That’s the point of this thread. The Torah says “Remain each of you in his place; let no one go out of his place on the seventh day.” But Jews in many places developed a workaround that lets them travel miles from home. How did Jews decide one law from Exodus could be obeyed so loosely and another law from Exodus had to be obeyed so strictly?
Your implication is that less observant Jews are less “morally upstanding” or don’t really like being Jewish. Actually, “a little nuts” is closer to the truth. I was raised Reform Jewish, and we thought of them as rather extreme and fanatical, and considering themselves “holier than God”. All the archaic rules and regulations and loopholes just seemed rather silly and old-fashioned to us.
So look at what Muslims do to operate a financial system but not violate the Koran law by charging ‘interest’. Equally loopholey.
Most religions have such silliness. It’s really hard to live in a real world of changing science & technology while trying to follow the strictures of some ancient holy book.
Or Catholics declaring that capybara are fish.
As far as I understand it (I’m not Jewish, but I’ve been confused enough to assume things, then later, ask about them before) - it’s not about fooling God, or outsmarting laws - it’s about not trying to second-guess the mind of God - that is, not asking why God made this law, and what he might also consider part of it, but rather, trying to observe the laws as best as humanly possible.
Apparently it’s a thing that people coming from a Christian-influenced background (even if not observant Christians themselves) have problems grasping. (again, in my understanding, which could be flawed) Jewish laws aren’t about people going to hell for disobeying; they are about doing the things God said to do, because he said so and (within the belief system) is assumed to have his own reasons for asking, which mortal humans may not understand, or necessarily even question.
The fire happens when a switch closes a circuit. The spark that occurs in the instant before the contacts meet is the creation of fire.
Lenten dietary restrictions are not a Biblical rule. Catholics created them as a discipline to be followed to observe Lent. They are not the result of trying to conform to any Bible rule.
That said, the capybara is both hairy and scaly and spends more of its time in the water than on land. Lacking a sophisticated taxonomic system at the time, why wouldn’t it be thought to be more like fish than cow?
The four legs?
Seriously? Every now and again you might like to exercise just a little more realism and less desperate fanwanking when it comes to Catholicism. Just a suggestion.
Or, as I recently discovered, there’s a tradition in Downriver (Detroit area) classifying muskrat as fish!
Scaly?
By reasoning from what they understood to be first principles.
The verse you quote is from Exodus, in which the Jews are camped between between Elim and Sinai, and Moses says that no one go forth to gather manna on the Sabbath:
So what is the mitzvah? The rabbis reasoned that they were enjoined from leaving the encampment. So in some respects, does the prohibition depend upon the size of the encampment?
Yes. Alone in the wilderness, the rabbis reasoned that a Jew can permissibly walk on foot 2,000 cubits from where he was when the Sabbath started. That’s a relatively small area when imagining the Jewish encampment Moses was speaking to.
But if you’re in a bigger encampment, then it makes sense that you can walk on foot within that encampment, even if it’s bigger, since the idea was not to wander far away from your encampment.
So a city boundary is fine to walk about – as long as you stay within the city boundaries, which are determined by an imaginary rectangle that encloses all buildings that are used for dwellings.
Not that this isn’t the only purpose of an eruv. Jews may walk about on the Sabbath consistent with the rules above; I explain these boundary rules only to address the Exodus quote. But an eruv also allows the carrying of objects between what would otherwise be separate domains, and that would be work, also forbidden on the Sabbath.
Now, you ask why there is a fence around some commandments and not others – why is the prohibition against mixing meat and diary so important that dishes are kept separate, even when today it’s virtually impossible that the flesh of a cow that’s eaten would come into contact with the milk of its mother, when the two come from farming and dairy operations miles apart, and yet a wire can be considered a shared wall?
The general answer is . . . . reasoning from what they understood to be first principles.
When Moses came down from Sinai, he bore the complete Law. Committed to writing was the part of it we know as the Pentatuech, the Books of Moses. But there was also an Oral Law, which G-d had vouchsafed to Moses to understand how the principles outlined in the Written Law were to be applied. The Oral Law was eventually codified as the Mishnah, in the third century CE. Of course, the principles of the Mishnah were then the subject of debate, commentary, analysis as the result of a changing world, and that commentary and analysis was captured in the sixth century as the Gemorah. So the body of application of Jewish Law became known as the Talmud, and is the basis for additional commentary, reasoning and analysis by future rabbis. This current body of work is called the Responsa, and continues to this day.
The early rabbis noticed that the prohibition against cooking the flesh of the kid in the milk of its mother appears not once, or even twice, but three separate times: Exodus 23:19, Exodus 34:26, and Deuteronomy 14:21 all forbid the practice. So the rabbis reasoned that G-d’s repetition elevates this injunction as something especially important to observe.
Strike that – I was inexplicably thinking of aardvarks when I wrote that, conflating the scaly skin with the swimming capys.
Fair point, but it also focuses myopically on a off-hand observation. I withdraw the comment, but my main point remains: Lent is not a Biblical injunction. The Lenten observance can be created, changed, or eliminated by the Church with no contradictions of any heavenly truths.
And that gentile’s name is Wonko the Sane.
Capybaras find that label offensive.
I’m a capyist. They all look alike to me.
Who paid for the wire and its maintenance?
^ From the article the OP linked to:
Plus the tits.
And the breathing of air.