Simplicity, Lecture 14
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- The encounter with Ma’arkhei Lev and the birth of the field of electricity on the Sabbath
- Responsibility in conceptual Talmudic learning and in halakhic rulings in yeshivot
- Rabbi Shlomo Zalman’s rulings on sensors and electronic cards
- Opposition to considerations like “the Sabbath will become like a weekday” as a substitute for interpretation
- Authority to enact ordinances and decrees, and the scope of “do not deviate”
- Jewish law as a process of interpretation and legislation, and the distinction from policy
- The principle of legality in Jewish law and the burden of proof on the one who prohibits
- Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, the Sabbath timer, and the possibility of a new primary category of labor
- The approach to the Chazon Ish: electricity as building, policy, and an alternative explanation
- The Chazon Ish correspondence: “heating metal” versus “electrical force,” and from death to life
- Rabbi Shlomo Zalman’s interpretation and rejection of liability for “closing a circuit without current”
- The definition of the labor of building in Maimonides, Kehillot Yaakov, and Rabbi Isser Zalman: a tent and assembling parts
- The step of abstraction: building as creating an “organic whole,” not a pile of parts
- Applying the abstraction to electricity: conceptual connection of a circuit and identification with the Chazon Ish
Summary
General Overview
The speaker describes an early encounter with Professor Lev’s book Ma’arkhei Lev and the feeling of standing at the “birth cradle” of the field of electricity on the Sabbath, where a small number of foundational decisions shape Jewish law for generations through books such as Shemirat Shabbat Kehilkhatah. He argues that real halakhic ruling must begin with serious and responsible conceptual analysis, and he criticizes the yeshiva-world disconnect between conceptual study and Jewish law, as well as the mixing of halakhic interpretation with policy considerations. After making a principled distinction between “permitted/forbidden” and “appropriate/consequences,” he returns to electricity on the Sabbath, presents the challenge of grounding a new phenomenon in the sources, and rejects using “policy” as a substitute for prohibition. Finally, he develops an abstract understanding of the labor of building through Maimonides, Kehillot Yaakov, and Rabbi Isser Zalman, and explains in that light why the Chazon Ish’s view that electricity is building seems to him compelling.
The encounter with Ma’arkhei Lev and the birth of the field of electricity on the Sabbath
The speaker receives from a relative in Bnei Brak Professor Lev’s book Ma’arkhei Lev on the Jewish laws of electrical devices on the Sabbath, reads it, sends comments, and corresponds with Professor Lev. He describes an unfamiliar experience in which Jewish law is not a “fully formed given” but a field in the making, requiring basic decisions in understanding new use-cases and concepts like indirect causation in electrical circuits. He conveys the feeling that a very small number of figures, like Professor Lev and Rabbi Shlomo Zalman, are shaping the framework that will later become a “given” in halakhic books, so that mutual persuasion at the formative stage actually changes future Jewish law.
Responsibility in conceptual Talmudic learning and in halakhic rulings in yeshivot
The speaker describes the youthful yeshiva disdain for studying Jewish law as opposed to conceptual analysis, and argues that this distinction is “nonsense” and a scandal. He says that serious study of Jewish law rests on conceptual analysis, and that ruling requires responsibility because it leads to practice, even to desecrating the Sabbath on the basis of one’s analysis, unlike clever insights that are never tested at practical cost. He argues that the separation in which “in conceptual study we say whatever we like” while in practical ruling we simply obey the Mishnah Berurah creates irresponsibility that distorts both conceptual learning and halakhic ruling.
Rabbi Shlomo Zalman’s rulings on sensors and electronic cards
The second speaker cites Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach as saying that when one walks in a hospital and a door opens by means of sensors, that is permitted, and the use of an electronic card is also permitted. He presents this as an example of how Rabbi Shlomo Zalman investigates matters thoroughly and arrives at a reasoned basis for permitting both.
Opposition to considerations like “the Sabbath will become like a weekday” as a substitute for interpretation
The speaker rejects the idea that electricity must be prohibited so that there will remain a difference between the Sabbath and weekdays, and argues that this is pragmatism that subordinates truth to utility and generates artificial interpretive stories like “building” or “kindling” merely in order to create a prohibition. He insists that one must first decide what is permitted and what is forbidden, and only afterward discuss consequences and policy as grounds for recommendation, not as a declaration of prohibition. He argues that someone who says “halakhically forbidden” out of fear that people will not listen to “not advisable” causes a loss of trust, until people will not believe even real prohibitions.
Authority to enact ordinances and decrees, and the scope of “do not deviate”
The speaker argues that turning policy into Jewish law is possible only through an ordinance or decree of the Sanhedrin by virtue of “do not deviate,” and that without such authority it is impossible to create new prohibitions. He says that a body lacking authority that invents prohibitions is “a liar,” even if its intentions are good, and he emphasizes the contradiction among conservatives who claim innovation is forbidden yet in practice innovate prohibitions. He cites the approach of the Sefer HaChinukh, which extends “do not deviate” to the sage of every generation, as a lone and implausible view, and he points to the difficulty of defining “who is the decisor” with respect to whom there is “do not deviate.”
Jewish law as a process of interpretation and legislation, and the distinction from policy
The speaker states that Jewish law “did not descend from Sinai in its present form,” but rather developed over the generations in two tracks: interpretation and legislation, where rabbinic law is legislation and Torah law is interpretation. He argues that interpretation is saturated with reasoning, worldviews, and insights, and therefore disputes among halakhic decisors are natural, and interpretive reasoning is itself the Jewish law. He sets a boundary: interpretive reasoning about defining building or kindling is part of the halakhic process, whereas reasoning about “what will happen if we permit this” is policy and may not disguise itself as interpretation.
The principle of legality in Jewish law and the burden of proof on the one who prohibits
The speaker presents the principle that “whatever is not forbidden is permitted,” and therefore one need not “check whether it is permitted”; rather, there is an obligation to prove a source for prohibition in order to prohibit. He compares this to the principle of legality in law, where for a citizen whatever has not been prohibited is permitted, while for the government whatever has not been authorized is forbidden because it infringes rights.
Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, the Sabbath timer, and the possibility of a new primary category of labor
The speaker cites a remark of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein that it would have been “proper” to prohibit a Sabbath timer, because if the Sages were alive today they would prohibit it, and he even raises the possibility of seeing this as a Torah-level determination, as a “primary category of labor,” though he notes that Rabbi Moshe ultimately rejects this. He connects this to the question of defining labor in “you shall not do any labor,” and to the discussion in Bava Kamma about a primary category and a derivative, and he presents a possible version according to which the “importance” of an act alone is enough to classify it as a primary category even if it was not present in the Tabernacle. He suggests that by such a criterion one could have ruled that activating an electrical circuit is an important enough labor to count as a primary category, and then reorganized the count of the thirty-nine labors differently, similar to his claim that the Talmud itself splits “winnowing is really selecting, is really sifting” into three primary categories in order to reach thirty-nine.
The approach to the Chazon Ish: electricity as building, policy, and an alternative explanation
The speaker says that many explain the Chazon Ish in terms of a policy consideration that “the Sabbath will become like a weekday,” and he rejects that explanation as invalid. He proposes that if a primary category of labor is determined by importance, then one can understand the prohibition of electricity as substantive interpretation rather than policy, though he notes that in practice most decisors go in a rabbinic direction such as “generating current,” similar to Beit Yitzchak, and he even defines this as a dubious rabbinic prohibition that is not explicit in Maimonides or the Shulchan Arukh under the source of “creating something new.” He presents the Chazon Ish’s position that electricity is building as exceptional and one with which many do not agree, and he cites the tradition that Rabbi Shlomo Zalman in the pamphlet Me’orei HaEsh raised this possibility and rejected it, while members of the kollel laughed at the very discussion, until the Chazon Ish’s position appeared and an exchange of letters began between them.
The Chazon Ish correspondence: “heating metal” versus “electrical force,” and from death to life
The speaker reads letters in which the Chazon Ish distinguishes between heating metal and connecting an electrical circuit, and argues that heating is temporary heat that the metal “continually expels,” whereas electricity is “electrical force impressed into the wire itself,” and its use is “constant.” He presents two reasons in the Chazon Ish: connection and assembling parts, and repairing the wire “from death to life,” which is building. He emphasizes that the Chazon Ish also refers to connection that is not tightly fixed and to a loose connection, and understands that in electricity connection has a significance that is not merely physical.
Rabbi Shlomo Zalman’s interpretation and rejection of liability for “closing a circuit without current”
The speaker cites Rabbi Shlomo Zalman’s words defining the Chazon Ish’s position as a great novelty, and quotes a report in the name of the Chazon Ish according to which even closing a circuit at a time when there is no current, where the activation will take place later by a timer, is liable because of building, attributing this to Rabbi Chaim Greineman. He quotes Rabbi Shlomo Zalman as challenging this interpretation and arguing that the Chazon Ish prohibits specifically where “new forces” are created, appearing “like from death to life,” and therefore, in his view, liability without current is unclear even within the Chazon Ish’s own approach.
