The Principles of the Categories of Labor – Lesson 4
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- Primary categories and derivatives on the Sabbath, and derivative categories learned conceptually
- Spitting, winnowing, throwing, and the wind assisting
- A common denominator versus conceptual construction
- A parallel in damages: his stone, his knife, his load, and the wind
- Electricity on the Sabbath, the need for a source, and the critique of the “it can’t be” prohibition
- Adding to the Torah, Igrot Moshe, and a Sabbath timer
- Candidates for prohibiting electricity and the distinction between different modes of halakhic ruling
- Me’orei Ha’esh, the Chazon Ish, and defining building as creating a functional organism
- Rabbi Isser Zalman, derivatives of building, and an alternative theoretical proposal
- Electricity as a derivative of building and the level of abstraction in the parent–derivative relationship
Summary
General Overview
The text aims to conclude an introduction to the Sabbath, the primary categories and their derivatives, and to illustrate the complex relationship between them through two examples: winnowing with the wind’s assistance together with the Jerusalem Talmud about spitting, and building with its derivatives through a discussion of electricity on the Sabbath. The central claim is that the derivatives of Sabbath labor are derivatives learned conceptually, but the mechanism by which they are learned is not necessarily a “common denominator”; sometimes it is rather a “conceptual construction” that joins conceptual components from two primary categories without a single shared characteristic. Later, the text sharply criticizes a halakhic tendency to prohibit electricity on the grounds of “it can’t be” or by means of invented rabbinic prohibitions, while also trying to justify the Chazon Ish’s approach that connecting electricity is a derivative of building, based on an abstract definition of building as creating a functional-organic structure.
Primary categories and derivatives on the Sabbath, and derivative categories learned conceptually
The text states that the derivatives of Sabbath labor are conceptually learned derivatives and not derivatives of causation, unlike derivatives of impurity, which are derivatives of causation. It notes that in damages the conclusion is that derivatives are conceptually learned, except for pebbles, which are derivatives of causation. The text presents a dispute over how to understand the primary categories of Sabbath labor: according to Rashi, there is a general prohibition of creating, and the primary categories are different modes of creation; according to Tosafot Ri”d, there are thirty-nine separate prohibitions with no essential link between them, and they are only counted together as one prohibition. The text argues that if one expected a “common denominator,” one might expect a derivative that stems from two primary categories on the Sabbath, as exists in damages, and the absence of such a phenomenon seems to support Tosafot Ri”d against Rashi. Still, an exceptional example is brought from the Jerusalem Talmud.
Spitting, winnowing, throwing, and the wind assisting
The text presents the Jerusalem Talmud’s statement that “one who spits on the Sabbath is liable,” with different versions as to whether the liability is “because of winnowing” or “because of throwing.” It explains that understanding it as “because of winnowing” seems unreasonable, because winnowing is a labor of separating, while in spitting there is no separation between food and waste. The text explains the possibility that this is a derivative of throwing, where the wind helps carry it four cubits in the public domain. It cites Rabbi Menashe of Ilya, who says, “This master said one thing and that master said one thing, and they do not disagree,” because it depends on throwing with respect to the actual transfer of four cubits, and on winnowing in order to teach that the wind’s assistance does not exempt. The text cites an approach attributed to Rashi in Bava Kamma 60, that “purposeful labor” is a stringency, and therefore “for indirect causation one is liable” in the context of labor done with the help of wind. It also brings the Rosh’s claim that liability with the wind’s assistance exists only where that is the normal way of doing it. The text emphasizes that in the end, one warns a person who spits under the category of throwing, not winnowing, and winnowing serves only as the underlying premise that the wind’s involvement does not exempt.
A common denominator versus conceptual construction
The text explains schematically the logic of a “common denominator” as a mechanism of eliminating the unique properties of two teaching cases in order to arrive at a shared characteristic that applies a law to the learned case, illustrating this through an analogy to gravity. It argues that in the case of spitting there is not really any shared feature of winnowing and throwing that could serve as a “common denominator,” and therefore the attempt to formulate it formally as such is mistaken. The text defines the correct mechanism as “conceptual construction,” in which one does not look for an intersection of characteristics but rather forms a union: one takes one component from one primary category and another component from a second primary category and combines them into the derivative. It suggests that for this reason, even when it appears that there is “a derivative from two primary categories” on the Sabbath, it is not a derivative of a common denominator but of conceptual construction. It explains that on the Sabbath one can in any case almost always assign a derivative to one primary category because of the “resolution question” of the thirty-nine narrow categories. The text adds another possibility: the similarity between a primary category and its derivative on the Sabbath is broad and conceptual, so one can always find a “conceptual” parent category for every derivative without needing a common denominator.
A parallel in damages: his stone, his knife, his load, and the wind
The text notes that there are medieval authorities (Rishonim) in damages, headed by the Rosh, who also interpret the derivative case of “his stone, his knife, and his load that were on top of the roof and were blown by the wind” not as a common denominator but as conceptual construction. The text describes a dispute over what exemptions would apply to a derivative learned from a pit and fire, including the possibility that it would carry all the exemptions of both primary categories, the possibility that it would have no exemption at all, and the Rosh’s view that the derivative would have the laws of a pit. The text explains that according to the Rosh this is really a damaging agent of the category of pit, and fire is needed only to teach that the involvement of wind in creating the hazard does not exempt, similar to spitting on the Sabbath, where winnowing is needed only to teach that the wind’s assistance does not exempt even though the labor itself is throwing.
Electricity on the Sabbath, the need for a source, and the critique of the “it can’t be” prohibition
The text describes the issue of electricity on the Sabbath as “sad and vague” and argues that it was obvious to many that it had to be prohibited, but it was far less obvious how to prohibit it within the framework of primary categories and derivatives. The text criticizes the approach attributed to Rabbi Yaakov Ariel, according to which “everything must be prohibited” because “it can’t be” that the Sabbath should look like a weekday, and argues that in Jewish law, to prohibit something you need a source, not to permit it, similar to the principle of legality in law. The text claims that today there is no authority to create new rabbinic prohibitions in the absence of a Sanhedrin, and it criticizes halakhic decisors who say, “If it’s not Torah-level, then it’s rabbinic,” without an authorized enactment. It notes that the Chazon Ish addressed this difficulty and made a claim of delegated authority, of the type of “acting as their agents,” allowing later sages to determine prohibitions as they saw fit, and the text presents this as a dubious claim and even as an “invention” meant to preserve the framework.
Adding to the Torah, Igrot Moshe, and a Sabbath timer
The text defines creating prohibitions without a source as “prohibiting Reformism” and as a violation of “do not add,” arguing that adding prohibitions resembles subtracting from the Torah in that both alter Jewish law. The text cites Maimonides, who says that a religious court issuing a decree must specify that it is rabbinic in order not to violate “do not add,” and concludes that anyone without authority who adds prohibitions “of his own” is acting without a basis. The text cites Igrot Moshe on a Sabbath timer: “It is obvious that one may not permit this… and there is no greater degradation of the Sabbath than this… and it is clear that if this had existed in the time of the Tannaim and Amoraim they would have prohibited it.” It presents a principled difficulty with the claim, “If the Sages were alive today.” The text suggests a possible reading of the argument as fitting a third approach mentioned earlier, according to which the thirty-nine primary labors are a classification of “significant labors” in the world, but then concludes that in Igrot Moshe the intention is probably a rabbinic prohibition by analogy to instructing a non-Jew. It quotes the continuation of Igrot Moshe, where he retreats from the possibility of prohibiting it on that basis and says, “There is no actual prohibition in this,” because it was not prohibited in the time of the Sages, but still writes, “Since it is something that ought to be prohibited, one should not permit it,” and raises the factor of “degradation of the Sabbath,” which the text presents as a vague and hard-to-define concept.
Candidates for prohibiting electricity and the distinction between different modes of halakhic ruling
The text describes how halakhic decisors searched for “something to lean on” in order to prohibit electricity, with kindling fitting mainly incandescent bulbs, and even there it is debatable whether heating metal counts as kindling, while in electronic devices and newer bulbs that model struggles. The text presents “creating something new” as a central rabbinic prohibition associated with Beit Yitzchak, but argues that the Talmudic source about creating a smell in an egg was not ruled in the Tur, the Shulchan Arukh, or Maimonides, and the prohibition “came back to life” in the nineteenth century to provide an anchor. The text distinguishes between “second-order decisors,” who collect opinions and also give weight to the Chazon Ish, and “first-order decisors,” who rule independently and mostly ignore the Chazon Ish because, “What does building have to do with building here at all?” The text states that the speaker changed his position after discussions about positivism, and now believes that the Chazon Ish is “completely right,” and that electricity is prohibited because of building, not as an after-the-fact excuse but as an ideal approach from the outset.
Me’orei Ha’esh, the Chazon Ish, and defining building as creating a functional organism
The text presents the book Me’orei Ha’esh by Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach as a central work on electricity on the Sabbath. It describes how, in the original edition, a chapter meant to explain “why there is no building in electricity” was removed because it seemed unnecessary, but after the publication of the Chazon Ish, who defined electricity as building, that material was restored in a new edition as a full section dealing with the Chazon Ish and including correspondence with him. The text quotes formulations from the Chazon Ish such as “setting it into its condition to allow the electric current to flow continuously” and “it is close to saying that this is building by Torah law, like making a vessel,” and explains that the Chazon Ish sees this as building both in a house attached to the ground and in utensils, because electricity is considered “firmly fixed” and sets the vessel into its proper function. The text describes how the Chazon Ish distinguishes between heating iron, which is “heat dwelling there temporarily,” and connecting current, which activates “an electric force embedded in the wire itself” and creates “a repair of the wire itself from death to life.” It stresses that the use is constant and that the current joins the parts “in the manner of fastening.” The text rejects a simplistic understanding as though merely closing a circuit were the building, and presents the thesis that the Chazon Ish means the transformation of an inert lump into a functioning device. Therefore, the comparison to opening a faucet is incorrect, because a pipe with water remains a pipe, while a wire with current becomes “an electric device,” and “a new reality has come here.”
