If God is omnipotent and omniscient, how is He fooled by litigation and reinterpretation of His commandments?
WJW 46 minutes ago [-]
He isn't, of course. According to Jewish thought, God is perfect and therefore any loopholes in the rules were put there on purpose. If you have studied the holy texts deeply enough to find the loophole, that makes you more holy, not less. It's like an easter egg for true believers.
The true sinners are those who think that they know what God wants better than what He actually passed down as commandments. God knows what He wants and wrote it down exactly like that.
thephyber 9 minutes ago [-]
I interpret these acts (trying extremely hard to find loopholes in divine command) to be ways to absolve the observant religious person from the guilt. It has no affect on the god.
It’s more of a “I can argue that I checked the box when I meet my maker and have to explain myself.”
Also, hopefully nobody actually takes these rules so seriously that they end up hurting or killing anyone. There was a bicyclist who was injured when one of these lines fell far below installation height, but I’m thinking more about, for example, people who need to use hospital equipment during the Sabbath.
graemep 24 minutes ago [-]
Firstly, if the article is accurate, it still separates private from public spaces. An omnipotent and omniscient God would have made the rules anticipating good faith interpretations in different times and cultures.
It still means accepting a restriction. I am Christian so do not think the same way about religious law, but if I was asked to come up with a defence of this idea, I would argue it fulfils the purpose of the rule - e.g. people still cannot pop into a office. I am sure someone who knows Jewish law could come up with a much stronger argument, but I just want to make the point you should not assume it is bad faith workaround
The article also says there is a 100 pages on this in the Talmud so that implies there has been a lot of discussion and argument about this.
religiontrw 5 minutes ago [-]
>I am Christian so do not think the same way about religious law
Judaism isn't Christianity any more than Islam is.
Trying to apply Christian norms to Jewish practices usually ends up in a pogrom when Christians realize that Judaism isn't Christianity.
And just in case I hadn't said this enough: Judaism isn't Christianity.
I have no idea why the right in America has run with the whole "Judaeo-Christian Western Culture" bullshit when Christianity was founded from the start on not being Judaism and making a clean break with it. You might as well say Cristiano-Islamic culture since there was about as much impact on Western thought by Islam as there was by Judaism.
lores 1 hours ago [-]
Has any rabbi ever put together the amount of calamities that befell the Jews with constantly trying to pull fast ones on God?
azernik 1 hours ago [-]
He's not "fooled" - this is within the rules he set.
buran77 4 minutes ago [-]
Almost nothing about modern life falls "within the rules". The rules were written when they perfectly matched life as it was at the time. Today a man has to interpret that word. A man has to pretend they know what God really meant.
Why would God set rules if man can just interpret his way into an exception for absolutely anything?
The last of the rules must have been "And in case you really want it, do whatever".
sandworm101 24 minutes ago [-]
It isnt about god. This is about a set of rules for living a good life. Those rules are under constant scrutiny, being reevaluated to facilitate the needs of the community. The line between religeous debate and "litigation", between theologians and lawyers, is a fiction. They are the same trade under different hats.
lifeinthevoid 1 hours ago [-]
You can’t convince people with logic I’m afraid.
petesergeant 54 minutes ago [-]
I think the thinking is that God appreciates the hustle
bravesoul2 3 hours ago [-]
Why not make a tiny 10cm wire at the north pole to do the entire planet? And bless the oceans for unlimited holy water. Anyone who goes to the beach is baptised.
mkfs 2 hours ago [-]
Your response may strike some as flippant, but it's not exactly uncharacteristic of how Jews, even the Orthodox, navigate adherence to their mitzvot (commandments). For example, the Shabbos Goy and the Sabbath elevator, or the eruv (the wire described in the article) itself.
gadders 2 hours ago [-]
It does seem to me that an omniscient God would see all these attempts to outwit him via looking at the small print, but then it's not me that would end up in hell or purgatory or whatever the Jewish equivalent is.
WJW 42 minutes ago [-]
An omniscient God can't be outwitted by stuff in the small print. If there's a loophole in the small print, God put it there on purpose. If anything, He would be delighted that some of his followers read the holy books closely enough to find some of the easter eggs that He put in there.
The whole idea of "the spirit vs the letter of the law" is a secular one that came up as a result of imperfect human lawmakers. But when dealing with holy texts, that is obviously not required because axiomatically God doesn't make mistakes.
kstrauser 1 hours ago [-]
A friend explained it to me like this: they believe God gave the rules, loopholes and all, exactly as intended. His followers were made in his own image. He delights in their creativity in discovering the true intent of his rules, which must include those loopholes because the rules are perfect. If he meant something different, he would’ve phrased the rules otherwise.
I’m not Jewish and this just my paraphrasing of an explanation I’ve heard a couple of times. The idea of God giving us a hacker nature and delighting in it makes me happy.
2 hours ago [-]
Infinity315 4 hours ago [-]
What's stopping someone from declaring one of the undersea fiber optic cables which circumnavigates the globe from being an eruv? Alternatively, what's stopping an observant Jew just making a wire bracelet and placing it on the ground and declaring the inner part of the wire as being "outside" and the other "inside?" Could I make a mobile eruv and hire some people to carry a loop of wire around me?
sjs382 4 hours ago [-]
Depends on the group, but generally the owner of the land that the drug is on needs to be involved in its creation. So, for a sidewalk, the local government.
See this article that states that the path of a Houston eruv was leased from the city for 50 years for $1.
Wouldn't the natural thing to do be to bury it? That's what we do with other important wires. Hanging it off old telephone poles seems like a recipe for recurring disaster.
Does it need to be a metal wire? Or is, say, a plastic pipe enough? In the spirit of the other comments here, there are plenty of those already in place. Certainly with the involvement of the land owner, which in these cases probably are the city or the state.
It would be interesting to hear from someone who are involved in these traditions to hear their view.
In fact, an entire tractate of the Talmud, called “Eruvin,” is focused on discussing these topics. Most subjects regarding Eruvin are fraught with differing opinions of Jewish Law, and therefore it is of utmost importance that questions related to the Eruv should be discussed with a Posek (Jewish Legal Expert.
There's a bunch of info on that site. I just watched the video on "How to Make a Home Made Shabbos Belt", which is a hack to meet some rules about carrying keys on Saturdays.
Not Jewish, I just enjoy systems of rules.
profsummergig 3 hours ago [-]
OK, so the Jews have gotten their NYC situation under control. But what about all the vulnerable populations in SF, LA, etc.? We must group-fund an eruv for those vulnerable populations.
Also, this is a lost opportunity for ambulance-chasing lawsuits. Anyone know if anyone's been killed by their city being surrounded with fishing line suspended 30 feet in the air?
I'm not religious so I'll admit I don't "get it." It's a neat idea.
