Rav Avi: Hi, welcome to Responsa Radio, where you ask and we answer questions of Jewish law in modern times. I'm Rabbi Avi Killip, speaking with Rabbi Ethan Tucker, Rosh Yeshiva at Mechon Hadar, a center for higher Jewish learning based in New York City. Hello!
Rav Eitan: Hi Avi, how are you?
Rav Avi: I'm great, how are you?
Rav Eitan: Doing great.
Rav Avi: Here at Responsa Radio we get a lot of questions that fall into this model: can I do x on shabbat? So, we've answered, can I make coffee on shabbat, can I take medicine on shabbat. And one thing that I really love about these questions is that they seem like it's the same question and yet the answer to each question opens up a new understanding and a new layer of the values of shabbat and what it means to keep shabbat and what we're really trying to do in this practice of shabbat. So, we're about to tackle another can-I-do-x-on-shabbat. So here's the question of the moment: "Can mail be opened on shabbat?"
Rav Eitan: Ah, mail! Mail on shabbat! Classic question. What's your instinct, do you feel like it should be okay, or not?
Rav Avi: I suppose… I've always wondered when I hear this question whether it's an issue of ripping paper physically, can I open mail, or is there some other reason why inherently reading my mail, you know, if I pre-opened all my letters, would be a problem?
Rav Eitan: Good. So that's kind of where I want to go with it, because I do think that this, like many questions, gets boiled down to a kind of almost physical, technical issue when that is important, but may not be the whole story. Let's start with the physical, technical issue. Right? The core activity we're talking about here is taking something that's stuck together and unsticking it. You know, maybe it's ripping it open, maybe it's actually pulling the flap up where the adhesive is attaching. And that falls into the whole set of discussions around t'firah, around sewing. Basically, taking two objects and, you know, sticking them or threading them together.
And specifically, a category that comes up for discussion is the question of an act of sewing that is not permanent, is not meant to last. T'fira she'eina shel kayama. This is a trope in the laws of shabbat in general, where there's not just the notion of something being physically significant, that kind of, you know, treads on the ban on manipulating G-d's world on the day when G-d rested, but there's a notion of, like creation itself, which is sort of to last, is the action you've done a d'var hamitkayem, is it something that actually is enduring? And to the extent that it's not enduring, everyone pretty much agrees that it can only be forbidden on a rabbinic level, right? Like, a core Biblical violation of shabbat has to be something where, you know, you took a pen and you wrote on a piece of paper and it's gonna be there forever. It can't be writing with your finger on a fogged-up windowpane on shabbat, right? In other words, writing on a fogged-up windowpane is not allowed, it's drawing out letters and doing all of that, but it's not gonna last. So it's only rabbinically forbidden.
And the question is, when you have these sort of temporary actions, as it were, like a letter that is sealed in order to be reopened, in which cases do we think of that as, well, it's not a full melakhah, but it's still forbidden? And in which cases do we think of it as something that, no, it's just not actually meaningful at all? It's like possibly, let's say, playing with Legos on shabbat and kind of building them and taking them down and building them and taking them down, and nothing really has happened. So this actually comes up with sewing. Medieval authorities argue over this. You know, where would this come up?
So we take for granted that we have buttons on our shirts and little holes into which we can put the buttons so that you can, you know, get your hands out and in and they can still be tightly around your wrist. But they didn't used to have that, and the way a lot of shirts worked was you would actually kind of take a needle and thread one pass through to hold the sleeve together, and when you wanted to take it off, you would unthread it. Alright? So you had this sort of temporary sewing, basically, that was done with respect to clothing.
Rav Avi: It's like when you buy a new suit or something, and the pockets are sewn shut but with the intention that you'll open them and use them as pockets.
Rav Eitan: Exactly. Another case that comes up in the Shulkhan Arukh that comes out of this, right? Drawstring clothing, all sorts of things that actually are things that are meant to be done and undone, but if you actually focus in on the action itself, it might look a lot like sewing something or doing something that would otherwise be physically significant. So you have a debate over this. You have the Rid, Rav Yeshaya Ditrani, an early medieval Italian authority, who says look, buttons and loops, those are fine. But temporarily using a needle, no way. And he says in a very pithy phrase, malit fira yom echad mali olamit, what's the difference between sewing something for one day and sewing it forever?