Rabbi Isser Zalman, derivatives of building, and an alternative theoretical proposal
The text brings an article by Rabbi Isser Zalman, the Even HaEzel, and at length in Kehillot Yaakov, section 37, according to which Maimonides implies that there are two kinds of derivatives of building: making a permanent tent and making cheese. It argues in his name that both are derivatives even though there is no similarity between them, because the primary category includes two features: gathering parts together and creating a functional space, and a derivative can include only one of them. The text criticizes this move as problematic because it creates a logical difficulty in defining what the essential characteristic of building is. It argues that if both features are essential, then the derivatives should not be prohibited by Torah law, and if only one is essential, then only one of the derivatives should be accepted. The text proposes another definition of building as “creating an organism,” meaning creating a functional entity in which the whole is more than the sum of its parts. It brings the Rogatchover’s concepts of “neighborhood composition” versus “blended composition” to describe the transition from a collection of details to a new entity. The text illustrates this through a living body and a corpse, “the ship of Theseus,” “emergence,” and properties that exist not in the individual parts but in the whole, and applies this to a building and to cheese as cases where a “mass” or a “functional space” is created that receives a new name and essence. The text formulates that in a permanent tent there is also a gathering of parts, where the gathering is of the “parts of the space” defined by enclosure, and brings an example from the dispute between Rashbam and Tosafot in Bava Batra over whether a “pit” is the cavity or the walls, to reinforce that building constitutes an entity of functional space.
Electricity as a derivative of building and the level of abstraction in the parent–derivative relationship
The text concludes that according to the proposed definition, activating an electrical device changes it from “a collection of plastics and metals” into “a fan, a radio, a television, a computer” as a functional whole, and therefore it is genuinely building and not merely something to hang an argument on. The text emphasizes that relating it to building requires a high level of abstraction regarding the similarity between the primary category and the derivative, because building in the classic sense is done with stones and boards, whereas here one is “just flipping a switch,” but on the conceptual level the same phenomenon occurs: the establishment of a new functional entity. The text ties this to the general claim that on the Sabbath the similarity between a parent category and its derivative can be broad and conceptual, and therefore it is less likely that one would need the pattern of a common denominator, and it ends by stating that electricity is “prohibited because of building,” while rejecting the focus on kindling or on technical distinctions such as an incandescent bulb.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so what I want to do today, I hope, is finish this general introduction about the Sabbath, the primary categories and derivatives and so on, and then starting next time move into the actual topics: unintentional action, labor not needed for its own sake, and the rules of the labors themselves. And today I want to spend a little time—maybe more by way of illustration—on the complex relationship between the primary categories and their derivatives. We talked about the sources of the primary categories, how the list of primary categories is formed, and about the fact that the derivatives are conceptually learned derivatives and not derivatives of causation. At the beginning of Bava Kamma, as opposed to the derivatives of impurity, which are derivatives of causation, the derivatives of the Sabbath are conceptually learned derivatives. And the Talmud there, regarding derivatives in damages, hesitates, but in the end the conclusion is that they are conceptually learned, except for pebbles—right?—because pebbles are derivatives of causation. So I want to talk a little about this matter of conceptually learned derivatives, because it’s something very general. Okay, so the derivative resembles the parent category, and therefore we declare it a derivative. But what exactly does that mean? So I’m going to do it through two illustrations. One of them we already touched on briefly, but I’ll try to show in a bit more detail what it means, and that is winnowing and the wind assisting it, or spitting—the Jerusalem Talmud about spitting, we talked about that. And the second example will be building and its derivatives, especially as applied to electricity on the Sabbath. Because that example is a good test case to show how we move from the parent category to its derivatives, when those derivatives obviously did not exist either in the Tabernacle or in the period of the Sages, but are something completely new—electricity. So I think that’s a good test case for checking how we work with this logic of parent categories and derivatives. So I’ll start a little with winnowing and the wind assisting it. I talked about the dispute between Rashi and Tosafot Ri”d regarding how we relate to the different primary categories on the Sabbath. According to Rashi, it seems there is some general Sabbath prohibition, the prohibition of creating, and the different primary categories are simply different ways of creating, different applications of the prohibition of creating. According to Tosafot Ri”d, it seems there are thirty-nine different prohibitions; there’s no connection between them. They all emerge from one verse, “You shall not do any labor,” and that’s why we count them in the enumeration of the commandments as one prohibition, but in terms of their essential definition they are actually thirty-nine different prohibitions. And I said that this is what—again, it’s not certain this is Rashi, but this is what people attribute to Rashi; we noted that. But I said there is a possible implication regarding a common denominator. Right? What does that mean? We know that in the Torah there’s a hermeneutic called deriving a principle from two texts, which is basically a common denominator. I have two teaching cases; I see what those two teaching cases actually share—call them the parent categories—and I say I can derive a derivative from those two parent categories because the common feature shared by the two parent categories also exists in the derivative, and therefore it is a derivative of both parent categories in that sense. So we find derivatives of that sort in damages, for example. And that means that derivatives—and probably conceptually learned derivatives—I would expect that where the relationship between the parent and the derivative is a learned conceptual relationship, there could be a derivative that is a derivative of two parent categories, not just one. When would that happen? In a place where one parent category by itself is not enough to teach the derivative. There are essential differences between the parent and the derivative, and you can’t derive it from parent A and you also can’t derive it from parent B, but from the combination of the two together, I can. That’s the structure of a common denominator. But somehow it turns out that in damages this does exist, whereas on the Sabbath it doesn’t. What? What do you mean? What about in the chapter HaKones? No, wait, you’re talking about winnowing and the wind assisting it; we’ll see that in a moment. But at the beginning of Bava Kamma, not in the chapter HaKones, we see that in damages this exists, on page 6. But on the Sabbath we don’t find it anywhere.
[Speaker B] Why? The examples are in damages?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] His stone, his knife, and his load that were on top of the roof and were blown by the wind.
[Speaker B] So “his stone, his knife, and his load” isn’t a common denominator, that’s a dispute. What?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s a dispute between Rav and Shmuel, not whether it’s a derivative of a damaging agent. No, no—it’s a common denominator of two primary categories, just it may be that this works only according to Rav and not according to Shmuel, because it depends on whether a pit applies only in the public domain or not; that’s a side issue. But the Talmud there says that in the end it comes out as a derivative of two parent categories: pit and fire. So where was I? Right—on the Sabbath we apparently don’t find such an example. We don’t find any such example anywhere in the literature of the Sages or in any source. What does that mean? Seemingly, this is evidence for Tosafot Ri”d. Right? Because according to Rashi I would have expected it. After all, there is a common infrastructure to all the parent categories, just like in damages where “they are your responsibility to guard.” So too in the parent categories of Sabbath labor, they’re all different ways of creating. So if I can derive some derivative that is also creative from two parent categories, I would have expected that here too. And if I don’t find a derivative of two parent categories via a common denominator, that seems to be evidence for Tosafot Ri”d against Rashi, because it means there really isn’t any common denominator; there really isn’t anything shared by the different parent categories. They’re two different prohibitions. What kind of common denominator can you make from two different prohibitions? But when we look, there is one exceptional example. And we saw that example: it’s the Jerusalem Talmud speaking about one who spits. And there are different textual versions there, whether it says because of winnowing or because of throwing. “One who spits on the Sabbath is liable.” It doesn’t say from where to where, it just says one who spits. Okay? Now the question is what exactly we’re talking about. So there are different versions and, based on them, different interpretations of what the Jerusalem Talmud means. Some say it’s a derivative of winnowing, and some say it’s a derivative of throwing. Those are the versions. Now if it’s winnowing, then yes, we know winnowing with the wind assisting it, so the idea would be that I perform an action with the aid of the wind, and therefore here too you’re liable. But many already object to that: it makes no sense. Winnowing is an act of separating food from waste. Right? In spitting I’m not separating anything; I’m using the wind, yes, but there is no separation here. How can this belong to a derivative of winnowing? So what then? So indeed there are those who say no, it’s a derivative of throwing. What does that mean? Throwing means four cubits in the public domain. If I throw four cubits in the public domain, that’s a derivative of carrying out and I’m liable. That’s explicit in the Talmud. Now the Jerusalem Talmud says that if you spit, that too is like that—you’re liable because of throwing. Now why because of throwing? It’s not really throwing. Throwing with your mouth? What’s the problem? No, it’s not just throwing with your mouth. If it were ordinary throwing with your mouth, then fine, just ordinary throwing—what difference would it make? Rather, this is a case where he spits and the wind carries it four cubits. In regular throwing, my own force propels it four cubits. Here, the spitting by itself doesn’t do the job, only with the kind assistance of the wind. Okay? And then it reaches four cubits. So it’s a derivative of throwing, but not really throwing. Rabbi Menashe of Ilya says: “One master said one thing and another master said another thing, and they do not disagree.” It’s a derivative of both throwing and winnowing together. Why? Because it’s obvious that it is not a derivative of winnowing in the sense that there is no separating labor here, right? That’s irrelevant. So what is it? Obviously the labor here is throwing, the transfer of four cubits in the public domain. But you need winnowing to teach you that the fact that you made use of the wind does not exempt you. That I learn from winnowing. So in effect, if you ask me on what basis I’m liable—on the basis of throwing, not on the basis of winnowing. The labor of winnowing is needed here to teach me that even if I threw with the help of the wind, I still violated the labor of throwing, just as with winnowing, if I did it with the help of the wind I am still liable because of winnowing. But in the end, this is spitting, not winnowing. Okay? So he’s basically saying there’s a common denominator here from winnowing and throwing together, and from that I learn about spitting. So at first glance we’ve gone back to Rashi. Before, we had evidence for Tosafot Ri”d from the fact that there was no common denominator; now there is a common denominator. If there is a common denominator, then what kind of evidence is that? The question is whether that is really what the Jerusalem Talmud means. But if that is what it means, it fits Rashi’s approach. What? That with the aid of the wind you mean winnowing. Yes, Rashi says this explicitly in Bava Kamma 60, that with Sabbath labors, because “the Torah prohibited purposeful labor,” in that context I quoted Rashi, that purposeful labor is a stringency. And since the Torah prohibited purposeful labor, then for indirect causation one is liable. Meaning, any labor done with the help of the wind—you’re liable. And the Rosh argues that this is only for winnowing because that is the normal way to do it, but not for other labors—the Rosh can’t disagree. Yes, if that is the normal way of doing it, then even with the help of the wind you’re liable. So apparently we’ve