The definition of the labor of building in Maimonides, Kehillot Yaakov, and Rabbi Isser Zalman: a tent and assembling parts
The speaker quotes from Kehillot Yaakov in the name of an essay by Rabbi Isser Zalman on Maimonides that one who curdles milk is liable because of building, because “whoever joins one part to another and binds everything together until they become one body, this resembles building.” He presents a definition of the primary category of building as specifically “making a permanent tent,” but only “through assembling many parts to make them one body,” and defines two types of derivatives: a tent without assembling parts, and assembling parts without a tent. From this he emphasizes that there can be non-transitivity in resemblance: two derivatives of the same primary category that are not similar to each other, because each preserves a different parameter of the primary category.
The step of abstraction: building as creating an “organic whole,” not a pile of parts
The speaker develops the definition beyond the technical wording, and argues that building is not merely connecting parts, but creating a structure that has significance as a whole, not as a collection. He illustrates this with the distinction between “a pile of stones” and “a house,” which has an overall function, and expands this with the metaphor of an organism in which cells and organs become one entity through mutual function, balance, and division of roles. He explains that “reviving the dead” is interpreted by him as the transition from a collection of cells to an organic whole, and therefore the idea of “from death to life” connects essentially to the definition of building.
Applying the abstraction to electricity: conceptual connection of a circuit and identification with the Chazon Ish
The speaker explains that when an electrical circuit begins to function, its parts become “organs” of a functioning body, so the connection is “conceptual” and not dependent on the strength of the physical connection or its permanence. He argues that the Chazon Ish’s explanations of “from death to life” and of “connecting the parts” are not two reasons but one and the same move: the functional vitality is itself the connection to the whole. He presents the result as a classic abstraction of the labor of building, and argues that on this basis the Chazon Ish’s conclusion that electricity is building becomes, in his view, necessary, concluding with the formulation that the very space is “the whole through the gathering of parts,” and that from this meaning the Chazon Ish’s ruling naturally follows.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Let’s take the subject of electricity on the Sabbath. I think there’s an interesting point here that has to do with abstraction. Maybe I’ll give a bit of an introduction. Where did I first encounter issues of electricity in Jewish law, electricity on the Sabbath in Jewish law? I was living in Bnei Brak, and someone who lived not far from me came by — he was also a relative of mine, a distant relative — and he was also related to Professor Lev; both of them have since passed away. He brought me a book by Professor Lev called Ma’arkhei Lev, about the Jewish laws of electrical appliances on the Sabbath, things like that. He said it was a book nobody reads, meaning it falls between categories because it combines technology and science with halakhic discussion.
[Speaker B] You knew him, right?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. So he said nobody reads it, nobody responds, and he’d be happy if someone would read it and send him comments — to Lev — various things like that. I read the book, sent him all kinds of comments, a lot of them; with some things I agreed, with some I didn’t, and we corresponded a bit about the matter.
[Speaker B] With Professor Lev?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. But the point is that while reading, I suddenly felt a kind of experience that was unfamiliar to me. Basically, we’re used to having Jewish law, halakhic sources; if you want to know what to do, you open halakhic books and see what one should do, what is permitted, what is forbidden. Jewish law is a kind of given. You can interpret it this way or that way, okay, there are disputes here and there, you have to decide, fine — but overall it’s some kind of consolidated given, and within it you have to make decisions. Here, though, the feeling was that you were standing at the cradle of this field’s birth. Because even though the field of electricity on the Sabbath, or electricity generally, had already existed for some time, it was still a field in formation. It was a field in formation where you begin to see how people discuss whether a microwave is permitted or forbidden, this kind of cooking or that — not just electricity, all sorts of situations involving all sorts of electrical devices — how to analyze them, what counts as indirect causation. In the electrical sense, it’s really not simple what counts as indirect causation. Indirect causation in the everyday sense, fine; but if an electrical circuit does something like this, is that also indirect causation, or only when a person does it that way is it indirect causation? In an electrical circuit, what difference does it make whether it happens from here or from there? It moves electrons around and in the end it starts working. So there are all kinds of conceptions here about which very basic decisions have to be made, and afterward you can apply them to various areas and decide what is permitted, what is forbidden, what one is liable for. And my feeling was that although there were quite a few things in his analysis with which I disagreed — he really was an intelligent man, a clearly learned Torah scholar, and truly knew the material well, I wasn’t catching him on nonsense of course — still, there were things I didn’t agree with, matters of judgment and so on. And suddenly I understood that it could be that now, say I — because in the end, what was going to come out of this field? At the stage when this field is taking shape, the people who ultimately shape it are a group of three or four individuals. These laws of electricity on the Sabbath — that means Professor Lev together with one or two others, Rabbi Shlomo Zalman, who was prepared enough to enter these areas, even though he wasn’t a man of science and technology, but he was both a wise Jew and a Jew willing to learn, meaning he was prepared to go into these issues. That’s actually very rare, even among halakhic decisors. Very few decisors really delve deeply into a professional field that requires understanding. So in the end, this whole area rests on three or four people, and they will determine Jewish law for generations. Once it crystallizes, everyone already knows: this is permitted, this is forbidden, everything becomes as if it were a given. You open Shemirat Shabbat Kehilkhatah and you see what is permitted and what is forbidden. And what is Shemirat Shabbat Kehilkhatah? It’s simply the conclusion that came out of their current discussion. They didn’t extract it from the Talmud, and he checked the views of the medieval authorities and reached a conclusion. Everything depends on interpretation; everything depends on how you see these things. Now if I persuade him, or he persuades me, whatever it is — the Jewish law will change. In another ten years, that will be the Jewish law; that’s what will be written in all the halakhic books — this is permitted, this is forbidden, everything. Now that’s a very rare experience in the halakhic context. Jewish law is, all in all, a pretty old field. So how many such birthbeds can you stand beside — the birth of some halakhic field like this — and see how the thing actually develops, and that you might influence the way it ultimately functions?
And also responsibility. What? And also responsibility, right, yes. That’s why I say — it’s fascinating. I was much younger then than I am today, and as a yeshiva student people look down on Jewish law. What is Jewish law? Jewish law means doing what you learn from the Mishnah Berurah; that’s not serious. The serious people are the conceptual analysts, not the halakhic decisors. And of course with time I learned that that’s nonsense. Meaning, Jewish law is a fascinating field. It’s fascinating not because you look at the Mishnah Berurah and say what’s written here and what’s written there — that really isn’t interesting. But if you think about how to apply things, how to interpret things, what is relevant, how you compare one matter to another, then all the conceptual analysis ultimately goes in behind the halakhah. There’s a certain feeling that when you study conceptual analysis, you offer reasoning and do this and that, whereas when you study Jewish law, you say what’s written in those books and apply it. It doesn’t work that way. Real halakhic ruling — not the way many people actually do it, but real halakhic ruling — has to begin with conceptual analysis, with analytic study, and then arrive at a conclusion. And that’s what’s beautiful: after the conceptual analysis, you’re also prepared to stand behind it and issue a halakhic ruling, to desecrate the Sabbath on the basis of your analysis, and not just say clever things and stay safe. In yeshivot they often separate the study of Jewish law from conceptual study. Jewish law gets half an hour or something like that, while conceptual study takes most of the day, or at least the first half of the day. What? Medieval authorities and later authorities, and people throw around reasons this way and that way. In my view that’s a scandal. It’s a scandal. Of course you need to study the Mishnah Berurah too, because not every law can be worked out from its foundations and brought to a conclusion. But in the end this separation — where this is what we study, and there we say whatever we like, reasons this way and that way, yes plausible, not plausible, what difference does it make? There’s no responsibility. You can say whatever you want. You have this law and that law, and systems and conceptual flashes, everything is wonderful. Stand behind it. Say that you’re willing to desecrate the Sabbath on the basis of that distinction, and then you’ll state the distinction more responsibly too. Your conceptual analysis will look different, not just your rulings — both will look different. Today there’s no issue: in conceptual study you can say whatever you want, and in halakhic ruling you do what’s written in the Mishnah Berurah, so what’s the problem? There’s no problem at all.
[Speaker C] If I may, two comments. One is that Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach said that when we walk, say, in a hospital and the door opens — or anywhere a door opens — by means of sensors, that’s permitted.
[Speaker B] Go ahead.
[Speaker C] And second, he also said that an electronic card is permitted. Meaning, it’s really beautiful to see — he’s known for really investigating, investigating everything deeply, and coming to a reasoned basis for saying that both are permitted. Second, the issue is understanding that, say, if back then — after all there was a dispute whether electricity could be used — now if they had said it was possible, then all these electronic things, our whole life today is just that; there would have been no difference at all between the Sabbath and a weekday.
[Speaker B] Why? Because there are things that — it doesn’t matter — even things done by electricity would still be forbidden because of their result, say cooking or whatever.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I mean the very use of electricity. But what did you do with the electricity? Obviously. Yes, but in general, by the way, I really don’t like that kind of consideration, which comes up a lot — I have to say, I don’t like it. What? The type of consideration you mentioned in your son’s name — I bring it up a lot.
