Some number of years ago, I looked at the map on this page and tried to find the eruv on the west side, near 14th St and a few streets below.
My conclusion was the eruv wasn't there (despite the green checkmark on the website), making this whole thing even more fun than people find it here! :)
I'm not in the city at the moment to check but they seem to take it down or shift it when there's going to be construction in an area. With the Gansevoort Pier rebuild and Little Island it wouldn't surprise me if they shifted where the wire crossed West St further South to avoid the construction.
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.
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?
Would that make it invite a lot from scrutiny from the city and power company? An inert wire, they can look the other way. A live wire is a potential fire hazard and source of EM interference for utilities.
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.
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.
People of faith are finding their way to practice in the context of modern society. As humans we generally try to make sense of the world, and faith is a big part of this community’s world.
Personally, I think that commitment and the thoughtfulness behind it is something to be respected.
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!
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?
That would remove all interpretability as a side effect, wouldn't it? I'm not religious either, but I imagine that would make all sorts of literal claims problematic as measured against modern ethics, and make it impossible for contradictory claims to be resolved.
Personally I do think interpreting rather than following the word of your chosen supreme being is the height of hubris. Intentionally interpreting it such that you can ignore the ostensibly obvious meaning even more so.
Then again if a text allows for ways to skirt the spirit of a prescription then maybe the 'supreme' being that is supposed to have dictated it isn't all that.
The first subversion that occurred was the administrative change that said you can subvert the rules within your home. Then the rabbis proceeded to enlarge the home boundaries.
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.
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.
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.
> any loopholes in the rules were put there on purpose
> 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.
So it's just man who decides "this is a loophole and God wants me to use it". Man decides what God really wants. Man who not only looks for ways around God's word but he also claims God wanted him to do this.
> 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.
Did God ever say man should look for loopholes, exceptions, or reinterpretation of His word? Did God say what you just said or was it you who thinks that you know what God wants better than what He actually passed down as commandments?
I’m not a believer myself, but the response here seems obvious: by putting his law in writing, god invites (even demands) interpretation. What you are calling a “loophole” would just be a perhaps nonobvious but correct interpretation as applied to a particular set of facts.
Seems logical to me, either you believe you can understand the divine will by interpreting holy books or you don't. If you don't believe the divine will is knowable, then why would you follow any religion?
It is my understanding that Catholics believe that Pope can interpret the scriptures, but laypeople can't. Sort of how a Supreme Court judge can interpret the law, but a layperson can't, I guess.
> If you don't believe the divine will is knowable, then why would you follow any religion?
This doesn't follow. If you believe you can just decide how to reinterpret the word of God then you put yourself at the same level as Him and are qualified to follow your own word, rather than a religion.
You follow a religion because you want to be given the word of God to follow. Not the word of a man who pretends he is at the same level as God so his reinterpretation weights the same.
Let me bring it down to earth. If you go for a lecture from Einstein you want to get Einstein's word, not an assistant to interpret "I think he meant we're all relatives man".
If anything you have two choices. 1) You take God's word at face value, no interpretation, no exceptions. 2) You choose to freely interpret everything because God wanted you to.
E.g. In war time emergency you are allowed to carry guns and a radio but the volume must be kept low. This is a very arbitrary interpretation drawing from present needs rather than anything in the word of God. Well and good, anything can be categorized as an exception. If everything can be an exception that you don't need a rule book. The only reason for that book to still exist is so some men can make rules for other.
The problem with looking to a dusty old book full of loopholes for your moral compass becomes evident when you realize that pedophilia is never condemned in the Bible, and as a result the Babylonian Talmud endorses it.
> God knows what He wants and wrote it down exactly like that.
When the word of God has obvious contradictions and inconsistencies what does it mean? Are there little traps that He set up for us mortals? Is God mischievous?
