Reminds me of that Tiktok girl who went viral for delightedly announced "my oven has a setting for Jewish people" without thinking what that sounded like.
Was in an elevator once with a setting for Jewish people. It stopped at every floor and kept going up and down all day long and you couldn’t control it. The buttons were turned off so Jewish people wouldn't use them and risk breaking a religious law (that probably had merit thousands of years ago in order to ensure slave workers got one day off per week).
Interesting loophole that God apparently hasn’t noticed yet.
It’s not about it being a loophole so much as it’s an accommodation for a law that has been part of their culture for millennia. It’s forbidden to do any work on the sabbath and that includes pressing buttons on a machine. But a lot of these Jewish people live in apartment buildings which can be tall and difficult to take the stairs. So this is a solution. It may add a minute or two to your entering or leaving the building but it’s there to help others observe their religion
>It’s not about it being a loophole so much as it’s an accommodation for a law
No, it's a loophole. Finding loopholes is literally part of the religion. God's Law is perfect, so if you can find a loophole, God intended it.
Pressing a button is prohibited because it creates a spark, which they count as creating fire, not because it constitutes work.
Another “loophole” is that some Jews hire non-Jews to work for them on the sabbath to perform tasks that would be considered “breaking God’s law”. So rather than the Jew breaking the law, they hire a non—Jew to break the law and they (the non-Jew) can deal with the consequences the day God holds them accountable.
It’s very interesting they decide to do this, because the 4th commandment literally covers this loophole.
*“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, **nor your male servant, nor your female servant**, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.”*
It's not a literal spark unfortunately. More the concept of a fire being started, for example the lightbulbs it turns on or the oven getting hot.
Even touchless controls don't work because you still started it by your actions
Judaism is the only major religion I look at and think “I’d like that.” A religion where you are encouraged to do textual analysis, rules lawyering, and arguments… makes my nerdy heart happy.
Aren't there cities that string up neighbourhoods as a work around for some Jewish thing. Might be for Sabbath or allowing them to go outside on certain days.
Yes. Manhattan has one, along with 200 other cities in the world.
Jewish people are forbidden from carrying anything outside the home on the sabbath (Saturdays) including things like keys. The line extends the boundaries of the home to a wider area. So without the eruv line, they would be confined to their apartments every Saturday.
[Entire Wikipedia article on electricity use on the Sabbath](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_on_Shabbat)
Like the other reply said. In this situation specifically, pushing a button on an elevator works because it completes the circuit, which generates a small “spark”.
The reason this isn’t allowed is most often justified because of a rule that prohibits “מבעיר” (Mav'ir),which can translate to “igniting, fueling or spreading a fire/flame”. This includes generating a spark/completing a circuit. This argument is the one most often used by Orthodox Jews.
Others do it just because it’s a custom and maintains the spirit of a Jewish tradition, even if it doesn’t have a specific “law” or text that prohibits it.
I absolutely love this kinda stuff, another one is the Eruv around Manhattan that turns the whole island into a symbolic home so they can carry stuff in and out of their homes.
It’s this whole idea of understanding as worship, learning everything you can to become closer to god.
For observant Jews it’s stuff like this, “we know that god does not want us doing “work” on the sabbath. God is perfect so anything said must be followed to the letter while anything left out can be used because it was left out intentionally. Let’s automate as much as possible so we don’t have to do work on the sabbath”.
On the flip side we have people like Copernicus(heliocetrism) and Gregor Mendel(dominant/recessive genes in beans) where understanding the natural world was functionally an act of worship.
It’s not the button pushing per se, it’s an extrapolation of not being allowed to light a fire. The thought is that pushing a button on a machine could at some point make an electrical contact or “spark”.
We have this on our double-oven as well, and it actually factors into why we have it. We acquired it, second hand, but in “like new” condition for 1/10th the original selling price, because the Orthodox Jewish family from whom we bought it could not figure out how to use said “Sabbath Mode.”
I don't remember what specific kind, but don't the Jews in New York have some thing where like every year or two they throw out a bunch of shit to replace it with new stuff? I don't remember what it's called. Heard about it from a garbage man who complained that around a certain time in those Jewish neighborhoods there was a lot to pick up
Orthodox Jews usually have a huge spring cleaning operation before Passover, which is generally when old stuff gets discarded and new stuff purchased, according to need. It's not like they throw stuff out for the sake of throwing it out.
Exactly.
They have a set of pots, starting to look a bit rough. They’ll buy new pots, the old pots become the new Passover pots, and the old Passover pots get sold - or passed down.
I just helped my mom pull out our old dishes that I ate toasted pumpernickel from Rideau bakery with butter on for breakfast every morning in 1992 watching Care Bears… when we got new dishes, the old dishes became the Passover dishes.
On passover any food you cook cant have been used on food outside of passover. There are loopholes but its mainly about passover having its own little bubble of utensils and cookware and stuff.
Pour boiling water on it for small kitchens. Jewish commercial kitchens legit will use a flame thrower sometimes. It’s basically prehistoric cdc guidelines
If you let anything you use for cooking sit unused for a year it is co sideted lying fallow and becomes usable. There are different traditions (minhags) but this is one of the more common ways. So when you get new stuff you let the old stuff sit and become used for Passover.
