A reader with the pseudonym “Freethinking Jew” sent me the link below, adding this:
“When we think of the deaths caused by religion, we probably usually think of terrorism. But in this case, people who may have otherwise been fine people and good parents, for all we know, may have caused the death of 7 of their children by strictly obeying their religion, even though they weren’t trying to hurt anyone.”
And of course the link he sent was to the New York Times article on the death of 7 children in a single Jewish family last Friday. Because of Sabbath regulations, Orthodox Jews are not allowed to turn their oven on or off from Friday sundown to Saturday evening, for that constitutes work, and you can’t work on the Sabbath. The mother was apparently keeping food warm on a hotplate (turned on before Friday sundown), and the hotplate malfunctioned, causing a fire that killed everyone but the father, who was away, as well as the mother and one daughter, who jumped out their second-floor window. Seven other kids died (see below; Orthodox families are large!), apparently of smoke inhalation. The mother and surviving child are in critical condition. From the Times report:
Just after midnight, flames began to fly off the large hot plate on a first-floor kitchen counter, near the back of the home in the Midwood section of Brooklyn, a neighborhood with many large Orthodox families. On a day of rest, it would have been one of the few electrical appliances in the neighborhood that were flipped on.
In upstairs bedrooms connected to the kitchen by an open stairwell, the Sassoon family slept: their mother, Gayle Sassoon, 45; four girls: Eliane, 16; Siporah, 15; Rivkah, 11; and Sara, 6; and four boys: David, 12; Yeshua, 10; Moshe, 8; and Yaakob, 5. Their father was at a religious conference, and given the Sabbath prohibition on electronic communication, he did not learn what had happened until several hours after the fire, when the Police Department reached him at a synagogue.
. . . Gayle Sassoon was separated from her children by the flames, Mr. Nigro said. After leaping from the second floor, she stumbled through the smoke to the steps of her cousin Gary Jemal’s house across the street. There, a neighbor and friend of Ms. Sassoon, Victor Sedaka, found her “black, charred,” he said. “You couldn’t even tell who she was.”
With a voice so hoarse it was barely audible, Mr. Sedaka heard her try to scream: “Save my children, save my children.”
I doubt that she or her daughter will survive. And think of the father who has lost his entire family because of a hot plate, and a crazy religious stricture. What terrible grief! (Of course, he probably won’t think twice about the ludicrous nature of the rule that killed his family.)
As the “Freethinking Jew” noted, these regulations may seem ridiculous, or even humorous, to non-Jews, but they can also be dangerous. These children almost certainly wouldn’t have died if their parents were nonreligious, or even non-Jewish. How many lives is it worth to keep such a rule in place?
While my plea to get rid of these ridiculous restrictions will of course go unheeded, do take a look at some of the crazy rules. Have a gander, for instance, at the Wikipedia article about to what extent Orthodox Jews can actually ride in a motor vehicle on the Sabbath. Further, Orthodox adherents can’t tear toilet paper on the Sabbath—it must be pre-torn. No flippping of light switches, either: for that you can have automatic lights or hire a “Shabbos goy“—a non-Jew who will turn the lights on at your request. (That’s always seemed like cheating to me.)
It’s not as if fulfilling these rules of behaviors—performing mitzvahs—will help you go to heaven, either. Jews don’t believe in an afterlife; it’s their one nod to reality. The many Sabbath restrictions, as well as others (ritual purification in a special bath for women after menstruation, for instance) are construed as divine rules of conduct that, for some Jews, will hasten the return of the true Messiah.
Curiously, just before this tragedy happened, reader Robin sent me a copy of the instructions she’d received with her new General Electric range. It turned out that her oven has a “Sabbath mode“, which you can program beforehand to turn it on and off on Sabbath. Furthermore— and I didn’t know this—the beeper and oven light are disabled in Sabbath mode, for beeping and lights going on apparently constitute “work.” The same goes for Orthodox refrigerators: you can’t have the light go on when you open them on a Sabbath. How crazy is that?
Here’s a copy of the relevant part of the instructions. In this oven there’s no lights or beeping, though on some models you have to unscrew the bulb before Friday sundown:
Subscribe.
At the risk of trying to make sense out of nonsense…why not just declare appliances to be Shabbos goy? Then the machines can turn on the lights just as your neighbor can.
I also found the quoted part about “at a random time between 30 seconds and one minute…” to be strange and completely illogical. The machine is still producing a signal as a deterministic result of you pushing the buttons. It is probably consuming slightly more energy than it otherwise would, in order to run whatever randomizing switch is in it. This is not even an internally consistent rules set.
