Sending a Shabbos Goy to prevent a Kashrus mishap

00:00 Speaker 1 Welcome to the Halacha Podcast L'maan Yish'mu with Harav Yosef Yeshaya Brown, Maharad da'Asra and a member of the Crown Heights Beis Din. This podcast is brought to you by the Ask the Rav platform, in partnership with L'maan Yelmedu, the premier institute for practical Halacha learning.

00:21 Speaker 2 There's an interesting story that happened recently in Eretz Israel at a chuppah, where right before the chassan was about to give the ring to the kallah, the ring dropped, fell into a ditch, a hole in the floor, and it was impossible to retrieve it, and they were stuck without a ring. And the Rav, the Rosh Yeshiva that was there on the spot decided to be extremely creative, and he asked the chassan if he has on him any money. He took out a bill, a hundred shekel, a hundred dollars, whatever it was, and they used that for the kiddushin. And this is reported in the media about the creative solution of the Rosh Yeshiva at the time. Now, I will mention that b'chlal our minhag is that generally the chassan does not keep any valuables in his pocket, and certainly a bill of a hundred dollars or a hundred shekel is a valuable item. The ring, it, it is clear it is not a problem for the chassan to hold. I've been often asked that question if it's okay for the chassan to hold the ring. But normally, the chassan anyhow is not the one that holds the ring. The ring is being held by the Rav. Most Rabbanim are not very comfortable to have the ring anywhere else other than their hand to make sure that it's r- there and there's no problems, as indeed happened in this wedding that the ring disappeared. I mean, it could have fallen out of the Rav's hand too.

01:49 Speaker 2 But there's really no problem otherwise with the chassan holding the ring. Well, in this case, since the hundred dollar bill was a ring, that was the kiddushin ring, so therefore technically there's no issue with the fact that the chassan had that in his pocket because it's okay for him to hold the ring. But the question here really is a different question. Was that the right solution at the time? Was that the way to deal with the issue? So we have a whole discussion in Poskim about something called Tabash Ula. Borrowing the ring, and this goes back to the Rash that discusses this. This is brought down in Hilchas Tzitzis as well, and the association with Hilchas Tzitzis is because to make a bracha on a pair of tzitzis has to be your tzitzis. What happens if you borrow a pair of tzitzis? Well, Alter Rebbe in the Siddur writes that if you're borrowing a tallis, it's best to specify clearly and say that you want it to be Matana Al Matana Le'hazor, to be given to you as a gift with the intention you're going to be returning it, not to run into any shailas. But they bring there the Sheitos HaRash about Tabash Ula, about a borrowed ring. And often the situation was there was no ring, and they borrowed a ring from someone in the audience. And that is a problem. It's not so simple because the ring is supposed to belong to the chassan. Or do we say that Anan Sadi it

03:01 Speaker 2 is clear we, we can testify that the person that borrowed it gave it a full intention should become his because it can't really be a Matana Al Matana Le'hazor. That's also a gift in order to return, but also wouldn't work. So what could be done? Often what people do is they ask someone else in the audience if they're willing to give away their ring. And a lot of people seeing the dilemma that's going on and being concerned for the welfare of the chassan and the kallah and for the simcha would gladly give away the ring, especially that they know they're probably gonna get some money for it too, and there's some strong chance they might get it back also. But they're giving it with a full desire to give it away. It's not a Matana Al Matana Le'hazor, a gift in order to return. They're actually giving away the ring. In many places they say there was that the Shamash, the, the structure of a chuppah was there was a Rav, a chazzan, and a Shamash referred to in Poskim as Rachash. Even the money that's paid to the Rav is called Rachash gelt. Rav, Rosh Yeshiva, Rav Chazzan Shamash. So that's how a chuppah would run. And the Shamash had a ring, the Kehillah's ring, and he would sell it to the parties for the chuppah, and the next day he would buy it back, and he would get his ring back. I mean, that-- I guess those ladies did not have the minhag