Now what does he mean, obviously there's a big difference between the two. But what he means is, for you, the person doing the action, the act of passing a needle through something once is the same act, whether you're doing it for a short amount of time or a long amount of time. And for him, that physical dimension of it trumps any kind of psychological frame you have around it as being temporary. That's one approach, basically says t'firah she'eina shokeyama, that sort of temporary sewing is just not allowed, you can't really ever allow that. The Ravya, Rav Eliezer ben Yoel Halevi, who's in Germany, not that far apart in terms of his timing, he says no, that kind of temporary sewing, it's not sewing. And therefore whenever you encounter some kind of stitch like that, and you gave the example, Avi, of a suit that's together, the Ravya's dealing with cases of, like, shoes that might have come with, to speak anachronistically, one of those, like, annoying plastic tags, you know, linking the two together -- he says you can rip that apart on shabbat, because that was only put in there so that you would take it out. So there's no meaning to that physical action whatsoever.
Rav Avi: That's interesting. I'm surprised to hear that leniency, actually. I guess I would have assumed that the action itself would be a problem, so this is an interesting specification. It's a great way of going back in and saying what was the actual purpose of this rule, and then let's apply, let's actually think logically and not just say that action is forbidden no matter what.
Rav Eitan: Yeah. And this is exactly the debate, and I think you'll like this. Where it then goes is, if you have some sort of the read on the one hand saying no, the physical action is what determines and, you know, the frame might make it Biblical or rabbinic, but the frame is not gonna make it permitted. You can't say, oh, it's temporary, so I'm allowed to do it. The Ravya says no, if it's completely temporary, it's meaningless. The Beit Yosef, Rav Yosef Karo, in the Shulkhan Arukh, has an interesting compromise position: he says you're allowed to tear apart the shoes, but you should never do it in front of an am ha'aretz, in front of an unlettered Jew who doesn't know the intricacies of Jewish law, and essentially saying you know, those who are kind of deep into the rabbinic discussion, they can understand that the frame of intention for this to be temporary is dramatically transformative, but someone who approaches it on a kind of more intuitive level with less legal expertise, they're gonna see an act of tearing, of destruction on shabbat, and you'll give them the impression that that's not a problematic physical action.
Rav Avi: Yeah. That's interesting, there really is a reality that extends into so many areas, especially when someone is newly learning any halakhic area, you find that people are overly strict and stringent, because it's not intuitive to them where they can be more flexible in their practice.
Rav Eitan: Yeah. And I think, you know, another way of reading this is that the am ha'aretz here on the one hand can be translated as someone who's not kind of versed in Jewish law; from a different perspective I think you could also translate them as someone who hasn't had their mind turned upside down by halakhic discussions and approaches things in a sort of intuitive way, where what they see and feel is the physically transformative action, and there's a kind of respect for their frame there of not completely undermining it.
Rav Avi: Okay. So bring me back to mail, tell me how this is gonna relate back to mail.
Rav Eitan: Okay. So I think the sewing piece here pretty much viewed as a paradigm is basically what we would be arguing over in terms of letters. Do I view the tearing open of a letter as an act of tearing on shabbat, which is normally forbidden? Or do I view it as the sort of closed parenthesis of a process that began with someone temporarily sealing up the letter so that I would eventually open it? Alright? That's more or less the question here. And I think if you follow the Ravya, if you follow this view that the kind of temporary act of sewing is actually permitted, then I think it's pretty clear according to that view, it's permissible to open a letter on shabbat. That said, we find in a whole bunch of medieval sources authorities that say well, if you need to open a letter on shabbat, you should ask someone who's not Jewish to do it, which of course, you know, makes pretty clear that they think the Jew should not be doing it. But you do find some other views that explicitly say, like the Maharil is one of these, who says you're allowed to break open a seal to open a letter on shabbat. Imagine, like, a wax seal that's closing up the letter. And he says yeah, you can tear that right in half in order to open the letter, and that seems to give credence to that view. And some later authorities follow that approach. You have Rav Yaakov Emden in the early modern period saying why is, you know, opening a sealed letter on shabbat any different than breaking open a seal of a container, where you have food or something else that you need to get at?
