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What do you do on Shabbos if that happens? All the Shabbos food is in the fridge.
And how do you make sure it doesn’t happen again (short of keeping it off the whole week)?
For the first question, the standard AYLOR applies 🙂 I would imagine that, given the need, you may be able to ask a non-Jew for assistance, but that’s not a question for me to answer.
For the second question, one helpful thing may be to make an Erev Shabbos checklist, and review it every week before heading off to shul or lighting candles. Put all of those easy-to-forget-in-the-rush items on the list, e.g., stuff you need out of the car, turn ringers off on phones, turn off fridge light, set up blech, turn off the oven, etc.
What do you do on Shabbos if that happens? All the Shabbos food is in the fridge.
You cannot close the door, as that would turn the light off. Look for a goy
And how do you make sure it doesn’t happen again (short of keeping it off the whole week)?
either hang a sign on the fridge ,or tape over the sensor erev shabbos
Why NOT keep it off the whole week? Do you really find you need a light in the fridge?
Takah mamash, takahmamash. Do people have lights in cupboards?
Set yourself a calendar alert to repeat every Friday to shut the light. A light is helpful for finding things in the fridge.
A friend of mine once forgot to disconnect it before shabbos. What he ended up doing is that his wife put the baby in front the fridge and the baby closed it by herself.
I looked this up-I believe the best idea is to get a goy to close the door.
maybe try taping it to ON, always, even when the door is closed.
Seriously, with today’s modern equipment, one must really know exactly how it works, completely, in order to avoid Chilul Shabbos. Some sensors work by magnetic. Some, even if bulb is turned off, still causes the fan to go on or off, causes displays inside to go on. There are many makes and models to contend with, many variations.
As for your first question, I don’t know the answer.
As for your second question, keep the matches you use to light your Shabbos candles in the fridge.
The Wolf
This is a complicated shaila which not everyone agrees on(some more machmir some more maikel) its an ask your Rov question. However the sefer Avnei Yashefei 1:63 explains the problems well and he comes out that using a katan to open the fridge to get something for himself and then you can take your stuff out,using a goy is more problematic ,see the tshuva inside.Regarding closing it is also a whole discussion .
If you don’t want a light in your fridge, don’t buy a fridge with a light.
I thought of a Heter, but it only helps once you’ve accidentally opened the door. You need two people. One person stands with their hand in the way of the door were it closing. Then the person who has been holding the door open closes it. It cannot close, because the other person’s hand is in the way. Then, after all momentum from the closer has been expended, the stopper merely removes his hand. This is not even a Grama. He’s not even doing anything, just getting a blocker out of the way (because almost all refrigerators are designed to close on their own as long as they are only slightly open.
I haven’t presented this to Poskim yet, but I think it works. And no, don’t ask me about removing the dam to drown someone. It’s not the same.
RebYidd23, it could be that a fridge that the door opens without a light exists. But I don’t think they’re so common.
Sam2- Usually the switch that turns off the light is right when the door enters the frame, so you’d have to be careful about that
Sam, if the one closing the door knows the other fellow will move his hand, it’s not a grama.
According to you, you could put an object in the way, push the door, and remove the object before the door closes; you don’t need an aide.
Refrigerator lights are a recent invention.
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http://www.hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=918&st=&pgnum=262&hilite=
I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned it yet.
DY: No no no. You can’t remove the object before the door closes. The door has to actually hit the second guy’s hand and come to a full stop. And this is better than using an object because now there is a second guy who is stopping the first guy’s Ma’aseh, not the first guy himself.
Tell a Kattan to ask a Goy to tell him what to do.
That is why I shut the fridge light on THURSDAY every week. This DID happen to us, and I had no Shabbos Goy around, and luckily the Friday night food was on the blech,and for Shabbos lunch we just had cholent, which was also on the blech. I never made that mistake again.
The best thing you should do is ask your LOR
Malbim: How could I ask my LOR when they all moved to Austin?
Sam2, then move there then as the saying goes when you can’t beat them join them.
Sorry, I didn’t catch that it stops completely. Still, there’s nothing wrong with stopping the ma’aseh of closing the door, so if you think there’s no problem with pulling the hand away, you could do it yourself, with a chair, or even your own hand. Just close the door enough (l’shitoscha) so that it would close in its own, but not enough for the light to go off, then move your own hand away.