This is answered throughout scriptures. The problem of sin is human's rejection of the goodness of God. We love ourselves more than we love him and in that rejection regularly advantage ourselves at the disadvantage of those around us. In order to solve the problem, we would have to be wiped out. But in the wisdom and goodness of God he planned a way from the beginning to solve our transgressions.
God created all things out of love, and made humans as image bearers to tend to his creation. Out of love he did these things, fully knowing that humans were capable of turning away from God. Humans put themselves before God in the garden and by doing so brought evil into the world. The rest of scripture is God's good plan to turn the world right again, to expel evil from his good creation while also saving those whom bear his image that he loves. He does this by giving them the law to expose the sin of humankind, and sending the 2nd person of the trinity of God (Jesus) to fulfill the law. Jesus offered himself as a sacrifice to pay the guilt of the sins of humans. In doing so bringing true justice and mercy for the evil brought into the world. In his resurrection he conquered death (the ultimate punishment for evil, death is something that was never intended in God's good creation) and setting in motion the process of restoring the world, bringing about new creation in which Jesus is the first fruits. The world will be set right and all sin, evil, and tears wiped away.
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.
>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.
It is absolutely not a "clean break". While Judaism and Christianity are distinct, they are related in that Christianity builds on the Hebrew Scriptures. I think perhaps the best imagery for their relationship is Romans 11 and the olive tree. That takes some studying to fully understand though.
> Judaism isn't Christianity any more than Islam is
All three share common beliefs and values. Christians and Jews worship the same God.
Islam IS closely related to Judaism and Christianity and the Quran explicitly states Muslims worship the same God.
> Trying to apply Christian norms to Jewish practices usually ends up in a pogrom when Christians realize that Judaism isn't Christianity.
BS. Thinking about where we agree and where we disagree leads to greater understanding. Pogroms are motivated by ethnic differences and othering people, not by theology, religious law, or anything thoughtful.
> I have no idea why the right in America has run with the whole "Judaeo-Christian Western Culture"
Is it a right wing concept? The term seems far more widely used to me than that. They see correct to me, because western culture (that of the left, as well as the right!) is a product of Christianity, which is an offshoot of Judaism, so you cannot ignore the Jewish influence.
> when Christianity was founded from the start on not being Judaism and making a clean break with it.
It was far from a clean break, and the intention was not a clean break. There was much argument (see Acts) in early Christianity about which Jewish practices to follow. Christians use Jewish scriptures and prayers and symbolism. The first Christians were Jews, and they would not even have considered themselves converts at that point, just those who followed the promised (to Jews!) messiah.
> 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.
Not true because Judaism and Christian culture had a greater and longer lasting history of geographical and cultural overlap than Christianity and Islam.
On the other hand, all three religions have a lot in common.
> Islam IS closely related to Judaism and Christianity and the Quran explicitly states Muslims worship the same God.
This is like saying that Windows and GNU/Linux are closely related because they both run on PCs, and were both (Windows originally) written in C (thus worship the same "foundations"). :-)
> Christians use Jewish scriptures and prayers and symbolism.
Quite some applications have become ported from Windows to GNU/Linux or vice versa. There is also Wine. Also keep in mind that there exist people who use gcc to compile Windows applications.
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.
> 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.
Abortion is also [mandatory] in Jewish law if the (((preborn baby))) is endangering the (((mother)))’s life, because (((the baby))) is then considered to be a rodef.
What are all those [brackets] and (((parenthesis))) in your posts supposed to mean? Do you need a refresher on HN’s half-assed version of Markdown (https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc) or something?
This poster is a fan of, or maybe actually is himself, the neonazi cartoonist StoneToss; the username is an allusion to the artist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StoneToss
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.
This sounds roughly like the sorts of criticisms Jesus would make of the ‘legalism’ of the Pharisees, by which I mean an excessive emphasis on external acts - going through the motions - to appear to obey the law while neglecting its spiritual purpose. A good example is where the Pharisees criticize Jesus for working on the Sabbath when he heals a man. Another is where the Pharisees bring an adulteress to Jesus, and he remarks that any man who lusts after a woman has already committed adultery in his heart. And then there are the parts where the Pharisees try to trap Jesus, such as when they try to find loopholes to justify divorce.
