Granted, when you kill the person attempting suicide, you are not saving the one being pursued here, but you are saving the pursuer from violating the prohibition of “You shall not murder,” which is one of the sins for which one must be killed rather than transgress. Is it clear to the Rabbi that killing a pursuer is solely in order to save the pursued, and that there is no permission there at all מצד saving the pursuer himself from violating a prohibition for which one must die rather than transgress?

After you spill your fellow’s blood and break out in cheers, try not to dance on his blood because of “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood.”

Mocking is nice, but how about giving reasons?
One who goes to worship idolatry is saved even at the cost of his life,
so why is it obvious to you that someone going to kill himself is not saved at the cost of his life?

It’s not clear that it is solely that; it’s clear that it is also that. The obligation to kill the pursuer is based on a combination of saving him from sinning (that is how it appears in Rashi on Sanhedrin) and saving the pursued. But more than that, it can be formulated differently from Rashi: the pursuer is in any case already liable to death, so why wait until he becomes liable to death and then both the pursued and he die? Better to carry out the death penalty now and at least save the pursued. It seems to me this is a much more sensible formulation. But from this formulation you can understand that one pursuing murder, and one pursuing idolatry, can be killed, whereas one pursuing suicide cannot. And that is even if, as you say, one who is about to worship idolatry is killed — which in my opinion is far from clear.
Beyond that, one who commits suicide is not murdering himself; he is violating a different prohibition. Therefore he is not among the three cardinal sins, and there is no permission to kill someone in order to stop him from committing a sin that is not one of the three cardinal sins.

As for your question, I’ll add an explanation regarding the sarcasm.
The sarcasm was because the answer to this question is clear as the sun. If you had asked a conceptual Talmudic question in order to clarify why this is the law, that would definitely be worth clarification and discussion. But you presented it as a halakhic question, and as a halakhic question it is simply nonsense. There are things that are self-evident even before you know exactly what the reasoning is.
For example, there is an a fortiori argument brought in works on legal methodology to obligate a doorpost in tzitzit: if a four-cornered garment, which is exempt from mezuzah, is obligated in tzitzit, then a doorpost, which is obligated in mezuzah, all the more so should be obligated in tzitzit! Even before you find the flaw in this argument (and it is not easy to find it), it is obvious that this is empty casuistry. So if someone asks whether a doorpost is indeed obligated in tzitzit, he deserves a sarcastic answer. By contrast, if someone asks on the conceptual level: what is wrong with this a fortiori argument? Where is the flaw? — that is definitely a question worth discussing.

Thank you for the answer, and with your permission I’ll continue asking.
A) There is an opinion that one kills someone who is about to worship idolatry, and at least according to that opinion this is what I am asking. In Sanhedrin 74a it is taught: Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai says that one who worships idolatry may be saved at the cost of his life.
B) If I may get the proof that someone committing suicide is not among the three cardinal sins, thanks in advance.
C) The sarcasm doesn’t bother me (and also doesn’t especially interest me), so long as it comes with an answer I can understand. The Rabbi based the answer on two foundations (sections A and B), and each one may be correct, but neither is self-evident, at least not to me.

A. I answered even according to that opinion.
B. See any summary on the subject. For example, on Wikipedia: https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%9E%D7%90%D7%91%D7%93_%D7%A2%D7%A6%D7%9E%D7%95_%D7%9C%D7%93%D7%A2%D7%AA_(%D7%94%D7%9C%D7%9B%D7%94)

