The Obligation of Oneg Shabbos and its Implications - Rabbi Michael Shlomo Avishid shlita

00:02 Speaker 1 You’re listening to “Lemaan Yishme’u,” a podcast of the Chabad Institute of Halacha.

00:09 Speaker 2 Siman 248 in the laws of Shabbos. This subject used to be even more central and practical, because one of the ways to get from place to place was by ship, especially between continents. When I say “practical,” I mean sixty or seventy years ago. In the early years of the State of Israel, this came up a great deal: many people traveled by ship to Eretz Yisroel, including to fulfill the mitzvah of settling Eretz Yisroel. So it was a very practical question. Today it’s more a question of pleasure. Someone takes what’s called a pleasure cruise—a ship to travel around the world. If all you want is to get from one place to another, only a fool would spend weeks and weeks doing that when a short flight can get you where you want to go. But as with any area of halacha where we want to reach the right conclusions, we have no choice but to go back to the sources: the early sources of Chazal, the Mishnah, the Gemara, the Rishonim, and the Shulchan Aruch. There’s nowhere else to look for answers. So the first journey we need to take—if I can say it jokingly, our first voyage—is back to the days of the Rishonim and the poskim, and even further back to the time of the Talmud, to find answers to the questions we’ll discuss in this class. These include surgeries before Shabbos and several other details, train journeys that arrive on Shabbos or continue through Shabbos, flights, and so on. So first, it’s important to try to understand what conditions were like then. Only after we understand them can we learn what to do. And we’ll see that “turn it over and turn it over, for everything is in it”: even today’s most modern cases can be found in our siman. Everything can be resolved from it, but first we have to set aside today’s norms and think about how things used to be. All right,

03:11 Speaker 2 So in the past, traveling by ship, as I said, was essential for making a living, moving somewhere else, visiting another place, or bringing merchandise from somewhere else. These were genuine needs. That point is important, as the Shibbolei Haleket and the Baal Hamaor, Rabbi Zerachiah Halevi, write. We’ll see certain leniencies that don’t quite fit the rules we’re used to concerning a non-Jew doing something for a Jew, going beyond the techum, and other matters. If I asked someone who knew the laws of Shabbos generally but wasn’t familiar with Siman 248, they might think there was some disregard for Shabbos here, some unusual leniencies. But the Shibbolei Haleket and the Baal Hamaor write that the Sages had to refrain from making decrees, and sometimes set aside various stringencies they had instituted, so that people could live, earn a living, and get from place to place. And travel wasn’t as frequent as it is today. You want to go to Jerusalem? There’s an Egged bus every fifteen or thirty minutes. You want to reach another country? There are plenty of flights, and if there’s no direct flight, you can connect somewhere else. Things have changed. Today it’s easy to get places; back then it wasn’t. Ships were infrequent, and not everyone lived in a port city. You had to get to the port where the ship would pick up passengers, and that didn’t happen every day. A ship would depart, and the next one might be three weeks later, or perhaps two months later, depending on where you were. So most people were in a situation where telling them, “Don’t travel now; travel another time,” was no simple matter. If I travel another time, I won’t make it back for my son’s wedding

05:42 Speaker 2 We’ve already set the date. So that aspect is very important. We’ll see that some contemporary poskim rule out certain apparent leniencies of the past on that basis. Today, at a moment’s notice, you have a huge range of alternative travel options, and that changes many things. But we’ll see that later. For now, let’s start at the beginning. There’s a braisa on page 19 of Tractate Shabbos. Have you learned it? It’s a short braisa that states the rule briefly, without explanations, which is why the Rishonim discuss it so extensively. You want to set sail? Then you should know that there’s a problem if you depart within three days of Shabbos. If it’s more than three days before Shabbos, that’s fine. First, let’s define “three days.” The Ran says—and the Magen Avraham writes likewise, understanding this to be the position of the author of the Beis Yosef—and this is also how the Alter Rebbe rules: the three days are Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. In other words, if someone boards a ship on one of those three days and the ship will continue sailing on Shabbos, it’s forbidden. Before those three days—on Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday—it’s permitted. The braisa then continues: If you’re traveling for a mitzvah, rather than, perhaps, just sightseeing or earning a living—though we’ll see later that earning a living also counts; it needn’t actually be a mitzvah—you may set sail even within those three days. The braisa ends with a disagreement between Rebbi and his father, Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel. Rebbi says that if you leave on Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday, you don’t need to make a stipulation with the sailors, the people operating the ship. But if you leave within the three days before Shabbos under a permitted circumstance, such as for a mitzvah, you need to tell them to stop sailing on Shabbos. Tell them: “I’m traveling with you, but I want you to stop for Shabbos. Bring the ship close to a port or somewhere else, or drop anchor and stop the ship. I don’t want it to sail on Shabbos.” Rebbi then says that if they don’t actually do it, and you keep sailing on Shabbos, that’s all right. You asked, and that’s sufficient. This itself raises a question we’ll look at later: What if the sailor tells you in advance, “I won’t stop”? Does that prevent you from traveling, or is it only permitted when his decision not to stop comes as a surprise on Shabbos? Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel says you don’t need to make any stipulation. You’re traveling in a permitted way. If it’s more than three days before Shabbos, there’s no dispute at all: you don’t need to ask for anything. When you leave on Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday, you don’t need to say, “Please, could you stop on Shabbos?” You don’t need to say anything. But if you leave on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday, according to Rebbi you need to ask, while according to Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel you don’t. That’s the braisa. Now, when I said the three days are Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, that’s the Ran’s position. But there are other views. To give an example directly from the poskim, it appears from one of the Rishonim, the Rosh, that the three days are Thursday, Friday, and Shabbos itself as the third day. So Wednesday is fine. What do I mean by “fine”? Unlike what we said earlier, you may still leave on Wednesday. But you may not leave on Thursday or Friday, except for a mitzvah. Now, those who hold this view of the three days, unlike the Alter Rebbe’s ruling,

08:24 Speaker 2 If you set sail within three days of Shabbos in a permitted case, such as for a mitzvah, you have to tell them to stop for Shabbos. Tell them: “I’m sailing with you, but I want you to stop for Shabbos. Bring the ship close to a port or some other place, or drop anchor and stop the ship. I want you to stop the ship so it won’t travel on Shabbos.” Then, Rabbi says, if they don’t actually do that and you continue traveling on Shabbos, that’s all right. You asked them, and that’s enough. This itself seems to raise a question: What if they tell you in advance, “We won’t stop for Shabbos”? Does that prevent you from sailing, or is it only permissible when their decision not to stop comes as a surprise on Shabbos? We’ll see that later. And Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel says you don’t have to. You don’t have to make any stipulation. If you set sail more than three days before Shabbos, there’s no dispute at all: you don’t have to ask for anything. So if you set sail on Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday, you don’t have to say, “Please, if possible, could you stop on Shabbos?” No, you don’t have to say anything. But if it’s Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday, then according to Rabbi you have to ask, while according to Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel you don’t have to at all. That’s essentially the baraisa. Now, when I said that the three days are Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, that’s the Ran’s view, but there are other views. I’ll give an example from the halachic authorities right away. One of the Rishonim, the Rosh, seems to hold that the three days are Thursday, Friday, and Shabbos itself as the third day. So it’s all right—meaning, it’s all right to set sail on Wednesday, unlike what we said earlier. You can still set sail on Wednesday, but on Thursday and Friday you can’t set sail unless it’s for a mitzvah. Now, someone who holds this view of the three days, unlike the way the Alter Rebbe ruled,

10:42 Speaker 2 Not as the Magen Avraham rules. That is actually the Vilna Gaon’s position, and he cites several Rishonim who agree with the Rosh. It is worth noting that immediately after the Mishnah Berurah presents the Ran’s position, he says that the Gemara indicates that the three days are actually Thursday, Friday, and Shabbos, but Wednesday is all right. It seems that the Mishnah Berurah does give that position some weight. But our position is that Wednesday is not permitted, following the Ran. As I mentioned, the Magen Avraham explicitly says that this is how he understands the Shulchan Aruch. So that is how we understand it: the prohibition begins on Wednesday, unlike the Vilna Gaon’s position. Okay. Now, because the baraisa is obscure—it does not clarify what the problem is, or what distinguishes more than three days before Shabbos from within three days of Shabbos—it has generated a very interesting discussion. We’ll divide it into six approaches, six interpretations. First, there is the approach of the Rashbam, Rashi’s grandson, who makes a simple claim. He says that traveling is permitted; there is no restriction. You can travel even on Friday. No problem. But isn’t there an explicit baraisa saying otherwise? That follows Beis Shammai. You know that according to Beis Shammai, even when things happen on their own, if you want to trap an animal and set a trap before Shabbos, they say that is a problem. If you want to soak garments so they take on dye, and you put them in before Shabbos and it happens on its own, that is a problem. The idea is that a Jew’s utensils may not continue working, and so on. So how does that apply to a ship? We won’t go into it at length, because this is not a position we follow. But the major point here—and incidentally, the Behag, the author of Halachos Gedolos, also takes this approach—is that this baraisa is not practical halachah. There is no restriction; you don’t need a mitzvah purpose, and you don’t need to tell the crew to rest on Shabbos. You can board a ship on Friday, and everything happens afterward

13:23 Speaker 2 on its own. You yourself are apparently not doing anything. The ones who prohibited it followed Beis Shammai; we follow Beis Hillel. Well, when Moshiach comes and the halachah follows Beis Shammai, we’ll start debating what happens when the air conditioner suddenly turns on with a Shabbos timer, and what about all our other devices that keep working. Of course, there are very essential things for which there are arguments for leniency. For example, regarding leaving food on the stove, discussed in the chapter Kirah, it is said that even according to Beis Shammai, perhaps the Sages declared the stove ownerless because it is so essential, and then it is as though the utensils do not belong to a Jew. But that is halachah for the days of Moshiach. As you know, the Brisker Rav says that a time will come when the halachah follows Beis Shammai. The Rebbe mentioned this several times in his sichos, including the sicha on “A new Torah shall come forth from Me.” These are familiar matters. So that is one approach. In practice, the poskim rejected it; we do not follow it. Still, some poskim wanted to say: when there is a clear halachah in the Shulchan Aruch and you see people acting differently—as I’ve told you several times, nowadays people immediately attack the practice and say, “You’re acting against the Torah.” Even if it is a very observant, Chassidic community, they say, “It’s against the Shulchan Aruch,” and immediately start hurling burning coals. But that wasn’t always the approach. Many poskim said—and you can see this in the Shulchan Aruch too, toward the end—that there was a widespread practice, mentioned by the Rishonim, including the Ramban and many others, in which people did not follow what is written here. They traveled on ships on Friday. More than that, they would board a ship before Shabbos even though it would sail on Shabbos. They knew it was leaving at eleven o’clock on Shabbos morning, and they would board in advance. We’ll see

15:29 Speaker 2 this later in the class. So some wanted to explain why people were not careful about this, even though going on an outing, earning a living, or transporting merchandise—the purpose of most people’s journeys in those days—does not appear to be a mitzvah purpose. Perhaps they had no choice; the Aruch Hashulchan, for example, suggests that. Or perhaps it was because the restriction follows Beis Shammai, while we rule according to Beis Hillel. So sometimes you can explain a custom even if it does not accord with the practical conclusion reached in the Shulchan Aruch, as we’ll see later. But the first interpretation, that of the Rashbam, was rejected as practical halachah. The second interpretation of the baraisa is that of the Rif and the Rambam. So you understand why the Beis Yosef adopted it: it fits his basic approach. The Rif and the Rambam together—that is quite a combination. In fact, the Rosh takes this approach too, which makes it even stronger. What do they say? We learned in siman 242 that one must take pleasure in Shabbos. People who travel by sea on a ship—especially when you go out onto the open sea, not on rivers, as we’ll see later. The Gemara wasn’t discussing rivers. It said not to set sail. Many also understand “setting sail” to mean traveling a long distance, so on small rivers you often wouldn’t use that expression. In short, when you set sail on a ship, most people don’t feel well. These are familiar, severe symptoms: nausea and vomiting. Many people suffered so much that, after a few hours on a ship, they could no longer function. They were in bed, unable to move. That’s simply how it was. It comes from several causes: the sea air and the waves, the salt and its effects. When you walk by the sea, it has an effect. It affects the skin and many other things. Sometimes it is healthy, too.