Post-Christian Judaism following the destruction of the Temple only entrenched this Pharisaism by turning the faith away from one of Temple sacrifice, complete with a Temple priesthood, to one hyperfocused on slicing and dicing the Torah. (The Catholic mass continues the sacrificial liturgy, albeit in a perfect and elevated form; the Mosaic covenant is fulfilled and the perfect sacrifice of Christ - the spotless Lamb of God - becomes the sacrificial lamb for which the prior animal sacrifice was a preparation.)
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.
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.
The latter wouldn’t be valid, as baptism also involves an intentional act. Merely touching holy water doesn’t baptize you. In fact, you don’t even need holy water for baptism, strictly speaking. Any Christian can validly baptize any non-Christian by merely pouring any water over someone’s head and stating that they baptize this person in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. (Whether it is a licit baptism is another question.)
As for the former, that could very well be an example of the absurdities that Pharisaical thinking can lead to. On the one hand, there is the prudential application of the law. On the other, there is the semantic manipulation of the law even to the point where its observance is rendered comically vacuous and nonexistent.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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).
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.
Yes. But not if you set up a timer to do it automatically. (As long as you set up the timer before shabat obviously)
There is also apparently a slightly more technologically minded sub-sect of Judaism which considers only electricity generators that actually burn things (coal, oil, gas, biomass, etc) to be "fire". Battery powered devices are therefore OK, as would be things purely powered by solar power (as the sun is technically not "on fire") nucear power or even hydroelectric power. For the vast majority of electricity grids though, at least a percentage of generation will be from fueled generators and so forbidden on shabat.
In general a lot of scientists who are followers of theistic religions do think there is a religious motivation in their work, it that it is the study of God's creation so I would take it seriously.
I would argue that even a non-believer who studies the sciences in pursuit or truth and appreciates the beauty they reveal is doing God's work.
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.
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.
I doubt very much this is related to any local Jewish population. Most traffic buttons are placebos these days; the pedestrian signals automatically signal alongside the traffic lights.
The exception would be low-pedestrian-volume areas with lights and crossings reserved specifically for pedestrians.
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).
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.
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
> 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.”
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]
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.
I recently heard that an apartment block near me cannot have automatic emergency lighting or fire sprinklers retrofitted incase there is a fire on a Saturday.
Forget about burning to death or falling down pitch-black stairs and breaking your neck, it is apparently more important that electrical circuits are not energized or a valve is not opened on a saturday!
Absolutely absurd.
I am indifferent to people stringing up wires to lie to themselves. They are not "invisible" and the poles they are on are an eye sore in my part of London and also attract negative attention (e.g. people put palestinian flags or stickers etc on them). But whatever.
What I do have an issue is that someone's religious beliefs are preventing basic fire safety protections for everyone else. We in London/UK are rightly getting a lot of fire protections retrofitted to older apartment blocks because of the Grenfell disaster [1] - this is not some hypothetical thing, its a real problem in older buildings and it disgusts me individuals can veto fundamental basic fire protection for everyone else in their building just because of their own personal beliefs, despite being totally willing to go along with this Eruv sleight-of-hand.
> 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.
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").
> 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?
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.
>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.
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.
> 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.
> 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.
I've been eastern orthodox roughly my whole life so I'm familiar with economia. But I don't think that's the correct lens to view this through. I'm not as informed about judaism but I believe most practitioners have a very different relationship to rules and the place of them in their belief.
I do think it's a bad thing to confine women to their homes though. I'm in favor of whatever theological tools individual believers and bodies of believers decide to use to break from this historical norm.
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.
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.
Since people seem to be completely misunderstanding what the point of this is, or why it's even a problem in the first place, let's start with two simple definitions of what's going on:
1. In Jewish law, the definition of "work that is prohibited on the Sabbath" includes "moving objects outside the private domain".
