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
- Connection to the previous lecture: resolution and interpretation of reality
- The formation of Jewish law regarding electricity on the Sabbath and the problem of interaction between different worlds
- The role of reasoning and the tension between commitment to tradition and the possibility of thinking differently
- Primary categories and derivatives in Sabbath labors, and the possibility of thinking of “electricity” as a primary category of labor
- Igrot Moshe and the consideration: “If this had existed in the time of the Tannaim, they would have prohibited it”
- The starting point of halakhic decisors in prohibiting electricity: intuition first, and only afterward grounding it
- Three ways of grounding the prohibition of electricity: kindling, generating, and building
- Me’orei Ha-Esh, the debate with the Chazon Ish, and the extent to which the approach was accepted
- The language of the Chazon Ish: “from death to life” and “repairing the form”
- Rabbi Chaim Greineman and Rabbi Shlomo Zalman’s clarification of what exactly the Chazon Ish prohibited
- The definition of the labor of building in Kehillot Yaakov according to Maimonides: joining parts into one body
- The essence of “building” as creating a whole: a structure versus a pile, an organism versus a collection
- Collective entities in Jewish law: the law of a city on Rosh Hashanah, a communal offering, and the giving of the Torah
- Balancing collective and individual: “do not be afraid of any man” and IDF ethics
- The ship of Theseus and Jewish law: the identity of a whole beyond replacement of its parts
- Interpreting the Chazon Ish’s approach to building: “bringing to life” an electrical system as a functional whole
- Resolution versus level of integration, and implications for borderline questions
- Why the logic of building is preferable to kindling and generating, and the conclusion
Summary
General Overview
The text continues a previous lecture on the *grama* devices of Tzomet, and through that develops a conceptual framework about interpreting reality and about the formation of Jewish law at the meeting point of technology and halakhic ruling. The speaker argues that the field of electricity on the Sabbath emerged out of a problematic interaction between technological experts and halakhic decisors, and that sometimes Jewish law becomes fixed through certain people and certain books whose influence later becomes binding after the fact. From there, he proposes examining the prohibition of electricity through the labor of building according to the Chazon Ish, not as a technical halakhic lesson, but as a window into understanding the essence of “building” as the creation of a functional whole out of parts. Accordingly, he suggests that there is a deep logic in classifying electricity under building, even if most halakhic decisors do not accept that.
Connection to the previous lecture: resolution and interpretation of reality
The speaker uses Tzomet’s *grama* devices, a scooter, and the example of small worms versus large worms to show that halakhic determination depends on the question of at what resolution we are looking at reality. He says that one can view a device as something you press and it operates, or as internal circuits activating various *grama* “tricks,” and that both readings are correct but lead to different halakhic judgments. He defines this as factual interpretation of reality, not interpretation of a halakhic source.
The formation of Jewish law regarding electricity on the Sabbath and the problem of interaction between different worlds
The speaker describes an early encounter he had with Professor Lev’s book, “Ma’archei Lev,” and with a request that he read it and comment on it because very few people are capable of reading both the halakhic side and the scientific-technological side. He describes an exchange and responses he received, and says that reading it made clear to him that he was standing at “a point of halakhic formation,” where the laws were still taking shape and still open to dispute. He argues that this field was built by very few people, and therefore what later entered “Shemirat Shabbat Kehilchatah” and abridged halakhic books effectively became a binding system whose source lay in decisions made by individuals, in a way that sometimes seems arbitrary and dependent on “who happened to be there in the right place.”
The role of reasoning and the tension between commitment to tradition and the possibility of thinking differently
The speaker says that every halakhic rule is created out of sources, facts/reality, norms drawn from the sources into a particular reality, and reasoning and interpretation, both of the sources and of reality. He raises the question of one’s obligation to what “people usually think” as against the possibility that a person may think differently, and argues that in fields such as electricity on the Sabbath, reasoning has immediate power to produce halakhic conclusions that do not necessarily fit what is commonly accepted. He says that the added value of this field is the practical possibility of influencing the shaping of Jewish law more than in fields that have already become fixed.
Primary categories and derivatives in Sabbath labors, and the possibility of thinking of “electricity” as a primary category of labor
The speaker cites the Talmudic discussion at the beginning of Bava Kamma on the definition of primary categories and derivatives in the Sabbath labors, and emphasizes that there are different versions regarding the relationship between “that which was in the Tabernacle” and “importance.” He explains that the notion of “important” can be interpreted either as a significant creative act or as something distinct from other primary categories, and presents the possibility that the criterion is simply “whatever is important is called a primary category.” He argues that if so, new actions that did not exist in the time of the Sages—such as electricity—can be considered candidates to be primary categories of labor because they seem “more significant” than certain labors like gathering produce, and he even suggests the idea of “removing” an existing primary category and inserting electricity in its place in order to maintain the number thirty-nine, while acknowledging that halakhic decisors would not accept this and that there are sociological fears of change. He presents this as a substantive question of whether the list of labors is closed, and notes that according to Rabbi Yehudah there are forty primary categories of labor.
Igrot Moshe and the consideration: “If this had existed in the time of the Tannaim, they would have prohibited it”
The speaker quotes from the responsa Igrot Moshe in a discussion of cooking by means of a timer prepared before the Sabbath, where it is written that in his humble opinion “it is obvious that this must not be permitted,” because in that way one could do “all labors” and it would be “a great degradation of the Sabbath,” and it also says, “and it is clear that if this had existed in the time of the Tannaim and Amoraim, they would have prohibited it.” The speaker asks whether this is a legitimate consideration for prohibiting something that is not explicitly included in the system of prohibitions, and connects it to his own principled proposal of electricity as a primary category of labor. He notes that Rabbi Moshe Feinstein ultimately retreats from that line of reasoning and formulates instead, “we have only what they prohibited.”
The starting point of halakhic decisors in prohibiting electricity: intuition first, and only afterward grounding it
The speaker argues that halakhic decisors begin from the assumption that electricity on the Sabbath is “obviously prohibited” and only then go looking for a reason. He says this is not necessarily criticism, but rather a legitimate description of an intuition that guides halakhic ruling, and he attributes a similar statement to Rabbi Soloveitchik. He explains that the intuition comes from the feeling that electricity is something significant that should not be permitted, but that halakhic decisors still require some grounding within primary categories/derivatives or rabbinic prohibitions, and therefore a systematic search begins for a halakhic classification.
Three ways of grounding the prohibition of electricity: kindling, generating, and building
The speaker presents one classification under the labor of kindling, mainly in incandescent bulbs where there is actual “burning of fire.” He tells a story about Richard Feynman, from “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!,” in which two yeshiva students asked, “Is electricity fire?” in order to clarify the connection to kindling, and he says that Feynman did not understand the scientific context of the question. He then presents a more common approach that attributes the prohibition to “generating current” as a rabbinic prohibition, and adds that the concept of generating itself is problematic and is not ruled that way in the Shulchan Arukh, so the grounding seems forced to him. He then presents the Chazon Ish’s approach, according to which closing an electrical circuit is prohibited because of building as a primary category of labor, and emphasizes that many regard this as “bizarre,” but he wants to show the logic in it.
Me’orei Ha-Esh, the debate with the Chazon Ish, and the extent to which the approach was accepted
The speaker says that Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach wrote the pamphlet “Me’orei Ha-Esh” in 1935 and discussed there the possibility of classifying electricity as building, but rejected it; and that the “myth” says that in the kollel people laughed at the very discussion. He notes that in that same year the Chazon Ish came to the Land of Israel and introduced his approach of building, and an exchange of letters developed, which is brought in Minchat Shlomo and in various collections. He says that in the end most halakhic decisors do not really take the Chazon Ish’s approach into account, and stresses the practical difference between the views: building is a Torah-level prohibition, generating is rabbinic, and in devices that are not incandescent bulbs, such as transistors, it matters what the prohibition is based on.
The language of the Chazon Ish: “from death to life” and “repairing the form”
The speaker quotes from the correspondence a formulation according to which heating metal does not “create a new nature,” but only temporary heat, whereas “connecting the electric wire” awakens an electrical force embedded in the wire, and since the use is constant, the connection makes the interrupted wire “one body” with the electrical machine, and therefore there is concern because of building. He identifies two components in the Chazon Ish’s words: seeing the closing of the circuit as “joining the sections,” and seeing “repairing the wire itself from death to life” as building. He cites Rabbi Shlomo Zalman’s response, which agrees that an actual connection of wires could be “joining sections,” but questions whether building applies when we are dealing with a loose button intended to open and close, and adds the possibility that it may be “repairing a vessel,” because the wire becomes a “usable instrument” when connected and realizes its capacity to receive.
Rabbi Chaim Greineman and Rabbi Shlomo Zalman’s clarification of what exactly the Chazon Ish prohibited
The speaker cites a description in the name of the Chazon Ish that “even when there is no current at all in the wires,” the mere closing of the circuit so that it is “arranged and prepared for lighting” by a timer is considered building, and attributes this to Rabbi Chaim Greineman. He then quotes Rabbi Shlomo Zalman’s ruling that this understanding is incorrect, and that in his view the Chazon Ish prohibited only where “new powers were created in the wires,” which appear “like from death to life,” and where there is “repairing the form of the object.” He concludes that for him, the meaning of the prohibition according to the Chazon Ish depends on activation that produces a real functional change, not merely potential preparation.
