Better to Lose One Member

I want to talk about a very simple commandment today. “When you build a new house, make a wall for your roof, and you will not bring blood upon your house if anyone falls from it.” Deuteronomy 22:8

This only applies to flat roofs in personal dwellings, so for most of us, it won’t apply strictly as it appears here. A few Spanish style houses still have flat roofs, and they require a wall at least ten handbreadths high and strong enough for a person to lean against it without it falling over. (Mishneh Torah, Sefer Nezikim, Rotseakh ushmirath nefesh 11:3)

If we take this as a general principle, though, it applies to a lot more of us in a lot more ways. Rambam does take this as a general principle, and gives the example of building a wall around a well, or any other place that a person might fall from or into (Mishneh Torah, Sefer Nezikim, Rotseakh ushmirath nefesh 11:4). R. Israel Meir Kagan z”tzl expands this to anything dangerous in your house. This could be a vicious dog, a place where a person is likely to trip, or anything else that might endanger someone (The Concise Book of Mitzvoth, positive commandment 75).

All of this is an extension of the commandment to preserve life. It is important for us to provide for the life and safety of others. There may be a tendency sometimes to think of that as “their responsibility,” but the Torah teaches us to take responsibility for each other, making us stronger as a group than we were as individuals.

We can also expand this principle in another direction. R. Yeshua says, “If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.” (Matthew 5:29) The idea here is that if something consistently causes us to sin, we should take it out of our lives. If every time I talk to certain people I end up slandering someone else, I should avoid talking to those people until I can control myself.