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Comment by chimeracoder | Hacker News Reader

Somewhat related: B&H, an electronics store in New York owned by Hasidic Jews not only closes its brick & mortar store on Saturdays, but its website as well: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/

Screenshot for anyone looking at this after 8:30 EDT today: https://i.imgur.com/XvZHDXA.png

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Their main competitor, Adorama, is also owned by Hasidic Jews, but lets people file web orders, considering it sufficient to not processes those orders until later.

It's clear you are not allowed to transact business on the Shabbat. But is your computer allowed to? Not so clear.

Different Rabbi's have ruled differently, that's why they are different. Some say don't take any transactions at all, other say it's fine to collect the info, but don't actually bill.

Letting the computer serve web pages is fine though, computers don't have to keep the Shabbat. The issue of business is that it's really you collecting the money, not the computer.

I'm _I_ collecting the money when a third party (or automated process) deposits it on my bank account?

It would be the equivalent of delegating that responsibility to a non-jew. I don't know how would that be ruled, but I remember reading that it's allowed to let non-jew servants perform tasks on the sabbath, though I have no idea if it's accepted by the Hasidics.

> I'm _I_ collecting the money when a third party (or automated process) deposits it on my bank account?

Yes. You don't have to physically touch it to own it. There is a concept of "clearing", once the money clears it's yours. The dispute is if it's enough to avoid clearing payments, or if you should avoid taking any orders altogether.

> It would be the equivalent of delegating that responsibility to a non-jew. I don't know how would that be ruled, but I remember reading that it's allowed to let non-jew servants perform tasks on the sabbath, though I have no idea if it's accepted by the Hasidics.

The rule there is not in dispute, Hasidics are the same as any other observant Jews.

The rule is you can not pay a non-Jews to work specifically on Sabbath. However you can pay him to work, and let him decide when to do it, as long as you give enough time to complete the work not on the Sabbath, if he decides to work on the Sabbath that's none of your concern, he's not Jewish as is not required to keep the Sabbath. You can also pay by the week and then the payment is not for the Sabbath.

Incidentally a slave (even a non-Jewish slave) is not allowed to work for you on Sabbath, also animals are not allowed to work for you. Computers however are not alive - automatic processes are unquestionably permitted. AI (if it's possible, which I don't think it is) will be very interesting.

Easy solution to the last problem - create all AI to be Jewish, presumably by having a Jewish woman program it. Then it has to observe shabbos in its own right without you worrying about comparing it to a servant or an animal.

Perfect! Problem solved :)

There is discussion in the Talmud on if a Golem can be counted for a quorum, i.e. can be considered Jewish, and the answer is no because like an animal, or an angel, a Golem does not have free will.

Actually, the modern interpretation is that it's ok to take an order and store it in an in-memory database, but you can't commit a transaction to disk or even write it to logs. This functionality is built into ShabbatDB (shabbatdb.io).

Are you trolling? I can't find any evidence that shabbatdb exists.

lol, i checked the link too. got me excited

Do they actually explain on their website why they do this? I've spent some time in the past looking without success.

Here's a theory. If the site had an issue, they would be unable to do anything about it that day. Could be too much of a liability, so they shut it down.

Or maybe I'm applying too much thought to it.

If that was all it was they could easily hire a non-Jew to monitor it.

You can't hire a non-Jew to specifically monitor it on the Sabbath.

That's true. But you can hire him full time.

I wonder how that would work, though. In general the accepted work week is Monday through Friday, so even if you did hire/pay the person on a weekly/yearly basis, you'd still have to specifically say to them that they're required to work on the weekend, and thus the Sabbath. I wonder if that's ok or not...

You don't need to tell them to work, just to be on-call :)

I guess they do proper timezone detection?

They shouldn't need to. The issue is them accepting your order during their observance of the Sabbath. If you're in a different timezone and are still supposed to be observing the Sabbath (while the website's owners are no longer in their Sabbath window), they'll accept your order; you've violated the Sabbath, not them.

(At least that'd be my interpretation based on my often-limited understanding; I'm not Jewish, so I'm hardly an authority.)

I'm not sure if their automatic system accepting the order is a problem. It shouldn't be (no people are involved in any of it from their side). However they serving someone who is violating Shabbos at the same time is a problem (for both them enabling the violation, and the violator). And that's timezone dependent.

See http://www.zomet.org.il/Eng/?CategoryID=199&ArticleID=53

But it's also dependent on whether the user is Jewish or not, no? And how can the computer know that?

It is dependent, but it's easier to prevent all transactions in such case than trying to ask the user about it and rely on honest answer. Plus it would probably make it "moris ayin", i.e. the likelihood of violation to the observer which is a whole long subject on its own. I'm not an expert in the law however, so those who implement such systems would have to ask about it anyway.

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