I'll admit, I especially don't get this part:
> The series of practically invisible wires becomes a necessity that “benefits the most vulnerable people of the community.” He sees it not only as a way for communities to come together, but also as a way for the more affluent to give back. The eruv is funded entirely by the Jewish community, with a considerable portion of that support coming from wealthy philanthropists.
Giving back to your community, sure. Benefiting the most vulnerable people of the community seems a bit much though. I feel like there are other ways that money could be spent.
All in all though, there are nonprofit religious organizations who spend an unreasonable amount of money on things that don't matter (private jets), so I'm not at all complaining about something that helps that communal feeling like this.
egypturnash 9 hours ago [-]
The article really neglects to explain what an eruv is and why you would want it. Wikipedia's much more helpful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eruv
Basically if you are an observant Jew then you are forbidden from doing work on Saturdays. There are some extremely specific rules about what "work" is. One kind of forbidden work is taking things outside of your house; the eruv symbolically turns most of the city into "home" so you can do things like, say, take your baby for a weekend stroll on a nice day or walk outside with a cane. It's more nuanced than this, there's a whole bunch of rules about what you can't do and about how big an eruv can be and what you have to do to make it valid.
(I am not Jewish so do not ask me for any further details on this.)
vrosas 8 hours ago [-]
My Jewish friend once told me, specifically discussing this wire, that Jews consider finding loopholes in their own rules a national pastime. The same thing goes for the hotels where someone is paid to wave their hand in front of automatic doors so the guests don't force the door to "work" for them or the elevators that run 24/7, stopping at every floor so they don't have to even work by pressing a button.
cperciva 5 hours ago [-]
My favourite in this genre comes from a physics DPhil student I knew in Oxford: He insisted that it was permissible for him to work in the lab on Shabbat because after all he was really just studying the works of God and so it was no different in character from reading the Torah.
I'm not sure entirely how serious this argument was, but he wasn't entirely unobservant; he made a point of not playing in orchestra on Friday evenings (after dusk).
WJW 34 minutes ago [-]
Just asked my wife about this, who grew up Jewish and also loves debating these things as she's a programmer. Apparently the rules describe certain activities that one is not allowed to do, which in practice block most people from doing their profession. Reading books is not on that list, but nowhere does it say that the book needs to be the Torah. So it would definitely be allowed to read research papers, as long as you don't take notes (because writing is forbidden). Even a book critic could be reading books during shabat without any issues.
Operating a particle accelerator (ie actually pressing the buttons) would probably be a no-go, but if you set it up beforehand and it runs through the weekend without interaction then that would be fine.
YZF 5 hours ago [-]
I'm pretty sure 99.999% of observant Jewish people would consider this work but there is a lot of room for interpretation in Judaism and in the end it's between you, your belief, and God. An interesting piece of trivia there is that in Yom Kippur you can atone for sins to god but you can not atone for sins to other people without getting reconciliation.
wbl 4 hours ago [-]
But did he write down anything?
SlowTao 5 hours ago [-]
I am not the brightest spark as it took me a few months of living in a heavily Jewish area to realise that the pedestrian traffics light were configured to run every cycle so they didn't have to press the button. Probably a lot more details I also missed.
voidUpdate 23 minutes ago [-]
In my area at least, if there is a pedestrian crossing across a single road, it will not be automatic, but if it's near a junction, where the lights would need to toggle anyway, the button does nothing, and it's just on a fixed timer
Al-Khwarizmi 1 hours ago [-]
Buttons in pedestrian traffic lights are far from universal, my country is not Jewish and pedestrian lights without a button are very common.
Actually I dislike those with buttons. They send the message that cars passing and pedestrians stopping is the "default", and ensure that a lone pedestrian always has to stop, regardless of luck, while establishing the ritual that pedestrians need to "beg" for being allowed to cross. In my view, cars already have too many privileges in cities, it's not the end of the world if they have to stop at an empty crossing from time to time (something that pedestrians also have to do often).
msgodel 34 minutes ago [-]
Cars have much more inertia and often more traffic than pedestrians, it makes sense to give them right of way and reduce the ambiguity with traffic control devices in most places.
ticulatedspline 4 hours ago [-]
Could be coincidence. Many of those buttons are "placebo buttons" and aren't actually hooked up, particularly at busy intersections.
3 hours ago [-]
kennethrc 6 hours ago [-]
I've been a "Sabbath Goy" a couple of times for some of my friends :)
macinjosh 8 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
rjbwork 8 hours ago [-]
A very silly thing to say. The Hasids of New York are some of the most prominent anti-zionists in the United States.
zxexz 2 hours ago [-]
Judging by the previous posts/comments of the user you are replying to, I doubt they are capable of understanding your comment, if they are even a real person.
Notable examples of Shabos goyim include Maxim Gorky,[7] Thomas D'Alesandro Jr,[9] Floyd B. Olson,[10][11] [President] Harry S. Truman,[12][13][14] Pete Hamill,[15] [Secretary] Colin Powell,[15][16][17] [The Honorable] Mario Cuomo,[17] Martin Scorsese,[15] (((Ralph Branca))) (((who did not know at the time that he was Jewish))),[18] Tom Jones,[19] and the ... [King] Elvis Presley,[15][20] all of whom served their Jewish neighbors in this way. [President] Barack Obama served his Jewish office neighbor while serving in the Illinois Senate.[21]
bentley 4 hours ago [-]
> Basically if you are an observant Jew then you are forbidden from doing work on Saturdays. There are some extremely specific rules about what "work" is.
This was cause for major debate in the founding days of Christianity. Jesus’ ministry as a Jewish rabbi often involved condemning the religious leaders of the time for focusing on minutiae of the law, particularly Sabbath law.
Matthew 23:1–7 — “Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to His disciples: ‘The scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So practice and observe everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy, burdensome loads and lay them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.’”
Matthew 23:23–24 — “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You pay tithes of mint, dill, and cumin. But you have disregarded the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.” [Referring to the pious practice of straining one’s drinks for bugs to avoid violating dietary law.]
Luke 14:1–6 — “One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched. There in front of him was a man suffering from abnormal swelling of his body. Jesus asked the Pharisees and experts in the law, ‘Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?’ But they remained silent. So taking hold of the man, he healed him and sent him on his way.
“Then he asked them, ‘If one of you has a child or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull it out?’ And they had nothing to say.”
Mark 2:23–28 — “One Sabbath Jesus was passing through the grainfields, and His disciples began to pick the heads of grain as they walked along. So the Pharisees said to Him, ‘Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?’
“Jesus replied, ‘Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? During the high priesthood of Abiathar, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which was lawful only for the priests. And he gave some to his companions as well.’
“Then Jesus declared, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Therefore, the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.’”
Mark 3:1–6 — “Another time Jesus went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath. Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, ‘Stand up in front of everyone.’
“Then Jesus asked them, ‘Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?’ But they remained silent.
