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.
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.
Interpretation of a law can be very subtle without being merely a ruse to "find loopholes".
The development of the religious law around eruvim strikes me as a series of common sense adaptations that took place to preserve an ideal in the face of changing historical circumstances.
Going from a solid wall providing actual privacy and access control to a completely pointless wire is NOT "common sense adaptation". It is negating the law while pretending you are still adhering to it.
Eruv originally meant wall and those are the main functions of a wall. It is reasonable to assume that that is why the law used a wall as a condition for exceptions on Sabbath restrictions. They sure as hell didn't originally use a freaking WIRE.
It seems similar to Islam allowing women to wear completely sheer niqab.
Agreed. I think in situations of religious laws, where the text really can never be changed because it is literally holy, it's at least understandable and mostly harmless. But in general I find the practice of reinterpreting law texts to the point of absurdity really problematic. It undermines faith in the legal system, because suddenly law texts become "legalese" that cannot be interpreted by laymen. In the worst case, you get "creative reinterpretation" of legal terms like the Trump admin is doing it currently.
I remember reading about an US state where the governor was allowed to unilaterally modify state laws before they came into effect, by removing parts of it. The constitution didn't specify what was meant by "parts", so some governors took it as the right to delete individual words and letters from the text and thereby completely change the meaning of the laws...
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.
The wire is many miles long. You'd probably need some decent voltage to even be able to produce any kind of current in it.
Even then, if the eruv was broken, the sensor would only inform you that it is broken, but not where on the entire island the fault is.
(unless of course you monitor each segment of the wire separately, e.g. using capacitance sensing, with internet-connected controllers that send an alert when the capacitance of their segment changes. That would be the practical but boring solution)
Think of it as a telephone line. They do fine for tens of miles. And you have no signal integrity concerns, merely continuity. (Though being able to launch a TDR pulse down it would be neat, since localizing breaks would become trivial.)
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.
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.
Isn't it interpreted literally to an extreme degree? For example, the injunction to not boil a kid in its mother's milk [1] has had a bunch of corollaries added going to extreme lengths to ensure this doesn't accidentally happen.
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.
In some sense, the existing wire is already that. But your question raises a great point: how was it established that Manhattan is actually on the _inside_ of this wire and not on the outside? Not very non-Euclidean to assume one way or the other.
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.
Adversarially? That doesn't sound especially compatible with the sacrament. Sacraments are generally freely received.
In any case, you can't baptize an adult against his will. In extreme situations, when a person is in, say, a coma, there can be a presumption of consent, but as I understand it, if the person in question was totally hardened against the very possibility of baptism, then the presumption would prove false and no baptism would have occurred.
FWIW, the LDS isn't really Christian. The theological differences are just too vast. Indeed, AFAIK, while the Catholic Church recognizes the baptism of many Protestant sects, it does not recognize the validity of LDS baptism. So a convert to Catholicism from the LDS must be baptized as part of his conversion.
I've heard some claim that it's impossible to dilute holy water, and the resulting mix is still holy water.
Following this logic, the entire ocean has been multiple flavours of holy water at once for centuries. Failing that, the subset which is has become homogenous throughout.
I have placed a small loop of twist-tie in one of my kitchen drawers. For a modest fee I'm willing to commit to it remaining that way indefinitely. With enough subscribers perhaps a webcam so everyone can be assured that the outside is not leaking into the rest of the world (:
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
You're probably correct, but having lived in northern Brooklyn for almost a decade, I wouldn't be surprised if those communities had a hand in that type of infrastructure. They already have their own police force.
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.
If you take sidewalks away completely and turn everything into a big highway you’ll have even less pedestrian traffic. That doesn’t make it good policy.
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
Judging by the previous posts/comments of the user you are replying to, I doubt they are capable of understanding your comment, if they are even a real person.
> 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.”
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.
> 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").
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.
>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!
