Why Two Religions Invented a Bad Lamp

What I have next to me are two lamps that are probably unlike any lamps you’ve ever seen before. Each lamp looks ordinary, but each one is unusual in a unique and very specific way that will probably make you not want to buy it. Not only are these lamps probably unfamiliar to you, they’re unfamiliar to each other. In fact, I’m willing to bet I’m the only person in the world who owns both of these types of lamps. To explain why, let’s start by looking at the lamps themselves.

First, let’s take a look at this lamp, which is designed to sit on a bedside or maybe a living room table. The lamp shade is normal. The LED bulb is normal. The light switch is normal. It even has a dimmer. If you look carefully, however, you’ll notice that this lamp is missing something that’s pretty important, a power cord. There is, in fact, no way to connect this lamp to an electrical outlet, which seems like a pretty big flaw on a table lamp. The reason this lamp doesn’t have a power cord is that it isn’t powered from the wall at all. Instead, if I lift this lamp up and show you the underside, you’ll see that it’s rigged to run off a battery, specifically a power tool battery of the sort you might use in a cordless drill or a circular saw. Now, as you might suspect, running a lamp on a power tool battery is kind of annoying. I’ve had this lamp for a couple of months, and I can tell you that a fully charged battery will only power it at full brightness for a few hours, maybe six on the outside. Once the battery dies, you need to pick up the whole thing, extract the battery, and either swap it out with another one, or wait for it to recharge, which takes at least an hour.

What I’m trying to say, if it’s not clear, is that this is a bad lamp. It is, in every respect, worse than a similar lamp that you could simply plug into the wall. In fact, the very idea of running a table lamp on a power tool battery simply doesn’t make sense, because the point of a power tool battery is to be portable, and the point of a table lamp is to sit on a table. If that’s not bad enough, I should tell you that this is not just a bad lamp, but it’s an expensive lamp. Generally speaking, table lamps are pretty cheap. You can get a perfectly decent one for 10 bucks. You can get a fancy one for under 100 bucks. This lamp, by contrast, cost $165. And that doesn’t even include the cost of the batteries or the battery charger, which adds an additional $150 to the price – meaning the actual lamp cost around $315.

If you’re watching this and wondering why anyone in their right mind would buy this lamp, that’s a good question and we are going to get to it. But before I tell you, you’ll be happy to know that you’re not likely to accidentally purchase this lamp anytime soon – and that’s because this lamp is not sold anywhere on the internet. It’s specifically made by a company in Indiana that has almost no presence online and only accepts orders in person or by phone. If you’re wondering why this lamp is so hard to buy, you may have already guessed it’s the same reason that the lamp has such a strange design in the first place – which is that this lamp was designed by the Amish and is intended specifically for Amish communities.

Now, I should preface this by saying that not all Amish communities use lamps like this. Like every other religious group, the Amish culture is diverse and has all sorts of differences in what technologies it uses. That being said, lamps like this have become more popular in recent years, and the reason is that they allow the Amish to bring electrical lighting into their homes without breaking the rules of the order. The key to this change is the battery, which for some Amish is an acceptable way of getting electricity. While you may have thought the Amish reject electricity itself, the thing that many Amish object to is actually the electrical grid, which has been a red line for Amish communities since electrification began because it physically connects houses to the outside world. And it makes it much easier to import all the various appliances like refrigerators and toasters that run on grid electricity. For a long time, refusing to join the grid meant that Amish people couldn’t use electricity to light their houses at all and instead rely on candles or even gas lanterns.

Recently, however, a couple of things have changed. First, batteries have gotten a lot better, which means that you can pack a lot of energy into not that much space. And second, LED bulbs use far less energy than incandescent bulbs, so batteries can power them for a reasonable amount of time. This combination of better batteries and energy-efficient bulbs leads us to the lamp that I just showed you, which looks like it was made by hand – which probably also explains the price. Yes, this lamp is more annoying to use and more expensive than literally every other lamp on the market. But it’s not competing with every other lamp on the market. It’s competing with wax candles and gas lanterns. And against those things, please forgive me, they can’t hold a candle to even the simplest electrical lamp.

