seasonal humor

[cellio]

The following is (IMO) hilarious if you're at all familiar with Talmudic reasoning. I've been told that it's pretty darn funny even if you aren't.

Hilichot Xmas (the laws of Christmas).

(No, I don't know what the letter of approbation really says. If you do, please tell me.)

Comments

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

This brings up a question I had when I read a newspaper article on shmita a while ago. What would the Jews do in the case where there were no non-Jews in their land, and they were still required to not farm? How would they get food?

This actually leads to another question that I am not sure of having correct implicit assumptions but I will ask anyway, which is: Why is it allowed to request that another person do something which you are forbidden yourself? (ie, drive somewhere on Shabbat, or turn off the lights). Is it different if they volunteer without you asking? (If so, why does not their being informed of your restrictions constitute an implicit request for assistance? (I would read that (being looking for opportunities to help), and so must assume that it is not uncommon)

[cellio]

This brings up a question I had when I read a newspaper article on shmita a while ago. What would the Jews do in the case where there were no non-Jews in their land, and they were still required to not farm? How would they get food?

I think they were expected to store food from previous years (and the presumption is that God will provide good harvests to help out).

There is a controversial rules hack that I gather is applied today: they "sell" the land for a year to a gentile. Today in the middle east this sounds like a very risky proposition, as the bill of sale would have to be valid in order for this to work halachically. But I don't know the details of how this is done.

Why is it allowed to request that another person do something which you are forbidden yourself?

Sigh. It's not. People abuse this all the time, but they are violating halacha when they do it.

You are allowed to hire people on a task basis, and if they're gentiles and do it on Shabbat that's not your problem. (There are exceptions, but they're tangental.) A Jew is permitted to personally violate Shabbat in cases of health dangers (this principle is called pikuach nefesh), and must do so to save a life. I *suspect*, but do not know, that the tradition of the Shabbos Goy arose in a time when *economics* required that you keep your shop open on Shabbat (else you wouldn't make enough to keep food on the table), and from there it generalized. (Gee, if Moshe can have his gentile employees keep the shop open, I guess I can hire a gentile to tend my fire.) Pure speculation on my part, of course.

Is it different if they volunteer without you asking?

Sort of. If they are doing it explicitly to do something for you, this is a problem. If they do it for their own benefit, it's not. So if a gentile says "gee, it's cold in here" and stokes the fire (or turns up the thermostat) for his own benefit, that's fine. If *you* say "gee, it's cold in here" and he turns it up, you're on shaky ground. And you can't say "would you turn that up?". If there is a genuine health issue you can turn it up yourself so you don't need to ask, and if there's not a genuine health issue you are asking a gentile to do forbidden work for you.

As you can imagine, this can lead to some pretty ludicrous situations and conversations. I personally try to be careful here; even if I see my Orthodox friends twisting things to "not quite ask" for something like this, I prefer to just not go down that path. (Yes, there are areas where this Reform Jew is *stricter* than some Orthodox. I never did get back to that rant on rules hacks, did I? Well, this is part of it.)

As you can probably imagine, being married to a non-observant Jew has added even more complications to Shabbat for me.

[sk4p.livejournal.com]

(a) On the "gentiles working on Sabbath" thing: If I'm not mistaken, isn't there something in Torah (or at least in Talmud) which implies that the full list of commandments are only expected of Jews, as their "price of admission" for being the chosen of God, and that gentiles are not expected to keep most of them?

(b) And if I recall correctly, the laws protecting human life supercede other things such as Sabbath observances (doctors, for example, may tend to the sick on Sabbath if it's necessary), so if there really were no gentiles around and you had to do that farming on Sabbath or run the risk of losing the crop, starving, etc. I'm sure it would be OK.

($0.02 from Comparative Religion Non-Denominational Boy.)

[cellio]

a) On the "gentiles working on Sabbath" thing: If I'm not mistaken, isn't there something in Torah (or at least in Talmud) which implies that the full list of commandments are only expected of Jews, as their "price of admission" for being the chosen of God, and that gentiles are not expected to keep most of them?

Oh, sure. The Torah is mostly about what binds Jews, and says very little about gentiles. (And the talmud says nothing about that -- it's just for Jews.) According to Judaism, gentiles are bound only by the seven laws of Noah, and it's mostly pretty basic stuff like "no murder".

The issue is not whether the gentile can do something on Shabbat; of course he can. The issue arises when a Jew (who is forbidden) asks him to do it, because having an agent do something for you is as you doing it yourself. (There are plenty of places in Judaism where you have an agent fulfill your obligation.)

(b) And if I recall correctly, the laws protecting human life supercede other things such as Sabbath observances

Yes. There are only three commandments that you must keep even if by doing so you will die; Shabbat is not one of them. To violate Shabbat, though, the demand has to be immediate. A doctor can perform emergency heart surgery; he can't open his office to give flu shots. That sort of thing. In your farming example, you'd have to make the case that the work has to be done that day (and not the day before or the day after) or people will die, and I suspect you'd have trouble making that case.