By Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel
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CHULA VISTA, California — One of the most respected Chabad authorities on kosher food, who is also the chief rabbi of a haredi city in Israel, has banned the use of tap water on Shabbat.
Bnei Brak’s Rabbi Moshe Yehuda Leib Landa issued a halachic ruling that using a faucet directly turns on electrical water pumping system. Such an offense is, according to a number of Haredi scholars, potentially punishable by stoning.
Rabbi Landa used to be one of my Talmud mentors in the yeshiva where I studied. I have personally written about this topic as well over the years. He is partially correct if you accept his premise that electricity is on par with lighting a fire—a view that has been disputed by many scholars over the last 130 years.
Some of the key arguments made for banning electricity include:
- Igniting a fire—This is perhaps the most widely perceived attitude. They argue that an incandescent light generates light and heat by causing an electrical current to flow through a metal filament. Some scholars liken this point to the method of “tempering metal” that is mentioned in the Talmud. If one accidentally tempered a pot’s metal, scholars debate whether this is indeed permitted or not—even if the person never intended to produce such a result (BT Shabbat 41b).
- Building— Rabbi Avrohom Yeshaya Karelitz, (1878-1953) a.k.a, “ Chazon Ish,” argued that closing an electrical circuit to create current constitutes a biblical prohibition, while closing a circuit is analogous to the prohibited act of destroying. Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach (1910-1995) rejects such an analogy, contending that opening and closing an electrical circuit is no different from opening or closing a door on the Sabbath. Rabbi Auerbach was regarded by many people to be the greatest Halachic scholar of his generation. [1]
- “Striking the final hammer blow” i.e., making a device operational, for a device does not become complete until the electricity is turned on! Once again, Rabbi Auerbach rejects this exposition. Functionally speaking, an electrical appliance is by its very purpose—temporary. Once it is turned on, it requires minimal effort to reactivate it.
- “Creating sparks” –Some argue that electrical appliances might create sparks, and that constitutes “creating a fire.” But Rabbi Auerbach retorts, “Not so! The lighting of sparks is unintentional and might not occur. Moreover, sparks are too small to be considered “final.” With solid-state technology, the probability of generating sparks is greatly reduced!”
- Custom (Minhag) – Rabbi Auerbach concludes that since most people think electricity on the Shabbat is forbidden, one should not alter the public perception. The only thing one should not turn on is an incandescent light, which he equates with lighting a fire. One of the members of my congregation is a nuclear engineer. According to him, it is impossible for electrical sparks to be considered, “fire,” since fire requires oxidization in order achieve combustion; in contrast, electrical sparks can occur virtually anywhere in the cosmos.
- One might argue that electricity functions more like the element of water and not fire. Unless one is talking about the solar storms that occur on the sun, we generally refer to electricity having both a “current” and a “flow.” Apply Rabbi Auerbach’s reasoning, turning on a light switch is no different from turning on a faucet.
With respect to creating sparks, one can generate between 1500 and 3500 volts just walking across your carpet! I suspect wearing rubber shoes might solve the problem, but this hardly seems like a practical solution for those who really worry about making electricity on the Shabbat.
Then again, the human brain is also electrical. Cells use electricity to communicate and stimulate muscles, but the brain takes this to another level. If you could take the brain’s electricity, tap into all the electricity the neurons are generating, you’d have enough power to turn on a flashlight.
By the same line of reasoning, the heart is also electrical. Rabbinical reasoning never imagined that everything that is human runs on electricity–even on the Shabbat!
On the other hand, my Karaite friend, Hacham Avraham Qani, turns off everything that is electrical in his house for Shabbat. He refuses to benefit from a Jew who might be working at the local power plant during the Shabbat! While I personally find his view quite extreme–he has one major advantage over the rest: Hacham Avraham is consistent!
One might argue that Ludwig Wittgenstein’s theory of “language as game” may help make some sort of sense out of the rabbinical debate concerning the halachic status of electricity. Wittgenstein notes:
- But how many kinds of sentence are there? Say assertion, question, and command?—There are countless kinds: countless different kinds of use of what we call ”symbols”, “words”, “sentences”. And this multiplicity is not something fixed, given once for all; but new types of language, new language-games, as we may say, come into existence, and others become obsolete and get forgotten…Review the multiplicity of language-games in the following examples, and in others: Giving orders, and obeying them—Describing the appearance of an object, or giving its measurements—Constructing an object from a description (a drawing)—Reporting an event—Speculating about an event—Forming and testing a hypothesis—Presenting the results of an experiment in tables and diagrams—Making up a story; and reading it—Play-acting—Singing catches—Guessing riddles—Making a joke; telling it—Solving a problem in practical arithmetic—Translating from one language into another—Asking, thanking, cursing, greeting, praying. (PI, 1953, 11–12).
Based on the way Talmudic and discussions operate, I think Wittgenstein’s notion of game theory describes the essential interpretive relativism that is linguistically embedded in Halachic thinking. Simply put: rabbis love creating linguistic walls to construct around their communities. Walls serve to isolate as well as protect their followers from secular, or contrarian Orthodox counter-values, which the rabbis find threatening. The Mishnah often speaks about the importance of “making a fence around the Torah” (Aboth 1:1). However, when you make fences around fences ad infinitum, you have effectively created a labyrinth (also known as a maze). People who let the rabbis micro-manage their lives, remain prisoners (for the most part!) in a world fabricated by their own artifice.
R. Yaakob Kranz [2] (1741-1804) once compared the halachic process to someone trying to shoot a bull’s-eye. This can be achieved in one of two ways:
One way involves using skill to hit the center of the target. The other method involves shooting at a random target and then painting concentric circles around wherever the arrow lands. Rabbinic thinking, more often than not, tends to arbitrarily use straw man arguments for the prohibitions they wish to promote. This is especially true with how many of today’s Haredi and Hassidic scholars arrive at foregone conclusions, which will not stand up to logical scrutiny, or for that matter–common sense.
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[1] Rabbi Michael Broyde & Rabbi Howard Jachter, The Use of Electricity on Shabbat and Yom Tov, part 1, section A. Journal of Halacha & Contemporary Society No. XXI – Spring 1991 – Pesach 5751.
[2] R. Yaakob Kranz is better known as the “Dubna Maggid.”