Hashkafah.com: Non/Shomer Shabbos Online Store written by Torn

By NICHOLAS ZAMISKA
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
August 17, 2004; Page B1

Because of the biblical prohibition against working on the holy day, Orthodox Jews must close their stores on the Sabbath. But does that also apply to their Web sites?

With the rise of e-commerce, that question has long been brewing in Orthodox Jewish circles, and last fall it came to a head with a random phone call to Rabbi Moshe Heinemann.

Rabbi Heinemann, of Star-K Kosher Certification, an international kosher certification organization based in Baltimore, is one of a handful of rabbis in the United States recognized as having mastered the minutia of Jewish law.

He is consulted frequently by Orthodox Jews -- who number some 600,000 in the U.S. -- seeking guidance with the wave of new technology never anticipated by the strictures of Judaism, especially when it involves the Sabbath, which begins at sunset Fridays and ends an hour after sunset Saturdays.

With the dilemma over Web-based businesses before him, Rabbi Heinemann recalled a 45-year-old related ruling by another renowned arbiter of Jewish law. The late Rabbi Yitzchok Weiss had said Orthodox-owned vending machines must be closed, because even though the owner isn't present to make the exchange, he still collects the money. The parallel precedent seemed clear, so Rabbi Heinemann's answer was that Web sites, too, must be unplugged, even though the owner isn't technically doing anything.

A Web site operated by an Orthodox Jew could remain open only "if the shopping cart on the Web site is shut down," ensuring that no actual transactions took place, Rabbi Heinemann ruled in his group's small but influential newsletter Kashrus Kurrents.

The article spurred a storm of protests from Orthodox businessmen concerned that Rabbi Heinemann's ruling, which several rabbis say has the force of law among observant Jews, would mean a loss of online orders.

The 66-year-old Rabbi Heinemann travels around the world certifying everything from ovens manufactured by General Electric Co. that can be programmed to go into "Sabbath mode" -- meaning that food can be kept warm because Orthodox Jews aren't allowed to turn things on by pressing buttons on the Sabbath -- to legal arrangements in which a Jew transfers formal ownership of his business to a gentile one day a week so it can stay open on Saturday. His organization boasts what it calls the world's only Mandarin-speaking rabbi.

Born in Germany, Rabbi Heinemann lived in England and came to the U.S. after World War II ended. He studied at rabbinical college under a prominent rabbi, the late Rabbi Aharon Kotler, dean of Beth Medrash Govoha Seminary, in Lakewood, N.J., the largest rabbinical seminary in the U.S. He has been teaching Jewish law for several decades.

"When Heinemann speaks, people listen," says Paul Mendlowitz, senior vice president of DiamondCard Processing Corp., a credit-card processing company in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.

Mr. Mendlowitz, who is Orthodox, and others countered that since most Web sites don't process transactions on Saturdays, no money changes hands, so the sites should be able to remain open. Israel Sendrovic, a retired executive vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, weighed in with the protestors, confirming that credit-card transactions over the Internet aren't generally processed Saturdays.

"One of my hottest business days was on Rosh Hashana," says Rabbi Mayer Pasternak, who created Jewishmusic.com, an online emporium of aural Judaica. "I felt a twinge of guilt, coming back and there were a couple hundred orders." The guilt was especially strong, he says, because he assumed that visitors to his site were nearly all Jewish, and should not be browsing the Internet on the Sabbath and holidays at all.

The Talmud, the collection of writings that make up the body of 3,000-year-old Jewish civil and religious law, weighs in on many of the finer points of the Sabbath, but not all of them, and could never have anticipated the explosion of Internet shopping, to name only one technological development that would have confounded the ancient patriarchs. "This is all new," Rabbi Heinemann says.

An infertile Jewish couple once asked the rabbi whether their child would be Jewish if they used a surrogate mother who wasn't. To the couple's relief, Rabbi Heinemann ruled that their child would indeed be Jewish, as the host mother would simply be an "incubator." He even developed an Orthodox procedure for ensuring the paternity and maternity of a baby conceived in a test tube: An Orthodox Jew must be on hand to collect the sperm and the egg and to seal the contents of the test tube.

The rabbi heard from an array of people who disagreed with him on the Web site issue. He was inundated with phone calls both at work and his home, and after mulling over the decision, he handed down a rare reversal in the newsletter's latest issue in May.

"Technically speaking," he wrote, "the vendor's monetary acquisition, the kinyan kesef, happens on a weekday so there is no issue, prohibition of mekach umemkar, business sale transactions, on Shabbos."

The issue has quieted down, but the rabbi, who has reversed himself only a handful of times in his 40-year career, says it deserved the attention: "This is something you have to know. Keeping the Sabbath in a proper way is very important to us."

On one of R' Frand's tapes he discusses this related to a mail order business that receives orders via fax or mail. He ruled that it is muttar since the actual exchange of money doesn't happen until after Shabbos.

This was discussed in a previous topic when the original Star K newsletter came out.

geshtunken, on Aug 17 2004, 04:07 PM, said:

And therefore...

Therefore if people want to see more about it, they can go there to check it out.

geshtunken, on Aug 17 2004, 04:16 PM, said:

A - A quick search revealed no other posts discussing this topic (care to provide a link?).
B - The WSJ reporter did an excellent job of reporting and it is doubtful if the previous posts you mentioned expounded on the isue as well as he.
C - It's amusing to see our halachic lifestyle delved into in an open forum such as the WSJ; this is not your typical Wall Street story.
D - I don't see what the big deal is in reposting an interesting topic. I suppose that in your life you discuss topics just once and bury it forever but most other people like to, and even enjoy (sounds crazy, doesn't it?), revisiting topics of past discussion.

It looks like it was discussed here.

Torn, on Aug 17 2004, 04:40 PM, said:

E, F and G - Take a breather matey, I was being informative, not critical.

See sasson's link.

geshtunken, on Aug 17 2004, 05:19 PM, said:

No offense taken...

We discussed this ruling on Avodah too. One more question: in which time zone must the shopping cart be shut off -- the owner's or every potential customer's (thereby making it nearly two days)?

FWIW, my LOR was lenient. As we do not do anything on the information until after Shabbos, it's a question of shevisas keilim (making your posessions rest for Shabbos), which is permissable (as per Beis Hillel). As long as you don't take posession of the money you didn't know you got until after Shabbos. If the account accrues interest from the moment the deal is made, things get more iffy.