Halakha Gone Wild: Haredim To Operate Cell Phones With Their Teeth

What happens when ideology supplants Jewish law?

Haredi volunteers to operate mobiles with teeth
Special halachic ruling permits emergency service volunteers to reply to calls on their mobile phone during weekends by operating the device with their teeth
Dr. Itay Gal, Ynet

The issue of working on Shabbat presents a difficult dilemma for the ultra-orthodox workers and volunteers of the Magen David Adom emergency services. A recently-issued halachic ruling now permits on-call volunteers to activate their mobile phones on weekends, provided that they do so using their teeth.

MDA has lately began replacing its workers' old beepers with modern MIRS mobile phones equipped with GPS technology, which enables the dispatch center to locate the volunteers closest to the scene of an accident, thus shortening the emergency teams' response time.

But the switch to the new technology has created a problem for the haredi volunteers, who were concerned that the use of the MIRS device on weekends will amount to Shabbat desecration. Some ultra-Orthodox leaders have even called on the volunteers to keep their old beepers.

In an attempt to resolve this dilemma, MDA approached the head of the Scientific-Technological Halacha Institute, Rabbi Levy Yitzhak Halperin. Halperin permitted the use of the new mobile phones, but stipulated a series of conditions for this: The devices will remain open at all times during weekends and placed in a specially-designed case which will not enable them to shut down accidentally.

On Shabbat and holidays, on-call volunteers will respond to calls by using a small metal pin, which they will place between their teeth and use to press the buttons and confirm their arrival.

"Magen David Adom is committed to adopting the GPS technology while making sure not to disrupt the lifestyle and customs of the volunteers," said MDA Director Genera Eli Bin.

This is one of the most foolish halakhic rulings I've seen:

1. Using this metal mouth pointer will slow down response times, not by vast amounts, to be sure, but it will still slow down response – and that is forbidden according to Jewish law.

2. Mobile phones operate using batteries. Some major rabbis – like Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, for example – hold that batteries are not electricity in the strict legal sense. That makes the use of the metal mouth pointer even more foolish.

3. Lastly, there is the issue of how long the battery will operate. Can it operate for two full days and do so with enough strength to send and receive a clear signal? Does that allow for talk time on the way to and at accident scenes? If not – or if there is even a slight doubt – the ability to turn off and turn on the phone as an EMT goes off and on call, or the ability to plug in the phone to keep it charged, should be paramount.

4. There is no mitzva in using older, less effective technology in order to follow Shabbat halakha. In fact, the opposite is true: It is a mitzva to break Shabbat by using newer, more efficient technology. Using older, less effective technology is actually a sin.

Rabbi Halperin's halakhic ruling is what you get when ideology rather than actual halakha is paramount. And choosing ideology over halakha is the essence of what is wrong with haredi Judaism.

Comments

[MisterApikoros]

Choosing ideology over common sense is exactly what's wrong with haredi Judaism.

Hint to Moishe Feinstein: Batteries aren't electricity. Nor are nuclear power plants, coal-fired power plants, hydro power plants, or windmills.

All of the above GENERATE electricity. Rabbi Feinstein ought to study physics in addition to Torah, Talmud, and Tanakh.

[Shmarya]

I don't think you understand. Rabbi Feinstein's ruling is permissive, not restrictive.

And, for the purposes of halakha, the issue is not whether a generator is electricity or simply generates electricity. The issue is whether or not any actions take place in its use that violate specific areas of Shabbat law.

Because electricity is normally considered to be in violation of that law, Rabbi Feinstein's ruling removes batteries from the general category of electricity, which under limited circumstances makes their use permitted on Shabbat.

[justayid]

I think this would be great, if only the haredim would admit that finding loopholes in halacha with the deliberate purpose of solving a modern problem IS part of what halachic Judaism does. "where there is a rabbinic will, there is a halachic way" to spin it a bit more aggressively than I would.

