We have ruled in the past that Americans may carry out stock orders on behalf of Israelis on Friday afternoon in the United States, at a time that is Shabbat in Israel.[1] We will review the logic and sources in that case and examine how to apply the principles to this case.
The gemara[2] says that Reuven may ask Shimon to watch Reuven’s fruit that is beyond his techum Shabbat[3] but within Shimon’s. The Rashba[4] extrapolates from this that if Reuven accepted Shabbat early and Shimon has not yet accepted it, Reuven may ask Shimon to do work on his behalf. Why don’t we say that Shimon’s action relates to Reuven through the principle of shelichut,[5] much as we forbid a Jew to have a non-Jew do work on his behalf on Shabbat?[6]
Three answers appear in the poskim: 1) The prohibition to ask others was not instituted when one presently has or at one point had a way in which it would not be forbidden to do the work himself.[7] In the case of the fruit-watching, Reuven could have checked on the fruit using “burgenin.”[8] In the second case, Reuven could have chosen not to accept Shabbat early. 2) When one accepts Shabbat early, the acceptance applies only to prohibitions that one performs himself.[9] 3) Reuven may ask Shimon to do something that is not a melacha for Shimon based on his situation, as opposed to asking a non-Jew to do something that would be forbidden for him if he were obligated in Shabbat.[10]
In our case, according to reasons #1 and #2, performing the internet check-in for your friend would seem to be forbidden, as the work you would do on Motzaei Shabbat would be done on your friend’s actual Shabbat, and ostensibly he has and had no way of doing the action at that time in a permitted way. One could argue that our case is more lenient, since the request was made before Shabbat. However, while that is helpful in regard to the issue of not involving oneself in matters that are forbidden on Shabbat,[11] the aforementioned element of shelichut would appear to pose a problem. After all, when the work is done, it is done on behalf of the one who requested it, irrespective of when the request was made.
According to reason #3, the approach of the Taz, there should be no problem, as the important thing is that you were asked to do work on what is Motzaei Shabbat for you. Among the reasons why we were lenient in the case of the Friday stock orders is this approach #3, which is the strongest and most accepted.[12] We also noted, as several poskim do, that if we were to rule stringently, then when the owner of a kosher bakery in New York visits Israel, his bakery must be closed 7 hours before Shabbat begins in New York.
However, my halachic intuition tells me this case is worse than those of the gemara and the Rashba, in which it is permitted for one to do work on behalf of someone who could not do it. In the permitted cases, the work was intrinsically permitted even for Reuven; he was simply in an “artificial situation” that precluded his specific involvement (i.e., out of techum, early Shabbat). In our case, a person in America wants a melacha done that he would normally not do himself, involving activities in America specifically during Shabbat. Modern technology allows him to find someone to do the work from a “halachic time warp,” from a place where Shabbat is out. Is it clear that the Taz and Rashba would extend their leniency to that which, from the requester’s perspective, is an intrinsic violation of Shabbat? Would we allow someone to have Jews in different places in the world run his life or his business by remote control from various continents on his Shabbat?! This would seem to violate the Rambam’s[13] logic for the prohibition of amira l’nochri: One who treats Shabbat lightly enough to have things done by a non-Jew may come to do those things himself.
Although important talmidei chachamim with whom I shared this idea acknowledged the logic of my stringency, it is difficult to forbid such a situation without a source. Our rosh kollel, HaRav Yosef Carmel, acknowledges the problem of having someone “out of Shabbat” remotely operate household items during the requester’s Shabbat, but reasons that the “ethereal” world of internet follows the place of the person who enters it (marit ayin does not apply there). Since you want to enter it when it is not Shabbat for you, and your friend in America is uninvolved, even though he benefits, it need not be forbidden.
In the final analysis, you may fulfill your friend’s request.