17:54 Speaker 2 Yes, when you walk along the shore and there is a lot of salt in the air. But the salty air together with the waves made people feel unwell—most people, even. So the point is simple: there is a halachah that one must enjoy Shabbos. If you do something that will usually leave you feeling unwell—and here I’ll add a side note: contemporary poskim have discussed how this may apply to our situation, and we also see it in a sicha of the Rebbe, as we’ll see later—this is a model for anything that can make you feel really unwell. I’ll give you an example. Some people decide on Friday to spend many hours at the beach getting a tan. Not everyone uses sun protection, or enough of it. They put some on and think it will last three or four hours. You need to reapply it every—I don’t know exactly; I’m not an expert in these things—but if you don’t reapply it every hour or two, or whatever the interval is, the person is in terrible pain for the next three or four days. You can barely move; even your shirt touching your back hurts. Someone in our shul had just come back from Eilat a week and a half earlier, and he couldn’t move for several days. It was during the holidays then. Or take someone who suddenly feels like exercising—not people who exercise regularly. Someone who exercises regularly feels better afterward, just the opposite. He showers afterward and feels on top of the world. But someone who doesn’t exercise regularly and suddenly has an awakening from Above—if he does a few exercises, fine, but if you do more than that, afterward your whole body

19:55 Speaker 2 Your body is broken. Your arms hurt, your legs hurt, everything hurts. You didn’t warm up; you wanted to do, I don’t know, sit-ups right away, and now your whole body aches. That’s an aside, though it does relate to our subject. The Mishnah Berurah writes this too, and the Minchas Shabbos discusses it at length: don’t do things that leave you completely wiped out. I’ll even give you an example. Some people can’t tolerate flights. After a flight they spend two days in bed, or they have terrible earaches. The pressure affects them, and it takes a few days to settle down. We don’t need a thousand examples. One of the major examples is a sea voyage. So that was an aside; back to the Rif and the Rambam. The reason you don’t board a ship during the three days before Shabbos is that, if you board during those three days, most people will probably feel unwell. The Meiri suggests a novel qualification: perhaps the rule doesn’t apply across the board. Someone who works on a ship is used to it. His body adjusts, and he doesn’t suffer. Such people may not experience any discomfort. That’s what he suggests, and some wanted to build another novel argument on this Meiri: today there are small ships, and there are ships that are like entire buildings moving across the sea. The luxury ships really are buildings. You can play tennis there, play baseball; there are floors for everything and lots of rooms. So a ship of that size is much more stable and is less likely to make people feel unwell. All the more so since today there are medications you can take that can settle your stomach. So some wanted to argue this way. It’s an aside, but since we’ve touched a little on the practical question, many have wanted to say this. Rabbi

22:05 Speaker 2 Nissim Karelitz and several other poskim did not accept it. They said, first, the rule makes no exceptions; and second, some people feel unwell even on a huge ship. As soon as there’s a little movement—and it also depends on the conditions—even on the most stable ship in the world, if there’s a storm and strong winds at sea, people will feel unwell. So people say: today you can know three or four days ahead, and when a ship knows a storm is coming, it goes around it. Fine, but it’s not so simple to say the problem has been eliminated. This argument can certainly provide grounds for defending those who do it. Now, that’s the second approach. The Rif and the Rambam hold that boarding during the three days before Shabbos is a problem because you won’t feel well. So what happens if you’re traveling for a mitzvah? Why is it suddenly permitted? Simple: someone engaged in one mitzvah is exempt from another. If I’m traveling to perform a mitzvah and that mitzvah causes me to miss another mitzvah—take the mitzvah of enjoying Shabbos—then, well, that’s an interesting question. A person can walk where there’s no issue of going beyond the Shabbos boundary, but after many hours of walking, it isn’t easy. His legs hurt. But what can he do? He has elderly parents who live some distance away, and he wants to make them happy on Shabbos, honor them, and help them. So the question is: he’s doing a mitzvah, but he’s somewhat detracting from his enjoyment of Shabbos. Someone engaged in one mitzvah is exempt from another. Of course, you always have to consider when that applies and when it doesn’t. But the Rif and the Rambam say that this explains the baraisa: during the three days before Shabbos, it’s all right if the voyage is for a mitzvah. What if it’s earlier than those three days? Then there’s no question. After three days people feel well; the body adjusts to the change and gets used

24:09 Speaker 2 to living that way. Even if the sea tosses us about, it’s fine. Most people no longer suffer after three days at sea. That, essentially, is the explanation of the Rif and the Rambam. A third explanation is the approach of Rabbeinu Chananel, which Rabbeinu Tam also brings. He says the issue is the Shabbos boundary. After all, one may not go beyond the boundary on Shabbos. We have two thousand amos. Now, two thousand amos is about 961 meters, roughly a kilometer. There’s also a rule in halachah, in the laws of eruvin, concerning twelve mil. It’s clear that the two-thousand-amos limit is rabbinic. Whether twelve mil is a Torah prohibition is a major dispute, going back to the Tannaim, between Rabbi Akiva and the Sages, and it’s a major dispute among the Rishonim. Many Rishonim hold that it isn’t a Torah prohibition, but several important Rishonim say that twelve mil is. Twelve mil is approximately—let’s round it off—twelve kilometers. It’s easy to travel twelve kilometers. So he says there’s a problem with going beyond the boundary. When the ship sets sail, you’re at point Y and you arrive at point X, so... But the twelve-mil boundary, where it is a Torah prohibition, applies on land. Even when you’re traveling close to the seabed, in a very shallow lake on a boat close to the bottom—there are various shallow places like that—it’s rabbinic. The Rema writes this too: it’s rabbinic, definitely not a Torah prohibition. Why? Because the prohibition of going beyond the boundary is learned from an actual reshus harabim as it existed in earlier times, not from a karmelis such as... In places like these it isn’t a Torah prohibition. That’s one point. There’s a tremendous novel ruling of the Alter Rebbe in siman 404. I’m just letting you know, because it may make a practical difference later: even though, in principle, this is a Torah prohibition, the Alter Rebbe makes a novel ruling. The Mishnah Berurah challenges it, and many later authorities challenge the Alter Rebbe on this.

26:50 Speaker 2 The Alter Rebbe says in siman 404 that since nowadays we do not have a reshus harabim by Torah law, the twelve-mil boundary is not a Torah prohibition either. Some say: what’s the connection? This is about going beyond the boundary; what does that have to... No, he says, there has to be a reshus harabim by Torah law for the twelve-mil boundary to be a Torah prohibition. Otherwise, it’s rabbinic. Still, you should know that, in principle, it can be a Torah prohibition on land. By contrast, at sea it can never be a Torah prohibition. Okay? Now, above ten tefachim: in the discussion on pages 42 and 43 of Eruvin, there’s a question about whether the Shabbos boundary applies above ten tefachim. For those who know a little about eruvin, I’ll just point something out. One reason for the question is that above ten tefachim in a reshus harabim or a karmelis, the space is neither a reshus harabim nor a karmelis; it’s a makom patur. Above a reshus hayachid, though, the reshus hayachid extends all the way to the heavens. You remember the discussions in Shabbos, both in the first chapter and in Hazorek. Yes, you know this. So a reshus hayachid extends to the heavens, but where does going beyond the Shabbos boundary usually take place? In a reshus harabim or a karmelis. Since the space above ten tefachim is neither a reshus harabim nor a karmelis, the question is whether traveling there counts as going beyond the boundary. The Gemara does not reach a conclusion. It’s an unresolved question. Right? Many therefore wanted to say that since there’s a doubt... And of course, according to all opinions, it may be a Torah prohibition. Some say it’s rabbinic; others say not necessarily—perhaps it’s a doubt concerning a Torah prohibition, because if the twelve-mil boundary is a Torah prohibition and there’s a doubt about traveling above it, that’s a doubt concerning a Torah prohibition. Fine. Some say that in matters of eruvin, the halachah follows the lenient opinion, as I mentioned to you regarding the laws of mourning, where there’s also a rule like that. But in practice, we see that many were stringent, holding that above

29:06 Speaker 2 Ten tefachim. In practice, we certainly rule stringently; that is how the halachah is decided in [unclear]. But over the sea, it may be less stringent, because the sea is not a reshus harabim to begin with, and the Torah-level limit of twelve mil does not apply there. Going beyond the techum at a height of less than ten tefachim is only prohibited by rabbinic law, so when you are above that height, there may be no problem. Now, based on this, Rabbeinu Chananel says that this may be the meaning of the Gemara: it is talking about a small boat. Large ships travel at sea, with plenty of space between the bottom of the ship and the seabed. As you saw, in principle, the measurement is not taken from where a person stands; we look at the bottom of the ship itself. True, it says that when necessary one can be lenient about this, but in any case, on the open sea, with large ships, this generally should not be a problem. It may be talking about certain places where people cross on a ferry or some small boat, in shallow water, and that is why going beyond the techum was a problem. Now, if it is for a mitzvah, they apparently were not concerned about it. After all, the whole issue is rabbinic, and we are talking about the seabed, where in any case the prohibition is rabbinic. And people needed to travel from place to place; it was part of life. Right? When things are part of life, you cannot stop people. Say you walk to shul and a light turns on here, another light turns on there—we will discuss such cases. Even if you conclude that an inevitable consequence involving a rabbinic prohibition is forbidden, and so on, clearly the solution is not to keep a person shut inside his house his whole life on Shabbos. People need to live. All the more so here, when they needed to get from place to place. These were important things, and this was a means of transportation. When there is water and you need to get to the other side,

31:28 Speaker 2 you need a ferry, a boat. So if it is for a mitzvah, they were not concerned about it, especially since you are not doing anything yourself: someone is taking you. You sit there, and they take you through an area where the prohibition is rabbinic. And if you board more than three days beforehand, you are not really expected to be thinking about Shabbos yet. It is not kamei Shabbata—the days leading up to Shabbos—but belongs to the previous Shabbos: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. Incidentally, this is one of the strong proofs that kamei Shabbata really means Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. In the Gemara, in Gittin 77 and in Pesachim, kamei Shabbata always means Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. That is why you can make Havdalah until Tuesday: it is still basar Shabbata, the days following Shabbos. So once you boarded before that, Rabbeinu Chananel’s reasoning is that you are, so to speak, in a situation beyond your control. You have run into a problem—what can you do? But when you board within three days of Shabbos, on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday, it is no longer beyond your control. What do you mean? When you board, Shabbos should already be on your mind. It is kamei Shabbata. So we are stringent. When it is not kamei Shabbata, we cannot fault you; you are already at sea, and you are already at sea. That is Rabbeinu Chananel’s explanation. As for Tosafos’s explanation, the Ri says there is a sugya on page 36 in Gittin: swimming is forbidden on Shabbos. Right? You may not swim on Shabbos. Why? The baraisa says it is because of a concern that you might make a flotation device. In those days, to learn to swim or to get from place to place, you would use something like a small boat to hold on to. Sometimes people wanted to cross a river, and even if they knew how to swim, who says they had enough breath to make it across? That is why it is very dangerous when there is no lifeguard at the beach. Some people want

