3.27 Tzav 5783

00:05 Good evening. Welcome to Panorama of Halacha, lesson number twenty-eight. All right, let’s get to the first question. A woman from somewhere in Europe wrote to me that she was walking down the street on Shabbos after shul, wearing her glasses up on her forehead. She had forgotten they were there. They weren’t reading glasses; she generally uses them to see at a distance, not to read, and she had simply forgotten that she was wearing them on her forehead. In the middle of the street she suddenly realized: Oh! What do I do now? It’s a very interesting question. Why? Generally, the halacha is that if someone is walking in the street on Shabbos and realizes he has an object on him, one option is to drop it on the ground in an unusual manner. Let’s read this in siman 266. There, though, it discusses giving it to an animal, a non-Jew, or a minor: “If he can guard it there until after Shabbos, he should do so; otherwise, he loosens his belt in the street so that the pouch falls, and asks a non-Jew to guard it.” So he has a pouch of money attached to his belt. What does it say? That he loosens his belt and it falls. In other words, he lets it fall in an unusual manner. With the melacha of carrying on Shabbos, there is taking an object from one domain to another—sorry, there is lifting it and setting it down. Here he tries to set it down in an unusual manner, so that this does not constitute a melacha. Now, this woman had her glasses on her forehead. That is carrying them; it isn’t the normal way to wear them. If she puts them on her nose, will that count as setting them down and thus completing the melacha? Or will we say that it interrupts the act of carrying before it is completed? That’s what we’ll discuss. Here’s a similar case. Suppose you’re walking down the street on Shabbos and you notice

03:20 that you have a gartel in your pocket, or food in your pocket. Or a kippah. If it’s like money, that settles it: the advice is to drop it from your pocket in an unusual manner. But what if, without stopping as you walk, you take out the kippah and put it on your head? Or you put the food in your mouth and swallow it? Does that count as setting it down in an unusual manner, or as setting it down normally? Let’s read Shemiras Shabbos Kehilchasah: “Someone walking on Shabbos who realizes that he has a handkerchief or a kippah in his pocket should act as stated at the beginning of section 59: he should not stop, but should cast it away from himself in an unusual manner. After dropping the handkerchief or kippah in that manner, he should stop, pick up the handkerchief, and wrap it around his neck while standing still. With a kippah, he should pick it up and put it on his head while standing still. But he should not do so while walking, since such an action is considered setting it down in the public domain.” Very interesting. That would be considered setting it down. He cites Igros Moshe and the Chazon Ish. I didn’t check Igros Moshe—sorry, I didn’t check the Chazon Ish. Igros Moshe has a brilliant responsum, and he brings a proof from the Gemara: someone has ink with him and, while walking, takes the ink and writes on Shabbos. His writing constitutes setting it down. The ink had been in transit; he puts it on the paper, and the paper is still moving. Objectively, then, the ink and paper are still moving, but for a brief moment the ink has come to rest, and that is called setting it down. Similarly, if you have food with you and swallow it while you’re still walking, then in the larger picture it is still moving. But now the food has reached a state of relative

06:13 rest, and that is enough to count as setting it down. He brings several proofs. There’s a law concerning someone standing in the public domain who bends over into a private domain, where there is water, and drinks it with his head inside the private domain. Tosafos discuss why that is permitted: when he drinks, doesn’t the water pass down his throat into his intestines, which are in the public domain? Tosafos say no: once he swallows it, that’s it. That is where it is considered to have come to rest. What happens afterward is irrelevant. Reb Moshe brings this as part of his ruling. We see here that even though the person is still moving, if he brings the object to its natural resting place—what is, so to speak, its final destination—that counts as setting it down, even though, broadly speaking, it is still moving. So I told this woman too—she asked after Shabbos, of course—that she could not put the glasses on and wear them, because that would count as setting them down. What could she do? She could drop them. Well, you can drop money or a handkerchief, but glasses are valuable. So I suggested perhaps dropping them onto grass, for example, or onto plants that are less than ten tefachim high. Someone suggested dropping them onto a hedge. Often, along the sides of streets, houses have hedges. But I said that wouldn’t work. First, what is the status of the hedge? Is it in the public domain or the private domain? If I stand in the public domain and put something on a fence belonging to a private domain, the fence is considered part of the private domain. That is bringing an object into a private domain, which is forbidden. So the hedge separating the front of the property from the public domain

