The Laws of Labor Categories – Lesson 3

Table of Contents

• The lecture framework and the selected topics
• Carrying and kindling as labors explicitly written in the Torah
• The topic in Shabbat 96b: “Where is carrying itself written?” and the need for Sabbath
• The Ran and the exceptional nature of carrying compared to the other labors
• The approaches of the medieval authorities (Rishonim): is carrying an “inferior labor,” and what is the status of its derivatives?
• Two directions in explaining an “inferior labor”: lack of creation versus illogical definitions
• The connection to the dispute between Rashi and Tosafot Rid, and the common denominator versus the Tabernacle
• The Jerusalem Talmud and Rabbenu Chananel versus Nachmanides and Rashba regarding this “inferiority”
• Halakhic implications of the concept of an “inferior labor”
• Telling a non-Jew, agency, and object/person categories as a prism for the dispute
• A scriptural decree that is not “a law without a reason”: Meiri and the wayward and rebellious son
• Intentional labor and the gap between God’s creation and human creation
• Carrying as the distilled form of human action and as changing the world in terms of “entropy”

Summary

General Overview

The lecture concludes the topic of primary categories and derivatives by examining the labor of carrying, in order to shed light on what defines the Sabbath labors in general and what the relationship is between creation, the Tabernacle, and intentional labor. The Babylonian Talmud looks for an explicit textual source for carrying and emphasizes the need to connect the command “and they proclaimed throughout the camp” specifically to the Sabbath, and this is understood as hinting to the assumption that carrying is an “inferior labor,” even though in the end Jewish law counts it as a primary category of labor punishable by stoning and a sin-offering under the general prohibition of “do not do any labor.” Out of the disputes among the medieval authorities (Rishonim) about the reason for this “inferior labor” and about the scope of its derivatives, a broader picture is built regarding the essence of the Sabbath prohibitions, including implications for the laws of benefiting from labor done on the Sabbath, destructive action in carrying, the required rest of one’s animal, and the distinction between Sabbath and a Jewish holiday. In the end, a conceptual framework is proposed that explains how carrying can be both “inferior” and yet express the core of the Sabbath prohibition, through intentional labor, a plan that is realized, and a change in the order of the world in terms of “entropy.”

The Lecture Framework and the Selected Topics

The lecture is meant to complete the discussion of primary categories and derivatives through two fundamental points: the labor of carrying as a key to understanding labors in general, and the relationship between primary categories and derivatives. The lecture presents two topics through which this move will be made: the Jerusalem Talmud about spitting on the Sabbath and the topic of the labor of building, with building defined as a model for non-trivial thinking that also has implications for things like electricity on the Sabbath. The lecture is later aimed at moving on to subjects like a labor not needed for its own purpose.

Carrying and Kindling as Labors Explicitly Written in the Torah

The lecture states that carrying and kindling are the two labors that appear explicitly in the Torah, and regarding kindling it cites the tannaitic dispute whether “kindling was singled out to teach only a prohibition” or “was singled out to divide the liabilities,” with the conclusion that “kindling was singled out to divide liabilities,” and therefore it is one of the thirty-nine primary categories of labor and one is liable for it to stoning and a sin-offering. Regarding carrying, it is said that in the Sages there is no direct discussion of “why it is mentioned,” and in the medieval authorities (Rishonim) it is explained that it was written because it is an “inferior labor.” The lecture seeks to probe the meaning of “carrying is an inferior labor” and to tie several fundamental points that were discussed to that idea.

The Topic in Shabbat 96b: “Where Is Carrying Itself Written?” and the Need for Sabbath

The lecture opens with the topic in Shabbat 96b: “Since throwing is a derivative of carrying, where is carrying itself written?”, and emphasizes that the question itself is unusual, because the other labors are not written explicitly and are learned from the Tabernacle. The lecture suggests that the underlying assumption is that carrying “should not have been prohibited unless it were written in the Torah, because this is an inferior labor,” and therefore the very demand for an explicit source is already an early hint to that. The Talmud brings a source from the verse “And Moses commanded, and they proclaimed throughout the camp,” and interprets it to mean that Moses was sitting in the Levite camp, which is a public domain, and commanded: “Do not take out and bring from your private domain to the public domain.”

The lecture emphasizes the Talmud’s question: “And from where do we know that it is speaking about the Sabbath? Perhaps it is speaking about a weekday,” and wonders why it is necessary to prove that this was specifically on the Sabbath if the principle of the Tabernacle is also learned from labors done on weekdays. The lecture formulates that from here it seems that it is not enough to prove that the action took place in the Tabernacle, because “in the Tabernacle they also walked, in the Tabernacle they also sat,” and therefore there must be “a special reason that places this prohibition of carrying specifically on the Sabbath,” which fits with the view of carrying as an “inferior labor.” The lecture presents a tension: from this line of thought one might have expected to see carrying as a separate prohibition—“and they proclaimed throughout the camp”—that is not a “labor,” but in practice “no halakhic decisor and no one who counts the commandments claims that carrying is a separate prohibition,” and Jewish law includes it within “do not do any labor” as a primary category of labor.

The Ran and the Exceptional Nature of Carrying Compared to the Other Labors

The lecture brings the Ran’s novel point that regarding carrying the Sages “do not even raise the question of why this was written,” and sharpens the point that the Babylonian Talmud asks even before that, “where is it written,” as though “it has to be written in order to be prohibited.” The lecture concludes that the Ran learns from here that carrying is an “inferior labor,” and that without an explicit textual source, it would not have been prohibited.

The Approaches of the Medieval Authorities (Rishonim): Is Carrying an “Inferior Labor,” and What Is the Status of Its Derivatives?

The lecture presents a dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim): most of them, including Rabbenu Tam in Shevuot 5a, understand that carrying is an “inferior labor,” whereas in some places in Rivah a direction appears according to which carrying is not an “inferior labor,” with room to interpret whether this is a position based on logic or a description of the situation after the verse innovated the prohibition.

The lecture explains that in the Talmud there are two formulations for why bringing in is prohibited: one based on logic—“what difference is there between taking out and bringing in?”—and one because that too occurred in the Tabernacle, and from here bringing in is a derivative of carrying. Tosafot on Shabbat 96 asks, “Why is it necessary that the derivative be written in the Tabernacle?” and answers that since we are dealing with carrying, which is an “inferior labor,” we do not compare its derivatives to it without reinforcement from the Tabernacle. The lecture formulates three broad positions: carrying is not an inferior labor; carrying is inferior, but the verse taught that now it is no longer inferior; or carrying is inferior and remains inferior even after the innovation, and that affects the way its derivatives are treated.

Two Directions in Explaining an “Inferior Labor”: Lack of Creation Versus Illogical Definitions

The lecture distinguishes between two central explanations among the medieval authorities (Rishonim). The first approach, such as that of the Or Zarua, the Sefer Mitzvot Gadol, and the glosses to Mordechai in the name of Maharam Kazis, explains that “what labor did he do? At first it was an object, and now it is still an object,” meaning that no change took place in the object itself, whereas the other labors “leave a mark” and the object changes. The second approach—Nachmanides, Rashba, and Tosafot HaRosh—explains that carrying is an “inferior labor” because its definitions are not intuitive: for example, a heavy thing is permitted within the same domain while a light thing is forbidden from one domain to another, and there is no visible logic in the division between private domain and public domain, public domain to private domain, and one private domain to another private domain.

The lecture argues that the first approach assumes that the Sabbath labors are fundamentally about creation, and therefore “no new aspect has come into being here” defines the inferiority. The second approach does not see creativity as the focal point, and so it is not troubled by the fact that nothing new was created in the object; rather, it is troubled by the fact that the very definitions are not transparent to understanding.

The Connection to the Dispute Between Rashi and Tosafot Rid, and the Common Denominator Versus the Tabernacle

The lecture connects the dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim) to the dispute discussed in the previous lecture between Rashi and Tosafot Rid about the nature of the thirty-nine primary categories of labor. The lecture attributes to Rashi a view of one underlying principle for all the Sabbath labors, with “different concrete forms,” and describes this as a tendency to see the Sabbath prohibitions as derived from a prohibition of creation that appears in many forms. The lecture describes Tosafot Rid as understanding the thirty-nine labors as thirty-nine different prohibitions united under one verse, where the Tabernacle is what defines them, rather than “the measure of creativity.”

The lecture explains that according to Tosafot Rid it is clear why on the Sabbath we do not find a derivative learned from the common denominator of two primary categories the way we do in the laws of damages in Bava Kamma 6a, because there is no substantive “common denominator” among primary categories that are separate prohibitions. By contrast, according to a view that assumes a shared foundation like creation, in principle one could have learned a common denominator on the Sabbath similar to damages.

The Jerusalem Talmud and Rabbenu Chananel Versus Nachmanides and Rashba Regarding This “Inferiority”

The lecture presents the view of Rabbenu Chananel and the Jerusalem Talmud as the position according to which the fact that the labor was present in the Tabernacle is what defines it, and therefore carrying is “not an inferior labor at all,” but a primary category of labor like any other, without any need for a dimension of creativity. The lecture identifies in Nachmanides and Rashba a partial closeness to this view, in that for them too creativity is not the focal point, but they still classify carrying as an “inferior labor” because the Babylonian Talmud required a special source, and they locate the inferiority in the lack of logic in the definitions.

Halakhic Implications of the Concept of an “Inferior Labor”

The lecture brings the Chayei Adam, who rules that the prohibition on benefiting from labor done on the Sabbath exists only when a change was made in the object itself, and therefore when an object is brought from one domain to another, “nothing happened to the object itself,” and accordingly there is no prohibition of labor-done-on-the-Sabbath with respect to it. The lecture presents the Beit Yitzchak, who discusses destructive action in carrying and rules that “destructive action in carrying will still be liable,” because carrying by its very nature does not improve the object, and therefore the exemption for destructive action does not apply to it.

The lecture brings the Pnei Yehoshua on Shabbat 51, who argues that carrying “is an inferior labor and is not included in ‘do not do any labor’ were it not that we learned it independently,” and derives from this a practical difference regarding the required rest of one’s animal: in other labors there is a Torah prohibition on an animal performing labor, but not in carrying, because carrying is not a typical labor prohibition, but is learned from “and they proclaimed throughout the camp.” The lecture also presents the fact that carrying is not prohibited on a Jewish holiday in a way parallel to Sabbath as evidence that carrying remains exceptional even after being counted as a primary category of labor.

Telling a Non-Jew, Agency, and Object/Person Categories as a Prism for the Dispute

The lecture brings Rashi at the beginning of the chapter “One Who Is Overtaken by Darkness,” where he grounds telling a non-Jew in agency as a stringency on the rabbinic level, and presents an apparent contradiction to places where Rashi ties this to “speaking of matters.” The lecture suggests an explanation in the practical difference between giving the instruction before the Sabbath and giving it on the Sabbath, and between the non-Jew’s acting on the Sabbath and his acting after the Sabbath. The lecture cites a view among the later authorities (Acharonim)—Imrei Binah, Beit Meir, and Chatam Sofer—that “agency does not apply to Sabbath prohibitions,” because Sabbath prohibitions are on the person: “for things that pertain to one’s own person, agency does not apply,” and opposite this it brings the Mekhilta via the Sefer Mitzvot Gadol, which emphasizes “do not do any labor” as an emphasis on preventing the labor from being done.

