Pets are not Muktzeh (full article)
My article in the Jewish Link this week, in full. I wrote most of it a few years ago, but reworked it so that it both addresses the idea of ha’idna in Daf Yomi. In last week’s Jewish Link, Rabbi Chaim Jachter penned an article (Petting Animals on Shabbat: An Update From TABC’s Halacha Kollel) in which he referenced his own position from his extensive halachic essay, that Rav Moshe Feinstein and Rav Shlomo Zalman Aurbach maintain that pets are muktzeh. I don’t think that this actually holds true, and that they maintain a different position forbidden other things, but by which pets are not muktzeh. Read on, and let me know if I am off the mark!
Applied halacha often appears to change over time. For instance, in Avodah Zarah 39a, Abaye, a fourth-generation Babylonian Amora, declares that small fish of the Bav River are unequivocally kosher. The gemara suggests various reasons, finally landing on the idea that the mud quality of the river isn’t suitable for non-kosher fish to reproduce. Then, Ravina II, a sixth- and seventh-generation Amora, said that ha`idna, nowadays (after governmental construction of canals connecting rivers), since the Goza and Gamda rivers spill into the Bav River (bringing in non-kosher fish), the small fish are forbidden.
The word ha`idna and veha`idna appears often in the Talmud, explaining how changed circumstances in the physical reality (like canal construction) or legal reality (like the innovation of shevuat heset) cause the applied halacha to differ than what was described in the immediately preceding sugya. Rav Herschel Schachter, when encountering veha`idna in shiur, has often explained this – that it is not the case that halacha changes, even in modern times. Rather, the underlying halachic principles were decided and established. It is just that if the metziut changes, then those same halachic principles would lead to a different practical conclusion.
An example of this might be whether pets are muktzeh. The Mishnah on Shabbat 128b allows overturning a basket so that baby chickens can climb on and off; pushing a hen until it reenters the house, and helping calves and foals to walk. In the gemara, Rav discusses bringing cushions and blankets to help an animal get out of an aqueduct. The background assumption is that the animals themselves are prohibited. However, the modern corresponding case could be various farm animals, whose primary use involves melacha. Ha`idna, nowadays that we have a new class of animals called pets, which people relate to as companions to play with, perhaps these are not analogous to Chazal’s muktzeh animals.
Rav Moshe’s Permissive Ruling
Indeed, Rav Moshe Feinstein explicitly carves out modern pets as non-muktzeh. In Igros Moshe, Orach Chaim 5:21, the question posed was about whether songbirds are muktzeh. Q: Small birds which chirp, and which children play with, are they muktzeh? After all, in Tosafot Shabbat 45b, d.h. Hacha, Rabbenu Yosef permits moving a live chick, for it is fit for a child to play with. A: All animals are muktzeh, even those which children play with, unless they are designated for playing with (פעטס).
The last phrase discusses pets, and Rav Moshe wrote the English word “pets” using a Yiddish transliteration scheme – peh ayin tet samech. He is distinguishing between the historical case discussed Tosafot, and modern pets. Specifically, Rabbeinu Yosef Porat had suggested that a bird whose purpose was not play could be used to comfort a small child, so that secondary usage might render it non-mukzeh. That halachic position was rejected, so similarly modern songbirds cannot be permitted because of the secondary usage. However, a pet, whose very purpose is to play with, cuddle with, pick up and directly interact with would surely not be muktzeh.
This permit should be intuitively compelling, even if Rav Moshe had not said it, because the whole idea of muktzeh is that, when Shabbat comes in, your mind is distanced from the possibility of using it. If it is something that you regularly interact with, and there is nothing inherently prohibited on Shabbat in that interaction, then of course you intend to interact with it on Shabbat.
The only way to say otherwise is to take an animal’s muktzeh status as a chok and lo plug rabbanan. It is a blanket gezeira without recourse to judge a situation based on underlying principles. Though I disagree with this idea (but see below), I certainly see room for others, including great Torah scholars of past and present generations, to come to a contrary conclusion.
Not Well-Known
When discussing the halachic status of pets, many don’t cite this explicit teshuva from Rav Moshe. I suspect that a few factors lead to this situation. Firstly, this teshuva was published posthumously, in volume 8, so some people may not have it in their sets. Next, when secondary works by competent Torah scholars formulated their summary of Rav Moshe’s position on animals, they relied on and extrapolated from other responsa; these works were not revised in light of this newer responsum.
Also, if someone merely reads the teshuva quickly, the gist they get is that this is Rav Moshe once again prohibiting modern animals as muktzeh. The words that permit only appear in the teshuva’s final phrase.
Additionally, some have cast aspersions on the authenticity of the posthumously published responsa of Rav Moshe, asserting that one of the Tendlers or Rabbi Shabtai Rappaport inserted their own teshuvot into the volume. This question was taken up by Moshe Schorr (of the HaMapah teshuva project) and Avi Shmidman (of Dicta, The Center for Text Analysis), who applied computational approaches of authorship analysis to Rav Moshe’s responsa. As detailed in a Seforim blog post, the differences between volume 6 and the later published volumes are “minimal to the point of non-existence.”
