Why Do Rabbis Give Such Bad Answers to So Many Questions?!

When our acceptance of Jewish law gets subverted

Welcome to the alliteratively and delightfully entitled Qontroversial Questions on the Parashah (it’s still pronounced “Controversial” – I just think I’m being qlever). Subscribe to continue to receive these and please share with those you think would be interested.

This is part one of a two-parter that is something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently – and in some ways might be the most “Qontroversial” Qontroversial Question I’ve tackled.

The connection to the parashah/parshiyot won’t happen until next week – where you’ll see its relevance to both Emor and Behar/Beḥukotai.

I. A Thought Experiment

There is a well-known (and true!) story regarding the rabbinic search committee of a high-profile shul. After reflecting on the specific qualities they were looking for in their new rabbi, they highlighted two particular attributes required by their community.

First, he needed to possess the boldness, courage, and fearlessness to speak the truth to his community – that, were he to feel a need to correct their halakhic practice, he would have no qualms doing so, no matter how unpopular it might be.

But second, they needed to be absolutely, completely certain with 100% confidence that he would never, ever tell them that it was prohibited to swim on Shabbat.

Now, this is not a Qontroversial Questions on the Parashah devoted to swimming on Shabbat per se. But it is devoted to the subverted way in which we often end up teaching and accepting halakhah – an issue that encompasses a variety of major halakhic issues: things like the prohibition of electricity on Shabbat, observing two days of Yom Tov outside of Israel, and the Ashkenazi prohibition of kiṭniyot.

But I choose to explore this through the lens of swimming on Shabbat because it not only has – as you’ll eventually see next week – tremendous relevance to the parshiyot that close out Sefer Vayikra, but also because it allows us to consider the following thought experiment:

Imagine you are the rabbi who was hired by the shul I mentioned above,¹ now a couple of decades into your tenure and having just been handed a lifetime contract. And what this means is that you’ve no further need for self-preservation. It’s finally time for you to express that boldness, courage, and fearlessness they specifically hired you for in the one way they absolutely never, ever wanted you to: You’re going to tell them that they can’t swim on Shabbat.

But here’s your quandary: How do you frame the prohibition to your congregants? Because while it’s undeniable – despite many otherwise observant and committed Jews’ willful denial – that swimming on Shabbat is prohibited (Peninei Halakhah, Laws of Shabbat 14:9), your challenge is not so much in explaining that it’s prohibited, it’s in articulating the prohibition to your congregation.²

Because what you, the rabbi, have realized is that despite how halakhah is supposed to function – both in its teaching and observing – there is a phenomenon in large swaths of the Modern Orthodox community writ large (and perhaps other parts of the Jewish community, too), where people often relate to halakhic observance in a manner that completely subverts how Judaism is supposed to function.

And before going any further, I want to stress that my purpose here is not to be judgey: I’m not here to criticize the community for how it relates to halakhah. But the phenomenon I want to address is something that fascinates me and I think about a lot. And with the end of Sefer Vayikra presenting such an obvious portal through which this phenomenon can be discussed – which, as you’ll see, we’ll eventually get to next week – it’s the perfect time to engage in this particularly Qontroversial thought experiment.

II. The Ignorance/Knowledge Paradox

I want to coin a term that captures the entire quandary facing you in this thought experiment as you try to explain to your community why they can’t swim on Shabbat. It’s what I’m calling the Ignorance/Knowledge Paradox.

But to recognize the paradox, we need to first consider how halakhah is supposed to function, which I often think is perfectly captured by one of my favorite XKCD cartoons, Wikipedian Protester:

Because, when a rabbi tells you something is prohibited, such as swimming on Shabbat – or even something theological, like it’s a cardinal belief of Judaism that dinosaurs never truly existed millions of years ago – he can’t just say it while waving his hands and expecting acceptance. Because Judaism doesn’t work like that. It’s absolutely crucial that he cite the sources behind his claim.

And that’s why throughout halakhic literature, you’ll always find citations. Any rabbi who wants to make a claim about the halakhic legitimacy of something will include the sources from which they base their opinions.

Indeed, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks has a powerful interpretation of the obligation to learn Torah (that I might have mentioned before because I mention it often). It exists, he argues, to ensure Judaism doesn’t devolve into a religion in which a clerical caste utters laws and beliefs and no one is able to question them. When every Jew is commanded to learn Torah – is expected to be fluent in Judaism’s sacred texts – and its greatest rabbis are forced to cite every source they marshal, you can never just be told what to do.

But what the Ignorance/Knowledge Paradox captures is that the lived experience of many Jews ends up being the exact opposite. Many rabbis teach Torah under the assumption that the less a person knows about why someone must do or not do something – the less knowledge they have about a given area of halakhah – the more willing they will be to abide by a law.

