Posted By: Janine Delacroix
By Jonathan Saul
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - If as a Jew you are observant but
modern, scientists and rabbis are developing gadgets -- and
workarounds -- to meet your needs.
ADVERTISEMENT
var lrec_target="_top";var lrec_URL=new Array();
lrec_URL[1]="http://us.ard.yahoo.com/SIG=12gg95a5e/M=560859.9533728.10326407.1442997/D=news/S=96423242:LREC/_ylt=A9FJqa3TRltFAwwAMgBKTb8F/Y=YAHOO/EXP=1163617011/A=4123780/R=0/id=flash/SIG=11nhjefaf/*http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/beck.extremistagenda/";
var lrec_fv="clickTAG=javascript:lrec_window(1)";
var lrec_swf="http://us.a2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/a/cn/cnn/300x250b_tonuse.swf";
var lrec_altURL="http://us.ard.yahoo.com/SIG=12gg95a5e/M=560859.9533728.10326407.1442997/D=news/S=96423242:LREC/_ylt=A9FJqa3TRltFAwwAMgBKTb8F/Y=YAHOO/EXP=1163617011/A=4123780/R=1/id=altimg/SIG=11nhjefaf/*http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/beck.extremistagenda/";
var lrec_altimg="http://us.a2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/a/cn/cnn/300x250_ton.jpg";
var lrec_w=300;var lrec_h=250;
if (window.yzq_a == null) document.write("");if (window.yzq_a)
{
yzq_a('p', 'P=yYG7RELaS.a.7nLB5T9ygwhPSDRIwkVbRtMABZuG&T=19sc73srd%2fX%3d1163609811%2fE%3d96423242%2fR%3dnews%2fK%3d5%2fV%3d1.1%2fW%3d8%2fY%3dYAHOO%2fF%3d3029878448%2fH%3dY2FjaGVoaW50PSJuZXdzIiBjb250ZW50PSJKZXdpc2g7aXQ7c3dpdGNoO2NpcmN1aXQ7d2hpdGU7SXQ7aG91c2U7SXNyYWVsO0NvbHVtYmlhO2Rpc2FzdGVyO3RlY2hub2xvZ3k7UGFsZXN0aW5lO3NlY3VyaXR5OyIgcmVmdXJsPSIiIHRvcGljcz0iIg--%2fS%3d1%2fJ%3dADA949D1');
yzq_a('a', '&U=13auehdcc%2fN%3dnryKAULaSs0-%2fC%3d560859.9533728.10326407.1442997%2fD%3dLREC%2fB%3d4123780');
}
At a modest cottage in a suburb of Jerusalem, the Institute
for Science and Halacha, founded in 1965, has found a way for
religious physicians to write prescriptions on the Sabbath,
when such activity is banned by ritual law.
Want to be an astronaut? But how to observe the Jewish
Sabbath, which stretches from sundown Friday to sundown
Saturday, while traveling in a spacecraft orbiting the earth 16
times every 24 hours? The institute found an answer.
"The Torah (Jewish law) was given to us 3,500 years ago in
the desert," said 73-year-old Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Halperin, the
institute's executive director and chief theological scholar.
"Each generation takes up the challenge to apply it."
The Sabbath is one of the major issues it has dealt with.
At least a third of today's 5.4 million Jewish Israelis are
religiously observant, a growing community with ever-more
pressing demands for accommodating edicts on Sabbath
observance.
On the divinely ordained day, the Torah prohibits Jews from
engaging in 39 biblical categories of "work," including
lighting a fire -- extended in today's world to a prohibition
on using a light switch or starting a car.
Applying the principle of "grama," or indirect action in
the ancient biblical language Aramaic, Halperin and his team
have come up with gadgets for observant Jews to carry out vital
tasks while still not violating the Sabbath strictures.
One example is the Sabbath phone. A microprocessor in the
device is configured so that the user does not break an
electric circuit -- a banned activity under ritual law -- while
dialing.
Creative answers to other questions have been found using
Halacha, Hebrew for the 3,000 year-old compendium of Jewish
law.
Doctors can get around the writing prohibition by using
special pens whose ink disappears in a few days. Only permanent
marks are considered taboo.
And despite minimal resources, the institute's engineers
are currently using a simple bicycle pump to create a
wheelchair powered by compressed air rather than batteries.
A doorbell being developed by the facility also works on
air pressure instead of electricity.
"LOOPHOLES FOR A REASON"
Halperin dismisses any notion of theological cheating.
"If there are loopholes in the Torah they are there for a
reason," he said, stroking his flowing white beard.
The institute says its solutions have been used by Israeli
corporations and a hospital in Jerusalem.
It also recently helped El Al Israel Airlines tackle the
issue of transporting corpses -- a problem for members of
Judaism's priestly caste, called Kohanim, who are banned by
ritual law from coming in close proximity to the dead.
Orthodox Jews had threatened to boycott the airline if the
matter was not dealt with.
The institute found a solution by wrapping thick corrugated
cardboard around the coffin in the shape of a house. That way,
the body is considered enclosed and unable to "spread
impurity," making it acceptable for Kohanim to travel on the
same plane.
Then there is space travel. Israel's first astronaut --
Ilan Ramon, who was among the crew killed in the 2003 Columbia
space shuttle disaster -- had sought guidance on how to observe
the Sabbath in orbit.
Halperin ruled that any would-be space traveler should fix
the time of blast-off and calculate the day and hour of the
Sabbath from then on.
Rabbi Mordechai Nissim, a scholar of Jewish law, said: "We
do not see technology posing a threat to Judaism, we see it as
part of God's intended design of creation. Therefore we are
meant to engage technology as part of our mission."
After Israel's creation in 1948, officials needed to deal
with the provision of public utilities on the Sabbath. It had
been less of a problem in the former British Mandate Palestine,
as many service providers were then gentiles.
The Zomet Institute, based in Gush Etzion, a Jewish
settlement in the occupied West Bank, is another body that has
tried to deal with the challenges. Working in a similar field
to Halperin's institute, Zomet tries to find wider solutions.
"Their world outlook is different to ours -- a lot of
things that they won't allow, we deal with -- such as electric
wheelchairs," said its executive director, Dan Marans.
Zomet also offers customized vehicles that can be used for
security patrols in religiously observant Jewish communities.
Other devices include metal detectors, now installed at
places such as the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest prayer site,
and at synagogues in Europe and the United States. Instead of
the standard buzzers and lights, the detectors feature a dial
that discreetly registers someone passing through with metal.
The information reported above is property of Yahoo! inc. and reprinted or modified with legitimate permission.