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.
I wonder why it seems to circumvent Hells Kitchen?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plesk
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Expires on: Jan 7, 2011
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Man that's 14 years ago
Were these the fabled Geocities Jews that everyone talks about? NYC really made a name for itself
"Hymietown controversy" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Jackson#Relations_with_t...
Did they host this website in the cloud services towering above the plains of Shinar?
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
Yes... well, ... y'all say that like those are "bad things".
Ask a Rebbe what's the worst calamity that can befall him
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.)
See https://christianity.stackexchange.com/questions/105380/is-t...
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.
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.
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!
Let people like what they like. It's not hurting anyone. People are weird. Embrace it.
The other religions would just need to care enough to ask, then install and maintain the wire.
On the other hand, if you tried to cult an adult, most of the time it will fail (though not always).
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.
Havoc•5h ago
You could just not but hey I guess no harm no foul