The Prohibition To Save a Life With a Life

Life is a gift from G-D our creator. Our creator gives life and takes life. The Torah provides us with the rules when we are permitted to take a life and when we are forbidden to take a life. The general rule is that it is forbidden to take a life even if it is done to save a life unless it is done to save a victim from a potential murderer. The simple meaning of a potential murderer is a person who willfully acts to cause the death of another person either directly or indirectly and that this action is one of the prohibitions of murder that are Biblically forbidden, regardless whether the homicide is punishable by execution our not. There are cases where one is allowed to save a life with the life of a potential murderer who is not acting of his own free will, when the state of life of the potential murderer has a different status than the life of an ordinary human, as will be explained.

A classical example of this is with an embryo that is threatening the life of its mother. If the only way to save the mother is by killing the embryo, it is permitted, although the embryo is not acting of its own free will. The reason for this is, that although it is forbidden to kill an embryo even to save the life of one in need of one of his vital organs, but in this case the embryo is threatening his mother's life, and the embryo's life is considered a different status of life because it is unborn. Therefore, with the combination of these two factors the Torah permits saving the mother's life with the embryo's life. The halacha defines being born as, when the embryo's head emerged from the womb. With modern medicine it is possible for an embryo to be removed prematurely and survive.

It is important to note that life begins at inception, and that these rules apply to an embryo at even the earliest stage of inception.

There is one more case similar to this case that I will discuss later, after explaining the reasoning and studying cases pertaining to these laws.

The rule is, that anyone may stop a potential murderer from murdering with whatever means needed. If it is definite that he can be stopped by shooting him in his foot, then it is forbidden to kill him. If there is a small probability that not killing him may not save the victim, then it is permitted to kill him to save the victim.

If the potential murderer bound someone and put him into a sack, so that he cannot move, and threw him on a child to kill him, the person who is bound is not doing an act of murder of his own free will and it is forbidden to kill him to save the victim's life the same way it is forbidden to kill a fetus whose head had left the womb to save its mother. It is the one who threw the sack onto the child who is the potential murderer, and the one who is in the sack is the physical murderer, and not the sack. Although it is only the sack that hits the child, nevertheless, the sack does not have enough weight to hurt the child, it is the weight of the person within the sack that kills the child. If the victim was a healthy grown up who could not be killed by the weight of one person, and the murderer added lead weight to the sack in order to kill him. It was the weight of both the person and the lead that killed, but if not for the weight of the person the lead was not heavy enough to kill. In this case, the person is the physical murderer and the lead is the murderers instrument. If the lead in the sack was sufficient to kill the person, then the lead is the murderer's instrument, and the person tied to the lead had no hand in the murder.

If the brakes of a vehicle malfunction and there is no way for the driver to avoid being thrown off a cliff and crashing into the homes below killing someone, the driver is not considered the physical murder, it is the vehicle that is the instrument of murder. The reason being, that he had no hand in the killing since he was unable to stop the car and his added weight was not needed to kill.

This law also applies to a case when the potential murderer did not bind the person but told him that he would kill him unless he allows himself be thrown on a child to kill the child. As long as he only allows himself to be thrown and does no positive action and cannot save himself with the child by doing any action, he is not killing the child of his own free will.

If a person is the physical murderer, even if he alone cannot kill, as with the case where they had to add lead weight to the sack, and due to his fall on the child, it is almost certain that he will also be killed, he is then a chayai-shoah, and it would be permitted to save the life of the child with the life of the physical murderer, as will be explained in the following case.