The lecture presents the suggestion of the Eglei Tal to tie the dispute of “lack of creation” versus “illogical definitions” to the dispute between object-centered and person-centered categories, but the lecture rejects that dependence and argues that whether the focus is creation or rest, the requirement still remains a requirement upon the person, and the real debate is whether the problem on the Sabbath is creativity or work and rest.

A Scriptural Decree That Is Not “A Law Without a Reason”: Meiri and the Wayward and Rebellious Son

The lecture explains that a scriptural decree is not necessarily “a law without a reason,” and brings Meiri in Sanhedrin on the phrase “a son and not a daughter” in the case of the wayward and rebellious son: even though this is “a scriptural decree,” Meiri explains that “women are not generally prone to rob people.” The lecture defines a scriptural decree to mean that the law would not have been derived from logic alone were it not for the exposition, but after it is learned one can still understand the logic behind it. Within that framework, the lecture seeks to explain how carrying, although it is an “inferior labor,” nevertheless enters the system of “do not do any labor.”

Intentional Labor and the Gap Between God’s Creation and Human Creation

The lecture argues that there is an asymmetry between God’s work and human work: God creates “something from nothing,” while human beings always create “something from something.” The lecture states that every human act can be analyzed as moving things from place to place, while nature performs the essential change, as in cooking, where “the fire cooks,” and in planting, where “the earth causes growth.” The lecture emphasizes that the human part is the plan and the setting of the initial conditions, while the actual execution belongs to the laws of nature.

The lecture connects this to the principle that “the Torah prohibited intentional labor” through the example of “winnowing while the wind assists him,” where in the laws of damages this is indirect causation and exempt, but on the Sabbath one is liable, because “his intention was realized.” The lecture defines Sabbath labor not merely as imitation of the actions of the Tabernacle, but as the realization of the planning that underlies them, like “skillful design” in Bezalel’s work.

Carrying as the Distilled Form of Human Action and as Changing the World in Terms of “Entropy”

The lecture states that the labor of carrying is an “inferior labor” because it does not change the object, but precisely for that reason it purely reveals the core human action underlying all the labors: moving things. The lecture proposes that carrying does in fact “create” a change—not in the object, but in the world, in the picture of how things are arranged in space—and formulates this in terms of “entropy” as a measure of order and structural change. The lecture explains that movement between domains of different types changes the structure of the system in a way that is not equivalent to merely changing labels, whereas transfer from one private domain to another resembles replacing labels and therefore is not a substantive structural change.

The lecture connects “entropy” to “intentional labor” through “Maxwell’s demon,” and describes how order in a closed system becomes possible when information and prior planning are invested into it. The lecture states that this parallels the idea that a person’s “thought” is the factor that enables nature to realize the result, and therefore a reduction in entropy reflects the realization of the thought of an intelligent agent. On that basis, the lecture concludes that carrying, although it is “inferior” from the standpoint of the absence of change in the object, can nevertheless be the purest expression of what is prohibited on the Sabbath. Therefore, once the verse innovated its prohibition, it is absorbed into the general category of labor prohibitions, does not remain a separate prohibition, and even opens tractate Shabbat as the labor that expresses the very principle of cessation.

Okay. We talked a bit about the category of the primary labors, how they’re divided up, where they’re learned from, and I want to wrap up this topic of the primary labors, and then also the subcategories, with two more fundamental points. One point I want to talk a little about is the labor of carrying, because it will illuminate something for us about the labors in general—half philosophy—and after that I want to talk a bit about the relationship between primary labors and subcategories. I’ll do that through two specific passages. One of them is the Jerusalem Talmud about spitting on the Sabbath—I think I read it yesterday—and the second is about the labor of building. I want to define the labor of building simply as a model for how to think about these things in a non-trivial way. It has various implications—electricity on the Sabbath and so on. So I think that will be a good illustration of the things I want to show regarding primary labors and subcategories. And after that we’ll move on to labor that is not needed for its own sake, all those things.

All right, so I’ll start by taking a look at the labor of carrying. We already mentioned that carrying and kindling are the two labors explicitly mentioned in the Torah. Regarding kindling, there is a dispute among the tannaim whether “kindling was singled out to make it merely a prohibition” or “to divide the categories,” which is basically an explanation of why it had to be mentioned, because the other labors do not appear explicitly in the Torah. So if something appears explicitly in the Torah, apparently we need to derive something from that. So regarding kindling, that’s the dispute, a tannaitic dispute. The conclusion is that kindling was singled out “to divide the categories,” and therefore kindling is one of the thirty-nine primary labors; it is not just an ordinary prohibition—it carries stoning and a sin offering.

And carrying is something that in the words of the Sages there is no discussion about—not a direct discussion, that is, why it is mentioned. The medieval authorities (Rishonim) discuss the fact that carrying is an inferior labor, and therefore it was written explicitly. I already mentioned this, but I want to go a bit more into this issue of carrying as an inferior labor, because I think it sheds light on several points we’ve already discussed.

So the source for the labor of carrying is a passage in tractate Sabbath, page 96b. “Since throwing is a subcategory of carrying, where is carrying itself written?” Now already here we need to pause. What do you mean, “where is carrying written”? And where is selecting written? We learn from the Tabernacle, we learn from “labor” “labor,” whatever it may be—none of the other labors are written explicitly in the Torah. Carrying—maybe there was a tradition that it had to be written, or some reasoning that says that such a labor should not have been forbidden unless it was written in the Torah, because it is an inferior labor. So it could be that the Talmud’s very question already reflects an assumption that carrying is an inferior labor. The Talmud doesn’t say that; the Sages don’t say that; that’s the medieval authorities. But here in the Talmud we already see a first hint. But not only that—look further.

“Where is carrying itself written? Rabbi Yohanan said: As the verse says, ‘And Moses commanded, and they caused a proclamation to pass through the camp.’ Where was Moses sitting? In the Levite camp. And the Levite camp was public domain. And he said to Israel: Do not take out and bring from your private domain into the public domain.” Fine, so we found it there, with Moses our teacher. The Talmud says: “And how do we know it was speaking about the Sabbath? Perhaps he was speaking on a weekday.” How do we know this is talking about the Sabbath? Maybe he told them on a weekday not to bring things for all kinds of reasons, but not because of Sabbath prohibitions.

What do you say about this question of the Talmud? It says explicitly that in the previous verse the work had already been finished and there was more than enough, and after that it says “And Moses commanded and they caused a proclamation to pass through the camp,” so they understood that it was because the work was finished and not because of the Sabbath. But ask yourselves: okay, the labors were done in the Tabernacle. Up till now, as I understood it, the rule was: labors that were done in the Tabernacle on weekdays are the ones forbidden on the Sabbath. Exactly. So why on earth do I need proof that this particular thing had to occur on the Sabbath? After all, all the labors done for the Tabernacle were not done on the Sabbath; they were done on weekdays, right? So what then? As Doron said, from the fact that it was done in the Tabernacle and from the juxtaposition in the portion of Vayakhel to the Sabbath, I understand that these labors are also forbidden on the Sabbath.

You could say: the problem is that the work had already been completed. The work was completed. So from the fact that the work was completed and he tells them not to bring any more, what do I learn from here? That before the work was completed, they did bring things. How did they bring them? From public domain to private domain. Ah, so there was in the Tabernacle this labor of transferring—from public domain into private domain. So what’s the problem? There you have it; that’s why it’s a Sabbath labor. Why does it have to be on the Sabbath? Why does the Talmud look for a source that this happened specifically on the Sabbath? Without that, it wouldn’t count as a source. That’s really strange.

In other words, before the construction of the Tabernacle, they brought the objects, the raw materials. That’s what I’m saying—you’re suggesting another proposal, but still, the common denominator of all the proposals, or of that one and what I said before, is that you need some special reason to place this prohibition of carrying specifically on the Sabbath. Meaning: if I knew it happened in the Tabernacle but I didn’t know it was on the Sabbath, that would not be enough to forbid it. Now as for explanations, I don’t know; the Talmud doesn’t say anything. We can suggest an explanation, maybe what you’re saying, but it seems to me the obvious explanation is what all the medieval authorities say: carrying is an inferior labor. And if carrying is an inferior labor, then what? Then even if it happened in the Tabernacle—yes, people also walked in the Tabernacle, people also sat in the Tabernacle, and no one turns that into a primary category of labor. So because this is an inferior labor, it is not enough for me to prove that it happened in the Tabernacle. I need to show that Moses’s command not to bring things was because of the Sabbath.

But notice what this means. The meaning is that if I ask you now: why is it forbidden to carry on the Sabbath from private domain to public domain? What is the source? Which prohibition am I violating? “Do not do any labor”? “Let no man go out from his place”—that is a different prohibition altogether. There is the prohibition of labor, which includes all the labors. The labor of carrying that existed in the Tabernacle is actually not labor at all; otherwise I would have learned it from “do not do any labor.” Rather what? There is another verse—but the verse does not, if the verse were teaching me “look, carrying too is labor,” then fine, I would say okay, after the verse taught me that, I would include carrying in the list of labors forbidden under “do not do any labor.” But that’s not what the verse teaches. The verse gives me a source that carrying is forbidden, and that’s all. It doesn’t discuss whether it is labor or not labor. On the contrary, the simple reasoning is that it is not labor, right? That is why I needed a verse. And therefore the conclusion is also that it is not labor. But even though it is not labor, it is forbidden. Why? Because Moses our teacher commands them not to bring things.

In other words, I have the prohibitions of labor, where there are thirty-nine primary categories, and then I have another prohibition—“let no man go out from his place,” or however it works there, yes, “and they caused a proclamation to pass through the camp”—which is a separate prohibition of carrying, unrelated to labor. One may not carry on the Sabbath, not because of the prohibition of labor at all. It is not labor. Okay?

So I think that throughout this whole Talmudic discussion—from the first question in the passage, and then continuing with the search for why it happened specifically on the Sabbath—first of all, we see that carrying is an inferior labor. Even without the medieval authorities, just by reading the Talmud forcefully and sensitively. Okay?

Second—and this is really, I would say, even difficult, or a real question, not just an inference—in the end, no halakhic decisor and no enumerator of the commandments claims that carrying is a separate prohibition. At the end of the day, we learned that carrying too is included under “do not do any labor,” and it carries stoning and a sin offering and everything that goes with it. Now that is really difficult according to what… yes yes, of course—I’m saying, in truth no one disputes this. In truth no one here says, as a result of what I’m saying, that carrying is a prohibition on the Sabbath, all fine, but it is a prohibition separate from… yes, from “and they caused a proclamation to pass through the camp.” They don’t say that.

That means the medieval authorities somehow understand that after the verse taught me that carrying is forbidden, it does enter the category of labor, even though the assumption was that it is an inferior labor. And not only was the assumption like that; apparently even in the conclusion it remains an inferior labor. Because otherwise I wouldn’t need to bring proofs that it was done on the Sabbath, right? So what then? Even though it is an inferior labor, the verse still forbids it. One might say: fine, if so, then it is not forbidden under “any labor” but under “and they caused a proclamation to pass through the camp.” No. But all the halakhic decisors say, as you said correctly—it’s in the Mishnah in tractate Sabbath—that carrying too is one of the thirty-nine primary labors; it is forbidden under “do not do any labor.” So somehow something here needs explanation. In other words, it is an inferior labor, and therefore a separate source was needed from the outset, and that source is a source that forbids it—not just a source that defines carrying as labor so that now it is automatically included under “do not do any labor.” No, it is a source that forbids. It is a source that says carrying on the Sabbath is forbidden, an independent source. So how do you connect this to “do not do any labor,” if as an inferior labor it is not labor at all?

