Q&A: Sabbath Pay
Sabbath Pay
Question
As I understand it, the main laws and discussions about Sabbath pay were stated regarding hiring a person’s labor, and not regarding renting utensils or equipment and the like. But the halakhic decisors wrote about that as well.
And I saw in Noda B’Yehuda (Second Edition, Orach Chayim 26) that he suggested a rationale, regarding women’s ritual baths, that one pays for the expenses, and the profit is included incidentally.
If so, wouldn’t that apply to any utensil or item? (And perhaps even to part of hiring workers, where there are expenses.) If so, then is the law of Sabbath pay only about hiring labor?
It is hard to say that he was speaking specifically there because of the reasoning of a matter involving a commandment, since it seems he meant this as an independent rationale.
Thank you very much!
Answer
I didn’t understand the question. Payment for renting a place or utensils is also forbidden (Orach Chayim sec. 246). What is the question?
Discussion on Answer
Correct. You can always game the system. So what?
I didn’t understand the last question. Expenses of that very Sabbath are reasonable. Paying expenses of other days is not.
If you always can, then what is the law? This is no more of a legal workaround than any other incidental inclusion, because the basis of the payment also comes for the expenses, just like in the case of the women’s ritual bath, the Noda B’Yehuda’s case.
The question is simple: after all, one also pays for general expenses, like the example above with the car.
That is indeed a legal workaround, because the payment is not for expenses but for rent. In incidental inclusion, you are paying for the service you received.
According to the Noda B’Yehuda’s reasoning mentioned above,
one can always claim that I am paying for your expenses.
Say I rent a car from you and say that I’ll pay you for the insurance and the annual inspection.
But in the meantime I saw that Rabbi Shlomo Zalman addressed this and wrote that this applies specifically to the expenses of that very Sabbath,
because otherwise you could say the same thing even about renting a house.
But I don’t understand the reasoning behind the distinction.