this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2023
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The following is not a critique of religion a people
I sometimes find the loopholes Jewish people use to get around the law of their own religion akin to the definition of lawful chaotic here.
'you shall not leave your home on sabbat' so we shall make a iron loop around the city, so it can be explained to be our house.
'you may not use fire (and therefore electronics), therefore we set timers for our gas furnace the day before.
It's quite bordering on creating chaos in order to follow the law. Just read this:
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/5-must-have-gadgets-for-shabbat-observant-jews/
I've actually always enjoyed those solutions. It's very legalistic.
I do too, they are funny in a way that they try and lawyer up against a all knowing and all powerful being.
I always saw that as a valid game that their God is ok with. It promotes creative thinking, so it's arguably a good thing.
Furthermore, and opinions on this may vary, but I was talking with an Orthodox Jew about all the rules and the sense of following them in the modern world, when at least some of them (like kosher) were obviously very important for reasons like hygiene and don't carry that importance any more, and he said he's obviously aware of that, but that following them is a sort of test/proof of strenght of faith/building of character kind of deal. And that no, God has no issue with non-Jewish people not following them. We don't have to and aren't supposed to. It's fine.
And it seems to me like finding these loopholes while still following the letter of the law (my favourite is paying non-Jews to do stuff for you on Sabbath) still works quite nicely from this perspective, since finding ways to circumvent these rules still requires you to know and acknowledge the rules.
A contract is a contract, divine or mundane! You actually see similar practices in other pre-Christian faiths as well, though none, I think, with quite the level of creativity developed by Rabbinical Judaism.