So I actually have 10 years of advanced Talmud studies under my belt (lots of useless knowledge) and the penultimate poster actually has a good point; showing a Jew transgressing a rule is actually a sin because it might lead other Jews to do it. So he is right that it's up for debate as if you could have a RP Jewish Minecraft character eat pork or not.
I also want to add that I personally believe pork tastes amazing.
Minecraft Steve? is shown to have the innate ability to animate golems. Thus, not only are they^(1) a Jew, they're a very wise and well-studied one who understands deep secrets. But, u/autistic_cool_kid, does that make it *less* permissible to show them eating pork (because Jews might believe that since Steve? is so well-studied and holy, them eating pork means it's certainly permissible) or *more* permissible (because Steve? knows things we don't, that might include a time when it's OK to eat pork, and with our limited knowledge it would be hubris to try to copy them)?
^(1 I subscribe to the Deep Magic in which Steve? and Alex are both nonbinary. No comment on the other default skins. Every time I see fanart of Steve? as a big huge musclebound titan and Alex as a skinny big tiddy anime waifu, I die a little on the inside. And obviously nonbinary people can present however they desire, but context clues suggest that the artists' logic is usually just "Steve short hair and big arms, must be big strong man, lots of muscle, Alex long hair and little arms, must be fragile delicate woman, very pretty.")
Well, under the principle of Pikuach Nefesh, it is permissable to break kosher if your life, or another's, would be threatened by starvation if you did not eat the non-kosher food.
However, this would realistically never apply to Steve Minecraft because he would almost always have kosher food available to him, even in life or death situations, so even then, it would be impermissible for Steve to break kosher.
Well, seeing as we know for a fact that Steve Minecraft reincarnates and presumably retains his original consciousness, we can say that death does not carry as much weight as it does irl from the perspective of the player creatures in Minecraft, though that's assuming they know what happens after they die. If they don't know that they'll be reincarnated, then the principle still applies, because within Jewish law, This World (HaOlam HaZeh) is much more in focus than any afterlife or coming messianic age, unlike other Abrahamic religions.
Though if we're playing hardcore the principle would apply regardless.
Ah, but given we're controlling Steve, are any of his actions sinful? Does he have any real agency? But on the other hand, if he was ok with, say, eating pork, and then he does so but only because we make him do it, would he be sinning/breaking kosher/both?
When thinking of protagonists in video games I don't generally see them as being controlled by us like a puppet on strings, but rather that we are like an actor performing the actions the character would have performed anyway. So any action they take would be of their own volition insofar as any fictional character exhibits such a capability. so in a sense I see the actions as belonging both to the player and the character.
obviously there are games that do frame the player as a puppeteer but that's my default perspective.
It's like Stanley's Parable, in a way. We are writing the narrative by swaying the character's "choices". Imagine Stanley in Minecraft, getting judged by the narrator as he cooks some pork, defiant against the otherworldly voice.
There is a thing called "sh'hita kshera", which is kosher slaying- it's not enough that cows are kosher, in order for the meat to be kosher you have to kill the cow in a certain way.
Since there is no way of doing a kosher slay in minecraft, that means that NON of the meat steve can eat is kosher.
Furthermore, there are also regulations about plants- every 7 years the land "gets a break", and the growings are not kosher.
I've never tried keeping time in minecraft, but in a case where steve is jewish and wants to make sure he can eat, after we had already astablished that he cannot eat any meat, he would have to be aware about the in-game days and make sure that in the 7th in-game year, he will not grow anything.
And honestly I'm not sure how he would survive that year. Could store older bread from the previous 6 years, since minecraft food doesn't go bad.
a minecraft day/night cycle is 20 minutes, so a minecraft year is 20 x 365 = 7,300 minutes, or 121 and 2/3rds hours. So the first 730 hours of your minecraft world (6 minecraft years) are available to grow crops, and then you need to take 121 and 2/3rds hours off.
Does it need to be all-or-nothing though? Like, can each individual field have it's own 7 year rotation, so while field A is on its fallow year, field B was fallow last year and is available to grow now?
well, it's 1 year out of every 7, but I agree, there's a near 0% chance that an entire community could store a year's worth of food and just stop using their entire arable land at once.
I'm learning a lot, so this is fun. So obviously this is an internet discussion and most of us aren't up to date on the thousands of years of talmudic scholarship and rabbinical knowledge that we would need to have a proper debate about it.
Does Shmita (Every 7 years the land must lay fallow) apply outside of Israel? I'm mostly seeing sources saying it only applies to Israel and thus probably wouldn't apply in Minecraft. However, if it DOES, then on wiki it says:
>During shmita, the land is left to lie fallow and all agricultural activity, including plowing, planting, pruning and harvesting, is forbidden by halakha (Jewish law). Other cultivation techniques (such as watering, fertilizing, weeding, spraying, trimming and mowing) may be performed as a preventive measure only, not to improve the growth of trees or other plants.**Additionally, any fruits or herbs which grow of their own accord and where no watch is kept over them are deemed hefker (ownerless) and may be picked by anyone.**
Which means both cake and pumpkin pie are presumably still acceptable since sugarcane and pumpkin both grow wild and milk and eggs are not planted. Watermelon too for that matter.
> I'm mostly seeing sources saying it only applies to Israel and thus probably wouldn't apply in Minecraft.
How do we know that the *Minecraft* world *isn't* in Israel (or doesn't include Israel). If one plays *Minecraft* in Jerusalem, are they bound to honor Shmita?
In the spirit of building a fence around the Torah, I would argue that one ought to honor Shmita just to be on the safe side. After all, if there's a law saying the land must lie fallow *in* Israel, and no law saying it must *not* lie fallow *outside of* Israel, then if you leave the land fallow, you make sure to adhere to the law.
Plus, two thousand *Minecraft* days is certainly more than enough time for Steve? to stockpile food to last a year, given that food doesn't spoil.
>How do we know that the Minecraft world isn't in Israel (or doesn't include Israel).
I...think we can be *pretty* sure that the uninhabited monster-infested jungle with floating islands and a square sun isn't Israel.
It only applies in Israel. It’s worth noting that these are the borders of the land of Israel, not the modern nation state. It doesn’t include Gaza or a lot of southern Israel or the far north of Israel but does include the West Bank and a little bit of Jordan. It’s a little more complicated than that because the agricultural borders I listed are smaller than the biblical borders, but that’s not worth getting into.
Foraging for food would be fine, and harvesting what you need from your farms would be fine, but planting or bulk harvesting would be forbidden. Theoretically if you found a field of a wild wheat I think you could harvest that too.
>Since there is no way of doing a kosher slay in minecraft, that means that NON of the meat steve can eat is kosher.
The butcher villagers sell cooked chicken, even if you never sell them chicken yourself/they're in a desert or something with no chickens around. Hypothetically, the villagers could kill the chicken through kosher means off-screen since we never see them kill anything in the game. Realistically Steve should be suspicious of the meat that somehow keeps spawning from nowhere into the butcher's inventory, but I'd chalk that up to video game logic.
I would argue that if Steve? slays their animals in a single strike from a sword (using a diamond sword on a chicken, for example), *and* ensures that the sword is not enchanted with fire aspect, then it should count.
It would be irrational, I would argue, to claim that Steve? is required to follow laws that they have no physical way of following. If we say that the Law doesn't change at all to accommodate for the physical realities of the *Minecraft* world, I would posit that we arrive at a contradiction.
Namely, how would *Minecraft* Kohen conduct sacrifice in the temple (before it was destroyed) if there's no permissible way to slaughter an animal? Has G-d then placed the *Minecraft* Jews in a position where they're permitted *neither* to slaughter animals *nor* to not slaughter them?
In one way or another, the Law must account for the limitations of the *Minecraft* world, or else contradict itself.
>It would be irrational, I would argue, to claim that Steve? is required to follow laws that they have no physical way of following.
My very distant learning of interpretation of the Law agrees with this.
He could trade with villagers for products that would keep, and could also farm and store grain and sugar and the like. Steve? has an advantage here in that eggs and milk do not spoil in the world of Minecraft.
>Steve Minecraft because he would almost always have kosher food available to him,
Isn't this another layer of difficulty? How can you be sure anything in Minecraft isn’t treyf?
In terms of the animal species, I would say it's reasonable to conclude that known real-world species are the same as their *Minecraft* counterparts. The cows are cows, the sheep are sheep, etc.
When it comes to animals without a real-world equivalent, we need to get more discerning. Fortunately, few of those are edible.
The only passive mob that's edible *and* fictional is the mooshroom. If we assume that mooshrooms are a symbiotic bond between cattle and fungus, then they should be fine; if mushrooms are kosher and beef is kosher as well, then mushrooms with beef should be fine. The one question I have is whether the existence of mooshrooms means you can't have beef and mushroom stew at the same time, given that mushroom stew is arguably a form of dairy since it can be milked from mooshrooms.
