Ah, those crazy Jews...

[flyinbutrs]

No idea if this was designed by, or just for jews, but this is what happens if you take the idea of the "shabbas elevator" to it's logical extreme. Sometimes, I think the main joy of some jews is finding ways to exploit loopholes in the laws so that you can maintain the letter of the law while completely shitting over the spirit of the law. Maybe that's why there are so many jewish lawyers.

Kosher Ovens!

Comments

[desh]

There's a contingent of liberal Jews out there that care more about the spirit than the letter of the law. (Another example: no potato-based cookies on Passover, but chicken with a side of rice and corn is fine.) That feels much more relgious to me...

[flyinbutrs.livejournal.com]

That does seem somehow more goodly... baked goods should be right out on pesach, but rice? Corn? come on...

In general, I think the orthadox people have it all wrong, and that our religion was more or less hijacked by rabbis who interpret interpretations of interpretations, setting up idiotic loopholes, and even more idiotic fences around the rules. Case in point, Eruv's (or however you would spell that in english). Complete idiocy. And chicken being meat! What the fuck is that? Personally, I think the not mixing milk and meat commandment is entirely misinterpreted. But no one else seems to agree with me.

Incidentally, my father just told me that the new appliances in his kitchen will be star-k compliant. He didn't know what it meant though...

[below-the-belt.livejournal.com]

no, i totally agree about the milk and meat thing. i don't understand how chicken is meat but fish isn't. and eggs are irrelevant. of course, it's easy to just tell my grandparents i eat parve only but beyond that the milk and meat thing is totally wonk. it's about respect for the animals and animal products you're eating, not about two sets of dishes and gross gefilte fish.

also: all my aunts [and uncles but they have little or nothing to do with ovens] have shabbas modes on their ovens. technology is nuts. we should go back to the trees.

and, about aaruvs [how the heck are you sposed to spell that?!]: the idea of community is nice. the idea of tying a string around a neighborhood is creepy at best.

[flyinbutrs.livejournal.com]

Oh, I understand the reasoning, it's all safe and sound. I just don't agree with it. It's dumb. It's overprotective, and it's overanalysis. The place where judaism went terribly wrong was when the Mishna was written down. Up until that point, mishna was entirely oral, and therefore open to adaptation, evolution, and personal beliefs. By writing them in stone, we were forced to instead rely on the interpretations of that snapshot in time, and then with the codification of the talmud, we were even further restricted. It's retarded.

Also, I love gefilte fish. Tasty.

Also also, shabbas mode is different from star-K ovens. Shabbas mode is usually basically a timer on/off where you set it before shabbas and it does it's thing. I can live with that... it's understandable, since you basically leave the oven alone all shabbas, but still get to make use of it's heat. It's more efficient than just leaving the oven on all shabbas, which is what we used to do in my apartment. Star-K gives you complete transparency, so you can use the oven exactly as you would any other day, yet somehow someone has concocted technology so that it is somehow within the letter of the law. It's basically using a random number generator and a computer as your own personal shabbas goy. It's so supremely dumb, that I think anyone who buys it with that in mind should be cast out of judaism and burned at the stake for being so insanely tunnel sighted that they can look at the one twig of a tree while missing the entire forest. Wow... more ranty than normal.

Also also also, I agree about the community thing with eyruv's (which, from now on, I will never spell the same way twice), and the idea of being able to carry stuff in your community is nice. Why couldn't jews have just left it at that? That's one of the problems with the talmud... they want to quantify everything. You can eat on Yom Kippur as long as it's less than an olive's volume. You can have an ayroov around any area that less than 100,000 people travel through in a day. STOP IT!! Vague=good. stop being specific. The best rules in the bible are vague, and metaphorical! Chase away a mother bird before you take her eggs! Don't put a stumbling block in front of a blind man! Are they meant to be literal!?? Obviously you shouldn't trip blind folk, but I don't think these were only meant to apply only to bricks, blind folk, and birds. Same deal with "Don't cook a kid in it's mother's milk." Am I the only person (aside from shix, who I think agrees already), who thinks that wasn't meant to be taken literally?!?! For fuck's sake, couldn't that be much more understandable and moving and reasonable as a lesson on needless cruelty?

Again... super ranty. Sorry. Judaism does that too me.

[below-the-belt.livejournal.com]

don't apologize, i like hearing [reading] you rant. it's satisfying and saves me a lot of typing.

okay that star-k thing is a load of horseshit. i always knew in the back of my mind that the shabbas goy would be replaced by a robot but i didn't realize it would be so soon.

you know what's nice? the swedenborgians. they're a christian sect that is sometimes referred to as a cult, and their whole deal is taking the spirit of The Word, not the letter. bryn athyn and pitcairn are entirely populated by this population.