This is literally bogus. Nothing in Judaism prevents automated systems! That's the entire point of "sabbath mode" in elevators for example, and it's perfectly normal and usual to set electrical things to work on a timer on the sabbath.
Whoever told you this was utterly wrong and ignorant. There is no rabbi who would have agreed with this, WITHOUT the "you can ignore mitzvot to not die" corollary that others point out.
A fire alarm is a perfectly normal part of a kosher home. Maybe reconsider how much you trust the person who said this to you.
If I were in a situation like that I would reach out for advice to some religious authority the person in question trusts.
There are widely accepted fairly common sense exceptions for saving lives. [1] That could maybe apply to an automatically activating fire sprinkler. Only someone well versed in the scriptures could say for certain. (And only they would be believed anyway.)
Even about the emergency lighting one can probably find a workaround. For example could it be wired so it is always on via a timer during shabbat?
The point with discussing these with a religious authority is manifold. They might better know how to mediate. In both directions! They might explain to the engineers what is and isn't a sticking point. Similarly they could explain if a given technique is permissible to the person who worries about them. Or alternatively they might have heard solutions others have employed in the past previously.
I think I'd prefer that they just say "deal with it - this is real". How many different sets of beliefs do we need to accommodate? How many "mediations" do we need to do to use fire sprinklers?! What if they are incompatible? Whose religion "wins" if one stays one thing but one says the other?
The solution is obvious: religion and beliefs should not be a factor in these sort of things. We in the UK are a secular society with strong separations between state and religion, so this sort of behaviour should be treated for what it is.
> 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.
> 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.
>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.
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.
> 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.
That sounds reasonable, but consider that the original texts give instructions that are quite specific, and leave the door open to all sorts of poor food habits.
Exodus 23:19 (and 34:26) -
"Bring the best of the firstfruits of your soil to the house of the Lord your God.
Do not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk."
---
Deuteronomy 14:21 -
"Do not eat anything you find already dead. You may give it to the foreigner residing in any of your towns, and they may eat it, or you may sell it to any other foreigner. But you are a people holy to the Lord your God.
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.
Especially since its a text written thousands of years ago, where the meanings of some of the words are pretty unclear, and you are probably not reading the original but a translation.
> 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.
. . .
> You take God's word at face value, no interpretation, no exceptions.
But your judgment that god's word must be understood in this way just reflects your own belief about how god has chosen to communicate with us.
And it's actually a belief that does not give god very much credit. Great books convey meaning in numerous different ways at the same time. Why would you assume that god has written a text that operates on the level of an Ikea instruction manual when he could have used all of the tools available to great literature — and, through his omniscience, used them perfectly to speak to the needs of different readers in different times and places?
Ask yourself this: when you read scripture, does does it seem more like an instruction manual or a piece of literature?
> But your judgment that god's word must be understood in this way just reflects your own belief about how god has chosen to communicate with us.
I'm trying to understand it in the most likely way it would have been understood by the first man who heard it, and put in that context (as much context as I can have from back then).
> when you read scripture, does does it seem more like an instruction manual or a piece of literature?
If you read them you know they very much sound like both. So the way I read it (and I read the "major" ones as a religious agnostic) is that if I take the freedom to interpret everything from that book always in a way that's aimed at making my life or religion more convenient, then I'm in it more for show. Something that's probably true for most religious people I've met.
How else do you propose we understand? To understand any text requires interpretation. Interpretation just is the process by which one determines a text's meanings. You seem to have in mind particular kinds of interpretation which are and are not appropriate (I notice you keep using the word "reinterpretation" below, which is not the word I used.) You may or may not be able to defend a particular approach, but you can't just skip the interpretive step altogether.
Of course I don't claim to 'know' what god wants. All I can do is do my best with the information I have.
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.