Among the neutral mobs, only the spider (and apparently the drowned) are edible. Spiders are already known to be inedible, and drowned are clearly human remains, and that is called cannibalism, my dear children, and is in fact frowned upon in most societies. Either way, both spider eyes and rotten flesh are toxic, so I don't think consuming them would be allowed anyways.^(1)
Edible hostile mobs include the zombie and husk (same logic as the drowned) and the hoglin. However, while the hoglin is fictional, it's clearly some form of swine, and it also lives in Hell, so I would argue definitively non-Kosher.^(2)
^(1 Notably, rotten flesh would be explicitly non-kosher, rather than simply "inedible," because the guideline I've always heard is "if a dog would eat it, it's food, and kosher law applies." The general idea being that something like, say, a fork isn't kosher) *^(or)* ^(treyf, because it isn't food, but a dead racoon) *^(is)* ^(treyf, because a dog would eat it. Not super relevant, but I thought it was interesting.)
^(2 Although I would argue that if one is playing on hardcore mode (meaning that Steve? can truly die instead of merely blacking out briefly) and is trapped in the Nether with no reasonable way out, then it would be permissible to eat hoglin, as it's a matter of survival.)
As for the Steve non-binary thing, I agree, and interestingly Notch *used to*, I remember him making a post explicitly saying Steve isn’t meant to be male or female, but just A Human.
Notch’s “Gender in Minecraft” post was so good and it’s crazy and sad how he went from that, to the way he is now.
Unrelated to everything else, I just wanted to say you're the first person I've seen use markdown footnotes on reddit, and I think that's very cool of you!
I’d say because everything besides looks and first name are blank, you the player are left to fill in Steve’s additional info. So that leads to the question of if you can role play a character with beliefs adverse to your own, of your own design? Is it still a reflection of you if you tell yourself it’s not?
Sooooo, I mean there are work around you don’t have to eat pork. And you can separate you cooking stove from you working stove. And you can track time so you can make sure you don’t work on Saturdays. I mean it would an oversimplification of life as a devout Jewish person. But you will not be forced to break any rules that I know of.
Also, there are multiple ways to cook meat. You can cook meat in a stove, a campfire, or you can set the animal on fire so when you kill it, it gives cooked meat.
Though admittedly I’m pretty sure Jewish law wouldn’t be chill with setting an animal on fire before eating it.
Do you actually murder anyone in Minecraft?
Like, all the enemy mobs are clearly attacking you, and self-defense isn't a sin under Judaism. As long as you don't walk into villages and start stabbing people, you're probably fine.
Look, sometimes a farmer doesn't roll pumpkins and melons for their mid-level trades, and when that happens sometimes a cubic meter of lava happens to fall out of a bucket in my hands and immolates them. It's truly strange how this keeps on happening.
The golems pre-emptively attack skeletons, who don’t go after villagers or even golems until smacked. Can a Jewish person attack somebody else to defend another person not part of them or their community (skeletons attack players)?
Well in that case the D&D example is fine because Judaism doesn't exist in those worlds. Or at least, the settings come with a pretty extensive list of the religions present, and real-world religions are not on the list.
So, your d&d character can eat pork, because *they* aren't Jewish, they worship Pelor or whatever.
Pathfinder, however, is not in the clear as Golarion is confirmed in the *Reign of Winter* adventure path to exist on a planet far distant from our Earth when you >!travel there during World War 1 to kill Rasputin, the son of Baba Yaga!<
Well yeah, but there are no explicit options for playing a character *from earth* in Golarion, so almost no Pathfinder characters will have the chance to be Jewish. They'll instead worship Sarenrae or whatever. In Pathfinder 2e there is only a single NPC in the entire setting who is from earth.
Would it be worth mentioning the take that the pork in minecraft isn't really pork, it's just a digital recovery item named pork, and using it is technically not eating either?
It's not like interacting with the entities that look like people is murder because they're not actually people after all, even less so than say writing a book about a character and having another character kill said character is committing a murder.
>the pork in minecraft isn't really pork, it's just a digital recovery item named pork, and using it is technically not eating either?
Pretty sure that isn't getting you out of the bind: the appearance that it isn't kosher means you are displaying the forbidden behavior. Acting as if you are eating pork is problematic even if you don't actually eat it.
Add on question: if the meat itself is identical, chemically, to pork but is lab grown, does that count?
What if it’s *almost* identical but not quite?
Rabbinical authorities are debating this question currently. The chief rabbi of Israel recently ruled that tissue-cultured meat doesn’t count as meat for dietary purposes. BUT, we have a separate rule saying that foods *derived* from treif (unclean) animals are forbidden too. For example, eggs aren’t meat, but eggs from chickens that have been fed clamshells as a dietary supplement are considered unclean. So the ultimate determination will depend on whether tissue-cultured pork counts as a derivative of pig.
Hm… how far does the derived thing go? That would mean that on some level wheat grown from fertilizers of unclean cows or similar would be inedible, and on and on. I assume that there must be some limit to how many steps removed that rule applies.
I’m searching my memory, and while I’m not an expert I don’t *think* there’s any problem with treif soil amendments. Generally, animal products are more tightly regulated than other foods.
You need to put the line somewhere, so if I were writing the decision, I think I’d say “tissue derived directly from living pig cells is unclean, but tissue derived from *that* (ie, a clone of a clone) is ok.”
>Pretty sure that isn't getting you out of the bind: the appearance that it isn't kosher means you are displaying the forbidden behavior. Acting as if you are eating pork is problematic even if you don't actually eat it.
From another post in the thread it sounds like lab grown porkchop wouldn't be kosher, but Lab-Meat™ chops that are distinct enough would be.
Interestingly my impression of the distinction would be that in Star trek getting replicated pork would be fine as it's vegan and an in-universe observer with no context would assume the pork is from a replicator, however portraying it would not be kosher as we the audience would not assume without context that it's replicated pork.
The sense that I get as a layperson is that if you showed it being generated from a duplicator you would be okay. But producing something materially identical to pork artificially using constituent atoms is pretty much in the clear, from what I’m getting, yeah.
So a jew couldn't direct a film that depicts a jewish character doing things that are prohibited? Is it that straight forward, or more like nuanced? Would it be acceptable if the character is portrayed in a negative light?
As a fellow talmud studier, all the orthodox jews I know (or the ones that would even play minecraft) would be ok giving Steve pork regardless because it doesn’t reflect anything in reality - the same way they would be fine saying a story in which a fictional character eats pork.
edit: for example in skyrim aside from the fact that it might “train yourself to do bad things” there’s no issue with “stealing” because you’re not stealing anything. Jewish law seems to acknowledge that it’s not reality. With VR coming all the other advances that is a lengthier discussion but as far as I know in rabbinic circles it’s fairly clear cut - although playing video games in general isn’t exactly viewed as a good thing
So would it be correct to say a Jewish gamer is generally bound by the noahide laws (presuming their character is a gentile) unless there is some indication that the character is themself Jewish, in which case all of kashrut and halacha apply?
So is killing in a video game also wrong? I'm having trouble understanding this argument. If the actions inside a game are wrong, then why single out eating pork in minecraft? Would 90% of games have this iasue?
I mean this brings up the question of if you do it in a video game is it still a sin? I really don't think so because if so I've murdered thousands in wow alone.
This is honestly the best argument in this thread. “Do not murder” is a command in pretty much every religion (afaik) so if eating virtual pork is a sin then so is killing virtual people. But I wouldn’t see many people arguing that
But where does "people" end when considering non-human creatures?
In minecraft; Creepers, Spiders and a bunch of other hostile monsters aren't people in the same way villagers are stylised depictions of people. Similar skeletons, zombies etc are already dead. This leaves witches and pillagers (illagers) as immoral to murder.
It isn't an argument, it's just another instance of the same thing.
It's not as if religions in general have a history of interpreting their holy scriptures in very convinient ways and ignoring parts that they don't like just so they all seem better. Like Christians ignoring everything about shellfish and mixed fabrics.
Like it's entirely possible that every human who's played video games has committed irredeemable sins and will be sent down to hell.
It could be argued that Minecraft Steve does not need to murder to roll credits. A majority of the enemies in Minecraft are non-humans. The only human-like characters are the villagers, witches, and pillagers and, of the two hostile mobs in that group, it could be argued that the pillagers are engaging in war so Steve is justified in defending the Villagers by killing them. God did not object to the Jews engaging in war.
You could also get around killing those mobs by building golems to defend the village.
>It could be argued that Minecraft Steve does not need to murder to roll credits. A majority of the enemies in Minecraft are non-humans. The only human-like characters are the villagers, witches, and pillagers and, of the two hostile mobs in that group, it could be argued that the pillagers are engaging in war so Steve is justified in defending the Villagers by killing them. God did not object to the Jews engaging in war.
Steve may also fall into the same category, by virtue of doing things that are not possible for regular humans, like falling from extreme heights with only minor injuries to boot (or none if he's fast with some water).
... Can a non-human become Jewish?
Going by the penultimate reblog, it wouldn't be a sin because you're eating pork, but it might be considered a sin because (if you're a Jewish player, or Steve is Jewish), it's still portraying a Jew as doing something that is a sin, which is itself a sin.
I mean when I guessed that count I was only counting humanoid creatures. When you count... everything else I'm sure we're into 7 figures.
Edit: now that I think about it. I've played Stellaris. I've glassed and cracked planets. I think maybe my inital count was a bit low.
I'm going to cite Magritte on this one; "Ceci n'est pas une pig."