“He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.”
And there are further examples, like John 5.
rmason 7 hours ago [-]
I remember attending a tech conference years ago in Dearborn, Michigan. One of the speakers was a devout Jew from NY City. On Saturday he taped the lock open on his hotel room so he wouldn't need to use a key.
This drove hotel security nuts and one of the conference admins had to get involved because the hotels employees who were all Arabic did not accept his explanation. They were certain he was up to something shady.
He and his wife had brought extra food and invited the conference admin and myself to dinner in their room. I remember it as a very special night and I am still friends with them to this day.
emmelaich 4 hours ago [-]
There are hotels and apartment blocks that have physical locks as well as the swipe card. So you can use the physical key on the Sabbath.
theshrike79 4 hours ago [-]
So turning a key to open a door isn't work, but pushing an elevator button is?
gizmo686 3 hours ago [-]
Yes. There are several explanations for this, but the most popular ones are:
1) Making fires is prohibited work. Activating an electric switch causes a spark, which is kind of like a fire.
2) We have a tradition of considering using electricity to be work.
3) This is stupid, not using electricity is more work. Just push the button.
4) This is stupid, but having a day when we aren't all on our phones is nice, so let's keep all of the silly rules to not lose that
xorcist 2 hours ago [-]
> Activating an electric switch causes a spark, which is kind of like a fire.
So is walking on a carpet and removing your sweater and almost anything involving fabrics and motion.
Is it really a useful definition of "fire" and "spark"? Most people think of those as different things. Fire implies oxygen, you put out fires with heavy blankets or with nitrogen gas since time immemorial. Sparks, as in tiny plasma discharges, does not require oxygen and can not be put out the same way.
azernik 1 hours ago [-]
There's an important distinction between "thing that happens even if you don't intend it" and "thing that happens because you intentionally caused it" (and the even more subtle distinction between "beneficial side effect of thing you intended" and "neutral/negative side effect of thing you intended").
ie intentionality matters.
Maken 1 hours ago [-]
We are talking about religion here. Don't try to rationalise it.
petesergeant 44 minutes ago [-]
> because the hotels employees who were all Arabic did not accept his explanation
I feel like I would expect Arabs to be the most likely to accept this? Abrahamic religion that also still practices all sorts of ritualistic stuff in a region with a historically high Jewish population?
msgodel 39 minutes ago [-]
At my last employer I remember a Muslim coworker explaining the fasting thing they do to me and the two of us having a small bonding moment after mutually understanding the whole denial of self thing (I'm protestant.) I think people under appreciate the potential for that kind of thing.
serf 10 hours ago [-]
>Benefiting the most vulnerable people of the community seems a bit much though.
it makes sense contextually.
if there is some holy manifest that urges people to do a thing even when they're old/invalid/bed-ridden/sick, and there are people that will devoutly follow this rule, then it stands to reason that those people will feel a burden eased when part of the manifest is accomplished automatically.
ofalkaed 8 hours ago [-]
During Shabbat the members of the Jewish community who are most vulnerable are the ones who take it too far? Technically you are not supposed to even carry your keys, medications, babies, anything, so to strictly follow the rules means either being a shutin for the day or taking stupid risks which could easily cause undo long term hardships or even death. For the most part it is just updating the laws to modern society and the move away from the more communal living arrangements of the past.
AStonesThrow 5 hours ago [-]
> long term hardships or even death
Yes... well, ... y'all say that like those are "bad things".
Ask a Rebbe what's the worst calamity that can befall him
giraffe_lady 9 hours ago [-]
> benefits the most vulnerable people of the community.
I suspect the author may have misunderstood what this is euphemistically referring to. I think the original source means women. A lot of routine elements of childcare fall within this restriction, and in conservative communities that would be the exclusive domain of women. Without the eruv women with young children would be confined to their home during this part of the week.
AStonesThrow 5 hours ago [-]
> confined to their home during this part of the week
You say that like it is a bad thing
There is a related concept in Eastern Orthodoxy called oikonomia, or a relaxation of the laws. Roman Catholics or Episcopalians may know this as "dispensation". When the law becomes very complex and there is a concerted effort to get legalistic and eventually you end up with circumventions that are worthy of publishing news articles to the goyim, eventually you begin to think about dispensations or oikonomia from the leadership in order to relax the rules of Shabbat observance and the Day of Rest.
And undoubtedly that is the crux of whence originated Reform Judaism and Conservative Judaism.
Judaism is more akin to Islam than Christianity in the particular aspect that it is not unified and not organized under one particular visible head, like the Pope or a Patriarch. Not since the Destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70. During the Second Tempe Period there was definitely a unification of Jews and a singular doctrinal authority.
But in today's synagogue system with rabbis interpreting Torah and Talmud, it is quite federated and decentralized, and in New York in particular there are congregations following individual rebbes and having unique beliefs inside the walls of their synagogue, but also councils/conferences of Jew leaders who team up to build this Eruv Wall and make America pay for it.
theMMaI 2 hours ago [-]
Seems more akin to Christianity then, Pope is only recognized by roman catholics, and there's ridiculous amounts of Christianity doctrines that each interpret the writings differently.
labster 2 hours ago [-]
That’s not entirely true, the Orthodox Christians recognize the Bishop of Rome as being an equal to any of their patriarchs.
Protestant Christians run the gamut from “it’s complicated” with the pope to “the pope is the literal devil”. Some denominations have no central authority at all, and qualifications for priesthood is determined entirely by the local community.
Ekaros 1 hours ago [-]
Do these wires apply castle doctrine? That is if you create a big one and then someone believing in their power enters you are free to defend what is inside?
I wonder why it seems to circumvent Hells Kitchen?
epc 8 hours ago [-]
I don't think that's a current map, the eruv web site shows much more of the island covered (including much of Hell's Kitchen): http://eruv.nyc/#map
AStonesThrow 5 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
jefftk 8 hours ago [-]
"Hell's Kitchen" doesn't sound like something I'd want inside my house.
zaptrem 8 hours ago [-]
Sorry, “”Midtown West””
n1b0m 2 hours ago [-]
I believe the Hells Kitchen avoids using actual wire because it relies on existing structures like telephone poles and buildings.
walterbell 9 hours ago [-]
Also circumvents Times Square, Penn Station, SOHO and Lower East Side.
duskwuff 8 hours ago [-]
There are limits on how much traffic can pass in and out of the boundaries of an eruv. I suspect that's why it avoids high-traffic areas like Times Square, as well as the area around Turtle Bay.
jmpman 9 hours ago [-]
Are other religions also allowed to run stands of wire around arbitrary parts of the city?
gizmo686 7 hours ago [-]
I don't see why they wouldn't be. Basically all cities allow 3rd parties to run wires as long as they do all of the paperwork and rent the needed right of ways. Normally this is used for things like comm lines; but some inert wire isn't going to cause any issues.
