Jews and fishing line (merged thread on eruvs)

[TJG]

I thought I'd heard every bit of religious inanity imaginable ... then this comes along:
http://www.kfwb.com/pages/113124.php?contentType=4&contentId=228964

Is it just me, or does it seem that orthodox Jews expend an inordinate amount of energy in coming up with creative ways to circumvent the law they profess to follow?

[chapka]

This isn't that uncommon, actually. Most of my old neighborhood (http://www.parkslopeshul.org/eruv.html)was surrounded by an eruv, and there are a bunch more in Brooklyn.

By the way, hanging up the line itself isn't enough to make it okay for you to carry things around; you also have to have one person inside the eruv give another person a matzoh once a year. Or something like that.

Personally, I think it's more honest to just admit that you aren't following the talmudic requirements, like conservative and reform jews do. When you set up an eruv so that you're "symbolically" not leaving your house, or when you "symbolically" sell all your chametz when really you're just putting it in the basement for a week, it seems to me like a cop-out. I don't think any Hasid would let you off the hook if you said, "The condom represents the distance God ordained between me and my neighbor's wife," or "I called my gay lover Ruth every time we made love, so it's as if he was a woman."

In other words, if you're going to be an apostate, at least be honest about it.

[Anat]

It's the same as courts interpreting secular laws. The religious laws are believed to be open to interpretation following certain methods of logic. If rabbinical authorities find a way to interpret a law, and the arguments that lead to the interpretation are sound, then the interpretation is considered to have pretty much the same authority as the original law. This also applies to Conservative Judaism, which also considers itself a halakhic movement, but has different standards for interpretation than the Orthodox.

For an Orthodox family an eruv enables especially mothers more freedom on Shabbat, as it enables them to carry infants and push strollers outside the home. It also makes it easier for whole families to attend services.

[The Evil One]

But surely the whole *point* of the Orthodox Shabbat is to make things hard for people. If the idea was to make things easy, they would do what modern secular society does and say "take a day off and do whatever the hell you like". The whole point of a ritual purity system is that it is inconvenient to follow. This whole eruv business is raw hypocrisy.

And it leads to these bizarre situations such as municipal authorities wasting time and energy on the erection of potentially wildlife-harming symbolic markers so that Orthodox Jews can relax a set of arbitrary restrictions which they imposed on themselves in the first place.

It's bonkers.

[Revolutionary]

That is completely idiotic! There is no way in hell they should let them create an environmental hazard just so they can "technically" not break a religious law. :mad:

[Ubercat]

I've said it before. I'll say it again. Religion makes people do stupid things.

-Ubercat

[chapka]

It's the same as courts interpreting secular laws.

No, it isn't. If a secular court, at least in a common law system, feels that a law is too restrictive or impacts the basic rights of the people affected, the court will refuse to enforce it. They won't pretend it means something other than what it does, or require the people who break the law to do a strange ritual every time they break it.

Only a few laws occur to me which are anything like the above; for example, the Utah liquor laws which require you to sign a membership to a "private club" before you order a beer, or the Texas law that makes it legal to sell a "massage wand" but not a vibrator. If you spoke to the people who set up or drink at the private clubs, or the people who buy or sell vibrators, I doubt you'd find many of them who think, as the observant Jews we're discussing presumably do, that the laws themselves are a good thing. And frankly I doubt you'd find many legal scholars who think this sort of wink-wink law with this sort of large loophole is a good thing. And the people who actually think that drinking or vibrators are sinful probably don't approve of the loopholes, as most observant Jews seem to approve of the eruv or the chametz charade. In the secular law, we call this sort of thing a "technicality" or "following the letter but breaking the spirit of the law."

This kind of secular law, where it exists, has the same fundamental root as the eruv: religious hypocricy.

For an Orthodox family an eruv enables especially mothers more freedom on Shabbat, as it enables them to carry infants and push strollers outside the home. It also makes it easier for whole families to attend services.

Bullshit. What enables the mothers to do this is ignoring the Talmudic restriction on pushing a stroller out their door or down the street. What the eruv does is let them pretend that they're not ignoring the restriction.

Don't get me wrong. Ignoring the law is a good first step, and I'd rather they set up the eruv than actually imprisoned their women in the house all Sabbath; I'd rather they pretended they were selling their food than that they burned and wasted it.