04:08 Speaker 2 of always taking with them the ring, that they should-- people should always know that they're married, as some people have that minhag, which was based on the Chinuch. The ring would always go back to the Shamash afterwards, who would buy it back. But again, we're talking about in the modern situation, there is no ring, so people sometimes go and take a ring from someone in the audience. What this Rav did was he actually asked for a dollar bill or shekel bill, and that brings into a serious shaila. There's a discussion if you're allowed to be mekadesh b'matbea. The Beit Shmuel raises something in the name of the Mordechai, one of the Rishonim, if it's okay to use a matbea, a coin. Now, most Poskim do not-- are not concerned at all with the problem of being mekadesh b'matbea, and they argue that the Mordechai never meant to say that. He was just asking a question. He wasn't making a statement. It is perfectly legitimate to be mekadesh b'matbea, to use a coin. However, the minhag is to be mekadesh b'tabas. The Ra- Rama brings a minhag, and he says this minhag has a source in the Zohar in the Kun Zohar to use a ring. That is the minhag, and we don't change the minhag. In Yemen, interestingly, that was not the minhag. A lot of, lot of the Yemenites, when they came to Eretz Israel, they would come up to the chuppah, they would just take out a coin because they never heard of

05:22 Speaker 2 such a minhag. But a lot of Yemenite Rabbanim say since that became the minhag today, Yemenites should follow that minhag too. One should not change the minhag. The reason for using a ring, there's Kabbalistic reasons, but there are also Halachic reasons. A, because of the potential concern that we just mentioned about a coin with the Mordechai, even though it's not accepted l'Halacha. There's also another whole argument that really today's day and age, the chuppah and kiddushin happen at the same time. There's the eides and then the nisuin. There's two stages of marriage. I'm not gonna go into the whole lengthy explanation. But today, because right at the same stage of the eides is the nisuin, we do it one after another, already standing under the chuppah when the chassan gives, gives the item, the ring to the kallah. So it becomes when you give something to the wife, whatever the wife owns, the husband owns, so it becomes the husband's. That means it never became the wife's. And based on that, the Rogatchover has a whole explanation. There are other sources for this as well. The Rebbe explained it, this Rogatchover at length, that when you're giving a garment, which is something that the husband can wear, specifically a ring, it's actually-- he's putting it on her finger. He's not only giving it to her, so it's actually being used as a garment. It's specifically for the wife, and it's not gonna go to the husband. Therefore, that's much better. So certainly somebody shouldn't be

06:36 Speaker 2 looking at the ‹foreign language› to go and use a coin instead of a ring. That is the meaning. We shouldn't change the meaning. And there's a good reason there might even be serious problems with not using a ring. In Israel never, I believed, did a chuppah in Russia, and he used a becher. Okay, that's an exception to the rule. They couldn't find everything that we could find today. Technically, it is okay, although according to this Rogatchover argument, it might be a problem because it's supposed to be, the Rogatchover argues, halakhically something that she would wear based on the structure of the chuppah the way we do it today. But there's really a much bigger problem over here, and that is a bill was used. Coins today, and especially bills today, coins have no value. Coins in the past had a specific value to the coin. It was the weight of gold, silver, whatever it was. Today, coin is just a currency, and the government decides this should be considered a dollar, this should be considered five dollars and five cents and ten cents. And certainly paper bills, which have really no value, they're almost like a star chov. This is a piece of paper that says that you should be-- receive money. Now, this is called a star, a document. One of the methods of kiddushin is star, but that means something totally different. That means that there's a star that says, "‹foreign language›," that the woman will be mekudes through the star through a

