As on Orthodox Jew, while I don't have anything against this and it sounds like a fun hobby project, I don't like that it misleads regarding what Jewish law actually requires.
As several others have mentioned, there is absolutely no problem with keeping a server running on the sabbath - computers aren't Jews (Jewish law only expects Jews to keep the sabbath). If it's Jews working to generate the electricity (most "modern" or "yeshivish" Orthodox Jews don't believe this is a problem; I don't know what fraction of "ultra-" Orthodox Jews disagree with that), any public cloud outside of Israel should suffice. If you're concerned with electricity, why not worry that Jews may be working to maintain the server's internet connection (again, this is trivially solved by not hosting it in Israel - all it takes is a non-Jewish majority to provide a reasonable presumption that the workers probably aren't Jewish)?
If you're worried about Jewish users accessing it on the sabbath (in my opinion the least far-fetched concern, but not one addressed by the site), the complete solution would be to shut it down for ~49 hours every week starting from ~sunset on Friday in east Asia - this doesn't require using batteries or really anything special about the site's hardware or even software.
Finally, why call it a 'kosher' search engine when almost anyone interested in such a thing would understand that as being about filtering the search results?
Edit: If you assume that using electricity and/or internet that are maintained by Jews on the sabbath is a problem, I guess you might be able to make a case for avoiding indexing sites in Israel or at all during the sabbath, since then you'd be benefitting indirectly from the work of the Jews that maintained the infrastructure - however, I think it's safe to assume that the vast majority of the internet is not served using infrastructure actively supported by Jews during the sabbath so even assuming you're concerned about this, the final answer would probably still be that indexing during the sabbath is fine.
Just random observation - when I visited Israel I was astounded how nearly complete the sabbath shutdown is. In the US, the only day that comes close is Christmas Day and it’s still not even close. My wife and I struggled to find dinner and drove around for an hour or so until we found an Arab place that was open. Pretty much the only place in town that was open.
Then sunset comes and everyone comes out. If you travel to Israel, plan for it!
I live in Israel and always felt terrible for tourists who accidentally got stuck! Depending where you are you can end up with no public transportation, no grocery stores, restaurants, shops, museums, anything!
My wife and I arrived in France the same day as a holiday. All the grocery stores and restaurants were closed and we had absolutely no food - we spent an hour driving/walking from place to place. Defeated and on our way back to our car to go to our rental, our savior appeared.
I'm confused, is there a usage of the word 'kosher' that isn't safe at work? Are you worried that they may think you're Jewish and discriminate against you?
p.s. You may know this, but from the religious POV, you are either Jewish or not, there's no 1/8th Jewish. If your mother was Jewish, you are too, all the way up your family tree. Either that or if you converted. :)
There is no "the religious POV" and for some purposes, it seems practically and morally compelling to use a similar definition to what persecutors of Jews use, rather than a traditional religious one.
To some extent they do, and as I mentioned it's both a matter of practicality and morality. There's obviously a problem with saying that people who are or may be persecuted as part of a group, are excluded from help by that group if they don't belong due to some technical definition.
According to the Wikipedia article on Israel's Law of Return, in 1970, it was extended to people with one Jewish grandparent or married to a Jew.
"There are several explanations for the decision to be so inclusive. One is that as the Nuremberg Laws did not use a halakhic definition in its definition of "Who is a Jew", the Law of Return definition for citizenship eligibility is not halakhic either. Another explanation is the 1968 wave of immigration from Poland, following an antisemitic campaign by the government. These immigrants were very assimilated and had many non-Jewish family members."
As I understand it, the strict definition of Jewish descent is purely. You have to go back around 100-200k years to reach the most recent common matrilineal ancestor, and I'm reasonably confident she was not Jewish.
How many ancestors you have it just a function of how many generations you look back, and with each successive generations it doubles. At some point in the past, the entire world is your ancestor.
B&H photo (run by Orthodox Jews out of NYC) stops accepting orders during the sabbath in their time zone. You can keep browsing, but you can’t generate work for them. This seems like a decent compromise, and it’s definitely not hurting their business.
I would question that conclusion. There have been times in the past I've wanted to order from B&H, but could not because it was on the Sabbath. In most cases, I just keep looking until I found the item on a different website.
I'm sure they consider the loss of business worthwhile to comply with their religion, but there is a cost.
Chick-Fil-A does the same thing domestically with their respective Sabbath on Sunday and it's reported to cost them over $1 billion a year in lost sales. Remembering the Sabbath day to keep it holy is extremely expensive, especially when the business is online and serving a worldwide customer base.
It may be less than you suspect because the regular bubble in their ordering pipeline might give them time to deal with suppliers, maintain stock, improve their website, maintain systems, relax and refocus, etc.
I doubt it works out better than not doing it at least economically, but there may be enough benefit to offset most of the costs.
The times I've run into the B&H sabbath outage, I just waited and ordered later. There are more thing in my life than just ordering things as fast as possible, and I respect a business for having other priorities. (Plus, B&H is just generally a really good supplier)
>It may be less than you suspect because the regular bubble in their ordering pipeline might give them time to deal with suppliers, maintain stock, improve their website, maintain systems, relax and refocus, etc.
the thing is, the bubble they have includes not doing anything on this list :)
Not during the time but presumably the lack of orders during that period results in reduced work the following day. Otherwise, they'd be like many businesses: closed on sunday, but handing sunday's orders on monday.
> There are more thing in my life than just ordering things as fast as possible.
On a purely personal level, it's not so much the speed as it is the need to get it done and move on with my life. If I need to order something, I want to just do it and forget about it for a few days (or whatever) until it arrives in the mail. If I have to come back later, that's one more thing for my mental to-do list.
This is actually my favorite thing about B&H, because I'll be impulsively browsing on a Friday night or Saturday online, and sure enough coming back one day later is enough to re-evaluate whether I did really need to have that gadget.
I also find it charming that they've managed to become a massive retailer while sticking to their religious values, although there are plenty of examples of that in other chains in the US that don't sit as well with me, personally (Chick-fil-A, Hobby Lobby, etc).
It's extra impressive considering that not only are they closed on the Sabbath, but also the major and mid-importance Jewish holidays. Count on them being shut down for weeks during September and October.