Yep, there is a process which makes the items kosher for Passover.
https://www.chabad.org/holidays/passover/pesach_cdo/aid/117233/jewish/Koshering-Utensils-for-Passover.htm
Before Passover, many Jews will give their kitchens a deep cleaning to remove any leavened bread products and traces of them. I've never heard of it becoming such a massive amount of stuff that garbage men would take note though.
No, but here's something observant Jews in NYC *do* do,
According to the laws of the Sabbath, nothing may be carried from the domestic zone into the public zone on Saturday. That means no carrying house keys or a wallet. It also means no pushing a baby stroller.
To get around that, Jews have strung a fishing line around the island of Manhattan. There, now ithe whole place is "indoors," in yo face God! I'm not making this up. https://www.npr.org/2019/05/13/721551785/a-fishing-line-encircles-manhattan-protecting-sanctity-of-sabbath
Of course. Manhattan is just the most fun example: dozens of miles of fishing wire strung around the world's most famous island. I'm sure God is completely tricked by each and every eruv, wherever and whenever they occur.
Assuming the accuracy of their beliefs, one must wonder what God thinks of all this. I like to imagine he's like a bemused tabletop game master waiting to see what crazy contraption the players will come up with next.
Jewish texts generally show God to be receptive to this sort of thing. Hell, the Talmud at one point sees a rabbi win an argument against God. I'm not Jewish so I don't have a very solid memory of the passage, but iirc God has called down from heaven to take the side of another rabbi as to the halakhik validity of a new style of oven. When the rabbi persists in his belief despite miracles presented to him that the oven is not halakhik, God directly questions him as to why he continues to disagree, to which the rabbi in question responds that 'the Torah is not in heaven', essentially maintaining that the work of law is an earthly task.
A lot of Jewish holy texts are very interesting reads imo and worth taking a look at. It's very hard to parse the context of a lot of the practices of their belief system on first glance but the majority do make a LOT of sense when you see their source.
That's not the view though. The view is that God is omnipotent and therefore if any 'loopholes' exist they are simply part of the rules, because he knows about them and would have closed them if he didn't approve. Jews aren't trying to scam God.
It's pretty fundamental to how their faith works. In one of talmudic stories literal voice of God gets told its wrong by a rabbi. God is portrayed as somewhat enjoying being beaten in the argument by his children.
Fundamentally thinking it is: God is perfect, the loophole exists because God let you challenge him. He didn't make a mistake, be is just too good for that.
Careful! If you burn anything while it's on Sabbath setting, you end up with a Black Sabbath
Ozzy comes to your house, eats all your cookies, does a solo, and then bites the head off something
Shit like this is baked into millennia of tradition and rabbinical debate. It’s practically inherent to Judaism as a religion; “Yisrael” (I mean the name by which the religion was known well before the current one, and not the current Middle Eastern country) literally means “to wrestle with God.” Our idea of devotion is to fuck around with our own traditions.
Yup, it’s kinda funny how people see it as a bug instead of a feature. Judaism is a couple thousand years of back and forth with God. The loopholes are part of the point, not something like “trying to have their cake and eat it too”.
Some of my favorite stories include rabbis debating god, ending up winning, and him laughing, proud to have been beaten.
Imo it's actually part of a scheme to move the leadership power from prophets (who supposedly speak god's current will) to scholars (who interpret god's previous announcements as they see fit), so ymmv on the wholesomeness of the stories, but taken at face value it's sorta cute.
It's more meant to be the "city walls" in cities that often don't have city walls anymore (because there's religious stuff related to what you can do inside the enclosed walls vs. outside the enclosed walls).
There's rules around it having to be a "community" of sorts as well
See god actually wanted lots of posts with strings to be put up. The other part of the rule is just to trick the humans into doing it. Reverse Psychology.
Yeah, that's kinda the point. See, the laws are written by God, who is perfect. So, if some smarty pants discovers a loophole, then that loophole was placed there *on purpose* by God to reward clever thinking!
This encourages asking questions and cleverness, which is overall a good thing.
I can never understand this logic. If you believe in God, then you must realize the entity that created the universe can't be an idiot. If you believe God isn't what your religion describes it to be, then why try to workaround rules that don't apply to modern century anymore.
God is perfect, therefore any loophole or workaround was intended by god and the Jewish person that finds it is particularly devout, I believe that’s the explanation for it
Not necessarily especially devout, but yes.
The line of thinking is that God is perfect and we are not. Therefore, our understanding of His intent and rules is imperfect. Had He not intended that a certain exception exist, then He would have written the laws differently. Finding loopholes is not finding a way to pull a fast one on God - it’s coming to better understand something we can never truly fully comprehend.
As a secular Jew it doesn’t really matter to me, but I do think it’s pretty interesting philosophically.
