A time to be silent, and a time to speak up

A thought on Parshat Vayikra:

Our parshah takes a strong stand in favour of confidentiality. The opening verses relate, “And G-d called to Moshe, and G-d spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting, to go tell. Speak to the Children of Israel, and tell them…” Troubled by the doubled “go tell,” our sages explained that the duplication teaches us, “that one may not repeat something told to him, unless he is told, ‘Go tell.’“ (Talmud, Yoma 4b)

Certainly, the need for confidentiality is clear; as Sefer haChinuch (mitzvah 236) notes, gossip causes quarreling and strife. However, we might be forgiven for wondering why G-d personally violated this principle. When three visitors informed Avraham that his wife Sarah would birth a baby, Sarah overheard, and laughed. She said, “After I have been worn out, will I be rejuvenated? And my master is old!” G-d then asked Avraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, saying, ‘Can it be that I will give birth? And I am old!’ Is anything beyond G-d?... “ (Bereishit 18:12-14) Why did G-d fail to honour His principle of confidentiality?

We might gain some understanding by studying a conflict between a halachic obligation and the Rules of Professional Conduct (2000) of the Law Society of Upper Canada, regarding permission to break confidentiality.

According to the Law Society’s Rule 2.03(3), “Where a lawyer believes upon reasonable grounds that there is an imminent risk to an identifiable person or group of death or serious bodily harm, including serious psychological harm that substantially interferes with health or well-being, the lawyer may disclose, pursuant to judicial order where practicable, confidential information where it is necessary to do so in order to prevent the death or harm, but shall not disclose more information than is required.” Two points are worth noting here: (1) The lawyer may break confidentiality to  prevent serious harm to health, but not to prevent financial loss; (2) Even regarding saving a life, the lawyer may inform, but is not required to do so.

Contrast this with the Rambam’s position (Sefer haMitzvot, Lo Taaseh 297); he warns against “weakness” in rescuing from “danger of death or financial loss.” Based on the Talmud (Sanhedrin 73a), Rambam includes financial loss as grounds for action, and views intervention as a requirement. Therefore, modern halachic authorities rule that one must break confidentiality in order to save a person from physical or financial harm. [See Chafetz Chaim, Rechilut 9. Note: A discussion of endangering a career to avert another person’s financial or physical harm is beyond the scope of this article.]

The Law Society honours confidentiality over rescue because Ontario law does not require any individual to save any other individual from harm, unless a special relationship of caring for the victim already exists. In contrast, as explained by Rambam, halachah does require that we rescue others. Therefore, our responsibility to look after each other overrides our great respect for privacy and confidentiality.

This duty to rescue may explain why G-d spoke with Avraham about Sarah’s laughter: G-d broke confidentiality to rescue Sarah from denial of Divine omnipotence. As we see in numerous mitzvot, such as tochachah and lifnei iver, the Torah requires intervention to save a person from spiritual harm. Therefore, G-d spoke with Avraham. Avraham was already well-established as the Divine messenger; from the moment when Avraham and Sarah journeyed to Canaan (Bereishit 12:1), to their move to Chevron (ibid. 13:14), to the re-naming of Sarah (ibid. 17:15),    G-d issued each instruction to Avraham,  and Avraham relayed it to Sarah. Admittedly, the choice of Avraham as prophet is confusing, given that G-d told Avraham that Sarah possessed greater insight and he was to follow her word. (ibid. 21:12) Nonetheless, Avraham is the prophet, and G-d breaks confidentiality in order to have His prophet educate His people.

The combination of our parshah’s imperative for confidentiality, and our duty to rescue, precipitates a difficult decision: Do we err on the side of confidentiality, or on the side of rescue? Even if we conceal the worst, as G-d did in relaying Sarah’s speech, how do we decide whether it is a time to be silent, or a time to speak? (Kohelet 3:7)

We might apply five rules offered by the Chafetz Chaim (Rechilut 9:2):

• Make certain that the danger you wish to avert is real and substantive;

• Do not exaggerate;

• Act to help the victim, not to harm the other;

• Seek other methods of rescue first;

• Avoid language which could cause collateral damage to the subject.

