Unpacking the Iggerot: Deleting the Divine
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Unpacking the Iggerot: Deleting the Divine / Iggerot Moshe, Y.D., vol. 1, #173
Summarizing the Iggerot
There is a fairly self-understood principle in halakha that it is forbidden to erase the Name of God. What then are the implications for recordings found on our phones and laptops? Already, in the mid-twentieth century, R. Moshe Feinstein had to address these kinds of questions vis-à-vis tape recorders and Victrola record players. He opens up his responsum by considering the implications of a recorded pronunciation of God’s name “in vain” with a bold assertion:
In my humble opinion, I do not see anything prohibited here [playing a recording with God’s name pronounced]. For the injunction against invoking a Heavenly Name or reciting a blessing in vain only applies to a one who pronounces the Name in the normal manner of speech, not through “wood and stones” [i.e., mechanical reproductions].
The terms “wood” and “stone,” of course, refer to the new devices in question that are just as inanimate as a piece of lumber or rock. While R. Feinstein distinguishes between invoking God’s Name through speech versus a device, he notes that in either event it would still be forbidden to play it in a setting that is unclean and thereby undignified for holy matters to be uttered.
Another potential pitfall with playing God’s Name on a recording device is that it may be in violation of the following Talmudic passage:
The Sages taught: One who reads a verse from Song of Songs and renders it a form of song, and one who reads a verse at a banquet house, not at its [appropriate] time [but merely as a song], introduces evil to the world, as the Torah girds itself with sackcloth and stands before the Holy One, Blessed be He, and says before Him: Master of the Universe, Your children have rendered me like a harp on which clowns play (Sanhedrin 101a).
It is possible to conceptualize that recording verses from the Torah onto a tape recorder could constitute a form of instrumentalization, which could potentially run afoul of this Gemara. However, R. Feinstein qualifies that if the Torah verses are being recorded for the purpose of practicing Torah reading (or some other religiously recognized goal), it would be permissible, as the Talmud seemed concerned only for misappropriating the Torah for personal entertainment.
Assuming there is no issue of recording God’s Name or verses from the Torah onto such a device, and that playing them is also appropriate, the next question concerns deleting them. R. Feinstein asserts that since there is no actual name of God, or letters for that matter, imprinted on the tape, then overwriting the recording would not constitute a halakhic act of erasure. He adds that this would even hold true for a record player, despite the perceptible grooves on the disc.
In the final lines of the responsum, R. Feinstein tersely forbids activating a device on Shabbat by motion-sensors or by voice command. The latter is particularly intriguing as this was written in 1957, well before Smart Devices entered the market, yet it would appear to have strong implications for halakha about three-quarters of a century later.
Connecting the Iggerot
Six years later, R. Feinstein was asked to opine on the matter once again (Iggerot Moshe, Y.D. vol. 2, #142). Consistent with his initial analysis, he reiterates that playing God’s name via a recording device would not constitute a transgression of uttering God’s Name in vain.
What is noteworthy is that, this time around, he provides a more extensive analysis of the Talmud in Sanhedrin which forbade turning the Torah into musical entertainment. He clarifies that both the initial recording and its subsequent playing would both run afoul of this proscription. While some have sought to limit the implications of the Gemara exclusively to the Song of Songs, R. Feinstein goes in the opposite direction asserting that it even extends to blessings and the broad corpus of Oral Torah (Rabbinic literature).
Similar to invoking God’s Name, he considers whether the distinction between a human being singing words of Torah versus a device may serve as a mitigating factor. Indeed, R. Feinstein is reported to have expressed a degree of doubt as to whether a tape or record should be classified as an instrument (Mesoret Moshe, vol. 1, p. 156). But even if we are to accept such a distinction, he observes:
We see that much of the world sings the text of blessings and Biblical verses at all forms of celebratory events—even pious men of [good] deeds. And this is despite the Gemara which explicitly prohibits it, and I know not of any good rationale [to justify this].
