In the Jewish tradition, nobody is tricking God. There's a long history of legalism in the religion - God sets out his commandments in language and you take that language at face value. Exact interpretation of that text is then debated by religious scholars, but the meaning of the words is entirely contained in the text.
For Christians and those raised in the Christian tradition, this is entirely foreign. The rules are not set out nearly as strictly for you, you have to interpret them much more broadly.
Generally, if you read their respective books, the old testament has a set of rules mixed in with a quasi-historical context, while the new testament is almost entirely in the form of parables.
Islam, by the way, goes back toward the Jewish legalistic idea.
I am not sure one could argue that playing semantics is the most honest conduct in understanding.
Only the most extremist of Muslims, the Salafi, take the Jewish legalistic idea, majority of other traditions in Islam lean towards Tafsir that squarely leans on “spirit of the law” than strictly the word.
What is "the Jewish legalistic idea"? It's not a monolith. What makes a salafi a salafi has nothing to do with legalistic ideas.
>majority of other traditions in Islam lean towards Tafsir
This also doesn't make sense to me, as tafsir is exegesis of Quran. Salafis and all muslims care about tafsir.
The core differences between different groups of muslims, loosely in order of priority, is which sources to take from after the demise of Prophet Mohammed, and then how to interpret any sources (incl. Quran) (literally (salafis), logically (shia), etc.).
There are different tafsirs of Quran as well, and can have very stark differences. However loopholes are completely disallowed by all muslims.
I'f argue the opposite. “spirit of the law” does not work with actual law though. Imagine trying to run a legal system off “spirit of the law”. It would never work. Semantics is the only honest way to interpret the law.
> For Christians and those raised in the Christian tradition, this is entirely foreign.
I'd say it is quite familiar to Christianity. Canon Law mirrors the secular legal system, complete with its own lawyers, courts and so on. (Arguably, it's the other way around: secular Western law that mirrors Canon Law.)
Canon Law is only for Catholics and also only pertains to the management of the Church itself rather than to the behavior of individuals. All religions have this idea of textual interpretation to some degree, but it has comparatively more importance in Judaism.
I'm not saying your main point is wrong, but there is a lot of legalistic quibbling over things like Lent. For example, various animals are classified locally as "fish" for Lenten purposes, including the Beaver (in Canada) the Capybara (in Venezuela) and the alligator (in New Orleans)
At this point in the conversation I would like to once again point out that Catholics once considered beaver tails (but not beaver bodies) "fish" for purposes of meatless Fridays.
And in Jews consider birds to be "meat" because people in the 15th century kept getting confused. The Mosaic law is that the prohibition against mixing milk and meat applies to land animals; not water or sky animals (which each have their own set of rules).
I see this sentiment a lot when it comes to Jewish customs, especially when it comes to eruvs, I don't really get it. Why do you consider it "tricking" God, instead of just following the rules?
Because under any normal circumstances we'd call this a trick? Like, imagine someone under house arrest trying to argue they were allowed to go all around Manhattan because of this wire - we'd quite rightly jail them for contempt.
Sure, after determining that the offered definition of “house” using the wire didn’t apply. That’s not a trick, that’s the system at work.
The legal system and morality and all areas of any complexity require judgment and decision making.
It might satisfy a certain type of person to have explicit, highly detailed mechanistic rules for human conduct, with no exceptions. But even where that’s been tried, 50 years passes, and now someone has the job of interpreting how those rules apply to modern life.
> after determining that the offered definition of “house” using the wire didn’t apply. That’s not a trick, that’s the system at work.
> The legal system and morality and all areas of any complexity require judgment and decision making.
I don't think it requires much real judgement to say that a wire does not make a home and that whole area is not a single big home. This is not some finely balanced call that requires the greatest legal minds. Judges can and do strike or ignore definitions that pervert the meaning of a statute too far from the plain reading, and they're right to do so.