2. The definition of "domain" has three kinds: "public domain" (such as a house), "private domain" (such as a highway), and "vineyard" (a catch-all term for "hard to define whether it's public or private").
Turns out, most of an average city in the world is "vineyard". The Eruv's function is to change the domain within it from "vineyard" to "private domain". That's it. No "fooling God", no loophole, just a simple way to create a legal status. Public domain remains public, private domain remains private, and now the grey area in between gets resolved. And there's a bonus of "there's a nice symbolism in the creation of a unified community boundary".
A rabbi and a priest are sitting next to each other in a plane on the Sabbath. The priest notices that the rabbi keeps on his seat belt for the whole journey. Finally, overcome by curiosity, he asks: "Rabbi, why are you traveling on the Sabbath and why do you keep your seat belt on the whole time?"
The rabbi answers: "I'm not traveling, I'm wearing the plane!"
I'm sorry but I fail to see how what you wrote makes it any different. The wire is nothing more than a hack, like a cheat in a game. The law prohibits work "outside" so let's redefine the meaning of "outside" so we can continue working there.
Google Maps zoomable map I found: https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/viewer?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0...
I wonder why it seems to circumvent Hells Kitchen?
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
Some number of years ago, I looked at the map on this page and tried to find the eruv on the west side, near 14th St and a few streets below.
My conclusion was the eruv wasn't there (despite the green checkmark on the website), making this whole thing even more fun than people find it here! :)
I'm not in the city at the moment to check but they seem to take it down or shift it when there's going to be construction in an area. With the Gansevoort Pier rebuild and Little Island it wouldn't surprise me if they shifted where the wire crossed West St further South to avoid the construction.
"Hell's Kitchen" doesn't sound like something I'd want inside my house.
Sorry, “”Midtown West””
I believe the Hells Kitchen avoids using actual wire because it relies on existing structures like telephone poles and buildings.
Also circumvents Times Square, Penn Station, SOHO and Lower East Side.
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.
See http://eruv.nyc/#map for a more current map (circa 2023).
to keep out vampires?
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?
Seeing as how an eruv doesn’t meet the secular (and therefore the legal) definition of a “home” my guess would be no.
This has nothing to do with secular law.
couldn't they hook up some kind of low voltage or resistance check to confirm continuity. instead of a visual inspection.
and
This is pretty crazy loop hole.
Would that make it invite a lot from scrutiny from the city and power company? An inert wire, they can look the other way. A live wire is a potential fire hazard and source of EM interference for utilities.
With a fraction of a volt and a fraction of a milliamp on it, how many fires you gonna start? No EM if it's DC. C'mon.
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.
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!
Islam does allow women in mosques.
Only in the back LOL
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.
2125: Jews invent the dyson hoop to trick their way out of being Jews.
Religious enclaves are part of American culture.
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.
People of faith are finding their way to practice in the context of modern society. As humans we generally try to make sense of the world, and faith is a big part of this community’s world.
Personally, I think that commitment and the thoughtfulness behind it is something to be respected.
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!
That's just a loophole to justify exploiting loopholes.
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?
That would remove all interpretability as a side effect, wouldn't it? I'm not religious either, but I imagine that would make all sorts of literal claims problematic as measured against modern ethics, and make it impossible for contradictory claims to be resolved.
Personally I do think interpreting rather than following the word of your chosen supreme being is the height of hubris. Intentionally interpreting it such that you can ignore the ostensibly obvious meaning even more so.
Then again if a text allows for ways to skirt the spirit of a prescription then maybe the 'supreme' being that is supposed to have dictated it isn't all that.
Now you know why there are so many Jewish lawyers. Also Catholic.
"Loophole" is a bad term. "Deliberate misunderstanding" is more accurate.
The first subversion that occurred was the administrative change that said you can subvert the rules within your home. Then the rabbis proceeded to enlarge the home boundaries.
