Instructing a Non-Jew - Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Feiglestock shlita

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

00:09 Speaker 2 Today we’ll discuss the prohibition against asking a non-Jew to do something forbidden on Shabbos. The Sages prohibited us from telling a non-Jew to do something that we may not do on Shabbos. The Alter Rebbe discusses this in many sections of the Shulchan Aruch. These laws are not all in one place; they’re scattered throughout. Covering all the laws of asking a non-Jew in a one-hour class is very, very difficult. We’ll go through the main points and look at the subject as a whole, focusing especially on the cases in which it is permitted to ask a non-Jew to do something forbidden on Shabbos. When is it permitted? That will be our main focus. The general prohibition is discussed in section 243, paragraph 1: the Sages prohibited us from telling a non-Jew to violate Shabbos for us, whether he receives a salary from us and works for us or is doing us a favor for free. It is forbidden. Even though, throughout the Torah, a non-Jew cannot become an agent, and generally there is no agency for a transgression, the Sages nevertheless imposed the stringency that telling a non-Jew, who is not commanded to rest, is considered a form of agency. The reason they prohibited asking a non-Jew is so that people won’t come to take Shabbos lightly and do the work themselves. Therefore, it is also forbidden to ask a non-Jew on Yom Tov, and even on Chol Hamoed. And this prohibition is not limited to the mitzvah of resting on Shabbos. It applies to all the Torah’s mitzvos: whatever we are forbidden to do, we are forbidden to tell a non-Jew to do. It’s the same thing. For example, if someone wants to give or receive a loan with interest, sending a non-Jew to receive or give the money does not remove the prohibition. In that case it is even worse, because the loan itself is attributed to the person who owns the money. It does not even come under the category of agency; it is the prohibition itself. Doing it through a non-Jew is actually forbidden by Torah law. And there are

03:07 Speaker 2 other mitzvos for which asking a non-Jew is forbidden. For example, the laws concerning children: giving a child something forbidden, and various other cases. Or take the prohibition against castrating an animal: one may not tell a non-Jew to do that. The prohibition against asking a non-Jew applies across the Torah’s mitzvos. And the Sages ruled that if a non-Jew performed work on Shabbos, a Jew may not benefit from that work on Shabbos, or after Shabbos until enough time has passed for it to have been done then. That is, the Jew must not benefit at all from its having been done on Shabbos. If it took the non-Jew an hour to prepare it, one must wait an hour after Shabbos ends. Then the Jew gains nothing from its having been done on Shabbos, since there would have been enough time for the non-Jew to do it after Shabbos. That is why one may not benefit from it until that amount of time has passed. Many laws of this kind are discussed in various places. Take a lamp: if it belongs to a Jew, and the Jew did not tell a non-Jew to light it, but the non-Jew sees him trying to read a book in the dark, realizes that he would like some light, and turns on the light—because the lamp belongs to the Jew and he does not object, he may not benefit from its light. Does that mean he has to leave the room? No, he does not have to leave, but he may not read or otherwise benefit from the light. Since the lamp belongs to the Jew, his failure to object, allowing the non-Jew to turn it on, shows that he agrees, and the non-Jew becomes his agent. So he may not benefit from it, and he must object. What if he tells the non-Jew, “Listen, I’m in the dark, and I have to object to what you’re doing. But you should know that whenever I object, I’m only doing it so that I’ll be allowed to use the light. I actually want you to turn it on, so don’t listen to me—turn it on”? The Alter Rebbe says that if a non-Jew does not listen when you object, you must

