[Avodah] Fitbit on Shabbos

Akiva Miller via Avodah avodah at lists.aishdas.org
Thu Mar 31 18:28:35 PDT 2016


R' Micha Berger wrote:

> Many of the pedometers, sleep trackers, etc... have no display. ...
> ...
> If someone were to wear one on Shabbos, every step is counted (or toss
> and turn in bed recorded, or...) but the only effect on Shabbos is in
> the voltage levels in microscopic traces within chips.
>
> After Shabbos, however, the effects of what he did on Shabbos are
> observable.
> ...
> Thoughts?

What about an ordinary old-fashioned film camera? Without a flash, there's
nothing electrical about it. In fact, when one presses the shutter, nothing
at all happens except that some chemical reactions occur in the film. Even
after Shabbos, there is no visible change to the film, until after it has
undergone some specific chemical treatment. Yet I've never seen a shomer
shabbos person use such a camera on Shabbos, nor have I ever hear it
suggested that it might only be d'rabanan.

Let's compare a modern door-opener with an older one. Nowadays, a high-tech
motion detector will sense a person approaching, and it will open the door
for him. Back in the day, we would step on a large flexible mat, and
electrical contacts would complete the circuit and open the door. Is there
really any difference between these two? The only easily-seen melacha would
be a heating of the motor that opens the door, and that is equal to both
cases.

I think the real difference between the two cases is how deeply one must
dig to see the wires and the switches: In the floor mat all you'd need, I
guess, is to cut through a centimeter or two of rubber to see the wires,
while the motion detector would need a microscope and an engineering degree
just to understand what you're looking at. But even with the mat, no one
can actually see the electricity move simply as a result of standing on it.

There seems to be an idea that Hilchos Shabbos ignores invisible actions,
but in my experience this idea is very new. Not even ten years old perhaps.
I will be the very first to concede that the ubiquity of these modern
devices is a strong incentive to find heterim for them. (And I'm not
referring to convenience or even health-related devices which we would like
to use on Shabbos, but to the extreme difficulty of avoiding security
cameras in public places, and automatic lights at night, and flushers on
hotel toilets.) But are the heterim new or old?

I guess the question I want to ask is this: Let's say that there is a posek
who rules leniently on these devices, and he bases his ruling on this
principle that tiny things can be ignored. What precedent is there? What
lenient rulings existed 25 or 50 years ago, based on that same principle?

Akiva Miller
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