The other religions would just need to care enough to ask, then install and maintain the wire.
Rebelgecko 3 hours ago [-]
I know of at least one religion that made it mandatory to run strands of wire around arbitrary areas. Brigham Young and his successors made the Deseret Telegraph a real community project.
fortran77 4 hours ago [-]
Comcast is allowed to.
bravesoul2 3 hours ago [-]
Amen
idiotsecant 8 hours ago [-]
Is this an honest question? Are there other religions wanting to run wire around the city?
foxwolf 4 hours ago [-]
I'm pretty sure that if there is a god, then the act of deliberately subverting what you believe to be his laws by exploiting what you perceive to be a technicality for your own convenience isn't going to work out in your favor in the end.
bradrn 4 hours ago [-]
Not at all. The Jewish perspective is essentially that Jewish law stems from the creation of an all-knowing God, and therefore any seeming ‘loopholes’ must not only be known to Him but explicitly intended to exist. On this basis, it must be perfectly valid to use them!
nehal3m 2 hours ago [-]
That's just a loophole to justify exploiting loopholes.
WJW 25 minutes ago [-]
Only if you believe the loopholes to be actually loopholes. I'm not religious, but taking the word of God and declaring that it means something else than what it actually says would be a textbook example of the sin of hubris, no?
lazide 1 hours ago [-]
Now you know why there are so many Jewish lawyers. Also Catholic.
voiper1 2 hours ago [-]
The eiruv only works as a loophole for the added stringencies by the Rabbis. Anything that's considered totally public in actual Torah Law (which is a big debate what exactly that is) is not subject to the permissibility of creating an eiruv.
amendegree 3 hours ago [-]
Religious Jews consider your contention to be blasphemous, as it suggests there’s a way to outsmart god, which would directly contradict his apparent higher being status.
boxed 2 hours ago [-]
Not outsmart god, but outsmart yourself straight into hell.
azernik 60 minutes ago [-]
Judaism in most variants doesn't have hell.
Don't try to parse this religion as "Christianity with different rules", it'll only mislead you.
theshrike79 4 hours ago [-]
This is on the level of "if the bar doesn't have windows, Allah can't see me drink" of tomfoolery.
And I'm all for it. =)
bravesoul2 3 hours ago [-]
What do you mean by "god". I don't think you know what you mean when you say god. What do you mean by "is" ...
peteforde 3 hours ago [-]
It's not a party until JP walks in.
ctkhn 4 hours ago [-]
Have you seen the polymarket odds for Jesus Christ's return in 2025? Can't imagine taking the yes on that whether you believe or not.
lovecg 4 hours ago [-]
I know, someone should really point out that following the rules of a religion blindly can go too far! Might start a movement of some sort.
gadders 2 hours ago [-]
Wait until you hear about Kapparot.
Havoc 10 hours ago [-]
Two arbitrary rules that cancel each other out
You could just not but hey I guess no harm no foul
I love how Orthodox Jews can't change any of their laws BUT they can and do change the definition of words to such an extent it accomplishes the same thing, such as changing eruv from meaning wall to wire.
throw37384848 3 hours ago [-]
Jews can absolutely change their laws. For example butchering animals and women rights are completely different now!
Orthodox Jews at East Europe still do not allow women in synagogue, very similar way is Islam!
elAhmo 2 hours ago [-]
Islam does allow women in mosques.
UltraSane 29 minutes ago [-]
Only in the back LOL
justlikereddit 4 hours ago [-]
2025, possibly the end of the human era.
If your religious life is centered around an absolute nutcase god or a set of commandment that seems to come from a psychiatric inpatient maybe then rather than putting in so much time fooling the god and organizing your life like someone with severe OCD it's time to just declare yourself secular.
pfdietz 5 hours ago [-]
If and when there are space colonies, this will naturally generalize to the pressure boundary, even if the thing is a rotating cylinder 100 km long.
7e 5 hours ago [-]
These religions are whack and only work because the indoctrination happens when kids are young and imprintable. Then they have to contort themselves to the abuse as adults. And, incredibly, they then do it to their children.
On the other hand, if you tried to cult an adult, most of the time it will fail (though not always).
peteforde 2 hours ago [-]
You know, a lot of Obama voters are wearing red hats now.
neuroelectron 6 hours ago [-]
Religious enclaves are part of American culture.
RayVR 10 hours ago [-]
“God hates this one weird trick…”
7 hours ago [-]
harvoc5 9 hours ago [-]
There are other currents in Judaism, such as mystical based, or philosophy based (Spinoza), but they are a minority nowadays.
The mainstream Judaism has focused mostly on codifying rules for all situations in life, which has evolved into a semi legalistic framework of rules and their loopholes. So many loopholes... Like temporarily selling your belongings 1 week per year to bypass Passover rules about Hametz, etc.
mhb 10 hours ago [-]
There are many similar tricks.
gizmo686 9 hours ago [-]
God didn't make a mistake when writing the Torah. That "one weird trick" as you call it is as fundamental a part of his will as every else.
Also most Jewish laws don't come from God. Instead, they come from the confluence of two doctrines: first we develop fence laws to keep ourselves from accidentally violating the actual laws. But, once we have been doing something long enough, they become Minhag and given more or less the full force of law. Naturally, this leads to new fence laws being developed around them, and the cycle continues.
Frankly, almost no Jewish law comes from God, and he has no business telling us what to do.
idiotsecant 8 hours ago [-]
In fact, I would go so far as to say no religious rules come from God! It seems pretty obvious that an omnipotent being in command of all the subtle and awesome phenomena of all of time and space is not going to concerned with whether some barely evolved apes on a backwater planet orbiting an unremarkable star in a forgettable galaxy, among innumerable galaxies eat shellfish and cows milk in the same meal.
defrost 8 hours ago [-]
Regardless of any personal cosmology rules or guidelines with respect to preparing and eating food in an unelectrified fridgeless warm to hot climate are emergent from the nature of the physical universe.
Debating whether such rules spring from physics, 'God', or a mere abundance of caution is fun for some.
6 hours ago [-]
comrade1234 9 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
pclmulqdq 9 hours ago [-]
In the Jewish tradition, nobody is tricking God. There's a long history of legalism in the religion - God sets out his commandments in language and you take that language at face value. Exact interpretation of that text is then debated by religious scholars, but the meaning of the words is entirely contained in the text.
For Christians and those raised in the Christian tradition, this is entirely foreign. The rules are not set out nearly as strictly for you, you have to interpret them much more broadly.
Generally, if you read their respective books, the old testament has a set of rules mixed in with a quasi-historical context, while the new testament is almost entirely in the form of parables.
Islam, by the way, goes back toward the Jewish legalistic idea.
femto 8 hours ago [-]
> For Christians and those raised in the Christian tradition, this is entirely foreign.