08:43 is in the private domain. That’s one point. Second, if the glasses fall onto the hedge, we have another problem: using something that grows from the ground. It would be a problem to lift the glasses off the hedge, because one may not take an object resting on a tree. That is considered using something that grows from the ground, which is not permitted. All right, the next question: May a pregnant woman visit a cemetery on her father’s yahrzeit? I brought Nitei Gavriel on this; let’s read it. He says: “Some have the custom that a pregnant woman should not go to a cemetery, even for a yahrzeit or to visit the graves of tzaddikim; but there is no objection to doing so.” What is the source of this whole practice of not going? He says it has no source. He cites the sefer Shevet Mussar—these are later authorities—which writes that a woman should be careful not to enter a place of impurity, as this could cause an evil spirit to affect the birth. He says that perhaps this is why pregnant women refrain from going to a cemetery: because of the spirit of impurity. The Minchas Yitzchak also did not know the source of the custom, but nevertheless respected it. So there is some basis for understanding this custom. In the end, though, he says that for a particular need one may be lenient. He brings the halacha regarding a niddah: it does say in the poskim that a niddah should not go to a cemetery. A niddah is in a state of impurity, and combining that with the impurity of a cemetery is not a recipe for something good. Nevertheless, in special circumstances it is permitted, so that she should not suffer distress. Similarly, one may be lenient regarding a pregnant woman, although the reason is not at all the same, right? In one case we’re talking about the combination of one impurity with another; here we’re talking about a possible risk of an evil spirit affecting the child. Still, all these matters

11:14 have no clear source, so when there is an unusual circumstance or a particular reason, the practice is to be lenient. All right, one last matter. These are two pictures from two different places, but they raise the same question: If there is an area in front of a house that is open to the public domain and has three walls, may one carry from the house into that area? Is it a private domain, or is it forbidden? The situation in the picture on the right is on an island. Garbage collection there is on Tuesday or Shabbos. Until now they had been putting the garbage out on Friday, but the neighbors complained. So he asks whether there is a solution: can he put the garbage outside the entrance, on the steps leading from the street to the door? Again, it’s the same layout. The door is, say, half a meter or more back from the street, with a recessed entrance. Is one permitted to bring the garbage out of the house and leave it within that entrance? That’s the question. Let’s read the Shulchan Aruch in siman 363, slowly: “The allowance of three walls and one lechi, or a beam a tefach wide, was given only for an alleyway.” The law is that if you have a dead-end alleyway with walls on three sides, the Sages required something on the fourth side, where the alleyway meets the street: either a lechi, which is a vertical post, or a beam a tefach wide. A lechi or a beam. The Shulchan Aruch says that this applies to an alleyway, “but a courtyard that is fully open on its fourth side”—and that is our situation. In both pictures, you have an area enclosed on three sides, but the fourth side is open.

14:12 If it opens completely onto the street, it cannot be permitted that way; a courtyard is more stringent than an alleyway. It can only be permitted with a strip four handbreadths wide, placed on one side of the opening. So that is one solution: a strip four handbreadths wide and, of course, ten handbreadths high. A second solution: if he wants to fix it on both sides of the opening, two strips of even minimal width are enough, provided they are ten handbreadths high. After that, he discusses a case with people living in the fourth [unclear], but that is not relevant to us because there are no residents there. So what is the solution? Put strips on both sides of the entrance. Going back to the diagram here in the picture, you see that you put a stick ten handbreadths high, attached at the bottom, where the entrance meets the street, on each side. Even something very narrow will do. So I told the young man that, for example, there are those plastic strips people stick onto corners at home, on furniture or something like that. I said even something like that would work, since it says it can be of any width. He asked me, “What if he uses adhesive tape? Suppose he puts a strip of thick tape on each side?” I said that was fine. In other words, in the two places where we said he needs a strip of even minimal width, he can put adhesive tape there, as long as it lasts; he should not have to do it every week, right? On both sides. And I told him that in earlier years, for the lechi mentioned in the Shulchan Aruch, they would paint a line. They would simply make a line with paint, and it counted as a lechi, because a lechi can be of any thickness; it does not have to be particularly thick. The same goes for adhesive tape: he can put it on both sides here. But before we finish with this question, there is another question. On Shabbos morning, or