The definition of the labor of building in Kehillot Yaakov according to Maimonides: joining parts into one body
The speaker cites “Kehillot Yaakov,” explaining Maimonides’ statement that one who curdles cheese “is liable because of building,” because “whoever gathers part to part and joins everything until they become one body, this is similar to building.” He presents a definition according to which the primary category of building is making a permanent structure “specifically when it consists in gathering many parts to make them one body,” and the derivatives are either creating a space without gathering parts together (such as spreading a sheet to make a tent), or gathering parts without creating a space (such as a wall). He emphasizes that this yields derivatives that do not directly resemble one another, but each bears a partial resemblance to the primary category, which contains both components together.
The essence of “building” as creating a whole: a structure versus a pile, an organism versus a collection
The speaker formulates the deeper meaning of building as the creation of a new whole out of separate components, in contrast to a pile, which is merely a gathering without a new essence. He argues that a building is not just “a pile of stones,” because it has a function and a structure that cannot be derived merely from the number of stones, and he presents this as the principle that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” He illustrates this through the question of the existence of a people as against individualism, through breaking a person down into cells and molecules, and through John Searle’s claim about “collective properties” such as liquidity, which do not belong to any single molecule but only to the aggregate.
Collective entities in Jewish law: the law of a city on Rosh Hashanah, a communal offering, and the giving of the Torah
The speaker explains Maimonides in the laws of repentance, that on Rosh Hashanah Hashem judges a person, a city, a country, and the world, and argues that the question “if the people were judged, what is left to judge in the city?” is resolved by recognizing that a city is a collective entity, not “merely a collection of people.” He presents collective responsibility as something that follows from recognition of a collective entity. He cites Tosafot in Megillah regarding a communal offering, which is not subject to the law of “its owners died,” because “the community does not die,” and they bring the verse, “One generation goes and another generation comes, but the earth stands forever.” He presents the giving of the Torah as binding because what is bound is the collective, not only the individuals who stood at the event, and compares this to the American Constitution, which binds later generations because the collective undertook it.
Balancing collective and individual: “do not be afraid of any man” and IDF ethics
The speaker presents a halakhic outlook that is neither absolutely collectivist nor absolutely individualist, and illustrates this through the discussion of a judge who is forbidden to fear issuing a ruling, on the basis of “do not be afraid of any man.” He describes a position according to which in a case of possible danger to life, the judge should rule in order to preserve the legal system, which is “danger to life of the community” in the sense that the collective would collapse; but in a case of certain danger to life there is no requirement of self-sacrifice, because the judge is also a private individual. He brings an example from IDF ethics at Mitla, where Raful asked for a volunteer for a dangerous jeep mission and did not issue an order, and interprets this as a boundary between demanding risk for the sake of the public and forbidding the subjugation of the individual to a suicidal mission.
The ship of Theseus and Jewish law: the identity of a whole beyond replacement of its parts
The speaker brings up “the ship of Theseus” as the question whether a whole remains “the same thing” even after all its parts have been replaced, and notes that there is a parallel to this in a dispute among medieval authorities (Rishonim) regarding a condition in a bill of divorce referring to “her father’s house” that collapsed and was rebuilt. He uses this to emphasize that a whole is not identical to the collection of materials composing it, but rather to a functional-structural identity that is preserved even when the parts are exchanged.
Interpreting the Chazon Ish’s approach to building: “bringing to life” an electrical system as a functional whole
The speaker argues that the Chazon Ish means that the flow of electricity turns a collection of inert parts into an organic, functional system, so that “repairing the wire from death to life” means creating a functioning whole. He explains that when an electrical device begins to operate, it is no longer just a collection of atoms but “a fan” or a system that performs a function, and every part takes part in the functioning of the whole; therefore this resembles a building, which is not just a pile. He answers the question “why is this different from closing a door?” by saying that closing a door does not create a new entity, but only changes the state within an existing entity, whereas activating electricity actually creates a new functional state of the whole.
Resolution versus level of integration, and implications for borderline questions
The speaker distinguishes between the previous lecture, which dealt with resolution, and the current discussion, which deals with “level of integration,” meaning whether we see the whole as a whole with new properties or only see the details. He says that here the issue is not a difference of size, like a large worm versus a small one, but the creation of new function and structure. He rejects applying this principle to salad on the grounds that there is no sufficiently significant new function there to count as Torah-level creation. He agrees that there are borderline cases, such as a dimmer or *standby*, but presents them as specific halakhic questions beyond the principle he is trying to show.
Why the logic of building is preferable to kindling and generating, and the conclusion
The speaker argues that the accepted approaches that seem “reasonable,” such as kindling in an incandescent bulb and generating current, actually seem to him more “far-fetched” and conceptually doubtful, whereas the Chazon Ish’s approach requires a conceptual perspective but explains the meaning of the prohibition well. He concludes by saying that the interpretive move here, as in the previous lecture, actually leads to stringency rather than leniency, and thanks the participants.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, good evening. Last time, a week ago, the lecture was self-contained, meaning it stands on its own and doesn’t require having been at the previous one, but there is still a connection between the two. In the previous lecture I spoke about Tzomet’s *grama* devices, and once again I’m using a technical halakhic case to illustrate a certain mode of thinking or broader meanings. So last time I talked about the question of the resolution at which we look at the things we’re discussing, and I tried to show that this can affect the question of how we judge them on the halakhic level. I also brought other examples: small worms versus large worms, *grama* devices such as a scooter or Tzomet’s *grama* devices, where from the outside you press a button and they start operating, but inside we know there are all kinds of *grama* tricks. The question is whether we look at this on the electronics scale, on the scale of the electronic circuit, where it’s *grama*, or whether I look at it on the broader general scale where in effect it’s just a regular electrical device. Today I want to deal with a slightly different question, although there is some similarity or connection between them. During the previous lecture, I think more than once, the issue of building came up, the labor of building. The Chazon Ish links the prohibition of electricity on the Sabbath to the labor of building, and today I want to talk about that. I said I was leaving it for the following week. Today I want to talk about it, but again, I’m not going to give a halakhic lesson here on the labor of building; rather, I’ll use that labor to illustrate a certain form of thinking or broader perspective. Maybe by way of an introduction or an interesting conceptual framework.
One of my first encounters, I think, with this field of electricity on the Sabbath and Jewish law in general—usually I tended to dismiss halakhic study the way the yeshiva guys, the yeshiva students, dismiss Jewish law. I got over it. In any case, I had some relative who was also related to Professor Lev, of blessed memory, and he brought me his book called Ma’archei Lev, where he discusses various electrical devices and their halakhic status: whether it is permitted to use them on the Sabbath or forbidden to use them on the Sabbath. And he told me, listen, at the time I was doing a doctorate in physics, so he said: look, there are almost no people who can read both sides of the book, the halakhic side and the scientific-technological side, so Professor Lev basically doesn’t get any feedback. So he asked me whether I’d be willing to read a bit and send him comments. I read it, it was very interesting, and I sent him various comments too; I got responses, and there was an interesting give-and-take around the issue. But one thing I remember very clearly, because I read the book and there were various points I didn’t agree with. And suddenly I began to understand that I was actually standing here at some point of halakhic formation, something that usually doesn’t happen to us. Meaning, the shaping or crystallization of the laws of electricity on the Sabbath was obviously done only in recent generations, since that’s when we had electrical devices, and as more devices come out, of course it has to keep being shaped and developed.
Now, how does that happen? It turns out that just as this book doesn’t have many readers, it also can’t have many writers, obviously—even fewer, probably. And what that actually means is that this field is supposed to be built through interaction between people who are expert in the scientific-technological side and halakhic decisors or halakhic authorities, when that kind of interaction is always problematic because each side lacks the other side, and the sum of the two sides doesn’t always really give the whole. Sometimes you need to understand better what the scientific-technological issue is saying, and that’s something a rabbi won’t always understand, a halakhic decisor won’t always understand, and vice versa. And therefore this field is very—meaning, it was created in a way that is prone to mistakes, prone to missing things. And I found not a few of those there, in my view—of course you can argue, but that’s what I thought. And it was very interesting because Professor Lev, as someone who was immersed in both sides, both the scientific-technological and the halakhic, had, it seemed to me, a very central, dominant role in shaping the laws that relate to electrical devices.
Now in effect we are all captive to him, because what he decided there later entered Shemirat Shabbat Kehilchatah or various halakhic books and abridgments, and today there are already laws: this you may do and this you may not do, and with a Sabbath timer you do it this way and not that way—all of which, in the end, is a decision made by one or two people who happened to be sitting in the right place, wrote the right book that was accepted, or I don’t know exactly what, and that’s it. And from that point on, that’s Jewish law in the laws of the Sabbath. And when I read the book and realized that I disagreed with some of it, that was very interesting, because it was clear to me that ten or twenty years later, if I don’t do as it says, then I’m publicly desecrating the Sabbath. But if I’m there in the middle of the process, then I can argue with him and maybe the Jewish law will crystallize differently. Because in fact it’s open to discussion; there are interpretive questions here, and today I’ll try a bit to illustrate that. But that was a point that illuminated for me an angle I hadn’t been aware of.