06:07 Speaker 2 remove him from the house. You must fire him. You have to send him away. You may not continue employing him. There are no tricks here. You must object and send the non-Jew away, so that he will listen to you and Shabbos will be observed. I think this appears—yes—in section 276, paragraph 6. If the lamp belongs to a Jew, he must object to the non-Jew’s action. Now, if the lamp belongs to a non-Jew and most of the people in the room are non-Jews, and he lights it for himself or for most of the people there, then he has done it for non-Jews and the Jew may benefit from the light. But the lamp must belong to a non-Jew. For example, a Jew enters a hotel. The lobby is dark, and three people are sitting there: two non-Jews and one Jew. A hotel employee comes and turns on the hotel’s light. The Jew may benefit from it. But if there are two Jews and one non-Jew, he may not benefit from the light, because the majority of the people are Jews. This is in section 276, paragraph 6. Today, if you walk into a hotel lobby and sit down, the light may come on by itself. But it has not come on by itself. A sensor detects someone entering, and as soon as it senses movement in the room, it turns on the light. That is not a way around the prohibition. Who turned on the light?

08:15 Speaker 2 The Jew who entered the room did. He violated Shabbos. So in a hotel with that kind of sensor, this is not a matter of asking a non-Jew. It is an act done directly. Instead of turning on the light with his hand by pressing a button, he turned it on by walking into that area. The sensor detected his movement, and through that movement he turned on the light on Shabbos. It is an act done directly. [unclear] But all of this discussion concerns a lamp belonging to a non-Jew, not one belonging to a Jew. If it belongs to a Jew, he must object. And if he objects but the non-Jew pays no attention, he must send him away. There is no permission for a non-Jew to do something on Shabbos with a Jew’s property, even without being instructed to do it. What if it is for the sake of a mitzvah? Is that permitted? Say it is to turn on the lights in a shul that is dark. I would say that today this is not for the sake of a mitzvah; it is for the sake of people who were too lazy to prepare. If we have a shul, then “whoever prepares on Friday will eat on Shabbos.” Just as we must prepare the cholent, wine, and challahs before Shabbos, we must set the Shabbos timer before Shabbos to turn the lights on and off. We should not arrive at shul on Shabbos, find it completely dark, and look for a non-Jew to turn on the lights. That is not preparing for Shabbos. The Alter Rebbe rules that, for the sake of a mitzvah, there is room to permit asking a non-Jew to do something prohibited by rabbinic law. But when it is prohibited by Torah law, such as lighting a lamp for the sake of a mitzvah—even where the mitzvah is circumcising a child on the eighth day, and the circumcision itself overrides Shabbos—carrying the child to shul, or bringing the knife through a public domain, is prohibited by Torah law. If that is necessary, the circumcision must be postponed and they will not circumcise him, because the mitzvah of circumcision overrides Shabbos, but

10:56 Speaker 2 the preparations for circumcision do not. Whether it is bringing the child or carrying the knife, the circumcision must be postponed even if a non-Jew could do it. However, those who are lenient and have a non-Jew perform work for the sake of a mitzvah have authorities on whom to rely. Therefore, one should not protest against them—calling someone a Shabbos desecrator, telling him, “You’re like a non-Jew, you desecrate Shabbos,” or invoking the duty to rebuke and protest, and so on. There are opinions that permit asking a non-Jew to do something for the sake of a mitzvah, even though the Alter Rebbe does not rule that way. Someone who follows the Alter Rebbe’s rulings will not ask a non-Jew to turn on the light on Shabbos; he will set the Shabbos timer. The same applies to similar situations. Suppose many people are in shul and suddenly the lights go out because of a malfunction. Here there may be grounds to ask a non-Jew—not for the sake of the mitzvah, but because the darkness could put people in danger. As happened in Meron, people may suddenly panic on the stairs and trample one another, creating a dangerous situation. So the darkness may pose a danger. In that case, asking a non-Jew is certainly permitted. It may even be necessary to consider having a Jew violate Shabbos where there is danger. We’ll discuss that in another class, when we talk about saving lives and when a Jew may do so. But asking a non-Jew is certainly permitted in such a situation—not for the sake of the prayers, and not so people can read from a siddur, but to prevent danger. That is something you can ask a non-Jew to do. Now let’s turn to cases in which it is permitted to ask a non-Jew. For someone who is dangerously ill, Shabbos may be violated even by a Jew; that will be covered in the next class. For someone who is ill but not in danger—that is, there is no concern at all that his life is in danger, not even a possibility—he is simply ill. In that case, all his needs may be attended to by a non-Jew on Shabbos. One may instruct a non-Jew to do whatever the patient needs.

