Author: Rafael Hope

Amen V'Amen is supported by its audience. That means when you purchase something from one of our partners through one of our links, we may earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. Amen V'Amen is also an Amazon Associate, so we may earn a commission from qualifying purchases. Thank you for your support!

If you’re an observant Jew – you might be old enough to remember the days you had to manually turn off the refrigerator. And if you had a rather unsophisticated fridge, you had to come up with all sorts of weird hacks and workarounds like unscrewing the lightbulb, and covering the light switch with scotch tape.

Thankfully, those days are long gone! Luckily, some of the biggest refrigerator brands came to the Jewish audience’s rescue and manufactured Sabbath-mode refrigerators to make the lives of observant Jews a tad bit easier.

In fact – the problem nowadays is that there are too many Sabbath mode fridges to choose from. Every retailer is throwing buzzwords, deals, coupons our way – all in the attempt to lure observant Jews into their stores (whether digital or physical) attention.

But careful… not all Sabbath mode refrigerators are created equal. Before you swipe out your credit card and cough up hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars – you might want to make sure that shiny new fridge is actually “Shabbat certified” and matches your level of observance (surprise surprise, not all religious Jews are created equal!)

In this detailed guide, you’ll learn:

• What the “Sabbath mode” appliance certifications mean (we’ll decypher terms like Star-K, 4-UL, Energy Star, and others)
• How to tell the difference between a “Kosher” refrigerator and a non-Kosher one.
• How to find a refrigerator that matches your level of observance

Let’s begin…