When is it normal to sacrifice and risk one’s own well being? How do you know the difference between noble and self-destructive?

The Gemara (end of amud aleph) notes that even a routine bris milah in a healthy child induces a state of danger. This got me thinking about mitzvos we perform that viewed from a physical perspective are “unhealthy” but are still mandated. Here are a few:

Childbirth and labor, though a routine part of life and part of the mitzvah of periyah ureviyah, is dangerous. It is significant that childbirth’s inherent danger is Rav Moshe’s argument against inducing labor for convenience (Iggeros Moshe, Y.D. II:74). He paskens, since it is life-threatening, we have no right to cause it to come about prematurely, unless of course there is a current danger we are trying to forestall. G-d brings labor when it is the best time for the mother and child.

There are other mitzvos which can be hard on our health, such as Fasting, drinking the four cups even when ill (Shulkhan Arukh OH 272:10), and studying Torah to the point of exhaustion (Shabbos 83b).

Does this collection of sacrifices add up to a meaningful theme? I think it is important to recognize that there is no religion without sacrifice. It is a basic human need to voluntarily abstain or dedicate something or some behavior that is within the locus of control and to offer it to a higher cause.

From an anthropological viewpoint, sacrifices in ancient civilizations involve a number of recurring but interchangeable dynamics. These include an offering of a gift for the deity often from a first fruit or bounty, a self-sacrifice or abnegation, a scapegoat or expiation of sin, and a ritual to achieve a supernatural bonding with the deity and or a transformation of ritual objects and the supplicant. By the way, the term “Scapegoat” comes from the Yom Kippur ritual of throwing the goat of the cliff, which was indeed a symbolic placing of the sins and punishment onto the goat. Tashlich is not that different symbolically, regardless of the different sources for the custom. (Source: https://sociology.iresearchnet.com/sociology-of-religion/sacrifice/ ) Even in a secular or atheistic mode, sacrifice is meaningful. Are we to assume that only a soldier who believes in reward in the hereafter would risk his life to fight country and freedom? In Lincoln’s words, “those who here gave their lives, that the nation might live.”? While believing in a higher power might incentivize sacrifice, all that is necessary is believing in a higher cause, such as “liberty” or “justice”. It is inescapable that sacrifice is to a degree a pattern of instinctive behavior. Even certain animals, such as Naked Mole Rats display altruism ( https://nmrcolony.weebly.com/what-is-altruism.html ).

Psychoanalytically, the urge to sacrifice may be a diversion and sublimation of violent instincts, such as self-punishment for the individual, or communal violence toward outsiders by enacting violence on a sacrificial object that ritually joins the community. It is not accidental that blood, the symbol of life and death, is often involved in sacrifice. The Paschal lamb us both a protection declaring the Jewish group as unit and also hinting at the slaughter of the Egyptians, as in the phrase “like lamb to the slaughter”. Circumcision and labor also involve considerable blood and aggression.

Of what practical significance is all of this analysis? I believe that we must be able to accept the instinctive psychological and sociological processes that are involved in sacrifice in order to enact it with some degree of sophistication. And yet, human processes happen best when we don’t analyze them, or force them, rather just allow ourselves to experience them. We do not analyze sleeping or eating, or even love, we just experience it. One cannot directly enjoy a flower by studying its biology.  You enjoy a flower by looking at it, not by slicing it and putting it under a microscope. So too, the instinct to make sacrifice and the feeling of fulfillment or being uplifted that comes from it can be best enjoyed by mindfully doing it. Not all things that we do provide us with sensual pleasures, and yet at the same time can be sublimely pleasurable. When the dictates of our conscience, values, or religion guides us toward self-sacrifice we should allow ourselves to tap in to this fulfilling pattern and instinct of human behavior in order to get the most from it, and certainly avoid resenting it.

Translations Courtesy of Sefaria, except when, sometimes, I disagree with the translation

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