33:51 Speaker 2 to show their friends, “Look, I’m going far out into the sea.” Who says you know how to get back? Have you tried? Oh, you swam a few laps back and forth in a pool? A pool is not the sea. There are currents; they pull you a little backward, a little forward, and you have to struggle. So, to cross more easily, even if you knew how to swim, people would make some sort of device... and then you might make it. Sometimes you might even cut wood and so on. That involves prohibitions. So he says that the decree covers not only swimming with your arms but also boarding a boat. If you board more than three days before Shabbos—on Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday—then one explanation the Beis Yosef wants to offer is that this distinction serves as a reminder. The very fact that they distinguished between the first three days and the three days before Shabbos puts the thought in your head: “Oh, I need to start thinking about Shabbos.” It is a kind of reminder not to make a device. That is one explanation. Later authorities gave other explanations for the distinction according to this view. The Aruch Hashulchan, in particular, offers a logical explanation. Along the lines of what we will see later regarding other matters, he says that when you have already been on a ship for three days, it is like your home. Right? You are already living there; you have an established place there, so you are considered to be at home. It is not called going out now to sail on a boat. But if you board within the three days before Shabbos, you have not actually lived there for three full days, so it is still considered as though you have just boarded the ship. That is how he wants to explain it. All right, so in practice we have the view of Tosafos, which is the Ri’s view: if you board within three days for a mitzvah, they would say that the decree was not made in such a case.

36:02 Speaker 2 It is for a mitzvah. After all, you are not boarding something on Shabbos that will cause you to sail. You boarded before Shabbos, and now they are taking you. So if it is for a mitzvah, they were not stringent about it. That is the fourth explanation. The fifth explanation is the Ramban’s. The Ramban says: What is the case? A Jew went to a non-Jew who had a ship, and Jews hired the ship from him. The non-Jew is fine—even if he is the sailor, even if he is the one steering the ship, they hire him. They are not experts themselves, but you have paid him a fixed fee for his services, and you want him to take you. Sometimes the cost may be split among many Jews, but the majority of those who hired the ship are Jews, with a few non-Jews. In short, when the majority are Jews, even though the non-Jew is the one steering the ship, it is a problem. Why? Because if you board within three days of Shabbos, it is as though you boarded expressly relying on him to perform melachos for you. That is clear. Until now, we have not discussed the person operating the ship. But as for the person operating it—obviously I am talking about the old days; today the work is concentrated in [unclear]—back then it clearly involved many melachos. You are constantly tying things, adjusting the—what do you call them?

37:45 Speaker 3 Sails.

37:46 Speaker 2 The sails. Yes, moving them to the side. Sometimes you raise them, sometimes you lower them, sometimes something breaks and has to be repaired. So it involves many melachos. Ah, with a fixed-fee contract it should be all right. We will learn that when you are present on-site, a fixed-fee contract is much more problematic. We will study that at length in [unclear]. So, in short, the Ramban says that when you board within three days of Shabbos, it really looks that way. After all, one of the issues when a non-Jew does something for a Jew is that he appears to be acting as the Jew’s agent. One of the foundations of the prohibition against instructing a non-Jew—one of the most serious points in the Gemara’s discussion, which begins with this in the first chapter of [unclear]—is that he is your agent. So when you board within three days of Shabbos, when Shabbos is already in view and you are already in a Shabbos frame of mind, it is kamei Shabbata. It is as though you are explicitly telling him, “Work for us on Shabbos.” By contrast, if you board more than three days beforehand—on Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday—when Shabbos is not yet in the air, he does not appear to be acting as your agent. So they were lenient here. And this is always on the basis of the Shibbolei Haleket and the Meiri, as I mentioned earlier: these are special leniencies, because people need to be able to earn a living, travel, and get around in life. Okay. So...

39:13 Speaker 3 Before that, it is a non-Jew.

39:15 Speaker 2 So, okay, we said that within three days it’s forbidden. But if it’s for a mitzvah, that would also be fine according to this explanation, because it’s a mitzvah, so they didn’t make a decree. After all, he’s your contractor; you paid him, and you’re essentially just being carried along. So they were lenient about it: for a mitzvah, they didn’t make the decree. After all, this is a rabbinic rule about instructing a non-Jew, and they didn’t apply it here. Also, remember the discussion: you have to tell him to stop for Shabbos. Yes, that’s written in the baraisa. So if you’re boarding within three days of Shabbos, you have to tell him that. According to Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel, you don’t have to tell him to stop. Now, by the way, people may want to say... When we study and teach Shulchan Aruch and practical halachah, I can’t always also do the work they do in yeshivos, going into a detailed analysis of every view among the Rishonim: how each one understands the others, and what the proofs are. That would take us far afield. But the problem is that when you learn something without getting to the heart of the argument, an explanation can sometimes seem strange to you. The Ramban’s view might look as though something is missing. But the Ramban’s view is actually very good. I’ll just mention, by the way, that it explains something the Rishonim mentioned even in the Ramban’s time. He lived in Spain, where there were many ships, and people were accustomed to boarding ships on Friday—even for a pleasure trip, for all sorts of purposes. How could that be? According to the Ramban, it works very well: we’re talking about a non-Jewish captain, with mostly non-Jewish passengers aboard. You’re a Jew in the Diaspora, in the minority, so there should be no problem. The whole issue here arises because

41:14 Speaker 2 he looks like your agent when most of the passengers are Jews. So that would explain the custom, and also the requirement to tell him to stop for Shabbos. It sounds like a joke. The Rosh points this out: if you don’t understand it as the Ramban does, it’s rather absurd. You think that on a ship full of non-Jews, they just wanted you to make a laughingstock of yourself? “Excuse me, there are two hundred passengers here, or fifty passengers, and we two Jews have come aboard. Given how fond these non-Jews are of Jews, could you please stop the ship before Shabbos? Just wait twenty-four hours—it’s Shabbos for me.” They’d laugh. So the Ramban’s approach also gives a very strong explanation for why you have to tell him to stop. Fine, that’s mentioned; it’s not the point here. That was the fifth explanation. The sixth is that of Rabbi Zerachiah Halevi. Rabbi Zerachiah Halevi says, essentially: “A voyage by ship often creates”—he knew what voyages were like in those days—“a strong possibility, something quite common,” though not a certainty, “that the Jews themselves will have to violate Shabbos.” Why? Particularly in those days, there was no information about where a storm would or wouldn’t occur. And when there’s a storm, a great deal needs to be done, and everyone has to help. Sometimes you have to help... Sometimes it’s like one large private domain: you have to take the water and throw out all the water coming in from the waves. You have to deal with the wind, the deck—“Grab this, hold that, tie a knot here.” You can’t say, “I’m Jewish; I’m not doing anything.” It’s a matter of saving lives. If the ship capsizes, everyone is lost. That’s why Tehillim 107 describes people at sea crying out to Hashem. People cried out to Hashem

43:39 Speaker 2 a lot. It was a place where people prayed a great deal. As I mentioned once, the Magen Avraham here brings this, and the Noda BiYehudah says that one may take a risk to earn a livelihood. So all the sources indicate that people did take such risks. That’s why the first form of life insurance was in “Hamocheir Es Hasfinah,” the fifth chapter of Bava Basra: people would pay into something like a bank at the port, where everyone deposited something. Then, if, G-d forbid, the merchandise was stolen or a ship sank, a wife could come and collect money from the insurance her husband had paid for. So, yes, it was dangerous. And what do we see? The Magen Avraham says, incidentally—there’s a detailed discussion at the end of the siman about whether earning a livelihood counts as a mitzvah purpose—but what if you already have a livelihood and you travel in order to earn more? The Magen Avraham says that perhaps this, too, counts as a mitzvah purpose. But wait: before discussing whether it’s a mitzvah purpose, are you allowed to take a risk to earn more money? You’re earning twenty thousand shekels a month, and now you want to take a sea voyage to earn fifty thousand shekels a month. So you see that it’s permitted. That’s how the Noda BiYehudah learns from... Incidentally, this point clearly emerges here from siman 248. In short, the Baal Hamaor says—Hamaor is Rabbi Zerachiah Halevi; he wrote a commentary on the Rif. He challenged the Rif many times, and in his day that was seen as rather audacious. A young man of eighteen or twenty writing a commentary and disagreeing with the Rif! Disagreeing with the Rif was like disagreeing with the Geonim. The Rif was a student of... There were students of Rav Hai Gaon, the last in the chain of the Geonim, students and students of students of

45:37 Speaker 2 the Geonim. So this was no small matter. In any case, he writes there that within three days of Shabbos, since there’s a strong possibility—not a certainty, but a strong possibility—that the Jews will also have to violate Shabbos to help, you have to take Shabbos into account. It’s as though you knowingly entered that situation from the outset. But if you board earlier—on Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday—halachah does not require you to worry about Shabbos. You’re going about your life; you need to travel. Fine: if a life-threatening situation then arises, you’ll deal with it, and it’s permitted to act to save lives. Now, if the trip is for a mitzvah, then even boarding within three days is fine. Why? You could say it’s because Shabbos hasn’t begun yet, and it still isn’t certain that this will happen. Right? That leads into the discussion involving the Rivash: if it is certain, is it forbidden even from Sunday? We’ll see later. So far, then, we’ve seen six explanations: the Rashbam’s approach, following Beis Shammai; the Rif and the Rambam, concerning oneg Shabbos; Rabbeinu Chananel’s approach, concerning leaving the techum; the Tosafos Rid’s, because the ship moves on Shabbos, under the decree mentioned on page 36 of Beitzah; the Ramban’s, because Jews hired the ship, so most of the passengers on the voyage are Jews; and Rabbi Zerachiah Halevi, the Baal Hamaor, who says there’s a strong possibility that you yourself may have to violate Shabbos, and that is the basis of the prohibition. Just a moment, I’m starting another recording. The non-Jew. Yes. If the Jew himself is steering, does everyone agree that boarding three or four days beforehand is permitted? The Jew himself is steering. Yes. Oh, steering? Yes, we’ll see, we’ll see later. If it’s a Jew... Here we’re talking about a non-Jew steering, but even if the Jew himself is steering the ship, whether it’s certain or not certain, then