> Rabbi Eliezer then said to them: If the halakha is in accordance with my opinion, Heaven will prove it. A Divine Voice emerged from Heaven and said: Why are you differing with Rabbi Eliezer, as the halakha is in accordance with his opinion in every place that he expresses an opinion? Rabbi Yehoshua stood on his feet and said: It is written: “It is not in heaven” (Deuteronomy 30:12). The Gemara asks: What is the relevance of the phrase “It is not in heaven” in this context? Rabbi Yirmeya says: Since the Torah was already given at Mount Sinai, we do not regard a Divine Voice, as You already wrote at Mount Sinai, in the Torah: “After a majority to incline” (Exodus 23:2). Since the majority of Rabbis disagreed with Rabbi Eliezer’s opinion, the halakha is not ruled in accordance with his opinion. The Gemara relates: Years after, Rabbi Natan encountered Elijah the prophet and said to him: What did the Holy One, Blessed be He, do at that time, when Rabbi Yehoshua issued his declaration? Elijah said to him: The Holy One, Blessed be He, smiled and said: My children have triumphed over Me; My children have triumphed over Me.
> 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?
It is easy to manufacture contradictions by prooftexting. It isn't difficult to read in a favored hypothesis that contains contradictions, but that is by no means demanded by the text. Many can be resolved by recognizing that the same thing was being described from two different perspectives or with a focus on different aspects.
The quintessential example is perhaps #3 which purports that the two accounts of creation are contradictory. But there are a number of ways to interpret Genesis [0] that doesn't result in contradiction while maintaining the theological truths that are the purpose of biblical texts. The Bible isn't a scientific treatise.
Another typical class of examples are the purported inconsistencies within the Gospels themselves [1].
An article on inerrancy you might find interesting [2].
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.
No, no. He didn't give us any option. God is all-powerful and all-knowing, so he made us knowing that we would break his rules and thus knowing that he would later punish us for eternity for breaking them. The notion of free will is in complete contradiction with an all-knowing all-powerful agent that sets things in motion. And the fact that God still punishes us even though we never had a choice is proof that it's not benevolent.
So: all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving. Pick two.
If you can’t or won’t see the truth in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ I pray that it is revealed to you and you have life changing faith. Either way, be blessed in your day and week.
Yes, out of love he gave us the agency and dignity to choose not to be in a love relationship with him. Faith in Jesus Christ and the arrival of the Kingdom of God to set things right provides us a means to enter into a relationship with him in a fallen, sinful world. To be adopted into his family and inherit new creation. This means he also dignifies those who choose not to love him to separate themselves from his presence for all eternity. In which case then they become less human.
In our culture it is easy to think of this in terms of Dante's "Inferno", but that is a poem from the Middle Ages, and not in fact what the Bible tells us eternal separation from God looks like. Anyways, there is a lot of context to cover that isn't possible here. If you'd like to understand all of this better, go to the Bible, but then also perhaps consider "The Prodigal God" by Tim Keller. Blessings.
If God is truly good and omniscient, why would he intentionally create imperfect beings with the capacity for evil and then judge them for being imperfect? It's hard to see this story as one of some being of pure goodness instead of, rather, a character more akin to Jigsaw, trapping his creations in paradoxical or impossible situations for some unknown pleasure.
Maybe we just have drastically different ideas of what "love" is.
God, who is referred to as love, created beings in his image to tend to his creation, and to be in a love relationship with him. He himself created out of a loving relationship (read up on his triune nature). Rather than make them automatons that simply do his will he wanted them to love him of their own will the same he loves them. You can understand his first command as "do this because you love me and trust that I have your best interest in mind". When they instead chose themselves he could no longer be in their presence because of their sin, thus they were ejected from his presence, and thus cursed to pay the costs of that sin, until his plan to redeem them through his own justice and mercy could be fulfilled.
Any love relationship that is truly loving is not created by power or authority. It is by the willingness of both parties, unconditionally.
> Rather than make them automatons that simply do his will he wanted them to love him of their own will the same he loves them. You can understand his first command as "do this because you love me and trust that I have your best interest in mind".
