Baptism of vessels manufactured by a company abroad

שו”ת › Category: Halacha › Baptism of vessels manufactured by a company abroad

asked 8 years ago

Hello Rabbi,
Should utensils manufactured by a company abroad be immersed in the blessing? On the one hand, it can be said that every rabbi is a rabbi. On the other hand, nowadays companies are usually traded on stock exchanges, and it is required that there be at least one shareholder who is Jewish in each company. Then, ostensibly, there is a partnership between a Jew and a Gentile. The question is whether it is appropriate to say here that the majority is entirely in terms of ownership of the company (a majority of Gentiles as full ownership by Gentiles). This also has implications for the matter of taking a loan from a bank abroad.

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מיכי Staff answered 8 years ago

This is a question to which I have no clear answer, but from my understanding it seems that there is no need to immerse. In the current perception, a company is an independent entity and not a partnership (corporation), and certainly not a partnership between the shareholders, and certainly not those who are not the controlling shareholders. Therefore, in my opinion, it is very doubtful whether the law of immersing vessels applies to it at all (such an entity is neither gentile nor Jewish). Therefore, a majority or minority of Jewish or gentile shareholders and a majority or minority of companies are also irrelevant. Of course, there is no need to worry about the Akko-based manufacturers either (unless there is concern that non-kosher fat was used in the manufacturing process, etc.), since this is a new tool. I would not welcome this baptism.

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nav replied 8 years ago

Apparently it does not depend on who the owner is, but on who the craftsman who actually created the vessel is, and he was presumably a Gentile (I remember that there is a great deal of length in the Poskim regarding the law of a Gentile Jew melting money and making a vessel from it, according to the Ritzvah and Toss, as well as 16 and 17).

אורן replied 8 years ago

Now the question arises as to what will be the ruling regarding an artisan who is a machine/robot. Perhaps the one who pressed the button will be considered the artisan (like making a machine match for a mitzvah) or perhaps the one who created the machine itself (ultimately the root must be manual even though there are many stages of a machine that produces a machine until you reach the person behind them). Or perhaps society in general will be considered the artisan, and that is how it seems to me that most of the world relates to products these days. Art is a work of art that consists of many processes and stages, with casting usually being the last and least complex stage (a kind of hammer blow - the completion of a craft). Before that, one had to think and plan the design, the materials that would make up the tool, the optimal weight of the tool, recruit the right workers for the process, pay them salaries, etc. The one responsible for this "art" is society as a whole (engineers, designers, managers, clerks, etc.). Society is a kind of abstract entity with legal rights (like a state). To refer only to the worker who makes the tool is similar to me cutting off the finger of a man who murdered his friend by using his finger on the trigger of a gun.

מיכי Staff replied 8 years ago

At first I wrote: The one who created the tool is the factory.
Then I saw that Oren was already ahead of me. And I was like,