Electric Sabbath

In today’s episode, we explore how observing the seventh day continues to change over time and up until the present age of heatless LEDs and electric vehicles. So welcome to Madlik. My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik, we light a spark or shed some light on a Jewish text or tradition. Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast platform and now on YouTube. We also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show notes.

This week’s Torah portion is Parshat Vayakhel. The explicit prohibition of the lighting and enjoyment of fire is unique amongst the forbidden activities on Shabbat. And we explore how the interpretation of this taboo affects Shabbat observance up until today. So join us for Electric Sabbath. Well, Rabbi, we survived Purim, and here we are. We’re talking about another holiday, one that comes 52 times a year.

Adam Mintz [1:37 – 1:47]: It’s great. Vayakhel is a great Parasha. A lot of it is repetition of the building of the tabernacle. But at the beginning, we have the laws of Shabbat, and let’s take it away.

Geoffrey Stern [1:48 – 2:52]: So in Exodus 35, it says, Moses then convoked the whole Israelite community and said to them, “These are the things that God commanded you to do. On six days, work may be done, but on the seventh day, you shall have a Shabbat of complete rest, holy to God. Whoever does any work on it shall be put to death. You shall kindle no fire throughout your settlements on the Sabbath day.”

So, Rabbi, the Shabbat is mentioned throughout the Torah, but the reference to it here, right before we get into the actual construction of the Mishkan, is taken to somehow connect keeping Shabbat with the work done in the Mishkan. And that would have been good enough of itself, but it takes this question of lighting fire, kindling fire, and puts it on a separate heading. It’s something that I think the text wants us to recognize.

Adam Mintz [2:53 – 3:13]: It’s for sure, right? You know, this isn’t the only place, but it’s one of the two or three places in the Torah where the Torah tells you exactly what’s not allowed on Shabbat. Generally, the Torah just says, you can’t do work on Shabbat. So this is extremely important in terms of the evolution of the prohibited and permitted activities on Shabbat.

Geoffrey Stern [3:14 – 4:25]: Absolutely. So Rashi says, “You shall not kindle a fire throughout your habitations on the Sabbath day.” There are some of our Rabbis who say that the law about kindling fire is singled out because in order to constitute it mere negative command, thus indicated that like all other negative commandments, its infringement is punishable (only) by lashes, but does not make the offender liable to death.

Basically, what he’s saying is there are two opinions. One is the one that I think would be a knee-jerk reaction, which is it singled it out because it’s more important. But the first thing that Rashi says here is actually it comes to tell you that while you might be liable for death for doing any of the Melachot, the works, the labors that were used to construct the Mishkan, the tabernacle, fire is just a mere negative command. That really struck me this year. In a sense, he was downplaying lighting a fire. When I think my knee reaction was the one thing everybody knows you can’t do on Shabbat is light a fire.

Adam Mintz [4:25 – 4:30]: It is good. I mean, those two opinions are basically polar opposites. So it’s interesting.

Geoffrey Stern [4:30 – 5:36]: So anyway, it says in the Midrash Lekach Tov, “The seventh day shall be to you holy,” so that Israelites should not say, since it is permissible to us to do work in the temple, it is also permitted in our domain. Therefore, it is written to you holy: to you it is holy, but to God, it’s a normal day with regard to sacrifices.

So, Rabbi, here again, this was novel to me. Normally, we think in terms of how does Shabbat relate to the temple or the tabernacle. Any work that one does to build the tabernacle cannot be done on Shabbat. Here he flips it on its head and says, and if with regard to the temple itself, meaning the sacrifices that are done in the temple, it’s just a normal day. The sacrifices and the music and everything that went on in the temple continued. It was the work that was done to build it that you can’t do on Shabbat. That was new to me this year, by the way.

Adam Mintz [5:36 – 5:53]: You know that sacrifices are given on Shabbat, which is kind of striking. How can you give sacrifices on Shabbat? But obviously, on Shabbat, the sacrifices were allowed, correct? Right. The sacrifices involved slaughtering. Involved all these different things that are not allowed.

