Prayer Proximity December 5, 2024 Excerpted and adapted from a shiur by Dayan Yehoshua Grunwald …
Moral Hazard: When Risky Behavior Is Permitted
Adapted from the writings of Dayan Yitzhak Grossman
November 28, 2024
The Jewish Telegraph Agency (JTA) reports:
Sam Salz’s first taste of NCAA Division I football came during a kickoff—known in football as a “special teams” play.
For most football players, kickoffs are in fact routine. But if anything about the play was special, it was Salz’s presence on the field.
The 5-foot-6, 160-pound wide receiver for Texas A&M is not only Jewish—itself a rarity in the ranks of college football—but is believed to be the only Orthodox athlete on a DI team. And in taking the field Saturday evening after the end of Shabbat, Salz became what is likely the first Orthodox Jew to appear in a DI game.
Like most Orthodox Jews, Salz observes Shabbat and abstains from work—which includes a wide range of activities, from using electricity to traveling in a motor vehicle—on Saturday, which is also college football’s usual game day. So in more than two years on the team, Salz, a senior, hasn’t been able to suit up once.
But Shabbat ends earlier in November (it concludes at nightfall), and for once, the team’s schedule was aligned in Salz’s favor. Saturday’s game between Texas A&M and New Mexico State began at 6:45 p.m. local time, approximately 40 minutes after the stars came out.
“From the bottom of my heart I would just like to thank G-d and everyone who believes in me,” Salz wrote on X. “The moment felt so crazy I totally forgot that it was the first official snap of football I’ve played in my life.”…
Salz knew Shabbat would be a challenge coming in and chose jersey No. 39 in honor of the 39 kinds of work traditionally forbidden on the day of rest…
Still, he persisted. For games on Saturday nights, Salz told The Athletic he would walk to the stadium, finish Shabbat with Torah study and a meal, and then suit up and join the team in the second half of the game…[1]
While the reporting on Salz and the challenges posed to his football career by his religious observance focuses on Shabbos, playing contact sports entails another potential halachic problem: the voluntary assumption of risk to life and health. R’ Moshe Feinstein addresses this issue in a famous teshuvah on the permissibility of engaging in “the game of throwing balls”:
I was asked by someone whether it is permitted to earn a living from the game of throwing balls (mis’chak zrikas hakadurim)…for there is a risk, as one in several thousand have experienced danger. I responded that in my humble opinion, we may permit this…
R’ Moshe’s basis for leniency is the following breisa cited by the Gemara:
The pasuk says: “And for it he risks his life.” Why did this worker climb a high ramp, or suspend himself from a tree, placing himself in mortal danger? Was it not for his wage?[2]
R’ Moshe infers:
It is evident that it is permitted to earn a living even where there is a remote risk of danger, and it follows that it is permitted even where there is a similarly remote risk that he will kill others—for why is this different from the risk that he himself will be killed? After all, killing oneself is also included in the prohibition of “You shall not murder,”[3] but it is still permitted in the case of a remote risk like this when necessary to earn a living. If so, even where there is a risk to others, it is permitted in a case like this, where the risk is remote. Also, if we do not say so, then the owner of the tree would not be allowed to hire him.
But it is certainly reasonable that this is only when the other person too engages in this willingly, for one certainly has no right to impose even a remote risk like this upon someone else who either didn’t know or didn’t wish to assume even this remote risk.
