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A new development has come to our attention. On many ranges and wall ovens when the door of oven is opened the fire will go off. Even in Sabbath mode, although there is a delay, it’s an exact amount of time. Fire will go back on after closing door and again in Sabbath mode there will be a delay but a specified exact amount of time. Obviously you must check with your Rov to find out if this is a problem To get around the problem you can use an oven shabbos switch that will be available at Town Appliance starting on tues, or at your local seforim store, that can override this issue.
Bosch newly manufactured gas ranges do not have a problem and the old ones will be corrected by customer contacting Bosch. Bosch, Thermador and Wolf E series wall ovens do not have a problem either.
To check if your oven/range has an issue, put it in the Sabbath mode and preheat oven.
After it reaches the set temperature wait till fire goes back on and then open the oven door. Check if the fire goes off and if it does time it a few times. If timing is random range is okay. If it’s an exact time you need a shabbos switch.
The following GE ranges do not have a problem
- Non self cleaning ranges
- Hotpoint ranges
- JGB630 JGB660 and JGB700
You can read about this in this months OU Pesach guide.
Thank you
Mordechai Schreiber
Town Appliance
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4 Responses
Reb Mordechai,
You’re a צדיק for posting this info. And an extra thanks for giving us enough time before Yom Tov to work on it!
Most people don’t regularly use it for Shabbosos but for Yom Tov – 2 days – it gets used aplenty.
Thanks YWN for posting!
Gas or electric or both?
The only issue with an oven Shabbos switch is when my power goes off on my stove and comes back on, while the stove will still be in Shabbos mode the temp setting will need to be reset and that is an issue on Yom Tov to start . while Rabbi Heineman allows one to adjust the temps, many other poskim do not, I do not believe any allow one to start the fire for a first time
Many of the new ovens can be diagnosed over the phone and the company can connect with the appliance through a wireless connection. The next step is that anyone can establish a remote connection to their appliance with a smartphone app. All this is possible because most new appliances already have an on-board computer which is monitoring the appliance’s sensors 24/7. Even when the appliance is powered down in OFF position the computer checks if the door is open or closed.
So basically when you are opening, closing or causing changes to the appliance’s temperature and humidity, this change is immediately recorded in the computer to be used in the next re-calculation of commands and functions.
All of this is a problem on Shabbos. This data is important for the appliance to operate [try cutting the wire of a sensor and see what happens] and when you use an appliance or open one which has power flowing through the plug you are basically doing data entry at your own mini-computer which is installed inside your appliance. To cause data to be entered in any computer chip whether in an MP3, refrigerator, oven or smartphone even if there is no active display is a question of a d’Oraisa on Shabbos.