Geoffrey Stern [5:53 – 6:15]: Yes. So we have this tension between, on the one hand, I think the knee-jerk resolution is even building the temple. Shabbat comes first. But then you have this midrash that says, you know, for you it’s holy, but for God, it’s just another day. You’ve got to provide the sacrifices. It’s an interesting dialectic, I would say.

Adam Mintz [6:15 – 6:18]: Very interesting. That’s a very interesting midrash.

Geoffrey Stern [6:18 – 7:13]: There is this oral tradition that everybody seems to agree on: that there are 39 principal types of labor that one cannot do. How do we know it? I think most people would respond, we know it because of the proximity of what we just read to the actual building of the temple. Well, that’s only one opinion. Rabbi Yonatan, son of Rabbi Eliezer, said that corresponds to the words “labor.” Malacha is used 40 less one times, less one in the Torah.

So I wanted to point that out because it’s not so obvious. It’s the tradition that we all kind of take, but the only thing that there is a consensus about is that there are these 40 less one melachot. But some learn it from the labors associated with the temple, and some learn it from other places.

Adam Mintz [7:13 – 7:26]: Now, let me just say, the fact that there are 39 prohibited activities, that’s not so obvious, right? I mean, where do you know that from? So even that, they kind of take that as a given, but that’s not so obvious.

Geoffrey Stern [7:26 – 7:47]: Yeah. I mean, you know, and it ends up by saying that really it’s an oral tradition. And that’s what I pointed out. It wasn’t. The rabbis can distinguish between how we know it, but there seems to be a consensus that was passed down that there were 39. It’s a funny way of saying it, 40 less one. But nonetheless, that’s also interesting.

Adam Mintz [7:47 – 7:58]: 40 less one. That’s because 40 is one of those round numbers. 40 days on the mountain, 40 years in the desert. 40 is one of those round numbers in Jewish tradition.

Geoffrey Stern [7:59 – 10:31]: Yep. So what I’m trying to get at is that we all assume Shabbat observance is like there’s a consensus about it. It’s always been the same, certain things you can do, certain things you cannot do. But the truth is, it is extremely fluid. If you look at Josephus, for instance, the Roman historian, he says that the Essenes, who were living in the desert and were ascetic and were very, I would say, had high requirements, they were more strict than the Jews. In terms of the seventh day, they not only get their food ready the day before. And I think the assumption there is they heat the food the day before and they eat it cold, they may not be obliged to light a fire on that day.

I think we’re gonna see that there are opinions that believe that whether it’s the Essenes or it’s the Karaites, they were very rigid in their Shabbat observance. I think if we looked at their Shabbat, we would find it very unshabbosdik. We would not recognize ourselves at all. Along with not lighting a fire, in Exodus 16:29, it says, let everyone remain in place. Let no one leave the vicinity on the seventh day. Again, Josephus says they may have stayed inside their domain in pitch darkness. Totally strange to us.

What I found fascinating was in the Ibn Ezra, under “you shall kindle no fire,” he says, since scripture earlier mentioned with regard to the first and the seventh day of the festival of unleavened bread, no matter of work shall be done. So, he says, what it teaches us is you’re allowed to prepare food on Yom Tov, but you are not allowed to prepare it on Shabbat. He also says Rabbeinu Saadiah Gaon composed a very important work refuting those who dispute with the ancients regarding the Sabbath lights. The translator says the reference is to Karaites who prohibit a candle that is lit before the onset of Shabbat from continuing to burn on the Shabbat. I found this before in academic sources, but never in classical rabbinic sources.

Adam Mintz [10:31 – 10:42]: Ibn Ezra is the one source who talks about it. That’s amazing. Okay, so you want to explain the Karaites forced everyone to sit in the dark on Friday nights.

Geoffrey Stern [10:42 – 11:39]: It’s unheard of to us. It is totally unheard of to us. And I said a little bit of this in the intro. Sometimes, if we’re lucky, in an episode of Madlik, it makes us look at things we do on a regular basis differently. This week, when my wife lights the Shabbat candles, I am saying to myself, the rabbis instituted this lighting of candles right before Shabbat to refute the Karaites, to refute their concept of a dark Shabbat.

