[Avodah] Tefila Over Loudspeakers At a Big Gatherings

[Chana Luntz]

RTK writes:

> A lady in South Africa (who was nominally Orthodox but not fully
> observant -- typical of many South Africans) once told me that one time
> she was out shopping and realized that she would not be home in time to
> light candles Friday evening.  So she called home and asked her maid to
> light the candles and to hold the phone near the candles, so that she
> (the madam) could make the bracha on the phone.  The lady asked me if
> she had done the right thing.  I had a hard time keeping myself from
> laughing but I tried to answer her seriously and told her no, she had
> not done the right thing, a bracha on the phone didn't count.  (She
> then asked me if it would have been better to have gone home and lit
> the candles herself after it was dark already -- of course I told her
> that would be even worse!)  However, now I am wondering:  aside from
> the fact that this lady was obviously going to be mechallel Shabbos --
> she still had to finish shopping and get home -- but aside from that,
> is it possible that her saying the bracha over the phone could be a
> real bracha in any possible sense?  Or was it purely and simply a
> bracha levatalah?  Would it make a difference if a Jew had lit the
> candles and had answered Amen to the bracha?

This is an extremely interesting question.  It seems to me that it can be
divided into two parts: - the first is should she have phoned home and asked
the maid to light? And the second is about the bracha.

The first question is relatively easy.  One of the specific permissions
given in the Shulchan Aruch (Orech Chaim siman 261 'if 1) regarding amira
l'akum if it is a safek whether it is dark yet or not or if it is bein
hashmashos, is to allow one to tell a non Jew to light the shabbas candles
as that is l'ztorech mitzvah.  It thus seems to me that, while if the
husband was home, it would have been better to get him to light the candles
(and in his absence another adult Jew, who could be her shaliach) and he (or
they) could bless (and she could answer amen over the telephone as per Rav
Ovadiah) (it seems that, unlike Chanukah candles, shabbas candles are not a
mitzvah shebegufo - since there is a lot of discussion about the woman being
the shaliach of the husband - although the form of the bracha l'hadlik would
seem somewhat against this, and makes one wonder why the formulation is not
"al neherot Shabbat"), if there was no Jew available, the next best thing
was indeed to phone before shabbas and get the maid to light.  Indeed the
Marharam  rules (according to the Magen Avraham 263:11) in situations where
there was a chuppah on erev shabbas, and the woman did not want to bring in
shabbas before going to the chuppah, and by the time she got back, it would
be dark, recommended as one of his solutions that the woman ask a non Jew to
light for her.

However the bracha is more tricky, the Marharam quoted above says that the
woman makes the bracha when she gets back from the chuppah after dark on the
candles that the maid has lit prior to dark (or alternatively that she
lights before the chuppah without a bracha, and then when she gets back,
puts her hands over the candles and then blesses).  The Magen Avraham is not
very keen on this, but does say that b'dieved if she lit candles before
shabbas but forgot to bless then she can rely on this Maharam - so
similarly, it would seem to me, that the most straightforward solution,
assuming she is Ashkenazi, would be to rely on this Maharam, get the maid to
light  before shabbas and for her to make the bracha when she gets home (and
indeed, for those who hold that the ikar of accepting shabbas is on lighting
the candles and making the bracha, since the last thing we want her to do is
bring in shabbas early and have more shabbas violations out shopping, if the
bracha were in any way to be effective via the telephone, that would make
her have accepted shabbas, unless she made a tnai to the contrary).  Of
course this making the bracha afterwards certainly doesn't work if she holds
like the Sephardi poskim (eg ROY) that say one must make the bracha over the
candles before lighting the candles, otherwise the time for making the
bracha has passed.  In which case I do wonder if this wouldn't be effective
on some level (especially if she had a video phone, and could make the
bracha and then watch the maid light).  The main reason I would tend to
reject this is  because a non Jew generally cannot be a shaliach for a d'var
mitzvah - but given that the Maharam and others appear to allow a bracha on
candles lit by a non Jew, there must be something different going on here. 