I will now discuss another exception to this rule. If a group of armed soldiers surround a town and demand that the town's people deliver to them a person who they mention by name for execution, or else they will take him by force, and if arrested by the militia town's people will be killed in the process. If within a day or two the person named will almost definitely be killed by the troops, then, according to the Bais Yosef it is permitted to deliver him to save their lives. The reasoning is that once they mention him by name, it is he who is now a threat to the lives of the town's people and not the opposite. Furthermore, the fact that he has only a day or two to live makes him a chayai-shoah. In this case the life of a chayai-shoah is to be compared to that of an embryo and it is permissible for the town's people to save their lives with his life. In another scenario a chayai-shoah may elect a dangerous procedure to try to save himself even if the odds are that it will kill him sooner, as long as there is a small chance that it will lengthen his life. This type of procedure is prohibited if he is not a chayai-shoah.

In a similar case where the soldiers do not specify anyone by name, but simply demand that the town's people choose one of their people to deliver for execution or they will take one of them by force, it is forbidden to forcefully choose and deliver anyone, but one of them may choose to sacrifice himself to save the others. The difference between these two cases is, that in the second case, one of the town's people is not more of a threat to their lives than another, since they did not specify an individual, any one of them could be a threat to the other people of the town. Therefore, even if they would all be chayai-shoah, one life is not more important than another life.

The commentary on the Shulchan Aruch, Yorah Dayah, the Turi Zahav, (chapter 157) writes, that if someone in a Jewish community is engaged in criminal activities that are punishable by execution, and if by harboring him the government will accuse the community of non-cooperation, thus endangering the lives of the community, this criminal is considered a potential murderer and the community must stop him or deliver him to the authorities. In this case he is considered a potential murderer even if the threat is indirect and he is only engaging in an act that in itself is not related to an act of murder. Therefore, we define endangering another life, when through his action a change was made that causes another life to be endangered. Consequently, if his action did not make a change that endangered another life and he did not save that persons life, he is not included in the category of potential murderers. One is commanded to save a life so long as there is no risk to his life. If there is a small risk to his life and the odds are that he will be able to save the person, he may choose to risk his life to save another life. If there are strong odds that he will die risking his life to save another life and the odds are that he would nevertheless save the person, in most cases it is forbidden to save a life with his life even when volunteering. There are several exceptions to this rule. If he is in a situation where his life is in danger also, and he will be killed in a day or two, and if by doing a heroic act there is a small chance that he will save himself also, then he may choose to risk his life with the odds that he will be killed sooner as long as there is some hope that the person risking his life may be saved. When there is no chance that he will saved but he is doing so to save many people or to save a very important G-D fearing leader, he may choose to save them with his life.

In the above cases the decision to, or not to save the person, must be made quickly because the danger is immediate. The question arises when there is no immediate danger but a long range danger. If two people are walking through a desert and it would take them one month to reach civilization, one person has a months provisions but the other person does not. The question is, do they share alike and pool their provisions and divide them equally although by doing so both will not survive the desert, or do we say that the person in possession of the one month's provisions is not allowed to shorten his life in order to extend the life of his partner. This same question can be asked when one has a choice to donate one of his kidneys to extend the life of a person and by this he would be shortening his expected life span. The answer to this according to the halacha is that if the odds are that his life expectancy will be shortened he is not allowed to increase the life expectancy of another by shortening his life expectancy.

The Rambam (Maimonides) enumerates the categories of murder that are forbidden by the Torah (Bible). Some of these categories are punishable in court by execution and some are not. The rule is, that it is forbidden to save one's life by committing any of the Biblically prohibited murders, and that one may save the life of a victim with the life of anyone attempting to commit murder by any of the Biblically forbidden methods of murder.

The following are part of the list of Biblically forbidden methods of murder. 1. Placing a person within range of a wild beast, or sending a wild beast to kill a person. 2. Hiring a murderer to murder. 3. Causing physical weakness to a person so that he is not able to escape from a fire or from a flood. 4. Locking someone in an air-tight room causing his asphyxiation. 5. Causing one's death through starvation. 6. Removing a person's shield, thus causing his death through shot arrows.

