posted
I was at lunch today at a friend's house, and another friend was there as well, with her teenaged daughter, who had Amazon'd the new Harry Potter book. All of us at lunch were Orthodox Jews, btw.
Turns out the mailman had gotten to her house that morning, and when he saw her, he asked if she wanted him to open the box for her. Apparently he knew that she wouldn't be able to open it herself until after 9pm tonight. He'd done this for several other people, as well.
I have a different mail carrier, and I wasn't at home when the book got there anyway, but that's one mailman who's going to be raking in the tips this year.
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Just to be clear, I'm not judging it, just surprised. I had known about no work, no travel and no turning anything on, but didn't realize it extended to opening mail.
But hey, that's one awesome mailman! Posts: 3852 | Registered: Feb 2002
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Tearing is a problem, unless absolutely necessary. We even pre-rip a bunch of toilet paper before Shabbat starts.
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Why can you open books, but not boxes? (All in all, it's a good thing she didn't order the Collector's Edition, which comes inside a box.)
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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No offense, but that's a lame question. Where does tearing come into opening a book? Or the kind of box the Collector's Edition comes in, for that matter. Mailers are a different thing.
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What a cool mailman! I love it when people make a point to provide water or caffeine free diet coke at gatherings that would otherwise only serve tea. In the southeastern U.S., sometimes your choice of beverage is sweet or unsweet, and there aren't many Latter-Day Saints so lots of people don't know that there are actually human beings who don't drink tea.
When someone does know, and is accommodating, it's lovely. Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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I was very confused for a minute, but I've caught on. Very nice man...Be sure to buy him a Christmas present. Posts: 1735 | Registered: Mar 2001
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Why can you open books, but not boxes?
Actually, if the book is sealed in some way, you can't. That can be a problem with the occasional book that has an untrimmed edge holding two or more pages together. Which probably explains why there are some opinions that prefer that a brand new book NOT be opened on Shabbos for the very first time.
And while it was very nice of the mailman to open the box, how is that not amirah l'akum? And the book would still have been delivered on Shabbos, from more than t'chum Shabbos away. So it's still muktzeh. Not to mention taking ownership.
I'm surprised the mailman left the book when someone wasn't home. Around here they were expressly forbidden to do so with book 6, and I imagine with this one as well. Fortunately, we were home, and mine (who has shown for years that he's a really nice guy) put it inside the door for us.
As it happens, I didn't start it until 11 pm -- I wasn't finished re-reading book 6 when Shabbos was over. After havdallah and getting everyone to bed, I fished off book 6, took a deep breath, and sailed into book 7. Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Tom will probably have a field day, and the very, very brief summaries really do not explain the laws, but I'll try my hand at a brief explanation:
On Shabbos, I cannot ask a non-Jew to do something for me that I am not allowed to do myself on Shabbos. That is amirah l'akum. (There are exceptions, but neither life/health nor impact on a large group would apply here. And while "hinting" is sometimes ok, that doesn't sound like what was happening in this case at all.)
On Shabbos, having an object transported to or from more than (approximately) 4000 feet (t'chum Shabbos) outside the city limits is problematic. (So is travelling that distance oneself.)
There are five (or four, depending how you divide them) distinct categories of objects which are muktzeh, which cannot be moved on Shabbos.
Transferring ownership of an object is not allowed on Shabbos. (I cannot give a friend a gift, for example.)
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:Originally posted by rivka: And while it was very nice of the mailman to open the box, how is that not amirah l'akum?
He offered to open it. It's only amira l'akum if you ask him. The question is, how did he know? I suspect that someone along his route actually did ask him to the first time, which is what clued him in. So was she allowed to benefit from a presumed amira l'akum done by someone else? What about if the first person only hinted? "Gee, I'm bummed, because I can't open the box, it being Shabbat and me being Jewish and all." It's iffy, because remiza l'akum isn't the same as amira, and while you could make a case that it's an issue of oneg Shabbat (the distraction of having that box sitting there is pretty harsh), it's not exactly the classic example of oneg Shabbat.
Still and all, since we don't know that the first person did amira, the most we can reasonably assume is that it was remiza, and I don't see why that's a heavy enough issue that she wouldn't be able to benefit from the mailman offering to open the box for her.
quote:Originally posted by rivka: And the book would still have been delivered on Shabbos, from more than t'chum Shabbos away. So it's still muktzeh. Not to mention taking ownership.
Okay, taking ownership is an issue. That was actually the first one I thought of. But again, once the mailman dropped it into her reshut, wouldn't he have been makneh it to her (as a shaliach), even if she did nothing at all? Why would techum matter?
quote:Originally posted by rivka: I'm surprised the mailman left the book when someone wasn't home.
They leave anything here. USPS, UPS, Fedex, they're all the same. They love to play ding-dong ditch. I think they have a scoreboard back in their headquarters, and that they lose points if the resident gets to the door before they're back in their truck.
quote:Originally posted by rivka: As it happens, I didn't start it until 11 pm -- I wasn't finished re-reading book 6 when Shabbos was over. After havdallah and getting everyone to bed, I fished off book 6, took a deep breath, and sailed into book 7.
Nice timing.
(As a minor glossary, "remiza" means "hinting", "oneg Shabbat" means "enjoying Shabbat", which has major importance in Jewish law, and "techum" and "t'chum" are just variant spellings of the same thing. "Reshut" is "domain", and "makneh" means to transfer ownership to another. And a "shaliach" is an agent.)
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I believe the argument has been that she already owned the book when she paid for it. It was entrusted to the mailman, he didn't own it at any point.
Though I've been reminded many times I don't really understand Judaism.
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Actually, my paying for it didn't create ownership in terms of Jewish law. Transfer of money can't do that for movable objects. But the placing of it on my property might have, without me having to do anything.
My argument about having owned the book when I paid for it was simply about the moral issue of downloading the jpeg version and reading it before the 21st.
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