[Avodah] goy vs chiloni

[Chana Luntz]

RET writes:

> Just to get the facts right I assume R. Zilberstein is 
> referring to the usual door in Israeli apartment building. 
> These doors are basically manual and can be opened from the 
> outside with a key and from the inside with a handle. In 
> ADDITION they can be opened from the outside electronically 
> by pushing the correct combination and (the case he is 
> discussing) from inside every apartment by pushing a buzzer. 
> His heter is based on the act that the person on the inside 
> could have gone down to the door and opened in manually.

I don't think this can be right.

The reason I say that is that thousands of frum Jews in Israel have been
living with these door systems for decades.  The accepted situation is that
those who live in the apartments have keys, and enter with the keys.  If
inviting guests, they either prop the door ajar, or the guests stand outside
and yell until they attract the attention of the residents, who come down
and open the door for them. 

Even if there are chilonim in the appartment block, which there often are,
there is no need to rely on the actions of a chiloni to get into one's
appartment, and hence absolutely no need for this heter.  Why would anybody
be seeking what is clearly a more problematic halachic reliance if he could
wait until the chiloni closed the door, and then use his own key?  In such a
circumstance he would clearly not be getting any benefit from the action of
the chiloni, and the guf of the d'var, ie the door, has been changed back to
what it was.

Hence this teshuva would seem to be predicated on a scenario where the
fellow in question cannot in fact get into his apartment without utilising
the act which is done b'issur by the chiloni.  If he could beg or borrow a
key, then what is the question?  If he could stand outside and yell for
assistance from the inside, again what is the question?  I certainly did not
get the impression that this teshuva was based on the scenario where he had
forgotten his key.  And in fact the very analogy to the lion would seem to
be against this interpretation.  After all, whether somebody scares away a
lion, whether by shooting it or not, it is hard to see how one truly could
be said to benefit from that act, if there is a derech achrina that one
could comfortably take that avoids the lion.  OK one can now take this path
rather than that, ie it gives one options, but unless the derech achrina is
truly much more onerous or difficult, can one even say that one has really
got a "benefit" from the absence of the lion?
 
> My assumption is that the halacha would be different if it 
> could only be opened electronically ie a hotel room that has 
> only electronic access from the outside without any manual override

One of the things that the hotel door in Malta has made me think about is
whether in fact the classic Israeli doors are truly as manual as we think
they are.  As mentioned, the hotel door in the hotel in Malta, had an
electronic swipe, that when it worked successfully, changed the light from
yellow to green, and allowed the door to be pushed open.  It also had a key
mechanism, and it was only by examining it closely that one noticed that
when one inserted and turned the key, it also changed the light from yellow
to green.  But what if there had not been a light?  The light was only there
for the user's, convenience, to know whether or not the action had worked
successfully - but it seems to me that that without the light, it still may
well have been true that the action of the key was triggering some
electronic reaction in the door (presumably not to set off the alarm or some
such).  Is it necessarily true that even if you have what appears to be a
completely manual operation, by means of a key, you are not in fact
disconnecting some sort of circuit?  Now the hotel was a very modern hotel,
and I am pretty sure its technology was streets ahead of the old style
Israeli doors, which are probably fine.  But newer doors?  

> kol tuv
> 
> -- 
> Eli Turkel

Regards

Chana
>