I am not religious, and my English level is far from enough to explain this subject well, but the source of the the actions which constitute “work” (I am not sure it’s a good translation, but cannot think of a better one) is the works described in the Torah in building the Tabernacle. There are some which are forbidden for reasons of… ehmmm… respect to the Sabbath and maintaining a “Sabbatical atmosphere”
This whole issue has nothing to with human effort or energy.
I had no idea they had oven lights and beepers back then.
LOL
In case this isn’t clear, I am secular. Personally, I think that while the Sabbath is an awesome idea for many reasons which has little to none to do with religion, the religious obsession with its regulations pretty much ruins it.
To the point, for those who believe that the Torah was given by God, there is no problem to argue that he predicted the “discovery” (what’s the right word here?) of electricity. Some actually say that.
But the common reasoning against turning electric devices on is that closing the electric circuit is an act of building, which is known.
Jewish law is a legal system, and when it encounters something new, it tries to apply on it existing concepts. In this, Judaism isn’t unique.
I am not justifying this (frankly, I don’t care), but merely explain the religious reasoning.
You may call it reasoning… 😀
This does not help me understand it one bit. Pushing buttons and having lights come on telling you what the machine is doing is not allowed. Pushing buttons and having lights come on 30-60 seconds later on a partially random delay telling you what the machine is doing IS allowed. Explain to me the theological difference.
That is clearly an attempt to engineer plausible deniability in case someone more devout walks into the kitchen while you’re breaking the rules.
It reminds me of this other story.
Latest news:
Gabriel Sassoon, the father of the seven children killed in a horrific Brooklyn house fire last month – a fire caused by a Shabbat hotplate left on and unattended as the family slept in a house with no smoke alarms on either the main floor or the second floor where the family slept – now blames the deaths of his children on Internet and cellphone use by Jews:
http://tinyurl.com/keapznw
“Our generation is tested with many types of trials, but the greatest of which, as declared by our great leaders to be the greatest trial that ever existed since the beginning of time, the trial of technology and the internet. With awesome hidden and veiled heavenly hand, the internet is burning and destroying the souls of many Jews while keeping their bodies intact. When our heavenly father returns us to our home and redeems us, how great will be the pain of the heavenly presence be, over the souls lost for all eternity, due to the internet, heaven forbid.…”
Amazing how they could figure all this out to apply to something like electricity that would not be discovered for thousands of years. Wonder if they have the same apply to the clothes washer.
But it’s a kind of fire, you see?
/@
fire:electricity::birds:bats
On the Sabbath, you can’t drive your Pontiac Electrobat…
/@
“fire:electricity::birds:bats”
More like birds:airplanes.
I can understand the ‘electricity = fire’ idea in relation to old-style switches which cause a tiny spark to jump, and even old incandescent lights.
But modern-day solid-state semiconductor switches and LED’s are 100% spark-free. One winders why Judaism hasn’t cottoned on to this convenient fact? (I suspect it’s some sort of perverse desire to make things as difficult as possible for themselves).
Growing up in South Florida, I always had many Jewish friends. Learning about the Sabbath elevator that stops on every floor and other such sabbath “cheats” was one of those moments of clarity for me. I remember thinking how absurd it all was and that maybe the absurdity didn’t stop with silly rules about refrigerator lights.
I know, like God is going to be fooled by these loop holes.
The first thing I thought when I read this, however, was, “what no stove with sabbath mode?” My parents have something with sabbath mode and I can’t remember what it is; I think it is their gas stove, which sounds dangerous.
For all the pickiness of the rules, they aren’t even close to eliminating all work. Wouldn’t you have to remain perfectly motionless? Work is, after all, force times distance. In fact, seems like even breathing shouldn’t be allowed.
LOL.
Thank you, DD.
What constitutes work is not necessarily what is commonly thought of as work. For example, riding a bicycle is ok, but driving a car is not, because fire is involved.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Activities_prohibited_on_Shabbat
This is, presumably, so long as your bicycle doesn’t have lights?
And isn’t on fire.
Those large plastic bags used when flying over cemeteries may become more popular.
That was my initial thought, Darth. This is just another example of abysmally stupid human behavior based on idiotic religious belief.
While technically, yes, the mother wouldn’t’ve have left the hot plate on all night to keep the food warm if she could have used the oven the next day, isn’t keeping food warm the whole point of hot plates? Wasn’t the actual culprit a defective hot plate? If you’re not supposed to leave them on all night, it seems like the culprit was her ignorance of the proper workings of the device. Couldn’t this just as easily have happened to a secular family, although for different reasons?
Yes, but a hot plate is more likely to cause a fire than is an oven.
But that’s special pleading. I just cited Mennonites and cars. Anyway, what if this were 1936 and she had a gas oven? Then your figures would probably be backwards.