07:59 Speaker 2 method called star. But here, it wasn't written lishma. It wasn't a star kiddushin. This was a regular star of kesef, which who says has value to it. There are those that question very seriously if it's okay to use a star, a bill. Now, when a person is faced with a problem and there's no-- where there's no ring, there are poskim that say that it's better to use a coin than a tabash she'ul than a borrowed ring. Many poskim say that ‹foreign language› better than using a borrowed ring, better than that would be to use a coin. And that's probably presumably the reason why this Rav decided to do so. But this wasn't a coin like this was a bill, and we also didn't have to get a borrowed ring. We could have gotten a ring as a gift. Maybe that wasn't-- I, I don't know. Maybe it wasn't possible. Maybe the audience wasn't prepared to give away a ring. That could very well be. Many rabbonim often face a situation where there was some shailah on the kiddushin afterwards, and after the chuppah, they realized, well, there was a problem, so they have the kale return the ring to the chassan, now becomes the chassan, and they redo the kiddushin. So there's ways to get rings. The chassan doesn't have the ring anymore. He gave it to his kale. The kale was prepared to give it back. And there's always someone in the audience. The mother of the chassan would be willing to give away

09:13 Speaker 2 her ring or whatever the case is. Uh, there is a sefer called Tiv Kiddushin, and he says that a borrowed ring versus a coin, better to use both because the meaning is davka to use a ring. Some say, "No, this is a meaning that doesn't have a source in, in, in officially in Halakha." I mentioned the Rogatchover's svvarah that was developed many years later. But a ring is a zoyr of that, but a coin, there's really no problem with a coin. A borrowed ring is problematic. Use a coin rather than a borrowed ring. The Tiv Kiddushin says, "No, the meaning is to use a ring. Let's use both." So I will say the Temech Tzedek actually writes, I don't think he brings the Tiv Kiddushin, but he specifically writes that there's no advantage in using both. It actually creates a problem. We don't really know which one is she having in mind when she's doing a kiddushin. You can't say, "Well, I have the ring and the coin." Maybe the intention here was only the ring, and the ring is a borrowed ring. So that really won't work. So back to the-- that story, I-- in my opinion, it would've been better to get a proper ring from someone as a gift and use it at the wedding without going into any shailas.

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10:47 Speaker 2 Talking about shailas that came up recently, it was a big issue that came up in one of the Beit Midrash in Eretz Israel. I received the shaila as well, and as the nature of some of these shailas, they travel from one beit din to another beit din. By the time I got it, it wasn't relevant anymore, but it was just a discussion that came up in Eretz Israel, and they passed on the question here as well. There was a Shabbos Sheva Brachot. I believe this was in Ashdod, and there was a woman in Bnei Brak that prepared dessert for the Shabbos Sheva Brachot. And as part of the dessert, the dessert had in it, if I, if I recall correctly the situation, a chocolate on top. And she made a hundred beautiful, nice pieces of cake, dessert, ice cream, whatever it was, with a chocolate on top. And after Shabbos came in, she discovered that the dessert that she sent was unfortunately milchig. That means all the people that are gonna be sitting by the Sheva Brachot will be eating Milchigs in a fleishig meal at the Sheva Brachot. What could be done at this stage? So there is an organization called, I think, Ezra MiTzion, some organization which has a Shabbos goy working for them, and the idea came up, we'll have the Shabbos goy of the organization travel to Ashdod, take a car, travel to Ashdod, and inform the people as soon as possible they should not eat the dessert because the dessert