It seems somehow that the Talmud, and after it the halakhic decisors, the medieval authorities, and so on, understood that after the verse innovated that carrying too is forbidden, we basically understand that it is included in the concept of labor, even though it is inferior. Why? I’ll want to explain that in a moment. Because it was in the Tabernacle and everything in the Tabernacle is… that will already depend on different approaches. We saw that not everything in the Tabernacle counts. Walking was also in the Tabernacle, sitting was also in the Tabernacle. That doesn’t work. In the Ran here, in his novellae, he notes that regarding carrying, the Sages do not even raise the question why it was written. With kindling there is a tannaitic dispute. With carrying there is not even a question why it was written. I’d sharpen that even more: it’s not only that there’s no question why it was written—the Talmud asks even before it knows where it was written: wait, where is it written? Why does it have to be written? None of the other labors are written. That is much stronger than merely saying there is no question why it was written. The Talmud, before even knowing that it was written, says: what, but it has to be written? Because without that, it would not be forbidden. That is much stronger. Okay?

So the Ran indeed learns from here that carrying is an inferior labor. That was obvious—it has to be written in order to be forbidden; that’s the point. Now of course after we have learned the labor of carrying we can begin to discuss: okay, what did that teach me? Did it teach me that carrying is not an inferior labor? Did it teach me that it is forbidden despite still being an inferior labor—and we’ll see the consequences? Or is it really a separate prohibition altogether? But as I said, no one writes that it is completely separate.

So the Rivam in several places—there is Tosafot in tractate Sabbath page 2 and elsewhere—holds that carrying is not an inferior labor. Other medieval and later authorities write this as well. Rabbenu Tam in tractate Shevuot page 5 argues that carrying is an inferior labor—that’s the view of most of the medieval authorities. There is also room to discuss, in the Rivam, whether when he says carrying is not an inferior labor, what does he mean? Does he mean that on the level of pure reasoning he does not see it as an inferior labor? Or does he mean: no, the verse innovated that it too is forbidden, and now therefore it is no longer inferior? Meaning, he is talking about the situation after the verse has already innovated that it is forbidden, not that on the level of pure reasoning he disagrees that this is in principle an inferior labor. I’ll explain in a moment why I’m raising those two possibilities.

But before that, on page 96 the Talmud has two formulations for why bringing in is forbidden. Carrying out is forbidden—we just saw that. Why bringing in? One answer is reasoning: what difference is there between taking out and bringing in? And the second formulation is that this too existed in the Tabernacle. Fine? And therefore in any event, for our purposes, bringing in is a subcategory of carrying out.

Okay, so some of the medieval authorities write—Tosafot there in the Talmud on 96, Tosafot says there: what? Why does the subcategory need to be written in the Tabernacle? Where do we ever find that in order for subcategories to be forbidden, they have to be written in the Tabernacle? So he says: because we are dealing with the labor of carrying, which is an inferior labor, therefore I would not compare its subcategories to it unless they too were in the Tabernacle. You need some reinforcement in order to forbid the subcategories. It is not enough merely that it resembles carrying—what difference is there between bringing in and taking out? Rather, it also has to have been in the Tabernacle.

So what do we see here? That even after it was innovated that carrying too is forbidden, it still remains an inferior labor, even in the conclusion. Right? Therefore, concerning its subcategories: I already know that it itself is forbidden, now I ask what about the subcategories? I don’t know—if it was in the Tabernacle, I’ll forbid it; if not, then not. In other words, it comes out that even after the verse innovated that carrying is forbidden, it still remains an inferior labor. Fine. So in practice we have three approaches: carrying is not an inferior labor; or carrying is an inferior labor but the verse innovated that it is not; or carrying is an inferior labor even after the innovation of the verse. Okay? Those are the three approaches. I’m doing this very briefly; I don’t want to get into all the sources because that’s not our concern here.

Now I want to make another claim. There are two directions among the medieval authorities in explaining the claim that carrying is an inferior labor. The first direction—yes, the Or Zaru’a—says: “What labor did he do? At first it was an object, and now it is still an object.” You see a particular object; that same object remains exactly as it was, only now it is in public domain rather than private domain, or vice versa. Okay? So he did nothing. The Sefer Mitzvot Gadol also says: it does not look like labor. And in the glosses to Mordechai, Maharam Kazis holds that all the labors make an impression on the thing with which the labor is performed, and it changes from what it was beforehand. Okay? Therefore this is an inferior labor.

All of these are basically explaining what we ourselves would also say by simple reasoning, right? That carrying creates nothing new; it does nothing; it simply transfers the object from place to place. That is the first direction.

But several medieval authorities—the Nachmanides, the Rashba, Tosafot HaRosh, and others—go in a completely different direction. They claim that carrying is an inferior labor because its parameters are not logical. Why? Because the fact is that… a heavy object is permitted if it stays within the same domain, but a light object—at least if it goes from one domain to another—is forbidden. Fine? So some tie this to the fact that we make no distinction between a light thing and a heavy thing. Others tie it to the question: why should I care whether it goes from private domain to public domain, or from public domain to private domain, or from one private domain to another? The definitions, the parameters of the labor, are not logical. Therefore it is an inferior labor.

An interesting question is: if they’re not logical, then where did they come from? We saw that earlier in the Talmud. The Talmud says that Moses was in public domain and they were in private domain, and therefore the Talmud infers that apparently the carrying he was talking about was from private domain to public domain. We have a source for that. But still we do not understand the logic of it, and therefore it is an inferior labor. That’s what the medieval authorities of the second type say. It doesn’t fit what we would have thought. Meaning, I would forbid something heavy—you drag it. Why should it matter to me whether you transfer it from private domain to public domain? Or from one private domain to another private domain not? Why? What difference does that make? In other words, we don’t understand the logic. It’s not a contradiction; we simply don’t understand. There’s no contradiction here. Yes, it’s a question, not a refutation.

Now, it seems to me that the medieval authorities of the first type—the Or Zaru’a and his school—are apparently assuming what we’ve assumed until now: that Sabbath labors are fundamentally about creation. Right? And if you create nothing at all, the object now looks exactly as it looked before, then the labor is inferior. And in the subtext of their assumption you can see what they think labor on the Sabbath is, what the essence of Sabbath labors really is: the degree of creativity involved. To what extent is the thing produced here new? There’s no “new face has come here,” as it were.

The medieval authorities of the second type are not troubled by the fact that… let’s put it this way: if you asked me why carrying is an inferior labor, I would say like the Or Zaru’a. It’s obvious. Carrying is this kind of thing—what do you want? It’s like walking. Why isn’t walking forbidden? Okay? That’s how I would explain why it is an inferior labor. Why don’t Nachmanides and Rashba and their school go in that direction? Because they apparently don’t understand the degree of creativity to be what defines the meaning of Sabbath labors. The point is not creativity.

I’m not saying that transferring from one domain to another counts as a change—I wouldn’t connect that here. I wouldn’t connect it here, but never mind. In any case, for our purposes, these medieval authorities apparently understand that the fact that nothing new is produced in the object does not bother them. That is not the problem with the labor of carrying, and that is not what makes it an inferior labor. So what does? Illogical definitions. Okay? Definitions that are unclear, unintelligible.

And more than that, according to this, when we say—if we are talking about the degree of creativity—you understand that not only is the explanation of why carrying is an inferior labor simply that nothing happened to the object, but also it’s obvious that if you’re speaking about the degree of creativity, then it really doesn’t matter whether it’s heavy or light. It cuts both ways. The first school of medieval authorities basically says two things. First, it says that nothing was created in the object. Second, it is not troubled by the fact that there is no difference between a heavy object and a light object. That is not what troubles it; that is not the definition of an inferior labor. Those two things fit what I said, because they see the focal point as creativity. And creativity means that nothing happened to the object. On the one hand, if nothing happened to the object, it’s an inferior labor. On the other hand, what difference does it make whether the object is light or heavy? We’re not talking here about resting. We’re talking about not creating. So why should I care if it’s heavy or light?

The medieval authorities of the second type are exactly the mirror image. They say the opposite on both counts. They say it is very important—I would have expected something heavy to be forbidden and something light to be permitted. And the fact that it creates nothing—why should I care? That is, according to them the focus is probably rest: forbid something heavy, permit something light. Okay? And on the other hand, the question of whether it creates something in the object—why should I care whether it creates something in the object? The question is whether you are resting. Okay?

So from both sides, when I look at this dispute, it somehow appears that this dispute is really rooted in the question of how we understand Sabbath labors in general. That’s why it connects to everything we have discussed until now. And you understand that this immediately raises again the dispute between Rashi and Tosafot Rid that we saw. Remember that according to Rashi, the thirty-nine primary categories of labor are basically… no, sorry, that was Tosafot Rid. Like harvesting and grinding. Rashi says that it is simply divided acts, right? You remember from the previous lesson. What does that mean? Exactly. That means that according to Rashi there is one foundation underlying all the Sabbath labors; there are divided acts, but one foundation underlying all the Sabbath labors. What could that one foundation be? Apparently creativity, right? That is, it is forbidden to create, and there are many ways to create—those are the various Sabbath labors.

In contrast, according to Tosafot Rid, for him it is like harvesting and grinding. Meaning, these are simply thirty-nine different prohibitions. Why are they not counted as thirty-nine separate negative commandments? Only because they all appear in one verse. But on the conceptual level, that verse teaches me thirty-nine different prohibitions. Okay? That’s what I said in the previous lesson regarding the dispute between Rashi and Tosafot Rid—that it reflects the question whether the issue is creativity, and then when you classify labors or examine what counts as primary categories of labor, use your head and see what is significantly creative and what is less so, right? Whereas according to Tosafot Rid, the focus is the Tabernacle, not the degree of creativity. Why? Because we are not talking here about a prohibition on creative activity as such; we are talking about a prohibition against repeating the labors that were in the Tabernacle. Any labor, if it was in the Tabernacle, was forbidden. Why? I don’t know why. But there are thirty-nine primary categories of labor, thirty-nine different prohibitions. They have no common foundation except that they were in the Tabernacle—but that means there is not some shared element in all the definitions of these labors.

I explained, if you remember—and I’ll come back to it later—that according to Tosafot Rid it is also very clear why we do not find a subcategory in Sabbath law learned from the common denominator of two primary categories. Whereas in damages we do find a derivative from two primary categories in tractate Bava Kamma page 6. Why not? Because according to Tosafot Rid there is no common denominator between two primary categories. According to Rashi there is a common denominator: the two primary categories are different forms of creation, so I can see whether the derivative also has the same level of creativity as the two primaries, and I can learn from their common denominator that this too will be forbidden. But if two primary categories have nothing in common, if they are two different prohibitions—what is there to learn from the common denominator of, I don’t know, the prohibition of pork and the prohibition of entering the Temple in impurity? Those are two different things. What derivative could emerge from the common denominator of those two? There is no common denominator.

No no, I’m talking about page 6, for whoever asked this in the previous lesson as well. No, I’m not talking about the categories in the Mishnah. The categories in the Mishnah are one thing. I’m talking about page 6, after I already have the four primary categories. On page 6, his stone, his knife, and his load which he placed on top of the roof and they fell and caused damage—there I learn it from pit and fire, both of which are written in the Torah, whereas this one is not. It is from the common denominator, okay? I can’t learn it from pit alone and I can’t learn it from fire alone. Fine—ox and fire, there are several such common denominators there.

