As a New Yorker who actually sees this kind of elevator on occasion, I appreciate that I will think of this joke every time in I run into them in the future.
For the more orthodox folks, there's a general proscription on Doing Work on the Sabbath that goes as far as avoiding using machinery even in functionally convenient ways. Pressing a button on an elevator: doing work. Turning on or adjusting the oven: doing work.
@cow I think the most difficult passage involves Exodus 35:1-3 which prohibits the "kindling of a fire." One of the important things to remember about Judaism is that there are thousands of Rabbis in the world today that are constantly interpreting the word of G-d, and in the Orthodox/Hasidic community their Rabbis define closing an electrical switch as starting a fire.
As strange as this seems, there are a ton of potential loopholes. For one thing, it's not uncommon in Brooklyn to find one of the Hasidim on Sabbath asking a gentile on the street to come in and turn on/turn off one of their appliances (walking home from a party, quite drunk on a Friday night, I was once invited upstairs to an apartment to turn down their thermostat).
My other favorite loophole is this Kosher lamp: http://www.kosherimage.com/images... You can't turn on or off the light, but some Orthodox Rabbis said it's perfectly fine to turn a knob!
Seriously, though: @stereoplex, thank you for the specifics of the Sabbath work proscription(s) and the loopholes. I've gotta admit, some of the loopholes that I know strike me as so winky-nudgy that I just roll my eyes. I don't mean to offend anyone here who's Orthodox, but I have a tough time seeing how the instant of flipping a switch or pressing an elevator button is meaningfully a form of work, in either the "starting a fire" or "completing a job" sense (per your Chabad link), relative to what the equivalent would have entailed thousands of years ago when, hey guys, every seventh day you're supposed to not do your standard day's laborious work and worship Yahweh. Really, the elevator is doing most of the work here, which is still true even if it happens automatically, but now it's no big deal because it would have happened anyway? The "work" of button pressing feels sub-trivial; no greater than turning a doorknob and causing the latch bolt to move (which as far as I know is permitted), but it's forbidden on grounds that seem mere technicalities. I get that from an absolutist viewpoint, there would be no time so short that it would be beneath an omniscient G_d's notice, but it's forbidden because it's "completing a new object (which a circuit certainly does not seem to be doing) while something as complex as checking email *might* be OK per *some* "rabbinic authorities"? Or it can't be done because it shows "man's mastery over nature", but if the electric light or the A/C or the fridge or, in this case, the elevator is already running or gets turned on by goyim, that doesn't count? Heck, what about living in a leak-proof structure 10 or 20 stories in the air? I have to think just that alone would seem utterly masterful to an ancient talmudic scholar.
I think what made eye-rolling my default response was reading years ago about eruvs ("eruvim", I guess?), specifically a huge one in Brooklyn that gives the OK for Hasidim, etc. to attend services or do activities in public really far from home with keys, kids, strollers, what have you that they otherwise couldn't bring. The mental gymnastics performed/hoops of religious law jumped through to have a set of poles and wires all across a neighborhood replace the walls and doorways that originally represented public/semi-public vs. private spaces just seemed ludicrous.
If the intent of all these rules of the Sabbath is to get the Orthodox out of their non-Sabbath mindset and to be more mindful a creator or of the non-mundane world, why not just come out and say so: "Friday sundown to Saturday sundown, observant Jews need to focus awareness on the divine and their relationship with same", rather than these (to me) arbitrary and (objectively) not universally acknowledged/accepted bans, but ones with a slew of funky workarounds because the requirements – like mandatory attendance at services while not leaving your infant at home – are mutually incompatible.
Hmph. If we could work out the whole issue of religious traditions vs. rigid internal logical consistency here and now, I'd be grateful.
@Lord_John_Whorfin Think of it as the most logical outcome when a proscription is not sufficiently explicit or specific. It keeps the "*this* but not *that*" exemptions and counter-exemptions down to a comparatively small, memorizable set by using classifications, and if some of those classifications lead to awkward outcomes, the arguments in that regard (eg, the relationship of electricity to fire) is a lot neater than arguing the exemption sets, which would be nigh-infinite.
As I understand it, these rules are not necessarily to be observed unto death... If you're dependent on electronic devices to monitor your health, it's OK. if you're in a burning building and the fire escape doors are electronically triggered, use the damn doors anyway. Martyrdom for the sake of ritual purity seems to be much more of a Roman Catholic than Jewish thing to do.
And so: Sabbath mode.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...
A good primer: http://www.chabad.org/blogs...
As strange as this seems, there are a ton of potential loopholes. For one thing, it's not uncommon in Brooklyn to find one of the Hasidim on Sabbath asking a gentile on the street to come in and turn on/turn off one of their appliances (walking home from a party, quite drunk on a Friday night, I was once invited upstairs to an apartment to turn down their thermostat).
My other favorite loophole is this Kosher lamp: http://www.kosherimage.com/images... You can't turn on or off the light, but some Orthodox Rabbis said it's perfectly fine to turn a knob!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...
I think what made eye-rolling my default response was reading years ago about eruvs ("eruvim", I guess?), specifically a huge one in Brooklyn that gives the OK for Hasidim, etc. to attend services or do activities in public really far from home with keys, kids, strollers, what have you that they otherwise couldn't bring. The mental gymnastics performed/hoops of religious law jumped through to have a set of poles and wires all across a neighborhood replace the walls and doorways that originally represented public/semi-public vs. private spaces just seemed ludicrous.
If the intent of all these rules of the Sabbath is to get the Orthodox out of their non-Sabbath mindset and to be more mindful a creator or of the non-mundane world, why not just come out and say so: "Friday sundown to Saturday sundown, observant Jews need to focus awareness on the divine and their relationship with same", rather than these (to me) arbitrary and (objectively) not universally acknowledged/accepted bans, but ones with a slew of funky workarounds because the requirements – like mandatory attendance at services while not leaving your infant at home – are mutually incompatible.
Hmph. If we could work out the whole issue of religious traditions vs. rigid internal logical consistency here and now, I'd be grateful.
As I understand it, these rules are not necessarily to be observed unto death... If you're dependent on electronic devices to monitor your health, it's OK. if you're in a burning building and the fire escape doors are electronically triggered, use the damn doors anyway. Martyrdom for the sake of ritual purity seems to be much more of a Roman Catholic than Jewish thing to do.
http://gothamist.com/2017...