Q:
What is more important for a woman to study? First aid, like how to save a child’s life, or hashkafah, the attitudes of emunah and middos tovos?
A:
And the answer is both. What’s more important, the brain or the heart? You can’t get along without either of them.
And therefore it certainly is worthwhile to learn pikuach nefesh but that doesn’t mean that a person’s time is so occupied that he can’t learn matters of emunah and middos tovos.
And by the way, while we’re on the subject of pikuach nefesh, most of the matters of pikuach nefesh are not things that need much study. The precautions to save the lives of children are much more simple than the study of hashkafos. And it’s because of negligence, batlanus, just plain downright carelessness, that children’s lives are sacrificed constantly.
It’s unforgivable in a frum house that a child should fall out of a window and lose his life. And it’s happened again and again. It’s unforgivable. That doesn’t need any studying. Just plain common sense.
Letting children play on the sidewalk without being supervised; they’re playing with a ball and they’ll run out in the street to pick up the ball. It’s so important for parents to think about their children in the most common sense terms.
Or a menahel of a yeshivah who allows boys to sit on windows on the top floor. Boys are sitting on the window sills and he passes by and says nothing. He thinks it’s not his kavod to say such gashmiyusdike things. He should take action immediately! There must be either window guards or strict punishment for sitting on windows.
Batlanus, carelessness, is a matter of life and death. And that’s something that we could teach. We should speak about it and it doesn’t take up much time.
TAPE # 715 (November 1988)
