Rav Avigdor Miller on Torah Responsibility

 

If a Jew is unwittingly the cause of serious harm to somebody else, how should he feel?Now the question is what is meant by ‘unwittingly’? You know, if a man kills somebody b’shogeig, he didn’t want to kill, the law is that if the goel hadam catches him he can kill him; a relative can kill him. Because a shogeig is also blameworthy. If it is an oness, something entirely beyond his ability to prevent,  you can’t blame him; but otherwise there is a very great blood-guilt on a person who even indirectly has a share in somebody’s death. 

There is a teshuvah in one of the teshuvah sefarim. A man sent a boy, a youth, to drive a wagon at night through the forest. Now at night it is not so easy to drive on the road, and the wagon overturned and the boy perished. And therefore the chacham who answered the teshuvah said it’s a very serious matter. He said you have to fast so many days every year, and you have to give away so much money to establish a fund to do mitzvos instead of the the mitzvos he lost. A very great and difficult teshuvah. 

Because anybody who is responsible for somebody’s life even indirectly, unwillingly, has to have it on his conscience always. Very serious matter. So therefore, what people call unwilling and not responsible is not necessarily taught in the language of Torah. Is not necessarily true. 

Rabbi Avigdor Miller, TAPE # 405 (May 1982), 1:33:15-1:34:58.