Shabbat on the internet

The global village is the new reality, but it is not complete. The world is still round and there still are time zones.

This brings some challenges to the village concept, one of which is the Jewish holiday of Saturday (Shabbat).

Some of the main mitzvahs (Religious rules) relates to keeping the Shabbat as a day of rest when all work and business are not allowed.

According to Judaism, the Shabbat begins on the evening of Friday and ends after the sun sets on Saturday.

Enter the Internet and the different time zones and now you have a problem.

The issue of keeping the Shabbat on the Internet is a subject of many debates. When a Jewish related or Jewish owned website owners honor the Shabbat, they usually do so according to their local time. Once the Shabbat ends (on the evening) the site is open for business. However, during this time, a surfer or even a client from a different country where it is still Shabbat may be entering the site and violating the Shabbat with the unwilling help of the religious owner.

Until now the only way to prevent this was to shut down the website for more than 24 hours in order to cover all time differences. But this damaged business and ranking in Google when both potential clients and search bots could not reach the site.

ShomerShabes.com claims it has a solution in the form of a system which enables blocking access to websites during the Shabbat according to the surfers' time zone enabling only those from places where it is not Shabbat to access the website. Others are notified that the site is closed for Shabbat and encouraged to try again when the evening comes in their area.