According to R. Feinstein, it would seem that much of even the Torah observant world has wholesale disregarded this Gemara. (This is in keeping with his broader opposition to post-Temple music; see our previous column on “Malevolent Music”).
Similar to his initial responsum, he proceeds to address the question of erasing God’s Name from a recording. While he maintains his original premise that there cannot be a formal infraction of erasure without the presence of letters, he recommends doing so as a gramma, in an indirect manner.
Perhaps we can glean his discomfort on the matter from another responsum written almost a decade later in which he wrote that “perhaps it should not be erased for it appears to the world like one is erasing [God’s Name].” Once again, he posits that if it were to be performed as a gramma, it would be acceptable (Iggerot Moshe, O.H., vol. 3, #31).
The principle of gramma serving as a mitigating factor in issues of erasing God’s Name appears in several additional responsa. For instance, in Iggerot Moshe (Y.D., vol. 2, #139), he was asked about a community that was selling its synagogue and wished to remove the Ten Commandments design from the premises, but were concerned that the double yudin that represent God’s Name might be compromised in the process. He responds:
They are not intending to break the Name and there is no certainty (psik reisha) that it will occur. For it is more likely that it will not break as they will be careful during the removal not to break it. And in such a scenario it would not be forbidden to do this even with the actual Name of God—for it would at most constitute a gramma, which the Talmud in Shabbat informs us is permissible.
In another case involving God’s Name symbolized by double yudin, R. Feinstein was asked about a Shabbat candle set with the printed blessings that a yeshiva had mailed out in its fundraising campaign (O.H., vol. 2, #55). The concern was that the text of the blessing might be discarded and the Name of God thereby desecrated. Interestingly, he points out that the worst-case-scenario is that even if it is thrown out, the sanitation department will incinerate it, which is not as bad as actual erasure. Though, he remarks that this effort that is intended to increase Torah observance may actually lead to many instances of having God’s Name uttered in vain by recipients who unwittingly recite the blessing at the incorrect time. He suggests that the yeshiva should consider a different item to mail out for their fundraising efforts.
Perhaps the most iconic responsa related to this topic appears in Iggerot Moshe (O.H. vol. 1, #4) regarding whether tefillin may be provided to someone in a hospital which has the policy of incinerating all of the patients’ belongings at discharge (to avoid contagion). In this 1944 response to R. Yitzchak Hutner, he asserts that despite the fact that the Jew providing the patient with the tefillin is not incinerating it directly it would nonetheless be forbidden. As halakha enjoins us to actively rescue tefillin which are in danger of being burned, it stands to reason that we certainly may not place them in such a scenario in the first place. While R. Feinstein, in the other responsa we reviewed, noted that erasing God’s Name indirectly could be acceptable, in this case we are dealing with full sections of the Torah contained within the boxes of the tefillin which assume a higher status and would not be subject to that leniency (see Shabbat 120b).
He further asserts that to submit the tefillin to an institution which is guaranteed to incinerate them is not even a gramma but is tantamount to me-abeid be-yadam mamash, destroying them with his own hands. Moreover, he proposes that the transgression of the provider of the tefillin is not triggered at the time of actual incineration, but from the very moment he relinquishes it to the hospital, as it constitutes a dereliction of his duty to safeguard the tefillin. Intriguingly, this means that even if somehow the tefillin were spared from destruction, he would nonetheless be culpable for putting them in such a circumstance.
While in the previous responsum R. Feinstein seemed to do everything he could to avoid the burning of holy scriptures, he ironically prescribed it as a solution for words of Torah that are incorporated into heretical works: “Therefore, you certainly need to burn all of their books [of missionaries]. Even though you will incidentally burn the verses and Names [of God]. For, on the contrary, burning the Names written therein is an honor to them as it removes the denigration [of them being incorporated into heretical content]” (Iggerot Moshe, Y.D., vol. 2, #137).