So he doesn't want automatons, but he does want unquestioning loyalty and trust? Is this not simply a distinction without a difference?
If someone we knew in our lives behaved like this with their children, we'd rightfully question what trauma occurred to make them this way. To create and then cast away those he created who did not act as he wished is the behavior of a control freak, not a loving god.
I don’t think it is so much “unquestioning loyalty and trust” but a loving relationship with the creator of the universe. It is hardly a distinction without difference. The story continues that God came to earth as a man who, while innocent, was brutally murdered, for spreading this message. That doesn’t sound like controlling (nor trauma-induced) behavior to me. Instead it sounds like the ultimate sacrifice for a loved one.
Finally, you missed the part where humans chose to be cast away, the consequences of sin are death.
Either way, I pray this truth is revealed to you and that you are blessed in your day and week.
One way to think about it is that we were created to be in a loving relationship with God. The same way we were created to breathe oxygen. It is designed to be that way. But we're intelligent beings, if someone chooses not to be in your presence, you provide them the dignity to make that choice. But that doesn't mean they remain in the same status as the ones you love. I think we could be honest with ourselves that our loved ones have a different relationship with us than those who choose not to be our friends? Very similar to our relationship with God. And he has done a tremendous amount of work through the ages, through his Son to show you how much he loves you and wants to be in a relationship with you.
Ultimately if someone chooses they do not like God's design and do not want to be in his presence, he honors that, but that means they are setting aside their humanity, and his design for them.
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.
I think it depends on historical period and region. There were times when there were very strong Christian presence and influences on Islamic culture in places like North Africa, Syria, Anatolia etc. where Christianity had been the majority religion before Arab and Turkish conquests. I assume Zoroastrian influences in Persia.
> 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.
> 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
A better analogy would be its like saying BSD and MacOS (the current version) are closely related because they share lots of common code.
You should read what the Quran says about Jesus or Mary or the Jewish prophets. Seriously, read what the Quran and the New Testament (and church documents like the Catholic Catechism) have to say about this.
I think the best analogies of the relationships between the religions is:
1. Christianity (claims) to be an updated and enhanced fork of Judaism
2. Islam (claims) to be a bug fixed fork of Judaism with some code from Christianity merged in.
> Quite some applications have become ported from Windows to GNU/Linux or vice versa.
We are not talking about optional bits, we are talking about things of fundamental importance.
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.)
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.
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
With users like this, I've been making good use of the "Comments Owl for Hacker News" browser plugin: add an emoji tag to the user for visibility, then insta-flag their posts whenever I see them.
(There are probably better uses of my time, but...)
I don't see why they wouldn't be. Basically all cities allow 3rd parties to run wires as long as they do all of the paperwork and rent the needed right of ways. Normally this is used for things like comm lines; but some inert wire isn't going to cause any issues.
The other religions would just need to care enough to ask, then install and maintain the wire.
I know of at least one religion that made it mandatory to run strands of wire around arbitrary areas. Brigham Young and his successors made the Deseret Telegraph a real community project.
This is a question about the first amendment. Is the government making rules in favor of one religion over, anyone else? Bob, an atheist, is allowed to run arbitrary wires around midtown manhattan, just the same as some other group?
Depends on the group, but generally the owner of the land that the drug is on needs to be involved in its creation. So, for a sidewalk, the local government.
See this article that states that the path of a Houston eruv was leased from the city for 50 years for $1.
Wouldn't the natural thing to do be to bury it? That's what we do with other important wires. Hanging it off old telephone poles seems like a recipe for recurring disaster.
Does it need to be a metal wire? Or is, say, a plastic pipe enough? In the spirit of the other comments here, there are plenty of those already in place. Certainly with the involvement of the land owner, which in these cases probably are the city or the state.
It would be interesting to hear from someone who are involved in these traditions to hear their view.
