[Avodah] Russian Roulette

[Daniel Israel]

On Tue, 20 Mar 2007 10:54:21 -0600 Zev Sero <zev at sero.name> wrote:
>Rich, Joel wrote:
>> Is one allowed to play Russian Roulette with 2 bullets in a 5 
chamber 
>> gun to win $1?
>> What about 1 in 10 for $1million?
>> Vchen Halah?
>
>I assume your question is ultimately based on the pasuk "ve'elav hu
>nosei et nafsho", which explicitly authorises a person to risk his 
>life for parnasa.  It seems obvious that this cannot be a blanket 
>heter, to take any risk for any reward; there must be gedarim, 
both in 
>the degree of risk that is allowed and in the size of the reward 
that 
>justifies it. 

Two other differences spring to mind.  

First, in this case the connection between the risk and the reward 
is artifial.  That is, working in construction on a skyscraper 
entails a risk of falling, but there is a constructive purpose and 
the risk incidental to it.  Or smoking a cigarette where the 
purpose is the pleasure of the cigarette, and the risk is 
intrinsically attached to the reward.  Whereas in Russian Roulette 
someone has arbitrarily decided to give a financial reward in 
return for taking an otherwise pointless risk.

Second, in this case the maaseh you did (pulling the trigger) is 
directly responsible for your death.  So looking at that act in 
isolation, you committed suicide (even if you did it thinking that 
the chances of it happening were a miut).  However, if you slipped 
while constructing a skyscraper the act you were trying to do (walk 
across a plank 1 foot wide, 500 feet off the ground) was not what 
killed you, it was the accidental slip.  So too, when you smoke, no 
particular puff actually was what killed you.

Of course many poskim still conclude smoking is assur.  So I'm not 
sure how the above affects the halacha, but it does provide some 
context in which we could try to find some halachic differences 
between the examples.

--
Daniel M. Israel
dmi1 at cornell.edu