Q&A: Caution
Caution
Question
To what extent is a person obligated to be careful and guard against dangerous situations? For example:
Is it permitted to smoke one cigarette once every… ? And what about smoking a pack a day?
Is it permitted to eat chocolate? How much? And if I’m addicted to it, am I obligated to go for treatment? How much do I have to pay?
When there’s a siren, must one go to the safe room? After all, what are the chances that it will fall on that particular person’s house?
In short: is there a clear rule for this whole issue?
Thank you very much in advance
Answer
There are no rules.
When there’s a siren, one should go to the safe room not because of the danger to you personally (which is negligible), but because of the collective danger. If each of us doesn’t enter the safe room because he personally is not in danger, then someone in the collective will be harmed, and every person who is harmed is harm to the public.
Discussion on Answer
About that it is said, “The Lord protects the simple.” But even that is not a rule. Who is the reasonable person? This is just a matter of common sense, that’s all. See my article on Jewish law and reality, where I discussed the vagueness involved in defining the concept of “dangerous.”
I once heard a rule that might help here:
Whatever an ordinary reasonable person regards as a dangerous act is forbidden.
According to this, chocolate and cigarettes are permitted, because each individual cigarette and each piece of chocolate, in themselves, are not regarded as dangerous, whereas going to the safe room is obligatory.