When I lived in Jerusalem three years ago, every morning I would ride my bicycle up Jabotinsky Street on my way to school past a handful of demonstrators maintaining vigil outside the Prime Minister’s residence. One placard in particular always caught my eye: “Galid Shalit: 823 days of captivity,” “824,” “825,…” Finally, this week, amid jubilation and anguish, the quixotic effort came to fruition. Jubilation—because at times Israel functions more like a large family than a country, and Gilad became the surrogate son of every Israeli household. Anguish—because some of the more than one thousand Palestinian prisoners released in exchange for his freedom will surely turn right around and plan new terrorist attacks. Nor is it the first time that the State of Israel has agreed to such a disproportionate swap. In 2004, Israel let go 436 Palestinians and Lebanese in exchange for 1 Israeli businessman and the remains of three soldiers. In 1985, Israel freed 1150 Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners for three live soldiers. This latest bargain is merely the most extreme case.
The imperative to bring home a prisoner of war at all costs is embedded within the Israeli military ethos. However, it goes deeper than that. It goes back to the incalculable worth that Jewish tradition places upon human life, as articulated in a famous Talmudic statement that rests, in turn, on this week’s Torah portion, Breishit. “Why was Adam created singly?” the Talmud asks. “To teach that whosoever destroys a single soul, it is as though he had destroyed an entire world, and whosoever saves a single soul, it is as though she had saved an entire world.” (bSanhedrim 37a)
What happens when heroic efforts to save one life places others at risk? I became interested in this ethical dilemma for my final project before Rabbinic ordination, a research paper exploring Jewish perspectives on universal health care. (This was during the time when President Obama’s signature health care bill was being hotly debated throughout the country.) I realized that a major source of the health care controversy stems from the challenge of distributing limited resources across a large population. To put it crudely, there are not enough funds within the system to pay for every possible medication and medical procedure. When one person is treated for a disease or condition, there’s that much less money to go around for everyone else. The injunction to save a single soul as if the single soul were equivalent to the entire world rings resoundingly in the abstract, but, at least when it comes to universal health coverage, it cannot be the only driving principle.
I discovered another Talmudic passage that adds complexity to the argument. It reads as follows: “A caravan is traveling in the desert. A gang confronts them, saying: ‘Give us one of your men, and we will kill him; otherwise, we will kill you all.’ Even if all of the travelers are to die, they shall not hand over a single Israelite soul. Rabbi Shimon says: ‘if the gang names a specific individual who is guilty of some crime against it, then the travelers may hand him over in order to save themselves.’ Rabbi Jonathan says, ‘if the gang names a specific individual, even if he is not guilty of any crime, the travelers may hand him over in order to save themselves.’” (jTrumot 47a)
What’s fascinating here is that the passage starts out with a bold, unqualified proclamation: the group must go to any lengths to save the life of the individual, even at risk to the group. As the discussion progresses, however, the successive opinions chip away at the initial ruling. In the first instance, maybe the outsiders’ claim is justified. Maybe the person they name is a criminal and they demand him for extradition. According to Rabbi Shimon, the group should deliver him to them. In the second instance, even when the outsiders’ demand is unjustified and the person they specify is innocent, it is still permissible to hand him over in order to save the group. By the end of the passage, the only situation remaining in which it is forbidden to sacrifice a single life in order to save the group is the case where the outsiders do not specify a particular person. In essence, they say, “hand over somebody, anybody, from your group, and we kill him,” and the group is now in the anguished position, like Sophie in “Sophie’s Choice,” to choose the victim to be sacrificed for the greater good. If the group were to accede in this case, then the group would be complicit in the victim’s murder. Therefore, according to Rabbi Jonathan, it is forbidden to hand him over.
The Talmud is a layered document. Both Rabbi Shimon and Rabbi Jonathan lived centuries after the sages who first formulated the expression of the supreme sanctity of human life. The original directive says: “we will never hand over anyone under any circumstances.” The Talmudic Rabbis, Shimon and Jonathan, and later commentators, such as the Bach (17th century Poland) and R. Shimon Efrati (Holocaust-era Germany), added successive limitations. My own speculation is that the constant dangers of persecution to which Jewish communities were subjected influenced the later authorities. There were times, they ruled, when their followers could not afford to stand on principle, or else they would all be annihilated.
A universal ideal such as “whosoever saves a single soul, it is as though she has saved an entire world,” may inspire us with its nobility. Unfortunately, we are rarely in the position to base real-world moral decisions upon one ethical principle alone. More often, moral dilemmas involve the clash of two competing values. In the case of Gilad Shalit, it pitted the life of one individual against the relative risk to the lives of an entire nation.
During my Kol Nidre sermon, I concluded that the fundamental diversity of humankind precludes the formation of a uniform version of the Truth—at least not until the Messianic age. Different people will never see exactly eye to eye on everything—or even on anything. Actually, I’ll go even further than what I stated on Kol Nidre. It’s not just that people inevitably conflict, it’s that even the fundamental principles of ethics inevitably conflict. No ethical system can be complete on the one hand, and consistent on the other. Some questions simply do not have a right answer. Somehow, we must learn to hold in our own hearts both the joy of the homecoming of our adopted son, Gilad Shalit, as well as the injustice of releasing convicted murderers onto the streets. We must learn to live in tension, not just in dealing with the actions of others, but even, and especially, in dealing with our own decisions. We must make the best choice possible under the circumstances, knowing that no choice is ever perfect.
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