For some 130 years – a mere nanosecond in Jewish history – Orthodox Jews have chosen not to use electric lights on Shabbat, the Biblical sacred day of rest. But the scientific realities behind this relatively young tradition have been transformed by the Solartopian Revolution in renewable energy. Additionally, new research on diet and health has revolutionized our views on food and its impact on the human body and on the planet.
Indeed, the twin crises of ecological survival and industrial malnutrition dominate much of modern life. In their shadow, we might do well to consider a serious re-evaluation of certain halachot and their impact on our lives.
In terms of the global ecology, renewable energy is transforming the core of our most polluting industry: energy. The revolutionary difference is being made by solar panels, windmills, geothermal energy, and water power. These clean, green sources create electricity without the direct use of fire (except from the sun, 93 million miles away).
There is a widespread belief that Orthodoxy requires that Jews refrain from switching on and off lights because it is a form of work, which is forbidden on the Sabbath. But according to some, the reality is more complex. The core prohibition on the use of electricity seems to be its similarity to fire. “Lighting and extinguishing of fires are two of the thirty-nine named chores required in the construction of the original Jewish temple used during the years the Israelites wandered in the Sinai desert,” says a key source. “Since these temple-related chores were not performed on the Sabbath, Jews today refrain from performing these chores, and their derivatives, on the Sabbath, hence the Sabbath restriction on use of electricity.”
But Jewish law – thankfully – is wonderfully disputational. Judaism has survived without a pope or even a penultimate body of scholars or legislators to officially interpret a definitive way of doing things. Intellectually, its essence is its fluidity. Thus an entire Israeli institute is devoted to evaluating things relating to Shabbat in light of modern technological complications, covering issues such as the use of elevators, hot water, emergency phone calls, and the like ().
As a whole, Jewish life hums with debate, discussion, and contradictory learned opinion, but little in the way of unvarnished, irrefutable dogma. Two Jews, three opinions….and that’s on a slow day. Indeed, serious students of the faith enjoy nothing more than a great argument followed by an eloquent interpretation. If there is a reason for our unlikely tribal survival (in America, Jews are classified as an “ethnic group”), it may lie in a legendary penchant for vibrant argument that exalts education and free thinking.
In researching this article, I found numerous rabbis, experts, and scholars who provide learned opinions that are wildly at variance with each other and endlessly subject to change.
It’s an obvious historic fact that the Torah is technically mute on electricity as we know it. So as the transmission wires spread through the Gilded Age, the Rebbes mined the liturgy for a sign about the use of this amazing new technology.
A prohibition emerged. Back then, virtually all electricity was generated with coal, oil, and gas (and, since the Manhattan Project, with nuclear power). Like that of the temple, fire was lighting those incandescent bulbs, so working them on Shabbos was forbidden.
Other reasons are also given for this prohibition. Producing, moving, and using the electricity involved the uses of devices. Their use taints Shabbos. Completing an electric circuit was a form of work – “building” – not allowed on the day of rest. And more. But in many eyes, the root of prohibition has been the ban on using fire. The rest has been extrapolated from ancient texts and scholarly dialogue to somehow confront the new technological realities of the Industrial Revolution.
Today, a post-industrial/post fossil-nuclear Solartopian Revolution is making a quantum leap vital to our survival. In the new millennium, our power must come free of the fossil fuels and nuclear fires that are destroying the planet. Photovoltaic cells sit passively while billions of photons displace electrons in a chemical array, thus creating a usable current. South-facing windows also passively harvest the sun, and may nonetheless be opened and closed on Shabbos. Windmills twirl in the breeze, their generators passively spun through a field of magnets that draw out current. Geothermal energy harvests the heat pouring out of the center of the Earth. Bio-fuels do involve fire, which would rule them out. But hydro-power, created by water falling through spins or turbines, is clearly eco-kosher (a phrase coined by the great green Rabbi Art Waskow).
Ironically, one major American city – Las Vegas – gets nearly all its electricity from nearby Boulder Dam. Little if any fossil or nuclear fuels are burned to power those slot machines, or the lights that surround them.
So in the Solartopian Age, the Temple’s fire does not drive green electricity. Should its use therefore not be exempt? Remember: this prohibition dates to Edison, not Abraham.
The intensity of our transition to a new millennium has stretched some halachic barriers, as it should. The murderous impacts of cigarette smoking have prompted a ban among many rabbis who link its enforcement to holy writ. There is heated debate over whether fois gras (goose liver paste) should be allowed in light of the extreme cruelty suffered by the animals who yield it. If followed to its logical conclusion, that debate should cut to the core of the pain and filth that define the production of most modern meat, milk, and eggs in feedlots and factory farms.
Inevitably, the debate has seeped into the nutritional value of food, as laid out in a recent article in the Beacon (https://thebeaconmag.com/2012/03/opinions/ou-dairy-but-not-kosher/). Here Josh Sullum raises the issue of whether obviously unhealthy food should be certified as kosher.
The debate is escalating alongside a global epidemic of heart disease and other avoidable diet-related medical problems. Many who admire the kosher laws argue that the ban on pork (shared by Islam) derives at least in part from the diseases it can carry, especially when undercooked. Yet at the same time we have a kosher lexicon that embraces such lethal substances as corned beef, chicken fat, and stuffed intestines, not to mention artificial colorings, aspartame in diet drinks, and the monosodium glutamate (“msg”) that taints so much gefilte fish. White sugar is omnipresent in virtually all kosher desserts and much else that makes its way onto festival tables, and into the compromised bodies of those who consume it.
The argument that the kosher laws have only to do with the word of the Bible has its place. But in this day and age, fast food and bad eating habits kill millions. Industrial meat and dairy production do incalculable ecological harm. Does it not behoove the Jewish community to move the mandates of a healthy diet onto a higher plane? If we are concerned with survival, what better place to start than with what we eat? And if freedom from illness and quality of life are not fit for halachic consideration, what is?
As for energy, we must note solar units already provide much of the hot water in Israel – not to mention southern California. Israeli and Angeleno believers gladly embrace it on Holy and other days. Given Israel’s head start in this technology, as well as its size, geography and advanced technical capabilities, Israel could easily lead the world in getting to the Solartopian Promised Land. She would gain invaluable energy independence and a vanguard role in what may become history’s greatest green growth industry. The potential impact on the oil business and all that means is obvious.
In the 21st century, the interdiction against flipping solar-powered circuits seems obsolete. Encouraging green power in all its forms and uses is both wise and holy.
Renewable energy – like healthy food – is the new burning bush. It’s time to embrace the higher spirit of its healthy, sustainable power. So solarize your home, plug in to the nearest windmill, and switch your heating and cooling systems to geothermal energy. Then start flipping switches on Shabbat, and sit down to a dinner where the healthfulness of what you eat matches or surpasses its rabbinic sanction.
Modern spirituality needs the sustainable miracle of Solartopian green energy and the healthy food revolution. With that embrace, the Sea of Red Biomass might again part. Jewish tradition can enter the 21st century. Tikkun Olam will begin in earnest, for both our bodies and our planet.