In other words, there’s a fear of letting people see how the sausage is made. The more people know, the less inclined they might be to accept the law as binding.

And in this thought experiment, this is your problem: How much do you share about the halakhic intricacies of the prohibition to achieve the maximum number of people observing what you tell them?

And here, I’d suggest that you have three different ways to explain it.

III. The Veil of Ignorance

The first way to tell your congregation that they can’t swim on Shabbat is to maintain their ignorance. If you keep Jewish practice opaque and mysterious, there is no need to explain why they can’t do it – you just tell them they can’t.

This somewhat relates to what the brilliant Rabbi Aryeh Klapper refers to as the “chokification” of Judaism: where we intentionally claim laws are beyond our grasp – when we declare them to be ḥukim, statutes that are logically and legally impenetrable but nonetheless binding – even though their premises were intelligible in the times of Torah. It’s only nowadays, when we can’t relate to that rationale anymore, that we declare it a ḥok.³

And this is something that’s pretty easy to do when it comes to the prohibition of swimming on Shabbat. Because not only does the Mishnah itself explicitly include swimming on its list of Shabbat-prohibited activities – ve-lo shaṭin ‘al penei ha-mayyim, “and one may not swim” (mBeitzah 5:2) – but the Shulḥan Arukh codifies this prohibition:

אין שטין על פני המים – אפילו בבריכה שבחצר.

We do not swim in water [on Shabbat] – even in a pool⁴ in the yard. (S.A., O.Ḥ. 339:2)

And that’s it. That’s all there is to it.

It’s just five words taken straight from the Mishnah – or eight words of the Shulḥan Arukh – and boom. The reason doesn’t matter, there’s no point sharing any rationale motivating the prohibition. You just tell them they can’t do it because halakhah says so; that it’s as assur as driving.

And I’d wager that this approach is surprisingly successful. Indeed, this is the very paradox at the heart of the Ignorance/Knowledge Paradox. Because a good chunk of your community, simply hearing that swimming on Shabbat is explicitly prohibited by two of the most authoritative sources in the canon of Jewish law – the Mishnah and the Shulḥan Arukh – will think twice before swimming again on Shabbat.

It doesn’t matter that they don’t know why. It doesn’t matter that that isn’t how Judaism is supposed to function. The rabbi said it’s a problem – so it’s a problem.

But your success comes at a cost. Because your total embrace of the Ignorance/Knowledge Paradox means that you are relying on the complete Torah ignorance of your community. You’re banking on no one looking up the Shulḥan Arukh for themselves and seeing that it’s five times longer than what you quoted.

And so, as tempting as it might be to articulate the prohibition to your community this way, you may decide on a different tactic – though one in which you’re still not opting for complete intellectual honesty.

IV. Misinformation

Rather than simply saying it’s prohibited to swim on Shabbat by making a passing reference to the Mishnah and Shulḥan Arukh, you’ve decided to explain the rationale behind the prohibition.

Because while it was true that this mishnah takes just five words to express the prohibition as but one item on a long list, you’ve decided to explain the crucial context of the mishnah found in its opening words: “And these are prohibited [on Shabbat] because of shevut.”⁵

Now, defining this term shevut is its own complex endeavor. Though it clearly relates to the fundamental underpinnings of Shabbat – as its root, after all, is sh-v-t, which not only gives us the word Shabbat itself⁶ but other words meaning “rest” – it’s ultimately a technical, legal term invoked to prohibit many different types of activities.

But you choose to simply define shevut in line with Rambam’s definition, which you can’t go wrong with: Activities that are rabbinically prohibited on Shabbat despite being technically permissible themselves out of the concern that a person doing the activity will end up violating an actually prohibited activity on Shabbat (M.T. Laws of Shabbat 21:1).⁷

And you thus quote the gemara’s explanation of the mishnah’s prohibition. Ḥazal were fearful that swimming might lead to someone making a ḥavit shel shayyaṭin, which literally means “a swimmer’s barrel” (Beitzah 36b). Practically, however, it means that Ḥazal were concerned that a person swimming in the ocean might find themselves needing to construct (or mend) some sort of raft to survive. Hence the shevut: the swimming itself isn’t the problem; it’s the risk of prohibitions being violated as a result of the swimming.

Now, your problem with taking this approach is obvious: The sheer inapplicability of this to the modern-day swimming pool. While it was a genuine concern in the times of Ḥazal – people might get washed away when swimming in an ocean or river and need to do something to survive⁸ – it just doesn’t apply now.

