TO DISSUADE A WOULD-BE SUICIDE

QUESTION:

How much effort does our religious tradition require of us to prevent a person from suicide? By words only, or even by force if necessary? (Asked by Rabbi Allen S. Mailer, Culver City, Calif.)

ANSWER:

As FAR AS I KNOW there is no clear mention in the legal literature of the duty to exert strong effort to dissuade or prevent a person from committing suicide. Nevertheless it is possible to answer the question asked here by way of analogy and by developing the implications of existing law.

First it must be clearly understood that in this regard Jewish tradition is diametrically different from that of the Romans and the Japanese, among whom suicide was considered under certain circumstances virtually only a private matter. In Jewish law suicide is considered a most heinous offense. In fact, one may judge with what horror it was looked upon that in the long and often bloody history covered by the Bible there are only three clear suicides, Saul, his armor bearer, and Achitophel. Another indication as to what horror suicide aroused all through Jewish history, Bible and post-Bible, can be seen from the law governing the burial of suicides. The strict letter of the law as given in Semachos II is that we do nothing with regard to the funeral of suicides (Eyn Misaskin Bohem); but immediately the law as it developed came upon various ways of removing the stigma of suicide from the person who died. If the man was afraid, or if he changed his mind or, as some say, even if he repented at the last moment, he was said not to have committed the crime of suicide. Even as strict an authority as Moses Sofer (Resp. Yore Deah 32b) permitted such a man’s relatives to observe full mourning for him so that a respected family would not have to bear the stigma of suicide (cf. Recent Reform Responsa, p. 114 ff.).

This shameful crime of suicide is considered analogous to murder. The Scripture in Genesis 9, verse 6, speaking of murder, says: “He who sheds the blood of a man, his blood will be shed by man.” And in the previous verse, 9:5, it says: “I will seek your blood from yourselves,” which the Talmud (Baba Kamma 91b) says means a prohibition against suicide. See Rashi to the passage, and also Midrash Rabba, Genesis, Chapter 34:13. The term used in the Talmud for doing oneself harm and suicide is Chovel, which means “to damage” or “to harm,” and the Talmud says: Just as a person may not harm (Chovel) another person, so he may not harm (Chovel) himself. This is exactly equivalent to the legal phrase “felo de se,” a felony against oneself.

Now there is a great deal of clear law about the efforts which must be expended to prevent a person harming others (Chovel). The law is given in detail in the Shulchan Aruch, Choshen Mishpot 425. There we are told what great efforts must be made to prevent a person harming another (Chovel). If he is pursuing somebody to harm him or to kill him, you must pursue after him. You must stop him somehow or other, even if you injure a limb of the potential murderer, or even if your pursuit to save the victim results in the death of the murderer.

Clearly, then, we may make this analogy: Since the law uses the term “to harm” (Chovel) for suicide as it does for murder, and thus considers suicide equivalent to murder, it seems clear that we may make the same effort to prevent a man from suicide as we must make to prevent him from murder. Of course in his case, we avoid harming him in our efforts to save him.

So far our discussion of our duty toward would-be suicides was based upon a general consideration, namely, that since in Jewish law we are in duty bound to prevent a man from doing damage to another man, it would stand to reason that we are equally in duty bound to prevent a man from committing the sin of doing fatal damage to himself. However, beyond this general consideration, there are also some specific legal statements in the Halacha which bear more directly on the subject.

It might be mentioned at the outset that there is an interesting responsum rather closely related to the subject in the Or Ha-Mizrach, the magazine of the Orthodox Zionists, the Mizrachi, for Tishri, 5772. Rabbi Judah Gershuni reports that he received the following question from a religious Israeli soldier at the Suez Canal. Israeli soldiers encamped along the canal are forbidden by army orders to swim in the canal because of the danger from Egyptian snipers. Nevertheless many soldiers ignore the order and go swimming in the canal. Thus they are wilfully endangering their lives. The Orthodox soldier therefore asks this question: Is he in duty bound religiously to go to the rescue of those soldiers who are wilfully risking their lives?

