Q&A: A Hasidic Story Permitting Sabbath Desecration
A Hasidic Story Permitting Sabbath Desecration
Question
On the Sabbath I read in a Hasidic piece on the weekly Torah portion about a Hasid in a town who became very ill in the middle of the Sabbath. They sent a messenger to the Rebbe (his name was mentioned, but I don’t remember it) who went beyond the Sabbath boundary in order to ask for mercy on his behalf.
When the rabbi heard about this (I don’t remember his name either), he asked the Rebbe how this could be permitted, given that it involved violating a Torah-level prohibition.
He answered: this follows by an a fortiori argument. After all, a doctor is permitted to heal a dangerously ill person on the Sabbath. And if a doctor, about whom it is said, “permission was given to the doctor to heal,” may heal on the Sabbath,
then all the more so one may seek mercy through a righteous man, about whom it is said, “one who needs mercy should go to the righteous person” (a quote from some Talmudic passage), in obligatory language: “should go”!
The story was presented to the Hasidic audience without any qualification regarding practical Jewish law; it seems this was a ruling in every sense.
Where would you classify such an instruction?
Plain-sense interpretation / midrashic / Reform / Conservative / some other mutation?
Answer
It was the Rebbe of Belz.
Seemingly, the matter depends on the question whether going to a righteous man really is effective (and whether he really is a righteous man). If so, then why not violate the Sabbath? So this has nothing whatsoever to do with Reform or any other mutation. There is a factual discussion here. However, quite a few later authorities wrote that even if it is effective, it is still forbidden to violate the Sabbath for a segulah-type rescue. Birkei Yosef and Rabbi Shlomo Kluger, among others, discussed this at length. If I recall correctly, they brought proof from the Talmud in Makkot about throwing the Divine Name in order to stop the depths.
Discussion on Answer
That a fortiori argument is just a Hasidic homily. Ignore it. There is a halakhic claim here that can be discussed.
The same issue exists regarding whether it is permitted to write a “holy name” on the Sabbath so that someone will be healed.
Okay. Now I see there’s actually a real halakhic discussion about this (all the halakhic decisors are stringent about it).
That a fortiori argument seemed strange to me. And if they rely on it (as the story implies), it sounds really absurd and ridiculous to permit Sabbath desecration on that basis.