Q&A: Unintentional Involvement
Unintentional Involvement
Question
Hello and blessings!
I saw that Shemirat Shabbat Kehilkhatah wrote that unintentional involvement on the Sabbath is exempt but forbidden, and if so it comes out that this is forbidden rabbinically. What reason is there to forbid unintentional involvement? After all, the person is not at all aware of what he is doing and cannot prevent it, so what did the Sages accomplish with their enactment? If this is an enactment whose purpose is to make a safeguard and distance a person from transgression, here that certainly does not apply. But even if we say that this is an intrinsic prohibition, why would they do that if people cannot live up to it?
Answer
This is Rabbi Akiva Eger’s view, and indeed I too was very puzzled by it. In my opinion, unintentional involvement is permitted.
Perhaps his view is that they want to cause a person to pay closer attention and not enter a state of unintentional involvement. Clearly, when he is unintentionally involved, the prohibition has no meaning. The prohibition is entering such a state (a kind of negligence).
Discussion on Answer
The question of the difference between an unwitting transgressor and unintentional involvement is a very difficult one, and the commentators are quite confused about it. But even in unintentional involvement there is an element of negligence. You are walking ליד plants on the Sabbath and might detach some of them as you walk. Clearly, you can also be careful if you are aware. This is not constant alertness to every detail of your life, but caution in the laws of the Sabbath at a particular place and time where there is concern about a prohibition. It is not so terrible at all. But as I said, I tend toward the view that it is actually permitted.
A clarifying note: contrary to what you wrote, an unwitting transgressor is also a lack of attention to reality and not only to the law. See the Mishnah in tractate Shabbat, chapter “Kelal Gadol.”
Regarding your puzzlement about Rabbi Akiva Eger, it seems to me that this topic can be explained with the help of one of the Tzafnat Pa’neach’s conceptual inquiries in his responsa. He investigates and tries to infer from the words of the Sages whether commandments need to be done, or whether they need to come about. Similarly regarding Sabbath desecration: is the desecration determined by the person, for whom the situation is completely permitted and poses no problem, or is there an intrinsic problem in the act itself, a problem that may project its result back onto the person himself?
These conceptual inquiries always seem questionable to me. Certainly when formulated so sweepingly. But in any case, we are talking about a rabbinic prohibition, so it does not seem relevant to me.
First, Rabbi Akiva Eger himself distinguishes between the laws of the Sabbath and other prohibitions, because on the Sabbath there is no prohibition when one is unintentionally involved, since “the Torah prohibited only deliberate, thoughtful labor.”
Second, the reasoning is very simple: even if the person did not commit a transgression, all the same he affected the object of prohibition itself (and even according to the Rabbi’s view that an apikoros does not violate prohibitions, here it does have the significance of a prohibition).
Here it is clear that he did not affect an object of prohibition, because on the Torah level this is permitted. The whole discussion is why the Sages would create an additional layer.
Continuation: the fact that this is considered an object of prohibition in other places does not mean that on the Sabbath it is also considered an object of prohibition, only that one is not liable for it. That is because the reason one does not violate it on the Sabbath is that Sabbath prohibitions are fundamentally different, and it is not applicable for unintentional involvement to be an object of prohibition on the Sabbath.
Your suggestion is a bit difficult for me, because there is a difference between an unwitting transgressor, where it is clear that we are dealing with negligence, and unintentional involvement. An unwitting transgressor is a lack of attention to the law, and there it is understandable that a person is required to stay alert and pay attention to the laws relevant to the situations he is in. But regarding unintentional involvement, it sounds to me completely unreasonable to require a person to be on constant alert for every detail of his life.