12:11 Speaker 2 is Milchig. This question was asked-- the question was asked of a rav in Bnei Brak if they allowed to tell the goy to drive, and the rav said no. We'll talk now about-- soon about the lamdis, why yeah, why no, different tzaros, and later many rabbonim, a lot of people gave shiurim and wrote kontrasim about this topic. But just to share an interesting story, the woman was very concerned about this. That means she'll be the cause of so many people being mikshol, and the rav told her, "If you're doing the right thing, you don't have to worry." I don't know if this is the moefes of this rav or the woman's yiras Shamayim. The reality is that at Motzaei Shabbos, they found out that no one ate the dessert because the meal-- the Shehakol went so long, and they decided to push it off, and they'll use it as a Motzaei Shabbos dessert. So Baruch Hashem, they were all saved from a mikshol. So now let's talk about the reasons why it would be okay or not okay. There's a isur of amil l'nechri. You're not allowed to tell a goy to do melacha for you on Shabbos, so you do even the isur d'Rabanan. Now, in some cases where there's a great need, a need of a mitzvah, we can ask a goy to do a d'Rabanan, uh, a-- something which is only rabbinically forbidden. To ask a goy to take a car and drive on Shabbos is isur d'Oraisa. You can't have a

13:27 Speaker 2 goy doing the isur d'Oraisa unless we're talking about a chole or a katan or whatever, a number of things. Under normal circumstances, you can't have a goy do melacha d'Oraisa for you. So that-- So it would seem straight-- a straightforward argument would be that you're not allowed to ask the goy to do this. However, there's a shetes habal ha'itur. The bal ha'itur, one of the Rishonim says, not only for bris milah, but even for any other mitzvah, any time it involves an ishu of a mitzvah, you're allowed to have a goy do a melacha d'Oraisa to allow you to do a mitzvah. The Rama brings down that in many places, if it would become dark Friday night at the meal, they would have a goy turn on the light, or more correctly, light the candles, even though that's a isur d'Oraisa, because in order to be able to eat the seudah Shabbos properly, not in the dark, in order to be able to perform a mitzvah. So they allow-- they rely on the opinion of the baal ha'itur. However, that-- there's a-- this is a limud zchus. This is a way to defend the behavior of people. When Ateret Zekenim brings this Rama, he writes that we shouldn't protest about those who are lenient and rely on the baal ha'itur. The Rama says the same thing, but he adds a few important words. We shouldn't protest because they will not listen, implying that it is actually wrong. Not we don't protest 'cause they have what

14:46 Speaker 2 to rely on, because they won't listen to us, because people think, "Yeah, I'm getting a goy. I'm not doing it. I'm telling the goy. What's the problem?" But according to Halakha, the Halakha is not like the baal ha'itur, and you can't get a goy to do a melacha d'Oraisa for a mitzvah. So back to our case again, we wouldn't be able to tell the goy. But here comes another argument. Many poskim say that in a case when there's a mikshol to protect people from doing an avera, mikshol derabim, many people are gonna go through a mikshol, then it would be okay to have a goy do a melacha d'Oraisa. And they talk specifically about an etev that was ripped, and we have to have the goy to fix the etev, and it-- so because people will be carrying with-- when the place where there's no etev, so now we're protecting people from a mikshol, that even more seriously. In some places, it just says mitzvah derabim. For a mitzvah derabim, it's okay to do a d'Oraisa. Now, first of all, that's not so straightforward. There are many sources that would imply that even for a mitzvah derabim, you can't have a goy do a melacha. And when we talk about mitzvah derabim, it's not very clear if it means a mitzvah that is done b'rabim, a mitzvah like tefillah betzibur, a mitzvah which is incumbent on the rabim, a mitzvah where there's a zikr rabim. We often find when we're talking about even mitzvot asot

16:00 Speaker 2 d'Oraisa, such as shofar and lulav, which are often done-- it's many people need a shofar in town. Many people need a lulav, and we're talking about having goyim do melachos d'Oraisa, and it comes that clearly you can't do that. I wanna point out that there's a very interesting Ateret Zekenim which defines the-- the Gemara uses the term mitzvah derabim, and Ateret Zekenim defines sp-sp-specifically this Gemara is referring to the mitzvah of tefillah betzibur, that tefillah betzibur, and that's what the Ateret Zekenim learns in this Gemara, is more important than any other mitzvah in the Torah because it's a mitzvah of being mekadesh Shem Shamayim b'rabim, where everybody's getting together, sanctifying Hashem's name. So not every mitzvah that many people are doing, like shofar, a bunch of people are doing shofar, would be called a mitzvah derabim. But either way, the argument of mitzvah derabim is not so simple, but what about the tzarah of mikshol derabim, protecting people from stumbling? So this is brought often from a sefer called Panim Me'iros. But if you actually look in the Panim Me'iros, it's very interesting, although so many people quote this Panim Me'iros, when you open the Panim Me'iros, you see very clearly he actually was not comfortable with allowing a goy to do a melacha d'Oraisa because of a case of a mikshol of the etzba that people will carry, but it's not about a etev that was ripped. He was very stringent, and he was gonna argue even not to let a goy to do