And Rav Ovadia Yosef in a long responsum dealing with lots of different issues of shabbat and breaking things open, seems to be very sympathetic to this approach. He doesn't say you're allowed to open mail, but he seems to say the view that thinks that doing and undoing temporary connections on shabbat is not a problem is right. I mean, for instance, one of the things he says is this is why it's totally fine, let's say, to open a soda bottle on shabbat, that's never been opened before, even though by twisting off the cap, you're actually tearing something in two. But he says, but that cap was put on there temporarily so that you would remove it in order to drink it. And I think there's logic to be said that this line of thought fundamentally says yeah, opening a letter, what could really be wrong with that?
On the other side of things, you have some very clear statements by the Mishnah Berurah, and others, who say no, come on, at the end of the day this is an act of tearing, and sure, the temporary nature of it means it's not gonna be a Biblical-level violation, but we actually, there's something almost sacred about the physical activity. So up till that point, I think we've got the kind of technical issue of whether the opening of the envelope is a problem on shabbat that we should sort of, you know, focus on.
Rav Avi: So the idea that you mentioned somewhere in there about you should ask the non-Jewish person to open it for you -- that really seems to imply that the problem, the yes or no here is a matter of can you rip or can you not rip, but that there would not be an inherent problem with your reading your mail or seeing something from the outside world or that that's not actually an issue.
Rav Eitan: Yeah. I think you're right, and that's what I maybe want to problematize or sort of channel, that some of the restrictive view here is perhaps also going to I might make mail different from a soda bottle. All of this discussion is through the lens of melakhah, right, of the discourse of what are the physical actions that I am or am not allowed to do on shabbat. There's of course a whole other area of shabbat restriction, which we know as muktzeh, or we know as things that are eino min hamuchan, things that are sort of sitting off to the side or that have not been prepared before shabbat, or have not kind of entered into my shabbat world along with me at the moment when I lit candles.
That speaks to me much more as the reason why, for instance, I don't generally open my mail on shabbat. There's something about I enter into a space, I've created a certain world, I've kind of closed the door as I enter the room of shabbat, and mail represents, you know, something kind of coming in and intervening there. Now, I'm not trying, I don't want to, you know, be mislead anyone here. I get the weekend edition of the New York Times and I read it on shabbat morning, and there could be nothing that is more --
Rav Avi: That's exactly what I was gonna say!
Rav Eitan: There's nothing that can be more an intrusion than something that basically is, you know, printed on shabbat and it can be news of things that happens on Friday night. That's a whole other set of circumstances and why it's okay, the majority gentile population, and all sorts of other things. So, I'm not saying I really toe the line on not allowing anything else in, but there's something to me about unless there is something in that mail that feels like it's actually critical to my shabbat experience in some way -- so for instance, maybe a magazine arrives, which I read on shabbat afternoon and get, you know, tremendous oneg out of. And it gives me a kind of pleasure of reading in the day.
That, to me, is different from, you know, you're opening up to see what this direct mail person wants from you, and what that one wants, and certainly sitting and sorting and throwing things out -- that already starts to get into things that tread closer to the world of melakhah. But I guess what I would suggest is, part of the calculus here is not just the question of alright, do you break more like the Mishnah Berurah or more like Rav Ovadia Yosef on the tearing question, but how do you relate to things that, you know, things that essentially arrived into your shabbat world once the day began? And you actually have to do this kind of physically destructive activity to get at them. That feels to me like something my strong preference is to avoid. Now, if I had a kid who got their, you know, it used to be you'd get your SAT scores, I mean now everything you get, you know, instantaneously. Something arrived in the mail that you know it arrives in the mail, it's gonna drive you crazy the rest of shabbat, as a sympathetic father I could imagine myself saying alright, you know, Rav Yaakov Emden probably would have thought it was okay. And maybe letting them do it.
But I think a general posture of avoiding opening mail is not necessarily most strongly grounded in the prohibition on tearing; it's more about what is it to maintain a posture of simply being in G-d's presence for 25 hours and not worrying about all the other details that intervene in our lives.
Rav Avi: So long as we can read the New York Times!
Rav Eitan: G-d forbid, we don't want to take that away from anyone!
Rav Avi: Alright, great.
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