So we find that in damages; in Sabbath law we do not find it. According to Tosafot Rid it is understandable why not. In damages, at the end of the day it is your property and you were negligent, therefore you must pay—that is the common denominator, as the Mishnah says at the beginning of tractate Bava Kamma: “Their common denominator is that their way is to cause damage, they are your property, and their safeguarding is upon you, and when they caused damage, the damager is obligated to pay compensation from the best of his land.” So that is the common denominator. If you find a derivative whose characteristics are these, you can learn it from the primary categories through the common denominator. But on the Sabbath, if these really are thirty-nine primary categories that are separate prohibitions, and they have no common foundation such that they are all different forms of creation, then what common denominator do you want to learn from? There is no common denominator. They are simply different prohibitions. Yes, as I said, it is like learning from the prohibition of pork and the prohibition of entering the Temple in impurity. What are you going to learn? What common denominator is there between them? That they are both forbidden? So what? What derivative could be learned from their common denominator? They have no common denominator. Right? That’s what I said in the previous lesson.

Now I want to claim that the dispute among the medieval authorities here may also reflect that same dispute between Rashi and Tosafot Rid. Because according to Rashi, where the foundation is creation, right? Then Rashi says it is obvious why carrying is an inferior labor, because it contains no creation. “At first it was an object, and now it is still an object”; nothing at all changed in the object. What? That’s a point I made afterward, that I don’t think Rashi necessarily explicitly says they have a common foundation, because he also says this about harvesting and grinding—that they are divided acts. Right. I’m saying: according to the way Rashi is usually understood, I’m using this only as a heading, the conception that says everything here is creation—that is the issue. I said that in Rashi himself I’m not at all sure that this is the point. But according to that conception usually attributed to Rashi, I understand that carrying is an inferior labor because there is no creativity in it. At the end of the day, what characterizes the labors is the creativity in them, and carrying has no creativity, therefore it is an inferior labor. So that is the first school of medieval authorities, the Or Zaru’a and his school, who would go in Rashi’s approach.

According to Tosafot Rid, there is no dimension of creativity. That is not what defines the labors forbidden on the Sabbath. So what does define them? I don’t know. One must rest on the Sabbath for some reason, and what does “rest” mean? Not to do all the things that were done in the Tabernacle. What do all the things done in the Tabernacle have in common? Nothing. They have nothing at all in common. It is not that there is some underlying principle that appears in all the primary categories; rather, they were in the Tabernacle. Therefore the Tabernacle is what defines them, not creativity or importance or reason—all the approaches we talked about at the beginning of Bava Kamma, right? The Tabernacle is what defines it. What was in the Tabernacle—like Rabbenu Hananel and the Jerusalem Talmud.

Okay, so indeed according to Rabbenu Hananel and the Jerusalem Talmud, carrying is really not an inferior labor at all. Because Rabbenu Hananel and the Jerusalem Talmud maintain that what defines the labors is their presence in the Tabernacle. They do not need to be creative; they do not need to be important in any other sense. Whatever was in the Tabernacle. Okay, so if that is so, carrying too was in the Tabernacle, as we saw, so if so then carrying too is a primary category of labor. What’s the problem? It is not an inferior labor at all. There was no initial assumption that it was an inferior labor, and not in the conclusion either after we learned carrying—still it is not an inferior labor. Perhaps in the Jerusalem Talmud—I don’t know whether the Jerusalem Talmud even brings a source for carrying—perhaps in fact the Jerusalem Talmud would not bring any source at all for carrying, because it was in the Tabernacle; therefore it is one of the thirty-nine primary categories of labor.

But according to the school of medieval authorities represented by Nachmanides and Rashba, who say that carrying is an inferior labor not because it is not creative, then in principle they too join the Jerusalem Talmud. They too claim that creativity is not what defines the labor. But they still claim that this is an inferior labor, because the Babylonian Talmud does in fact bring a source for it. So it is apparently an inferior labor—not like the Jerusalem Talmud. But it is an inferior labor only because its definitions are not logical. No, it is not about creativity. In that sense they are like the Jerusalem Talmud. That is a split within that approach between the Jerusalem Talmud and Rabbenu Hananel on the one hand, and Nachmanides and Rashba on the other. Okay? The question is whether it is an inferior labor because its parameters are illogical, or whether the fact that its parameters are illogical does not bother me and therefore it is not an inferior labor at all. But anyone who says it is an inferior labor because of lack of creativity is on the other side entirely. That is on the side of Rashi—or what is attributed to Rashi—where creativity is the point, and if carrying has no creativity then it is an inferior labor. Okay? Therefore this dispute about how to define why, and whether, carrying is an inferior labor basically reflects the same dispute we discussed in the previous lesson between Rashi and Tosafot Rid. Again: between what is attributed to Rashi and Tosafot Rid. Fine?

Now, there are several practical implications of this issue that it is an inferior labor. I’ll bring a few of them so that we know what is at stake. The Chayei Adam writes—and the Chayei Adam is well known, people use it a lot—that the prohibition of benefiting from something produced through Sabbath violation exists only when a change was made in the body of the object. And if someone performed a Sabbath violation involving something but no change was made in the object itself—say, he brought an object from one place to another, he brought it on the Sabbath in violation from public domain to private domain—fine, but nothing happened to the object itself, okay? Then it would not be forbidden as something produced through Sabbath violation.

Meaning, this is contradicted by some passages and it is not clear, but as far as bringing things on the Sabbath is concerned, the passages imply that there is an issue of something produced through Sabbath violation. But never mind—take another case where a prohibition was committed with regard to a thing, but no change occurred in the object itself. If there is no object in which you are now making use of the result, then the prohibition of something produced through Sabbath violation does not apply. It seems to me that this certainly reflects the conception that says that the essence of Sabbath labor is changes in the object, creativity. Something that made no change in the object, as the Or Zaru’a says, is an inferior labor. So okay, the Torah forbade it, but it would not count here as “something produced through Sabbath violation,” okay? Because you would need a special innovation for that too, not only for it to count as labor.

Remember what I said earlier: in principle, according to this approach I would almost have expected the labor of carrying not to be forbidden under “do not do any labor” at all, but to be a separate prohibition learned from “and they caused a proclamation to pass through the camp.” That’s it—an ordinary negative commandment, not connected to stoning, not a labor prohibition, not connected to all the other Sabbath prohibitions. I said this appears nowhere, but this is what would really have been called for according to this approach. Okay? So obviously, if you now want to forbid also the result of Sabbath violation, that concept was stated with regard to labor prohibitions. What does that have to do with this? So that is the conception of carrying as an inferior labor because it does not create anything in the object.

Yes. A second example: in Beit Yitzhak he discusses there what the law is regarding destructive action in carrying—whether one is liable or exempt. He says that destructive carrying would incur liability. Usually destructive action is exempt; in all the labors, if you do them destructively, you are exempt. But not in carrying. Why not? Because carrying to begin with does not fix anything in the object. So if the carrying damaged something in some way, why should I care? Destructive action exempts where the essence of the labor is to repair, so if you do it in a destructive way then you have missed the point of the labor. He says: you did not sin against the Holy One, blessed be He, in the sense that you didn’t do what that labor is generally supposed to do. But in carrying, even when you do it normally, it fixes nothing at all; therefore, if you do it destructively, that does not exempt you. Because what? Right, so not because it is an inferior labor, but because it repairs nothing in the object. Yes, although again I’m saying: according to, say, Nachmanides and Rashba, Tosafot Rid, who basically understand that carrying doesn’t… well, according to them, even in the other labors it isn’t really about the creativity involved. Maybe there is creativity, but that doesn’t interest me in the laws of the Sabbath. So the other side of the coin will be difficult for those approaches.

A third point—well, it’s less essential so I’ll leave it. A fourth point: the Pnei Yehoshua on page 51 in tractate Sabbath says, “Furthermore, carrying into public domain, even by a person, is an inferior labor and is not included in ‘do not do any labor’ were it not that we learn it independently.” If we had not learned it separately, it would not have been included in “do not do any labor.” Yes—I mean, that is exactly what I noted earlier. Even after we have learned it, I don’t understand why it enters under “do not do any labor.” It should have remained a separate prohibition. That is exactly his formulation.

Then he says: “And if so, it seems that this concept does not apply to an animal at all on the Torah level, only rabbinically.” The resting of one’s animal—the resting of one’s animal is a prohibition concerning the case where the animal performs labor on the Sabbath. Say the animal harvests, or the animal, I don’t know, selects. Then that is a Torah prohibition, the prohibition of the resting of one’s animal. Okay? Unless this is its normal life-functionality—meaning if, say, it is eating grass from the field because it needs to live, it is eating for itself, then that is permitted. Meaning there is no prohibition of the resting of one’s animal there. But if the animal is selecting for itself and it doesn’t need that in order to live—it is just selecting—then I have violated a Torah prohibition. People don’t know this. I have violated a Torah prohibition: the resting of one’s animal. It is not a labor prohibition carrying stoning; it is a negative commandment. Okay? The resting of one’s animal.

Says the Pnei Yehoshua: but not with carrying. If my animal carried from private domain to public domain, that is not included. The resting of one’s animal does not apply to that. Why not? Because this is not really included in “do not do any labor.” After all, “you and your animal”—“do not do any labor” is said regarding labor prohibitions. The prohibition of carrying is not really a labor prohibition. In essence it should really have been counted as a separate prohibition, learned from “and they caused a proclamation to pass through the camp.” It is not clear why it was included in “do not do any labor,” but that is some scriptural decree, and it is not truly a labor prohibition. That is perhaps the clearest expression of what I said earlier. So much so that it sharpens the difficulty even more: if so, why indeed was it not counted as a separate prohibition? Fine—but I’m saying that here you see perhaps in the most extreme form the conception that really we are dealing with a prohibition from a completely different passage, which they decided to connect to the other thirty-eight primary labors under “do not do any labor,” and they decided this for some reason that is not clear.

On the Torah level? Who said not on the Torah level? Ah? No—the resting of one’s animal. Not carrying itself. Carrying itself is certainly a Torah prohibition. It’s only that the resting of one’s animal, when the animal carries, that is not on the Torah level. For the other labors, if the animal performs them, that is a Torah-level issue, but for carrying it is not. Why not? Because the prohibitions of the resting of one’s animal were not said regarding all Sabbath prohibitions; they were said regarding labor prohibitions on the Sabbath. And now carrying is not really a labor prohibition. It is an inferior labor; it is learned from “and they caused a proclamation to pass through the camp.” And the resting of one’s animal was not said about that.

I said that according to this it becomes very difficult—so why don’t they really count it as a separate prohibition? Why nevertheless in the end do they include it under “do not do any labor”? Why is it counted as the thirty-ninth primary labor? So I’m saying: because he claims that even after they included it, that was only a matter of arrangement. But there is no sense in which this is a labor prohibition. Even in the conclusion, the prohibition of carrying is not really a labor prohibition. This is the most extreme expression of conception A: that carrying is an inferior labor because it creates nothing in the object, and B: that it remains so even after the innovation of the verse. Not that the verse innovated that it is no longer inferior. No—the verse innovated that it is forbidden despite being an inferior labor, and it still remains an inferior labor. And here are the implications. Fine? Because it also has legal consequences, since it remains an inferior labor even after the verse prohibited the labor of carrying.

