Hello Rabbi,
I’ve been reading through the site and I’m a bit confused, so here goes. The teshuvas say flat-out that electricity is ‘not prohibited on a Torah level, nor on a Rabbinic level’ – ‘The prohibition is imaginary.’ And that your father held this his whole life and never backed down.
But then the day-to-day answers here are a lot more careful. In Electricity from battery you write, ‘We don’t propose that you use electricity… We are just saying that it does not seem to be De’Orayta.’ Real needs get a heter, everyday use stays off.
So for someone just trying to follow this honestly: what do I do with that gap? Is the caution still meant for today, or was it for that era? And if the whole worry was public optics – is there any reason for restraint for a person at home alone, where no one sees?
The one that really gets me though: for a hundred years everyone treated electricity as assur. If it was never assur to begin with, does all that practice create its own din – or is a minhag built on a mistake still just a mistake?
Thank you!
I did a major research on the Halachot of electricity on Shabbat more recently. It is possible that prior to that I was a bit less assertive on this issue. If you send a link as to where you saw this, let me have a look.
With respect to Minhag, a mistaken Halachah does not become an official Minhag.
https://kashrut.org/electricity-from-battery/
You are picking up on a real distinction, and I think your question is a fair one.
The older response you quoted was written in the context of explaining a teshuva of my father, Rabbi Yitzhak Abadi zt”l. My father generally spoke about electricity as being, at most, something we would treat as a derabbanan. That was deliberately cautious language. His underlying halachic view was considerably more fundamental: he did not see the use of electricity itself as one of the 39 melachot, nor did he find a legitimate independent rabbinic prohibition that suddenly made electricity a new melacha.
But there was another consideration in his practical conduct. He lived and taught within an Orthodox community in which certain things had become so universally identified with violating Shabbat that permitting them openly could create enormous social disruption.
An umbrella is a good example. He held that using an umbrella on Shabbat, certainly within an eruv, was not prohibited. Nevertheless, he did not want us walking around the Orthodox neighborhood carrying umbrellas on Shabbat. Not because he suddenly discovered a melacha involved, but because socially it had become regarded almost as a public declaration of violating Shabbat.
Electricity was obviously an even bigger example. Imagine all the students and followers of Rabbi Abadi suddenly turning lights on and off publicly on Shabbat. Whatever the halachic argument, the result would have been chaos. Instead of anyone studying the sources, the discussion would immediately have become, “Rabbi Abadi permits Shabbat desecration.” He was not interested in creating that battle.
So there were really two questions:
What is the actual halacha?
and
How should a posek introduce that halacha into the community in which he lives?
My father was much more cautious about the second question than I am.
Over the years I have moved away from that caution. I don’t believe we should perpetuate a mistaken halachic conclusion merely because it has become socially entrenched. I am therefore prepared to put the cards on the table and explain the halacha as I understand it, even if that position is unpopular.
That is why my more recent teshuva on electricity is much more explicit. If you want to know my present halachic position, follow the teshuvot and material in the Jewish Law and Torah Talk sections dealing directly with electricity. Those represent my position.
And this brings us to your excellent final question: does a hundred years of treating something as prohibited turn it into a binding minhag?
Not automatically. A practice does not become halacha merely because a mistake has been repeated for a long time. There is an enormous difference between a community knowingly accepting a legitimate permissible practice as a minhag of restraint, and people believing that something is actually prohibited because they were taught an incorrect halachic premise. Calling the second category “minhag” does not magically repair the underlying mistake.
That doesn’t mean communal practice is meaningless. Minhag is an important part of halacha. But first we have to determine what kind of minhag we are dealing with and why people adopted it.
So yes, you correctly noticed that the older answer was more cautious than what I write today. That was not accidental. It reflected the cautious practical approach my father used and that I continued for some time. Today I prefer to separate the two issues clearly: what the halacha actually is, and what people may choose to do for communal or social reasons.
One final point: if you find another place on the site where I clearly state as my own halachic conclusion that electricity itself is prohibited derabbanan, please send it to me. I am happy to correct it. I don’t believe I would have said that. I believe I was always careful to use wording that would not be contradictory to the actual Halachah.
Thank you for your question.
Rabbi Abadi,
Thank you for engaging with me on this. I searched the site carefully – no spot where you say electricity itself is forbidden even d’rabbanan, so happily nothing to correct.
One thing your answers don’t directly address. You explained the caution as a response to public perception – the umbrella in the neighborhood, students turning on lights publicly. For someone at home, where none of that applies, is there any reason left to hold back?