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.

Read more about this topic:  Activities Prohibited On Shabbat

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

    some little plan or chart,
    Some fragment from his dream of human life,
    Shaped by himself with newly-learned art;
    William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

    Science, unguided by a higher abstract principle, freely hands over its secrets to a vastly developed and commercially inspired technology, and the latter, even less restrained by a supreme culture saving principle, with the means of science creates all the instruments of power demanded from it by the organization of Might.
    Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)

    He’s not the finest character that ever lived. But he’s a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid.
    Arthur Miller (b. 1915)

    Thou gav’st me life, but mortal; for that one
    Favour I’ll make full satisfaction:
    For my life mortal, rise from out thy hearse,
    And take a life immortal from my verse.
    Robert Herrick (1591–1674)