Q&A: A Question Brought Before a Religious Court
A Question Brought Before a Religious Court
Question
Good morning, Rabbi Michael Abraham,
There is someone in our study hall whose heart is close to matters of monetary Jewish law and serving as a rabbinical judge, and from time to time he brings us issues and cases that actually came before a religious court. Yesterday he brought us a case that happened on Purim, involving a group of young men who entered an elevator meant for four passengers, and in their drunkenness more of them got in. The elevator broke down. The question was: who has to pay for the repair—the last one who got in and pushed the weight over the allowed limit, or perhaps all of them equally?
And that fellow said that the rabbinic scholars who were in the halakhic ruling court received the question and immediately began discussing it, weighing and debating on the basis of the Talmudic passage in Bava Kamma 10 and more. (P.S. I have no idea what the “and more” means—whether it means other sources and the like. In any case, if one wants to add here the issue of drunkenness and Purim, personally that doesn’t grab me all that much, because it really is a secondary side issue in the story. What interests me more is the essential case in itself: the relation and responsibility of the first four who entered as against the fifth who entered last.)
To get back to our matter: when the person presenting the case mentioned, in the name of the scholars who discussed it, the Talmud in Bava Kamma page 10, it vaguely came to mind (the last time I learned Bava Kamma was in junior yeshiva decades ago) that there is a story about a bench on which several people were sitting, and then a fat fellow named Pappa bar Abba came and also sat down, and the bench broke. Beyond that I don’t remember anything—not the conclusion, and certainly not the give-and-take of the discussion.
I opened Bava Kamma 10a. At first I was disappointed, because I saw a case at the end of the page about a pit of depth nine, and someone came and completed it to ten, etc., and that was not the case I remembered. But immediately after turning the page, to 10b, I indeed came across that story of Pappa bar Abba, and there is some back-and-forth there, so from a quick glance it is hard to extract the conclusion and the practical bottom-line ruling.
In any event, since the Rabbi swims in these matters and in the order of Nezikin, I would be happy to hear the Rabbi’s opinion on this story: whom should we obligate, and how much? And I will, God willing, fulfill the saying of the Sages, “Whoever says something in the name of the one who said it brings redemption to the world,” and I will bring before the learners that this is not my Torah but the Rabbi’s, of course. Thanks in advance.
Answer
I’ll write off the cuff, because this seems to me like a simple ruling. But I haven’t checked it too thoroughly.
There are two planes to discuss here: 1. Damage caused in the course of Purim rejoicing appears in the Shulchan Arukh as something for which one is exempt. 2. The basic law itself, had this not happened on Purim. Here one must discuss the nature of the damage: first, was it a result of the weight, or was it accidental damage unrelated to the weight? (It is hard to believe that the addition of one person causes damage. There are safety margins in elevator regulations.) And if the damage was because of the weight, one must discuss whether it happened only because of the addition of the fifth person, or whether it would have broken even without him. And one still has to discuss whether they all entered together or one after another. If they entered one after another, then in the bench case there in Bava Kamma the ruling is that the last one pays. See Choshen Mishpat 381:1.
Discussion on Answer
With all this length, I didn’t understand anything. Was the damage caused by the pressing? It’s not clear what the reality was. Even if the pressing caused it, I’m also not sure that the one who pressed is the one liable, since he acted on behalf of all of them. There’s room to argue this back and forth.
Even if one of them had said “for the sake of the unification” and appointed one of them as an agent, we hold that “there is no agency for a transgression.” But I went on too long, as the Rabbi rightly noted. “Give to a wise man and he will become wiser still.”
This is not agency for a transgression. Agency for a transgression is, for example, sending a fire through a competent person. Besides, when the agent acts unintentionally, the medieval authorities dispute whether there is or is not agency.
At most one could say that because of the button press, it is considered as though they all caused the damage together and not one after another.
I’m uncomfortable wasting the Rabbi’s time, except that the Rabbi left me an opening in the second-to-last remark when he ended with, “There’s room to argue this,” so I argued a little. (When I end with “Give to a wise man and he will become wiser still,” indeed the Rabbi made me wiser.) I’ll only conclude that I do not know to what extent one can call it unintentional when someone violates the manufacturer’s regulations that permit use of the elevator only for four people. And Pappa bar Abba, fat as he was, fifth in number, pushes himself in.
Pappa bar Abba is only an interpretive setup explaining why he is liable even if they would have broken the bench without him. The ordinary case of a bench is not with Pappa bar Abba.
They are acting unintentionally, because a reasonable person understands that even if it says four, five can still enter. And indeed I don’t believe such a case really happened. There are safety margins in the manufacturer’s instructions.
A reasonable person, in my view, is someone like the Rabbi, who obeys the law. But with respect, let him not forget that in Bnei Brak you can’t define people as reasonable, since state laws and manufacturers’ rules are nothing more than a recommendation and are not binding at all. And let the Rabbi believe me: in the junky elevators of Bnei Brak from the year 5680, not only are there no safety margins—it’s doubtful whether there is any safety at all.
More power to the Rabbi.
The truth is that in the few hours that passed from when I asked the Rabbi—at first I waited a bit, maybe the Rabbi would get to see it and answer and I would go with an answer, but the Rabbi doesn’t work for me, and presumably the Rabbi has many important things to deal with besides answering my question, and in any case the Rabbi has no obligation to answer someone—so I went to the study hall, and we discussed the issue before the one who brought the case would tell us what they ruled in the religious court.
And indeed the spirits there were stormy in both directions, and among the things said there were in fact also some that pointed in the direction the Rabbi raised, and we waited with curiosity to hear what the religious court had ruled in the matter. But what turned out was that the one who brought the case from the court had pulled a bit of a prank on all of us. We thought this was a case from this past Purim that had recently been discussed in court, but that was not so. He revealed to us that the case indeed happened and came before a religious court, but it was a few years ago, when Rabbi Nissim Karelitz of blessed memory was still alive. And what I brought above in the name of the scholars there, to discuss it based on the Talmud in Bava Kamma 10, really was said and raised by them.
But then Rabbi Nissim came in, they brought the question before him, and he responded immediately: the young man who pressed the button is the one liable. Truthfully, we forgave him for the prank—it’s the first time he’s done such a thing, as far as I remember until today—because we were amazed by this clear judgment, something we hadn’t thought of. After all, until the button was pressed, essentially nothing had happened and no damage had yet been done. So only the one who pressed it caused the damage. What a loss, those who are gone. That really is the difference between us small people and the great sages of the generation, in their sharp grasp.
I’m actually curious to ask the Rabbi: does such an answer belong to what people in yeshivot are used to calling a “fifth section of the Shulchan Arukh”? Or is it simply correct analysis and a proper, clear-sighted view of reality in light of what is ruled in the Shulchan Arukh—knowing how to compare one case to another and fit the case, even in the technological reality of our day, to what has been ruled in Jewish law—but it still belongs to the four sections of the Shulchan Arukh?