Every single time I've walked by the physical store location in NYC on a Saturday (or holiday), there's always people approaching the entrance expecting it to be open. They're certainly losing business at the store too.
B&H also has a stellar reputation for service, support, and selection. Lots of people will choose to wait another day in order to do business with someone they trust.
Thank you all for participating in this conversation. We are aware our Sabbath schedule is an inconvenience, however brief, for a few. We regret the inconvenience. It is also, based on our owner's beliefs, unavoidable. -- Henry Posner / B&H Photo-Video
My understanding is that making a non–Jewish person work on the Sabbath is also forbidden. Granted, this was just a schoolmate of mine in Brooklyn saying this but I have no reason to doubt the claim.
It does seem like electricity gets a huge carveout though as long as the initial startup wasn't initiated on the Sabbath. One sees that with Sabbath elevators where all the buttons are on and you can walk on without pushing a button and walk off at the correct floor. It still consumes electricity, you're just not making a spark to initiate the work.
consuming electricity isn't a problem. doing things defined as "work" is a problem.
work is in quotes, as it doesn't mean doing a job. it also doesn't mean the physics meanin.
As the simplest example: take rabbis in a synagogue. They are doing their jobs.
Another more complicated example: there's no fundamental difference between what an individual can do to prepare a meal they are serving on the sabbath and what caterers can do. Both can't do things defined as "work", but obviously the caterers are doing their job.
Then there's is the whole interplay between biblical law and rabbinic law
To elaborate on another comment: Jewish law is seldom concerned with absolute certainty; it much more often is a question of degrees of doubt. In many cases two disjoint causes for reasonable doubt about facts that would impact the whether a certain action is forbidden are sufficient to render it permitted. When coming from a mindset of mathematical/logical proof, it can seem like "fuzzy logic" or, as you said, innumerate, but in actuality it's typically more like a hypothesis and the body of evidence that supports it (and depending on the specific hypothesis, a higher or lower degree of certainty may be considered sufficient).
>You have three pieces of meat, two kosher, one not. You lose track of which is which. Can you eat them? Answer, according to (my memory of Sternberg’s account of) the Talmud: Each individual piece of meat has a 2/3 chance of being kosher. So if you choose one of them and ask “Is this kosher?”, a “yes” answer gives you a 2/3 chance to be right and a “no” answer gives you only a 1/3 chance to be right. A 2/3 chance is better than a 1/3 chance, so you should say yes. Repeat three times and you’re allowed to eat all of the meat.
>There is much that is troubling here, because that strategy actually gives you a 100% chance of eating a non-kosher piece of meat, so it matters whether you inquire about each piece separately or whether you inquire about all three as a group. I’m not sure what principle the Talmud invokes to settle that issue. But that’s not the point that concerns us here. The point here is that we’re instructed to focus strictly on probabilities, without regard to any measure of how bad it would be to be wrong in either direction.
>You’re traveling to town with a left pocket full of coins designated for charity and a right pocket full of coins designated for your personal expenses. (In certain circumstances, you’re required to designate these coins in advance, and cannot substitute a coin from one pocket for a coin from the other, even if they’re otherwise identical.) You fall off your horse, and the coins all spill out into one great heap.
>If there were more coins in your left pocket to begin with, then each individual coin has a greater-than-fifty-percent chance to be a charity coin, so each individual coin must be given to charity. If there were more in your right pocket, you can spend all the coins on yourself.
>You take in an abandoned child. Should you raise him as a Jew? It depends on whether he was born as a Jew. Suppose you don’t have that information. Answer: If the majority of your neighbors are Jewish, you assume he’s Jewish. If not, not.
>(A later commentary amends this prescription by directing your attention not to the majority of your neighbors but to a majority of those neighbors who are of such character that they would abandon a child.)
So I could start a Kosher meat factory that mixed in non Kosher patties 49.999% of the time and then all the meat would be Kosher? Sounds like a great way to launder my non-Kosher meat!
for the record, no, it can't be done purposefully. i.e. all students of jewish law no inherently the concepts of a priori and posteriori. i.e. many things are prohibited a priori (i.e. to purposefully do), but would be permitted posteriori.
A simple example example is one can't mix milk and meat at all apriori. But if accidentally mixed a small amount of milk into a meat dish (example: one wasn't thinking and took a spoon directly from a milk pot directly into a meat dish), it would be permitted posteriori. But that's only because the act wasn't intentional.
Outside of Israel, there are enough people of non-Jewish faith to be able to arrange labor schedules around individual needs. I work in a diverse company with a number of co-workers who observe Sabbath, and it has never been any hardship to arrange on-call schedules so they will never be paged on their day of rest.
on the flips side, observant jews in tech companies sometimes struggle with this in Israel, as the on call people who take over for them will still be jews. Even if said jew doesn't mind not observing the sabbath, the observant jew doesn't want them to do it on their behalf (so to speak).
It's about the degree of certainty. OP isn't doing the work directly and hasn't hired them to specifically do it. They might not. They also are probably not Jewish. Two doubts and it's not a violation of a d'Rabbanan prohibition. (Note I am not orthodox nor a rabbi so this explanation may be mangled).
Compared to secular best practices, here we're working with different logic and different epistemology, among other things. A religious worldview not just about agreeing to this or that proposition.
...so, any theories as to who made this and what the purpose was? I mean, maybe it is just a hobby project, but it's a bit of an odd one if the requirements that don't exist at all.
Inclusive or, I assume (from my limited understanding, Judaism considers some rules to only apply to Jews, so it would make sense to consider Jews and Gentiles separately here).
Total side note, but I’ve noticed that programmers (including myself) are more prone to read English or as xor than, for want of a better term, normal people. Not sure why this is.
That's correct; I updated my original comment to mention that the Jewish laws of the sabbath aren't meant to apply to non-Jews (there is, however, a large and rather entertaining body of practical discussion of under what conditions, and how explicitly, one can ask a non-Jew to do things on the sabbath that would be forbidden for the asker themself to do).
> practical discussion of under what conditions, and how explicitly, one can ask a non-Jew to do things on the sabbath that would be forbidden for the asker themself to do
If I remember well, one option is "if someone were to do this job, he wouldn't regret it later" (as in he would be paid for that, but that can't be explicitly mentioned).
in practice, things that are biblibcally prohibited, one cannot ask a non jew to do. only things that are rabbinically prohibited would one be permitted to do (i.e. same people who prohibited, also created a backdoor to permit. I'd also note that in practice its a bit more complicated than this simplification).