In fact, an entire tractate of the Talmud, called “Eruvin,” is focused on discussing these topics. Most subjects regarding Eruvin are fraught with differing opinions of Jewish Law, and therefore it is of utmost importance that questions related to the Eruv should be discussed with a Posek (Jewish Legal Expert.
There's a bunch of info on that site. I just watched the video on "How to Make a Home Made Shabbos Belt", which is a hack to meet some rules about carrying keys on Saturdays.
I'm not Jewish, nor have I studied Jewish law/rules, but I don't think those could be justified as being sufficiently continuous. It's more of a network of various stations connected by discrete cables, rather than one big ring of fiber.
OK, so the Jews have gotten their NYC situation under control. But what about all the vulnerable populations in SF, LA, etc.? We must group-fund an eruv for those vulnerable populations.
Also, this is a lost opportunity for ambulance-chasing lawsuits. Anyone know if anyone's been killed by their city being surrounded with fishing line suspended 30 feet in the air?
> The eruv is funded entirely by the Jewish community, with a considerable portion of that support coming from wealthy philanthropists.
So, no, you're not paying for this.
I'm quite sure that any religion that wanted to fund the cost and follow the proper permitting procedures could similarly run wires for religious purposes, otherwise NYC would have a First Amendment problem. But I don't think any other religions want to run wires for religious purposes.
And yes, other religions can and do use public space in myriad ways too. As for encroaching on others, the eruv doesn't really encroach on anyone - I'm a secular Jew who has lived in NYC for most of my life, and while I've heard about this before, I've never actually noticed it in person, even when I've probably been within eyesight of it.
> Do [ other groups ] get similar perks of using public space
Yes, it's public space.
> and encroaching on others?
An eruv wire looks just like any other wire strung on a pole, save it's and thinner, doesn't carry electricity or communications .. so it "encroaches" on your life just as much as any other utility wire .. even less if you spend little time in jewish neighbourhoods that actually string such things.
Well it’s not a Jewish neighbourhood if it’s all of Manhattan. Encroachment isn’t always the most obvious - do construction permits require builders to fix any breaks to this, similar to other public utility lines (telephone, electricity)? That would be an encroachment. Does it increase any risk to public workers who fix supply lines, or increase the risk of electrical fires from thunderstorms? That’d be encroachment. Not saying it’ll happen, but some non-obvious examples.
Also, what are other such examples from other groups? There’s a big difference between theoretical (a matter of law) and the practical (societal acceptance). I’m also not sure of telephone poles being public space, I can only imagine the administrative and legal hurdles to overcome to hang something off one.
Leaving aside that this is about "much of Manhattan" rather than "all of Manhattan" it remains that Manhattan, Brooklyn, New York City in general are well known as one of the larger jewish neighbourhoods on the planet.
Jews comprise approximately 10% of New York City's population, making the Jewish community the largest in the world outside of Israel.
Some of your other what if's are addressed in the article, if you're a good faith commenter looking for actual serious issues then there's also 100 years of existence in Manhattan and the wider New York City to draw upon.
Perhaps you could highlight some actual real issues that have cropped up in the last century?
“Largest [jewish community] in the world outside of Israel” doesn’t really equate to “Jewish neighbourhood”. My argument would be the same regardless of which religion’s orthodoxy this stems from, so questioning whether I’m a “good faith” commenter is just a lazy ad hominem response. The article doesn’t address many of the questions I posed.
Speaking of which, tell me, would there be so many defensive comments if, in a hypothetical scenario, there was an article written about how every cell tower in the city had an Arabic inscription written (in such small text that it couldn’t be seen) in order to “bless” all the cellular waves emanating from there? I know what my response would be.
In the Jewish tradition, nobody is tricking God. There's a long history of legalism in the religion - God sets out his commandments in language and you take that language at face value. Exact interpretation of that text is then debated by religious scholars, but the meaning of the words is entirely contained in the text.
For Christians and those raised in the Christian tradition, this is entirely foreign. The rules are not set out nearly as strictly for you, you have to interpret them much more broadly.