May we always honour our duty to rescue, but with a firm commitment to our parshah’s value of confidentiality.

Rav Kook on Individualism in the Jewish Community

As part of a shiur on Sunday evening on recognizing and valuing individualism, I'm going to cite an excerpt from אל חכי שופר [To my mouth, a shofar], a poem of Rav Kook; here is the piece I am going to use. It is an ode of respect for the individual's path in life. The whole poem is just beautiful; I should translate the entire poem someday soon:

We will not measure every acquisition by our personal measure.
We will know that each individual is only a unit,
one portion, a share of our community,
and how could the whole judge but little?

One whose work is in Torah, in fine points of law,
if he would depart to sing songs, to examine poetry,
his profit would be balanced by his loss in these tasks,
and his work would ascend in smoke, and his learning would be uprooted.

Or one whose task is in examining wisdom,
to be transported to the heavens in the deeds of Creation and Merkavah,
in the war of pure ideas his intellect battles.
This is his portion in his life, which his soul loves.

Or one who loves to seek in knowledge and philosophy,
to birth ideas in parables,
to open streams like channels of water in the desert,
upon the plain of exegeses his hand founded her.

Or one who turns his heart to analysis of history,
in books of generations and chronicles of days.
There, too, he will find gold and precious coins;
there he will build a temple to knowledge in the heights.

And one whose heart is given to mundane wisdoms,
to medicine, to nature, to mathematics, to chemistry,
and his heart thirsts and broadens like the depths,
to enjoy the benefits of branching, fruitful knowledge.

Those who pursue insight in parables, seeking ability and insight,
if they seek only insight, honestly, in righteousness,
seeking pure insight, not straying or desecration,
then the voices will cease and the protests will halt.

Those who love labour, when they raise their voice,
if in truth they will raise their banner in love of labour,
to increase production among our nation they will give their strength,
then as illuminating stars, over our heavens they will shine.

Guardians of Torah and mitzvot, who reign with Gd,
if to strengthen the law they raise their voices,
why would not all turn their ears to them?
Who would be cruel to them, summoning against them a group?

Those who love the holy language, the beloved language,
if they will give a hand in the name of benefiting the language,
who will not accept them with great love?
Who would not support them with one heart?

Or one who has strength in his loins, a full arm,
and to all manner of production his heart turns,
will travel his path, aiming for the hair's breadth,
to broaden labour and find his life therein.

Each person toward his heart's desire will travel and succeed,
and from the fruit of their hands, their nation will be elevated.
Each in his trade will breathe the breath of life;
when he builds for himself a home, the ruin of our people will be erected.

And here is the Hebrew:

אל נמוד כל קנין רק לפי מדתנו.
נדע כי כל אחד הנהו רק פרט,
חלק אחד, אחוז מקהלינו,
ומה יוכל על הכלל לדון, הלא מעט.

אם העמל בתורה, בחקרי הלכות,
אם יצא לשיר בשירים, מליצות לבקר,
יצא שכרו בהפסדו באלו המלאכות,
ויגיעו יעלה בעשן, ותלמודו יעקר.

או מי אשר מלאכתו לתור בחכמה,
להרקיע שחקים, במעשה בראשית ומרכבה,
במלחמת מושכלות מופשטות בינתו לחמה,
הנה זה חלקו בחיים, שנפשו אהבה.

או מי אוהב דרוש במדע והגיון,
להוליד רעיונות בדברי הגדה,
לפתח נחלים כפלגי מים בציון,
על ככר המדרשים ידו יסדה.

או מי שם לב לחקר קדמונים
בספרי תולדה ודברי הימים.
גם שם ימצא זהב ואדרכמונים,
שמה יבנה מקדש לחכמה ברמים.

ומי לבו נתונה לחכמות החול,
לרפואה, לטבע, להנדסה, לחימיה,
ונפשו צמאה ותרחיב כשאול,
להתענג על טוב חכמה ענפה, פוריה.


המשכילים למשל דורשי כשרון והשכלה,
אם רק להשכלה ידרשו, באמת, בצדקה,
להשכלה צרופה, לא זונה וחללה,
אז חדלו הקולות ותשבת הצעקה.