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.
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. =)
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.
Not outsmart god, but outsmart yourself straight into hell.
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.
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.
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" ...
It's not a party until JP walks in.
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.
Wait until you hear about Kapparot.
If God is omnipotent and omniscient, how is He fooled by litigation and reinterpretation of His commandments?
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.
> any loopholes in the rules were put there on purpose
> 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.
So it's just man who decides "this is a loophole and God wants me to use it". Man decides what God really wants. Man who not only looks for ways around God's word but he also claims God wanted him to do this.
> 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.
Did God ever say man should look for loopholes, exceptions, or reinterpretation of His word? Did God say what you just said or was it you who thinks that you know what God wants better than what He actually passed down as commandments?
I’m not a believer myself, but the response here seems obvious: by putting his law in writing, god invites (even demands) interpretation. What you are calling a “loophole” would just be a perhaps nonobvious but correct interpretation as applied to a particular set of facts.
> but the response here seems obvious: by putting his law in writing, god invites (even demands) interpretation.
You, just a man, purport to know what God invites and even demands us to do.
Seems logical to me, either you believe you can understand the divine will by interpreting holy books or you don't. If you don't believe the divine will is knowable, then why would you follow any religion?
It is my understanding that Catholics believe that Pope can interpret the scriptures, but laypeople can't. Sort of how a Supreme Court judge can interpret the law, but a layperson can't, I guess.
There's a long tradition of rabbinical interpretation, not just random believers making up what they want.
> If you don't believe the divine will is knowable, then why would you follow any religion?
This doesn't follow. If you believe you can just decide how to reinterpret the word of God then you put yourself at the same level as Him and are qualified to follow your own word, rather than a religion.
You follow a religion because you want to be given the word of God to follow. Not the word of a man who pretends he is at the same level as God so his reinterpretation weights the same.
Let me bring it down to earth. If you go for a lecture from Einstein you want to get Einstein's word, not an assistant to interpret "I think he meant we're all relatives man".
If anything you have two choices. 1) You take God's word at face value, no interpretation, no exceptions. 2) You choose to freely interpret everything because God wanted you to.
E.g. In war time emergency you are allowed to carry guns and a radio but the volume must be kept low. This is a very arbitrary interpretation drawing from present needs rather than anything in the word of God. Well and good, anything can be categorized as an exception. If everything can be an exception that you don't need a rule book. The only reason for that book to still exist is so some men can make rules for other.
I’m not sure whether it’s possible to read a text without any interpretation. I don’t think you can derive any meaning without interpretation.
The problem with looking to a dusty old book full of loopholes for your moral compass becomes evident when you realize that pedophilia is never condemned in the Bible, and as a result the Babylonian Talmud endorses it.
All religions are absurd, don’t think too hard about them - just follow.
> God knows what He wants and wrote it down exactly like that.
When the word of God has obvious contradictions and inconsistencies what does it mean? Are there little traps that He set up for us mortals? Is God mischievous?
> the word of God has obvious contradictions and inconsistencies
Such as?
https://www.bartehrman.com/contradictions-in-the-bible/
"Problem of evil".
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_evil
This is answered throughout scriptures. The problem of sin is human's rejection of the goodness of God. We love ourselves more than we love him and in that rejection regularly advantage ourselves at the disadvantage of those around us. In order to solve the problem, we would have to be wiped out. But in the wisdom and goodness of God he planned a way from the beginning to solve our transgressions.
God created all things out of love, and made humans as image bearers to tend to his creation. Out of love he did these things, fully knowing that humans were capable of turning away from God. Humans put themselves before God in the garden and by doing so brought evil into the world. The rest of scripture is God's good plan to turn the world right again, to expel evil from his good creation while also saving those whom bear his image that he loves. He does this by giving them the law to expose the sin of humankind, and sending the 2nd person of the trinity of God (Jesus) to fulfill the law. Jesus offered himself as a sacrifice to pay the guilt of the sins of humans. In doing so bringing true justice and mercy for the evil brought into the world. In his resurrection he conquered death (the ultimate punishment for evil, death is something that was never intended in God's good creation) and setting in motion the process of restoring the world, bringing about new creation in which Jesus is the first fruits. The world will be set right and all sin, evil, and tears wiped away.
