  The spin Hall effect depends crucially on the intrinsic spin-orbit coupling
of the energy band. Because of the smaller spin-orbit coupling in silicon, the
spin Hall effect is expected to be much reduced. We show that the electric
field in p-doped silicon can induce a dissipationless orbital current in a
fashion reminiscent of the spin Hall effect. The vertex correction due to
impurity scattering vanishes and the effect is therefore robust against
disorder. The orbital Hall effect can lead to the accumulation of local orbital
momentum at the edge of the sample, and can be detected by the Kerr effect.
