A photo caption for the NYT article, "For Observant Jews in Brooklyn, the Sabbath Expands/For the first time, an exception to the prohibition against 'carrying' on the day of rest includes most of the borough, allowing, among other things, children to be pushed in strollers."
The concept of an eruv has ancient roots and demonstrates both the rigor and the pragmatic flexibility of Orthodox Judaism. It was developed as an adaptation to the verse in Exodus 16:29, in which the Lord offered the Israelites manna but forbade them to gather and to carry any on the Sabbath. “Remain each of you in his place; let no one go out of his place on the seventh day,” the verse commands.
The Talmudic sages dedicated an entire volume to the complicated subject. The impulse for constructing eruvim was to ease restrictions so Jews could honor another biblical mitzvah — delighting in the Sabbath....
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49 comments:
the rules are clear.. if you're inside the walls.. you're okay
Walls are walls. No for me to say some wall is too thin
Does this mean we can get Chik fil A sandwiches and waffle fries on Sabbath?
How long until Al Sharpton, antifa, and other Democrats take it down?
There's no accounting for religious law. Each religion does many things that perplex outsiders. This makes me think that some fresh Woke concepts, such as explicitly listing pronouns and creating dozens of pronouns, may persist in a subculture for at least a few thousand years. That is, if they don't all sterilize each other with transgender operations first.
It's a living Talmud.
Sir Richard Burton made a point once that it was the unique Jewish adherence to the law, as it defines their religion, that provided them with the cultural motivation and trait of figuring out creative ways to bend laws without breaking them. Whether it be law, finance, politics etc., Jewish creativity in interpretation is pretty unique and celebrated throughout the world.
It gives you wonderful and thoroughly ridiculous workarounds like 'eruvim' in the context of 'his place'. It really makes you wonder if Jews upon dying and going to heaven (if they believed in that) wouldn't be able to befuddle God himself on the details and intricacies of his own laws as originally provided:
"Unfortunately, I Am Who Am, you did not specify what the definition of 'place' was as it pertains to cave, hovel, shack, or boundary. We therefore strung a line between some poles and called it good. Your holy of holiest objection is unfortunately overruled. Next time remember who you're dealing with down there."
This is how Jewish scholars got to be so good at disputation. They strictly follow biblical commands that are impossible to strictly follow--they achieve this by being brilliant at finding loopholes. Another favorite--you can't pay your rabbi for performing Sabbath services because that would make it work, which you can't do on the Sabbath. But you can pay the rabbi twice on Saturday. The Shabbos goy is more cheating than clever reasoning, but having your elevator stop at every floor is a real drag.
Is this new? I remember reading about it, maybe even here, 5-10 years ago.
I was once in a hotel and there were 2-3 Hasidim standing by the elevator. I don't remember if it was Sabbath or not but they could not push the up button. They had been standing there waiting for someone else to push it. When I got in, they could not push the floor button but it was OK to ask me to do it.
It's OK, my church has some wierdnesses too. As do all churches. But at least they can't comment on my diet (we follow the OT) or keeping the Sabbath instead of the Lord's Day.
We're SDA.
John Henry
Blogger traditionalguy said...
Does this mean we can get Chik fil A sandwiches and waffle fries on Sabbath?
As far as I know CFA has always been open on the Sabbath (7th or last day of the week. The day God rested and commands us to.A/K/A Saturday) They've always been closed on the Lord's Day (First day of the week, the day he rose. A/K/A Sunday)
/pedantry
John Henry
Blogger Enigma said...
There's no accounting for religious law
The weirdest of all has to be eating bugs to change the weather/climate.
John Henry
I first learned about this… dispensation via a YouTube video.
Best analysis of The Law of Moses is that everything is illegal, but we will make exceptions for our inside friends. Thus arises the power of Lawyers to negotiate you in.
I’m having dinner at the bar in one of Trump’s hotels about this time of the Jewish year…there’s a basketball game of some importance on the television. Two teenage boys walk in and with their backs turned to the game they are grilling a stranger sitting at the bar about the score of the game and other highlights. A young woman not their mother is pushing a stroller past the bar to the elevators and starts yelling at them at the top of her lungs for their lack of observance. She then pushes the elevator button…
Apparently hypocrisy is a mitzvot…
"Is this new? I remember reading about it, maybe even here, 5-10 years ago."
