Matters of life and death Time and place: Kovno Ghetto Background: One of the harshest edicts imposed on Orthodox Jews was the shaving of the [tip of the] beard; this means of identification provoked the Nazis, who claimed reasons of hygiene and prevention of spread of disease for demanding its removal. There were also great Jewish scholars among them who wished to avoid identification and were forced to this act. Jews fought devotedly to retain their appearance. Those who refused were in danger of their lives. Questions arose as to the manner of removing the beard. Question: Is it permitted for a Jew to remove his beard with a razor when in danger? Answer: The Rabbi's answer was that since the men were in danger of their lives and had no other tool but a razor at hand, therefore even direct shaving of the beard could permissibly be done with a razor Time and place: 5701 (1941), Kovno ghetto. Background: A family in Kovno was completely assimilated in non-Jewish society. They did not circumcise their son, and they had nothing to do with the Jewish religion. When the Nazis ordered the Jews of Kovno to leave the city and move into the ghetto in Slobodka, this family was included in the decree. The family suffered doubly, since-despite having cut themselves off from their people and spurned G-d-they couldn't understand why this was happening to them. After all, they thought, they were no different from the Gentiles. They couldn't understand that the Germans regarded all Jews as equally fit only for annihilation. Their uncircumcised son was strongly affected by awareness of this fate. His heart was filled with love for his unfortunate people, and he wanted to be one with them. But he was troubled by a particular question: "If in death I will not be separated from my people and am likely to suffer the same fate as everyone else, why should I be separated in life, without the sign of the holy covenant on my flesh? Why should I be like those impure, uncircumcised ones who are devouring my people and devastating their homes…?" He therefore wanted to be circumcised according to halakhah, and to be like the rest of the Jewish people in all ways. The young man, now 27 years old, was desperate to be circumcised. At the time there was no G-d-fearing mohel in the ghetto; there was only a doctor who was known to violate Shabbat in public. Question: Could this doctor circumcise the man? Answer: The rabbi ruled that the doctor should definitely be permitted to circumcise the man due to the urgency of the matter. While hundreds of Jews were being slaughtered daily, the young man was begging to be able to die as a kosher Jew among his people, if he was indeed doomed to die. Source: Rabbi Ephraim Oshry, Mi-ma'amakim Time and place: Elul 16, 5701 (Sept. 8, 1941), Kovno ghetto Background: The question of the white cards known as Jordan Schein first came up when the notorious SS-Oberf?hrer Goecke arrived in Lithuania. Jordan, the commandant of the Kovno ghetto, had ordered the Judenrat to hand out 5,000 of these cards to skilled laborers. The trouble was that 10,000 of the 30,000 ghetto inhabitants at the time were skilled laborers. It was said that holders of white cards and their families would be permitted to remain in the ghetto, while the rest would be killed. The inhabitants of the ghetto were gripped by shock and fear, with everyone trying to get a white card, even by force if necessary. The panic and terror increased when it became known that the ghetto was surrounded by machine guns, and that there had been a Selektion in the Little Ghetto in which holders of white cards were separated from everyone else. In the midst of the uproar, the following question was asked. Question: May the Judenrat hand out white cards to only part of the population? After all, every card issued to one skilled laborer meant that another would be handed over to the German authorities, who would do with him as they saw fit. Thus the Judenrat was choosing one life over another. How could its members know that the lives of the people receiving white cards were the most important? May a person grab a white card in order to save himself and his family? After all, grabbing a white card for oneself meant that another Jewish family would not be saved. "How could you determine that your life was more valuable than another's life?" Answer: The rabbi ruled that the Judenrat should hand out white cards as it saw fit. Because the orders did not specify who was to receive a white card and the decree would have destroyed the entire community, the community leaders must save as many people as possible. The rabbi permitted the stronger people to grab cards in order to save themselves and their families, even though the lives of other Jews would thereby be put in danger. The principle, expressed by R. Moshe Isserles, is that "someone who sees harm coming to him may save himself even if another person will be harmed as a result." Source: Rabbi Ephraim Oshry, Mi-ma'amakim, part 5, question 1, p. 13; and the abridged translation in Rabbi Ephraim Oshry, Responsa from the Holocaust (New York, 2001), pp. 14-17