Q&A: A Half-Measure and Two People Who Performed It
A Half-Measure and Two People Who Performed It
Question
When two people carry something out on the Sabbath together (both of them jointly lifted it up and jointly set it down), they are exempt because when two people perform an act together, they are exempt. Why aren’t they liable on the grounds that each of them violated a half-measure? (According to the view that a half-measure is not relevant only to the prohibition of eating.)
Answer
The Sefat Emet asks this about the Mishnah at the beginning of tractate Shabbat, regarding a case where one person lifts it up and the other sets it down. But there it is easier, because each one performed only half of the action, and that is not a half-measure.
As for two people who carry something out together, it seems to me that the answer is that there is no half-measure here. A person’s act of carrying out is not a quantitative measure. Think about the logic of “fit to combine,” and you’ll see that it does not apply here.
To be sure, some understood the exemption of two people who performed it together as a matter of an atypical manner of performing the act, and then the question does not arise.