[Speaker C] Not as the consideration — not as the consideration. Just to describe what it is.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but there are people who use it as a consideration: basically, that electricity needed to be forbidden because otherwise the Sabbath would become like a weekday. So let it become like a weekday — I don’t understand. Either you make enactments, which is fine — ordinary weekday activity — so make enactments. But don’t tell me interpretive stories that it’s building, or that it’s kindling, or whatever, because you don’t want the Sabbath to become like a weekday. It’s like philosophical pragmatism. Philosophical pragmatism subordinates what is true to what is useful. In other words, you want something to be useful, so you define it as true. And you don’t separate — and it is an important question, what is useful and what isn’t, what is harmful and what isn’t — but you need to separate that from the question of what is correct and what isn’t. And in many halakhic discussions people do not separate these things. For example, egalitarian prayer quorums for women — there too this is very, very common. Immediately people move to the argument: wait, wait, what will happen in the end, what will the synagogue look like? First of all, tell me what is permitted and what is forbidden. Afterward say: look, it’s permitted, but listen, there are consequences here, and all the same maybe it’s worth forbidding it, or rather worth not doing it — not forbidding it, you can’t forbid it. If something is permitted, then it is permitted; you can’t forbid it. What you can do is recommend not doing it even though it is permitted. Fear that people won’t listen? Exactly. So out of fear that they won’t listen, people say no, it’s halakhically forbidden. Except that at our fingertips, with two clicks on Google, you immediately find out whether it’s permitted or forbidden, and why, and you see ten decisors who say it’s permitted and there’s no problem. And then they lose trust in what you say, and once they lose trust in what you say, then even when you say something is really forbidden they won’t listen to you, because they no longer believe it. Therefore this distinction is very important, both in the conceptual world of the yeshivot and in life generally. When you issue a halakhic ruling it’s very important to distinguish between the plane of true and false, halakhically permitted or forbidden, and the question of what is appropriate and what the consequences will be. Consequences and so on — that’s another discussion, a discussion of halakhic policy. That is not — in a place where there is a Sanhedrin, they and only they can turn a policy consideration into Jewish law. How? By means of an ordinance or a decree. They cannot define it as Torah law, of course; that would be adding to the Torah. What they can do, since in terms of policy we think this is the proper way to act, is establish a rabbinic prohibition or a rabbinic obligation to act this way, and thereby they turn the policy consideration into a halakhic consideration. But for that you need the authority of the Sanhedrin. A body that does not have that authority — a rabbi, a halakhic decisor, or a court, or whoever it may be — that does not have that authority, cannot do such a thing. And if he does such a thing, then he is a liar. And there are many liars, by the way — liars with good intentions. In other words, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. But they are liars. They say that something is forbidden when it is not forbidden, because they are afraid people won’t listen to them, so instead of saying it is not appropriate, or not advisable, or I don’t recommend it, they say: forbidden. That’s it. Even though there is no prohibition. And today you cannot create new prohibitions. After all, the great conservatives are precisely the ones who insist that you cannot introduce novelties today. You cannot create prohibitions, you cannot create permissions. So if you can’t innovate, then don’t innovate. Today there is no authorized court, and it is impossible to make such decrees. You can say what is permitted and what is forbidden in light of what already exists… but today you cannot make decrees. There is no authority today that can issue decrees. For decrees you need a Sanhedrin — “do not deviate.” What is the source of the authority of the Sages? From “do not deviate.” “Do not deviate” applies only to the Sanhedrin. There is the Sefer HaChinukh, who says it also applies to every sage in every generation, but that is a solitary view; it’s implausible, it doesn’t emerge from the sources, it doesn’t…
[Speaker E] According to the Sefer HaChinukh, what does that mean regarding a rabbinic prohibition? What?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] According to the Sefer HaChinukh, it seems from him that he really interprets “do not deviate” that way: that someone who violates the view of a halakhic decisor — I don’t know exactly how one defines who that decisor is, after all anyone can choose a decisor for himself, but I don’t know, if there were a consensus among the decisors, leave that aside for the moment — then yes, apparently “do not deviate” would apply there with all the definitions. That’s how it appears; I’m saying that’s how he writes, though I don’t know. From his wording it seems that it’s not just a nice idea tucked away among the roots of the commandment; sometimes you get passages there that are more homiletic. But there it seems he says it as practical Jewish law, or at least that’s what his wording implies. But again, that’s a solitary view. It’s just not the case.
Anyway, so to our point: we now need to discuss questions of what is permitted and forbidden, not policy. Not how the Sabbath will look, and whether there will be a difference between Sabbath and weekday — good questions, but second-order. I’m talking about first-order questions, meaning what is permitted and what is forbidden. On the other hand, of course one has to know — we’ve spoken about this more than once — that Jewish law did not descend from Sinai as is, contrary to the common ethos. Everyone understands that that isn’t true, yet for some reason people keep reciting it. Jewish law did not descend from Sinai as it is. What descended were initial sources — say, the Torah — together with some basic interpretations, the law given to Moses at Sinai, something like that, perhaps the basic hermeneutical rules; the earliest authorities write that even that came down from Sinai — and that’s it. Most things ultimately developed over the generations. When they developed over the generations, this was ultimately through two processes: one process of interpretation and one process of legislation. These are the two modes of function of the Sages, and we’ve discussed this more than once. That is what distinguishes Torah law from rabbinic law. Rabbinic law is legislation; Torah law is interpretation. Interpretation — and I’m talking now only about interpretation, not legislation — interpretation too is not ultimately a straightforward process, meaning a simple process. There’s a verse, so interpret what it says, that’s all. Obviously interpretation contains reasoning, worldviews, insights, and therefore there are disputes among halakhic decisors. And of course interpretation is saturated with reasoning. Reasoning — each person with his own reasoning. This does not contradict what I said earlier. In other words, reasoning is part of the Jewish law. If I have interpretive reasoning, that does not fall under the category I mentioned earlier of not mixing things into Jewish law. This is the Jewish law. If you have pragmatic reasoning — reasoning that says what will happen if we permit or forbid — that is a different plane. If I have a reasoned view that something falls under the category of building or the category of kindling, that is interpretation. If that is what I think — that this is building and this is kindling — and someone else thinks not, then we argue, no problem; not that I’m necessarily right. But if I think this is an interpretation of the category of kindling or building, then from my perspective it is a Torah prohibition, and that’s how I need to present it. Here I am not saying what I said earlier, not to mix policy or your own considerations with the Jewish law. Here the Jewish law is the product of your reasoning, of your considerations — that’s obvious. There is no Jewish law that is naked, that is, without a human imprint, without the added value of interpreters. What is written in the Torah says nothing. Everything must pass through interpretation. Without interpretation, nothing is written there. Do whatever you want. So obviously when I speak about Jewish law, I do not mean to exclude interpretation and reasoning; I mean to exclude policy considerations. When I consider what the verse says, that is interpretation. When I consider how one ought to act, that is policy, or where one ruling or another will lead. Okay, so that’s an important point.
Now I’ll return to the issue of electricity on the Sabbath. In the end we need to use interpretive tools. Interpretive tools for what? Ostensibly for the verses of the Torah — but how far removed from us are the Torah’s verses? We see the Torah’s verses through the translations they already received in the Talmud and in the medieval authorities. In the end we need to connect ourselves to that interpretive halakhic chain of the generations. We need to do some kind of interpretation. So on the one hand we have a new phenomenon: electricity. It didn’t exist 150 years ago. On the other hand, we cannot invent laws about electricity, because inventing doesn’t help at all. Even if it is appropriate, that’s policy. In order to prohibit, you have to anchor it in some authoritative source. You have to explain: this is forbidden for this reason, this is forbidden for that reason, from this primary category of labor, from that derivative, a rabbinic prohibition, whatever — but you have to find, not choose at random, some halakhic source to rely on. You can’t decide that something is forbidden because it doesn’t seem right to me. Okay.
There is a consideration of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein — I’ll just say this in passing — there is a consideration of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein regarding the Sabbath timer. I think he says it even in a note in one of his responsa, where he says that really it would have been proper to prohibit use of a Sabbath timer, because if the Sages were alive today they would prohibit it. Maybe he’s speaking generally about electricity, but also regarding the timer it appears in a responsum about the Sabbath timer. What? Right, yes. It doesn’t fit into the primary categories of labor and their derivatives, but obviously it doesn’t fit simply because it didn’t exist then. But if the Sages were — this is just a historical claim — if the Sages were alive today, or if there were a Sanhedrin today with binding halakhic authority, then it would have been prohibited. So he says: if that’s the case, then it ought to be prohibited because of that.
