I've been reading up on electricity and chemistry of late and the attitude of the rabbenim towards electicity has me perplexed. David Deutsch below explains the operation of the rule, but he does not explain the basis for it. Here's what I need to know.
Consider the elevator. Every elevator does work in raising a mass m a distance h. The amount of that work, the energy spent, necessarily varies as a function of the weight of the passengers getting on no matter what the rabbenim had to say about it. (There are other factors as well, such as the frictional forces encountered.) So, given that the amount of energy an elevator must use - the amount of WORK it must do - is dependent upon the weight of the person using it, why is this permitted, but summoning the elevator by touching a switch is not? Why can't you summon it? Why can't you switch on a radio? Why can't you switch on other appliances, even when there is no spark involved? And speaking of sparks, why is a Jew permitted to have carpeting in his home, when it is known that on a dry winter day he will generate substantial static charges by walking across it, charges that discharge with a spark that produces both heat and light when he touches a metal door knob? Just what is the physical basis for these relatively recent rules? And while you are at it, why are orthodox jewish women trading in their natural hair for wigs made of other women's natural hair that often looks better than the stuff they started out with? Dave, every day Christians and Muslims write to me to tell me that my adopted faith is full of idiocy (pointing to these very examples), and that the One True God hates this idiocy. Please use your yeshiva education to help me prove them wrong.