By the way, one of the reasons—well, maybe we’ll talk about it—carrying, for example, was not forbidden on a Festival. There are some disputes about whether carrying not for any need at all is permitted entirely or not, like food-preparation or something like that, but there are definitely several views, and the simple meaning of the passages seems to be that carrying simply is not really in play among the Festival labors. And if that is so, then in fact we see that even after the Torah innovated the labor of carrying and attached it to all the other primary labors under “do not do any labor,” it still is not really an integral part of the labor prohibitions. There is still something different here, and that prohibition was not stated on a Festival. On a Festival what is stated is a prohibition on labor—occupational labor, not food-preparation labor. As Nachmanides says: occupational labor, not food-preparation labor. This is not occupational labor. Occupational labor is creation; carrying is not creation. Fine? Therefore on a Festival it really is not forbidden. And that of course sharpens once again the question: so why on the Sabbath, when it is forbidden, is it not on the basis of a separate prohibition from “and they caused a proclamation to pass through the camp”? Why is it included within “do not do any labor”? After all, it is not really labor.

Fine. So once again I’m saying—I’ll explain this later in the lesson, but for now I’m leaving it there.

Now, there are suggestions—I saw this in the book Mei Tal, do you know it? Some Chabad yeshiva head put out various books on Sabbath labors, actually interesting stuff, but that’s not the point. So he suggests there that the dispute whether carrying is an inferior labor because it is not creative, or because its parameters are not logical, depends on something else. I’m not entirely sure I agree. He wants to claim: regarding telling a non-Jew to do work, there is a question why it is forbidden. Why is it forbidden to tell a non-Jew to do something on the Sabbath? Rashi at the beginning of “Mi Shehechshikh” claims that it is forbidden because the non-Jew is considered my agent. When I tell a non-Jew to do something, he acts as my agent—“a person’s agent is like the person himself.” If he did that labor, then it is as if I did it. Rabbinically.

Why rabbinically? Because a non-Jew cannot be an agent, right? “You too shall lift up”—you are members of the covenant, so too your agents must be members of the covenant. There is no agency for a non-Jew. But there is agency for a non-Jew stringently on the rabbinic level. We see this in Rashi in the chapter “Eizehu Neshekh.” There Rashi writes regarding interest: I send interest by way of a non-Jew and so on, and Rashi writes there that the Sages decreed agency for a non-Jew regarding prohibitions stringently. That if you violate a prohibition through a non-Jew, you cannot exempt yourself with the claim that the non-Jew is not your agent. But it is still only rabbinic; it is not a Torah prohibition because there is no agency for a non-Jew. But the Sages decreed agency for a non-Jew stringently.

Rashi says—he says this in “Eizehu Neshekh.” In “Mi Shehechshikh” he says that this very principle is the basis for the prohibition of telling a non-Jew to do labor on the Sabbath. Because telling a non-Jew on the Sabbath is basically appointing him as my agent, and regarding prohibitions stringently, there is agency for a non-Jew. By the way, there are contradictions in Rashi elsewhere, where he says it is because of “speaking of matters,” that to say to a non-Jew to do labor on the Sabbath is forbidden because you are speaking forbidden speech on the Sabbath. That is the problem—not that you said it specifically to a non-Jew, but that you uttered speech on the Sabbath that is forbidden.

The standard explanation of this contradiction—I no longer remember where I saw it, maybe in Shiltei HaGibborim, I don’t remember where. Exactly. That is the practical difference they bring. If you tell the non-Jew before the Sabbath, then if you view him as your agent, it does not help that you appointed him before the Sabbath. When he does it, he does it as your agent; you have desecrated the Sabbath. But if the problem is that your speech on the Sabbath should not be like your speech on weekdays—weekday-type activity, forbidden speech, “speaking of matters”—then what is the problem? I spoke on Friday. The fact that he did it on the Sabbath is irrelevant. What he did is not the point; the question is when I spoke. And vice versa too: if I spoke on the Sabbath and he did it after the Sabbath. Then from the perspective of forbidden speech it would indeed be forbidden, while from the perspective of agency stringently there is no problem, because he did it after the Sabbath, so that would be permitted. So in Rashi, for example, there is no contradiction.

But for our purposes, what do we see? That in principle agency does have some relevance to Sabbath prohibitions. Suppose I appoint a Jew to do labor for me on the Sabbath. Let’s say—setting aside the rule that there is no agency for transgression—according to Shammai the Elder, who holds that there is agency for transgression because of the prophet Haggai, as the Talmud in tractate Kiddushin says. According to his view, what would be? Seemingly according to this approach of Rashi, I would be violating a Torah prohibition. He is my agent and he acted on my behalf, therefore it would be Torah-level. For a non-Jew the agency is only rabbinic, so the prohibition is rabbinic. But telling a Jew would be a Torah prohibition according to this, were it not for the problem of agency for transgression.

By contrast, the Shulchan Arukh HaRav says this—and this is essentially Rashi’s view at the source—but several later authorities, the Imrei Binah and the Beit Meir, sorry, and the Hatam Sofer, disagree with him, and they claim that agency is not relevant to Sabbath prohibitions. Why? Because in Sabbath prohibitions the focus is on the person, not on the object. What was done—whether it was done by my agent or not—that matters only if the prohibition is one where something must not be done to the object, in which case if I did it through an agent it is also forbidden; agency can apply there. But if the obligation is on the person—I need to rest—then the fact that I appointed an agent who did something does not mean that I did not rest. Here this depends on reality; it doesn’t depend on the laws of agency. The fact that the agent works on my behalf does not mean that I didn’t rest. I rested. I lounged in bed all day. So the agent did various things—what does that have to do with me? Things that concern one’s own body, as Tosafot Rid says and others: for things involving one’s own body, agency doesn’t apply. I cannot appoint an agent to put on tefillin on my behalf. Why not? Because the commandment is that the tefillin be physically on me. The fact that the agent is “like me” does not turn this into a situation in which the tefillin were on me. For things that require the person’s own bodily act, agency does not apply.

So they say the same thing regarding Sabbath prohibitions. The Holy One, blessed be He, is not troubled by the fact that something was selected on the Sabbath; He is troubled by the fact that I selected on the Sabbath. It is about the person, not the object. So if I appoint someone else to select, what does that have to do with me? If he is a non-Jew, nothing happened; if he is a Jew, then condemn him. But what does it have to do with me? I rested; everything is fine. Therefore they say agency is not relevant to this type of thing.

Now notice: this is agency stringently on the rabbinic level. Fine. They say: okay, but still, conceptually the category of agency cannot even be defined for this sort of task. And since that is so, even rabbinically it cannot be defined as agency—whatever the Sages instituted, they instituted parallel to the Torah. Meaning, even if the agency is only rabbinic, it still has to be the kind of thing to which agency can apply, otherwise it’s not agency. Therefore that is what they claim.

So basically there is some dispute here over whether labor prohibitions on the Sabbath are about the object or about the person. By the way, there is a Mekhilta, brought by the Sefer Mitzvot Gadol and quoted in the Beit Yosef, where the Mekhilta says: “‘Do not do any labor’—from here we learn telling a non-Jew.” Why? Because the prohibition is that the labor not be done—not that you not do it, but that the labor not be done. So if I told a non-Jew, then the labor was done. True, I did not do it, but the labor was done. And that is perhaps a very clear expression of the conception of a prohibition concerning the object. If the problem is that in objective reality this happened, then obviously if I do it through a non-Jew, in the end it still happened. What difference does it make if I did it this way? Bottom line—it happened.

If the focus is on the object, then according to this telling a non-Jew should be Torah-level. So they say it is only an asmachta, even according to the Sefer Mitzvot Gadol maybe—I don’t know, that is another question. In the Sefer Mitzvot Gadol it does not sound as though he takes it merely as an asmachta. But never mind, that is a lone view; no one rules that way. So it is a rabbinic prohibition. And indeed the point of the Avnei Nezer and the Hatam Sofer is that agency does not apply to such a thing because the law is directed at the person, not at the object. And according to Rashi, or according to the Shulchan Arukh HaRav, the conception is that it is about the object, not the person. Therefore it is like the Mekhilta: “Do not do any labor” means that objectively the labor may not be done. So if I did it through a non-Jew, in the end it was still done. True, I didn’t do it, but it was still done under my influence in some other way. What difference does it make that I personally didn’t do it? It is enough that it happened under my initiative; I do not need to be the direct one doing it. Okay? That is the dispute.

That Aglei Tal claims that the dispute over how to define the inferiority of the labor—whether it is because of absence of creativity or because of lack of logic in its definitions—depends on this dispute: whether it is a prohibition concerning the object or the person. If it is a prohibition concerning the object, then basically it means that one may not change the object. So carrying does not change the object; nothing happened to the object. Okay? If the law concerns the person, then you are supposed to rest. It doesn’t matter what happened to the object. If you carried, you didn’t rest. It’s just that the definitions are not logical, therefore it is an inferior labor. But not because you did nothing to the object. Therefore the focus is on the person. That is his claim.

I tend not to think he is right. I’m saying that the dispute between Nachmanides and Rashba on the one hand and Or Zaru’a on the other is not about whether Sabbath labor prohibitions concern the object or the person. If it concerns the object, that would mean one may not change objects, right? Therefore indeed the Or Zaru’a says carrying does not change the object, so it is an inferior labor. Fine? So that would be the object-based conception, the conception of Rashi and the Shulchan Arukh HaRav. By contrast, the conception of Tosafot Rid—well, not Tosafot Rid, but of Nachmanides and Rashba—who say that a person needs to cease on the Sabbath from the labors that were in the Tabernacle. But you, the person, need to cease on the Sabbath. Okay? So why is carrying an inferior labor? Because its parameters are not logical. Fine? But you, you need to cease on the Sabbath. In that case indeed agency does not apply; that is the Hatam Sofer. The Hatam Sofer and the Avnei Nezer say that this is person-focused, and where it concerns the person, agency does not apply, just as things involving one’s own body are not subject to agency.

I’m not sure I agree with that claim. Because even if this prohibition is object-focused, it is still clear that the prohibition is that I do the change in the object, not simply that a change happen in the object. After all, nobody says—except for that Sefer Mitzvot Gadol, and even there it is unclear whether he says it is Torah-level—that if I tell a non-Jew to alter an object, then I have violated a Torah prohibition. Why not? After all, a change happened in the object. Why isn’t that a Torah prohibition? It isn’t a Torah prohibition because there still has to be some connection to me in any case. The whole question is whether the focus is on the person or the object—whether I must rest or whether I must refrain from creating. And both of those are person-focused. Therefore I would associate both of these with the Avnei Nezer and the Hatam Sofer. Why do I always switch them? The Avnei Nezer and the Hatam Sofer. Both sides I can connect to the person, and it is plausible that both are indeed person-focused.

And even so, one can still say that the question is what exactly is demanded of the person: to rest and not work hard—in which case I would indeed expect a difference between a heavy object and a light object, or what difference should it make whether it is private domain or public domain?—or rather, what is demanded is not to create, in which case carrying is non-creative and therefore an inferior labor. But the demand is always a demand on the person; it is not really a law about the object. Therefore the claim of the Avnei Nezer and the Hatam Sofer that agency is irrelevant here can be said according to both conceptions among the medieval authorities. Fine? And I don’t think it really depends on that point. I would tie it more to Tosafot Rid and Rashi—to the question not of object versus person, but whether the problem is creativity or whether the problem is labor. But both are about the person. Okay.

