When such acts [that desecrate Shabbat in order to save a life] are done, they are not to be done by gentiles or by children… but by great Torah scholars and wise people. It is forbidden to delay when desecrating Shabbat for the sake of a dangerously ill person, for the verse says (Leviticus 18:5): “These are the commandments which you shall do and live,” and not die because of them.
From this we learn that the laws of the Torah are not in order to punish the world but to bring love, kindness, and peace to the world. As for those heretics who claim that such an act is a desecration of the Sabbath, about them the verse says (Ezekiel 20): “I gave them laws that are no good and rules by which they cannot live.”
– Maimonides
Mishneh Torah Shabbat 2:3
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Shabbat
Pronounced: shuh-BAHT or shah-BAHT, Origin: Hebrew, the Sabbath, from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday.
Torah
Pronunced: TORE-uh, Origin: Hebrew, the Five Books of Moses.
