Torah This Week
Welcome to Torah This Week, where you will find thoughts and reflections by CLAL faculty and associates on the Torah portion of the week.
ACHAREI MOT
(Leviticus 16:1 - 18:30)
With three exceptions, all Jewish laws are suspended when human life is at stake. For example, while Jewish law traditionally forbids driving on the Sabbath, a Jew who would refuse to drive a very sick person to the hospital on the Sabbath would be violating Jewish law.
The rationale for violating Jewish laws when life is at stake is based on a verse in this Torah portion, Leviticus 18:5, which teaches: "You shall keep My laws and My rules, by the pursuit of which one shall live." The rabbis understood this to mean, " 'You shall live by them,' and not die by them" (Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 85b).
Concerning the three exceptions, Jewish law teaches that death is preferable to violating the law. The most obvious case involves murder: if one can remain alive only by murdering an innocent person, it is better to die. Likewise, one must not save one's life by performing acts of idolatry. For this reason, many medieval Jewish martyrs refused to be baptized and instead accepted execution. While contemporary Judaism has come to regard Christianity as non-idolatrous, the martyrs felt that forsaking Judaism to save their lives would be a betrayal of God, and tantamount to idolatry. Finally, in cases of gilui arayot (certain forbidden sexual relations), death is preferred to violation of a law. Thus, talmudic law forbids men and women from engaging in incestuous or adulterous relations even if doing so would somehow help keep them alive.
The laws regarding pikuach nefesh (preservation of life) reflect the very high value Judaism assigns to human life. But the exceptions, relating to murder, idolatry and perverse sexuality, also reveal that it does not always view life as the highest value.
(Joseph Telushkin)
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