Now I want to enter a little into the philosophical issue. Because I want, after all, to explain why carrying—despite being an inferior labor and learned from another verse and so on—in the end everyone includes it under the Sabbath labor prohibition. In the end it really is labor. More than that: not only is it labor, but the labor of carrying occupies more space than any other labor in tractate Sabbath, and people always bring that Maharal—introductory lessons on tractate Sabbath always bring it—that every tractate opens with the thing that expresses it in the clearest way. Not that I believe that, but that’s what they always say. Therefore the labor of carrying expresses Sabbath prohibitions and the obligation of Sabbath rest in the clearest way. Therefore the first chapter is devoted to the labor of carrying. That’s the claim. Fine. I don’t know if it’s true, but it sharpens the point even more. In what sense? After all, if it’s an inferior labor, then it is the thing that expresses the obligation of Sabbath rest in the least good way, not the most good way. So I want to explain why that is not true. Why that is not true and why it does not contradict the fact that it is an inferior labor.

I’ll say more than that. Suppose carrying is an inferior labor, and the verse taught me that it is nevertheless forbidden. A scriptural decree. Despite the fact that it is an inferior labor, it is nevertheless forbidden. Let’s say like Rabbenu Tam, that even in the conclusion, after we learned that it is forbidden, it still remains an inferior labor—it’s just forbidden. Not that we learned it isn’t inferior. Okay? All the practical differences I brought. When people talk about a scriptural decree, they often have the feeling that it means a law without reason. But that’s not so—or not necessarily. A scriptural decree is something that Scripture teaches me, but after it teaches me, I can still try to think about what it means. It may be that without the verse I would not have arrived at it on my own, but after the verse says it, that does not necessarily mean I cannot understand it. I certainly can.

There is a Meiri in the chapter about the rebellious son in tractate Sanhedrin. The Talmud says there that we do not apply the law of the rebellious son to a daughter, only to a son. “If a man has a rebellious son”—a son and not a daughter. And the Talmud says this is a scriptural decree. In the Jerusalem Talmud it is even more explicit, and also in the Babylonian Talmud: it is a scriptural decree, a son and not a daughter. What? No, it’s not that we say scriptural decree and therefore don’t derive a reason. We do not say that one cannot seek the reason of Scripture where the law comes from an interpretive derivation. A scriptural decree can still be interpretively derived, because it comes from the text. The principle that “we do not derive law from the reason of the verse” applies to something that comes directly from the plain verse; but something that comes from a derivation—that’s different. I have no problem with seeking the reason of Scripture in a matter that comes from an interpretive derivation. Only in something written explicitly in the Torah do we not derive law from the reason of the verse.

So the Meiri says: okay, it says “a son and not a daughter,” that’s a scriptural decree. But then the Meiri says: yes, but really there is an explanation, and the explanation is that girls are not accustomed to rob people. After all, the Talmud explains there why there is a law of the rebellious son: because if he grows up, he will rob people. Okay. Therefore the law of the rebellious son is applied to him. Now the difference is that other medieval authorities too—the Meiri follows others, the Sefer HaHinukh and Maimonides and others—also explain this way the reason why it is a son and not a daughter. But the Meiri goes one step further. If so, then why call it a scriptural decree? We have an explanation. The other medieval authorities don’t say that; they offer explanations and move on. The Meiri takes this explanation seriously. This is not just some nice homiletic line. He means that this is the explanation. And if this is the explanation, then how can the Talmud call it a scriptural decree?

Usually when the medieval authorities give an explanation, they don’t really think that is the explanation. Fine—it gives you a taste in the mouth, but they don’t really mean to say that it is the explanation. Therefore they are not so bothered by the question why the Talmud called it a scriptural decree. But the Meiri is bothered. That means he understood that this is the explanation. And the reason, by the way, is connected to what you said before: because this is a derivation, I can ask myself why the expositor derived “a son and not a daughter.” Why not “a son and not… I don’t know… not an adult,” or “a son and not” something else. Fine? Why—yes, when it says “man,” usually it means both man and woman; we do not usually derive “man and not woman” except in specific places. Exactly. Because it is a derivation, I understand that there is some logic behind it. Apparently he had some reasoning for saying that “son” there comes to exclude a daughter. Because he had some reasoning that this law does not apply to a daughter, only to a son. Then he asks himself: what is the reasoning? The reasoning is this—that a daughter will not come to rob people. And that is what the Meiri says.

The Meiri claims that when something is called a scriptural decree, that does not mean it has no explanation. But it does mean that without its being written in the verse, I would not have derived it from reason alone. Imagine there were no such derivation: “If a man has a rebellious son,” etc., “he does not obey the voice of his father and the voice of his mother.” Would I on my own have said not to apply this law to daughters, only to sons? Because daughters don’t come to rob people? What about good boys? I don’t know—someone who in my opinion has no chance of ever ending up a robber. He is disabled, fine? He cannot become the leader of a gang of robbers; he can’t even leave the house. Does the law of the rebellious son apply to him? I don’t know anyone who excludes disabled boys from this law. Why not? He too will not come to rob people. Fine, that too is a big question—where did these things come from?

So the point, ultimately, is that even if there is reasoning, I explain the reasoning after I have understood from the Torah that this is the law. Then I explain the reasoning, but that doesn’t mean that if I didn’t have that derivation, my own logic would have told me that the law of the rebellious son applies to a son and not to a daughter. That is why it is called a scriptural decree. And a scriptural decree is not something that necessarily cannot be understood. A scriptural decree is something that from my own understanding or reasoning alone I would not have derived the law. For all kinds of reasons, by the way—it could be for other reasons. For example, the law may be very logical, but it contradicts some other legal principle, therefore I wouldn’t have done it were it not for a scriptural decree. I have an article on scriptural decrees—look in the summary, I’ll send the summary—there I refer to that article, and there I distinguish between several types of scriptural decrees. One type is where I would not know the law without the verse; another is where it contradicts other legal principles, and so on. There are several kinds.

In any case, for our purposes: if I say that carrying is an inferior labor and there is a scriptural decree that nevertheless forbids it, and the medieval authorities include it under the labor prohibition rather than leaving it as a separate prohibition, then okay—there is some logic behind this. Fine, I learned it from a verse, but still there is some logic here. What is that logic? Why indeed is carrying nevertheless ultimately perceived as labor? Or perhaps even the clearest labor, if you want to go with the Maharal.

So look, there is a principle here that is very easy not to notice, but I think that when… what? Yes yes, I’m intentionally not reading from a source right now, because otherwise that grabs the eye. If there’s a source I’m reading, I read it. Look afterwards in the summaries; it’s all written there. I’ll send the file.

There is a very substantial difference—an asymmetry—between the work of the Holy One, blessed be He, and the work of human beings. The Holy One creates, and we produce. And what does “produce” mean? In practice, a person can never do anything out of nothing. Even the greatest “something from nothing” you can imagine is always “something from something.” Fine? More than that: generally, when we make a change—even a substantial change, let’s say, not inferior labors but good labors, fine, labors that make a change in an object—how is that change made in the object? At the end of the day, if you think about it philosophically, all a human being ever does is move things from place to place. Nothing besides that. We are incapable of doing anything but that. We only move things from place to place. We can move the knife here so it cuts, we can move the ink there and spread it over the page and then suddenly writing appears, we can take the eraser and move it like this and it erases what is written—but we are always occupied only in moving things around. Everything.

But even more so: in cooking, all we really do is put the ingredients in the pot and the fire cooks them. What did we do? We brought them to the pot. To that degree. In sowing too, I put the seed in the ground and the earth makes it grow; I am not making it grow. Same thing: I am simply moving things around. No, nature creates the fire; we move things. I am not saying that our actions do not result in new things—of course they do; that’s what all the good, non-inferior labors are. But if you pay attention to the process by which it happens, you will see that what creates it is nature, not us. We only move things from place to place. If we place them in the right place at the right time, then we know that nature will already do there what we want done. But at the end of the day, all we do is move things around. We do not do anything except move things. Nothing. Every action we perform is only moving things around. That’s an interesting point, I think, and people don’t notice it. Every action, anything you like, the greatest intervention in nature we can imagine—nothing but moving things around, putting them in a certain place, and letting nature do its thing. Nothing beyond that.

So ultimately what we discover here—yes, with sowing and cooking this is even much more obvious. You brought it as an objection, but it’s actually the answer. In sowing and cooking it is so obvious that the medieval authorities ask why it is forbidden at all. What are you doing? The fire cooked it, not me; I only put it on the fire. That is indirect causation. Or in sowing, it takes days, weeks, months until the seed sprouts and something happens there. I only put it in the ground. Is it forbidden to put things in the ground? To that extent they really discuss what happens if I put it in the ground on a weekday and it happened on the Sabbath, or put it on the fire on a weekday and it happened on the Sabbath, or vice versa, I put it there on the Sabbath and it happened on a weekday. What then? There are all kinds of debates and discussions about things like that, because indeed these very labors—the ones that create something entirely new—a seed, you create a whole tree that was not there at all. There was a tiny grain and suddenly it produces a full tree with fruit. Incredible—what a level of creativity there is here, right? What a level of change happened as a result of my act. But what? In the end, I only moved things from place to place. Everything else that happened is nature.

So what are we basically doing? The work we do is really just the “intentional labor” aspect of it. We think about what to place where and when in order to achieve such-and-such a result. The plan is ours. None of the execution is—except for moving things. We have a plan, and beyond that it is just moving things, and the plan tells me where to move them, where to place them and when, and then the thing will happen. It will happen not because of what I did directly; it will happen as a result of what I did. But nature performs the change, not me. So basically, think for example about the Sabbath labors. We talked about winnowing with the wind assisting him. The Talmud in tractate Bava Kamma page 60, yes? If he winnows and the wind assists him, or fans a fire and the wind fans it, then in damages he is exempt, because it is indirect causation. I fanned the fire and the wind took it and it caused damage. So it’s indirect causation; exempt. But on the Sabbath he is liable. Why? Because the Torah forbade intentional labor. I brought this as one of the examples showing that intentional labor is a principle that is sometimes used stringently in Sabbath law, not leniently. In other words, because of intentional labor I forbid on the Sabbath what in other legal contexts would have been permitted—indirect causation. Right? That’s what Rashi writes there. And the Rosh says this is specific to the labor of winnowing. But still, he says I am liable for the labor of winnowing even though what happens there? I throw the kernels and the chaff into the air and the wind takes the chaff while the kernels fall. So who separated them, me? The wind separated them. I only put them there in the right place and my plan worked. What I intended happened. Very much “intentional labor,” right?

And that is what Rashi says: since the verse says “intentional labor,” therefore one who winnows and the wind assists him is liable. Because the idea on the Sabbath is really the plan, not the action. The action is not really yours; you are only indirect. You only moved things. But your plan—what to move and when—that is really your contribution. If you don’t put it there, nature won’t do it. If you don’t put the seed in the right place, in the right season, at the right time, in the right soil, then nothing happens. So you need to think, to make a plan about exactly how to do it, what to do, when to do it—and then if you made the plan properly, it will come to fruition as well. So what is your role in the matter? Two things. First, the plan, the intentional labor. Second, to move things from place to place. That is the only thing human beings know how to do: move things from place to place. Nothing else. And then the plan turns the movement into something meaningful. The plan says: if you moved it to the right place at the right time, then something significant will happen—a change, a creation, a novelty will come into being in the object. But that will happen on its own. Your plan is what ultimately stood behind the matter, but the execution is not yours. The execution belongs to nature. You provide the plan and set the initial conditions. The process itself is a process of nature. Okay? That is basically the point.