Now, at about this time, you’re probably asking yourself, “Isn’t this all sort of silly? The Amish are basically recreating electrical lighting. They’re just doing it in a weird and roundabout way. What’s the point of this system if the result you’re trying to get to is just a weak imitation of what everyone else in America has had for more than a century?” And these are all good questions, and I want you to hold on to them, because we’re going to answer them.

But first, we need to look at lamp #2. To start things off, lamp #2 is not an Amish lamp. It definitely has a power cord, and when you flip the switch in the cord, the light turns on and off. What you’ll notice, however, is that the shape of this lamp is a little unusual. Inside of it is a cylindrical bulb, but most of the casing is opaque, so light only comes out of it from a narrow window in the front. Where things really get strange is that this case actually consists of two parts, each of which has a window of the same shape and size. When the windows line up, the light shines through just fine. When you rotate them, so they’re out of sync, however, the light from the bulb inside is completely obscured, even though the light itself is still on. If it’s not obvious, this is a very strange way to build a lamp. It’s not quite as annoying to use as the Amish battery lamp, but it’s still unnecessarily complicated. The shape of the lamp means that it can’t accept a standard bulb, and the opaque case means that most of the bulb’s energy is wasted. Meanwhile, if you accidentally misalign the casing window, so all the light is blocked, you end up with a light that’s wasting energy and giving you absolutely nothing in return. Also, it isn’t cheap.

This one wasn’t quite as pricey as the Amish lamp, but it still cost 60 bucks on Amazon – I will say (and this is a pretty big hint about who this lamp is for) that it is possible to buy these lamps for considerably less in Israel.

So, what’s the deal? Again, this is not the sort of lamp that the typical American consumer would buy. Everything this lamp can do, other lamps can do better and cheaper. Instead, the key to this lamp is the ability to control the light without actually flipping the switch. This ability is useful for exactly one group of Americans – specifically, the subset of American Jews who do not use electricity on the Sabbath. Like the Amish, some Jews have a problem with electricity. But also like the Amish, that problem is narrower than it seems. For the Amish, the problem isn’t electricity, but electrical grids. For Jews, the problem isn’t electricity, but manipulating electricity – that is to say, actively using an electrical device on the Sabbath, flipping something on or off.

What this means, in practice, is that observant Jews are perfectly happy to keep lights on on the Sabbath as long as those lights stay on. The problem isn’t electricity, but the electrical switch. Generally speaking, this isn’t really a problem. Observant Jews will typically check the lights in their houses to make sure that they’re all set the way you’re going to want them for the next 24 hours. Lights in public spaces are on; lights in bathrooms are on; lights in bedrooms are typically left off.

The problem, of course, is that there are some places where you want both. For example, if you’re the sort of person who reads in bed, you might want a light when you’re reading, but have the ability to shut it off when you’re done. It was situations like this that ultimately led to the invention of the Kosher Lamp, which is the official name of the lamp I just showed you. Again, like the Amish lamp, the Kosher Lamp is objectively worse than the alternatives, unless the alternative is not being able to read in bed at all. So, we can ask the same question we asked earlier.

What is the point of doing this? Isn’t it a little bit silly to invent a whole lamp just to avoid flipping a switch? And if we’re feeling particularly cheeky, we can even ask a more forward question. If Jewish law says you’re not supposed to turn off lights on the Sabbath, isn’t it at least a little disrespectful to invent a lamp whose whole purpose is to circumvent that law? And I think the answer is “no.” In fact, I think the very existence of these lamps runs counter to a lot of the narratives that we tell about how religious communities respond to technology.

The real reason I like these lamps, though, is that even if you don’t agree with Amish or Jewish values, these lamps are physical examples of a profound principle. When you have clarity about your values, you can shape your relationship to technology in ways that align with those values rather than letting technology dictate the terms of your life.