I'd say it is quite familiar to Christianity. Canon Law mirrors the secular legal system, complete with its own lawyers, courts and so on. (Arguably, it's the other way around: secular Western law that mirrors Canon Law.)
Canon Law is only for Catholics and also only pertains to the management of the Church itself rather than to the behavior of individuals. All religions have this idea of textual interpretation to some degree, but it has comparatively more importance in Judaism.
ajb 8 hours ago [-]
I'm not saying your main point is wrong, but there is a lot of legalistic quibbling over things like Lent. For example, various animals are classified locally as "fish" for Lenten purposes, including the Beaver (in Canada) the Capybara (in Venezuela) and the alligator (in New Orleans)
At this point in the conversation I would like to once again point out that Catholics once considered beaver tails (but not beaver bodies) "fish" for purposes of meatless Fridays.
gizmo686 6 hours ago [-]
And in Jews consider birds to be "meat" because people in the 15th century kept getting confused. The Mosaic law is that the prohibition against mixing milk and meat applies to land animals; not water or sky animals (which each have their own set of rules).
throwneawayx255 8 hours ago [-]
I am not sure one could argue that playing semantics is the most honest conduct in understanding.
Only the most extremist of Muslims, the Salafi, take the Jewish legalistic idea, majority of other traditions in Islam lean towards Tafsir that squarely leans on “spirit of the law” than strictly the word.
detourdog 8 hours ago [-]
It's not about playing with semantics it's about interpreting texts. Jews have different sects as well with different interpretations.
jedimastert 9 hours ago [-]
I see this sentiment a lot when it comes to Jewish customs, especially when it comes to eruvs, I don't really get it. Why do you consider it "tricking" God, instead of just following the rules?
lmm 8 hours ago [-]
Because under any normal circumstances we'd call this a trick? Like, imagine someone under house arrest trying to argue they were allowed to go all around Manhattan because of this wire - we'd quite rightly jail them for contempt.
shermantanktop 7 hours ago [-]
Sure, after determining that the offered definition of “house” using the wire didn’t apply. That’s not a trick, that’s the system at work.
The legal system and morality and all areas of any complexity require judgment and decision making.
It might satisfy a certain type of person to have explicit, highly detailed mechanistic rules for human conduct, with no exceptions. But even where that’s been tried, 50 years passes, and now someone has the job of interpreting how those rules apply to modern life.
lmm 7 hours ago [-]
> after determining that the offered definition of “house” using the wire didn’t apply. That’s not a trick, that’s the system at work.
> The legal system and morality and all areas of any complexity require judgment and decision making.
I don't think it requires much real judgement to say that a wire does not make a home and that whole area is not a single big home. This is not some finely balanced call that requires the greatest legal minds. Judges can and do strike or ignore definitions that pervert the meaning of a statute too far from the plain reading, and they're right to do so.
In areas of law - or of everyday life - that we take seriously, we would not tolerate such a twisted reading of a rule.
jaza 6 hours ago [-]
Imagine that a whole nation's statute laws, and associated common laws, were frozen in time for over a thousand years, because (the statutes were declared to be immutable canon, and) any judges with sufficient authority to strike out old common law and to establish new common law were long gone. That's Judaism (specifically the Talmud)! (Speaking from experience as a Jew.)
The "eruv" definition was established back when the biggest conceivable area that it might cover was that of a medieval village or ghetto, of maximum several hundred (small cramped) houses, i.e. let's say about the area of Vatican City, which is 0.49km2 (0.19 sq mi). Whereas the total area of Manhattan island is 59km2 (22.7 sq mi). So, yes, in my opinion, a Talmudic judge would consider the modern-day Manhattan eruv a gross perversion of the spirit of the law, and would update the definition accordingly. But no such judge exists in this era. So, yay, let's play "how ridiculously can we apply anachronistic archaic rules to the modern world" - apparently, ultra-orthodox Jews consider it such a fun game, that they let it rule their entire life!
gizmo686 6 hours ago [-]
This has been litigated well over a thousand years ago. To put it in modern legal terms, the legitimacy of an Eruv is a super precedent. It is discussed in depth in the Talmud, which is the clearest source of Jewish law.
Even in modern law, courts can and do come up with some fairly peculiar readings at times. Particularly with old laws or the constitution itself which can, at times, be vague at best when applied in a modern context.
The rules that the Eruv is a loophole for do not even come from God. They come from the specific interpretation that has developed about those relatively vague laws.
There is an old "joke" in Judaism that God has no place in interpreting Jewish law. I put joke in quotes because the Oven of Akhnai is itself part of the Talmud and is generally read as establishing that exact principle.
This type of "trick" is foundational to both Judaism and every common law system.
lmm 2 hours ago [-]
> This type of "trick" is foundational to... every common law system.
Disagree. Courts bend and stretch the law but only up to a point, and the more twisted interpretations tend to get overruled. Precedent is respected but only up to a point. And when people do apply a trick, everyone acknowledges that it's a trick, that they're subverting the will of the original drafters of the law because they think they know better than them.
6 hours ago [-]
throwaway2849 8 hours ago [-]
If your parents said come home by 6:00 PM and instead of coming home you put a wire around the city to “make it your home” and stay out, you’re tricking your parents.
azernik 56 minutes ago [-]
G-d is not your parents, and set and worded His rules with omniscience that your parents do not have.
9 hours ago [-]
emmelaich 9 hours ago [-]
There's at least two in Sydney. One near Bondi and one around St Ives. The one around St Ives was a little controversial but the council eventually permitted it.
jaza 5 hours ago [-]
Yep. The St Ives one involved a fairly protracted debate at the local council, with accusations of anti-semitism (whether warranted or not is a matter of opinion) being levelled at those who argued against it.
Although I don't know if the Bondi and/or the St Ives eruvs involve their own physical wires? I thought it was deemed sufficient for the rabbis to just "declare" various sets of third-party power lines / phone lines as constituting the eruv, or am I mistaken?
bradrn 4 hours ago [-]
Both eruvim have their own dedicated physical wires, yes.
> accusations of anti-semitism (whether warranted or not is a matter of opinion)
I live within the St Ives eruv. At least some of the opposition was unquestionably antisemitic — I recall receiving at least one antisemitic screed in our mailbox during the time of the council debate. (That one went something along the lines of ‘the Jews are trying to kick out all the non-Jews’ etc. etc., for two pages of fairly small text.)
emmelaich 4 hours ago [-]
The St. Ives eruv definitely has their own wire, though it very difficult to discern unless you know exactly where it runs already.
