Telephone, flashlight and mouse: Meet the Military Rabbinate's technology unit

Meet the LOT unit - "Halacha and Technology" - of the Military Rabbinate: This is a unit that brings together the best scholars and technology professionals, who know how to adapt halakhic solutions to combatants in the field.

This is a high-quality unit that works hard to prepare unique products that allow a mitzvot-observant soldier to conduct himself in the army without desecrating the Sabbath.

Among the products the unit has developed for the fighters: a flashlight that is permitted for use on Shabbat, a keyboard and mouse for religious soldiers, or a mechanism that allows automatic systems to be transferred to Shabbat and holiday mode - these are just some of the patents produced by the unit.

The laboratory, which operates at the Military Rabbinate base in Bashura, is under the supervision and guidance of the Chief Rabbi of the IDF, Brigadier General Grat Krim, who was the founder of the institute and has the blessing and approval of the great rabbis.

The person who founded the unit and established the grammar of halachic law is the Chief Rabbinate of the Military Rabbinate, Lt. Col., Harosh Orkavi, who is recognized as a scholar who served the great rabbis and is considered an expert in the field.

The team is headed by Rabbi Ronen Aharon and they create a halakhic-technological solution for fighters in various units.

The institute integrates all methods into halakhic law and enables a very strict halakhic response even to the method of the Chazon Ish.

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Among the many developments carried out by the unit: products whose operation does not "close an electrical circuit", and therefore allows their operation even on Shabbat, such as the "Shabbat Code" and the "Optical Code" that allow entry to segregated places using a code.

There is also a "Shabbat telephone" that allows for calls, or a "Shabbat lantern," which, even when it appears to be off, actually emits a tiny amount of light. Turning it on on Shabbat only increases the current and the light, and does not actually perform a turning-on action.

A "Sabbath pen," which contains ink whose color fades over time. From a halachic perspective, in the event that orders need to be written in an operations journal, a religious soldier can use the pen – and at the end of the Sabbath go over the text with a regular pen, before the ink from writing on the Sabbath fades.