I heard someone say once that being “chosen” must be understood in the sense of being chose for a suicide mission.
In all the years I went to Hebrew school and to shul (Conservative, but the reform wing of it) I never heard the rabbi mention hell once, and I never heard him say anything implying that those of other faiths were in any way immoral or inferior. I think membership coming from birth, not conversion, puts a spin on things that most Christians seem to have a hard time understanding.
But this story shows that it isn’t harmless. What would that lady have done if there hadn’t been a non-Jew who was willing to go through all the silly ritual on their behalf? She held her belief that using keys on the Sabbath was wrong higher than the safety of herself and her children! And then when she found someone willing to help her, she expected that person to jump through most of the same hoops she does. The father wouldn’t give the guy the key until he said the right phrase to make it all ok, and then expected the guy to carry the key in his shoe? I’m sorry, but that’s delusional, and is definitely not harmless.
Yup, to the extent Judaism has official doctrine it is official doctrine. At least, in the Talmud (written commentaries on the law) humanity and preservation of life is always held to rank above mere adherence to ritual.
Don’t know how dire it has to get. That’s probably something that Talmudic scholars argue about a lot. 
Well, I’m glad it isn’t just me that gets this impression - I’ve tried on a couple of occasions in the past to describe how it looks, to an outsider, just like a bunch of tricks and workarounds to avoid rules you don’t like to follow, but I suppose there isn’t really any non-insulting way to say it. It’s weird and I just don’t get it. That’s probably all.
But you have several Jewish people in this very thread explaining that it is “official” (to the extent anything in Judaism is “official”) that humanity ranks above ritual. To the exact extent that this woman is putting her kids at risk to follow ritual, she is acting religiously incorrectly.
Moreover, the “attitude” displayed by the religious Jews in this story seems to me to contradict numerous other tenants of Judaism - such as not acting arrogantly towards outsiders, particularly ones doing you favours. Assuming of course it is accurate.
Stuff like carrying a key in a shoe = absurd to outsiders, but no more than any other religious or ritual act, such as wearing a hat or taking one off when in a church. How can it be “delusional” or “harmful” (other than risking a blister on your foot)?
I’m attempting to explain the point, but I’m probably not doing the best job.
Put it this way - the point of doing ritual is to do ritual. The workarounds are also part of the ritual. It is just as meaningful to use the workarounds as to not use them.
The point, for a religious Jew, is to follow the law. What confuses you, I suspect, is that you think that the ritual law has some point that those using the “workarounds” are evading. But it doesn’t (or at least, not any knowable to mere humans). Following the law is the point.
To make an analogy - if I “evade” paying taxes by using a “loophole”, the reason that this is bad is that the point of the exercise isn’t to ritually fill out tax forms, but to ensure I pay my fair share of the social burden. By using a “loophole” I’m exploiting a weakness in the letter of the law to nullify its purpose.
Using a “workaround” in the ritual law isn’t the same thing at all, since there is no “object” you are intended to accomplish by performing ritual outside the ritual itself. It isn’t for anything.
That’s the beauty of it! 
Yes, I think you’re absolutely right. Most people of other religions and the areligious want to know the “purpose” of the religion. Christian = go to heaven and be with Jesus. UU = social networking and a spiritual upbringin’ for the kids. Islam = heaven with virgins. Buddhist = stop reincarnating already! Hindu = nirvana (the state of being, not the band). Pagan = dress up in silly outfits and stare at bonfires. (That last one was tongue in cheek. As a pagan, yes, there is more to it than that. I just like to make fun of myself.)
Judaism = doing what you’re told by G-d CAUSE HE’S FRICKIN’ G-D, MAN! What more is there? G-d said “do this, don’t do that”. Period. End of story. There is no “purpose” or “point” beyond doing what G-d says. (Individual Jews may have ideas about community cohesion, spiritual betterment or afterlife rewards, but none of that is doctrinal.) G-d says “jump”, you don’t have to worry about whether he wants you to jump for physical fitness (and so therefore you should also lift weights) or to avoid stepping on an ant (and so therefore maybe you shouldn’t swat mosquitoes either). It’s not important, or he would have left more explicit instructions, so you just jump, and don’t worry about the weights or the mosquitoes. 'Cause he’s G-d, and he said “jump”. If he was interested in weights or mosquitoes, he would have mentioned them.
This part, I could get on board with. I love dressing up, and I’m a pyro at heart.
There is an exception to most of the rules of Jewish law when life is at stake. Being outside for a while at night in an LA suburb (presumably with a mild climate) that doesn’t sound (from the article) like a particularly dangerous place isn’t life-threatening, or at least this woman presumably didn’t think it was. She presumably would have acted differently had she been locked out in a really dangerous inner-city neighborhood full of drug dealers, or been locked out in a Minnesota winter. Being outside for a while with a parent in a relatively safe neighborhood in a mild climate is hardly a huge threat to a child’s safety, even at night.
