Who Should Survive?
Rabbi Deborah Wechsler
God and Abraham stood together on the precipice. Both looking out on the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. God had decided to destroy the cities and had shared with Abraham His intentions. Together they went down, and stood, and tried to determine if the people in those towns had acted according to the outcry that had reached all the way up to God. And together they had to decide who to save.
“Will you sweep away the innocent along with the guilty?” Abraham asked. What if there should be fifty innocent within the city?” and on it went, how many would make this city worth saving. Until the last time when Abraham asked God to quell his anger and inquired what God would do if ten people should be found in Sodom and Gomorrah. And with that the conversation ceased. But we have to imagine that God and Abraham then set out to find the ten that might be worth saving.
A terrible story and a terrible decision for anyone to make – how to decide who to save or even who to save first. That was one of the questions we were most curious about and most fearful of asking last week. Together with the world community we watched with baited breath as 5000 miles away a small group of people decided who to save first.
It must have been a terrible and awesome decision. Since August 5 “los 33” the 33 Chilean miners had been trapped underground and finally they were perched on the precipice of salvation or destruction. How would they decide who was to be saved first? Would it be the weakest and the sickest? Would it be the men who were parents of young children? Would it be the men who were married with loved ones waiting for them? Would it be the youngest or the oldest? Would it be the one who had done the most to help the others while trapped? Would it be the one who had the most to look forward to if he survived? Would it be the one who had a child born while he was trapped underground? Or the one who had celebrated his 35th birthday half a mile below the earth’s surface?
What would you do if you had to make the decision who to save first? What kind of criteria would God and Abraham have used to decide what makes a person worthy of being saved?
Though it might not have come into account in Northern Chile, we imagine that there must be some sort of Jewish criteria to help guide us at such a time.
There is a basic mitzvah as taught in the Torah that as Jews we have an obligation to save human life – not Jewish life, human life. Lo ta’amod al dam rey ekha “You may not stand idly by your neighbor’s blood.”[1] The Talmud interestingly expands this obligation to say that one must be willing to spend money if necessary to save human life. This teaching was particularly poignant to me this week when learning about the expense involved in saving these 33 individuals.
But how to choose? There is another fundamental principle in Jewish law that one life is not to be sacrificed for another. The famous story of Rabbi Akiva’s which tells of two men lost in a desert with only enough water to save one teaches us that both need not perish and we do not ask who is more worthy. Rabbi Akiva says that the man who has the water may drink all of it.
The classic exception to the rule that that we do not choose between people’s lives is that of a mother during childbirth. Judaism requires that a mother’s life be saved during delivery even at the expense of the fetus. But while these principles of Jewish law are interesting and inform us as to how Judaism views the world and the worth of human life, it is less helpful in figuring out criteria of how to determine who should be saved and in what order.
The officials in Chile were under no such obligation to follow our religious law or their religious law for that matter.
Some aspects of the decision were easy, the men themselves were not the ones to decide the order in which they would be saved. Despite reports from the mine that each of the men had volunteered to be the last one saved, it was left in the hands of the rescuers, including those medics who were sent down into the mine and had the authority to change the order based on medical need.
As you may know by now it was neither the youngest nor the oldest who was saved first, not the sickest nor the new father, not the clergy man nor the shift leader. Instead it was Florencio Avalos, 31 married with two children. Chilean officials saved first a man who was physically strong in case the capsule got stuck or broke off and he had to climb back down or up to safety. In essence they saved someone who would be able to save himself if he had to. They also needed someone who was psychologically strong – in case something went wrong they needed someone who had the emotional strength to deal with that.
In between, the others were pulled from death’s grasp through the rescue capsule which was named the Phoenix after the mythical bird reborn from its own ashes. The equivalent of the torah’s dry bones of Ezekiel which Ezekiel gradually grow new muscles and flesh to give a new chance at life.
The 9th man rescued was Mario Gomez, at 63 the oldest of the 33.
The 12th miner Edison Pena, ran three miles every day while underground in what he described as a living hell.
Jose Henriquez, the 24th miner is an evangelical preacher who has worked in mines for 33 years. He had the role of keeping his colleagues' spirits up during their 69-day ordeal.
The 26th miner brought up was Claudio Acuna who celebrated his 35th birthday in the mine.
The 30th miner up was Raul Bustos, who had the job of organizing the water supplies. He became a miner when he had lost his business during the earthquake in Chile earlier in February and came to the mine for a new start.
Ariel Ticona was the 32nd man rescued. While trapped his wife gave birth to a baby daughter he asked her to name Esperanza – hope.
The last man out was Luis Urzua, 54. He was the one credited with keeping the miners together back in August for those first 17 days before anyone knew that they were alive. He was the shift leader.
The events of last week were extraordinary. But perhaps even more extraordinary is the reality that these kinds of decisions, the kinds made by God and Abraham in the desert outside Sodom and Gomorroah and made by Chilean officials in the desert outside Copiapo, Chile are made every day in all kinds of different settings. Not a day goes by that we do not have to choose who to save – in a medical setting, in a financial setting, in a military setting, in a reproductive setting, in an educational setting, in a healthcare setting.
When it comes our turn to decide we can only hope and pray that we do so with the kavod, the dignity, the compassion, and the solemn sense of responsibility with which those decisions were made last week. And that we have the same miraculous, wondrous and profoundly sacred outcome.
[1] Leviticus 19:15
