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Dec 5, 2019

Interesting Psak: protesting chilul shabbos on Shabbos

Someone sent a question to Rav Yitzchak Zilbersht6ein, rav of Ramat Elchonon neighborhood of Bnei Braq, asking that in light of the increasing amounts and levels of public chilul shabbos, perhaps it would be better not to hold protests on Shabbos itself but to prefer to strengthen ourselves in our own Shabbos observance, , because protests held actually cause an increase in chilul shabbos because of the police and journalists and photographers who get involved. Also, perhaps there is no obligation of "tochacha" and holding a protest because the halacha is that one must rebuke his sinning brother only to the point where he might get hit as a result of the rebuke, and if the police will hit protesters that means the protesters are exempt from protesting.

Rav Zilbershtein responded that it is permitted to protest chilul shabbos on Shabbos. He quoted his father in law, Rav Elyashiv, who said that people are obligated to protest and just strengthening ones own shabbos observance in various ways is not enough of a response, as good as it might be to do - but doing so does not fulfill the requirement of protesting the chilul shabbos.

Rav Zilbershtein said that if each person would find a way to exempt himself from protesting, all the stores and businesses and trains and buses would be running and operating on Shabbos and it would be just like any other weekday. The purpose of the protests is to prevent the destruction of Shabbos from spreading more, and the only tool left available to the God fearing people to do is the protests for the holiness of Shabbos. We are obligated to protests so that Shabbos in the streets of our land will be observed, but we are not obligated to be concerned that the police office facing us might call his supervisor for instructions.
source: Kikar

It all sounds good and I have no problem with it, except for the last line not making sense to me. We are obligated to protest chilul shabbos in the streets to prevent in from spreading, but we are not obligated to be concerned about the chilul shabbos of the police officer calling his superior... are we obligated to be concerned about other people's chilul shabbos or not?


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2 comments:

  1. It's along the lines of חלל עליו שבת אחת כדי שישמור שבתות הרבה

    But I question whether protests really do increase shmiras shabbos in the long run. If more stores and buses are operating, then there is really more chilul shabbos?

    ReplyDelete
  2. As Rav Soloveitchik once pointed out in the context of a story of how Rav Kook made a kibbutz kosher and shomer shabbat "merely" by example, that all the protests have never made a single person do the same. To the contrary, in fact.

    ReplyDelete

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