13:37 Speaker 2 You may tell a non-Jew to cook for him, turn on the light for him—whatever a person who is ill but not in danger needs, all his needs. What is the definition of someone who is ill? Someone who does not feel well and takes to bed. Let’s put it in our own words. A person feels so unwell that, if it were the middle of the week, he would call his employer and say, “I’m not coming to work today. I don’t feel well. I’ll ask the doctor for a note confirming that I’m sick.” That is considered being ill. He cannot carry out the tasks he normally does each day. Say a woman doesn’t have a job outside the home. She has a sink full of dishes and a mountain of laundry, but she leaves all her responsibilities at home, lies down in bed, and calls her husband: “My dear husband, I can’t do it today. I’m not able to. Either come do the dishes yourself or get someone to help. I can’t run the household today; I’m in bed.” That is called a person who is ill but not in danger, for whom a non-Jew may do whatever is needed. And even if, for whatever strange reasons, someone who really is ill has not taken to bed and is still on his feet, if he could, he would leave all his responsibilities and go lie down. He is considered ill even though he is standing, and a non-Jew may perform even full-fledged melachah for him. And a young child—a toddler, meaning two years old or younger—has the same status as a person who is ill but not in danger with regard to all his needs. Say they prepared food for the baby, but suddenly, on Shabbos morning, the baby develops diarrhea and I need to give him rice or cooked apple or something, and there isn’t any. There’s no cooked rice in the house. I can instruct a non-Jew to light a fire and cook rice for the little one, for

16:16 Speaker 2 the young child—whatever he needs. But what about food cooked by a non-Jew? The Sages provided for that too: when a non-Jew cooks for someone who is ill, the prohibition against food cooked by a non-Jew does not apply. The question is what its status is after Shabbos, when there is time to cook fresh rice or another dish for the baby. There are two opinions, and the Alter Rebbe seems inclined to say that after Shabbos it becomes prohibited again as food cooked by a non-Jew. The pot in which the non-Jew cooked on Shabbos, after lighting the fire, needs to be kashered—even if it is earthenware, which cannot be kashered in cases involving Torah prohibitions. But in this case, even an earthenware vessel can be kashered. We won’t go into the details of how to kasher it, or how the kashering here is more lenient. We’re focusing more on instructing a non-Jew, but this is a case where that is permitted. If a person is a little sick, though, but would go to work and carry out all his usual tasks on a weekday despite feeling this way—even though he has a bit of a cold, doesn’t feel quite right, is a little sick, and takes some Tylenol or Acamol, some sort of medicine—he is not considered ill, and one may not instruct a non-Jew on his behalf. What’s more, he may not even take medicine, because the Sages prohibited someone who is not ill from taking medicine on Shabbos. A person who is ill but not in danger and taking medicine is a subject in its own right; we won’t discuss it today. In any case, that is one situation in which instructing a non-Jew is permitted. A second situation is anything prohibited as a shevus, a rabbinic restriction. Yes. A simple example that comes up often in our homes is the refrigerator. Today there are refrigerators with a Shabbos system and all that. I’m talking about the old refrigerators sold fifty years ago. They had a temperature sensor. When it sensed that the inside of the refrigerator had become warm, it turned on the