Of course one then might get into a debate whether a particular action is rabbinically or bibilically prohibited.
> Total side note, but I’ve noticed that programmers (including myself) are more prone to read English or as xor than, for want of a better term, normal people. Not sure why this is.
The English terms 'or' and 'and' used in normal, non-mathematical speech are far closer to the set operations, not boolean propositional logic.
The set operations they refer to are of course context dependent. For example, in a question context, 'or' is asking for the selection of one set or another. In a statement context, it usually indicates that it refers to a member of either set, unless used with the qualifier 'either' in which case the statement once again requires the choice of one set or another.
That's interesting. My observation is almost the reverse — the casual English default for "or" seems to be xor, and only people with some exposure to formal logic know it can be ambiguous.
I find some reinforcement for that in almost every logic book I've ever read using the casual English parsing of "or" to introduce the notion of inclusive or. But it's been a while, I may be misremembering.
Yeah, maybe I misstated; 'normal people' are more likely to read English 'or' contextually (in this case, for instance, clearly it's not meant to mean that Jews aren't people), while programmers are more likely to treat it as 'must mean exclusive or' (maybe precisely because explicit inclusive or is introduced with reference to it).
I'm still not sure what distinction you think I made... what I intended was:
1. All Jews are people
2. Computers are not people
3. Therefore computers are not Jews
As a Jewish citizen of both Israel and the US, I understand that it can be hard to exist as a minority in your own country, and I'm sure it's harder in Israel, which doesn't have separation of religion & state.
it even worse than that for people trying to take issue with you. if one has a problem with the statement "people or jews", one would generally assume this removes "jews" from the group of "people". and hence jews aren't people.
I think this sort of thing reads as absurd in Christian majority cultures mostly because mainstream Christianity does not currently have many restrictions which inconvenience people day to day. Back when it did, they did stuff that was at least as weird; did you know that both beavers and certain types of geese were regionally considered to be fish to get around the no meat on Fridays thing?
> mostly because mainstream Christianity does not currently have many restrictions which inconvenience people day to day.
Note however that Islam has similar restrictions but an entirely different way to deal with them (respecting the spirit as well as their letter). My pet theory about the approach of the three main Abrahamic religions to restrictions:
1) Christianity: (loosely) respects the spirit but not the letter;
2) Islam: respects both the spirit and the letter.
There do seem to be cases where Islam is more willing to adapt the rules, though. For instance, most halal meat in Europe at least is now slaughtered with stunning, and this appears to be acceptable to most local Muslim authorities provided that the stunning is done in a way that is unlikely to cause permanent injury (so, no captive bolt guns etc). This is arguably staying within the spirit of the rules (the animal isn't dead when slaughtered, and won't die if you don't slaughter it), but not the letter (in that it's an addition to the prescribed procedure). As far as I know this is _never_ acceptable for kosher slaughter.
> This is arguably staying within the spirit of the rules (the animal isn't dead when slaughtered, and won't die if you don't slaughter it), but not the letter (in that it's an addition to the prescribed procedure).
It's staying within the spirit and the letter. The letter never dictates NOT to stun the animal. As a matter of fact, there are narrations that order us to make it as easy as possible on the animal being slaughtered. This falls perfectly inline with the sprit and letter.
Sorry if I came across as apopleptic - I'm mostly not at all confident that most gentiles or secular Jews would readily identify it as satire - when I clicked on the link, I expected to see something real.
I'm hoping that it is something more warmer than satire, that the author is willingly embracing self aware absurdity. The whole thing, from the choice of domain name jewjewjew.com, with the ridiculous triple repetition, to me suggests a person with a wonderful and kind sense of humour. If that's not what this is, then it's something so strange I don't think I'm going to get my head around it.
Also nothing to do with "Judaism", rather more of the ludicrousness of Eastern European rabbinical orthodoxy holier than though attitude that made them the most hated social group in Israel, mostly due to their blatant hypocrisy (i.e. object the legalization of prostitution in Israel, while they are the largest beneficiaries of it by percentage). Sort of kidnapped and suffocated to the death the essence of Judaism and reduced it into a cult.
B&H Video is shut for a day every week but also disallows online checkout. I've always found that interesting, like the website is an extension of their beliefs.
> Online checkout will be closed while we observe Shabbat from 8:15pm ET Fri until 9:45pm ET Sat. Although online ordering is unavailable, you may still add items to your cart or wish list.
I did my degree in Photography and spent money I don't care to sum up at that store both online and in person the few times I was in the City.
I always found their stance to be one of integrity instead of self-righteousness. They are situated in a little enclave - see HN articles about the Eruv, etc. - and are quite genuine and not exclusive to their Jewishness, but simply have a community and a point of view.
The no-shabbat-order-processing feels less like "we don't make the machines make money for us" than it feels like "Look, you can shop online, but we're not gonna load it and ship it until we get back from our families."
Like how I interpret the intentions of that commandment, it forces Photographers to think ahead and plan for that service outage. I may or may not encourage Rest, but again, the commandments weren't for the Egyptians.
> The no-shabbat-order-processing feels less like "we don't make the machines make money for us" than it feels like "Look, you can shop online, but we're not gonna load it and ship it until we get back from our families."
That interpretation doesn't make much sense to me. Unless there's a human actually validating each order individually right as you checkout, you could just have a note saying there won't be any shipping on saturday. Or even that orders only ship mon-fri. And nobody would find it surprising.
Other commenters' hypothesis (against doing business on shabbat) make a lot more sense, a checkout would in fact be "doing business" even if the business does that on its own it's still in your name and under your responsibility.
As someone who works at a 24/7 retail company, I can say that if the orders stop flowing, somebody gets called to fix it (even if nobody's boxing it right then and there). B&H has it set up so that no outage will trigger a pager and I'm betting that if the site went down on Sabbath it would stay down.
I have to believe that they have spent a great deal of time considering Talmudic law and all that (I am non-jewish, so I am not aware of the niceties).
It may have to do with the "making money" thing, during Shabbat.
I don't know why, but I find it absolutely hilarious, in a good way. It's such a weird thing to build, but it gives you that fuzzy old-school internet vibe.