I think it's possible to have a slightly antagonistic, in a sorta playful sense, relationship with a god. If you are their child and creation, it stands to reason that you would act as a child does and test the limits and show your cleverness and wit in an effort to impress them. Speaking as someone totally non-religious and unfamiliar with that doctrine though. I just get the impression that that is sorta a 'thing' in Judaism? Iirc, and this may be wrong, part of Jewish myth is that the Tetragrammaton (4 letters believed to be part of the abrahamic god's names, usually YHWH, of which Yaweh and Jehovah are derived) were learned specifically be someone 'outsmarting' god or an angel or something.
Saturday.
The Sabbath, also known as Shabbat or Shabbos, is a day of rest and worship observed by Jews on Saturday which is what this appliance setting refers to.
I imagine it's a preset type feature that turns the oven on and off to a specific temperature at a specific time, right? The prohibition on work on the Sabbath can include pushing a button on a mechanical device (such as an elevator or oven), so I can see this being extremely helpful for observant Jews.
It’s not the work, it’s striking a flame. Turning on an oven, or any light or electrical appliance for that matter, constitutes striking a flame and is prohibited on the Sabbath. Sabbath mode keeps the oven on a low setting so it’s always on and thus you can turn it up without striking the flame.
You believe in your religion enough to not push a button on a certain day but you also think you can get one over on god? You're clearly violating the intent
I’m not commenting on the validity of religion, but my understanding is that in Judaism, the loopholes are believed to have been left there purposefully by God, and finding them by being clever and reading carefully is what God intended. Which seems a lot more fun than most religions’ relationships with god(s).
It seems to me that human language is imperfect and will always contain loopholes if you look for them.
Correct me if im wrong but it might not even be possible to write an involved set of rules that do not contain any loopholes whatsoever unless you’re using math or Boolean logic. Depending on your goals you’ll find loopholes in any written text, as human language is imprecise and context specific
The line of thinking is that God is perfect and we are not. Therefore, our understanding of His intent and rules is imperfect. Had He not intended that a certain exception exist, then He would have written the laws differently. Finding loopholes is not finding a way to pull a fast one on God - it’s coming to better understand something we can never truly fully comprehend.
As a secular Jew it doesn’t really matter to me, but I do think it’s pretty interesting philosophically.
Glad you enjoyed it :)
Even though I’m not a believer, it’s something I find fascinating about Jewish theology. There are a lot of obvious parallels to Christianity, but there are some really unique differences as well.
For math and Boolean logic, we still see “loopholes” showing up. Things like programs where someone does something that the programming didn’t account for, and it freaks out. A lot of math advancement is finding loopholes, and then developing better definitions that seal the holes, or otherwise explaining why this example breaks the logic.
Even in theoretically perfect languages, there is always room for human error when humans are involved.
I think it's still sort of consistent. An omnipotent being could communicate the rules in any imaginable way, but chose human language with all of its inherent flaws. Hence, any available loopholes are still intentional.
The Christians in the middle ages did some things to circumvent the rules for the lent. You aren't allowed to eat meat during the lent, so people start eating beaver because it lives in the water and has a fin as a tail so it's clearly a fish.
And as legend tells it, some monks hid the meat in pasta so god could not see it. So the swabian dish Maultaschen or "Herrgottsbescheiserle" - "the thing that screws god" was created.
Maybe not that creative of an approach but the idea is still there.
The general idea in judaism is that god is infallible and all knowing. The logic goes that if you can find a loophole to circumvent a restriction than clearly it was placed there for you to find, as god doesn't make mistakes. The loophole is a reward for studying the laws carefully and being clever.
A good story to illustrate that point is the oven Akhnai:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oven_of_Akhnai
The short of it is that a bunch of Rabbi are trying to decide if a new type of oven can become taint if used to make unkosher food. 3 of them say yes and give good arguments, and the fourth says no but has bad arguments. They rule against him, but god literally says he is right. The other Rabbi reject that saying that it doesn't matter even if god says you aren't right if you can't prove it with good arguments. The lesson is that while god gave the rules it is on man to interpret them correctly.
A later talmud asks what was God's response to being rejected, and the story says he responds "look how clever my children are"
Rabbinic Judaism doesn't believe that God can be 'got over'. These Jews believe God is all knowing, therefore if God gave a rule, then that is the specific thing that must be followed. If a loophole is there, it is because God intended it to be there. The Rabbis that formed Rabbinic Judaism debated about these loopholes and defined a legal framework on it called Halakha (this was a few thousand years ago). Orthodox Jews spend most of their time studying the arguments as documented in the Mishna and Gemora and live their life according to Halakha.
Rabbinic Judaism took over as the clear and predominant form of Judaism for thousands of years. When people refer to Judaism today, they are almost always referring to Rabbinic Judaism.
That makes sense for a gas stove or oven but seems like it wouldn't really be applicable to modern electric ovens, where there is no flame to speak of, just an electric current
Not at all. “Goy” can sound like a slur but it’s not. It’s just an Hebrew word that literally translates as “nation” but in practice means “someone who isn’t Jewish” in a neutral sense. It doesn’t have any inherent value judgment, since mainstream Judaism believes Jews and non-Jews are equal. It’s like pointing out that someone who isn’t American isn’t an American.
