Hello and blessings. We continue discussing matters regarding the prohibition of murder and bloodshed, from Chapter 5 of the book Brit Shalom. Now we are dealing with the understanding that murder is a serious offense, and a person might say, "I don't want to be in situations where I might cause someone's death." So maybe I shouldn’t be a doctor, a surgeon, or a soldier in the army, because in all these situations I might find myself in circumstances where someone could die because of me. Is this forbidden, allowed, or desirable? That is what we will discuss now.
I am reading here in Halacha 10. A doctor is permitted to perform surgery on a person even if it involves a risk to save their life. It is stated in the Torah in Parshat Mishpatim: "And he shall surely heal." From here we understand that the doctor is given permission to heal. But what does this permission mean?
After all, any medical practice can end tragically. A person might say, "I don't want to get involved in this; on the contrary, the Torah guides a person to make an effort to heal others." It’s clear that healing is from heaven, but the person, the doctor, is a messenger of the Holy One Blessed Be He to improve a person’s life, sometimes even to save it.
What about someone who kills unintentionally? For example, in a car accident. A person didn’t take proper care of their vehicle, didn’t make sure the brakes worked, or there are situations where it wasn’t their fault, and someone gets run over, someone dies by their hand. This is referred to as killing unintentionally. This means that someone who kills out of negligence is exempt from the death penalty. Even at a time when this could have been possible, the Torah spoke of the ir miklat (city of refuge), where someone who killed unintentionally has some level of responsibility and should be removed from their place and live elsewhere. This comes from the idea that we cannot be indifferent when someone, even accidentally, but still negligently, kills their fellow.
But if someone believes that murder is permitted, they are liable. What does this mean? A person might say, "Yes, I killed... I never heard that this is forbidden." So the halacha says that they are liable, they are punished because there is no such thing as a person saying, "I didn't know it’s forbidden to murder." It is such a fundamental moral principle that the Torah has made it stricter and holds liable someone who believes it is permissible to kill.
And here we come to a very significant halacha - what happens to a soldier? If I am a soldier, is it even permitted for me to enlist in my country's army? After all, I might kill others in a war – is this allowed or not? The answer is that while the halachic authorities disagree on this, the Netziv of Volozhin, one of the great sages of Israel in the 19th century, said that because the Torah says "From the hand of every man, I will require the life of man" (Genesis 9:5), we understand that the prohibition against bloodshed is when there is brotherhood, but when there is war, there is no brotherhood. This is the way of the world that wars exist, and therefore it is permitted for a Noahide to serve in their country's army, even if they go to war.
