When must the
gentile be prevented from doing a melacha and when not?
This section must be divided into two. The first part deals with direct
benefit and the second deals with indirect benefit.
The first part is clear-cut and simple.
It
might happen that a gentile wishes to do a favor for his Jewish friend
and when he sees that he is sitting in the dark he wants to turn on the
light for him. Making use of a light is direct benefit and one must
protest when one sees that a gentile is about to turn on the light for
one’s sake.
Does this apply in the gentile’s house or only
in the Jew’s house?
One needs to protest
in one’s own house but not in a gentile’s house.
Does that mean that the Jew may benefit from a
light turned on in a gentile’s home?
If the gentile
turned on the light for the Jew’s sake, the Jew may not derive benefit
from it regardless of where they are. The only difference is that the
Jew need not protest when he sees that the gentile is about to turn on
the light for his sake.
For example, a Jew is
staying in a non-Jewish hotel in chutz la’aretz for Shabbos and
the room-service ‘kindly’ comes into his room and turns on the light.
The Jew may not benefit from that light.
What then is the Jew to do? Must he leave the
room?
Chazal did
not require that one leave the room or the house in such a case,
but one may not do
anything that could not have been done without the light. If the room
was dark to the extent that reading was impossible one may not read with
the new light. However, it makes sense that one need not shut one’s
eyes, and if one had to grope one’s way in order to find the bed or the
door one need not shut one’s eyes to revert the situation as if there
was no light.
What if it was possible to read before the
gentile turned on the light but it is now more comfortable than before?
One may continue to
read because the additional light is negligible and is not considered as
if the gentile added light to the room.
How would this apply to air conditioning?
One may not instruct
a gentile to turn on the a/c unit nor may one hint in that direction.
However, if the
gentile did turn it on, although one need not leave the room but one may
not derive any benefit from it either. Therefore possibly one may not
shut the windows in order to trap the cool air nor do any intentional
action to enhance the enjoyment of the cool air.
What is indirect benefit?
The second part
deals with indirect benefit and it is far more complicated.
An example of
indirect benefit is turning out lights in order to enable one to sleep.
Turning the lights off is an indirect action even though without him
doing so the Jew would not have been able to sleep in that room. One can
argue and say that after all he is enabling him to do something that he
could not have done; nevertheless it is not direct gain only indirect.
Removing the lights from the room enables one to sleep but the gentile
did not ‘give’ the Jew anything, he merely removed the disturbance.
May one hint to a gentile to do something that
involves indirect benefit?
This is the
complicated part, because on the one hand one is not ‘receiving’
anything from the gentile but on the other hand the gentile is doing a
melacha in the Jew’s house for the Jew’s sake.
To instruct the
gentile is definitely ossur because one may not instruct him to
do a melacha, even if the melacha is only to be done after
Shabbos all the more so on Shabbos. The question is whether one may
hint?
For example, “I
cannot sleep with so much light in the room”. This is an indirect hint.
After one has removed the cholent from the stove or from the hot
plate one might say “we no longer need the use of the blech or
hot plate”.
Everyone agrees
though that the following is ossur: “it would be nice if you
would turn off the hotplate”, or “whoever turns off the lights will
profit”, because this is a direct hint.
B’ezras Hashem
next sheet we will deal with this question.