18:55 Speaker 2 compressor, which circulated the gas and cooled the refrigerator compartment, until the sensor, the thermostat, detected that it had become very cold. Then the sensor turned off the motor so it would stop running. When a person opens the door, he lets warm air in, and the warm air turns on the motor. His intention in opening the door is not to turn on the motor, but it is a psik reisha—an inevitable result. So, according to the opinions that prohibited opening the door while the motor was not running because of psik reisha, one may tell a non-Jew to open it. Today we have refrigerators with a Shabbos mode. How does that work? There are different kinds and different methods. The most common is that the sensor does not operate when you open the door. Once every... three seconds, three minutes, two... once every two minutes, the sensor switches on to check whether the compartment is warm or cold. If it senses warmth, it turns on the compressor until it senses that the compartment has become cold. In other words, the final thing that causes the compressor to turn on is not the opening of the door but the timer, which runs a cycle every two or three minutes. That was the last action; opening the door was only a remote, indirect cause. Whether a more immediate indirect cause is permitted is something the halachic authorities have discussed at length. We won’t get into that, but that is the general method used by today’s refrigerators that have Shabbos certification. Today’s refrigerators are a little more complicated because of “no frost”—the feature that prevents ice buildup. With these refrigerators, when you open the door and there is a lot of ice, you also cause a hot electrical wire to switch on and defrost it. That happens on Shabbos too. And for that, there is no allowance to

22:00 Speaker 2 open the door only when the motor is running. Refrigerators like these cannot be used on Shabbos without Shabbos certification, because opening the door affects not only the compressor but also a hot wire, and that is much more complicated. You could give an entire class just on refrigerators on Shabbos, or... or... water heaters on Shabbos. There is a whole discussion about all kinds of appliances with certifications, different types of certification, lenient and stringent opinions, and all of that. The audience knows this. It isn’t the subject we’re discussing today. In any case, I just want to stress the importance of Shabbos certification for a no-frost refrigerator, where ice does not need to be defrosted. It is a much more serious issue than an ordinary refrigerator and needs to be discussed separately. How does it work? Because the truth is, there is no such refrigerator: all refrigerators develop ice. The question is how they get rid of it. Now for another practical case today in which instructing a non-Jew is permitted despite a psik reisha. The floor is dirty, and I tell a non-Jew to take a wet cloth and wipe it. That raises an issue of psik reisha involving squeezing or laundering: he squeezes the cloth to wet the floor, which softens the dirt, and then gathers up the dirt. But I may tell the non-Jew to do it, because I am telling him to clean, not telling him to squeeze the cloth to get the water or soap out. I am only telling him to clean the floor, and I do not intend for him to squeeze. A Jew may not do it because of the inevitable result, but he may tell a non-Jew to do it. Similarly, consider a broom whose bristles break on Shabbos. His intention is not to break the bristles; it is to sweep the floor. A Jew may not do it, but he may instruct a non-Jew to do it. Or he levels

24:37 Speaker 2 Holes in the ground—that’s something that isn’t really relevant in neighborhoods today. Today everything is paved, though you can still have that situation in a courtyard. I don’t know if anyone today would ask a non-Jew to sweep the ground in a courtyard, so we won’t deal with that. I don’t see it as practical today. Those are the cases in which asking a non-Jew is permitted. So let’s narrow it down: a person who is ill but not in danger, and a case of psik reisha. In all other cases, anything we may not do ourselves, we may not ask a non-Jew to do. It goes even further. Let’s take something that still comes up and involves a rabbinic prohibition. Is it permitted to ask a non-Jew? The question arises like this: I invited a large crowd to the second Seder, on the second day of Yom Tov in the Diaspora. Or I invited a large crowd to a Simchas Torah kiddush immediately after Maariv. Maariv is held at the usual time, and fifteen minutes later everyone enters the dining room for Simchas Torah. Can the non-Jewish workers set the tables and heat the food on Shemini Atzeres, during Yom Tov, so it can be served on Simchas Torah? That is prohibited because it is preparation from a holy day for what may be a weekday. The second day of Yom Tov in the Diaspora is treated as possibly holy and possibly a weekday; Shemini Atzeres may be holy while Simchas Torah is a weekday. Therefore, one may not prepare from one day of Yom Tov for the next. Asking a non-Jew is also prohibited, even when the only issue is preparation—setting tables, clearing them, putting out tablecloths, plates, chairs and cutlery. Even if they aren’t lighting a fire or cooking, asking a non-Jew just to set the tables is prohibited. How do we solve the problem? There are several ways. If the room hasn’t been used, you can set the tables on Hoshana Rabbah or at any earlier time and leave them set. Or you can bring in a large staff—many people, many

