To be fair, that’s pretty close to describing the Jewish faith. One fundamental tenet is that God put loopholes there on purpose, and it’s the rabbis’ duty to debate legalistically to extrapolate what he meant based on what he said. That’s why they’re called laws. (I was raised jewish, for the record)
One common one that most people have heard of by now since they went viral on youtube a couple years back, is eruvim. Since there’s a bunch of rules around how much effort you’re allowed to exert on the sabbath (e.g. you’re not allowed to move anything from inside your house to outside, or to carry anything heavy more than about half a meter while outside), people hang a wire, called an eruv (plural eruvim), encircling an area ranging from a small neighbourhood to several city blocks to the entire island of Manhattan, proclaiming it to be one big “home”, allowing practicing Jews to do anything they’re only allowed to do at home, anywhere inside its area.
Another fun one that has a lot of ramifications is that we’re not supposed to “start a fire” on sabbath, and rabbi have traditionally declared that turning something electrical on or off is “starting a fire”. Because of this, jewish hospitals have elevators that run constantly between floors so people can just walk on without actually pushing a button and causing a circuit to close. Or lightbulbs; for the longest time, the “solution” was just to leave your lights on all saturday in case you needed them, or maybe spring for electronic timers, or just get your goyim buddy to come over and turn em on for you, but with the modern prevalence of LED bulbs, there’s now jewish smart lights called “shabulbs” that have internal shutters which cover the LEDs without actually extingishing them, so you can turn it back “on” again without breaking the rules. Some places even sell ovens with a shabbat mode so they stay slightly warm all day and never turn all the way off, don’t show the display screen, and don’t turn on their internal lightbulb when you open them after sundown on friday! All this because there’s a rule against starting fires.
Maybe I got a bit off topic, but my point is, In some ways you might say that finding loopholes in Abrahamic law is practicing religion lol
I can just imagine having parents care about any of this and being SO annoyed by it. Worst I got as a kid is going to church on christmas before opening the presents. (We do presents on the evening of the 24th)
It was worse when I was a kid, in winter we had to heat the house to blistering on friday afternoons and just hope it stayed warm enough til sabbath ended (if it wasn’t, we had to get a non-Jewish friend to come turn the furnace on for a bit, and there was all sorts of rules about whether that was allowed too). And if you turned a light off at night by reflex, it stayed off. Nowadays there’s all sorts of “sabbath mode” gadgets lol
That’s super interesting. I was not raised Jewish at all, but I’ve heard an expression “making a fence around the Tora.” At least as it was explained to me, the idea is that we don’t really know what the exact line is for what we’re supposed to do, so we’re just going not even get close to the line so we know we’re definitely okay.
To me, that seems like the complete opposite of what you describe. Do you know if that’s a different interpretation/sect/denomination or if I’m misunderstanding and those loopholes are the fence around the Tora?
That is essentially correct. The torah itself is sacrosanct, and Rabbinic derivations are not seen as loopholes, so much as expert notes to aid in understanding the intent of the torah and accidentally violating the letter of the law. The really short version is, god is omniscient, and therefore knew when he spoke how his words would be interpreted for all time, and so if he didn’t want people to interpret them a certain way, he would’ve said something different. In other words, following the letter of the law is integral, but rules lawyering is not just allowed, it’s expected. There’s actually a famous jewish parable about a time rabbis exiled god himself from a debate because if he wanted to influence the proceedings, he should’ve done so in the torah.
“The torah says we can’t start a fire on the sabbath. But what counts as ‘fire’ or ‘starting’, exactly?” “The torah says we can’t carry a heavy object more than 4 cubits while outside our private domain on the sabbath. What counts as heavy? What is a private domain?”
I’ve heard stuff like this several times from different sources over the years, but I’m still not convinced it’s not some elaborate collective prank. It reads like something written by Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams.
The really short version is that the jewish belief is that an omniscient god wrote the torah with the complete foreknowledge that people would be debating over its intent in edge cases for the rest of time, and so he wrote exactly what was necessary for rabbis to collectively come to the correct conclusions. If an interpretation would’ve been wrong, then god would’ve written that part differently.
I get that, but at the same time I don’t. I mean, it doesn’t make sense to me. Expecting endless debate and also expecting correct conclusions to be reached seems contradictory, since once conclusions are reached, debate would cease. This is one of those things that make me feel very uncertain, like when you finish an exam in half the allotted time, watch everyone else keep furiously working, and start questioning whether everyone else is dumb or whether you are and you missed something obvious. I get that feeling a lot when reading/thinking about religion.
So if I put a movement sensor that triggers a light in front of a jewish household, they couldn’t leave on sabbath because their movement would trigger a fire?
Unfortunately not, just normal elevators programmed to go up and down to each floor automatically at regular intervals rather than requiring any user input.
In the Netflix show Unorthodox there’s a scene where a girl wants to go out but bunch of neighbours standing at the exit tell her that eruv is broken so she has to go back to her apartment and leave her bags. There’s no explanation given but I’ve read about the eruv thing in the past so I knew what’s going on. I felt smart.
didnt some religion have a concept where since they believe god infallible, any loophole in the rules must therefore be intended, possibly as a reward for the cleverness of finding it? I forget which one that was
Somehow god is all-knowing, but forgot to consider the loopholes.