Therefore, one must save a potential victim's life with the life of one engaged in the act of hiring a murderer if there is no other fool-proof way to save him. Once the murderer is hired, the one who hired him is no longer a potential murderer, but it is now the murderer who must be stopped.

Doing business with a murderer is not one of the Biblically forbidden categories of murder. Therefore, to save one's life it is permitted to purchase goods from a murderer who looted it from his victim, providing that by doing so he will not encourage the murderer to kill more people. For example, if the murderer is engaged in selling human organs and body parts, then it is to be assumed that these wares cannot be obtained through theft and thus he is encouraging him to kill more people in order to increase his profit. It would then be forbidden to purchase these organs even when they are needed to save a life, because through this purchase he is causing the death of innocent people. If however the murderer has more than enough customers for these body parts, and that by purchasing a body part, this purchase will not result in more murders, it is permitted to purchase the organ from him in order to save a life.

One is permitted to save his life with another life if that person could have also saved his life but did not. An example of this rule is, when in a war situation where the enemy is shooting and the soldiers scream "duck", the front line may hit the ground although exposing the second line to enemy fire because they must also hit the ground to save themselves.

If two people are jailed and this jail is a dangerous place because they are at the mercy of cruel guards who are murderers. If one prisoner has the ability to escape, but this will put the remaining prisoner at greater risk of being killed, he may escape, since before he escaped the other prisoner was anyway in danger of his life by these guards.

Referring to the list of Biblically forbidden methods of murder, category number two, hiring a murderer to murder. The act of hiring does not require that he be personally guaranteed payment. If he is hired as an assassin to be paid after executing the act, however, he expects to be killed before he acquires the payment, and consequently he agrees to do the act if his family receives the payment. This is also an act of hiring since there are monetary rewards for the act that he is receiving by his family benefiting from them. This may be compared to a life insurance policy where one pays money for it in order for his family to benefit from it after his death.

Therefore, if a government promises payment to the families of suicide bombers, this government is hiring murderers and increasing the amount of suicide bombers. In a situation like this it is permitted to engage that government in war in order to save many innocent lives although in the process some soldiers will be killed, as explained before.

It is now standard regulations in most countries to down a passenger plane that is piloted by terrorists dedicated to a mission of destruction, before they succeed. The justification of this procedure is, that the passengers only have minutes to live before the terrorists crash the aircraft one way or another, and their targeted victims have their whole life before them if they are saved.

According to the halacha, this question is divided into four scenarios. The first is the situation of the passengers attempting to save themselves by overpowering the terrorists and piloting the aircraft to safety. The overwhelming odds are, that the terrorists will put the aircraft into an irreversible nose dive, and that they will be killed several minutes earlier than waiting for the terrorists to crash it into their target. This is what happened with the last flight of the September 11 plot. This is permitted because the passengers have only minutes to live and are in the category of chayai Shoah (a person who has only a day or two to live). A person who is a chayai shoah, may select a high risk procedure that may kill him immediately if there is a small chance that it will save him.

The second case is when there are no pilots left to land the aircraft, and there is no chance of survival, yet the passengers are willing to attempt to overpower the terrorist so that they will not crash the aircraft into their target. This is also permitted, because one is permitted save a life with his life for a very good reason. In this case the reason is that the passengers have only minutes left to live, whereas the targeted potential victims have their whole life before them, if saved.

The third case is when the military can stop the plane from turning into their target by damaging the wings, but the aircraft remains with the potential to land. Although this action will cause the terrorists to crash the plane immediately and kill the passengers sooner, it is permitted. The reasoning to permit this is, that the passengers would agree to this even though they themselves lacked the ability to overpower the terrorists, and that the military is not killing the passengers directly, they just frustrated the terrorists, and the terrorists killed the passengers.

The fourth case is, when the only way to stop the terrorists from crashing into their target is to down the plane with a missile. This is not permitted because the military are directly killing the passengers, and it is forbidden to save the life of a person by killing a dying person even when he is close to death.

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