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 saving, human and/or life:
“A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high virtues of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“The people of Western Europe are facing this summer a series of tragic dilemmas. Of the hopes that dazzled the last twenty years that some political movement might tend to the betterment of the human lot, little remains above ground but the tattered slogans of the past.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“When it’s over I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.”
—Mary Oliver (b. 1935)