Q&A: The Blood Avenger and Permission to Kill
The Blood Avenger and Permission to Kill
Question
The Rabbi said in several of his lectures that there is no such thing as “permission to kill,” because such permission would automatically turn into a prohibition because of the importance of life.
But in fact the blood avenger may kill a murderer, even an unintentional killer.
One could say that the Torah does not address the inherent moral prohibition here, but then it is strange that on the other hand it offers a legal mechanism to save the unintentional killer.
If in principle we do not want the blood avenger to kill, then why not simply forbid him from doing so?
Answer
It is not clear that for the blood avenger this is only a permission. There is a dispute about that. According to the view that it is only a permission, it is indeed exceptional. It would seem that the person is liable to death (“he has no blood,” in the Brisker Rav’s definition at the beginning of his book), but there is no obligation to carry it out.
Discussion on Answer
If you have a question, I suggest you ask it. I don’t know who Yonatan Shamriz is or who Alon is, and what connection that has to our discussion here. The laws of blood vengeance do not exist today, and they have various conditions regarding the nature of the inadvertence involved, and so on.
Is there really an opinion that says Yonatan Shamriz should have killed the soldier who mistakenly shot Alon? Doesn’t that sound extreme to you, borderline crazy?