You’re not supposed to make snide comments about someone else’s level of observance, certainly. She could have embarrassed the writer’s Jewish friends in front of their friends, and there is a law against publicly humiliating anyone in Judaism (in some cases, it’s considered as bad as murdering someone).
The religious Jewish couple also probably took the prohibition against contact with someone of the opposite sex other than a spouse or family member too far. AFAIK, there’s nothing in Jewish law that says you can’t talk to or look at an unrelated member of the opposite sex, or acknowledge that they are talking to you- the restriction is only on touching them, and, even then, a lot of Orthodox rabbis allow things like shaking hands with such a person, or handing them a key.
Of course, if you’ve been following these rules for most or all of your life, and you suddenly come upon a situation where the rules themselves say you should set them aside, it’s not always an easy thing to do. There are many stories of people continuing to fast on Yom Kippur to the point of fainting or health problems (a lot of synagogues will make arrangements to have an ambulance nearby on Yom Kippur just in case), even though the relevant Jewish law says pretty explicitly that you’re not supposed to do that. This kind of behavior isn’t restricted to religious ritual- there are also cases of people continuing in an exercise class even when feeling pain, even if the instructor has said not to do that, because they want to try to do whatever the authority figure (in this case, the exercise instructor) has asked them to do and not disrupt the class.
I understand that, but even without the laws having any knowable underlying ‘point’, it still seems like a bunch of workarounds designed to avoid something you have to do, but don’t want to. Doesn’t matter if you don’t or can’t know why you have to do it, you can still want to comply as minimally or notionally as possible.
Wow. I didn’t find that story funny at all. I found it rather offensive, actually.
Too bad the doctrine of “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” didn’t into the Old Testament. Not that you won’t find hide-bound thinking among the Christians, just sayin’…
I bet that guy played Scott Adams adventure games.
But this is exactly what Judaism doesn’t do, IM(non-Jewish)O. G-d said ‘no work on the Sabbath’. That doesn’t mention keys or lights or electricity or any of the other things that Rabbis have since decided are ‘work’.
G-d said ‘thou shalt not boil a kid in it’s mother’s milk’. Kosher standards have extended that to mean I* can’t have cream gravy on my chicken, but I* can use an egg in the batter. (Not to mention requiring separate dishwashers for the chicken plate and the gravy bowl.)
I understand what Malthus is saying about the point being the ritual itself, and I think that is true. I follow the logic about the workaround being part of the ritual. But I also think that Mangetout has a good point about the workarounds being designed to avoid fully complying with the ritual; that is, after all, what they’re for.
I think where Gentiles get confused is that the rituals have become so convoluted and so restrictive that the workarounds are absolutely necessary in order to live, to the point that the workarounds often seem to be much more important than the original commandment.
I can understand "thou shalt not work on the Sabbath’, whether the purpose is to devote oneself to the contemplation and worship of G-d, to improve familial relationships by providing for and requiring time spent together in ritual, or simply because G-d said so.
I can understand some questions about what constitutes ‘work’. Obviously working for an employer is right out. Cooking is work for someone, so no cooking. There are gray areas that might go either way.
But not being able to flip a lightswitch to provide light for my reading, or not being able to press an elevator button to get home from synagogue, not being able to unlock the door when I got home? That’s not work, any more than is the reading itself or the walk home.
(I realize that these things have been hotly debated by people much more qualified than I to decide what’s what in Judaism and that there is logical justification for each decision, I’m just saying what it looks like from outside.)
*Well, OK, I can, but ya know what I mean.
But she still did it. How easy do you think it would have been to convince her that what she believed was wrong? How do I know that the people in this thread are right and she’s wrong? How can you tell? It’s all interpretation, and every person is going to have a different one.
Maybe the guy was a jerk, who cares. The absurdity of what was being done should have been a wake up call. ‘Is this really what god wants me to do to keep my children safe?’
Just because it’s not directly harmful doesn’t mean it’s good. Why bother with the absurd just because it doesn’t hurt? It’s absurd, that’s enough of a reason to discard it.
So it’s follow the rules unless it’s inconvenient? She would have been fine for a while, but all night? Is that what she thinks her god wants? ‘We slept on the lawn in the cold cuz we’re not allowed use keys on the Sabbath’. If it’s ok to obey the law in this case, why try to find any loopholes at all? As long as you’re not going to die, it should be ok. Don’t cook on the Sabbath, humans can go for a day without eating no problem. I don’t get the picking an choosing which rules to follow and which ones to dodge.
Well, some people see value in following ritual - the entirely subjective value of being closer to God.
I myself do not, which is why I don’t follow the rituals. The difference between me any you, I suppose, is that I’m not willing to label stuff I don’t follow as “absurd” and leave it at that. I find it more rewarding to try to understand why people do stuff I don’t believe in. I find it a good working method not to assume that they are stupid or nuts, but rather that they are operating with motives I don’t fully comprehend.
I know you, and others, don’t understand the point of the rituals, or more particularly the workarounds. I’ve attempted to explain that point from what I’ve been able to determine, but I’m obviously not very good at explaining things.
