Nazareth Official Makes Ruling on Shabbat Elevator Use

After a lawsuit was filed about the use of Shabbat elevators in high-rise buildings, Nazareth Supervisor of Real Estate Registration Einat Medan Blum has determined that the Shabbat elevator in a high-rise building will only stop on the floors where tenants who wish to use it live, 7 Israel National News reports. Shabbat elevators are designed to automatically visit each floor for a certain period of time, allowing residents to use the elevator on Shabbat while not operating any electrical systems. The lawsuit against building managers was filed by a tenant of a 25-story building who claimed, “the use of the Shabbat elevator involves a long wait, suffering and mental anguish that make its use unacceptable.” In response, the building managers said that this change “would amount to private use of the common property and most of the tenants oppose this request,” as the Shabbat elevator belongs to all the tenants of the building. In the ruling, Blum criticized the claim of the building’s representative, saying that “the current approach indicates, at best, unacceptable indifference to the needs of the residents who wanted to use a Shabbat elevator.”