47:58 Speaker 2 Some want to be lenient. Yes. Yes, the Rivash in section 101. Good, so, just a second, let’s start the second recording. Okay, now. Having seen all the opinions, what did the Shulchan Aruch rule? The Shulchan Aruch ruled like the Rif and the Rambam. In other words, the problem with setting sail is that it affects oneg Shabbos, the enjoyment of Shabbos. Right? If you set sail within three days of Shabbos, you won’t feel well on Shabbos. If it’s for a mitzvah, we don’t take that into account—a person engaged in one mitzvah is exempt from another. And more than three days before Shabbos—Sunday, Monday, Tuesday—you don’t feel unwell at all. That is essentially the ruling. So... of all the reasons we’ve seen, the one accepted in practice is the approach of the Rif and the Rambam. That’s true of the Beis Yosef, the Alter Rebbe, and the Shulchan Aruch—all of them. But, but. When I say that this is the conclusion and not any of the other explanations, that the Shulchan Aruch rejects the other explanations, I mean as interpretations of the baraisa. It doesn’t mean that the concerns each of them raised can’t be relevant in practice. That’s the important point. When you make a summary, you can summarize the Rishonim’s explanations of the baraisa and say that the Shulchan Aruch ruled like the Rambam and the Rif. But it would be wrong to say that their concerns were discarded entirely. Certainly not. So let’s put things in order according to the Shulchan Aruch: when do the other reasons come into play? Let’s take an example. With the Rambam and the Rif, the basic case is that you don’t board a ship under circumstances that will make you feel unwell. Incidentally, we find in a responsum of the Rambam a case the Gemara doesn’t discuss—the baraisa doesn’t discuss: what is the law on rivers? You’re on a river, in Tiberias, or in various places that aren’t actually the sea, with its waves and salt water. Fresh, calm water. So what does he say explicitly? He says

50:29 Speaker 2 that on rivers, there’s no longer a problem with traveling within three... three... You don’t need it to be for a mitzvah, and you don’t need to limit it to Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday. You can travel. The sailing discussed in the Talmud is a long voyage; “setting sail” means going to sea. So it’s clear that this is the practical ruling too. Now let’s look at the other reasons. Well, the Rashbam’s reason certainly isn’t taken into account; it was rejected, and that’s that. Except that some want to say, as I mentioned, that the common practice of being lenient may rely on it. Now let’s take Rabbeinu Chananel’s approach. Rabbeinu Chananel says the problem is traveling beyond the Shabbos boundary. That may indeed be a problem. In what case? Say it’s within three days of Shabbos, on salt water, and the trip isn’t for a mitzvah. Then you’re forbidden to set out anyway: it will affect your enjoyment of Shabbos, and that’s the main reason. So when would we apply Rabbeinu Chananel’s view? And when it’s for a mitzvah, the ship is usually more than ten tefachim above the bottom. But suppose you’re traveling on rivers, for example, and they’re shallow, or the ship is riding very close to the bottom. In that case, if you go beyond the Shabbos boundary while you’re within ten tefachim of the riverbed, there’s a problem. If you aren’t traveling for a mitzvah—after all, travel on rivers is permitted even when it isn’t for a mitzvah—but you know you’ll pass through a shallow spot, that will be a problem. Why? Because he’s right: you may not travel beyond the Shabbos boundary. So there is a case where we do take Rabbeinu Chananel’s approach into account. We never said that the laws against traveling beyond the Shabbos boundary were discarded. But if the trip really is for a mitzvah, or it begins more than three days before Shabbos, which Rabbeinu Chananel

52:58 Speaker 2 also says is permitted, then we too say it’s permitted. We could have said otherwise. We could have said: fine, since our reason is the enjoyment of Shabbos, who says we accept that permission? But this is how the halachah was ruled. The Alter Rebbe also says that if you set out more than three days before Shabbos—right? The Alter Rebbe sums it up well. Clearly, whenever you travel for a non-mitzvah purpose and go beyond the Shabbos boundary, there’s a problem. If you travel for a mitzvah or set out more than three days before Shabbos, it should be fine. Okay? So when do I apply Rabbeinu Chananel’s concern? When I travel on a river for a non-mitzvah purpose and the ship is riding close to the bottom—that’s when I have a problem. Okay, that’s how I apply Rabbeinu Chananel’s approach. Does anyone disagree with that? No.

54:07 Speaker 4 Rabbeinu Chananel.

54:08 Speaker 2 Huh?

54:08 Speaker 4 The Mechaber says so explicitly.

54:10 Speaker 2 No, I’m talking about the conclusion now. Yes, you’re looking at section two or three.

54:14 Speaker 4 Yes.

54:15 Speaker 2 Yes. Yes, you’re right that, at first glance, there’s a problem if you set out. Yes, but the Magen Avraham, the Eliyah Rabbah... True, it says explicitly that if it’s less than that, it shouldn’t be permitted. But you’re right: as I mentioned earlier, that wasn’t conclusive. You can say, as is also quite clear in the Beis Yosef, that he is stringent.

54:33 Speaker 4 He also understands that to be the Shulchan Aruch’s view.

54:35 Speaker 2 That?

54:35 Speaker 4 That although he ruled like the Rif, he agrees that setting out more than three days before Shabbos is permitted.

54:39 Speaker 2 Yes.

54:40 Speaker 4 He says that apparently the Gra says this is what the Rema meant in his gloss.

54:45 Speaker 2 So, in short, in practice—this back-and-forth doesn’t sound good on the recording. We’ll answer all the questions afterward. So when the ship is less than ten tefachim above the bottom, one can be lenient in some circumstances. What I’m trying to tell you is when this approach definitely applies, according to all opinions. If I’m traveling for a non-mitzvah purpose and the ship is less than ten tefachim above the bottom, there is a problem. That’s one point. Now, regarding Tosafos’s approach, which concerns traveling on the water: when do we say there’s a problem because you’re traveling on the water on Shabbos, and there’s a decree lest you make a barrel and so on? We apply it when a person boards a vessel on Shabbos. In other words, he enters the ship on Shabbos. If he boarded before Shabbos and established his Shabbos residence there—meaning he was aboard throughout bein hashmashos on Friday evening and, let’s say, didn’t leave the ship—yes, that’s the point I want to make here. Do you understand what I’m trying to do? I’m trying to say when we definitely apply it. That’s why the comment about the Beis Yosef didn’t belong here: I’m trying to show that even though we don’t follow that approach generally, here is where we do take it into account. So if you board on Shabbos, even for a mitzvah, in practice there will be a problem. True, the Mishnah Berurah cites an opinion that some are lenient when it’s for a mitzvah. In practice, we don’t rule that way. Most of the later authorities, including Sephardic authorities—most halachic authorities—don’t accept it. And this is a very, very practical question in certain places. I’ve been asked it several times in my life, as an actual practical matter. People say, “We live...” Some people like to go live in some out-of-the-way place, right? Suddenly they have endless land, and they’ve reached a certain age and want that. Or they go camping at their grandparents’, right? And sometimes you’re even an hour

57:02 Speaker 2 from Paris, an hour and a half, and sometimes you need to get to various places. There’s a place with a minyan at someone’s house, somewhere in Ambourtaine[?], I don’t know where, and to get there you have to cross from one side to the other. Now, if you want to go twenty kilometers to find a bridge, you’ll find one. But there’s something that crosses here every day, and it’s free. Non-Jews have set up a ferry there; you get on, and it goes from one side to the other. Have you ever seen that? I once saw it at a family member’s place. So you cross from one place to another. Now, can you use it to go to a minyan? To hear the shofar? Can you board the ferry—a raft, whatever you want to call it—on Shabbos? There’s no permission to do that. In practice, we are stringent even when it’s for a mitzvah. I think that even Rabbi Ovadia, in Chazon Ovadia—perhaps he sometimes cites a leniency for hearing the shofar and so on; some are lenient in such cases—but as a rule, we aren’t lenient for a mitzvah. When we said we are lenient for a mitzvah, that meant boarding more than three days before Shabbos. So, yes. Then there’s no problem of traveling on the water. We said that if it’s more than three days before Shabbos and it’s for a mitzvah, right? Or, in practice, even if it isn’t for a mitzvah but it’s on a river, there’s no problem. We don’t call that prohibited travel on the water; we don’t follow the approach that says it’s a problem. And if you boarded the ship before Shabbos, but it only sets sail on Shabbos, and you’re traveling for a mitzvah, that’s also fine: you established your Shabbos residence there. The problem would be if someone—there were people who did this—the ship was due to depart at eleven in the morning on Shabbos, and they had heard that you needed to establish your Shabbos residence there, both so it wouldn’t look like you were boarding to travel on the water on Shabbos and because it would make it easier to disembark if the ship reached port on Shabbos, as to whether you could leave it or not. So, so I

59:11 Speaker 2 We’ll talk about that later. So you establish your place of rest for Shabbos—that’s fine. But there were people who would do this, clever fellows: they would stay on the ship throughout bein hashmashos. Now, when is bein hashmashos? Between five-thirty and six in the winter. At six, they would leave the ship. They would even make Kiddush. Some had a custom that when they established their place of rest, they would also make Kiddush to publicize it, to make a bit more of a fuss. They would prepare something small there, but afterward they would go home. “I’ll sleep at home. Why should I sleep there at the port? I’ll sleep in my usual bed, come back in the morning, and I’ve established my place of rest.” Yes. So the Mordechai says not to protest against those who do this. As a general rule, when a posek says “do not protest,” it means you shouldn’t do it. That’s straightforward. You just don’t shout at someone who does it, because he has an opinion to rely on. But you don’t do it yourself. In any case, what I wanted to highlight here is the issue of traveling on water on Shabbos that Tosafos mentioned. We’ll use it in practice. Even someone who established his place of rest, left the ship, and then boarded it on Shabbos—or who boarded it for the first time on Shabbos—even if it’s for a mitzvah, that counts as traveling on water on Shabbos. You’re taking an action on Shabbos, and any action that lets you float on water, even boarding a ship, already raises the concern that you might make a flotation barrel. Now, the Ramban’s explanation. So how do I use the Rambam’s explanation? I’ll give an example. If it’s within three days of Shabbos on salt water, I don’t need it: it’s already prohibited according to the Ramban and the Rif because I won’t feel well. But let’s say it’s on rivers. On rivers it’s permitted; that’s what the Rambam says in a responsum as a practical ruling. You can travel on rivers even within three days of Shabbos. But what happens if most of the people aboard are non-Jews? Or most are Jews? In other words,

1:01:21 Speaker 2 there are many kinds of work here that the sailors do, according to all opinions. Right? And they do them. If it’s primarily for Jews, that’s a problem. If it’s more than three days before Shabbos, or for a mitzvah, then again there are grounds for permission. But a case where there certainly won’t be grounds for permission is if, say, you board a riverboat within three days of Shabbos and most of the people aboard are Jews. So in that case I can, so to speak, use the Rambam’s explanation in practice. Okay. Now, the last explanation, that of Rabbi Zerachiah Halevi: it is common that even people who aren’t operating the ship may have to violate Shabbos during a storm, and that happens often on ships. So here too, if you set out on rivers, for example, the truth is that usually there won’t be dangers. Yes, but if for some reason a person knows that, given the circumstances of this particular voyage, it’s likely they’ll need help—there aren’t many people, and everyone has to pitch in sometimes, and so on—then you have a problem. If you know you may have to violate Shabbos, that’s a problem. Now, there are grounds for permission here too. If you travel on Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday, there won’t be a problem, because according to the Baal Hamaor too, there wouldn’t be a problem. And if it’s within three days of Shabbos but for a mitzvah, that’s an explicit baraisa according to the Baal Hamaor’s explanation. Yes, that too won’t be a problem. The whole discussion is whether there will actually be a definite violation of Shabbos. Now, there is one. Even for a mitzvah—but let’s look at another discussion related to this. So we’ve seen all the reasons. We’ve seen that the reason adopted in halachah is that of the Ramban and the Rif, and yet we can see that, in certain cases, the reasons given by all the other opinions can also apply. Okay, that’s one point.

