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It's Hard Out There For A Jew

Oct 27, 2009
By .
Politics & Current Events, WTF?

It won't surprise any of you to know that I am pretty down on religion. I have never been an adherent (my parents are the prototypical Cultural Jews – we celebrate Christmas) nor a big fan of just about any religion (although some of the Eastern ones have their moments..) I'm pretty much with Marx on this one.

The good news for you New Testament types is that Jews can be just as silly (or even sillier) than Christians. Exacerbated greatly by the fact that Judaism has more de facto leaders than a titular head. So, various Rabbis can make various statements about what is and isn't kosher (literally!)

Take for instance the ruling a few months ago that Crocs were too comfortable to be worn on Yom Kippur (sorry Ken..) or last year's blockbuster that approved nose picking on the Sabbath, despite the danger that a nose hair could be dislodged (cutting of hair is prohibited on the Sabbath).

Now, of course these strictures only apply to the most Orthodox of Jews. You can still see plenty of Crocs in Brookline or Manhattan on Saturdays. However, these things have a major effect on Israel. And the latest ruling, from a revered 99 year old Rabbi, impacts most people.

Jews regard Saturday as the day of rest (for Mormons it's Sunday), and for Orthodox Jews that means you don't use any electricity (among other things.) There have been clever means found to get around this (timers on lights, etc) and among the most imp0rtant was the Sabbath elevator. It's an elevator that stops at every floor so that the devout can sneak around the no using machinery or electricty rules. But no more, as Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv has ruled that the elevators are not kosher.

Apparently, there are buildings with these elevators all over the World, and this ruling is causing consternation. You see, many Jews had used the elevators to live in skyscrapers, leading to booms in tall buildings in Israel, and now they are stuck.

See, we Jews can be just as crazy as any other religious group. Although, I'm still shocked there has never been a Jewish televangelist. You'd think that was right in our wheelhouse.

Last 5 posts by Ezra

8 Comments
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8 Comments

  1. Legally UnBound  •  Oct 27, 2009 @10:51 am

    I've often wondered about the tele-rabbi myself. Jews & Muslims are really missing the moneytrain there.

  2. Charles  •  Oct 27, 2009 @12:00 pm

    How would Benny Hinnowitz televise the Shabbos services, Ezra?

  3. Old Geezer  •  Oct 27, 2009 @3:57 pm

    I managed a resort. A Jewish Day School brought a class of 10-12 year olds to a study camp at the resort. One Friday evening I was in my office and a young boy with his yarmulke firmly in place stuck his head in the door and said there was a problem in the conference room they were using. I accompanied him back to the door of the room and he pointed to the light switch and said he needed me to turn on the lights. I asked him why he couldn't do it. He replied that as it was after sundown God prohibited him from turning on the lights. I asked him if he thought God meant for others to do it, or did He think they should sit in the dark?

    He couldn't come up with an answer, so I simply turned on the (perhaps more than one) light.

  4. Marc J. Randazza  •  Oct 27, 2009 @7:07 pm

    When I was a kid, every time a new house was built in the neighborhood, me and the other kids would steal some wood, drag it out into the forest, and build a fort.

    Inevitably, building the fort meant that we had to have a "club" to run the fort. The club would then pass rules. You know, no sense in having a club if you don't have rules, and those rules would usually be silly, arbitrary, and designed just to fuck with one another.

    You have to jump over the big rock before you can come in. You can't wear green in the fort, or else you're a fag. No girls in the fort, except Ruthie, because she's cool. If you want to be in the club, you have to let everyone else in the club throw a hacky sack at you really hard, but if they hit you in the balls, you get to throw it back at them three times.

    These were rules. We had to have rules. None of the rules survive today, but they worked for a time.

    I can't help but wonder if 5,000 years ago, your ancestors weren't sitting in the desert and coming up with rules the same way. If you want to be in the club, we get to cut this little piece of your dick off. You can't eat ham, but you can eat lamb. It's Saturday, you can't work, but someone else can work for you. If you get milk on that knife, you have to plunge it into the dirt before you can cut meat with it.

    I mean really, which rules are dumber?

    Not to single out Judaism. Most religious rules are stupid. It just seems that Judaism has more of them, they make the least amount of sense, and for a religion with no hell — and thus no penalty for not following them, it just baffles my mind that there are people who walk around in trenchcoats in Miami Beach because they think their imaginary friend likes them in that color.

  5. Jag  •  Oct 28, 2009 @6:14 am

    It's tied into a sense of tradition (Tradition!) and identity as much as religious belief. As a non-religious Jew I don't understand many of the rules either. Some are very logical, wash your hands, don't eat certain foods, etc. But like everything else, some groups take it to extremes.

  6. Jdog  •  Oct 29, 2009 @5:10 am

    I'm reminded of an old cartoon, of a patriarch — pretty clearly Abraham — looking up at the sky. "Now, lemme get this straight — you want us to cut the tip of our dicks off?"

    After that, a little fiddliness about elevators, well, that doesn't seem to register.

  7. jb  •  Oct 29, 2009 @2:26 pm

    Judaism is one of the few religions that existed 3,000 years ago still in continuous observance. Its counterparts from back then had equally-silly rules; all that has changed is that the world is now dominated by later, more abstract religions focused on other things rather than on trivial rituals. For that matter, many modern Jewish traditions (including that to which I belong) have become more abstract and spiritual.

  8. Marc J. Randazza  •  Oct 29, 2009 @2:35 pm

    I am not certain that other "later religions" have any less trivial rituals and more numbskull rules. Judaism is, imho, a dumb set of rules slapped together for dumber reasons — but it isn't any more so than any other religion.

    At least some of the Jew rules have a root in logic. Im sure that the kosher rules come from someone's idea that these were things that made you ill, so lets stay healthy and not eat them. Moishe says "nah, clams are delicious, they won't kill me!" so the Rabbi says "fine, fuck it, God doesn't want you to eat it, now shaddap and have some matzoh!"