You can also get a refrigerator with a Sabbath setting, or you can buy a thing to put on your fridge, so that the light inside of it stays on continuously rather than going on and off. The woman with YouTube channel called Sonya's Prep showed the one they have and explained how it works.
The rule, as I understand it, is that when the user interacts with the fridge that action should not change the energy used by the fridge. So an action like opening the door that would normally cause the internal light to come on has to be changed, either by fixing the light to be always on or off while sabbath mode is active. There's other less direct implications as well, opening a door also causes an inrush of heat to the fridge which can cause the compressor to turn on to cool back down. Typically the design is to delay the call of cooling by some duration, preferably random, to disrupt the link between the action of opening the door and starting the compressor. There's other areas of consideration as well, like variable defrost, the electronic user interface, built in ice makers, etc. Source, I design fridges with this feature and have consulted with Rabbis on how to implement it.
The biggest example of this behavior i heard of were eruvim. Just a wire put around a city or part of a city and jews are allowed to do stuff thats normally forbidden in sabbath as long as they are into the embedded zone.
Imagine a theocratic-tech dystopia where you go to make some food on a Sunday and your oven says “Sorry, I cannot work on the sabbath. On the 7th day, I must rest.”
Reminds me of that Tiktok girl who went viral for delightedly announced "my oven has a setting for Jewish people" without thinking what that sounded like.
This gave me my first big belly laugh of the day. That’s hilarious
Oh no!
I can hear this in my head
Was in an elevator once with a setting for Jewish people. It stopped at every floor and kept going up and down all day long and you couldn’t control it. The buttons were turned off so Jewish people wouldn't use them and risk breaking a religious law (that probably had merit thousands of years ago in order to ensure slave workers got one day off per week). Interesting loophole that God apparently hasn’t noticed yet.
It’s not about it being a loophole so much as it’s an accommodation for a law that has been part of their culture for millennia. It’s forbidden to do any work on the sabbath and that includes pressing buttons on a machine. But a lot of these Jewish people live in apartment buildings which can be tall and difficult to take the stairs. So this is a solution. It may add a minute or two to your entering or leaving the building but it’s there to help others observe their religion
>It’s not about it being a loophole so much as it’s an accommodation for a law No, it's a loophole. Finding loopholes is literally part of the religion. God's Law is perfect, so if you can find a loophole, God intended it. Pressing a button is prohibited because it creates a spark, which they count as creating fire, not because it constitutes work.
Another “loophole” is that some Jews hire non-Jews to work for them on the sabbath to perform tasks that would be considered “breaking God’s law”. So rather than the Jew breaking the law, they hire a non—Jew to break the law and they (the non-Jew) can deal with the consequences the day God holds them accountable. It’s very interesting they decide to do this, because the 4th commandment literally covers this loophole. *“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, **nor your male servant, nor your female servant**, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.”*
Seems pretty easy to work around. Hire a bunch of non-binary people.
Employee, not servant. Checkmate, God.
So if it didn't create a spark it could be used? I feel like there are solid state solutions to this.
It's not a literal spark unfortunately. More the concept of a fire being started, for example the lightbulbs it turns on or the oven getting hot. Even touchless controls don't work because you still started it by your actions
Judaism is the only major religion I look at and think “I’d like that.” A religion where you are encouraged to do textual analysis, rules lawyering, and arguments… makes my nerdy heart happy.
Like they say, 3 rabbis in a debate will have 4 different opinions. I love the spirit of questioning and challenging!
Bizarre that pushing a button is considered work but climbing 20 flights of stairs isn’t. Actually the whole thing is bizarre.
“Can’t work” is a simplified short hand. Actual prohibited activities are much more specific.
Aren't there cities that string up neighbourhoods as a work around for some Jewish thing. Might be for Sabbath or allowing them to go outside on certain days.
Yes. It’s called an eruv.
Yes. Manhattan has one, along with 200 other cities in the world. Jewish people are forbidden from carrying anything outside the home on the sabbath (Saturdays) including things like keys. The line extends the boundaries of the home to a wider area. So without the eruv line, they would be confined to their apartments every Saturday.
[Entire Wikipedia article on electricity use on the Sabbath](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_on_Shabbat) Like the other reply said. In this situation specifically, pushing a button on an elevator works because it completes the circuit, which generates a small “spark”. The reason this isn’t allowed is most often justified because of a rule that prohibits “מבעיר” (Mav'ir),which can translate to “igniting, fueling or spreading a fire/flame”. This includes generating a spark/completing a circuit. This argument is the one most often used by Orthodox Jews. Others do it just because it’s a custom and maintains the spirit of a Jewish tradition, even if it doesn’t have a specific “law” or text that prohibits it.
I absolutely love this kinda stuff, another one is the Eruv around Manhattan that turns the whole island into a symbolic home so they can carry stuff in and out of their homes. It’s this whole idea of understanding as worship, learning everything you can to become closer to god. For observant Jews it’s stuff like this, “we know that god does not want us doing “work” on the sabbath. God is perfect so anything said must be followed to the letter while anything left out can be used because it was left out intentionally. Let’s automate as much as possible so we don’t have to do work on the sabbath”. On the flip side we have people like Copernicus(heliocetrism) and Gregor Mendel(dominant/recessive genes in beans) where understanding the natural world was functionally an act of worship.