1:03:57 Speaker 2 Now, there’s a discussion in the Rivash, section 101. We see that all of this is about a case where perhaps—perhaps it’s not limited to a case where there’s a strong possibility we’ll violate Shabbos. Perhaps it applies even when it’s certain, even when you’re traveling more than three days before Shabbos—say, on Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday—and even the people operating the ship are Jews. The Rema cites this Rivash. So here they will certainly violate Shabbos. There are Torah prohibitions, rabbinic prohibitions, all sorts of things. So even when they will certainly violate Shabbos—not just when it’s very likely—if you leave several days beforehand, on Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday, that’s all right. And perhaps it’s all right within three days of Shabbos if it’s for a mitzvah. But the Alter Rebbe, and other poskim including the Magen Avraham, come to the subject of someone setting out with a caravan. That was another situation that existed in the past. The poskim call it traveling in a caravan. People would go with camels and horses. They would set out in groups and cross the desert. There were wolves, lions, and thieves. It was very dangerous. So you had to stay with the group at all times. Right? If you got separated from the group, it was very, very... And here everyone is traveling, and there are many things that need to be done. So that’s where this discussion comes up, but it also has implications for a sea voyage; it’s the same story. There are three major poskim: the Radbaz, Rabbi David ben Zimra, who was also the Arizal’s teacher in the revealed dimension of Torah, and the teacher of the author of the Shitah Mekubetzes, Rabbi Betzalel Ashkenazi. He lived in Egypt and wrote a great many responsa. Then there’s the Knesses Hagedolah, Rabbi Chaim Benveniste, one of the great Sephardic poskim, and also the Mahari ben Lev. The Mahari ben Lev was

1:06:25 Speaker 2 a man who lived 450 years ago. He was known for being very firm in his rulings. He was so firm—he would insist that the law be upheld even against the community—that in many of the communities where he served, things sometimes ended badly between him and the community. He was in Salonika, but he moved around a lot, to Constantinople and many other places. He was a forceful man; people persecuted him and wanted to cause him trouble because... Anyway, the Mahari ben Lev: all three of them say that when it’s certain you’ll need to violate Shabbos, whether a Torah prohibition or a rabbinic one—as with caravans, where everyone has to do things, move along, leave the techum, and so on—then once it’s certain that you’re setting out and will violate Shabbos, it is certainly forbidden even if you leave on Sunday. The Magen Avraham, the Alter Rebbe, and many other poskim write that although sometimes one should not protest against someone who acts otherwise, we should be stringent about this. So that’s a bombshell. In other words, if I conclude that, despite all the grounds for permission we’ve discussed until now, the Jew himself will definitely have to violate Shabbos, whether a Torah prohibition or a rabbinic one, then even if it’s necessary to save a life, he may not set out even on Sunday. I’d call that an atom bomb in the context of these laws. One more thing: everything we’ve discussed until now involved something likely, something very common. In most cases it could happen, but it still wasn’t certain. When it’s certain, that changes the entire picture. Even if it’s for a mitzvah, it would be forbidden to set out even on Sunday. That’s one point. The second point isn’t a bombshell, but it’s extremely important. It’s in the Alter Rebbe’s Shulchan Aruch, section 248, paragraph 8. All the grounds for permission we’re discussing—let’s say a posek says, “I want to rely on them. You’re a great Torah scholar; I want to rely on the Rivash’s opinions. I don’t want to rule like the Mahari ben Lev, the Radbaz, and the Knesses Hagedolah. I don’t want to rule that way.” All right, let’s say so.

1:08:51 Speaker 2 But what are we talking about? Even if it’s very likely—even if it’s certain that you’ll have to violate Shabbos, according to the opinions that permit it, why would you violate Shabbos? So that you don’t remain in a dangerous situation. That’s the plain meaning. On the one hand, that’s a bombshell; on the other, it’s fairly certain that... So what does that mean? All the laws, including asking a non-Jew to do something and all the other laws—there is no permission for you yourself to violate the rules of a Torah or rabbinic prohibition, or even to ask a non-Jew to do so, unless the purpose is to save you. Those opinions said that even if you will certainly have to violate Shabbos to save a life, it’s permitted. We rule like the Mahari ben Lev and the Radbaz that it isn’t. But if that isn’t the purpose—if I show you that on this voyage, non-Jews will be doing prohibited things for you that aren’t permitted on the grounds of saving a life, just ordinary things, I don’t know, serving you coffee, all kinds of things—or that you’ll do them yourself. Now, when we study the laws of asking a non-Jew to do something, there’s a very, very big debate. There’s a ruling in section 307, also in the Sefer Haterumah, and in the Alter Rebbe’s Shulchan Aruch, section 307, paragraph 12, and section 276, paragraph 8. In the Shulchan Aruch it’s section 276, paragraph 2, and section 307, paragraph 5: a shevus d’shevus for the sake of a mitzvah. You can ask a non-Jew to do something that, if you did it yourself, would also be a rabbinic prohibition. Shevus d’shevus—two rabbinic prohibitions—for the sake of a mitzvah. The question is whether a Jew may perform a shevus d’shevus for the sake of a mitzvah. We find a shevus d’shevus permitted to prevent a substantial loss, but as the Magen Avraham says, you can’t just compare one case to another, or... So there are many, many discussions about this. I have a huge list of poskim who are stringent about a shevus d’shevus. On the face of it, the Alter Rebbe is lenient about a shevus d’shevus for the sake of a mitzvah when it’s done by a non-Jew, or about a shevus d’shevus such as doing melachah in an unusual way, sometimes, to prevent

1:11:23 Speaker 2 a substantial loss. There is even permission to do something prohibited by Torah law in an unusual way to prevent a substantial loss, but we won’t get into that until we reach those sections. But a shevus d’shevus performed by a Jew—so I once wrote a long article about this. Someone had supposedly made a big fuss about the spacecraft carrying Ilan Ramon. They wanted to—they said no one was violating Shabbos; everything was done in shifts. There were hours when people worked in Israel, then they handed it over to America, then to Australia, where they monitored everything. It was all nonsense. There were about thirty or forty people working there with computers, monitoring it in Israel and so on. Then Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef started writing about shevus d’shevus, and I saw a Chabad rabbi post that in a group too, about the spacecraft. So I immediately wrote in the rabbis’ group. I said, “What are you talking about? First, I don’t believe the story that no one was working on it.” Everyone was working there, a team of about thirty people. Well, that story didn’t end well, and besides that—

1:12:42 Speaker 5 Bereishis, that was—not, not...

1:12:43 Speaker 2 Yes, yes.

1:12:44 Speaker 5 It wasn’t Ilan Ramon; it was Bereishis.

1:12:46 Speaker 2 Oh, yes, yes. The space—the spacecraft that crashed in the end.

1:12:49 Speaker 5 Yes, yes, Bereishis.

1:12:50 Speaker 2 That didn’t land.

1:12:50 Speaker 5 We’re getting to that now. Yes, yes, it was Bereishis.

1:12:52 Speaker 2 Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Sorry, I got confused.

1:12:55 Speaker 5 That was it, yes.

1:12:55 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, it wasn’t the Challenger, right.

1:12:57 Speaker 5 It was a bit of aluminum.

1:12:58 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, but for many people, a lot of it was actual Shabbos violation—doing it in an unusual way and so on. So what? In many places, the Alter Rebbe makes it clear that a shevus d’shevus for the sake of a mitzvah is permitted only through a non-Jew. Some wanted to say, “But perhaps section 248, paragraph 8, proves the opposite,” because the Alter Rebbe says that everything we permitted was for the sake of avoiding Shabbos violation, but otherwise it’s forbidden to commit any Torah or rabbinic prohibition, apart from what we learned here in section 307 about a shevus d’shevus for the sake of a mitzvah. Apparently, he’s talking about a Jew doing it. A bombshell! But that’s not true. There’s plenty of evidence from all the other passages, and from the discussion in its proper place, that this isn’t what he means here. He means: don’t commit any prohibition, whether Torah or rabbinic, apart from the permissions given in section 307 for a shevus d’shevus for the sake of a mitzvah. There, it’s talking about something done through a non-Jew, but he’s stating the general rule that it’s permitted. He didn’t intend you to infer from this passing reference that, since until now we were apparently talking about a Jew, it applies to a Jew. No, he just meant to say, “Look there.” But you hear? You can see throughout that, according to our approach, the permission for a shevus d’shevus for the sake of a mitzvah applies when it’s done through a non-Jew, not by a Jew. Okay, so, in short, some also want to derive a permission for doing something after Shabbos for an experiment—not for an immediate need. But we won’t get into all the details here; we’ll get into that later, in the classes on asking a non-Jew to do something. So, so, what have we learned?

1:14:35 Speaker 5 All the permissions are so that he won’t be endangered.

1:14:37 Speaker 2 Oh, exactly. So first, we have that even in a case of saving a life, it’s forbidden to set out from Sunday onward if a Shabbos violation is certain, according to the Mahari ben Lev, the Radbaz, the Knesses Hagedolah, and the Alter Rebbe, who ruled that way, as well as many other poskim who were stringent. And even according to those who disagree, all of this is about saving a life, not just anything. That’s going to change a great many permissions here. Unfortunately, there are lots of rabbis whom people send these questions to—you see it online. Sometimes you see people of a very, very high caliber, at different levels, but you also see people answering off the cuff without realizing that a great many things will change. So, for example, as we went along and said that each approach is in fact found among the Rishonim, we more or less summarized all the cases too, right? But in simple terms: you want to set sail—let’s stick with the ships of old. You want to set sail now on a ship, right? The voyage leaves on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday, and it’s on salt water. If it isn’t for the sake of a mitzvah, it’s forbidden. If it is for the sake of a mitzvah, it’s permitted. And let’s be practical: for the most part, we’re not going to encounter a ship that’s nearly scraping the bottom, right? And if it’s before the three days—Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday—you can set sail. That’s the general picture. Even if it’s likely that you’ll do a melachah, that you might help out, that too should be permitted. If it’s Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday—or Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday. If it’s certain, then that’s what we just discussed. Okay? On rivers, it’s permitted even within the three days, even for a non-mitzvah purpose, as long as most of the passengers aren’t Jews and the ship isn’t scraping the bottom. There are permissions for that too. And before

1:17:01 Speaker 2 the three days and a night, even if it was scraping the bottom. That’s basically the summary. Now, what counts as a mitzvah purpose? Settling the Land of Israel, right? The Alter Rebbe says that, don’t worry. Now, the Alter Rebbe has a Kuntres Acharon. Usually, the passages in Kuntres Acharon are very practical and can have very practical implications. I always—so don’t worry. Here it’s more analytical discussion and explanations supporting the Alter Rebbe’s approach and everything he explained in the main text. In section 248, for example, there are a few passages in Kuntres Acharon here that do have very practical implications. So I’ll mention just that Kuntres Acharon passage here, so there’s no confusion. People say, “Oh, I saw that earning a living counts as a mitzvah. I saw that maybe touring the Land of Israel counts as a mitzvah—you walk four cubits there. I saw that all kinds of things might count as a mitzvah purpose.” No. Look: he cites those opinions, but what’s the main point? That you shouldn’t protest. About many things he says you shouldn’t protest. There are things you must protest and things you needn’t protest. But when he says not to protest, it means that according to our approach, it doesn’t count as a mitzvah purpose. If someone asks you, “Rabbi, may I board for this purpose?” don’t say, “It’s for earning a living, it’s for this need or that need,” if it isn’t actually for a mitzvah. Now look, he says: even someone who says, “I’m traveling to Israel”—why are you traveling now? Well, if he tells you he’s only going to Eilat, then it’s a question whether that counts as traveling to Israel. But let’s say he says, “I’m going to a hotel in Tel Aviv now.” He’s going there to enjoy himself. Yes, many