(fixed some grammatical errors)
That isn’t a Scriptural example, but a general criticism.
In any case, the problem of evil is not the showstopper some think it is [0][1].
[0] https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/12/4/268
[1] https://www.newadvent.org/summa/1049.htm
The word is not “fooled” but ignored. By that metric the question is: How is man fearlessly ignoring an all powerful God?
“They fool no one but themselves.” - God
Has any rabbi ever put together the amount of calamities that befell the Jews with constantly trying to pull fast ones on God?
Have you read the Book of Daniel? The full Septuagint version? Bel & the Dragon, chapter 14? The Vindication of Susannah?
Pretty much half of the Tanakh’s narratives are focused on that theme.
“He who sits in the heavens laughs.”
“What is this baaaa-ing I hear...?” — Amalekite property and population not thoroughly destroyed
“Do you do well...?” — Yahweh to Job, to Jonah, to Moses, et. al.
The priests of Ba’al vs. Elijah at Mt. Carmel
“That man is you!” — Samuel to David, regarding his proto-Machiavelli seduction and murder maneuvers
“Let us [Elohim] go down [to Earth] and see what men are doing now.” Genesis 11
The idolatry of Jamnia — actually that one turned out OK
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.
>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.
It is absolutely not a "clean break". While Judaism and Christianity are distinct, they are related in that Christianity builds on the Hebrew Scriptures. I think perhaps the best imagery for their relationship is Romans 11 and the olive tree. That takes some studying to fully understand though.
> Judaism isn't Christianity any more than Islam is
All three share common beliefs and values. Christians and Jews worship the same God.
Islam IS closely related to Judaism and Christianity and the Quran explicitly states Muslims worship the same God.
> Trying to apply Christian norms to Jewish practices usually ends up in a pogrom when Christians realize that Judaism isn't Christianity.
BS. Thinking about where we agree and where we disagree leads to greater understanding. Pogroms are motivated by ethnic differences and othering people, not by theology, religious law, or anything thoughtful.
> I have no idea why the right in America has run with the whole "Judaeo-Christian Western Culture"
Is it a right wing concept? The term seems far more widely used to me than that. They see correct to me, because western culture (that of the left, as well as the right!) is a product of Christianity, which is an offshoot of Judaism, so you cannot ignore the Jewish influence.
> when Christianity was founded from the start on not being Judaism and making a clean break with it.
It was far from a clean break, and the intention was not a clean break. There was much argument (see Acts) in early Christianity about which Jewish practices to follow. Christians use Jewish scriptures and prayers and symbolism. The first Christians were Jews, and they would not even have considered themselves converts at that point, just those who followed the promised (to Jews!) messiah.
> 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.
Not true because Judaism and Christian culture had a greater and longer lasting history of geographical and cultural overlap than Christianity and Islam.
On the other hand, all three religions have a lot in common.
> Islam IS closely related to Judaism and Christianity and the Quran explicitly states Muslims worship the same God.
This is like saying that Windows and GNU/Linux are closely related because they both run on PCs, and were both (Windows originally) written in C (thus worship the same "foundations"). :-)
> Christians use Jewish scriptures and prayers and symbolism.
Quite some applications have become ported from Windows to GNU/Linux or vice versa. There is also Wine. Also keep in mind that there exist people who use gcc to compile Windows applications.
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.
> 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.
They are supposed to ignore these rules if a life is at stake. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pikuach_nefesh
Abortion is also [mandatory] in Jewish law if the (((preborn baby))) is endangering the (((mother)))’s life, because (((the baby))) is then considered to be a rodef.
