The Enemy's Donkey Comes First

About This Talk

Rotze'ach u'Shmirat Nefesh closes, and with it all of Sefer Nezikin, on the second half of its name: the preservation of life. Chapter 11 makes it a positive commandment to build a guardrail for a roof used as a dwelling, at least four cubits by four, including a house owned by partners, excluding warehouses, barns, synagogues and houses of study, and excusing a roof that lies below the public domain since the verse speaks of falling from the roof; the fence must be ten handbreadths high and strong enough to lean on, and leaving it open negates the positive commandment and violates do not cause blood to be spilled in your home, without lashes since no deed is involved. The same applies to wells and cisterns, which need a ten-handbreadth wall or a cover, and to every obstacle that endangers life. The Sages added many safeguards, punishing with stripes for rebelliousness anyone who says I will risk my life or I am not careful: no drinking from a conduit or from rivers at night, and no drinking water, wine, milk, honey or brine left uncovered, with exemptions for boiled or fresh wine, steaming or continuously dripping liquids, liquids whose taste was changed, quantities large enough to nullify venom, and flowing streams, a sleeping person beside the jug offering no protection, a tenth drinker forbidden though nine drank safely, filtering useless, and uncovered water not to be poured in the street or used for mortar or washing though it may be given to a cat. Chapter 12 forbids meat of an animal bitten by a snake, requires a roasting check for a bird found with its feet cut off, forbids fruit with holes even when a bird was seen pecking it while permitting fruit that has dried, and forbids coins in the mouth, a dish under the couch, a knife set upright in an etrog, and walking under leaning walls, on shaky bridges or into ruins, along with precautions for the roads of the Rambam's era; it forbids selling weaponry and instruments of harm to those who endanger the public or to a Jewish robber, permits shields and sales to the soldiers who defend the land, and applies do not place a stumbling block before the blind to bad advice and to strengthening a transgressor. Chapter 13 commands unloading and reloading a fallen animal, free for unloading and paid for reloading, a hundred times if necessary and with escort for a parsah, once one comes within 266 2/3 cubits, exempts an elder for whom it is undignified while praising the pious who help anyway, exempts the passerby when an able owner steps aside but not when the owner is old or ailing, sets precedence on narrow roads, straits and passes, and ends by sending one to help an enemy before a friend in order to subdue the evil inclination, the enemy being a Jew who persisted in sin after rebuke, whom one still helps lest he come to danger, for God desires not the death of the wicked but that he return and live.