[A. Nuran]

The purpose of picking up an emergency call is to save lives. How is making that more difficult a mitzva?

[justayid]

"Special halachic ruling permits emergency service volunteers to reply to calls on their mobile phone "

pardon, but this makes it appear to be a PERMISSIVE ruling, not a chumra. the implication being that prior to the ruling they couldnt tkae the calls at all.

How is that reconcilable with pikuash nefesh? Presumably the same way an observant doctor not operating on shabbos is reconcilable - by allowing gentiles to take that shift. Presumably EMTs are more interchangeable than doctors.

But Hatzoloh doesnt have enough (any?) gentile EMTs. Properly they should make some arrangements with other ambulance services, but that could introduce other complications. So this is basically a way of making it easier for hatzoloh to continue to operate as it does - whether that saves enough lives to offset delay issues from this device, I dont know.

[justayid]

pardon, this appears to be from Eretz Israel (by the references to MDA) which introduces different issues, which are even more beyond my knowledge than the above. Sorry.

[a]

can you please post how to contact you directly, failed messiah - for a whistleblower who needs total anonymity - can you put a link on your site for that?

big baalie tzedakah, honored and all, doing bad things in their businesses

[itchiemayer]

J. Ezra Merkin? Jack Abramoff? Shalom Rabushkin? Sadly, dishonest ba'alei tzedakah are not that hard to find.

[maven]

The whole issue of electricity is one that didn't have to happen halachically, there were many sides to allow it (as R. Shechter frequently points out). The whole reason to forbid it is an extreme ruling by the Chazon Ish, stating that completing a circuit is "boneh", which is certainly not a necessary ruling, and of course, in the true application would cause us to live like they do in Ponovitch in Benei Brak, with lights off all Shabbat (they light these old gas candles on Friday; according to them all the rest of us are anyway mechallel shabbos since we are benefiting by electricity). This is the same Chazon Ish that created the idea that frum people should stay in kollel and be supported by the community, etc. Had these two rulings not been made, Judaism would almost certainly be stronger and more popular now.

[MisterApikoros]

Batteries generate direct current (DC), while powerplants generate alternating current (AC). That's the only difference between the two. Both will generate a spark, as anyone who's jump-started a car knows.

If direct current is halachally acceptable, it would be OK to drive an electric car, such as a Tesla, which has a range of 235 miles or so, or a plug-in hybrid, like a Chevy Volt, which will run 45 miles on the electric motor before switching over to the gasoline engine which will then generate the power (DC) which will run the electric motor.

Both the motor and the engine will generate a spark, so I'm sure that once these kinds of vehicles are in wide production, some common sense-challenged putz of a rabbi will issue a ruling "outlawing" driving these types of vehicles on the Sabbath, even if one steers with one's teeth.

Question: If Fred Flinstone were Jewish, could he drive his foot-powered "car"? How about the Tiny Tykes blue and yellow toy, which also uses the Fred Flintstone propulsion system?

[Shmarya]

can you please post how to contact you directly, failed messiah - for a whistleblower who needs total anonymity - can you put a link on your site for that?

failed DOT messiah AT comcast DOT net

[Yochanan Lavie]

It's a shinuy with the shinayim.

[A. Nuran]

Richard Feynman (or anyone who's ever wired a circuit) answered the whole "spark" thing long ago. A capacitor in the right place will bleed off current so there's no possibility. And most electric equipment produces no sparks at all.

Could it? Well, yes in the same sense that doing anything with wood should be forbidden on Shabbos because there's a chance that it will spontaneously combust or a bolt of lightning might strike from the blue and set it on fire.

The whole electricity/halacha issues were created needlessly by people with a lot of understanding of dogma and none of physics.

[maven]

Generating a spark was not the reason for banning electricity. The completing of a circuit was the reason.

[face]

Most Rabbis used to permit microphones on Shabbos since they were ignorant of how they worked. The Rebbe who was an Electrical engineer as well as a master in halacha, was the one to point out this falsity as well as educate the Jewish world on these matters.