[Speaker B] And would that be considered Torah law, or an enactment?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Torah law. Yes. He says one would have had to establish it as a primary category of labor. A primary category of labor? How did the Sages determine the thirty-nine primary categories of labor? They looked around and checked what seemed like significant activities. The labor of the Tabernacle. It’s not clear — there are different versions in Bava Kamma.
[Speaker E] That would be interpretation — a move of interpretation — if the Sages were here today, as Rabbi Moshe says.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly — interpretation of what is written in the Torah: “You shall not do any labor.” What is labor? What is labor? So he decided — or maybe didn’t decide; some say there is an analogy to the Tabernacle, that’s the accepted view. There are different versions in general: “A category that existed in the Tabernacle and is significant is called a primary category; a category that did not exist in the Tabernacle and is not significant…” there are various versions there in Tosafot on Bava Kamma. So fine — if the Sages… But he rejects it. In the end, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein presents it only as an initial thought.
[Speaker B] The path of analysis you’re describing now is first of all: let’s check whether it’s forbidden, and if I can’t fit it into the framework of prohibitions, then it’s permitted. Doesn’t it also work the other way? Let’s first check whether it’s permitted. You don’t need to check whether it’s permitted. Everything that isn’t forbidden is permitted. Meaning, you have to proceed…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The burden of proof is only on the one who prohibits. That’s all. Obviously.
[Speaker B] Everything that hasn’t been forbidden is permitted.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the principle of legality.
[Speaker B] On the website some time ago someone asked…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s the principle of legality, and the principle of legality says that everything not forbidden is permitted. You don’t need a reason to permit; you need to prove there is a source that forbids in order to forbid. If there is no source that forbids, then it is permitted. You don’t need proof that it is permitted. With the authorities, by the way, the principle of legality says the opposite. That applies to the citizen. For a citizen, everything not forbidden is permitted. For the government, everything it has not been authorized to do is forbidden, because the government infringes people’s rights. So if it was authorized by law, then it may do it; anything it was not authorized to do is forbidden. Okay. In Jewish law it works exactly like that.
[Speaker C] Why would they say it’s forbidden?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because it’s a significant labor. The fact that they didn’t have electricity… What? No, but electricity in general.
[Speaker B] Yes, and in the end he retracts it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. He says: but you can’t do that, because — I don’t know — for various reasons. In my view those are policy considerations. Not entirely.
[Speaker D] He doesn’t decree that way because he thinks he can’t prohibit on his own authority. He doesn’t know what the Sages would have thought.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because it’s obvious to him that this is something… Maybe I’ll go back to the versions I mentioned before in Bava Kamma. In the Talmud in Bava Kamma, the Gemara says — it defines what a primary category and a derivative are with regard to the Sabbath. And it says: a category that existed in the Tabernacle and is significant is called a primary category; a category that did not exist in the Tabernacle and is not significant… there are different versions… is a derivative. Now there are different versions there: the Maharam and the Maharsha there in Tosafot and others. There are versions that say: a category that existed in the Tabernacle is significant and is called a primary category. Meaning, whatever existed in the Tabernacle, by virtue of that alone is important, and therefore it is called a primary category. What did not exist in the Tabernacle is therefore not important, and is called a derivative. But lots of things did not exist in the Tabernacle. How do you determine which among the things that did not exist in the Tabernacle count as derivatives? Obviously you still have to find something that is important or that resembles one of the things that did exist in the Tabernacle, and then it is a derivative. Fine, not crucial now. In Melekhet Shabbat at the beginning, in Kalkalat Shabbat, at the beginning of the Tiferet Yisrael’s commentary on the Mishnah, he has an introduction called Kalkalat Shabbat. There he really discusses this classification of primary categories and derivatives: is it similarity, uniqueness, importance; what are the criteria; how exactly do we classify the primary categories and the derivatives. That’s one version. A second version says: a primary category is one that existed in the Tabernacle and is important. Right, and is important — yes. So those are two requirements: that it existed in the Tabernacle and that it is important. Not everything that existed in the Tabernacle is a primary category. What existed in the Tabernacle and is important — that is a primary category. And there is a version that says: either it existed in the Tabernacle or it is important. Meaning, it is enough that something is important for it to be a primary category, even if it did not exist in the Tabernacle. All right?
Now why am I saying all this? Because today we’ll talk about the Chazon Ish. The Chazon Ish prohibits electricity because it is building. Hardly any halakhic decisor agrees with that. Everyone is concerned because the Chazon Ish said it, but hardly any decisor actually agrees with it. And many times people explain the Chazon Ish in terms of policy. What do I mean? Exactly the consideration that Yehudit mentioned before. In other words, if you don’t prohibit electricity on the Sabbath, you’ve turned the Sabbath into a weekday. So you have to find some labor category, whether distant or close doesn’t matter, something to hang it on in order to prohibit it. But as I said before, that’s out of the question. What do you mean? You can’t prohibit things that are not prohibited. You can recommend; you can’t prohibit. I think something else is going on here. If indeed the criterion for being a primary category of labor is that it is important, then that is exactly how it should be done. It’s not a policy consideration. You look around and ask yourself: what counts as a significant act of creation? And then I say, I don’t know, activating an electrical mechanism on the Sabbath is a significant act of creation. If so, then it really should be a primary category, because that is the definition of a primary category. This is not policy; it is an interpretive consideration. Because if in the end you need to determine what is important and that will count as a primary category, then what’s the problem? That is exactly Rabbi Moshe Feinstein’s consideration: that in the end, if the Sages were alive today, obviously they wouldn’t need to distinguish winnowing, selecting, and sifting. After all, the Gemara says that winnowing is really selecting, and selecting is really sifting. All three are labors of separating food from waste. Okay, so why are they three primary categories? The Gemara says because all three were in the Tabernacle. What does that mean, all three were in the Tabernacle? You have only thirty-nine primary categories, and you need to reach thirty-nine. So you take selecting, and you say: ah, selecting done by wind we’ll call winnowing, and selecting done in another manner we’ll call sifting, and then we have thirty-nine labors. Because on the one hand we have to get to thirty-nine — there are thirty-nine mentions of labor or its cognates in the Torah, from which they derive how many primary categories of labor there need to be. On the other hand, it is somehow connected to the Tabernacle. So what you’re really doing is stitching things together. Basically, winnowing, selecting, and sifting are the same thing. All three are separation of things. A similarity of that degree between labors in other contexts would make them a primary category and derivative, not separate primary categories. But here the Gemara says that even though winnowing is really selecting and selecting is really sifting, nevertheless all three were three separate primary categories of labor. Why? Because you need to reach thirty-nine. That’s all.
Now if I say today that we need to reach thirty-nine, that’s not a policy consideration; it’s an interpretive consideration. I’m not belittling that consideration. We have a source that says there need to be thirty-nine primary categories of labor. Now I have to determine how to populate that list. Yes? Like the 613 commandments — we talked about that once. Exactly. We discussed that once. So I’m saying: now, though, we live in a different world. In our world, look, we’ve found another primary category of labor that the Sages didn’t mention: lighting an electrical circuit on the Sabbath, activating an electrical circuit on the Sabbath. So now we can drop one — just winnowing and selecting, without sifting. Why strain ourselves just to get to thirty-nine? Today I have another important labor that there is no doubt should count as a primary category of labor, for the sake of discussion, so that will really be a primary category of labor, and we’ll organize the thirty-nine differently. We have several candidates we could get rid of. Right? Altogether, it’s a very sensible consideration. And that consideration is not a policy consideration, even though it looks very similar. It’s not policy. It’s a substantive interpretive consideration. Because really we do need to choose the thirty-nine labors, the thirty-nine important labors, and those are what will be called primary categories. What do you mean, they were fixed? So they were fixed — I determine differently today. What does it mean, they were fixed? They were fixed for their time. But in my time it’s different.
[Speaker E] Are there two definitions? Is it important labors, or was that only a rationale for the labors?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, no—what do you mean? “Compressed,” you say? That basically the list was already given and we only explained it after the fact? On the face of it, it doesn’t look that way. Rabbi Yehuda disagrees there, after all—forty, thirty-nine. No, no, it doesn’t look like there was such a tradition. They determined the categories of labor from their own analysis. And then I say: so what if today there would be… what’s the problem? Today too, you’d have to choose the thirty-nine important categories of labor, and those would be the primary categories. What difference does it make? There’s the famous thesis of the Chazon Ish, where he says there are two thousand years of chaos, two thousand years of Torah, and two thousand years of Messiah—the Talmud says this, it’s that sort of aggadic statement. So the Chazon Ish says that all kinds of factual scientific determinations that appear in the Talmud, and it turns out they aren’t correct—at least according to the information we have today—he says it doesn’t matter. Why doesn’t it matter? There are those fundamentalist types who say, “What do you mean? That proves science is wrong, because the Talmud says otherwise, so obviously science is wrong.” That’s nonsense. But the Chazon Ish reaches the conservative conclusion in a more sober way. What does that mean? He understands that if it’s an error, then it’s an error. But he says: fine, what binds us are the scientific determinations of the two thousand years of Torah, not of the two thousand years of Messiah. We are now in the last two thousand years out of the six thousand—that’s the two thousand years of Messiah. Where he got that from, God knows. There’s no source for it at all.