What are all those [brackets] and (((parenthesis))) in your posts supposed to mean? Do you need a refresher on HN’s half-assed version of Markdown (https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc) or something?
It's an anti-semitic dog whistle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_parentheses
This poster is a fan of, or maybe actually is himself, the neonazi cartoonist StoneToss; the username is an allusion to the artist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StoneToss
He's not "fooled" - this is within the rules he set.
Simple answer: he isn’t.
https://godisimaginary.com/
I think the thinking is that God appreciates the hustle
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.
You can’t convince people with logic I’m afraid.
This sounds roughly like the sorts of criticisms Jesus would make of the ‘legalism’ of the Pharisees, by which I mean an excessive emphasis on external acts - going through the motions - to appear to obey the law while neglecting its spiritual purpose. A good example is where the Pharisees criticize Jesus for working on the Sabbath when he heals a man. Another is where the Pharisees bring an adulteress to Jesus, and he remarks that any man who lusts after a woman has already committed adultery in his heart. And then there are the parts where the Pharisees try to trap Jesus, such as when they try to find loopholes to justify divorce.
Post-Christian Judaism following the destruction of the Temple only entrenched this Pharisaism by turning the faith away from one of Temple sacrifice, complete with a Temple priesthood, to one hyperfocused on slicing and dicing the Torah. (The Catholic mass continues the sacrificial liturgy, albeit in a perfect and elevated form; the Mosaic covenant is fulfilled and the perfect sacrifice of Christ - the spotless Lamb of God - becomes the sacrificial lamb for which the prior animal sacrifice was a preparation.)
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.
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.
How do you check if the line is not broken? And when it is broken, what do you do then?
The loop can be anywhere, not just the north pole :)
The latter wouldn’t be valid, as baptism also involves an intentional act. Merely touching holy water doesn’t baptize you. In fact, you don’t even need holy water for baptism, strictly speaking. Any Christian can validly baptize any non-Christian by merely pouring any water over someone’s head and stating that they baptize this person in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. (Whether it is a licit baptism is another question.)
As for the former, that could very well be an example of the absurdities that Pharisaical thinking can lead to. On the one hand, there is the prudential application of the law. On the other, there is the semantic manipulation of the law even to the point where its observance is rendered comically vacuous and nonexistent.
So I could adversarially baptise people with a water cannon like they use for riots? What about cloud-seeding?
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.
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.
I see. Thanks for the explanation. Does that mean the old testament is taken literally as well?
God didn't write the texts.. people did.
I mean, even apart from the fact god doesn't exist.
Don't interfer with their LARPG. :-)
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.
“God hates this one weird trick…”
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.
There are many similar tricks.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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).
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.
Starting a particle accelerator would be forbidden, as the electricity alone would be akin to starting a fire.
Yes. But not if you set up a timer to do it automatically. (As long as you set up the timer before shabat obviously)
There is also apparently a slightly more technologically minded sub-sect of Judaism which considers only electricity generators that actually burn things (coal, oil, gas, biomass, etc) to be "fire". Battery powered devices are therefore OK, as would be things purely powered by solar power (as the sun is technically not "on fire") nucear power or even hydroelectric power. For the vast majority of electricity grids though, at least a percentage of generation will be from fueled generators and so forbidden on shabat.
This is not a mainstream view though.
In general a lot of scientists who are followers of theistic religions do think there is a religious motivation in their work, it that it is the study of God's creation so I would take it seriously.
I would argue that even a non-believer who studies the sciences in pursuit or truth and appreciates the beauty they reveal is doing God's work.
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.
But did he write down anything?
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.
I doubt very much this is related to any local Jewish population. Most traffic buttons are placebos these days; the pedestrian signals automatically signal alongside the traffic lights.
The exception would be low-pedestrian-volume areas with lights and crossings reserved specifically for pedestrians.
Could be coincidence. Many of those buttons are "placebo buttons" and aren't actually hooked up, particularly at busy intersections.