27:13 Speaker 2 non-Jewish workers—and delay Maariv by fifteen minutes, giving us half an hour. Say we have a hundred tables: if we hire fifty waiters, then fifty, or even twenty-five, waiters can set a hundred tables in half an hour. Every problem has a solution. The question is how much money we want to invest in observing the mitzvos properly. In any event, preparation here may involve a Torah-level prohibition: preparing from a holy day for a weekday. Shemini Atzeres is holy by Torah law, while Simchas Torah has the status of a weekday under Torah law, since we observe the second day only because we maintain the custom of our ancestors. So there is a Torah-level question here, even though no melachah is involved. But even if we say it is entirely rabbinic, asking a non-Jew to do something prohibited is forbidden even in a case of shevus d’shevus, a double rabbinic prohibition. Right? Whether there is room for leniency for a mitzvah, and whether this counts as such a case, I don’t know. When the Alter Rebbe seeks to be lenient for a mitzvah, he is speaking about something prohibited only as a shevus, a rabbinic restriction, that is done by a non-Jew—such as carrying in a karmelis. It doesn’t mean planning to do it that way. Rather, the plan was to do it another way, but then something went wrong, something happened, and help is needed so that the mitzvah won’t be missed. That is the situation the Alter Rebbe is discussing: asking a non-Jew to perform a rabbinically prohibited act for a mitzvah when proper arrangements had been made, but something broke or fell. I’ll give an example of something that happened to the Alter Rebbe himself. They had planned to sit in the sukkah, but snow fell and covered the s’chach, making it invalid because the snow formed a covering over it. It is permitted to instruct a non-Jew to remove the snow. Removing the snow involves only a shevus, not a melachah. So for the mitzvah of sitting in the sukkah, one may ask a non-Jew to do something prohibited as a shevus—namely, to move the snow,

30:03 Speaker 2 which is muktzeh. That is what we’re talking about: something beyond our control happened and is preventing us from doing the mitzvah. In such a case, one may ask a non-Jew to do something prohibited as a shevus for the sake of the mitzvah. But we shouldn’t plan to fulfill a mitzvah that way. Just as we make arrangements for everything else, we should make arrangements for the mitzvah, giving a sacred need the same importance as an ordinary need, if not more. That is the subject of asking a non-Jew to do work, and those are the cases in which it is permitted. Everything else is prohibited. There’s a question I want to address: What is the law about asking a non-Jew to turn on the air conditioner in summer or the heat in winter? In Canada, where it can be twenty-five degrees below zero, if the heat breaks down, the temperature inside the house can fall to five or ten degrees below zero. The Alter Rebbe rules in the Shulchan Aruch: everyone is considered ill when exposed to cold, and one may ask a non-Jew to light the stove and heat the house. In other words, if something in the heating system breaks, one may ask a non-Jew to call the repair company to come and fix it on Shabbos or Yom Tov, because everyone is considered ill when exposed to cold. The question is: if it is forty degrees outside, is everyone considered ill because of the heat? That is a major discussion. We can see that a hundred years ago there was no air conditioning, and people lived. In Russia, a thousand years ago, there were stoves to heat homes in winter, wherever it was cold. People had wood-burning stoves in their homes, and they lit them and heated their homes throughout the years. Even a thousand—one thousand years ago, two thousand years ago. The Gemara says that everyone is considered ill when exposed to cold, and homes were heated in winter. Anyone building a house in a cold country built a stove inside it for winter heating, and it was customary to heat the house several times a day to keep it warm. But people lived through the heat; nothing happened to them. If it was forty degrees, they stayed in the shade, drank a little more water, and everything was fine.

