Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Moed Kattan 12b - Adam Chashuv

The gemara uses the concept of adam chashuv a few times to say that even something which is mutar m'ikar hadin, should not be done by an adam chashuv. It is not clear if the reason is b'geder "ba'al nefesh yachmir" or if the reason is that even though it is totally mutar, people will be midameh it to something assur and come to be matir an issur. Rashi in Shabbos 51 explains that an adam chashuv should be more machmir bec. someone will see that he is lenient and come to be more lenient.
The sho'el in Igros Moshe O.C. 1:96 challenged R' Moshe about riding in a car to the Yeshiva after candle lighting bec. it was mar'as ayin. R' Moshe responds by explaining that mar'as ayin is when you do something that is mutar that people will confuse with something that is actually assur, but here the people are making a mistake in thinking that it is assur when it is mutar. That is called "am ha'ratzus" not "mar'as ayin" (That phrase is my own, not R' Moshe's!). Perhaps our gemara is a source that the sho'el is correct, in that an adam chashuv should not do something that is mutar if people will think that it is assur. Perhaps this is why R' Moshe refrained from driving to the Yeshiva from then on (as he writes about himself) and just argues the point that it is not an actual issur of ma'aris ayin. Also, if one reads the Teshuva carefully it seems that he rejects the notion that a few people who see would make a mistake and think that it is assur, would make it assur, since it is known to almost everyone that it is mutar. But in a case where many people may think that it is assur, even though it is mutar, an adam chashuv should refrain from doing it.

1 comment:

Yossie Schonkopf said...

for what its worth, i went thru the same exact line of thinking when we were learning the ran of "maris ayin" in beitza, "baruch shekivanti"