IS OLD AGE A DISEASE?
another at the cost of his own life, and once he has been offered medical treatment he has acquired a legal title to it.” This, we would say, is the analogy of medical treatment to the container of water. I enjoy a legal claim of ownership of this life-sustaining resource. I may not, on a“cosmic” scale, deserve this water any more than you do. But, then, neither do you deserve it more than [. And if I already possess it, I am under no obligation to share it with you or give it up to you at the cost of my life, no matter how brief my remaining time on this earth.
Then there is a third criterion, one we might call the principle of qualitative evaluation: when confronted with two persons who are both in mortal danger, we save first that person who ranks higher on a scale of religious value. This scale is found, as Feinstein notes, in the Mishnah and Gemara in B. Horayot 13a. When it comes to saving life, the male takes precedence over the female, whereas the woman precedes the man in terms of redemption from captivity. If both endangered persons are men, the kohen precedes the levi, who precedes the yisrael, who is followed in order by the mamzer, the natin, the convert, and the freed slave. All this applies only when the two men are equal in Torah learning; but if one is a scholar, a talmid hakham, he always takes precedence over the other, even over the High Priest. These priorities figure prominently in the halakhic discussion of the allocation of tzedakah, along with such qualitative criteria as“one’s relatives take precedence over all others” and“the poor of one’s own community take precedence over the poor of other communities.”*°
The three principles that play a role in Rabbi Feinstein’s thinking are at their most basic level contradictory. The principle of equality of persons, for example, if we take it to its logical extreme,
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