gone back to Rashi, basically. So there is a common denominator in the laws of the Sabbath—but that’s not correct. If you look at it carefully, you’ll see that this derivation is not a derivation of a common denominator. It’s a derivation I call conceptual construction, not a common denominator. What do I mean? A common denominator is a derivation where there is some feature shared by the two teaching cases. And that shared feature also exists in the learned case. Since that is so, I say: good, from the two teaching cases I understand that the learned case is also obligated. Okay? That’s a common denominator. Maybe I’ll show this in a diagram. What? Where’s the mouse? Yes, it’s not exactly a region because I’m talking about characteristics, but here. Look at this diagram. This is basically a schematic diagram of the logic of a common denominator. I have two parent categories above, and from both of them together I derive some law for the derivative. Right? The parent categories are A and B, and the derivative is C. Now the law is, say, liability to pay, as in damages. Okay? So P is what I’m trying to derive. So how is a common denominator structured? Look at the diagram and I’ll describe it verbally. I begin by trying to derive C from A. Okay? What do I say? Just as in both C and A there is Y-bar—X, Y, and Z are characteristics. X-bar means it lacks the characteristic X, Y-bar means it lacks Y, Z-bar means it lacks Z. If it’s just Z without a bar, then it has characteristic Z. Okay? That’s the meaning of the notation. Now I try to derive from A to C. I say: no—what is unique to A? It has characteristic X. You see that in C it is X-bar; it does not have characteristic X. Right? So I can’t derive it from A. So I say: B will prove it. What about B—sorry, yes, B—so I’ll derive from B to C. Why? Because in B too, as you see, there is no X. That’s X-bar, right? No X. So everything is fine? No. What about B, which has Y? In B there is Y, and note that in C, Y too is barred. C does not have Y either, right? So I can’t derive it from B either. And then suddenly some hocus-pocus happens, and the law returns. A and B together—what is the common denominator between them? That they have Z. Then say of C too that it has Z—and you see Z appears without a bar in C, right? What does that mean? It basically means this: I try to derive the law from A to C, and then I say: what is unique to A? It has X. What does that mean, “what is unique to A is that it has X”? It means that the law P—liability to pay, say—perhaps depends on characteristic X; maybe that’s why this law exists in parent category A. But if so, then it won’t exist in C, because C doesn’t have characteristic X, right? So I say: okay, then I’ll derive it from B. And you tell me, what does B show me? B shows me that X is irrelevant, because the fact is that law P also exists in parent category B, and B doesn’t have characteristic X. You see that it’s not true that X is the cause of law P. I say: good, then if that’s the case, everything is fine, let’s derive from B to C. But no, because what is unique to B is that it has Y. It could be that what causes law P in parent category B—if I were an Arab I couldn’t say that sentence to you—so maybe what causes it is characteristic Y. Right? And characteristic Y does not exist in C, so from B too you can’t derive it. And then I say: yes, so now notice what comes out if you look at A and B together. After all, characteristic P, liability to pay, say if the two parent categories are fire and pit, and both are liable to pay—I said good, maybe the unique feature of fire causes it. You said no, because the fact is that with pit too one must pay. Maybe the unique feature of pit? No, because the fact is that with fire too one must pay. So apparently it’s not X and not Y; it’s not the unique characteristics. So what is it? Presumably that shared characteristic that exists in both A and B—this is really scientific elimination. Okay? So I say it’s probably the shared characteristic that exists in both A and B. What is that? It’s Z. Ah, so Z is what causes law P. Fine—then what’s the problem? C also has Z. So I take the common denominator that exists in A and B, and from that I derive the derivative C. Think about the law of gravity; I always use that example. Say I let this go, and it falls downward, right? Then I say, okay, what is unique to this? It’s made of glass. Fine. I take this other thing, throw it down, and it too falls. It’s not made of glass. So apparently glass is not the cause, right? I say yes, but what is unique to that is that it has a handle. Fine, this one doesn’t have a handle. Fine, and now the law returns: you see that really the handle isn’t the cause, because this also falls; glass isn’t the cause, because this also falls. So what does cause it? The fact that both have mass. And therefore an object with mass will fall toward the earth. That is exactly scientific generalization; it’s simply elimination of features. I’m saying that certain features cannot be the cause, because the fact is that other things lacking that feature still display the property, the law, or the physical phenomenon. Okay? So I’m trying to understand which features of the parent categories generate the law that exists in both parent categories. I eliminate and say it’s not X and it’s not Y, so presumably it’s Z. If it’s Z, then no problem—then in C too one is liable to pay; C too has property P, because it too has Z. Okay? That’s what is called a common denominator. A common denominator means that I remove the features unique to each of the two teaching cases, find the shared characteristic—the so-called common denominator—strip away the unequal sides and leave the equal side, and now, if the law is generated by the common denominator, then any thing that has that common denominator, that Z, will also have law P. Okay? That’s the logic of a common denominator. You can discuss it at length too, but that’s not for now. Is that what happens in the case of winnowing and the wind assisting it? Or spitting—forget winnowing, spitting. Is that what exists in the case of spitting? Obviously not. Why? Think about it: what is the common denominator between winnowing and throwing? Let’s formulate it as a common denominator to derive spitting. So I begin by deriving spitting from winnowing. And what do I say? Just as in winnowing one is liable, so too one who spits is liable. What is unique to winnowing? It is a labor of sorting, where you separate the grain from the chaff. Spitting doesn’t sort anything. So I say: throwing will prove it, because in throwing there is no sorting and yet one is liable. And what is unique to throwing? There is no involvement of the wind there. So I say: good, winnowing will prove it, because there there is wind involved, and the law returns, and the two together teach me spitting. That is the formal formulation of a common denominator. But understand: that’s only formally so. It isn’t really true. Why? There is no actual common denominator between winnowing and throwing. What is the shared characteristic Z between them? Nothing. What characterizes throwing and winnowing? What do they share? Nothing. The wind is in winnowing, and in throwing? What? Never mind—say according to Tosafot Ri”d. Say according to Tosafot Ri”d. There’s nothing shared between them.
[Speaker D] Something that passes through the air? What? Something that passes through the air.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, that’s not—obviously not. Is everything that passes through the air prohibited on the Sabbath? No one is trying to make that argument. So it looks like a common denominator, but it isn’t. It’s conceptual construction. And I can show you in the Talmud in all sorts of places that people get tangled up in difficulties—medieval authorities and later authorities get tangled up in difficulties—because they diagnose this as a common denominator, and that’s a mistake. It’s conceptual construction. Not a common denominator. The formulation is very, very similar—I can formulate it that way—but look, I’ll show you the diagram of conceptual construction, and you’ll see: it’s similar, but not identical. Here. See? That’s conceptual construction. Look: very, very similar, but there’s one difference. There is no Z. Right? In other words, again: A has characteristic X and lacks characteristic Y; B lacks X and has Y; and C has neither X nor Y. But Z isn’t there. So how does the logic work? The logic works very simply: I’m not doing an intersection, I’m doing a union. A common denominator is an intersection. Right? What is the overlap, what is shared by the two teaching cases? X and Y are not shared; Z is what is shared. Here I’m doing a union, not an intersection. I take a certain characteristic from one parent category, a different characteristic from another parent category, stick them together, and create a derivative. In other words, I take one characteristic from throwing, namely the transfer of four cubits. There’s no sorting in it; yes, it’s not separating food from waste; it’s the transfer of four cubits in the public domain. Fine. But now something is still missing, because there’s no assistance from the wind. So I take a characteristic from winnowing, where I see that assistance from the wind does not interfere. I attach that, and now I say: transfer of four cubits with the assistance—the assistance of the wind—that will be a derivative of both. Notice, this is not a common denominator. I’m taking a combination of X and Y, or of not-X and not-Y. Do you see? I take the not-X from B, the not-Y from A, and I apply the result to C, because I see that neither the absence of Y nor the absence of X interferes. Right? The lack of direct human action—because the wind is helping—doesn’t bother me. The lack of sorting—you didn’t sort anything—also doesn’t bother me. I take those two things together, and I basically say that the derivative is also liable. This is really a union, not an intersection. It is the union of A and B, not the intersection of A and B. Right? Unite the characteristics of A and B—what do you get? The union of X with not-X is X; the union of Y with not-Y is Y. So the overall union is X and Y, right? Or look at the mirror image: not-X and not-Y. Okay, the point is that there really isn’t a common denominator here. Winnowing and throwing have nothing in common. So even if we seem to find a common denominator here, it isn’t really a common denominator. And now I want to argue that if so, then really—even according to Rashi, and according to Tosafot Ri”d all the labors are like this—but even according to Rashi, they didn’t really use a common denominator here. And therefore we really don’t find an example of a common denominator in the labors of the Sabbath. What was done here is conceptual construction. And then the question comes back: why indeed don’t we use a common denominator? According to Tosafot Ri”d that’s obvious—you don’t use a common denominator because there is no common denominator for all the Sabbath labors—but according to Rashi, why not? So we talked about this. I said there are one of two possibilities. One possibility is to say that… one possibility—I said one, not two. The one possibility I mentioned is the question of resolution. In other words, in the primary categories of damages there are four categories, or thirteen in the baraitot, twenty-four in the later baraitot; in the Mishnah there are four primary categories of damages. Four primary categories of damages means that each one covers a fairly broad segment of kinds of damage. It’s divided into only four categories. On the Sabbath it’s divided into thirty-nine categories. So each category is fairly narrow. Okay? Therefore, in most of the derivatives you look for, they will naturally belong to one of the primary categories. You have lots of options because the resolution is higher. So it is less likely that we would need something that would be a derivative requiring two parent categories, and that we would not be able to assign clearly to one parent category. In damages, because the parent categories are broader and less sharp, less clearly defined, it may be that there are derivatives that fall between the parent categories, and we would need two of them in order to derive the derivative. So that is only a technical question, not a substantive one. Here I want to say something else, and this takes me to the second part of the lecture. I want to argue that maybe the resemblance we draw between a parent category and its derivative on the Sabbath is a very broad resemblance. In other words, it is a conceptual resemblance and not such a concrete one. And because of that, for every derivative we will find, at the conceptual level, the parent category under which it can be placed. Because the requirements are much less unequivocal than in other places. And that I want to demonstrate today. Okay? Through the labor of building and the Sabbath and so on. So that concludes the first part. First of all, it turns out—
[Speaker C] So what you’re basically saying is that there really isn’t much of a case where we would say “common denominator” that now we can’t say, because your case is even better from the standpoint of—it’s even stronger from the standpoint of—the technique you mentioned is stronger than a common denominator, because you can do it anywhere you can do
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] a common denominator, and more.
[Speaker C] So what’s the question? I mean, then there’s really no reason to say there wouldn’t be a common
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] denominator on the Sabbath; it only strengthens it. Conceptual construction, not a common denominator. Conceptual construction.
