So Long, Farewell
"My bags are packed and I'm ready to go." Waiting for other family members who previously were waiting for me. The hotel is emptying out. A quasi-world disappears. I learned a bit over Yom Tov from a sefer based on psak of R Shlomo Zalman about Yom Tov Sheni. He deals with someone from Israel coming to a hotel in chutz laAretz. He says that in an exile community an Israeli shouldn't do "work" in private out of respect for the community. But a hotel is not set in the same way and therefore an Israeli can do melacha in private. Interesting ramifications. Hotels exist in the Twilight Zone.
posted by rabbi neil fleischmann @ 10:10 AM
4 Comments:
I am confused. What would "work in private" mean in this context? As in the private industry, or privately at home?
In this context "work" doesn't mean earning a livelihood but is an inaccurate translation of the Hebrew word used later in the paragraph "melachah." Melachah includes 39 broad categories of activities with many sub groups of actions that one is obligated to hold back from doing on Sabbath and Torah Holidays. The idea is - out of respect of the community you are visiting - to not be acting in a way counter to the spirit of the holy day, even though where you come from it's not a JHoliday.
Sounds like a chidush. I would have thought that all of chutz la'aretz is one "community."
Yup, that's what I thought. My nephew was learning from this sefer, as he was visiting from Israel. He had heard that it wasn't as pashut as the street Torah that dictates that an Israeli here can do everything on the eighth day - betzinah. He'd heard that you shouldn't even do it betzinah. This sefer has a separate section on hotels. The sefer doesn't spell out quite why, just stresses that the psak is based on the fact that people come from various places. My nephew and I worked on it for for a while, trying to understand the svarah. I definitely thought like you at the start, sits right. But this svarah seems to be that (despite how it may feel) there's a din of a community based on the fact that people are kavua there, and vice versa for a retreat center. If 100 Israelis wanted a chol minyan yesterday (the last day of Pesach) in a shul in Flatbush there would be a whole to do - the kahal wouldn't want to provide it so quickly, and that kahal needs to be respected. In a hotel those hundred Jews
\ would have their own room in a second.
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