17:04 on Friday night, he takes a bag of garbage and puts it on the ground. For whom? So that the non-Jews will take it at six in the morning, or whenever they come. Does that not count as asking them to take something from his house? After all, there is a halacha that a non-Jew may not leave our house carrying an item he bought there, because of maris ayin: people might say I asked him to take it somewhere else. So we have resolved the question of carrying. But what about placing or preparing a load for a non-Jew to take from your property out to the street? Let us read this. We have a volume of responsa by the gaavad of the Beis Din Tzedek in Jerusalem, Rabbi, uh, Rabbi Sternbuch—one of the earlier volumes of his responsa. He addresses precisely this question: a non-Jew responsible for emptying garbage bins on Shabbos—must one prevent him from emptying a bin in a Jew’s courtyard? After all, he comes into my front yard and takes garbage from my property. He writes: “I found no concern in this, even though the non-Jew removes garbage from the Jew’s property and the Jew benefits from it. Nevertheless, the non-Jew is working for his own purposes.” In other words, when he collects the garbage on this street today, I did not ask him to do it specifically on Shabbos. “And the Jew does not directly benefit from the non-Jew’s labor; he merely removes a nuisance for him.” I do not benefit in the sense that he brought me something to enjoy. He removed it, and that is the non-Jew’s job. He is not doing it for me personally. He is doing it because he is responsible to the municipality for collecting the garbage. “And although the Jew pays taxes for this, nevertheless, the Jew never instructed him to do it on Shabbos. On the contrary, as far as the Jew is concerned, he could

19:47 come and collect it on Friday or Sunday. I therefore see no grounds to require the Jew to notify them not to empty the bin in his courtyard. There is no maris ayin, as though the Jew had instructed him to come on Shabbos, and therefore it is permitted.” Now, we did say that if a non-Jew left my property for the street carrying a crate of milk, for example, there might be a concern of maris ayin: people might think I had asked him to take it somewhere. But in our particular case, we are talking about the garbage collector. Everyone knows that this is the municipality’s responsibility and that they do it whenever they choose. There is no concern of maris ayin. Perhaps we have spoken about this before: what about Yom Tov? May one take out the garbage and put it in the street on Yom Tov? What is the question? On Yom Tov, one may carry something out for a need of the day. When you take garbage out to the street, it is not that you need it there; you just need to get it out of here. So there is a problem of hotza’ah—carrying out when it is not needed for the day. That is quite a serious question. I once looked into it and wrote about it. In short, there is something of a solution. I do not know what it is like where you live. Here in London, our garbage bins are a meter tall or more, with two wheels. They are rectangular, say sixty by eighty centimeters, or sixty by sixty. It does not matter; there are various sizes. But they are certainly more than ten handbreadths high and more than four handbreadths wide. If so, these garbage bins are a private domain. For example, I have a garbage bin in my front yard, and it is a private domain. I move it into the public domain, and it is still a private domain. Wherever

22:22 it goes, it remains a private domain. So it is not a case of carrying it out into the public domain, because wherever it is, it remains a private domain. The prohibition of hotza’ah does not apply here. So that provides something of a solution. Well, what happens when the non-Jews collect the garbage? They lift the bin and empty it into their truck. Well, that is a private domain and this is a private domain. There is no hotza’ah involved at all. So that is a solution here. But—I was in New York about three years ago, during Sukkos, and on Yom Tov I saw people taking bags of garbage out to the street. It did bother me, because that is carrying out when it is not needed for the day. Apparently some are lenient, but I was not convinced by that leniency. Well, all right, we will stop here. I wish you a healthy, pleasant summer until we meet again, and may we meet at happy occasions [unclear]. All the best. Uh, is it permitted to carry on Shabbos? Now, if one may move a baby carriage on Shabbos when it is more than ten handbreadths high and four—yes. So, actually, based on what I said, if it [unclear]. Usually a baby carriage does not have walls ten handbreadths high. That is, it may stand ten handbreadths high, but it does not have a partition of that height, because it has a frame underneath and wheels. We are talking about walls ten handbreadths high; that does not apply here. If it did—well, I am not talking about carrying on Shabbos. I am talking about Yom Tov, but... Right, a carriage too, fine. I am talking about Yom Tov and taking out the garbage, yes? We are not introducing a new permission here to take

24:38 carriages out into the street. But if he did take one out, he would be exempt. If its walls are ten handbreadths high, he would be exempt, yes. All right, so we have come away with a permitted solution. All the best, good night.