Life versus death! Thou shalt live!!!
When I was Nine Months old, there was a plane crash en-route from Uruguay to Chile, later to be known as the Andes flight disaster (Tragedia de los Andes) and the Miracle of the Andes (Milagro de los Andes). Since I was so young at the time, how did I learn about it? Well, you might say: "from his stamp collection"; unfortunately, this is not the correct answer...
When I was studying the Kosher Dietary Laws, as part of my training to become a Rabbi, one of our Rabbis asked the following (horrible & terrifying) question: "if you were on a plane that crashed, and in order to survive you had to choose between the non-Kosher food in the flight's kitchen, or the dead people - which do you choose"?! The reason for this question is that even though there is a "prime directive" (as I call it) to live in the Commandments; you must choose (if possible) the lesser prohibition. For example, if you have a choice between pork and a chicken that was killed without slaughtering it properly - you must choose the chicken. We told our Rabbi that this question about eating humans was impossible to answer, and that's how I found out about this plane crashing into the Andes mountains, and subsequent necessity of the survivors to eat their friends and family.
In the Bible, there are several verses mentioning resurrection of the dead, but the stamp of Uruguay depicted in my Bible says "death and life". These survivors weren't resurrected from the dead - but I feel that this is the true message of Isaiah 26:19
The lesser of 2 evils. I think the commandment here is to live, and bless the Lord. Eat whatever is laid before you. I think judgment would only come into play when/if someone took another life in order to live themselves. That is not for us to decide, who lives and who's life is more important than another's. Command is to live, not to kill and cause death.
ReplyDelete