[justayid]

face

my understanding it that the only O rabbi to permit microphones on shabbat was in baltimore, he was young and inexperienced, and that his opinion was not accepted outside of a few shuls in Baltimore

[justayid]

"From: Jeff Woolf
Date: Thu, 05 Jan 95 16:44:53 IST
Subject: Re: Microphones

If my memory serves me correctly, it was Rabbi Levy, head of the Halakha
Commission of the RCA in the forties who allowed microphones in
Baltimore. He based his decision on the assumption (then very prevalent)
that electricity is not fire (though exactly what it is is still moot
among Poskim). When the Rav zt'l took over Halakhic guidance of the RCA
he banned microphones because he felt electricity WAS equivalent to
fire. Whether Baltimore has the status of 'So-and-so's place' (See
Shabbat 119a) is an interesting question. If the position that
electricity is NOT fire is a legitimate, though rejected, one. It MIGHT
be legit to keep the microphone. If it's based on an error, it would
not. Any comments?
Rabbi Dr Jeffrey R Woolf
Lecturer, Talmud Department
Bar Ilan University

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: (Avi Teitz)
Date: Thu, 05 Jan 1995 11:02:56 -0500
Subject: Re: Microphones, Orthodox Rabbi's hetter

Regarding Tzvi Weiss's posting, in which he did not recall the name
of the Rabbi who was mattir microphones, the Rav in question is Rabbi
Mendel Polikoff, and he still resides in Baltimore. BTW he is also
my relative (but its too complicated for me to figure out how). Maybe
Eliyahu Teitz could figure it out, or better yet, find out what the
basis of the hetter was.

----------------------------------------------------------------------"

[Shmarya]

Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Auerbach ruled that electricity is not a violation of Shabbat halakha (although he still forbids using it because of the prevalent incorrect rulings caused by freakazoid rabbis like the Rebbe).

So did many other huge talmidei hachamim, all of whom were far more versed in halakha than the Rebbe. (Many of then knew at least as much about electricity as he did, too.)

The Rebbe almost flunked out out of his junior college EE training.

He wasn't much of an EE – and he wasn't a posek.

[face]

Nobody ever claimed the Rebbe was a posek, although he was well versed in all areas of Torah. Also nobody disputes that he was an electrical engineer.

[Shmarya]

nobody disputes that he was an electrical engineer.

Who did very poorly in his EE junior college.

[face]

Can you please post his report card to your site? If you don't have it maybe you could devote a part of your busy day to investigating the matter for me?

[Shmarya]

Ask Shimi Deutsch. He's publishing it and the letter threatening expulsion for poor grades in his next volume.

[itchiemayer]

Re: Rabbi Deutsch - I tried to buy earlier volume(s?), and the price is like $450 a book! I would love to read his writings on the Rebbe and Lubavitch. Any ideas on when his newest volume will be coming out? Any ideas on how to access his writings without paying an arm and a leg?

[face]

Who's Shimi Deutsch? Do you have his email adress?

[Shmarya]

Ask your rabbi. child.

[face]

I looked into it, is he the guy who got arrested for counterfitting 10 dollar bills and crowned himself the Rebbe of Liozna?

[Shmarya]

No, idiot.

He's the guy Chabad slandered and libeled. He was never arrested, indicted, tried, or even suspected of any crime.

True to your rebbe, you are scum.

[face]

You're a good man and even better investigative journalist Shmarya!
Thank you for all your hard work!

[face]

Shmarya, what book is going to come out first, The next volume of Mr. Deutsch's book or Kiruv stories?

