This question does deal a bit with medical ethics. I hope you can help me with this. I have never read the Talmud, so I have some questions.
I read the book Jewish History, Jewish Religion, the Weight of Three Thousand Years, by Israel Shahak, about 9 years ago, I reread it during this summer.
Mr. Shahak, who has since passed away, was Jewish, lived in Israel, taught at an Israeli university, and was a holocaust survivor. Yet in his book he makes many criticisms of the Talmud and how it has been interpreted over the centuries by rabbinic leaders.
For example, he explains that men like Maimonides taught that a pious Jew should refrain from saving the life of a gentile if possible. He permitted it in cases where the Jewish person was working for pay, or if by not saving a gentile life it might cause a future pogrom. But such things as taking away a latter from a gentile, who is on a roof top, was permitted, or may just be a small sin, since in such a case the gentile was not being directly killed by the Jew. The idea being that a Jew should neither hurt a gentile, not help him.
Shahak has many other examples in the book. When reading it I remembered how in 1998 I read in the Jerusalem Post that Jewish rabbis were protesting the fact that IDF soldiers left on the Sabbath to go on a rescue mission to save gentile lives in the bombing of the American embassy in Nairobi, Kenya. The chief Ashkenazi rabbi of Israel defended the mission because he said that it was actually a mitzvah. But the reason the rabbi said it was a mitzvah was not because the lives of gentiles was precious, but because we now live in the modern world, where communications are so vast that if Israel refused to do such a thing like help in a rescue mission, then the whole world would know.
There are a few other examples which I have read in the Jerusalem Post which indicate that much of what Shahak said was true.
Many Jews, especially Reformed Jews in America, know nothing about the Talmud or what it teaches.
Is Mr. Shahak's book true? If not, then why would this holocaust survivor write such a thing and why have I been able to find so much information to back Shahak's arguments in the Jerusalem Post? He claims that the reason for writing his book was that he saw what his own people were doing to Palestinians and he was disgusted and felt that he needed to protest. The book gives the reader who thinks about it the idea that much anti-semitism which exists in the world is really a backlash against the anti-gentile teachings and practices of the Talmud and Orthodox Jews and rabbis.
What can you tell me about all this?
Thank you: Joshua"
Answer Joshua,
I have not read the book so you will have to pardon my ignorance as to its contents. One must also bear in mind that the Talmud is a collection of Rabbinical arguments about the various concerns of man in each generation, bring ancient law into modern context. However, the Sages of the Talmud lived hundreds of years ago and, as such, their modernity is not our own.
Your overall question reminded me of the question posed to Jews and Gentiles alike: If you had the opportunity, would you have killed Adolf Hitler before he slaughtered millions of Jews (and others)? Most Christians answer in the negative because "Murder is wrong", even though one 'murder' could have prevented millions of others. Most Jews, on the contrary, answer in the affirmative.
I believe the modern Halakhah (Jewish Law) would distinguish little between a Jewish and a Gentile life, so long as it was not a choice strictly between the two. If it were, we are commanded to save the life of the one that lives Torah and is most likely to be the best and longest lasting "Light unto the Nations".
