The Laws of Erev Shabbos - Rabbi Michael Shlomo Avishid shlita

00:02 Speaker 1 You’re listening to “Lema’an Yishme’u,” a podcast of Machon Halacha Chabad.

00:09 Speaker 2 All right, we’ll have a class on siman 249. There are a lot of topics. First, at the beginning of the siman, it discusses not traveling three parsaos on Erev Shabbos. The person is going either to his own home or to someone else’s, but the people there don’t know he’s coming. In the past, food wasn’t as plentiful as it is today. So a guest arriving unexpectedly, or even a homeowner coming home without letting anyone know, could create a problem: there might not be enough food. There was poverty; there wasn’t the abundance we have today. Even getting the ingredients wasn’t simple. So the Sages told us not to travel three parsaos. Each parsa is four mil, so three parsaos are twelve mil. A mil is a walking distance of 960 meters, so let’s round it to twelve kilometers—the time it takes to walk twelve kilometers. The law, then, was that you couldn’t travel beyond that. The Alter Rebbe emphasizes that the time is counted from the beginning of the day. For example, from sunrise, travel that takes the time it would take to walk three parsaos—twelve mil—is fine. Beyond that, it becomes a problem; you can’t travel that far. Why? They may not have been told you’re coming, and there may not be enough food or enough time to prepare for Shabbos. So there was an enactment. But, thank G-d, as you see, the Magen Avraham mentions, and the poskim accepted in the name of the Agudah, that nowadays you can also let people know. Today, even on a plane, you can send an SMS or a WhatsApp message, and you can certainly do so before boarding. And there’s plenty of food. There’s simply enough that an extra guest won’t cause any harm.

02:56 Speaker 2 So in practice, that restriction has fallen away. Now, you could devote a whole class—even an hour and a half—to the length of a mil according to all the different views, because it affects many things. For example, we learned in the laws of salting meat, in siman 69, section 6, that if you need to salt meat on Erev Shabbos and there isn’t time to leave it with the salt for an hour, the time it takes to walk a mil is enough. So for many things, you need to know how long a mil is. Then there’s three-quarters of a mil in connection with bein hashmashos. And there’s the question of matzos, right? Not leaving the dough for the length of a mil, when it could become chametz. It comes up in so many places, and often in calculating times—what sunrise is, what dawn is, and so on. You often need to understand the measure of a mil. We won’t make a whole class out of it, because it would take a very long time to go through the proofs for every view. I’ll just mention it briefly, since it comes up here and we see the Alter Rebbe’s view. Notice the other context in which the Alter Rebbe discusses it, besides the three parsaos. Why does he give the time measure? Because he asks: What if a person isn’t traveling on foot? In the past he traveled by horse and wagon; today he travels by car. If people aren’t preparing plenty of food, and he’s going somewhere without knowing whether there will be shops or things to buy, would we still limit him to twelve kilometers? That would be a joke—it’s a ten-minute drive. So he says that the time remains the same: the amount of time it would take to walk twelve mil is the time allowed for travel by vehicle. According to the calculation the Alter Rebbe gives there,

05:12 Speaker 2 in parentheses, that comes to four hours and forty-eight minutes, which makes each mil twenty-four minutes. So apparently we see his view here: twenty-four minutes. By contrast, according to the views that use eighteen minutes—if you remember, in the laws of salting meat, the Shach says that a mil is eighteen minutes—the Alter Rebbe’s view here is that a mil is twenty-four minutes. If it were eighteen minutes, the total would be three hours and thirty-six minutes. Now, as an aside, and this is very important in practice, the Bach says that if you switch from walking to another form of travel—a wagon, or today a car; there were no cars in the Bach’s time, of course, but we’re putting it in today’s terms—some poskim even argued that the time limit no longer applies. Why? Because when you walk, you might get tired. It’s hours of walking. A person might be in pain, or take a bad step and get injured. Often you think you can walk for hours, and then at some point you find you need to stop. That’s not the case in a wagon, and all the more so in a car. So perhaps the whole restriction no longer applies, as long as you arrive before Shabbos. Now, we see that the Alter Rebbe does maintain a time limit for travel by vehicle—not twelve kilometers, but four hours and forty-eight minutes. Incidentally, if you notice, the Alter Rebbe doesn’t write about another point here. There are two new questions when you travel by horse and wagon. First, does the four-hour-and-forty-eight-minute limit still apply? The Alter Rebbe says yes. But second, must those hours specifically be counted from the beginning of the day? Because

07:20 Speaker 2 what is the plain meaning when someone travels on foot? The Alter Rebbe wrote that the time is counted from the beginning of the day. What does that mean? If a person gets up late, he has less time; he doesn’t get the full time for three parsaos. But would the same apply to travel by car? The Alter Rebbe doesn’t say so here, though he could have, and that’s important to emphasize. Some poskim argued that even the four-hour-and-forty-eight-minute limit doesn’t apply. Others would say there is a limit, but, as the Bach says, it isn’t necessarily tied to the beginning of the day. The main thing is to arrive with enough time before Shabbos; you don’t necessarily have to arrive in the first third of the day. So I asked you what you think about this. It seems to me that here we can be lenient. There are many reasons to say so. In other words, if you know you’ll still arrive with plenty of time—say, three hours before Shabbos—what’s the problem? Your trip or flight doesn’t necessarily have to leave at sunrise. If you’re traveling to Eilat, say, and you know it will take four hours and forty-eight minutes, why must you leave at six in the morning? Perhaps you could leave at eight or nine. The main thing is that you arrive. First, several later authorities say this: even if there is a limit, travel by vehicle presents far fewer problems. Now I want to bring up another interesting halacha that you should note, so you understand what it concerns. Many people ask, “Rabbi, may I travel on Erev Shabbos? Maybe it’s forbidden? Maybe I shouldn’t take a flight? I want to go to Nice and take the TGV, the high-speed train. Is that allowed or not?”

09:25 Speaker 2 These are the questions. I’m going to Geneva, I’m going here or there. From siman 248, concerning travel from Tyre to Sidon—as we said, that’s part of ordinary life. And as the Shibbolei Haleket and the Maor say—by the way, you asked where the Maor says it: the Shibbolei Haleket reads it in our edition of the Maor. I showed it to Rabbi Levit yesterday. In short, that discussion concerns particular needs. But can you make a trip? Siman 248 says yes, and siman 249 says yes, if you know people will be ready to receive you and there’s enough food, or there’s somewhere to buy food. Say you arrive in Kfar Chabad: you know that even if you go to someone’s home, there’s plenty of food. And even if you’ve rented an apartment, you know that Kol Tuv is open until a certain hour and you can buy food. So there should be no problem traveling on Erev Shabbos. Still, you can see in the Bach, the Perishah, and the Chayei Adam that they say—and the Mishnah Berurah also mentions this—be careful not to travel in circumstances where you might end up desecrating Shabbos. Arrive well before Shabbos. Some people were stringent about this for themselves. There were great chassidim or tzaddikim—there are various stories, for example, that the Chazon Ish wouldn’t leave home to go anywhere after midday. There are various stringencies, but halachically it’s permitted. Just be careful. Along these lines, later authorities, following the Perishah, the Bach, and the Chayei Adam, offered several suggestions. Some say you should always arrive an hour before Shabbos. Don’t set out—I’m not talking about arriving from one place to another at the very last minute, when the siren is already sounding. Fine, you’re in the area, but you say, “I’m going to Bnei Brak,” or “I’m going to Hadera.” Be careful to arrive an hour before Shabbos. Many poskim said that this is

11:41 Speaker 2 Worth it. One more thing, an additional stringency: Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu wrote this several times. He says that besides arriving an hour before Shabbos, you should always allow for the possibility that your trip will take twice as long. Sometimes there are traffic jams at the very last minute. One accident on Highway 6 or somewhere, and suddenly you’re stuck. Sometimes it takes a while for an accident to be cleared. Again, what I want to emphasize is that this is still not a halachah given to Moshe at Sinai. Obviously, as the Perishah says, you have to be careful and make a reasonable estimate so that you won’t arrive late and violate Shabbos. That’s clear. Don’t set out at the last minute and hope everything will be fine. Don’t board a flight scheduled to arrive at Ben Gurion an hour before Shabbos. You know there can be delays, and an hour is nothing. So that’s clearly halachah; what they wrote is straightforward. But if you’re going now from Bnei Brak to Jerusalem and expect to arrive an hour before Shabbos—you see people arriving at the very last minute, after the phone has already rung and everything, and you’re thinking the guests aren’t going to make it, right?—you can’t say it’s a halachah given to Moshe at Sinai. But a G-d-fearing person who wants to keep Shabbos and avoid any problem—the Or LeTzion also writes about this at length—makes sure to arrive an hour early and allows for the flight to take longer. So if you think getting to Jerusalem takes forty minutes, allow an hour and a half. Double it, so to speak. It helps a great deal. Now, regarding a plane: yes, it’s possible. Say you’re in Paris and want to get to Israel. There’s a flight at nine and you arrive at two. Shabbos begins at seven, so you have room to maneuver. Now, I can understand people who would say—let’s

13:45 Speaker 2 call them people of action—“No, no, no, I don’t want to travel on Friday. I don’t want to take the risk. Sometimes there are problems; suddenly the plane has to stop midway because of an engine problem, and it lands in some country along the way, and things happen...” Everyone hears a story like that at least once a year. You remember, maybe a year ago they landed in Greece and weren’t allowed off the plane, and all sorts of things. You hear about it all the time, but it’s rare. So yes, if people of action choose not to travel on Friday, excellent. But not everyone can do that. If you can avoid it, why choose to travel then? But sometimes it’s not that you have another option; doing something else is simply difficult. You’re going to Paris, you have several shlichus commitments, you have a farbrengen on Wednesday, and on Thursday you have to give a class somewhere or officiate at someone’s wedding. There’s no flight at midnight on Thursday, and you don’t want to leave your community or your family for Shabbos, so you fly. “I’ll take the nine o’clock flight on Friday morning.” Now be smart. If you see a delay of several hours, cancel. Tell them, “I can’t travel. I can’t take the risk. I’m not boarding.” That’s what you need to do. If you see it’s only an hour, a slight delay, fine. But if the hours are passing and there’s a repair underway, something with the engine, and they’re trying to fix it—meanwhile the flight is delayed, with no clear information about what’s happening—then in most cases, that’s where you stop. Don’t even check your suitcases. You know that if you don’t board the flight,

15:31 Speaker 2 they have to bring your suitcase back; they aren’t allowed to send it. If a person doesn’t board and they know he hasn’t boarded, they have to take the suitcase off. Good. Now let’s return to the matter of the mil. As I said, I won’t make a long class out of it, just a few points. The discussion in Pesachim 94 says that a person can travel ten parsaos in a day. So does that mean—from dawn until nightfall, which would seem to be the plain meaning? If you divide that span into parsaos and time periods, many arrive at a calculation of eighteen minutes per mil, because it’s forty mil: ten parsaos are forty mil. There’s a way of saying that a person walks—there’s a calculation here that sometimes gives fewer parsaos between sunrise and sunset. There are four mil from dawn to sunrise and four mil from sunset, and you can walk four mil in each of those periods. Four mil is a parsah, so that’s a parsah at each end. That means that from sunrise to sunset you walk eight parsaos. There’s an approach that works all this out through calculations. I said you could make a whole class out of this. There’s an approach that says you can actually walk five mil between dawn and sunrise, and five mil from sunset until nightfall. How far do you walk in between? If it’s five and five, you walk thirty mil. Right. So, in short, it also depends on where you start counting from. Ultimately, there’s a well-known disagreement between the Terumas HaDeshen and the Rambam. The Terumas HaDeshen says a mil is eighteen minutes, while the Rambam, in his Commentary on the Mishnah in Pesachim, says it is twenty

