Right, I’m familiar with where many of these “fences” came from, I’m just saying that’s how it looks to people unfamiliar with the history, which is why you get articles like the one in the OP and comments like some of those here.
OTOH, I think there are some number of observant Jews, probably particularly those brought up Orthodox, who don’t really know the details either - who cares where the rules came from or how the workarounds were devised - they just know how it all works because that’s how they grew up. Much like many people of any religion, who follow the mandates of their religion (as handed to them by family or leaders) without really caring about the history and details.
hotflungwok, most of the rules and the workarounds aren’t just random dodges thought up on the spur of the moment at someone’s convenience. Learned experts debated and argued the most minute details to decide how these things worked and what was permissible and what wasn’t. There’s a whole book of these rules and workarounds, firmly established as part of the religion.
How any individual Jew decides to follow those rules is another matter. Just as individual Christians/Muslims/Hindus/whatever choose to follow, ignore or adapt selected parts of their religious rules.
In fact, the Talmud says that for every non-kosher food, there is a kosher food that is equivalent in taste. There is, in fact, a bottle of kosher “bacon” bits in our fridge right now, as well as kosher veggie sausage patties, kosher veggie bacon, and veggie burgers (so we can have cheeseburgers) in our freezer. The point is to avoid actually consuming pork or mixtures of meat and dairy, not to avoid anything that might be a little like those things.
Yes, but a lot of us who believe in that sort of thing think God gives partial credit, and that sometimes following the rules is better than never following them. We assume that God knows we aren’t perfect, and makes allowances for that.
Yes, being an ascetic to make sure you don’t break any rules is a valid interpretation. But it’s not a Jewish interpretation- if you want that in your religion, Christianity (among others) is a lot friendlier to that viewpoint. Just like if you want God incarnating as a specific human being in your religion, Christianity or Hinduism are friendlier to that idea than Judaism is.
Judaism isn’t just a matter of following some rules- you can follow all the 613 mitzvot that apply to your lifestyle (some, like sacrifices in the Temple, can’t be carried out today, and some apply only to certain lifestyles, like leaving a corner of your field unharvested for the needy) and still not be Jewish. In fact, if you convert to Judaism (at least if you convert Conservative- AFAIK, Reform is similar), you’ll spend more time learning about Jewish history and culture than you will learning about those rules. I’ve never heard of anyone going to a rabbi and saying they’re willing to scrupulously practice those mitzvot but not get involved in any other aspects of Jewish culture or tradition- but I doubt most Conservative or Reform rabbis would let such a person convert to Judaism. Or you could follow the rules as a literal interpretation of the Torah would lead you to do, but ignore all the rabbinic traditions that Judaism has added to that- that would be a religious lifestyle, but it wouldn’t be Judaism.
Laws written by humans have specified exceptions to circumvent other laws, too- an example is the law saying you can turn right on a red light in certain circumstances, which is there to circumvent the law that says a red light means stop. In some places, there are laws saying you can run through a red light if your safety is threatened by staying stopped. The human-written laws prohibiting murder have exceptions for things like self-defense, capital punishment, and soldiers killing other soldiers in war. Those exceptions don’t make the laws prohibiting red-light running or murder invalid or inconsistent or silly (though they do make them more complex and harder to understand)- why should exceptions to religious laws make them less valid?
Just a nitpick, but “dogma” isn’t a good word for the mitzvot of Judaism. Dogma is something that one is required to believe, not something one is required to do, and Judaism is short on dogma (rules about what one has to believe) but has lots of rules about one has to do. Dogma is much more characteristic of Christianity than it is of Judaism.
Of course. I doubt there are very many people who really do understand all the complexities and nuances of Jewish law (I certainly don’t). And people who don’t know all the details of the rules may misapply them out of ignorance- following them in circumstances where they don’t need to be, or ask people who aren’t required to follow them to follow them.
I’m still not seeing the harm here. There are cases where people are actually harmed, and sometimes die, by following religious rules, but this isn’t one of them- this woman and her kids stood outside at night for a while, and did something that seemed a bit silly to someone who was not familiar with her take on her religion. That’s hardly likely to kill them. Maybe the kids were embarrassed to be seen with their mother while she did that, but embarrassing your kids is hardly child abuse.
To my mind, the interesting revelation in this thread is the unwitting effect of a whole mindset of being familiar with a particular reigion, even if you don’t believe in it.