Generally, if you read their respective books, the old testament has a set of rules mixed in with a quasi-historical context, while the new testament is almost entirely in the form of parables.
Islam, by the way, goes back toward the Jewish legalistic idea.
I am not sure one could argue that playing semantics is the most honest conduct in understanding.
Only the most extremist of Muslims, the Salafi, take the Jewish legalistic idea, majority of other traditions in Islam lean towards Tafsir that squarely leans on “spirit of the law” than strictly the word.
What is "the Jewish legalistic idea"? It's not a monolith. What makes a salafi a salafi has nothing to do with legalistic ideas.
>majority of other traditions in Islam lean towards Tafsir
This also doesn't make sense to me, as tafsir is exegesis of Quran. Salafis and all muslims care about tafsir.
The core differences between different groups of muslims, loosely in order of priority, is which sources to take from after the demise of Prophet Mohammed, and then how to interpret any sources (incl. Quran) (literally (salafis), logically (shia), etc.).
There are different tafsirs of Quran as well, and can have very stark differences. However loopholes are completely disallowed by all muslims.
I'f argue the opposite. “spirit of the law” does not work with actual law though. Imagine trying to run a legal system off “spirit of the law”. It would never work. Semantics is the only honest way to interpret the law.
> For Christians and those raised in the Christian tradition, this is entirely foreign.
I'd say it is quite familiar to Christianity. Canon Law mirrors the secular legal system, complete with its own lawyers, courts and so on. (Arguably, it's the other way around: secular Western law that mirrors Canon Law.)
Canon Law is only for Catholics and also only pertains to the management of the Church itself rather than to the behavior of individuals. All religions have this idea of textual interpretation to some degree, but it has comparatively more importance in Judaism.
I'm not saying your main point is wrong, but there is a lot of legalistic quibbling over things like Lent. For example, various animals are classified locally as "fish" for Lenten purposes, including the Beaver (in Canada) the Capybara (in Venezuela) and the alligator (in New Orleans)
At this point in the conversation I would like to once again point out that Catholics once considered beaver tails (but not beaver bodies) "fish" for purposes of meatless Fridays.
And in Jews consider birds to be "meat" because people in the 15th century kept getting confused. The Mosaic law is that the prohibition against mixing milk and meat applies to land animals; not water or sky animals (which each have their own set of rules).
I see this sentiment a lot when it comes to Jewish customs, especially when it comes to eruvs, I don't really get it. Why do you consider it "tricking" God, instead of just following the rules?
Because under any normal circumstances we'd call this a trick? Like, imagine someone under house arrest trying to argue they were allowed to go all around Manhattan because of this wire - we'd quite rightly jail them for contempt.
Sure, after determining that the offered definition of “house” using the wire didn’t apply. That’s not a trick, that’s the system at work.
The legal system and morality and all areas of any complexity require judgment and decision making.
It might satisfy a certain type of person to have explicit, highly detailed mechanistic rules for human conduct, with no exceptions. But even where that’s been tried, 50 years passes, and now someone has the job of interpreting how those rules apply to modern life.
> after determining that the offered definition of “house” using the wire didn’t apply. That’s not a trick, that’s the system at work.
> The legal system and morality and all areas of any complexity require judgment and decision making.
I don't think it requires much real judgement to say that a wire does not make a home and that whole area is not a single big home. This is not some finely balanced call that requires the greatest legal minds. Judges can and do strike or ignore definitions that pervert the meaning of a statute too far from the plain reading, and they're right to do so.
In areas of law - or of everyday life - that we take seriously, we would not tolerate such a twisted reading of a rule.
Imagine that a whole nation's statute laws, and associated common laws, were frozen in time for over a thousand years, because (the statutes were declared to be immutable canon, and) any judges with sufficient authority to strike out old common law and to establish new common law were long gone. That's Judaism (specifically the Talmud)! (Speaking from experience as a Jew.)
