There are some of us, who are not Orthodox Jews, who keep the Sabbath in our own ways. For example, I won’t do work on the Sabbath, but it’s work as I define it- basically, anything connected to my job, house or yard work, errands, or driving (except to synagogue). I will turn lights on and off (in fact, I will blow out the Sabbath candles before we go to bed, because curious cats and unattended candles aren’t a good mix), watch TV, or play computer games. Under the Orthodox rules, I’d be permitted to read a book for my work, but under my rules, I’m not.
And yes, having sex on the Sabbath is not only permitted, there’s a long tradition of encouraging it. If you find it to be work, you’re probably doing it wrong
No, Jewish law in fact requires you to break the Sabbath laws if someone’s life might be endangered by following them (and I would say something that might start a fire would qualify, though IANARabbi). The only Jewish laws you’re not allowed to break to save a life are the ones against murder (you can’t kill an innocent person to save your own life, though you can kill in self-defense), adultery (though you’re not required to resist rape to the point of death), and idolatry (you can’t worship another god if someone is threatening to kill you unless you do).
There’s no ritual of penance or anything like that for breaking the Sabbath- you just sincerely regret doing it, and try not to do it again. Fasting on Yom Kippur is supposed to atone for sins like this, between people and God (you have to try to undo the harm you did if you committed a sin between yourself and another person, if possible). But you still fast on Yom Kippur even if you can’t remember committing any specific sins between you and God, so it’s not exactly a ritual of penance for some specific sin.
Not being Christian, I feel the same way about eating your god and drinking his blood.
I will confine myself to pointing out that Jews don’t believe in an afterlife in the same way that Christians do. I don’ expect to “go to heaven,” or “explain” anything to anyOne.
Jewish law can certainly look silly, but it has been arrived at by very rigorous argument, as a glance at any translaton of the Talmud will show you. It may seem bizarre to debate when the sabbath is in a building (was it a castle?) floating in a courtyard, but this issue having been legally debated as an extension of the sabbath laws, it was much easier to answer the question of when it’s sabbath aboard a space station.
One point that could be made, if we’re comparing Christianity to Judaism, is that most of the Jewish law is derived from the Torah - the same five books that form the beginning of the Christian Bible. The difference is that Christians have conveniently come up with excuses why they’re not bound by the Mosaic law; endeavoring to follow God’s law is a complicated matter. But deciding to give up on it instead is a questionable approach to how to follow it.
Thanks for the glimpse into Jewish Cleveland Heights, elmwood. Growing up near there, I remember synagogues on both Taylor and Lee roads, as well as on Green and Fairmount. I learned to be extra cautious driving on Friday evenings with all the pedestrian traffic afoot. I remember as a young child reading the words “Oer Chodosh Anshe Sfard” on one such building and wondering how it was possible to have a language with such unpronounceable looking words (then I grew up and studied enough Hebrew to be able to pronounce it and understand what it means (“new light of the people of Spain”?).
Reading this thread, I feel saddened and dismayed by the gross disrespect shown toward things that many people hold sacred. If you don’t understand it, and it isn’t hurting anyone, why not just suspend judgment until someone who knows it well gets a chance to explain it? If you still disagree, you can express disagreement without flinging verbal mud. Credit goes to Chaim, Dex, and Shoshana for keeping their cool and patiently explaining the perfectly sound reasons for these concepts.
Although when it comes to that Alabama judge and his big stone idol, I fail to see anything sacred about imposing that as a sign of fundamentalist political hegemony over this secular republic and its religious freedom, which is what I hold sacred. If guys like that get to trample the First Amendment, that would be harming people.
Thanks; I meant to mention sniping tools, but forgot, so thanks for adding that bit.
More on this though; a bid on ebay is an offer to enter into a contract; if you end up being the high bidder, you have entered into a binding contract at the point when the auction ends. Does this make any difference?
IANAM, but this is the Straight Dope and one of the really very wonderful things about this Board is that anyone can ask anything, and bring anything to the table without being smeared or attacked. The BBQ Pit is an excellent place to call someone’s religion “shit”, but this thread might not be the nicest place for it, ok ? Just one Doper’s opinion.
The rigors of Jewish Law don’t seem any more or less bizarre or outrageous than the rigors imposed by the Orthodoxy of most other religions on the planet. Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, what have you- there are Orthodox strains to most if not all religions that demand much of the followers.
When I was in college, I had a good friend who had been raised pretty religiously in Vancouver. She had a set of dishes her parents had bought for her when she moved to NYC, but she’d not used them ( her roommate had a perfectly good set already). After a year, she made plans to move in with a girl who lived in Brooklyn, and attended Stern College for Women. ( A Yeshiva). This friend was not allowed to take the set of dishes into the house, because they were not Kosher. She had three choices.
