kosherswitch.com
I'm not jewish, but some of my friends are observant (but progressive) and use the Sabbath as a day of reflection. This seems to completely go against the spirit of the rule (to spend a day living simply with friends and family, without technology for maximum reflection, introspection, and rest).
I don't see how this gadget would catch on -- unless someone is bound is follow the rule to the letter, but doesn't really want to (but then at that point, they should just stop adhering IMHO)
So I can tell you that you are 100% right. I don't think this is really going to catch on for that very reason. Sabbath is a day set aside for family, religion, and not working.
I think what the main use is going to be is people will install it for emergencies. So I'm sure in Israel a lot of people will put it in their bomb shelters so if they need to spend Sabbath in the shelter and need to use the light, it won't be directly going against Sabbath.
Surely use in emergencies is allowed already.
(I am not Jewish, but I heard an Oy Vey once)
Sorry for being ignorant. But can you please explain in simple words what is need for this for Jews?
Thus, there is an entire industry of elaborate contraptions to allow the observant Orthodox Jew all of the convenience with none of the covenant-breaking. Like this switch, which doesn't create an electric circuit; it blocks an intermittent light pulse which has some possibility of not even doing anything.
Allegedly this is more acceptable to the Almighty. Perhaps because the Torah lacks an anti-circumvention clause.
Some factions believe that flicking a light switch is "work," or that pressing a button is "work." So some enterprising fellows have been creating ingenious inventions to allow observant orthodox jews to live comfortably while still not technically violating their rules.
It all seems pretty silly to me, but you have to admit, it is indeed hacking and I think the devices are clever.
One specific example is an elevator, which has a sabbath mode. On the sabbath, it will stop and open its doors at every floor, over and over, so that an observant rider can simply walk on, and walk off at their desired floor, without the perceived sin of pressing the button for their floor.
I have also heard that a lot of devices have kosher mode. E.g. refrigerators lights not coming on and power randomly going in and out much like this swith
Some electric ovens and stoves also have a Sabbath mode that lets them stay on all day; in the normal mode most have an auto-shutoff after 12 hours, under the assumption that an oven left on for more than 12 hours was probably an accident.
If the logic is that God didn't want a fire lit, surely that is because he didn't want the fire, not that he didn't want someone lighting it.
Isn't it all a little bit like a scaled down, less immoral, version of saying "No, I didn't kill him, I just pushed him into the ocean - blame the water"?
Things like the switch in this article seems really silly though. Of course having a gentile to push elevator buttons for you seems silly to me as well.
Anyway - omnipotent and omniscient God is logical contradiction already, either logic don't work on God, or it's all bullshit. So religion doesn't have to be logical.
Sabbath law prohibits Jews from performing actions that cause a direct reaction;
that would qualify as forbidden work. But indirect reactions are, well, kosher. In
Hebrew, this concept is called the gramma. There are two types of grammas,
Ottensoser tells me. Say you hit a light switch, but it doesn't come on
immediately - that's a time delay, a time gramma. There's also a gramma of
mechanical indirectness, like a Rube Goldberg contraption in which a mouse turns a
wheel that swings a hammer that turns a key that launches a rocket. You can't
claim the mouse actually launches the rocket.