When I go to synagogue, and say “BaMeh Madlikin” right before we start, the whole idea of lighting candles is nowhere contained within our ancient texts. But if you look at it from the perspective of this dispute with the Karaites, the rabbis were making a statement by lighting those candles: there has to be light in the Shabbat home. It’s profound.

Adam Mintz [11:40 – 11:49]: The fancy word for that is polemic. They were responding to a view of the Karaites and they were fighting against it. That’s why they introduced Shabbos candles.

Geoffrey Stern [11:49 – 13:09]: But again, what it goes to say is we take Sabbath observance as a given, and the truth is we can travel and see different customs. We’ve said in a previous episode how taking out of the Torah and raising it is different in various congregations. But the Sabbath itself, the way it’s observed, has been fluid and different.

We were exposed a little bit to this rigidity on the part of the Essenes, maybe. Shaye Cohen, a great scholar of ancient Judaism, wrote a beautiful monologue, saying dancing, clapping, meditating, Jewish and Christian observance of the Sabbath in Pseudo-Ignatius. He says that people used to dance on balconies: men danced downstairs, women on balconies. They swam and even went to theater in observance of the day of rest. If I try to transmit one concept today, it is that we know that Shabbat is different, but that doesn’t necessarily give us a license to assume how it’s different. We can do different things, we can experiment in different ways, and we become part of this rich tradition of a living Shabbat. It changes over time.

Adam Mintz [13:09 – 13:13]: It’s fantastic. That article by Shaye Cohen is a classic.

Geoffrey Stern [13:14 – 15:33]: So in the Mekhilta de-Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai, it says, you shall not kindle a fire. Why is this said? Since it says a perpetual fire shall be burning on the altar, not to go out. Here we get to this dialectic, this contrast with what was going on in the temple; I should say the Mishkan, because the Mishkan was a placeholder for the temple.

We are being told that we can’t light a fire, but we’re also told that the fire on the altar can never go out, including Shabbat. One might think this applies both on weekdays and on the Sabbath. How then do I fulfill, ‘Whoever does any work shall be put to death?’ It is referring to all other forms except arranging the wood on the altar.

Or even arranging the wood, ‘how do I fulfill not to go out in all other days, excluding the Sabbath, or even on the Sabbath?’ The scripture says, you shall not kindle a fire in any of your dwellings. In your dwellings, you shall not kindle, but you can, and I would add, must in the temple. So, again, each commentary is picking apart the verse that we started with, and it talks about in your dwellings, in your abode.

The Essenes and the Karaites said, ‘you’re stuck in the dark in your Moshevotaychem, in your domicile.’ The rabbinic texts are saying it’s different in your domicile than it is in the temple. You cannot do certain things in your domicile, but they can be done in the temple. This year, I had another insight.

In a different account of the Shabbat, called the Book of Jubilees in the Apocrypha, it talks about what can and cannot be done on Shabbat. It says, amongst other things, a man that does any work on it shall die. Whoever desecrates the day, whoever lies with his wife… I believe that in our tradition it’s a mitzvah to lie with one’s wife on the Shabbat….

Adam Mintz [15:33 – 15:34]: That’s interesting.

Geoffrey Stern [15:34 – 18:11]: Or whoever says he will do something on it, that he will set out on a journey, or in regard to any buying or selling, whoever draws water thereon which he has not prepared for himself. So we find things that are similar but also different.

Then it goes on to say, “great is the honor which the Lord has given to Israel, that they shall eat and drink and be satisfied on this festive day, and rest from all labor which belongs to the labor of the children of men, save burning frankincense and bringing oblations and sacrifices before the Lord for days and for Sabbaths.”

This work alone shall be done on the Sabbath day in the sanctuary of the Lord, that they may atone for Israel with sacrifice continually. Maybe I’m reading a little too much into the text, but it seems that in this text, the activity is focused on the temple.

They are almost transforming Shabbat into a Yom Kippur; it’s a day where all the activity is in the temple. The rabbis, however, focused it on Moshevotaychem, your abode. We won’t discuss it today, but all those laws of carrying, the rabbis spent time trying to ameliorate them, saying you can set up a partition, a symbolic fence, an eruv.

