Hi Rabbi,
Everyone knows you don’t speak in a bathroom or bathhouse, and the Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chaim 84 and 85) says you also can’t think words of Torah there, and the Rambam brings it in Hilchos Krias Shema 3:4. But when I think about how that plays out today I realize I don’t actually know the parameters.
1. Is the issur because of the place itself, the tumah of the room, or is it about kavod haTorah? Does that difference matter practically?
2. A modern bathroom is basically clean and doesn’t smell. Is it still the beis hakisei the Shulchan Aruch is talking about? And what about a room that is only a shower with no toilet, like at a gym or a pool?
3. If I’m alone in the shower not doing anything, my mind goes to Torah by itself, a sugya I was learning or a pasuk. Am I oveir every time that happens? Am I supposed to force my mind onto something else?
4. Is listening different than thinking? Can you listen to a shiur or a Torah podcast in the shower or in the bathroom?
Bottom line: when I’m in the bathroom or bathhouse alone and not busy with anything, what exactly is assur, what is mutar, and what do I do about a mind that drifts to Torah on its own?
Thank you Rabbi
Thank you Rabbi, thank you very much.
I think we have to separate the actual halachah from the feeling people have about a bathroom.
The prohibition is not because the walls of a bathroom acquire some mysterious tumah. The issue is the dignity of Torah in a beit hakisei, a beit hamerchatz, or a makom hatinofet, a place where there is actual tzo’ah or urine. The Rambam describes it that way explicitly, and the Shulchan Aruch prohibits even thinking Torah in such a place. (Hilchot Kriat Shema 3:4; O.C. 85:2.)
But the Gemara already discusses the בתי כסאי דפרסאי, Persian toilets, where the waste immediately rolled away from the place where the person was sitting. Rava says that even though there was waste farther away, the toilet itself was treated כסתומין דמו, as though the waste were sealed off. The Shulchan Aruch brings this directly: where the tzo’ah and urine immediately travel away and there is no bad smell, it is permitted to recite Kriat Shema there. (Berachot 26a; O.C. 83:4.)
A modern flush toilet is at least as good as that. Once you flush, the waste is no longer sitting in the room. It has been carried through the plumbing and away. So according to the way I understand the basic Gemara, a clean modern bathroom after it has been flushed does not have the problem people imagine it has. If necessary, for example if you were traveling and the only private place available to put on tefillin and daven properly was a clean modern bathroom, I would have no problem with that after the toilet was flushed and there was no waste or smell present.
A private shower is even simpler. There is no toilet and no tzo’ah there at all. The bathhouse discussed in the Gemara was a particular type of public bathhouse with areas where people were standing naked, and Chazal gave different rules to the different sections of that bathhouse. (Shabbat 10a.) A clean modern shower room, locker-room shower, or swimming-pool area should not automatically be turned into the same halachic category merely because English calls both of them a “bathroom” or “bathhouse.”
Now, regarding your mind wandering to Torah, do not make yourself crazy. The Shulchan Aruch itself brings the case of someone whose learning is so familiar to him that Torah thoughts come into his mind involuntarily, and the later commentaries explain that an involuntary thought is not something for which a person should torment himself. If a sugya suddenly comes into your head while you are showering or using the bathroom, redirect yourself if you can and move on. Don’t stand there conducting a war with your own brain.
I also would not deliberately put on a shiur or Torah podcast while sitting in the bathroom or taking a shower. Even where I do not see the technical prohibition people normally assume, there is still such a thing as kavod haTorah. There is no need to turn every free three minutes into another shiur. Take your shower. If you are sitting in the bathroom and want something to occupy your mind, read the news, look up travel, business, sports, or whatever interests you.
So the bottom line is simple. Actual tzo’ah, urine, or a bad smell creates the real problem. A modern toilet that has been flushed is fundamentally different from the old beit hakisei, and a clean shower is certainly different. And if Torah happens to wander into your mind anyway, don’t obsess over it. Do your reasonable best and move on.