אוהבי מלאכה, עת ירימו קולם,
אם באמת באהבת מלאכה ידגלו,
להרבות בעמינו החרשת יתנו חילם,
הלא כככבי אור על שמינו יהלו.

שומרי תורה ומצוה, הרדים עם א-ל,
אם לחזק את הדת קולם ישאו,
למה לא יטו להם אזנים כל,
ומי אכזר עליהם, מלא יקראו.

חובבי שפת קודש השפה האהובה,
אם בשם טובת השפה יתנו יד,
מי לא יקבלם באהבה מרובה,
ומי לא יתמכם בלב אחד.

או מי כחו במתנו, מלא זרֹוע,
ולחרשת כל מעשה תטה לבתו,
ילך בדרכו אל השערה לקלע,
להרחיב מלאכה למצא בה חיתו.

כל איש לחפץ לבבו ילך ויצליח,
ומתנובות כפימו עמם ירוממו.
כל אחד במקצֹעו רוח חיים יפיח,
בבנותו לו בית, הריסות עמנו יקוממו.

Will we ever graduate High School?

(On re-read this post seems kind of dull to me, but it's what's on my mind today. Feel free to scroll down to more interesting material from previous days, I won't be insulted. I had a much better post here: The Increasing Irrelevance of the American Jewish Community.)

One of my favorite reads, Mother in Israel, ran an interesting story on Monday and I’ve been mulling it ever since I saw it:

A large day camp also attended the zoo today. A camper, who appeared to be about seven, began throwing water bottles into the bird lake. Another camper pointed this out to the counselor. "Wait!" she called. "Is that my bottle?," and proceeded to examine it. "Oh, it's not mine," she decided, and returned it to the camper. Who promptly threw it into the water. . . .

I’ve been mulling it because this story encapsulates so much of what I see in myself, and in others around me, in scenes where intervention is warranted.

It reminds of something that happened to me just last night, when I was sitting at a table at a social gathering and someone started reporting a nasty rumor about the head of a local Jewish institution – and for what felt like forever, no one spoke up to stop him. Frankly, I wasn’t even the one who spoke up in the end, to change the subject.

Start with the givens:
- Throwing plastic bottles into the bird lake is wrong. Yes? (You nod here.)
- Camp counselors are supposed to keep their seven-year-old charges from doing things that are wrong. Yes? (Nod again here.)

Or:
- Reporting nasty, unsubstantiated rumor is wrong. Yes? (Nod. An “Amen” would be appropriate as well.)
- We are supposed to quash conversations which involve nasty, unsubstantiated rumors. Yes? (Ayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy-MEN!)

So why doesn’t the counselor do anything? Why doesn’t anyone at the table say anything?

Psychologists point to something called the Bystander Effect, under which individuals witnessing an emergency will intervene, but members of groups witnessing the same emergency will not intervene. Everyone expects someone else to do it, and feels less personal responsibility.

I agree with this observation, but I think there’s more involved. It’s peer pressure, a fear of condemnation by others, and it’s so powerfully, fundamentally instinctive, and so reinforced by our youthful and adolescent experiences, that we don’t grow out of it after high school… or even after marriage and four kids.

I’ve been working in “Youth and Prejudice” conferences for years, and we always talk with the high schoolers about what keeps them from intervening, from becoming a
“rescuer” instead of a “bystander.” The answer is always the same: Peer Pressure.

Peer pressure, in this context, means that if I see what I think is a dangerous situation, and no one else is acting, on some level I question myself, “They’re not acting – maybe I’m reading the situation wrong. Maybe what I think is appropriate, is not appropriate.” And I am less likely to act, unless I am a supremely arrogant person or someone practiced in bucking community opinion.

Some 15-20 years ago I was in a beit midrash in a summer camp’s Kollel when Rav Herschel Schachter entered to deliver a guest shiur. Rav Schachter walked to the front, and en route noticed a pencil, and stooped and picked it up. That pencil must have been there for hours. No one else had picked it up. Why? Because no one else was doing it, so it didn’t seem like something to do.