You can of course make an argument (correctly IMO) that these restrictions impoverish and thus impair in the long run the ability to save lives, but that’s a very different argument.
I have to agree. What about the secular mother who turns the hot plate on on a Sabbath, leading to a fire and deaths? Will we say, “oh if only she had a rule against hotplates on Sabbath”? When someone is killed in a car crash do we say “oh, for the lack of Mennonite prohibitions on cars”?
I agree with the Captain on this one.
The immediate cause of the fire seems to have been the (misuse of) a faulty hotplate.
While it is true that the hotplate might not have been used if not for the religious rule, how far back can you go in a chain of causes to place blame? And which chain do you go down? You could also say the hot plate wouldn’t have been on if they hadn’t wanted hot food; or if they had known that it was dangerous; or had read the instructions etc
It is also possible that they would have misused the hotplate with the same tragic results on another occasion having nothing to do with the Sabbath rules.
The concern is that leaving cooking food unattended is unsafe, and it’s practically impossible for Orthodox Jews to have hot food at their Sabbath day lunch without leaving their cooking food unattended overnight, as was the case in this horrible tragedy. If not for religion, this family presumably would have had no reason to leave their hot plate on over night unattended.
I live in an apartment block where the fire alarm is frequently set off by people doing something along those lines. So I don’t find it too hard to imagine someone leaving a hot plate on overnight for some other reason.
I can’t think of any other reason than accidentally.
Well I sure as hell do NOT leave things on when I’m out of the house. Other than the fridge and the telephone, which I assume are minimal fire risks. All else gets turned off at the point.
When I’m in the house I rely on smoke alarms to wake me if anything goes wrong. Still wouldn’t leave the stove on when I went to bed though.
Well, you probably leave most of your clothes on when you leave the house…. 🙂
OK, by ‘things’ I meant electrical things which are capable of self-ignition and causing a fire.
My clothes are not usually capable of that, not even after I’ve had a bad day…
I don’t know anyone who would deliberately leave a hot plate on overnight. Anyway, even if some people do it for other reasons, I don’t see how this excuses doing this dangerous practice because of Sabbath. If I am injured in a car crash after talking on my cell phone while driving, it will be little comfort to me to know that some drunk drivers end up with equally severe injuries.
Of course it could happen to anyone. Just as easily? Well, that’s the point isn’t it? No, probably not just as easily. People who leave hot plates on unattended for many hours at a stretch, for any reason, are going to be more likely to experience bad malfunctions than those that use them more normally.
In this specific case the family was in that higher risk group. It seems pretty straight forward that if in this specific case the family were not determined to comply with the Sabbath prescriptions they would have been unlikely to have left the hot plate on,unattended, through the night.
The point is that reality is fickle enough without doing things that blatantly increase your risk for no good reason. In this case of silly religious rules, not even having fun. Which may, arguably, be a good reason depending on the circumstances.
The higher risk group isn’t simply Jews who observe the Sabbath; it’s the intersection of Jews who observe the Sabbath and those who don’t know how to use hot plates responsibly. Of those two groups, the latter is clearly at a much higher risk, and the former alone is at zero risk. If you’re already irresponsible with your hot plate, the marginal risk incurred by also being a Sabbath-observing Jew is probably negligible, unless my guess on how often non-Jews use hot plates, given that they own them, is quite wrong.
Importantly, the Associated Press coverage indicates that their neighbors are rethinking using hot plates. They’ve learned their lessons in ways that, say, snake-handling Christians haven’t. I think the Orthodoxy here is a pretty unfair red herring.
And let’s not forget the incidents of electrical fire and automobile accident that these families are at 1/7th less of incurring than the rest of us. I think that more than offsets the dangers of an overnight hot plate.
I haven’t yet heard of responsible hot plate use that includes leaving the hot plate on and unattended overnight! The hot plates I know have clear instructions: switch on immediately before cooking and off immediately after it, be around.
Not using autos on Sabbath also means that if someone is sick, you cannot drive him to the doctor. As for having arguably fewer incidents of electrical fire, it sounds strange to me in the aftermath of this tragedy.
Fair point about the electrical fire comment. Plenty of people in this thread, though, have already pointed out you can break an Sabbath restriction, including driving automobiles, in a matter of life and death.
Granted, these rules are dumb as hell. I’m not defending them; I’m also not defending misusing hotplates. I just don’t think an Orthodox Jew is more likely to misuse a hot plate as a result of their religion (though I think I’m convinced that those that do misuses use them do so more frequently than non-Jewish dummies).
I disagree. It is much simpler than your analysis. Many things increase risk. Stupid religious rules are one of those things. Stop following such rules and lower the risk. Stop doing or abiding by any of the other myriad stupid things / reasons humans have come up with that increase risk in return for little to no tangible benefit and likewise decrease risk.