I don’t see why a second person is maaleh or morid, unless you’re looking for shnayim sheasuhu as a snif.
I guess you’re just going to have to move to Austin, Tx. 🙂
Malbim: Why would I make Yeridah from the Eretz HaKodesh of Las Vegas to “Horns Down” Austin, Texas?
Sam2, cause it is a great city, check it out and you will see.
Malbim: Been there, done that. I really, really don’t believe that you are from there, though. You should have said something at some point but didn’t. Sorry.
About the only refrigerators without lights are those little dorm ones. Ordinary modern refrigerators have a switch that affects not only the light, but the self-defrost cycle. That means it’s not enough to unscrew the bulb. You must keep the switch down. I use duct tape, but there is a device sold for this. Leaving the switch down all week is not good for the refrigerator because the self-defrost cycle won’t be triggered and the fridge may ice up and stop working (I know this because I had such a refrigerator). High-end refrigerators are more complicated.
Sam2, I am from there you owe me big time.
Malbim: Prove it. Or, at least, correctly tell me why I currently don’t believe that you are. Then maybe I’ll be inclined to not dismiss you as not being from there out of hand.
Read the rules. Failure to follow can lead a poster to be blocked.
Lior, I am right.
Malbim: You still have not said why I don’t believe you’re from Austin. Saying that won’t break CR rules. And if you were from Austin, you’d know.
Lior, it’s a davar shaino miskaven and also it might not necessarily happen. (There’s an igros Moshe that talks about the motor running which was quoted in a previous post) In the Shabbos Kitchen on the last page, R’ Simcha Bunim Cohen shlita writes that R’ Moshe told him that you can open the fridge even while the motor is off.
can a refrigerator be set to leave the light on all day, even when the door is closed on Shabbos, as we benefit greatly from having a light on in the fridge?
You could rewire your refrigerator so that the light stays on. I my fridge, the light is incandescent, so it gives off a lot of heat. If it stayed on, your fridge would be working overtime to negate the extra heat. Maybe some refrigerators use LEDs, where this wouldn’t be much of an issue. In any case, there are things other than the light that are controlled by opening and closing the door.
I have an older refrigerator and I permanently removed the lightbulbs (meaning also during the week). I got used to it 🙂
Even if you hold that opening the fridge is assur, lichora there is a loophole. If you ask someone else to open the fridge and he doesn’t know that there is a light that will go on, he is misasek. According to R’ Akiva Eiger (siman 8) misasek doesn’t make it not an aveirah; it just makes you patur. But many argue and hold that it completely removes it from the aveirah (see the footnote there and Shiurim L’zecher Abba Mari p. 30). This is suggested by Rabbis Broyde and Jachter in the Journal of Halacha and Contemporary Society vol. 21.
Even if you hold that opening the fridge is assur, lichora there is a loophole. If you ask someone else to open the fridge and he doesn’t know that there is a light that will go on, he is misasek.
This happened to me a few weeks ago, and I had that same theory, and I asked my rav. He disagreed. He said it was not misasek. Misasek, he said, is when you don’t know you are doing something. Unlike here where my sister in law would have known she was opening the fridge.
I didn’t really understand what he was saying though. Seemed to me that my sister in law would not know she was turning on the light.
I agree with your last paragraph. Why wouldn’t it be misasek? If you pick up a flower not knowing that it was attached to the ground, you still know that you are picking up a flower. That is misasek.
I would close the door with my elbow I am upfront with the ai bish ter and don’t have to use my sister in law to fool him.
Popa:
Wouldn’t your case be amira l’akum?
I am upfront with the ai bish ter and don’t have to use my sister in law to fool him.
It’s not about fooling the ai bish ter; it’s about fooling your sister-in-law in such a way as to make it that the ai bish ter allows the fridge to be opened.
Your sister-in-law would be angry. Why put your life in danger just to open a fridge?
Why would she be angry?
If you agree that this is a halachically permissible way of getting the fridge open, why would she care? And if you disagree halachically then you can’t do it anyway, so her anger is never even an issue.
Even if it is halachically permissible, it involves fooling her. People do not like being fooled.
You’re not really fooling her. You’re just not telling her that the light will go on. And even if she doesn’t like being fooled, I think attempting to kill the fooler is a bit of an overreaction.
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