Of course these things also happened 500 years ago and 800 years ago, but the pace in our time is faster, and we’re not always aware that Jewish law as it came down to us is simply the product of a long process of formation by human beings. And those human beings—it depends who happened to be in the right place and what he thought. And maybe someone else thought differently, didn’t write a book, was forgotten, and that was it. And now all the halakhic decisors agree that this or that is forbidden, or this or that is permitted. And in fact the whole business, when you look at it—unless you enter all kinds of mystical districts—looks a bit arbitrary. Meaning, why should what I do today depend on which decisor happened to be sitting in exactly the right place when the Jewish law was being shaped regarding absorption in utensils, mixtures, ritual prohibition and permission, or when the Jewish law of electricity was being shaped, what I spoke about earlier? So it seems to me that these questions, when we’re still in a period where one can still discuss them—although it’s already relatively crystallized—but this is still a topic one can discuss. And I think that’s a very interesting point, unlike many other halakhic areas where the kinds of reasoning, both from last time that I spoke about and what I’ll speak about today, are actually lines of reasoning from which halakhic conclusions immediately follow. And those conclusions don’t necessarily fit what people usually think. So now the question is whether I’m supposed to be committed to what people usually think, or whether, if I think differently, then differently. Meaning, just because someone thought something—so what does that mean?
So engaging in these areas has some added value beyond engaging in other halakhic areas. Meaning, anyone who enters this seriously can actually also influence it, unlike other laws that are already crystallized and it’s harder to move anything there. That influence human beings have matters because every halakhic rule we encounter is the result of sources, facts or reality, application of norms drawn from the sources to a given reality, and interpretation or reasoning. Meaning, and the interpretation can be both of the sources and of reality. For example, in the previous lecture, a week ago, I showed an example of interpretation of reality, not of sources. Meaning, the question of how I see a scooter. Is a scooter a *grama* device, or is a scooter an electrical device and what happens inside doesn’t interest me? That’s a question of interpretation of the factual reality standing before me, not interpretation of a halakhic source. How do I interpret reality? How do I see reality? Do I see here a *grama* device, or do I simply see a device where you press a button and it starts moving? Both are true at different levels of resolution, but that is a question of factual interpretation. Today I’ll bring another example of factual interpretation that has halakhic implications.
Our context is the labors of the Sabbath. In the labors of the Sabbath, the matter of interpretation and the influence of the decisor and the interpreter seem to me even more significant than in other halakhic areas. The Talmud at the beginning of Bava Kamma brings—or discusses—the question of how we define primary categories and derivatives in the Sabbath labors. As is known, there are thirty-nine primary categories of labor listed in the Mishnah in the seventh chapter of tractate Shabbat, and there are derivatives. The derivatives too are labors forbidden by Torah law exactly like the primary categories—practically speaking, almost exactly. There is almost no practical difference between primary categories and derivatives. Besides that there are rabbinic prohibitions, but primary categories and derivatives are all labors prohibited by Torah law. How do we know which labors are primary categories and which are derivatives? So the Talmud says there something like: that which was in the Tabernacle, and is important, is called a primary category. What was in the Tabernacle. Now there are several versions there, brought in Tosafot and the commentators on Tosafot. I’m not going into the details; I’m only saying that these versions are distinguished from one another by the question of the relationship between “that which was in the Tabernacle” and “importance.” Meaning, is something that was in the Tabernacle considered a primary category, or is something important considered a primary category? There are versions that say that what was in the Tabernacle is important, so what was in the Tabernacle is basically the criterion for what counts as a primary category. There are versions that say what was in the Tabernacle and important, meaning that it’s not enough that it was in the Tabernacle unless it’s also important. Not every labor done in the Tabernacle is a primary category of labor; obviously a lot of things were done in the Tabernacle in day-to-day life. Things that are significant can be considered primary categories. But there is a third different version that says that what is important is called a primary category. Meaning, basically the Sages took all the labors that exist regarding the Sabbath and tried to classify them according to criteria of more important and less important.
By the way, the concept of “important” itself needs definition. Sometimes “important” means a significant creative act, let’s say, and sometimes “important” means distinct from the others. Meaning, in order for a certain thing to be a primary category in its own right, first, it has to be a significant creative act, and second, it has to be different from the other primary categories. So there are two criteria here for importance: uniqueness and significance, meaning how much it creates something new. But for our purposes, that third version basically says that the criterion for what is called a primary category and what is called a derivative is whether it is important. Now what counts as important? The Sages back then went over all the possible candidates to be called labor and checked which of them were important, and that is what they defined as primary categories, and what branches out from them is called derivatives. What happens today? We now have kinds of actions that didn’t exist in the time of the Sages—for example, electricity. Okay? Now a halakhic decisor comes and says, listen, this is no less important than gathering produce. Gathering produce is, after all, just collecting fruit into a basket; I wouldn’t make that into a terribly significant creative act. But that’s how the Sages defined it, as one of the primary categories of labor. But there’s no doubt that using electricity on the Sabbath sounds like something much more significant. And the question is, if so, then certainly according to the third version, if this thing is important then it is basically a primary category even though it doesn’t appear in the Mishnah’s list of primary categories of labor. It doesn’t appear there simply because it wasn’t around.
Now there is a datum: it’s only thirty-nine. This is learned from various other places as to why it’s thirty-nine—the word labor appears thirty-nine times in the Torah. So there is some datum that it has to be thirty-nine, but which thirty-nine, I don’t know. So for example, winnowing, selecting, and sifting—the Talmud says that they are actually very similar, all three are types of selecting, and they are counted as three different primary categories, probably in order to complete the thirty-nine and because they were in the Tabernacle. Fine, but that’s not really distinct enough to count as three separate primary categories of labor. So now today we have another candidate—we can throw one of them out and put electricity in its place, turning on a light or I don’t know, riding a scooter, and that will be another primary category of labor. This basically means that I don’t even need to look for which primary category of labor, or which labor, use of electricity on the Sabbath can be assigned to. Because such a search basically assumes that the list of labors is closed, and now the question is under which of the labors, if any, use of electricity can be inserted. But the way I described it earlier, you don’t need to get there. Electricity is significant enough to be considered a primary category, and therefore it will be forbidden even if I don’t find any other primary category under which it can fit. And that has very far-reaching implications in Jewish law, something no halakhic decisor would really accept, such a mode of thought.
[Speaker B] That move, even according to that version, where we remove one labor and insert another in its place because the importance changed, the importance—why not?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Where have we found it? What do you mean, we don’t need to find it? It says thirty-nine important labors. I check what the important labors are, and that’s it.
[Speaker B] But this fear of taking out—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —a labor and inserting another one, fine, the sociology of that process is completely clear, yes—Reform, and all the concerns and all that. But I’m asking the question on its own merits. Leave politics out of it.
[Speaker C] Why add a labor at all? There are thirty-nine, it’s a closed list.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Who said the list is closed? That’s exactly the question. The thirty-nine most significant actions are what are called primary categories of labor. Now when I look around me today, in my eyes operating electricity on the Sabbath is far more significant than gathering produce. So in effect, the thirty-nine most significant labors include electricity. And I’ll take gathering produce out. Will gathering produce be permitted? No, not permitted, but at least it won’t be forbidden by Torah law; it will be a derivative of something. Winnowing, selecting, and sifting, for example, obviously won’t be permitted; it will be a derivative of selecting. In fact all three are basically the same thing; the Talmud itself says: this is winnowing, this is selecting, this is sifting.
[Speaker C] You’re just putting it in there because you’re missing a number.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So here now I have something. I’m not missing anything in the number. So it’ll be a derivative, not a primary category. That doesn’t mean I’ll permit it, but I don’t need to look for a source for why electricity should be forbidden. I don’t need to look for such a source. Why put electricity in at all?
[Speaker C] Who says it’s… oh—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s a different question. If I say that when I look at electricity by reasoning, it seems to me that this is a significant act of creation, then that’s why it has to be put in. Because it’s a significant act of creation. Why put it in? A most positive act of creation—why? Everything is positive, what? But plowing isn’t positive? Is plowing negative? I’m asking—do you think plowing is positive or negative? Hunting I wouldn’t ask my daughter about, but plowing is completely positive, right? Why? On the Sabbath it’s not because the labors are negative. It is labor, real labor. And electricity isn’t labor? What, labor in what sense? In the sense of effort? The labors aren’t defined by effort. The Talmud itself says effort has nothing to do with labor. There is no criterion that it involve effort. The Talmud says that already. You can drag heavy benches around all day and all night on the Sabbath and not violate a Torah prohibition. And you can do things that involve no effort at all and it will be a Torah prohibition. Effort is not the criterion. Right. So why is electricity a problem at all? Because if you see in it—then really, if you see in it a significant creative act, no less than anything else, or far more than other things. I don’t understand. Slaughtering? Well, what are you saying? Will slaughtering be permitted? No, it’s forbidden. On a festival that’s something else, because it’s labor for preparing food, but on the Sabbath it’s forbidden, a capital offense. Slaughtering is significant. So I ask again: taking an electrical device, turning on a light, I don’t know, turning on all the lights in the synagogue—isn’t that a more significant creative act than gathering a few fruits into a basket? Sounds reasonable to me, no? Yes.
