Q&A: The Labor of Kindling
The Labor of Kindling
Question
Hello Honorable Rabbi, from what I understand, every labor is meant to bring about some kind of creation in the object of the labor itself, such as cooking producing food, writing producing a word, and sewing producing a garment. I wanted to ask: what does the labor of kindling come to create? Is it also forbidden because of the coals it creates, like the labor of extinguishing? I am asking according to the opinion that this is not merely a prohibition stated as a negative commandment. Also, it would seem that incandescent bulbs should not be forbidden because of kindling, since nothing is created here (the “fire” itself lights the room by means of the filament).
Answer
The labor of kindling creates fire (and that is also what happens in an incandescent filament, aside from the issue of building, of course). The labor of extinguishing creates coals.
I did not understand what the connection is to the question of whether this is merely a prohibition stated as a negative commandment or not. In the prohibited labors there is both a negative commandment and a positive commandment.
Discussion on Answer
Fire is enduring because that is its nature.
Kindling was singled out to teach separate liability, but even if it was singled out as merely a negative commandment, kindling is still one of the primary categories of labor, it just is not written explicitly in the Torah (like all the others except carrying from domain to domain).
You’re right, thank you very much, all the best.
That was exactly the problem that came up for me here: there is the rule of something enduring, and it seemed to me that fire, by its very nature, is not something enduring but rather something that happens to an object and after some time disappears. Perhaps with regard to fire one can say that lighting a fire (a real one, as opposed to, say, sparks) does meet the criterion of something enduring. As for the second remark, there is a dispute whether the prohibition of kindling was written in the Torah to teach that each labor is counted separately, or whether “kindling was singled out as merely a negative commandment.”