I do not refrain from using electricity on Shabbat, but I don't undertake large amounts of work either using electrical appliances or requiring tools. I read, listen to music, watch TV and use the computer at various points in the day. I drive to synagogue. There are some very Orthodox who eschew all use of everything mechanical that involves starting or stopping any device that causes the technical "spark" or "arc" involved in making electrical contact because that involves making light. Ovens can be left on to keep food warm if they were turned on before Shabbat started. When electronic oven controls were introduced, they shut off automatically after a certain number of hours so the "Sabbath mode" was added to ovens permitting them to operate for the 25 hours of Shabbat. In Israel and in kosher resorts elsewhere, on Shabbat the elevators stop at each floor so no one has to push a button and make electrical contact to select a floor or call for an elevator. To the really Shomer Shabbat (those who really keep the Sabbath) there are many acts prohibited on Shabbat because they are related to the work God performed in creating the world. If you want to get right down to it, talking should be prohibited on those grounds also since everything God did is introduced by the phrase, "God said." Genesis 1:3, "And God said, Let there be light: and there was light." But in the next verse, God divided the light from the darkness. This is an act of separation in the work of creation and is the reason for gefilte fish. Gefilte fish is prepared by separating the flesh of the fish from the bones before combining it with chopped onions, eggs and seasonings to form the quenelles before they are poached. That allows us to eat fish (and horseradish) on Shabbat without separating the flesh from the bones of the fish since you can't eat the bones except from canned salmon so, if the can of salmon is labeled kosher, you could eat salmon loaf or patties on Shabbat. Fish fillets can also be eaten on Shabbat because there are no bones in them, we hope. To me Shabbat is a day of delight and rest that is anticipated all through the week. My soul or spirit is refreshed by the worship service, the discussion over questions and topics introduced by the Rabbi, the fellowship with friends over food after the service and the rest, a time for me with no deadlines or schedule. Shabbat is, according to Rabbi Jacob Rader Marcus, a cathedral of sanctified, separated time within time, when we take time to enjoy and be grateful for what is ours, and do not seek to create or purchase additional material goods. It is a special gift set apart from the rest of the week. This separation is sanctified and comes from the creation story in Genesis. God rested from the work of creation on the seventh day and was refreshed. God blessed the rest and gave Shabbat as a gift to us.
When the Mishkan or tabernacle was built in the desert, its furnishings were inscribed with the term Kadosh L'Adonai, Holy unto God. You can see the words in Hebrew in the Tiffany Studio's window depicting the building of the Tabernacle in the desert at the Chapel on Jekyll Island, ironic since it was a restricted private club. The Mishkan was a place where God and the people of Israel might draw close to one another. This holiness extends to other places and our homes are considered mikdashim, holy dwellings because of the commandment "You shall be holy for I the lord your God am holy." So we strive to make our lives and homes holy. Because our homes are holy and the meal table is an altar where sustenance is blessed before being consumed, we do not bring things into the home that would harm or defile the holiness which is one of the reasons for looking for kosher-certified products. It is not that they have been blessed, but that there is something beyond purity and ethically proper preparation in them. Kosher slaughter with one swift severing of the jugular vein is supposed to painlessly render the animal unconscious very quickly. There can be no imperfections in the knife edge that would cause the animal pain if the rough place caught on the animal's flesh. There is even a prohibition from these ancient times against eating the limb of a living animal. Before refrigeration or preservation techniques, people used to chop off an animal's leg or as much of it as was needed to eat and let the animal stay alive since while it was alive, the meat would not go bad. Kosher products are not contaminated or adulterated by other things. If you will remember from chemistry class, there are purity ratings for certain chemicals: pharmaceutically pure and chemically pure. In the chemistry lab, chemicals have to be chemically pure to avoid messing up chemical experiments, altering reactions or causing other undesired results. The slight impurities tolerated in a pharmaceutical compound will not affect the patient or outcome. The kosher food grade rating is similar this. It is certified to not contain other ingredients which would not be necessarily harmful anyplace else, but would not be good if they come in contact with anything food-related. When CocaCola was made kosher, for example, the source of glycerin in the formula had to be changed because it originally was a pork byproduct.
I know you can see the dichotomy of my using food-grade STPP for a mouth rinse and non-food grade STPP in the laundry. I do not know if the STPP from China sold by the Chemistry Store is kosher or not nor its degree of purity because the only kosher STPP is food grade. My father alav hashalom, is not here to tell me what goes into getting a hechsher or kosher certification for cleaning and sanitation products or the ingredients in them, but I remember him telling me about one of the companies with which he worked getting kosher certification so that they could market to kosher establishments.
To correct something written above about kosher and pareve. Pareve means dietarily neutral, neither meat nor dairy. Salt, vegetables, fruits, most vegetable oils and flours and eggs are pareve. Depending on any additives added in production of the processed product, these can be kosher or not and pareve products can be combined and eaten with either meat or dairy items in meat or dairy preparations. The same flour that makes a dairy cake can also make meat gravy. You can't put butter with the meat, but separately, either a meat or dairy food can use a pareve product. Beans are kosher. Pork and beans are not. Heinz vegetarian baked beans in tomato sauce was the first commercially prepared food product mass-marketed in this country. Even though eggs are sold in the "dairy" section of grocery stores, it is more because of the grouping of refrigerated cases, not that they are dairy. As a friend once said, eggs come out of a chicken's ass, not out of a cow's udder.
