#736: Break Glass In Emergency

Rashi and Sforno on Parashat Korah, Bamidbar/Numbers 17:13

Bamidbar/Numbers 17:13

וַיַּעֲמֹ֥ד בֵּֽין־הַמֵּתִ֖ים וּבֵ֣ין הַֽחַיִּ֑ים וַתֵּעָצַ֖ר הַמַּגֵּפָֽה׃

[Aaron] stood between the dead and the living until the plague was checked.

Gimme Some Torah #736

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God punishes the rebellious Israelites with a plague. Moses immediately tells Aaron to take incense from the fire pans and spread its smoke among the people in order to atone for their sin. Aaron does as he’s told and stops the plague; the total number of victims is 14,700.

The Torah describes Aaron as “standing between the dead and the living.” A midrash quoted by Rashi says that Aaron was fighting with the Angel of Death:

He (Aaron) seized the Angel of Death and stopped him. The angel said to him, “Let me be, so that I may carry out my mission!” He (Aaron) answered him, “Moses has ordered me to stop you”. The angel replied, “I am the messenger of the Omnipresent—you are just the messenger of Moses!” Aaron retorted, “Moses does not say anything out of his own mind, but only at the command of the Almighty. If you do not believe me, behold, the Holy One, blessed be He, and Moses are at the entrance of the appointed tent; come with me and ask them!”

The curious thing is that Moses dared to issue the incense order in the first place. If God wanted to punish the people with a plague, what gave Moses the right to countermand the will of the Holy One? Moreover, as Rabbi Yaakov Medan argues, the incense was meant to be used only in the inner sanctum and even then it’s use was most likely limited to Yom Kippur. How could Moses do such a thing?

And Aaron, for his part, disobeyed the order that Moses gave him. Moses merely told Aaron to take the incense to the community. Sforno notes that Aaron went into the community to help those who were dead, dying, and still living:

וַיַּעֲמֹד בֵּין־הַמֵּתִים וּבֵין הַחַיִּים —After he had already reached that spot (that Moses chose), he waited in order to help cure the ones who had taken sick but had not died yet. Instead of distancing himself from the congregation of sinners (verse 21) Aaron did the opposite in order to save whom he could save.

What we see here is that both Moses and Aaron react to the divine plague not with docile compliance but rather with brave, even foolhardy disobedience! How could either of them think that what they were doing was in accordance with God’s will?

Rabbi Medan says that Moses and Aaron were operating under the rules of an emergency situation, or שעת הדחק (sh’at had’hak) in the language of Jewish law. If an exigent situation involves saving a human life, we have an obligation to transgress Jewish law if need be.

Saving a life is such a dire emergency that it even overrides God’s explicit will. As we read in the Talmud (B. Yoma 85b):

“You shall keep My statutes and My ordinances, which a person shall do and live by them” (Leviticus 18:5), and not that he should die by them. In all circumstances, one must take care not to die as a result of fulfilling the mitzvot.

Of course, not all emergencies involve saving a life. In terms of Jewish law, the concept of the שעת הדחק (sh’at had’hak) has been used to grant a woman a divorce when Jewish witnesses to the husband’s death are not available. It has also been used to prevent severe financial loss and to justify abortions that are not technically lifesaving.

Life sometimes requires that we break the glass.

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I am the rabbi of Temple Beth El in Somerset, New Jersey, and the author of The JPS Jewish Heritage Torah Commentary.