[Speaker D] If bringing electricity in is based on the assumption that there were really rules, and from them, in a certain period, the period of the Sages, the various labors were defined, maybe the process is the reverse. Meaning, maybe the defined labors were already there and were given there at Sinai, and later the Sages took the labors and said these are the rules that apparently—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What in yeshivot they call a sign or a cause. Meaning—but in the simple sense, what appears there in the Talmud is that the definition of primary category and derivative among the labors is made according to this criterion of importance and being in the Tabernacle. So on the face of it, it doesn’t look like a law given to Moses at Sinai. Meaning, on the face of it, it looks as though they determined it by those criteria. Why? A law given to Moses at Sinai is supposed to stop at thirty-nine. These are the labors that—why? Who determined that? If it was given at Sinai, then it’s a law given to Moses at Sinai. If it wasn’t given at Sinai, then the Sages determined it. The Oral Torah. What is the Oral Torah? Oral Torah is a general term. Was it given at Sinai? Then it’s a law given to Moses at Sinai. I’m saying: it doesn’t look that way. From the Talmud it doesn’t look that way. If so, then you’re right, there’s nothing to talk about here regarding these changes, because we received a closed list. On the face of it, not so certain. Rabbi Yehudah, for example, has forty primary categories of labor.
[Speaker B] But on the sociological level that’s what we tend to say.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Let’s stop—
[Speaker B] —all because we don’t know where it will end.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Sociology doesn’t interest me, I’m not dealing with sociology. I’m talking about the substantive issues. Sociology and fears and politics are other discussions. Yes.
[Speaker C] Is there some argument written in the commentators for why specifically these are what is really important, or is it just a matter of versions there in the Talmud?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t understand. The different version in the Talmud. Either the definition is what was in the Tabernacle, or the definition is what is important. I think it starts from the versions, I think, yes, as far as I understand at least. Maybe I’ll bring just one example, which Rabbi Moshe Feinstein in Igrot Moshe, in the responsa Igrot Moshe, brings up but rejects. Meaning, he’s not willing to accept that kind of thinking. I didn’t bring it for you, so I’ll read a sentence or two here, no more than that, because this is all introduction. Here: concerning—yes—the issue is labor done on the Sabbath by means of a Sabbath timer. Again, something we’ve become completely accustomed to, because someone decided what is permitted and what is forbidden with a Sabbath timer, and whether one may extend or shorten it, all kinds of things like that. About all of these one can argue. There are a lot of unreasonable decisions there regarding Sabbath timers, even though today the whole business is considered clear Jewish law and every abridged halakhic book says exactly what is permitted and what is forbidden to do. In any case, in Igrot Moshe he discusses this issue of using electricity by means of a Sabbath timer. The assumption is, of course, that to turn the electricity itself on is forbidden, but if we arrange it with a Sabbath timer before the Sabbath, then maybe it would be permitted. Today we do this, meaning the decision is that it is permitted, but he himself hesitates about it. And he says: regarding something which by means of electricity—the matter of electricity, yes, for anyone who doesn’t know what electricity is, here there’s a translation with ayins—one can, by means of a timer made for that purpose, set it on Friday evening so that it will begin cooking tomorrow on the Sabbath, about an hour before mealtime. Okay? In my humble opinion it is obvious that this must not be permitted. For by means of such a timer one can do all labors on the Sabbath and in all factories, and there is no greater degradation of the Sabbath than this. Very reminiscent of my opening from last time, yes? What Rabbi Brand wrote there: that if we permit these grama mechanisms and all these Tzomet Institute things, then with such tricks you can do whatever you want. And then he says the sentence for which I’m reading this: and it is clear that if this had existed in the time of the Tannaim and Amoraim, they would have prohibited it. How does he know?
[Speaker C] No, exactly the opposite.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, before the question, maybe yes maybe no, I don’t think it’s exactly the opposite, but that’s a different discussion. What interests me is, let’s say he’s right. Is that a legitimate consideration? Is the fact that if this had existed in the time of the Tannaim and Amoraim it would have been forbidden—so even though right now it isn’t included in the list of prohibited labors, still my assessment is that if it had existed in their time it would have been forbidden—is that good enough to forbid it? It very much resembles the consideration I mentioned earlier, right? That if there had been electricity, then basically it would have entered their list. It just didn’t exist then, that’s all. In the end he retreats from that; he doesn’t accept this kind of consideration. He says we only have what they actually forbade, and again it could be that sociological concerns are at work here, fears of various changes in Jewish law, but this is the place where I perhaps found this kind of consideration. It’s very rare, and even here he doesn’t stick with it in the end. So it seems to me I’ll close this introduction here and move a bit more into this issue of electricity. When the halakhic decisors come to discuss the use of electrical devices, or electricity in general, their basic assumption is that it’s obvious that it’s forbidden. Completely obvious. They didn’t begin from the reasoning and then arrive at the conclusion that it’s forbidden. They begin from the fact that it’s forbidden and then look for a reason. By the way, that’s not criticism. Rabbi Soloveitchik is known— I haven’t seen it written, but it’s attributed to him, that’s what I heard— to have said that no responsa writer in any responsum ever wrote the halakhic ruling only after discussing the sources and then finally reaching a conclusion. He begins from the conclusion, and only afterward presents the sources and all those things. Now this isn’t criticism; you have to understand. A person has some intuition that says: this thing seems to me to be forbidden. Fine. The way of Jewish law is that you have to anchor that in sources and show for what reason it’s forbidden and so on, but there is nothing invalid about using intuition. Okay? Not to be completely captive to it, but intuition can definitely guide us. It happens in science, it happens in every other field of thought, certainly in law and also in Jewish law. In Jewish law too, that’s how it works. Many times when you read a legal ruling, you’ll see that the judge basically wants to reach that bottom line, and then starts piling up various reasons of one kind or another. Legitimate there too, by the way; that’s not criticism. Meaning, there’s some kind of intuition that directs us in this matter. In Jewish law too it’s like that. The halakhic decisors understood—and maybe this is based on what I said earlier—that this thing is significant enough that it would not be right to permit it on the Sabbath. It has to be forbidden. But on the other hand they aren’t willing to use the consideration I mentioned earlier. Meaning, it has to be anchored in the list of labors that appear in the Mishnah, in the Talmudic text, yes, it has to be anchored in the list of primary categories or derivatives, or rabbinic, it doesn’t matter, but something from the system of prohibited labors. And then the search begins: okay, so where do we anchor it? How do we anchor it? In some forms of using electricity, some anchor it in kindling—that’s one of the primary categories of labor—like, say, incandescent bulbs. Some say there is fire-kindling here. There are electronic devices where it’s harder to speak about kindling; there isn’t really something there that resembles burning. It reminds me, there’s a story: Richard Feynman, the Nobel Prize winner, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, an American Jew, was a young participant in the Manhattan Project. So he tells—he has a book, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, right, a kind of cult book among various devotees, devotees of Feynman. And he tells there that once two yeshiva students came to him to ask him—listen—they wanted to ask him a scientific question. So he was delighted: finally the eyes of those benighted people have been opened, they want to take some interest in science. So they came to him and went up with him in the elevator to his apartment, and on the way he says to them, what did you want to talk about, what’s the issue? We wanted to ask whether electricity is fire. So he looks at them and says, I don’t understand—what do you mean, is electricity fire? Electricity is electricity and fire is fire. He didn’t understand the question at all. Electricity is chemistry, it’s physics, he didn’t understand what they wanted, where such a question could even come from. So they said, look, because we have a prohibition on using electricity on the Sabbath, and the question is whether it’s correct to classify it under the labor of kindling or not, so we’re asking whether electricity is fire. So he realized these benighted people had remained benighted and threw them down all the stairs. In any case, when halakhic decisors try to anchor the prohibition on using electricity, some of them link it to kindling, and as I said, that’s only in some uses of electricity, where there is something that perhaps can resemble burning. The more common and more general approach is that of the author of Beit Yitzhak, who says that here one is creating a current—meaning, it’s a rabbinic prohibition. Basically, you create something that wasn’t in the world before: current. When you close the electric circuit, something new is born, the current that didn’t exist before. So this isn’t included in one of the thirty-nine primary categories of labor, nor in their derivatives; it’s a rabbinic prohibition. But it’s something that was accepted by most halakhic decisors as the basis for the prohibition on using electricity. It’s some rabbinic prohibition, though the prohibition of creating something new is itself a very problematic prohibition; it isn’t ruled in the Shulchan Arukh that there is such a prohibition at all. It’s a Talmudic text in tractate Beitzah. Meaning, the whole thing looks a bit forced, because he decided to forbid it and that was the only thing he found. And the third well-known approach is of course the approach of the Chazon Ish, who