3.28 Shemini 5783

00:05 Good evening. Welcome to Panorama of Halacha, episode, uh, twenty-eight. All right, let’s get into the first question. A woman from somewhere in Europe wrote to me that she was walking down the street on Shabbos after shul with her glasses up on her forehead. She had forgotten they were there. These weren’t reading glasses; she normally uses them for seeing at a distance, not for reading. She had simply forgotten that she was wearing them on her forehead. In the middle of the street, she suddenly realized: “Oh no—what do I do now?” It’s a very interesting question. Why? Generally, if a person is walking down the street on Shabbos and realizes that he has an object on him, one option is to let it fall to the ground in an unusual manner. Let’s read this in siman 266. There it discusses giving something to an animal, a non-Jew, or a child: “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 tells a non-Jew to guard it.” So here he has a pouch of money attached to his belt. What does it say? He loosens his belt and lets it fall. In the melachah of carrying on Shabbos, there is an uprooting and a placement. So he tries to make the placement happen in an unusual manner, so it doesn’t constitute a melachah. Now, in this woman’s case, the glasses were on her forehead, which is not the normal way to wear them. If she moves them onto her nose, is that considered a placement, completing the melachah, or do we say it interrupts the carrying in the middle? That’s the discussion. A similar question: suppose you’re walking down the street on Shabbos

03:19 and you notice that you have a kippah in your pocket, or food in your pocket. Well, a kippah—if it’s like money, that settles it: the advice is to let it fall out of your pocket in an unusual manner. But what if, while continuing to walk without stopping, you take out the kippah and put it on your head? Or you put the food in your mouth and swallow it? Is that considered an unusual placement or a normal placement? Let’s read Shemiras Shabbos Kehilchasah: “Someone who goes out on Shabbos from a private domain into a public domain and realizes that he has a handkerchief or kippah in his pocket should act as stated at the beginning of section 59: he should not stop, but should let it fall away from him in an unusual manner. After dropping the handkerchief or kippah, he should stop and pick up the handkerchief and wrap it around his neck while standing still. As for the kippah, he should pick it up and put it on his head while standing still. He should not do this while walking, because such an action, or something similar, is considered a placement in the public domain.” Very interesting. It would be considered a placement. He cites Igros Moshe and the Chazon Ish. I didn’t check the Igros Moshe—sorry, I didn’t check the Chazon Ish. The Igros Moshe has an ingenious responsum, and he brings a proof. The Gemara discusses someone who has ink with him and, while walking, writes with that ink on Shabbos. His writing is the placement. Until then, the ink is in transit. He puts it on the paper, even though the paper is still moving. Objectively, the ink and paper are still moving, but for that brief moment the ink has come to rest, and that is called a placement. Similarly, if you have food with you and swallow it while still walking, in the bigger picture it’s still moving, but now

06:09 the food has reached a state of relative rest, and that is enough to count as a placement. He brings several proofs. There is a law about a person standing in a public domain who bends into a private domain, where there is water, and drinks the water there. Tosafos ask why this is permitted: when he drinks, the water passes down his throat to his intestines, which are in the public domain. Tosafos say no—once he swallows it, that is the placement. What happens afterward is irrelevant. The Igros Moshe brings this as part of his ruling. So we see that although the person is still moving, if he has brought the object to its natural resting place, as it were, its final destination, that is called a placement, even though, broadly speaking, the whole thing is still moving. So I told this woman too—she asked after Shabbos, of course—that she could not move the glasses onto her nose and wear them, because that would become a placement. What could she do? She could let them fall. Well, money or a handkerchief you can drop, but glasses aren’t something you want to drop. So I suggested perhaps onto grass, or where there are plants lower than ten tefachim. Someone suggested letting them fall onto a hedge. Often there’s a hedge along the side of the street, in front of houses, 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’m standing in a public domain and put something on a fence belonging to a private domain, that is considered putting it into the private domain, which is forbidden. So a hedge that separates