17:58 Speaker 2 -four minutes. Now, if we have time, perhaps we’ll do a class just on this sometime and look at all the approaches to learning the Gemara and so on. But I have a lot to cover—sixteen topics to discuss in this siman—so I don’t want to dwell on it. Just briefly: when the Alter Rebbe discusses the length of a mil, here’s one example. In siman 249, he says it’s twenty-four minutes. That’s why he says twelve mil take four hours and forty-eight minutes. In siman 89, in the laws of prayer and the time for prayer, he doesn’t specify how long a mil is, but he says there are four mil from dawn to sunrise. That’s what he writes. Remember that, because Rabbi Chaim Naeh examined all the places in the Alter Rebbe’s writings, especially in light of the Siddur, and to reconcile them he concludes that there are five mil, each twenty-four minutes long. According to his approach, that comes to 120 minutes before sunrise. Right? That raises questions about fasts, which begin at dawn, and about calculating dawn itself, for many laws. So here, in siman 89, he says it’s four mil. In siman 249, he says a mil is twenty-four minutes. In siman 184, which deals with how long you have to recite Birchas Hamazon or an after-blessing, he goes into various opinions. The conclusion there, for example, is that if you ate a lot, the time can be even longer than an hour and twelve minutes. But it also emerges there from the Alter Rebbe’s words, when he discusses the length of a mil, that sometimes you say, “Well, I don’t know whether I’m full

20:03 Speaker 2 or not,” and so on—or, according to the other approaches, it’s a disagreement between the Taz and the Magen Avraham. As he explains the length of a mil, he says that four mil of eighteen minutes each make seventy-two minutes, and on that basis he establishes that you can still recite an after-blessing then, or recite Birchas Hamazon. All right, I haven’t gone into it; as I said, there are specific laws here. If you ate enough to be fully satisfied, the time is much longer. But ultimately, it emerges from siman 184 that he holds a mil is eighteen minutes—the opposite of what he wrote in siman 249. Now, siman 459 deals with the laws of Pesach: how long must you be careful not to leave the matzah dough without working it? The length of a mil. There the Alter Rebbe cites both opinions: the Rambam’s in his Commentary on the Mishnah in Pesachim, and the Terumas HaDeshen’s. He says the primary opinion is twenty-four minutes, but because of the stringency regarding chametz, we follow the stricter view of the Terumas HaDeshen. So again, in siman 459 we see that the primary opinion is twenty-four minutes. That matches siman 249 but not siman 184. Where it gets more complicated is in the Siddur. When he discusses the onset of Shabbos and the related laws, he rejects Rabbeinu Tam’s approach, saying it contradicts what we can observe. Right, you know the whole discussion. So, with all the detailed analysis there, some wanted to say: look, when the Alter Rebbe argues against Rabbeinu Tam, it emerges that a mil is eighteen minutes. And they offer another proof: in that discussion, he wanted to say that in Russia, during the period from 18 Iyar, Lag BaOmer, until some later point in Tammuz or Menachem Av, it turns out that dawn should

22:15 Speaker 2 To come out at almost midnight. In other words, if you’re fasting on 17 Tammuz—he gives another example there—if you’re fasting on 17 Tammuz, the hours there work differently from what we’re used to today. For us, dawn would never be at one in the morning or around midnight. But he says that in our countries, at that time of year, according to the calculations, you have to be careful not to eat from midnight onward. Now, there’s also the Rebbe’s well-known scholarly letter in Igros Kodesh about Igeres Hateshuvah, chapter 3, concerning people who would not eat for three hours before sunrise. Yes, they would start very, very early. So what emerges there? The Rebbe has a letter explaining the Yerushalmi, the Bavli, all the issues. What emerges there is that the time is the crowing of the rooster, which is a different measure. And, by the way, that isn’t for practical application; it concerns fasts undertaken for teshuvah. For the fasts we observe, the time is dawn, but there’s room for discussion based on that source too. I’m just giving you a taste of the various sources people discuss. Now, many argued that according to the Alter Rebbe’s calculations for Russia at that time of year, you also have to say that a mil is eighteen minutes. They make a detailed calculation and so on. Many have written about it—Rabbi Gelshtein, Rabbi Levin. Many have written about these matters. So there are many opinions on this. In Chabad, there’s an opinion that a mil is eighteen minutes, as Rabbi Levin holds. There’s an approach like Rabbi Chaim Naeh’s that it is twenty-four minutes. And twenty-four minutes means that from dawn until sunrise there are five mil, meaning 120 minutes, and sometimes it can be longer in the summer, and so on. We’re talking about

24:23 Speaker 2 hours that are more or less seasonal here. And there’s an approach in Chabad—Rabbi Elshvili[?] and Rabbi Ashkenazi, among others—held that the Alter Rebbe says explicitly that this cannot be. You arrive at the conclusion that it’s five mil from various accounts. Rabbi Chaim Naeh resolves this very well and says that the Alter Rebbe stated explicitly, on one of the occasions I mentioned to you, in section 249 and a few other places, that it is four mil. And those are four mil of twenty-four minutes each, which comes to ninety-six minutes. Yes. So, in short, all the proofs brought for eighteen minutes—I can’t explain my position on them now because I don’t want to take up time. But where he argues against Rabbeinu Tam, according to Rabbeinu Tam’s own calculations it’s clear that he holds a mil is eighteen minutes. So since that is what he holds, it follows. By the way, there’s also a discussion in the Shulchan Aruch about bein hashmashos, where too you can sometimes see eighteen minutes in the Alter Rebbe’s words. But let’s put it briefly: when he argues against Rabbeinu Tam and works within Rabbeinu Tam’s approach, he uses eighteen minutes. That’s clear. But that’s because he’s working with Rabbeinu Tam’s approach and refuting it on its own terms. He says, “What you’re saying runs counter to what we can observe, even by your own calculation.” But it’s clear that the Alter Rebbe always held that a mil is twenty-four minutes and that there are only four mil between dawn and sunrise. That’s always his position. What do you do with section 184? What’s the question? In section 184, the issue is that when there’s doubt about a blessing, we rule leniently. And there, even on a different point where the measure is in doubt, he says that because of the doubt about the blessing, one has to be stringent so as not to recite

26:14 Speaker 2 a blessing in vain. So regarding the after-blessing, he was stringent, just as he was stringent regarding matzah for reasons connected with chametz on Pesach. But his position is twenty-four minutes, as he writes here in section 249 and as he wrote in section 459. This is halachah. Here he discusses it directly and says explicitly that the principal ruling follows the Rambam, not the Terumas Hadeshen; one shouldn’t turn a stringency for Pesach into a general rule. And by the way, regarding the proof people brought from the calculation for Iyar and so on that the Alter Rebbe wrote, he says that those who worked through the calculations very carefully found that it isn’t correct at all. You can demonstrate it even with something like ninety minutes. Incidentally, there’s also Rabbi Tukachinsky’s approach, under which each mil is twenty-two and a half minutes. Well, it depends how you calculate it. I’ll send you something; I have a very interesting short summary of this subject too, but let’s not spend any more time on it. I only wanted to say that there’s a whole storm of discussion within the Alter Rebbe’s writings, across various sections: how do you reconcile them? How do you reconcile them with the Siddur? And I’m just saying that my conclusion is twenty-four minutes, as stated in section 249. So the whole matter comes to four hours and forty-eight minutes. But as I said, this halachah often ceases to be relevant, because nowadays you can notify people who are coming, and people also cook plenty of food, as the Agudah says. So from that standpoint, we don’t have a problem here. Now, there’s the subject of a meal on Friday. In Gittin, page 38, we have the brief passage about two families that were uprooted. What concerns us here is one family that would hold meals on Fridays. And in short, in Erev Pesachim, page 99, there’s a discussion

28:29 Speaker 2 between Rabbi Yosi and Rabbi Yehudah about whether one may have a meal on Fridays and the eves of Yom Tov. Erev Pesach is much stricter. For anyone who doesn’t know why Erev Pesach is stricter, it’s because there’s a mitzvah to eat matzah, and we generally don’t have another example like that of a mitzvah specifically to eat, where the eating itself is the mitzvah. For example, on Shabbos, the food itself isn’t the mitzvah. The mitzvah is enjoyment, and the food gives you enjoyment. You know, if you had a bad dream and you don’t feel like eating, and you think eating will make you feel worse than fasting, then if fasting gives you enjoyment, it becomes permissible. But if someone fasted because of a dream, what, he won’t eat the matzah? There’s a mitzvah to eat here. That’s why it’s very, very important there to have a real appetite, because the eating itself is a Torah-level mitzvah. So from the beginning of the tenth hour, you don’t even have an ordinary meal. But regarding Fridays and the eves of Yom Tov, according to Rabbi Yosi, until it gets dark—until Shabbos or Yom Tov begins—there’s no problem with eating a meal. Now, how do we reconcile that with the account of the two families that were destroyed? Many Rishonim discuss it from different angles, and the position we follow is what seems to emerge from the Rambam according to the Maggid Mishneh’s explanation. It goes like this: a large meal means a meal of a kind people don’t ordinarily have on weekdays. Shabbos meals aren’t ordinary meals. There are lots of salads, there’s fish, meat, dessert. That’s a large meal. At a bris milah too, and at celebrations generally, they put out salads. Nowadays, when you order from someone in that business, what does he ask you? “Do you want

30:47 Speaker 2 ten salads? Twelve salads? Choose your salads. What about the fish?” And so on. These are simply lavish meals. You can also picture a lavish hotel meal. You’re at a hotel in the morning, and there are tons of salads, tons of yogurts and cheeses and other things. A person has paid for it, so he wants to get his money’s worth while he’s at the hotel, and he fills his plate and keeps filling it. Even if he doesn’t finish everything he wanted, he’s eating lavishly. So a lavish meal is what the Gemara in Gittin is talking about, and it’s forbidden even in the morning. This isn’t just a matter of being particularly scrupulous. Here it’s a mitzvah to refrain; it’s right to refrain. It’s forbidden. It wasn’t for nothing that two families were destroyed—a family was destroyed over this. Incidentally, this is one of the halachos with, you could say, a very high level of laxity in the Charedi community. Often you might go to a shop in BIG; there’s a Café Rimon there, and on Friday morning they put out some sort of tasting or something, with lots of food. It’s like a hotel. You pay some amount—I don’t know, 120 shekels, however much it is—and people eat endlessly. Or someone says, “I’ll go to a restaurant in the morning.” You’re on vacation in Jerusalem, whether you’re staying in a hotel or you decide to go to a restaurant. And if you’re going to a restaurant, it isn’t for coffee and cake. Some people do that often—every couple of days they go for coffee and cake or something small. But for others, going to a restaurant means really indulging. So on Friday, that’s forbidden. It makes no difference whether you davened at sunrise or not; it’s forbidden all day. That’s one point. By the way, an important point: [unclear] I’ve seen young married men who noticed that at a certain point

