Q&A: To Whom Are You More Obligated
To Whom Are You More Obligated
Question
Suppose you are working by the river and two people are about to drown and are shouting for you to save them! One is a gentile and one is a Jew. Suppose the gentile shouted first—whom would you save first?
Answer
I assume the Jew. Both because of the laws of precedence in Horayot and because he is from my people.
Discussion on Answer
Let me answer in your place, Michi, and tell me if I hit the mark: even if according to the laws of precedence the Torah scholar comes first, it’s obvious I’d save the secular person. I’m amazed by the very question.
Well, I’m not amazed by the very question, but indeed I would save the secular person first. He is willing to invest himself in order to save me. He is involved with me and bound up with me. The Haredi person is not.
I’m more cruel than you, Michi, but not because of bad character traits—rather out of a purely Torah consideration. For if, for example, that secular person were not in the category of a child taken captive among the gentiles—say he had become religious, studied in a yeshiva for baalei teshuvah, and then went back to his old ways and denied either everything, let’s say that there is no God, or admitted that there is a God but still denied some part that is essential to Judaism—whether he looks secular (for example, Yaron Yadan) or whether he still has Haredi markers, a kippah, beard, and so on (you’d be surprised to hear there are such people), not only would I prefer the Haredi Torah scholar, I would not save that secular person at all, even if it were known to me that he served in a significant and select military role (for example, he carried out the most attacks in Iran), even if he were alone at the scene of danger. More than that: I would throw him into the dangerous place myself (if I could do so without fear of being caught by the authorities, of course, so this is not practical and only in theory), just as the Torah commands me: “They are lowered down but not raised up,” and “One who causes another to sin is worse than one who kills him.”
Bravo. Sharpness of thought and deep fear of Heaven are clearly evident.
And if it were a secular person (who served in the army in an elite unit) and a Haredi man (a Lithuanian kollel avrekh, a Torah scholar, who didn’t serve in the army and presumably also won’t serve later), whom would you save? And are there also Torah laws of precedence between those two, or is it just according to whatever you feel like?