We’ve answered these specifics in other threads. “Work” is a bad interpretation of the word. “Acts of creation and destruction” would be a better one. The spark of fire is too similar to the act of G-d creating light. Since He rested from Creating and told us (them), we should likewise rest from creating. Flipping a light switch creates light, therefore it is “work” like the “work” G-d did while creating the world.
Even if you really, really like quilting and do it to relax in your spare time, it’s forbidden on the Sabbath, because it’s an act of creation. Work vs. recreation or labor vs. relaxation is not the actual issue.
And some non-Orthodox Jews do in fact observe the Sabbath in that way. Personally, for me, “no work” means obviously no work that I’ve brought home from the office (including reading something for work, rather than for pleasure- an Orthodox Jew might do that, since reading isn’t the kind of work that is prohibited, but I wouldn’t). It also means no chores (other than really trivial ones), no “real” cooking (a rather nebulous definition, but anything involving substantial prep work is out), no cooking food for the rest of the week (only food that will be eaten that day, though it’s OK if there are some leftovers from misjudging amounts), no errands, and, if at all possible, no driving (I don’t enjoy driving, so I consider it work). My definition of an “emergency” that would lead me to bend or break these rules is a little more flexible than Orthodox Jews’, too- I’d consider a looming deadline at work an emergency, for example. Other non-Orthodox Jews are going to have different rules- some even observe the Sabbath like many Christians do, by going to religious services in addition to whatever other things they would normally do on a day off work.
Of course, this brings up its own problems- unlike an Orthodox community, not all non-Orthodox Jews are observing the same rules about the Sabbath. If you want to arrange a Sabbath get-together, you don’t just have to make sure you’re not violating one set of rules, but a whole lot of them, which may not have much in common with each other. I can see how all obeying the same Sabbath rules could lead to a more cohesive community (and a cohesive community is a very valued thing in Judaism).
The light switch one comes from the fact that until fairly recently in the history of Judaism, you had to start a fire to turn on a light, and starting a fire was considered work (easier to understand if they didn’t have modern matches).
One of the things about Orthodox Judaism, in my non-Orthodox Jewish understanding, is that it is a reaction against the Haskalah, or Jewish Enlightenment, when Jews started interacting more with gentiles on a daily basis. I think some of their stricter rules are there to stop that kind of thing, or to keep Orthodox Jews from acting too much like Gentiles. I think a lot of Orthodox Jewish groups have been resisting changes to the rules that would be possible now not because those changes are necessarily incompatible with the rules themselves, but because the changes would make Orthodox Jews too much like gentiles.
In other words, I agree with you that throwing a light switch isn’t work in the way that starting a fire without modern matches is (though that’s a guess- I’ve never done that, so I don’t really know how much work it is), and I think that Orthodox Jews don’t see it that way because some of them think that letting people turn lights on and off on the Sabbath would make people act less distinctively Jewish and more like gentiles.
That’s hardly unique to religious rules. There are people who don’t shop at certain stores for ethical or other reasons (they don’t like something that might be the store’s business practices, or might be their lack of parking). They’d probably go to those stores if it were inconvenient enough to avoid them in some case. There are people who don’t like to drive SUVs, but would take one if that’s all the car-rental place had. There are parents who don’t believe in bribing kids to behave well, but do it occasionally because a situation comes up where anything else is much more difficult. They’re picking and choosing in the exact same way religious people do. You really couldn’t do much of anything for any reason other than convenience if you weren’t sometimes willing to do that sort of thing. I personally think the world would be a worse place if no one ever took a principled stand on something because there might be a situation where they might have to violate that stand.
But it’s entirely possible to eat without cooking- just make yourself a cold sandwich, or eat some stew out of a crockpot that you set up before the Sabbath began, and you’re good to go. Judaism is not very friendly to asceticism- it’s not generally considered a good thing to restrict yourself more than you need to do to follow the rules.
I know, but you’re talking about religion. Weren’t these rules handed down by god? I hate Walmart, but I’ll pop in there once a year to buy a certain type of superglue only they carry. But there’s nothing riding on this other than my own distaste of the place. You’re disobeying rules laid down by the focus of your religion, something I imagine has consequences independent of what you think of the action. The law is ‘Dont work on the Sabbath’ not ‘Dont work on the Sabbath unless you feel like it, or something comes up, or you’re really hungry, etc’.
But it’s just as a valid an interpretation as the dodges and loopholes. As long as it doesn’t hurt you, follow the rule. The way it sounds, you should be following the rule as best you can unless it hurts you, so the people who use the loopholes to cook are breaking something.
Perhaps observance is illustrated by how Mrs. Plant likes Bac’n Bits on her salads. It doesn’t have any pork in it and is indeed Kosher.
Coming from a Christian background, this did indeed seem quite sneaky to me. But the commandment is to not eat pork, not to not enjoy eating something that looks and tastes like bacon.