243:1 - Drilling for Oil on Shabbat #3 - Response from Machon Tzomet

After sending my letter to Machon Tzomet last week, I received a brief response from R' Rozen via email. He basically assured me that there are no non-Jews working in the drilling site on Shabbat and the oil flows totally on its own.

I responded again by stressing that the non-Jewish presence at the site was not the focus of my question and that it was mentioned only to illustrate a possible concern with the current setup.

I have not yet received a second response... 

Two additional updates on this front are actually a tag-team assist from my sister and brother in law (Shira & Chaim). Chaim summarized some very good points for and against the Machon Tzomet solution for oil drilling. I've included his comments at the end of the post. Shira actually attended a shiur from R' Rozen the other day and subsequently spoke to him about the issues we raised. R' Rozen reportedly made 2 interesting comments:

1. He acknowledged that Machon Tzomet's approach in general is somewhat controversial and has historically been the source of disagreement with other Rabbinic authorities
2. He confirmed what we suspected in previous posts - the reason for the media coverage was to try and mitigate the possible mar'it ayin factor. This may be a chiddush as we pointed out, but it does seem to make sense.

Chaim's comments are as follows:

243:1 - Drilling for Oil on Shabbat #2 - My Letter to Machon Tzomet

In light of the issues we began discussing here I sent a letter to Machon Tzomet yesterday outlining my questions. I am posting a copy of the letter here:

They responded with a brief note telling me that the letter would be passed to Rav Rozen's desk for further review and follow-up.

Cool.