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).
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.
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
I've been a "Sabbath Goy" a couple of times for some of my friends :)
> 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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabbos_goy#Notable_examples
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]
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.
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.
I recently heard that an apartment block near me cannot have automatic emergency lighting or fire sprinklers retrofitted incase there is a fire on a Saturday.
Forget about burning to death or falling down pitch-black stairs and breaking your neck, it is apparently more important that electrical circuits are not energized or a valve is not opened on a saturday!
Absolutely absurd.
I am indifferent to people stringing up wires to lie to themselves. They are not "invisible" and the poles they are on are an eye sore in my part of London and also attract negative attention (e.g. people put palestinian flags or stickers etc on them). But whatever.
What I do have an issue is that someone's religious beliefs are preventing basic fire safety protections for everyone else. We in London/UK are rightly getting a lot of fire protections retrofitted to older apartment blocks because of the Grenfell disaster [1] - this is not some hypothetical thing, its a real problem in older buildings and it disgusts me individuals can veto fundamental basic fire protection for everyone else in their building just because of their own personal beliefs, despite being totally willing to go along with this Eruv sleight-of-hand.
Fire does not respect religion.
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grenfell_Tower_fire
Ah, but it would be forbidden to start the fire on the Sabbath, so there would be no need for sprinklers!
So turning a key to open a door isn't work, but pushing an elevator button is?
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
> 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.
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.
We are talking about religion here. Don't try to rationalise it.
> 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?
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.
>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.
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.
> 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
> 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.
> 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.
I've been eastern orthodox roughly my whole life so I'm familiar with economia. But I don't think that's the correct lens to view this through. I'm not as informed about judaism but I believe most practitioners have a very different relationship to rules and the place of them in their belief.
I do think it's a bad thing to confine women to their homes though. I'm in favor of whatever theological tools individual believers and bodies of believers decide to use to break from this historical norm.
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.
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.
Two arbitrary rules that cancel each other out
You could just not but hey I guess no harm no foul
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Anti-semetic or anti-Orthodox? Though I guess the former can come from lumping together different folks as a unified mass.
Thinking this is silly is a critique of the religion of Judaism, not the Jewish people.
You seem to have a very loose definition of anti-semitism
“It is a trick” says the former Minister for Education:
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0IHYtUPElJ/
IMHO this is an attempt to legally claim some rights over that land in the future
Since people seem to be completely misunderstanding what the point of this is, or why it's even a problem in the first place, let's start with two simple definitions of what's going on:
1. In Jewish law, the definition of "work that is prohibited on the Sabbath" includes "moving objects outside the private domain".
2. The definition of "domain" has three kinds: "public domain" (such as a house), "private domain" (such as a highway), and "vineyard" (a catch-all term for "hard to define whether it's public or private").
Turns out, most of an average city in the world is "vineyard". The Eruv's function is to change the domain within it from "vineyard" to "private domain". That's it. No "fooling God", no loophole, just a simple way to create a legal status. Public domain remains public, private domain remains private, and now the grey area in between gets resolved. And there's a bonus of "there's a nice symbolism in the creation of a unified community boundary".
A rabbi and a priest are sitting next to each other in a plane on the Sabbath. The priest notices that the rabbi keeps on his seat belt for the whole journey. Finally, overcome by curiosity, he asks: "Rabbi, why are you traveling on the Sabbath and why do you keep your seat belt on the whole time?"
The rabbi answers: "I'm not traveling, I'm wearing the plane!"
I love this notion that apparently god shares an appreciation for going against the spirit of the law on technicalities.
I'm sorry but I fail to see how what you wrote makes it any different. The wire is nothing more than a hack, like a cheat in a game. The law prohibits work "outside" so let's redefine the meaning of "outside" so we can continue working there.
Aah! Now I see the relevance to HN.
Perhaps what’s inside or outside is the intrinsic concept of private versus public, and cities without such a wire are incomplete?