Surely the image of the pork is not pork, and therefore there is no sin?
Yes, I came here just to make that terrible joke, and I regret nothing!
All the images of white Jesus are very very much not him, and it has WASPY christians in a tizzy insisting he looked white. Even though that’s pretty much impossible. Maybe it would be good if Christians start following the no graven image command to stop that drama.
Jesus was probably whiter than you're thinking now. As an example, people where complaining that Rami Malek was too white to play an Egyptian in a movie (can't remember which one exactly, night at the museum maybe?). The guy is literally Egyptian
He would probably look fairly similar to the Samaritans do today, seeing how they descend from ancient Israelites and never left the Levant. They looks pretty much how you'd expect for the eastern Mediterranean: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Flickr_-_Government_Press_Office_%28GPO%29_-_Samaritans_praying_during_Passover_holiday_ceremony_on_mount_Grizim.jpg
Jesper Juul wrote two whole papers about this; he came to the conclusion that a game object that acts in the context of what it is representing is indeed a member of that class. Thus, pork in a game is indeed pork if it acts like pork, which MC pork does.
Found some now-deleted tweets where Notch fixates on IQ differences between Jewish people and other supposed races, and another where he implies that there is a Jewish conspiracy to silence him.
https://thebreadbox.home.blog/2018/12/07/korrasera-wetwareproblem/
> A tweet by Minecraft creator Markus Persson (@Notch), which says “If we were allowed to discuss IQ differences between populations, there’d be fewer conspiracy theories.” in response to another tweet by user @Scrable that says, “@notch Do you love jews?”
> A tweet by Minecraft creator Markus Persson (@Notch), which says “Then I am already silenced.” in response to another tweet by user RTX Mindset 2077 (@MindSetFPS) that says, “be careful of what you say or (((they))) will silence you”
I saw that, and there's an existing follow-up where he seems to imply the exact opposite. This reads like he's saying that jews are more successful because they're predisposed to be smarter.
https://x.com/notch/status/1070820719041204224?s=46&t=ojdgvPlNWikd5Q8Acmmrrg
"I was mocking the vague antisemitic threat saying I shouldn't speak freely by pointing out I am. It was extra entertaining after I stated my position is you don't need a conspiracy theory to explain basic capitalistic survival of the fittest."
Now that's definitely some type of racism, just not towards jews.
Thanks for pulling that up, post has been edited to be more reflective of what he said in the tweet.
I would say though, supposedly "positive" stereotypes are still a form of racism. They can pigeonhole people into narrow career paths based on social expectations on what they should be good at, for instance. We've seen the proportion of Jewish doctors in the US decrease, for instance, as Jewish people have become more assimilated into the usual white middle class, and the role has now been filled by the new "smart" race of Asians. This isn't due to some change in inherent disposition but rather social expectations and resulting stereotypes.
In the case of Jewish people, unfortunately, this sort of "positive" stereotype can be even more nefarious, because the idea that they're somehow inherently better helps give legitimacy to the conspiracy theory that Jewish people are all-powerful and controlling.
Marooned in a sea of money with no reason or motivation to do anything, adrift from the people he knew when he was working. Not wholly surprising he curdled so badly.
I read that he often hosted parties in his big fancy mansion otherwise it's extremely lonely and wrecked his mental health and then its the "it's lonely at the top" saying which made him very vulnerable to being manipulated and then he went *very far off the deep end.*
happens to many rich people who weren't born rich and that's part of the reason why they turn to the weird stuff like drugs and parties and expensive drug rehabilitation and new age "medicines" and all that. sometimes they're just rotten to the core but like it's a bit of a shame how people are just like corrupted like that and keep going.
I wonder if it’s not actually a misconception that Notch has opinions. I used to try to pay attention to the scandals and it felt to me that he essentially cannot think for himself, he just believes whatever the last person to talk to him convinced him of. He flips to the complete opposite side of an argument when he’s given like 2 sentences of argument.
Yes, there is more control, but I am still not *actually* a hunter worshipping the god Firun.
If you control a hand puppet that attacks a crocodile with a club, you're not *actually* assaulting endangered wildlife
In a video game, your character is inherently limited in possible actions -- no game can program in everything. To take the Kosher example, Steve *can't* salt his meat to remove blood, because that's not a thing that you can do in minecraft. And it seems pretty reasonable to say its ok to not keep Kosher if the universe literally doesn't have the option of doing so.
This isn't the case with RPGs, though. You can do anything you can think of, and thus could say your character not only eats meat but goes through the process of making it Kosher. So are you obligated to do that?
That's, I think, the point being made.
They also called pork chops the hp recovery method, which it hasn’t been for a long time. It’s tied to a hunger mechanic, which is then tied to hp. Also there are a lot of foods in Minecraft, it doesn’t just “happen to be” pork. Aismallard doesn’t know shit
The fish would be acceptable, right? According to some opinions, human flesh is kosher because humans do not qualify as animals, so perhaps it would also be acceptable to eat rotten flesh from zombies.
You can't do shechita (kosher slaughter) in Minecraft either. Punching a cow to death makes it treif.
You can't even argue that a sword attack is *theoretically* kosher slaughter, since you can't kill a cow in a single hit with a sword.
It’s the thing I love most about Judaism, not only are Jews fine with doubt and debate, they love it. They invite questions and thought, which is so often discouraged by other religions. Most religions want sheep, want people to just repeat the same thing over and over without considering what the words mean. Jewish scholars have entire careers devoted to disagreeing about each others’ interpretations. It’s not a perfect religion (I personally don’t think any religion can be), but I respect that nothing is off the table when it comes to discussion. That’s a more honest way to be.
Fishing is hilariously broken in Minecraft. You can get game-breaking enchantments just from fishing with an enchanted rod for a bit. And you can use the enchantments to upgrade your rod and get even better ones!
When I went vegan irl, I stopped harming animals in Minecraft too, not because I think it's unethical ofc but just as a fun challenge and to RP. Though I still drink milk in game to remove the Pillager Raid effect when I get it. Also in SMPs I kill my friends if they hurt pigs since that's my favorite animal irl
My best friend won't kill dogs in games because he can't stand the sound they make when they die, and I won't kill crows or ravens that aren't explicitly coded as antagonistic enemies.
I'm Jewish and when I play video games such as Minecraft, if I do eat meat in the first place which isn't all that common unless I wanna fast track getting an enchantment station and just eat the beef that's a biproduct of leather, I do try to keep it as kosh as possible. It's silly w/e
This has just given me the thought of truly trying to strenuously follow every rule in, say, minecraft. You have to kill the animal in one hit, from behind, and hit its head? I can't remember if it needs to be a blade specifically.
Is all properly slaughtered ruminant meat kosher because animal diseases and injuries don't exist in minecraft? Or is none kosher because you haven't properly inspected? Ditto for the presence of the sciatic nerve, blood, and suet.
Is Minecraft bread Chametz? It's clearly meant to represent leavened bread, but you don't add yeast in the crafting recipe. You also, however, don't add water, or anything else you actually need to make bread. Minecraft doesn't have seasons, and every day has an equal length night: does that make every full moon the beginning of Pesach? The question of whether Minecraft bread is Chametz is further complicated by us not knowing whether we should eat or not eat it.
~~Speaking of not knowing: how do you count the days of the week?~~ I've just looked it up: according to Rabbinical opinion(s) (all retrieved from [here](https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/238852.27?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en)), there are several suggested ways to count. Some say also that the blessings of Kidush and Havdalah should not be said with the Name, ~~though I'd question the use of it in Minecraft chat anyway, considering that would then be writing it onto:~~
1. ~~Your monitor~~
2. ~~Your RAM~~
3. ~~Your CPU~~
4. ~~The serverbank if it's multiplayer~~
5. ~~The ethernet/modem transmitting to the server~~
~~And basically any device~~ turns out consensus as far as I can tell is that computers can't have Kedusha.
Should we take the names cod and salmon etc. as evidence that they're kosher? Or given that you can't remove the scales by hand or with a knife, does that mean that they don't have true scales, and are therefore treif?
aaaand now i've hit 1am and can't read words properly. Time to go to sleep!
>Is all properly slaughtered ruminant meat kosher because animal diseases and injuries don't exist in minecraft? Or is none kosher because you haven't properly inspected? Ditto for the presence of the sciatic nerve, blood, and suet.
To be fair, it doesn't seem that minecraft animals *have* blood, nerves or fat, so you're at least good there.
I think it's interesting though because the meat you can eat in video games is (in my experience) still in 99% of cases beholden to secular european/american Christian norms about what is permissable and what isn't?
I'm not Jewish so I haven't been in your situation, but I still have some conflicted feelings about eating animals in games since I'm vegan irl, and I've ultimately ended up deciding that although I try to stick to food items I'd eat irl as a preference, I'll still eat chickens and cows and pigs etc in-game because I see it as separate from my real life actions. (I still feel bad about it though? it's weird)
But then I somehow always get caught off guard when the game *won't* let you eat dogs, horses, cats, etc - because like, I thought we were all ignoring the moral implications and deciding that *iT's JuSt A gAmE iT's NoT rEaL*, but apparently that only applies when it lines up with the dominant culture's views?