There are some "kosher search engines", to go with "kosher phones" in Israel. This is an ultra-Orthodox thing. Basic kosher phones are "no Internet, no text", but that's so restrictive that there are now kosher smartphones. These often have a very short list of allowed sites. Stack Exchange explains: [1]
> New search results are calculated on Tuesday of each week. Nothing new is created during Shabbat. You are served static cached data.
I've been interested in the idea of having a user-facing website that generates static copies of its dynamic content on a set schedule. Do any of you have more examples of this?
About this particular search engine, though, the search results I received from it either were not very relevant or the service did not display information that made them seem relevant (such as a snippet of text from the page — it did this occasionally but not always).
I've been interested in the idea of having a user-facing website that generates static copies of its dynamic content on a set schedule. Do any of you have more examples of this?
> This computer does not physically manipulated electricity.
Sophistry.
The whole purpose of a computer is to manipulate electricity, it is what electronic computers do.
Perhaps it really is kosher (I have no idea, I'm not Jewish and I'm not well informed about what kosher really means) but whatever it is or is not, it is quite certainly not true that 'This computer does not physically manipulated electricity.'
Perhaps the author actually meant something else, if so I'm curious as to what that might be.
Presumably the inclusion of the superfluous word physically means something to the author. To me (B. Sc. Physics) there is no need to include the word because all manipulation of electricity is physical, there is no other kind.
one can start a fire before the sabbath and benefit from its heat. One can't stoke the fire (to make it hotter) or extinguish it. On the flips side (as an example only) if I was sitting around a camp fire that I lit before the sabbath with a non jew, and he wanted to extinguish it or stoke it for his own benefit (I might benefit as well, but he's supposed to be doing it for his own benefit) that would be permitted.
apply to a computer: one can let it keep on doing what it is doing, but he owner wouldn't manipulate it.
Does anyone know if there is some significance to it being calculated on Tuesday? Since Shabbat is from Friday to Saturday I would have picked Sunday or Monday.
"In Judaism, on the other hand, Tuesday is considered a particularly lucky day, because in Bereshit (parashah), known in the Christian tradition as the first chapters of Genesis, the paragraph about this day contains the phrase "it was good" twice."
Assuming everyone else don't work on the Shabbat, there should be nothing new to calculate on Sunday, compared to Thursday. You can't use the site on Friday to Saturday yourself, because Shabbat, so indexing on Thursday perhaps also doesn't make sense, because no one will see it before Saturday. Tuesday is sort of in between... It's weird, why not do the calculating all other days than Friday and Saturday?
> why not do the calculating all other days than Friday and Saturday?
Note that assuming UTC reference point you need to bleed into sunday: Kiribati is on UTC+14, and you need to wait until some time after sunset (stars should be visible).
Though that makes me wonder how shabbat works in northerly latitude, how does shabbat work within the arctic circle?
Been there, done that. The commonly accepted ruling is to take the time that the sun is at its lowest point as simultaneous sunset/nightfall/midnight/dawn/sunrise (each of which has its own significance in Jewish law). So shabbat is from around midnight Friday to midnight Saturday.
It also means one can pray the afternoon, evening, and morning prayers one after the other.
yes, basically doing things from wed on that you know will have issues on the sabbath is problematic.
i.e. there's a concept that if one is going to get on a boat that is going to be sailing over the sabbath, one should get on sunday-tuesday. not wed-friday (saturday would obviously be an issue).
I have never understood trying to get in to heaven on a technicality. Anyway, none of my business! All power to them (except during Shabbat of course.)
Kosher laws have nothing to do with getting into heaven. They're about community. Jews are the people who keep kosher. It's not a sin to fail to keep kosher. You're not jeopardizing the afterlife; Judaism puts far less focus on the afterlife than we're used to swimming in a Christian world view.
That does sometimes lead to a weird performative "more kosher than thou", which I don't believe is really healthy but every community has equivalent behavior. The finger wagging isn't about protecting their immortal soul, but merely making yourself to be the best at the arbitrary rules and therefore somehow to be most beloved by the community.
That is not really true of most Orthodox Jews. Keeping the laws is about following the word of God, and the afterlife does play a fairly big part in our worldview. There are a handful of laws which are identified in the literature as being about community but those tend to be ones added later by the early rabbis (miderabannan), rather than straight from the Torah i.e. God (mideoraisa).
That being said, what you described in your second paragraph does happen, yes. Though not everyone who engages in it has the motives you ascribe to them. Some are sincerely trying to do the will of God as best they can.
> It's not a sin to fail to keep kosher
Well, it is for a Jew, but not for a non-Jew. We don't say that non-Jews need to keep our laws, other than a few very very basic ones likes not to murder. Non-Jews can still have an afterlife without keeping kosher.
Neat. This might not be satire though. To those wondering why it needs to be passively cooled:
Jews and other folks that keep Torah do not kindle a flame on the Shabbat. For those who are very strict about keeping God's commandments (basically orthodox Jews), they avoid anything that would create a spark. This spark is like a very tiny, short lived flame. Any time physical electronic contacts join together (like when turning on a light switch), the argument is that there's a very small spark that occurs. The same would happen with the electric contacts in a motor, such as the motor inside CPU fans, desktop power supplies, and platter hard drives. By running on this physical hardware, they're avoiding breaking the Sabbath as much as possible.
source: I'm a gentile Christian that tries to keep the Torah. So I'm more familiar with Jewish laws than the average person, but don't quote me too much.
I've often wondered if "spark" is only considered in the electromechanical sense. Driving a tesla might be ok, since it uses brushless motors that are electronically commutated and has no electromechanical switches or brushes to speak of.
Is that a joke? Because if it isn't, I'd hate to tell you but you are wrong. That computer most definitely manipulates electricity.
If anyone is about to take this seriously, check out how a transistor works. It most certainly manipulates electricity. The cpu in that computer has about a billion transistors.
I don't get it: the potential user has to use some kind of computer/smartphone/non-kosher device to make use of this server. Not to mention all the network infrastructure in-between!
A specific segment of Jews (namely Ultra-Orthodox) have quite a complicated relationship with the internet. On one hand, that community has experienced the positives of this technology, but they also VERY much discuss the fears and downsides.
