Haredim who use 'kosher' phones - without text messages and internet - have been fined hundreds of shekels for calls made on Shabbat from their phones. Among other things, these were calls to Home Front Command emergency hotlines. This was reported today (Tuesday) by Shilo Fried in Ynet and Yedioth Ahronoth.
In retrospect, it turns out that part of the conditions for receiving approval for a 'kosher' telephone line by the Rabbinical Committee is to agree to be fined for using the telephone on Shabbat and holidays.
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""Suddenly I discovered that 540 shekels had been deducted from my credit. I looked at the invoice. I went to the store through which I purchased the line. I made a line of 12 shekels a month, not to pay such an amount," a young Haredi man was quoted in the report.
""What could have been is that one of the children touched the phone and made a call that lasted a few minutes. I was not informed of any such clause. I went through their advertisements. I didn't see anything like that, not even in the fine print. Maybe it appeared in one of the many documents that are there when you receive a line from the company.".
Another case is of an ultra-Orthodox father who discovered that one of his young children was playing on the phone on Shabbat - and called. Due to the way the phone works, which returns to calls that were disconnected on their own, the call was disconnected after an hour and the phone automatically dialed again, thus counting five hours of talk that Shabbat afternoon - and the payment amount reached more than 1,400 shekels, instead of 30 shekels.
Yedioth noted that, in addition to this, during the war, the authorized telephone lines also offered a Home Front Command alert service: because this is a device without the ability to receive written messages - in the event of a true alarm, the customer receives a call from the Home Front Command, and he can return to the number and hear in which localities the protected area must be entered.
According to Jewish law, in times of personal safety or security concerns, one can call and hear the location of the alarms, but disconnecting the call is considered an unnecessary action and prohibited on Shabbat. In such cases, the call lasted a long time and amounted to a monthly sum of hundreds of shekels.
Rami Levy Communications, which operates the kosher lines, told Yedioth: "Charging kosher subscribers for calls on Shabbat is a requirement of the Rabbinical Committee in our agreement with them. We are obligated to charge kosher subscribers for calls on Shabbat (for reasons of the Rabbinical Committee, which does not want populations that do not belong to their sectors to use their SIM cards for other purposes).
""The issue of billing for minutes on Saturday is known to all customers, and every customer who joins Rami Levy Communications (including in accordance with regulatory requirements) must sign a service access form (SAF), which explicitly states the billing for calls on Saturday.".
It was further stated: "I reiterate that in our company we have arranged the above-mentioned issue as a procedure, and these cases are handled with great sensitivity. Most of the inquiries on the subject receive a response to the request and end to the customer's satisfaction. In these difficult times, in cases where our customers have contacted security, emergency and rescue bodies on Shabbat or on Israeli holidays, we are justifying the full charge for these calls as a regulated procedure.".
