I’ve heard that before the Halacha was settled by the Poskim like the Chazon Ish, many or most Orthodox Jews used lightbulbs etc on Shabbat. Is there any validity to this?
I’m just curious
16
-
1Even nowadays most poskim reject the chazon ish– Double AA ♦Commented Jul 29 at 16:47
-
1There were no major poskim who allowed turning lights on or off before the Chazon Ish either. Some were of the opinion that the prohibition is only rabbanic but no major posed allowed it– SchmerelCommented Jul 29 at 16:50
-
3Note Yom Tov is different from Shabbat, and you may have heard of people turning on lightbulbs on Yom Tov.– Double AA ♦Commented Jul 29 at 16:58
-
4I heard (I think from R' Rakeffet, but I'm not certain) something like that early Sephardic pesak permitted use of electric devices on Yom Tov, though R' Ovadia Yosef paskened against, and standard practice is not to, though there are some older Sepharadim who still do use electric devices on Yom Tov on that basis.– Isaac Moses ♦Commented Jul 29 at 16:59
-
2In "Two Worlds" a memoir written by David Daiches (1912-2005), the son of the former Chief Rabbi of Scotland, he describes how as a child, he would sit next to an electric heater on cold Shabbat days because his father paskened that electric lights and heaters were not "flame" before today's standard opinion became settled halacha.– MikeCommented Jul 31 at 0:38
|
Show 11 more comments
1 Answer
In the biography "A Kabbalist in Montreal: The Life and Times of Rabbi Yudel Rosenberg" author Ira Robinson states (p. 131):
By the early twentieth century, a consensus within the Orthodox Jewish community had emerged whereby nearly all halakha-observant Jews refrained from turning electric lights on and off on the Sabbath.74 By contrast, in the first third of the twentieth century, the jury was definitely still out in these circles regarding the possibility of turning electric lights on and off on Jewish holidays.
Rabbi Yudel Rosenberg held that electricity is permitted to be utilized on the holidays but not on the sabbath (see his pamphlet מאור החשמל). In fn#74 of the abovementioned biography Robinson notes that the consensus surrounding the refrain from turning lights on and off on the sabbath, was not absolute:
Nonetheless, even that consensus was not completely uniform. One rabbi who held the opposite was Rabbi Yosef Zvi Dushinsky of Jerusalem. Menachem Keren-Kratz, “Mishmeret le-Moshmeret: R. Yosef Zvi (Maharitz) Dushinsky,” in The Gedoilim: Leaders Who Shaped the Israeli Haredi Society, ed. Binyamin Brown and Nissim Leon ( Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2017), 365. Thus Rabbi Rosenberg polemicizes against some Jews, whom he characterized as “light of intellect” [kalei ha-da‘at] who sought grounds to utilize electricity in this manner also on the Sabbath. Me’or, 7.
In summary, other than a very small minority (such as R. Dushinsky, that argued in favor of permitting it), the use of electricity on the sabbath was widely eschewed by the Orthodox community in the early 20th century.