Send them to Vancouver or somewhere else for a year. If they went untouched for 1 year, apparently they were Kosher.
Perform a ritual cleansing at the ocean with them, to make them Kosher.
Get rid of em.
I bought them from her, and enjoyed them for about 15 years till they were all gone. She wound up discovering Ultra Orthodoxy and marrying a man who works for the Simon Weisenthal Center in L.A. ( interesting… ).
The idea of a Kosher cleansing ritual down at the surfside didnt’ strike me as any more unusual than lots of other religious rules and regulations. She just chose not to take that route.
Nah, I never informed anybody about how to practice their religions. Just said I thought it was silly. You’re free to practice it however you want, and I’m free to say it looks silly.
Because some of this stuff bears a striking similarity to fanaticism. In Israel, religious jews chain up public phones to ensure no one uses them (meaning no 911 access). If anyone dares drive on the sabbath in their neighborhood (Mea Shearim), they have a good chance of getting stones thrown at them (cite ). I can personally attest to how dangerous some of these overzealous interpretations of the bible can get. When I was in Jerusalem, from time to time I used to smoke whats known as a hookah (pic), its a large glass water pipe used for smoking a fruit flavored molasses/tobacco mixture. I happened to be smoking from the device on a saturday afternoon on top of my apartment building when an ultra-orthodox fanatic apparently noticed me from the street. This gentlement proceeded to break into the building, climb to the top, take the nearest chair and violently swing it at myself and the hookah, the reason being, that he was offended I, a total stranger on private property, was smoking on a saturday!
And so, Johanna et all, I think it is you who should be more tolerant of those who dare question the validity of aniquated extreme religious practices. Jews have every right to practice their religion as they see fit, however everyone else has the right to consider these strange actions for themselves and pass judgement if they so choose.
Could you tell us more about this hypothetical floating castle? I can see how such a structure might have some similarities to a space station, but it seems to me that the biggest complication with Sabbath on a space station is that the station is passing through 16 time zones an hour and seeing 16 sunsets a day, which (I presume) the floating castle is not.
FWIW, I’m not Catholic (I’m more of an Agnostic than anything, I guess), so I find the whole Communion Wine & Wafer thing to be just as mind-boggling and slightly iffy as you do.
I wasn’t defending fanaticism. I would be interested in hearing what reputable rabbis think of the behavior you described. I can’t imagine they would condone such violent extremism. All I can think of is Yitzhak Rabin saying “Sensible Judaism spits you out.”
What I like about Jewish ethics is the emphasis on treating others gently and with compassion, wisdom, and understanding, at least that’s what I’ve heard from rabbis I’ve listened to. But you were in Jerusalem. Doesn’t the city have a reputation for driving people berserk? Like that Australian guy who thought he was the Messiah and set fire to Masjid al-Aqsa.
“…oh just about everything is a sin, have you ever sat down and read this thing? Technically we’re not allowed to go to the bathroom.”
-Reverend Timothy Lovejoy
Really, so basically it’s an excuse to be a total slob?
What about heating up a baby bottle? Is that allowed?
That sort of thing isn’t even terribly uncommon. There’s a name for it, Jerusalem Syndrome maybe - something like that. I don’t think it’s recognized as a specific mental illness but it’s a fairly frequent occurrence that people have to be treated for psychotic breaks they have upon visiting the city.
I’m sure it’s nice besides that. And, like, the constant fighting and stuff.
Is it not reasonable for me to posit that there might be a correlation between extreme religious observance (‘the creator of the universe wishes for me to not wear shoes today’ or ‘the maker of the world commands me to avoid toilet paper after sundown’) and the roots of dangerous fantaticism?
Globe and Mail June 4th 1997
…she mentions that "the Orthodox Jews would gather on a Saturday morning, piously to stone the passing motor-cars, breakers of the Sabbath.cite.
I think that by dismissing critism of what we in a secular western society can safely refer to as extreme and bizarre religious practices you are opening the door to giving fantatics carte blanche.
Religion is weird like that. On the one hand, you’ve got God turning himself into a cracker on Sunday mornings so that the faithful can eat him, or God telling people to cut the end of their baby’s penis off; on the other, you’ve got Millard Fuller, who gave up an extremely lucrative career to found Habitat for Humanity because Jesus told him to, and you’ve got religious martyrs with the courage to be tortured to death rather than abandon their beliefs. And they come as a set: the seemingly crazy, together with the awe inspiring.
It’s also sinful to violently attack people on the Sabbath, or any other day of the week. And how did hookah man know you were even Jewish? Oy.
On the lighter side, I’ve heard you can buy T-shirts in Israel that say, “I got stoned in Mea Shearim.”
Just one Doper’s opinion.