 One might say that in the case of the Maharam, the mitzvah is that there
should be "lit candles" which there are at the time of the bracha, not *to
light candles* and since there are lit candles on shabbas a bracha can be
made but (a) the bracha does say "lehadlik ner" - ie "to light" not on the
existence of lit candles where surely it should be "al hanerot Shabbat" or
some such; and (b) while there is the opinion of Tosphos in Shabbas 25b
"chova" that if there is already lights lit, there is no obligation to light
specifically for shabbas,  we appear to follow Rabbanu Tam there, who
disagrees, and requires at least one candle to be extinguished and relit for
shabbas, so surely the maid is doing something which appears to be the
performance of a mitzvah.  

Shmiras shabbas K'hilchasa 43:14 does seem to says that if the non Jew
lights during ben hashmashos, "ain mevarchin al bracha zu shel nochri", but
it is not clear from there whether the "zu" is on the essential lighting of
one candle, or on the additional candles that he rules one may also ask the
non Jew to light over and above the necessary one (or two) or in a case
where the lighting takes place in the presence of electric lights which are
already on (the comment "ain mevarchin al bracha zu shel nochri" is at the
end of this whole piece allowing one to ask the non Jew to light extra).  As
his source for this he cites Rabbi Akiva Eiger (Orech Chaim siman 261, si'if
katan 1) in the footnotes  - and reading that Rabbi Akiva Eiger, he doesn't
seem (IMHO, but I could be wrong here) to be contradicting the Magen Avraham
who allows bidieved to make the bracha later (RAE specifically says that
what the Magen Avraham permits is that the non Jew lights and the woman
later blesses) - but only commenting on the situation where more lights are
added to one already existing as shabbas comes in - so I *think* he (and
hence SSK) is restricting making the brocha to such a case.

So I am not quite sure what is going on here - but it seems to me, that if
we can rely on the Maharam who allows a Jew to make a bracha on a non Jew's
lighting, then why shouldn't the woman's bracha down the telephone (or at
least the video phone where she sees the candles being lit) count?  A half
way house would seem to be, let us say that a disabled Jewish woman lived
alone with her non Jewish carer.  And she was sufficiently disabled to be
unable to light candles herself, but able to tell her non Jewish carer to
light the candles on her behalf - could she not make the bracha (even before
the lighting, as per ROY)?   The implication from the Maharam and the Magen
Avraham would seem to be yes (although as I mention above I don't quite know
why, given that non Jew cannot be a shaliach for a d'var mitzvah).  But if
that case is correct, then why would the bracha down the phone be any
different (especially if she was watching the maid lighting on her video
phone)?  Mostly of course the straightforward course is to appoint another
Jewish person to be a shaliach, and then bless, assuming it is not a mitzvah
shebegufo, where one can't.  And mostly where one is dealing with a mitzvah
shebegufo, one could not be in a different place from the place where the
mitzvah is performed (although the existence of robots that can be
controlled remotely might be changing this - how about if a man ordered a
robot remotely to pick up a lulav and esrog?  No non Jew complications
involved here - if he couldn't do that, why could a Jew with a bionic arm do
it, and yet I can't imagine anybody objecting to that).  One case I did
think of was if there was a bris, and the father was, say overseas or in
hospital, and they had a video link up to the bris - why couldn't the father
say the father's bracha over the bris from where he is, assuming he sees it
all happening, even though via video link up?  It would not seem to be a
bracha l'vatala - there is a tzorech, the bris has been performed and he
knows it has, according to his instructions.  Instead of seeing the bris via
light waves bouncing off the baby, they bounce through some video camera,
are turned into other forms of electricity, bounce around the world and end
up in his eyes.  Is that really so different? That is my instinctive
response, but there may be other issues I haven't thought of at stake here.

> --Toby Katz

Shabbat Shalom

Chana