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:

    “Human life is thus only a perpetual illusion; men deceive and flatter each other. No one speaks of us in our presence as he does of us in our absence. Human society is founded on mutual deceit; few friendships would endure if each knew what his friend said of him in his absence, although he then spoke in sincerity and without passion.”
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    “Avarice is generally the last passion of those lives of which the first part has been squandered in pleasure, and the second devoted to ambition. He that sinks under the fatigue of getting wealth, lulls his age with the milder business of saving it.”
    —Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)

    “One of the signs of passing youth is the birth of a sense of fellowship with other human beings as we take our place among them.”
    —Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)

    “we two
    With life forever old yet new,
    Changed not in kind but in degree,
    The instant made eternity—”
    —Robert Browning (1812–1889)