But you do have a way of framing this, nonetheless. Because so much of Judaism, after all, is about observing laws regardless of their applicability to modern-day situations. In fact, you point out that no one in your community would think for a second that we should start blowing the shofar on Rosh Hashanah when it falls on Shabbat, despite the fact that the only reason we don’t is completely inapplicable nowadays – it’s based on the concern that perhaps someone will carry the shofar on Shabbat Rosh Hashanah in a place without an eruv in order to seek an expert to teach him how to blow the shofar (Rosh Hashanah 29b).⁹

And thus, you say, the same laws that prevent us from blowing the Torah-obligated shofar on Shabbat Rosh Hashanah also prevent us from swimming on Shabbat. It doesn’t matter how uncompelling the rationale is; that’s just the way things are.

But here, there is still a problem. Because the comparison between shofar on Shabbat Rosh Hashanah and swimming on Shabbat is a tad disingenuous. Because, unlike blowing shofar on Shabbat Rosh Hashanah, halakhah has codified situations in which the prohibition of swimming doesn’t apply. If the body of water in which you are swimming is one in which it’s impossible to get swept away – and thus there’s no need to fear needing to build a raft – the prohibition just doesn’t apply.

Indeed, Ḥazal themselves not only recognize this (Shabbat 40b), but the Shulḥan Arukh also codifies the caveat alongside the prohibition – it’s the rest of his words beyond the first eight:

We do not swim in water, even in a pool in the yard, because the water can overflow and thus resemble a river. If there is a barrier around the pool, it is permitted, because even if the water overflows, the barrier forces it back, so it is more like a container, and there is no reason to decree out of concern that one will make a raft.

And there is no more textbook example of a body of water that is less of a problem than a swimming pool.

Now, you might recognize that this is a glaring issue in your fight against swimming on Shabbat and thus offer some additional reasons for prohibiting it.

You might choose to quote other halakhic arguments against swimming on Shabbat that don’t take issue with the swimming itself but other associated prohibitions that are violated as a result of swimming on Shabbat.

You might thus argue that, by swimming on Shabbat, you are effectively considered to be bathing in a halakhic sense – something prohibited on Shabbat (M.B. 326 §21).

Alternatively, you might suggest that the act of drying yourself – particularly your hair – or even the very act of removing wet swim clothes, will result in a violation of the prohibition of seḥiṭah, of squeezing or wringing out a liquid from another medium (M.B. 320 §55; Be-Yitzḥak Yikra 339 §2).

But without getting into the details here, these arguments, while compelling, still assume a certain level of ignorance. Because the details concerning the prohibitions of bathing on Shabbat and seḥiṭah are much more nuanced than we tend to think – and anyone seriously engaging in these topics might question their applicability. There are valid halakhic arguments against swimming being either bathing or seḥiṭah.

But you’re goal is not to give the most intellectually honest answer. Your goal is to stop your shul from swimming on Shabbat. So you just give enough halakhic arguments to make them take it seriously, without analysing the actual merits and pitfalls of your approach.

And because of this, you might still be quite successful here. Because many Jews are so terrified of violating prohibited activities on Shabbat that the mere mention of something like seḥiṭah will stop them.

But what if that makes you uncomfortable? Because you know that the claim that drying hair and clothes violates seḥiṭah is not as water-tight (pun intended) as people think.

And so, your only recourse is to explain the prohibition of swimming on Shabbat in a manner that makes it absolutely, completely halakhically compelling and defensible.

The only problem, as we’ll see next week, is that no one will buy it.

1. Let’s call it [Redacted-because-I-don’t-want-to-get-into-trouble].

2. This challenge is a thought experiment because I don’t have to figure out how to articulate to my community that swimming on Shabbat is prohibited – I’m devoting two entire email shiurim to the topic that just so happen to make it very clear that swimming on Shabbat is undeniably prohibited while recognizing the challenge of conveying that fact to people. Wow. So meta.

3. This somewhat relates to what I wrote about a couple of weeks ago for Tazri‘a-Metzora.

4. He doesn’t mean the modern-day swimming pool; he means a pool of water.

5. Admittedly, you could also include this line without any explanation whatsoever when maintaining your community’s ignorance: “You can’t swim on Shabbat because Ḥazal said so – it’s shevut.”

6. The connection between the word Shabbat and the root sh-b-t is not actually so clear. But that’s a Qontroversial Question for another time.

7. Rambam also notes that activities are sometimes prohibited as shevut because they resemble prohibited activities – but that category is irrelevant for us.

8. Yes, there is the law of pikuaḥ nefesh here, which permits breaking Shabbat to save a life – but you can’t intentionally put yourself in a life-threatening situation knowing that pikuaḥ nefesh will bail you out.

9. Fascinatingly, Rosh reports that Rif blew shofar on Shabbat because he felt the concern was inapplicable. (Rosh, Rosh Hashanah ch. 4). But that’s a Qontroversial Question for another time.