[Yochanan Lavie]

Halacha Gone Wild (apolgies: Steppenwolf):

Get your cellphone ringin'
Head out on the sabbath
Lookin' for halacha
And a nice mikveh bath
Yeah Darlin' go make it happen
Take my phone and dial it with my teeth
Call all of my friends at once
And explode their belief

I like smoked herring
Mussar schmooze thunder
Mountain dew chaser
And tefillin that I'm under
Yeah Darlin' go make it happen
Dial the cellphone with my teeth
Start a new chumra each month
Till's it's hard to believe

Like a true rebbe's child
The latest chumra is going to be wild
Like a vildeh chaya
Posting on Failed Messiah

Halacha gone wild
Halacha gone wild

[Paul Freedman]

Purple Haze!

[Yochanan Lavie]

Paul: 'scuse me, while I kiss the mezuzah.

[The Monsey Tzadik]

The concept of doing things is shabbos with shinuy is very old concept. I know a rabbi who is mattir to play a piano on shabbos, if you play it not with your hands but with your penis.

[Isa]

The Rebbe was Never an Electrical Engineer. It was more like an electrical technician, somebody who could fix door bells.
BIG DIFFERENCE

[maven]

again, the primary source for banning electricity was the teshuva by the Chazon Ish claiming it was "boneh" by completing a circuit. There was, indeed, confusion on whether it should be forbidden because it isn't "fire", etc. R. Shechter has discussed this many times. R. Lamm famously argued to allow electricity on YomTov and was attacked, though he was probably correct.

[Arthur]

I think that the chazon ish had more issues with who was manning the plant than what was being made there

[MisterApikoros]

Electricity is not fire. Nothing is burned (oxidized) when an electrical current passes through overhead wires, underground wires, or for that matter, lights a light bulb, TV, etc. Electricity is the rearrangement of electrons.

When electricity does cause a fire, it's either due to an accident of man (or machinery) or an act of nature (lightning starting a forest or brushfire).

This goes back to the difference between a motor and an engine. An engine, such as an internal COMBUSTION engine, creates "fire" in that gasoline is oxidized into water and CO2, and some byproducts. Remember that gasoline is mostly comprised of two hydrocarbons, heptane and octane. There are two basic elements, hydrogen and carbon. When that reacts with the oxygen in the air, that's combustion, in that the hydrocarbons are broken down into water, which contains hydrogen and oxygen (you can call water dihydrogen oxide) and carbon dioxide.

An electric motor, on the other hand, doesn't cause combustion.

Rust, btw, is a product of combustion. Iron rusts, to some degree or another. And it does so on Saturday and on every other day. So even if your car sits in the garage on Shabbat, it's "combusting," as some of the iron molecules in the steel react with the oxygen in the air to form ferric oxide, which is rust. Not too quickly, I hope.

The halachic solution would be to park your car in a vacuum on Shabbot.

[maven]

Arthur: That's the second part of the teshuva and why passive use of electricity (ie, leaving the lights on) was forbidden by him as well if any Jews were violating Shabbat at the power plant.

[MisterApikoros]

Human beings, and all animate life, "combust." That's why we exhale CO2.

If all combustion is to be banned on Shabbot, is there any way for us to die on Friday and be resurrected on Sunday?

It happened once, so there's a precedent.

[Yochanan Lavie]

What about spontaneous combustion? Isn't it assur to make an ash of oneself on Shabbat?

[maven]

YL: Spontaneous combustion? I read those comic books too when I was a kid.
However, I think it would be forbidden to blow up on shabbat under the av melacha of menapetz? Sort of the way getting hammered on Shabbat ought to be forbidden due to makeh b'patish...

[Paul Freedman]

YL: I make an ash out of myself nearly every single day, if the people I work with are to be believed....

[Dr. Dave]

What about spontaneous combustion?

That's why Spinal Tap never had a Jewish drummer.

