On the Value of Human Life

Text #1: From the Torah

Whoever sheds the blood of a human, by a human shall his/her blood be shed. God made humanity in God’s image. (Genesis 9:6)

Text #2: From the Mishnah

Adam was created as a single individual to teach you that whosoever destroys a single soul, Scripture considers it as though he had destroyed a whole world…Also, to proclaim the greatness of the Blessed Holy One: for if a person strikes many coins from one mold, they all resemble one another, but the Blessed Holy One fashioned every person in the stamp of the first person, and yet not one of them resembles his/her fellow. Therefore every single person is obliged to say: the world was created for my sake… (Sanhedrin 4:5; these are the words used to caution witnesses about to testify in a capital case.)

Texts #3 & #4: From the Talmud

Two people were walking on a road, and one had a canteen of water. If both drank, they would both die, and if one drank—she would make it to the village. The son of Petura said: Better that the two of them should drink and both die, so that one would not have to look on the death of her friend. But Rabbi Akiba taught: So that your brother may live with you (Lev. 25:36)—this means that your life takes precedence over your friend’s life. (Bava Metzia 62a)

A certain man came to Rava, and said to him: “The governor of my town told me that I have to kill this particular person, and if I don’t, he’ll have me killed.” Rava said to him: “Allow yourself to be killed but do not kill [the other person]. How can you say that your blood is redder? Maybe that person’s blood is redder?” (Pesachim 25b)

Questions:

  • Texts #1 & 2 emphasize the uniqueness and sanctity of every human life. The Genesis text asserts that the taking of human life merits the death penalty,while the Mishnah cautions about implementing the death penalty. Can a human life be taken in order to uphold the ultimate value of human life?
  • In Text #3 (Bava Metzia), if we take Rabbi Akiba’s opinion as authoritative, is it possible to reconcile that text with Text #4 (Pesachim)? Can both Rava and Rabbi Akiba be right?

(over)

Laws of the “pursuer” (Medieval law codes)

A person who is being pursued by another person who wishes to kill him may defend himself and kill the pursuer. If someone was pursuing another person with the manifest intent to kill him, everybody is obligated to save the pursued party, even by taking the pursuer’s life.

If someone is able to save another person from his pursuer, but fails to do so, or if he sees another person drowning or being attacked by bandits, and he is able to save him, but he fails to do so, he violates the prohibition, You shall not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor(Lev. 19:16).

If someone was pursuing another person with the manifest intent to kill him, and it was possible to save the intended victim by inflicting a blow to one of the pursuer’s limbs, but the rescuer killed the pursuer without making any effort to stop him with less force, the killer is regarded as a murderer (but he is not subject to judicial execution).

(Maimonides, Sefer Nezikin, Hilkhot Rotzeach chapter 1, and Shulkhan Arukh, Hoshen Mishpat 425-26)

Responding to Evil – Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook

It is an art of great enlightenment to purge anger from the heart entirely, to look at all with a benevolent eye, with compassionate concern, without reservation. It is to emulate the eye of God that focuses only on the good. This should also include the works wrought by the wicked, even on those most thoroughly immersed in wickedness. It means to pity them for being sunk in the mire of wickedness, to find their good aspects and to minimize the scope of their guilt…

Love for others must be alive within our heart and soul, a love for every individual and a love for all nations, expressing itself in a desire for their spiritual and material advancement; hatred may be directed only at the evil and foulness in the world…Wherever we find allusions in our tradition to hatred, clearly the reference is to the phenomenon of evil, which has disrupted by force the unity of many nations at the present time, and certainly in ancient times when the world was in a much lower moral state. But we must realize that the life process, its inherent light and holiness, never leaves the divine image, with which each person and each nation been endowed, each in accordance with its nature. This seed of holiness will elevate everything. It is because of this perspective on life that we are concerned for the fullest progress to prevail in the world, for the ascent of justice, merged with beauty and vitality, for the perfection of all creation, beginning with humanity and all its attributes…

Though our love for people must be all-inclusive, embracing the wicked as well, this in no way blunts our hatred for evil itself; on the contrary it strengthens it. For it is not because of the dimension of evil clinging to a person that we include him in our love, but because of the good in him, which our love tells us is to be found everywhere…

[Exceprts from “Lights of Holiness” and “The Moral Principles,” collected in Abraham Isaac Kook, trans. Ben Zion Bokser, Paulist Press 1978. Rav Kook (1865-1935) was the first Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of British mandate Palestine and an early supporter of the Zionist movement.]