Mangetout: Violence towards another person does not count as work – but it does count as assault & battery. The prohibition against work on Shabbat is a religious rule to sanctify the concept that everybody has one day each week where they don’t work for a living. The prohibition against attacking people is a societal rule based on the premise that violence against your neighbor is a Bad Thing ™.
In public safety positions, including Tzaha’'l (the Israeli military), the premise is that “Shabbat was given to Humanity, and not Humanity to Shabbat,” according to the precedent of saving the life of the young Hillel (long before he was the great sage Hillel). Saving lives, including preventing a clear threat to lives, takes precedence over all religious rules and most of the others; the exceptions are the prohibitions against murder, rape, incest, and idolatry.
Just as a personal note, this past Shabbat mid-Passover, my family played Scrabble in Hebrew. It’s sort of been a tradition for a few years. My father kicked our butts on his third word, haohavim, using all seven tiles.
It certainly does count as work. Causing a wound is under the “slaughtering” category of work. In fact, despite all that was said earlier about sex on the Sabbath being a great idea, one situation in which it should NOT be done is if this is a virginal bride’s first intercourse, because in breaking the hymen, the husband would be violating the Sabbath in this way.
In any case, the chair-throwing incidents related to the “Women at the Wall” group, and not (I’m pretty certain) on Sabbath.
It reminds me of the story about the Presbyterian minister who tied up his budgie’s swing every Sunday so that it would not spend the day in idle enjoyment.
Or another minister, himself less strict, who was fond of the ‘cello, and quite good at it. After Sunday lunch he was just settling down with a sheaf of music when there came a loud knock at the door, where he was greeted by a deputation of elders all with faces as long as a yard of pump water. "Ye’ll no’ be playin’ yer instrument on the Lord’s Day!" said the oldest and sternest. It was not a request. The 'cello was put away.
Can one really apologize “on behalf” of a people? That seems like odd groupthink to me.
About criticism of the religion. I think people should be free to criticise other people’s religions as they want. They should of course use a proper amount of courtesy, but that goes for all kinds of communication. The point where ridicule becomes quite important, is the point where religious people have religious political agendas, such as teaching creationism in schools, or the 10 commandments in the courthouse. That discussion would be unfair, if only 1 side can ridicule the other.
I prefaced my remarks, xiix, by saying “if it isn’t hurting anyone”. That caveat is all-important. Swinging chairs, throwing rocks, and trampling the First Amendment are all harmful things I’m not defending. I was thinking of private observances people do quietly on their own without infringing anyone else’s freedoms.
cmkeller, I’ve worked with some Orthodox physicians, and they basically agree with you. When I worked in radiology billing, the handful of Jewish radiologists just weren’t scheduled to work on the Sabbath, barring an emergent case that required their particular specialty.
The only Orthodox physician I’ve ever heard of who worked regularly on the Sabbath was an intensive-care specialist who rounded with an intern or resident who could write orders and perform necessary routine procedures. She either lived or at least kept an apartment within walking distance of the hospital. She just felt that the risk of losing a patient due to her unavailability on the Sabbath was unacceptable. (One of her former residents treated my older son while he was in hospital and told us about her. I’ve never met her personally.)
I’ve done this, and sometimes it works to my benefit if I get overtime, which can be as high as double or triple time, plus a day of comp time. However, never underestimate the ability of some people to get pissy about the overtime. One of my now former co-workers had the nerve to tell the boss that she should get the Christmas Day OT because she was originally scheduled to work, even though I was working that shift for her.
The boss suggested that she re-think her position.
Again, here’s an entire thread that has had the opportunity to get ugly, but thanks to the overall culture of the SDMB and its several members, has retained a level of civility, while engaging in debate and argument. That this is possible, even around a seemingly trivial and banal issue (which, of course quickly expanded into a large and potentially inflamatory one) impresses me, if only because the world right now appears on the brink of explosion and implosion. And on some level, maybe discussion could help. Someplace. It’s just that I made the mistake of reading the entire front section of the newspaper today.
I guess I don’t know too much about transliterating Hebrew. From the Latin orthography of that word, I would expect a maximum of four consonants (even counting “aleph” as a consonant), and I wouldn’t expect vowel-markings to warrent space on Scrabble tiles. Even accepting your correction, though, a Scrabble word which uses seven tiles is much more likely to be eight letters than seven, since you’ll generally use one already on the board for one of the letters in your word.
As for the notion of having a gentile do work for you on the Sabbath (I presume that this is what Shabbes goyim refers to), don’t the Sabbath laws in the Torah also apply to “the stranger living among you”? I can see the case being made that nowadays in most places, the Jews are the “strangers” living among others, so clearly you can’t expect everyone else in the city to observe the Sabbath. But it still seems to me that for a Jew to hire a Gentile to perform tasks the Jew would otherwise perform emself (turning off lights and the like) would run afoul of this restriction. And what about in Israel, where the gentiles really can be said to be “strangers living among the Jews”?
