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Rav-hadassah posts (in a locked post) about electricity on Shabbat; can you or can't you?
Rabbinic tradition forbids many things on Shabbat, but electricity is hard to slot into traditional categories. This means responsa over the past century have wobbled back and forth over the "is it ok?" question; Orthodoxy has settled into a position of "basically no," Conservative takes its usual confused position of "yes no and maybe" and Reform of "yes if you want to." Not using electricity, let us say, has become a measure of piety.
The technicalities of the question are kind of technical - am I not superbly articulate? - and I don't intend getting into them. Instead I'm going to note that using electricity makes a huge giant change in how we live, these days, and compare that to something else that made a huge giant change to the way Shabbat is observed.
Think about muktze, handling foreign objects.
In biblical times, Shabbat was totally - but totally about foreign objects. You can handle food if you designate it for Shabbat beforehand, but if you handle anything else, you get stoned to death, because Shabbat is supposed to be almost entirely separate from the physical world.*
By later rabbinic times, muktze has undergone a radical transformation. From being "anything that isn't completely crucial," muktze becomes "anything that you might use for forbidden work." In biblical times, you would not be allowed to crack nuts on Shabbat; in later rabbinic times, it is taken for granted that obviously you may crack nuts, and furthermore that you may use tools other than nutcrackers. This is a radical, fundamental shift in the nature of Shabbat. Before, Shabbat was essentially separated from the physical world apart from specific things which one would designate beforehand to be part of one's Shabbat. Now, in the talmudic period, Shabbat is far more firmly based in the physical world, assuming that everything is basically part of Shabbat unless otherwise specified. Shabbat has become much less distinct from everyday life.*
This is a pretty gigantic shift. A biblical Jew would be simply horrified at a late rabbinic Jew's way of doing Shabbat. It wouldn't seem like Shabbat at all. Yet you and I still have Shabbat, undoubtedly. It is true that in looking at electricity, we are looking at something with the potential to transform Shabbat completely, but it won't hurt us to remember that this isn't an entirely new situation; it's happened before, and we survived.
Electricity largely facilitates things we do in everyday life. Insofar as we allow Shabbat to mix with everyday life - cracking nuts, walking around, washing dishes - how far do we want to allow electricity to be part of that? As I recall, in responsa from the 20th century, we can see a tendency towards permitting use of electricity in certain forms as electricity becomes more widespread and more a feature of everyday life. Denominational politics aside,** we recognise that electricity has the power to be very, very, very non-Shabbat - eBay? - but nonetheless, even Orthodoxy wants electricity (honestly, who wants to walk up nine flights on Shabbat?), and has developed a mechanism whereby electricity can be used, in a formalised, this-is-not-exactly-the-same-as-everyday sort of way.
Electricity has become so much part of life for some things, like getting up stairs, that we want to let it into Shabbat, and often we do, by whatever halakhic mechanism our community sees fit to utilise - if it's something we would normally do on Shabbat (compare e.g. talking to someone three time zones away; that's not very shabbat-like, for reasons not having to do with electricity at all). But it is also so bound up with all aspects of everyday life that if you let it into Shabbat, it brings everyday life with it. When you're thinking about whether you want to use electricity, you have to think about that, and how far you want that to happen, and it is a good idea to remember that since that isn't at all a new question, you can learn from history.
Which is another way of saying that whatever you do, it's basically about what fits in with your community's understanding of Shabbat, which is what it's all about anyway. It's not that there's a Right or a Wrong Answer - Should We or Shouldn't We. It's about how far our community sees fit to let everyday life mix with Shabbat. The Essenes didn't even let you poop on Shabbat; our ancestors in biblical times let you poop and eat but not crack nuts; Talmudic rabbis let you crack nuts; today's Reform Jews will let you use an electric nutcracker, and Orthodox Jews will let you use an electric nutcracker if it's on a timer.
In two minds about whether to allow comments on this thread. I think I reserve the right to block comments if anyone starts a denominational flamewar.
* I am not putting all the sources I have up here. If you really want, I will email them to you.