1:18:56 Speaker 2 French people come, and there’s a street of hotels there near Ben Yehuda—Hyatt, Continental, all kinds of names. So they go to the hotels. “But Rabbi, I heard there’s a mitzvah to walk four amos in Eretz Yisroel.” Yes, just walking in Eretz Yisroel is already something; I’m not going there to live. The Alter Rebbe says in Kuntres Acharon—and we really need to check the wording—that, simply put, if the purpose of his trip is sightseeing, right? He wants to fulfill a mitzvah along the way. Fine, we’ll visit. What, you’re not going to the Kosel? You’re not going to the graves of tzaddikim? On page 134, in the laws of Chol Hamoed, going to the graves of tzaddikim is considered a mitzvah purpose. You’re in the Land, you go to King David’s grave, you go here, you go there, to... But the Alter Rebbe says not to confuse the issue. You have to look at the focus of the trip. Right? So everyone has to take stock of himself. Boruch Hashem, today the bochurim are very, very much chassidim, much more than in my day. I remember a lot of things. For example, I hear about many bochurim who haven’t even seen what Manhattan looks like. You go to the Rebbe, you go to the Rebbe. But some people go and also have other plans. So you always have to think about these things. Someone who is plainly going away for a summer vacation and chose to go to Eretz Yisroel—fine. The main purpose of the trip is to have a good time. Why Eretz Yisroel? Because there are readily available restaurants here, and it’s easy to find kosher things. That may be, but don’t casually label the trip a mitzvah. Okay. Now, about the sea voyages, let’s talk practically—what applies in practice today. First, there were the voyages at the time the state was established. The Land is not ours because of ’48.

1:21:03 Speaker 2 Our Land is Eretz Yisroel. It was promised to Avraham Avinu, and it has been ours ever since—certainly not since ’48. And because people say it is ours because of ’48, we have a great deal of criticism. Lately you really hear this: the Rebbe pushed it very strongly, and now it has become common language among people on the right. It wasn’t like that before; I remember. Now, at the UN and everywhere, they say, “It’s ours; Avraham Avinu—it’s ours,” not because of, and so on. Because if you base your claim on ’48, then why did you drive out the Arabs here? Right. But, in short, I’m speaking in practical terms. After ’48, many ships arrived in the 1950s, ’56, full of people from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and so on. They would often go to Marseille in France, and from Marseille travel to Eretz Yisroel. The Rebbe was the one who raised a great outcry about this. He told the leading rabbis of the generation and alerted them, and they all acknowledge it. Everyone knows; this isn’t—it’s a fact. Look at Chazon Ovadia, volume 1, in the laws of Shabbos, page 112. Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, zichuso yagen aleinu, and the other great rabbis all credit the Rebbe of Lubavitch with raising this issue. “After he brought it to our attention, we agreed with him”—that is what Rabbi Ovadia writes in Chazon Ovadia, and also in Yabia Omer and Yechaveh Daas. So the Rebbe took up the issue. Incidentally—well, it would be a waste to explain this to a fool. You need to know that the Rebbe knows the entire Torah, in depth and breadth. Yet many times the Rebbe would answer, “Ask a rabbi,” and direct people to rabbis, and so on. Because, in his role, the Rebbe did not want—first of all, people from all over the world turned to him for advice, and when great rabbis had doubts, they would write to the Rebbe. In the 1980s,

1:23:10 Speaker 2 there is a letter by Rabbi Moshe Feinstein in which he writes that, with the most difficult questions, he would also send them to the Rebbe of Lubavitch to learn his opinion on many matters, including halachic considerations. He would send them to the Rebbe. That is what he writes explicitly in the introduction. The Rebbe did not want to take on the role of the generation’s halachic authority. But whenever he saw that the leading rabbis of the Jewish people were, in his opinion, apparently mistaken, there was always a major response: “This is contrary to the Shulchan Aruch,” and they hadn’t understood it. Sometimes they said, “No, perhaps it’s this”—there is an explicit Gemara in Eruvin concerning Eretz Yisroel. Whatever the issue, when the Rebbe saw it—and this is one example. They had seen it in the responsa of [unclear], and Rabbi Moshe Feinstein said that if you leave on Sunday, the Rivash writes that it is permitted even if they desecrate Shabbos—and these were Jewish crew members. They were Israeli ships, going back and forth to save money. The Rebbe said: “Why don’t you board a non-Jewish ship? There’s also a non-Jewish ship going to Eretz Yisroel. That’s better.” It depends on whether most of the passengers are Jews or not; it depends on the circumstances. So the Rebbe pointed out something very simple. First, the Rebbe said, the Radbaz and the Rivash—and they certainly violate Torah prohibitions on Shabbos. The Rebbe’s letter is there. I told you to study it; study all the letters I brought you. The Rebbe lists all the prohibitions, both Torah and rabbinic, involved on every ship. And the Rebbe taught them, and they said so. Not only [unclear]—they all said, “The Rebbe taught us. We didn’t know. We received incorrect information from experts.” The Rebbe told them that the ships send messages constantly, all sorts of signals and codes, to say, “We’re here; we’re there,” so that one ship doesn’t collide with another, and for all sorts of other reasons. It goes on all the time.

1:25:10 Speaker 2 So, in short, first of all, they certainly desecrate Shabbos. That’s the first point. There’s no doubt about it. They also said that if a ship stops in the middle of the sea, it’s dangerous. Not true. Not true. The Rebbe demonstrated this, and today everyone agrees. But at the time, the information the Rebbe was given—you can see in the responsa of the leading rabbis of that time—they said it was very dangerous to stop. First of all, if you’re a Jew, you can arrange a day and a half in advance for the ship to stop at a port. And if it needs to stop in the middle of the sea, then stop in the middle: drop anchor and stop. Nothing will happen. In 99 percent of cases, there will be no danger to life. Why? Because you have the weather forecast; you know what conditions will be like in the area where you stop. And if the weather suddenly changes, then move—that’s a matter of saving lives. Here, Jews are certainly violating Shabbos, but for what? The Rebbe mentioned the disagreement involving the Radbaz and the others, but he said they are doing things that are not necessary to save lives. Why? Who told them they couldn’t stop? You can stop, and you’re not yet in the middle of the sea. You can stop and nothing will happen. So they send a thousand messages, do a thousand things, take a thousand actions—for nothing. Why are you loading something else onto the ship? Why are you lubricating the machinery? Why are you doing that? Stop. It isn’t a matter of saving lives. What danger would there have been in stopping on Friday afternoon, on the way, at a port in Greece or Italy? There’s no problem. And there’s no problem stopping in the middle of the sea either. Once the Rebbe raised these points, it was clear that Shabbos was being violated, and that not everyone had considered everything. Rabbi Moshe Feinstein had focused on the Rivash’s ruling, even where the crew members were Jews. But so what? And even if you want to say there would be a major financial loss—then many

1:27:23 Speaker 2 There were many arguments, and Rabbi Ovadia really enjoyed this: “You’re throwing fuel on a fire to put it out,” and all kinds of expressions that the Rebbe mentioned. Look afterward in Chazon Ovadia, page 112, and also at the letters I mentioned. But they hadn’t thought of this detail. There are many forms of labor that are definitely being done, and whoever told them no labor was being done was wrong. Okay, that’s about those ships. Now, regarding ships in general, let’s say the operators are non-Jews. Right? That’s different. The whole discussion we had about definite Shabbos violations wasn’t about non-Jews. But if the operators are non-Jews and you hire a non-Jewish ship, even if most of the passengers are Jews and you’re traveling for a mitzvah—yes. Or you... So some people said, “We’ll put one or two non-Jews on the ship so they can do those particular things.” The Rebbe said, “You don’t understand how a ship works. It takes dozens and dozens of people working.” So once it’s a Jewish ship, forget it. Now, suppose the whole crew is non-Jewish and the ship is sailing. Right? Let’s say you board on Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday. First of all, today, why get into all these complications? There are planes and so on. If your goal is to get somewhere, to move there or something like that, you have no grounds for a leniency. The Shibbolei Haleket says all those leniencies were because of the situation in the past. Today you can easily avoid getting into these complications. So the question doesn’t even begin. And another thing: someone says, “No, Rabbi, it’s a pleasure cruise. I’m not going to a destination. I don’t care about the destination; I’m going for the ship.” Fine. Sometimes they go to the Caribbean, stop here and there—it’s nice, a few pictures—but the whole pleasure is being on the ship. Ah, so if we’re talking about Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday, even if most of the passengers are Jews, but the entire crew is non-Jewish and you take a non-Jewish ship, then ostensibly it should be all right. But—

1:29:37 Speaker 2 The problem is that these ships... I even have recordings from fifteen or twenty years ago, when I was already starting to send out recordings explaining this, though I hadn’t fully verified it. I had a friend—well, a student—who used to go on ships, and he told me what went on, so I said it right away. Now I’ve heard Rabbi David Yosef say it in recordings. I looked into various things, and this has become very clear. You don’t know how ships work today. The whole place is full of Torah prohibitions and rabbinic prohibitions, even in things affecting every person who comes aboard. How do you think the water gets... You go to the bathroom, whether you’re on a lower deck or an upper one. Everything is electrical, everything works by pressure, everything is electrical. They do all kinds of things for the people aboard the ship—many prohibited acts done by non-Jews. Where have you seen a leniency for that? What, is it being done to save lives? And... Now, the one thing you might still be able to say—though even that doesn’t work—is, “I’m going on a non-Jewish ship.” First, even an individual non-Jew bringing you various things will sometimes do many prohibited acts for you. Then there’s what you yourself do. And particularly if it isn’t a ship for the chareidi community, besides the immodesty you’ll see there and besides the—well, you won’t be able to move around without opening an electric door. People think, “Oh, it’s...” And kosher food? You can be sure that will be something very poor indeed. So there are people today who run pleasure cruises. There are ships based in Miami that go to the Caribbean in the summer, and if they have a chareidi hechsher and so on... Still, someone who was there told me about various questionable leniencies concerning the hechsherim and so on. He saw them bringing things aboard in the middle of Shabbos when they dock. So what do they do? They dock on Shabbos, right? They bring in Avraham Fried and others. They come onto the ship like this—Avraham Fried arrives by helicopter, comes down, puts on an event for them, and goes back. Right, that isn’t on Shabbos, huh? I mean... But in general, they dock. What do they see? Sometimes they receive a lot of supplies. Now, what I’m saying is still hearsay, but sometimes supplies are brought to them on land where they’ve stopped—vegetables and other things. Sometimes they stop on Shabbos, and sometimes that happens on Shabbos. And regarding the hechsherim, there are various things I... There is reason for concern. But if you actually contact them and they say, “No, no, that isn’t true; everything is clear, everything is in order,” and they dock and spend Shabbos on land—right? Usually that’s what they do—then it would be all right. But with other places, it’s simply hard to imagine. And you don’t have to do it that way: if you want a taste of it, you can sail from Sunday and then pay for only part of the trip. You stop in that country, so you can save on the flight. Sometimes there are various ways to avoid traveling on Shabbos by ship.

