read more
On the 27th of Elul, 5701 (September 19, 1941), the Nazis began forced labor in which one thousand Jews from the Kovno ghetto worked daily under brutal conditions in an airfield outside of the ghetto. They were given meager rations, and the main nutrition was a bowl of meat soup. A few days later, during Aseres Yimei Teshuva of 5702, a number of men approached Rav Oshry with the question of whether they were allowed to refrain from eating the non-kosher soup. They reasoned that the lack of nutrition was not an imminent danger to them and therefore this was not categorized as being needed for Pikuach Nefesh. Were they obligated to eat the soup if the danger would only emerge at some later point?