this post was submitted on 06 May 2024
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So if I get some to agree that fire is only flame from wood grown from trees native to Israel, then I can barbecue on Saturday and it's Kosher.
( The idea being that if rules are allowed to be interpreted, then they can be interpreted into anything. If electricity is fire (many Jewish sects say yes), then my sect can say oxidized propane isn't fire and also be correct.
Yup, that tracks. As you mentioned, there are disagreements about the exact meaning and consequences of the prohibition already, so if you can find source material to back your argument, you can argue it.
They don't view it as interpretation, but as closer to a legal argument. There's the written law, and that's what matters, the deity won't judge you based on unwritten laws, because their goal was to write down the criteria that you'll be judged by and the rules you need to follow, not to judge you based on your ability to infer the intent of the rules based on what they told you. Similar to how, when you go to court in the legal system, you're judged by the law as written, not by the intent of the congressperson who proposed the law.
The belief that it's the spirit that matters and not the letter of the law is itself a religious belief derived from early Christian rejection of the legalistic aspects of Judaism. It's why so many people in this thread have such a "well of course you're not supposed to debate the semantics of your religion, you're supposed to know what God meant and do that instead". Same for when someone "cheats" the legal system to "escape punishment" by "getting off on a technically", since what they did was supposed to be punishable. Legally, that's called "following the law", or "making a valid legal argument".
Some religions and people just don't hold that belief, and so "what if an argued position clearly subverts the intent of the rule" just isn't a compelling negative consequence, it's just part of what happens with debate.
It's got no bearing on either of our points, but I believe the Jewish interpretation isn't that electricity is fire, generally, but that incandescent lightbulbs violate the prohibition on "igniting a fire", and that many other applications violate prohibitions on things like "lifting", "doing work", or "cooking".
So electricity isn't the issue, but rather what you do with it, and even if you argue that it's only fire if it's Israeli wood, you'd also have to argue that BBQ wasn't cooking.
Unfortunately that was original the interpretation. It has since been amended into "building a circuit" and/or "doing work" as explanations. Of course neither of those hold up because turning on a water tap or turning a door knob aren't prohibited.
So there is no basis for following laws. It's only tradition and tradition can be however you define a word.
BBQ can be declared as not cooking by definition just like turning on a cold water faucet is declared as not work by definition.
I'll admit that I'm not entirely sure what point you're arguing anymore. If you think religious law is malleable through argument, then religious law changing after argument or discussion isn't a problem, it's just how it works.
Wouldn't you know, there's actual debate with citations about faucets and the circumstances In which they're permitted or not. It's not "all work" that's prohibited, but specific categories in certain circumstances. I'm neither a Rabbi, a scholar of talmudic law nor even Jewish so my understanding of the specifics are only about as deep as curiosity has taken me over the years. I don't think the specifics matter for this discussion.
Yes, there's nothing actually tangible about any law, religious or otherwise that compells people to follow it beyond cultural momentum. Words lack inherent meaning and it's only through shared convention that we agree on meaning or order in our society.