Arnon Grunberg

Tool

Law

Kevin Sack in the NYT on kidneys, trade in human organs and Israel:

“While Jewish law commands that almost anything can be done to save a life, it holds that one life is not to be sacrificed to save another.”

(Read the article here.)

It’s an interesting and probable even disturbing concept that one cannot sacrifice another to save a life. Can we wage war to save lives? What if a person is voluntarily willing to sacrifice himself for another, should we prevent this sacrifice? Does the idea of sacrifice mean that a subject is degraded to object, to a mere tool for another person’s survival, for the survival of a country, the survival of a platoon?

Leonard Cohen sang:

“You who build these altars now/ To sacrifice these children,/ You must not do it anymore./ A scheme is not a vision/ And you never have been tempted/ By a demon or a god./ You who stand above them now,/ Your hatchets blunt and bloody,/ You were not there before,/ When I lay upon a mountain/ And my father's hand was trembling/ With the beauty of the word.”

discuss on facebook, 4 comments