So this site can be a seen as trying to wiggle into that tough space of getting use out of it, but in an "acceptable" way.
Interestingly, all ISPs and phone companies in Israel are required to offer server-side filtered internet for all customers who request it, at no extra cost.
According to the bible you or possessions or servants aren't allowed to "work" on the Sabbath (On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates.)
Rabbinic Judaism expanded this to the Jews doing "work" for you. Since this server is hosted in Israel and there are Jews who work for electric company on Sabbath. In addition the he doesn't want the server to work so he has it "work" only on a day when there isn't Sabbath anywhere in world.
Unless a shabbat goy is employed (who would have to be human) I don’t think you can have a compliant search engine.
The machine can work at any point of the week but a jew cannot operate it on shabbat. A non jew could, but not acting on a direct command.
The rules are quite watertight. Siri and co. are a no-go and there are no obvious ways to adapt smart assistants that would restore functionality. Anything that’s not preprogrammed is not possible.
Thinking of elevators which stop at every floor on shabbat, maybe the search engine ought to run on a timeout, returning results for all the "most common searches" (such as the auto-fill suggestions for each letter?) on some interleaved schedule.
(I'm not concerned with electricity here so much as with "בורר", selection.)
Ok. A serious question here: Can some HN Jews, enlighten me (a 100%-proof agnostic) on what they actually do on Shabbat? Are you allowed to use the internet? If something in your house breaks, are you not allowed to fix it? Do you just sit around gazing into space just in case something you do is classed as 'work'?
For Sabbath observing Jews, “work” is defined as a certain set of 39 (?) activities that are defined in the bible and relating to building the “Mishkan”. Generations of Talmudic rabbis then added new interpretations and requirements on these rules to adapt for new technology. eg, the prohibition against using electricity is because it relates to igniting a spark, which is one of the 39 prohibited activities (Or “malakha”)
Internet? No
Something breaks, fix it? No
Sit around all day? No :)
For many that keep the Sabbath, the time is spent eating, praying, and studying and there’s somewhat of a schedule. Friday night: synagogue, then big ceremonious dinner. Saturday morning: Synagogue. Saturday afternoon: big ceremonious lunch and study or sleep. Saturday evening: back to synagogue again. It’s a pretty full day.
I assume that's only if not urgent? e.g. pipe blows up or rock hits a window for whatever reason, you can at least effect basic repairs if not immediately call the tradie?
depends what community you are in. Can point to plenty of orthodox synagouges (especially those with large single populations) that get large numbers of both men and women to all services.
and being a single guy, I've hosted many a meal where I did the cooking, table setting and cleaning. (though in practice at these meals, there is also a pot luck nature to them and many times there's a whole system where your friends come over help you set the table and then help clean up and throw everything away all the trash after the meal, collecting silverware, wrapping up the plastic table cloth cover with all the crumbs/spills on it).
There's no cooking allowed on the Sabbath, and women can and frequently do go to synagogue with the men. (But if they stayed home, they were probably setting the table while the men were in the synagogue.)
I'll give you a focus on what I do, not what I don't.
- I have two full, sit-down meals with my family and sometimes friends as well, typically with appetizers, mains, the whole she-bang. No cellphones.
- I go to synagogue (when it is not closed due to COVID) and pray. They have a light meal after services where I socialize before going home and having a bigger meal.
- I go to the park and play with my daughter. Other Jewish families in my neighborhood often do the same, so we socialize while our kids play.
The major theme is that we are not allowed to do anything constructive/productive. Just as God stopped creating the world on the seventh day, we stop our part of making the world.
This is broken out into fine detail in the sources. There are 39 categories of work listed, covering agriculture, food production and cooking, textile production, building, and a few more.
When electricity came along there was a big debate among rabbis if its use comes under one of the existing categories or not. Nowadays among Orthodox Jews it's universally agreed that it does. This obviously wipes out a lot of modern life - not just the internet but even switching on lights, etc.
Reading, learning, eating lots of good food with the family, meeting friends, taking your kids to the park - all totally permitted.
As kids, yes it was sometimes annoying. But now it's amazing.
I wake up, go to shul (right now it's a social-distance service, we all wear masks and sit 6' from each other in a back yard). Then we have a few drinks.
Then I go home. Before COVID, we'd visit several friend's houses, walking around the neighborhood, eat a little, have lunch, talk.
Then we'd meet again for the afternoon service. Then I'd go home and read for a while.
Then we'd meet again for evening service and havdalah. Then we'd have a few more shots and go home.
(During the winter when days are shorter, things are compressed. This is "summer mode" with long days.)
What we can't do is to any acts of creation. So pushing a button and creating a circuit, building and many other things are forbidden. If something breaks we wait till Shabbat ends. Or if there is discomfort caused, in some cases we can hint or ask a non jew to fix it, turn off a light, ect. If a life is in danger we can and should do anything we can to save a life even if it means violating Shabbat.
What we do do is go to Synagogue (when they aren’t closed for covid-19), eat meals with friends and/or family, visit people who have celebrations (new baby, or wedding ect), read and study. And no we don't "just sit around gazing into space just in case something you do is classed as 'work'" like it may appear to be on first glance as we know what we can and can't do.
For a different view from the rest of the replies: our family takes a more relaxed view of things. Shabbat is for food, family, and taking time off from the hustle and bustle. This may include things like:
* Scrabble and other board games
* Cycling and other outdoor activities
* Reading
* Gardening
* Picnicking with friends (though not so much nowadays)
We don't really subscribe to the very strict definition of "work", and I don't think the rest of our synagogue community does either. But phones, internet, and computing are largely discouraged.
There is nothing wrong with having a computer running on Shabbat if it is scheduled before Shabbat. (If you are worried about electricity generated on Shabbat by a Jew, use AWS ect that isn't in Israel)
And some of the sites it links don't appear to be very "kosher".
I can't find the exact quote but I think a comedian once said something along the lines of (large pinches of salt on the quote and whether it was said by a comedian):
You think your god is all knowing, etc.. but at the same time stupid enough to fall for these work arounds
Halakhic Judaism isn't about faith or what God knows. It's about obeying laws (Halakha [1]) made by people based on a God-given "constitution." Employing "loopholes" is fine -- it means you care about the law and try to obey it, which is the point. Worship is expressed not with faith but in a process of interpreting and creating laws and then following them.
