Activities Prohibited On Shabbat - Saving of Human Life

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.

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Famous quotes containing the words human life, saving, human and/or life:

    These arts open great gates of a future, promising to make the world plastic and to lift human life out of its beggary to a god- like ease and power.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    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)

    Every other enjoyment malice may destroy; every other panegyric envy may withhold; but no human power can deprive the boaster of his own encomiums.
    Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)

    I had this advantage, at least, in my mode of life, over those who were obliged to look abroad for amusement, to society and the theatre, that my life itself was become my amusement and never ceased to be novel. It was a drama of many scenes and without an end.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)