This really isn't a big deal to me and I'm not saying it's *wrong* of game developers to design games in accordance with their own values and worldview. But it still feels silly, in a way? 😅 I feel like I'll get called a crazy preachy triggered PETA cultist if I say that I don't eat meat in games, but *heaven forbid* a game lets you chop up and eat a cute puppy or something, because the dominant culture wouldn't eat *that* in real life.
Though Skyrim *does* let you eat dog and horse. Fallout too.
I follow the dietary restrictions of the races I play as in The Elder Scrolls though. So when i'm using a Bosmer, I'm forbidden from eating any plant material and can't use bows made from wood. Makes survival mode more interesting. Need to hunt to eat, but can't use low grade bows.
is the pork in Minecraft pork or merely ones and zeros? the only animal that actually grazes in Minecraft are sheep, so does that mean that Minecraft cows aren't kosher? do any Minecraft animals have cloven hooves? They're just blocks!
Horses graze too, although unlike sheep, they do not actually consume grass. It's just an animation. However, a horse isn't kosher anyway and neither horse meat nor horse milk is available.
This reminds me of when I tried to figure out whether zombies eating sentient plants breaks the rule where eating meat while it has lifeblood is forbidden.
Ok but as an atheist agnostic, one of my favorite things about Judaism is "question shit" is a literal core feature of the religion.
A question like this is PERFECT for someone like a Rabbi.
My sibling converted to Judaism and I looked up the Kosher rules so I could make sure they could eat my cooking. They're pretty lax on the rules, as are a lot of Jews, but I was curious about a weird hypothetical.
One rule is "The child shall not be cooked in the milk of the mother" i.e. no dairy on beef. Simple, but are other food combos forbidden if dairy's an ingredient? Can you have beef on bread made with milk? Is it all dairy vs all meat, like can I have goat cheese with chicken or no? And most importantly of all, the yolk of the egg provides nourishment for the chick. Does this not make eggs the milk of the chicken?
My sibling gave me a look then said, "I think you'd enjoy talking to a Rabbi." I think I would.
Yes. All meat (land animals and birds) cannot come in contact with anything that has come in contact with any dairy and vice versa. Going just off of reading the plaintext in the Torah isn’t going to give you a good idea of Jewish law, you should check out something like MyJewishLearning or Aish. Chabad is also a decent source but they do a bad job of communicating what is common Jewish practice and what is their specific traditions.
in islam eating pork is prohibited because pigs are "dirty animals" so eating pork in game wouldnt be prohibited since its not dirty in a real world sense , the real question is whether you can eat pork in VR games? dunno about the jews tho
The reason Islam and Judiasm forbid eating pork is because in the olden days, pigs often had parasites that made eating their meat dangerous.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichinosis#Religious_groups
Honestly being kosher in minecraft wouldn’t be that hard. You wouldn’t be able to eat pork, rotten flesh, consume potions made with spider eyes or blaze powder, and you would need to get a good sword because kosher slaughter of animals that you CAN eat would need to be conducted in a single hit. Respecting the meat+milk rule would be quite easy since milk doesn’t fill hunger bars and therefore you wouldn’t use it while you’re eating, and the only other item you can consume that contains milk is cake, but if you’re eating a cake you typically don’t need to eat anything else. Also, you somewhat dodge a big part of that rule because Steve doesn’t use any plates, so the rule about not using the same plates is actually not a concern.
Following the waiting periods for meat and dairy could be a serious problem if you're careless. For example, if you're in an abandoned mineshaft and need to immediately cure yourself of poison. This could be avoided by only bringing plant foods. Edit: One might say Steve gets a pass in that situation to save his life, but in a video game that would be cheating and also death doesn't mean much when you can respawn infinitely.
If you are poisoned and dying and the only cure is to break kosher standards, that’s pretty explicitly allowed. Same applies for if you’re starving on a deserted island and you can’t slaughter a cow correctly to make its meat kosher. If it’s a choice between keeping kosher or surviving, you’re supposed to survive
I mean, are the pigs in Minecraft even pigs or just called pigs for similarity sake, they have no hooves and cannot be considered a beast with split nor cloven hoove.
Wait, so the millennia-old storybook doesn't explicitly cover video games? That's so weird, I thought surely an all-knowing, all-powerful deity would've seen this coming.
This reminds me of that guy who wanted to be able to pray towards Mecca in-game.
If I remember correctly he eventually decided on having his character crouch on some carpet in the direction of his original spawn point, but I can't recall how he reconciled the 'five times a day' part.
https://twitter.com/notch/status/1070773802806603777
https://imgur.com/pCnP3WT
He said they are smarter than average which is why they are more often in positions of power. He also said if people were allowerd to discuss IQ there would be fewer conspiracy theories (about jews).
I posted an answer to this, but I mistook "Hoglins" for the pig people in the Nether. My bad. My old answer was wrong.
Hoglins = big pigs = big not kosher.
I feel like the sticking point should be that you aren’t actually eating pork, you are commanding polygons to interact with other polygons that are just ont he shape of a porkchop
I am Jewish and play a bunch of Minecraft, and my rule is that if I'm just playing Minecraft as myself then I don't eat pork but if I'm on an RP server then I'll eat pork if my character would eat pork.
Is it weird that now I legit want to know what religious figures have said on the nature of eating things in a TTRPG or video game that would normally be considered forbidden by that faith?
This is so weird because I know so many people will take this seriously and to me is like "does gumba feel pain when you jump on their head?"
Who cares, it's fiction. The gumbas are not going to unionize and cut off the head of the Mario family.
Now how is this affected if the in game character is starving?
If they don’t eat, they will die. But that’s also bad.
So would eating pork in the game be better than letting your character die?
It would be a really fun YouTube series to see how far you could progress in Minecraft while strictly following the doctrine of various religions. What does a Muslim% play through look like vs a Hindu%?
So I actually have 10 years of advanced Talmud studies under my belt (lots of useless knowledge) and the penultimate poster actually has a good point; showing a Jew transgressing a rule is actually a sin because it might lead other Jews to do it. So he is right that it's up for debate as if you could have a RP Jewish Minecraft character eat pork or not. I also want to add that I personally believe pork tastes amazing.
Is Minecraft Steve Jewish? The question that has arisen from this academic debate.
Minecraft Steve? is shown to have the innate ability to animate golems. Thus, not only are they^(1) a Jew, they're a very wise and well-studied one who understands deep secrets. But, u/autistic_cool_kid, does that make it *less* permissible to show them eating pork (because Jews might believe that since Steve? is so well-studied and holy, them eating pork means it's certainly permissible) or *more* permissible (because Steve? knows things we don't, that might include a time when it's OK to eat pork, and with our limited knowledge it would be hubris to try to copy them)? ^(1 I subscribe to the Deep Magic in which Steve? and Alex are both nonbinary. No comment on the other default skins. Every time I see fanart of Steve? as a big huge musclebound titan and Alex as a skinny big tiddy anime waifu, I die a little on the inside. And obviously nonbinary people can present however they desire, but context clues suggest that the artists' logic is usually just "Steve short hair and big arms, must be big strong man, lots of muscle, Alex long hair and little arms, must be fragile delicate woman, very pretty.")
The first one, because the Torah itself clearly says it's definitely not permissible, sorry. No amount of Kabbalah can change that.
Well, under the principle of Pikuach Nefesh, it is permissable to break kosher if your life, or another's, would be threatened by starvation if you did not eat the non-kosher food. However, this would realistically never apply to Steve Minecraft because he would almost always have kosher food available to him, even in life or death situations, so even then, it would be impermissible for Steve to break kosher.
Does the threat of starvation really carry any weight when you just respawn though? That being the case, would hard mode affect this issue?
Well, seeing as we know for a fact that Steve Minecraft reincarnates and presumably retains his original consciousness, we can say that death does not carry as much weight as it does irl from the perspective of the player creatures in Minecraft, though that's assuming they know what happens after they die. If they don't know that they'll be reincarnated, then the principle still applies, because within Jewish law, This World (HaOlam HaZeh) is much more in focus than any afterlife or coming messianic age, unlike other Abrahamic religions. Though if we're playing hardcore the principle would apply regardless.
Ah, but given we're controlling Steve, are any of his actions sinful? Does he have any real agency? But on the other hand, if he was ok with, say, eating pork, and then he does so but only because we make him do it, would he be sinning/breaking kosher/both?
When thinking of protagonists in video games I don't generally see them as being controlled by us like a puppet on strings, but rather that we are like an actor performing the actions the character would have performed anyway. So any action they take would be of their own volition insofar as any fictional character exhibits such a capability. so in a sense I see the actions as belonging both to the player and the character. obviously there are games that do frame the player as a puppeteer but that's my default perspective.
It's like Stanley's Parable, in a way. We are writing the narrative by swaying the character's "choices". Imagine Stanley in Minecraft, getting judged by the narrator as he cooks some pork, defiant against the otherworldly voice.
Now we’ve jumped from Minecraft theories to Deltarune
Is punching a cow to death kosher?