argues that using electricity on the Sabbath, or closing an electrical circuit on the Sabbath, is forbidden because of building, under the category of building. Building is one of the primary categories of labor. Now here there’s a very interesting anecdote in this context. In 1935 Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach was in the kollel in Jerusalem, and he wrote there—he published a booklet in ’35 called Me’orei Ha’esh. And in that booklet he deals with the use of electricity on the Sabbath, and among other things he discusses the question whether there is building here, and rejects it. It seems to me he still hadn’t heard of the Chazon Ish’s approach at that point. He discusses various possibilities—as I said, it was a field in formation, so you start checking what exactly the meaning of this issue is. The myth says that the fellows in the kollel laughed themselves to death. Meaning, you’re attacking straw men—who would ever imagine that electricity is building? What connection is there between electricity and building? What are you doing here, these empty pilpul arguments to show that electricity is not building—nobody would even imagine that it is. It’s like saying electricity isn’t pork. What’s the connection? I mean, why write about it at all? In that same year the Chazon Ish came to the Land of Israel, in 1935, and he of course innovated the idea that electricity is forbidden because of building, under building. And there was a very interesting exchange between Rabbi Shlomo Zalman and the Chazon Ish, part of which is brought in various writings of Rabbi Shlomo Zalman, in the responsa Minchat Shlomo and in various collections that were published afterward. There is a collection of articles on electricity on the Sabbath, which is a compilation from his responsa. There they bring letters that he wrote to the Chazon Ish and the Chazon Ish wrote back to him, and they argue over the question whether this is building or not building. In the end—and in a moment we’ll get into this a bit more—in the end most halakhic decisors do not take the Chazon Ish’s position seriously. It seems crazy to everybody. Meaning, there’s no connection—what connection is there at all between pressing a switch on the Sabbath, an electric switch, and building? What did you build here? What kind of building is this? What does this have to do with constructing a building or setting up a tent or something like that—what does it have to do with it at all? I want to show what I think at least the Chazon Ish meant, and to try to explain why there is logic in it—considerable logic, in my opinion, if I may say so. To attach myself to him. Let’s maybe begin with the page in front of you. Here are those letters that Rabbi Shlomo Zalman brings; this is taken from his letters, and he says as follows. After extending his greetings, yes, these are letters and I copied excerpts. “Your precious letter reached me. The matter depends on judgment. Heating iron”—there they compare turning on an electric circuit on the Sabbath or closing an electric circuit on the Sabbath to heating metal, heating iron. The question is whether it’s the same thing: sending current into iron or heating iron. “It does not create a new nature in the iron.” When you heat the iron, it doesn’t turn the iron into something else; it’s the same iron, only hot. “Rather, the heat dwells temporarily inside the iron, and the iron constantly expels it.” Yes, iron is a good conductor of heat, so it also gets rid of the heat very quickly if you don’t keep pumping it in. “But connecting the electric wire awakens the electric force embedded in the wire itself, and it is part of the composite constitution at the root of its creation, and this use is constant, and establishing its function through the connection by which the interrupted wire becomes one body with the electrical machine—we are concerned in this with building. First, because one assembles the parts together. When you close the circuit, you are in fact connecting different parts of the circuit and making them into one body. And the leniency of a loose connection does not help here”—that’s a side note. “Second, because repairing the wire itself from death to life is building. Basically, the wire itself, when you close the electric circuit, is awakened from death to life. It was a dead wire, and now it is a wire with current in it, a living wire. So you awaken the wire from death to life; that is called building.” These are very unclear statements; it’s really not clear what he wants. And then again he comments with various remarks about the leniency of temporariness and so on—I’m not going into all those remarks, they’re secondary for us. I move to the left-hand column. Rabbi Shlomo Zalman: “After extending his greetings”—maybe on your page it’s not the left-hand column; on mine it appears differently, I don’t know. “My dear friend, after extending his greetings and so on, your precious words reached me to gladden my heart, like words of Torah of which it is said, ‘they gladden the heart.’ However, the matter discussed is not concerning the essential law that connecting the wires by means of a button is assembling parts. When I connect the wires to one another by means of the button, it is an assembling of parts, it is a joining of these two things to become one entity. And if there had been a break in one of the wires and he took an iron wire and connected them on the Sabbath, he would be liable to bring a sin-offering. And the whole discussion is only because the button is loose and intended to be opened and closed”—meaning, this whole discussion is incorrect, that’s what he writes. “And here there is room to say that if one does so at a time when the electricity is already in use and through the connection the current is already received, this is significant building and is like firmly fixing the parts together, as I wrote in my earlier letter. And for this one need not enter into the nature of electricity in the wire, and perhaps there is building only in the assembly of actual physical substances.” It may be that this isn’t true, because only when you connect physical things to one another is it called a connection. But to create current, which produces some unity from all the parts of the circuit, maybe that is not considered a connection forbidden as building. “However, there is still room to say that the electric wire too, which is made by its power of receiving—which rubber does not have, yes, rubber does not conduct electricity, it doesn’t have the capacity to become an electrical conductor, while iron has the power of receiving—and as long as it is not connected, a person has no object and no benefit from the power stored in it, and when he connects it, it becomes in human hands a usable instrument.” Yes, he continues. “And it makes no difference whether the iron acts or is like the ground itself, because the matter of the labors is judged according to the way human beings use things.” This is a little connected to the previous lecture. “And when the wire is connected, it stands in its natural capacity at his service”—yes, “natural capacity” means the natural property of the wire, that’s the nature of the wire. I’m not putting current into the wire; rather, it’s there, I only cause this natural thing to operate. “And this is considered repairing an instrument.” “And the capacity of receiving is fixed and permanent, it exists inherently and rejoices in it, and never expels it.” Yes, when the circuit operates, the current continues to flow. It’s not like heat, which dissipates if you don’t keep pumping it in. “And more than that, the wire contributes its part to the current.” And there is one more sentence here that is important for my purposes—not this one, in the next passage. Fine, these are the connections, these are the letters of the Chazon Ish. In the third passage, the one that begins “And it is known,” there Rabbi Shlomo Zalman writes: “And it is known that his words are a very great novelty indeed. And all those who discussed matters of electricity made no mention at all of being concerned here with the labors of building and demolishing.” Yes, opening an electric circuit would be demolishing, if closing an electric circuit is building. “Moreover, I heard it said in the name of our master, the Chazon Ish of blessed memory, that even when there is no current at all in the wires, and when the person presses the button still nothing has happened, nevertheless the very closing of the circuit, making it prepared and repaired for a lighting that will later be done by a timer—even this too is considered building.” This is Rabbi Greineman actually writing this: that according to the Chazon Ish, if one closes an electric circuit and it is not connected to the socket at all, one still violates the prohibition of building. Because in the end you connected all the parts of the circuit to one another, and now it has the potential ability to conduct electricity once you plug it into the socket.
[Speaker C] So that takes away all the drama from last week? Why? Because then you prepare the circuit in advance and then—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, that issue needs discussion, right. So that’s what Rabbi Chaim Greineman says. But Rabbi Shlomo Zalman says that’s not correct. “And in my humble opinion it seems,” I’m skipping a bit, “and in my humble opinion it seems, as will be explained below, that the Chazon Ish forbade only in a case where, through his action, new forces were created in the wires, which appear to us like going from death to life. And he also explicitly wrote in his book: because there is a repair of form to the physical object. Therefore, even though people are accustomed to this, it is nevertheless considered building.” And what Rabbi Chaim Greineman writes is not correct. When you close a circuit but it does not create the flow in the wire, that is not it. Only when it creates flow in the wire, because it awakens it from the dead to the living, or because it gives a new form to the wire. Very vague expressions. I’ll try to explain them, and here I come to the significant points. As I said before, usually the halakhic decisors reject the words of the Chazon Ish. It already begins here with Rabbi Shlomo Zalman, or Rabbi Shlomo Zalman’s friends in the kollel—even as an initial possibility they weren’t prepared to accept such a thing. Today very few halakhic decisors are actually concerned about the words of the Chazon Ish. Truly concerned. Yes, they write about it, but they aren’t really concerned about it in practice.
[Speaker C] What practical difference does it make? What practical difference?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] For example, that it’s a Torah-level prohibition, whereas creating a current is a rabbinic prohibition.
[Speaker C] Kindling is—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Something else. In an incandescent wire there’s also kindling. But if it’s not an incandescent wire—a transistor, for example—there it makes a practical difference. Yes.
