Skating through Shabbos

Associated Press :

The full scope of Jewish texts and traditions couldn't help the rabbi sort this one out: Could he inline-skate to synagogue on the holy day of rest and prayer?
Dov Kaplan decided he should go straight to the top for an answer - a religious sage in Jerusalem who rules on what's acceptable, and what's not, under Orthodox Jewish codes. His verdict on the skates? Roll on, including Saturdays...

Any dilemma over Shabbat - like the roller-skating question - will likely find its way to a crammed wedge of offices on a Jerusalem hilltop. The space serves as a kind of one-stop answer factory: its staff responding to letters and e-mails, its head rabbi issuing religious decrees and amateur inventors tinkering on work tables to find Shabbat-acceptable devices. Among the latest projects is a doorbell that uses air pressure instead of electricity.
"We believe the Torah is a living document and needs to address modern issues, especially with the incredible pace of change," said Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Halperin, a shaggy-bearded scholar who directs the Institute for Science and Halacha, the term for the body of Jewish law. "But we are not an institute that is looking for loopholes."...