[Speaker C] Right, there really is—okay, I’m saying, that only
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] strengthens it; it should be even more common. No, it won’t be more common because, as I said before, you’ll always find some parent category that it fits. Right, yes. A second question—
[Speaker C] Seemingly, in damages too it makes a lot of sense to say the same thing. What? That it’s not a common denominator, that it’s conceptual construction.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s a different question. I think I mentioned— I don’t remember if I mentioned it, but if you want I’ll send it to you—I think it’s a dispute among the medieval authorities. There are medieval authorities in damages too, the Rosh for example, who say that there too it is not a common denominator but conceptual construction, and then, again, many of the difficulties raised against him fall away. That’s the Rosh and the Geonim—whoever knows the sugya there on page 6, a very famous dispute. The question is this: when you derive from pit and fire the case of his stone, his knife, and his load that were on the roof, fell, and caused damage after coming to rest, right?—you derive that from pit and fire. Now the question is: what exemptions will the derivative have? Pit is exempt for vessels, right? “Ox and not a person, donkey and not vessels.” Which of those exemptions will apply to the derivative? So there’s a dispute in the Rosh. The Rosh seemingly brings two views there; in my opinion there are really three. One opinion says it will have all the exemptions. That’s the most logical, right? If you need both teaching cases, then anywhere one of them is exempt, you no longer have both teaching cases; obviously the most logical thing is that all the exemptions of both parent categories would exist in the derivative. The second opinion—this is the opinion the Rosh mentions, or sorry, one opinion that appears there indirectly in the Rosh—is that there would be no exemptions at all. No exemptions at all. And I think what lies behind this is precisely the opposite view, which says there is one big common denominator here that tells you: anything that is your property and whose guarding is your responsibility, you are liable to pay for. If it resembles one of the parent categories very closely, it will have the exemptions of that parent category. But a derivative that does not completely resemble either of the two parent categories will have no exemption. It will have the liability, but no exemption can be derived for it. That is the second opinion. And the Rosh himself argues that all the laws of pit apply to them. That is generally how people rule in practice. The laws of pit: it would be exempt for vessels, but not exempt for concealed items. Why not? According to the Rosh it is clear that this is not a common denominator, right? It’s clearly not a common denominator according to the Rosh. So what is it? A common denominator could be interpreted in one of the two previous directions, but not by the Rosh. What is the Rosh actually saying? Once the stone, knife, and load fell down and caused damage, it is obviously a pit. There’s no fire there at all, no nonsense—it’s just a pit, something lying in the public domain that you trip over and a person is damaged. Why did I need fire? Because there was involvement of the wind in making it fall from the roof. I didn’t dig the pit; the wind dug the pit. Right? It took the stone, knife, and load. So this is exactly like on the Sabbath, like spitting on the Sabbath. I need fire to teach that the involvement of wind does not exempt. But in the end, the damaging agent is an instance of pit. Exactly like spitting: if you ask me what category you violated, under which parent category do we warn someone who spits? We warn him under throwing, not under winnowing. I need winnowing only in order to say that even if there’s wind involved, you’re not exempt. But there is no labor of winnowing here; the labor is throwing. That’s what you did. The same thing in the Rosh, right? It’s a dispute among the medieval authorities. Good. So that’s the first part. In the second part I want to move to electricity on the Sabbath and the parameters of the labor of building. And there I’ll try to demonstrate the conceptual room there is when I draw the analogy between the derivative and the parent category. You’ll see that this isn’t just some technical matter. There is something much more abstract here, broader, conceptual, and therefore it is quite clear that there will be no need for a common denominator. I will always find a conceptual parent category for whatever kind of labor I’m looking for. Okay? In a moment you’ll see that I really am looking, because that is how the mechanism is built. So first of all, regarding electricity on the Sabbath: electricity on the Sabbath is a sad and vague sugya. Right? Almost everyone felt it was obvious that it had to be prohibited. It was much less clear how it could be prohibited. In other words, a derivative of what would it be, or on what grounds would I prohibit it? I can’t just prohibit things for no reason. I once brought on my website an article by Rabbi Ariel about a smart home—Rabbi Yaakov Ariel on a smart home. He says: we have to prohibit everything; that’s obvious, because it can’t be that such a thing should be permitted. Huh? Are you talking about electricity?
[Speaker E] No, no, the smart home isn’t here.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I’m saying—I don’t know whether nobody thinks this way—Rabbi Ariel said that this is something that has to be forbidden. It’s obvious, it can’t be, because it turns the Sabbath into a weekday, and so on. And that kind of thing really annoyed me. What annoyed me wasn’t the conclusion; what annoyed me was the reasoning. Meaning, what do you mean, “it can’t be”? If it can’t be, then it can’t be—but bottom line, if you didn’t find a source, then it’s permitted. In other words, in order to forbid something, you need a source.
[Speaker C] He thinks that this really is what the Sabbath is—he’s saying the truth, apparently he really thinks that electricity on the Sabbath was forbidden from the outset.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, “was forbidden”? There are the thirty-nine primary categories of labor and their derivatives. So don’t you have to identify which primary category and which derivative? Can you just forbid something because you don’t like it?
[Speaker C] What? He looks at it historically and says the truth.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I don’t know what “historically” and “truth” mean. I’m talking about a halakhic consideration; I’m not an academic researcher, I’m a man of Jewish law. I want to understand whether this thing is forbidden or permitted. In order to say whether something is forbidden or permitted, you need a source. It’s like someone I once mentioned—the Rebbe of Klausenburg once said that if it weren’t written that one is allowed to break challah on the Sabbath, or cut challah on the Sabbath, he would also forbid cutting challah on the Sabbath. Meaning, in order to permit something you need a source. Which is total nonsense, of course. To forbid, you need a source. Anything for which you have no source is permitted. There are people who’ve gotten a bit disoriented about this, but it’s obvious that in Jewish law, to forbid you need a source, not to permit. Right? It’s like in law. The principle of legality in the legal world—what is that principle? Anything the law didn’t forbid is permitted to you. Right? You don’t need reasons to show it’s permitted; you need a source showing it’s forbidden. As for government authorities, it works the opposite way. The opposite. There, anything the law didn’t authorize them to do is forbidden, because they are, of course, infringing on citizens’ rights, and in order to infringe on a citizen’s rights you need a source that gives you the authority to do it. But with me, if you want to forbid me from doing something, bring a source. As long as there is no source, then it’s permitted for me. Right? Same thing in Jewish law. So here too, yes—so on the Sabbath, with electricity. Fine, I understand why you want to forbid it, but the desire to forbid isn’t enough. The question is: what’s the source? You need… if you were the Sanhedrin, you could make, I don’t know, some rabbinic decree of your own and say, okay, I can’t permit such a thing, I claim it needs to be forbidden rabbinically. There is no Sanhedrin. Nobody today has the authority to create new prohibitions. In order to forbid, you have to find a source. To say it’s this kind of rabbinic prohibition, or that kind of Torah-level prohibition, I don’t know, this primary category, that derivative—but you have to find a source. You can’t forbid things without a source. By the way, a lot of halakhic decisors fail on this point. Think about decisors who look and actually say: look, this doesn’t fit the definitions of a Torah-level prohibition, but it can’t be that it’s permitted, so it’s rabbinically forbidden. Oh, it’s rabbinically forbidden? Did you find some enactment of an authorized court, a Sanhedrin, that established that it’s forbidden? What are you inventing rabbinic prohibitions for? A rabbinic prohibition requires a sitting of a court that establishes a prohibition on the matter. A rabbinic prohibition is not something you just make up. Even if it may be appropriate to forbid it—you may be right. But if you’re not the Sanhedrin, how can you forbid it? You need authority for that. Right, that’s it. You get all sorts of decisors—you know, the kind who say we don’t recite Hallel on Israel Independence Day because we don’t have authority to introduce innovations. But innovations regarding rabbinic prohibitions—they invent them at every step. This is rabbinically forbidden, that is forbidden—what rabbinic prohibition? Who is the religious court that established this rabbinic prohibition? The Chazon Ish at least was an honest man. He addressed this question. And he argued something a little dubious, but that’s what he argued. He claimed that the early sages essentially delegated authority—some kind of “they act as our agents” sort of idea—they delegated authority to the sages of later generations, that whatever seems to them should be forbidden, we forbid on your authority. Some kind of “they act as our agents” idea. Okay, I don’t know where they invented that from. Yes, exactly. Whoever accepts it, accepts it; whoever doesn’t, doesn’t. Fine. The Chazon Ish has all sorts of inventions like that that clearly don’t hold water, and it’s doubtful he himself believed them, but he understood that he needed to say it. Yes, yes. He had to… it’s obvious he said things just to preserve the framework and so all kinds of Reform people wouldn’t get in through the cracks. Fine. Back to our matter: so I ask, why forbid electricity on the Sabbath? Now, the argument that comes closest to this kind of Reformism—prohibiting Reformism; usually that doesn’t happen among Reform people, but here it’s prohibiting Reformism: they invent prohibitions. That’s “do not add,” not “do not subtract.” Reform Jews are usually accused of “do not subtract,” but “do not add” is also Reformism. To the same extent. Meaning, you’re not allowed to change Jewish law—not that you’re forbidden only to subtract or add to it, but you’re forbidden to change it. Or rather, you can’t change it—not “forbidden”; you can change it but it has no force, it’s an invention. After all, Maimonides says that even a religious court that enacted a regulation or decree has to state that it is a rabbinic law, because otherwise it violates “do not add.” Because people will think it’s a Torah law, and then it has added to Torah prohibitions. And even a court that does have authority to add prohibitions—if it doesn’t specify that this is a rabbinic prohibition, it violates “do not add.” Not to mention someone who has no authority whatsoever to add, and he adds prohibitions of his own, rabbinic or Torah-level, I don’t know—then it’s just… I don’t know whether he violates “do not add”; he’s just talking nonsense. There is no such thing, no such prohibition. Where did you invent it from? In any case, the clearest example I found of this is Igrot Moshe. He talks about operating things by means of a Sabbath timer. Yes, here it is, exactly in that column I wrote about Rabbi Ariel’s comments. I also brought that Chazon Ish there. So here, the argument in Igrot Moshe—yes, in Orach Chayim 4—he says: “In my humble opinion it is obvious that one must not permit this. For by means of such a time-indicator”—meaning a Sabbath timer—“one can do all forms of labor on the Sabbath and in all factories, and there is no greater degradation of the Sabbath than this. And it is clear that had this existed in the time of the Tannaim and Amoraim, they would have forbidden it, just as they forbade telling a non-Jew to do work for this reason and the like.” What is he saying? He’s saying: if the sages of the Talmud were alive today, then clearly they would forbid this. Fine—but they aren’t alive today.
[Speaker E] But they’re working from the assumption that they would have… doesn’t he think otherwise?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m asking a question. Fine, if they were alive—but they’re not alive today. So have you now appointed yourself in place of the sages? What? I don’t understand. By what authority are you forbidding it? By virtue of the fact that if the sages were alive today they’d forbid it? Do you have a source for that? That’s Reformism in the finest form. Say, this is the Mekhilta—we talked about this Mekhilta.
[Speaker D] And you kind of caused there to be the prohibition because the prohibition in…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. Okay, therefore what?