Personal note: It’s the same thing when you see a tissue on the floor in shul. Why don’t you pick it up? Yeah, YOU - you know who I mean. Is it your bad back – or is it the fact that if no one else has done so, the tissue must not be worth intervening? (And who knows – maybe it’s for some bizarre ritual… yeah, let the rabbi do it.)

It’s the same thing at the table last night. No one else is saying anything to stop him. Maybe the story is true and I’m the only one who doesn’t know? Or maybe they’re not saying anything because speaking up will only make things worse and stir up the conversation? Better to speak, or to quietly look away? Follow the pack.

And let’s look at our camp counselor. No one else is stopping the child. Maybe that bird-lake-spot- is actually where the bottles should go. Or maybe this child isn’t old enough to understand, so I should let it go. Or maybe they tried before and the kid went wild.

I don’t think the blasé response is a function of not caring; I think it’s that society, the people around us, are telling us not to care. If no one else cares, then that voice inside telling me to act is clearly wrong.

I’m not going to make the Pinchas connection – I have a different topic to speak about this Shabbos. But you can connect the dots at home.

A big question, and Sotah 36-38

First, a question: I’ve been mixing gemara notes and derashot and personal observations on the rabbinate and life in this blog, and I’m not sure it’s jelling well. What do you think? Split off gemara notes and derashot into a separate blog? Or leave it all together, because that's the way my life works anyway?

As always: Best to read these notes with a gemara in front of you. Some big points on parenting and society toward the end. I'm working on a computer that doesn't have Hebrew options, so please bear with the annoying transliterations.

36a
The Maharsha addresses the question of how we know that the tzirah did not cross the Yarden with the Jews; the gemara here just seems to take it as a given.

See Tosafot esrim who provides the Yerushalmi’s version of the alignment of tribal names on the two stones of the Ephod, including the interesting idea of splitting the name of Binyamin. (This Tosafot, as well as the very interesting Tosafot mai, address points published on 36b in the gemara.)

36b
Make sure to see Tosafot la'asot and b’otah.

Fascinating: Back on 10b we credited Yehudah with “sanctifying Gd’s Name in public” by acknowledging Tamar’s righteousness (a troubling concept, as we noted here). Here, though, we have the same statement regarding Yehudah, but we understand it to refer to Nachshon ben Aminadav, descendant of Yehudah, and his bold march into the Yam Suf at the head of the Jewish people.

37a
At Yam Suf (the Sea of Reeds), with the Egyptian army bearing down on the Jews, the Jews cry out in frustration and anger, asking why Moshe took them out of Egypt to die at the sea. Moshe rebukes them, and says Gd will fight for them. Gd then says to Moshe, “Mah titzak eilai? Why are you crying out to Me? Tell the Jews to go forward, and you raise your staff and stretch it over the sea, and split the sea.” The opening line of “Why are you crying out to Me” is problematic – we don’t find Moshe crying out to Gd.
The gemara here offers one solution, by adding that Moshe was davening to Gd, it just wasn’t mentioned in the Torah's text.
Another approach I’ve seen parses the sentence, “Mah titzak? Eilai!” “Why are you shouting? Rally to Me!”
As some commentators note, though, the most straightforward read is that Moshe represents the nation, so that “Why are you crying out to Me” is addressed to Moshe as the nation’s representative. The only problem with this read is that “you” then transitions from “you the nation’s representative” to “you Moshe” without textual hint.

See Tosafot v’hayu.

37b
Here we receive a huge lesson in parenting. The parent who creates a mamzer is responsible for the fact that the mamzer child, frustrated with Judaism, leaves the religion. The same is true for any parent who – by refusing to educate a child properly, or by failing to be a good role model – leads a child to abandon a good path for a bad one.

The gemara’s harei kvar neemar is reversed here, and should not be taken literally; kvar is a reference to a later pasuk, not an earlier one.

38a
See Rashi on the mishnah, and Tosafot O, on the meaning of the word kinui here in the gemara.

