[Avodah] Eruv Tavshilin - who makes it?

Akiva Miller akivagmiller at gmail.com
Tue Oct 10 03:47:36 PDT 2017


.
I asked how one could ever rely on the Rav's eruv:
> How does the eruv made by someone outside of my home
> help me? What sort of *reminder* does his eruv provide?

R' Zev Sero answered:

> ... that it's wrong to rely entirely on leftovers, and one
> must prepare at least one thing just for Shabbos. According
> to this explanation, the fact that one must ask the rabbi
> (or the neighbor, or whomever) before relying on their eruv
> accomplishes the same thing. One has provided for Shabbos,
> not by cooking but by arranging an invitation to eat out.

I don't follow this logic at all. One who relies on this did NOT
"prepare at least one thing just for Shabbos." If you respond that the
one thing he prepared was "arranging an invitation to eat out", I will
say that he did NOT arrange such an invitation; he is merely aware
that the rabbi/neighbor had him in mind.

You write about "the fact that one must ask the rabbi", but I never
saw such a halacha. One does not need to do any sort of action at all,
not even speaking. All one needs is to be aware that the
rabbi/neighbor had him in mind. So what is being accomplished?

> The second explanation is that originally there was no ha'arama;
> it was permitted to openly cook on Yomtov for Shabbos.  Chazal
> legislated that one must save Yomtov's face by pretending to be
> cooking for that day. According to this explanation it's very
> simple; the important thing is not the eruv itself, but the need
> for the ha'arama.  The eruv's function is merely to give the
> ha'arama some surface plausibility.  So it makes no difference
> whose eruv one uses; the fact that one is pretending not to be
> cooking for Shabbos *is* the kevod Yomtov that Chazal required.
> The enabling notion that on Shabbos one will be eating the rabbi's
> eruv is only barely less plausible than the one that one will be
> subsisting on ones own eruv.

Focusing on the last sentence here, we agree that relying on the
rabbi's eruv is indeed less plausible than one's own. I think our
disagreement is that you feel it has a sufficient shiur of
plausibility, and I don't. Alternatively, you feel that relying on the
rabbi constitutes "pretending to be cooking for that day", but I think
it doesn't even constitute "pretending".

And this is especially true in the case where one genuinely forgot to
make the eruv, and remembered on Yom Tov; surely you'll agree with me
that this person did absolutely *nothing* before Yom Tov as a Shabbos
preparation, right? Not even to ask the rabbi to have him in mind!

Akiva Miller


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