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honey or sweet things which are bad for a wound, and he acts con- a calming effect on his wife, or that the husband will bring another
trary to the physician’s instructions by doing so, he is not considered expert to assist and advise in consultation, it is clear that one should
a great sinner. So, this is not the transgression of the injunction to desecrate Shabbos and bring him. On the other hand, if the physician
safeguard one’s life, and the matter requires definition. Nonetheless, will clearly not bear any blame, and he will be able to explain to the
it emerges from Shem Aryeh that one can violate the prohibition of relatives and the authorities that the woman’s condition required im-
yichud for the positive commandments of safeguarding one’s health mediate surgery, there is no justification to desecrate Shabbos.
and returning a lost object. This question only applies if the husand will certainly not be of
any medical assistance, and if one can assume the physician will suffer
1 SuMMaRy and Conclusion significantly as a result of performing the surgery without consent,
and would even be forced to hire an attorney to defend himself. If
If the driver is a gentile, it is preferable that her husband or her son these are in fact the conditions, then we must determine whether the
accomplny her, in order to prevent yichud. If the driver is a Jew, and if physician is permitted to refuse to do the surgery until the husband’s
a watchman accompanies her he will transgress a biblical prohibition, arrival, thus causing a desecration of Shabbos.
then she should travel alone because the prohibition of yichud is sus- We find in Tractate Shabbos (42a): One extinguishes a burning
pended for pikuach nefesh. piece of metal which is lying on a public street. According to Rabbenu
Chananel and the Gaonim, the case involves the Torah prohibition of
“combining” (metzaref) on Shabbos, but the Sages permitted it so that
the people on the street not be harmed or endangered. The question
arises: Why do we not obligate the finder of the burning metal coal
to watch it throughout the entire Shabbos so that nobody gets hurt,
or to hire other people to do so, so none of the passersby are hurt? It
sounds, from the above, that a person is not obligated to exert effort
and to suffer when it comes to saving a life or saving others from dan-
ger. [Based on this, Rav S. Z. Auerbach, zt”l (Minchas Shlomo, Vol. 1
#7) ruled that if one sees exposed electrical wires in the public street,
he does not have to stay in place and to watch that the passersby not
get hurt, but is allowed to call the electric company on Shabbos to
come and repair the damaged wires. Rav P. Epstein zt”l, disagreed
with this (see Shemiras Shabbos Kehilchasah, Ch. 41 #65).]
As explained in Tractate Sanhedrin (73a) we are obligated to ex-
ert effort and money in order to save a life. Nevertheless, the Sages
do not obligate us to exert effort to avoid or prevent desecration of
Shabbos, but permit desecrating Shabbos in cases of danger. This ap-
plies all the more so to the physician, who has no obligation to lose
money on fines or on the expenses of hiring a lawyer, according to
316 1 Medical-HalacHic Responsa of Rav ZilbeRstein Demanding relatives' consent on Shabbos 2 329