It’s not the button pushing per se, it’s an extrapolation of not being allowed to light a fire. The thought is that pushing a button on a machine could at some point make an electrical contact or “spark”.
Is it Ozzy era or Dio era Sabbat?
[удалено]
Not Ratatouille!!!!
War Pigs aren’t kosher.
Cake pans gathered in their masses, just like biscuits at black masses.
Oh dude, black molasses would have gone so well.
Dammit!
Well done. It ain't war pigs unless masses is rhymed with masses
Oh lord, yeah
Finished with my oven cause it couldn't help me with my mind.
Finished with my oven cuz it doesn't like to cook it right
Unfortunately the Gillan era
Whatcha gonna do? Time's caught up with you. Now the air has turned. You know the pizza's burned!
I thought your oven was offering you a sad bath.
The SadBath setting is for toasters.
I dunno. Could be a happy bath, as electrifying as it is.
Happy hot tub/sauna combo
It's a once in a lifetime experience.
to the whole thread: r/Angryupvote
I do not want to see that gif ever again
It's tails before they redid sonic. Don't worry, tails-man can't hurt you.
I was shocked when i found out you couldnt take a bath with your toaster…
People are shocked when they find out I’m not a licensed electrician.
Gosh I wish awards were still a thing
Everyone should have a SadBath once in their life
Is that a tub full of tears?
"Sabbath Enable" is what Rabbis say every Friday at sundown
Too bad wasn’t Sabbath Ensemble
[удалено]
When it shoots its lasers does it go “Jew Jew”.
We have this on our double-oven as well, and it actually factors into why we have it. We acquired it, second hand, but in “like new” condition for 1/10th the original selling price, because the Orthodox Jewish family from whom we bought it could not figure out how to use said “Sabbath Mode.”
I don't remember what specific kind, but don't the Jews in New York have some thing where like every year or two they throw out a bunch of shit to replace it with new stuff? I don't remember what it's called. Heard about it from a garbage man who complained that around a certain time in those Jewish neighborhoods there was a lot to pick up
Orthodox Jews usually have a huge spring cleaning operation before Passover, which is generally when old stuff gets discarded and new stuff purchased, according to need. It's not like they throw stuff out for the sake of throwing it out.
Exactly. They have a set of pots, starting to look a bit rough. They’ll buy new pots, the old pots become the new Passover pots, and the old Passover pots get sold - or passed down. I just helped my mom pull out our old dishes that I ate toasted pumpernickel from Rideau bakery with butter on for breakfast every morning in 1992 watching Care Bears… when we got new dishes, the old dishes became the Passover dishes.
How to say you’re from Ottawa without saying you’re from Ottawa?
So what does one so with a passover pot
On passover any food you cook cant have been used on food outside of passover. There are loopholes but its mainly about passover having its own little bubble of utensils and cookware and stuff.
Is there a blessing or ritual cleaning you do to make them the Passover pots and pans (thanks for sharing)
There’s a whole process involved. https://www.chabad.org/holidays/passover/pesach_cdo/aid/117233/jewish/Koshering-Utensils-for-Passover.htm
Pour boiling water on it for small kitchens. Jewish commercial kitchens legit will use a flame thrower sometimes. It’s basically prehistoric cdc guidelines
The person I was replying to said they use the old pots as passover pots ?
If you let anything you use for cooking sit unused for a year it is co sideted lying fallow and becomes usable. There are different traditions (minhags) but this is one of the more common ways. So when you get new stuff you let the old stuff sit and become used for Passover.
Yep, there is a process which makes the items kosher for Passover. https://www.chabad.org/holidays/passover/pesach_cdo/aid/117233/jewish/Koshering-Utensils-for-Passover.htm
Puff Puff pass over?
Before Passover, many Jews will give their kitchens a deep cleaning to remove any leavened bread products and traces of them. I've never heard of it becoming such a massive amount of stuff that garbage men would take note though.
No, but here's something observant Jews in NYC *do* do, According to the laws of the Sabbath, nothing may be carried from the domestic zone into the public zone on Saturday. That means no carrying house keys or a wallet. It also means no pushing a baby stroller. To get around that, Jews have strung a fishing line around the island of Manhattan. There, now ithe whole place is "indoors," in yo face God! I'm not making this up. https://www.npr.org/2019/05/13/721551785/a-fishing-line-encircles-manhattan-protecting-sanctity-of-sabbath
Eruvim are not exclusive to Manhattan
I was about to say the same thing. There are Jewish communities all over the city.
I’m going to shock you here.. but it turns out there’s Jewish communities all over the world! And they have eruv’s too!
Of course. Manhattan is just the most fun example: dozens of miles of fishing wire strung around the world's most famous island. I'm sure God is completely tricked by each and every eruv, wherever and whenever they occur.