38b
Rashi here, Upatarnuhu, says something of crucial importance for society. He explains the case of eglah arufah, saying that if I don’t aid a traveler, so that the traveler then goes hungry, and that traveler then turns to theft and is killed in trying to steal food, then I am responsible for his death. Because I failed to provide proper social services, I am responsible for the needy person’s life of crime. Senator McCain, Senator Obama, are you listening?

Derashah: Shekalim - A Community's Lost Limbs

Here's the derashah I expect to give tomorrow. We have a Bar Mitzvah in shul this week, and I wanted to speak about something else entirely, but that will have to wait.

I was sitting in the waiting area at the Honda dealership while my car was being inspected on Thursday, when I got the call about the attack at Yeshivat Mercaz haRav. I had a laptop with me, and went on-line, and felt like I had been gutted, just gutted. All around, of course, people drank their coffee and read their newspapers and sold cars, and I was just in shock.

There was a time, not that long ago, when these attacks were so familiar that I was numb to them, when not a week passed without a bus bombing or a shooting. But, thank Gd, for many months the IDF and police have been successful in halting the attacks, in catching bombers. Just a couple of weeks ago terrorists broke into a yeshiva but were killed, thank Gd, before they could strike. And so, with the passage of time since the last mega-attack, I’d forgotten what it felt like… until Thursday. And for all the forgetting, my feelings were the same old feelings. Wanting to book a flight to Israel today. Wanting to lash out. Wanting to sit down and cry.

The news hurt not just because these were yeshiva students. The news hurt not just because I know the yeshiva, because I’ve been there. The news hurt because we are all half-shekalim, every Jew is a half-shekel, and every Jew has just had his other half torn away.

We read this morning, from the third Torah, about the half-shekel each Jew donated to the mishkan in the desert. That half-shekel contribution was intended for a specific purpose - to pay for the korban tamid, for the daily offering that was brought in the Mishkan, and later in the Beis haMikdash.

Because every Jew contributed to that collection, every Jew had a portion in each korban. No Jew could do it alone, no Jew was permitted to make a mega-donation and cover a year’s offerings, or even a single day’s korban. No, the korban had to be a product of communal funds, so that each Jew had a portion. Each of us owned an incomplete part as a יחיד, an individual, made whole by the rest of the ציבור, the community.

The Jew exists as an individual, and the Jew exists as a member of a community.
· We are responsible for ourselves personally, we have a connection to Gd personally, we take responsibility for our transgressions and receive credit for our mitzvot personally.
· And we are also part of a community, a loving ציבור, such that we are taught to study communally, to daven communally, to celebrate our Yamim Tovim communally, and to bring our korbanos communally.

This individuality and this community each stem from different missions:
· We are individuals, because each of us is created in the image Gd designed for us, as an Adam and as a Chavah, with a mission of לעבדה ולשמרה, to perform the mitzvot, the tasks of growth that Gd set before us in this world.
· But we are also community because in caring for each other and working together we can multiply our individual strengths and create an umbrella which protects all of us, and which builds opportunities for all of us to grow as individual Jews. כל ישראל ערבין זה בזה, all of us are responsible for each other, practically and spiritually.
Individuals grow; communities protect those individuals and build opportunities for those individuals.

Rav Adin Steinsaltz underscored this communal responsibility in a comment on the Shma, that critical declaration of Jewish beliefs and Jewish responsibility.
· In the first paragraph of the Shma, Moshe turns to each individual Jew, speaking in the singular, and says, “You shall love HaShem your Gd, with all of your heart, with all of your life, and with all of your מאד, your wealth.”
· But in the second paragraph of Shma, Moshe turns to the Jews en masse, speaking in the plural, and says, “You shall serve Gd with all of your hearts, with all of your lives.” And Moshe stops there, without mentioning serving Gd with our wealth.
Rav Adin Steinsaltz explained that this is because the individual’s chief responsibility is to connect with Gd, which means using every resource at our disposal to make that connection. The community, though, has a chief responsibility of protecting its citizens - and so Gd demands not that we turn our communal resources to Gd, but rather that we turn them to taking care of each other.

Which brings us back to this past Thursday.
When members of the community are murdered, each part of the community must feel that we have lost limbs. This is not hyperbole, and it’s no analogy - the community now lacks eight young men who would have strengthened it; where they once stood, we now have a gaping hole.

