[Avodah] Shaliach for a mitzvah

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

On the quesiton of sending tzedaka via a non-Jewish postal service, I suggested that
> tzedakah is different than gittin. By a get, the giving
> is a critical part of the act, and so either the husband
> must give it himself, or it can be given by someone who
> is a real shaliach of the husband. ...

R' Arie Folger pointed out:
> Please note that gittin are sent by mail, as long as it
> is mailed to the beis din/shaliach, and is then given by
> the shaliach to the woman. IOW, the intermediary of the
> non Jewish mail office does not create any problems. 
> Likewise, the tzdaqah you give is likely going to an
> institution, which will in turn pass it on or expend it
> on behalf of those in need, hence the whole question
> doesn't arise. Nonetheless, it is a nice theoretical
> question.

I did not know that gittin are sent by mail, but the procedure you describe makes sense to me. Nevertheless, I still perceive a big difference between gittin and tzedakah, because the husband has explicitly made that person his shaliach, and so the get is valid even though the shaliach received the get via a non-jewish postal system. In contrast, the donor did not make the tzedakah fund into his shaliach for giving the money to the poor.

The above might be answered by saying that even though we are machmir to explicitly name a specific individual as the shaliach for the get, it is also acceptable that the unnamed office worker of the tzedakah fund is an implicit shaliach to pass the donation onwards to others, in a "zochin l'adam shelo b'fanav" sort of way.

But I would question that, even in a case of a tzedakah fund which collects for poor people, because the office worker is much more easily called a shaliach of the recipient than a shaliach of the donor (and if he is indeed a shaliach of the recipient, then the chain between the donor and the recipient is broken). But certainly in the case of donations to a charitable institution, such as a yeshiva, where the money does *not* get passed on to a third party - in such a case it is very difficult for me to see how the case can be compared to your description of sending a get through the mail.

Akiva Miller
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