There is a discussion in the gemara (Sanhedrin 74a) about whether
you are required to give up your life to avoid being a passive participant in a
murder. If someone threatens to kill you unless you allow him to throw you onto
a baby, thereby killing it, should you passively allow him to? Tosfos on the
gemara says that just as we learn that you may not kill another person to save
your own life because "his blood may be redder than yours," that is,
his life might be more important than yours, so too you do not have to resist
being a passive participant in a murder, because your life may be more
important than his. You are not in a position to judge whose life is more
important. Resisting would be a judgment that the baby's life is more
important. So you shouldn't interfere, and should allow the baby to be killed.
After the Holocaust, Jews around the world (rightly) condemned the
world powers for allowing the Holocaust to happen. They excoriated the lack of
resistance in Germany, in nations the Nazis conquered, the reluctance of people
to help their Jewish neighbors escape the Nazis, and the refusal of the Allies
to bomb the camps, railroads, and other infrastructure that made the mass slaughter
possible. But why? The world was just following halacha according to Tosefos!
You don't have to risk your own life to not be a passive participant in a
murder. Whether that means Germans resisting the Nazi government, or Poles
hiding their Jewish neighbors, or American and British airmen risking their
lives to bomb railroad lines to concentration camps.
For halacha l'maisah, it becomes more complicated. The Yerushalmi
learns from the pasuk, "Lo ta'amod al dam re'echa," “Do not stand by
your brother's blood.” that one is obligated to put himself at risk to save
another's life. But can we fault the world for paskening like Tosofs?
This is what happens when you turn moral questions into legal
questions. The question of whether to allow yourself to be thrown onto a baby
is strongly reminiscent of the Trolley Problem, and is a question for philosophy, for ethicists, not jurists. Most
people would find it immoral to be complicit in a murder. Turning it into a
legal question strips it of its ethical dimension, and allows the question to be
decided in a legalistic rather than a moral framework. Even the Yerushalmi,
which obligates one to risk himself to save another person, comes to that
conclusion on legal grounds based on a proof text, without consideration of
the morality of the question.
I wonder if this might tie into the recent spate of arrests
in Lakewood. In a community immersed in Talmudic legalism, there may be some
who have lost sight of the moral dimension of their actions. They have learned
to judge the permissibility of an action based on its halachic legality, without
considering its morality. If it's muttar, it's allowable, even if, when on the
other side of it, they might complain about its immorality.