17:18 Speaker 2 a d'Rabanan at what we call a shvut d'shvut. So to use this argument, even though some poskim bring this, when you look at the original source, this becomes problematic. There's another point here that the-- we're-- when we're talking about a mikshol derabim, that means a mikshol for a city, not a mikshol for a few individuals sitting by a sheva berachos. And you-- there are many cases where poskim talk about problems that would have been a mikshol, and they did not allow to do amil l'nechri. So it's very hard to use that argument. The Ish Bitah Avraham brings about a case of an etev, and he says the goy is gonna do only a d'Rabanan in fixing the etev. In fact, there's another question here. What kind of mikshol are we talking about? Are people gonna carry in a way that's isur d'Oraisa or isur d'Rabanan? Say if we're talking about an etev, usually the very fact that it means that you could put up, like, strings, ropes, and not put doors over there, that itself implies that the place is only a problem to carry mid'Rabanan. So that tells us that even some drabbanan would be okay, but on the other hand, what kind of melacha thing is the goy doing? Is he doing a deoraisa, or is he doing a drabbanan? There's an separate question. When people carry with eida that's ripped, they really don't even know that they're carrying. So they're not doing a melacha, they're not doing a meja, they're not even

18:42 Speaker 2 doing a shogeig. A shogeig means when you don't know today is Shabbos or you don't know that what you're doing is melacha. Here it's not they don't know what they're doing is melacha. They don't know what they're doing. We call that misasek. When somebody wants to cut something, and he wants to cut an apple, and by mistake, he's cutting an apple which is attached to a tree, and he thought he was cutting an apple which is not attached to a tree. That's called misasek, which is questionable if b'chlal that's considered a drabbanan or maybe even less than a drabbanan. That's dependent on a lot of chakiras, and which is why it's hard to understand what would be the hetter to have a goy fix the eida if people are not even gonna be over issur drabbanan. And it could be because misasek is also a form of a issur, or could be the concern was that there are some people that even if their eida is ripped, and they know it's ripped, they'll still continue car-- to carry because that's just what they're used to doing, and maybe that's why the posek over there allowed it. So going back to our case over here, let's think about the case over here. They're going to be eating fl-- mm, ice cream, milchig chocolate, Milchig ice cream in a fleishig meal, but they're not gonna be eating it together, so they're not gonna be violating issur deoraisa. It's not cooked together. First of all, in order to

19:58 Speaker 2 be an issur deoraisa, it has to be cooked together. It's not cooked together, and it's not eating it together. It's eating it one after another. More than that, many people-- I don't know what was at that sheva brachos. Friday night, they eat chicken. According to many shitas, after chicken, strictly speaking, it's okay to eat milk. The problem is only after meat. Okay, that's a whole discussion. That's not more the halacha that we follow. But we're trying to understand the nature of the michshol. Would this be okay to allow to have a goy to do an issur of driving, which is issur deoraisa? I mean, we'll be violating the issur drabbanan of telling a goy, but we're asking to do issur deoraisa to protect people from doing something which is a potential michshol of a drabbanan. So who says that would be permissible? That isn't so simple. So the, the Rav who was asked this question, he held that it was forbidden. There's another whole discussion. Sometimes we say, "Im nimlo adem chatei k'desh yiskeh chavercha." Uh, that, "Ein im lo adem chatei," we don't tell one person to sin that other people should be protected. And sometimes we say, "It's better I do a small aveira to protect people from a big aveira." And that's a whole sugya. The argument that it's better to do a small aveira to protect people from big aveira doesn't usually fly, and in this case also seems like it wouldn't fly. But the question is if it's enough of