32:45 Speaker 2 The rabbi is talking about a problem with having an appetite on Shabbos, and how it is not as severe as we will see later. The Rema also says it is not so severe, which is why we do not protest it. And there is that wording, “you will not be able to eat properly,” right? You saw that wording about this. We need to pay attention, because some things are only a matter of it being a mitzvah to refrain from them, not actually forbidden by the strict letter of the law. And some things are completely forbidden by the Sages, like this. So what is the difference? You could say that an ordinary meal very late in the afternoon would seemingly spoil my appetite more than a meal I had at a hotel at eight in the morning. At first, no matter how much you ate, you think... You come out of breakfast at a hotel and say, “That’s it, I won’t eat for two or three days,” right? You feel like you ate so much. But then at eight in the evening you find you are very hungry. Right? So what is going on here? First, you could say they did not want to draw distinctions about how long a meal runs or does not run, or how many hours it lasts, or whether it is a large meal. Perhaps if we start permitting it at eight in the morning, people will also be lenient at one in the afternoon. So perhaps they made a blanket rule about optional meals. That is one way to explain it. I would explain it differently, because there it is forbidden even in the morning, and seemingly the concern is that you will not eat properly. So I would put it this way: You know how sometimes—and I’m sure everyone has a personal story about this—you have not eaten, it is mealtime, and you are hungry as you would be at any meal, but you do not feel like eating. Why? Not because you exercised or want to go on a diet. You just do not feel like eating. Someone said something that upset you? That’s it,

34:43 Speaker 2 you do not feel good now. You got bad news, or something happened, and you are not yourself. It kills your appetite. Right? Appetite also has a morale component. The desire to eat depends on many things. Someone in the middle of very, very, very important calculations does not even feel hungry. That is what it says in maamarim of Chassidus, right? A person who loves intellectual pursuits and suddenly... Sometimes such people barely eat for a day and a half. A person in the middle of writing down a novel Torah insight does not feel like eating until he has worked it out. He is focused on an insight he wants to express and put into words; it is hard for him to... No, he just does not feel like eating. And this really happens, and the Sages certainly saw it. A person who had a huge meal that day—it is like, have you ever had several festive days one after another? Sometimes there are three days. It is rare in Israel, but the French know it well, and people from abroad do too. At first it is, wow, salads, you are enjoying this and that, you ate lamb and who knows what else. Then you say, “Enough, I don’t feel like it anymore.” What do you mean, you do not feel like it? You ate yesterday at eight in the evening, now it is two in the afternoon, you went to daven—of course you are hungry! But something has worn off. It is not... “I have no desire for it. All these meats and all these things—I don’t want them.” Why? Because once you have had the satisfaction and excitement of a very large meal and so on, and suddenly that evening there is a Shabbos meal, it loses something. It is not some kind of magic. It is not as if the stars stop turning when you look at the table. That is probably one meaning of “not properly” here.

36:46 Speaker 2 Besides, some do say that when a person eats a great deal, it affects his desire to eat—his appetite—not only psychologically but physically. Someone who ate a tremendous amount finds it hard to eat; he simply has no appetite, on a bodily level. But I think the Sages were also concerned about the effect on a person’s enthusiasm. Say a family is celebrating on Erev Shabbos: they make pasta, put on a feast, and eat heartily. Clearly, that evening the glow of Shabbos, the pleasure of eating, the appetite, the desire to eat, all diminish. Okay, but however we explain it, a large meal is forbidden—one that people do not normally have on a weekday. An ordinary meal is permitted. According to the strict letter of the halachah, Rabbi Yosi said—and the Gemara says the halachah follows Rabbi Yosi—that it is permitted all day, right up until Shabbos begins. Except that the Rambam wrote that one should nevertheless refrain. The Alter Rebbe uses the wording “it is a mitzvah to refrain”: there is reason to refrain from an ordinary meal from the beginning of the tenth hour. Now, it is very easy to work that out. Someone who does not know how to calculate it can look up the time of Minchah Ketanah. We are talking about seasonal hours, but roughly speaking, go back forty or forty-five minutes from Minchah Ketanah, and then you can easily tell, in summer or winter, when the tenth hour begins. Minchah Ketanah is nine and a half hours into the day. And what does the beginning of the tenth hour mean? Half an hour earlier, when nine hours have passed and you enter the tenth hour. So it is a mitzvah to refrain. Now, what is an ordinary meal? What people generally eat on a weekday. Do not come and ask, “Sometimes I eat a lot on weekdays.” Fine, that is not relevant. They are talking about what is generally normal, like the portions you bring here, right? A little rice, a little

38:58 Speaker 2 meat, a little of this, an apple, and that’s the meal. Not when you arrive at the kollel for lunch and there are five or six salads, fish as well as meat, and dessert too. No. At home, too, some people actually make something in the morning... An evening meal might be pasta, or cornflakes—yes, some people have that—or an omelet. And even if the wife put in the effort and made a cooked meal, fine: there is chicken, potatoes, and perhaps an apple at the end. That’s it. You do not have five or six salads and all sorts of other things. So they were speaking about what most people normally do. There are ordinary meals that people have on weekdays, and those same meals are permitted throughout Friday, except that it is a mitzvah to refrain from the beginning of the tenth hour. Who came up with that? Not the Talmud. It is brought in the Rambam, right? That it is good to refrain. The Gemara does not say it is a mitzvah to refrain. What it does say is that on Erev Pesach you do not have an ordinary meal, and that is an actual prohibition, not merely a mitzvah to refrain. That applies from the beginning of the tenth hour. So how did the Rambam derive this? The commentators on the Rambam explain: from the Gemara. He has no Yerushalmi, no Tosefta, no Gemara that says this about an ordinary meal on Erev Shabbos or Erev Yom Tov. So where did he get it? From the Gemara. He said: Look, you see that on Erev Pesach an ordinary meal affects your appetite. Right? It affects it. There, even eating a lot of fruit is not good. Right? But the point is that it affects your appetite. So why deliberately affect your appetite in the first place? Clearly, there is an advantage to eating the meal with a real appetite. Right? I am not talking about when you have things to eat before hamotzi, before Kiddush—we will discuss that later. That is more... It is more or less in the same category, but

41:09 Speaker 2 that is another matter. Here it is a mitzvah to refrain. Why? It makes sense. It will spoil your appetite a little, so it is not worth it.

41:21 Speaker 3 Better to be hungrier.

41:24 Speaker 2 But then take a pita, take a piece of chicken. Wash your hands and eat. We’re talking about an ordinary weekday meal—bread and a few other things. Take something small. So that’s the point of the mitzvah to refrain. It’s brought in the Shulchan Aruch, and everyone agrees with this ruling of the Rambam, that it’s a mitzvah to refrain. We’ll talk about a seudas mitzvah, but first, regarding an ordinary meal: I get this question whenever I meet a yeshiva bochur. They always ask it. In many yeshivos, the bochurim ate in the morning after davening. Then they learned a little, perhaps, or took a test, and off they ran on mivtzoim. They arrive before Shabbos starving. Right? Now, there are two kinds of bochurim [unclear]. There’s the one who drops in on a family and has already eaten every Shabbos delicacy beforehand, and even brings things back to the yeshiva. And then there’s the bochur with mesiras nefesh: he goes only on mivtzoim and comes back to yeshiva starving. He didn’t take time to eat a falafel or anything; he was doing mivtzoim, mivtzoim. So a lot of bochurim arrive, often at that hour, and what do many yeshivos give them? A very large salami sandwich. Sometimes there are boxes of them; there are a few here in Kiryat Gat. You come and take one or two, and often it’s around the beginning of the tenth hour, and a bochur eats that. So, first, everyone asks, “Rabbi, is this all right or not?” Why not just open the kitchen and give them lots of apples, bananas, other things, instead of making a really big sandwich or two until their hunger settles down a little? Well, first of all, we’re talking about a mitzvah to refrain. By the way, look, if you want, at

43:27 Speaker 2 the Kuntres Acharon in siman 250. I think it’s subsection two, where he discusses—or perhaps it’s one—how each rabbi would prepare things himself: it is a greater mitzvah to do it oneself than through an agent. Yes. So there’s a Kuntres Acharon there; if it isn’t one, it’s two. In the first four lines he says something very interesting. He says that when it simply says “it is a mitzvah,” that isn’t a binding law—as with “it is a greater mitzvah to do it oneself than through an agent.” There’s no problem with someone separating terumah for me. Rather, when it says “it is a mitzvah,” apparently the alternative is permitted; there’s no prohibition. Strictly speaking, it’s permitted. And he says, “As it says in siman 249.” Did you see that? Siman 249 is his example. So that’s a principle here: “It is a mitzvah to refrain” is not a prohibition. There’s no prohibition here. I’m failing to fulfill a mitzvah, but it’s not the same thing. I mean, there is a mitzvah. If I don’t put on tefillin today, I’ve neglected a positive commandment. That’s not what “it is a mitzvah to refrain” means here. It means that refraining is a positive thing, a more conscientious way to act. It’s good to do. It’s a mitzvah to take care over Shabbos, to treat Shabbos more seriously and not sit down to a meal now, but it isn’t prohibited. So, first, there’s no reason to object. These bochurim are hungry, and it’s convenient for the yeshiva to prepare something. They don’t want each bochur to have to take five or six apples to get by, and this works out more or less cheaply for them. Often the bakery gives the bread to the bochurim for free, and someone else gives the salami for free. You know how it is. Yeshivos have all kinds of arrangements; everyone contributes something. It works out well for them. That’s one point. But I want to offer another line of reasoning regarding yeshivos, to explain it. Let’s say

45:24 Speaker 2 this: if a yeshiva bochur really can eat a little something earlier—stop while he’s out on mivtzoim, step aside and get a falafel before the beginning of the tenth hour, or have a banana or something—then why not fulfill the mitzvah of refraining? But to judge them favorably: first, there’s no reason to object, because strictly speaking it’s permitted. That’s explicit in the Gemara [unclear]. And second—and I think this is the important point—why is the cutoff at the beginning of the tenth hour? Because, based on when a Jew would ordinarily eat, people used to daven while it was still day and eat fairly early. So those hours would presumably spoil their appetite. But what happens in yeshivos? You know, one reason they do this isn’t just to quiet the hunger of bochurim who haven’t eaten since morning. It’s also that the bochurim have a schedule: Chassidus, a lot of learning, sometimes even a time for niggunim. They have things to do, and they don’t—when they come to the table to eat, after the whole yeshiva has sung Shalom Aleichem properly, it isn’t like a householder who can rush through it. By the time a yeshiva bochur eats, much more time has passed. You know how it is in yeshivos, right? They don’t eat as soon as they get home the way we do. They have a set order, an hour and a half, I don’t know. They learn Chassidus, there’s davening, and little by little, by the time they come downstairs and so on, it takes time. So it may be that even if they ate at five in the afternoon, by the time they get to the meal at eight-thirty or nine at night, they do have an appetite. And here, as I said, we don’t have a ruling sourced in the Talmud. It’s a matter of reasoning: that eating then spoils the appetite. So if the whole issue rests on reasoning, I can offer you reasoning too.

