Does Virtual Seeing Count as Seeing under Jewish Law?

Chaim Saiman’s characteristically astute essay provides a thorough and cogent accounting of the logic on both sides of the Zoom-seder controversy and, most importantly, explains why it has become such a flash point for debate. While his analysis largely accords with my own account, I would like to call attention to two points that he does not touch upon, which I believe can further our understanding of the subject: the first involves the nature of rabbinic authority, the second the status of virtual reality in Jewish law (halakhah).

Underlying the debate over the Moroccan rabbis’ ruling is a question of rabbinic politics, by which I don’t mean interpersonal squabbles or rabbinic ideas about affairs of state, but the ways in which rabbis sometimes defer to one another and, at other times, agree to disagree. To wit: one of the document’s original signatories later retracted his support, citing “rabbinic unity” as a reason to suppress his original opinion on the topic. This scholar thus signaled that while he might agree in theory with the reasoning permitting the Zoom seder, he did not wish to dissent from the Orthodox consensus.

In some ways, this appeal to “rabbinic unity” is an attempt to uphold the status quo regarding the use of electricity on holidays. As Saiman notes, despite a diversity of rabbinic opinions among both Ashkenazim and Sephardim, a practical consensus emerged in the 1970s that the use of electricity on such days is forbidden. Preventing the proliferation of divergent opinions can help sustain adherence to halakhah: if one Orthodox family uses electricity on the holidays, and its observant neighbors do not, the latter might see little reason not to adopt the more lenient position.