Seems to me that many of the non-religious people posting here who come from a non-Jewish background, to whom Christianity is more the cultural “norm” (whether or not they or their families were ever Christian) have a hard time understanding Jewish concepts, because try as they might they keep understanding things through a Christian perspective.
From my POV, what is interesting is that, although I have in effect rejected Judaism as a religious practice, and never was particularly knowlegable about the practice in the first place, I’m more comfortable with its meaning than I am in a Christian world of dogma and salvation.
A good friend of mine is an Orthodox Jew, and happens to be a pharmacist where I work. When I asked him once about a pork-derived medication and its use by Jews, he said that a) we also had it beef-derived, and b) the rule is to save the life before worrying about the laws of Judaism. So, save the life, even if it means that you have to watch TV or listen to radio on Shabbos.
He and his wife are patient with my silly goyishe questions, and have taught me a lot about Judaism (I grew up in a pretty non-Jewish area in Canada). I don’t understand why anyone would want to follow all of those rules, but I sure know a lot about them. We’ve had many long discussions about it - she’s got a degree in Jewish Studies, so she knows it all (as pertains to their tradition).
Yup, humanity is the highest virtue, it trumps ritual.
What really freaks some non-Jews out, is “following the rituals” is sometimes only tangentally related to how conservative the particular Jew is, how religious a partricular Jew is, or even to how much he or she believes in God. See for example “Reconstructionists”, who tend to follow lots of ritual rules voluntarily but who are more or less athiestic in orientation: Reconstructionist Judaism - Wikipedia
You wouldn’t get this I think in many other religions - intensity of ritual observance usually corresponds to intesity of faith. But Judaism isn’t really based on faith.
It just sounds odd. you’ve got these rules from a being you worship, but whatever, he’ll understand. They aren’t really rules then, more like suggestions. Why follow any of them if it doesn’t really matter anyway? I’m having a hard time getting the mindset. I guess being brought up Catholic (I’m all better now) will do that to you.
There really wasn’t any harm in this situation, but there could have been. What if a non-Jew hadn’t been around? What would she have done? She was so horrified of even touching a key, could she have brought herself to do something that she considered work? I’m not saying they would have died, but it’s easy to think of a much worse situation that she would have been prevented from acting by her beliefs. I think any situation in which beliefs like that prevent a rational course of action is potentially bad in some way.
IANAJ, but I guess it’s like being a kid: you have lots of rules, they’re important, but infringing on them from time to time won’t get you disowned. Half of the time your parents probably just cluck their tongues and tell you not to do it again, especially if it was an accident or too difficult for you.
It’s not a game, where if you’re not following the rules you’re either cheating or playing a different game. You’re supposed to do all of those things, but being human, sometimes you err, and it’s not the end of the world. Nobody’s perfect, in other words.
Yeah, as I said, it is confusing if you don’t have the mindset.
Certainly, for many Jews the reason for carrying out the rituals is an abiding belief in God. But, as in the case of Reconstructionists, that isn’t true of all.
Think of it this way: Judaism is both a religion and a culture growing out of that religion. A major part of that culture is following a set of rituals that defines many aspects of your life. I think this is true of all long-established religions to an extent, but it is much more true of Judaism. In Judaism, what you do is much more important than what you believe. As a religion, of all of the big three monotheistic religions, Judaism is the least interested in the ‘faith’ of the individual - hence, it is entirely possible to have an athiest Jew who follows the rituals. [If there was ever a Jewish version of the Inquisition, it wouldn’t ask “do you believe in God?” but rather “do you eat bacon?” ]
If a Christian announces that he or she doesn’t believe in Christ or God, generally speaking he or she isn’t a “Christian” anymore because faith is central to Christianity (again with the caveat that one can be ‘culturally Catholic’ I suppose, but one cannot generally be ‘culturally evangelical’). If a Jew announces he or she doesn’t believe in God, some Jews will think he or she isn’t really Jewish - but by no means all; because faith isn’t as central to Judaism. How one lives is more central.
Just to make things even more confusing, Judaism is also heriditary, though many Jews believe it is only heriditary through the female line.
Why would one do the rituals if one doesn’t believe in a God commanding it? Put it this way: it is a connection to a line of ancestors, a shared practice going back thousands of years. Jewish practice is very ancient and has survived millenia. By carrying it out, one connects with these ancestors - many families have traditions and habits which keep them grounded; Judaism provides a set of those, ones of immense antiquity.
