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person who is seriously contemplating suicide be considered a shoteh
because he is prepared to destroy the most precious thing he has been
given, namely his life? [One of the signs of a shoteh listed by Chazal is
that he destroys whatever he is given.]

The first point – Is a serious suicide threat considered piku’ach
nefesh?

Now, the sefer Eitz Chaim (by the Torah Sages of the Amsterdam
yeshiva, published in 5501/1741) discusses a similar question concern-
ing a patient whom the physicians instructed to drink the milk of a
she-ass every day. The patient refused to comply, maintaining that
nothing forbidden would pass his lips. Upon seeing his father’s obsti-
nacy the man’s son told him to drink goat milk instead but he tricked
his father and gave him ass’s milk. When the milk was served to him
the father suspected trickery and refused to drink it. He called his
son over and told him, “I want you to drink some of it first and then
I’ll drink the rest. I want you to do this twice a day otherwise I won’t
drink unclean milk under any circumstances.” The son responded,
“I’ll do what you want but I can’t fulfill your wish today because I am
fasting.” The son immediately went to the beis hamedrash and asked
Torah scholars whether he was allowed to drink the milk.

The question here is as follows: Will we say that the son is allowed
to drink the milk because there is no other way to cure his father,
and just as a healthy person is allowed to desecrate Shabbos for a
dangerously ill patient the patient’s healthy son may drink the milk
of a she-ass in order to cure his father? Alternatively, this case may be
different for over there, there is no way to cure the patient without
desecrating Shabbos whereas in this case the patient ought to listen
to the words of the Torah scholars who tell him that it is permitted
to consume foods prohibited by the Torah in order to be healed from
dangerous illness, and then a healthy person would not have to drink
what the Torah forbids. The conclusion there is that this case does not
resemble the standard case of piku’ach nefesh because the patient has
an obligation to drink and if he wants to unwisely take his own life,
what can the son do? [The father in that case was apparently a Torah
scholar who knew that he was allowed to drink and he is therefore

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