What's new is that it includes most of Brooklyn now, a much larger area.
"Orthodox Jewish man covers himself in plastic bag during flight because faith forbids him to fly over cemeteries."
- NY Daily News
Unorthodox is an intriguing limited series on Netflix. It is about Hasidic jews in Williamsburg, NY.
But you can pay the rabbi twice on Saturday.
Oops, I mean twice on Sunday. (Which is funny because the phrase "any day of the week and twice on Sunday" was in my head as I typed Saturday.)
It depends on what the meaning of “place” is.
They don't have Constitutional Carry in Brooklyn, but they have Talmudic Carry...which is nice.
@John Henry: "The weirdest of all has to be eating bugs to change the weather/climate."
Old joke:
"Why won't Baptists make love standing up?"
"Someone may think they are dancing."
I yield to no one in my respect for Jewish talents in legal interpretation. But honestly, I always knew that my Catholic education gave me a significant leg up in law school, particularly in torts and criminal law (all that priestly exposition on when thoughts become sinful, negligence, the need for mens rea, etc.) Even in the English tradition, suits in Equity arose out of ecclesiatic, not civil, courts.
straightdope.com is where I first read this (a “staff report”) years ago before Cecil retired and the message board became an early woke/ progressive devotee.
oh, and it was referred to Manhattan, not Brooklyn.
I once made the mistake of getting on the Sabbath Elevator in a large multistory hotel in Tel Aviv. I didn't realize it would stop at every floor between the lobby and the 15th.
For the next ride I made sure to get on the Gentile Express.
If interpretations of Jewish law seem arcane, have a look at interpretations of American constitutional law arguing about the extent to which Jewish law can be accommodated within the limits of the First Amendment's Establishment and Free Exercise clauses.
Shira J. Schlaff, "Using an Eruv to Untangle the Boundaries of the Supreme Court's Religion-Clause Jurisprudence," Journal of Constitutional Law (May 2003)
scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1390&context=jcl
Such absurdities are not unique to Jews, of course.
When I was a kid, airlines didn't provide special meals, which of course was a problem for Catholics who flew on Friday, the day on which eating of meat was prohibited for them. Catholic friends told me that it was some kind of punishable sin to break that rule that came from God. Then the Pope up and decreed that it was OK for Catholics, on Friday, to eat meat on an airplane! Abruptly, magically, it was cool with God and no longer a sin - but only on that particular day at that particular altitude.
This struck youthful me as magical nonsense. It was a first step, it turns out, fleshed out a few years later when I started actually thinking about the mystical pap I was hearing every Sunday morning at church, and the implausible stuff I had been mindlessly parroting back to the instructor every Saturday in confirmation class.
Harvard Yard is almost completely enclosed, but for two gates with no top structure running across. There's been talk for a long time about somehow re-engineering those gates so that Orthodox freshmen can carry things around in there in their Sabbath.
In Tel Aviv, the hotels have "Shabbat Elevators."
During Shabbat, they stop at every floor automatically, since button-pushing is forbidden, but passively riding is not.
Ah, the loopholes.
Why is the NYT so hung up about Orthodox Judaism? Among other things, the NYT has recently accused Orthodox Jewish schools of stealing money from the government, Orthodox Jews of spreading diseases such as measles because they are supposedly not vaccinated, and of spreading Covid because they wanted to be able to use a park and worship on the Sabbath. They now run a story on the use of the eruv to allow Orthodox Jews to be able to carry items on the Sabbath. This is not a benign story. They do not print stories like this about any other “minority” community. They are othering Orthodox Jews. Their purpose is to show that Orthodox Jews are strange and therefore not to be trusted. Their ultimate goal is to destroy the Orthodox Jewish community because they hold conservative views that puts them in opposition to gays and transgenders.
Again we get this double standard on Religion. If Jews or Muslims do something wacky, its just stated without comment or even praised. If Chritian Evangelicals did something like this it would be mocked and derided.
WHy isn't the label "Fundamentalist" "Right wing" applied to Jewish or Muslim sects by the MSM?
Were they walking around naked?
In The Yiddish Policeman's Union, one of Michael Chabon's characters opines that an eruv is essentially a scam run on God.
