Hairsplitting in Jewish Law

Great Debates
1

Let me be perfectly clear, Mr. Nixon: I have no intention of offending anyone with this question. It genuinely puzzles me.

So Orthodox Jews follow a number of complex and rather arcane laws to guide daily life. I can respect that. But the degree to which the letter of these laws is stretched while (apparently) stomping all over the spirit amaze/amuse/s me.

For example, the prohibition on “going out of one’s place” on the Sabbath quite evidently means that the faithful Jew will remain in his home, with his family. However, the interpretation has been extended so that any ‘enclosed’ extension of the home - such as a fenced yard - is still “one’s place.” This has been extended, in some cities, to enormous areas (eruvs?) that, as long as they are enclosed by SOMETHING - fence, wall, phone wires, and even lengths of string over the gaps, can be considered “one’s place.” So Jews of that area can travel all over the neighborhood or even city without breaking the law.

Another: As I understand it, women must completely cover their hair at religious services, including weddings. However, they can wear extremely lifelike wigs. (I recently heard that the very best wigs for cancer and alopecia sufferers come from orthodox suppliers for this purpose.)

And so on. Now, I understand that rabbinical reasoning and what we might call hairsplitting is a high, honored art for the educated Orthodox, an old, old trope.

But REALLY. Do Jews, who respect these ancient laws and worship the god that sent them down, really think these almost childish shortcuts represent compliance with the laws? Or, put another way, that they’re fooling God for a moment? I sincerely can’t make up my mind whether to laugh or applaud.

2

Tradition!

Actually, thinking along those lines is what shepherded me towards agnosticism, particularly the very arbitrary and capricious-seeming laws regarding Passover and other dietary restrictions. In some ways, though, many laws/traditions are much stricter than a straightforward read would suggest (or so to my thirteen-year-old self).

3

Perhaps inevitably, hairsplitting is also a proud cultural trait of many secular Jews. So it might not just be an empty ritual, but a recognition on the part of the people who are the world’s default intellectuals that someone’s gotta look after the little details or everything goes to shit.

4

That’s Judaism for ya…21st Century ethics and morality wrapped in Bronze-age superstition. Reconciling the two is where you get these logical contortions.

5

I think you could have worded your question differently if you didn’t want to offend people.

You misunderstand the Orthodox/Rabbinical Jewish view of Jewish law and the Bible. You assume that your reading of the plain text of the Bible represents the “spirit of the law”. Do you think when the Rabbis read “an eye for an eye” as meaning fair monetary compensation rather than literal lex talionis they were violating the spirit of the law? They would say that their interpretation represents the true spirit and meaning of the law. Rabbinical Judaism, as opposed to some Sadducee or later Karaite interpretations, does not assume that the literal text of the Bible is the plain meaning.

Your point about eruv is partly based on a misunderstanding. The prohibition of “going out of one’s place” on the Sabbath is not circumvented by the eruvim you are talking about. The purpose of that eruv is to allow one to carry objects between certain places which would otherwise be forbidden, essentially circumventing a Rabbinical prohibition. The Biblical prohibition of “not going out from one’s place” is read as not leaving a populated area, and has nothing to do with remaining in one’s home, *eruv *or no eruv.

Your point about wigs, on the other hand, is well taken and many Orthodox Rabbis would agree with you.

In any case, it’s hard to not find your post insulting. Do you feel that all legal arguments which hinge on exact reading of texts are “childish shortcuts”, or only when applied to religious texts? In fairness though, I find that a lot of people raised with a Christian perspective on the Bible, whether they are religious or not, have trouble understanding that Rabbinic Jews never read or interpreted the Bible the same way they do.

6

More of an IMHO or GD response:

If you read the New Testament, Jesus seems to be coming down rather hard on what he calls the “teachings of men” that he felt were perversions of the intent of the Jewish law. I think this idea may have rubbed off on a lot of Christians who roll their eyes at the exceptions and exceptions to exceptions found in Orthodox Judaism today. I think a lot of Christians would look at the Sabbath and say that the purpose of the sabbath is that you need to take a break, get your mind off work for a bit, worship God, and study his Word. Christians would not generally approve of circumventing the plain meaning by doing “work” that somehow doesn’t count as “work” because you are good with a dictionary, or going the other way and recharacterizing mundane things you do doing the day as “work”.

I looked at some of the rules of Orthodox Judaism a while back and it struck me as very obsessive-compulsive and nitpicky, where the goal was to follow the letter of the law while completely and utterly shattering its purpose in order to do what you wanted to do all along.

I was reading something a while back indicating that certain Hasidic rabbis consider cell phones that can send and receive text messages to be problematic. I can’t fathom how text messages and voice communications are different enough that they should fall under different religious rules of conduct.