** that was something of a cop-out, because it became a really big deal - e.g. Rav Soloveitchik in his early years said that elevators were okay for higher than x floors, but once it became a big denominational thing, that got retracted. For instance. Other "it might technically be okay but we don't do it because we're not Reform" stuff abounds; that's a complication, but I left it out because denominational politics gets into everything these days
Rabbinic tradition forbids many things on Shabbat, but electricity is hard to slot into traditional categories. This means responsa over the past century have wobbled back and forth over the "is it ok?" question; Orthodoxy has settled into a position of "basically no," Conservative takes its usual confused position of "yes no and maybe" and Reform of "yes if you want to." Not using electricity, let us say, has become a measure of piety.
The technicalities of the question are kind of technical - am I not superbly articulate? - and I don't intend getting into them. Instead I'm going to note that using electricity makes a huge giant change in how we live, these days, and compare that to something else that made a huge giant change to the way Shabbat is observed.
Think about muktze, handling foreign objects.
In biblical times, Shabbat was totally - but totally about foreign objects. You can handle food if you designate it for Shabbat beforehand, but if you handle anything else, you get stoned to death, because Shabbat is supposed to be almost entirely separate from the physical world.*
By later rabbinic times, muktze has undergone a radical transformation. From being "anything that isn't completely crucial," muktze becomes "anything that you might use for forbidden work." In biblical times, you would not be allowed to crack nuts on Shabbat; in later rabbinic times, it is taken for granted that obviously you may crack nuts, and furthermore that you may use tools other than nutcrackers. This is a radical, fundamental shift in the nature of Shabbat. Before, Shabbat was essentially separated from the physical world apart from specific things which one would designate beforehand to be part of one's Shabbat. Now, in the talmudic period, Shabbat is far more firmly based in the physical world, assuming that everything is basically part of Shabbat unless otherwise specified. Shabbat has become much less distinct from everyday life.*
This is a pretty gigantic shift. A biblical Jew would be simply horrified at a late rabbinic Jew's way of doing Shabbat. It wouldn't seem like Shabbat at all. Yet you and I still have Shabbat, undoubtedly. It is true that in looking at electricity, we are looking at something with the potential to transform Shabbat completely, but it won't hurt us to remember that this isn't an entirely new situation; it's happened before, and we survived.
Electricity largely facilitates things we do in everyday life. Insofar as we allow Shabbat to mix with everyday life - cracking nuts, walking around, washing dishes - how far do we want to allow electricity to be part of that? As I recall, in responsa from the 20th century, we can see a tendency towards permitting use of electricity in certain forms as electricity becomes more widespread and more a feature of everyday life. Denominational politics aside,** we recognise that electricity has the power to be very, very, very non-Shabbat - eBay? - but nonetheless, even Orthodoxy wants electricity (honestly, who wants to walk up nine flights on Shabbat?), and has developed a mechanism whereby electricity can be used, in a formalised, this-is-not-exactly-the-same-as-everyday sort of way.
Electricity has become so much part of life for some things, like getting up stairs, that we want to let it into Shabbat, and often we do, by whatever halakhic mechanism our community sees fit to utilise - if it's something we would normally do on Shabbat (compare e.g. talking to someone three time zones away; that's not very shabbat-like, for reasons not having to do with electricity at all). But it is also so bound up with all aspects of everyday life that if you let it into Shabbat, it brings everyday life with it. When you're thinking about whether you want to use electricity, you have to think about that, and how far you want that to happen, and it is a good idea to remember that since that isn't at all a new question, you can learn from history.
Which is another way of saying that whatever you do, it's basically about what fits in with your community's understanding of Shabbat, which is what it's all about anyway. It's not that there's a Right or a Wrong Answer - Should We or Shouldn't We. It's about how far our community sees fit to let everyday life mix with Shabbat. The Essenes didn't even let you poop on Shabbat; our ancestors in biblical times let you poop and eat but not crack nuts; Talmudic rabbis let you crack nuts; today's Reform Jews will let you use an electric nutcracker, and Orthodox Jews will let you use an electric nutcracker if it's on a timer.
In two minds about whether to allow comments on this thread. I think I reserve the right to block comments if anyone starts a denominational flamewar.
* I am not putting all the sources I have up here. If you really want, I will email them to you.
** that was something of a cop-out, because it became a really big deal - e.g. Rav Soloveitchik in his early years said that elevators were okay for higher than x floors, but once it became a big denominational thing, that got retracted. For instance. Other "it might technically be okay but we don't do it because we're not Reform" stuff abounds; that's a complication, but I left it out because denominational politics gets into everything these days
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