But the fact is, they have decided to break these laws. I think it would be more honest to admit it.

[Malachi151]

The Jewish group says it needs the eruv to keep young families in the area, which in the 1940s hosted a thriving Orthodox community. Some families have left because there is no enclosure, said Rabbi Ben Geiger.

``We have a family with a child in a wheelchair and it's not just getting to synagogue for her, it's getting outdoors,'' he said. ``It is a terrible thing for an 8-year-old.''

Oh.... my..... god......

Do they not see the irony here? The thing that is preventing them from doing this is the freaking "law", OF THEIR "GOD"!!!!!!

If I lived there I would #1 cut them down, and #2 I would form a Greek pagan church and demand the right to "erect" giant phalluses on the beach as a part of my religious requirements, and then complain that my children were being deprived because they couldn't go outside unless that had a big giant phallus to rub, since that's a requirement of my "faith".

The sick part of all this is that these people are BLAMING the public for their "having" to stay inside!!!

[Markoff Chaney]

Could one erect an eruv on top of one's hat, thus allowing one to go anywhere?

- The Mgt.

[drewjmore]

What happens to someone who happens to be out pushing their pram when local malcontents cut the line enclosing the eruv? Must they not stop pushing & wait for sunrise?

[Malachi151]

This is exactly the kind of crap that Sam Harris is talking about, what a waste.

[orac]

#2 I would form a Greek pagan church and demand the right to "erect" giant phalluses on the beach as a part of my religious requirements
If they actually get their giant house (well, they are extending their "private" property), it would be much more fun to (a) assess their property taxes on their extended property and (b) find out if there's any muslims with equally weird requirements and make sure they're treated equally. ;)

I love how people are obsessed with "believing" in god and finding loopholes to let them do whatever they want. It's almost as if they respect their deity as much as atheists do. ;)

The only other alternative is for theists to demonstrate a small shred of intellectual honesty, and that would probably be a sign of intervention from at least a demi-god.

[Anat]

In the secular law, we call this sort of thing a "technicality" or "following the letter but breaking the spirit of the law."
I can think of people who would say that the letter of the law is its spirit. Yeshayahu Leibowitz went all the way to claim that if one seeks a purpose to obeying the laws other than obedience itself one is commiting idolatry. He was an extremist in his interpretation, but he was entirely honest.

[Anat]

I love how people are obsessed with "believing" in god and finding loopholes to let them do whatever they want. It's almost as if they respect their deity as much as atheists do.

See The Oven of Akhnai (http://www.jhom.com/topics/voice/bat_kol_bab.htm) for the origin of the idea that the rabbis took the authority to interpret the law (by majority rule) ignoring a direct proclamation from heaven, because God already gave all the laws he had to give out on Sinai, and had no right to interfere in its interpretation. And God laughed with delight.

[J-D]

No, it isn't. If a secular court, at least in a common law system, feels that a law is too restrictive or impacts the basic rights of the people affected, the court will refuse to enforce it.Are you sure about that? Can you back it up?

[chapka]

Are you sure about that? Can you back it up?

Of course I can. It's what is happening when a court finds a law unconstitutional, either on its face or as applied. Often in the United States this is based on the due process clause of the Constitution, or on the protections of the Bill of Rights. When the courts desegregate schools, they don't make the black kids wear whiteface. When they overturn sodomy laws, they don't make one partner wear a girl mask. They say, This law is unconstitutional for the following reasons. And then you don't have to follow that law any more.

[post tenebras lux]

What are the rules of etiquette if I happen to be eating a bacon cheeseburger when I walk 'into' the home of an orthodox jew? Is it still OK for me to take a piss in the park even if that park is now 'inside' the home of a religious jew?

What if a blind person is walking along a sidewalk - or a wheelchair user is rolling along - and then meets an orthodox family coming the other way? Is she expected to get off the sidewalk onto the sand and wait until they've passed so they they don't have to step 'outside' their home?

[Anat]

No special rules of etiquete, they don't expect you to know about the eruv or any details of Shabbat laws. Just go about your business as usual.

[JustBlazed]

Eeeemmmm....arbitrary, religious barriers. Yum!

