Yes. Lightroom will re-sort immediately if the current sort order is set to Rating, so to keep the thumbnails from moving you need to switch to a fixed order instead of an automatic rating sort.

A common way is to use Custom Sort. Once the images are in the order you want, drag a thumbnail to create or enable a custom order, then choose Custom Sort in the toolbar. After that, changing ratings won’t cause the grid to reshuffle the way a live Rating sort does.

Another workaround is to place the images in a collection. For example, add the photos to the Quick Collection, sort or organize them there, then copy them into a regular collection and work from that collection in a fixed order.

So the short answer is: Lightroom doesn’t “pause” a Rating sort, but you can avoid the jumping by working in Custom Sort or in a collection with a manually controlled order.