47:23 Speaker 2 But what happens when a person doesn’t eat promptly? How does that fit with the halachos that say it’s good to make Kiddush right away and so on? That’s another question. In yeshivos there’s Torah study and other things, and there are allowances for them. There’s also the Yerushalmi about Rabbi Meir giving classes at night and all that. When it comes to Torah study, there’s an allowance. You understand the answer. Now, regarding a seudas mitzvah, it’s much easier. Why? Because the Shabbos meal is a seudas mitzvah, and this is a seudas mitzvah too. I have a bris milah now; its meal is a seudas mitzvah. So it’s one seudas mitzvah and another seudas mitzvah. Fine, one may detract from the other—but why should I favor Shabbos? Especially since I’m living in the present right now: each day has its own task. Right now I’m at this meal, and there’s a mitzvah here. Fine, it may be at the expense of another mitzvah, along the lines of “one who is engaged in a mitzvah is exempt from another mitzvah,” as we saw earlier regarding oneg Shabbos [unclear]. So in the Gemara and the original sources there’s no problem, and in the Rishonim and the Rambam too, a seudas mitzvah can be held all day, right up until Shabbos begins. If it detracts from the Shabbos meal, then it detracts from it. A seudas mitzvah is a substantial meal. So what if it detracts from it? There’s no restriction, no beginning of the tenth hour, nothing.

48:49 Speaker 4 For Purim.

48:50 Speaker 2 Huh?

48:51 Speaker 4 For Purim too.

48:53 Speaker 2 Wait. Seemingly the Purim meal should be the same, but let’s see. As for a seudas mitzvah, the basic law and the Shulchan Aruch place no restriction on it—nothing about the beginning of the tenth hour. Who wrote that even for a seudas mitzvah it’s good to refrain from the beginning of the tenth hour? The Alter Rebbe, the Bach, and the Magen Avraham. They wrote that. So here too, just as we asked about the Rambam, where did they get it from? It’s very simple: it’s a matter of reasoning. If you can make peace between the two, why not? You can honor both Shabbos and the other mitzvah. As it says, “One who is engaged in a mitzvah is exempt from another mitzvah.” But if you can do both—you know the discussion in Sukkah 25 and a few other places—if you have the time, then do both. So here too they wrote: why hold the bris milah meal right up until Shabbos begins? Hold it by two or three in the afternoon. At least start it before the beginning of the tenth hour. If it’s too late, it will certainly detract from your Shabbos meal. Why? True, it isn’t such a serious matter; strictly speaking, it’s permitted. But if you can fulfill this mitzvah and that mitzvah—even if the Shabbos meal is affected a little somehow—don’t undermine it altogether. If you can avoid that, why not? So this was brought by the Magen Avraham, and the Sephardic poskim too, the Kaf Hachayim and everyone, accepted it. They said: don’t detract from the Shabbos meal. In general, there’s an approach among the poskim to be stringent. You see it in the Aruch Hashulchan, the Mishnah Berurah, and the Kaf Hachayim: even with things that are permitted, if you know they’ll spoil your appetite, some are careful even from midday. There are rules about an ordinary meal from midday onward. And some say

50:53 Speaker 2 It depends. On winter Shabbosim, you really do eat very early, so you should be careful. In summer the hours are much longer, so that pushes it off further. But in winter, the Mishnah Berurah discusses this. The Bach says that people of piety would do this as a matter of course. Many write that even in the morning they would not eat much; they would just have a taste. We’ve even seen people who would fast. Well, those were Ashkenazim—they eat a little for two days and then can’t eat for a whole day. But in principle, these are recognized practices. So with these halachos, the approach of the later authorities is actually to be stringent, based on that same reasoning. In practice, you know yourself: if eating affects your appetite, be careful. Some people eat a little too much and that’s it—they won’t be ready to eat again for a long time. A lot of food puts them off. Everyone knows themselves. So in these matters it’s sometimes worthwhile to be stringent rather than lenient, because the distinction you make in honor of Shabbos carries a very great reward. But of course, we were discussing the basic law here. Now, regarding a seudas mitzvah, as we said, it is permitted all day, except that it is a mitzvah to avoid that—to begin it before the start of the tenth hour, and so on. And who brings that? The Magen Avraham, here in our discussion. Not the Rema. The Rema states the law simply: you can hold it all day. So that raises the question about the Purim seudah: the Rema himself, in section 695, writes that the Purim seudah is held in the morning. In the morning. Why? You consider it a seudas mitzvah. What? You didn’t even mention the stringency of beginning a seudas mitzvah before the tenth hour. That’s brought by the Magen Avraham. What’s more, the Vilna Gaon, in section 695, commenting on this Rema who says to hold it in the morning, says,

53:02 Speaker 2 What does it say? Section 249, paragraph 2. There’s nothing about it in either the Mechaber or the Rema. And even if you want—even if you meant the Magen Avraham, the Magen Avraham means the beginning of the tenth hour, not the morning. So there are many explanations. First, this isn’t a seudah for one particular group, for a few families who have a bris. We’re talking about the entire Jewish people. So perhaps, when it comes to the entire Jewish people, they don’t want everyone’s seudah to come at the expense of the Shabbos meal. That’s one line of reasoning. Fine, that won’t explain the Vilna Gaon’s reference to this, because there’s something specific here. This isn’t one person’s bris seudah; it’s a bris seudah for the whole world. If you know that one family’s seudah will run into Shabbos, it will affect their appetite a little, but ninety-nine percent of the Jewish people won’t be affected. Fine. But if everyone goes—if you allow the seudah to be held in the afternoon and so on—it will certainly detract from Shabbos for everyone, and they didn’t want that. That’s one explanation. But how can we explain the Vilna Gaon citing this? Again, it’s a matter of reasoning. The fact that the Rema wrote that it can be held all day doesn’t mean he disagrees with the Magen Avraham, who says it’s better to hold it earlier. He simply didn’t write that. He stated the law: as a matter of law, fine, this is a mitzvah and that is a mitzvah. Why should Shabbos prevent it? But perhaps if you had asked that same Rema, “Rabbi, when should I hold a bris seudah—or a pidyon haben seudah—in the morning or the afternoon?” do you think the Rema would necessarily have said, “Hold it even an hour before Shabbos”? Not necessarily. He wrote “all day,” meaning, “I wrote that it’s permitted, but I don’t have to recommend it.”

55:03 Speaker 2 Now, the fact that the Mechaber wrote that it is a mitzvah to avoid it, and the Rema apparently agrees, is simply because the Rambam says so explicitly. The Rambam said it, but they did not necessarily want to introduce this additional ruling. Still, as practical advice, I’m sure that if people had asked the Rema, he too would have told them to hold it earlier. And what is a Purim seudah? A Purim seudah isn’t just an ordinary meal; it is “feasting and rejoicing.” Well, there’s a certain [unclear] who wants to say—that’s how he explains the Gemara in Gittin—that this relates to intoxication, that “feasting” implies drinking to intoxication, and only then is it really a problem. But let’s put that [unclear] aside; it doesn’t affect the practical ruling. A Purim seudah really does go on for a long time, and there’s the obligation of ad d’lo yada. So even according to the Rema, who says not to drink to the point of intoxication—he says to let loose a little—he knows Purim is an experience and that the seudah is very long. In other words, it’s a long seudah. But an ordinary bris seudah—when you’re at a bris on Friday, do you think people will stay for three hours if the seudah is in the afternoon? People know it’s Friday. A Purim seudah, though, is a meal where people—well, “joy breaks through all boundaries.” The entire Jewish people are rejoicing, so he knew it was best to hold it in the morning. These halachos are really based on common sense: something that could genuinely take a very, very long time. Say you know someone is planning a bris seudah, but he’s as rich as Korach, and he’s made plans. He tells them, “I’ve arranged it all for you. There will be singers, a Bach performance lasting an hour and a half, and you’ll have this...” Clearly, if you asked the Rema about an event like that, he would tell you,

56:50 Speaker 2 “Hold it in the morning; don’t hold it in the afternoon.” Just like a Purim seudah. Okay, so it all follows common sense. Now, regarding a delayed bris: if the bris is on its appointed day, then it is certainly a seudas mitzvah on that day—it is the day of the bris. If it was delayed, there is, after all, a prohibition against remaining uncircumcised at every moment. So here you can’t say, “Well, it’s no longer the appointed date, so why not postpone it? Why hold a seudah that detracts from Shabbos, when the bris isn’t being held at its appointed time anyway?” In other words, it is at its appointed time. Even if it was delayed—and if it was deliberately delayed, every moment you put it off involves a prohibition. So every moment is its time. Its first appointed time was the eighth day; that is the ideal time, and at that time it overrides Shabbos, as we learn in Parshas Tazria. But if it wasn’t done then, this is also its time. More than that: the Alter Rebbe, in the Laws of Shechitah, chapter 2—section 2 of the Laws of Shechitah, subsection 17. Look there in the Alter Rebbe, because there’s a major dispute. It says that of the positive commandments, only Pesach and circumcision carry kares. But what does it mean that there is kares? Many say that even a man who has reached adulthood and has not had himself circumcised incurs kares if he dies uncircumcised, but not that he incurs kares at every moment. Kares applies when a person dies uncircumcised; as long as he can still have himself circumcised, there is no kares.

58:28 Speaker 5 Why is that so with a bris?

58:30 Speaker 2 The Raavad, the Raavad—there are different opinions about this. Some opinions say that with a bris it can apply to him in any case. Otherwise, it is, so to speak, the father who has to be careful about the prohibition carrying kares; that’s how it is written. So the Raavad’s novel point is: no, at every moment you are subject to kares until you rectify it. There is kares, though of course the child isn’t at fault, so that falls on the father. That is the severity of the kares involved here. So, accordingly, it is certainly its time. Okay? And this doesn’t contradict the various formulations in the Shelah, which say that when a bris has been delayed, you don’t perform it on Shabbos because you can postpone the circumcision, and similar formulations there. But there is a prohibition against remaining uncircumcised, and there is an issue of kares according to the Raavad; that is also the position the Alter Rebbe takes in the Laws of Shechitah, as I mentioned. Therefore, when the bris is to be performed on Friday, we hold the bris seudah on Friday, whether the bris was delayed or not. Later we’ll come back to who can attend. Regarding pidyon haben, if its appointed time is on Friday, there’s no question. Day thirty-one falls on Friday; that is its time, so you redeem the child and hold a seudah. But what if the pidyon haben is not at its appointed time? Some people didn’t know; some miscalculated; the child was so ill that they didn’t do it. So once you have a pidyon haben that isn’t at its appointed time, what is the law? The Alter Rebbe—when you look at his wording, at first he writes that since it is not at its appointed time, the mitzvah has already been delayed. That implies that you cannot perform the mitzvah and hold the seudah. The wording at the beginning of the paragraph implies that if you postpone it, you postpone it together with the seudah. But at the end

1:00:49 Speaker 2 In parentheses he writes, “Rather, redeem him without a meal”—in other words, you redeem him without a meal. That’s the opposite of what the three lines before it seem to say. So everyone jumps when they see it; the wording feels uncomfortable. So, uh, there really is—the contradiction is right there in the text. It’s clear-cut. If you look very carefully at the wording—well, I don’t have it in front of me. Maybe you can read it. Do you want to?