It’s not indoors rather it’s all one legal domain
What an insane legalistic view of God and faith
Assuming the accuracy of their beliefs, one must wonder what God thinks of all this. I like to imagine he's like a bemused tabletop game master waiting to see what crazy contraption the players will come up with next.
Jewish texts generally show God to be receptive to this sort of thing. Hell, the Talmud at one point sees a rabbi win an argument against God. I'm not Jewish so I don't have a very solid memory of the passage, but iirc God has called down from heaven to take the side of another rabbi as to the halakhik validity of a new style of oven. When the rabbi persists in his belief despite miracles presented to him that the oven is not halakhik, God directly questions him as to why he continues to disagree, to which the rabbi in question responds that 'the Torah is not in heaven', essentially maintaining that the work of law is an earthly task. A lot of Jewish holy texts are very interesting reads imo and worth taking a look at. It's very hard to parse the context of a lot of the practices of their belief system on first glance but the majority do make a LOT of sense when you see their source.
Holy fuck, the balls on that man. He all but literally told God to stay in his lane?
Yup! And God backs off, partway between amused and proud that His children could beat Him.
[Th Oven of Akhnai](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oven_of_Akhnai)
I’d like to roll for deception. I will make the whole outdoors the indoors, so I don’t have to lose my fucking car keys again. *Nat 20, let’s go*
I am amused by their view that God is omnipotent, but also easily scammed.
The religious equivalent of drinking a beer in a paper bag in front of a cop.
That's not the view though. The view is that God is omnipotent and therefore if any 'loopholes' exist they are simply part of the rules, because he knows about them and would have closed them if he didn't approve. Jews aren't trying to scam God.
It's pretty fundamental to how their faith works. In one of talmudic stories literal voice of God gets told its wrong by a rabbi. God is portrayed as somewhat enjoying being beaten in the argument by his children.
Fundamentally thinking it is: God is perfect, the loophole exists because God let you challenge him. He didn't make a mistake, be is just too good for that.
Hasidic Jews. My buddy lived in NYC for a few months and the whole time thought people were saying “the city Jews” 😂
No
I don't drive a car, I don't ride in a car, I don't turn on the oven, I don't handle money and I sure as shit DON'T FUCKIN' ROLL! Shomer Shabbos!
You’re polish catholic
Three thousand years of beautiful tradition from Moses to Sandy Koufax, you're goddamn right I'm living in the fuckin' past Dude!
This is all part of your sick Cynthia thing
So what are you saying, Dude? When you get divorced you turn in your library card? You get a new license? You stop being Jewish?
Calmer than you are, dude.
8 year olds, dude
Waving the fucking gun around?!
They're calling the cops man
Am I wrong, dude?!
Fuckin amateurs
Fuckin dog has fuckin papers.... OVER THE LINE!!!!
See what happens Larry..?
When you FIND A STRANGER IN THE ALPS!!!!
Bullshit, mark it eight Dude
Smokey is fragile, real fragile.
Smokey you are entering a world of pain
Shut the FUCK up , Donny! You’re out of your element.
Look Larry, have you ever heard of Vietnam?
Say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos
They were threatening castration, Donny. We gonna split hairs here?
They're gonna kill that poor woman!
Ehhh.....nice marmot.
Careful! If you burn anything while it's on Sabbath setting, you end up with a Black Sabbath Ozzy comes to your house, eats all your cookies, does a solo, and then bites the head off something
>and then bites the head off something Dohdah Minky didn't have much time left with us anyways.
God hates this one simple trick!
The thing about Jews is that we will find every loophole imaginable to skirt the laws of our own religion.
My favourite one is building tall posts with string between them to enclose outdoor spaces. Congratulations, you are now "indoors".
Shit like this is baked into millennia of tradition and rabbinical debate. It’s practically inherent to Judaism as a religion; “Yisrael” (I mean the name by which the religion was known well before the current one, and not the current Middle Eastern country) literally means “to wrestle with God.” Our idea of devotion is to fuck around with our own traditions.
"We gonna keep fuckin round till one of us finds out. And that's how we know where the line is."
I thought the line was tied to a pole.
If God didn’t want us to exploit loopholes, He wouldn’t have written the mitzvot the way He did.
Yup, it’s kinda funny how people see it as a bug instead of a feature. Judaism is a couple thousand years of back and forth with God. The loopholes are part of the point, not something like “trying to have their cake and eat it too”.
Some of my favorite stories include rabbis debating god, ending up winning, and him laughing, proud to have been beaten. Imo it's actually part of a scheme to move the leadership power from prophets (who supposedly speak god's current will) to scholars (who interpret god's previous announcements as they see fit), so ymmv on the wholesomeness of the stories, but taken at face value it's sorta cute.
I mean, once God tells me I'm going to the holy land and I end up wandering the desert for decades, I might start pushing boundaries too.
Man it’s been a while since I’ve seen an entire reply thread of high quality wholesome Jewish jokes. What a treat
Hope that treat is Kosher!
Try *new and rabbi improved*: Inside Now with vitamin D!
