Q&A: Bulletins — “Mundane Documents”?
Bulletins — “Mundane Documents”?
Question
The Talmud in Shabbat 149a prohibits reading mundane documents (more than that, it even enacts decrees because of this). What is the law regarding Sabbath bulletins? Starting with news items or opinion pieces that are pure politics or pure blah-blah (and then they are mundane documents at least according to Maimonides, who included in this almost all literature that is not sacred), and ending with advertisements, which are on the borderline of bills of sale, since they deal with prices and business…
Answer
The ads certainly fall under the category of mundane documents. In general, it is best not to touch that trash. A mixture of commercial advertisements, political preaching, tourism offers soaked in fear of Heaven, stupid text-message questions, and the like.
Regarding opinion pieces and politics, it is not clear that this is included in mundane documents. The accepted view is that this too is forbidden, and only writings of wisdom and something needed for a commandment were treated leniently. But as is well known, many are lenient about reading newspapers.
All trash is fit to be touched. As they say in the name of Saul Lieberman: nonsense is nonsense, but the study of nonsense is science. If the content itself is not important, then you can think about it, and that already makes it very interesting. What characterizes preaching, whether, why, and how preaching works, the distribution of preachers among different communities, whether and how one can become inoculated against the influence of preaching (or advertisements).