1:01:25 Speaker 6 There’s an argument that—

1:01:26 Speaker 2 Wait, wait, wait. There’s a whole class on exactly this. I’m just explaining. “Since the mitzvah has already been postponed from its appointed time, let it also be postponed from Friday for the sake of welcoming Shabbos.” He’s talking about the mitzvah of pidyon haben, so it should be postponed. And then he says: What should you do instead? “Redeem him without a festive meal.” So perhaps you do the pidyon haben with something small, a little mezonos, without—don’t make a big meal here; do the minimum. Not a festive meal and all that. But before that, it sounds like—you postpone the mitzvah. That’s why some have the reading, “and do not redeem him without a meal.” Why emphasize it, though? He more or less said that before; that’s how it sounds. But you could say that here there was a genuine reason to think otherwise: concerning a bris milah it says, “they accepted it with joy,” and therefore it has to be treated with honor. But with pidyon haben, the main thing is to do it—fine, so you delay the seudas mitzvah by a day. That’s why he makes it clear: do not redeem him without a meal; rather, postpone it. Postpone it until Sunday, because you don’t perform a pidyon on Shabbos. So that’s how Rabbi Chaim Naeh understands it. He says the reading should be “and do not redeem him.” Others say no, keep what’s written: redeem him, but with a small meal. True, earlier it sounds like you should postpone it, but he meant that because of the large meal, you might think you have to postpone everything. In fact, you can do the pidyon with a meal, and at most hold the big meal a day later. So there are two approaches in Chabad. To start with—now I’ll give you a third approach, which is mine and that of several other rabbis. Either don’t perform the pidyon, following Rabbi Chaim Naeh’s reading,

1:03:32 Speaker 2 and postpone it until Sunday, because this is a pidyon haben that isn’t taking place at its appointed time; or perform it without a large meal; or perform the pidyon with a large meal. And that’s what I say to do: redeem him with a large meal. The opposite of what’s written in the Alter Rebbe’s Shulchan Aruch. Why? The reason is simple. Rabbi Ashkenazi agreed with me, and many others agreed too—leading Chabad rabbis. Many agree with this. I also spoke with the rabbi who wrote HaPidyon HaMekarev, Rabbi Berlander[?]. So, actually, I gave this class in the presence of Rabbi Ashkenazi, of blessed memory, and many other rabbis. There was the rabbi who was rosh yeshivah in Kfar Chabad, Rabbi Grossman, and Rabbi Ferdovitch[?]. That was on 19 Kislev 5759, at the pidyon haben of my son Binyamin. There’s even a picture of me giving them a talk at the meal. In short, there are several opinions about a delayed pidyon haben. There are three opinions. I’m not going to go over all three. One opinion is that of the Magen Avraham, who says here, and also in section 598: What does it mean that you must redeem him “from the age of one month”? Redeem him—meaning, you can redeem him starting on day thirty-one. Until when? For as long as he lives. That’s when the time begins. You have a mitzvah to perform a bris milah on the eighth day. Does that mean it has to be at seven in the morning? Can it be at three in the afternoon? It can be at three in the afternoon. It can even be at five. As long as it’s before sunset, that’s fine. It’s just that the eager perform mitzvos early. Fine, but the time for it is the whole day. Here, too, it’s from day thirty-one onward. So if you don’t redeem him that day, you’ve fallen short of “the eager perform mitzvos early.” That’s the Magen Avraham’s view, and many other halachic authorities hold that way too. The Tanya Rabbasi—there are many. But some halachic authorities say

1:05:50 Speaker 2 no, from then on you are in violation of a positive commandment. It’s as though you are violating a positive commandment. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a positive commandment that renews itself every moment; it can also be that each day carries a positive obligation. But while you’re still within day thirty-one, it’s fine. After that, it’s as though you’re violating a positive commandment every single moment, and that makes it very serious. Now, the Magen Avraham says you aren’t violating a positive commandment. And it seems that here the Alter Rebbe follows the Magen Avraham, as he does in many related rulings, so he bases himself on that view. There are, after all, halachic authorities who rule differently altogether, who prohibit doing a pidyon on Friday when it isn’t at its appointed time. I think that’s what the Mishnah Berurah says, right? He says that a delayed pidyon isn’t done on Friday. So what? The Magen Avraham holds otherwise. Why? Because he doesn’t hold that from then on you’re violating a positive commandment. But look in the Siddur. The Alter Rebbe didn’t write the Siddur when he wrote the Shulchan Aruch, at age twenty-five. He wrote it in his sixties—at sixty-eight, toward the end of his life, he wrote the Siddur and its halachic rulings. What does he write there? That he must be redeemed on day thirty-one, and from then on one is in violation of a positive commandment. The opposite of the Magen Avraham. Yes, according to everyone—everyone who has written a book on pidyon haben writes that the Alter Rebbe holds one is in violation of a positive commandment, disagreeing with the Magen Avraham. There’s no dispute about that. In other words, according to the view explicitly stated in the Siddur, that from then on one is in violation of a positive commandment, the whole picture changes. Just as one may not remain uncircumcised, just as—why should pidyon haben be a problem here? It would only be a problem if this weren’t the time to do it. If it isn’t the time, why compromise the Shabbos meal? But if I have to perform the pidyon haben now

1:07:49 Speaker 2 because I’m violating a positive commandment, then obviously the meal is fine. Okay. Thank G-d, we’ve had several occasions to tell people to perform a pidyon haben, including a delayed one. It doesn’t happen very often that someone postpones it, but some people say, “We couldn’t manage it all week.” Sometimes it’s already Thursday when you catch someone. You say to him, “Wait, do you know you’re obligated to perform a pidyon haben?” “Oh, I didn’t know. I didn’t know, because my wife is Jewish and the father is a non-Jew. I didn’t know.” But wait—she’s a Jewish mother; the father makes no difference. There are many cases. I actually had a case just yesterday. Someone asked me yesterday. He didn’t know the child needed a pidyon. It involved a woman who had been married to a kohen. She divorced him, so they were divorced. What happened was that a few months later—four months later—and they had already been separated for a long time even before the divorce, they happened to meet at some point and had relations. A daughter was born from that union. So she is a chalalah. He is divorced, after all; even without a marriage, the daughter is a chalalah. Now that daughter had a son, and I received a question about it yesterday. I can show it to you afterward. Without names or anything, of course. But I received the question, and they described the situation to me. Now, she married someone who isn’t a kohen, and she is a chalalah. Normally, a Jewish woman who is the daughter of a kohen or a Levi is exempt; there’s no pidyon. But here she is the daughter of a kohen and a chalalah, so her son needs a pidyon haben. So quite often a pidyon haben doesn’t take place at its appointed time. Well, in this case they did it yesterday, but—huh?

1:10:03 Speaker 7 Does a chalal need a pidyon haben? A chalal who has a son.

1:10:06 Speaker 2 A chalal who has a son—the issue... Ah, yes. So he clearly does. The question in the Shulchan Aruch is something else. It’s a case where the father himself doesn’t become a chalal. He was with his divorced wife, they had a child, and it was a boy. The boy is a chalal, but the father isn’t. The father is a kohen who caused the child to be a chalal, but he doesn’t become a chalal himself. So does a father who is a kohen have to redeem his son when he himself is a kohen? That’s the question. The Shulchan Aruch discusses when the pidyon should be done: when the son grows up, rather than by his father. That’s the discussion there. All right, now let’s get back to our subject.

1:11:10 Speaker 7 Wait, why not postpone the meal?

1:11:13 Speaker 2 Huh?

1:11:13 Speaker 7 Why not postpone the meal itself?

1:11:14 Speaker 2 Very simple. Because there’s no such thing. There’s no such halachah. When there’s a mitzvah—when there’s a pidyon haben—there’s a meal. Ask someone: “Rabbi, I have a pidyon haben today, on the 31st of Elul. I feel like having the meal three days later.” Where have you heard of that? “I’m performing a bris milah today, but I feel like having the bris meal in two days, or tomorrow.” What do you mean? Where does that happen? So it’s the same here. The same thing. A delayed bris milah—why don’t we postpone the meal? Because now is when the mitzvah of bris milah must be done. You can’t postpone it, so you can’t postpone it. The meal comes along with it. So here, because delaying it would mean failing to fulfill a positive commandment, the meal comes along with it. Very simple. Okay, let’s move on. So this is one of the examples you asked me about, Rabbi Tubul. You asked whether, sometimes, when the Alter Rebbe says something, the conclusion might turn out differently. This is an example. Here it doesn’t turn out differently, because this is the Alter Rebbe himself in the Siddur. But clearly, sometimes you see something in the Shulchan Aruch and that still doesn’t mean it’s the final word. Sometimes there’s a change. Sometimes the Alter Rebbe revised his ruling. Okay, okay, let’s move on. As for the bris milah meal, that’s a separate matter; it belongs to the laws of bris milah. But while we’re on the subject, one of the sources for this discussion appears at the beginning of siman 249 in our text, and also in Hilchah Rabbah. Once, a Chabad rabbi told someone who had a delayed bris—and this happens every day, unlike a pidyon haben. With a pidyon haben, a delay is usually a mistake, but delayed brises are very common. The child was ill. Now he’s well and can be circumcised on Thursday or Friday, but it’s no longer a bris milah on its proper day. So...

1:12:55 Speaker 2 What does the Gemara say? That a delayed circumcision does not override Shabbos. Why? When it’s on its proper day, you perform the bris milah on the eighth day. If that falls on Shabbos, you perform it. Now, if you have a delayed bris milah, what does it say? You may not do it on Shabbos, because only a circumcision on its proper day overrides Shabbos. So what does that imply? That you can do it on Thursday, Friday—any day. The restriction is only on Shabbos. But the Tashbetz introduced a major new ruling. The Tashbetz is Rabbi Shimon ben Tzemach Duran. Actually, he was born in... You know the Aragon region of Spain? As you come down from France, you have Spain, and there are islands off to the right as well. I think they’re called the Balearic Islands, something like that. They’re islands, yes? That’s where Rabbi Shimon was born. He was one of the great Rishonim. This was seven hundred years ago. So, in short, if you’re in Spain, with those islands opposite you on the right, and you go down, you reach Algiers. Eventually he moved to Algiers, and his son, the Rashbash, was Rabbi Shlomo ben Shimon Duran. Now, the Tashbetz is very well known, one of the great Rishonim, and he’s cited often in halachah. So the Tashbetz comes along and says: A delayed bris milah may not be performed on Thursday. He isn’t talking about Friday; in fact, he is lenient about Friday. He says that after three days, they would generally need to bathe the baby in warm water, and there are various things for which Shabbos would be desecrated on his behalf. Then he says, “Look, we learned at the beginning of siman 249 that even if a mitzvah is involved”—and here there’s certainly a mitzvah to circumcise him; after all, he must not remain uncircumcised—but even if there’s a mitzvah, if it can lead to Shabbos being desecrated afterward, and with certainty, in the sense of... then he says no, don’t perform the bris milah. And on Friday—

1:15:12 Speaker 2 He generally says the danger comes on the third day after the circumcision. So he says Friday isn’t a problem, but Thursday is, because Shabbos is the third day. Many understood it differently. Many even understood that Friday is a problem too, because there could always be a complication—bleeding and so on—and there’s a very, very high likelihood of Shabbos being desecrated. So many of the great Sephardic authorities accepted this: Rabbi Chaim Palagi, the Chida, the Knesses Hagedolah. Many followed the Tashbetz. After all, he was a very important rabbi, one of the great Rishonim, and that really was the practice for a delayed bris milah. There’s even a Taz in the laws of circumcision, at the beginning of siman 262, who says that Friday is a problem too. But who disagrees with this? The Magen Avraham. He’s cited at the beginning of siman 249. There’s also something here in siman 331; you see there that the Magen Avraham disagrees, and the Shach in Yoreh De’ah disagrees. In fact, you could say that most halachic authorities disagree. More than that, many say that today even the Tashbetz would have permitted it, because things aren’t the same now. Today it’s not that there’s a high chance of Shabbos being desecrated. The high likelihood is that there will be no Shabbos desecration at all. What? Generally speaking, apart from the rare cases when a bris milah has complications. Right? That’s why in Chabad we’re very careful that the mohel be proficient, even before considering his fear of Heaven. If you can have both, that’s even better. But his professional skill is very important. Don’t take risks just to make one person or another happy if he isn’t an expert. Choose someone who has years of experience and performs many brises—not someone who does one every couple of weeks or months. An experienced mohel who does this often: then things generally go well. So he, too, would have reconsidered his ruling today. Right? And what about Shabbos wages? It’s—

