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nonetheless obligates us to help such an individual load or unload his
donkey.

It is also written in the Navi that an evildoer should not be saved
from the authorities, whose intent is to impose order and ensure that
society isn’t ruined. As it says, “A king maintains [law and order in]
his country through judgment.” (Mishlei 29:4) This applies to saving
the sinner from the hands of the judge. However, if the sinner finds
himself in other dangerous situations, we are not to say that this is
certainly a heavenly punishment that has befallen him. Rather, we
must conduct ourselves in the spirit of the passuk, ‘You shall surely
help, together with him,’ and even if we saw him commit an immoral
act.

Further proof that the Torah cares about sinners can be adduced
from the gemara in Sotah, (14a) where it says that they make the So-
tah tired, with the aim of getting her to admit that she committed
adultery, in order that she should not die. The baraisa there concludes
by saying,“If this is how the Torah cares about those who violate His
will, all the more so [does it care] about those who fulfill His will.”
Rashi writes, “If she committed adultery, she has violated G-d’s will,
yet the Torah wants her to admit her guilt so that she should not
undergo examination [by drinking the bitter waters] and die.” The
Torah thus has pity even on the life of an adulteress and instructs
us to tire her out so that she will admit to her sin and not die. See
Minchas Kena’os [by the gaon Rav Meir Arik,] who poses this gemara
as a question on the She’ilas Yaavetz who is of the opinion that an
adulteress is allowed to commit suicide because she has incurred the
death penalty anyway.



“The Torah’s Judgments are not Vengeance”

The Rambam writes (Hilchos Shabbos 2:3), “…and it is forbidden to
delay desecrating Shabbos for a dangerously ill patient, as it is writ-

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