I don’t think the Amish and the Jews had a meeting and decided to make weird lamps. In fact, I know they didn’t. Instead, I think the fact that these two different communities made similar products says that we might have more options than we think when a new technology arrives knocking at the door.

To understand this, let’s go back to the Amish lamp – the one that runs on batteries. From the perspective of an outsider, there’s really no reason for this lamp to exist. Everything about it is worse than a regular lamp. But if you’re Amish, the lamp makes perfect sense. Remember, most Amish don’t think electricity is inherently bad. In fact, most Amish wouldn’t even characterize themselves as anti-technology, and plenty of Amish people use electricity regularly while at work. Instead, the lamp makes sense because the Amish approach to technology is guided by a desire to preserve a certain way of living. And that way of living, like your way of living and literally anybody else’s way of living, can’t be reduced to a single rule, like “Never use technology.”

When new technologies come to town, Amish communities aren’t just saying “yes” or “no,” they’re actively adapting the technologies to fit into the lives they want to live. Scholars who study the Amish will tell you that these adaptations can be found all over the place.

Take the horse and buggy, for example, which is maybe the most recognizable Amish symbol. While the Amish still avoid car travel, the cab of a modern buggy often looks very much like a car’s dashboard. The buggy itself might be made of fiberglass instead of wood. These buggies come equipped with foot brakes for the wheels and electrical switches that let the driver use headlights, tail lights, interior lights, and turn signals. The thing looks like a car inside. Some Amish even use pneumatic ceiling fans and power tools that run on compressed air instead of electricity.

You might have thought that the Amish were against any new technology. But in each of these cases, the Amish are literally making new technologies, inventing entirely new tools in order to make life easier for them while still keeping their distance. Rather than saying “yes” or “no” to new technologies, the Amish response is often to creatively adapt the tech to their particular circumstances.

One of the things that makes this invention process unique is that, unlike tech development in the rest of the world, it’s not necessarily designed to make things easier to use. In fact, sometimes products are made annoying by design, like how it’s a huge pain to swap out the battery in the Amish lamp. According to the scholar Lindsay M, these speed bumps are actually a feature, because they signal to the user that they’re still separate from the rest of society. Yes, switching out the battery of a lamp is annoying, but the annoyance serves as a small constant reminder of the community’s values and intentional choices.

Again, I want to be clear that there’s a spectrum here. There are Amish people who have smartphones, and there are Amish people who will fight local governments because they don’t want to put turn signals on their buggies, even though it reduces fatal accidents. But at least part of the Amish community has decided that the solution to new technologies is to make more new technologies to respond to invention with more invention.

And as it happens, that’s basically the exact same story behind the Kosher Lamp, with one important exception. For the Amish, aversion to technology is about specific places. Churches, homes, and schools are supposed to preserve the traditional character, whereas the rules are a little bit more lax for workplaces. Jews don’t restrict technology in specific places, but they do restrict technology at specific times – specifically, on the Sabbath and on holidays. This means, for example, that there are Jewish engineers in places like Google and Microsoft who refuse to use the technologies that they themselves are designing for at least 25 hours every week. And if you really want to know why 25, not 24 hours, you’re welcome to read my dissertation, which I’ll drop a link to in the description.

When America and Europe started to electrify at the beginning of the 20th century, Jewish leaders decided, much like the Amish, that manipulating electrical circuits wasn’t in keeping with the spirit of the day. The legal reasons for this have always been a little flimsy, but the ban has always been widely accepted by Orthodox Jews because the Sabbath is supposed to be a day of rest, and so many kinds of work rely on electricity. The problem, of course, is that lots of leisure tasks use electricity, too. Elevators, for example, are electric, and if you live on the 12th floor of an apartment building, it doesn’t really seem restful to walk up 12 flights of stairs. So, what do you do?

