Defensive Force as an Act of Rescue

Abstract

Jewish law takes an approach to self-defense that differs dramatically from the conventional assumptions of Western secular legal systems. The central theme of Talmudic jurisprudence is that self-defense rests on a duty not to stand idly by while one's neighbor suffers. “Do not stand on the blood of one's neighbor,” as the point is cryptically put in Leviticus 19:16. This way of thinking about self-defense departs in two significant ways from common Western assumptions. First, it stresses that the roots of self-defense are a duty rather than a right to act; second, it treats the case of third-party defense (defense of others) as logically prior to the first-party case of self -defense.