[Avodah] R Zilberstein

Eli Turkel via Avodah avodah at lists.aishdas.org
Wed Nov 18 12:56:28 PST 2015


I had an argument today in Rav Zilberstein's shiur. I let members give
their opinion

cases:
1) in WWII Turing et al broke the German code. In order to keep the break a
secret it was necessary to not always use the available information.
Churchill decided that keeping "breaking the code" secret was the highest
priority. This meant that people were killed in not using the information.
It is estimated that a million lives was saved by breaking the code and
Eisenhower said that breaking the enigma code was one of the important
points in the allied victory

2) A teerorist stabs someone seriously. A paramedic has the choice of
helping the seriously wounded person or else running after the terrorist
who is trying to kill many more

3)  A spy deep in enemy territory sees a wounded Jew. If he helps the
victim he gives away his identity and all the work put into his identity
and the information he has been gathering

4) In a battle the enemy attacks one side. Sending troops to help the
soldiers defend themselves leaves the flank open and could jeopardize the
entire "regiment"

psak of R. Zilberstein: We are only concerned with "chole be-fanenu" ,
Halacha is not interested in strategy. We rely on G-d to solve the future
problems. We solve the immediate problem and ignore the consequences that
is G-d's problem i,e, a present :vadai" overrides a future "safek" no
matter what. Hence, Churchill's decision was against halacha

I argued that this is different than the classical "choleh le-fanenu" and
"safek and vadai" and that one must consider future consequences but R
Zilberstein said again that halacha does not allow taking into account the
consequences at the expense of a single life

(as an aside he discussed a CI about using a shield to deflect arrows to
kill less people and claimed that it was not relevant to our case)

Again any opinions?

-- 
Eli Turkel
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