There is a concept of kashering a knife by burying it, or plunging it into the ground 10 times. This is discouraged unless one only has the one knife. I also believe the knife has to be one piece. I don’t have time now to look up a cite.
This is probably one of the greatest examples of someone demonstrating why they are wrong while arguing they are right that I have ever seen. It’s like someone speaking at length in fluent French about how they can’t speak French.
Not only that but the flaw in your argument is facile: you say the person in the first paragraph has done nothing wrong; but they have taken a risk that something wrong might occur that they didn’t have to take. And the next two paragraphs are about how they can’t possibly do something, because it involves the teeniest risk that something may go wrong. It’s utter fanwankery from start to finish.
And the unconvincing rationalisation that this sort of sophistry involves is a demonstration that it is utter tosh to say “they crafted laws to live by it as best they understood the requirements of it”. They evolved a practice which ignored certain risks and permitted certain others, based on nothing more than tradition and pragmatism.
No. It’s nothing like that. And I’m not wrong.
And a gratuitous assertion may be equally gratuitously denied.
If you were to learn that an accountant insists that the “cost” of an asset refers to the amount spent in cash or cash equivalent used to obtain an item, whether that purchase happened last year or forty years ago, and therefore an asset amount does not reflect the amount of money a company would receive if it were to sell the asset at today’s market value, would you perhaps point out the inconsistency of showing the current value of a company’s long-term assets at a ridiculously low value merely because they were purchased forty years ago?
Or would you acknowledge that as along as the practice is well-understood as a generally-accepted one, your views on the inconsistency are uselessly unconvincing to the community of accountants?
Well, yes – if “tradition” means, inter alia, living by it as best they understood the requirements of it.
And it does.
You say “pragmatism,” plays a pivotal role, but it’s incredibly difficult to be an observant Jew. Your words might have more bite directed at Reform Judaism; I suppose pragmatism can be said to weigh more strongly in that tradition than it does in the Orthodox tradition.
But I repeat my earlier theory: your evaluation of “fanwankery,” arises from your basic certainty that there is no such thing as a G-d that gave Moses a set of laws to which the Jewish people consented to be bound.
If you believed that event to be true, your evaluation would be quite different.
I know you think so but the need for expansion on my assertion is only necessary because you are so wrapped up in your infinitely detailed study of trees you can’t see that you are standing in a forest.
My statement was “Your behaviour is traditional not logical”[my emphasis] and your response included:
[my emphasis]
And then in your next post you use an example involving accounting practices and you say:
[emphasis added]
Honestly, have you stood back and looked at your own posts in an attempt to have any frickin’ perspective whatsoever? It doesn’t appear so. You are in furious agreement with me. I said these things were a matter of tradition not logic and your response amounts to “no they aren’t; they are matter of tradition, so you’re wrong!”
Sheesh.
Further, it’s not a matter of “tradition” meaning “inter alia, living by it as best they understood the requirements of it” as you say. As you’ve repeatedly admitted (nay, asserted) above, it’s about tradition meaning tradition.
… and it would be even more difficult if you could only eat food prepared by yourself to avoid the risk of someone cooking something for you in a forbidden manner. Your point fails basic logic. The fact my life is hard doesn’t mean it couldn’t be worse.
I have a basic certainty that all religious tenets are based only on tradition and pragmatism. But you don’t see me commenting in similar terms and extent on all religions; the particular sub-culture about which we are speaking appears to have a quite extraordinary array of silly OCD-like behavioural requirements, and seems to have a particular bent for contorted rationalisations to justify them.
I don’t for one moment expect you to indulge in allowing yourself to have the perspective to see it, but the whole idea of the “eruv” sounds like something my sons would have dreamed up as an attempt to argue their way around a (substantive and rational) parental rule when they were five years old. If you want an example of “one man’s religion being another man’s belly laugh” you couldn’t do better. To hear supposedly smart greybeards giving it credence as if it actually makes some sort of sense (outside of a silly sophomoric verbal game) boggles the mind.
Traditioooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooon! Tradition!
Nope. I agree with you that tradition is involved, to be sure, but I argue that reliance on tradition is logical in these circumstances.
To the contrary, my perspective is fine, and more fluid than yours. I’m not Jewish. I don’t agree that God requires these practices of anyone; I believe that Christ Jesus was born the Son of God and fulfilled the covenants God made with His Chosen People. I am a Roman Catholic.
But I understand Jewish practice, and can clearly see how it follows from basic postulates. You reject those postulates and therefor scorn the practices; you’re unwilling or unable to say, “If I accepted these basic postulates, then these practices make perfect sense.”
Someone should publish an article: “Weird Hacks to Fool your god that Actually Work”.
Perhaps they should first publish, “Deliberate Misunderstandings That People Keep Trying To Claim Are A Real Thing.”
My god, this is clever. Nothing wrong with a work-around as long as you’re not hurting yourself or others. Thanks for sharing. 