Can I use a Shabbat elevator?

Here's what you need to know

Whether you may use a Shabbat elevator depends on which authorities you follow. It is set before Shabbat to stop automatically at every floor so that nobody presses a button. Much of the Ashkenazi world permits it on that basis, while many Sephardi and Haredi authorities do not.

The specific rule is

Follow your own rabbi or community on this one, because the authorities genuinely disagree about it. Where it is permitted, going up is treated more leniently than going down, and many people who ride up will walk down. While riding, stay passive: do not wave at a closing door or step into the sensor beam to hold it, do not ask anyone to press a button for you, and step in and out without lingering in the doorway.

Background

A Shabbat elevator is an ordinary elevator set before Shabbat to run a continuous loop, stopping at every floor and opening and closing its doors on a timer, so a passenger never presses a button. The case for permitting it rests on grama, indirect causation: the rider completes no circuit and starts nothing. Authorities divide on whether that holds. The permissive view, common among Ashkenazi poskim, treats a passenger's weight as a passive load on a motor that is already running. The stricter view, common among Sephardi and Haredi poskim, holds that the added weight makes the motor work harder going up and helps drive the car going down, which makes the rider a participant rather than a bystander. Modern engineering sharpens the descent problem, since many lifts recover energy from a descending car through regenerative braking and some carry weight sensors.

Each source is checked against Sefaria — unverified references are dropped, never shown.