Even the Amish (who are Christians), who have complex rules of behavior, don’t seem to go to the depth that Orthodox Judaism does, and there is much less arguing over minutae and trying to say that this Chevy truck is actually not a car but a buggy because there’s a trailer with a horse in it attached and therefore I can drive it without violating my church’s rules against operating motor vehicles.

7

A long time ago, when Steve Allen used to shill for a non-dairy milk substitute called Mocha Mix, I was made uncomfortable when he threw in, for the benefit of people with religious dietary restrictions: : “With Mocha Mix, it’s A-OK!” I felt that it somehow trivialized the piety of the observant to encourage the use of what I saw as a technicality.

Later, when I had done some more growing up, I realized that it’s not up to me to decide for anybody else what the"spirit" of the law meant (in cases of purely religious prohibitions, that is. The ones we also have on the secular law books are a different matter).

8

I went to a university that had a strictly kosher dining hall. Salad bar served bacos (bacon bits from soy). Totally kosher.

Finding the loopholes doesn’t spoil the spirit. The law is what matters and there is nothing wrong with legit exceptions or implementation. It’s a legal and ethical code first and foremost.

That said, of course interpretation and spirit do count, but many folks don’t realize what a legalistic religion Judaism is.

9

You misunderstand the way Orthodox Jews interpret these rules. There is no such thing as “the spirit of the rules”. One is either violating the rules or one isn’t. If there is a “loophole” that seems to allow getting around a rule, then that loophole is actually just part of the rules and so taking advantage of it is completely legitimate.

10

One could argue, of course, that the Word of God is really important, and that anything that causes people to pay really close attention to it is therefore a good thing.

11

You need to both laugh and applaud. Also, occasionally shrug, shake the head slowly from side to side, maybe cry a little, then make a joke about it. Eat something now, then sit and talk about it. Smile, nod, argue, concede, insist, then start all over again.

12

My experience has been that the paramount concern in Protestant Christianity over a rule is to determine the intent and principle behind the rule, i.e. the spirit of the rule. If the rule says, “Thou shalt not strike thine own brother with a sword”, then the intent of the rule essentially boils down to not assaulting a family member with a deadly weapon. You can’t nitpick the difference between a “sword” and a “knife” and say that even though you cut him up it was ok because the weapon you used only had a 5 inch blade and thus doesn’t count, nor could you get away with shooting him with a pistol or hitting him with a baseball bat, nor could you say that the rule doesn’t forbid you from hitting your sister, because being allowed to assault girls but not boys is absurd and contradicts the plain meaning of Christian love, and love of God and your neighbor are the ultimate “laws” (Matthew 22).

13

By acting as if a whole neighborhood or city were a private domain, correct? What is the spirit of the law when it comes to not carrying certain objects on the Shabbath? Is this spirit of the law circumvented or not by the use of an eruv?

Let’s put this in a secular legal context; If a municipal code forbade activity X in public space and someone strung a wire around a dozen housing blocks and declared everything within the wire private space (and then proceeded to perform activity X on the streets and sidewalks within the wire), should that be allowed? Do you think a court would follow that argument?

To take another example: Milk and meat.
It starts from the prohibition on cooking a kid in its mother’s milk, correct? I can see how it might expand by analogy to not mixing a kid in its mother’s milk and, when unsure of the provenance of milk and meat, not mixing milk and meat of the same species. Sure, alright, no disagreement from me there, it’s completely reasonable.

What about chicken then? It is simply not possible to mix a chicken with its mother’s milk. How is the spirit of the law obeyed by the prohibition on eating chicken and milk together?

In this quote, you seem to be saying that rabbinical Judaism is based on an exact reading of texts.

Here, you seem to be saying that rabbinical Judaism is not based on the exact reading of texts.
So, how does rabbinical Judaism determine the spirit of the law?

Perhaps some will not like the concept of “spirit of the law”. If they don’t perhaps they could offer what is used to determine the application and/or expansion of biblical rules when the literal meaning is unclear or not obviously applicable to a given situation.

14

The OP is better suited to GREat Debates rather than General Questions.

Moved.

samclem, moderator

15

The Talmud (and I’m oversimplifying here) is the codification of the Torah. The Talmud is the product of rabbinical discussion and debate unil codes of ethics and legal rules of implementation were formed. It was the writing down of oral law.

That is what is being closely read for legalistic interpretation, not the Torah itself.

Again, very much simplified.

16

In a way, it’s kind of nifty. It’s child-like – young, fresh, innocent. A friend of mine told his son not to take one step out the front door. So, the kid lay on his tummy, out the front door…with his feet carefully still inside. Letter of the law obeyed; spirit broken all to hades. My friend congratulated his son for his clever legalistic interpretation, and then explained, in that lecturing way that is almost worse than a spanking, that the spirit of the law, and the context, and the intent, must all be taken into account.