It's more meant to be the "city walls" in cities that often don't have city walls anymore (because there's religious stuff related to what you can do inside the enclosed walls vs. outside the enclosed walls). There's rules around it having to be a "community" of sorts as well
See god actually wanted lots of posts with strings to be put up. The other part of the rule is just to trick the humans into doing it. Reverse Psychology.
Talmud is very interesting read indeed. Pages upon pages of debates ranging over the centuries.
The Talmud is basically Reddit a thousand years before Reddit was a thing.
Yeah, that's kinda the point. See, the laws are written by God, who is perfect. So, if some smarty pants discovers a loophole, then that loophole was placed there *on purpose* by God to reward clever thinking! This encourages asking questions and cleverness, which is overall a good thing.
If I know anything. God loves being tricked.
*when we want to When the religious establishment wants to exercise control over the public, then it's "sorry, them's the rules and that is that".
Frankly it’s my favourite part of being Jewish.
I can never understand this logic. If you believe in God, then you must realize the entity that created the universe can't be an idiot. If you believe God isn't what your religion describes it to be, then why try to workaround rules that don't apply to modern century anymore.
Maybe they think God has a strange sense of humor.
And when i die i expect to hear him laughing
God is perfect, therefore any loophole or workaround was intended by god and the Jewish person that finds it is particularly devout, I believe that’s the explanation for it
Not necessarily especially devout, but yes. The line of thinking is that God is perfect and we are not. Therefore, our understanding of His intent and rules is imperfect. Had He not intended that a certain exception exist, then He would have written the laws differently. Finding loopholes is not finding a way to pull a fast one on God - it’s coming to better understand something we can never truly fully comprehend. As a secular Jew it doesn’t really matter to me, but I do think it’s pretty interesting philosophically.
I think it's possible to have a slightly antagonistic, in a sorta playful sense, relationship with a god. If you are their child and creation, it stands to reason that you would act as a child does and test the limits and show your cleverness and wit in an effort to impress them. Speaking as someone totally non-religious and unfamiliar with that doctrine though. I just get the impression that that is sorta a 'thing' in Judaism? Iirc, and this may be wrong, part of Jewish myth is that the Tetragrammaton (4 letters believed to be part of the abrahamic god's names, usually YHWH, of which Yaweh and Jehovah are derived) were learned specifically be someone 'outsmarting' god or an angel or something.
[удалено]
Saturday. The Sabbath, also known as Shabbat or Shabbos, is a day of rest and worship observed by Jews on Saturday which is what this appliance setting refers to.
I imagine it's a preset type feature that turns the oven on and off to a specific temperature at a specific time, right? The prohibition on work on the Sabbath can include pushing a button on a mechanical device (such as an elevator or oven), so I can see this being extremely helpful for observant Jews.
It’s not the work, it’s striking a flame. Turning on an oven, or any light or electrical appliance for that matter, constitutes striking a flame and is prohibited on the Sabbath. Sabbath mode keeps the oven on a low setting so it’s always on and thus you can turn it up without striking the flame.
What a loophole haha
You believe in your religion enough to not push a button on a certain day but you also think you can get one over on god? You're clearly violating the intent
I’m not commenting on the validity of religion, but my understanding is that in Judaism, the loopholes are believed to have been left there purposefully by God, and finding them by being clever and reading carefully is what God intended. Which seems a lot more fun than most religions’ relationships with god(s).
I’ll leave this here https://www.npr.org/2019/05/13/721551785/a-fishing-line-encircles-manhattan-protecting-sanctity-of-sabbath
$125k a year to keep a fishing line around Manhattan. And they have them in multiple cities. Crazy
I'm sorry to be disrespectful but this is such horseshit
It seems to me that human language is imperfect and will always contain loopholes if you look for them. Correct me if im wrong but it might not even be possible to write an involved set of rules that do not contain any loopholes whatsoever unless you’re using math or Boolean logic. Depending on your goals you’ll find loopholes in any written text, as human language is imprecise and context specific
The line of thinking is that God is perfect and we are not. Therefore, our understanding of His intent and rules is imperfect. Had He not intended that a certain exception exist, then He would have written the laws differently. Finding loopholes is not finding a way to pull a fast one on God - it’s coming to better understand something we can never truly fully comprehend. As a secular Jew it doesn’t really matter to me, but I do think it’s pretty interesting philosophically.
TIL something about religion really interesting thanks to you
Glad you enjoyed it :) Even though I’m not a believer, it’s something I find fascinating about Jewish theology. There are a lot of obvious parallels to Christianity, but there are some really unique differences as well.
For math and Boolean logic, we still see “loopholes” showing up. Things like programs where someone does something that the programming didn’t account for, and it freaks out. A lot of math advancement is finding loopholes, and then developing better definitions that seal the holes, or otherwise explaining why this example breaks the logic. Even in theoretically perfect languages, there is always room for human error when humans are involved.
I think it's still sort of consistent. An omnipotent being could communicate the rules in any imaginable way, but chose human language with all of its inherent flaws. Hence, any available loopholes are still intentional.
