We are in the final third of chapter 24, on page 30b (page 60), near the bottom of the page: the last seven lines, beginning with the word "ורמשים." Last time we stopped at the words "ומה שפיקוח נפש" ("And the fact that saving a life...").
In the previous lesson we established a fundamental point, one that bears directly on what follows: in truth there is no difference between a "light" transgression and a "severe" one. Every single transgression of the Creator's will creates, at the moment it is done, a disconnect between the Jew and the Holy One, blessed be He. It makes no difference whether we are speaking of idolatry, where everyone understands that a severing has taken place, or of desecrating Shabbos, eating non-kosher food, or something that looks small and light.
And if a person nevertheless draws a distinction in his own mind between one sin and another, telling himself regarding something severe that he simply cannot transgress the will of Hashem, while regarding something light he says, "after all, it is only a small matter," that distinction comes from the ruach shtus, the spirit of folly. As our Sages said, "A person does not transgress unless a spirit of folly has entered into him." It is the ruach shtus that tells him there is a difference between a big thing and a small thing; in truth there is no difference at all. And as the Tanya puts it, even by the lowest of the low, the "אשה מנאפת," the adulterous woman, whose mind is light, once there is an awareness of what it means to transgress the will of Hashem, the small matter and the great matter are one and the same.
But here a question arises. If there is no difference between a small matter and a great one, and the only thing producing the distinction is a person's foolish imagination and the yetzer hara confusing him, why does the Torah itself, in its halachos that direct a person when a mitzvah he must perform collides with a transgression bound up with it, distinguish between severe matters and light ones? In the Alter Rebbe's words: "ומה שפיקוח נפש דוחה שאר עבירות" ("And the fact that saving a life overrides other transgressions").
Pikuach nefesh means the obligation to preserve the soul so that it continues to animate the body. Take the case brought in the Mishnah: a building collapsed on a person and he lies under the heap of stones, and it is not known whether he is alive or dead but he may well be alive. Everyone around him is obligated to do whatever it takes to clear the rubble, because of the mitzvah of "ונשמרתם," and the duty to safeguard another person as well. If this happens on Shabbos, the obligation does not change; it is simply that now it involves desecrating Shabbos. Concerning this halachah says: pikuach nefesh overrides other transgressions.
The same applies in other cases: a sick person whose only available medicine involves a transgression, or a person starving and about to die whose only available food to keep his soul alive is non-kosher. In all of these, halachah instructs him to transgress. And a person is not entitled to say, "I am being scrupulous and I do not want to transgress." There is no room here for personal judgment and no room for choice, and one who refuses has violated the Torah's command.
On the other hand, pikuach nefesh does not override three transgressions: idolatry, forbidden relations, and murder. Even if a gentile says to him, "If you do not serve this idol I will kill you," here we do not tell him to transgress. So we find that the Torah itself makes a distinction: with one category of transgressions it tells a person to disregard the transgression and go on preserving his life, while with these three it tells him not to transgress.
Now, one might argue that pikuach nefesh is a special case, since after all he is fulfilling a mitzvah by doing it, guarding a person's life and health, and so we have a collision between a mitzvah and a transgression. So the Alter Rebbe adds another example, one in which the act involves no mitzvah whatsoever: the rule of "וגם יעבור ואל יהרג" ("and also, let him transgress rather than be killed"). A gentile comes to a Jew and tells him to eat non-kosher food, and if not he will kill him; the halachah is that he should transgress and not be killed, and only in the three severe matters do we say "let him be killed and not transgress." So too if a gentile who knows that this Jew is an excellent chef demands, for his own enjoyment, that he cook him a meal on Shabbos, and threatens to kill him otherwise: he cooks, he transgresses and is not killed. Here the Jew is fulfilling no mitzvah at all; on the contrary, he is violating a command in order to go on living.
[It is worth noting that there are situations in which one must give up his life even over other matters, when the issue is one of kiddush Hashem. The Gemara in Sanhedrin says that if the gentiles seek to change among the Jews even the manner of tying one's shoelaces, "ערקתא דמסאנא" (in Aramaic, "מסאנא" is a shoe and "ערקתא" a lace), and Rashi explains that if the gentiles tie one way and Jews another, for instance that one manner of tying expresses modesty and another expresses immodesty, and the way of Israel is to be modest, then even over so small a change, which is no mitzvah but a mere custom, he must sanctify Hashem's name before his fellow Jews. For the gentile's intent at that moment is to uproot Judaism.]
So the question returns: we see that the Torah itself distinguishes between severe mitzvos and light ones. Why, then, did we say earlier that this distinction is nothing but a product of the ruach shtus, and that in truth there is no difference at all?
To this the Alter Rebbe answers that the reason pikuach nefesh overrides other transgressions is "היינו כפירוש חז"ל: אמרה תורה חלל עליו שבת אחת כדי שישמור שבתות הרבה" ("this is as our Sages explained: the Torah said, desecrate one Shabbos on his behalf so that he may keep many Shabbosos"). When Shabbos is desecrated for a Jew who must be rushed to the hospital, this is not a desecration of Shabbos at all but a mitzvah, for Shabbos itself, as it were, declares that this is its sanctification: through desecrating one Shabbos this person will go on living and will keep many more Shabbosos.
And here is the main point: "ולא משום קלות העבירות וחומרן" ("and not because of the lightness or severity of the transgressions"). It is not that light transgressions were selected as ones that may be violated as opposed to severe transgressions that may not. The distinction has nothing to do with light and severe; it depends entirely on what the Holy One, blessed be He, determined.
To summarize: in this section we learned the Alter Rebbe's question on the very distinction the Torah draws between one transgression and another, that pikuach nefesh overrides other transgressions but does not override the three severe ones, and the rule of "let him transgress and not be killed" even where no mitzvah is involved at all. His answer is that transgressions are set aside for pikuach nefesh not because they are light, but as our Sages explained, "desecrate one Shabbos on his behalf so that he may keep many Shabbosos." It all follows the decree of the Creator, and not the lightness or severity of the transgressions.
In the next lesson we will continue with the Alter Rebbe's words further on in chapter 24.