[Speaker D] You could say it’s because it shouldn’t look like a weekday—that’s the point. The Rabbi mentioned that telling a non-Jew is because of a decree of weekday-like activity.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He says that the reason they forbade telling a non-Jew is so it won’t look like a weekday, because otherwise you can do everything through a non-Jew. That’s the same consideration you’re mentioning—what’s called that the Sabbath turns into a weekday. You’re effectively nullifying all Sabbath prohibitions. Okay, so he says the same thing exists with a Sabbath timer. So his claim, apparently—at first glance. On second thought I’m not sure at all—but what apparently is written here is basically the following. I’ll now translate this. We saw three possibilities for understanding how we construct the list of the thirty-nine primary categories of labor. Right? One possibility was that these are the important forms of labor, regardless of the Tabernacle. The Tabernacle may perhaps be connected to the derivatives in some way, but the third approach we discussed is: the important labors. You look at all the types of labor that exist in the world, sort them, distill from them the thirty-nine important ones. Important in both senses: both in the sense of what defines them uniquely and in the sense of the degree of creativity, if we go with Rashi. And that is the list of the thirty-nine primaries. Okay? Now according to that logic, then apparently Igrot Moshe is really right. Because what is he saying? He’s saying: if the sages were alive today, and today we were going over all the forms of labor that exist in the world and sorting from them the thirty-nine important forms of labor, then obviously winnowing, selecting, and sifting would be reduced from three to two, and electricity would be inserted instead. Right? Because clearly winnowing, selecting, and sifting are the same thing. The Talmud itself says: winnowing is selecting, selecting is sifting—it’s just that you include them in order to reach thirty-nine. Right? You split them up. And now today I have a type of labor that is obviously important. And after all, the important forms of labor are simply what the sages understood from looking at the world around them. It’s not some tradition, a law given to Moses at Sinai, about what the Torah meant—speaking according to the third approach, if this isn’t based on the Tabernacle. Right? According to the third approach, basically it says: the Torah forbade the important forms of labor. That’s what the Torah forbade. We know there need to be thirty-nine because the word for labor appears thirty-nine times in the Torah—the Talmud in tractate Sabbath. Right? So how do we find the thirty-nine? We go through all the forms of labor in the universe and try to distill from them the thirty-nine important ones. Okay? What is so sacred about the period of the Talmudic sages? If we look today at the important forms of labor, the list changes a bit, right? Why? Why? That’s another invention of the Chazon Ish. Another invention of the Chazon Ish, yes. Two thousand years of Torah, and he invented exactly this point—another invention. Meaning there’s no logic to it at all. In the end, the Torah says: take the thirty-nine important forms of labor in your own time, each person in his own era. In the time of the sages they gathered those thirty-nine. In our time, we have electricity; it’s far more important than other forms of labor. Right? So when it said to look at the thirty-nine important forms of labor, it didn’t say to look at the thirty-nine important forms of labor in the time of Rav Ashi. Right? That’s not what it meant. No, but this isn’t in the time of Moses; in the time of the Tannaim they made the list. But that’s what they… but why? Who said they did it based on Moses? They did it based on their own time. Maybe they too… but he wants to forbid
[Speaker C] electricity—that is, he doesn’t want to forbid it as a primary category of labor.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Good point. That’s why I noted earlier that I’d qualify this in a moment. You’re right. So apparently—at first, when I saw this, I thought what’s written here is actually that specifically regarding Sabbath labors one really could say this. Because specifi… one second—because specifically regarding Sabbath labors, I could have said that indeed I need to gather the thirty-nine important forms of labor, and therefore if today I see that electricity on the Sabbath is an important form of labor, then obviously it should be included among the primary categories. If the sages were alive today, it would enter the list. The fact that they aren’t alive today is just incidental. What difference does that make? So I’ll do the work. Therefore there was room to say that specifically regarding the Sabbath, apparently you wouldn’t need to look for a source to forbid it. On the contrary, I do have a source: “Do not do any labor.” It’s just that if this labor is important, then it is included in the prohibition of “do not do any labor.” So specifically for the Sabbath, apparently one could have said such a thing. But as you rightly said, I think, it seems to me that’s not what he meant. He meant to forbid it rabbinically, like telling a non-Jew. He didn’t mean to say that electricity would now become one of the primary categories of labor. He meant to say that just as the sages added rabbinic prohibitions according to the first two approaches as well—not according to the third approach where every important labor is itself a primary category—even according to the first two approaches. So leave aside the primary categories and derivatives; I already have them. But the sages also added, rabbinically, telling a non-Jew. Why? Because they didn’t want the Sabbath to turn into a weekday. He says: exactly that same consideration applies to a Sabbath timer. And about that he says that if the sages were alive today, clearly they would also forbid this rabbinically—not that they would insert it as a primary category of labor. By the way, in his conclusion he really says: “But even if we say that one may forbid only that which the sages enacted, and we cannot derive from this to forbid also something which by logic is severe, since in any case they did not forbid it, even though this was because this matter did not exist in the days of the sages, there is no actual prohibition here.” Here he retracts what I argued against what Rabbi Ariel wrote—he wanted to forbid it as a Torah law, not rabbinically, at least from the brief description. It was a journalistic summary; I didn’t hear the lecture itself. But I’m saying: Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, if I’m right in the point I made at the end, in what I noted earlier, then he wants only to say that it’s rabbinically forbidden, like telling a non-Jew—not that it is one of the primary categories of labor. But even from that he backs down. Even that can’t be forbidden, because it didn’t exist in the time of the sages. Okay? The fact that they would be alive today—fine, but they aren’t alive today. So therefore he backs off from it. Then he says, “Since it is something fitting to be forbidden, one should not permit it.” What does he mean there? That’s an interesting question. Later on he says, “There is strong reason to forbid it on another ground: degradation of the Sabbath.” Yes, that’s the term people pull out of their sleeve. I have no idea how one determines what counts as degradation of the Sabbath and what counts as weekday-like activity. Riding a bicycle is weekday-like activity. Why? Because on the Sabbath it’s forbidden to ride, so one rides only on weekdays. Therefore on the Sabbath it’s forbidden to ride because it’s weekday-like activity. Meaning, if you permit it on the Sabbath, then it won’t be weekday-like activity. A kind of bypass road that isn’t clear how to define. Fine. In any case, that’s less important for our purpose. What interests me is really the relation to the primary categories and derivatives of Sabbath labor. So he says, “One should not permit it.” Maybe he means: don’t say that it’s permitted. As if, the truth is that it’s permitted, but don’t say so, because it’s something fitting to be forbidden. We’ll forbid it, yes—something like that, maybe, I don’t know. Lie gently. In any case, the argument itself—but now I’m leaving Rabbi Moshe Feinstein aside—the argument itself really is an argument that needs discussion. There is a labor here, electricity; the sages didn’t live today; and suppose it doesn’t emerge straightforwardly from one of the primary categories or derivatives—what do I do with such a thing? And it is fitting to be forbidden, like all the discussions of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein that exist generally, not only regarding a Sabbath timer but electricity in general, okay? Even much more so. Rabbi Moshe Feinstein? I don’t remember anymore. After all, the Sabbath has a defined framework of prohibitions.
[Speaker D] No, what about before the Sabbath?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m talking about on the Sabbath. Why before? I’m talking about the Sabbath—why before the Sabbath? No, no, that’s a different discussion. I’m talking now about activating electricity on the Sabbath. I’ve left the Sabbath timer aside. I want to activate an electric circuit on the Sabbath, turn on the light on the Sabbath, okay? Is that permitted or forbidden? So in the nineteenth century, when this issue became relevant, the halakhic decisors confronted it, and the clear impression is that it was obvious to them that it had to be forbidden, and now they were just looking for where it comes from. Okay? So the Chazon Ish is known for classifying it as building, and others as kindling, creating, because it’s like creating fragrance in an egg there, or something like that. But it’s obvious this was some sort of game where it was clear in advance that it needed to be forbidden, and now we look for something to hang it on. Something to hang it on, right? It’s pretty clear this is a kind of fixed game. Now, with regard to the Sabbath, as I said earlier, such a fixed game isn’t entirely unfounded, because if we really take—at least in the third approach, or according to Rashi, say—that the prohibition is a prohibition on significant creation, and now we just need different modes of significant creation, then it’s obvious that this kind of creation is significant creation on the Sabbath, so basically it should be forbidden. Then I only have a technical problem of what to hang it on, and I’m looking—maybe even with some strain—for something to hang it on, but the prohibition is clearly supposed to be there. According to the Tosafot Rid, it’s harder, because according to the Tosafot Rid these really are just thirty-nine prohibitions that were forbidden simply because they were in the Tabernacle, that’s all. Not creativity and nothing else. There is no reason in the world to forbid electricity unless you really found a genuine similarity to one of the primary categories that existed in the Tabernacle. Right? Otherwise there is no reason to forbid it. According to Rashi, you tell me every form of creation is basically forbidden; the thirty-nine primary categories are just different ways of creating. So here, obviously this ought to be forbidden in some way. And now I’m only looking for what to hang it on. So the Chazon Ish decided on building, someone else decided on kindling—but it’s obvious that comes afterward. First of all, it’s forbidden; now let’s see what I can hang it on. Okay? So that’s the perspective in the decisor’s mind when he comes to it. And now I want to look at the… what? Exactly so, that’s what I’m saying. Right. I’m saying, in the end, with Sabbath matters there is room for this kind of thinking—specifically with regard to the Sabbath. There is room for this kind of thinking if you go by the third approach, which of course nobody accepts, if you go by the third approach we found there at the beginning of Bava Kamma, that the primary categories of labor are the important forms of labor. Now I want to look a bit at this—so really, why on the Sabbath do we forbid electricity? Why do we forbid electricity? So look, as is well known—I’ll send you, I’ll send you in the summaries also these columns that I’m using