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job, we can append the opinion of the Maharil Diskin (discussed
above) that he does not have to suffer financial loss in order avoid
violating,“Do not put an obstacle before a blind man.”

There is another rationale that can be made for leniency, namely
that in our case the director does not violate lifnei iver [“Do not put
an obstacle before a blind man”] since the prohibition [of abortion]
would be violated in any event. Were the director to refuse to autho-
rize the abortion, he would be dismissed and replaced, probably by a
non-Jew.

Now, the Mishneh Lemelech (Hilchos Malveh Veloveh 4:2) writes,
“The Torah forbids lending money on interest, even when the lender
will anyway lend his money to others and if this borrower doesn’t
borrow it from him [on interest] he will lend it to others [on interest].
The Torah nonetheless forbids borrowing from him. This does not
resemble the case of a nazir, where, unless the nazir is on the other
side of a river [and has no way of accessing the wine himself ] the
Torah does not forbid handing him the wine for if this person won’t
give it to him he will obtain it some other way. [The reason for this
distinction is as follows.] In the case of a nazir [who can access wine
himself ], no lifnei iver whatsoever will be transgressed when this
person refuses to hand the nazir a cup of wine, because the nazir can
take the wine himself. Since even without his assistance the nazir can
obtain wine to drink, this is not considered as having put a stumbling
block before a blind man [i.e. the stumbling block exists without his
input]. However, in regard to an interest bearing loan however, even
if this person doesn’t borrow the money, whoever does borrow it will
still violate lifnei iver for without a borrower the lender on his own
cannot violate the prohibition of lending on interest. Thus, whoever
enables him to do so is considered to be creating a stumbling block
and by this person borrowing from him, he is not exempt from lifnei
iver [simply because somebody else would otherwise have done so].
In the case of a nazir too, if someone else would hand him the wine
[when the nazir had no other access to it], he obviously violates lifnei
iver.”

[According to this, since there is no way of legally carrying out

456 1 Medical-Halachic Responsa of Rav Zilberstein