Adam Mintz [18:11 – 18:55]: Right, well, let’s first.

So, first of all, the Book of Jubilees was written around the year 200 BCE, and basically, it’s a review of the laws of the Torah. However, it reflects how they were observing the Torah then, and it’s exactly what you said. It seems Shabbos was a day that was totally temple-focused, which is fascinating because you’re also right that we don’t see that anywhere in the Torah. The Torah says everybody, even your animals, has to observe Shabbos. So it’s very much home-oriented, but they turn it towards the temple. I don’t know why that is, but you’re 100% right.

Geoffrey Stern [18:56 – 19:48]: And again, if we’re correct, it changes the way we read the Torah. Because when in Leviticus it says, “You shall keep my Sabbaths and venerate my sanctuary,” Et Shabtotai tishmeru umikdashai tira’u ani Hashem, it puts it into context. You could make a conflict between Shabtotai and Mikdashai, or you can say they complement each other. This whole discussion and dynamic concerning the position, the proper place of the personal Shabbat, and the Temple is in this short verse that I think we read differently as a result of diving into this polemic, as you said before.

Adam Mintz [19:48 – 20:22]: Yeah, there’s no question. That’s very good. And what you’re really arguing is that this verse is the source for the Book of Jubilees. That’s an additional twist here, right? It’s not made up. The Book of Jubilees gets their idea because they read this verse. You shall keep my Sabbaths and venerate my Temple means you should keep my Sabbath. And through my Sabbath, you’re going to venerate my Temple, my sanctuary, because you’re going to observe Shabbos in the sanctuary. It’s like a dvar Torah.

Geoffrey Stern [20:23 – 20:53]: Yeah. And you could see the other, the rabbinic source saying, no, no, no, no, that’s not what it’s saying. The two are separate. But again, it brings this word polemic that you introduced into the discussion of Shabbat, and so much of how we define Shabbat is how we don’t define it. What we’re allowed to do is what we’re not allowed to do. So, I went ahead and looked. I had not been aware that the Rabbinical Council of America, the halachic arm of the Conservative movement, had written some serious and fascinating responsa literature on using electricity on Shabbat, on using EV, electric vehicles on Shabbat.

Geoffrey Stern [20:53 – 21:24]: There’s one that I have a link to. It’s 75 pages long. It literally surveys all of the traditional sources. It’s a fascinating read for those geeks amongst us who are fascinated by this type of stuff. But what it talks about is that electricity in and of itself is not altogether clear that it is fire. It goes into great lengths to say, obviously there are those in the Orthodox community, they say the knee-jerk reaction is you don’t turn on lights on Shabbat. It’s kind of the definition, the threshold of Sabbath observance.

Geoffrey Stern [21:55 – 22:25]: Again, if we’ve learned anything till now, there are different thresholds, there are different things. But this has seemed to have stuck. They quote and talk about the other issues involved. In other words, it’s not simply a question of what we can do and what we can’t do. It talks about when you’re dealing with elderly people, for instance, if there are accommodations that can be made. Knowing the law is important. Preservation of the environment. You know, I walk out of a room every day, I turn the lights off. I don’t want to waste energy.

Geoffrey Stern [22:25 – 22:56]: There are different values. And then of course, there is the joy of Shabbat. It’s again, a great read in the fundamentals of the laws of Shabbat. It talks about what malacha is, what something is. Mutar is when it’s patur. The most important concept that it really talks about is this concept of Shavut or rest. Because, Rabbi, I’d love to know what you think about this. But more and more, you get responsa or you get rabbis commenting on what’s permitted and what’s not. At the end of the day, the expression is, yeah, but it’s not Shabbosdik.

Geoffrey Stern [23:27 – 23:35]: In other words, you probably can do this, you can take a swim, you can ride your bicycle, but it doesn’t fit into a certain conception of what Shabbat is. So it becomes a little bit of an exercise of our perception of what Shabbat is that drives what we perceive in the law. What’s your impression of that?