Think of them as being more like a diet plan than anything else. If you’re on a diet, you have rules about what you do and don’t eat, and rules about exercise. People break their diets- they go to events where there is no food that conforms to their diet, something comes up that they can’t exercise, or whatever. But any authority on diets will tell you that you should try to keep occasions where you break your diet to a minimum, if you do break your diet the thing to do is to get back on it as soon as possible, and it’s better to be on your diet some of the time or most of the time than to not be on any diet any of the time. The goal with religious rules isn’t to lose weight, though- it’s to get closer to God, and to be a better person.
One big difference between Judaism and Christianity is that most Jews don’t believe in eternal damnation, or if they do it’s for doing something on the level of Hitler or Stalin, not for the kind of transgressions an ordinary person is likely to get into. There’s a Jewish tradition that hell exists, but even the most wicked people (with the possible exception of the Hitlers and Stalins of the world) only stay there for a maximum of 12 months. In fact, that tradition shows up in our mourning customs- if one of your parents dies, the original custom was to say a particular prayer every day for 12 months, but it later got shortened to 11, because we don’t want to imply that our parents were wicked enough to go to hell for the full 12 months.
If you believe in a hell that is temporary, doing as many mitzvot as you can makes more sense- you’re not going to go to hell forever for any sin that you’re at all likely to commit (unlike what some versions of Christianity would say), and sinning less often might mean less time in hell.
Some Jews believe in reincarnation, in which case the same holds- you’ll get a better future life for doing the right things, even if you’d get a better one if you could do the right things more often.
Other Jews believe that the point of doing mitzvot isn’t to get a better afterlife for themselves, but to make the world a better place. You can make the world a better place by doing the right thing sometimes, even if it would be even better if you did the right thing all the time.
At any rate, none of these things are quite as black-and-white as the idea that some Christian denominations have that you either go to heaven or hell when you die. There’s a lot more room for gradations of rewards and punishments than eternity in heaven or eternity in hell.
Some of them carry out these rituals for the same reason that Americans carry out the rituals of Thanksgiving or the secular aspects of Christmas (stuff like decorating trees, giving gifts, and so on). There are very few Americans who believe they would actually be punished somehow if they decided not to celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas in the traditional way this year. But most of us do it anyway- maybe we enjoy it, or we like the feeling of being connected to our traditions, or we would feel that something was missing from our lives if we didn’t. Some Jews follow Jewish rituals for the same reason. The feeling that something is missing if you no longer celebrate Thanksgiving is common among American expats, and the feeling that something is missing if you no longer celebrate Christmas is very common among converts to Judaism, even the ones who don’t miss any of the religious aspects of Christianity. I certainly felt that way when I stopped celebrating Christmas, even though I had left behind any Christian faith many years earlier.
And she could have been out in a Minnesota winter, too. Or if she had testicles, she’d be a man.
I suspect that if there hadn’t been a non-Jew around, she would have eventually walked the 12 blocks with the kids to her in-laws’ house. It sounds like the kids could walk, and they probably would have walked the 12 blocks eventually. They might not have liked to do it, but it wouldn’t cause any permanent harm, and it would have been better than staying outside all night.
I remember having to walk farther than I would have normally done with my dad and my sister when I was a kid and my dad locked the keys in the car, and we both survived. This situation wasn’t any worse than the kind of things that used to happen before people had cell phones, and yet people back then went out when something like this might possibly happen.
Yes, this woman’s religious rules make something like this a little more likely. But following them might also make her feel better most of the time- she might feel more strongly connected to her community and family than she would without them. We all make decisions like that- we do something that makes us feel better most of the time, while making a bad situation slightly more likely. Driving cars is a good example- driving makes things like shopping and visiting family easier most of the time, but it definitely makes it more likely that we’ll be in a car accident.
Now, I can understand if you don’t understand what this woman gets out of being religious- not everybody does. You probably do something that I wouldn’t understand what you get out of it, too.
Thanks to all who gave insight into the rituals and work-arounds. I grew up in a christian household but have always been anti-religion. If I ever were to decide to take up a religion I think I’d want to be a Jew. It’s so much more intelligent!!
(Also I have always enjoyed arguing more than is healthy…)
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