Since these soldiers are certainly not seeking death but surely hope to avoid it, this question is not precisely one dealing with would-be suicides. Nevertheless because they are wilfully putting themselves into danger, the religious problem of whether to rescue them or not comes very close to the question of suicide. In his answer Rabbi Gershuni cites virtually all the relevant Halacha. It would be well for our purposes to go over the legal material and see what conclusions it leads us to.

The basic commandment involved here is the statement in Leviticus 19:16: “Stand not idly by the blood (i.e., the bloodshed) of your neighbor.” The Talmud (in Sanhedrin 73a) on the basis of this verse says that if you see a man drowning or being attacked by a wild beast or by robbers, it is your religious obligation to come to his rescue, as Scripture commands: “Stand not idly by,” etc. This obligation has become one of the regular 613 commandments. In the Sefer Hachinuch it is commandment 237, and in the Shulchan Aruch it is in Choshen Mishpot 426.

Joseph Babad (19th century) wrote a large com mentary on the Sefer Hachinuch. This commentary, Minchas Chinuch, has become a standard legal reference book. In his supplementary notes (Kometz Minchd) Joseph Babad comes to the conclusion that although the commandment, “Thou shall not stand idly by,” impels us to come to the rescue of any one in danger, this duty does not apply when a person willfully and of his own accord puts himself into danger. As his reason for this conclusion, that the duty to help does not apply to suicides, he uses an inference based upon which proof texts are used and which are not used in the Talmud in the passage in Sanhedrin.

Yet actually there is another and a firmer ground for Babad doubting the duty to rescue a suicide. It is as follows: The duty to ransom captives is one of the prime obligations in the law. Cf. Shulchan Aruch, Yore Deah 251:1: “There is no Mitzvah greater than that of ransoming captives.” Nevertheless, the Mishnah {Gittin IV: 9) says that if a man sells himself as a slave, we should not rescue him. The Talmud in Gittin 46b says that we do ransom him the first or second time because he might have sold himself because he was under some duress (poverty, etc.) but if he sells himself the third time, then his intention to enslave himself is clear and we are not in duty bound to help him further. But even so, we should ransom his children.

However, an opinion exactly contrary to that of Joseph Babad is given by the premier 13th-century authority, Meir of Rothenburg. In his responsa collection (ed. Budapest, #39) there is an especially interesting responsum because it deals with the ransoming of captives. He himself had been captured and held for ransom, and remained in prison for the latter part of his life. The Jewish communities would have raised money to ransom him, but he did not permit them to do so because he feared that the authorities would then imprison other leaders and force the community to ransom them. However, in cases of captives and ransom which did not involve the danger of mulcting the Jewish community, but were a private matter for private ransom money, he was of course strongly in favor of ransoming captives (as the commandment requires). This responsum of his concerns two Jewish men who were held for ransom. “A” got enough money to ransom them both. After they were free, “A” asked “B” to pay his share of the ransom money. “B” refused, saying he did not ask nor want to be ransomed, and so refused to pay. Meir of Rothenburg decided this dispute by saying that “B” was in duty bound to pay, even though he said that he was unwilling to be ransomed. He concludes this responsum by saying that we must rescue a drowning man even if he cries out, “Do not rescue me” (I want to die). In other words, Meir of Rothenburg took the stand that we must rescue a person even if he does not want to be rescued; even if he wants to be a suicide.

Faced with these two opposite opinions (that of Joseph Babad and Meir of Rothenburg), Rabbi Gershuni has no decisive answer for the pious Israeli soldier. But he wisely makes a practical compromise. The soldier who would want to rescue these swimmers can approach carefully and quietly and be in minimum danger. It would therefore be permissible to expose himself to minimum danger in order to save others who were in maximum danger.

We might come to a similar conclusion. To put it pictorially: If the would-be suicide is standing on the ledge of the twentieth story of a building and threatens to jump, you are not required to risk your life by going out on the ledge also. You may stand in the window, or on the ledge near the window and hold on, but certainly you must make an effort to dissuade him. In this we follow the great authority, Meir of Rothenburg, that it is our duty not to “stand idly by” when a man is trying to commit suicide. We must try to save him even though he shouts, “I want to die,” etc. But on the basis of the dubieties mentioned above, we are not in duty bound to endanger our own life. Nevertheless we are still in duty bound to obey the commandment, “Stand not idly by,” and must make earnest efforts to save him in spite of himself.