here, links—when we look at the prohibition of electricity on the Sabbath, where exactly can it be drawn from? Because again, the assumption is always that it’s a kind of fixed game. It’s obvious to us that we need to forbid it; now the question is what to hang it on. So the obvious candidate for most decisors is kindling. But kindling applies only to certain things on the Sabbath. There’s an incandescent bulb, and even there one can discuss whether there is kindling in metal; it’s not so simple. But, but, but that’s when there is an incandescent bulb, say. Then maybe one can talk about kindling. Elsewhere it gets more complicated—electronic devices, or even today’s bulbs that are no longer incandescent. You know the… I wrote about that too once—they forbade incandescent bulbs because of energy waste, right? So there are energy-saving bulbs. So my son-in-law showed me some website, I think from Germany, where it had become forbidden to sell incandescent bulbs, and he was a dealer in incandescent bulbs. So he sold—because these are bulbs with low efficiency, right? The efficiency is that the light comes at a high energy cost that mostly goes to waste. What? Yes, yes, it’s light with low efficiency. So he wasn’t selling bulbs that produce light with low efficiency; he was selling bulbs that produce heat with high efficiency. He was selling heaters. Right—some of the electricity is wasted on light, but that’s a negligible part. Overall, I’m selling you a heater. It’s permitted to sell heaters, isn’t it? And the heater always comes with an incandescent bulb. So he sold heaters, and his website was simply wonderful—I died laughing when I read it. By the way, it was real: he really sold bulbs, but openly mocked the law and everything else on the site itself. He says, what are you talking about, this is permitted. Actually the column where I wrote about it dealt with the question why you can’t solve problems top-down, solve problems from above. You think some piece of legislation will solve the problem—the market is always smarter than you. There was another example I once heard, an example I heard from him, about his father-in-law. He told me he had a business in England. And in London there was a law that shops were forbidden to open on Sunday unless they were food stores. And he was a religious Jew, so he didn’t open on the Sabbath, but on Sunday it was forbidden to open. So he had to be closed two days. Now he had a furniture business. You can’t open that on Sunday. So he opened a vegetable store, and he said that anyone who buys a kilo of tomatoes gets a sofa for a thousand sterling. In other words—a sale. It’s exactly the same as the bulbs, the exact same idea. So in short, you won’t solve problems through legislation. That’s the principle. Among positivists, certainly not. When legislators caught on to this, they stopped being positivists and simply forbade things even though you could still work around the law, because basically they just forbid it, period. Exactly like what’s done here. Meaning, you could permit electricity if you follow positivist inference, the logic—but it’s obvious it should be forbidden, and therefore we’ll forbid it. There’s no choice. Anyone who thinks one can be a positivist is naïve. Fine. In any case, back to our matter. Kindling doesn’t really do the job. Right? It can perhaps forbid incandescent bulbs, but other things—electronic devices—won’t be forbidden as kindling. So what then? Usually they move to rabbinic prohibitions. There are rabbinic prohibitions; there is “creating,” which is basically the most prominent rabbinic prohibition here. That’s the Beit Yitzchak. The Beit Yitzchak’s view was basically the first to formulate this. The source is some Talmudic passage in tractate Beitzah about creating fragrance and all kinds of creating and so on. Even though that Talmudic passage wasn’t ruled on by any halakhic authority—not the Tur, not the Shulchan Arukh, not Maimonides, nowhere. But here it is: the prohibition of “creating” came back to life in the nineteenth century, because there is “creating.” Maybe there is something there—but not about creating fragrance and not about the other things similar to it, okay? Creating ice is creating something tangible, that is, an object. Maybe the Mishnah Berurah—but no, I mentioned the Tur, the Shulchan Arukh, Maimonides—it’s not there. In any case, that is the prohibition, and that’s how it became established, and it is obvious to all of us that it basically needs to be forbidden, and they just hung it on “creating,” but it needs to be forbidden anyway. No, no, there are many decisors who definitely say that it is a rabbinic prohibition. But you have to distinguish—look. There was, there is another point. The Chazon Ish, of course, hung it on building, right? And he doesn’t distinguish between an incandescent filament and so on. An electric circuit is building, and we’ll deal with that in a moment. But there are two types of decisors. There are what I call second-order decisors, for whom when you ask whether something is permitted or forbidden, they say: according to the Chazon Ish it’s forbidden, according to this one it’s permitted, and therefore it’s forbidden, or something like that. They don’t tell you what they think; they simply collect the opinions of other decisors and tell you. These decisors usually also take the Chazon Ish into account because he too is an important decisor and he said it’s building. First-order decisors are decisors who rule on their own, not encyclopedias of Jewish law. Most of them ignore the Chazon Ish. They ignore the Chazon Ish because it’s a puzzling view. Building? What does this have to do with building? And for many years I thought the Chazon Ish really was an example of the kind of reasoning we saw with Rabbi Ariel—that basically you’re looking for a tree to hang it on, and you found building; it’s the least bad option, so you hang it on building. You have nothing else. But he too didn’t really believe it resembled building, because in truth it doesn’t belong there. And a few years ago—I don’t remember exactly, two or three years, I don’t remember—I gave a series here with Rabbi Shabtai on positivism, and there he raised this idea, and afterward I got kind of enthusiastic about it, developed it further, and I became convinced that he—that this really is correct. And today I think electricity is forbidden because of building; the Chazon Ish is completely right. This is the most spacious interpretation, ideally—not as an after-the-fact excuse. And I’ll try to explain—we’ll explain in a moment why. Just one more introduction. I arrived at this after the fact, yes? Maybe I’ll give another interesting introduction that sharpens the issue. The central work that deals with electricity on the Sabbath is Me’orei HaEsh, by Rabbi Shlomo Zalman. Rabbi Shlomo Zalman himself—if you look, there is a new edition of this book, in two or three volumes, I don’t remember how many, I think two. And the entire second volume is devoted to a supplement that did not appear in the original edition. In the original edition, his son Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach says that his father also wrote a section, a chapter, I don’t remember, something like that, explaining why there is no issue of building with electricity on the Sabbath. Then the people there laughed at him—as if there’s also no issue of weaving. What? Who would even think there’s building here? You’re fighting a straw man. Why devote a chapter to showing that one is not liable because of building? There is no building here; it has nothing to do with building. What does this have to do with building? There’s also no issue of trapping or eating pork. What—what does this have to do with anything? So he removed that chapter; he was convinced it was just nonsense. And immediately after his book came out, the Chazon Ish published his work on Eruvin saying that it is forbidden because of building. So the supplement of that same chapter he had removed is the second part of the new edition, and it is devoted mainly to that—to dealing with the Chazon Ish. Among other things, there is correspondence there between Rabbi Shlomo Zalman and the Chazon Ish, and that correspondence is, I think, the main source—even more than in the books of the Chazon Ish themselves, where it also appears in a few places—from which one can learn how the Chazon Ish thought about the matter. Even though it’s a work by Rabbi Shlomo Zalman, in the correspondence he brings the Chazon Ish’s letters and his own responses, and it’s a primary source from which one can see what exactly the Chazon Ish’s line of thought was. And I want to look a bit at these things. So look, first I’ll bring a passage from the Chazon Ish’s own book, not from Rabbi Shlomo Zalman’s book. And there, look at this one passage—I’m bringing it, and it appears in several places—he says: “Additionally, there is in this the issue of fixing a vessel, for since one sets it in a condition to let the electric current flow continuously, it is close to saying that this is Torah-level building, like making a vessel. And all the more so here, where all the wires are connected to the house, and it is like building in something attached to the ground. And there is no question here of saying there is no building with vessels; rather, its law is like something attached to the ground, in which there is building and demolition. But here that distinction makes no practical difference, for even with vessels in such a case it is considered building.” A short introduction: the category of building usually deals with structures attached to the ground. When you build a building, it’s attached to the ground, okay? The question is whether there is building with vessels. In the straightforward sense, the Talmud says there isn’t. There is no building with vessels. But the medieval authorities already note—many of them—that in several places in the Talmud it seems that even with vessels, the Talmud sees this as a prohibition of building. So they make various distinctions. Some of the medieval authorities say: making a vessel from the outset is considered building. Building something within a vessel is not building, but making a vessel from the outset is building. Or firmly fixing something in place is building. There are various distinctions the medieval authorities make, and therefore for our purposes, under certain circumstances, there is building even with vessels. Now regarding electricity, if we discuss it as building—as the Chazon Ish sees it—we can discuss electricity that you activate in the house, in which case it’s attached to the house; it’s attached, it’s not building with vessels. Or electricity in portable objects—meaning, turning on a fan, or I don’t know, a radio. What? Wait, we’ll see in a moment. So one can discuss building in an electric circuit that is part of a building, and one can discuss building in the electricity of a vessel. Now apparently there’s no building with vessels, so if you say electricity is forbidden because of building, then it’s not relevant to portable utensils; it’s only relevant to house electricity. So he says, in our case the discussion is about house electricity, so one can discuss it as building. But then he adds: for our purposes, electricity in vessels also ought to be forbidden. Why? Because it basically resembles making a vessel from the outset, and therefore its law is like something attached to the ground, and there is building here. “Like making a vessel,” yes, what he says—like someone who makes a vessel from the outset. Therefore even if it’s not attached, its law is like something attached, and there is building here. That’s his claim: that electricity is forbidden because of building, both in the house and in vessels, okay? But that’s still only a statement. What’s the explanation? What is the building here? So he says: because one sets it in a condition to let the electric current flow continuously. What does that mean? Why is that an explanation for saying that activating an electric circuit is building?
[Speaker C] Before, it was disconnected, and now… building a vessel, completing the construction of the house by the fact that it’s connected…
[Speaker D] Wait.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He sets it in a condition to let the electric current flow continuously.
