So, Commandment #4 killed seven children?

[trof]

Disgusting.

Commandment Four: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it."

According to the orthodox rabbis, turning a switch on or off is 'work'.
Give me a fucking break.

"Flames engulfed the family's two-story, brick-and-wood home in Brooklyn's Midwood neighborhood early Saturday, likely after a hot plate left on a kitchen counter set off the fire that trapped the children and badly injured their mother and another sibling, investigators said.

The tragedy had some neighborhood Jews reconsidering the practice of keeping hot plates on for the Sabbath, a common modern method of obeying tradition prohibiting use of fire on the holy day."
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_FATAL_BROOKLYN_FIRE?SITE=SCAND&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

No shit.

[democrank]

1. CBS News had a report on this tonight.

I was sickened by it. May those precious children rest in peace and may their mother and sister recover from their critical injuries. Just awful.

[Spider Jerusalem]

2. That's some awesome rules-lawyering, there.

Pressing a switch is 'work'; using electricity in a way that's 100% exactly identical with what fire would have been used for 3000 years ago? Not actually the same as using fire.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

4. Think that's bad? Ever hear of an "eruv wire"?

Religious Wire Splits Edgebrook
Jewish Area Line Faces Opposition

July 28, 1996|By Evan Osnos, Tribune Staff Writer.


http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1996-07-28/news/9607280021_1_eruv-orthodox-jews-jewish-people


Strung 35 feet above the street, a length of black electrical wire between the lampposts on a few blocks of Devon Avenue would be virtually indistinguishable from the other wires that already droop high above Chicago's sidewalks.

Nevertheless, the proposal to hang the wire, known to Orthodox Jews as an eruv, has made a strip of land in the Far Northwest Side community of Edgebrook the site of a controversy that pits the primarily Christian neighborhood against its Jewish suburban neighbors.




The eruvim--ancient, largely symbolic enclosures important in the religious lives of Orthodox Jews--have not run into such trouble in other parts of the city. One has been established, without significant objections, in West Rogers Park and another one is planned for Lakeview.

The eruv that would run through Edgebrook also would encircle parts of the suburbs of Skokie and Lincolnwood, where officials have already approved the hanging of the wire.

According to Jewish law, an eruv enclosure is an area in which observant Jews may carry on activity outside their homes that would otherwise be prohibited on the Sabbath. As in this case, the boundary is often marked by a wire.

[MindPilot]

8. We had a simlilar controversy in my part of the world.

http://www.utsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060919/news_1m19eruv.html

[hifiguy]

3. How would you stop the cows from working weekends?

[MindPilot]

5. Your range & refrigerator have a "sabbath mode".

On a range or oven it disables the safety feature that turns the appliance off after 15 hours, and puts the oven in a continuous "on" state. The display is disabled, as is the oven light. On a refrigerator, sabbath mode engages a timer which delays the start of the compressor (Because opening the door would start the compressor almost right away and that would cause work to be done. However somehow running a timing circuit to delay that process circumvents the "causing" part of the rule.) and any displays and lights are disabled as well.

This feature is in virtually every refrigerator and oven from all the major manufacturers. It is a de facto industry standard. You get to pay for programming in your appliances which exists solely to allow some religious people to skirt their self-imposed restrictions.

Sabbath mode is also in elevators. When activated, the elevator stops at every floor. All of us get to be inconvenienced so the very religious among us don't push a button and piss off God.

[sharp_stick]

6. I hate fundies

of all creeds and stripes. A stupider breed of human hasn't yet evolved.

[SheilaT]

7. I have long thought that these people

(Orthodox Jews) are total idiots in this regard. It is genuinely sad that those children died. They absolutely didn't deserve it. But I do start wondering about whether or not any Orthodox Jews are fire fighters, since they would have to work Sabbaths. Or, would they be perfectly fine if no firefighters, or police, or doctors worked on the Sabbath. You get sick, you get in an accident, you get mugged, no doctor, no police, no firefighting until the next day.

I would last twenty minutes at best in a place that had that sabbath bullshit with the elevators. I'd either do the sort of violence that would get me locked up, or I'd find someone to hack the elevators so that they could work normally. The lack of consideration for others in monstrous. And then, I'd refer back to my first paragraph, and tell them they have absolutely no right to expect medical help, and so on, on the sabbath.

[ileus]

9. Uh no....but you knew that already.

[2naSalit]

10. All these elaborate methods to

basically cheat your dogma. Wow. But as it appears, in the US iokiiyj.

[XemaSab]

11. I usually sympathize with the Jews over the Christians

but this is the kind of Pharisee bullshit that Jesus was 100% right about.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

12. Seems the right time to post this