21:24 Speaker 2 a tzorech to ask a goy. If it would be a drabbanan, we wouldn't have a problem with that. To make a phone call, that wouldn't be a problem. But to do a deoraisa, to drive, that's very hard to be matter. But someone raised a different question altogether that wasn't the original question that the Rav was asked. Someone raised the question, there could be someone that's allergic to Milchigs. Now, that's already an issue of sakana. So why wouldn't it be mutar for the goy to drive there to protect people from a sakana? But now we have to go into another whole discussion that in-- when it comes to sakana, we need to be aware, even though a safek sakana is also something, but als-- it's only when there's chol l'faneynu. We know of someone that's allergic who might be there, who might not be there. That we can understand. But the fact that in the world, there's statistically always gonna be people that are allergic, you know, a, a kohein is not allowed to learn, to, um, nituchei meis, operate on dead bodies, learn medicine, and become tomim to a dead body because he could become a doctor and help people in the future. So there's a lot of halachas associated with how we define pikuach nefesh for that to allow a goy to do a deoraisa. So if we were talking about having the goy do a drabbanan, I wouldn't have a problem with that. The fact that maybe someone is allergic, eh, that would

22:34 Speaker 2 be okay. But for such a far-fetched thing, the amount of people that we're having a daily allergy could be fatal is a very, very small percentage, almost nonexistent, where it actually would be fatal. So it'd be very hard to be matter based on that logic. Anyway, that was that interesting story. And from there, I'm gonna come to another interesting story that happened, um, uh, a couple weeks ago. It was in one of the Chasidis-- a Chasidisim, a-- one of the Rebbes of today.

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23:32 Speaker 2 So sister passed away a particular morning. Her sister is, uh, also a Rebbetzin of one of the Chasidisim, and she wasn't well. But the Rebb-the Rebbe went to daven Shacharis, this particular Rebbe, and they discovered that she passed away, and therefore the Rebbe became an oinen. And his whole-- I'm not gonna talk about him attending the chupa later. That was another whole discussion. But the issue that we're talking about right now was they did not say Tachnun because they just thought there's going to be a bris after davening, and there's a sandek. The Rebbe was there. This particular Rebbe was going to serve a sandek. But then when they discovered that he-- his sister really passed away, that means he's not a-- there is no bris. He's not a sandek. They, by mistake, they didn't say Tachnun. So the dayanim of that particular community paskened that they have to make this up, and they have to say Vehu Rachum, which is part of the davening of Monday and Thursday. They have to say it later, and they said they should say it at Mincha. So let's examine this halacha. So we know there's a din that you're not supposed to talk from Shemoneh Esreh to Tachnun. It's really one continuation. Tachnun belongs right after Shemoneh Esreh. The Alter Rebbe addresses a case where people were in the house of a mourner where there's no Tachnun and no Vehu Rachum, and he says they don't have to make it up. Not only the Tachnun, but even