[Speaker D] What do you mean, the two thousand have already passed? That’s well known. And with the categories of labor too, I’m sure that every time—one hundred fifty years ago we got the topic of electricity, and in another twenty, a hundred years, we’ll get another topic that will also enter this framework.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, so what? Exactly—so what? Then that generation will have to decide what belongs under it. Every generation has to decide regarding what arises in its own time, right?
[Speaker C] But the problem is that this is the Chazon… that this is the…
[Speaker D] Not a problem—it’s a consequence.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine. Every generation, I’m saying—what I’m saying isn’t specifically true only for our generation. Every generation: whatever arises has to be decided. So the claim—I’m saying this is a claim of the Chazon Ish—it really is a strange claim. I don’t know where he gets it from.
[Speaker E] Huh? So then how does the Chazon Ish deal with building on the Sabbath? Why is electricity…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He holds that electricity falls under the law of building.
[Speaker E] I’m telling you: electricity didn’t exist. It wasn’t determined during the two thousand years of Torah.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that doesn’t matter. Again: the definitions of the thirty-nine primary categories of labor were determined there, but the fact that today I see that I have another way to build—that enters the category of building. What’s the problem?
[Speaker E] But didn’t we say earlier that that was the Chazon Ish’s reasoning, because there would be here…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Not a reason for building, not a reason for building—that’s unrelated. The Chazon Ish has this principle that the two thousand years of Torah are the whole…
[Speaker E] The idea that there could be another primary category of labor…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He doesn’t say that. The Chazon Ish ties it to building. He doesn’t… That’s the initial thought of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein—that there is another primary category of labor here because it’s important enough to count as a primary category—and in the end he rejects it.
[Speaker C] But that’s on condition that it’s important enough.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, correct. If you adopt that version—that it’s important enough—then…
[Speaker B] So what is this really… is this meant to explain the Chazon Ish or to offer an alternative?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m saying: the Chazon Ish says it’s prohibited because of building, and I’m saying I actually could have suggested an alternative—like Rabbi Moshe Feinstein’s alternative—to say that it’s important enough to be a primary category in its own right. Why do you need to hang it on building, which is strange, or on kindling, which is also pretty strange, or other things? In the end, most halakhic decisors say it’s rabbinic—even an electric circuit—because it’s rabbinic. It’s not really kindling, at least in most cases, and it’s also not really building. Okay? So of course, as decisors tend to do, they always take various opinions into account. But if you ask what they really think is the concern, most say it’s generating a current or something like the Beit Yitzchak, or other rabbinic issues of that kind. What? Rabbinic? Yes. Not only is it rabbinic—it’s shaky rabbinic, because that law of generating, say, a fragrance, which appears in tractate Beitzah, wasn’t ruled as Jewish law; it doesn’t appear in the Shulchan Arukh or in Maimonides. But somehow generating a current… behind that, again, I don’t know whether policy considerations aren’t sitting there. But never mind—that, I think, is the accepted view among most decisors. It seems to me they go more in that direction, not in the directions of Torah-level kindling or building, because it’s a bit hard to fit it into the usual definitions. Building certainly not—on building, most don’t agree at all. The story goes that Rabbi Shlomo Zalman—back in 1935, I think—was a kollel fellow… he was young. Yes, when he was young. So he wrote a pamphlet called Me’orei Ha-Esh, and there he raises the possibility that electricity would be prohibited under building, and rejects it. Meaning, he says: that’s not correct. They still didn’t know about the Chazon Ish, about the Chazon Ish’s opinion. And the guys in the kollel laughed themselves to death—that’s how the myth goes. What, building? That’s like asking why washing on the Sabbath isn’t prohibited under the law of eating pork. What’s the connection? How is this connected to building at all? Why do you need to trouble yourself rejecting something so bizarre? Okay? Then, that same year or the year after, the Chazon Ish’s thesis came out saying it’s prohibited because of building. And Rabbi Shlomo Zalman debates him at length on this matter, and there’s an exchange of letters—I’ll show you, I brought some of it—an exchange of letters between them debating this issue of electricity as building. Fine, so the question is really how to understand this claim of the Chazon Ish. For many years I really thought it was something very strange. Today I very much agree with him—with the Chazon Ish. What, that it’s building? Yes, yes. I think it makes a lot of sense, and I’ll try to explain today why. And here I get to the question.
[Speaker B] Fine, you understood the building part. Yes. You understood building.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What—really, is it so different from making cheese? What? What is so different from making cheese? The connection to making cheese? When making cheese, you build something—what difference does it make? You can discuss why making cheese counts as building, fine—but electricity doesn’t?
[Speaker B] If making cheese is building, then what—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why is electricity similar to making cheese? What’s the connection?
[Speaker B] Every act of creation is—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Building? What, then all thirty-nine primary categories of labor are building, except for carrying, which is an inferior category of labor. Fine—everything else is building. Not every act of creation is building. It depends what, how you create, what you create, in what way.
[Speaker B] An electrical body that doesn’t work is a dead body, and an electrical body that’s alive is—fine—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the famous Chazon Ish, yes. Fine—but you need to understand what that has to do with building. It’s dead and it’s alive—so reviving the dead is prohibited because of building? Maybe striking the final blow, maybe—but building? Why building? That’s like the Golem of the Maharal—when he took the note out of the Golem on the Sabbath so it would stay dead. The question is whether it was permitted to put the note back in on the Sabbath. Anyway, his note was… whether he was allowed to put it back. In any case, I want to talk a bit about this matter of the Chazon Ish. Look here—I printed it, for some reason it didn’t come out double-sided, so it’s in page pairs. I messed up a bit with the printing.
[Speaker B] Is the Chazon Ish left with the problem, or does he have an explanation?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, yes. He has several explanations, by the way, for why this is building. In different places he explains it in different ways.
[Speaker C] That’s interesting.
[Speaker B] Doesn’t matter—when it’s over, it’s over.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wow, why is this so small. That’s it? There’s another one here if someone needs it.
[Speaker B] I understood that for a long time you held it wasn’t building, and now you explain. Right, right.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll explain, I’ll explain, yes. Actually, this is inspired by Rabbi Shabtai Rappaport—I think I heard the basic idea from him. He was the head of the kollel at Bar-Ilan.
[Speaker B] Is he Rabbi Moshe Feinstein’s son-in-law?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Married to his granddaughter, yes. So let’s read a little, just to get a feel for the arguments. Look at the correspondence on the first page. “After inquiring after his good welfare and the peace of his Torah”—what?
[Speaker C] This has so many letters.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Every Torah letter opens with “After inquiring after his good welfare.” Let’s skip the nonsense and get to the point. Okay—greetings, be well, regarding building. “Your esteemed letter has reached me; the matter depends on judgment. Heating iron…” The discussion there is: what’s the difference between passing electricity through a wire and heating iron? Why is this building and that not building? Here too you change the nature of the iron, and there too you change the nature of the iron.
[Speaker B] What? Glowing? Right. So—not building.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ah, the question is why. So then why is electricity yes building?
[Speaker B] So one could say that because in cooking it enters, maybe here he puts it under building.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean “it enters”? Then he’d be liable both because of cooking and because of building. What’s the problem? It could be both in a tight way. I don’t see why not. “Heating iron does not create a new nature in the iron; rather, the heat resides temporarily in the iron and the iron continually expels it.” Iron conducts heat well, so really, if you left it, the heat would dissipate. “But connecting the electric wire awakens the electrical power embedded in the wire itself, and it comes from the compositional structure at the root of its creation.” Meaning: a conducting wire—the Chazon Ish understands it as though there is some potential for current that is part of the wire itself. It’s not heat entering it and then leaving as soon as you stop heating. Electricity is something connected to the wire itself. Of course, you also need a voltage difference for there to be current, but still, the current is part of the wire; it’s not something external entering the wire. “And this use is constant, and establishing it in its condition by means of the connection, whereby the interrupted wire becomes one body with the electrical machine—this is subject to concern because of building.” A—of two reasons: A, because of assembling sections one with another. He assembled two things with each other: the wire with the machine, the wire that activates the machine, yes. “And the leniency of a loose connection does not help”—a loose assembly is not building. Never mind, he explains why not. B, “repairing the wire itself from death to life is building.” The wire itself is awakened. From death to life—meaning when you insert a battery or a voltage difference, current begins to flow in the wire. So the wire begins to live. The wire is no longer just a dead lump; it has some sort of life, and that is building. That’s what I asked earlier: so reviving the dead is prohibited because of building? So basically, killing is demolition, right? Killing—someone who takes a life on the Sabbath violates demolition and also giving life. Fine, let’s not start building from that. Or maybe we should? Depends. That’s the Rabbi of Brisk—the famous Rabbi of Brisk—on the topic of Sabbath boundaries. The Rabbi of Brisk on Sabbath boundaries: there’s a Talmudic text there that says he won’t come down, yes, he won’t come down because above ten handbreadths there’s no boundary, and therefore he won’t come on the Sabbath. He won’t come from above on the Sabbath. So he says: you see, even the redemption of the Jewish people doesn’t permit a rabbinic prohibition. Let him wait until Sunday. So a few more Jews will be killed, but redemption will come without there being a halakhic problem. Fine—these are Brisker quips. Once they start learning aggadic literature, the situation is bad. In any case—then he says there is no leniency of temporariness and so on, that’s less important. After that he writes: “My dear Rabbi Shlomo… your precious words reached me with joy of heart.” What? The peace of his Torah. “After inquiring after his good welfare and the peace of his Torah.”
