כל המקיים נפש אחת מישראל מעלה עליו הכתוב כאילו קיים עולם מלא
“Whoever saves a single soul among Israel is, according to scripture, as one who has saved the entire world.”
—Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 37A
On May 17, 1895, Saul Adler, the Israeli medical researcher, was born in Belarus. Five years later, he emigrated with his family to England, where he studied medicine and served as an officer in the Royal Army Medical Corps from 1917-1920. Following his service, he traveled to Sierra Leone, where he helped discover a cure for malaria.
In 1921, Chaim Weizmann invited him to Palestine, where he served as director of the department of parasitology in Hadassah Hospital and as a professor of parasitology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. During his time there, he helped domesticate the hamster and translated Charles Darwin’s “Origin of Species” into Hebrew. In 1957, he was awarded the Israel Prize for medicine, in honor of his work in combating the deadly malaria mosquito. When he died in 1966, he was still working, conducting research into a vaccine against leishmaniasis.
Adler’s lifelong pursuit of interventions to safeguard against deadly parasites showcased the Jewish value of pikuach nefesh, commitment to saving lives. Though only a select few among us will discover cures for life-threatening infections or parasites, Saul Adler’s life reminds us to ask ourselves how we can use our gifts and our everyday choices to promote pikuach nefesh.
—Rabbi Josh Knobel