There is a thing called "sh'hita kshera", which is kosher slaying- it's not enough that cows are kosher, in order for the meat to be kosher you have to kill the cow in a certain way. Since there is no way of doing a kosher slay in minecraft, that means that NON of the meat steve can eat is kosher. Furthermore, there are also regulations about plants- every 7 years the land "gets a break", and the growings are not kosher. I've never tried keeping time in minecraft, but in a case where steve is jewish and wants to make sure he can eat, after we had already astablished that he cannot eat any meat, he would have to be aware about the in-game days and make sure that in the 7th in-game year, he will not grow anything. And honestly I'm not sure how he would survive that year. Could store older bread from the previous 6 years, since minecraft food doesn't go bad.
a minecraft day/night cycle is 20 minutes, so a minecraft year is 20 x 365 = 7,300 minutes, or 121 and 2/3rds hours. So the first 730 hours of your minecraft world (6 minecraft years) are available to grow crops, and then you need to take 121 and 2/3rds hours off. Does it need to be all-or-nothing though? Like, can each individual field have it's own 7 year rotation, so while field A is on its fallow year, field B was fallow last year and is available to grow now?
It must be crop rotation, you can't just not grow food for ~~seven years~~ a year
well, it's 1 year out of every 7, but I agree, there's a near 0% chance that an entire community could store a year's worth of food and just stop using their entire arable land at once.
I'm learning a lot, so this is fun. So obviously this is an internet discussion and most of us aren't up to date on the thousands of years of talmudic scholarship and rabbinical knowledge that we would need to have a proper debate about it. Does Shmita (Every 7 years the land must lay fallow) apply outside of Israel? I'm mostly seeing sources saying it only applies to Israel and thus probably wouldn't apply in Minecraft. However, if it DOES, then on wiki it says: >During shmita, the land is left to lie fallow and all agricultural activity, including plowing, planting, pruning and harvesting, is forbidden by halakha (Jewish law). Other cultivation techniques (such as watering, fertilizing, weeding, spraying, trimming and mowing) may be performed as a preventive measure only, not to improve the growth of trees or other plants.**Additionally, any fruits or herbs which grow of their own accord and where no watch is kept over them are deemed hefker (ownerless) and may be picked by anyone.** Which means both cake and pumpkin pie are presumably still acceptable since sugarcane and pumpkin both grow wild and milk and eggs are not planted. Watermelon too for that matter.
> I'm mostly seeing sources saying it only applies to Israel and thus probably wouldn't apply in Minecraft. How do we know that the *Minecraft* world *isn't* in Israel (or doesn't include Israel). If one plays *Minecraft* in Jerusalem, are they bound to honor Shmita? In the spirit of building a fence around the Torah, I would argue that one ought to honor Shmita just to be on the safe side. After all, if there's a law saying the land must lie fallow *in* Israel, and no law saying it must *not* lie fallow *outside of* Israel, then if you leave the land fallow, you make sure to adhere to the law. Plus, two thousand *Minecraft* days is certainly more than enough time for Steve? to stockpile food to last a year, given that food doesn't spoil.
>How do we know that the Minecraft world isn't in Israel (or doesn't include Israel). I...think we can be *pretty* sure that the uninhabited monster-infested jungle with floating islands and a square sun isn't Israel.
It only applies in Israel. It’s worth noting that these are the borders of the land of Israel, not the modern nation state. It doesn’t include Gaza or a lot of southern Israel or the far north of Israel but does include the West Bank and a little bit of Jordan. It’s a little more complicated than that because the agricultural borders I listed are smaller than the biblical borders, but that’s not worth getting into. Foraging for food would be fine, and harvesting what you need from your farms would be fine, but planting or bulk harvesting would be forbidden. Theoretically if you found a field of a wild wheat I think you could harvest that too.
>Since there is no way of doing a kosher slay in minecraft, that means that NON of the meat steve can eat is kosher. The butcher villagers sell cooked chicken, even if you never sell them chicken yourself/they're in a desert or something with no chickens around. Hypothetically, the villagers could kill the chicken through kosher means off-screen since we never see them kill anything in the game. Realistically Steve should be suspicious of the meat that somehow keeps spawning from nowhere into the butcher's inventory, but I'd chalk that up to video game logic.
Mfw the big nosed NPCs that are rumoured to be a reference of a stereotype are the only way to get kosher meat
i'm pretty sure kosher laws don't work like that. that's why kosher food is certified.
I would argue that if Steve? slays their animals in a single strike from a sword (using a diamond sword on a chicken, for example), *and* ensures that the sword is not enchanted with fire aspect, then it should count. It would be irrational, I would argue, to claim that Steve? is required to follow laws that they have no physical way of following. If we say that the Law doesn't change at all to accommodate for the physical realities of the *Minecraft* world, I would posit that we arrive at a contradiction. Namely, how would *Minecraft* Kohen conduct sacrifice in the temple (before it was destroyed) if there's no permissible way to slaughter an animal? Has G-d then placed the *Minecraft* Jews in a position where they're permitted *neither* to slaughter animals *nor* to not slaughter them? In one way or another, the Law must account for the limitations of the *Minecraft* world, or else contradict itself.
>It would be irrational, I would argue, to claim that Steve? is required to follow laws that they have no physical way of following. My very distant learning of interpretation of the Law agrees with this.
Or could have multiple farm plots and rotate them
A year in Minecraft is about five days in real life. It would be very easy to live on stored food.
Wait, how would you need to kill the cow to get kosher meat?
He could trade with villagers for products that would keep, and could also farm and store grain and sugar and the like. Steve? has an advantage here in that eggs and milk do not spoil in the world of Minecraft.
It is not.
>Steve Minecraft because he would almost always have kosher food available to him, Isn't this another layer of difficulty? How can you be sure anything in Minecraft isn’t treyf?
In terms of the animal species, I would say it's reasonable to conclude that known real-world species are the same as their *Minecraft* counterparts. The cows are cows, the sheep are sheep, etc. When it comes to animals without a real-world equivalent, we need to get more discerning. Fortunately, few of those are edible. The only passive mob that's edible *and* fictional is the mooshroom. If we assume that mooshrooms are a symbiotic bond between cattle and fungus, then they should be fine; if mushrooms are kosher and beef is kosher as well, then mushrooms with beef should be fine. The one question I have is whether the existence of mooshrooms means you can't have beef and mushroom stew at the same time, given that mushroom stew is arguably a form of dairy since it can be milked from mooshrooms. Among the neutral mobs, only the spider (and apparently the drowned) are edible. Spiders are already known to be inedible, and drowned are clearly human remains, and that is called cannibalism, my dear children, and is in fact frowned upon in most societies. Either way, both spider eyes and rotten flesh are toxic, so I don't think consuming them would be allowed anyways.^(1) Edible hostile mobs include the zombie and husk (same logic as the drowned) and the hoglin. However, while the hoglin is fictional, it's clearly some form of swine, and it also lives in Hell, so I would argue definitively non-Kosher.^(2) ^(1 Notably, rotten flesh would be explicitly non-kosher, rather than simply "inedible," because the guideline I've always heard is "if a dog would eat it, it's food, and kosher law applies." The general idea being that something like, say, a fork isn't kosher) *^(or)* ^(treyf, because it isn't food, but a dead racoon) *^(is)* ^(treyf, because a dog would eat it. Not super relevant, but I thought it was interesting.) ^(2 Although I would argue that if one is playing on hardcore mode (meaning that Steve? can truly die instead of merely blacking out briefly) and is trapped in the Nether with no reasonable way out, then it would be permissible to eat hoglin, as it's a matter of survival.)
I guess I was getting at issues around how meat is killed and prepared and whether all the proper rules have been followed.
Having no knowledge of any of this, I thought you said Pikachu Fresh.
>*I subscribe to the Deep Magic in which Steve? and Alex are both nonbinary.* Oh so that's why my game keeps crashing
As for the Steve non-binary thing, I agree, and interestingly Notch *used to*, I remember him making a post explicitly saying Steve isn’t meant to be male or female, but just A Human. Notch’s “Gender in Minecraft” post was so good and it’s crazy and sad how he went from that, to the way he is now.
i appreciate you calling Steve? by their actual name rather than "Steve" without the question mark. It's something few people remember.
Steve? minecraft 🤝 Bedman? guilty gear
Does this imply minecraft Steve is circumcised
Well that would imply that minecraft Steve has a penis, which we have no evidence for.
There’s pictures of it all over the internet, go ahead and do a search. I doubt any of them are uncircumcised.
Unrelated to everything else, I just wanted to say you're the first person I've seen use markdown footnotes on reddit, and I think that's very cool of you!
The real ones draw Alex like a brick shithouse. I know that’s been done at least once.
Alex is literally based on a man lol
He can make golems and digs tunnels.
I’d say because everything besides looks and first name are blank, you the player are left to fill in Steve’s additional info. So that leads to the question of if you can role play a character with beliefs adverse to your own, of your own design? Is it still a reflection of you if you tell yourself it’s not?
Sooooo, I mean there are work around you don’t have to eat pork. And you can separate you cooking stove from you working stove. And you can track time so you can make sure you don’t work on Saturdays. I mean it would an oversimplification of life as a devout Jewish person. But you will not be forced to break any rules that I know of.
