Q&A: Question
Question
Question
With God’s help,
The Rema wrote in Yoreh De’ah, section 87, paragraph 6: “Some say that it is forbidden to stir the fire under a gentile’s pot, because they sometimes cook milk in them and sometimes meat, and one who stirs the fire under their pot may thereby bring about the cooking of meat and milk.” Rabbi Akiva Eiger asks there: but after all, he does not intend to cook; he only intends to stir the fire, and this is not an inevitable result, because it is not certain that the gentile cooked both meat and milk in it. He answers that specifically in a doubt about the future — perhaps his action will not produce that result, as in dragging a chair or bench, where the doubt is whether his dragging will make a furrow — but in a doubt about the past, like here, if the pot has absorbed meat and milk then by stirring the fire it will certainly be cooked; the only doubt is whether it has absorbed meat and milk. That is called an inevitable result, etc. End quote. The truth is that I didn’t quite manage to understand his distinction between the types of doubts. In both cases there are two possibilities, and reality is certainly one of them; it’s just that he doesn’t know which possibility is correct. So what is the difference between a doubt about the past and a doubt about the future?
Thank you very much.
Answer
Hello,
As is well known, this is a dispute between the Taz and Rabbi Akiva Eiger. The distinction is explained in detail in Bi’ur Halakhah in the laws of trapping, regarding any closing of a box, and I am going to discuss it in one of the upcoming columns. Briefly: Rabbi Akiva Eiger argues that when the reality is clear but the doubt is only on my side (the person), that is a case of doubtful inevitable result; only if reality itself is indeterminate is it not considered an inevitable result. When one drags a bench, the ground itself is in a state where maybe a groove will be made and maybe not. Therefore there it is not considered an inevitable result. But in the case of closing a box, where there is a doubt whether there are flies in it, then if there are flies there will certainly be trapping, and therefore it is a doubtful inevitable result. True, one could ask: after all, with the ground too, either a groove will be formed or it will not; that too is only a doubt from the person’s perspective. But from a common-sense, everyday perspective, that is not how people view it. People see that situation as though the ground itself is in a state where it is not intrinsically clear whether a groove will be formed, and not merely as a lack of knowledge on the part of the person. I discussed this at length in the book on Talmudic logic, volume 11, and also a bit in volume 12 (available only on Amazon).