1:31:33 Speaker 2 An observant Jew and so on, he was still there, and he told me all kinds of things about leniencies and kashrus certifications. He saw that they bring things in during Shabbos when they dock. So what do they do? They dock on Shabbos, right? They bring in Avraham Fried and others. They’re out there in the middle of the sea, Avraham Fried arrives by helicopter, comes down, puts on an event for them, and goes back. Right, that’s not on Shabbos, huh? I’m talking about—anyway, they dock. What do they see? Sometimes they receive a lot of supplies. Okay, for now what I’m saying is only hearsay, but sometimes they bring supplies to them on land where they’ve stopped—vegetables and other things. Sometimes they stop on Shabbos, and sometimes that happens on Shabbos. And with the kashrus certifications, I... there are things to be concerned about there. But if they actually call and are told, “No, no, that’s not true; everything is clear,” and they dock and stop on land for Shabbos—right? Usually that’s what they do—then it would be fine. But in other places, it’s simply impossible to imagine. And you don’t have to do that. If you want to get a bit of the experience, you can start on Sunday, and then you pay for only part of it. You stop in that country, so you can save on the flight. Sometimes there are all kinds of ways to avoid traveling on Shabbos that way.

1:33:04 Speaker 6 The Rebbe didn’t speak about that.

1:33:06 Speaker 2 Huh?

1:33:06 Speaker 6 The Rebbe didn’t speak about that case.

1:33:08 Speaker 2 No. Now, by the way, the case you saw about Tzidon, the circumstances in Tzidon and all that—can you learn from it to treat Shabbos so lightly? When could he manage to arrive before Shabbos? Only if the weather was good. Even if you don’t know, you hope the weather will be good. Don’t learn that from it; that would be a distorted reading. I’ve seen rabbis looking for leniencies: “What’s the problem? On Friday, take the car whenever you like.” That’s siman 249; we’ll learn about traveling on Friday, when you’re supposed to arrive before Shabbos. But many say, “There you go, it’s fine. And even if you don’t make it, at worst you’ll have to violate Shabbos, and at worst this or that—it’ll all be fine, right?” If the weather isn’t good. If you don’t study the Shibbolei Haleket and the Baal Hamaor, you won’t understand any of this. All this was about people who would go to the market before Shabbos—huh? I’ll remind you afterward. The Baal Hamaor on the sugya, in any case, on page 19—meaning, on page 19 of the Rif. Now, they say all this was because it was a necessity of the time. There was a market in a particular place, and people would go and return before Shabbos. It was part of life. You couldn’t bring in the goods you needed without it; you couldn’t live without it. So they took risks for the necessities of life. Today you don’t need to do that. You have plenty of flights, plenty of options. Why do you specifically need to buy there on Friday? And why take the ship? Take a plane; you’ll arrive in an hour, in fifteen minutes, okay? That’s the point. Now, one more thing. Sorry this class is long, but this way we’ll wrap up the whole subject. There’s the matter of operations. I want you to study the Rebbe’s sicha about operations on Friday. It’s in volume 17 of Likkutei Sichos, I think, but it’s also there in Shulchan Menachem. Go through it; when you’re finished, pass it to the next person if they don’t have Shulchan Menachem. But you have to study it inside. Various notes were included, some added by the Rebbe and some by others. The Rebbe raised this issue too. Particularly in the United States, there are very, very many Jews in every hospital department—so many. Especially where Jews live, Manhattan and so on—even if the hospital isn’t called Sinai, there are many, many Jewish staff members. All the more so in Eretz Yisroel. So the Rebbe mentioned that very often you call to schedule an operation. Now, there are many operations that... Today you have an operation, and medicine has become so skilled, with such a small incision, that whereas you once needed three days’ rest, now they send you straight home. You go in for a kidney stone, they treat you, and two hours later you’re home. Medicine has advanced. So you shouldn’t say “forbidden, forbidden, forbidden” about everything. Someone told me, “Rabbi, I’m in pain; I have a kidney stone.” Why would you leave it for weeks afterward? Anything involving danger to life, or even possible danger to life, is not delayed at all; you do it as soon as possible. If the operation is urgent, you take the first available slot. That’s clear. But sometimes there’s a serious issue in the body, yet the operation isn’t urgent. They tell you, “You can have it done within two months; that’s fine.” Then you choose the time. That’s what the Rebbe was talking about, and it needs to be checked. A few times, rabbis from the institute asked me, “Rabbi, is that right?” I explained it to them. I said, “Why did you do—

1:35:07 Speaker 2 The Rebbe’s sicha about operations on the eve of Shabbos—I think it’s in volume 17 of Likkutei Sichos, but it’s also there in Shulchan Menachem. Pass it around; when each of you finishes, pass it to the next person if you don’t have Shulchan Menachem. But you have to study it inside. They included various notes, some added by the Rebbe and some by others. So the Rebbe also raised this issue. Especially in the United States, there are many, many Jews in all the hospital departments. Especially where Jews live—Manhattan and so on—even if the hospital isn’t called Sinai, there are many, many Jews on staff. All the more so in Eretz Yisroel. So the Rebbe mentioned that often you call to schedule an operation. Now, there are many operations where—sometimes it’s something that, today, because procedures have become so advanced and the incision is small, where you once needed three days of rest, now they send you right home. You go in with a kidney stone; just like that, they treat you, and two hours later you’re home. Medicine has advanced, so we shouldn’t say “forbidden, forbidden, forbidden” about everything. Someone told me, “Rabbi, I’m in pain; I have a kidney stone.” Why leave that for weeks later? Anything involving danger to life, or even possible danger to life, must not be delayed at all—do it as soon as possible. If the operation is urgent, you take the first available slot. That’s clear. But sometimes there’s an important issue in the body, yet the operation isn’t urgent. The doctor might tell you, “You can do it within two months; that’s fine.” So now you’re choosing the time. That’s what the Rebbe was discussing, and it also needs to be checked. A few times, rabbis from the institute asked me, “Rabbi, is this correct?” I explained it to them. I said, “Why did you do the”

1:36:55 Speaker 2 that?” “No, the Rebbe says not to have an operation on Thursday.” This is an operation for someone with an ingrown toenail. You wouldn’t do it on Friday morning? What’s the matter with you? On the contrary, poor fellow—he’ll suffer all Shabbos.

1:37:09 Speaker 7 Because he isn’t having the operation, he’ll miss out on a positive mitzvah.

1:37:11 Speaker 2 Exactly. So sometimes you need to use a little common sense. And what was said back then doesn’t necessarily apply today, because surgeries are easier now. But in this case—and you’re asking about convalescence, which is called...

1:37:26 Speaker 7 Recovery.

1:37:26 Speaker 2 Recovery. You see that recovery takes a few days, that you don’t feel well and won’t feel well on Shabbos—then it becomes a question. Some people saw this and immediately wrote to the Rebbe: “What do you mean? Didn’t the Rebbe think of that? It’s a mitzvah. Isn’t getting well a mitzvah?” Of course getting well is a mitzvah. What does that have to do with it? What does that have to do with it? He has to stop. You have to tell him not to do it. What, are you ruling like the Magen Avraham? You have to tell him to stop the ship, not to do it. Yes. And if he doesn’t listen, then you sail, unless that would mean missing the mitzvah. Yes. Or you can’t find a ship after Shabbos. Didn’t the Rebbe think of that? Of course he did. It doesn’t help here at all. What does it mean that it’s a mitzvah? The mitzvah won’t be lost. The doctor told you that if you have the surgery within two or three months, everything will be fine. And there are all kinds of surgeries for people who had, I don’t know, something happen to them, and they need to put, I don’t know, pins or things into their leg, or things like that. Nothing has happened. There’s no danger to life here. If you don’t have it done, you don’t have it done—but you want to walk better, so you’ll need surgery. When is it better for your mobility to have it done? Earlier. If you don’t, nothing happens. So what—does that make it a mitzvah need? What’s the connection? Even if it is a mitzvah need, you have to tell him not to do it on Shabbos. And if he tells you, “No, I’m going to do it anyway,” then, in these matters, if it will affect your enjoyment of Shabbos, and you can do something else, do something else. That’s what the Rebbe says. Why?

1:39:14 Speaker 2 Why get into that? Wait another two weeks. You’ll be well on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday; do it then. Okay, that’s one point the Rebbe raised. Besides that, we said this also applies to a mitzvah matter. Even if it could later lead to a danger to life, if it’s a mitzvah matter and it will certainly lead to Shabbos violations, it’s forbidden according to the Rema, and so on. That’s the situation when you have certain kinds of surgery. There are many things that may even involve a Torah prohibition: someone draws your blood to check how much iron remains in your body after surgery. If you might need a transfusion or something, isn’t that a Torah prohibition? You’re drawing blood to test it. Yes, so there are plenty of things that could involve a Torah prohibition. Often the staff are Jewish, sometimes they’re non-Jewish, and sometimes... But wait, this isn’t even a danger to life. Sometimes these are just routine tests. Another thing: when it says you may set out to do this if the opportunity comes up, as stated in Shulchan Aruch, section 248—and also with a bris milah, when someone can only have a bris on Thursday after it has already been postponed—the Rebbe says these are things that sometimes come up within those three days. Sometimes, as we said, it’s permitted for a mitzvah. But what does that mean? The straightforward meaning is that your opportunity comes up: this ship leaves only on Thursday or Friday, or the situation has just arisen. But here you’re calling to arrange something for two or three months from now. You’re calling about the future. Who says that all those cases treated as a mitzvah need would be all right here? And certainly, there are often Jews in the departments, especially in Eretz Yisroel, but there are plenty of Jews in the United States too. And even if the staff are non-Jewish, there are many things they’ll do that involve rabbinically prohibited work and aren’t needed to prevent a danger to life or save a life.

1:41:18 Speaker 2 It may just be to file a report, to... And ninety-nine percent of these people feel fine. Because there’s some one or two percent for whom something might happen, they sometimes do additional things just to be sure, or something like that. Besides this, the Rebbe brings another argument. He says: Even if you want to debate the finer points with me—have you seen anything like that?—and say, “Perhaps I have arguments from the case of sailing that it’s permitted here, here, and here,” the Rebbe says no. He says something simple. It says in Tractate Shabbos, page 32, that when a person is in a situation involving surgery and the like, a person is always at risk; throughout life, a person is considered to be in a state of danger. Whenever a person is at risk, there are accusations Above: Why should we help him? Why should we save him? So there are many more accusations when a person is ill than when he’s healthy. Therefore, don’t play games with leniencies here. We’re talking about health, not a boat trip. We’re talking about a situation where you don’t need additional accusations against you. So even if you want to put together a whole theory combining leniencies, these aren’t simple matters. And the same goes for inducing labor. Here too, of course, a wise person looks ahead a little, and the rabbi needs to use his judgment. For example, if they tell you, “Well, we see that the amount of amniotic fluid is such-and-such, but there’s no danger. Still, it would be better to come in for an induction within a week, a week and a half, or two weeks.” They’re giving you an opening. So obviously, don’t choose a time when it might lead to a birth on Friday and then all sorts of things will happen afterward. But that doesn’t mean taking any risk when the induction is urgent, yes? Or when they’re very concerned because the baby already looks very, very big and they think it’s dangerous, since the woman has reached week forty-one, or

