[Avodah] Costa Concordia and halachah

[Zev Sero]

Does anyone know what is the legal basis of the charges against him,
besides the manslaughter ones?  "Women and children first" is obviously
not only against halacha but also against EU law.  And there can surely
be no law (let alone a halacha) that the captain must go down with his
ship.  But as captain he presumably has a special duty to oversee the
evacuation of the passengers and crew, and can't abandon that duty in
the middle.  I'm also guessing that there are laws dating back to the
old days of shipping, under which crew members may not leave their posts
mid-voyage, which this was.

Now the halacha says that a worker may resign his job even in the middle
of the day; otherwise he'd be a sort of slave.  But even there I think
there are restrictions if leaving right at that moment would cause damage
to the baal habayis.  E.g. in Australia one of the favourite tactics of
the Builders Labourers Federation used to be to walk off the job during
a concrete pour; if the boss didn't quickly give them whatever they wanted,
the loss would be tremendous.  I vaguely recall a halacha that would say
once you've started pouring the concrete you must stay until it's done.
The same might apply in this case.

Also, there's the mitzvah of saving lives and the prohibition of lo
taamod.  Even if the captain is no more obligated in these than anyone
else, he is certainly not *less* obligated.  At the very least, since
he was on board and was capable of helping, he had a duty to help no
less than that of any passenger with the appropriate training.
Therefore he can be forced to fulfil these mitzvos just as he can be
forced to fulfil any mitzvah, and punished for failing to do so.


-- 
Zev Sero        "Natural resources are not finite in any meaningful
zev at sero.name    economic sense, mind-boggling though this assertion
                  may be. The stocks of them are not fixed but rather
		 are expanding through human ingenuity."
		                            - Julian Simon