[Speaker C] Meaning, what is its condition? What—what is its condition here, in this respect?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Its essential characteristic, the… for example, that the house should be warm… yes, it’s the same thing—the essential characteristic of the house, the characteristic
[Speaker C] the essential characteristic of the operation…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look, there are people who understood from the Chazon Ish—and there are decisors who drew conclusions from this—that according to the Chazon Ish it’s forbidden even to move a switch when the electricity isn’t connected, because you are building the circuit. Meaning, it doesn’t matter whether the electricity… Obviously that’s not correct; obviously that’s not correct. Like closing a door—
[Speaker D] building—you’re closing the circuit…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, same thing. Excellent questions—we’ll get to them in a moment. So first of all I want to understand what the Chazon Ish is saying, okay? What he’s basically saying is not—he’s not talking about constructing the circuit in the sense of closing it and building it. Clearly he’s talking about the fact that you caused current to flow continuously, and you establish the wire in its state, and you establish the device in its state. Look, I’ll bring you a few more formulations. He says: when opening electricity, when the current is introduced into the wires, it is always considered as though it were firmly fixed in place. Because therefore, in construction with vessels, if you fix something tightly, then according to some medieval authorities (Rishonim), that too is construction. He says this is called firmly fixed. Why is it called that? What are you fixing—are you fixing the current inside the wire? And therefore it’s a joining of the current with the wire; that’s the joining being discussed here. And you’re fixing it— in what sense is it fixed? What, why is it fixed? Or another formulation: for example, yes, giving form to matter—I didn’t bring the source here, but “giving form to matter.” There’s an inert body here, and you give it a new form; some new form of the thing appears here. Or here’s a final formulation, a fourth one, this is already in Me’orei Esh. He says: “And the matter depends on judgment. Heating iron does not create a new nature in the iron; rather, the heat dwells temporarily within the iron.” Right? They asked him: what’s the difference between introducing current into iron and heating the iron—introducing heat into the iron? What’s the difference? So he says it’s not the same thing. Because if you heat the iron, then it’s iron that is hot. That’s all. It’s nothing new. But if you introduced electricity into the iron—rather, joining the electric wire awakens the electrical force embedded in the wire itself, and it is part of the very composition rooted in its creation. And this use is constant, and he has established it in its form through the connection, such that the disconnected wire becomes one body with the electrical machine; we are concerned about it because of construction. First, because of assembling sections with one another—and a loose assembly doesn’t help here, since the electric current connects them, which is regarded as a firm fastening. The electric current connects all the parts of the wire—notice, now it’s no longer the connection of the electricity to the wire, but fastening all the parts of the wire to one another. Why? Because current flows through them, so they’re considered firmly fixed. Really something like that—it’s not entirely clear. And the second thing is that repairing the wire itself from death to life is surely construction. The wire was dead, right? A lifeless, inert mass—and suddenly it becomes something alive. So therefore that’s construction. There are all kinds of formulations here, but my sense is that there’s something common to all these formulations; they’re not really entirely different formulations. In a moment—you’re asking good questions, and I’ll answer all of them. But they’re all really the same question. So the Chazon Ish himself also answered this. I’m already… What? With heating, all you’re saying is that there’s heat in the wire. But here, he says, you take particles that are in the wire itself—they’re part of the wire—and you make them flow, so you’ve given a different form to the wire itself. Now the wire already has a different name; it’s no longer just a wire. It’s something else. That’s what he says: “repairing the wire itself from death to life.” Heating is heating a wire. A wire with current is already not a wire. It’s a fan, it’s a functional device. Okay? It’s something else. Maybe that already answers you here too—that’s what he answers here about the difference from heating. So they asked there regarding the discussion of the Magen Avraham and Even HaOzer, for those who know it, about a water mill and so on. So in that context they asked: what happens when you open a faucet? Isn’t that basically the same thing? You create a circuit of water flow. And that’s not correct. Why not? Because when current flows in a wire, the wire itself gets a different name. It becomes something different; it’s no longer just an electric wire, it’s a device. Not just a lump of plastic or electric wire. Right? There’s a device here; it’s something else, a new entity has appeared here. When you open a faucet, it’s still a pipe, a faucet—only now the stream is flowing. All you did was open the stopper and the water flows. You moved the water from place to place; you didn’t turn the pipe into something else. A pipe in which water is flowing is still a pipe; water is just flowing through it. But a wire through which electric current is flowing is an electrical device, not a wire. Until now it was a wire; now it’s an electrical device. It has a function, it also does things, and that’s something entirely different. You changed the wire itself—not that you passed current through it, but that the wire itself became something else. That’s the claim, first of all. In a moment we’ll see what that means, but that’s basically the claim. Now I want to elaborate on this a bit and explain why, in my opinion, he’s right. What’s the connection between all these formulations? Look, I’ll start—I’m going back to define the labor of building. How do we define the labor of building? There’s an article by Rabbi Isser Zalman, the Even HaEzel, an article in a journal; it appears briefly also in Even HaEzel on Zmanim, in the laws of the Sabbath, and at greater length also in Kehillot Yaakov, section 37 on the Sabbath. And basically the line of thought goes like this: he says there that according to Maimonides there are two kinds of subcategories of the labor of building. Making a permanent tent is one subcategory, and making cheese curds is the second. Right, producing cheese, coagulating the cheese. So that’s the second subcategory. He asks: why are both of these subcategories of building? What do creating a tent and making cheese have in common? Rabbi Isser Zalman’s surprising answer is that they have nothing in common—nothing at all. And nevertheless they’re both subcategories of building. Why? So he says like this: when you build a building, you’re basically gathering different parts—stones, boards, cement—connecting them into some functional structure, right? Creating a functional space in which people live or work or use the space, but the building is what created that functional structure. So you gathered parts in order to produce a functional space. That’s called building, okay? Now what happens if you gather parts that don’t create a functional space, but there is still a gathering of parts? That’s making cheese. Therefore it’s a subcategory of building. What happens if you create a functional space but not by gathering parts? That too is a subcategory of building. That’s a tent. So he says like this: something very interesting comes out here. There can be two subcategories of the same primary category that have nothing similar between them at all. Similarity is not transitive. Meaning: A resembles B, B resembles C, and A does not resemble C. How does that happen? Because B has two properties. It resembles A in property A, and it resembles C in property B. So both C and A resemble B. But between A and C there is no similarity at all. That means that similarity can be non-transitive. Right? Similarity from different aspects. And therefore that’s what he argues. He argues that the primary category of building is when both characteristics are present: gathering parts that creates a functional space. When one of them is missing, it’s a subcategory. In principle there can be two kinds of subcategories: either characteristic A is present or characteristic B is present. Both partially resemble the primary category and therefore are subcategories, and they still resemble the primary category even though there’s no similarity between them. This explanation is still a bit problematic. It sounds nice, but it’s problematic. Because let’s try to think what really defines the labor of building in essence. Come on—how do I relate to these two characteristics: gathering parts and creating the space? Are they both essential to define the labor of building? If so, then the two subcategories can’t be prohibited by Torah law at all. They’re not subcategories of building, because they’re missing an essential characteristic. So what will you say? No, one of them is essential and the other is only a condition. Let’s say gathering parts is a condition and creating the functional space is the essential thing. But if that’s so, then a tent should be a subcategory—it doesn’t have the condition but it has the essential characteristic—but making cheese shouldn’t be prohibited at all. And of course the reverse would apply to making cheese if we say that gathering parts is the essential thing and the functional space is the condition. Now if you want both of them to be subcategories, that actually creates a very strange definition. By the way, this is connected to conceptual structuring and to the common denominator that we did at the beginning. It basically means that building has two characteristics, each of which by itself is sufficient to define the labor as significant. But that too is very strange, because then I really should have defined two different primary categories: making cheese and making a tent. And building would be a subcategory of both of them. But—but—but there are two primary categories here that have no connection to each other, and each one by itself is enough to count as a principal labor? So that structure makes no sense in any way. Therefore this logic of the Avnei Nezer and the Kehillot Yaakov is problematic logic when you think about the relation between primary categories and subcategories. Logically it works, but when you look at the definition of primary categories and subcategories, something here doesn’t make sense. It can’t be that both characteristics are essential, because if that were so the two subcategories should have been permitted by Torah law. It can’t be that one is essential and the other is a condition, because then only one of the subcategories should have been a subcategory and the other not. And if neither of them is essential, then what is? That certainly can’t be. So what’s going on? In other words, there can’t be any definition that gives me some consistent scheme for what the definition of the labor of building is. So I’ll tell you what I think has to be said. I want to argue that the definition of the labor of building is the creation of an organism. That’s the labor of building. What is an organism? Let’s try to understand what an organism is. Say, in the biological context—we’ll try to extend it also to the inanimate, but first of all biologically. What distinguishes an organic body, right—a body of an animal or of a human being—I’m not talking now about souls and all that, leave me alone, this is pure biology, all right? What defines a living body as one entity? It’s just a collection of cells or organs, depending on the resolution at which you look, or particles. What defines it as one entity? The cybernetics of the matter—that is, the fact that it operates symbiotically here and the whole story functions as one large body. Right? There’s a division of tasks and adaptation among the parts. Or in other words: there is something in the whole that does not exist in any one of the components. In that situation I relate to the whole as an entity in its own right and not merely as a collection of components. That’s called an organism. Right? There are, for example, the philosophical and metaphysical disputes between fascists and individualists. Fascists see the collective as a real existing entity, and the individuals are only its organs. Right? And therefore they’re subordinated to the interests of the collective, which means to the ruler of the collective. The individualists say the opposite: the collective is a fiction. What exists is only the individual entities; the collective is a convenient fiction. You define a people, you define a community, you define a group, or a legal corporation, whatever, for various purposes, so it’s convenient to define it. It’s a fiction, okay? But what actually exists is the individual. He says, “A people is something that exists; suddenly a man gets up and decides he’s a people.” Right? So the people doesn’t exist. The people is a fictitious definition. What exists is human beings. Fine, that I can see. But regarding that thesis, you can go on and ask: why does a human being exist? He too is a collective entity. He’s a collection of organs, of cells, of particles, of sub-particles, yes, of quarks—doesn’t matter at what level of integration you look at it. Why do you think a human being does exist? A human being too is a collective entity. Because it’s obvious to everyone that a human being is an existing entity because he is an organism. Because the parts that make him up are not just a gluing together of a collection of particles and putting them in one domain; rather, they function together symbiotically. Okay? And therefore something is basically created here that I recognize as an existing entity beyond the parts that compose it. It’s not just a neighborhood-style assembly. In the language of the Rogatchover, they distinguish between a neighboring assembly and a blended assembly, or a physical assembly and a chemical assembly. Right? That’s basically the question whether I place things next to each other and just package them together—that’s a neighboring assembly—or whether they really connect and become one new entity. That’s a blended assembly. They merge into one another and become a blended assembly. Okay? That’s the Rogatchover’s definition, and he makes a lot out of it in various Talmudic topics. Regarding every combination he discusses whether it is a neighboring assembly or a blended assembly, and there are all kinds of practical differences. Half-slave and half-freewoman and all sorts of things like that. So in our context too, when you see that the combination is a blended combination, that means that the combined things merged and became a new entity. A neighboring assembly just means you gathered them all into some one domain, right? One geographic area or one spatial area. That’s a neighboring assembly. Where you connect things in a blended assembly, you treat the blended thing as a new entity. It has an existence of its own. Okay? Now creating