[Speaker E] Rabbi, in the lecture where you talk about developments in later generations, we see that sometimes there is an outlook—I don’t want to say usually—that the more ancient and earlier someone was who said something, the harder it is for us to challenge it. And even when we know they were mistaken, and even when we know the reason for which they thought that is no longer relevant, halakhic ruling comes and says, wait, if they were like that, then who are we to challenge something they did? You allow yourself things that others don’t allow themselves, and when the Chazon Ish determined something, in some places you say, wait, maybe even that isn’t so.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, that’s a question. It takes us into the discussion of changes in Jewish law and authority versus autonomy in halakhic ruling, but that’s a topic for another discussion. I have a lot to say about it, but I don’t have time to get into it here. I want to preface one more halakhic introduction, and then I’ll get a bit into what I really wanted to say here. The second halakhic introduction appears in Kehillot Yaakov; it also appears on your page. And there he brings a definition of the labor of building, unrelated for the moment to electricity. We’re back to a conceptual question about the labor of building. And he says as follows: “To resolve all this, he wrote based on what Maimonides wrote in chapter 7, law 6: ‘And if one makes cheese and turns it into cheese, he is liable as building under building, for whoever gathers part to part and joins everything until they become one body—this resembles building.’” Yes, someone who makes cheese, who joins the small parts of the cheese into one unit, violates a Torah-level prohibition of building. It is a Torah-level prohibition of building, like construction. “And it is explained that the idea of the labor of building is that one gathers and connects several separate things, such as wood and stones, and makes them into one building. If so, the primary category of building is the making of a permanent tent. And specifically when it is by gathering many parts to make them one body. Therefore he correctly wrote that one who makes a permanent tent, for example by spreading a sheet or leather, is a derivative. It is not a primary category of labor. When I make a tent, I take some sheet and spread it over poles, creating a space beneath it, so it is a derivative of the labor of building on the Sabbath, not a primary category. Why? Because even though he made a permanent tent, in any case he did not make it by gathering many parts together into one body.” He says that basically the definition of the labor of building is what? What is the labor of building? Construction. What do we do in building? We basically create a space. How do we do that? By taking stones, placing them one on top of another, joining them into some complete structure and creating such a structure, creating a space. Meaning, creating a space by joining parts that together form some one organism, some one whole—that is basically the definition of the labor of building. Now there is a very interesting structure here: that is the primary category of building. That is the definition of building. Someone who builds a structure from stones, yes, creates some space from stones. What happens if someone builds a wall without a space—there’s no roof, meaning only a wall? According to this definition that would be a derivative. Why? Because there is gathering of parts here. I am still joining stones and making from them some whole, but I did not create a space. So one element of the definition of the primary category is missing, but it is similar enough to count as a derivative. What happens if I made a tent? If I made a tent, I basically took some sheet and spread it over stakes, I created a space, but this was not done by joining bricks, yes, by joining stones. So here I created a space—the second element of building exists here—but the matter of gathering parts is missing. That too is a derivative. It comes out that the primary category of building is creating a structure from a collection of stones, creating a space from a collection of stones. When I create a space not by gathering parts, or I gather parts but do not thereby create a space, those two are derivatives. And that is, by the way, a very interesting lesson. When you look at the relation between these two derivatives, there is no similarity between them at all. Similarity is not a transitive thing. Not a transitive relation, as mathematicians call it. Meaning, when A resembles B and B resembles C, that does not mean A resembles C. Here there are two derivatives: one is gathering parts that does not create a space; the second is a space not made by gathering parts. Meaning, they are completely foreign to one another; there is no resemblance between the two. But both have a partial resemblance to the primary category, which is both gathering parts and creating a space. And through that the connection between them is created: they are both derivatives of that primary category, whereas between the two derivatives themselves there is really no resemblance. Because this one has property A, and that one has property B. There’s no connection between them. Only both resemble the primary category, which has both A and B. Okay, that is the structure he proposes here. Therefore, for example, in making cheese, in cheese, you gather parts; it doesn’t create a space. You gather parts. Therefore it is a derivative of building—that’s how he explains Maimonides. It’s not a primary category, but it is a derivative of building, and that has various implications that I won’t get into here. What is the meaning of this? Let’s try to think—now I’m entering the body of the matter—what is the meaning of this? Meaning, what does it actually mean, what is the real significance of the labor of building? It is basically to take a collection of components and produce from them a complete whole. As opposed to a collection of components that I place one next to the other and they do not form a whole, but rather a pile. A pile of stones is not a whole. But a building is not a pile of stones. A building is some new whole that is born through joining the stones to one another. If I tell you how many stones there are here, that won’t tell you anything about the nature of the building, about the nature of this thing. If you don’t understand how it was created, and how it functions, and how the stones were joined to one another, you won’t know what is being talked about here. By contrast, with a pile of stones I only need to tell you how many stones there are here and you understand what a pile of stones is. Meaning, a building is not a pile of stones. A building is some kind of whole born through the joining of parts, but there is something in the whole that goes beyond the collection of parts, beyond merely gathering the parts. When this gathering creates something new that has some kind of existence of its own, that is what is called building. The same definition here—you can show it very, very consistently in Maimonides. I’ll perhaps bring a few examples of this, in a way similar to what I did last time. We ask ourselves, for example, let’s say we’re talking about a nation. “A man gets up in the morning and feels he is a nation and starts walking”—Yehuda Amichai. What is a nation? Is a nation something that really exists, or is it a fictitious definition? A sociological definition, a psychological definition if you like, but not really an existing thing. Some would say that. Others claim that a nation is indeed an entity in its own right. Fascism, in its philosophical roots, basically understands that the collective is not only something that exists, but the main thing that exists. All the individuals are really limbs in the body of the collective. By contrast, individualism says, what are you talking about? Philosophical individualism basically says that all that exists is the individual human being. A nation is some legal or cultural definition of one kind or another, but it is a fiction. It’s in the eye of the beholder. It is not really something that exists. Except that we need to push this a little—apparently the individualists seem right. What is this nation, after all? In the end it’s just a collection of people who decided they are a nation. But let’s take that to absurdity, yes? Take it one step further. Does a human being really exist? A human being too is a collection of cells. Do you exist? It’s a collection of molecules. Does the molecule exist? It’s a collection of atoms. And the atom—a collection of subatomic particles, quarks. So what actually exists? What exists is only these elementary particles, and I don’t know whether we’ve even gotten all the way down there, and even if we have, the question is whether there is anything there at all in the end. So then nothing exists. Everything else is fiction.
[Speaker C] I assume we—what? I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand. Is that the meaning of “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I want to get to that. Meaning, the claim is that if we say a human being exists, that is because we understand that a human being is not a pile of cells. A pile of cells—nobody would relate to that as something that exists beyond a simple collection of cells. An organism is not a pile of cells. In an organism there is something cybernetic here. Meaning, something systemic. When the collection of cells actually creates a whole, and that whole has some significance of its own. It is made up, of course, of a collection of cells. When you try to point to what is here beyond the collection of cells, you won’t be able to point to anything. There is nothing here; it’s a collection of cells. When you try to point in the cell itself to what is in the cell beyond the collection of molecules, again you won’t find anything. It’s a collection of molecules. Or in the molecule beyond the collection of atoms. But the fact is that when we look at it as a whole, we basically say that there is something in the whole that goes beyond the sum of its parts. And when we see it that way, that is what we call an organism, or a whole, or a collective entity. Each time in other contexts. In biology it is an organism, but elsewhere we use the term organism metaphorically. Basically we mean a collective entity. Okay? Otherwise it is simply a collection of individual entities, and you can define it as this fiction or that fiction, you can give this collection some name. But that does not really describe something ontic, yes, something that exists in reality itself. So this basically means that if, going back to a nation or to a person, I see in them some kind of existing entity, what I am basically saying here is that if you gather many people and put them one next to the other, you haven’t gotten a nation. They need to function in some form as a complete system—with division of tasks, cultural cooperation, I don’t know, various things of that kind. Shared geography, yes? That’s a big question today in the age of Benedict Anderson’s imagined communities and all these heretical doubts, so people are not willing to hear statements of this kind. But once people took this as obvious. Yes. When you build, that’s—
[Speaker F] Meaning, in the end you have the structure—its parts no longer exist? Meaning—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They exist, they’re connected.
