Lo
Ta‘amod ‘al Dam Re‘ekha
Editorial Introduction
Mordechai Halperin, M.D.
“In the early hours of the morning of March 14, 1964, a
young woman named Kitty Genovese was attacked on her way home in Queens, New
York. The unknown assailant made several separate attacks on her over a period
of about forty minutes, and she finally died of the stabs he had inflicted on
her. As the police subsequently ascertained, at least thirty-eight neighbors
had heard her screams for help, some may have also seen her struggle, yet no
one intervened – not even to call the police.”
“As far as normative criteria are
concerned, the obligation to save life is established in the codex of Jewish
law as a legal obligation which obligates whoever happens to chance upon a
situation where he can intervene and save life.”
Until recently, Israeli law did not
obligate rescuing someone whose life is in danger except for parents, who must
come to the rescue of their children; firefighters, who must come to the rescue
when they are summoned; and the driver of a car involved in an accident or the
driver of a car who passes by an accident, who must come to the rescue of those
injured. Aside from these three exceptions, there was no legal obligation to
save the life of one’s fellow man. All this changed in June 1998, when the Lo
Ta‘amod ‘al Dam Re‘ekha Law was passed by the Knesset.
Source: ASSIA – Jewish Medical Ethics,
Vol. IV, No. 1, February 2001, p. 3