This means the community has failed. The community that is worldwide Jewry, that is responsible to use its מאד to shelter its citizens through tzedakah, through physical protection, through the spiritual protection that comes with our mitzvos and our tehillim - failed in its task. We failed in our task.

These moments of failure are times when people want to run from community, from ציבור. Being a half-shekel, being part of ציבור, expected to protect our globe-trotting family, is intimidating in its unreasonable expectations.
But running from the expectations of ציבור means abandoning the blessings brought by those expectations.
ציבור’s blessings include automatic relatives who envelop us in their embrace when we need it most, whose world is rocked when we are harmed and whose smiles shine like the Sun when we succeed.
ציבור’s blessings include the intellectual enrichment that comes from a millenia-old tradition, from text and debate and study and commentary and super-commentary and a Torah that cannot be confined to paper because it is so broad and deep and alive.
ציבור’s blessings include the emotional enrichment that comes with reaching out to unseen others, people whose names we don’t know, whose faces we’ve never seen, whose connection to us we cannot easily define, but who reach out and embrace us, in return.

For all of the communal pain of the past few days, I would never want to abandon those blessings. Instead, after our initial feelings of pain and failure, we need to move forward.
This, too, is the mission of community; as Rav Soloveitchik said regarding a general response to tragedy, our response is not “Why me,” but “What now,” “What can I do now?” And community that recognizes that we are all half-shekalim, that we all contribute to a greater whole, is ideally positioned to address the “What now” question.
· First, we protect. We reach out to each other and make sure that we are all taken care of. We reach out to family first, and then to local people, and then to our family in Israel, and then beyond. We look out for financial needs, as we will with Matanos laEvyonim, and we look out for psychological needs and spiritual needs.
· And then we build. We make sure that everyone has a chance to grow, to flourish in our individual ways. We build up our community institutions, whether by tzedakah or by volunteering our time and effort - to our shul, to our Day School, to our Mikvah, to our Eruv, to our LVKC, to ask the leadership of each organization, “How can I help you to build the community?” And then, once our own institutions are strong, to do the same for Israel, and beyond.
This won’t bring back the eight victims from Thursday, but it is the way community responds to its loss - by redoubling our efforts to protect, and to build, for the future.

Notes:
1. Rav Steinsaltz's comment is in his Commentary to the Siddur. Rav Soloveitchik's theme is developed in Kol Dodi Dofek.

2. I removed the "Bar Mitzvah" ending from this on-line version. Had it not been a Bar Mitzvah week, I probably would have closed with Esther's לך כנוס את כל היהודים וצומו עלי - the community working to protect the individual, who is in turn working for the community.

3. It feels like this vision of Community is the opposite of Democracy as it is practiced today. In today's Democracy, the voice of the people is heard, each individual speaking for his own personal interest. In this vision, the sectors of the community are responsible to support the good of the whole.

4. Update: The OU just sent out a link to this appropriate Dvar Torah from Rav Kook, on the half-shekel and Jewish unity.

Daf: Nedarim 50-51

50b
On 50b Shemuel is put down for his large stomach, which is odd; Rabbi Yochanan is described elsewhere (such as Berachos 5b and 20a) as being of surpassing beauty, and yet the gemara calls him a Baal Basar (Rubenesque) (such as Berachos 13b and Niddah 14a)!

Those who complain about expensive weddings should wonder at Rebbe's son's wedding on 50b. Of course, Rebbe was the Nasi, with political responsibilities involving the Romans as well as the Jews, but the idea of spending such a sum - and inscribing it on the chuppah! - is still remarkable.

50b also introduces the concept of an individual's suffering saving others from Divine punishment. We also see this elsewhere in the gemara, regarding misas tzaddikim mechaperes and Miriam's death. This is also the likely basis for the Christian concept of vicarious atonement. We have a different take, though. As I understand it, an individual will always have to answer for his sins, no matter how much someone else (such as Rebbe) sufffers. The tzibbur, though, may be saved from tzibbur-wide punishments, due to an individual's suffering - because when an individual suffers, the tzibbur is said to have suffered as well. There is much more to say on this, of course.

