rabbi, a follow up on the electricity sugya. on the electricity thread the Rabbi wrote that Rav Yitzchak Abadi zt”l did not see using electricity itself as one of the 39 melachos, and did not find a legitimate independent rabbinic prohibition that turns electricity into a new melacha, and that the Rabbi’s own more recent research is even more assertive. also the umbrella example, technically permitted but not done publicly because of the community factor.
if that is the electricity picture, a tesla on shabbos looks like a completely different sugya from a gasoline car:
1. a gasoline engine burns fuel on every piston stroke, which sounds like havara, a real deoraysa melacha, plus sparks from the ignition, plus heating. an electric motor has no combustion at all, just a battery discharging. if electricity itself is at most derabbanan, or not an issur at all, is the engine problem basically gone in an EV?
2. regenerative braking is the one place an EV does more than discharge, it actively charges the battery when the car slows down. does charging count differently from using, or is it the same electricity sugya either way?
3. what is actually left? techum if the drive goes past the boundary, hotzaah if there is no eruv, maybe uvdin d’chol, and the community disruption point the Rabbi raised about the umbrella. are those the real issues with an EV on shabbos, meaning the answer is not about the car at all but about where and how publicly?
4. practically: for someone who already holds like the Rabbi on electricity, is there any real difference between driving a tesla on shabbos and using an elevator or any other electric device that is technically fine but not done publicly?
bottom line basically: under the electricity psak, is “tesla on shabbos” a new question, or just the umbrella question with wheels?
As a physician I have to travel to the hospital on Shabbat. I have been told that using an EV is preferred especially if am returning home after rounding before the end of Shabbat. By your logic, is there any benefit halachically to having using an EV versus using a regular gasoline powered vehicle?
Not really.
Thank you Rabbi, thank you very much.
According to the approach I follow, I do not see a fundamental Shabbat difference between a gasoline car and an electric car.
People assume that the gasoline engine is obviously havarah because fuel is burning. But halachic fire is not simply anything that modern science calls combustion. The classical categories are a flame, שלהבת, or glowing coals, גחלת, something functioning as the kind of fire Chazal were dealing with. A gasoline engine works through repeated internal explosions inside the cylinders. My father, Rav Yitzchak Abadi zt”l, did not consider that to be the Torah melachah of havarah. The thirty-nine melachot come from the work of the Mishkan, and we cannot simply take a modern scientific use of the word “fire” and automatically turn it into a new Torah category.
For the same reason, I do not see a special problem with an electric vehicle. The battery discharging, the motor turning, and regenerative braking putting electricity back into the battery are all part of the same electricity discussion. If electricity itself is not one of the melachot, charging does not suddenly become a separate melachah merely because the electrons are moving in the opposite direction.
The more realistic Shabbat issues are therefore outside the engine itself. Techum can matter if you leave the permitted area. There is also a separate discussion in the Gemara and Poskim about techum above ten tefachim, which can become relevant with vehicles, trains, boats and similar transportation. Carrying is not created merely because you are sitting inside a car and the car is transporting you. You are not personally carrying or moving the automobile in the halachic sense. Obviously, if you personally carry an object from one domain to another where there is no eruv, that is its own question.
Practically, however, this brings us back to what I have said about an umbrella. My father held that opening and using an umbrella on Shabbat is technically permitted. Yet in an Orthodox community I would not ordinarily walk down the street under an umbrella because everyone recognizes that as something Jews simply do not do on Shabbat, and it would create unnecessary confusion.
Driving a car on Shabbat is that problem multiplied many times over.
If a visibly observant Jew drives into shul on Shabbat, nobody standing outside is going to begin analyzing internal combustion, electricity, Mishkan categories and techum. They are going to assume that he is publicly violating Shabbat. That communal reality matters.
So under this approach, a Tesla is not a special new Shabbat question. Nor do I think a gasoline or diesel engine automatically creates a different answer.
From the technical melachah standpoint, I do not see the engine itself as the problem. The remaining questions are things such as techum, particular actions or systems in the vehicle, and especially the public and communal consequences of driving.
In that sense, yes, it is somewhat like an umbrella on wheels, except that culturally driving on Shabbat is far more identified with public non-observance than carrying an umbrella. That practical difference should not be ignored even if the underlying melachah analysis is the same.