[Speaker E] By the way, they say that someone who vowed not to drink wine when the Messiah comes can drink wine on the Sabbath, because the Messiah doesn’t come on the Sabbath.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what they say. Yes. Because of that boundary issue, because of the boundary matter.
[Speaker B] The Talmudic text says that because of the boundary?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. No—only the Briskers say: you see, even a rabbinic prohibition—the redemption of Israel depends on a rabbinic prohibition, and still he won’t come. Fine, okay. “However, the matter we discussed was not regarding the essence of the law, that connecting the wires by means of a button and fitting pieces together… and if there were a break in one of the wires and one took an iron thread and connected them on the Sabbath, he would be liable to bring a sin-offering.” If you connect the two wires not with a switch but by simply tying them to one another—is that also building? Maybe it’s tying, but why building? “The whole discussion is because the button is loose and meant to be opened and closed, and in this there is room to say that if one does so at a time when the electricity is in use and its connection has already brought about receipt of the current, this is an important construction and is like firmly fixing the pieces together,” as he wrote in his earlier letter. “And for this there is no need to enter into the nature of electricity in the wire, and perhaps there is no building except in actual assembly”—that when you assemble two physical things into each other, that is building. But not assembly—how shall I call it?—theoretical or abstract assembly. Here we reach abstractions like electricity, where he assembles the parts of the circuit into one unit, but he assembles them at the conceptual level, not in the physical sense of attaching them one to another. But once electricity flows through the entire circuit, the circuit becomes one unit. So in that sense there is a connection here, and the connection is made on the conceptual plane, not the physical plane. Okay? There is also a physical connection, but the physical connection can be loose, and a loose connection is not called a connection—the Talmudic text says so. But here there is a conceptual connection: everything suddenly becomes one unit, and therefore this is building, and so on. I can already see I don’t have much time, so I won’t read all the details here.
[Speaker E] Today you can have current even without physical continuity, like charging a phone wirelessly.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. With a capacitor too, from the beginning, you could do that—you transfer current from one plate of the capacitor to the other; you don’t need… you don’t need a connection between them. Meaning—what do you mean? You need an air connection. Is air a connection? Yes.
[Speaker E] So you’re saying that would still be called building, even in a case like that where you don’t have physical continuity.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I think so. It seems to me that maybe this is actually a good illustration of what I said before about the Chazon Ish. The connection is a conceptual connection, not a physical connection. And it is well known—I’ll just read what Rabbi Shlomo Zalman writes about this—
[Speaker D] “And it is well known that his words are a very great innovation.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Is this the young Rabbi Shlomo Zalman or the later one? The young one. Yes, this is the one who said it’s building and afterward said it’s not. No—he rejected the possibility that it’s building. He never thought it was building, but he took the trouble to argue with that possibility, and the guys laughed at him—why are you arguing with this, there’s no initial thought like that at all. “And it is well known that his words are a very great innovation, and all those who have discussed matters of electricity did not mention at all any need to be concerned here for the categories of labor of building and demolishing. Moreover, I heard it said in the name of our master the author of Chazon Ish of blessed memory, that even when there is no current at all in the wires, and when a person presses the button…” By the way, “Chazon Ish of blessed memory” means this was already at least twenty years later; I don’t know exactly when this was written. “…nothing yet has been done. Nevertheless, the very closing of the circuit, making it arranged and prepared for lighting to occur later by means of a timer—even this too is liable because of building.” And later Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky—sorry, Rabbi Chaim Greineman—writes this: that when you assemble the circuit even before current passes through it, later the timer will activate it, but when you assembled the circuit that itself was already building—you transgressed a Torah prohibition. Why? Because all in all you assembled the parts; the current is only…
[Speaker E] Even if later the timer won’t actually operate?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. The indication is that current could flow through it, but really it’s the assembly of the parts. Yes, it’s only an indication. The flow of electricity isn’t really required. The very fact that electricity can flow there shows that in essence you connected the things.
[Speaker B] So that’s the sign, not the cause.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Correct. The closure of the physical circuit—meaning, even if in the end you didn’t connect the voltage that would activate the current through it. Okay? What?
[Speaker C] If you set it up with a Sabbath timer—does that also count? Yes, yes. That’s his reasoning.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now he says—Rabbi Shlomo Zalman says—let’s move on a bit, because Rabbi Shlomo Zalman argues that this isn’t correct even within the Chazon Ish’s own view. He himself doesn’t accept the Chazon Ish at all, but he says this statement of Rabbi Chaim Greineman, or this interpretation, isn’t right even within the Chazon Ish’s approach. Why? He says that the Chazon Ish only prohibits in a wire such that through its operation new powers are created in the wires, powers that appear to us as from death to life. You awaken the wire from death to life. But why is that true? Because the Chazon Ish in several places gives several explanations for why electricity is building. Only one of them is the move from death to life. Elsewhere he speaks about the connection. And then there is room for Rabbi Chaim Greineman’s interpretation. In the place where he speaks about the move from death to life, it’s obvious that you need the current flowing through the wire. Fine. In any case, he doesn’t accept that. I want to explain a bit why I think the Chazon Ish is right. I’ll start maybe with an interesting definition that appears in Kehillot Yaakov, and the source is Rabbi Isser Zalman in an article. Rabbi Isser Zalman in an article, and afterward it also appears in Even HaEzel, on what… Look, actually on your second page I brought it—I brought a passage from Kehillot Yaakov that cites this article of Rabbi Isser Zalman. I’m bringing only the answer; there are various questions at the beginning that led him to this, but: “To resolve all this he wrote based on what Maimonides wrote in chapter 7, law 6″—that is, Rabbi Isser Zalman wrote. In chapter 7, law 6: “One who curdles and makes cheese is liable because of building.” To make cheese, to take the parts and bind them together—that is liable because of building. “For anyone who gathers part to part and glues everything together until they become one body, this resembles building.” Therefore one who makes cheese is liable because of building. “And it is clear that the matter of the category of labor of building is that he gathers and connects several separate things—such as wood and stones—and makes them into one building. Therefore the primary category of labor of building is making a permanent tent, and specifically when it is by gathering many parts and making them one body.” When you build a building, you build—you make a permanent shelter, meaning a roof, you build a permanent structure, but you build it by connecting parts to one another. Bricks, in the case of a building. “Therefore he wrote correctly that making a permanent tent, such as by spreading a sheet or leather, is a derivative category.” That is only a derivative of building. Why? “For although he made a permanent tent, nevertheless he did not do so by gathering many parts to make them one body.” You spread one piece of cloth or hide overhead. So true, you created a permanent tent—let’s say it’s fixed—but you didn’t do it by gathering parts. It’s not building from bricks; it’s one unit that you placed there. Therefore it cannot be the primary category of building; it’s a derivative of building. “And making cheese and the like is also a derivative category,” even though there there is gathering of parts. So why is making cheese a derivative and not a primary category? “For although there is here a gathering of many parts to make one thing, nevertheless there is no tent here.” Making cheese has no internal cavity; it’s not a tent. “And there are two kinds of derivatives of building: one, a tent without gathering of parts; and the second, gathering of parts without a tent. And the primary category of labor is a permanent tent made through gathering of parts.” Okay? Then he resolves things and says: from here it is understood that there is no building in vessels—but never mind, now he goes back to resolving the questions that led him to the whole thing. But there’s a very interesting structure here. We’re used to the idea that similarity is a transitive property, right? If A is similar to B, and B is similar to C, then A is similar to C. But that’s not true—it doesn’t have to be. I didn’t understand.