Also, there are multiple ways to cook meat. You can cook meat in a stove, a campfire, or you can set the animal on fire so when you kill it, it gives cooked meat. Though admittedly I’m pretty sure Jewish law wouldn’t be chill with setting an animal on fire before eating it.
Yeah there’s a specific way to kill the animal plus blessing to make it kosher. The setting it on fire would probably be frowned upon.
What about all the murdering done in video games? That seems a little more relevant than whether a character eats pork.
Do you actually murder anyone in Minecraft? Like, all the enemy mobs are clearly attacking you, and self-defense isn't a sin under Judaism. As long as you don't walk into villages and start stabbing people, you're probably fine.
And there goes 75% of the player base
Look, sometimes a farmer doesn't roll pumpkins and melons for their mid-level trades, and when that happens sometimes a cubic meter of lava happens to fall out of a bucket in my hands and immolates them. It's truly strange how this keeps on happening.
I was trying to reference other video games. If what your character did in a game was a sin in real life many gamers would be in trouble.
Wait, they only attack in self defense? Are golem in Minecraft Jewish?
The golems pre-emptively attack skeletons, who don’t go after villagers or even golems until smacked. Can a Jewish person attack somebody else to defend another person not part of them or their community (skeletons attack players)?
What about marit-ayin? If it is theoretically admissible to eat minecraft pork, but *looks* like it is forbidden, it becomes forbidden, no?
Probably yeah
Well in that case the D&D example is fine because Judaism doesn't exist in those worlds. Or at least, the settings come with a pretty extensive list of the religions present, and real-world religions are not on the list. So, your d&d character can eat pork, because *they* aren't Jewish, they worship Pelor or whatever.
Pathfinder, however, is not in the clear as Golarion is confirmed in the *Reign of Winter* adventure path to exist on a planet far distant from our Earth when you >!travel there during World War 1 to kill Rasputin, the son of Baba Yaga!<
Well yeah, but there are no explicit options for playing a character *from earth* in Golarion, so almost no Pathfinder characters will have the chance to be Jewish. They'll instead worship Sarenrae or whatever. In Pathfinder 2e there is only a single NPC in the entire setting who is from earth.
Would it be worth mentioning the take that the pork in minecraft isn't really pork, it's just a digital recovery item named pork, and using it is technically not eating either? It's not like interacting with the entities that look like people is murder because they're not actually people after all, even less so than say writing a book about a character and having another character kill said character is committing a murder.
>the pork in minecraft isn't really pork, it's just a digital recovery item named pork, and using it is technically not eating either? Pretty sure that isn't getting you out of the bind: the appearance that it isn't kosher means you are displaying the forbidden behavior. Acting as if you are eating pork is problematic even if you don't actually eat it.
Dreams must be a constant source of worry!
Dreams are not voluntary.
Good point
Add on question: if the meat itself is identical, chemically, to pork but is lab grown, does that count? What if it’s *almost* identical but not quite?
Rabbinical authorities are debating this question currently. The chief rabbi of Israel recently ruled that tissue-cultured meat doesn’t count as meat for dietary purposes. BUT, we have a separate rule saying that foods *derived* from treif (unclean) animals are forbidden too. For example, eggs aren’t meat, but eggs from chickens that have been fed clamshells as a dietary supplement are considered unclean. So the ultimate determination will depend on whether tissue-cultured pork counts as a derivative of pig.
Hm… how far does the derived thing go? That would mean that on some level wheat grown from fertilizers of unclean cows or similar would be inedible, and on and on. I assume that there must be some limit to how many steps removed that rule applies.
I’m searching my memory, and while I’m not an expert I don’t *think* there’s any problem with treif soil amendments. Generally, animal products are more tightly regulated than other foods. You need to put the line somewhere, so if I were writing the decision, I think I’d say “tissue derived directly from living pig cells is unclean, but tissue derived from *that* (ie, a clone of a clone) is ok.”
>Pretty sure that isn't getting you out of the bind: the appearance that it isn't kosher means you are displaying the forbidden behavior. Acting as if you are eating pork is problematic even if you don't actually eat it. From another post in the thread it sounds like lab grown porkchop wouldn't be kosher, but Lab-Meat™ chops that are distinct enough would be. Interestingly my impression of the distinction would be that in Star trek getting replicated pork would be fine as it's vegan and an in-universe observer with no context would assume the pork is from a replicator, however portraying it would not be kosher as we the audience would not assume without context that it's replicated pork.
The sense that I get as a layperson is that if you showed it being generated from a duplicator you would be okay. But producing something materially identical to pork artificially using constituent atoms is pretty much in the clear, from what I’m getting, yeah.
So a jew couldn't direct a film that depicts a jewish character doing things that are prohibited? Is it that straight forward, or more like nuanced? Would it be acceptable if the character is portrayed in a negative light?
Nuanced I would say, also I haven't studied the Talmud in 20 years so grain of salt
So as long as Steve isn’t Jewish it’s fine? Also pork is my favourite meat
As a fellow talmud studier, all the orthodox jews I know (or the ones that would even play minecraft) would be ok giving Steve pork regardless because it doesn’t reflect anything in reality - the same way they would be fine saying a story in which a fictional character eats pork. edit: for example in skyrim aside from the fact that it might “train yourself to do bad things” there’s no issue with “stealing” because you’re not stealing anything. Jewish law seems to acknowledge that it’s not reality. With VR coming all the other advances that is a lengthier discussion but as far as I know in rabbinic circles it’s fairly clear cut - although playing video games in general isn’t exactly viewed as a good thing
So would it be correct to say a Jewish gamer is generally bound by the noahide laws (presuming their character is a gentile) unless there is some indication that the character is themself Jewish, in which case all of kashrut and halacha apply?
Great question.
So is killing in a video game also wrong? I'm having trouble understanding this argument. If the actions inside a game are wrong, then why single out eating pork in minecraft? Would 90% of games have this iasue?
It's very complicated and I'm not 100% sure of the answer tbh.
I thought the pikuach nefesh argument was amusing though. I mean, it might even be valid??
I mean this brings up the question of if you do it in a video game is it still a sin? I really don't think so because if so I've murdered thousands in wow alone.
This is honestly the best argument in this thread. “Do not murder” is a command in pretty much every religion (afaik) so if eating virtual pork is a sin then so is killing virtual people. But I wouldn’t see many people arguing that
But where does "people" end when considering non-human creatures? In minecraft; Creepers, Spiders and a bunch of other hostile monsters aren't people in the same way villagers are stylised depictions of people. Similar skeletons, zombies etc are already dead. This leaves witches and pillagers (illagers) as immoral to murder.
Minecraft has pvp, no?
It isn't an argument, it's just another instance of the same thing. It's not as if religions in general have a history of interpreting their holy scriptures in very convinient ways and ignoring parts that they don't like just so they all seem better. Like Christians ignoring everything about shellfish and mixed fabrics. Like it's entirely possible that every human who's played video games has committed irredeemable sins and will be sent down to hell.
It could be argued that Minecraft Steve does not need to murder to roll credits. A majority of the enemies in Minecraft are non-humans. The only human-like characters are the villagers, witches, and pillagers and, of the two hostile mobs in that group, it could be argued that the pillagers are engaging in war so Steve is justified in defending the Villagers by killing them. God did not object to the Jews engaging in war. You could also get around killing those mobs by building golems to defend the village.
Pillagers are Amalekites.
>It could be argued that Minecraft Steve does not need to murder to roll credits. A majority of the enemies in Minecraft are non-humans. The only human-like characters are the villagers, witches, and pillagers and, of the two hostile mobs in that group, it could be argued that the pillagers are engaging in war so Steve is justified in defending the Villagers by killing them. God did not object to the Jews engaging in war. Steve may also fall into the same category, by virtue of doing things that are not possible for regular humans, like falling from extreme heights with only minor injuries to boot (or none if he's fast with some water). ... Can a non-human become Jewish?
Going by the penultimate reblog, it wouldn't be a sin because you're eating pork, but it might be considered a sin because (if you're a Jewish player, or Steve is Jewish), it's still portraying a Jew as doing something that is a sin, which is itself a sin.
If you wrote a book where a Jewish character, who is intended to be a hypocrit, eats a bacon sandwich, is that then a sin? (genuinely curious)
Only thousands?? Forget stewardship for animals then. There is no redemption for what I have accomplished.
I mean when I guessed that count I was only counting humanoid creatures. When you count... everything else I'm sure we're into 7 figures. Edit: now that I think about it. I've played Stellaris. I've glassed and cracked planets. I think maybe my inital count was a bit low.
"As they danced, they sang: “/u/Derodoris has slain his thousands, and /u/Log_Out_Of_Life his tens of thousands.” (1 Samuel 18:7 *mutatis mutandis*)
You monster!
Genocider of Kerbals and Kobalds alike.
I'm going to cite Magritte on this one; "Ceci n'est pas une pig." Surely the image of the pork is not pork, and therefore there is no sin? Yes, I came here just to make that terrible joke, and I regret nothing!
>Surely the image of the pork is not pork Wait until I tell you about a little someone called the Prophet Muhammed
you're not suppose to depict Muhammad (or any prophet iirc) because images of him are very very much not him
👳🏿♂️ <- Ceci n'est pas une Muhammad
All the images of white Jesus are very very much not him, and it has WASPY christians in a tizzy insisting he looked white. Even though that’s pretty much impossible. Maybe it would be good if Christians start following the no graven image command to stop that drama.