[Proton Soup]

geez, no way does anyone become an electrical engineer by going to a junior college. trust me, it takes 2 years of busting your tail just to get to the point where the professors don't treat you like an idiot all the time, and then the meat of your education begins.

anyway, i'm not sure what a good definition of "fire" is for your purposes, but electricity involves quite a bit of chemical combustion and heat. for starters, most power produced in america at least comes from coal, which is burned in a big fire to heat water to make steam to turn generators that push electrons through the wires. this power is then routed to cell phone towers where it powers the radios that communicate with individual cell phones. cell phones are then powered by batteries that also use a chemical reaction to push electrons through the phone, even though no actual flame is generated. but it will generate some heat, just as sure as iron filing hand warmers will keep your mittens toasty.

also, on the receiving end of electric power in the general sense, anytime you've got a device that produces a spark gap, like say a motor with brushes, chances are you're producing ozone and maybe some nitrogen oxides that will definitely give your nose a tweak and might be considered "fire" or at least products of combustion.

but what is fire? i have no idea, i'm just a gentile. all i know is that the guy looks completely silly and is still using his other hand to steady the device and complete his circuit. maybe if he used another stick held between his toes to steady the phone it would make more sense. oh, and fwiw, just opening the phone will "complete a circuit", so you'll need to use sticks for that, too.

[Shmarya]

You don't understand the European system. In some countries, people go straight from high school to law school and become lawyers in 3 years.

The same used to be true with EE, except I belive the course took 2 years.

[Kiryas Mishigos]

The next logical application is to teach how to drive using your teeth.

Firmly bite down on the steering wheel, twist your head to the right...

[MisterApikoros]

As long as I can remember, and it was certainly true when I was in college 40 years ago, it took five years to get a bachelor's degree in Engineering. My uncle, who is an electrical engineer with a Ph.D. went to NYU in the 1940's. Took him five years.

[face]

Shmarya, do you have a University degree?

[Paul Freedman]

I still don't get the diff from agency with your finger to agency with an oral appendage/device.

[Paul Freedman]

Is it that oral law works off of examples of work or service done originally with hands?

[Paul Freedman]

Judaism makes my head hurt.

[Yonah]

Heh! This is cool; I learned a similar halachah when I was 14. Actually what I was taught was that in an emergency you use your nose on electric buttons. Once I tried it with an elevator and gave myself the worst nosebleed ever.

[Yonah]

By the way, what I was taught was not that it makes a difference in your responsibility/agency or what you're actually doing but that if you're going to break Shabbat you should at least still separate the way you do it then from the way you do it the rest of the week.

[A. Nuran]

Shmarya, I do understand the European system. It takes about as long from A-levels or lycee to become and engineer as it does in the States. Two years of junior college doesn't cut it.

And even then, being a tech or even sometimes an EE doesn't mean you understand the physics. Sometimes it just means you passed freshman physics and understand the theory for your courses a good seven or eight steps removed from the fundamental science.

[face]

Guys you have to cut Shmarya some slack, he doesn't have much experience with the post secondary school system.....

[Neo-Conservaguy]

Ask yourself this question: if you make a blessing for kindling lights for Chanukah, do you fulfill the blessing by turning on an electric light? If not, you should also hold there is no issue with regard to "fire" turning on an electric light on Shabbat, and none on Yom Tov in either case. If you hold that "completing" the circuit is the issue, what about turning it off - is that the same issue? We don't use these things because we don't feel they contribute to the static environment we try to create for Shabbat, but that's different than believing it is a violation of Shabbat.

[maven]

Neo: Yes, the Chazon Ish felt that turning off a circuit fell under "destroying" (soter). Many disagree with this approach, as I've mentioned earlier.

[Hometown Postville]

Kiryas- I like your analogy about driving with your teeth. Along with operating a cell phone, you could start a whole new instructional class called "How to Get Around Shabbat Rules." Personally, I would not want emergency care compromised because of prohibition of cell phones. So if a patient has fallen from a heart attack on the street during Shabbat do Haredi paramedics have to wait until the end of the day is over to lift him onto the stretcher? Or do they enlist the help of a passer-by??

[yudel]

anyone notice here the plethora of response and physics and all the info on who is who and who said what.....this really makes me happy...we know more about the idiots who made things assur or mutar but cannot organize ourselves enough to save a kid's life.