To be fair, that’s pretty close to describing the Jewish faith. One fundamental tenet is that God put loopholes there on purpose, and it’s the rabbis’ duty to debate legalistically to extrapolate what he meant based on what he said. That’s why they’re called laws. (I was raised jewish, for the record)
One common one that most people have heard of by now since they went viral on youtube a couple years back, is eruvim. Since there’s a bunch of rules around how much effort you’re allowed to exert on the sabbath (e.g. you’re not allowed to move anything from inside your house to outside, or to carry anything heavy more than about half a meter while outside), people hang a wire, called an eruv (plural eruvim), encircling an area ranging from a small neighbourhood to several city blocks to the entire island of Manhattan, proclaiming it to be one big “home”, allowing practicing Jews to do anything they’re only allowed to do at home, anywhere inside its area.
Another fun one that has a lot of ramifications is that we’re not supposed to “start a fire” on sabbath, and rabbi have traditionally declared that turning something electrical on or off is “starting a fire”. Because of this, jewish hospitals have elevators that run constantly between floors so people can just walk on without actually pushing a button and causing a circuit to close. Or lightbulbs; for the longest time, the “solution” was just to leave your lights on all saturday in case you needed them, or maybe spring for electronic timers, or just get your goyim buddy to come over and turn em on for you, but with the modern prevalence of LED bulbs, there’s now jewish smart lights called “shabulbs” that have internal shutters which cover the LEDs without actually extingishing them, so you can turn it back “on” again without breaking the rules. Some places even sell ovens with a shabbat mode so they stay slightly warm all day and never turn all the way off, don’t show the display screen, and don’t turn on their internal lightbulb when you open them after sundown on friday! All this because there’s a rule against starting fires.
Maybe I got a bit off topic, but my point is, In some ways you might say that finding loopholes in Abrahamic law is practicing religion lol
Shit… I though people over here were nuts… thank you for proving me wrong.
This was such a fun & interesting read. Thank you!
I knew about the elevators (and forgot about Manhattan) but this one’s new for me:
Men approving this 2-year innovation’s hoodwinking of God:
I can just imagine having parents care about any of this and being SO annoyed by it. Worst I got as a kid is going to church on christmas before opening the presents. (We do presents on the evening of the 24th)
It was worse when I was a kid, in winter we had to heat the house to blistering on friday afternoons and just hope it stayed warm enough til sabbath ended (if it wasn’t, we had to get a non-Jewish friend to come turn the furnace on for a bit, and there was all sorts of rules about whether that was allowed too). And if you turned a light off at night by reflex, it stayed off. Nowadays there’s all sorts of “sabbath mode” gadgets lol
That’s super interesting. I was not raised Jewish at all, but I’ve heard an expression “making a fence around the Tora.” At least as it was explained to me, the idea is that we don’t really know what the exact line is for what we’re supposed to do, so we’re just going not even get close to the line so we know we’re definitely okay.
To me, that seems like the complete opposite of what you describe. Do you know if that’s a different interpretation/sect/denomination or if I’m misunderstanding and those loopholes are the fence around the Tora?
That is essentially correct. The torah itself is sacrosanct, and Rabbinic derivations are not seen as loopholes, so much as expert notes to aid in understanding the intent of the torah and accidentally violating the letter of the law. The really short version is, god is omniscient, and therefore knew when he spoke how his words would be interpreted for all time, and so if he didn’t want people to interpret them a certain way, he would’ve said something different. In other words, following the letter of the law is integral, but rules lawyering is not just allowed, it’s expected. There’s actually a famous jewish parable about a time rabbis exiled god himself from a debate because if he wanted to influence the proceedings, he should’ve done so in the torah.
“The torah says we can’t start a fire on the sabbath. But what counts as ‘fire’ or ‘starting’, exactly?” “The torah says we can’t carry a heavy object more than 4 cubits while outside our private domain on the sabbath. What counts as heavy? What is a private domain?”
I’ve heard stuff like this several times from different sources over the years, but I’m still not convinced it’s not some elaborate collective prank. It reads like something written by Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams.
The really short version is that the jewish belief is that an omniscient god wrote the torah with the complete foreknowledge that people would be debating over its intent in edge cases for the rest of time, and so he wrote exactly what was necessary for rabbis to collectively come to the correct conclusions. If an interpretation would’ve been wrong, then god would’ve written that part differently.
Essentially it’s D&D rules lawyering
I get that, but at the same time I don’t. I mean, it doesn’t make sense to me. Expecting endless debate and also expecting correct conclusions to be reached seems contradictory, since once conclusions are reached, debate would cease. This is one of those things that make me feel very uncertain, like when you finish an exam in half the allotted time, watch everyone else keep furiously working, and start questioning whether everyone else is dumb or whether you are and you missed something obvious. I get that feeling a lot when reading/thinking about religion.
yes yes, omniscient and omnipotent no doubt, this fucking string will fool god…
I honestly wonder if this is as hilarious to them as it is to outsiders
So if I put a movement sensor that triggers a light in front of a jewish household, they couldn’t leave on sabbath because their movement would trigger a fire?
Jewish hospitals have paternoster lifts? That sounds ironic.
Unfortunately not, just normal elevators programmed to go up and down to each floor automatically at regular intervals rather than requiring any user input.
In the Netflix show Unorthodox there’s a scene where a girl wants to go out but bunch of neighbours standing at the exit tell her that eruv is broken so she has to go back to her apartment and leave her bags. There’s no explanation given but I’ve read about the eruv thing in the past so I knew what’s going on. I felt smart.
didnt some religion have a concept where since they believe god infallible, any loophole in the rules must therefore be intended, possibly as a reward for the cleverness of finding it? I forget which one that was
Pretty common among Jewish scholars.
I like the one where 4 rabbis are arguing 3-1 against each other and god tells them that the 1 guy is right and they respond with “Well that’s 2-3.”
That whole religion, especially the Kabbalah part, is super interesting to me, but it is just so dense that it’s hard to get into.
We call it the poophole loophole.