[Speaker D] What? What you read.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m explaining, I’m explaining. We’re used to thinking that similarity is transitive. That is, if A resembles B and B resembles C, then A resembles C—maybe a bit less, but there is some degree of similarity. But that need not be so. It could be that A resembles B in one respect, and B resembles C in another respect, and therefore A and C may have no connection at all. And that’s what happens with the category of labor of building. Think for a moment: what does it mean to build a house? The paradigm case of building is building a house. What is building a house? It’s creating a space, a space for use—for living or something like that—meaning a roof, walls, something like that, mainly a roof. And you do that by means of bricks, right? That’s how one usually builds a house. One does it with bricks—or even tying the coverings in the Tabernacle. So when you look at building a house, it consists of two things: creating a space by gathering parts. Okay. Now that is the definition of the primary category. One derivative is when one characteristic is present and the other is not. There is gathering of parts, but no space is created—that’s making cheese. A second derivative is when a space is created but there is no gathering of parts. Gathering of parts—that’s the tent. Now that means that between a tent and making cheese, even though both are derivatives of building, there is no similarity at all. Because making cheese resembles building in parameter A, right—resembles the primary category. A tent resembles building in parameter B. The primary category of building has both parameters A and B. One derivative has A, the other has B. Both resemble the primary category, but they don’t resemble each other at all. Okay? So many times one has to know that similarity is not necessarily transitive. If A resembles B, it depends whether it is in the same respect in which B resembles C, or in a different respect. Okay. So what comes out of this is that there can be two derivatives with absolutely no connection between them, no similarity. What?
[Speaker B] Is there another example like that in the laws of the Sabbath? I didn’t understand. Is there another example like that in the laws of the Sabbath? I don’t know, you’d have to think about it, I have no idea.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Two—
[Speaker D] Derivatives of the same primary category with no similarity at all.
[Speaker B] Not from the standpoint of the result. There it’s the result.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s what the Kalkalat Shabbat I mentioned earlier talks about—whether he speaks about the result or the mode of action, how one defines the relation between primary and derivative categories. In any case, the claim here is that there is this sort of split between the primary category and the two derivatives, where the primary category is defined as creating a space through gathering parts. That is the definition—this is what is called building in its abstract definition. Now I’ll try to take this one step further. If I take all the stones and glue them one to another on the floor, say—glue them one to another—have I violated building? Not clear. Maybe a derivative of building—it may resemble making cheese—but it’s not the building we’re talking about here. Why not? Because when we put all the stones one next to the other, or maybe even glue them, what we have is a collection of stones, not a structure. There’s a difference between a collection of stones and a structure. The category of labor of building means taking parts, connecting them together, so that the product has some significance in itself, not merely as a collection of the parts. Or the best example of this is an organism. You know: an organism is composed of organs, of cells—depending on the resolution at which you look. Fine. But once you have assembled all the parts, what is created is not a collection of cells lying next to each other. What is created is some being that functions as a single unified creature. Right? All these things together connect and produce something cybernetic—something with feedback, with mutual influence, with division of roles, and things of that sort. Okay? That is really the meaning of the category of labor of building. The meaning of building is taking a collection of things and producing from them an integrated whole. Now I’m taking one step beyond Kehillot Yaakov and Rabbi Sorotzkin—I’m trying to explain them. They only say the technical side. But what stands behind it? What stands behind it is that the category of labor of building really is reviving the dead—that is the category of labor of building. Why? Not because I turn him from dead to alive, but because a dead body is a collection of cells. It isn’t a dead person; it’s just a collection of cells. You could have glued them next to one another—that still wouldn’t be a person. When you put the spirit of life into it, it’s not that you changed something in the cells; rather, from that collection of cells you created a whole, an organism. That organism is one entity to which you now relate—not a collection of cells. Okay? That is what is called building. When you take a collection of stones and produce from it a house, it’s not that you connected stones to stones and made a pile of stones—that isn’t building. Rather, from the stones you created a structure. Something organic—of course in this case not an organism in the biological sense, but organic in the sense that each stone has a role, and the door and the window have roles, and together this whole structure forms a kind of whole with shared functions—that is, it works harmoniously, holistically. Okay? That is what is called building. That’s his claim.
[Speaker B] Does that have a practical implication for the definition of building?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? A practical implication for the definition of building? Then what—if that really is what lies behind this understanding of Rabbi Sorotzkin and Kehillot Yaakov, I think there is excellent evidence for it in Maimonides. You need to read the whole section to see it. And it really explains a lot of things—many more than what he brings. Later I used it in my book.
[Speaker E] Why wouldn’t every act of creation be building?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why wouldn’t creation by itself be enough? Then where are the other primary categories of labor?
[Speaker B] Why is building unique?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? Striking the final blow is building? In fact there are many disputes about things that… Finishing manufacture is not the same as taking something and making from it an integrated whole—that’s something else. Meaning, I can also have a wall that creates no space and nothing; there is the last stone that you place, like the last letter that you write in a book, where there you don’t need two letters—one letter is enough. Why? Because it’s important. But that doesn’t mean you turned the book into an integrated whole by placing the final letter. That’s not the point.
[Speaker B] I understand the addition, I don’t understand striking the final blow.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, obviously. I’m bringing it only as an illustrative example. Sometimes the completion gives some significance, receives some more important significance, but not because it transformed the whole into… the whole collection of parts into an integrated whole. Only there is that really considered building.
[Speaker B] But in a wall—a wall is a wall, and now it’s a wall.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine. So therefore a wall may perhaps indeed be some derivative of building, like making cheese, because there’s no space there.
[Speaker C] So then why not a floor? What? A floor, which you mentioned before. That too has significance.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Therefore if it functions as a floor, then yes. But if you simply glue things together and they don’t really create something functional, then I’m claiming that wouldn’t be building. And this has very significant halakhic implications. Meaning, the claim is that in the end something has to come into being here that has significance as an integrated whole. Yes—we once talked about fascism and individualism as philosophical conceptions. What are fascism and individualism? Fascism, at the philosophical level—I’m not talking right now about their practical behavior—looks at the collective as an object that stands on its own. And individualists see the collective as a kind of fiction. What really exists are individual people, and you define yourself as a nation. Yes—suddenly a man gets up in the morning and feels that he is a nation and begins to walk. That’s the… yes, Benedict Anderson’s “imagined communities.” Meaning, you imagine yourself to be a nation; you define it at the legal, cultural, whatever level. Fine, and there is some legal significance—a corporation, for example, can be defined at the legal level, and then it exists. But it has no meaning… In the individualist conception that is a definition. There isn’t really anything there in ontology, in reality itself—there is only a collection of parts. In the fascist conception, people look at the nation as a kind of entity. It’s not a definition. On the contrary, in extreme fascism they see individual people as non-existent, except as organs within the collective. Now, that’s not totally absurd. It sounds absurd, but it’s not totally absurd. Think about a person. A person—you don’t see him as a collection of cells; you see him as one thing. The cells are parts of this whole called a person, or an animal, whatever. Okay? So they also see a nation that way—that the people are organs in this collective called a nation. Okay? So the debate between individualism and fascism is precisely this question: does some whole emerge here from the joining of these individuals? Okay? Does some whole emerge here, or is it just a collection of individuals standing next to each other? Let’s say, according to… Ben-Gurion, in the declaration of the State in 1948, would have violated building according to the fascist definition. According to the individualist definition, no—he merely defined a nation, he didn’t… yes, as a metaphorical example—he didn’t create a nation there. But fine, the point is that fascists see this as though something was created here, not something was defined here. That’s something else.
[Speaker B] Really ontologi… meaning, it exists?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, yes. On the contrary—I’m saying in the extreme views, only that exists. In Hegel there are such things. Maybe he wasn’t really a fascist, but yes—the spirit, the spirit of the nation. He sees it like Esau’s angel in the words of the Sages, that every nation has a prince, the angel standing behind it. What is this angel, this prince? The meaning is the soul that turns this whole body into a living body—the body in the sense of the body of a nation. So there has to be something that makes it alive. In a person there is a soul that makes him alive. In a nation there is that prince, or the spirit of the nation—that’s what Hegel basically… yes, and after that the Nazis of course carried it further. So the point is that the category of labor of building is really taking a collection of parts and producing from them a whole that has some organic significance. That is called building. Now, I’m jumping straight to the end. You understand that if we look at it this way, the Chazon Ish’s explanation is almost demanded. You are basically taking a collection of things—wires or whatever, even atoms; look at the wire as a collection of atoms. They’re stuck together, true, so what? So what if they’re stuck together? When do they become an organic entity? When they have some function that lights them up from death to life. Like putting a soul into a body, turning it into an organism. So when an electrical circuit begins to function, all its parts essentially become organs of a living body in the essential sense. Again—not life in the biological sense, but in the cybernetic sense, meaning in the sense of mutuality and mutual functioning between them, the division of roles between them. Okay? And if so, what could fit this more than building? It is really building—the one who awakens from death to life. And now I’ll say more than that: the different explanations the Chazon Ish gives—on the one hand he says building because it awakens the wire from death to life, and on the other hand he says because he connects the parts one to another—these are not two explanations. It appears here as A and B, but it isn’t A and B; it’s one explanation. The moment you awaken the wire from death to life, it’s like reviving the person. When you revive the person, you connected the hand to the leg. Before that the hand and the leg were glued together with glue—that wasn’t a connection. When you turn it into a collective, into an organism in this sense, then the organism means that all these parts are connected into one thing. The conceptual connection is nothing but a consequence of the event of moving from death to life. These are not two explanations, but one explanation. The fact that it awakens to life turns it into a collective, and then all the things really are connected. And then I don’t care if the physical connection is loose—that’s what he says here. Even if the physical connection is loose—and the Talmudic text says, in the bed of the tarsiyyim and things like that, that when you make a connection without firmly fixing it, a loose connection is not building. Okay? Says the Chazon Ish: here that’s irrelevant. Why? Because we’re not talking about the physical connection. Physically, yes, it’s loose—that’s not interesting. In the end what I’m talking about is the conceptual connection. And in a conceptual connection that really turns it into a device that functions organically, that is a perfect connection. So what difference does it make now that it’s loose? And by the way, it also doesn’t matter that it’s temporary—that’s what he writes here. Even if it’s a connection that will later stop—you close the switch, and then it stops. It’s not as though you created a person here and would need to kill him in order to stop his life. Here you just turn off the switch. But never mind—as long as it is alive, you have here some sort of organic creature, and you have violated building.
