Q&A: The Prohibition of Electricity on the Sabbath
The Prohibition of Electricity on the Sabbath
Question
Hello, honorable Rabbi,
I was at a lecture the Rabbi gave in Shoham.
Afterward, I approached the Rabbi with a question about the essential difference between operating a device by means of an electric mechanism
and operating it by means of a mechanical spring mechanism.
Since, as I understood it, the Rabbi grounded the prohibition of building in the fact that the very act of activation changes something essential in the device, turning it into
a functioning device, the answer to my question is critical, because apparently the same prohibition would apply when flipping a switch in a completely mechanical mechanism.
The Rabbi did not answer me. Afterward, I kept thinking about the issue and wondered whether there is a basic mistake here
in the very attempt to derive a halakhic prohibition from the Sabbath prohibitions for an entire technology.
Let me explain my claim:
With Sabbath prohibitions, it seems that the Sages prohibited labors, not technologies.
For example, cutting with a knife is not prohibited.
If I cut a stalk with a knife, I violate the prohibition of reaping; but if I cut challah with a knife, that is part of normal Sabbath conduct.
Another example: riding a horse. The Sages prohibited it because of "lest one pluck [a branch]," and not because of the act of riding itself.
True, in practice there is no way to use riding technology on the Sabbath, but the prohibition itself stems from performing a labor while using that technology.
The approach to the prohibition of electricity should have been like that.
From that perspective, there should be no prohibition at all in connecting an electrical circuit on the Sabbath. If it is a circuit that does nothing, then there is no prohibition in the electricity itself.
Our problem is with the things done באמצעות electricity, and here each question should be judged on its own merits.
Is turning on a light a labor?
Is operating a device like a fan a labor?
Is opening a door on the Sabbath a labor?
From that perspective, we are touching the things themselves, those very things that rabbis were so concerned would damage the character of the Sabbath.
There is no harm to the character of the Sabbath if I open a door even if the mechanism is electric.
And there is harm to the character of the Sabbath if we permit labors that would allow people to continue their work and regular occupations on the Sabbath.
I am afraid of the moment when someone dares to permit using a telephone/computer/internet on the Sabbath,
even if the devices are operated by sound waves with no electricity at all (as I said, the technology is not the significant variable).
I would be happy to hear the Rabbi's opinion on this approach.
Thank you,
Dalit
Answer
Hello Dalit.
Regarding operating a mechanical device, as I told you then, this is indeed an interesting question. I tend to think that it is different from operating an electrical device, because here there is no change in the nature of the device. By contrast, in an electrical device, the wires pass from death to life, as the Hazon Ish writes. When electricity flows through a device, it becomes something different (beyond the fact that it is operating and producing something). The wire itself becomes an object with a different character (alive). But this is really a matter of intuition, and it is hard for me to give a sharp definition.
I do not agree that one should examine things only through what the device does. What matters is not what the device does, but what I do. And if I activate a device, that has significance beyond the product of the device itself. Riding a horse is not a good example, because the horse is not changed by the fact that I ride it (this sharpens the distinction I made in the previous paragraph).
Considerations of the character of the Sabbath are really not well defined, and certainly they are not the foundation of the labor prohibitions. If anything, the opposite: perhaps the labor prohibitions define them. According to Nachmanides, there is a Torah-level prohibition of shevut that relates to the character of the Sabbath, but even according to his view it is not a stoning-level prohibition like the labor prohibitions.
Discussion on Answer
When an electrical device operates, that is the life entering the wires. It becomes something else, and that is completely visible (you see a device operating). What you do not see is whether the circuits that activate it do so indirectly or directly.
You are still assuming result-based criteria. But one has to study the laws of the Sabbath to determine this.
And see Chayei Adam regarding a clock on the Sabbath.
I do not understand why the wires become alive,
and why with a water tap the pipe does not become alive.
And aside from that, electric current flows inside the wire like in a pipe,
and they strive to equalize, and therefore they flow.
And I do not understand what the connection is between electricity and fire.
Hello Rabbi,
The Rabbi taught us in the lecture that things must be examined at the proper resolution.
Just as I do not see the delay of electrons in various Tzomet mechanisms, so too I do not see
the current that passes through and brings the wire to life.
What I do see is pressing a switch and activating a device; I do not understand how these two distinctions
fit together.
And regarding labor: I did not claim that the test is a test of the result.
Labor is the meeting point between the creator and the creation; the technology used to act is secondary.
In many cases, technological differences (for example, by means of a device or by hand) will carry weight for a different halakhic ruling,
depending on whether one performs the labor in its normal manner or in an unusual way.
But the labor is the same labor.
The Rabbi noted that we are in the midst of the development of Jewish law on the subject of electricity, but everyone already feels that very soon
these discussions will be a thing of the past.
If the spotlight is put on the labor, then even if the reaping takes place by means of sound waves, it will still be that same reaping.
I did not mean that one should act only out of concern for the character of the Sabbath. The process should be: which labors, if we now had to build a Tabernacle (as an archetype of building and creating), would have to be prohibited? Technically, to which ancient primary category of labor should the labor be linked? That I will leave to those greater than me.