The supervisor of real estate registration in Nazareth, Einat Medan Blum, determined that the Shabbat elevator in a high-rise building will only stop on the floors where tenants who wish to use it live. A Shabbat elevator is an elevator designed to automatically visit each floor for a certain period of time to allow residents to use the elevator on Shabbat while not operating any electrical systems.
The inspector's decision came after a lawsuit was filed by a tenant of a 25-story building who claimed that in its current form, the use of the Shabbat elevator involves a long wait, suffering, and mental anguish that make its use unacceptable
This is a building in the north of the country, which includes three elevators, one of which is operated as a Shabbat elevator. The plaintiff, who is one of the apartment owners who demanded the installation of the Shabbat elevator, claimed as part of the lawsuit he filed against the representative of the condominium that in the current situation where the elevator stops on all 25 floors, it is unusable. The suit demands that it only visit floors with residents that use the elevator.
In response, the building managers claimed that the change to the elevator would amount to private use of the common property and most of the tenants oppose this request and that the Shabbat elevator belongs to all the tenants of the building who are entitled to use it even though they have two regular elevators at their disposal.
In the ruling, the inspector of real estate registration 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.
The inspector also added that the fabric of life in a shared house requires acting in good faith so that an apartment owner who does not need a Shabbat elevator should allow its operation to those who do. Therefore, the supervisor ordered that the Shabbat elevator stop during its operating hours only on floors requiring the Shabbat elevator and not on all floors.