[Speaker E] If the device is already working—what? If the device, say I have a phone and it’s already working, and I’m just playing with it, but I didn’t turn it on or off—then why should that be building?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It may be that it wouldn’t be building.
[Speaker E] Meaning, if I make a call on the Sabbath, then—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s like, say, a fan is already operating; I can turn it toward you so it will blow on you.
[Speaker E] No, but I am changing the current. Meaning, when I press, I change it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If you generate current, then now there is indeed generated current here—you are making current in a place where before there wasn’t any. But have you turned the phone into something else? It was functioning before too. Turning the phone on—maybe, that may be so. The phone is functioning. What?
[Speaker B] Like he’s asking—an increase of current, or—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] An increase of current—it isn’t certain that that changes anything. In this matter, I don’t think there could be Torah-level building. It’s alive; now it’s more alive—so what? It was an organism before too.
[Speaker B] It’s like murdering half a person—it’s not demolition.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t understand. Causing the soul to fall? Causing the soul to fall? Who said that isn’t demolition? Maybe it is, maybe it is—who knows. Yes.
[Speaker C] What if I read a story? I read a story—it’s a collection of words that have no meaning at all; only when I read it together does it become something else. What?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It becomes something else in you, but the author already connected it.
[Speaker C] Doesn’t matter—the moment you read it, it’s with me. When I read it, with me, I create something new.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You do not create—
[Speaker C] I create exactly like the thing—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no—what do you mean?
[Speaker C] You create meaning.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Meaning for what? What did you build? Did you build the story? A story is not a structure. Here I built a physical device. The only question is how I define it as connected.
[Speaker C] It sounds a little forced to me—you have a collection of words that—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, those words were not connected by you; the author connected them. What becomes connected are the words that you read and understand. The words in your consciousness become connected, not the words on the page. Those words the author already connected.
[Speaker B] And also when you go speak with someone—so, that’s what—
[Speaker C] —in the end does it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I’m saying that’s not right. In the end there has to be a structure that is built. The structure is a physical structure. But the building of the structure is not its physical construction; rather, transferring it from dead to alive is defined as the building of the structure. But the structure you built is a physical structure.
[Speaker B] So you didn’t take something mental now and connect it together. Completing one letter?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I said—but completing one letter, right, like I asked you earlier—
[Speaker B] —you—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Earlier—no, it doesn’t create, and therefore I’m saying it does not turn the book into an integrated whole. The book was an integrated whole before too. It only finishes the book. If you read the book before, without the last letter, was it not a book? It was a book exactly the same.
[Speaker B] But a Torah scroll isn’t a Torah scroll until—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is holiness here, there are substantive matters here. But it doesn’t create anything in the concrete object. It lacks content.
[Speaker E] And writing a whole book—would that then be writing? What? Writing a whole book from beginning to end.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Writing a whole book is not connecting parts; it is producing the parts. I think that’s writing before building. To say that after all it might also be building—maybe, I don’t know. There would be room to discuss that.
[Speaker D] For example—an example? Similar to what?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Similar to this building in electricity? If there were such an example, life would be easy. I think that’s exactly the novelty here.
[Speaker D] You wanted to raise an objection, but it seems to me that this is…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It makes a lot of sense in light of the definition of the labor of building, as I said earlier, which really does emerge from the sources in the Talmud, from Maimonides, and it comes out clearly. Now, when you think one step back, and you basically make an abstraction, then you say: after all, we arrived at abstraction. Our topic here is abstraction. And abstraction is exactly taking the labor of building. You ask yourself: what is the labor of building? Put down stones, do this, and build a house. That’s what building is. And then we abstract and say, wait a second, what does that really mean? Let’s see what concept stands behind it, not what you physically do. The concept behind it is taking parts and creating a whole from them. That’s really a classic process of abstraction. And now you see what very far-reaching implications this abstraction can have. Electric light is Torah-level prohibited because it is building. I very much want to ask about this whole story.
[Speaker C] I’m making up a story now, and I’m saying words. And that comes out here. Now, words are something physical. The words I’m saying. No? What isn’t physical?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s a physical process. Because the air moves, there’s pressure, pressure waves in the air. There’s no physical object here that is being built. What, a word isn’t an object?
[Speaker C] A word is a process.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What is a physical object?
[Speaker C] An object is something you can quantify over.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. That’s the accepted definition, right? Something you can quantify over. You can’t quantify over phenomena. Why can’t I
[Speaker C] quantify?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, again, if you treat them as ideal objects, then yes. You don’t quantify over properties; you quantify over objects.
[Speaker C] I’m not talking about properties, I’m talking about words.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But these words are processes, not objects. They are objects. Never mind. Okay, you can define them as objects in Plato’s world of ideas, but they’re not objects in our world.
[Speaker C] Something that has…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] A written word, not a word as a concept.
[Speaker C] Not as a concept, a word that you hear.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What you hear is nothing; it’s movement of air. Movement of air—what is that?
[Speaker C] Then you could say that about anything, that it’s movement.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Is velocity an object? Velocity is a property. No, a spoken word—not the word. A word as a concept is one thing,
[Speaker C] and a spoken word is not like velocity.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course it is. It’s movement of air. That’s a property of the moving air. It’s a property of the moving air; there’s nothing there. Waves in the sea are not objects; that’s a property of the sea. What advances when the wave advances? The energy advances; the water stays where it is—it only goes up and down. What advances is the energy. There’s no object there. The object is in the… if you abstract, then of course you can relate to the concept as an object, certainly, that’s possible, but it’s not an object in the tangible sense on which we define the labor of building. I once heard in the name of Rabbi Ovadia—I don’t know if it’s true—that he forbids analytical study on the Sabbath because it is selecting. He probably didn’t say selecting. At that level of abstraction maybe you could also talk about building, but of course neither this nor that is correct.
[Speaker B] I actually know of something similar, but the opposite. What? That there’s an opinion that it’s forbidden—I don’t know if forbidden or just not appropriate—to recite the blessing over the trees on the Sabbath.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because it draws out sparks.
[Speaker B] Selecting
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] the sparks from the tree.
[Speaker B] Yes.
[Speaker E] That one blesses the sparks of holiness that are found in them. I think Rabbi Ovadia spoke about analytical study, but Rabbi Ovadia
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] disagrees.
[Speaker B] That’s something completely different. Rabbi Ovadia disagrees with that
[Speaker E] and says there is no selecting involved.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Again, I heard it quoted in his name; I haven’t seen it myself. I don’t know whether it’s true or just a rumor. To study analytically on the Sabbath.
[Speaker B] No, of course one may, and the selecting part is nonsense.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So in short, I’ll finish here. The point is that this abstraction they make—that is, they take legal rulings, analyze them: how can it be that making cheese and a tent, which are not at all similar to each other, are both derivative categories of building? They do a logical analysis and say: okay, so building is apparently a combination of two parameters, and each one yields a different derivative category. This combination of the two parameters—now I’m taking it one step further, I’m reconstructing the abstraction that you described—one step further: what does that actually mean? These aren’t just two arbitrary parameters. It creates a space, and by gathering parts together. It’s an organic connection between these two parameters. Creating the space by means of the parts means taking the parts and producing a whole from them. It’s not just two parameters; it’s two parameters that really become some single totality. I’m now speaking even at the intellectual level, not the building itself, but the two descriptions of the… the two characteristics of the building—they are two characteristics that are connected to each other. Together they create a description that has meaning. It’s not just a conjunction of two conditions: that there be a gathering of parts and that there be a space. That’s how the Kehillot Yaakov or the book Zera Shmuel presents it. It’s clear that behind this there stands something much more substantial. It’s not just two things; rather, there is something here: creating a whole by gathering parts. The space is the whole created by gathering parts. And once we arrive at that meaning, I think the conclusion of the Chazon Ish is compelling. A gathering of parts and that there be a space—that’s how the Kehillat Yaakov or Rabbi Isser Zalman presents it. It’s clear that behind this there stands something much more substantial. It’s not just two things; rather, there is something here: creating a whole by gathering parts. The space is the whole created by gathering parts. And after we arrive at that meaning, I think the conclusion of the Chazon Ish is compelling. Okay, we’ll stop here.