1:17:15 Speaker 2 A mitzvah to perform the circumcision. So whenever Sephardim, Ashkenazim or Italians ask me, I always tell them: If it becomes possible to perform the bris milah on Thursday or Friday, do it, as most halachic authorities rule. The Alter Rebbe holds this way too. That’s what I began to tell you about the Chabad rabbi. It simply upset me very much. I hear about someone whose bris milah was delayed, and suddenly the baby’s fever went down. We had even waited a week, and now it was Thursday. Then a mohel calls me and says, “Rabbi So-and-so said there’s no bris milah on Thursday or Friday.” I said, “What? Most halachic authorities disagree with that, and the Alter Rebbe disagrees with it. Where? At the beginning of siman 249. You see here a delayed bris milah on Friday, and it says to perform the bris milah. What should it have said instead? ‘But in any case, we don’t circumcise on Friday’?” And he disagrees with the Magen Avraham, whose position is clear. So that’s certainly how one should act, even among Sephardim. Rabbi Ovadia says this: Only in places where the practice was otherwise should they continue that practice. Right? Today I don’t think we’re talking about a place with an established practice. All the communities are mixed together: one person is half Moroccan, another is half Tunisian, and half the people in a shul do one thing and half do another. Don’t tell me there’s an established custom here. So the directive is to circumcise even when the bris has been delayed. It’s stated explicitly in the laws of bris milah. So let’s move on. There are sections of Kuntres Acharon that you can look at when you have time during the day. Actually, sections one, two, three and four are very, very practical. Section two, by the way, is very short. But you remember seeing this in the Beis Yosef, and I’m sure you noticed that you didn’t see it again in the Mechaber’s siman 249. Some distinguish between types of meals: if it’s an ordinary meal, it’s permitted on Friday. We said the restriction begins only at the start of the tenth hour—

1:19:30 Speaker 2 But that’s if it happens occasionally. If a person regularly eats a meal like that, there are even those who apply this to snacking. If you eat that way regularly—not because it happened to work out that way, but as a regular, set practice—there may be a problem. So no, we don’t follow that opinion, as the Alter Rebbe explains in this Kuntres Acharon. Now, the first section of Kuntres Acharon is very interesting. It deals with something else people don’t know. Just as many people don’t realize that large meals on Friday are permitted and think they’re forbidden unless they’re mitzvah meals, there’s another point: even at a mitzvah meal, not everyone may necessarily attend. Now, who says not everyone may attend? This is brought in the Magen Avraham and also by the Alter Rebbe, but some disagree. The Rema didn’t limit it to relatives and ten people. The Rema sets no such limit. The Eliyah Zuta doesn’t limit it, and neither does the Levush, who was a student of the Rema. Many say there’s no problem here. But the Alter Rebbe said—and it’s very important always to be precise. Be precise in the Shulchan Aruch; every word of the Alter Rebbe’s is gold. It doesn’t say here that it’s a mitzvah to refrain, okay? And in Kuntres Acharon, too, he explains why it’s a good thing. He says the Eliyah Rabbah, the Eliyah Zuta and the Levush disagree, but it’s a good thing. Okay, so what does that mean? According to the Alter Rebbe, it comes out like this: Those directly involved in the bris can certainly all attend. Relatives—what does “relatives” mean? Those we learned about in Choshen Mishpat, siman 33, who are disqualified as witnesses. So all those relatives may attend, plus ten other people. For example, a second cousin isn’t disqualified as a witness. Right? You in relation to your cousin’s child. Yes. So, in short, the relatives plus ten other people. Now it comes out like this—don’t get confused. A bris milah

1:21:44 Speaker 2 There can be a thousand people at a bris. You don’t have to stay for the meal. There’s no limit on attending the bris itself, but staying for the meal—which is usually a substantial meal—that’s different. At that meal, it’s only the people involved in the bris, close relatives, and ten others. So if you’re not one of them, and you see that more than ten people are already sitting there, you shouldn’t sit down. Now, that may be hard for you. You really want to stay. Wow, he’s such a good friend of mine, and I’m not going to eat? When am I going to see a table like this again? I haven’t seen croissants and flan and who knows what else in years. So... even so, the wording is that it’s preferable not to. If you see that it’s very hard for someone—but still, it isn’t forbidden. You have the Levush, you have... That’s why the Alter Rebbe goes into it in depth in the Kuntres Acharon. And that’s why I wrote “preferable,” because many, many authorities are lenient about this. Okay, so if someone asks, clearly it is a hiddur. The Alter Rebbe holds that there is a hiddur in not taking part in the meal, but it’s a hiddur. It isn’t obligatory. If someone feels he needs to, then he needs to. Okay, that’s one point. Now, in the Kuntres Acharon itself, something interesting comes up along the way. This is the main subject of the Kuntres Acharon, but what’s interesting along the way? It starts with the Maharash Halevi. The Maharash Halevi was the Shelah’s teacher. Yes, Rabbi Shlomo Halevi was the Shelah’s teacher. He was also the Bach’s teacher, and the Sma’s teacher, and the Maharshal’s teacher. The Maharash Halevi is the Maharshal. That’s why, with the Maharash Halevi, people would often refer to him—since one was his student and the Maharshal too, and he lived ninety-two years, he was around long enough to receive questions from students and students of students. He was still alive. Someone who lives ninety-two years can see the students

1:23:50 Speaker 2 of his students. So it sometimes gets confusing, because you may see that the Sma was a student of the Maharshal. That isn’t a contradiction: he was a student of both the Maharshal and the Maharash Halevi. Okay, now, the Maharash Halevi was at a bris on Erev Shabbos, and he was the sandek. They had chosen an important rabbi to be the sandek. He saw that ten people were already eating—the relatives were eating, and... So he said, “I won’t eat.” Now, the Alter Rebbe says that in any case we don’t agree with him, because he was the sandek, and a sandek is certainly one of the people involved in the bris. But what did he say? He said, “Why am I not staying for the meal? I’m only the sandek, and I’m not staying for the meal, because during the week in which Tisha B’Av falls”—we don’t eat meat from Rosh Chodesh Menachem Av, but if there’s a bris, strictly speaking meat is permitted and everyone can attend from Rosh Chodesh Menachem Av. But during the week in which Tisha B’Av falls, there are limits. And... so he said, “I saw that there were already ten people there,” and so on, and therefore... Ah, and there it actually says there’s a limit on who may attend besides the relatives and ten others. So he says, “I can see that there are already too many people here, so I can’t.” He wanted to derive the rule for Erev Shabbos from the week in which Tisha B’Av falls. So the Shelah, his student, wrote to him: “I don’t understand you, Rabbi. There, I can understand a stringency against attending a meat meal, because the bris meal could have been dairy instead. True, it’s a mitzvah, and that’s what they did, and meat is permitted, but it could have been dairy. So there was an alternative. If it had been dairy, you could have

1:26:06 Speaker 2 attended. So I can understand why you refrained, why people refrain from attending: there’s another option. Why have a meat meal? Make it dairy. But here, on Erev Shabbos, it’s a large meal—what difference does it make to me whether it’s dairy or meat? Both are a problem; they spoil your appetite for Shabbos.” That’s the Shelah’s argument. By the way, the Alter Rebbe says: “I don’t understand why the Magen Avraham specifically cites the Shelah’s argument when the Maharash Halevi answered his question.” He told him, “You’re mistaken. You want to say that there’s an alternative there, so it’s more stringent. But first of all, there’s no alternative there. It says there has to be rejoicing, and there is no rejoicing except with meat. The bris meal has to be a meat meal. There’s no question of doing otherwise.” So it comes out the same. Okay. So from the Shelah you can learn that he thought you could make it dairy; the Chasam Sofer also holds that you can make it dairy; and then there’s the Maharash Halevi. And now, with the Alter Rebbe, you can see that he does go along with the Maharash Halevi. He only says that the Maharash Halevi wasn’t right in his own case, because he was the sandek and therefore certainly could attend. But his argument is an argument. The Alter Rebbe even addresses this, saying: “How can you cite the Shelah when you see that the Maharash answered him so well?” So, in the course of the discussion, you can see how important it is, after all, to have a meat meal at a bris. And you see—I don’t have an explicit ruling from the Alter Rebbe on this. What we have here is indirect. Now, some wanted to say: No, that still isn’t proof. You could say that since it’s a mitzvah to rejoice, and there is no rejoicing except with meat, then yes, even according to the Maharash Halevi you can make a dairy meal, but don’t think of the two as equal alternatives. The best thing

1:28:17 Speaker 2 is to make it a meat meal, and there’s permission to do so. So why—ostensibly you could learn from there about Erev Shabbos, but it’s not simple. It doesn’t seem that way. No, it doesn’t sound like that. It sounds like the Shelah argued, “You can make it dairy,” and he answered, “No, it has to be meat.” So here’s another point: people are sometimes surprised by what happens in France or in various other places. Besides that, you do sometimes see—let’s put it this way, you can judge them favorably—if you’re actually holding a bris meal at nine or nine-thirty in the morning, find me someone who wants to eat meat then, even if you say it’s for rejoicing. No, that isn’t rejoicing. For that person it isn’t rejoicing, and it isn’t—like we said in the shiur, for most people it’s rejoicing; for most people, eating meat then isn’t rejoicing. Fine, so who told you to do it so early? Well, early—those who are eager perform mitzvos promptly. But still, brissim have often been held early, and it says meat, meat. So a lot of the time it ends up somewhere in between. You know a bris on a weekday: they tell you eight in the morning. Shacharis isn’t really at eight in the morning. The first people arrive at eight; by the time there’s a minyan, it’s eight-forty. If there’s Torah reading, even later. Then they finish, the mohel arrives, and everything else happens, and then there’s a meal. Even if it’s in the morning, you’re already getting close to ten-thirty, eleven, and it isn’t the end of the world to eat meat. So first: when you can make it a meat meal, do so. To judge people favorably, if it really is very early, I can understand. Someone says, “No, not us. I go to work afterward. Shacharis is at seven in the morning, and we’re at the meal by eight-thirty.” That’s hard. It really would be suffering. Put out meat, and people will suffer.

