[HANASHIR:11753] Re: In case you ever wondered....

[Sholom Simon <sholom...>]

At 05:05 PM 6/17/2002 -0400, Jennifer Stevens wrote:
>So, if a guitarist doesn't break a string and any given instrumentalist 
>tunes before Shabbat (and miraculously stays in tune), is it still 
>forbidden?  I would suppose so since apparently we cannot make any musical 
>sound other than our voices... am I misreading this?

No, you're reading that part correctly.  

>Is this just because we may be confused into thinking that we are working?

I'm not sure what you mean.  The better way to phrase that last sentence
would be: "because we might be tempted to perform a melacha."

Unfortunately there is no good English tranlstaion for "melacha" -- so it
is usually translated as "work".  But "melacha" might better be tranlated
as "a physical creative (or destructive) action" -- which is why moving a
piano across the room is not a melacha, but plucking or watering a blade of
grass is a melacha.

There are 39 categories of malachas.  One of them, losely translated, is
"repairing/fixing."  Tuning a string is "fixing."

And anyone who has played a guitar, particularly for a performance, with an
out of tune string, knows how strong the urge is to tune that string back up!

(As far as the halacha-yomi that was sent along to the list -- I believe
that the Chassidim follow the opinion that clapping to songs for the joy of
shabbos is permitted (in practice, it seems like it's encouraged!)).

-- Sholom


+-------------------------------------------------------+
|   Sholom Simon     | sholom (at) aishdas(dot)org               |
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| proud daddy to Joshua Ari  4/18/93 - 27 Nissan 5753   |
|        and Eliana Rebekah  3/12/95 - 11 Adar-2 5755   |
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