It echoes, a little, Greek Philosophy, where careful definitions of words are of very high importance. It also echoes, a little, Greek Sophism, where puns, connotations, 2nd definitions, figures of speech, and the like are used, in clever, distortive ways, to derive totally spurious results from serious propositions.

Aristotle might have rolled his eyes at Jewish pilpul…but he would have understood it. His discussions of “the necessary” and “the good” have a bit of a Jewish feel to them.

17

As a Christian, I feel that the spirit of the law has been broken by rules lawyer shenanigans. The whole neighborhood is one household? Ok, let me go over to John’s house and I’ll just up and sleep in his basement tonight. I live there anyway!

Look at 1 Corinthians 8. Here, Paul talks about the reason behind a rule (not eating food sacrificed to idols), and explains that the purpose of it is to not make someone else stumble in their faith. If you aren’t going to cause anyone to stumble, the rule does not apply, and the rule does apply if you are eating something that has not technically been sacrificed to a idol but it will nonetheless cause your brother to stumble.

Christianity, especially Protestant Christianity, is a religion about intent and having the right heart for God, not about staying up all night trying to figure out how to scam your fellow man without sinning.

Does the Eruv have a principle behind it?

What’s the chance that a bottle of milk and a cut of meat bought from the store actually match together as from a mother and child? One in a million? One in a billion? Why even consider such a remote chance? You’re much more likely to accidentally kill a child tomorrow driving to work. Shouldn’t you be more worried about that?

18

As a Christian, this is not applicable to you, so what you feel is irrelevant.

19

No, although that is the biblical text which the prohibition is based on. But according to Rabbinic Judaism, there is nothing special about a mixture of a kid goat in its mother’s milk compared to any other meat/milk mixture.

Those are not seen as “fences around the law”, or Rabbinical prohibitions, but rather the actual Biblical prohibition.

The prohibition of mixing poultry and milk is a Rabbinic law enacted due to its superficial similarity to mixing meat and milk, and for fear that people might be confused if one was allowed. It may not necessarily be in the spirit of the original Biblical law as such.

Rabbinical Judaism, as laid down in the Mishnah, Talmud, and other related books, interprets Biblical texts by using logical rules which are believed to have been passed down in an oral tradition which was revealed by God along with the written Biblical texts at Mt Sinai. Many interpretations of the law are also believed to stem from similar oral traditions. Note that laws derived using these rules are not seen as Rabbinic laws, but as the actual Biblical laws (de’oraita).

In addition to these laws, the Rabbis sometimes added rules of their own as “fences” to the law, or because something seemed to be outside of the spirit of the law (as determined using the aforementioned rules), or to commemorate post-biblical events (e.g Hanukah). These Rabbinic laws (de’rabbanan) are observed by Rabbinic Jews, but do not have the same force as Biblical laws.

For example, the prohibition of eating on Yom Kippur is a Biblical law. The Biblical law was interpreted by the Rabbis, using some of the aforementioned methods. According to the Rabbis, all Biblical prohibitions involving food or drink only apply to a certain minimum amount; below that amount is not actually “eating” or “drinking”. However, they added on a prohibition of eating any minute quantity of food at all on Yom Kippur. One practical difference is that one whose life would be endangered by fasting can eat normally on Yom Kippur, because Biblical prohibitions are almost always overridden by a danger to life. However, certain people who are suffering from severe discomfort may eat very small quantities of food at specified intervals, because the Rabbinic prohibition can be overridden more easily.
For a (probably mostly accurate) overview of some of these concepts, these Wikipedia articles seem to be decent:

20

Pardon me, but that sounds very American Christian. It speaks of a certain comfortable, prosperous and established existence in a forgiving climate.

My ancestors, Volga Germans come to Canada, did not really always have the luxury to take that day off, especially around harvest. They would have gone to church if it were at all practical.

They fled Europe for religious freedom, and then a hundred years later, fled again, leaving Russia because of looming compulsory military service. They would begin an activity by saying, “In God’s name we begin.” To put it to a fine point, they were quite pious.

The tale of what they went through on the Russian steppes is a comedy of tears, but I wont relate it, except to say they first lived in holes in the ground. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell… except in the spring when it flooded. And that was it for rain for the year.

But on the Canadian prairies, you hoped to get the use of a thresher as early as possible after stooking(and that meant having it done), and before frost, and it would be crazy to say “not on a Sunday”.

It was the responsibility of the household women to cook and clean for the crews during harvest. And of course, the horses and wagons would have been busy too.

So the rules of the Sabbath were well known, but disregarded pragmatically many many times. I cannot imagine they bothered with loopholes, redefinitions or excuses other than “We gotta eat.”

Even in my youth, I recall my uncles and grandfather being absent from church, and they had tractors, swathers, combine harvesters and grain trucks. This was fifty or sixty years after clearing the land, and not one hundred years ago today.