A) I understood that the Rabbi answered that it is permitted to kill a pursuer only in situations where, if he succeeds in his pursuit, he would become liable to death in a religious court (and even in those cases it is not always permitted, because we do not save at the cost of his life someone who is about to desecrate the Sabbath). I understand this is the Rabbi’s own reasoning without proof, and the Rabbi himself writes that it is not like Rashi, and I am sure the Rabbi understands that I did not come to receive halakhic answers based on reasoning against medieval authorities (Rishonim), and presumably the Rabbi himself would also not rely in practice on his own reasoning against Rashi unless the reasoning were extremely strong.
And in the reasoning itself I have room to discuss, because the law of a pursuer applies even at a time when capital cases are not judged (and there are no witnesses and warning), so in practice the pursuer will not die. Therefore there is no case here of trading two hundred for one hundred, where instead of sin and death there will only be death. And if it is because he is in principle liable to death, then why should we not also save at the cost of his life a pursuer who is liable to death at the hands of Heaven? (And one who commits suicide, according to Maimonides, Laws of Murderer, chapter 2, law 2, although there is no court-imposed death penalty, is liable to death at the hands of Heaven.)

B) Thanks. It says there: “There are different opinions regarding whether one who kills himself intentionally is included in ‘You shall not murder’ or not.” Although there are no sources there for the different opinions, it seems there is an opinion, as I thought, that one who kills himself intentionally violates “You shall not murder,” and therefore there is room to say that this is among the three cardinal sins.

Researcher,
There is a relatively young rabbi named Yisrael Shneur about whose greatness in Torah wildly exaggerated rumors circulate. Rabbi Yehoshua Inbal once wrote a review (a devastating one) of his book “Ma’aseh Ephod,” and if I remember correctly he mentioned there that in that book he discusses this very question — whether one is obligated to kill someone committing suicide (and according to this, if one knows about himself that tomorrow he will not manage to stop himself and will commit suicide, then apparently he should commit suicide today in order to save himself from suicide, Heaven forbid) — and Rabbi Inbal remarked that this is a ridiculous discussion. If you’re interested, maybe look for that book.

A. Not necessarily liability to death by a religious court, but liability to death. Preventing a person from becoming liable to death plus saving the pursued justifies killing the pursuer. After all, it is obvious that we kill even a pursuer acting unintentionally, and regarding a minor too the Amoraim disagreed, and the halakhic ruling is that we kill a minor pursuer. So Rashi too cannot be explained literally (as though this were only saving him from sin).
B. There are no different opinions. There is one opinion among the Geonim that this involves “You shall not murder.” But it is a very puzzling view.

In the Rabbi’s expression: in murder there is an “essential otherness.”

It is not at all clear that someone committing suicide is not a murderer. In fact, it seems precisely the opposite. The transgression the person committing suicide violates is “You shall not murder.” In the language of Maimonides: “we were commanded not to murder a person from among Israel.” And every person himself is also a person from among Israel, and if he kills himself he is killing a person from among Israel. On the contrary, this is one of the things that gives this commandment a dimension of a sin between man and God, and not only between man and his fellow. In other words, a divine commandment and not merely morality with God’s stamp of approval. Therefore the commandment has even greater seriousness. And this fits the prohibition of speaking slander about oneself, which is also forbidden for exactly this reason: that it is forbidden to speak slander about a person from among Israel, and likewise to wound oneself, and so on. You are simply imposing human morality on the Torah. But if one sticks to Maimonides’ wording, there is a great deal of logic in equating one who kills himself with one who worships idolatry.

Immanuel,
Here is the language of Maimonides, Laws of Murderer, chapter 2, laws 1–2: “Anyone who kills his fellow by his own hand, etc., is put to death by the religious court. But one who hires a killer to kill his fellow, etc., and likewise one who kills himself, etc., is a shedder of blood, and the sin of murder is in his hand, and he is liable to death at the hands of Heaven, but there is no court-imposed death penalty for them.”

It is explicit that according to Maimonides, one who kills himself, “there is no court-imposed death penalty for him” — meaning he did not violate the prohibition of “You shall not murder.” If he did violate “You shall not murder,” this would have practical implications, for example for the law that one who incurs a greater punishment is exempt from the lesser one: if at the time he killed himself he damaged another person’s vessels, he would be exempt from payment because he did it at a time when he incurred the death penalty of the court (and therefore the injured party would not collect from his estate).