See also acoup.blog's series on Polytheism (https://acoup.blog/2019/10/25/collections-practical-polythei...). It's obviously not a direct analysis of Judaism, but the series discusses the idea of 'orthopraxis' (correct practice) as the relevant concept compared to the idea of 'orthodoxy' (correct belief). The latter, of course, is the central concept of modern Christianity.
> The latter, of course, is the central concept of modern Christianity. //
I'd say that "salvation by faith" is the central concept of Christianity, faith does not require knowledge per se, not in the way that belief requires knowledge.
"Even the devil believes [...]" as the author of the Epistle of James writes.
Christianity as revealed in Scripture is far less about rigid concepts.
On a side-note Catholicism demands significant orthopraxis, but that is heterodox wrt Scripture.
Your supposition requires a form of gnosticism that's really not Christian and is quite contrary to the Gospel IMO, heretical some would say/have said.
It's more that for Judaism it seems God's laws are legal boundaries devoid of any ethical meaning. The important thing is to respect their letter, not their spirit.
I wouldn't say that they're devoid of ethical meaning but rather that their ethical meaning might be unknown or can only be speculated, and whose understanding, in any event, is not pertinent to keeping the letter of the law, which is the central tenet. What you do is what's important, not what you believe or think or even what God thinks. Once His laws were given to humankind, they're out of His hands. There's even a famous story [1] in the Talmud where God argues with the Rabbis over Halakha, and the Rabbis tell God that what they say should prevail because Torah was given to man, and God concedes. From Wikipedia:
> [T]he work of law is a work of human activity, and... the Torah itself supports this legal theory. The Torah is not a document of mystery which must have its innate meaning revealed by a minority, but it is instead a document from which law must be created through the human activity of debate and consensus
God can't be stupid since (by axiom) he is all-knowing, perfect and presumably cares about the laws he sets. Therefore, any loopholes in the laws were put there on purpose and the believer is actually extra virtuous for paying close enough attention to notice the workarounds.
How do we know that the laws were set by him and not say a person who thought god was talking to him and somehow convinced people that they came from god?
How do we know that the loopholes are not there to test the to the letter followers versus the spirit of the law followers?
and how do we know which of those groups does god prefer?
Those are all fair questions, but they are about axioms and whether you should accept them or not. I was trying to describe the thought process of someone who has already accepted the axioms as set out in the old testament and is now trying to interpret the rules for modern times in an internally consistent way.
that's fair enough but say that we accept that the rules do come from god and he is all knowing, etc ..., the second question still stands and is the gist of the comedian's jibe
How do we know that to the letter vs to the spirit following is the right course of action for the follower of the religion?
What is the inherent spirit of the law in only eating animals that chew their cud and have split hoofs? Or fish that only have scales and fins? The inherent spirit of not wearing linen and wool together?
There are plenty of places where religious jews go beyond what the law says because rabbis have deemed it important. The prohibition of not eating meat and milk together come from "not eating a kid in its mother's milk" but rabbis said it applies to all meat and all milk.
I'm not sure how legitimate it is to think you know or can determine the spirit of religious laws you don't know the details of.
> I'm not sure how legitimate it is to think you know or can determine the spirit of religious laws you don't know the details of.
That is precisely my point. Rabbis might say X or Y, that doesn't mean that it pleases God one way or another.
You can take the view that the loopholes are there to be found and thus prove your commitment, the opposite view or just the view that some are ok and some are not, this is all very theoretical given the impossibility of knowing what the relevant God thinks, as arguments could be made for both situations.
On a similar note, from Terry Pratchett's Discworld, on (an analog of) Pascal's Wager:
> Upon his death, the philosopher in question found himself surrounded by a group of angry gods with clubs. The last thing he heard was 'We're going to show you how we deal with Mister Clever Dick around here…'
(As mentioned elsewhere, while this particular example may not be great, this sort of thing is accepted practice.)
If new electricity is created in automated fashion, how is that a problem for running a server? You aren't using it. Automated machinery is perfectly fine to work on its own.
Supposing you're right, then why did they put these loopholes by purpose if they're going to be discovered someday ? To play games with us maybe ? But then is that morally ok to do so ?
Before asking why the loopholes are there you should ask why the laws are there, then you can ask how the loopholes fit into that purpose.
Speaking as an Orthodox Jew - We believe the laws are there because particular actions affect the universe in ways we might not understand but that the creator does. It's like the instruction manual that comes with a machine. (If it was something we could figure out for ourselves we wouldn't need to be given the laws from on high.)
So it follows that if there is a loophole, in a law given by an omniscient God (i.e. there is no argument that He didn't think of it), it's because following that loophole does not cause the spiritual damage to the universe that breaking the rest of that law does.
Obviously some of you will argue with some of those axioms, but as stated by WJW elsewhere in this thread, this is about people who have already accepted the axioms.
I should add that there are those who study how each thing affects the world - that is the study of Kabbala.
But you don't need to know it to accept the idea, just as you don't need to know how a machine works in order to use it, as long as you follow the manual.
I can't claim to understand everything, as he apparently moves in mysterious ways. However, just from the definitions we can deduce it's morally OK to do, since otherwise a perfect being wouldn't do so.
To play games? Perhaps, but presumably a perfect being is already perfectly happy and has no need for games. You could see it as a test for humans: only the truly devout study the laws closely enough to notice the loopholes.
Obviously a joke/satire site. "This server is powered by 4 car batteries that are charged every Tuesday. This website does not use new electricity created during Shabbat." Shouldn't it have ran out of electricity by now? How many requests can a home server running on four car batteries serve?
Low-tech Magazine[1] runs off of a 168 W-h lead-acid battery and has pretty good uptime. An average sized car battery has ~600 W-h. Four of them is 2400 W-h. They might have enough power to run for a week between charges.
168 W/h gives you about 12 hours between charges.
2400 W-h / 168 W-h = about 14.28x the size of LTM's
Nothing is required for any religion. This is pretty well demonstrated by the major religions of the world, where for almost every element of their belief systems you can find a sect that either ignores that part altogether and/or takes it to the extreme.
Some people live their lives for the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Some live their lives for the gods capitalism. I'd say the former is a lot less pernicious.
