Q&A: Rabbinic Prohibitions Unintentionally
Rabbinic Prohibitions Unintentionally
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I wanted to know your opinion on whether there is no rabbinic prohibition when done unintentionally; and if indeed there is not, whether it is permissible to cause someone else to stumble into a rabbinic prohibition (in a case where for him it would be unintentional).
Have a kosher and happy Passover.
Answer
According to Netivot HaMishpat (sec. 234), yes, and many disagreed with him on this.
I think it may be correct for some prohibitions that are obedience-based prohibitions, but certainly not for all of them. For example, the later authorities distinguish between two kinds of rabbinic Sabbath restrictions. There are rabbinic prohibitions that are fences and decrees so that one not come to violate a Torah-level prohibition, and there are rabbinic restrictions that are extensions of Torah-level forbidden labors. Thus, for example, separating food from refuse is selecting prohibited rabbinically, and it may be that this is an extension of the prohibition of selecting, and not a decree lest one come to separate refuse from food. That is, it contains the same problematic element as selecting, but with lesser force. But riding a horse on the Sabbath (which was prohibited lest one break off a branch) is certainly not an extension of the labor of reaping (what does riding have to do with reaping?). There it is clearly a decree lest one come to reap, and not rabbinic reaping. From this you can understand that prohibitions of the first type would seem to be forbidden even when done unintentionally, and one may not cause others to stumble in them either, since they contain an intrinsic problem and not merely a duty of obedience. In prohibitions of the second type there is only a duty of obedience, and when done unintentionally one can say that there is no disobedience here.
Incidentally, even in Torah-level law there is a similar phenomenon. There are quite a few Torah-level laws regarding which we rule that in cases of doubt one is lenient: a firstborn, a mamzer, a mourner, orlah outside the Land of Israel, impurity in the public domain, and more. The Ran wrote at the end of Kiddushin that it is permissible to cause a person to stumble with definite orlah outside the Land of Israel, because from the perspective of the person being caused to stumble, it is no worse than a doubt, and it is permitted to him. Rabbi Elchanan Wasserman wrote in an article (I once heard this from Rabbi Hershel Schachter) that this is so regarding all laws where doubt is treated leniently. He explained that in these laws the forbidden element is awareness. It is not a condition for the prohibition, but the very definition of the transgression. It is forbidden to eat something that is known to the eater to be orlah outside the Land of Israel. If it is not known to him, there is no prohibition here at all (and not merely an exemption due to coercion or inadvertence).