I'd assume the Bondi one also, because I suspect it's not really valid unless continuous and monitored, per the article. Although I'm no expert.
nharada 8 hours ago [-]
You could make the argument that if God is giving you rules you should just obey them, not try and understand/interpret His exact intentions and do that instead (since presumably you cannot fully comprehend them).
jasaldivara 6 hours ago [-]
For correctly obeying the rules, you first need to understand and interpret them.
detourdog 9 hours ago [-]
It's not about tricking G-D it's about rationalizing one's own beliefs. Jews have to have their own personal understanding about the relationship. We already know from the story of Jonah that there is no tricking G-d. This more about community understanding.
idiotsecant 8 hours ago [-]
So we're willing to suspect our disbelief enough to assume that there's an omnipotent sky beard making rules, but not that he doesn't approve of his little rascals trying to trick him?
Let people like what they like. It's not hurting anyone. People are weird. Embrace it.
opentokix 36 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
anduril22 7 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
jkaplowitz 6 hours ago [-]
From the article:
> The eruv is funded entirely by the Jewish community, with a considerable portion of that support coming from wealthy philanthropists.
So, no, you're not paying for this.
I'm quite sure that any religion that wanted to fund the cost and follow the proper permitting procedures could similarly run wires for religious purposes, otherwise NYC would have a First Amendment problem. But I don't think any other religions want to run wires for religious purposes.
And yes, other religions can and do use public space in myriad ways too. As for encroaching on others, the eruv doesn't really encroach on anyone - I'm a secular Jew who has lived in NYC for most of my life, and while I've heard about this before, I've never actually noticed it in person, even when I've probably been within eyesight of it.
defrost 6 hours ago [-]
> Do [ other groups ] get similar perks of using public space
Yes, it's public space.
> and encroaching on others?
An eruv wire looks just like any other wire strung on a pole, save it's and thinner, doesn't carry electricity or communications .. so it "encroaches" on your life just as much as any other utility wire .. even less if you spend little time in jewish neighbourhoods that actually string such things.
anduril22 6 hours ago [-]
Well it’s not a Jewish neighbourhood if it’s all of Manhattan. Encroachment isn’t always the most obvious - do construction permits require builders to fix any breaks to this, similar to other public utility lines (telephone, electricity)? That would be an encroachment. Does it increase any risk to public workers who fix supply lines, or increase the risk of electrical fires from thunderstorms? That’d be encroachment. Not saying it’ll happen, but some non-obvious examples.
Also, what are other such examples from other groups? There’s a big difference between theoretical (a matter of law) and the practical (societal acceptance). I’m also not sure of telephone poles being public space, I can only imagine the administrative and legal hurdles to overcome to hang something off one.
defrost 6 hours ago [-]
Leaving aside that this is about "much of Manhattan" rather than "all of Manhattan" it remains that Manhattan, Brooklyn, New York City in general are well known as one of the larger jewish neighbourhoods on the planet.
Jews comprise approximately 10% of New York City's population, making the Jewish community the largest in the world outside of Israel.
Some of your other what if's are addressed in the article, if you're a good faith commenter looking for actual serious issues then there's also 100 years of existence in Manhattan and the wider New York City to draw upon.
Perhaps you could highlight some actual real issues that have cropped up in the last century?
anduril22 4 hours ago [-]
“Largest [jewish community] in the world outside of Israel” doesn’t really equate to “Jewish neighbourhood”. My argument would be the same regardless of which religion’s orthodoxy this stems from, so questioning whether I’m a “good faith” commenter is just a lazy ad hominem response. The article doesn’t address many of the questions I posed.
Speaking of which, tell me, would there be so many defensive comments if, in a hypothetical scenario, there was an article written about how every cell tower in the city had an Arabic inscription written (in such small text that it couldn’t be seen) in order to “bless” all the cellular waves emanating from there? I know what my response would be.
_xtbs 9 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
cap11235 8 hours ago [-]
Anti-semetic or anti-Orthodox? Though I guess the former can come from lumping together different folks as a unified mass.
rpmisms 6 hours ago [-]
Thinking this is silly is a critique of the religion of Judaism, not the Jewish people.
zoklet-enjoyer 8 hours ago [-]
You seem to have a very loose definition of anti-semitism
throwaway2849 8 hours ago [-]
“It is a trick” says the former Minister for Education:
The true sinners are those who think that they know what God wants better than what He actually passed down as commandments. God knows what He wants and wrote it down exactly like that.
It’s more of a “I can argue that I checked the box when I meet my maker and have to explain myself.”
Also, hopefully nobody actually takes these rules so seriously that they end up hurting or killing anyone. There was a bicyclist who was injured when one of these lines fell far below installation height, but I’m thinking more about, for example, people who need to use hospital equipment during the Sabbath.
It still means accepting a restriction. I am Christian so do not think the same way about religious law, but if I was asked to come up with a defence of this idea, I would argue it fulfils the purpose of the rule - e.g. people still cannot pop into a office. I am sure someone who knows Jewish law could come up with a much stronger argument, but I just want to make the point you should not assume it is bad faith workaround
The article also says there is a 100 pages on this in the Talmud so that implies there has been a lot of discussion and argument about this.
Judaism isn't Christianity any more than Islam is.
Trying to apply Christian norms to Jewish practices usually ends up in a pogrom when Christians realize that Judaism isn't Christianity.
And just in case I hadn't said this enough: Judaism isn't Christianity.
I have no idea why the right in America has run with the whole "Judaeo-Christian Western Culture" bullshit when Christianity was founded from the start on not being Judaism and making a clean break with it. You might as well say Cristiano-Islamic culture since there was about as much impact on Western thought by Islam as there was by Judaism.
Why would God set rules if man can just interpret his way into an exception for absolutely anything?
The last of the rules must have been "And in case you really want it, do whatever".
The whole idea of "the spirit vs the letter of the law" is a secular one that came up as a result of imperfect human lawmakers. But when dealing with holy texts, that is obviously not required because axiomatically God doesn't make mistakes.
I’m not Jewish and this just my paraphrasing of an explanation I’ve heard a couple of times. The idea of God giving us a hacker nature and delighting in it makes me happy.
See this article that states that the path of a Houston eruv was leased from the city for 50 years for $1.
https://jhvonline.com/mayor-signs-new-rental-agreement-for-h...
Does it need to be a metal wire? Or is, say, a plastic pipe enough? In the spirit of the other comments here, there are plenty of those already in place. Certainly with the involvement of the land owner, which in these cases probably are the city or the state.
It would be interesting to hear from someone who are involved in these traditions to hear their view.
Not Jewish, I just enjoy systems of rules.
Also, this is a lost opportunity for ambulance-chasing lawsuits. Anyone know if anyone's been killed by their city being surrounded with fishing line suspended 30 feet in the air?
https://sf.curbed.com/2017/8/23/16186962/jewish-tradition-sa...
I'll admit, I especially don't get this part:
> The series of practically invisible wires becomes a necessity that “benefits the most vulnerable people of the community.” He sees it not only as a way for communities to come together, but also as a way for the more affluent to give back. The eruv is funded entirely by the Jewish community, with a considerable portion of that support coming from wealthy philanthropists.