08:39 the front of the property from the public domain is in the private domain. That’s one point. Second, if the glasses fall onto the hedge, we have another problem: using something growing from the ground. Picking them up from the hedge would be a problem, because you may not take or lift something resting on a tree. That is considered using something growing from the ground, which is not permitted. All right, next question: may a pregnant woman visit a cemetery on her father’s yahrzeit? I brought something here from Nitei Gavriel; let’s read it. He says: “Some have the custom that a pregnant woman does not go to a cemetery, even for a yahrzeit or to visit the graves of tzaddikim.” What is the source for this whole practice of not going? He says there is no source for it. He quotes Shevet Mussar, a work of one of the later authorities, who writes that a woman should take care not to enter a place of impurity, as it 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 its source, but nevertheless respected the practice. So there is some basis for understanding this custom. In the end, though, he says that one can be lenient for a special need. He notes that regarding a woman who is a niddah, the poskim do say that she should not go to a cemetery. A niddah has a state of impurity, and combining that with the impurity of a cemetery is not a good recipe. Nevertheless, in special circumstances it is permitted, so that she will not suffer distress. Similarly, one can be lenient regarding a pregnant woman, although the reason is not at all the same. In the first case, we’re talking about the combination of one impurity with another; here, we’re talking about

11:05 a concern that an evil spirit might affect the child. Even so, with all these practices that have no clear source, when there is an unusual circumstance or a special reason, the custom is to be lenient. All right, one last thing. These are two pictures from two different places, showing the same question: If there’s an area in front of a house that opens onto 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 some island. Their garbage collection is either on Tuesday or on Shabbos. Until now, they would put out the garbage on Friday, but the neighbors complain. So he asks whether he has an option: 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 an entranceway in between. May he carry the garbage out of the house and put it in that entranceway? That is the question. So let’s read the Shulchan Aruch, siman 363, section 3, slowly: “Three walls with one lechi or a crossbeam a tefach wide were permitted only for a mavoi.” There is a law about a dead-end alleyway that opens onto a public domain. It has walls on three sides, and the Sages required that on the fourth side, where the alleyway meets the street, one place either a lechi—a vertical post—or a crossbeam a tefach wide. So the Shulchan Aruch says that this applies to a mavoi, but a courtyard that is completely open on its fourth side—and that is our situation. In both pictures, you have an area

14:06 It is enclosed on three sides, but the fourth side is completely open to the street. So it cannot be made permissible that way; a courtyard is more stringent than a mavoi. It can be made permissible only with a strip four tefachim wide, standing on one side of the opening. That is one solution: a strip four tefachim wide and, of course, ten tefachim high. A second solution: if he tries to fix it on both sides of the opening, two strips of any width are enough, as long as they are ten tefachim high. He then discusses a case where remnants of the fourth wall remain, but that is not relevant to us because there are no remnants. So what is the solution? Put strips on both sides of the opening. Going back to the picture here, you can see it: put a stick ten tefachim high right where the opening meets the street, on each side. It can be of any width. So I told him that, for example, there are those plastic pieces people stick on the corners of furniture at home. I said even something like that would work, since it says any width. Then he asked me, “What if, for example, I take adhesive tape, thick tape, and put a strip of it on each side?” I said that was fine. In other words, in the two places where we said a strip of any width is needed, you can put adhesive tape, provided it stays in place so you do not have to do it every week, right? On both sides. I also told him that in earlier years, as mentioned in the Shulchan Aruch, people would paint the lechi: they would simply make a line with paint, and that counted as a lechi, because a lechi only needs to have some thickness; it does not have to be particularly thick. So he can do the same thing with adhesive tape on both sides.

