[Avodah] goy vs chiloni

[Chana Luntz]

RET writes:

> <<.  The term mavriach ari I am
> familiar with as a concept within Baba Kama and the laws of compensation,
> ie
> if somebody chases a lion away from your property , do you have to pay
> them or not?,
> What does this have to do with hilchos shabbas?  Where is it found used it
> in hilchos shabbas?  >>
> 
> R Zilberstein says it is obvious that it applies to Shabbos without a
> source.
> He gives the example of a lion prevented someone from entering a building
> and someone shoots the lion. He takes it for granted that one can enter
> the building and it is not considered as benefiting from a melacha on
> shabbat.

I wonder why though he felt one needed to go to a concept in baba kama, when
I would have thought there were far more apposite areas of halacha to go to
for this.  I am thinking particularly of questions of hana'ah and issurei
hana'ah.  If you have an issur hana'ah on something -either due to a neder
or due to avodah type concerns - think wine for example, there is a lot of
discussion on how far this hana'ah extends.

But even not going so far - why do we not look internally in hilchos shabbas
to the definition of make bepatish and metaken kli and in particular, the
case that seems really appropriate to me to the building case, that of
opening a letter on shabbas.  After all, you are tearing the envelope
outside in order to extract the letter inside - about which the Mishna Brura
says in siman 340: 41 - one who tears a sealed letter even if he is careful
not to destroy the letters of the seal and only to tear the paper that is
around it also this is forbidden according to everybody even to say to a non
Jew one should be careful if it is not a tzorech gadol - although he then
brings the case that if one says to the non Jew "I am not able to open it"
if the non Jew understands of his own accord and opens it, it is OK.

And the Be'er Halacha there gets into the whole question of mekalkel al
manas l'mataken - where it would be assur, and mekalkel which is not al
manas l'mataken, where it would not necessarily be.  And would that not have
more bearing on this question?  If somebody shot the lion so as to get into
the building, I would have thought there might be a problem - but the
chances are, that if one shot the lion, it is because they were scared of
the lion pouncing on them or some such, and the intention to kilkul, ie to
kill the lion, it had to do with the lion, not the building particularly.
 

> Lost me on this one. Cooking the food is what makes it eatable and that
> is an active role. Removing rawness is a meanlingless phrase.
> In any case one is eating the food that was cooked or had its rawness
> removed and so one gets direct benefit

And removing the circuit that makes the door of the building remain closed
is what makes the building enterable - so one now gets direct benefit from a
modified building when one could not before.

What I was trying to show was that if you can argue that removing a circuit
from a building or opening the door of a building is "indirect" you can also
say that cooking is "indirect".  In both cases you have "fixed" the item so
as to make the useable, and hence it seems to me, you have a direct, and not
indirect, benefit.

Now I do agree that scaring off a lion, which has no necessary shachas to
the object called building, does seem to be a different case.  It seems even
further away than your letter case, because in the case of your letter, the
envelope was put around it, to protect the letter inside (similar to the
closed circuit door of the building).  However, I doubt very much anybody
placed the lion there with the intention of guarding the building (nor I
would have thought, could one treat the lion as a bar daas, whether or not
it had any such intention) - it just happens to come.  So it seems to me
that killing the lion is a mere kilkul in the lion.  If however somebody had
in fact placed the lion from before shabbas there to guard the building and
prevent anybody coming in, well I do wonder if that would in fact be
different.


> R Zilberstein only brought the CI to assume that it is a deoraysa and
> strengthen the question, he was not interested in the details
> He takes for granted that pushing the buzzer is prohibted. The question
> is whether another Jew can benefit from the melacha

I think what I am saying is even if you grant a concept such as mevarech
ari, then it doesn't seem to me that it is applicable in this case, since
you are being metaken the building for use, like your letter.  If anything I
think this case is more problematic than the letter - because at least the
letter inside is definitely a different guf from the envelope, whereas the
building is one building, with its door open or not, and its buzzer pressed
or not, so it seems to me that what the chiloni has done is a direct act
upon the building.

> In fact using Chanas case if someone blew out a candle there seems to
> be absolutely
> no problem for someone else to sleep there even when he couldnt sleep
> in the light.
> This is exactly mavriach ari. One gets no direct benefit from the
> absence of light

Which is why turning off a light is another case where it is discussed that
one may use indirect language vis a vis a goy - the Chai Adam links these
two cases in klal 62:3 as falling into the category of "dvar sheain guf
yisroel nehene mimenu" (as opposed to him lighting the candle) which is why
he allows indirect (but not direct) language in both of them.

>  > He then asked asked  a question from a MB who disallows using the
> contents of a put when a
> > Gentile opened the cover on shabbat for a Jew. Why should it be
> different?
> 
> forgot to mention the MB is 518:45
> so the question is whether in these cases one would need to wait until
> after shabbat a time of  bichdei sheyasu to remove articles from the
> pit or else to enter the building.
> 

Now I agree, this MB (he is bringing the Magen Avraham) seems to be a
contradiction to the case of opening the letter, where it would seem that
not only can one read the letter if the goy opened it, but one can even hint
to him to do so (as the Magen Avraham himself brings), whereas here the
Magen Avraham assurs where he does it l'tzorech yisroel, in case he might
come to tell him to open it some other time.

I was quite pleased to find, having a hunt around this morning, that the
Minchas Shlomo has the same problem - see Minchas Shlomo chelek 1 siman 5
d'h 2.  And he agrees that the letter opening case and the pit opening case
would seem at first blush to be exactly the same thing.  And he also
discusses the whole distinction about changing the guf hadavar - which to me
seems critical in this case.  Note that he seems to resolve the stira in the
Magen Avraham between the letters and the pit as suggesting that because
(unlike the pit case where the melacha done by the goy is accepted to be an
issur d'orisa) the opening of the letters he suggests is an issur
d'rabbanan, and since it is possible that since one also does not benefit
"miguf hamelacha" it is OK that it is permitted.  On the other hand, he is
no totally happy with this answer, and he does ask from where does the Magen
Avraham know this din about the pit on shabbas as he cannot source it in
shas.

Oh and I see he does use the term Kmevarech Ari - but not in describing the
pit, but in fact in a contrasting case that he brings, where a candle is in
an open house, and the wind is threatening to blow it out, and if one did
not shut the opening, the candle would go out - because in that latter case,
ie where one closes the opening, it is as if one is chasing away a lion
because, he says "one who chases away a lion b'averah of malaches shabbas
d'vadai shari".  But this strikes me here as more of a throw away line,
giving an example, and that his conclusion is framed more in the terminology
of the Chai Adam (and others) ie anyone who does not do a melacha b'guf
hadvar, v'lo nishtane machamas melacha ... benefit is permitted".

Which seems to me to be the key thing - and something which is not true in
the case you brought - at least according to the Chazon Ish, who holds that
there is binyan v'stira in the circuit, in which case what one is doing is
indeed changing the guf had'var from which one is about to benefit (the
circuit is opened and the door is opened), so we do indeed have a change by
way of the chiloni's melacha.

Anyhow there is a lot of really interesting stuff in this teshuva RSZA, and
I certainly have not had a chance to digest it all - but a lot of it would
seem to have a direct bearing on the issues you are discussing.

> Eli Turkel

Regards

Chana