Q&A: Creating and Eliminating Conditions for Fulfilling Commandments
Creating and Eliminating Conditions for Fulfilling Commandments
Question
Hello Rabbi,
What do you think about fulfilling commandments that we are not actually obligated in? I’m not talking about optional commandments, like eating bread in the sukkah after the first night, but about commandments where, apparently, there is currently no practical circumstance that would obligate a person in them, yet one artificially creates such a circumstance. For example:
- Wearing a four-cornered garment in order to become obligated in tzitzit
- Owning a firstborn donkey only in order to redeem it
- For someone who owns a field, fulfilling the commandment of leaving the corner of the field for the poor, even though apparently one could avoid it (because poor people do not come)
One could also ask the opposite question regarding a “standard” legal workaround—artificially changing the situation in order to avoid fulfilling the commandment. Tosafot says regarding tzitzit that for this (=avoiding wearing an appropriate garment, even though it is normally worn, in order to avoid tzitzit) there is punishment in a time of calamity. But seemingly we do this all the time with a prozbul, the sale permit, and so on. And regarding leaving the corner of the field for the poor, I’m somewhat uncertain whether perhaps it should still be practiced nowadays.
My question is: is it permissible to use such a legal workaround, and especially the reverse—is there value in artificially creating an obligation?
Answer
First, I do not see a difference for this purpose between optional commandments and conditional commandments. It seems to me that the question whether a person must, or whether it is proper for him, to place himself under an obligation is not very well defined. After all, it is obvious that if a person does so, he receives reward for it. By the same token, it is obvious that he is not obligated to do so. So what exactly is the question? Clearly there is value, because you gain a commandment and its reward. Is there some claim against one who did not do so? It is quite clear to me that there is not.
As for punishment in a time of wrath regarding tzitzit, that is in the Talmud, not Tosafot. On the contrary, Tosafot writes that the punishment is given only where the person evades fulfilling the commandment—that is, his regular shirt has four corners and he wears a different one in order to avoid tzitzit. But where there simply are no four-cornered shirts, as in our case, there is no problem at all in not fulfilling the commandment, and certainly one is not punished for it. In my opinion, this is a perfectly straightforward interpretation, crystal clear, even though from the plain sense of the halakhic decisors it does not appear that they took Tosafot’s view into account.
A prozbul and the sale permit are poor examples, because both are used in situations of significant need. There one certainly may use a legal workaround or avoid entering into the obligation of a commandment. If you mean drawing up a prozbul or using the sale permit where there is no need, then all the halakhic decisors agree that it is improper to do so. Moreover, the halakhic decisors who oppose the sale permit argue that there is an actual prohibition involved; that is, their opposition is not to the legal workaround itself (as with selling leavened food or a permissive business arrangement), but to actually committing a prohibition.