Q&A: Asking a Non-Jew
Asking a Non-Jew
Question
Have a good week.
I do guard duty on the Sabbath at the yeshiva, and at the station there is an air conditioner running. During the Sabbath there is a certain time when a non-Jew does the guard duty, and he very often turns off the air conditioner. The question is whether I may tell him, when I replace him, to turn the air conditioner back on. Even though he would be doing it for me, it is also just basic fairness: if you turned off the air conditioner because you were cold, and the person after you can’t turn it back on, then you should turn it back on when you finish.
Answer
It has nothing to do with fairness. This is a question of whether it is permitted, so why should I care about fairness? If this will interfere with your guard duty, then it is certainly permitted. If it will cause you very, very great discomfort (and also detract from Sabbath enjoyment), there is a dispute among the halakhic decisors whether asking a non-Jew is permitted for Torah-level prohibitions, and there is room to be lenient.
Discussion on Answer
Or maybe it can be phrased differently: that the non-Jew should not be allowed to turn it off if he won’t turn it back on afterward, because that harms whoever does the next shift, and therefore it would be permitted for him to turn it on.
As I wrote, it has absolutely nothing to do with fairness.
I didn’t understand why that isn’t an argument. If he is not allowed to turn it on for me (from a halakhic standpoint), then he should not be allowed to turn it off for himself (from a moral standpoint).
This is just ordinary guard duty so that random people won’t come in, not security duty, and it also doesn’t bother me that much. My question is whether it can nevertheless be permitted on the grounds that, from the non-Jew’s side, he should act fairly and turn it back on, and then it would count as him doing it for himself, or in the end is he still turning it on for me?