By Rabbi Yair Hoffman
Attention all EMTs:
“If you feel that the sick person you are tending to has a good chance of not making it, just leave him there. We can’t deal with him.”
Signed,
The State of California
Attention all states:
“Do not give the vaccine to those who are at the highest risk first. True, 80% of everyone dying from COVID is from the elderly or at-risk population, and they die at six times the rate of everyone else, but don’t give them the vaccine first. Indeed, even let the vaccines expire before giving it to those most at-risk.”
Signed
The Centers for Disease Control
The quotes above are not real, but the sentiments are. Their content reflects a very sad reality. And what is that reality? Our national moral compass needs a reboot and fast.
We are asking EMTs to not follow their usual protocols of saving lives. We have millions of vaccines stockpiled that are reaching no one, because we are waiting for all of the frontline healthcare workers to get vaccinated (and 30% of them do not even want it) while thousands are dying each week without the vaccine. The governor of New York is figuring out ways to financially punish the hospitals for not being quick enough.
Nietzsche Has Taken Over
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844–1900) was a philosopher who was adopted by the Nazi regime. He posited that in the ancient world it was the strong and noble who always won out. Compassion and mercy were for the weak. But Judaism and its daughter religions reversed the order, favoring the weak. Nietzsche claimed that G-d was dead and that the preferable state of affairs was lost on account of the negative influence of Judaism and, l’havdil, Christianity. He suggested that if we go back to the original state of affairs, we could abandon the weak, and the strong would marry the strong. A new Ubermensch, or Superman, would eventually emerge through genetics, and society would not only be saved but improved.
Nietzsche’s view was indeed a philosophy foreign to Judaism. Ours is a religion that defines strength as emulation of Hashem. The Gemara in Shabbos (133b) tells us: “Just as He is Merciful, so too must we be merciful. Just as He is gracious, so too must we be gracious.” And so, yes, we must be kind to the poor and destitute, to the weak. There are mitzvos throughout the Torah that reflect the very opposite of the Nietzsche philosophy.
We see this in the three types of tzedakah that precede all, described with the words “kodem la’kol.”
The sefer Ahavas Tzedakah states that there are three types of tzedakah where the phrase “kodemes la’kol” (it precedes everything else) is employed. The three types are:
1. Charity given to a Torah educational institute whose very existence is threatened with closure, and the future of Torah for Klal Yisrael, the Jewish People, is at stake. There are only three things for which we must sacrifice our lives — to avoid the sins of murder, arayos, and idol worship. Yet we see that Rabbi Akiva sacrificed his life in order to teach Torah. How could this be? The answer is that it involved the future of Torah for the Jewish People. (This is based upon the words of Rav Boruch Ber Leibowitz, zt’l, in the introduction to the Birchas Shmuel on Bava Basra.)
2. Charity given to save a Jew from conversion in a situation where it is permissible to violate the Shabbos in order to save him (see Orach Chaim 306:14).
3. Charity given to save a life — or to possibly save a life — i.e., pikuach nefesh.
We also see this in the halachos of who is saved first in halachah. The concept of healing the one who is most at risk is found in the Pri Megadim of Rav Yosef Teumim O.C. 328 in his Mishbetezes Halachah #1. In terms of halachah, the entire idea of placing the young before the old is incorrect. This is explicit in Igros Moshe of Rav Moshe Feinstein, zt’l (C.M. Vol. II #75:7). It is also in Minchas Shlomo of Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, zt’l (MT 2-3 Siman 86), as well as the Even Bochen Migdal Oz #85 of the Ya’avetz.
Somehow, some way, our nation’s morals and values have shifted. Our religious leaders must step up to the plate and declare a resounding, “No! We cannot allow the lives of Americans to be taken through this adoption of a Nietzsche-like philosophy! We need a collective and national reboot.”
The neighboring states and alternative medical sites should open their doors and tend to the sick. Pikuach nefesh is a serious issue, and we should take the cue from what yeshiva Sh’or Yoshuv did and shut down our basketball courts and make temporary hospital rooms. In 1848, the founder of the Mussar Movement, Rav Yisroel Salanter, established and raised the funds for a makeshift hospital of 1,500 beds in Vilna, and helped persuade doctors and other medical staff to work without pay.
Perhaps we should all pay greater attention to the words of Yirmiyahu (Yirmiyahu 6:16), who predicted all of this — the turning away of society from what is true and just. “Thus said Hashem, “Stand in the pathways and see, and ask for the old paths, where the good way is, and walk in it; and find rest for souls. But they said, ‘We do not walk in it.’”
Rabbi Hoffman can be reached at Yairhoffman2@gmail.com.
