I am not of that faith , but I like the idea of taking a day off from all work for contemplation or other enrichment . So this is just about the details , what constitutes work and what can and can ' t be done ? And how can we completely in my opinion violate the spirit of that while maintaining the letter of the thing ? Anyways , there are exceptions for things that make sense . If you need to do something that is medically necessary that is fine . If you are caring for someone who can ' t care for themselves , then you do what you must . The had a modern electric oven that had sabbath mode . You could set it the night before and tell it to enter sabbath mode . Then it would disable all buttons and displays and at a set time the next day heat up for a time and then turn off . So all you had to do was open the door and remove your heated food . It is a little crazy but I get the idea . Note I don ' t know much about Eruv . I was mostly talking about other sabbath restrictions .