Finally, people know of Igrot Moshe 4:16, where Rav Moshe does not discuss cats and dogs which one can play with, but does discuss moving a fishbowl containing small goldfish, which are used for beautifying the house. He forbids because we don’t hold like Rabbeinu Yosef.
Shifted Reality Through the Ages
This is not the first time where nishtaneh hateva could or would be invoked. As a result, as we read through the sources, we need to see how each case differs from the preceding reality. We also might want to take care not to conflate all changed reality which differs from Chazal into one or two bins. Each case may have its own reasons to permit or prohibit.
Rabbeinu Yosef’s case is actually Chazalic. He wonders why Shabbat 45b discusses a dead chick in the nest as muktzeh. (Rashi there explains it isn’t fit to be given to a dog.) He explains that a live bird could potentially be used to quite a crying infant, so it isn’t muktzeh, even if no crying infant is around. His fellow Rishonim (such as Tosafot, Mordechai, and Hagahot Oshri) disagreed, since the Mishnah discusses inverting a basket before hopping chicks, implying they are mukzeh. However, I’d note that that sugya could be understood otherwise – Mordechai quotes ר”ש that the chicks were born that day, and the concern is nolad rather than muktzeh. This case is thus not an appeal to nishtaneh hateva, but in understanding the primary gemaras. Rishonim who reject Rabbeinu Yosef might not reject a genuinely different reality.
Next, we have a case which might be considered nishtaneh hateva, a changed reality in Rishonic times. In Responsum 81 of Teshuvot Maharach Ohr Zarua, his son Rav Hayyim Eliezer discussed songbirds kept in cages that are a delight to those who listen, suggesting that while animals in general may not be moved, these may be moved from room to room in their cages. After all, these animals now have a Shabbat use! Rosh disagrees and invokes lo plug rabbanan, so the prohibition applies across the board. We don’t know what Tosafot, Mordechai, and Hagahot Oshri would say about this songbird nishtaneh hateva argument, since they were discussing the Chazalic case. Perhaps if there were an actual crying infant, they would allow the moving and using of a chick. And, if there was a class of animals that were regularly used to comfort crying infants, they might have permitted it. In my view, it is incorrect to lump this Rishonim into those who prohibit the songbird; we really only know of the Rosh, standing alone.
Among Acharonim, in Ketzot Hachoshen, Rav Aryeh Leib Heller deals with an aquarium containing fish. While the fish themselves shouldn’t be moved, he writes that one may move the aquarium from room to room. In terms of moving the fish themselves, in Shemirat Shabbat Kehilchata 27 footnote 96, Rav Neuwirth quotes the Nezer Yisrael who invokes Maharach Ohr Zarua to permit; also, that Rav Shlomo Zalman Aurbach and Rav Ovadia Yosef consider this Nezer Yisrael questionable since he didn’t cite the Rosh’s rejoinder.
Perhaps I need to read footnote 96 again and more carefully, but I am not sure that this translates into Rav Shlomo Zalman Aurbach rejecting the possibility of making such a distinction between Chazal’s muktzeh animals and modern pets. The aquarium and the songbird are Rishonic carve-outs with permitted usage, but that usage (listening, looking) does not primarily involve movement, unlike modern pets where interactive movement is primary.
Indeed, some invoke Shulchan Aruch HaRav, by Rav Shneur Zalman of Liadi 308:78 to say that such animals cannot be moved – וַאֲפִלּוּ עוֹף שֶׁרָאוּי לְצַחֵק בּוֹ תִּינוֹק כְּשֶׁבּוֹכֶה – אָסוּר לְטַלְטְלוֹ – but Rav Aurbach rejected this proof by correctly noting Rav Shneur Zalman wasn’t dealing with a bird like this which is specifically designated for a child to play with. (Rather, he was dealing with the Rishonic case of Rabbeinu Yosef, where it could potentially be used to quiet the child by the child playing with it – letzachek seems like an aural error for leshatek which appears in earlier sources.)
Elsewhere, in Shemirat Shabbat Kehilchata 18:13 footnote 62, Rav Neuwirth quotes Rav Aurbach that seeing-eye dogs are not muktzeh. While a live chick is muktzeh even though it could calm a crying infant (thus the Rabbeinu Yosef), a seeing-eye dog is standing ready and designated specifically for use such as this, that one needs to move it. Thus, Rav Aurbach sometimes does permit a class of animals whose very purpose involves interaction.
Seeing eye-dogs were first systematically trained in Paris in 1780 'Les Quinze-Vingts' hospital for the blind. Only in the Victorian era (1837 - 1901) were pets kept by the middle class. Meanwhile, pets like fish in an aquarium or a caged bird which perhaps might be moved seem different from a friendly puppy who wants to jump on your lap. The changed reality of a widely used animal class primarily designated for interaction seems to me like a veha’idna case, where they clearly should not be muktzeh.