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The wire that transforms much of Manhattan into one big, symbolic home (2017)

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Re: The wire that transforms much of Manhattan into one big, symbolic home (2017)

#71

Post by AStonesThrow »

ofalkaed wrote: post #39
hn_user82179 wrote: post #6

I'm not religious so I'll admit I don't "get it." It's a neat idea. I'll admit, I especially don't get this part: > The series of practically invisible wires becomes a necessity that “benefits the most vulnerable people of the community.” He sees it not only as a way for communities to come together, but also as a way for the more affluent to give back. The eruv is funded entirely by the Jewish community, with a cons…

During Shabbat the members of the Jewish community who are most vulnerable are the ones who take it too far? Technically you are not supposed to even carry your keys, medications, babies, anything, so to strictly follow the rules means either being a shutin for the day or taking stupid risks which could easily cause undo long term hardships or even death. For the most part it is just updating the laws to modern socie…

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Re: The wire that transforms much of Manhattan into one big, symbolic home (2017)

#73

Post by SlowTao »

vrosas wrote: post #22
egypturnash wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article really neglects to explain what an eruv is and why you would want it. Wikipedia's much more helpful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eruv Basically if you are an observant Jew then you are forbidden from doing work on Saturdays. There are some extremely specific rules about what "work" is. One kind of forbidden work is taking things outside of your house; the eruv symbolically turns most of the city into "h…

My Jewish friend once told me, specifically discussing this wire, that Jews consider finding loopholes in their own rules a national pastime. The same thing goes for the hotels where someone is paid to wave their hand in front of automatic doors so the guests don't force the door to "work" for them or the elevators that run 24/7, stopping at every floor so they don't have to even work by pressing a button.

I am not the brightest spark as it took me a few months of living in a heavily Jewish area to realise that the pedestrian traffics light were configured to run every cycle so they didn't have to press the button. Probably a lot more details I also missed.

Re: The wire that transforms much of Manhattan into one big, symbolic home (2017)

#74

Post by AStonesThrow »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #8
hn_user82179 wrote: post #6

I'm not religious so I'll admit I don't "get it." It's a neat idea. I'll admit, I especially don't get this part: > The series of practically invisible wires becomes a necessity that “benefits the most vulnerable people of the community.” He sees it not only as a way for communities to come together, but also as a way for the more affluent to give back. The eruv is funded entirely by the Jewish community, with a cons…

> benefits the most vulnerable people of the community. I suspect the author may have misunderstood what this is euphemistically referring to. I think the original source means women. A lot of routine elements of childcare fall within this restriction, and in conservative communities that would be the exclusive domain of women. Without the eruv women with young children would be confined to their home during this par…

> confined to their home during this part of the week

You say that like it is a bad thing

There is a related concept in Eastern Orthodoxy called oikonomia, or a relaxation of the laws. Roman Catholics or Episcopalians may know this as "dispensation". When the law becomes very complex and there is a concerted effort to get legalistic and eventually you end up with circumventions that are worthy of publishing news articles to the goyim, eventually you begin to think about dispensations or oikonomia from the leadership in order to relax the rules of Shabbat observance and the Day of Rest.

And undoubtedly that is the crux of whence originated Reform Judaism and Conservative Judaism.

Judaism is more akin to Islam than Christianity in the particular aspect that it is not unified and not organized under one particular visible head, like the Pope or a Patriarch. Not since the Destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70. During the Second Tempe Period there was definitely a unification of Jews and a singular doctrinal authority.

But in today's synagogue system with rabbis interpreting Torah and Talmud, it is quite federated and decentralized, and in New York in particular there are congregations following individual rebbes and having unique beliefs inside the walls of their synagogue, but also councils/conferences of Jew leaders who team up to build this Eruv Wall and make America pay for it.

Re: The wire that transforms much of Manhattan into one big, symbolic home (2017)

#77

Post by YZF »

cperciva wrote: post #69
vrosas wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Jewish friend once told me, specifically discussing this wire, that Jews consider finding loopholes in their own rules a national pastime. The same thing goes for the hotels where someone is paid to wave their hand in front of automatic doors so the guests don't force the door to "work" for them or the elevators that run 24/7, stopping at every floor so they don't have to even work by pressing a button.

My favourite in this genre comes from a physics DPhil student I knew in Oxford: He insisted that it was permissible for him to work in the lab on Shabbat because after all he was really just studying the works of God and so it was no different in character from reading the Torah. I'm not sure entirely how serious this argument was, but he wasn't entirely unobservant; he made a point of not playing in orchestra on Fri…

I'm pretty sure 99.999% of observant Jewish people would consider this work but there is a lot of room for interpretation in Judaism and in the end it's between you, your belief, and God. An interesting piece of trivia there is that in Yom Kippur you can atone for sins to god but you can not atone for sins to other people without getting reconciliation.
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