24:52 Speaker 2 the Vehu Rachum, they don't have to make up when they get home. 'Cause if it wasn't said in the spot where you're supposed to say it, it's pushed off completely. Vehu Rachum is a minhag to say, and the minhag is if you're obligated at the time. You were not obligated at the time. You were exempt at the time, so now you're exempt further on also. However, there's two points that we need to take into account. Number one, the Alter Rebbe's talking about in a, in a nusach, which is not our Nusach, that V'hu Rachamim said right after Shemoneh Esreh before Tachnun. The Tillot David makes that distinction. We can argue with that distinction. We can say that Tachnun, V'hu Rachamim is one unit, w-whether you say V'hu Rachamim first or Tachnun first, but the Tillot David makes this distinction. The other distinction is Alter Rebbe's talking about in a case where the person was actually exempt. They actually were in a mourner's house, not that a person by mistake forgot to say it. Not we, we made a mistake and we thought we were exempt. So in such a case, there's actually a strong argument to say, "Yes, you have to make it up." In a case where the chazan by mistake says Kaddish and not Tachnun, and afterwards we discover he made a mistake, he should really go and make up and say Tachnun afterwards. Really in our talk, he's supposed to say Tachnun right after Shemoneh Esreh. But if you didn't make a

26:01 Speaker 2 break, then you should say Tachnun afterwards. The Alter Rebbe was talking now in a case where they were exempt. Once they're exempt, they remain exempt for the future also. Moving on to another topic altogether. A few weeks ago, we spoke about various letters printed in the back of the Kuntessiches and how those letters were printed independently afterwards, and sometimes there's changes. Now, sometimes in the back of Kuntessiches there's what we call ma'yenes, an- short answers that the Rebbe wrote. And we spoke about sometimes there were mistakes in the way they were given over because they got it-- they received it sometimes from the maskiras, from the file of the secr-- the Rebbe secretariat, and sometimes they got it from private people and the... And when you get a hataka, you get a copy of something, you don't get the original, it could be a mistake. And we spoke about some, some examples. Just one other example that comes to mind, we spoke about it a few weeks ago. We can look back and listen to those examples. But another example that comes to mind is there's a particular letter of the Rebbe about which-- where to put the mezuzah. Minichabad as we go according to the hinges, the way you go into the room, that's how we define the mezuzah except for the front door. And someone asked the Rebbe what happens with a side door, and the Rebbe wrote with a side door is not like a front door when we follow what we

27:14 Speaker 2 call heker tzair. That's how it's printed on Kuntessiches. However, the individual who asked this question, now we have all the details. We-- in Kuntessiches we only have the one-liner. The Rebbe, he actually asked the Rebbe a question, "Ha'im yesh l'schachshe beknises zos is beheker tzair?" Question mark. And the Rebbe circled the whole thing with the question mark. Now, I'm not saying conclusively one way or another. It could be the Rebbe left it as a question, or could the Rebbe meant to circle it. Often the Rebbe would circle that's the statement, and the Rebbe also circled the question mark. His question was, it's not very clear, and there's a lot of debate about how we deal with side entrances. Um, and it could depend on many other factors, but that's not the subject of our shiur now, so let's move on to our next topic. The Minchabad is that in Shemoneh Esreh, in the beracha of Modim, we say, "Hatoiv ki lechol urachamecha, hamrachim ki lo yisa'mu chassadecha." If you look carefully in the Chabad siddur, in Shabbos and Yom Tov davening, it says, "Vehamrachim". And indeed, it's not a typo. The meaning is that there's a distinction between weekday and Shabbos and Yom Tov, that weekday we say, "Hamrachim", and on Shabbos and Yom Tov we say, "Vehamrachim". Interesting to note that the very first print of the Alter Rebbe siddur, seems like that was the first print, which was discovered a few years ago in the library in Russia, there's some changes. And over

