Rough Draft: Sin Now for Salvation Later?

Adapted from the writings of Dayan Yitzhak Grossman

August 14, 2025

VINnews reports:

At the anti-draft meeting of gedolim held Wednesday night in Ma’ale Hachamishah, R’ Yitzchak Zilberstein, a member of the Council of Torah Sages of the Degel HaTorah party, quoted a halachic ruling in the name of his teacher, R’ Yechezkel Abramsky zt”l: “If it is impossible (to obtain an exemption from the army), then there is a mitzvah for every person to leave Eretz Yisrael and make every effort not to live here.”

He continued with a shocking statement: “I said to my rebbi, ‘I’m horrified to hear that.’ But he responded, ‘You haven’t heard everything yet. Listen to what I’m saying: Desecrate Shabbos and flee the country.’ I asked again, ‘Rebbi, can such things really be said in public?’ And he said, ‘If you won’t say it, I will.’ And indeed, he went and said it publicly. “If there’s someone among us being forced into the army, and there’s a concern he might stray from the religious path, I command him to desecrate the Sabbath.”[1]

Rav Abramsky’s ruling seems to rest upon two assumptions:

1. Serving in the Israeli army is likely to cause one to “stray from the religious path.”
2. It is permitted to be mechallel Shabbos on a one-time basis in order to avoid the possibility of that result.

This article and a follow-up will not examine the first assumption, but will focus on the second.

The following question was posed to the Rashba:

A woman was forcibly removed from her home by an apostate Jew on Shabbos, in order to remove her from Klal Yisrael. Is it permitted to send on Shabbos for her father, who is in another city, even beyond three parsaos (parasangs) according to the one that maintains that the prohibition to travel outside the techum of three parsah is Biblical, and even to bring in his hand a seal from the government—is this like a possible danger to life (safeik nefashos) and we should thus be lenient, or not?

He responded:

The matter requires study, but nevertheless, my inclination is that it is prohibited, because we do not set aside Shabbos in order to save people from sins, because “we do not say to a person, ‘Get up and sin so that another will benefit (Amod vachato kedei sheyizkeh chaveircha),’” and even a small sin is not permitted in order to save another from a great sin, as is evident from the first perek of Shabbos[2]…[3]

The Bais Yosef, however, challenges the Rashba’s position. He notes that Tosfos—in order to reconcile the Gemara’s principle that we do not tell someone “Amod vachato” with its assumption elsewhere that a person is expected to commit a relatively minor sin in order to facilitate someone else’s mitzvah—proposes one of two possible limitations on that principle:

• It does not apply where the sin is being committed so that someone else will fulfill a “great” mitzvah.
• It applies only where the person to be rescued from sin was negligent, and thus morally responsible for his sin, not where he is being forced to sin against his will.[4]

The Bais Yosef argues that both these limitations imply that the principle would not apply in the case of the Rashba, because “there is no greater mitzvah than saving (the woman in his case) from them frightening her until she apostatizes,” and the woman was not negligent. Accordingly,

anti draft It is permitted to desecrate Shabbos for him to watch over her, and it is a mitzvah as well. And if he does not want to do so, we compel him…and it would appear that it is even proper to desecrate Shabbos in a Biblically prohibited manner, because we would say that to do so in order that she not apostatize and commit chillul Shabbos all her days is a small sin.[5]

The Shulchan Aruch rules in accordance with his own position in the Bais Yosef, that saving one’s daughter in such circumstances, even through means that involve chillul Shabbos, is a mitzvah.[6] The Mishnah Brurah qualifies, however, that this is only where the woman was seized against her will. If she was negligent, her father should not be mechallel Shabbos to save her, because “we do not say to a person, ‘Sin so that another will benefit.’”[7] This seems to assume that the second suggestion of Tosfos is normative,[8] so if the sinner was negligent, we do not desecrate Shabbos to save her, even where the sin involved is great. But according to the first suggestion of Tosfos, it would seem that Shabbos may be desecrated to save a sinner from a great sin even if he was negligent. The Gra, however, understands that the Shulchan Aruch does indeed maintain that the principle that we don’t tell a person to sin for another’s benefit applies unless both conditions of Tosfos apply, i.e., the person to be saved was not negligent and the sin to save him from is great;[9] this approach would yield the Mishnah Brurah’s conclusion that Shabbos may not be violated to protect a negligent person from sin, even a great sin.

The above discussion is concerned entirely with the question of whether someone may commit a sin so that another will benefit. In our case, however, the question is whether one may sin so that he himself will benefit. On the one hand, perhaps in our case even the Rashba would agree that sinning now to avoid a future lifetime of sin is permitted, because his entire objection to the proposed Shabbos desecration in his case is that we do not tell someone to sin for another’s benefit. But on the other hand, perhaps in our case even the Bais Yosef/Shulchan Aruch would agree that sinning now to avoid a future lifetime of sin is prohibited. In the case of the Rashba, the father cannot control his daughter’s future behavior, and he is therefore faced with the insoluble dilemma that if he does not now desecrate Shabbos to rescue her, it is highly likely that she will spend the rest of her life as an apostate, and there will be nothing further he can do to stop that. In our case, however, the draftee cannot argue that he must desecrate Shabbos now to avoid straying from Torah in the future, because as a human being possessed of free will, he may choose to neither desecrate Shabbos now nor stray in the future. The fact that he knows it is unrealistic to expect that he will remain strong in the face of future temptation may not be grounds to justify chillul Shabbos today.

This takes us to the question of the Torah’s perspective on spiritual harm reduction: Can a sin be permitted on the grounds that insisting upon its prohibition will likely result in greater sin? We will iy”H address this question in a follow-up.

[1]Yehuda Dov. Rav Zilberstein Quoted Rav Abramsky: One May Desecrate Shabbat, Leave Israel Rather Than Go To IDF. VINnews. https://vinnews.com/2025/07/31/rabbi-zilberstein-quoted-rav-abramski-one-may-desecrate-shabbat-leave-israel-rather-than-go-to-idf/.

[2]Shabbos 4a.

[3]Shu”t HaRashba cheilek 7 siman 267, cited (with some variations) in Bais Yosef O.C. end of siman 306.

[4]Tosfos ibid. s.v. Vechi omrim lo le’adam chatei bishvil sheyizkeh chaveircha.

[5]Bais Yosef ibid.

[6]Shulchan Aruch ibid. se’if 14.

[7]Mishnah Brurah ibid. s.k. 56.

[8]The Magein Avraham ibid. s.k. 28 also cites only the second suggestion of Tosfos in explanation of how the ruling of the Shulchan Aruch is consistent with the principle that “we do not say to a person ‘sin so that another will benefit,’”   implying that he considers that suggestion to be normative.

[9]Biur HaGra ibid.