Bais HaVaad on the Parsha, Parshas Vayakhel

Fire Power

March 20, 2025

Excerpted and adapted from a shiur by Dayan Yitzhak Grossman

You shall not light fire in any of your dwellings on the Shabbos day.

Shmos 35:4

Ever since the discovery of electricity, poskim have hotly debated its halachic status. Although all poskim agree that it is forbidden to use it on Shabbos, there is significant debate whether the issur is deOreisa or deRabanan, and which prohibition is violated.

Some poskim, including the Maharsham, posit that using electricity, and even turning on incandescent lights, might not be included in the melacha of hav’arah (lighting a fire). This is because the chemical reaction of combustion does not occur, and nothing is burned, and because it is dissimilar to the hav’arah of the Mishkan. Others, including the Bais Yitzchak, suggest that electricity violates molid, the issur deRabanan to create a new entity—in this case, fire—on Shabbos. (He suggests that incandescence might be hav’arah.)

A third group of poskim, including the Melamed Leho’il, holds that lighting incandescent bulbs constitutes hav’arah deOreisa, because the filament gets hot and emits light (and it is consumed, albeit very slowly). Poskim like R’ Yosef Eliyahu Henkin and R’ Ovadiah Yosef note that according to this approach, electricity without incandescent bulbs (like in a refrigerator or microphone) is not forbidden mideOreisa, but it would still be asur mideRabanan. Within this approach, some argue that incandescent bulbs are subject to a dispute between the Rambam, who holds that heating metal violates hav’arah, and the Ra’avad, who says it does not (though it may violate mevashel). Others reject this analysis.

A fourth group of poskim, led by the Chelkas Yaakov, argues that electricity causes sparks and that makes it hav’arah deOreisa. But many others—including R’ Yosef Eliyahu Henkin, the Chazon Ish, and R’ Shlomo Zalman Auerbach—disagree, arguing that sparks are not usually generated, and even when they are, they do not constitute hav’arah at all, because they are temporary and indirectly caused.