Resources and Review Tests for Nedarim 62
The גמרא says that a person is allowed to say that they are a servant of the people who worship fire in order to avoid a tax. According to the מפרש, the person is actually saying they are a servant of the idol of fire itself. What is the היתר for this? The ר"ן says two points: 1) its obvious to all that he is just saying this to get out of the taxes. 2) it is even מותר for a ת"ח to do this since he can say by “fire” I meant the רבונו של עולם as it says, “ה׳ אלקיך אש אוכלה”. It is not clear to me whether the ר"ן meant that both need to be true or whether only a ת"ח needs to also be able to say כוונתו לשמים. The רא"ש does not mention anything about the ability to say you meant something else, but does say the היתר is only for ת"ח because others would be מתפּקר יותר. It is clear from the רא"ש that you don’t need to be able to say you meant something else, so you could even say “I am the servant of those who worship the sun” and it would be allowed as long as you are a ת"ח. What’s interesting is that the רא"ש himself is also quoted in יו"ד סימן קנ"ז סעיף ב as saying that if someone asks you if you are Jewish, you have to say yes even if you know that means they will kill you. If you can say you are a עובד ע"ז to get out of taxes, why cant you say it to save your life?! The רמ"א there brings that you can say something that can be interpreted two ways but the רא"ש himself in נדרים didn’t hold of that! Perhaps the difference is saying you are not a Jew vs. saying you are a גוי. If someone asks you if you are a Jew, it’s a חילול השם to say no. However, if you simply say you are an עבד לכומרי ע"ז, that doesn’t mean you aren’t a Jew; its just what they will assume.
The גמרא says that רב אשי sold a forest of his to the church of fire worship. רבינא asks him “isn’t there an issue of לפני עור?” He answers that most wood is not for idol worship and you can be תולה that that’s what they are using it for. The מהר"ץ חיות brings theיד מלאכי who asks an important question: why is there לפני עור? There is plenty of wood in the world and one only violates לפני עור if the person could not have done the עברה without you. In this case, couldn’t the עובדי ע"ז have purchased the wood elsewhere if they wanted to? If so, לפני עור should not apply. The קרן אורה suggests that perhaps they needed a lot of wood and they could not have gotten it elsewhere. However, the יד מלאכי answers more along with the פּשטות that we are not talking about the דין דאורייתא here of לפני עור but rather the דרבנן version known as "מסייע עובדי עברה". The יד מלאכי says that it is מדוייק in the גמרא that says "והאיכא לפני עור" and not "והא עבר על לפני עור" because we are only talking about a דרבנן and not the לאו דאורייתא. The issue with this answer is that this would mean there is an איסור מסייע by a גוי or מומר. In fact, the גר"א in יו"ד סימן קנ"א אות ח says that our גמרא is a proof that מסייע applies to a גוי or מומר. However, the ש"ך there says that מסייע does not apply to a גוי or מומר. If so, how would he learn our גמרא? One possibility is as the קרן אורה said that the case is where he could not get would elsewhere. Another possibility brought by the דבר יעקב in the name of the דרכי דוד is the משנה למלך in הלכות מלוה ולוה פּרק ד הל׳ ב. The משנה למלך that says its only דרבנן if the person can get the treif item themselves or someone else has a היתר to give it to them (like a נכרי). However, in our case, we are talking about עבודה זרה. In that case, no one in the world would be allowed to give it to them. If so, there would still be לפני עור דאורייתא.
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