On Twitter there are currently a lot of Christians and Muslims getting really angry about ways that Jews work around restrictions on work during Shabbat, and, like, honestly I do not understand why they care? Just a lot of non-Jews telling nice Orthodox Jews that they’re doing their religion wrong for no reason.
I saw the same posts and will try to sum up:
Basically people who believe in God tend to get offended when they discover that another religion who believes in the same God has a bunch of ridiculous ways they think they can trick him.
Like, a lot of Christian denominations don’t follow every rule in the Bible, but they’ll either say “We should follow that rule, and we’re trying ” or “We don’t believe we should have to follow that rule and here’s why”.
The whole concept that mainstream sects of Judaism officially approve the practice of trying to try to TRICK God is really bizarre and offensive.
Like, you clearly don’t believe God is omniscient or at all impressive if you think he can be deceived by some mortals hanging a wire around their neighborhood.
It also shows bad character to not just be upfront and say “okay, we don’t believe we should have to follow this rule and here’s why” and instead to try and be sneaky and deceitful. Religions are supposed to promote good character, especially honesty, so this is another reason why it’s very disturbing to a lot of people.
And then back to my first point about how this shows they don’t believe God to be much of a God at all if he can be so easily tricked, (either that or they themselves and their magic wire is superior to God!) which…it should be obvious why that’s so offensive.
I think it's really interesting that you assume we worship the same god, when your god was a Jewish man and our G-d is, well, G-d.
Setting that aside for a moment, you also make a number of other assumptions about our processes and motives because you neither know nor understand them.
Jewish jurisprudence, halacha, is a living process that takes what would otherwise be dead words on a page and makes Torah into a process rather than just a book. A holy book, but simply a book nevertheless. Humans were given the ability to think for ourselves and to reason solely at the pleasure of the Divine. There is a reason: we were meant to engage, not just obey.
What you describe here is a rather infantile relationship to the Divine, in that it's always daddy's rules forever and always and there's no questioning or conversation or relationship there - just blind obedience.
Unlike you, we have a mature relationship with Hashem that involves ongoing dialogue and discussion, far more like spouses than mere fiat from on high. (Luckily for Christians, there are grown-up versions of Christianity too; not for nothing is the church called the "bride of Christ" and I have met plenty of Christians who question and wrestle and engage in open and active dialogue with their God.) Judaism is a living faith that evolves over time, and Torah, while its words are fixed, reaches across time to speak to us in each generation. Each time period and place are going to have unique struggles, questions, challenges, and demands, and the Torah is able to meet us where we're at in all of them because we were given the ability to interpret its words in light of the current day.
There is no trickery going on here; we are simply having a living conversation with our Creator and we are doing so using the exact process He gave us!
Besides; if it were really supposed to be a game and a trick, why would we write down six thousand+ pages of this commentary on exactly how to follow these rules??
But of course that's not the point you're actually making here.
Whether you know it or not, the argument that you are making is rooted in supercessionism, this chauvinistic idea that Christianity has "replaced" the Jewish people and that your new covenant is more valid than the covenant followed by your own god.
It's this fascinating and profound insecurity that lies beneath so many of these accusations: you can't stand that Jews still exist and still keep the Torah using the halachic process of our ancestors all the way back to Sinai, because it reminds you that your supercessionist religion is built on a house of cards. Your predecessors added to the Torah, abandoned the actual law, and instead chased power, expansionism, and idolatry. Today's decent Christians are only barely starting to peel back the layers of garbage to understand the actual teachings of their god, and meanwhile they have to deal with clowns like you going around harassing Jews over a religion that they diverged entirely from 2000 years ago.
So yes, we engage in the process of Torah because we understand it and it is our sacred relationship with Hashem. You are only offended (on G-d's behalf, no less! Really interested in how you think that you are allowed to speak for G-d) because you don't understand and choose not to. Luckily as a non-Jew, interpreting the Torah is neither your duty nor your privilege.
Wow those comments sure are extremely fucking antisemitic. Like, just to be clear, the sneaky, deceitful, (cunning, conniving) jew who tries to find ways around (Christian) authority is a classic antisemitic trope.
She may be talking about God's authority this time, but that's also how Jews are portrayed wherever we settle. "They're not real Germans/Americans/whatever, they're just deceiving us and pretending to follow our laws to further wily Jewish agenda." Straight up nazi rhetoric.
Actually no, I want to double back to this cause I'm still pretty upset.
Every time you see a Jewish law that seems like a "loophole" to get around another law, just know there are a dozen halachic rulings they do the opposite. Rules that make things waaay more difficult just to remove even the slightest possibility of accidentally breaking the commandments.
Like, We started at "do not boil a kid in it's mother's milk" and extrapolated out until we got to have two completely separate sets of dishes and cookware and utensils and if you can afford it stoves and fridges and sinks to make absolutely positive that no possible meat (including poultry) could come into contact with a single molecule of dairy. Just to make sure you don't accidentally cook a piece of a baby goat in its mother's milk. This is called Syag la Torah (your transliteration milage may vary) which literally translates to building a fence around the law.
So no, halachah isn't all about tricking God to take the easy way out. Halachah is about examining every detailed facet of the law to make sure we understand it and are follow it correctly in every possible scenario and to prevent accidentally breaking it. And this process continues to this day to account for changing society and technology.
It's not a goddamned loophole. It's never a "loophole". It's defining the rule to within an inch of its fucking life, because we enjoy that and that's part of our relationship with G-d. And what's more, HE LOVES THAT ABOUT US.
Like, this is just pure Talmud, including the end quote from G-d, who is exclaiming in delight.
