Reply To: Lessons Learned from the False Arrest of the Innocent Tzadik in Flatbush

simcha613: You heard that “there is debate on whether mesira applies nowadays” so you decided that you’re qualified to pasken that “the issue of mesira… is not one of particular concern to me”!?! When did you get big enough shoes to pasken pikuach nefesh shailos?

Massering a Yid is, in itself, a pikuach nefesh issue! That’s why the Halacha is that you may kill someone who attempts to masser a Yid. Massering means that you’re being rodef the Yid you’re turning over to the goyim who will severely punish that Yid kneged halacha (both in punishment and in ascertaining guilt.)

In this very case we are discussing he could have been thrown into prison for twenty years for felony kidnapping. That isn’t pikuach nefesh enough for you? The victim here was the innocent Tzadik that was falsely accused. The only reason he probably isn’t locked up in Rikers Island right now is because video existed of the actual alleged incident. If there had been no video he could easily have had his life destroyed.

And as far as “when it comes to children safety”, the child in this case was safe and sound in his mother’s care BEFORE she called Shomrim or the cops. So, even forgetting the fact nothing happened bad in the first place, even in her wildest imagination of whatever she might have dreamt occurred (even if it didn’t), by time she called and reported she knew that she had her child safe and sound. So there’s no issue of pikuach nefesh as far as the child in this case.