1:30:02 Speaker 2 So you might say, fine, you can challenge what the sefer says. Ah, there’s the Alter Rebbe—okay, the Alter Rebbe is only working through the arguments to draw out the points he wants to establish and reach his conclusion in general. In any case, here the person was the sandek, and a dairy meal is permitted. And as for the whole line of reasoning, he says at the end that it isn’t so conclusive either, because ultimately it’s only “preferable.” After all, the Rema, the Levush, and the Eliyah Rabbah say that you can attend without any limit. Right? So don’t build too much on that. You can judge them favorably, but once the meal is at eleven-something—yes, people like to serve dairy and all that—ostensibly it’s a seudas mitzvah, and it should be meat. That’s one point, apart from siman 249. Second, something more serious happens. Now, I know I’m being recorded, but all the better—let it cause a big stir. I’ve been to several brissim in France. I haven’t seen this in Israel. In the United States, I think they serve bagels, but at least people wash their hands. Now, what do you see? Huge tables with all kinds of French dairy pastries, crepes, omelets, and so on. People nibble away—some chocolate, croissants and things like that—and that’s it. There’s no bentching, nothing. Sometimes a few people, perhaps at least some of the family, put out matzah and wash their hands, but in many places I’ve seen that you don’t even see that. People just keep eating. So first, when you eat a lot of pas haba’ah b’kisnin—an amount of four eggs or more, along with everything else you’re eating—you certainly have to wash your hands. And besides that, why change the customs of the Jewish people? It was always a meal, and you see here that bread is the main part of the meal. Fine, you might tell me, Shabbos—Shabbos is connected

1:32:04 Speaker 2 And related to that. In simple terms, the Alter Rebbe writes in siman 188 that the main joy is in the bread. We covered that in the class on siman 242. So, uh, follow the halachah, not what people do. There is a halachah here; there is a Shulchan Aruch. Tell them, yes, try to make it a meat meal. If someone tells you that is too much in the morning, I understand. In this setting, serving meat would really put people off. Even cold cuts would be unappetizing. That’s not... that’s not the point, but at least there should be an atmosphere. People sit together, and so on. Now, people don’t even sit at tables. Here they aren’t even tables; it’s a bar. You know what I mean? People walk around, tasting this and tasting that. It’s simply the opposite of what this is meant to be. All right, sorry this class is running long. We covered that. We covered the Purim meal. Oh, regarding... yes, we covered that. Regarding sheva brachos, there is an interesting discussion here involving the Alter Rebbe and the later authorities. It is a disagreement between Rabbi Chaim Naeh and the Tehillah LeDavid, who was a chossid. It says here that an engagement meal—the Eliyah Rabbah is lenient about it. Some are stringent and do not hold an engagement meal on Erev Shabbos. You can get engaged on another day. As for a shidduch celebration in general, the Mishnah Berurah cites opinions that it is not a seudas mitzvah. The Eliyah Rabbah holds that the meal at the shidduch ceremony is a seudas mitzvah. Yes, at the ceremony itself. That is what he writes. In halachah, though, this is called a seudas savlonos, a meal for the exchange of gifts, and a meal for the formal agreement of the shidduch. There is a formal agreement, and there are also gifts. This isn’t just a casual gathering; it is a more binding stage on the way to marriage, which is why it is a seudas mitzvah. In short, the Eliyah Rabbah rules that an engagement meal is permitted on Erev Shabbos, and also a meal

1:34:21 Speaker 2 for a shidduch—on that basis, if it is a mitzvah, it is fine. But if the engagement took place on another day and they postponed the meal, and now they want to hold the postponed engagement meal on Friday—the engagement already happened, but the meal was postponed until Friday—that is a problem. Since you did not hold it on the same day, do not hold it on Erev Shabbos. The Alter Rebbe says that a wedding meal is different, because there is a whole week of sheva brachos. So it is permitted. What exactly does that mean? Perhaps it means that the wedding took place on a certain day—say, Thursday—and now they want to hold the meal on Friday. In that case, the point is that this meal still has to take place: there has not yet been a wedding meal, so you have to make it up. Regarding a wedding meal, then, he says you can make it up before Shabbos. But what if someone gets married on Tuesday or Wednesday and there was a wedding meal, and now someone wants to invite you to sheva brachos and says, “Come on this day”? “No, we can’t come that day. We have something else; we have to go to someone’s shloshim.” But do you have to hold sheva brachos every day? As we said when discussing Even HaEzer, people did not used to hold sheva brachos every day. The Rebbe himself had two sheva brachos meals over the entire week. Doing one every day is an innovation of the last forty years. All the older members of Anash say they had one or two sheva brachos meals. When the circumstances allowed, they held sheva brachos—not like today, when they hold one every day. Sometimes that works out well, because people may be vying to host your sheva brachos, so there is no problem. Other times, you find a family without so many

1:36:16 Speaker 2 friends, or people have not offered to host, and you do not have many sheva brachos meals. So according to halachah, there is no obligation. But clearly, a meal held for sheva brachos is a seudas mitzvah when the conditions for sheva brachos are met. Rabbi Chaim Naeh comes along and says: Suppose you want to hold sheva brachos now, during the day. You invite everyone to a sheva brachos breakfast, or invite them to sheva brachos at one in the afternoon. This is not a wedding meal that was never held; it is sheva brachos. He says that, according to the ruling, this might be forbidden. That is essentially how Rabbi Chaim Naeh understands it. I do not understand it that way, and thank G-d, I eventually found the Tehillah LeDavid, who does not understand it that way either. Since sheva brachos applies throughout the week, you can hold not only a postponed wedding meal but also a sheva brachos meal. Why? What is the proof? Sorry—the proof is this: What does the Alter Rebbe write? “See siman 640.” The Alter Rebbe brings the relevant law in the laws of sukkah, in section 6 of siman 640. It says that when you come to a sheva brachos meal—because in the past, unlike today, the groom had a special bridal chamber where they held sheva brachos; we spoke about this—are guests who come to sheva brachos exempt from the sukkah? It says there that throughout the week of sheva brachos you are exempt from the sukkah, because there is a mitzvah to bring joy to the bride and groom for seven days. So the mitzvah of sheva brachos applies all week, and that exempts you from the sukkah. Today there is no such bridal chamber, and the bride and groom also come into the sukkah, okay? But if the Alter Rebbe writes, “See siman 640,” referring to that law, then plainly he is talking about the obligation of sheva brachos throughout the week. So he is saying that in any

1:38:18 Speaker 2 case, whether this is making up a wedding meal or not, what difference does it make? During the week of the wedding, you have the mitzvah of sheva brachos. Each day has its own mitzvah, and therefore it is permitted to eat the meal. That is how the Tehillah LeDavid understands it. So decide for yourselves; think after the class about these two approaches to understanding it. This is how I understand it. Now, this is a point of halachic analysis, but in practice it may not come up. Why? Because organizing any sheva brachos is a headache. Try holding sheva brachos at one in the afternoon and getting someone to invite you over on Erev Shabbos. It isn’t practical. So what will families decide? They’ll say, “What do we do about Friday’s sheva brachos? We’ll hold it Thursday night.” Nobody is going to be crazy enough to organize sheva brachos on Friday afternoon, or even in the morning. It is such a headache, with Shabbos coming. So this is more a matter for discussion than something that will actually be practical. But it could come up. Say someone is spending Shabbos away; they did not hold sheva brachos the night before, and they really want to make sure there is sheva brachos every day. The whole family is invited to a hotel for that Shabbos. It’s a wealthy family, and everyone is invited for sheva brachos—or perhaps each person pays for their own room; there are all kinds of arrangements. But what happened? We did not hold sheva brachos the night before. Ah. So someone says, “Fine, we’re all at the hotel for Shabbos; I’ll host it. We won’t make anything elaborate. We’ll have a little salmon, chicken in the oven, and hold sheva brachos.” That could happen. So even if it is a lavish meal, there would be grounds to permit it, but it is rare. Okay. The last subject I want to discuss is eating after Kiddush. There is

1:40:21 Speaker 2 a whole subject here, and it is very lengthy, so I will just give you an outline of where to look and a few conclusions, very briefly. I do not want to go into it at length. The Magen Avraham says not to eat grimizlach. It is a kind of mezonos food, often something savory—like, say, cookies today. He says not to eat it after making Kiddush. Or perhaps you accepted Shabbos while it was still daylight. Once you have accepted Shabbos, you cannot even drink without Kiddush. So we are talking about someone who makes Kiddush and then snacks on some mezonos. He says no, there is a problem with that. You spoil your appetite. It is not a severe prohibition, as we explained. As we said earlier, one should not protest if people do it, but it is a problem. Say it is Friday night—that is the case being discussed, though the same could apply on Shabbos day—and after making Kiddush, for some reason, you want to have various things to taste. Say we are talking about mezonos. He says, “Wait, that is a problem.” Why? Is there a problem with eating a cookie two minutes before candle-lighting? No. Even [unclear] is not a problem. Just tasting some cake or something is not forbidden. So what is the problem here? Here it is more serious. We are already right up against the meal. We are about to eat, and the Shabbos meal begins with bread. That is the main thing: the bread. So why are you eating something before the main part of the Shabbos meal? Your appetite, the significance of Shabbos—it all begins with the bread. Anything you eat beforehand detracts from that. That is why the Alter Rebbe cites this Magen Avraham as practical halachah in his Shulchan Aruch, without qualification, and says that you do not do that.

1:42:17 Speaker 2 to eat. You shouldn’t protest if someone does this, because, as we said, strictly speaking it’s permitted. But you’re spoiling your appetite. You’re having a taste before the meal; you’re ruining the meal. “No, it’s the same meal. I’m eating now!” No! It isn’t the same meal. The meal begins when you eat bread. Whatever you eat before the bread isn’t the meal, so you’re spoiling your appetite.

1:42:38 Speaker 8 After all, saying not to protest is stronger than saying it’s a mitzvah to refrain.

1:42:41 Speaker 2 But on the other hand, the Alter Rebbe... Yes, it does sound stronger. Even though the Alter Rebbe says, “apparently, it spoils the appetite, as explained,” and he meant that earlier clause about refraining, the wording here is still stronger. Why? Because here it’s immediately before the meal. Oh, so this raises a huge question. You—usually people don’t do this at night. Now, some Sephardim do have this practice; Moroccans liked to have little tastes to increase the number of brachos. So that’s another question too: can you eat just to make more brachos, or are you causing an unnecessary bracha? There are major issues with that, [unclear], and also—

1:43:25 Speaker 8 If they stimulate the appetite.

1:43:27 Speaker 2 One second. So the Alter Rebbe says that, apparently, it’s a problem to eat it just to make up the number of brachos, and there’s a Kuntres Acharon there, section 4—take a look—that tries to justify those who do it. But right now we’re not talking about which bracha takes precedence or about an unnecessary bracha. I’m talking about the problem of spoiling your appetite. Ideally, it’s a problem. So how can you eat? Of course lots of people do it. We do it every Shabbos at a farbrengen. On Shabbos you make Kiddush. That isn’t your Shabbos meal. Your Shabbos meal is when you wash your hands at home. I’m not talking about a case where you have your Shabbos meal right there. If you have a Shabbos meal in shul, with bread and cholent, fine—that’s a Shabbos meal. But if it’s just snacks and other food, you’re spoiling your appetite. You live across the street; afterward you go home and wash your hands, and you don’t have much appetite. You say, “Fine, we’ll skip the salads and the fish and go straight to the cholent. I’ve already eaten more than enough.” That’s exactly the prohibition. You’ve turned the main Shabbos meal into... and you spoiled your appetite with something that wasn’t called a Shabbos meal—the food you had earlier. Incidentally, the Eshel Avraham of Butchatch, in Ukraine, one of the chassidim, says that perhaps we can explain it this way. He says the entire ruling in Shulchan Aruch appears in section 249. Section 249 gives the example of Friday. Why specifically Friday? Perhaps that’s deliberate, because throughout Friday you’re allowed to taste things. So if, in addition to that, you taste something after Kiddush and before the meal, it spoils your appetite. But what about a person on Shabbos morning? Especially if he isn’t a Chabad chossid, he hasn’t eaten anything. Even for us, as I always say, anyone in Chabad who thinks he can sit down on Shabbos

1:45:20 Speaker 2 morning before davening and polish off cakes—cheesecake, this cake and that cake—where does it say that’s permitted? We taste something. It’s a taste: you take a small piece, and coffee or tea, so you’ll have the strength to daven. We’re not talking about someone who fills his stomach with it. Even if you don’t get into the question of—I don’t know—you’re eating doughnuts, so there’s no question of bentching. How much can you eat? We’re talking about a taste. That’s certainly the plain meaning. So... but that, huh?