And this is how Maimonides continues and distinguishes between one who murders another and one who kills himself: “As it says, ‘Whoever sheds the blood of man’… this is one who kills by his own hand. ‘But your blood of your lives I will demand’ — this is one who kills himself.” And his source is in the exposition of the Sages, who looked for a source for one who kills himself and did not suffice with ‘You shall not murder,’ and therefore plainly even after there is a source that suicide is forbidden, he does not bring the person committing suicide under the wings of the prohibition of ‘You shall not murder,’ but under a different and independent prohibition.

Student, nice definition. It is taken from my lecture series on self-reference (which just ended). In murder, X murders Y. If you identify Y with X, it stops being murder, and therefore what the Avenei Miluim says regarding actions a person does to himself is not relevant here.

See here for a discussion of a related question.
https://forum.otzar.org/viewtopic.php?t=37166

To Researcher and Rabbi Michi,

What kind of argument is this? How could it even belong to say that someone who committed suicide should be liable to death by the religious court? He is already dead. In the plain simple sense, Maimonides was speaking about the other details in the list, not about the suicide case. In any event it is quite clear that even if there is no court-imposed death penalty, there is still a violation of “You shall not murder.” The source you brought is for Noahides, for whom too suicide is forbidden. According to Sefer HaMitzvot, “You shall not murder” applies to Israelites, not to gentiles. The murder of a gentile is learned from the verses that teach the seven Noahide commandments and from those verses in the portion of Noah. I brought Sefer HaMitzvot. There is no problem conceptually with a person murdering himself. Murder is bloodshed — that is the biblical meaning of the word for murder: making a hole in the body to let blood out (similar to the root of the word meaning to bore a hole in skin). Otherwise the expression “and they murdered a soul” would be unclear, since it parallels the expression “and struck him mortally”; there is a striking that is not a mortal striking. But according to this there is a murder that is not murder of a soul. According to the modern meaning of the word murder, there is no such thing. But according to the biblical meaning, there is. Making a hole in the body and shedding blood in a way that the soul does not depart from it (a quarter-log of life-blood found in the blood), but clearly in “You shall not murder” the meaning is murder of a soul. You cannot impose our modern use of language onto the language of the Hebrew Bible and the Sages if they used it differently.

It is hard to ignore the feeling that there is an intellectual and halakhic lack of honesty here on Rabbi Michi’s part. This is also connected to issues of coercing Jewish law — where one indeed has to think carefully about where and in what way it applies today (and how, in truly Torah terms, one can explain the feeling that today it is not relevant to stone Sabbath desecrators — but not from Rabbi Michi’s somewhat Reform-like mentality, which erases bodies of Torah in the name of morality. That is simply not intellectually or halakhically honest. His words just sound fake to halakhic ears). But Rabbi Michi tries to erase it in principle from our period despite belief in the eternity of Torah, and there is also an attempt to impose human moral perception on the Torah. Not that it is bad in itself, and not that there is no connection between it and Torah (the Torah stands one level above it — above basic decency — and certainly the Torah’s prohibition of murder is connected to moral prohibition of murder), but in matters of Jewish law one must listen to the Holy One, blessed be He, and not put words into His mouth — words you would like Him to say — and afterward trust Him that He knows what He is saying and that He is wise and righteous and will not command injustice and wickedness. The old Rabbi Michi would not have tolerated this intellectually dishonest halakhic mentality. Indeed, if there is a contradiction between moral feeling and halakhic feeling, one must think very hard about what to do. But Rabbi Michi is too quick on the trigger with “if Moses said it, then one must obey him.” And if a prophet were to come and prove himself with signs and tell you to stone someone — not from the laws of coercion but because he is a prophet and one must obey the words of a prophet — and you became convinced that God truly speaks through him, then on some level one must trust the Holy One, blessed be He, that He knows something we do not know, and that this really is not immoral even though it appears that way, and stone that person. This is no different from any other commandment that requires trust in the Holy One, blessed be He, such as giving up all your wealth in order not to desecrate the Sabbath, out of faith that in the end the Holy One, blessed be He, will see to it that you do not come out a sucker in the long run. But Rabbi Michi does not believe in reward and punishment.