The truth is, there isn’t really a perfect solution to this problem without removing the ban on electricity. But there are lots of little solutions. In Israel, and in some buildings in North America, you’ll see something called a Sabbath elevator, which will stop on every floor whether you press a button or not. Again, this is objectively worse than a regular elevator. It’s like a kid pressed all the buttons, but on purpose. And yet, within the context of Orthodox Judaism, it kind of makes sense. It lets you keep the ban on electricity while avoiding one of the band’s most annoying consequences. As a bonus, it’s also kind of annoying to use, so it has a kind of speed-bump effect, just like a lot of Amish technology.

This is basically the logic behind the Kosher Lamp. The rotating screen lets you block the light without turning it off, so you can safely control the light in a room without opening or closing an electrical circuit. Again, there’s also a bit of speed bump here, because the lamp is more complicated than a typical lamp, and it’s also a little bit more expensive.

Now, by this point, you might be getting to the same realization that I did, which is that these lamps have nothing to do with each other. As far as I can tell, they were invented entirely independent of each other. Most users of the Amish lamp probably don’t know that the Kosher Lamp exists, and vice-versa. While the lamps were invented around the same time, around 20 years ago, this is mostly because both lamps rely on LED bulbs – although even here, they use them for very different reasons. For the Amish lamp, the LED bulb is important because it draws less battery power than an incandescent bulb. With the Kosher Lamp, the LED bulb is necessary because it’s a lot cooler than an incandescent bulb, which means that you can cover it while it’s still lit without having anything catch on fire.

But it also makes sense that the Amish and Jews would invent the same lamp because both communities do something that is incredibly rare in modern society. They confront new technologies with suspicion and are willing to reject them if they clash with the community’s values. This is miles apart from the rest of American society, which doesn’t have any mechanism to say no to new technologies. Instead, it relies on a combination of good judgment, self-imposed safeguards, and maybe a few actual laws to make sure that they’re being used safely.

I want to dwell on this idea for a second, because I think it’s really important. One of the things that’s strange about these lamps is that, even knowing everything I just told you, it’s a little bit hard to understand why these specific solutions work unless you live inside those communities. The reason for this is that the Sabbath and Amish culture aren’t just a set of rules. They’re lived experiences. Because of that, it’s hard to say in advance which technologies are going to feel like they’ve crossed the line and which ones won’t. At the end of the day, the community’s gut instinct matters more than anything else. This is why, for example, the Kosher Lamp has become very popular, while the Kosher switch, which is built on similar loopholes, but is a switch, has stayed pretty marginal.

And this brings us to the key lesson that these lamps offer us. The Amish and the Jewish communities didn’t create these lamps because they were anti-technology. On the contrary, they created them because they were clear about what they were trying to preserve: a way of life built on their values. That clarity allowed them to innovate and adapt technology to fit those values, rather than letting technology redefine their lives. This principle matters to everyone, not just religious communities. When a society has clarity about its core values, it can approach new technologies in a way that feels intentional rather than overwhelming.

Let’s look at some examples. Consider the rise of the smartphone and social media. One of the big debates in recent years has been about the impact of these technologies on mental health, on relationships, on attention spans. Now, imagine if, as a society, we had been clearer about the values we wanted to preserve – things like focused communication, strong in-person relationships, mental well-being. Maybe we’d have designed these technologies differently, or at least set boundaries around their use earlier on.

Or think about artificial intelligence, which is rapidly changing industries and professions. If we’re clear about what we want to preserve, whether that’s meaningful employment or ethical decision-making or equitable access to resources, then we can shape AI’s development to align with those goals, rather than letting it reshape us in ways that we don’t fully understand.

The Amish and Jewish communities show us that saying “no” to certain new technologies isn’t necessarily a rejection of progress. And that if we think it’s a yes / no question, we’re really not using our imaginations about what’s possible. Their approach reminds us that we can take time to think critically about how new technologies fit into our lives. And even when the answer isn’t perfect, the act of being intentional can make all the difference. So, as we face a future filled with innovations that we can’t even imagine, let’s take a lesson from these two very different lamps. Let’s start by asking ourselves a simple but powerful question: What are we trying to preserve? Because the clearer we are about the answer, the better equipped we’ll be to meet the challenges and the opportunities of the technologies ahead.