[Speaker F] Like a building, where in the end when you see a building you no longer look at the bricks, and with electricity—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And in the end of—wait, wait, I haven’t gotten to that yet. You’re getting ahead of me. I still haven’t gotten to electricity, hold on. We’ll get there and then we’ll see, okay? For now I’m just trying to define organic existence or collective existence. Okay? There’s John Searle, in his book called Mind, Brain, and Science, a well-known American philosopher. I thought so already. So he talks about collective properties. He says, for example, take the property of liquidity. Liquidity is a property of a cluster of molecules, say water, right? A cluster of H2O molecules has the property that it is liquid. Or any state of matter, right—gas, liquid, or solid. A single molecule doesn’t have that—it’s not relevant. It doesn’t flow, it isn’t solid, and it isn’t gas. That’s a property of the collection. It’s not a property of the individual items that make up the collection, right? A state of matter belongs only to the collection of molecules; a single molecule has no state of matter. So what does that mean? That there are certain properties that appear at the collective level. They don’t characterize the individuals that create the collective; they emerge only on the plane of the collective. There, suddenly, some reality is created that has properties of its own. These are not properties of the individuals. Now, this example itself could be discussed a lot because it’s a very interesting example, but I won’t get into that here; I’m using it only for our purposes. Basically, what this means is that sometimes when I gather parts together, what I get is a pile—a pile of stones—and sometimes when I gather parts together, what I get is a building. Gathering stones and making a pile is not building. Gathering stones and making a building is building. If someone gathered cells and made a human being out of them, in my opinion he would violate the prohibition of building on the Sabbath, because he took building blocks and made from them an organic body, made from them an integrated whole. He violates the prohibition of building. In that case he didn’t create a hollow space, so maybe it would be a derivative category, but that doesn’t matter—it’s a derivative of building. Like a wall or like making cheese, yes. A human being is no less than cheese; if in cheese it’s making cheese, then in a human being it is certainly making cheese—it’s building. Basically the meaning of this is that when we take a collection of things, group them together, and create from them a structure and an integrated whole, that is the labor of building. In other words, to produce a collective entity out of individual entities—that is basically the definition of the labor of building. Maybe let’s give another example of this kind of approach. In Jewish law, in several places, you see a kind of what I’d call fascist attitude, so to speak. Not necessarily in the negative sense, but in the sense of the fascist philosophy I described earlier. For example, yes, we’re in Maimonides, in the Laws of Repentance, where he speaks about Rosh Hashanah, yes, timely enough. He says that on Rosh Hashanah the Holy One, blessed be He, judges each person, He judges the city, and He judges the state, and at each of those levels—and the whole world as well. And each of these judged entities can be intermediate, righteous, or wicked. And then if it is wicked it is sealed accordingly, and if it is righteous it is sealed accordingly, and so on at every level of integration. Then the commentators ask: if all the people have already been judged, what is left to judge in the city? After all, the fate of every individual in the city has already been decreed—what is still left to determine here? In other words, what is being judged when the city, or the state, or the world is judged? And it seems to me that the simple answer is that each person basically wears several hats. He is an organ in certain collective organisms—say, a community, a city, a state, the whole world—and he is also an independent entity. And he himself is also, of course, a whole made up of cells; there’s also a downward direction here. When the Holy One, blessed be He, judges such a person, He judges him on all these levels. That means He can judge him as a private individual and he comes out righteous, and then judge him as a member of a community and he comes out wicked, and as a citizen of the state or member of the state he comes out intermediate, and vice versa. In other words, there is no dependence between these judgments. A person can function properly on the individual level and function badly—or together with all the other components of the whole, function badly—on the collective level. And therefore on the collective plane the judgment may be one way, while on the individual plane it may be another way. And both of those things are true: we may suffer as part of the collective, yet be judged for a good life on the individual plane. Or the opposite. In other words, we actually see the city not as a collection of people. The city has in it something—or the community, or the state has in it something—collective. That is, something appears here beyond the mere fact that there is a collection of people. The assumption of those who challenge Maimonides was that a city is nothing more than a collection of people. And the answer is that that’s not true. A city is a collection of people, but not merely a collection of people. It is a collection of people such that that collection creates an entity with some independent status. Yes, when we impose responsibility on a society for things that happen in its territory—on a state, on a city, on a community, on one group or another—we sometimes impose responsibility on a group for what happens within it. Collective responsibility. Why? Because the claim is that the collective also has some responsibility, or some influence, or guilt for what the individuals within it do. We do not judge only the individual; we judge the collective as well. It bears responsibility for what individuals within it do. This touches on all sorts of questions about harming innocent people, by the way, and all kinds of things of that sort that I can’t get into here. What this basically means—if I just complete the circle of fascism versus individualism. Fascism is a loaded word, so I’m not using it in its negative evaluative sense, but in the sense of belief in the existence of collective entities in the philosophical sense. What? Not fascism—not the right word—collective. Yes, collectivism, call it that. The halakhic approach, it seems to me, actually presents an interesting combination of these two aspects. That is, each person is judged in several circles: he is both an individual and part of a collective, and neither one is exclusively subordinate to the other. In contrast to the individualist view on one side and the fascist view on the other, in the halakhic view, it seems to me, one can see in several places a kind of balance. I’ll give just one example so you can see where this finds expression. The Sages derive from the verse, “Do not be intimidated by any man,” that a judge may not be afraid to issue a ruling. Even if there is a violent litigant, he may not recoil; he must issue the true ruling. What happens if there is a threat to the judge’s life? He’s judging Al Pacino, I don’t know, someone—Assi Abutbul. Is he afraid for his life? What, must he give up his life in order to judge correctly? So there are halakhic decisors who want to say that even in a case of possible danger to life he is still obligated to rule. Certainly in definite mortal danger, no. But in possible mortal danger—if there’s a possibility he might die—then he must rule and take the risk. And this raises various questions, because generally in Jewish law, in a place where possible mortal danger does not override, definite mortal danger also does not override, and vice versa. When one is overridden, so is the other. We do not find a distinction in Jewish law between possible mortal danger and definite mortal danger. It seems to me—if I shorten it—that what this law basically expresses is that the demand on the judge not to recoil is because there is mortal danger to the public here. In other words, if there is no effective judicial system, then the public falls apart. In other words, it is the death of the collective. A collective that doesn’t function is a dead collective. You can see in Jewish law that there are literally laws of mortal danger for the existence of a collective even without anyone dying. There are laws of mortal danger because of the concern that a collective will disintegrate. And one of them is this example. Therefore, you must even take on possible mortal danger in order to preserve the effectiveness of the judicial system. Why not definite danger? Because the judge, besides serving the public, is also a private individual. And his private rights are not subordinate, or not entirely subordinated, to his public role, his social role. He also has some independent status. We do not wholly subordinate the person to his being an organ in an organism, and not the other way around either. And the organism also is not subordinated merely to providing services to the private individual. There is a very delicate balance here between these two aspects, and each one stands on its own. I’ll give just one example from IDF ethics. In IDF ethics, at Mitla—there was a famous case—Raful saw there that the Egyptians were hiding and it wasn’t clear where they were. It was impossible to deal with the situation because it wasn’t clear where they were located. Ground folds, I don’t know, things like that. So he needed someone to drive in a jeep so they would shoot at him, and he got a citation afterward—he died—Yehuda Ken-Dror. Kendor, exactly. Kendor. So he needed someone to drive in a jeep so they would shoot at him and reveal the Egyptians’ location. For that he asked for a volunteer. He did not give an order. Because in IDF ethics you cannot give such an order. In war every soldier is required to risk his life; that is the meaning of going out to war. But a suicide mission—you cannot order a soldier to go on one. A mission that is definite mortal danger, not possible mortal danger. There’s no such thing. Why not? After all, everyone is required to take risks for the sake of—that’s just how it is, that’s the social contract; everyone contributes his share during the period he serves and takes the risks. The answer is that yes, but all that is from the aspect of me as a citizen or as an individual in society. But beyond that I am also a private person. You cannot completely subordinate or completely ignore my personal rights as a private individual; you cannot wholly subordinate that to my obligation to the public. And therefore you cannot require a person to die with certainty for a public goal. You can require him to risk himself in extreme cases, because otherwise we will all die. But it isn’t completely subordinated. There is a very interesting in-between conception here. But that’s just closing the parentheses. For our purposes, what this means is that from the standpoint of Jewish law there are collective entities, and Jewish law recognizes a collective entity as a kind of being that is beyond the collection of individuals that compose it. The acceptance of the giving of the Torah, for example, assumed this. When our ancestors stood at Mount Sinai and received the Torah, the assumption is that this also obligates their descendants. I didn’t stand there. Why does it obligate me? So the kindergarten teacher, as far as I remember, told me that I did stand there. All the souls were there, standing in rows of three, and all those spooky stories. There’s no such thing. If my soul stood there, let it keep it. What does that have to do with me? Obviously not. There’s a metaphorical statement here. The metaphorical statement basically says that the one who undertook the obligation at Sinai was the collective. Not the collection of individuals who stood there, those specific people who stood there, but the collective. Whoever belongs to that collective is obligated by what that collective obligated itself to. So even if I was born a thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four thousand years later and didn’t stand there, that doesn’t matter. Just as laws accepted in the United States two hundred years ago—the sacred American Constitution—which were adopted more than two hundred years ago, still obligate everyone today even though the voters are no longer alive among us and the legislators are no longer alive among us. Why? Because the one obligated by that constitution, like any legal system, is the collective. It is the American public; it is not the collection of citizens who were alive at that time. And once the collective is the one bound, then everyone who joins that collective becomes bound automatically. Again, this is treating the collective as something that has a status beyond the individuals that compose it. There is a Tosafot in Arakhin—in Megillah actually, sorry, on page 9b. Tosafot says there that the rule of “a sacrifice whose owners died” does not apply to a communal offering. Meaning, if there is an offering that is a communal offering, the public set aside that offering, not a private individual. With a private individual, if he dies, then the question is what to do with the offering. There is no longer anyone for whom I am offering it. So what do you do? There are rules about what to do with an offering whose owners died. But with a communal offering there is no rule of an offering whose owners died. A public does not die. At most, the individuals who compose it died and were replaced, but the public is still here. He learns this from the verse: “One generation goes and another generation comes, but the earth stands forever.” Tosafot brings this verse. In any case, again we see here a kind of approach according to which a collective is a kind of entity; it is not a fictive definition. It is not a collection of individuals that I choose to relate to in one way or another. Maybe one more example: the Ship of Theseus. Yes, that’s a famous example. Theseus took his ship after a storm to dry dock for repair, and they started removing planks that had broken and replacing them with other planks, and then there was another storm and they replaced more broken planks, and in the end not a single plank remained from the original ship. The question is whether this is still the ship of Theseus. None of the planks that were originally there are still here. So the question is: from when does it cease being the ship of Theseus, if at all—or is it still? By the way, this is actually a dispute among medieval authorities (Rishonim). A dispute between Ritva and Tosafot on the question of whether, if a man says to his wife—gives his wife a bill of divorce on condition that she never enter her father’s house, and the house collapses. Now they rebuild the house. So the question is whether that is still called her father’s house, which she is forbidden to enter, or whether the condition depends on entering that particular structure or not. But for our purposes, what I’m showing here again is that this ship is a kind of building. It is not a collection of planks. Because if it were a collection of planks, then none of the original planks are here anymore. So it’s no longer the ship of Theseus, obviously. But our way of relating to it is that it is still the ship of Theseus. Why? Because the ship of Theseus is not the collection of planks, but the whole created by the collection of planks. Now, why am I saying all this? Because I think this is what the Chazon Ish means when he talks about building in the wire. He says there: he introduces life into the dead wire. He takes all the particles in the wire and basically creates from them some integrated whole that functions organically. It becomes an electrical device that functions as some kind of system. Until now it was just a collection of atoms alongside one another. As long as it doesn’t functionally operate, it isn’t a fan, it doesn’t give light, it doesn’t travel. It doesn’t matter what electrical device and what it does—then all you have is a collection of atoms. But the moment I turn it into an electrical device that functions—like a ship, like a building—then I have turned that collection of particles into an integrated whole. So says the Chazon Ish: that is building. Literally. It’s obvious that it is building. Because all in all, true, I’m not putting the particles there and gluing them to each other in that sense—there is indeed some expansion here—but I am taking this collection of parts and creating from it a whole that functions as a system. Now it is no longer a collection of atoms; it is a fan. Meaning, it is something that works in a functional way, each part in it taking part in the functioning. So basically, once I created from it some kind of collective entity, some kind of organism, I thereby violated the prohibition of building. Building means creating an integrated whole out of details. That is basically the meaning of what we also saw above in Kehillot Yaakov. And therefore I think that what the Chazon Ish says totally makes sense, even though everyone doesn’t understand what he wants. To me it totally makes sense. In other words, in the end what I did here was turn the wire into something else. I turned the wire—or not the wire, rather the electric circuit or the device, not just the wire—I turned it into some kind of organism that functions as one integrated whole and gives me some function. Until now it was just a collection of plastic parts, iron, all sorts of things like that; I took them all and turned them into an integrated whole. That is really building. And therefore the Chazon Ish says—the Chazon Ish says that when I close an electric circuit, I violate the prohibition of building.