this blended thing out of a collection of components—that is the labor of building. That’s my claim. A blended one. You blend the things, or they’re just neighbors of one another. All right? So my claim is—I want to propose this definition for the labor of building. The labor of building is producing organic bodies. And of course I need to extend this beyond a living body. I demonstrated the idea on a living body. But now let’s move to inanimate bodies. You understand that in fact building a house is something—or before building a house, think for a moment about a corpse. A corpse lying here on the floor. You understand that it’s a collection of cells. It’s just a collection of cells, physically connected to each other, but that’s just a neighboring assembly. Right? It’s a collection of cells. It’s not a body. I don’t relate to it as one entity, except because of inertia, because I know it used to be a person. But in fact it’s just—okay? If I were to breathe the breath of life into the nostrils, into the nostrils of that corpse, right, the Golem of Prague, then it would become a living body. What does that mean? That the collection of cells, which had been in a neighboring assembly, suddenly merged and became one large functional body. Right? That is the labor of building. That is the labor of building; that’s its definition. Now let’s look at a building. In a building too there’s basically the same thing. You know the Ship of Theseus. A well-known example, right? Theseus, a Greek commander, king and commander, had a ship and he used to fight at sea, and every time there were storms he would come to the dockyard and they would replace the planks of the ship, and he’d go out again and again. They replaced planks, and again they replaced planks. When does it stop being the Ship of Theseus? In the end there isn’t a single plank left from the original ship. Everything has been replaced. Is it still the Ship of Theseus? Or when does it stop being the Ship of Theseus? Now I think the accepted view is—if we don’t insist on formalism—that it always remains the Ship of Theseus. The cells in our body are also constantly changing, right? And it doesn’t matter. We’re still me. Nobody is philosophically troubled by the question whether I’m still the same person. Why not? If you ask materialists they’ll get a bit tangled up in this. But basically all of us relate this way to a person. Why? Because the functional entity is the collection of parts, and I don’t care if in the end you replace all the parts. Say, yes, Heraclitus. So the claim is that even in inanimate bodies you can define a relation similar to what we know in a living body. If I go out and take parts and don’t connect them—then I make a collection of marbles. A collection of marbles is a neighboring assembly. But if I take the collection of parts and produce from them a functional structure, then in fact I’ve built an organism here. Not a living organism in the biological sense, but it’s an organism in the sense that the parts are no longer just— a house is not a collection. A house is a functional structure composed of a collection of boards. But it is a functional structure. To create from a collection of parts a functional structure—that is the labor of building. That’s the claim. Right, the whole in the organic sense, not a whole in the sense that you just glued them to one another. Yes, exactly. There is something in it—what is called in contemporary philosophy emergence. And emergence means there are certain properties that appear only when you look at the whole. In the details that make up the whole you won’t see any trace of those properties. The most banal example: say, look at a liquid. A molecule of water is not liquid, not solid, and not gas. No—the properties are not relevant at the level of a single molecule. Those properties are relevant only if you’re talking about a cluster of molecules, only when you’re talking about a collective, a collection of molecules. So there you have an example of an emergent property. An emergent property is a property that appears when you look at the whole, and at the level of the details it has no meaning whatsoever. You look at a computer and ask yourselves: what in the computer does the calculation? Does this electron constitute a computer? The single electron? No, it’s just an electron. The whole entire system, when you look at its coordinated action—that is a computer. It performs calculations. By the way, it’s also not really calculating. It calculates only because I use it. Meaning, the action it does is not one plus two equals three. The action it does is moving electrons and creating images on the screen. That’s what it does. It understands nothing and none of it has any meaning. I give it the meaning. When I—this is an example of Leibowitz—when I look at the computer, I see written on it one plus two equals three. From my point of view, it performed a calculation that calculated how much one plus two is, and it gave me the answer three. From its point of view there are electrons, there are fields and particles—that’s what’s there. There’s nothing there besides that, just a lump. So in the final analysis, a functional structure is a property of a collection of particles that function together in symbiosis. Therefore I want to argue that there are inanimate organisms, not only organisms in the living world, in the world of biology and life sciences, but I want to argue that there are—what do you mean “want to argue”? I want to define that there are organic concepts also in the inanimate world. The Ship of Theseus, a building, whatever it may be. Building is basically the creation of a functional structure. That’s called building. Taking details and giving them the significance of something else entirely that appears here. Now it’s a building; it’s not a collection of boards. There are no boards anymore. I no longer see boards at all. I simply see a functional space. The boards have disappeared—they’re not here anymore at all. They’re here physically, but it’s no longer a collection of boards; I don’t call them that anymore. It has a different name. Okay? That’s called building. The appearance of this new entity—now understand, all the formulations of the Chazon Ish are all aiming at this. Look now at all the formulations I brought. He creates, gives life to the wire, fixes electricity into the wireless, connects all the parts of the device through the current flowing in the device. All these things are aimed here. These are different formulations of exactly the same thing. And what I’m building here—it’s pointless to say that I flip the switch and I build the circuit. It’s not that I’m building the circuit; I’m creating here a living functional whole. Living in the sense of functioning, right? Functional, not organic in the biological sense. But a fan is not a collection of plastic and metal. A fan is a functional whole that gives me some service; I use it. Therefore, therefore, even building a vessel from the outset falls under building. Building a vessel from the outset is essentially creating a new functional whole. That’s building in every respect. What difference does it make whether it’s movable or not? In contrast, a tent that is not a permanent tent is not prohibited by Torah law. Why? Because when you put the blanket there, but it’s mobile, right? A sagging tent, as it’s called—it moves. That’s not prohibited by Torah law, because you didn’t really create a functional space here. What functional space? One time it’s this and one time it’s that. You didn’t connect anything here; you didn’t create here a collection of things that acquire the meaning of a functional space.
[Speaker D] But the fan is operated by a switch, and the switch is only the activation of the—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The switch turns it into a fan. No, no—a door doesn’t turn this into a room. The switch turns it into a fan. We call it a fan because if I turn it on with the switch, it becomes a fan. So in short I say: I have a fan. I have a device that if you turn it on with the switch, it will be a fan for you. Do you want to buy such a device? So you bought it. In short, I say you bought a fan. But the claim here, the halakhic claim—again, this is just semantics—but the halakhic claim is that it becomes a fan only when it functions as a fan. Before that it’s just a collection of plastics.
[Speaker C] It’s like the corpse. The corpse of a person lying here on the floor isn’t a person; it’s a collection of cells. Okay? But what you’re saying is that every matter of current would mean that every time—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That I’m not sure I’ll have time to get to, but in the link I’m sending you, you’ll be able to see—it’s like someone who digs a hole in the ground, for example, or things like that; that too incurs liability because of building. In just a moment—I mean, not in just a moment, look at the link, because I need a few more things in order to explain it. All right, I’ll formulate it differently now, in order also to solve Rabbi Zalman’s transitivity problem; in my view he didn’t really solve it. I want to argue: what are we connecting when we gather the parts? Usually the view is that we connect the wood, the stones, the cement, right? Those are the things we connect. What am I connecting? What is the functionality doing? I want to argue that the functionality connects the parts of the space. Not the air, not the boards and the cement and the stones. The boards, the cement, and the stones are the framework that helps me define a functional space. And now, in effect, I had a collection of spatial points, and now suddenly they’ve become one block, like making cheese. Right? They’ve become one functional block; I can use it. By the way, there’s a dispute between Rashbam and Tosafot in Bava Batra on the question of what happens if someone is forbidden to benefit from a pit. So clearly he’s forbidden to use the cavity of the pit. The question is whether he’s also forbidden to use the walls of the pit. Right? Is the bagel the holes in the middle, or is the bagel the dough? So what is the claim, really? The claim is that a pit is the space; a pit is not what bounds it. But without something that bounds it, the space is not defined as a distinct entity. So you need what bounds it, but what that bounding does is not the gathering of the bounding parts. Rather, once you bound it, you’ve actually connected all that space and created from it a functional space. Exactly like making cheese. Right? A collection of cheese particles—I just connected them. Why isn’t it merely an aggregate entity? Because it’s not really cheese until you turn it into a cheese block, into something that is a lump of cheese. So here too, the technical connection, of simply connecting them to each other, is in fact essential—it changes the name of the thing. Until then it was milk with small bits in it; here it’s cheese, it’s something else. A functional space too—the whole space was already here, but if you didn’t put the structure around it, then that space is just a collection of spatial points. Now you create from those points a structure, and of course that includes both the boundary, what’s around it, and the space itself, the points of space themselves. And if that’s so, then notice that now I no longer need Rabbi Zalman’s structure. The labor of building is gathering parts into a functional entity. One definition, not two. He says there are two characteristics here: gathering parts and creating a functional space. Making cheese is only gathering parts; a tent is only a functional space without gathering parts. I say no—even in a tent there is gathering of parts. A permanent tent, not a sagging tent. What am I gathering? The parts of the space beneath it, the space that the tent defines. That’s what I’m gathering. Therefore building always gathers parts. There aren’t two parameters; there is one: gathering parts. Only if the tent is sagging, or a vessel, or something where you didn’t really create a new functional entity unless you did it from the outset—that is the labor of building. And if that’s so, then it’s clear why making cheese and a tent are both subcategories of building, and the problem of transitivity doesn’t arise—they really are similar to one another. They are similar because in both there is a gathering of parts into a functional whole, okay? And therefore there is no problem at all; there’s no need to be bothered by the question of which is primary and which is secondary and all those things. They are still subcategories and not principal categories because this is done in a somewhat different way from how it is done in a building. Why do I say that? The difference in the way it is done makes it a subcategory, but the essential property that exists in the principal category must also be in the subcategory—otherwise why prohibit it? It can’t be that the difference is in the essential property. Okay? So that’s the claim. Good. Now I return to the Chazon Ish. Good, now I return to the Chazon Ish. Actually I already said it—I’m doing this fairly briefly because I don’t have time for it—but what the Chazon Ish is really saying is this: when you activate an electrical device, you basically turn it from a collection of plastic and metal into a fan, or a radio, television, or computer, or whatever it may be. So in effect you’ve created here a functional whole. That’s absolutely building—it’s really building. It’s not a cute little homiletic line; it’s what you do when you build a building, exactly that. And therefore, in my view, it’s as convincing as can be. The labor of building is not some ad hoc thing, the way people always think the Chazon Ish was looking for something up his sleeve, yes, some principal category to provide cover for prohibiting electricity. No—it really is this. But notice the level of abstraction needed in order to define this thing as a subcategory of building. Because you need a very, very broad abstraction here, since the way you do it is completely different. When you build a building, you place a stone and this and boards and cement; here all you do is flip a switch. It’s not similar at all in the way you do it, but when you look at—what? I completely agree. Yes, I think he’s entirely right; it’s prohibited because of building. You can discuss it; maybe there it won’t be, fine, it needs discussion. No problem. That’s the conclusion.
[Speaker C] No, no, I was just asking, because it sounds like—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] that all of a sudden, you know, we’ll need all kinds of… No, that’s it, I won’t need anything. What will be will be, and what won’t be won’t.
[Speaker C] What about today, if they invent electricity without electrons? What?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They’ll invent electricity without electrons? Who invented electricity without electrons? You mean without an incandescent bulb. So what? You create a functional space, you create a functional collective, a functional structure. This has nothing at all to do with that question. I’m not speaking from the angle of kindling. You’re speaking from the angle of kindling; I’m speaking from the angle of building.
[Speaker D] If someone wants cholent, let him invent electricity without—electricity. What, you don’t know? Only Jews would invent such a thing—they’d look for a way to make electricity on the Sabbath without electrons. Finish
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] the story about.