I was driving to pick up a friend of mine on Saturday, the town she lives in has a large Jewish community. I saw a lot of the Jewish people walking, my friend said that was the case every Saturday. We were wondering why that is.
My friend also said that occasionally, she sees people with tents set up and she wondered if there was a religious reason for that.
She also mentioned that sometimes, she’ll see them walk to the river and toss some seeds in the water. What is the reason for that and what kind of seeds they are.
The first question is easy, so I can answer it – observant Jews are not supposed to work on the Sabbath (sundown Friday until sundown Saturday). This is taken to mean you cannot drive or use public transportation during this period.
Also, non-Orthodox Jews who don’t take the Sabbath restrictions as seriously may work (or use electricity or cook, etc) on Saturday, but will walk to cynagogue and back.
Saturday is the Jewish sabbath. The sabbath starts weekly at sundown on Friday evening and goes until sundown on Saturday. During the sabbath, certain Jews believe that it is forbidden to use electricity or drive cars (among numerous other forbidden activities). Hence the walking.
Tents are probably seen mostly in the fall (late september/october). This is during the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. On Sukkot, which is mostly a harvest festival, Jews often eat and sleep in makeshift huts which are built in their yards. The purpose of this is debated, but it is reminiscent of the Israelites wanderings in the desert and it provides solidarity with harvesting farmers, who stay in these huts throughout the harvest to get the most work done in the least amount of time when their crops are perfectly ripened.
Seeds in the water is usually done in the fall on Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of attonement. On that day, after praying to God for forgiveness, some Jews will go to a special service where they symbolically throw their sins in the water. The seeds represent the sins. The kind of seeds do not matter. Many people use bread crumbs.
There are common-sense exceptions. If you’re not able to walk or walking would make you sick then you’re not expected to. One of the resident orthodox folks like Zev can give you a more detailed answer.
The only exception is for life saving, so Orthodox doctors (and EMT’s and so on) are allowed to work on the Sabbath if necessary to save a life, and someone in need of immediate medical attention can be driven to a hospital. (Of course, when it turned out that my mother was in false labor with my little sister, she and my father were stuck at the hospital until after the Sabbath, since there wasn’t any pressing medical reason for them to drive home.) Otherwise, no. It’s considered more important to observe the Sabbath (by not driving) than it is to go to synagogue.
The seeds thing isn’t actually seeds (or at least I’ve never heard of such a practice). It’s customary on or after Rosh Hashana to go to a natural body of water and say a prayer asking G-d to throw away our sins, and many people will throw bread into the water, symbolizing the sins that will be destroyed.
The tents are probably more like little huts - they have to have at least three walls, plus a roof made of some naturally growing stuff (bamboo is popular). (Sukkot, the name of the holiday, means ‘huts’.)
No, there are no exceptions, and the reason for that is pretty simple: the “not working on Sabbath” thing is a prohibition directly from the Torah, and prayer in a synagogue is not a Torah commandment, but rather, an option. Prayers can be said in private as well. As such, there is no circumstance under which going to the synagogue will override a genuine Torah prohibition.
(except, of course, if it’s necessary to save someone’s life, as GilaB said.)