Q&A: A Radio Program Broadcast on the Sabbath
A Radio Program Broadcast on the Sabbath
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I started listening to old radio programs (from ten years ago), and it turned out to me that they were broadcast on Friday night of the Sabbath (I don’t know when they were prepared). Am I allowed to continue listening to them? (The program no longer exists today, so there is no concern that by listening to it I am strengthening their hand.)
Answer
There is no prohibition when it was not done for you and it is after the Sabbath.
Discussion on Answer
No.
Isn’t there a passage in tractate Shabbat about a bathhouse that was heated, which distinguishes between a majority of gentiles and a majority of Jews?
Well, is that a proof to the contrary?
See Mishnah Makhshirin 2:5, and Shulchan Arukh, section 326, paragraph 13. You can see there that when there is a majority of gentiles it is permitted immediately, and when there is a majority of Jews one must wait long enough for it to have been done. Here we are long past that waiting period. And with a Jew it was not said even only to require waiting long enough for it to have been done. Also, there are additional grounds for leniency here, but this is not the place to go into them at length.
Thank you very much.
If it was for anyone who wants to listen, doesn’t that count as being for me?