motion sensing lightsGizmodo ran a story named Orthodox Jewish Couple Sues Over Motion-Sensing Light on Sunday. It has been driving some buzz in the social space.

I actually mentioned the Jewish issue with motion sensing lights in March 2008 when I wrote about buying dark sensing lights for my home.

In short, an observant Jew technically cannot turn on or off lights on Shabbat. There are actually lots of things we cannot do, but let's discuss just Shabbat (Shabbos). A Jew cannot turn on or off lights on Shabbos. I won't get into why, we just can't. We can set lights to go on automatically, i.e. based on a timer or on dark sensing technology, but we cannot do anything physically that would turn on or off the light.

That includes flipping a switch, clapping your hands, walking past motion sensing lights. Why? Well, simply cause my action is causing the light to turn on. So when a building installed motion sensing lights in the entry way of the building, it caused the observant Jewish people to not be able to access that entry way. If there is another way in or out, they should use it. If not, I am not sure what they can do, outside of asking a neighbor to walk in or out before they do (as to not trigger the light to go on themselves). Of course, it might be an issue to ask others to do that for you as well.

I am not a Rabbi, so I am not an authority on this topic. But I do remember learning in school about this specific case. There is a topic just on things like this. If you have no intention of turning on a light, but it turns on because of something you did, is it allowed? It depends. Is the outcome (light turning on) helping you in anyway? In the case of this building, it would because otherwise it would be dark. By walking by, without having intention of turning on the light, but the action of walking by the sensor does turn on the light, and because you benefit from the light (i.e. it makes a dark room, lit so you can see better), technically, you cannot walk by that sensor.

Of course, if you did not know that walking by would turn on the light, then there is not much you can do. But after a a few times, figuring out that walking by the light does turn it on, in the dark, then you got an issue.

This is a common issue in modern day Jewish life. I have the issue when I walk home from synagogue on Friday night. One of the neighbors has this light in their driveway. I do my best to walk on the far side of the street, virtually in the woods, and as slow as possible, so that I would not set off the light. Most of the time, the light does not go off, when I do that.

I don't subscribe to Gizmodo, but I do read their blog posts often. The way I spotted this article is via Twitter. But the Twitter user is the son of my elementary school principle/Rabbi, Eliyahu Fink. Too funny.