Q&A: The Labor of Building and Its Philosophical Meaning
The Labor of Building and Its Philosophical Meaning
Question
Honorable Rabbi, hello. In the Rabbi’s lesson on the labor of building, the Rabbi spoke about how electricity essentially sustains the life of an object, and without it the object lacks meaning. We see that the Magen Avraham says that an object built by means of hinges, where one opens it and changes its form, does not involve the labor of building. Could one argue that with electricity too, since people constantly dismantle and rebuild it on a regular basis, there is no labor of building?
Answer
Hello.
Do you mean hinges? There is a difference. With an object that has hinges, it is indeed the same object the whole time. But with an electrical device, it is literally something else. Without electricity it is a block of wood/metal, and not a device at all. The matter is similar to taking the soul from a living creature and restoring it again and again. Would there not be killing here? I doubt it. It is worth comparing this to the folding bed discussed in the Talmud and by the halakhic decisors (in the topic of building with utensils), but this is not the place to elaborate.
Discussion on Answer
The nullification of the parts to one another is the same idea as going from death to life. Their becoming subsumed into one another turns them into a different entity, like an organic being whose organs and details are integrated into one new collective entity.
It’s worth checking the Chazon Ish itself, and his correspondence with Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach. It comes out from there that neither of them made these issues dependent on one another.
My claim is not necessarily about the Chazon Ish himself. It is a correct line of reasoning, and perhaps it is also the intuition (not necessarily conscious) underlying his words. There I cited the words of Rabbi Abraham of Sochatchov in the article and in the book (which were also brought in Kehillot Yaakov, if I recall correctly, on building with utensils) regarding the parameters of the labor of building, which is defined as making a structure that is an assembling of parts (stones, boards) in order to create a space. Therefore there are two subcategories that have no connection to one another at all: a tent (= the space without the assembling of parts) and cheese-making (= assembling without a space). I argued that this is seemingly a combination of two independent requirements (and that is why a non-transitive pathology is created here: subcategory A resembles the primary category. Subcategory B resembles the primary category. But there is no resemblance at all between the subcategories).
I explained that my proposal brings them closer to one another, because both create a new entity (from death to life in my sense). The tent gathers the parts of the space beneath it (and also the components of the structure itself) and bundles them into one “organic” whole.
And so you see that the essence of the labor of building is from death to life. And that is very true.
You got things mixed up.
The reasoning of going from death to life has nothing to do with hinges or with the artisans’ bed, and in the Chazon Ish it appears under the category of “possible.”
He has a more basic line of reasoning, according to which the issue is the nullification of the parts to one another, under certain conditions, even when this is done temporarily, and that does belong to the topic of the artisans’ bed. And there is a practical difference between the two reasonings.