Adam Mintz [23:35 – 24:22]: There’s no question. I mean, take electricity. It’s not Shabbosdik. You know, you quoted the Rabbinical assembly. But the truth of the matter is that the Orthodox also, there’s a famous article by Rabbi Michael Broyde, who’s a rabbi in Atlanta, and he also goes through all the possible explanations about why electricity should be forbidden. And at the end of the day, he says it’s not really forbidden, but it’s not Shabbosdik meaning. And it’s so smart because if we were allowed to use electricity on Shabbos, it wouldn’t be Shabbos. Because if you could, you know, what do we always say? What do I tell all the converts? You have to put away your telephone. That’s what it’s all about, putting away your telephone. And that’s what you have to do. If you were allowed to use your telephone, it wouldn’t be Shabbos anymore.

Geoffrey Stern [24:22 – 25:21]: So where it becomes interesting is when I started doing some soul searching myself. I love this idea of unplugged. There are people who have accepted the concept of unplugging, and not even Jewish. It’s just a great thing once a week to unplug, no question about it. But then I look at a specific device like my Kindle. I read a lot of my books on the Kindle, I don’t waste a lot of paper, I don’t cut down a lot of trees, I don’t print things out. It’s not a connected device. I’m not getting emails and texts and stuff like that.

Geoffrey Stern [25:23 – 26:20]: Those of us who live in rural areas or suburban areas, we live a distance away from our kehillah. Getting into an electric vehicle on Shabbat now becomes something that is all of a sudden possible if you believe there’s no fire involved with an electric vehicle. A regular car is actually much, much more problematic than just flipping a light switch. Flipping a light switch is electricity. But actually driving a regular fuel-driven car, you’re actually burning the fuel. That’s why you need to fill up on gas because you’re burning the fuel. The electric vehicle doesn’t have that problem. So driving a fuel car is in violation of the verse at the beginning of this week’s parsha. But an electric car is just like flipping a switch, which again, is only a problem because it’s not Shabbosdik.

Adam Mintz [26:20 – 28:37]: What you’re pointing out, Geoffrey, which I think is interesting and really needs to be considered, is that Shabbosdik needs to be balanced against observing Shabbos better. If you can get to shul by driving an electric vehicle, maybe that outweighs the fact that it’s not Shabbosdik because, in your case, it is Shabbosdik. There’s a group in Israel called Yisrael Chofsheet, Free Israel, and they argue there should be public transportation because they want to have Friday night dinner with their elderly parents or with their grandparents. They find that very Shabbosdik. They find the fact that only people who own a car can, quote-unquote, break the Sabbath in order to get together with their families is inequitable. So what I’m saying is it makes discussions. We are living in a kind of new era.

We are permitted, and I would say almost empowered, to ask these because we have the ability, number one, we might socially live more disparate from each other. So there might be things that used to be taken for granted on Shabbat that are no longer taken for granted.

But then there are also possibilities of having your cake and eating Shabbat and being able to visit Bikur Cholim or whatever. I think that it’s such a fascinating conversation. And I think the biggest, biggest takeaway for me is that it would be very easy for every Jew to believe in this litmus test of Shemirat Shabbat.

Either I’m a Sabbath observer because I don’t turn on lights, or I’m not. And I think that takes the onus over those of us who might turn on lights from saying to ourselves, no, I’m still a Sabbath observer. How am I going to make my day different? You never want to call a child a robber because he’ll act like a robber.

And what I’m arguing today is that every Jew and every human created in a world that was created in seven days has the obligation to look at that seventh day and say, how it is going to impact my life? The key is, and this I think you find everywhere, is don’t make plans, don’t do the types of calculations that you do all week, do things differently. And I think that’s an amazing mandate that the spectrum of how these traditions have evolved gives us and compels us.

Adam Mintz [28:38 – 28:44]: Fantastic. This is really a good topic, and it’s so relevant not only to how we observe Shabbat but how we look at the world.

Geoffrey Stern [28:45 – 28:50]: Amen. So have a Shabbat shalom and look forward to seeing you next week.

Adam Mintz [28:50 – 28:52]: Great parashah. Thank you so much.

Geoffrey Stern [28:52 – 28:53]: All the best. Bye.