The "eruv" definition was established back when the biggest conceivable area that it might cover was that of a medieval village or ghetto, of maximum several hundred (small cramped) houses, i.e. let's say about the area of Vatican City, which is 0.49km2 (0.19 sq mi). Whereas the total area of Manhattan island is 59km2 (22.7 sq mi). So, yes, in my opinion, a Talmudic judge would consider the modern-day Manhattan eruv a gross perversion of the spirit of the law, and would update the definition accordingly. But no such judge exists in this era. So, yay, let's play "how ridiculously can we apply anachronistic archaic rules to the modern world" - apparently, ultra-orthodox Jews consider it such a fun game, that they let it rule their entire life!
This has been litigated well over a thousand years ago. To put it in modern legal terms, the legitimacy of an Eruv is a super precedent. It is discussed in depth in the Talmud, which is the clearest source of Jewish law.
Even in modern law, courts can and do come up with some fairly peculiar readings at times. Particularly with old laws or the constitution itself which can, at times, be vague at best when applied in a modern context.
The rules that the Eruv is a loophole for do not even come from God. They come from the specific interpretation that has developed about those relatively vague laws.
There is an old "joke" in Judaism that God has no place in interpreting Jewish law. I put joke in quotes because the Oven of Akhnai is itself part of the Talmud and is generally read as establishing that exact principle.
This type of "trick" is foundational to both Judaism and every common law system.
> This type of "trick" is foundational to... every common law system.
Disagree. Courts bend and stretch the law but only up to a point, and the more twisted interpretations tend to get overruled. Precedent is respected but only up to a point. And when people do apply a trick, everyone acknowledges that it's a trick, that they're subverting the will of the original drafters of the law because they think they know better than them.
If your parents said come home by 6:00 PM and instead of coming home you put a wire around the city to “make it your home” and stay out, you’re tricking your parents.
No. As an extension of the rule about not taking his name in vain, and rules about preserving written instances of the name, observant Jews try not to refer to him explicitly. There's a bit of a dysphemism treadmill involved, but oh well.
There's at least two in Sydney. One near Bondi and one around St Ives. The one around St Ives was a little controversial but the council eventually permitted it.
Yep. The St Ives one involved a fairly protracted debate at the local council, with accusations of anti-semitism (whether warranted or not is a matter of opinion) being levelled at those who argued against it.
Although I don't know if the Bondi and/or the St Ives eruvs involve their own physical wires? I thought it was deemed sufficient for the rabbis to just "declare" various sets of third-party power lines / phone lines as constituting the eruv, or am I mistaken?
Both eruvim have their own dedicated physical wires, yes.
> accusations of anti-semitism (whether warranted or not is a matter of opinion)
I live within the St Ives eruv. At least some of the opposition was unquestionably antisemitic — I recall receiving at least one antisemitic screed in our mailbox during the time of the council debate. (That one went something along the lines of ‘the Jews are trying to kick out all the non-Jews’ etc. etc., for two pages of fairly small text.)
You could make the argument that if God is giving you rules you should just obey them, not try and understand/interpret His exact intentions and do that instead (since presumably you cannot fully comprehend them).
It's not about tricking G-D it's about rationalizing one's own beliefs. Jews have to have their own personal understanding about the relationship. We already know from the story of Jonah that there is no tricking G-d. This more about community understanding.
So we're willing to suspect our disbelief enough to assume that there's an omnipotent sky beard making rules, but not that he doesn't approve of his little rascals trying to trick him?
Let people like what they like. It's not hurting anyone. People are weird. Embrace it.
Do these wires apply castle doctrine? That is if you create a big one and then someone believing in their power enters you are free to defend what is inside?
I don't think I've seen an internet comment section about eruvs–especially the one in Manhattan–that doesn't end up becoming anti-semitic, but I'm sure this one will be different
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.
I wonder why it seems to circumvent Hells Kitchen?
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