A bit later in Exodus the Sabbath appears in the Ten Commandments:
“Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates.”
Exodus 20:9-10 ESV
Even the livestock were to rest, otherwise they’d be worked seven days a week. Beyond all the arcane rules about what does and doesn’t constitute work, the deeper purpose has always been the key thing. People and animals are to rest. In a society that goes at breakneck speed seven days a week, there is wisdom in keeping sabbath.
Richard said...
"Why is the NYT so hung up about Orthodox Judaism?"
Indeed. The majority of voters in some Orthodox neighborhoods even had the temerity to vote for Trump. Talk about unforgivable sins in the eyes of the NYT!
No tricksier than slicing a hide into strips and claiming everything 'covered' by the hide as one's own, I think.
One of the few law faculty who would have anything to do with lesser breeds was a genuine Mew York Jew who was impressed that I knew what a (an?) eruv is; I was impressed that he didn't think everything here was backward and deplorable until he arrived.
This feels like it's in the ballpark with how Anabaptist congregations will make decisions about the sorts of technologies that are acceptable within their communities. Some take a very hard line on modern conveniences, while others allow things like cell phones and automobiles under certain circumstances. As I understand it, the idea is to take a careful and deliberate approach to changes that impact the community. I'm not ready to join the Amish, but maybe our own society might benefit from a little more thinking before doing.
rcocean said...WHy isn't the label "Fundamentalist" "Right wing" applied to Jewish or Muslim sects by the MSM?
Jews get the Christian treatment if the story is about Israel.
Ice Nine said... Such absurdities are not unique to Jews, of course. When I was a kid, airlines didn't provide special meals, which of course was a problem for Catholics who flew on Friday, the day on which eating of meat was prohibited for them. Catholic friends told me that it was some kind of punishable sin to break that rule that came from God.
Bunk. The Catholic Church at some point instituted a man-made rule, understood as such, instructing members not to eat meat on Fridays as a sacrifice. The RCC also created exceptions to excuse people who face some particular hardship complying (e.g., sick people, old people, travellers who don't have an alternative meal available because the airline didn't serve fish on that flight).
Either you misunderstood your friends' explanation, or they misunderstood what they were taught.
to gather and to carry
==========
do OrthoJ's embrace power of 'and' ?
if they gather before sabbath are they not allowed carry during sabbath?
how would esteemed RH USSC Justices parse the phrase 'to gather and to carry'
Here's an idea: Let Jews be Jews.
robother said...
I yield to no one in my respect for Jewish talents in legal interpretation. But honestly, I always knew that my Catholic education gave me a significant leg up in law school, particularly in torts and criminal law (all that priestly exposition on when thoughts become sinful, negligence, the need for mens rea, etc.) Even in the English tradition, suits in Equity arose out of ecclesiatic, not civil, courts.
=========
how does need for 'mens rea' align with 'ignorance is no excuse etc.'
There's one in the North Druid Hills neighborhood in metro Atlanta:
Toco Hills Synagogues United to Repair Eruv
Another reason it's funny to see the South lampooned as lacking diversity! (I miss Bagel Palace)
A sort of spiritual metes and bounds description, allowing 'concealed' carry.
Narayanan said:
"how does need for 'mens rea' align with 'ignorance is no excuse etc.'"
I thought James Comey explained that quite clearly.
It's an issue that comes up in Home Owners Associations and Condominiums in South Florida. I would argue the common areas are already part of their homes.
Bending a rule is better than breaking it. Bending decreases the temptation/incidence of breaking. The corollary being that breaking a bent rule is much worse than breaking an unbent rule.
I recently started watching YouTube videos made by a woman who does walking tours in Brooklyn's Hasidic neighborhoods. She grew up in the Satmar sect but is no longer part of that world. Even so, she offers a respectful insight into the Hasidic community. Her recent interviews with a grandmother from the Satmar sect has received a lot of positive attention. Well worth watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ_GgbC9RD4
I would note that in some communities where this is proposed, the most vocal opponents are liberal non-religious Jews. Part of it is the fear that having an eruv will result in more Orthodox Jews moving in to the area. "There goes the neighborhood."
I first heard about this ages ago. I think my neighborhood is included in one that encompasses parts of Brookline, the Fenway, and Kenmore Square/Brighton.
--gpm
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