Giving back to your community, sure. Benefiting the most vulnerable people of the community seems a bit much though. I feel like there are other ways that money could be spent.
All in all though, there are nonprofit religious organizations who spend an unreasonable amount of money on things that don't matter (private jets), so I'm not at all complaining about something that helps that communal feeling like this.
Basically if you are an observant Jew then you are forbidden from doing work on Saturdays. There are some extremely specific rules about what "work" is. One kind of forbidden work is taking things outside of your house; the eruv symbolically turns most of the city into "home" so you can do things like, say, take your baby for a weekend stroll on a nice day or walk outside with a cane. It's more nuanced than this, there's a whole bunch of rules about what you can't do and about how big an eruv can be and what you have to do to make it valid.
(I am not Jewish so do not ask me for any further details on this.)
I'm not sure entirely how serious this argument was, but he wasn't entirely unobservant; he made a point of not playing in orchestra on Friday evenings (after dusk).
Operating a particle accelerator (ie actually pressing the buttons) would probably be a no-go, but if you set it up beforehand and it runs through the weekend without interaction then that would be fine.
Actually I dislike those with buttons. They send the message that cars passing and pedestrians stopping is the "default", and ensure that a lone pedestrian always has to stop, regardless of luck, while establishing the ritual that pedestrians need to "beg" for being allowed to cross. In my view, cars already have too many privileges in cities, it's not the end of the world if they have to stop at an empty crossing from time to time (something that pedestrians also have to do often).
Notable examples of Shabos goyim include Maxim Gorky,[7] Thomas D'Alesandro Jr,[9] Floyd B. Olson,[10][11] [President] Harry S. Truman,[12][13][14] Pete Hamill,[15] [Secretary] Colin Powell,[15][16][17] [The Honorable] Mario Cuomo,[17] Martin Scorsese,[15] (((Ralph Branca))) (((who did not know at the time that he was Jewish))),[18] Tom Jones,[19] and the ... [King] Elvis Presley,[15][20] all of whom served their Jewish neighbors in this way. [President] Barack Obama served his Jewish office neighbor while serving in the Illinois Senate.[21]
This was cause for major debate in the founding days of Christianity. Jesus’ ministry as a Jewish rabbi often involved condemning the religious leaders of the time for focusing on minutiae of the law, particularly Sabbath law.
Matthew 23:1–7 — “Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to His disciples: ‘The scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So practice and observe everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. They tie up heavy, burdensome loads and lay them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.’”
Matthew 23:23–24 — “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You pay tithes of mint, dill, and cumin. But you have disregarded the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.” [Referring to the pious practice of straining one’s drinks for bugs to avoid violating dietary law.]
Luke 14:1–6 — “One Sabbath, when Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee, he was being carefully watched. There in front of him was a man suffering from abnormal swelling of his body. Jesus asked the Pharisees and experts in the law, ‘Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not?’ But they remained silent. So taking hold of the man, he healed him and sent him on his way.
“Then he asked them, ‘If one of you has a child or an ox that falls into a well on the Sabbath day, will you not immediately pull it out?’ And they had nothing to say.”
Mark 2:23–28 — “One Sabbath Jesus was passing through the grainfields, and His disciples began to pick the heads of grain as they walked along. So the Pharisees said to Him, ‘Look, why are they doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?’
“Jesus replied, ‘Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? During the high priesthood of Abiathar, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which was lawful only for the priests. And he gave some to his companions as well.’
“Then Jesus declared, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Therefore, the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.’”
Mark 3:1–6 — “Another time Jesus went into the synagogue, and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath. Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, ‘Stand up in front of everyone.’
“Then Jesus asked them, ‘Which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?’ But they remained silent.
“He looked around at them in anger and, deeply distressed at their stubborn hearts, said to the man, ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He stretched it out, and his hand was completely restored. Then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with the Herodians how they might kill Jesus.”
And there are further examples, like John 5.
This drove hotel security nuts and one of the conference admins had to get involved because the hotels employees who were all Arabic did not accept his explanation. They were certain he was up to something shady.
He and his wife had brought extra food and invited the conference admin and myself to dinner in their room. I remember it as a very special night and I am still friends with them to this day.
1) Making fires is prohibited work. Activating an electric switch causes a spark, which is kind of like a fire.
2) We have a tradition of considering using electricity to be work.
3) This is stupid, not using electricity is more work. Just push the button.
4) This is stupid, but having a day when we aren't all on our phones is nice, so let's keep all of the silly rules to not lose that
So is walking on a carpet and removing your sweater and almost anything involving fabrics and motion.
Is it really a useful definition of "fire" and "spark"? Most people think of those as different things. Fire implies oxygen, you put out fires with heavy blankets or with nitrogen gas since time immemorial. Sparks, as in tiny plasma discharges, does not require oxygen and can not be put out the same way.
ie intentionality matters.
I feel like I would expect Arabs to be the most likely to accept this? Abrahamic religion that also still practices all sorts of ritualistic stuff in a region with a historically high Jewish population?
it makes sense contextually.
if there is some holy manifest that urges people to do a thing even when they're old/invalid/bed-ridden/sick, and there are people that will devoutly follow this rule, then it stands to reason that those people will feel a burden eased when part of the manifest is accomplished automatically.
Yes... well, ... y'all say that like those are "bad things".
Ask a Rebbe what's the worst calamity that can befall him
I suspect the author may have misunderstood what this is euphemistically referring to. I think the original source means women. A lot of routine elements of childcare fall within this restriction, and in conservative communities that would be the exclusive domain of women. Without the eruv women with young children would be confined to their home during this part of the week.
You say that like it is a bad thing
There is a related concept in Eastern Orthodoxy called oikonomia, or a relaxation of the laws. Roman Catholics or Episcopalians may know this as "dispensation". When the law becomes very complex and there is a concerted effort to get legalistic and eventually you end up with circumventions that are worthy of publishing news articles to the goyim, eventually you begin to think about dispensations or oikonomia from the leadership in order to relax the rules of Shabbat observance and the Day of Rest.
And undoubtedly that is the crux of whence originated Reform Judaism and Conservative Judaism.
Judaism is more akin to Islam than Christianity in the particular aspect that it is not unified and not organized under one particular visible head, like the Pope or a Patriarch. Not since the Destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70. During the Second Tempe Period there was definitely a unification of Jews and a singular doctrinal authority.
But in today's synagogue system with rabbis interpreting Torah and Talmud, it is quite federated and decentralized, and in New York in particular there are congregations following individual rebbes and having unique beliefs inside the walls of their synagogue, but also councils/conferences of Jew leaders who team up to build this Eruv Wall and make America pay for it.
