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The Chazon Ish answers: The second traveler is not allowed to steal
the bottle of water. Although a person is allowed to save his own life
with his friend’s money, in this case, halacha has already determined
that “Your life takes precedence,” so stealing the water would be equiv-
alent to taking his friend’s life.
We too, can say that halacha determines that since the bed was DESECRATING SHABBOS SO
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bought with public money for the purpose of saving life, it belongs THAT AN EXPERT SURGEON
to the patient with a longer life-expectancy (chayei olam) and it is 88 PERFORMS THE SURGERY
therefore forbidden for the patient with chayei sha’ah to steal the bed.
Doing so would not be considered stealing money, but rather stealing
a life.

There was once a girl with tuberculosis whose house collapsed. 1
It was the rainy season in Poland and, for lack of any other choice, Question Shabbos desecRation foR a MoRe expeRt suRgeon
she invaded the Jewish orphanage and took up residence there. The A man requires open heart surgery, which can be done by the surgeon
director of the institution (my grandfather, Rav Avraham Yaakov of the healthcare clinic (Kupat Cholim). However, the patient’s family
Bulimovsky zt”l) locked the door of her room so that she would not wants a more expert physician. (They will pay the added expense.)
come into contact with the orphaned girls in his care. He then trav- The expert surgeon can only operate on Shabbos. Is it permissible to
eled to the Rebbe of Belz, Rav Yissachar Dov Rokeach, zt”l, to ask his desecrate Shabbos in order to be healed by a better physician?
opinion. Could the ill girl be considered, halachically, as pursuing the
other girls to kill them [from tuberculosis]? If so, since one can save 1
the lives of the pursued by taking the life of the pursuer (as explained AnsweR
in Sanhedrin 72a), is he allowed to banish the girl from the orphan- In Tractate Shabbos (128b) it says: One may help a woman give birth
age? The Rebbe refused to allow this, as banishing the girl would on Shabbos and one may also call a wise woman to come from one
certainly lead to her death. He advised Rav Bulimovsky to build a place to another. This Gemara needs explanation. Why does it say
door leading from the room where she was confined to the yard, and that one may call a “wise woman” instead of a “midwife,” as in the verse
to build a wall around her section of the yard, so that she would not (Shemos 1:15) “the King of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives?”
come into contact with the other girls. That is what he did. The girls The Tiferes Yisrael answers this question in his commentary on the
whose room she had invaded squeezed into other rooms, and all the Mishnah (Shabbos, Ch. 18:33). He suggests that the Talmud says “wise
orphan girls made do with a small section of the yard, all in order to woman” to imply that even if a midwife is already there but there is
save one Jewish life. This was despite the fact that she had trespassed an even wiser woman available to help the woman give birth, it is
into the orphanage, an act of real theft, and that she had the status of permissible to call her.
a “pursuer”. On the other hand, we find in the Shulchan Shlomo (Refuah, Vol. 1,
Now, in regard to the first question about transferring an elderly p. 74, in the name of the Nishmas Avraham, Vol. 5, p. 82) that if a child
patient from an old-age home to a nursing home, it seems to me that needs open heart surgery that can be covered by the healthcare clinic
our first concern is to do everything possible to ensure that the pain in Israel, but the family prefers to have it done by a renowned, expert

148 1 Medical-HalacHic Responsa of Rav ZilbeRstein Shabbos desecration for a more expert surgeon 2 177