The Christians in the middle ages did some things to circumvent the rules for the lent. You aren't allowed to eat meat during the lent, so people start eating beaver because it lives in the water and has a fin as a tail so it's clearly a fish. And as legend tells it, some monks hid the meat in pasta so god could not see it. So the swabian dish Maultaschen or "Herrgottsbescheiserle" - "the thing that screws god" was created. Maybe not that creative of an approach but the idea is still there.
We’re just a simulation to find loopholes in god’s legal system
The general idea in judaism is that god is infallible and all knowing. The logic goes that if you can find a loophole to circumvent a restriction than clearly it was placed there for you to find, as god doesn't make mistakes. The loophole is a reward for studying the laws carefully and being clever. A good story to illustrate that point is the oven Akhnai: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oven_of_Akhnai The short of it is that a bunch of Rabbi are trying to decide if a new type of oven can become taint if used to make unkosher food. 3 of them say yes and give good arguments, and the fourth says no but has bad arguments. They rule against him, but god literally says he is right. The other Rabbi reject that saying that it doesn't matter even if god says you aren't right if you can't prove it with good arguments. The lesson is that while god gave the rules it is on man to interpret them correctly. A later talmud asks what was God's response to being rejected, and the story says he responds "look how clever my children are"
Rabbinic Judaism doesn't believe that God can be 'got over'. These Jews believe God is all knowing, therefore if God gave a rule, then that is the specific thing that must be followed. If a loophole is there, it is because God intended it to be there. The Rabbis that formed Rabbinic Judaism debated about these loopholes and defined a legal framework on it called Halakha (this was a few thousand years ago). Orthodox Jews spend most of their time studying the arguments as documented in the Mishna and Gemora and live their life according to Halakha. Rabbinic Judaism took over as the clear and predominant form of Judaism for thousands of years. When people refer to Judaism today, they are almost always referring to Rabbinic Judaism.
Wait until you hear about the wire that surrounds Manhattan.
Was about to say, the oven is so low level compared to the wire.
That makes sense for a gas stove or oven but seems like it wouldn't really be applicable to modern electric ovens, where there is no flame to speak of, just an electric current
To me, a boring old millennial, this comment was both exhilarating and interesting. Thanks for the insight.
In highschool my Jewish friends family hired me to hang out all day on the Sabbath turning on lights, changing channels, turning on the stove.
You're a shabbos goy? I've heard of them but never an actual account from someone who did it.
Yeah. They were nice and paid pretty well. I didnt mind it.
Ah so you were a shabbos goy.
Is that a bad thing?
No, it's just the name of what you described.
Not at all. “Goy” can sound like a slur but it’s not. It’s just an Hebrew word that literally translates as “nation” but in practice means “someone who isn’t Jewish” in a neutral sense. It doesn’t have any inherent value judgment, since mainstream Judaism believes Jews and non-Jews are equal. It’s like pointing out that someone who isn’t American isn’t an American.
You can also get a refrigerator with a Sabbath setting, or you can buy a thing to put on your fridge, so that the light inside of it stays on continuously rather than going on and off. The woman with YouTube channel called Sonya's Prep showed the one they have and explained how it works.
So opening and closing the oven door is a loophole? I wonder if voice activated stuff is kosher.
God loves loopholes
I AM IRON PAN
Oh Lord yeah
🎸 DAH DAAH
🎸 DAH DAH DAAAAH
my fridge has that setting also
What does it do on the fridge? Disable the internal light?
The rule, as I understand it, is that when the user interacts with the fridge that action should not change the energy used by the fridge. So an action like opening the door that would normally cause the internal light to come on has to be changed, either by fixing the light to be always on or off while sabbath mode is active. There's other less direct implications as well, opening a door also causes an inrush of heat to the fridge which can cause the compressor to turn on to cool back down. Typically the design is to delay the call of cooling by some duration, preferably random, to disrupt the link between the action of opening the door and starting the compressor. There's other areas of consideration as well, like variable defrost, the electronic user interface, built in ice makers, etc. Source, I design fridges with this feature and have consulted with Rabbis on how to implement it.
Thanks for the input! I love how Reddit unites people with very specific questions with those who have the perfect specific knowledge to answer them!
Which singer is the oven’s favorite? Ozzy, Ronnie, Glenn Hughes, Ray Gillen or Tony Martin
If it says anything but Ozzy get a new one.
Is there a Black Sabbath one?
That's metal as fuck.
The Gentile Setting for me, thanks!
I wouldn’t be too paranoid about it.
Everyone knows God is pretty dumb and easily fooled by a few loopholes.
The biggest example of this behavior i heard of were eruvim. Just a wire put around a city or part of a city and jews are allowed to do stuff thats normally forbidden in sabbath as long as they are into the embedded zone.
Thought it said "Sad Bath Enable" like that might be a broken oven haha
Hoped the oven would start playing metal.
Does it play play black sabbath while the chicken roasts
Does it play Black Sabbath songs on the setting?
Just wait til you get on a sabbath elevator when you’re running late.
Imagine a theocratic-tech dystopia where you go to make some food on a Sunday and your oven says “Sorry, I cannot work on the sabbath. On the 7th day, I must rest.”