In areas of law - or of everyday life - that we take seriously, we would not tolerate such a twisted reading of a rule.
Imagine that a whole nation's statute laws, and associated common laws, were frozen in time for over a thousand years, because (the statutes were declared to be immutable canon, and) any judges with sufficient authority to strike out old common law and to establish new common law were long gone. That's Judaism (specifically the Talmud)! (Speaking from experience as a Jew.)
The "eruv" definition was established back when the biggest conceivable area that it might cover was that of a medieval village or ghetto, of maximum several hundred (small cramped) houses, i.e. let's say about the area of Vatican City, which is 0.49km2 (0.19 sq mi). Whereas the total area of Manhattan island is 59km2 (22.7 sq mi). So, yes, in my opinion, a Talmudic judge would consider the modern-day Manhattan eruv a gross perversion of the spirit of the law, and would update the definition accordingly. But no such judge exists in this era. So, yay, let's play "how ridiculously can we apply anachronistic archaic rules to the modern world" - apparently, ultra-orthodox Jews consider it such a fun game, that they let it rule their entire life!
This has been litigated well over a thousand years ago. To put it in modern legal terms, the legitimacy of an Eruv is a super precedent. It is discussed in depth in the Talmud, which is the clearest source of Jewish law.
Even in modern law, courts can and do come up with some fairly peculiar readings at times. Particularly with old laws or the constitution itself which can, at times, be vague at best when applied in a modern context.
The rules that the Eruv is a loophole for do not even come from God. They come from the specific interpretation that has developed about those relatively vague laws.
There is an old "joke" in Judaism that God has no place in interpreting Jewish law. I put joke in quotes because the Oven of Akhnai is itself part of the Talmud and is generally read as establishing that exact principle.
This type of "trick" is foundational to both Judaism and every common law system.
> This type of "trick" is foundational to... every common law system.
Disagree. Courts bend and stretch the law but only up to a point, and the more twisted interpretations tend to get overruled. Precedent is respected but only up to a point. And when people do apply a trick, everyone acknowledges that it's a trick, that they're subverting the will of the original drafters of the law because they think they know better than them.
If your parents said come home by 6:00 PM and instead of coming home you put a wire around the city to “make it your home” and stay out, you’re tricking your parents.
No. As an extension of the rule about not taking his name in vain, and rules about preserving written instances of the name, observant Jews try not to refer to him explicitly. There's a bit of a dysphemism treadmill involved, but oh well.
There's at least two in Sydney. One near Bondi and one around St Ives. The one around St Ives was a little controversial but the council eventually permitted it.
Yep. The St Ives one involved a fairly protracted debate at the local council, with accusations of anti-semitism (whether warranted or not is a matter of opinion) being levelled at those who argued against it.
Although I don't know if the Bondi and/or the St Ives eruvs involve their own physical wires? I thought it was deemed sufficient for the rabbis to just "declare" various sets of third-party power lines / phone lines as constituting the eruv, or am I mistaken?
Both eruvim have their own dedicated physical wires, yes.
> accusations of anti-semitism (whether warranted or not is a matter of opinion)
I live within the St Ives eruv. At least some of the opposition was unquestionably antisemitic — I recall receiving at least one antisemitic screed in our mailbox during the time of the council debate. (That one went something along the lines of ‘the Jews are trying to kick out all the non-Jews’ etc. etc., for two pages of fairly small text.)
You could make the argument that if God is giving you rules you should just obey them, not try and understand/interpret His exact intentions and do that instead (since presumably you cannot fully comprehend them).
It's not about tricking G-D it's about rationalizing one's own beliefs. Jews have to have their own personal understanding about the relationship. We already know from the story of Jonah that there is no tricking G-d. This more about community understanding.
So we're willing to suspect our disbelief enough to assume that there's an omnipotent sky beard making rules, but not that he doesn't approve of his little rascals trying to trick him?
Let people like what they like. It's not hurting anyone. People are weird. Embrace it.