[Speaker G] The general definition of building? Can’t hear? Why is that different from closing a door?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Closing a door does not create the house. Building the house creates the house. Closing a door does not create the house. There was a functional space before, and there is a functional space now too.
[Speaker G] If I take a board and prop it up in the doorway, then I built. If I rotate it on its hinge, then I didn’t build. Right. So here I’ve got a button that rotates on a hinge and I introduced life. Here I have a door rotating on a hinge—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] —and you did not introduce life.
[Speaker G] And you transformed the whole—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] This whole? No, no, you didn’t transform any whole. No new whole was created here. There was a door and it remains a door. Obviously there’s a question here; it’s like the ship of Theseus—how many planks does it take before it’s no longer? There’s always a question of where exactly I create it. Fine. But I think this is a sufficiently significant creation, or the creation of a sufficiently significant whole, to see this as the labor of building.
[Speaker C] The fan before you pressed—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s potential. It has the potential to ventilate. The function isn’t there, but it’s a fan. Fine, but it isn’t ventilating as long as it isn’t functionally operating as a fan. We call it a fan because when you go to the store you ask, “Give me a fan,” but that doesn’t matter. It isn’t a fan as long as it doesn’t ventilate. Otherwise it’s a fan-device. “Fan” is also an active term—but it ventilates. What? A dimmer? What is there in a dimmer?
[Speaker C] Suppose I increase the current.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s already another question. It could be that there really it wouldn’t be—it wouldn’t be building. Increasing the current would not be. Maybe it would be kindling if it’s an incandescent bulb, but as for building, there’s definitely room to say that building would not apply there.
[Speaker C] Any device I put in standby mode?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m saying, we can now start discussing all these borderline cases and discuss whether there is building in them or not—that’s already specific halakhic questions. I’m trying to show the principle.
[Speaker C] There are also three other approaches that don’t depend on one thing. I don’t actually object to the Chazon Ish’s claim that it’s building.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why did they forbid electricity in the first place? Why did they forbid it? I said: either because of generating current, or because of kindling. Those are the main approaches. I’m saying, precisely the accepted approaches, which seem much more plausible, strike me as more far-reaching. Because to call an incandescent bulb kindling—what connection is there between fire and the filament of the bulb? And generating current is something very dubious altogether. And precisely the Chazon Ish, which everyone treats as some novelty that nobody agrees with—there precisely I see a great deal of logic. But of course that logic requires a certain kind of perspective that is not trivial. In other words, it is not a one-to-one copy of the cases that appear in the Mishnah or in the Talmudic text—look, this is very similar. It is similar in conception. It is not similar in the sense of how it is physically done. And here it also really connects with what I said last time. If last time I spoke about the question of at what resolution I relate to something—that is, whether I relate at the resolution of the little electrical circuits or at the resolution of the mobility scooter or the elevator or whatever the larger devices are—here it is a little different from what we had before. There is a similarity, but it is different from what I spoke about last time because here I am not speaking about the level of resolution. Here I am willing to see the parts too. It’s not that, for me, the parts don’t exist. Rather, those parts create some whole whose character is different from the character of the parts that create it. That was not present last time. Last time—for example, a small worm and a big worm—there is nothing in the big worm except lots and lots of cells of small worms. In other words, that’s only a difference of size. When I’m speaking here about the labor of building, it’s not a difference of size; something new is created. A difference of size is the difference between one stone and a pile of stones. Here the difference is in function. In other words, some new structure is created, and therefore it is not only a question of what scale I’m looking at it on, but maybe I’d call it the level of integration. So at what level of integration am I relating to it? At the level of the whole or at the level of the details? There are also intermediate degrees. According to this, even salad should be forbidden, because we created a whole? We are not creating a whole. I don’t know if I would call a salad a whole. Why not? Because it has some good taste, but it isn’t some thing that has a new function. Again, that’s a question of evaluation. I agree that there is something of what I said also in salad, and the question is how significant it has to be for us to decide that this is a Torah-level forbidden labor. It is always a quantitative question. Obviously, a creation has to be sufficiently significant, sufficiently new, for me to define it as forbidden by Torah law. If there is something of the matter there, that is not enough to… I wouldn’t think so; I wouldn’t include it, I think, under building. There is in it an element of building, in the sense of joining something. So I said—mentioned this earlier—that this isn’t present here. Meaning, I’m not taking component by component and gluing them to each other. The Chazon Ish himself addresses this. But he says that since in the end I turn them into a whole, the turning into a whole itself connects them—that’s what he writes; we read his language earlier. In other words, he argues that once it became one circuit, then conceptually it has been connected. Because now it is no longer a collection of atoms or a collection of parts, but has become one integrated whole. So I didn’t connect them physically, but conceptually it became something connected. So yes, there is some expansion here of the ordinary labor of building, but it’s an expansion that I think is no more far-reaching than many other expansions we make.
[Speaker C] Do you think that in this Rabbi Greineman is right or not right? Rabbi Greineman?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No. Rabbi Shlomo Zalman is right in his argument against Rabbi Greineman. Because I didn’t create anything as long as it isn’t functioning. As they said earlier, a fan, as long as it isn’t ventilating, is only the potential for ventilation; it is not yet a new function. Okay, so basically the point is that here I’m trying to distinguish between different levels of integration and not between different sizes or different resolutions, which is what I did last time. But still, I think the move is a similar move, and in both cases, by the way, this new way of looking comes in order to forbid and not in order to permit.
[Speaker C] What about the house? If the house is under construction, when you enter the house it didn’t serve me as a house.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why? No, the house functions. No, it didn’t serve me. Also, if I turn on the fan and don’t stand in front of it—then did I violate a prohibition? It isn’t ventilating me. Yes, but it functions as a fan. The house too functions as a house. Nothing more is needed than that. When I’m not inside it, then it’s not my house, but there is a house here. I don’t think you need the person in order for that to happen.
[Speaker C] The device is similar to a house that isn’t in use; it wasn’t there beforehand.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I said: if you turn on the fan and aren’t standing in front of it, do you think that would be permitted?
[Speaker C] The question is whether that’s what’s relevant.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m asking. No, it’s not relevant, because if I’m not being ventilated, then why should I care that it ventilates?
[Speaker C] You said that functionality is what changes things. Right. The function of it is related to the person.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, its function is connected to the question of what a person can do with it. Whether the person actually uses it or not—if I build a house and don’t live in it, I have violated the labor of building according to everyone. Because I created here something I can live in.
[Speaker C] That’s potential—it’s like the potential.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, because that’s the potential for use. But here they were talking about a switched-off fan—that’s the potential for the function, not for use. Meaning, it doesn’t yet serve at all. Understand? In other words, it doesn’t ventilate at all before I turn it on. The fact that I’m not being ventilated doesn’t matter—that’s on a completely different plane. The fan itself, the moment it ventilates, I have violated building. Just as when I built a house and didn’t go in to live there, obviously I violated the labor of building because I created here a device that functions. The fact that I am not using that device now—so what? I’m forbidden to create that device. Yes, what about electricity?
[Speaker C] When I connect something to the electrical grid, I’m not sending current; I’m creating a voltage potential.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean? The voltage already exists without that. When you plug it in, the voltage passes current.
[Speaker C] Yes, but from the side of the device I created a voltage difference. No, the voltage difference is there.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] When I put the terminals there, the voltage differences come to the terminals and create current. I didn’t send it by pumping; you created current by means of the voltage gradient—you created the current. Is that indirect causation? No, because the current isn’t what matters here. You can look at the voltage like the current. In practical terms, what animates the wire, what causes it to function, is really the power. It’s not the current and not the voltage. So you introduced power into the circuit. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the voltage or the current. The moment it becomes functionally different, you created something new here. The point isn’t that I pushed the electrons so that they roll around in there. Okay? Okay, I think we’ll stop here. Thank you. More power to you. Fortunate are you. Thank you very much,
[Speaker G] Thank you very much.
