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mitzvah of leaning on it, to confess his sin and to give the gifted parts
of the animal to the kohen. A robber who slaughters a stolen sacrifice
thus incurs the penalty even though the owner would have done the
same. When confronted with dangerously ill a patient who needs
meat however, the robber may not return the animal to its owner but
must slaughter it directly and give its meat to the patient. How do we
know that the Torah imposes the penalty even in this situation?

Just consider – were bandits to compel the robber to slaughter the
stolen animal, would he incur the penalty? It says in the Torah “But
to the [betrothed] young woman [who was raped by another man]
you shall do nothing,” (Devarim 22: 26), from which we learn that a
person cannot be held liable for an act he performed under coercion
or compulsion. From the gemara in maseches Kesuvos (3a) it appears
that such an act [i.e. that is performed under compulsion] is not at-
tributable to him at all. Not only is he absolved of any punishment,
the act is not even attributed to him.11

See the Minchas Chinuch (Mitzvah 296, 26) where it is written
that if a man was compelled to rape a young, unmarried woman, he
is exempt from paying the fifty shekel penalty [that the Torah ordi-
narily imposes], because no penalty is imposed for an act committed
under coercion, see there. This same exemption may therefore apply
in our case too, where the Torah compels him to slaughter the animal
in order to save the endangered patient. See the Ketzos Hachoshen
(25), who writes that a person who was compelled to steal is exempt
from the double payment penalty.

Now, we learn in the Rambam (Hilchos Avadim 5:13):“If his master
[i.e. of a Canaanite slave] was a physician and he [i.e. the slave] said to
him, ‘Salve my eye for me,’ and he blinded him, or [if the slave asked
his master] ‘fix my tooth,’ and he knocked it out, the servant laughs at
his master and goes free… and obviously if the servant’s eye hurt and
his master was an expert and removed it for him, he goes out free.” We
see that even when the master is a physician and is treating the slave

11. See our discussion of this point in our work, Chashukei Chemed on maseches
Kesuvos, 3a (pg. 40).

392 1 Medical-Halachic Responsa of Rav Zilberstein