The general store where I was buying clothing was operated by the sales clerks. The owner was present 5 days a week, but it wasn’t him making the sales and watching for theft.
I can see where a small jewellery business would be different, but from my childhood I don’t remember that Saturday was a big day for jewellery sales anyway.
Someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but my understanding is that it’s not just work that’s prohibited- it’s also earning money . There’s a camera store in NYC that doesn’t even take online orders during the Sabbath.
Yes, handling money is prohibited, and on-line sales would be affected by that.
Any place of business that is closed for the Jewish Sabbath, the first two and the last two days of Passover, Shavuot, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kipper is totally outside the NJ Blue Laws, so they can be open on Sunday and can sell anything.
And the store I work at does incredible business on Sundays. And Christmas.
Yes, that sounds like a possible explanation for the name. The other explanation I heard is because they are frightening, especially when you go around the top or the bottom, which is possible, because the cabin does not flip around, but moves laterally, but still it makes you pray it works though they claim it is completely safe.
Paternosters are pretty safe, otherwise the Germans would not use them in their Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And if G*d commands it *and *it brings you closer to Him or Her…
Safe? What sort of automatic stop feature does it have if you aren’t all the way through the opening when it passes the opening, risking getting a limb caught?
I’m trying to figure out how this thing is different from a regular light switch. I was watching a video by the inventor on YouTube, but with the sound off at work. Lots of great visuals … but nothing that demonstrates that using the KosherSwitch is different than using a regular switch.
My initial assumption was that the KosherSwitch is a “Russian Roulette” device, randomly set to only work one out of three times or something like that. But that doesn’t seem borne out by the video’s visuals.
Guess I’ll watch with the sound on and see if it makes more sense 
(Just watched with sound on)
Ah, OK … at heart, it is a “Russian Roulette” device. But I can see why a lot of rabbis don’t like the KosherSwitch – it seems to reliably turn on/off a light in a short time frame. To fulfill the law … it would have to have a substantial chance of never turning on or off all Sabbath long, I’d assume.
It is, however, entirely OK to cover and uncover a light source. This has led at least one inventor to create a Shabbat lamp in which the bulb is always on and the user opens/closes the lamp shade to control the amount of light emitted from the device.
So why not a cooking device that is always on on Sabbath with a “door” to let heat into an oven area in adjustable amounts?
As I recall, the Germans got very close to banning them entirely, but pulled back because (1) People who use them think they are cool, and (2) They couldn’t find any numbers indicating that they actually are, in fact, unsafe.
I don’t know, but I have never heard of an accident. They are not very fast, I have used them and the experience is like getting on and off an escalator. A very steep escalator, but nothing to write home about. Actually, I have read about many accidents in escalators, so you might consider banning them instead. Of course there are a lot more escalators than paternosters in use, so the data are skewed.
Because cooking is one of the activities that is also prohibited on the Sabbath. (This is an entirely separate prohibition and has nothing to do with the one against the igniting or dousing of a fire.)
That reminds me of a question I have mused about. I was told that the reason most Jewish holidays are celebrated for two days in the west and only one in Israel is to make sure that we overlap completely with the Israeli celebration. But for those us who are west of Israel, this is all wrong. If that reason were correct, we would be celebrating it the day before the date it is celebrated in Israel, not the day after (along with the date it is celebrated in Israel). Of course, reform shuls have abandoned the second day tradition.
As pointed out upthread, holidays are exceptions from the cooking ban.
Hari Seldon:
You were misinformed. It is not to celebrate at the same time as Israel. It is because in ancient times, the new month was declared based on witnesses sighting the new moon (backed up by astronomical calculations) and not automatically changed based on a fixed calendar. It was possible for the witnesses to come to the high court even minutes before sunset and result in the new month being declared while faraway communities (e.g., those in Babylonia) did not know yet which day was the beginning of the new month. Therefore, the Rabbis decreed that Jews outside of Israel should keep various holidays for two days because it was uncertain outside of Israel which of two possible days was the true holiday.
This is why even in Israel, Rosh Hashana is kept for two days (although the Torah only says it is a one-day holiday) - since it’s the first day of the month, even in Israel, it might not be known when witnesses come to tell of the sighting of the new moon
When the Jewish leader Hillel II set the Jewish months to a fixed calendar in perpetuity (circa 359 CE), the Jews in the diaspora were expected to keep the holiday for two days despite the new certainty, a) because it is improper to take a day that is already considered holy and reduce it to ordinary, and b) that it should not be forgotten that the proper way to declare a new month is by witness testimony.
Well, except if they fall on Sabbath, right? (This might have been mentioned up thread.) And if Yom Kippur falls on a Saturday night…hoo boy.
Which meant the Orthodox women (usually) has to prepare:
A festive full meal for Sabbath.
A festive full meal for Yom Kippur, where one is encouraged to eat a full meal-- many people, logically, want to ease into the fast bit-by-bit.*
Which you have had to have had prepared before the night before.**
Which, while fasting, you have to prepare using the tools allowed to you (a flame, if you’ve set it up beforehand)*** and prepped food while ducking out of synagogue in the brief moments allowed, and then for absolute sure going back for the last hour (“The Closing of the Gates”).
I’ve done it for my wife, and brother it’s hard, and we we have no kids, and had no guests that night, although we usually do.
*The meal is considered “festive” because although some life-or-death decisions will be made by The True Judge, at least you’re getting your day in court and we’re told his mercy endures forever.
**Can that actually be the correct compound compound tense as I write in the present? I’m sticking with it…
***With all the interest in this thread and outside about a Shabbes Goy, it is considered an un-cool thing to do and when at all posssible you prepare (also a Yiddish word) a_blech._
There’s no “of course” about this, and in fact I believe, nowadays, it may be far far fewer than you imagine.
In the early radical days that might have been another story; I am unaware of the current multiple Reform decisions from their leaderships.
Yom Kippur is one day only.
(No Yommim Kippurim 
)
Cx; ignore bold subject header on this post.
Downloadable 29-page PDF.
Apparently a topic in theoretical discussion since the 1960s, but since the imminent (at the time) flight of Ramon, these discussions and recommendations of halachic interpretation were made a tad more urgent, if one might say so, and reclassified to those of Halacha l’ma’aseh ie, Halacha for real (“ma’seh”), current life.
ETA, on existence of “reclassification”: I for one, never knew such a classification system exists, which is kinda cool. Eg, there are mountains of halachot and mitzvot on the operation of the Temple, eg, and one doesn’t go about choosing which mitzvot and halachot one decides to follow.