Try thinking of a family of 9 who use the toilet on Shabbat & are not allowed to flush. Yuk.

Yet another example of the arrogance of some people that think they understand the will of god. Its one thing to interpret HIS will for your own private life, but to dictate that will to others is the height of arrogance. That also pretty much sums up any organized religion in the world today.. a bunch of arrogant dictators,

The ban on electricity is more complex than "kindling a fire. The fact that God creates fires, lighting, thunderstorms, etc. is not an excuse for people to engage in melacha (commonly translated as "work" but a poor translation of the concept).

The "work" prohibited on the Sabbath has virtually no relationship to effort. I have never heard of the "subterfuge" of banning electricity because you need to light a fire. Batteries are as much of a problem as other electrical sources (and predate generated power by decades). While there is a halachik category of light/fire it is not based on the science (chemistry, physics, QED, etc.). Halacha is primarily based in human experience.

probably go against it for the amount of unpleasantness having to do that would cause. Still, it is only temporary. I don't do any of that stuff anyway as reading Torah would be very boring (I admit it) and would actually be work for me. If I have a day of rest I might as well enjoy it and the day of rest after as well as the day of rest after that (gotta love good class scheduling) Still, I keep as kasher as possible to make up for it in case anyone wants to call me a bad Jew (though I consider poultry to be parve). =p

If the Rabbis want to go back to the first century, maybe they should all move out of the cities and into the desert and do all the things their way there.

Oh what joy as your words are music to my ears.

Are we now to the point of making things up? Has it come to this?!

apartment building during a blackout, my good sir. What the rebbe says about the pumping of water is true. You can't rely solely on the water pressure for higher floors.

These rulings twist and turn every ritual until the basic concepts of Judaism are lost in the haze of man- made nonsense. But that "glue" of man-made nonsense is what keeps whole groups of people thinking they are the truly "holy" ones ---very sad!

So, if it is an Halachic issue to turn on the taps on Shabbos, what about flushing the toilet? Is that off bounds, too? It would be the same pump to replace the water in the reserve,

True, I began to understand the meaning of my being Jewish only when I lived here in Israel a few years - sad as that may sound ! However, if I may say so, this rabbi's stringent ruling appears to me to be quite ridiculous.

Electricity , as we are used to , did'nt exist when the tora was written . So how could the tora forbid something unknown ? What the tora forbids is working on Shabbat , and the power stations need to be manned .

Did they have electric water pumps in the days of stoning....?? We live in 2012, the computer age everything is digital, but we still need basiscs, like flushing the toilet aftyer use, and shower during the summer heat. I now await the next thing some rabbi will come up with. Good luck to those that can go along with all this, yes, they are truly blessed!

what is the diference to the Mullas of Iran? or those of Saudi Arabia. Is there total degeneration amongst the Ultra Ortodox ???

the reference in this article to "stoning" is gratuitous and unfortunate. there is no beit din today that sentences people to death for religious sins, by stoning or otherwise. jews who keep the shabbat do not do so out of fear of punishment. the reference to the torah is deliberately disrespectful and unnecessary to the actual story. it only serves to perpetuate an anti-religious bias. worse than that, an ignorant person might think that the stone-throwing vandals are somehow justified by jewish belief. but nothing could be further from the truth. it's sad enough that not all our leaders are wise, without adding bias to the reporting.

while it's nice to hear that the learned rabbi has discovered electricity, it's surprising to hear that he is revisiting a very old argument. the karaites (and there are still small communities of them around) took the torah very literally, and spent shabbat in the dark, because the torah forbids the burning of any fire in our dwellings. but this has not been the interpretation of the majority of jews throughout the last millenium or so, including rabbi landa and his ancestors. the logical extension of rabbi landa's ruling is that ANYTHING that causes electricity to be turned on, even indirectly, is forbidden. and that would include using hot water (even from a gravity-fed system), or an infrared motion detector, or even a thermostatically controlled heater or air conditioner, since opening a door changes the temperature and causes the unit to start. the karaites preferred to sit in the dark, and rabbi landau's followers will be even more "frum" and sit in the cold.

I can just see the health effects of a bathroom that is too full and a persons hands that are not washed before cracking into the halla. Mark me if I'm wrong but wont G-d abandon a camp where such overflow is visible. Now the Rabbi has placed abandonment of God higher than and addition to and addition to an addition. Rabbis make yet again another grave error in false additions to Torah. Moses and God said nothing about prohibiting the use of water nor working an electric motor or accidental fires. To educate the so called "educated" a fire is three elements not two. Heat, fuel, and oxidation (oxygen). The intent to cause all three of these is simply not there when one runs the water. An accidental fire is not part of the writing about the lighting of a fire. The law is a straight action and result. "ligh a fire" cannot be separated to say light a spiggot and start a pump and cause an accidental fire" A motor has heat and oxygen but intentionally no fuel to be oxidized. No oxidation, no fire. Even if a mishap of a fire starting happens, it is not intended. For example a light bulb is intentionally made to not include oxygen. Rabbi chooses to loose God in our camps and leave us exposed to our enemies because of this pumping by a machine. How much does the Rabbi understand about G-d's righteousness and dislikes? Worse comes to worse, and people stick with this absurdity, put a water tower above the roof and pump it full before shabbat.

if you live in a single story home and open the tap you use water pressure coming from the water plant. In extremes cases like in the early morning Shabbos when most people wake up and wash hands, and use the bathroom a water tower reserve goes into effect and an electric pump refills the reservoir. hence no using water on shabbos for the people who do not know the difference between fire and electricity. Also like someone else said, no wearing socks and no walking on shabbos because it might lead to static electricity that might cause a fire because someone might not have left their gas burner open... and ... well ... you know

class about the influence of the media on the society and politics of Israel. This is clearly meant to make people think that most religious people think that there should be stonings (it doesn't explicitly say they do, but it's clear from the tb's that that is how it is meant to be interpreted.)

Bnei Brak's Leb Landa with an otherwise overloaded stupid suggestion in a otherwise overloaded city full of " religious edits" promulgated by god (I didn't know they had faucets then) was an offense to Jews the world over.The main problem as usual, is our incompetant govt pouring Millions into worthless " thinkers " instead of puting them to work and contribute to our society. So he decided to find a new " item " from the sacred ' meguila ' of do and don't regulations. To Eric, # 6. You are quite correct. this self serving rabbi should take his flok back to the caves that they vacated only yesterday !!!!!!

Right on, Leo, I fought and killed to protect the holy values of Judaism and Yiddishkait, BUT even for me, these Rabbis are NOT AMCHA anymore - we are Not praying for the same Moshiach Tzidkenu anymore.

The question is: what does Torah mean by work? I suggest that work is something to do with your 6 days job. If you are a blacksmith, then making a fire for your forge would be part of your work. What is fire? Just the converting of one substance into another by way of oxidization. You technically are on fire when you walk or do any movement because your body is oxidizing carbon to make your muscles move.

As usual, the orthodox rabbis are missing the obvious main point. 3,000 years ago it was "work" to light a fire. You had to gather wood and then rub sticks together to get a spark. You would then probably use the fire for some kind of work like cooking. The fact that you might "kindle" a flame when there's an electric spark is irrelavent to me. It's impossible for me to believe that these are what God would have intended by the shabbat prohibitions.

stupidity. but if they want to live in a building with a huge big reservoir above it so be their choice. so long as other israeli need not subsidize this silliness.

Bathroom has only ONE B ! Where is this rabbi from ?