In our case, you are simply trying, unconsciously, to lessen the severity of the sin of suicide.

Immanuel,
It’s a shame that you are exerting yourself to argue empty things.
A) Maimonides writes that a murderer is liable to death by the religious court, whereas one who commits suicide is liable to death at the hands of Heaven. In your view there is no difference at all between a murderer and one who commits suicide, and he is not really writing that, and your argument is that after all he is already dead. But even court-imposed capital liability has practical ramifications, as I brought regarding the rule that one who incurs a greater punishment is exempt from the lesser one. Analyze carefully and you will find.
B) Be that as it may, the Sages, and Maimonides following them, distinguish between murder and suicide in the source of derivation and in severity. See my previous message and Google it and you will see.
C) Therefore the accepted understanding is that although suicide is of course forbidden, it is not included in “You shall not murder.” If you have claims against this based on your understanding of biblical language and ancient concepts and so forth, that means you probably have a mistake in your understanding of biblical language and ancient concepts. Before I saw the sources through this discussion, I too simply assumed that one who commits suicide violates “You shall not murder.” It turns out that is not the case, and that’s that. Lack of honesty and so on — that is exactly what you are doing: ignoring sources and inventing things.
D) Regards.

They are certainly not empty things.

I did not say that someone committing suicide is liable to death by the court. That is not applicable to him, and therefore it is very possible that the practical implication of the rule that one who incurs a greater punishment is exempt from the lesser one would apply to him. But his prohibition is still learned from “You shall not murder,” certainly according to Maimonides. There are many variations of transgressions that are learned from the same prohibition, with different levels of punishment — analyze carefully and you will find. Like the prohibition of torn flesh, from which they also derive eating invalid sacrificial meat that went outside its boundary, which is learned from the prohibition of eating torn flesh. There the punishment is not different, but it is a different level of severity of transgression. Same here. It is not a different prohibition. This is not merely the accepted understanding. Most halakhic decisors will tell you that suicide is forbidden because of murder. And they saw the sources. The distinction between “whoever sheds the blood of man,” which is for Noahides, and “You shall not murder,” which is for Jews, is famous and well known.

And the Maimonides you brought — I too have known it since ancient times. And I have not changed my mind.

There is a separate exposition in the words of the Sages for someone committing suicide, and there is a separate law in Maimonides for someone committing suicide. Now you are discussing whether after the separate exposition it goes back and is included in “You shall not murder” (even though if only “You shall not murder” had been written it would not have included someone committing suicide), but at a lower level of severity? So what practical difference comes out of what you are saying? A solemn declaration that suicide is very severe is agreed upon by everyone (and therefore unnecessary).

Immanuel,

I just now saw a lecture by Rabbi Asher Weiss on the subject of one who kills himself intentionally (you can search for “Ma’abed Atzmo LaDa’at Minchat Asher”). There he brings the Minchat Chinukh, who says that one who commits suicide is not a murderer, and the Beit Meir (as you said), who says that he is a murderer.

Rabbi Weiss discusses there whether every place where suicide is permitted there is also permission to murder, and he brings three possible cases where suicide may perhaps be permitted: one who fears abuse, one who fears desecration of God’s name through the killing of the king of Israel by enemies, and one who knows he is going to die. And there, for example, he decides that regarding brief remaining life filled with suffering, even if a person may commit suicide, it is still forbidden to murder him. But according to your view, Immanuel, that even if one who commits suicide is like a murderer his severity is still less, then Rabbi Weiss’s proofs neither add nor subtract. But in practice, what you said above converges with the claim that one who commits suicide is not fully like a murderer, and I understand that Rabbi Weiss is discussing whether the law of one who commits suicide is like that of a murderer in all respects.

