With new technology, Sabbath-keepers will be able to use electrical products without fear of desecrating the Sabbath. • Rabbis will be able to work with cameras that do not desecrate the Sabbath. "
Home camera network
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Illustration
The smart home, a code name for dozens of technologically sophisticated products that make our lives easier for us, are for rabbis a whole world
of difficulties.
If in the past it was possible to turn off the light in the refrigerator on Shabbat and turn on some Shabbat clocks, today technology causes many of the products in our lives that believers may desecrate Shabbat. Many halakhic articles have been written on the subject and the creative ways to enable believers to be aided by technology without the Sabbath space, however there are still many difficulties.
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The world of cameras and detectors is one of the most significant problems in the field because a person may violate Shabbat without knowing it. In fact, there are quite a few residents in Bnei Brak, for example, who avoid walking near shops on Saturday, so that they are not caught by a camera detector and turn it on.
A company called "Koritz Systems" offers adaptation to technological systems under an elegant kosher certificate from the Technological Institute of Halacha, Shabbat shift and Star Kay, under which Shabbat observers can purchase "smart home" products without fear of desecrating Shabbat. Among other things, they enable the setting of alarms on Saturday without human hand contact and cameras in which motion or weight sensors are disabled on Saturday, so that business owners can operate the technology without fear.
"A few months ago, leading rabbis in the field of kashrut approached me and said that the technology was not suitable for the ultra - Orthodox public," notes Mandy Koritz, the company's owner. He picked up the gauntlet and began to test the technologies in order to adapt them to the religious nature of life, focusing on the field of cameras and alarms. Two weeks ago they actually started installing the systems, and according to Koritz, they are able to work with most of the technologies of the giant companies such as Google. "If a yeshiva, for example, has the option of installing a camera that does not violate Shabbat, the rabbis will inevitably work with it," he is convinced.