Reception of the Iggerot
One of the core assertions made in the original responsum was that only a human can transgress the sin of invoking God’s Name in vain rather than inanimate objects, such as a tape recorder. However, the responsa Pe’at Sadekha (#126) contends that since the prohibition is rooted in preserving the dignity of God’s Name, that it not be invoked gratuitously, it seems that if a person causes the uttering of it, whether via his mouth or mechanical device, it would still be in contravention of the same principle.
On the other hand, R. Ovadia Yosef (Yabia Omer, vol. 9, O.H., #99) dismisses this argument and alleges that the Pe’at Sadekha sought to be unnecessarily stringent in this regard, pointing out that one can observe the most pious of individuals not accounting for this concern in their practices. And not only did he think that the Pe’at Sadekha was exceedingly strict, but he even argues in a separate responsum (Yehaveh Da’at, vol. 4, #50) that R. Feinstein also went too far by recommending that any erasing of a recordings with God’s Name should ideally be performed in an indirect manner. Firstly, the individual recording God’s Name likely had no intent to thereby sanctify the tape as one would do with a holy book. Moreover, as R. Feinstein himself noted, there are no letters to be erased on a tape recording. It seems unreasonable, R. Yosef asserts, that we should introduce our own novel stringencies. Finally, he posits that the process of overwriting the original recording with a new one automatically constitutes a gramma, thereby rendering any additional methods to make the process indirect as redundant at best.
Reflecting on the Iggerot
While R. Feinstein’s responsa were products of their time and addressed devices such as record players and tape recorders, it is interesting to consider the modern application of these principles. As we noted, when necessary he insisted on deleting God’s Name in an indirect manner. An attendee of my presentation on this topic, David Lambert, had pointed out that when one deletes a file on programs like Google Drive, the file initially is simply shifted to the recycle bin, where it is only deleted by the computer at a later point in time. It would be interesting to consider whether that would satisfy R. Feinstein’s preference for erasing a recorded Name of God via a gramma.
The other question that looms large within this topic is what kind of content meets the threshold of being forbidden to erase in the first place. R. Aharon Felder once asked R. Feinstein whether newspapers that contained Parasha columns required burial, to which he responded: “We first need to ascertain whether the ideas of the typical rabbi [writing in these publications even] constitute words of Torah requiring burial” (Reshumei Aharon, vol. 2, p. 9).
He expressed a similar sentiment about the permissibility for a rabbi to share a Torah thought during Torah reading: “And certainly if one were to do so like the sermons of the younger rabbis that the primary content has nothing to do with Torah at all it would be forbidden” (Iggerot Moshe, O.H., vol. 4, #40:21).
There are legitimate questions about the erasure and deleting of Torah material. R. Feinstein’s observations beckon us to ensure that the content of Jewish discourse remains in a place that we still have to reckon with such questions.
Endnote: For related topics, see R. Feinstein’s responsa on invoking God’s Name in the course of Torah study (Iggerot Moshe, O.H., vol. 2, #56), writing “With God’s help” in Hebrew on secular documents (Y.D., vol. 2, #138), and how the parameters of what constitutes writing differs between the laws of Shabbat and the laws of Torah, tefillin, and mezuza scrolls (O.H., vol. 4, #40). There also many follow-up responsa to the question of bringing tefillin into a hospital that will incinerate them which included notable Torah scholars such as R. Mordechai Gifter (O.H., vol. 1, #6) and extends into later volumes as well (for example, see: O.H., vol. 4, #8). The more recent question of deleting pixels that form God’s Name has been addressed by contemporary scholars such as R. Moshe Shternbuch in Teshuvot ve-Hanhagot (vol. 3, #325-#326).
Prepare ahead (for October 30): Intellectual Property and Copyrights / Iggerot Moshe, O.H., vol. 4, #40:19.
Moshe Kurtz is the rabbi of Cong. Sons of Israel in Allentown, PA, the author of Challenging Assumptions, and hosts the Shu”T First, Ask Questions Later podcast.