By the way, regarding Maimonides’ statement that one who commits suicide is liable to death at the hands of Heaven (and not liable to death at the hands of man), Rabbi Weiss raises the question how death is relevant to one who has committed suicide, as you asked and as everyone asks, and he suggests the possibility that Maimonides’ words about death at the hands of Heaven are not referring to the one who committed suicide (as you said — though to me that seems unlikely), and he also suggests that the point is to tell us the nature of the liability itself, with practical implications regarding the rule that one who incurs a greater punishment is exempt from the lesser one (as the Minchat Chinukh says, and that is also how I understand it).

Therefore,

A) I apologize for calling your words empty things, since it turns out that a clearly authoritative rabbi, one of the greatest of the later authorities, the Beit Meir, holds as you do. So I ask your forgiveness.

But I looked at the Beit Meir’s words, and I am not at all sure he really says what Rabbi Weiss understands from him. The Shulchan Arukh, Yoreh De’ah 215:5, writes that vows of urging do not take effect on prohibitions alone, “whether in neglecting a prohibition or in fulfilling it.” A vow to fulfill a prohibition would be, for example, one who vows to refrain from eating carrion, and that does not take effect. The Beit Meir asks: what does it mean, a vow to neglect a prohibition? Neglecting a prohibition means an active violation, whereas a vow only creates passive abstention. (To me this point itself needs analysis, because for example if one sees his fellow drowning and he has in his hand a stick with which he could save him by extending it, and then he vows not to touch the stick, then by that he neglects the prohibition of “do not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood.”) And the Beit Meir establishes the case as someone who vows to abstain from food and then will die, which is neglecting the prohibition of “You shall not murder,” and therefore the vow does not take effect.
And from here Rabbi Weiss infers that according to the Beit Meir, one who commits suicide intentionally violates “You shall not murder.” But this is only a linguistic inference, not that the Beit Meir explicitly discusses the issue, and not that the Beit Meir brought any practical implication to the claim that one violates “You shall not murder,” and the Beit Meir’s ruling remains true even if one who commits suicide does not, on the definitional level, violate “You shall not murder” but some other prohibitory commandment — and I would understand that for the sake of simplicity of wording the Beit Meir wrote “You shall not murder.” I too find it surprising, because at the beginning of the lecture Rabbi Weiss there questions the whole idea of making forced linguistic inferences from Maimonides, so how is he making such inferences from the Beit Meir?

B) As for the substance of the matter, as I wrote, I am not sure the Beit Meir indeed intended that, and even if he did, there are no proofs there at all.

What I said was based on reasoning: Maimonides thinks conceptually, and that is also how he learns the gemarot and midrashim. For Maimonides, every prohibition is supposed to be classified under one of the 365 prohibitions or under neglect of one of the 248 positive commandments. So obviously he would classify one who commits suicide (and likewise one who sends a man to murder, and one who kills a fetus in his mother’s womb, all of which are learned from the exposition there of “whoever sheds the blood of man,” etc.) under the prohibition of “You shall not murder.” Some will be punishable by death at the hands of Heaven. Of course he will cite the midrash of “whoever sheds the blood of man,” because from it the details of the laws are learned, and he does this in dozens of places. When details of law are learned from an exposition, he cites the exposition. But the essence of the prohibition is learned from “You shall not murder,” because there is no prohibition such as “shedding the blood of man” among his 365 prohibitions. Also the phrase “that we were not commanded to… a person from among Israel” recurs in several places in him. It is agreed that according to Maimonides it is also forbidden for a person to speak slander about himself, and so on. And “you shall love your fellow as yourself” Maimonides formulates as loving each of us for the other, and elsewhere as loving every person of Israel. So indeed a person is obligated to love himself from “you shall love your fellow as yourself” (this is not something trivial; it is not about ego), and likewise he is forbidden to hate himself from “you shall not hate your brother in your heart.”
“You shall not murder” is part of a large group like this. And there is also great wisdom here in understanding the Torah and its commandments, that they are directed toward the organism of the people of Israel. We do not love one another because it is nice and moral, but because one must love the Jewish people, and therefore love every individual in it. And likewise not murder any individual in it. And this is where Kabbalah also comes in, and so on.