33:15 Speaker 2 Today the situation is somewhat different. People live much longer. A hundred years ago, life expectancy was around sixty—sixty-five, fifty-five. Today people reach eighty or ninety, and reaching seventy or eighty is very common. People who reach eighty or ninety are much frailer, and without air conditioning they really could become ill, even dangerously ill. They could even faint. So if there are sick or elderly people in a fragile condition who could be endangered without air conditioning, there may be a case in which turning it on would be permitted. But in general, I would say that there is no such need to turn on the air conditioning on Shabbos. It isn’t like the case of someone who is ill. At 770, the practice was to call a non-Jew if the air conditioning broke down on Shabbos. The situation at 770 was different. There, even in winter, they would run the air conditioning because the sheer number of people heated the room, and it could become genuinely dangerous. Without air conditioning, it reached the point where people had no air to breathe and fainted. Even young people were taken away in ambulances. I saw it with my own eyes on Rosh Hashanah. On Yom Tov we would find people who had fainted, even with the air conditioning and everything else. Boruch Hashem, over all those years everyone came out alive; no one passed away. But quite a few people did reach a dangerous condition. Fainting from lack of air was extremely common. There, I would say that if the air conditioning broke down on Shabbos, it might even be better for a Jew to violate Shabbos to fix it. But at 770, the practice was to have a non-Jew available all the time, and if the air conditioning broke down, the non-Jew would fix it.

35:58 Speaker 2 At that moment. And he was responsible for making sure that throughout the farbrengens, the davening, or whatever was happening in the shul, an outside company brought in trucks with air conditioners. They ran enormous ducts through the windows, a meter in diameter, to bring cold air from the air-conditioning unit parked outside 770 on Kingston Avenue into the beis midrash. That’s how it was in the last years I was there. It was genuinely dangerous. But in an ordinary shul or an ordinary home, if the air conditioner breaks down on Shabbos, nothing will happen. People will drink another glass of water, open the windows, and everything will be fine. They’ll get through it safely, and nothing will happen. Cold is different: everyone is considered ill when it comes to the cold. That’s an explicit halacha. Each person is considered ill from the cold, and one may ask a non-Jew to repair the heating so there will be warmth on Shabbos. So what happens in Tzfas? It gets cold at night. Jerusalem gets cold at night, but it isn’t New York cold. The Shulchan Aruch discusses this and says: If there are small children in the home and they could become ill, that can happen even when it isn’t very cold. Say it’s ten degrees outside, eight degrees outside; inside, with the windows closed, it might be fifteen degrees or twelve degrees. No, asking a non-Jew was not permitted. There is no permission to ask a non-Jew. What should a person do? Put on a coat, put on a sweater, and everything will be fine. But when it’s twenty below zero, a coat might help for fifteen minutes, or an hour, but you can’t live in a coat for twenty-four hours. It doesn’t work. Not even for three hours. At ten or fifteen degrees, though, a coat will solve the problem. A person will feel warm, and nothing will happen. If there are young children, then even when the cold isn’t severe and it’s relatively warm, in a place where there are young children or elderly people, then

38:39 Speaker 2 even where the cold isn’t severe, one may ask a non-Jew to turn on the heating on Shabbos as needed—provided these people are considered ill and even a little cold could harm them. In practice, we need to protect the health of a Jew, so that a Jew remains healthy and well. Hakadosh Boruch Hu permitted all sorts of things that are forbidden in other circumstances. But to protect a Jew’s health, Hakadosh Boruch Hu permitted them. That is why the Sages saw fit to permit so many things for the sake of a Jew’s health. Ultimately, the intention is that a Jew be healthy in body and soul—in physical and mental health. I wish you all health and well-being, and may Hakadosh Boruch Hu protect you from all evil and from everything else.