Now, think for example of the Sabbath labors. The labor that I always like in this context is gathering into piles. I never understood this strange labor. In gathering into piles, you collect fruit that was scattered and put it into a basket. You have violated a prohibition punishable by stoning. You take scattered fruit and put it into a basket—prohibition punishable by stoning. That is gathering into piles. How is that different from carrying? You move things from place to place. What did you create? Some kind of cluster out of a collection of individual items. That is the creation involved in gathering into piles.

What? Yes, fine, you know, I also stand, also eat as part of the work process, also breathe. Fine. But that is not significant. It is not something that, in and of itself, I would ascribe significance to in order to define it as its own primary category of labor. So the point is that there what we did is very clear: I am merely moving things from place to place, really just like carrying. But there, nevertheless, unlike carrying, once these items are all gathered into a basket, I now have some cluster of figs. That is something different from a collection of scattered figs. So yes, I did create some kind of product with a new dimension. The collective emerges from the particulars, if you like. And now I have a basket of figs; before I had various scattered fruits. A basket of figs is a product. I sell it in the market. Okay? You can say that is creation. And here it is very clear that all I am doing is moving things. Nothing more—really just like carrying. Right? Except what? Except that here, in gathering into piles, this is some intermediate state. In gathering into piles I assembled them in one place, and the new thing produced is the cluster, the collective. In winnowing and cooking I moved things to another place and nature created the rest. Here, in gathering into piles, nature doesn’t do it—I did it. I simply assembled the particulars and the collective came into being. There was no need here for some further process for nature to do. Right? But in other places nature basically makes the change, not me. Yet the action that human beings perform in all the labors is exactly the same thing that happens in carrying. We move things from place to place, also in carrying. It is an inferior labor because after this movement nothing new is produced as a result of it. But not because the coming-into-being itself is the labor. The coming-into-being is done by nature.

From the perspective of the person, what is the act that I performed? There is no difference between carrying and the other labors. It is the same thing—I moved an object from place to place. Now I want to say more than that. Presumably—right, agreed. Yes yes, carrying, that’s where we began. Ah, what’s the result? That it is there. Meaning the fruit is also now in the basket. There is apparently some understanding here that a living creature that has been trapped is a different object from a living creature that is free. I don’t know, but one can say here that an animal once trapped is a different sort of object from that same animal when it is outside. It itself is different. It becomes something accessible to me as merchandise, presumably. I’m not sure; maybe even more so, because in gathering into piles I only assembled items and created a collective, while here I really transformed the thing into something else. Now it is merchandise. I have an animal; it can be sold, used, eaten, whatever one wants. It stands here as a potential piece of meat. Whereas an animal outside is an animal; it is part of the world, not part of my pantry. Yes, yes. Wait—I’ll get to that dispute in a moment.

Look, there is a Midrash Tanhuma: The wicked Turnus Rufus asked Rabbi Akiva: whose deeds are more beautiful, those of the Holy One, blessed be He, or those of flesh and blood? He said to him: those of flesh and blood are more beautiful. Turnus Rufus the wicked said to him: look at heaven and earth—can you make the like of them? Rabbi Akiva said to him: don’t speak to me about things beyond human beings, over which they have no control, but about matters that are found among human beings. He said to him: why do you circumcise? Rabbi Akiva said to him: I knew you were going to ask me that, and therefore I said first that the deeds of flesh and blood are more beautiful than those of the Holy One, blessed be He. They brought him ears of grain and baked cakes. He said to him: these are the deeds of the Holy One, blessed be He, and these are the deeds of human beings. Are these not more beautiful? They brought him flax stalks and fine garments from Beit She’an. He said to him: these are the deeds of the Holy One, blessed be He, and these are the deeds of human beings. Are these not more beautiful? Turnus Rufus said to him: if He desires circumcision, why does the child not emerge circumcised from his mother’s womb? Rabbi Akiva said: and why does the umbilical cord emerge with him? and so on. Because the Holy One, blessed be He, gave the commandments to Israel only in order to refine them through them. The Talmud in tractate Bava Batra also has this in the first chapter on page 9, also there Turnus Rufus and Rabbi Akiva, with a similar move.

In any case, what do we basically have here? The Holy One, blessed be He, makes something raw. The human being essentially completes the world, turns it into something useful, something that already has functions, right? But there is an aspect here that is in some sense the opposite. Without the infrastructure that the Holy One, blessed be He, created, we could only move things from place to place. Nothing would be produced. Everything we create in the end is really something that the Holy One created, not us. We only moved things from place to place. The fact that He created a world with laws of that kind enables us to make plans, yes, to make plans and carry them out by moving things to the right place at the right time.

So on the one hand it is obvious that we complete the deeds of the Holy One, blessed be He, but it is not really us. Without our movement of things, creation itself would not be able to reach completion. Because we need to make plans in order to cause the laws of nature to bring creation to the place where it is meant to arrive. And perhaps that is also the Midrash in Vayikra Rabbah: “Who has preceded Me, that I should repay him?” Rabbi Tanhuma interpreted the verse regarding one who lives in the city and pays the wages of scribes and teachers. The Holy One, blessed be He, says: am I supposed to repay him his reward and give him the reward of a son? That is what is written: “And He will repay him his recompense.” Because “Who has preceded Me, that I should repay him?” means: who did something that I did not first make possible? Who preceded Me such that I would really owe him recompense for something?

So they ask whether there really is someone like that or not, but the idea is that in essence everything we do is something the Holy One, blessed be He, preceded us in. We succeeded in sowing wheat—but He gave us wheat, and He gave us the law that when you put seed in soil, wheat grows again as was said. Yes, so this world that the Holy One, blessed be He, created—without it we would not be able to do anything. “Who has preceded Me, that I should repay him?” In other words, if you did something that I was not the One who first gave you the possibility and the infrastructure to do, then come to Me and receive your reward as a matter of strict justice. Otherwise every reward is beyond the letter of the law. You do not really deserve it; at the end of the day I did everything and you did nothing. That is what the Holy One, blessed be He, says. And it is the same idea as: who made me a parapet before I gave him a roof? I would say: who made Me a parapet before I gave him iron with which to build the parapet? Okay? Or a saw, I don’t know, things like that. So there is some conception here that on the one hand magnifies the role of the human being, but on the other hand this magnification is qualified. Because in the end the role of the human being is not in the execution. Execution is always nature, always the Holy One, blessed be He. The human being is the one who makes plans, moves things from place to place, and enables nature to perfect itself, yes, to reach its completion.

Now, that is basically the idea of intentional labor, as I said earlier. Intentional labor means what Rashi writes in Bava Kamma page 60: “his intention was fulfilled.” That is called intentional labor. In other words, if you did it by indirect causation—he winnows and the wind assists him—his intention was fulfilled. Therefore what does “his intention was fulfilled” mean? True, the wind did the work, but who created the situation because of which the wind actually did the separation and I was left only with the kernels and no chaff? The person, by his plan and by his decision to move the mixture into the air precisely when there was wind, and to place something beneath it to catch the kernels that fell. So what did he actually do here? He did nothing; the wind separated. But his intention was fulfilled. What does that mean? He made a plan, and the plan was implemented through the laws of nature. That is the essence of the Sabbath prohibition. Therefore it is forbidden on the Sabbath even though in damages indirect causation is exempt.

And that is what was in the Tabernacle. Why with Bezalel was “the Torah forbade intentional labor”? Intentional labor is the labor of the Tabernacle. What was special about Bezalel? “A craftsman of designs.” What is “a craftsman of designs”? He made the perfect plans. Right, that is what the Sages describe to us in countless midrashim: Bezalel was a man filled with spirit and so on, who made the perfect plans in order to create the Tabernacle. Meaning, the essence of Bezalel’s intentional labor was planning. He made the right plan. Afterward, of course, one also has to execute it, but he made the right plan. And what is forbidden on the Sabbath is not the execution—it is the planning. People think that what is forbidden on the Sabbath is what was done in the Tabernacle. No. What is forbidden on the Sabbath is the plans that the actions in the Tabernacle implemented. Of course they have to be implemented. If you just sit and make plans on the Sabbath, maybe that is weekday activity, but it is not a prohibition in itself. Plans that are implemented, and where “his intention was fulfilled”—that is what the Sabbath prohibitions are. Therefore carrying too is forbidden on the Sabbath. Okay?

So the concept of intentional labor really embodies what I have been saying here: that all Sabbath labors are not about the person, nor about the object, nor about anything of the sort. They are about thought, about the mind, as they say. When I make a plan and in the end move the things in such a way that the plan is implemented, that is the idea of the Sabbath, that is the idea of the Tabernacle, and that is what is forbidden on the Sabbath.

Now, if that really is the point, then we can now understand the meaning of the labor of carrying. The labor of carrying, as I said before, is simply moving things around. But that is the essence of everything we do in all the other labors. Therefore the labor of carrying really is the distilled essence of everything that is forbidden, from our standpoint, in all the other labors. Only here it appears in its purity—it is just movement, it doesn’t do anything. Okay? Only apparently—just movement, it doesn’t do anything. Wait a second, I’m about to qualify that. Since that is so, carrying contains the dimension shared by all the other labors, namely merely moving things from place to place.

So now there are the three approaches we had among the medieval authorities. One approach says carrying is not an inferior labor at all, like Rabbenu Hananel and the Jerusalem Talmud. Why? Because it was in the Tabernacle, so it is not an inferior labor. What do you mean? I don’t care that it creates nothing. The point is not creation; the point is moving things from place to place. Therefore carrying is labor like any other labor. On the contrary, in carrying what we do appears in the purest way, because what we do in all the labors is only move things from place to place. In carrying that is the only thing there is; it is not wrapped in all kinds of other things that hide this from us. Therefore in some sense perhaps carrying is even the clearest labor.

The other two approaches say that carrying is an inferior labor because it does not create. But after the verse innovated that… then one of two things. Either it innovated that really no—it innovated that despite being an inferior labor, it is still forbidden. What does that mean? To teach us this idea, that in all the labors basically our dimension is only the movement of things. So true, there there is also a plan being implemented and here there is not; therefore it is an inferior labor. Fine. There are those who understand: no, it is an inferior labor, but after the verse innovated that carrying is forbidden, it innovated that this too is not an inferior labor. Then that brings us back to Rabbenu Hananel and the Jerusalem Talmud. It is not an inferior labor, because here too I am moving things. Why should I care that there I moved things because it created something? But that is not entirely trivial. Because what then? I can also walk. Walking too is moving things. Why isn’t that forbidden? And why these strange definitions—that specifically from public domain to private domain or the reverse, but not from one private domain to another? And why does heavy or light make no difference? Right? All those questions are what these medieval authorities ask.