1:43:23 Speaker 2 sometimes even past forty-one weeks. And sometimes it’s only forty weeks but the baby is very big, and that can be dangerous. So sometimes that’s why they’ll tell you, “Well, we need to induce labor. The first opening we have is Thursday, and it’s fairly urgent.” Then, “All right, we can take you tomorrow.” “Are there other openings? Next week?” “Yes, there’s an opening on Monday”—but in that situation, you don’t take any risks with these things. There really are people who, because of their physical circumstances and medical history, know they need a C-section. Some people know in advance that it can be scheduled. So sometimes you know ahead of time. They wait until a certain stage to do the C-section, before the baby gets very big, and sometimes there are various complications—the cervix opens early, and so on. So the doctor says, “All right, I’ll give you a choice of dates...” Sometimes a person doesn’t know these halachos. They tell you, “You can have July eighteenth, or the twenty-third, or the twentieth,” and you don’t even think about it. Sometimes the choice is between Tuesday and Wednesday, so take Tuesday, because obviously a woman doesn’t feel well for several days after giving birth. If you can do it earlier, do it earlier. But of course, G-d forbid, there are some people who are so afraid of Shabbos being violated that they say, “Rabbi, I don’t want it to happen on Shabbos. If I can, my doctor is willing to induce me before then.” What? Wait for it to happen naturally. That’s not a doctor’s recommendation or anything of the sort. Now, the very last thing: there’s the Chasam Sofer that I told

1:45:24 Speaker 2 you to study. That is, page 7. At least take a look at it during the day, and summarize it too. Whoever is ready by this afternoon, I’ll give him sources for [unclear]. But if you still want to fill in gaps and summarize, this is your chance to learn it properly at least once in your life. You may want to learn it a thousand more times, and that’s excellent, but at least while you’re studying it in depth, now is the time. I promise you, many people who study this don’t understand anything, even if, like you, they’ve looked at a few sources and studied it thoroughly inside, including the Beis Yosef. So many people study only the Alter Rebbe’s text on a surface level. It’s very confusing, with so many details, unless you study it properly. Now, regarding a train: there were trains in those days. A student of the Chasam Sofer asks: Now there’s something new, a railway, and sometimes traveling from place to place takes days. A train traveled at eighty kilometers an hour or less. It wasn’t like today. Today, even a train that takes eight hours to get to southern France, so that you sleep on it overnight, still travels at a hundred or a hundred and twenty. Back then it was slower, and you could travel for days and days. So he wrote that this case is much more severe. All the leniencies we mentioned regarding the Shabbos boundary applied when you were above what? Above the sea, where you were over water to begin with. But now you’re above dry land, yes? And it’s a wide place. When you’re in a wide place, you’re in contact with it even if you’re more than ten tefachim above it. Huh?

1:46:57 Speaker 8 A moving tent.

1:46:58 Speaker 2 Huh?

1:46:59 Speaker 8 There’s a moving tent.

1:47:00 Speaker 2 No, but the question of a “moving tent” also comes up with ritual impurity and all that. In this case, though, the reasoning about a moving tent doesn’t apply. The question here is still whether it constitutes a barrier to impurity or not. So he says that once you’re traveling on wheels and it’s wide, this isn’t the case we were discussing. The debate about traveling more than ten tefachim above the ground is when you’re moving on supports that aren’t wide, right? That’s what the whole discussion there is about. So this isn’t that situation. Now, you might say, “Yes, but I learned that you can travel if you set out three days before Shabbos, or if you’re traveling for a mitzvah.” So what? That has nothing to do with techum. Where did you see that? With techum, the problem is going beyond the Shabbos boundary. At sea, too, that should be a problem—even above ten tefachim. But when you’re traveling for a mitzvah or set out three days beforehand, it can be permitted, taking all the considerations into account, because it wasn’t a Torah-level techum to begin with. Now, you might also say, “But according to the Alter Rebbe, there’s no Torah-level techum at all.” First of all, this is a place where a Torah-level techum can apply, since the train sometimes passes through mountains and other places. Second, it’s like being below ten tefachim. So here you really get into serious questions. Besides that, there’s also the... the feeling of it. When you travel by ship, people would sometimes put a mattress on the floor, or clothes and other things, and you could rest. You had your own corner and sometimes your own room, right? Even on ships in the old days. But on a train you’re packed in like sardines, especially... Now, obviously, the trains of the Chasam Sofer’s day weren’t TGV first class or anything like that. Obviously there are differences, but I’m talking about the principle. And there

1:48:55 Speaker 2 he drops a very famous bombshell in the name of the Chasam Sofer. There’s the well-known Ramban: say a person does no melachah on Shabbos, but spends the whole day doing all sorts of things—straightening up the house, arranging things. Sometimes even arranging things can involve rabbinic prohibitions, or preparing for later, and so on. But I’m talking about Torah law: you haven’t done anything prohibited. You moved things around, moved furniture, moved this and that, all day long. He says that it’s written, “so that you may rest.” If you don’t rest on Shabbos, then even if it isn’t melachah, you’ve undermined Shabbos by exerting yourself, and you can come under a Torah prohibition. That’s the well-known Ramban. But the Chasam Sofer goes further. He says that whenever the atmosphere of Shabbos changes, and you’re doing things that really aren’t Shabbos-like, in uncomfortable circumstances and so on, that too can put you in violation of a Torah prohibition. That’s... well, what he means is a little more involved. Look at his exact wording and precisely how he defines it; the class is simply too long to go into it. But, in short, he forbids doing this. There’s also the question of airplanes. Say a person boards a plane that will be flying throughout Shabbos. It’s not... Sometimes you might be traveling somewhere where suddenly the day... Actually, you leave before Shabbos. A plane today can stay in the air for around sixteen or seventeen hours, right? I once flew to Los Angeles on El Al, and it... But you can imagine a trip where Shabbos begins while you’re on board, it’s Shabbos during the flight, and you land on Motzaei Shabbos because of the time-zone changes, right? Such a thing is possible. It’s very rare, but someone might say,

1:50:54 Speaker 2 “Danny, I want to go. There’s a funeral on Sunday that’s very important to me. If I don’t fly, this is the only plane...” Say I live in the United States and I’m going to France. Most of the passengers are non-Jews, and the pilot is a non-Jew. I board without carrying anything except my passport. I want to travel, land at the airport, and stay in the terminal until Motzaei Shabbos. At least that way I can make it to the funeral there. Could that be... So let’s put it this way: if it isn’t for a mitzvah, then, yes, most of the passengers are non-Jews, according to the reasoning we discussed. But even if it is for a mitzvah, there’s the question of techum. You’re up above, and you’re not only over the sea; often, during a flight, you’re over land. Some parts are over the sea and some are over land, okay? By the way, when you land, in ninety-nine percent of cases you travel more than two thousand amos. You know those six or seven minutes when the ship—the plane—is about to land, right? Except at a very small airport where you just taxi over to the parking spot. At most airports you travel two or three kilometers without noticing. The plane is moving at sixty kilometers an hour on the ground. You don’t feel it, but it easily covers that distance. So, first of all, sometimes Shabbos begins while you’re over land, and that’s already more serious. All the leniencies we discussed about being above ten tefachim were over the sea. Here you could be passing over Dijon, over a city, over somewhere else. So that’s more serious, and it’s as though you establish your Shabbos place there, even though you’re up in the air. So,

1:52:59 Speaker 2 first of all, when you leave the techum, the leniencies we found concerned travel over the sea, not over land. Now, if Shabbos begins while you happen to be over the sea, then at bein hashmashos you’re supposedly in that location and so on. But many halachic authorities still say that perhaps it counts as leaving the techum even over the sea, right? Or perhaps it would count... So perhaps you established your Shabbos place somewhere up above. But I’m still saying it’s permitted if it isn’t for a mitzvah. When it isn’t for a mitzvah, many also raise the point that most flights are uncomfortable. People really suffer on planes, right? We may be used to flying, but even four or five hours can sometimes be hard. You want to fall asleep and can’t. You put your head this way, then that way, and so on. So besides suffering in the middle of Shabbos for something that isn’t a mitzvah, you have the issues of techum and other things during Shabbos. It’s certainly forbidden. Now, even if you say it’s for a mitzvah, the halachic authorities—Sephardic, Ashkenazic, Litvish, more or less all of them—were stringent. One reason is that often it isn’t so urgent. And what counts as a mitzvah? Is there a mitzvah to go to a funeral in another country? These aren’t simple questions. How often do you hear that even sons don’t make it because it’s too far away, or they missed it and will come afterward? So first you have to determine whether it’s a mitzvah. And for the vast majority—ninety-nine percent—of flights, these are trips that, according to the Alter Rebbe’s Shulchan Aruch, aren’t permitted at all. You don’t need to get into it; he wouldn’t agree to your spending Shabbos that way. You have many, many alternatives, and you don’t have to get to every funeral or every event at any cost.

1:54:54 Speaker 2 So, in principle, for several reasons—look, perhaps, in Piskei Teshuvos and various other books that discuss it—they did not leave this opening. The great Torah authorities did not leave any opening. You’ll find arguments on both sides, but no opening to board such a flight. Sephardim, Ashkenazim, Litvish Jews, chassidim: absolutely not. Apart from that, there really are cases where, unfortunately, someone can end up arriving in the middle of Shabbos because the flight was delayed. They stop somewhere along the way and don’t let anyone out, just to check something. Sometimes the plane lands en route because of a problem, but they don’t open the doors. They bring someone to check something—perhaps to inspect a wheel because it looked in a picture as though it might have been slightly damaged. A crew comes out; you’ve landed in Albania, Macedonia, I don’t know where. They make the repair and you continue. You had expected to arrive two hours before Shabbos, but because of the problem they stopped, repaired it, got clearance, took off, and now you land on Shabbos. If you boarded the flight in a permitted way—I don’t want to get into all the laws in chapters 404 and 405 now. Anyone who wants to can spend five or six minutes going through those sections, because this is already too long—but let’s say you traveled in a permitted way. Then, at most, even if you went beyond the techum and were over land and so on, you may leave the plane but must remain in the terminal, right? Since the landing itself took some time, and if it’s a large place you can move around within it. If they let you off onto the ground, they permit you to go to the bathroom or get out of the cold and so on. But once you’ve reached a place sheltered from the rain and everything else, you can’t leave the terminal. That’s one case. If you boarded without permission under halachah, right, and did not establish your Shabbos place in a permitted way, then according to halachah you can’t even leave the confines of the plane.

1:56:58 Speaker 2 of the plane. So the halachic authorities say to stay on the plane. Ah, that doesn’t work today. Maybe forty years ago, but today, if you don’t move within five minutes, a whole bunch of security officers will come and take you off, and you’ll be fined too. You can’t just say, “Shabbos or no Shabbos, I’m staying. I’ll stay another hour, until Shabbos. I don’t want to get off.”

1:57:20 Speaker 9 With a fine and a rabbinic prohibition, that doesn’t apply.

1:57:22 Speaker 2 Huh?

1:57:22 Speaker 9 With a fine and a rabbinic prohibition, maybe it does. They’ll carry you out now, but you won’t do anything yourself.

1:57:28 Speaker 2 No, but in any case it’s against the law, and it’s a criminal offense, so it says, and—

1:57:32 Speaker 9 I can—

1:57:33 Speaker 2 Let me answer you. It also says that if there’s a great need or pressing circumstances, you can go to a sheltered place—like going to the restroom, it says. So, okay, we’ll stop here.

1:57:44 Speaker 9 To the terminal.

1:57:47 Speaker 2 Here you don’t have a choice, either. It’s also against the law to stay; they’ll come and take you away.