Shalom Rabbi,
So, by driving a combustion vehicle on Shabbat yourself you are not really violating any Melacha Deoraita nor Derabannan or it can be considered Derabannan?
I know the position of the Conservative movement and they consider it Shvut, which doesn’t makes sense to me, and they consider the act of starting the vehicle gramma because it may not start. I know an Orthodox Sephardic Rabbi that personally told me that the whole thing is Rabbinical.
Now, I undertand the public perception and that it is considered the top of public Shabbat desecrations, but, lets asume that you are in a place where those issues are not present and that driving yourself a car is not per se a Melacha. Is the inside of the car considered private domain for the sake of carrying a jacket or driving license? By moving the car yourself are you carrying the car?
The driving is not Derabanan either. The private Domain vs Public Domain…. I’m still working on that. But as long as you’re in a Carmelit, I wouldn’t worry. Nowadays we barely have a real Reshut Harabim.
Thank you for your answer.
Could you elaborate a little on why driving yourself a combustion car is not considered Derabanan either? And which actions or systems inside the vehicle can be problematic?
In regards of carrying and Carmelit. What is your opinion on the Teshuvah that Rabbi Yosef Messas wrote to Rabbi Raphael Baruch Toledano in the 50s saying that if we have no public domain, there is no need for the Halakhic entity called Carmelit and therefore there is no need for Eruv at all. Can we rely on this opinion in places with no Eruv?
On the car question, I am not aware of any independent rabbinic prohibition called “driving a car.”
Chazal did not know automobiles, and we do not simply invent new gezeirot two thousand years later and call them deRabbanan. So if somebody wants to say that driving a gasoline car is prohibited, he has to identify the actual melachah or an existing rabbinic category that applies.
As I explained before, my father did not consider the internal combustion of a gasoline engine to be halachic havarah. Halachic fire is the type of fire Chazal were dealing with, a flame or glowing coals. A gasoline engine is a sequence of internal explosions. If that is not havarah, then I do not know what separate deRabbanan prohibition suddenly appears merely because you are driving.
As to carrying, I am not familiar enough with the particular teshuvah you mention from Rav Yosef Messas to comment on his exact reasoning without seeing it inside.
But the standard Halachah regarding karmelit is very clear.
Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 345, lists four domains for Shabbat: reshut hayachid, reshut harabim, karmelit, and makom petur. Then O.C. 346 says explicitly:
וחכמים אסרו להעביר ארבע אמות בכרמלית
Chazal prohibited carrying four amot in a karmelit.
The same applies to transferring between a karmelit and a reshut hayachid. So if an area is definitely a karmelit, carrying there without an eruv is prohibited mid’Rabbanan.
But it is also important not to oversimplify and say that every modern street is definitely a karmelit.
There is a major machloket among the Rishonim about what qualifies as a reshut harabim. According to Rashi and other Rishonim, one important condition is that 600,000 people pass through the area each day. According to other major Rishonim, that condition is not required.
So we do not have one universally accepted definition under which every modern street is automatically a karmelit. Some streets may be reshut harabim deOraita according to one group of Rishonim and karmelit according to another.
At the very least, in many places you are therefore dealing with a safek whether the street is a reshut harabim deOraita or only a karmelit.
That distinction becomes important when additional uncertainties or rabbinic layers are involved.
If the street is definitely a karmelit, the underlying carrying prohibition is derabbanan. If the street is instead a safek reshut harabim deOraita, then adding another genuine independent safek can create a safek sefeika on the Torah-level question.
So for practical purposes, in cases involving a genuine need, illness, a mitzvah, a shinui, or other shvut considerations, the uncertainty over the status of the street itself becomes part of the halachic calculation.
For example, if a child is sick, not dangerously ill, and you need to get medicine, there may be ways to carry through such an area with a proper shinui, depending on the circumstances and the combination of safek and shvut involved.
That is very different from saying, “There is no reshut harabim nowadays, therefore no eruv is needed.”
That skips the entire discussion.
If the street is definitely karmelit, carrying is prohibited mid’Rabbanan.
If the street may be reshut harabim according to major Rishonim, then you have a safek deOraita.
And if you have a valid eruv, then you avoid that practical problem and can carry normally within the eruv.
So for simplicity’s sake, I treat all the normal local streets nowadays as Karmelit, because Safek De’Oraita and a DeRabanan are treated very similar.