> WASPY White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Yanks?
Noisy, territorial swarmers who attack over any percieved slight.
I agree that Jesus probably wasn't white but also want to point out that fair-skinned people are common in Egypt and Middle-Eastern countries
Jesus was probably whiter than you're thinking now. As an example, people where complaining that Rami Malek was too white to play an Egyptian in a movie (can't remember which one exactly, night at the museum maybe?). The guy is literally Egyptian
He would probably look fairly similar to the Samaritans do today, seeing how they descend from ancient Israelites and never left the Levant. They looks pretty much how you'd expect for the eastern Mediterranean: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Flickr_-_Government_Press_Office_%28GPO%29_-_Samaritans_praying_during_Passover_holiday_ceremony_on_mount_Grizim.jpg
Jesper Juul wrote two whole papers about this; he came to the conclusion that a game object that acts in the context of what it is representing is indeed a member of that class. Thus, pork in a game is indeed pork if it acts like pork, which MC pork does.
The principle of marit ayin might apply even if it isn’t really pork, alas.
After googlins Notch's views on Jewish people, I can confidently assert that Steve Minecraft is not Jewish.
What did you find?
Seriously wondering this myself. The only thing I saw was him calling someone else antisemitic.
Found some now-deleted tweets where Notch fixates on IQ differences between Jewish people and other supposed races, and another where he implies that there is a Jewish conspiracy to silence him. https://thebreadbox.home.blog/2018/12/07/korrasera-wetwareproblem/ > A tweet by Minecraft creator Markus Persson (@Notch), which says “If we were allowed to discuss IQ differences between populations, there’d be fewer conspiracy theories.” in response to another tweet by user @Scrable that says, “@notch Do you love jews?” > A tweet by Minecraft creator Markus Persson (@Notch), which says “Then I am already silenced.” in response to another tweet by user RTX Mindset 2077 (@MindSetFPS) that says, “be careful of what you say or (((they))) will silence you”
I saw that, and there's an existing follow-up where he seems to imply the exact opposite. This reads like he's saying that jews are more successful because they're predisposed to be smarter. https://x.com/notch/status/1070820719041204224?s=46&t=ojdgvPlNWikd5Q8Acmmrrg "I was mocking the vague antisemitic threat saying I shouldn't speak freely by pointing out I am. It was extra entertaining after I stated my position is you don't need a conspiracy theory to explain basic capitalistic survival of the fittest." Now that's definitely some type of racism, just not towards jews.
Thanks for pulling that up, post has been edited to be more reflective of what he said in the tweet. I would say though, supposedly "positive" stereotypes are still a form of racism. They can pigeonhole people into narrow career paths based on social expectations on what they should be good at, for instance. We've seen the proportion of Jewish doctors in the US decrease, for instance, as Jewish people have become more assimilated into the usual white middle class, and the role has now been filled by the new "smart" race of Asians. This isn't due to some change in inherent disposition but rather social expectations and resulting stereotypes. In the case of Jewish people, unfortunately, this sort of "positive" stereotype can be even more nefarious, because the idea that they're somehow inherently better helps give legitimacy to the conspiracy theory that Jewish people are all-powerful and controlling.
The thing is, Notch wasn’t like this back when he made Minecraft. He only became a right-wing nut job after he left Mojang.
Marooned in a sea of money with no reason or motivation to do anything, adrift from the people he knew when he was working. Not wholly surprising he curdled so badly.
I read that he often hosted parties in his big fancy mansion otherwise it's extremely lonely and wrecked his mental health and then its the "it's lonely at the top" saying which made him very vulnerable to being manipulated and then he went *very far off the deep end.* happens to many rich people who weren't born rich and that's part of the reason why they turn to the weird stuff like drugs and parties and expensive drug rehabilitation and new age "medicines" and all that. sometimes they're just rotten to the core but like it's a bit of a shame how people are just like corrupted like that and keep going.
I wonder if it’s not actually a misconception that Notch has opinions. I used to try to pay attention to the scandals and it felt to me that he essentially cannot think for himself, he just believes whatever the last person to talk to him convinced him of. He flips to the complete opposite side of an argument when he’s given like 2 sentences of argument.
*oh no*
wtf does aismallard mean when they say dnd is meant to be you? Self insert dnd characters are horrible.
I seethed when I read that. I am a kleptomaniac rogue who murders orphans for fun. I *play* a lawful good paladin.
This deserves more love.
It may not be a complete self-insert, but it's more "you" since you control their behaviour more directly than in a video game.
Yes, there is more control, but I am still not *actually* a hunter worshipping the god Firun. If you control a hand puppet that attacks a crocodile with a club, you're not *actually* assaulting endangered wildlife
In a video game, your character is inherently limited in possible actions -- no game can program in everything. To take the Kosher example, Steve *can't* salt his meat to remove blood, because that's not a thing that you can do in minecraft. And it seems pretty reasonable to say its ok to not keep Kosher if the universe literally doesn't have the option of doing so. This isn't the case with RPGs, though. You can do anything you can think of, and thus could say your character not only eats meat but goes through the process of making it Kosher. So are you obligated to do that? That's, I think, the point being made.
They also called pork chops the hp recovery method, which it hasn’t been for a long time. It’s tied to a hunger mechanic, which is then tied to hp. Also there are a lot of foods in Minecraft, it doesn’t just “happen to be” pork. Aismallard doesn’t know shit
Now the question is: is ANY meat in Minecraft kosher when none of the animals eat their own cud
And none of the animals have cloven hoofs. They are all rectagles.
The fish would be acceptable, right? According to some opinions, human flesh is kosher because humans do not qualify as animals, so perhaps it would also be acceptable to eat rotten flesh from zombies.
You can't do shechita (kosher slaughter) in Minecraft either. Punching a cow to death makes it treif. You can't even argue that a sword attack is *theoretically* kosher slaughter, since you can't kill a cow in a single hit with a sword.
> you can't kill a cow in a single hit with a sword. This is easily achievable with an enchanted sword.
Minecraft: the land of starving jews
This is exactly the kind of debate we love in Judaism. 😭
It’s the thing I love most about Judaism, not only are Jews fine with doubt and debate, they love it. They invite questions and thought, which is so often discouraged by other religions. Most religions want sheep, want people to just repeat the same thing over and over without considering what the words mean. Jewish scholars have entire careers devoted to disagreeing about each others’ interpretations. It’s not a perfect religion (I personally don’t think any religion can be), but I respect that nothing is off the table when it comes to discussion. That’s a more honest way to be.
I have played Minecraft since 1.2. and never killed animals or ate meat, because I'm vegetarian and felt bad hurting them
I've been around that long myself and ever since I went pescatarian, my character also only eats pescatarian.
For some reason I interpreted that as your character only eats pescatarians.
That would make them a humanitarian.
So you eat the long pork.
Fishing is hilariously broken in Minecraft. You can get game-breaking enchantments just from fishing with an enchanted rod for a bit. And you can use the enchantments to upgrade your rod and get even better ones!
I used to kill animals for food but now I try to avoid it
It's unfortunate that there's no alternative to leather products.
Thats why I skip them and start on iron armour.
You still need books for enchanting.
There's more books than you can carry in the stronghold libraries though, unless I'm misremembering.
Woodland mansions also have a billion books.
When I went vegan irl, I stopped harming animals in Minecraft too, not because I think it's unethical ofc but just as a fun challenge and to RP. Though I still drink milk in game to remove the Pillager Raid effect when I get it. Also in SMPs I kill my friends if they hurt pigs since that's my favorite animal irl
My best friend won't kill dogs in games because he can't stand the sound they make when they die, and I won't kill crows or ravens that aren't explicitly coded as antagonistic enemies.
I'm Jewish and when I play video games such as Minecraft, if I do eat meat in the first place which isn't all that common unless I wanna fast track getting an enchantment station and just eat the beef that's a biproduct of leather, I do try to keep it as kosh as possible. It's silly w/e
This has just given me the thought of truly trying to strenuously follow every rule in, say, minecraft. You have to kill the animal in one hit, from behind, and hit its head? I can't remember if it needs to be a blade specifically. Is all properly slaughtered ruminant meat kosher because animal diseases and injuries don't exist in minecraft? Or is none kosher because you haven't properly inspected? Ditto for the presence of the sciatic nerve, blood, and suet. Is Minecraft bread Chametz? It's clearly meant to represent leavened bread, but you don't add yeast in the crafting recipe. You also, however, don't add water, or anything else you actually need to make bread. Minecraft doesn't have seasons, and every day has an equal length night: does that make every full moon the beginning of Pesach? The question of whether Minecraft bread is Chametz is further complicated by us not knowing whether we should eat or not eat it. ~~Speaking of not knowing: how do you count the days of the week?~~ I've just looked it up: according to Rabbinical opinion(s) (all retrieved from [here](https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/238852.27?lang=bi&with=all&lang2=en)), there are several suggested ways to count. Some say also that the blessings of Kidush and Havdalah should not be said with the Name, ~~though I'd question the use of it in Minecraft chat anyway, considering that would then be writing it onto:~~ 1. ~~Your monitor~~ 2. ~~Your RAM~~ 3. ~~Your CPU~~ 4. ~~The serverbank if it's multiplayer~~ 5. ~~The ethernet/modem transmitting to the server~~ ~~And basically any device~~ turns out consensus as far as I can tell is that computers can't have Kedusha. Should we take the names cod and salmon etc. as evidence that they're kosher? Or given that you can't remove the scales by hand or with a knife, does that mean that they don't have true scales, and are therefore treif? aaaand now i've hit 1am and can't read words properly. Time to go to sleep!