1:45:52 Speaker 9 What counts as a taste?

1:45:54 Speaker 2 Well, a piece of cake and a drink, coffee, and that’s it. Then you go to shul. Something—

1:45:59 Speaker 9 Something to keep you going.

1:46:00 Speaker 2 Something that keeps you going a little, but no, we’re not talking about someone... Now, sometimes it gets out of hand, and people start tasting things and end up eating in the morning. That’s crazy. Then you certainly have all the problems mentioned in Shulchan Aruch, section 89: you’re eating out of arrogance, and so on. Here we’re talking about the allowance the Rambam gives for people who are hungry or thirsty. We’re a weak generation, so we have a taste. Especially since we daven late, you’re going the whole... But you eat a little something, just enough to take the edge off your hunger.

1:46:30 Speaker 9 What does that mean?

1:46:31 Speaker 2 Huh? There’s no exact measure. Take a piece of cake, one piece, and—and—and have something to drink.

1:46:37 Speaker 9 A particular size piece?

1:46:38 Speaker 2 You want to taste two cakes? Take two small pieces, and that way you’ll have... A normal piece, like a nice slice of cake you’re given for dessert at the end of a meal—so here too. But you’re not supposed to sit down and eat.

1:46:50 Speaker 9 Like what you give a child before a meal.

1:46:54 Speaker 2 Yes. All right, let’s get back to the point. The Eshel Avraham wants to say this: since you haven’t eaten—you haven’t eaten anything all day—you arrive at shul hungry at twelve, one, one-thirty in the afternoon. So tasting a little something at a farbrengen isn’t like a person who has been tasting and eating things on Friday; if he eats a little more, it adds up to a substantial amount and spoils his appetite. That’s how he wants to justify the common practice of having a taste on Shabbos day.

1:47:31 Speaker 9 They’re mistaken about that.

1:47:32 Speaker 2 Yes. But—

1:47:37 Speaker 9 It’s Kiddush.

1:47:37 Speaker 2 Wait, what am I talking about... No, you make Kiddush in shul.

1:47:40 Speaker 9 Kiddush in shul.

1:47:41 Speaker 2 Yes, but that’s before the meal. The mea— that isn’t called a meal. A meal means bread, as the Magen Avraham says here. Oh, so now there’s a very interesting Kuntres Acharon, section 3. You can study it inside; it isn’t difficult. What he basically says is this. He says, apparently there’s a contradiction in section 273, paragraph 7, in the laws there, which says that Kiddush must be made in the place of a meal. What can count as a meal for this purpose? Drinking a revi’is of wine in addition to the cheekful required for Kiddush; or, in our case, eating a kezayis of mezonos, or some kugel; or eating a kezayis of bread. Then you fulfill your obligation of Kiddush—not the obligation of the Shabbos meal, but of Kiddush. The Gemara calls this “minei targima”: you eat various kinds of mezonos. Wait, how can you eat mezonos? Isn’t it forbidden to eat before washing your hands? So how does the Magen Avraham reconcile that with the law in section 273, which he himself upholds? The Alter Rebbe says: that isn’t a question. Section 273 teaches you the law of Kiddush in the place of a meal, but it doesn’t tell you when you have the meal. Who says he doesn’t have his meal perhaps half an hour later? The law here in section 249 concerns tasting various things or eating mezonos before washing your hands, eating treats, and then washing your hands. That’s a problem, because now you’ve spoiled your appetite a little. He says that if you wait a bit—he doesn’t specify how long, but let’s say fifteen minutes or half an hour—some time passes, and you haven’t eaten tons, then it’s fine; your appetite will return. You didn’t have a meal here; you just had a little

1:49:32 Speaker 2 nibble, tasted something, snacked on some savory mezonos, so that’s fine. Section 249, though, is talking about going straight into a meal with hamotzi afterward, and that’s a problem. For example, a person eats at Kiddush in shul and then just crosses the street and washes his hands. No time has passed, hardly any time at all. A three- or four-minute walk is nothing. That’s a problem, says the Alter Rebbe. Section 273 teaches the law of Kiddush in the place of a meal; it doesn’t say that you eat bread immediately afterward, but that some time passes. But the Alter Rebbe says it gets a little complicated, because in section 471, it appears from the Rashbam and so on, in the discussion of Erev Pesach, that there actually are things which, when you eat them before a meal, stimulate your appetite—just as you wanted to say. Sometimes you snack on various things before eating bread, and far from spoiling your appetite, they actually lead you to eat more. But here we said the opposite. And then why does it say that eating things—fruit and the like—before candle-lighting on Erev Pesach is a problem? As for eating immediately before the meal, the explanation is that here some time has passed. If a little time has passed, your stomach settles, and then it spoils your appetite. But if you eat and go straight into the meal, your stomach is still ready for food, so on the contrary, it stimulates your appetite. The Alter Rebbe says that this seems to be the opposite reasoning from what we said earlier: that when some time passes there’s no problem, and the problem is when you have that little nibble and go straight into the meal. Then the Alter Rebbe offers two kinds of answers. In one answer he says: there’s eating immediately before the meal, there’s a little time passing, and there’s a longer interval

1:51:48 Speaker 2 Time passes. So you could put it this way: If you go straight into the meal while your appetite is still open, then eat and begin the meal right away. But if there’s a pause of a few minutes—let’s say a ten-minute pause; I’m putting a number on it because he doesn’t give precise definitions—that may be different. If, after those little tastes, as the Sephardim do, you have a few olives, a little of this and that, make the brachos, then rush to wash your hands and start eating, your appetite is open, and that’s fine. But if a little time passes, say ten minutes or so, your appetite might close up, and then it could spoil the meal. And if you actually wait half an hour or an hour between those tastes and the meal, then, since it isn’t immediate, it’s fine; it doesn’t spoil the meal. That’s one answer. Another answer says it depends on what you eat. If you eat bread or mezonos, for instance, those are things that spoil your appetite when you eat them right before the meal. If you eat them earlier, it’s fine. But when you eat them close to the meal—as in the answer he gave at the beginning when he reconciled it with section 273—then I can understand that it doesn’t spoil your appetite when it isn’t close to the meal. But if you eat it close to the meal, like the grizel, then it does spoil it. So what doesn’t spoil your appetite even when eaten close to the meal? Things with a certain tartness. You eat a little fruit, a few vegetables—that opens your appetite. You know how sometimes they bring you something, a slice of melon or something like that, specifically to stimulate your appetite.

1:53:50 Speaker 2 So he says: Or sweets. You take a candy, a piece of chocolate, some little sweet, a nut with honey. Those are actually among the things that can open your appetite. And what was the Magen Avraham talking about? He was talking about grizel. He was talking about taking matzah now, taking a mezonos roll, taking cookies. Obviously, even if you begin the meal immediately afterward, that already spoils your appetite. Now, this is the Alter Rebbe in Kuntres Acharon, working through the subject with various arguments. But pay attention to something very simple. This is the point: When someone studies halachah, in the end, besides understanding each passage, he needs to understand one thing from another. You understand? If you’re not a serious student, it will be hard for you to be wise. To be wise, you either have to review a great deal or have a naturally good memory, and you also have to be a bit of a serious student. Because you can learn the Kuntres Acharon and say, “Oh, here I have answers,” and build on them—as many people take the various “one could suggest” statements in Likkutei Sichos and build mountains of halachos on them. Wait a minute. The entire Torah is spread out before the Rebbe; he is exploring the arguments. This isn’t a halachic ruling right now, so the discussion goes in every direction. Fine, one could suggest this here and suggest that there. So what is the Kuntres Acharon doing here? It gives you various possibilities, but what’s the conclusion? After all, if I take an answer from the Kuntres Acharon, I could ask: Why did the Alter Rebbe write above, in the Shulchan Aruch, that we don’t eat right before a meal, without saying anything else?

1:55:44 Speaker 2 Did he say grizel? The Magen Avraham gave that example. The Alter Rebbe doesn’t give you examples, so anything is a problem to eat immediately before the meal, right? You might say, “No, sweets are fine; make a distinction.” But he doesn’t make that distinction. Why? Because the Alter Rebbe explored the sugyos, and that doesn’t necessarily mean he ruled that way. Since there are several ways to learn the matter—if you learn it one way, you lose one permission, and if you learn it another way, you lose another—it seems he didn’t want to decide the matter and left it unstated, to be stringent. And even when you see—if this were a note he wrote fifty years later, that would be one thing. But Kuntres Acharon isn’t like that. It isn’t like the rulings in the Siddur or things he wrote in a responsum some years later. Very often, he wrote it while writing the halachah itself. For us, ordinary people, he put the halachos above, and for someone who wants to delve into them and explore the arguments, he put notes below. But it was written at the same time. So why doesn’t he put this here? Or give distinctions between a short time and a long time? Why doesn’t he say it? Because, plainly, the Alter Rebbe’s position in his Shulchan Aruch—and he doesn’t distinguish between Shabbos day and Friday night as the rabbi of Butshatsh does—is that he doesn’t want us to have tastes before the meal. He doesn’t want that. On the other hand, the first answer he gave, about whether it is close to the meal—that is what he’s discussing. He’s discussing a case where you made Kiddush on Shabbos day and afterward want to eat. Now, if you hold a farbrengen, there is indeed a custom to hold a farbrengen. But who told you to snack endlessly

1:57:28 Speaker 2 in the first place, and actually spoil the meal? After all, even regarding this law, the Alter Rebbe says not to protest. So if the result is that chassidim grow in yiras Shamayim—this is their only time; everyone worked with cattle and plows all week until holy Shabbos came and they could hear a bit of a farbrengen—then that benefit outweighs the reason to protest. You can say, fine, there needs to be a farbrengen. But why eat so much? Today they make mega-Kiddushes. Abroad, they put on Kiddushes costing thousands of shekels, thousands of euros. So you run into a problem. If you still intend to wash your hands and eat bread there, and think of what you continue eating at home as part of that meal, there’s room to discuss it. But to eat a full meal there and then go home for the actual bread meal—you’ve clearly spoiled that meal. That’s a problem, and you have no custom to support it. “It’s a Chabad custom to do this.” A Chabad custom? Do you want me to show you what was on the tables of the great chassidim over several generations? What was there? At the Rebbe’s farbrengen, when it lasted four hours, we’d be looking at the cup and the sponge cake, as if there were nothing there. There was nothing. Sometimes people made Kiddush and tasted a little shot or something beforehand, but at the farbrengen, there was wine on the table. That’s how it was on Shabbos, too. You want them to serve meals? What meals were there? A bit of herring fighting the onion all by itself? There was nothing. So don’t say, “No, no, this is a Chabad custom.” No. Endlessly snacking and eating is not a Chabad custom. Certainly not. And secondly, what you can do, since you did snack a little, is this: If you live a bit far away, a fifteen- or twenty-minute walk, excellent. If not, you can at least allow

1:59:28 Speaker 2 about twenty minutes to pass, so it isn’t right before the meal. Then you at least have the answer that the Alter Rebbe does accept: What’s written in section 3 applies when it isn’t close to the meal. If it is close, that’s something to be aware of and to be careful about. Good.