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save lives. Proof for this is the Yerushalmi’s statement (Yoma 8:5), “A
person who is gripped by a severe craving for food is fed pressed dried
figs and raisins of terumah as we learn from the passuk, “And they
gave him a wedge of pressed dried figs and two clusters of raisins”
(Shmuel I, 30:12). [It is written there”“Amalek forayed southward and
smote Tziklag, burning it with fire and they captured the women that
were there, from young to old… and their sons and their daughters
were captured… and David went in pursuit, he and four hundred
men …and they found an Egyptian in the field… and they gave him
bread and he ate and they gave him water. And they gave him a wedge
of pressed dried figs and two clusters of raisins and he ate and he
was revived… He said, ‘I am an Egyptian youth, servant to an Ama-
lekite man and my master left me because I became ill… we made a
southward foray… and we burned Tziklag in fire.’ David said to him,
‘Will you take me down to this [Amalekite] band?’… He took him
down and behold, they were spread out across all the land, eating
and drinking and celebrating with all the spoils… David smote them.
David saved everything that Amalek had taken.”]

In his sefer, Y’feh Mareh, the gaon Rabbi Shmuel Yafeh writes,
“Even though he was an Egyptian, for whose piku’ach nefesh terumah
may not be desecrated, since David and his camp needed him to show
them the band [of Amalekites] in order to save Jewish captives, it was
considered as piku’ach nefesh of Jews. Should you ask, did they have
no other food besides terumah? Why, there were several people in that
camp who were Yisraelim [to whom terumah is forbidden], so they
must have had regular food. Also, after they gave him bread and he
ate, why did they need to give him pressed fig cake and raisins? One
can answer that a person gripped by severe craving for food needs
sweet foods to revive him after he has eaten, as we learn in this perek
in the Talmud Bavli from this account.”

It is thus permitted to desecrate terumah [by feeding it to a
non-Kohen], violating the Torah prohibition of, “guarding My teru-
mah” (Bamidbar 18:8), in order to save an Egyptian, when there is a
chance that doing so will result in saving Jewish lives. In our case too,

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