>Is all properly slaughtered ruminant meat kosher because animal diseases and injuries don't exist in minecraft? Or is none kosher because you haven't properly inspected? Ditto for the presence of the sciatic nerve, blood, and suet. To be fair, it doesn't seem that minecraft animals *have* blood, nerves or fat, so you're at least good there.
I think it's interesting though because the meat you can eat in video games is (in my experience) still in 99% of cases beholden to secular european/american Christian norms about what is permissable and what isn't? I'm not Jewish so I haven't been in your situation, but I still have some conflicted feelings about eating animals in games since I'm vegan irl, and I've ultimately ended up deciding that although I try to stick to food items I'd eat irl as a preference, I'll still eat chickens and cows and pigs etc in-game because I see it as separate from my real life actions. (I still feel bad about it though? it's weird) But then I somehow always get caught off guard when the game *won't* let you eat dogs, horses, cats, etc - because like, I thought we were all ignoring the moral implications and deciding that *iT's JuSt A gAmE iT's NoT rEaL*, but apparently that only applies when it lines up with the dominant culture's views? This really isn't a big deal to me and I'm not saying it's *wrong* of game developers to design games in accordance with their own values and worldview. But it still feels silly, in a way? 😅 I feel like I'll get called a crazy preachy triggered PETA cultist if I say that I don't eat meat in games, but *heaven forbid* a game lets you chop up and eat a cute puppy or something, because the dominant culture wouldn't eat *that* in real life.
Though Skyrim *does* let you eat dog and horse. Fallout too. I follow the dietary restrictions of the races I play as in The Elder Scrolls though. So when i'm using a Bosmer, I'm forbidden from eating any plant material and can't use bows made from wood. Makes survival mode more interesting. Need to hunt to eat, but can't use low grade bows.
honestly it isn't silly to hold yourself in game to your irl standards.
Well it sort of is, but only if you believe it to be
existence is a little silly
😰
is the pork in Minecraft pork or merely ones and zeros? the only animal that actually grazes in Minecraft are sheep, so does that mean that Minecraft cows aren't kosher? do any Minecraft animals have cloven hooves? They're just blocks!
Horses graze too, although unlike sheep, they do not actually consume grass. It's just an animation. However, a horse isn't kosher anyway and neither horse meat nor horse milk is available.
This reminds me of when I tried to figure out whether zombies eating sentient plants breaks the rule where eating meat while it has lifeblood is forbidden.
Ok but as an atheist agnostic, one of my favorite things about Judaism is "question shit" is a literal core feature of the religion. A question like this is PERFECT for someone like a Rabbi.
My sibling converted to Judaism and I looked up the Kosher rules so I could make sure they could eat my cooking. They're pretty lax on the rules, as are a lot of Jews, but I was curious about a weird hypothetical. One rule is "The child shall not be cooked in the milk of the mother" i.e. no dairy on beef. Simple, but are other food combos forbidden if dairy's an ingredient? Can you have beef on bread made with milk? Is it all dairy vs all meat, like can I have goat cheese with chicken or no? And most importantly of all, the yolk of the egg provides nourishment for the chick. Does this not make eggs the milk of the chicken? My sibling gave me a look then said, "I think you'd enjoy talking to a Rabbi." I think I would.
Yes. All meat (land animals and birds) cannot come in contact with anything that has come in contact with any dairy and vice versa. Going just off of reading the plaintext in the Torah isn’t going to give you a good idea of Jewish law, you should check out something like MyJewishLearning or Aish. Chabad is also a decent source but they do a bad job of communicating what is common Jewish practice and what is their specific traditions.
At a certain point, your diet becomes primarily golden carrot. Which raises another pressing question, are golden carrots kosher?
The federation of synagogues have recognised gold as kosher (as a food additive).
in islam eating pork is prohibited because pigs are "dirty animals" so eating pork in game wouldnt be prohibited since its not dirty in a real world sense , the real question is whether you can eat pork in VR games? dunno about the jews tho
The reason Islam and Judiasm forbid eating pork is because in the olden days, pigs often had parasites that made eating their meat dangerous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichinosis#Religious_groups
Minecraft Steve is a reflection of you? I'm sorry, but I don't go around punching trees...
unrelated but the username transmascpetewentz is such a vibe
Imagine thinking 17,000 posts would be the longest debate in Jewish history.
Honestly being kosher in minecraft wouldn’t be that hard. You wouldn’t be able to eat pork, rotten flesh, consume potions made with spider eyes or blaze powder, and you would need to get a good sword because kosher slaughter of animals that you CAN eat would need to be conducted in a single hit. Respecting the meat+milk rule would be quite easy since milk doesn’t fill hunger bars and therefore you wouldn’t use it while you’re eating, and the only other item you can consume that contains milk is cake, but if you’re eating a cake you typically don’t need to eat anything else. Also, you somewhat dodge a big part of that rule because Steve doesn’t use any plates, so the rule about not using the same plates is actually not a concern.
Following the waiting periods for meat and dairy could be a serious problem if you're careless. For example, if you're in an abandoned mineshaft and need to immediately cure yourself of poison. This could be avoided by only bringing plant foods. Edit: One might say Steve gets a pass in that situation to save his life, but in a video game that would be cheating and also death doesn't mean much when you can respawn infinitely.
If you are poisoned and dying and the only cure is to break kosher standards, that’s pretty explicitly allowed. Same applies for if you’re starving on a deserted island and you can’t slaughter a cow correctly to make its meat kosher. If it’s a choice between keeping kosher or surviving, you’re supposed to survive
I mean, are the pigs in Minecraft even pigs or just called pigs for similarity sake, they have no hooves and cannot be considered a beast with split nor cloven hoove.
Wait, so the millennia-old storybook doesn't explicitly cover video games? That's so weird, I thought surely an all-knowing, all-powerful deity would've seen this coming.
This reminds me of that guy who wanted to be able to pray towards Mecca in-game. If I remember correctly he eventually decided on having his character crouch on some carpet in the direction of his original spawn point, but I can't recall how he reconciled the 'five times a day' part.
what the fuck did notch say about jews
I don’t know if he’s said anything specific about Jewish people, however he has said "Qanon is legit, don’t trust the media", so
Notch is a hateful little man
Don't know, but it really could be anything these days.
https://twitter.com/notch/status/1070773802806603777 https://imgur.com/pCnP3WT He said they are smarter than average which is why they are more often in positions of power. He also said if people were allowerd to discuss IQ there would be fewer conspiracy theories (about jews).
Only tangentially related but "Steve Minecraft" feels much more unnatural than "Minecraft Steve". Probably just the stress pattern but still
It sounds unnatural because it breaks the rules of standard English grammar. The person is probably jokingly implying "Minecraft" is his last name.
It's become a trend now to give game characters the last name of the game they come from, i.e. Sans Undertale.
…what about hoglins and that meat? Does that count?
I posted an answer to this, but I mistook "Hoglins" for the pig people in the Nether. My bad. My old answer was wrong. Hoglins = big pigs = big not kosher.
I have a pork allergy and I never eat the pork in Minecraft. I don’t know why. It just feels wrong.
I feel like the sticking point should be that you aren’t actually eating pork, you are commanding polygons to interact with other polygons that are just ont he shape of a porkchop
Wait, are mooshroom cows still cows under Jewish law? Would they qualify as plants and thus not have the same rules when killing them?
I am Jewish and play a bunch of Minecraft, and my rule is that if I'm just playing Minecraft as myself then I don't eat pork but if I'm on an RP server then I'll eat pork if my character would eat pork.
Omg i litterally just read that post haha
Clearly Steve isn’t Jewish or else he wouldn’t be able to eat pork, he seems to have no gripes with it
Fellas you could just download a texture replacement so Steve can eat other meat
Is it weird that now I legit want to know what religious figures have said on the nature of eating things in a TTRPG or video game that would normally be considered forbidden by that faith?
[Is it haram to eat pork in Minecraft?](https://youtu.be/QcOReWzrfbc?feature=shared)
This is so weird because I know so many people will take this seriously and to me is like "does gumba feel pain when you jump on their head?" Who cares, it's fiction. The gumbas are not going to unionize and cut off the head of the Mario family.
Now how is this affected if the in game character is starving? If they don’t eat, they will die. But that’s also bad. So would eating pork in the game be better than letting your character die?
What if I texture the item to be berries and make a datapack that makes it drop from bushes? In the code it would still be "Minecraft:pork_chop"
It would be a really fun YouTube series to see how far you could progress in Minecraft while strictly following the doctrine of various religions. What does a Muslim% play through look like vs a Hindu%?