28:39 Speaker 2 there, there isn't any change between weekday and Shabbos. It's always Hamrachim, but we have this as a tradition. The Rebbe's great-grandfather, the Shaarei Koil, says he asked this question to the Vilna Gaon, and the Vilna Gaon indeed told him that Shabbos and Yom Tov is different. It's supposed to be Vehamrachim, and he suggests an explanation over there that it has to do with the amount of vavs. The amount of vavs, there should be a total of twelve vavs, 'cause on Shabbos we don't have-- daven a regular Shemoneh Esreh. We don't have the eighteen or nineteen berachos. So we wanna make up for this by all the extra vavs in Modim. That's his suggested explanation that the Shaarei Koil wants to suggest. He's not sure if this applies also to Rosh Chodesh, to Chal Hamoed, but we have in Sefer HaMinhagim an instruction of the Friediger Rebbe that any time when there's a mosif in mosif is Vehamrachim. So it would apply to Rosh Chodesh and to Chal Hamoed as well. The Rebbe in his private diary wrote about the Rebbe Rashab that when he had yahrtzeit, he would swallow the vav and say in a way that people shouldn't notice, but he would say Vehamrachim when he had yahrtzeit. So it's an interesting thing that he had a minhag to say Vehamrachim on the day of a yahrtzeit. It could be this is the yahrtzeit of Yud Gimmel Tishrei, which is when the Rebbe Rashab yahrtzeit for his father, which is the day where we

29:59 Speaker 2 don't say Tachnun. Because the Rebbe, in the later years, there was a modification of the Rebbe's behavior. It seems like the Rebbe started saying whenever there was no Tachnun, mosif or Shacharis, makes no difference. Even though it doesn't have mosif, the Rebbe started more and more consistently always saying Vehamrachim the day there's no Tachnun. Now, we don't know the reasons for these things. They're beyond our understanding. Could be the Rebbe wanted that maybe on a yahrtzeit, a day to bring down more rachmim, a day we don't say Tachnun is another method of bringing down rachmim. Rabbi Chait wrote a sefer called Reshimas Devarim, and he had a bunch of ex- suggestions. What's the difference between tov and racham, and what's the vehamrachim coming down from tov ve'etem? Again, these are all suggestions which we don't know if they're all-- if any of them are correct or not correct. And I'll just finish with one thing. I got a question from someone who is not from a, from a different community asking about meat when a person is mourning during avelus. Now, the halacha is that in oinen, until the, the meis is buried, is not allowed to eat meat. There's no halacha about shiva. But I discovered, interestingly, that there's some communities that actually had such a minhag in Morocco and other communities, they wouldn't eat meat throughout Shiva. Is that a legitimate minhag? Is that not a legitimate minhag? So it's not-- in our circles, there's no such minhag. There's a-- a-- one of

31:22 Speaker 2 the poskim from Djerba brings about such a minhag not to eat meat even on Shabbos, and he writes this minhag was made up by the people. They, they made their own ideas. There's no source. Rav Ovadia Yosef writes that people who have this minhag don't even have to do ha'taras nedarim because it's a mistake the whole time minhag. However, there are some sources for this minhag, genuine sources that bring this minhag. And some of these early sources, there's a sefer called Mishpat Tzedek. There's more than one Mishpat Tzedek. This Mishpat Tzedek was one of the hakham in Greece over four hundred years ago. He writes clearly that they needed to-- someone who had-- in a place where they had this minhag, if they all stopped the minhag is one thing. The guy was sick, and he wanted to have meat. He says he should really do ha'taras nedarim. And the words of the Mishpat Tzedek are brought in Lekech HakeMach and in Ma'ayan Rab and in many other sefarim. Rav Chaim Palaggi, which we quoted a few times in our recent classes, recent podcasts. So to say you don't need ha'taras nedarim is very, very difficult. The sefer She'el V'Nishal that says that this minhag has no basis is most likely referring to the fact that even on Shabbos they don't eat meat, and that's going very extreme. Be that as it may, that is not the common minhag by us. I don't want to finish with the inun of avelus, so let's talk about

32:32 Speaker 2 the importance of eating meat on Shabbos, and meat and wine. And even if Tisha B'Av would fall on Shabbos, we eat meat and wine because the idea, it's a time of simcha. Now that the Three Weeks are coming in, we know bepnimis is really days of great simcha. It's only bechitzonius that it seems like days of mourning. And im yirtze Hashem, that pnimis will be fully revealed b'karov mamash.

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