16:53 But before we finish with this question, there is another question here. On Shabbos morning or Friday night, he takes a bag of garbage and puts it on the ground. For whom? For the non-Jewish collectors to take when they arrive at six in the morning. Is that not considered appointing them as his agents, by setting something out for them to take from his home? After all, there is a halacha that a non-Jew may not leave our home with an item he bought, because of maris ayin: people might say that I asked him to take it somewhere else. So we have resolved the question of carrying. But what about setting out a load for a non-Jew to take from your property into the street? Let us read this. We have a volume of responsa by Rabbi Moshe Sternbuch, the head of the rabbinical court of the Eidah in Jerusalem, from his earlier volumes of Teshuvos Vehanhagos. He addresses this very question: a non-Jewish worker assigned to empty garbage bins on Shabbos—must one prevent him from emptying a bin in a Jewish courtyard? After all, he comes into my front yard and takes the garbage from my property. He writes: “I have found no concern in this, even though the non-Jew takes garbage out of the Jew’s property and the Jew benefits from it. Nevertheless, since the non-Jew is acting on his own behalf”—meaning that when he collects the garbage on that street that day, 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 has merely removed a nuisance.” I am not receiving something from him that I can use. He has removed something, and that is the non-Jew’s job. He is not doing it for me; he is doing it because the municipality has given him responsibility for collecting the garbage. “And although the Jew pays taxes

19:40 for this, the Jew has never instructed him to do it on Shabbos. On the contrary, as far as the Jew is concerned, he could come and clean up on Friday or Sunday. I therefore see no reason to require the Jew to notify them not to empty the bin in his yard. There is no maris ayin suggesting that the Jew told him to come on Shabbos, and the matter is therefore permitted.” So, yes, we discussed how, if a non-Jew leaves my property and goes into the street with a crate of milk, there might be a concern of maris ayin: people could think I asked him to take it somewhere. But our particular case concerns a garbage collector. Everyone knows that collecting the garbage is the municipality’s responsibility and that they do it on their schedule. So there is no concern of maris ayin. Now, perhaps we have discussed this before: what about Yom Tov? May one take the garbage out and put it in the street on Yom Tov? What is the question? On Yom Tov, you may carry something out for the needs of that day. When you take the garbage into the street, you do not actually need it there; you just need to get it out of here. So that raises a problem of carrying for a purpose that is not a need of the day. It is quite a serious question. I looked into this once 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 or more high, have two wheels, and are rectangular—say, sixty by eighty centimeters, or sixty by sixty. Never mind; there are different sizes. But they are certainly more than ten tefachim high and more than four tefachim wide. If so, these garbage bins are a private domain. For example, I have a garbage bin here in my front yard,

22:14 and it is a private domain. I move it into the public domain, and it is still a private domain. Wherever it goes, it remains a private domain. So I am not carrying it out into the public domain, because wherever it is, it remains a private domain. The prohibition on carrying out does not apply here. That gives us something of a solution. Now, what happens when the non-Jewish collectors lift it and empty it from my garbage bin into their truck? Well, this is a private domain and that is a private domain. There is no carrying out from one domain to another at all. So that is a solution here. But... I was in New York once, about three years ago, for Sukkos. On Yom Tov, I saw people taking garbage bags out into the street. That bothered me, because it is carrying out for a purpose that is not a need of the day. Apparently some are lenient, but I was not persuaded by that leniency. Well, all right, we will stop here. I wish you a gezunten zumer, a healthy summer, and it will be a pleasure when we meet again. May we meet at happy occasions, [unclear]. All the best. Ah, carrying on Shabbos is permitted? Now, if it is permitted to move a baby carriage on Shabbos when it is more than ten tefachim high and four... Yes, according to what I said—if it... it looks like this. Generally, a baby carriage does not have walls ten tefachim high. It may stand ten tefachim high, but it does not have a partition ten tefachim high, because it has a frame underneath and wheels. We are talking about walls ten tefachim high. That does not apply. If it did... I am not talking about carrying on Shabbos. I am talking about Yom Tov, but I... That is it, all right,

24:27 it is a carriage too. All right, I am talking about Yom Tov and taking out the garbage, yes? We are not introducing some new permission here to take carriages out into the street. But if someone did take one out, he would be exempt. If it had walls ten tefachim high, he would be exempt, yes. All right, so we have ended on a matter of leniency. All the best, good night.