51
On 51b we get the word "tefel" as bland; some some use this to explain "tiflut" on Sotah 20a, in the position of Rabbi Eliezer on women's talmud torah.

Class: Allocation of Scarce Medical Resources

Tomorrow I'll teach a Jewish Medical Ethics class at Lehigh Valley Hospital, the last in our two-year series. Our topic is: Allocating Scarce Medical Resources.

Interestingly, as Rabbi Steinberg points out in the Encyclopedia of Jewish Medical Ethics, this is a fundamentally new field. Historically, physician care was personal rather than communal or institutional, treatment was based largely on accessible items, and the outcome was either healing, death or acceptance of a chronically untreatable condition. Today, though, we have research investment costs, expensive treatment options and extended treatment periods as well as preventive medicine, all of which drain our resources - and so we need to make choices.

Our class will address two topics:
1. Me as an individual vs. You as an individual
2. Society vs Individual, and the issue of spending on one patient and thereby depriving society of resources

We'll address the first case by looking at the classic "Ben Petura" and "Water supply" cases (and also see Rav Moshe's interesting look at the Ben Petura case, in Igros Moshe Yoreh Deah 1:145):

Talmud, Bava Metzia 62a
If two people were traveling, one of them holding a pitcher of water, and the result of both drinking would be that they would both die, but if one would drink then he would reach civilization:
Ben Petura taught: Better for both to drink and die, rather than for one to see the other die.
Rabbi Akiva taught: It is written, ‘The life of your brother will be with you’ - Your life precedes that of your brother.

Talmud, Nedarim 80a
If a spring is owned by a certain town, and there is a choice between their lives [in access to the spring] and the lives of others, their lives come before those of others. Their animals precede the animals of others, and if there is a choice between their laundry and that of others, their laundry comes before that of others. If there is a choice between the lives of others and their laundry, the lives of others precede their laundry.
Rabbi Yosi said: Their laundry precedes the lives of others.


We'll then look at Society vs. Individual.
First, we'll ask whether Society is the same as a collection of individuals, or whether Society has a set of rights unto itself.
We can view this through the prism of the Torah's narrative, such as re: the Mabul and the Givonim.
We can view this as the Kuzari put it, through Tefilah (3:19).
We can view this from a business ethics perspective, in terms of the rights and obligations of a corporation, as Rav Chaim Soloveitchik did in contrasting the mitzvah of Tzedakah in Behar and in Reeh.
And we can view this in terms of life and death, per the Sheva ben Bichri case and the Hostage ransom case:

Talmud Yerushalmi, Terumot 8:10
We learned: If groups of people were traveling on the road and they encountered non-Jews who said, “Give us one of yours and we will kill him, and if you don’t then we will kill all of you,” then even if all will be killed they should not give over anyone. If the non-Jews specified a victim, such as Sheva ben Bichri, then the group should give him over and not be killed.
R’ Shimon ben Lakish said: Only if the victim is liable for death like Sheva ben Bichri.
R’ Yochanan said: Even if he is not liable for death like Sheva ben Bichri.

Mishnah Gittin 45a
One may not redeem captives for more than their value, due to Tikkun haOlam.

Talmud, Gittin 45a
Does Tikkun haOlam refer to the burden upon the community, or to a concern that the captors may capture and bring more captives?
Come and hear: Levi bar Darga redeemed his daughter for 13,000 gold dinar.
Abayye argued: Who says that the sages agreed with this? Perhaps he did it against the desire of the sages.

Talmud, Gittin 58a
Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananiah said: I will not budge from here until I redeem him for whatever sum they demand.

Maimonides, Laws of Gifts for the Needy 8:12
One may not redeem captives for more than their value, due to Tikkun haOlam, lest the enemies pursue them to capture them.

Code of Jewish Law, Yoreh Deah 252:4
One may not redeem captives for more than their value, due to Tikkun haOlam, lest the enemies endeavor to capture them. But one may redeem himself for any sum he chooses. The same is for a Torah scholar, or even one who is not a Torah scholar but is a sharp student and may become a great man - one redeems him for a great amount of money.