Rav Slifkin quoted a psak from Rav Zilberstein (
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hHXxuQkIrjU/YJvlXCGteoI/AAAAAAACUE0/5ZptYy3hBh82XV0INVJu_3L00VG98TctgCLcBGAsYHQ/s933/ChildSiren.jpg)
<https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hHXxuQkIrjU/YJvlXCGteoI/AAAAAAACUE0/5ZptYy3hBh82XV0INVJu_3L00VG98TctgCLcBGAsYHQ/s933/ChildSiren.jpg>that
parents have no chiyuv to wake up sleeping children when the air raid siren
goes off and take them to a shelter. His reasoning is that going to a
shelter is hishtadlus and children have no chiyuv hishtadlus.
I don’t understand this at all. If he is right, we shouldn’t take children
to the doctor either, that is also hishtadlus. We also wouldn’t need to
watch that they don’t do anything dangerous, that is also hishtadlus. Yet,
I never heard of anyone who doesn’t take their children to the doctor when
they are sick. What am I missing?
.
R' Marty Bluke wrote:
Rav Slifkin quoted a psak from Rav Zilberstein (
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hHXxuQkIrjU/YJvlXCGteoI/AAAAAAACUE0/5ZptYy3hBh82XV0INVJu_3L00VG98TctgCLcBGAsYHQ/s933/ChildSiren.jpg
)
that parents have no chiyuv to wake up sleeping children when
the air raid siren goes off and take them to a shelter. His
reasoning is that going to a shelter is hishtadlus and children
have no chiyuv hishtadlus.
I don’t understand this at all. If he is right, we shouldn't
take children to the doctor either, that is also hishtadlus.
We also wouldn't need to watch that they don't do anything
dangerous, that is also hishtadlus. Yet, I never heard of
anyone who doesn't take their children to the doctor when
they are sick. What am I missing?
Excellent question. Thank you for posting the source, so I could read the
original. So now I have another question:
Could it be that according to Rav Zilberstein, even though the children do
not need to do this hishtadlus for themselves, the parents *do* have to do
this hishtadlus for *them*selves. Therefore, the parents must go to the
shelter, and leave the children at home. Right?
Alternatively: Since the children are patur from hishtadlus, the parents
who watch them are also patur from hishtadlus, just like a husband who
(from what I've seen in various places) can sleep in the house instead of
the sukkah, because that's where his wife is.
Akiva Miller
None of your answers really address the question. Regardles of hishtadlus,
since when do we say you're allowed to ignore safeiq piquach nefesh in
order to aid the next day's learning -- or for any other mitzvah? Making
this a she'eilah of whether histadlus is required is itself something
very hard to understand.
We have three mitzvos that are yeihareig ve'al ya'avos -- and learning
isn't one of them -- but we have NO mitzvos that allow risk to someone
else's life.
(Said mitzvah would be the father's obligation of veshinantam, since
the boy isn't a bar chiyuvah. But that seems tangential.)
Tir'u baTov!
-Micha
RMB replied:
None of your answers really address the question. Regardles of hishtadlus,
since when do we say you're allowed to ignore safeiq piquach nefesh in
order to aid the next day's learning -- or for any other mitzvah? Making
this a she'eilah of whether histadlus is required is itself something
very hard to understand.
Me: was Rav Zilberstein being serious about not taking children to a bomb
shelter, or was he being pedantic to show that the mitzva of hishtadlut is
the wrong model to analyze this particular responsibility, or was he
making a point that the risk of being hit is so small that one need not
necessarily run to a bomb shelter? Or was he making a point about how real
and actual he considered the protecting given by Torah learning while being
engaged in learning Torah?