Where would you argue a war exists today that does not have its roots in the economic domination of one group over another, and is purely fought on religious grounds?
Crusades, ISIS, the depression of the muslim Uyghur by China,
European antisemitism (which culminated in nazism), Armenian genocide, etc etc. Now many atrocities had several factors, but I believe religion plays a dominant role in the ones I listed. Arguably you can put 11-9 and the subsiquent mid east war in there as well...
This is not a religious conflict. China has oppressed the Uighurs because the Xinjiang region was only brought under full Chinese control late, and the Uighurs have been relatively independent-minded.
That this conflict isn't about Islam per se is evident from the fact that 1) there is a substantial Muslim population within China outside of Xinjiang, and those Muslims have not been given the same brutal treatment, and 2) there have also been secularist voices of resistance among the Uighurs to Chinese control of Xinjiang.
Edit: If you believe in a religion, then religion exists in the most real sense possible, as that which guides your relation to the beginning and end of reality itself, God.
If you don't believe, then religion exists in no more and no less of a sense as capitalism: it is a fiction which vast amounts of people believe in and live their lives by, and so it is real. Not in the sense of the computer in front of you, but in the sense of a real social relationship. From a secular standpoint religion and capitalism have no more and no less reality than other fictions like gender and race.
This is an excellent comment, and I agree on the conclusion that either exists as much as the other.
However ;-), I dare to say your argument is weak: Assume "I believe in the apple on my desk". But you will find there is neither a fruit nor an Apple branded computer on my desk. So an outside observer is bound to believe I am going mad, hence my belief shapes my social relationship with others around me. Now does this make the apple as real as religion, which becomes real due to it's impact on social relationships? Or are people who let religion shape their social relationships as mad as I am? Or is the argument flawed? (edit: No, I can not answer these question).
Shapiro's "Thinking about mathematics" springs to my mind, IIRC in the first chapter(s) he gives a nice overview about what philosophers thought about numbers, the realm of numbers and whether they "exist" or not. I think some of that could be applied here. (And, generally, I think it's a great read for computer scientists & mathematicians interested in philosophy, as it gives a great overview across various different schools).
I think the problem with your argument is that you're replacing the concept of religion with the concept of 'apple' which in every sense signifies something that exists as a hylomorphic object. An apple which can sit on my desk. However language is full of concepts which don't share that kind of existence, ones which tend to be the objects of philosophy. Love, justice, power... race, gender, capitalism, religion, God. These exist but not as 'physical' objects, objects whose existence can be accepted or denied according to empirical criteria.
For example, in the market I can say I see capitalism before me, even though it's not a physical object. It's in the exchange of goods, the extraction of commodity and surplus value. In the same way in a synagogue or church I can say that I see religion before me, or in the Oval Office I see power (as well as in the streets, of course).
With respect to comparing God to an apple, I'd take a Kantian line. One refers to belief, the other to knowledge. Got to make space for one in order to have room for the other ;)
Absolutely :) Very convincing, but as per your user-info (should have read that before trying to be smart), I should not expect less of someone with a proper philosophical education and the (as I suppose) accompanying repository of philosophical knowledge ;) The subject of your thesis seems pretty interesting,... ah, I'm digressing ;)
Now, regarding Gods and apples: Because that's how I setup the Gedankenexperiment (and assuming I belong to the majority of people, who are neither blind nor suffering from severe neurological problems), if there was some matter in form of an apple on my desk, I should perceive it. IIRC Kant would say that I have a-priory knowledge of the absence of an apple from my desk.
(I'm afraid I can't argue against that, so let me rephrase the first paragraph until I come up with something useful on how to convince you that comparing religion to an non-existent apple is perfectly fine reasoning.)
[... some minutes passed ...]
No, I think you're right. The problem is that, as you say, an 'apple' is an inherently physical object. Hence there either is one sitting on my desk and I can see it, or I can see that there is none. I can not just bend the definition of an apple at will, so I think I'm stuck here; accordingly, when I say "I believe in the apple on my desk", I am basing my proclaimed belief on a verifieable-false proposition; and much as with false assumptions, from that I can obviously derive anything.
Religion (or other constructs of the mind) don't exist as physical objects (there is no religion-shaped matter), yet they influence and shape (ha!) our world, often even beyond what's possible for a physical object [1].
edit So when I say that I still believe in the apple on the desk even if there is proof of the contrary, I am just acting like an idiot - and that's what's actually influencing/shaping my social relationships ;) end edit
But, one ray of light :) Comparing religion to an apple might not be possible, but I think it's undecidable if comparing God to an apple is: What constitutes God is a matter of belief and hence there is no coherent definition. E.g. some might say there is no physical God, or maybe there is one but not "on our realm of existence" (whatever that means). OTOH, some religious people might even go as far to say that there is a physical heaven and a physical hell, even when presented physical proof of the contrary. So, maybe, there is an apple after all? ;)
[1] I can't resist but to note that, if we were on Pratchett's Discworld, this would be much easier. In that case "the Gods" would probably come knocking on my door for implying that they might not exist.
Ah, so virtually every idea known to humankind is able to be critiqued, yet religion—a fundamentally unproven, dogmatic discipline that sows conflict into the world by its very nature—is immune from such criticism.
I don’t think so. There is nothing wrong with criticizing a belief system—it is distinct from more innate characteristics such as race or sexual orientation.
Would you mind editing out the direct link to astoundingly antisemitic content? It does HN no good to link it directly in this case and can only attract negative outcomes (like, antisemites who have a Google Alerts set up for that subdomain name discover this thread when it shows up in Google, or someone on HN gets sucked into the worldview as a result of curiosity, or etc).
It is also not clear cut that other than the incandescent bulb use of electricity is actually prohibited. The Hazon Ish ruled that the completion of a circuit is considered ‘makke bapatish’ or ‘boneh’. But one can argue reasonably that it is not so.
It's been assur for long enough that everyone just holds `lo plugh' when it comes to electricity. Yes an incandescent is prohibited, a hotplate is prohibited. An eInk display is technically alright, as is an LCD watch. But there's way to many gray areas between those. What about LED bulbs? Some get hot enough to be a problem, some do not.