Now look at another interesting point. When I want to talk about the change made by movement, the natural concept here is entropy. Let me demonstrate this through a simple case. Look, take for example this vector. Never mind, forget the word vector. It has six positions. Fine? Say I have a space with six places in it, x equals 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. In each such place there can be some object. Fine? Object A, object B, and object C. I have three objects in the world and six places. Always draw some point-like donkey, whatever. Fine. With six places—a discrete space; it only has six places. And I have three kinds of objects, A, B, and C. Now this is the initial state. You see? Object A is placed in the first location. The second location is empty. In the third location there is an object of type B. In the fourth location there is an object of type C. The fifth is empty, and the sixth also has object A, like the first.

Now I want to move object A from one place to another. Fine? So let’s say I move it from the sixth position to the fifth. Fine? Then the new vector I get—here there will be A and here there will be zero. Right? I switched the zero and the A. Did that change anything in the world? Nothing at all. Rename place five as six. It is the same vector as before, just with names switched, right? And if positions five and six have no essential difference between them, then switching objects between them changes nothing in the world. Just rename place A as B and place B as A. Right? It is a rotation of the coordinate system. It does not do anything.

By contrast, if I take object A and move it into the first place, then now I have made a change. Because now there are two A objects in the first place, and in the sixth place there is nothing at all. The picture of the world is different. You cannot now take the new world I created, rotate the coordinate system, and see that it is really the same as the old world. Right? There is no symmetry operation that takes me from this to that. Okay? What does that mean? I made a meaningful change in the world. The world is now different from what it was before. No rotation of the coordinate system will show you that it is the same world. It is not the same world; it is another world. But if I switch from place six to place five, that is just a change of coordinate system. From now on call Indonesia the Philippines and the Philippines Indonesia. That’s all.

Now switch all the people between the Philippines and Indonesia—you have changed nothing in the world, right? You only switched names. What used to be called the Philippines is now called Indonesia and vice versa. Nothing besides that. You have changed nothing in the world. Meaning, when I move an object from one private domain to another private domain, and now I return to the parameters of carrying, I have changed nothing in the world—or in scientific language, I have not changed the entropy. Nothing happened. It is exactly the same state. All that happened is that private domain A is now called B and private domain B is now called A. So what? In order for me to make a change, I need to transfer the object from a domain of one type to a domain of another type. Then indeed a state is produced that is not equivalent to the previous state. It is impossible by a symmetry operation to get from the new state back to the previous one. There is no symmetry between them; it is a new state.

In other words, when I move objects from place to place, what I am doing is changing the entropy of the world. I am changing the arrangement of things in the world. The level of order—that is basically entropy. I am changing the arrangement of things in the world, and the more I organize it, the smaller the entropy becomes. In the mathematical sense—never mind—but the order increases. And creation means producing something more ordered than what existed before. That is how entropy is defined: the state I have now produced is more ordered than what existed before. So that means its entropy has decreased. Entropy is negative order, so never mind—the entropy decreases. Okay?

So in fact the labor of carrying also creates something else—not in the object, but in the world. The world looks different. The object that was in place six in the vector is now in place three in the vector. And three and six are places of different types. If they were the same type, like five and six, then nothing happened. But if they are places of different types—private domain and public domain—then by moving the object from place to place I got a different vector. It is a different state, a changed state. Something new has come into being. Not the object—the world is new, it is different. Look now at the world, at all the places and how they are occupied: the overall picture is different from what it was before. But if I transfer from one private domain to another private domain, I have made no real change in the world. In the object itself no change occurred either way. But the change in the world that happens as a result of moving things—that is really the creation of the labor of carrying. Okay? That is basically the point.

Therefore the point is that if you move something from place to place, you have made a change. If you don’t move it to another kind of place, then why should I care whether it is heavy or light? This heavy object was here and now it is still here. It’s heavy—so what if it’s heavy? But the world looks the same. And if you bring it from one private domain to another private domain, not from private domain to public domain, then you moved that object A from place six to place five. Listen—you get the same vector with only different names. Domain A will now be Reuven’s house and domain B will be Shimon’s house. Fine—but what difference does that make? You haven’t changed anything essential.

Therefore I think the correct way to look at the labor of carrying is, first, that it is moving things, but it’s not just movement. In walking too I move things. This is a kind of movement that changes something—not in the object but in the world, in the occupancy, in the vector of locations in the world. How do you now view the occupancy of the world, the whole vector? It is a global perspective. How do you change the world, not how do you change one object? A change in an object is also a change in the world, but through changing one place in the world. Here it is a change in the global structure of the world. I am simply changing how the world is built; from a global point of view a change occurred here, not in any specific object. Okay, I think the concept of entropy really clarifies the meaning of the labor of carrying. The meaning of the labor of carrying is to move things from place to place, to change the vector, that’s all. And the change that occurs here is not to the object but to the vector, to the world. Okay, that’s the issue.

What? Yes, some already say—some of the medieval authorities say that four cubits in public domain count as a different domain. Fine—but it is a different kind of public domain, outside my own domain. It is also not from public domain to public domain; it is from one private domain to another private domain. Those four cubits are this private domain, and those four cubits are another private domain. Fine, but still—what? Obviously, in public domain my four cubits are mine. And now when you take the object beyond my four cubits, you have essentially taken it from private domain to public domain. No, you don’t have to walk; you can throw it. It doesn’t matter. The object left my domain and entered public domain, because beyond four cubits from me it is no longer my domain; it is public domain. Yes.

In principle yes. Obviously, when you create something in an object—you make a sculpture or a picture or something like that—obviously you have created something with a certain complexity, you have decreased the entropy of the world; that is obvious. Any building of a house, any organization of a space—every organization of matter is always a change in entropy. Therefore in some sense the labor of carrying is the purest expression of what actually exists in all the labors. In all the labors this is really what happens. The labor of carrying in that sense… what? Yes, but I’m saying that is true of all the labors we perform, but in the labor of carrying it appears in a purified form. That is the point. There it has no extra wrappings. It doesn’t also grow, and it doesn’t do all sorts of other things that hide from you what you as a human being did, because nature is doing so many other very new things there. Here you really see in pure form how you change the world, what you do—you change the…

Now I’ll add one more sentence that might illuminate this. You know, let’s continue with entropy. There is that puzzle of Maxwell’s demon. Maxwell’s demon—one expression of the second law of thermodynamics, which deals with entropy, is that if, say, we have a certain empty container and we put in one corner of it some gas, a little bag of gas molecules, okay? Now I open the bag—what happens? The molecules spread throughout the whole container more or less evenly, at roughly equal density. But the reverse does not happen. It does not happen that a container full of gas molecules suddenly gathers itself into one corner. Fine, that does not happen. Why not? That is the second law of thermodynamics: order, if there is no factor intervening—if no external factor intervenes in a closed system—order only decreases or does not increase. Fine? Order does not increase. Okay? Order only decreases. And again, the assumption is that when it is all in one side it is more ordered than when it is spread everywhere. That too needs explanation, but that’s not important; I’m not getting into the details right now.

Now why do I bring this? What? Yes. Now yes, the question is how many microstates correspond to a given macrostate. If the number of compatible microstates is small, then it is more ordered. And the macrostate with the largest number of compatible microstates is when it is spread out as much as possible in the container. That is the least ordered state. Okay? By the way, that is connected exactly to the change of places I was talking about here. If the objects can move among all the places and all the places have equal status, that is the least ordered state. And if they are all in one place in the vector, that is the most ordered state and has the least entropy.

In any event, why am I saying this? Because Maxwell asked the following question. Suppose we have a container divided into two chambers, and in the middle there is a partition or a gate that is permeable in one direction. There is some little demon sitting there, and that demon lets through—say there are yellow balls and green balls scattered about, flying around in the container, running in all directions at different speeds. Fine? Every time a green ball comes toward the door, he opens the door, lets the green ball through, and closes it. That’s how I build him. He is this little demon; he could be mechanical. I build him, fine? Yellow balls don’t pass. If they come, he keeps the door shut and they remain inside. After a while all the green ones are here and the yellow ones are there, right? Now there is no external factor—the system is a closed system. There is a demon on the gate and balls, and the container, all within the container, and suddenly the whole thing becomes ordered. How? But the rule of the second law of thermodynamics says that if the system is closed, if there is no external factor imposing order here, then how can it be that the level of order increases? The demon is part of the system. It is a mechanical demon. Okay?

The standard explanation for this is that the thought invested in that demon is really what compensates for the missing entropy. When we built that demon, we built him with a mechanism whose purpose was to create order. So we invested entropy in the system when we built it. It had some surplus of entropy, namely the information or the program of that demon, and that succeeded in producing the order there after we ourselves had already stepped away. Think of the Holy One, blessed be He, who created the world and then sent it off and let it run. He created the world with certain laws, and the laws run the world, and human beings arise through an evolutionary process. So did the Holy One create them or did the world create them? The Holy One created them through a third-generation missile, a “launch and forget” system, as it were. Meaning: there are laws, but the laws organize the world toward a more and more sophisticated state, even though that should not have happened. Why? Because the One who built the laws put into them the insights or the information or the program that would now manage to do this thing without His further involvement. Well, not getting into the details—that is the accepted explanation for Maxwell’s demon. In other words, the missing entropy is simply the information inside that demon or the information contributed by the person who built the demon. Such a demon does not arise by itself. Such a demon is created by a human being. And the work or insight of that human being that created the demon—that is the missing entropy. That is what does the work. Okay?

Why am I bringing all this? This is not a physics lesson. I’m bringing all this in order to show the connection between entropy and intentional labor. You understand that what creates the reduction in entropy is the thought of the person as implemented through the demon. He made a plan, he built a demon, and the demon does some work that decreases entropy, that increases order. That is intentional labor. “His intention was fulfilled.” And what does that mean? That his thought, his plan, his understanding are what in the end produced the plant, or the order in the container. The fact that he built the demon is what produced the order in the container. Or this plan to put this seed in the right place in the right season, to give it water and so on—that is what in the end produced the tree. It is not really nature. It is nature when I have made an orderly and sensible plan and constructed the initial conditions in a way suited for the plan to be fulfilled. Okay? You see that this is really intentional labor.

In other words, again, this connection between entropy and intentional labor. Intentional labor, where “his intention was fulfilled,” means that entropy decreased. Entropy always decreases when thought is invested here by an intelligent factor from outside. That is what it means to say that entropy decreased. That is the concept of creation. That is the concept of creation. The actual production is done by nature—that is not the point. Like the demon. The demon separates the yellow balls over here and the green balls over there. But who built the demon? Okay? Meaning, who put the seed there so that the earth would grow it? I did. And I did it for that purpose, exactly like one who winnows and the wind assists him. Who threw the grains so that the wind would come and the grains would fall downward? The wind did it, but obviously my plan set this up. The wind is Maxwell’s demon. My plan is what ultimately did it. That is called “his intention was fulfilled.” That is called intentional labor.

Therefore the labor of carrying is perhaps the purest expression of the Sabbath prohibitions. Even though it is an inferior labor, because nothing was created in the object, that does not contradict the fact that it is really the purest expression of Sabbath labor. Therefore, after the verse innovated for me that despite the fact that carrying is an inferior labor, it too enters the prohibition of “do not do any labor”—it is a primary labor, not a separate prohibition. Why? Because in the end, after the verse taught me this, I understand that yes, it belongs to the system of labors. Why exactly does it belong to the system of labors? Because there too this is really entropy produced as a result of a human plan. Fine?

Up to here. Thank you very much. Sabbath peace. Sabbath peace. Someone once asked why the world develops if that contradicts the law of entropy. Everyone asks that. I was just asking—I thought maybe.