Saving of Human Life
For more details on this topic, see pikuach nefesh.In the event that a human life is in danger, a Jew is not only allowed, but required, to violate any Shabbat law that stands in the way of saving that person. The concept of life being in danger is interpreted broadly: for example, it is mandated that one violate Shabbat to take a woman in active labor to a hospital.
Read more about this topic: Activities Prohibited On Shabbat
Famous quotes containing the words human life, saving, human and/or life:
“Fielding being mentioned, Johnson exclaimed, “he was a blockhead ....” BOSWELL. “Will you not allow, Sir, that he draws very natural pictures of human life?” JOHNSON. “Why, Sir, it is of very low life. Richardson used to say, that had he not known who Fielding was, he should have believed he was an ostler.””
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“We black women must forgive black men for not protecting us against slavery, racism, white men, our confusion, their doubts. And black men must forgive black women for our own sometimes dubious choices, divided loyalties, and lack of belief in their possibilities. Only when our sons and our daughters know that forgiveness is real, existent, and that those who love them practice it, can they form bonds as men and women that really can save and change our community.”
—Marita Golden, educator, author. Saving Our Sons, p. 188, Doubleday (1995)
“[Christianity] existed and flourishes, not only without the support of human laws, but in spite of every opposition from them.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“By degrees we may come to know the primitive sense of the permanent objects of nature, so that the world shall be to us an open book, and every form significant of its hidden life and final cause.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)