Protestant Christians run the gamut from “it’s complicated” with the pope to “the pope is the literal devil”. Some denominations have no central authority at all, and qualifications for priesthood is determined entirely by the local community.
I wonder why it seems to circumvent Hells Kitchen?
The other religions would just need to care enough to ask, then install and maintain the wire.
Don't try to parse this religion as "Christianity with different rules", it'll only mislead you.
And I'm all for it. =)
You could just not but hey I guess no harm no foul
Orthodox Jews at East Europe still do not allow women in synagogue, very similar way is Islam!
If your religious life is centered around an absolute nutcase god or a set of commandment that seems to come from a psychiatric inpatient maybe then rather than putting in so much time fooling the god and organizing your life like someone with severe OCD it's time to just declare yourself secular.
On the other hand, if you tried to cult an adult, most of the time it will fail (though not always).
The mainstream Judaism has focused mostly on codifying rules for all situations in life, which has evolved into a semi legalistic framework of rules and their loopholes. So many loopholes... Like temporarily selling your belongings 1 week per year to bypass Passover rules about Hametz, etc.
Also most Jewish laws don't come from God. Instead, they come from the confluence of two doctrines: first we develop fence laws to keep ourselves from accidentally violating the actual laws. But, once we have been doing something long enough, they become Minhag and given more or less the full force of law. Naturally, this leads to new fence laws being developed around them, and the cycle continues.
Frankly, almost no Jewish law comes from God, and he has no business telling us what to do.
Debating whether such rules spring from physics, 'God', or a mere abundance of caution is fun for some.
For Christians and those raised in the Christian tradition, this is entirely foreign. The rules are not set out nearly as strictly for you, you have to interpret them much more broadly.
Generally, if you read their respective books, the old testament has a set of rules mixed in with a quasi-historical context, while the new testament is almost entirely in the form of parables.
Islam, by the way, goes back toward the Jewish legalistic idea.
I'd say it is quite familiar to Christianity. Canon Law mirrors the secular legal system, complete with its own lawyers, courts and so on. (Arguably, it's the other way around: secular Western law that mirrors Canon Law.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_law
See https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/105380/is-t...
Only the most extremist of Muslims, the Salafi, take the Jewish legalistic idea, majority of other traditions in Islam lean towards Tafsir that squarely leans on “spirit of the law” than strictly the word.
The legal system and morality and all areas of any complexity require judgment and decision making.
It might satisfy a certain type of person to have explicit, highly detailed mechanistic rules for human conduct, with no exceptions. But even where that’s been tried, 50 years passes, and now someone has the job of interpreting how those rules apply to modern life.
> The legal system and morality and all areas of any complexity require judgment and decision making.
I don't think it requires much real judgement to say that a wire does not make a home and that whole area is not a single big home. This is not some finely balanced call that requires the greatest legal minds. Judges can and do strike or ignore definitions that pervert the meaning of a statute too far from the plain reading, and they're right to do so.
In areas of law - or of everyday life - that we take seriously, we would not tolerate such a twisted reading of a rule.
The "eruv" definition was established back when the biggest conceivable area that it might cover was that of a medieval village or ghetto, of maximum several hundred (small cramped) houses, i.e. let's say about the area of Vatican City, which is 0.49km2 (0.19 sq mi). Whereas the total area of Manhattan island is 59km2 (22.7 sq mi). So, yes, in my opinion, a Talmudic judge would consider the modern-day Manhattan eruv a gross perversion of the spirit of the law, and would update the definition accordingly. But no such judge exists in this era. So, yay, let's play "how ridiculously can we apply anachronistic archaic rules to the modern world" - apparently, ultra-orthodox Jews consider it such a fun game, that they let it rule their entire life!
Even in modern law, courts can and do come up with some fairly peculiar readings at times. Particularly with old laws or the constitution itself which can, at times, be vague at best when applied in a modern context.
The rules that the Eruv is a loophole for do not even come from God. They come from the specific interpretation that has developed about those relatively vague laws.
There is an old "joke" in Judaism that God has no place in interpreting Jewish law. I put joke in quotes because the Oven of Akhnai is itself part of the Talmud and is generally read as establishing that exact principle.
This type of "trick" is foundational to both Judaism and every common law system.
Disagree. Courts bend and stretch the law but only up to a point, and the more twisted interpretations tend to get overruled. Precedent is respected but only up to a point. And when people do apply a trick, everyone acknowledges that it's a trick, that they're subverting the will of the original drafters of the law because they think they know better than them.
Although I don't know if the Bondi and/or the St Ives eruvs involve their own physical wires? I thought it was deemed sufficient for the rabbis to just "declare" various sets of third-party power lines / phone lines as constituting the eruv, or am I mistaken?
> accusations of anti-semitism (whether warranted or not is a matter of opinion)
I live within the St Ives eruv. At least some of the opposition was unquestionably antisemitic — I recall receiving at least one antisemitic screed in our mailbox during the time of the council debate. (That one went something along the lines of ‘the Jews are trying to kick out all the non-Jews’ etc. etc., for two pages of fairly small text.)
I'd assume the Bondi one also, because I suspect it's not really valid unless continuous and monitored, per the article. Although I'm no expert.
Let people like what they like. It's not hurting anyone. People are weird. Embrace it.
> The eruv is funded entirely by the Jewish community, with a considerable portion of that support coming from wealthy philanthropists.
So, no, you're not paying for this.
I'm quite sure that any religion that wanted to fund the cost and follow the proper permitting procedures could similarly run wires for religious purposes, otherwise NYC would have a First Amendment problem. But I don't think any other religions want to run wires for religious purposes.
And yes, other religions can and do use public space in myriad ways too. As for encroaching on others, the eruv doesn't really encroach on anyone - I'm a secular Jew who has lived in NYC for most of my life, and while I've heard about this before, I've never actually noticed it in person, even when I've probably been within eyesight of it.
Yes, it's public space.
> and encroaching on others?
An eruv wire looks just like any other wire strung on a pole, save it's and thinner, doesn't carry electricity or communications .. so it "encroaches" on your life just as much as any other utility wire .. even less if you spend little time in jewish neighbourhoods that actually string such things.
Also, what are other such examples from other groups? There’s a big difference between theoretical (a matter of law) and the practical (societal acceptance). I’m also not sure of telephone poles being public space, I can only imagine the administrative and legal hurdles to overcome to hang something off one.
Some of your other what if's are addressed in the article, if you're a good faith commenter looking for actual serious issues then there's also 100 years of existence in Manhattan and the wider New York City to draw upon.
Perhaps you could highlight some actual real issues that have cropped up in the last century?
Speaking of which, tell me, would there be so many defensive comments if, in a hypothetical scenario, there was an article written about how every cell tower in the city had an Arabic inscription written (in such small text that it couldn’t be seen) in order to “bless” all the cellular waves emanating from there? I know what my response would be.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0IHYtUPElJ/