I've had this idea that if we could ever get e-ink displays to actually be paper like (i.e. in thickness, and bendability and hatever other features you attach to paper books) it be interesting for observant jews an people who just like books to be able to sell "placeholder" e-ink books. i.e. books filled with programmable eink pages that you can flip through like a regular book. One would download a book and program it, and then just read it like a traditional book, flipping pages as you go. once done, you download another book to it and all the pages get reprogrammed.
As someone who isn’t religious, it’s really, REALLY hard to remind myself that not only do people still believe this stuff, but MOST people in the western world still believe in the Judeo-Christian God and all the underlying mythology.
I feel like the rational outcome would be that only a small minority of people would still buy into these ideologies. But I guess economists already know that people aren’t rational.
Obviously, I’m aware that this website represents an orthodox minority. Most religious people don’t go to these lengths.
Religious rules and practices are just so annoyingly easy to pick apart. For example, doesn’t the change from the Julian and Gregorian calendars throw a wrench into what day we are actually on?
It’s hard for me to buy that God created billions of planets and galaxies with each planet having different orbital properties and that somehow the arbitrary days of the week that weren’t even set to their present status until after Moses was dead for 3000 years are important to him.
This nonsense affects my daily interactions in the sense that I can’t run around questioning obviously arbitrary traditions, it’ll just insult people and it’s just generally mean.
So, I’ve given you more than enough of my opinion, and this isn’t exactly constructive, but to me the sooner you exit the denial stage of grief the sooner you and move on to accepting the reality of life.
That means specifically accepting that the only two roles of religion are:
1. A social construct and group (with legitimate benefits of fellowship and social interaction like a club)
2. A coping mechanism for death, one that prevents its adherents from reaching the painful stages of grief beyond denial.
> but MOST people in the western world still believe in the Judeo-Christian God
This is probably no longer literally true; in polling a majority of Europeans who identify as Christian don't usually believe in a personal god, and significant numbers who identify as Christian don't believe in the supernatural at all.
> and all the underlying mythology.
Believing in _all_, or even most, of the mythology, as something that actually happened, is unusual; you're basically talking Biblical literalists, who are a small minority of Christians.
> For example, doesn’t the change from the Julian and Gregorian calendars throw a wrench into what day we are actually on?
For most Christians, the only one that's particularly important that it be on the right day there is Easter, which is dealt with. The Gregorian shift, in any case, was seen as a _correction_; from the point of view of those who initiated it the problem would have been the time that went before.
I think you make a good point, even in Bible Thumping America I bet a lot of people who identify as religious don’t deep down believe any of it.
At my most recent “church session to satisfy family” the preacher talked a lot about handling doubt. I found it very revealing that, on any given Sunday, you might find a preacher feeling the need to re-convince the congregation that the thing they’re there for is “real.” It made me think, “But I thought this was obvious truth to you? Haven’t you moved beyond this point?”
Interestingly, the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches don’t agree on which day Easter falls upon!
The problem with that thinking is that neither belief nor disbelief in a deity is rational. Ultimately the existence (or non) of said deity is a leap of faith either way, given the inability to prove the existence of G-D.
I fully understand the complete belief or disbelief in a religion. That's the assumption of a system surrounding G-D, but as an Orthodox Jew I don't pretend that there's 100% proof that G-D exists, rather the proof exists for me to maintain my beliefs.
Where I disagree here is the idea that my view is “disbelief.”
To me, believing or not is irrelevant. I don’t call a lack of evidence “disbelief,” it’s simply a lack of data.
I wouldn’t make decisions based on not knowing.
I wouldn’t plan to drive on interstate 90 to get to my destination if I wasn’t sure it existed.
I don’t consider the rationality of assuming something is to assuming something isn’t to be equal.
If my friend says “I have a million dollars in my trunk, but I can’t open it to show you” I can safely dismiss the remark as “unlikely“ without investing a lot of hope into the unlikelihood of my friend actually having a million dollars in their trunk. I certainly wouldn’t start telling all my friends and relatives about the money in the trunk that I have faith in being there.
Could my friend be telling the truth? Sure! But I see no reason to take those words at face value. And disbelief of that story isn’t on an equal level of rationality of belief in it.
Now, if my friend opened the trunk and showed me the money, I could absolutely accept that reality, even though the outcome was extremely unlikely.
Essentially, I don’t agree with the religious that faith as a concept is a desirable human trait.
Religions don't necessarily have the idea that faith as a trait is desirable. That very much depends on the religion.
However, every single day we make decisions based on not knowing. We make those decisions with the best available evidence at hand, both observable and non-observable. To wit, in your example I'd never drive on the interstate 90 to a non-existent destination, but you'd take the drive not knowing what you might encounter along the way; hence the road trip.
I can't prove the existence of a deity. Equally I can't prove the lack of existence. Today I can prove certain phenomena that in the past we were unable to prove. That didn't stop belief, it merely asterisked it.
As several others have mentioned, there is absolutely no problem with keeping a server running on the sabbath - computers aren't Jews (Jewish law only expects Jews to keep the sabbath). If it's Jews working to generate the electricity (most "modern" or "yeshivish" Orthodox Jews don't believe this is a problem; I don't know what fraction of "ultra-" Orthodox Jews disagree with that), any public cloud outside of Israel should suffice. If you're concerned with electricity, why not worry that Jews may be working to maintain the server's internet connection (again, this is trivially solved by not hosting it in Israel - all it takes is a non-Jewish majority to provide a reasonable presumption that the workers probably aren't Jewish)?
If you're worried about Jewish users accessing it on the sabbath (in my opinion the least far-fetched concern, but not one addressed by the site), the complete solution would be to shut it down for ~49 hours every week starting from ~sunset on Friday in east Asia - this doesn't require using batteries or really anything special about the site's hardware or even software.
Finally, why call it a 'kosher' search engine when almost anyone interested in such a thing would understand that as being about filtering the search results?
Edit: If you assume that using electricity and/or internet that are maintained by Jews on the sabbath is a problem, I guess you might be able to make a case for avoiding indexing sites in Israel or at all during the sabbath, since then you'd be benefitting indirectly from the work of the Jews that maintained the infrastructure - however, I think it's safe to assume that the vast majority of the internet is not served using infrastructure actively supported by Jews during the sabbath so even assuming you're concerned about this, the final answer would probably still be that indexing during the sabbath is fine.