Hooooowww far can you stretch God's laws anyway? Reminds me of the limbo game I played as a kid. :rolleyes:

[seebs]

I don't think that elaborate attempts to make something compliant are the same thing as disregarding a law. If they were, it wouldn't be a complicated and difficult task.

[chapka]

I don't think that elaborate attempts to make something compliant are the same thing as disregarding a law. If they were, it wouldn't be a complicated and difficult task.

I don't think the difficulty of the substitution changes the fact that you're making a substitution; following the rules concerning the eruv becomes a scapegoat for following the sabbath carrying rules.

We're really talking about a substitution rather than a technicality. Like it or not, setting up a pole with a string around it and having one rabbi hand another one a matzoh does not transform a neighborhood into a house or all the people in it into roommates in anything but a symbolic sense. The fact that they chose a somewhat arduous symbol is irrelevant. You're still ignoring what the law actually says. If I don't pay my taxes, it doesn't matter if I choose to substitute bowing three times to Washington or if I choose to substitute running the Boston Marathon in a three-piece suit or if I write "one dollar" on a piece of paper once for every dollar I'd otherwise owe. Either way, no matter how tough my substitution is to accomplish, I'm trying to get out of the law by substituting something else, and that means I don't think performing what the law actually says is necessary.

[Anat]

But if the appropriate legal authorities legislate the substitution then it may become acceptabe. The rabbis are the appropriate legal authority, and they supposedly have God's consent, as long as they follow the traditional process of interpretation. This is the same process that interpreted 'an eye for an eye' as the monetary value of the loss of an eye, and that defined the rebelious son in terms that made the law (almost?) never applicable.

[orac]

The Rabbis are the "appropriate" legal authority? Sheesh, and here we all thought that that "god" fellow had something to do with it! Dumb atheists, thinking that god's followers actually follow god.

This is almost what you'ld expect if a bunch of cynical old bastards had made up "god" as a purely fictional character to keep the sheeple in line. Oh, wait....

Still, if the "beach" is these people's house, and these people acknowledge that the general public has the right to enter their house, does that mean anyone can go into their actual house, as well? Or is that a special more-housy house? There's so much fun that could be had by letting them have their way.

[Autonemesis]

This IIDB Newswire (http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=185015) led me to look up what an Eruv was. OK, I thought I had seen it all, but this takes the cake. Because modern society makes it inconvenient to obey Sabbath laws, loopholes in the law are exploited by pretending that public areas are private, where some of the Sabbath laws can be relaxed. Sounds pretty sneaky to me, and if I were Yaweh, I don't think I'd fall for it, but whatever.

Here's my question. I found out that Los Angeles has a eruv and I happen to live within it. This is no surprise now that I know eruvin exist, since there are many synagogues and temples in the area, and on La Brea Blvd I often see people dressed in the traditional garments walking about. So it comes with the neighborhood here.

My question stems from this page (http://www.laeruv.com/eruvrepairs.htm) on the L.A. Eruv's official website. If the eruv is breached, are the excepted activities prohibited on the Sabbath within the broken eruv until it is repaired? Is the area within the broken eruv not a symbolically private domain if there's a break? Let's say the eruv is breached on the night before Sabbath - can it be repaired on the Sabbath? If no one knows the eruv was breached until the day after Sabbath, were all observant Jews within the broken eruv breaking the law if they used the eruv to justify an excepted activity?

If the answer is that the eruv is symbolic, why does there need to be a physical artifact marking the border? Some eruvs in the US are considered to have boundaries marked by civic structures such as wharfs and highways, as on Manhattan island. The L.A. Eruv is delineated by several prominent freeways that enclose the Westside, yet they also erected a physical fence. Why aren't the freeways enough to establish the symbolic border? The community within the Eruv would not have to worry about repairs if they just considered the freeways to be the symbolic border. If you are going to create the artifice of a symbolic private domains, why bother erecting a physical marker for the border?

Most religious doctrines have at least some internal logic, but I don't get this one.

[chapka]

There's already a thread going about the proposed Venice Beach eruv and the logic (or otherwise) of them going on here (http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=184226).

[TNorthover]

There's already a thread going about the proposed Venice Beach eruv and the logic (or otherwise) of them going on here (http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=184226).

Now mystically intertwined.