Shabbat Elevator

A Shabbat elevator is an elevator which works in a special mode, operating automatically, a way to circumvent the Jewish law requiring observers to abstain from operating electric switches on Shabbat. An elevator may be marked with a sign noting that it is specially configured for Shabbat observance. There are several ways the elevator works (going up and down); stopping at every floor, stopping at alternative floors, or rising to the top floor and stopping while going down.

Shabbat elevators can be found in areas of large Jewish population in Israel, the United States, Québec (Montréal), Ukraine (Dnipropetrovsk), and Argentina. They are typically found in big hotels, Israeli hospitals and other health institutions, apartment buildings, and in some synagogues.

The Israeli Knesset passed a special Shabbat elevator law in 2001 ordering the planning and building of all residential buildings, and public buildings which have more than one elevator, to install a control mechanism for Shabbat (Shabbat module) in one of the elevators.

In this mode, an elevator will stop automatically at every floor, allowing people to step in and out without having to press any buttons. Otherwise it is prohibited to use an elevator on Shabbat because pressing the button to operate the elevator closes a circuit, which violates the prohibition of building on Shabbat, and may also indirectly lead to "writing" of the new floor number in the display.

In 2009 senior haredi rabbis, led by Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, published a religious injunction forbidding the use of Shabbat elevators.

A non-Jew known as a Shabbos goy may be employed to press the buttons and hold the door for Jewish people, in buildings that do not have Shabbat elevators. As discussed in that article, a non-Jew is not expected to keep the Sabbath like a Jew. Hence a Jew may benefit from work performed by a goy if the goy performs this work for his own good and of his own free will. A borderline case is when a Jew hints to a non-Jew that he wants him to perform a certain service without explicitly asking him. These borderline cases are considered legitimate in most Jewish communities.