The vowel markings - nekudot - would not be on the tiles. But the “vav” used as a vowel (“oh” if a dot is on top, “ooh” if the dot is in the center) is a bona fide part of word construction in Hebrew. Likewise the “yod” in the second to last position…although it does not really contribute any sound, the pluralizing suffix is “yod-mem” not just “mem.”
Or one of the letters can be adding to a word that’s already on the board, extending that one by one letter. That’s certainly common enough in Scrabble, and with two "heh"s in the word, it’s easy to tack on to the beginning of most other words, since it just means “the.”
You’re 100% right. The term “Shabbos Goy” is very heavily misunderstood. Basically, a Jew cannot have a non-Jew violate Torah prohibitions for him on the Sabbath, but a Rabbinic prohibition might, under certain circumstances, be allowed to be performed through a non-Jew. That’s an oversimplification, of course, but suffice it to say that “Shabbos Goy” does not mean that all, or even most, Sabbath restrictions can be finessed by such means.
I really was serious when I asked about bowling on the Sabbath. I was wondering what kind of forms of play were considered ok under Rabbinical Law.
Like kids playing baseball but without keeping score? Is that allowed?
Play would only be considered “work” if the activity in question involves one of those aforementioned 39 types of activity.
Baseball would be OK…as long as you are within an “eruv” that allows one to convey objects from one location to another. Ditto bowling.
You can even keep score, as long as you do so without writing.
Other forms of play can definitely be “work.” Video games, for example, which make use of electricity, which = fire. Play-Doh is problematic, since building is prohibited. Wooden blocks are OK, but Legos are questionable, because even though they’re made as playthings that can be assembled and dissembled, they are bound together in a manner that could remain permanently.
Basically, a given type of play has to be considered on a case-by-case basis.
Thank you. My understaning of how those of Jewish faith conducts themselves on the Sabbath was crude at best. I appreciate that you are shedding light on the subject.
I was always baffled about that scene I mentioned in The Big Lebowski, I knew that driving was prohibited but I didn’t understand the bowling thing at all. The only Jewish person I know is non-practicing and I’ve discovered I know more about it than she does.
Yes, and before one condems the Jews for rules which seem odd to us Goyim- (and they *do * seem odd) how about the Xian far right insisting that stem-cell research is such a deadly sin, wheras one can’t even find a solid denouncement of abortion in the Bible?
Thanks cmkeller for being so patient with us. You’re a mensch.
Well, maybe the whole issue there is that they were bowling in a bona fide bowling alley, presumably requiring payment (monetary transactions are forbidden) and involving automatic pin-resetters, ball-returners and electronic scoring.
If one was, within a “Private domain” area (such as within an eruv), to manually set up ten pins and roll a ball toward them, there’s no prohibition to worry about.
DrDeth:
The laws are complex, but I’ll list two basic rules of thumb: a Jew can hint indirectly that something needs to be done, but is not allowed to directly ask the non-Jew to do it (e.g., “Boy, it’s dark in here!” but not “Please turn on that light for me”). And a Jew can directly ask a non-Jew to perform an act that would violate a Rabbinical prohibition, if it’s necessary for the performance of a Mitzvah. (That’s one common use of a “Shabbos Goy,” to carry the keys to the synagogue. Carrying where there’s no eruv is in most places only a Rabbinical prohibition - in fact, that’s what allows an Eruv in the first place.)
There are plenty of more detailed rules, of course.
In Hebrew and Aramaic script, the short vowels were not written, although they can be indicated with diacritic points that are not letters. Actual letters of the alphabet, as Chaim explained, are used to write long vowels. Arabic script copied this feature, using no letters for the short vowels but the letters alif, ya’, waw for the long vowels ā, ī, ū respectively. They can also serve as consonants, which is how they got to be letters in a consonants-only alphabet. The Latin name of these consonantal characters used for long vowels is matres lectionis, a translation of Arabic ummahāt al-qirā’ah, literally ‘the mothers of reading’, because writing some vowels makes reading easier thn f thr wr n vwls t ll.
The Ummahāt al-Qirā’ah were also a band during the cultural flourishing of the ‘Abbasid era, led by an experimental musician named Sheikh Yerbouti to promote literacy. They were soon forgotten after the caliph ordered them to disband because of complaints from audiences who went expecting to see women, because of the band’s name, but they turned out to be just a bunch of bearded guys.
Whoops, sorry, that’s what I get for learning the religion from Leo Rosten. :o Great linguistic humorist, lousy theologian.