After a while they showed me that in Noda Bihudah tinyana Y.D. siman 10, he also ruled this way about earning a living from trapping animals—look there—and I was pleased.[4]
(R’ Moshe does not specify which “game of throwing balls,” in which danger befalls only one in several thousand, he is discussing. But with respect to football in particular, research subsequent to his teshuvah[5] suggests that the risk of concussion and consequential chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a potentially serious neurodegenerative disease, among football players at all levels, may actually be quite high.)[6]
The teshuvah of the Noda Bihudah (R’ Yechezkel Landau) is indeed the seminal discussion of voluntarily assuming risk for the sake of earning a living:
A man to whom Hashem has awarded an expansive inheritance, and he has villages and forests—where in the forests, every forest beast stirs[7]—is it permitted for him to go himself to shoot with a firearm to hunt game,[8] or is it prohibited for a Jew to do such a thing?…
Rav Landau initially discusses several potentially applicable prohibitions, including those against causing pain to animals (tza’ar ba’alei chaim) and wanton destruction (bal tash’chis), and concludes that they are not applicable here. But he then proceeds to prohibit recreational hunting due to the danger involved, in addition to ethical impropriety:
For all those who engage in this must enter forests and place themselves in situations of great danger, in a place of bands of wild animals, and the Torah says: “But you shall greatly beware for your souls.”[9] Whom do we have greater and more skilled in hunting than Eisav—about whom the Torah testifies: “And Eisav became one who knows hunting”[10]—and go and see what he said about himself: “Look, I am going to die.”[11] And the pasuk does not depart from its literal meaning,[12] that he was in danger every day among the bands of wild animals, and this is how the Ramban explained it.[13] And now, how can a Jewish man enter into a place of bands of savage wild animals?
Even in such circumstances, one who is poor and does this for his livelihood—this the Torah permits, like all seafaring merchants who travel across the sea, for with respect to anything necessary for one’s livelihood, there is no choice. The Torah says: “…And for it he risks his life,” and Chazal said: “Why did this worker climb a high ramp, or suspend himself from a tree, placing himself in mortal danger? Was it not for his wage?” But someone whose primary motivation is not his livelihood, but out of the desire of his heart he goes to a place of bands of wild animals and places himself in danger, violates “But you shall greatly beware.” And this is the language of the Rambam in perek 12 of Hilchos Rotzeiach halacha 6: “It is forbidden for a person to pass under a wall that is leaning or over a shaky bridge, or to enter a ruin.” Similarly, it is forbidden to enter all other places that are dangerous for these or other reasons.[14]
The distinction explicit in Rav Landau’s teshuvah and implicit in R’ Moshe’s between dangerous activities done for recreational purposes and those done in order to earn a living is also articulated by other authorities. The Shem Aryeh concludes an extensive discussion of voluntary assumption of risk thus:
To depart to the great sea to travel, i.e., to travel the world to see novel things and so on…it is appropriate to avoid this, and this should be done only for the sake of sustenance or business. Similarly, it is certainly appropriate to avoid travel in deserts and placing oneself in other situations of danger where there is no necessity and compulsion to do so. But regarding that which is the custom of the world, there is no concern for danger.[15],[16]
[1]Jacob Gurvis. Sam Salz is likely the first Orthodox Jew to appear in a Division I college football game. Jewish Telegraph Agency. https://www.jta.org/2024/11/18/sports/sam-salz-is-likely-the-first-orthodox-jew-to-appear-in-a-division-i-college-football-game.
[4]Shu”t Igros Moshe C.M. cheilek 1 siman 104.
[5]The teshuvah is undated, but the volume in which it appears was published in 5724/1964.
[6]Wikipedia contributors. Concussions in American football. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Concussions_in_American_football&oldid=1258177791.
[9]Dvarim 4:15. The simple meaning of this phrase in context is an admonition to avoid the spiritual danger of idolatry rather than physical danger. Cf. Pirkei Avos 3:8; Brachos 32b; and Rambam Hilchos Rotzeiach 11:4.
[12]Yevamos 24a and elsewhere. See here, here, and here.
[13]Ramban Bereishis 25:34. This is also the understanding of the Ibn Ezra and Rashbam ibid. pasuk 32, although various Midrashim and other Rishonim, including Rashi, understand the pasuk differently.
[14]Shu”t Noda Bihudah tinyana Y.D. siman 10.
[15]Shu”t Shem Aryeh (O.C.) end of siman 27 p. 78.
[16]We have previously discussed the general topic of risk in halacha in: Hurricane Housing: When a Storm Is the Norm. Sep. 20, 2018; Value Judgment: What’s a Life Worth? Sep. 17, 2020; Risk Factors: Can You Be Too Safe? Jul. 15, 2021; Pool Rules and Road Codes: Safety in Halacha. Sep. 2, 2022.
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