I do not intend that as a prescription. I think people should be free to do their own cost benefit analysis, within reason.
In this case I have doubt’s that none of the adults involved knew that they were using the hot plate contrary to typical instructions. I’m sure they thought it was no big deal. Tragically it was. There are reasons those instructions are in the box. Yes, people can be motivated to misuse stuff for various reasons. In this case it was to help comply with stupid religious rules.
The real culprit was leaving it on 24 or more hours in a row, something a secular person would be highly unlikely to do. Their religion made them leave it on that long, creating the hazard.
The culprit is the religious proscription that requires one perform a very unsafe action rather than a much safer alternative, because religion forbids the safer alternative. Hmmm…now that I put it that way, sounds a bit analogous to faith healing.
Though I guess putting it that way also leads back to the question of cheating. Certainly the family could eat cold food for a day if they wanted to be religiously observant AND safe. So perhaps the culprit is the mindset which seeks to find a way to have their religious cake and eat it too.
If they had been karaim, this never would have happened (karaim don’t use ANY electricity on Shabbat, even if the appliance is turned on before the onset of Shabbat)
The hot plates I’ve known in life were intended for cooking, just like a range top, except they were usually rule-beaters (many local laws partially define a domicile as one possessing a range/oven). This would be like leaving your stove top on all night — but even less safe.
Exactly. The cause of the fire was not defective hotplate + weird religious rule. It was just a defective hotplate. Trying to shame a grieving family for the reason they used the hotplate seems not just irrelevant but cruel.
There is no shaming if the family but an honest review of how religion can lead you to make bad decisions. A hot plate would not have been used in this manner if their religion dictated that they can’t use a stove. Hot plates are notorious for causing fires and they aren’t supposed to be used like this. However, what choice did this family have if they wanted to maintain their religious practice?
Cold food?
Fully agree. Several commenters on this thread made the argument that if the hot plate had not been defective, the fire would not have happened, so the behavior of the adults in the house had not caused the fire and is not to blame. Put in other words, this argument is that Sabbath religious rules would be safe in a world in which hot plates never get defective. However, we don’t live in such a perfect world and never will. We live in an imperfect real world where hot plates do get defective, and part of the instructions for every device are how to come out alive and well from such situations. By the same argument, you could excuse an antivaxer whose child dies of a vaccine-preventable disease: it was a microbe that killed the child, not the lack of a vaccine.
BTW, I bet that leaving hot plates on for 25 hours every Saturday dramatically shortens their life span and increases defects, and that few Sabbath-observing users take this into account and replace their plates often.
But these plates are designed to work a long time.
It’s not like misusing a device due to the Sabbath regulations.
If it were not children who suffered and died I’d declare this just another example of thinning the herd, but this just makes me sick. What an amazingly idiotic interpretation of the word “work”. Perhaps they should adhere to the definition of work used in physics, when force applied to an object moves that object, but then they would probably have to hold perfectly still, including not blinking or even breathing, on the sabbath. If you can’t even rip toilet paper (no matter how you hang the roll) does taking a crap count as work? What about chewing? Would ATP transport across a cell membrane constitute as “work” as well?
I will stop now. I’m just getting angry.
but for those of you who can stand it, here’s a great summary of shabbat stupidity:
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/95907/jewish/The-Shabbat-Laws.htm
I read you link…how can anyone be so foolish?
Rules for leaders to lead the fools!
Why would anyone in their right mind put up with all that bullshit?
I fear your question answers itself.
stooooopid, and tragic for the kids:-(
It was int he Toronto Globe and Mail this morning, too, and I think I said something like Jesus H Christ on a 4-man bobsled (my favorite expletive so far).
Another sad aspect is that the surviving family members won’t take a lesson from this about the stupidity of these rules. They’ll just chalk it up to “god’s will” or some crap like that. Religious rules like this may have been difficult to understand when they came about, but they’re just plain nonsensical in a world with technology so unimaginable compared with what existed for the ancient peoples who came up with them. It’s amazing to me that people still try to hold onto and interpret those rules in light of modern technologies instead of just dropping them altogether as irrelevant. But what do I know?
Oh yes, the good old “this was God’s will”. Or “God has a special plan”, “God works in mysterious ways”, “God is testing me”, etc… What a sick way of thinking. How any reasonable person can make sense out of this tragedy is beyond me.
My ex had an orthodox classmate in med school whom we ran into in a park on a Sat before some big exams. The guys were planning on studying together but mr ortho “could” not write down our number, so we had to write it down and hand him the slip of paper. I would not want a doctor who held with all this bs.
“oh, I see you’ve had a tragic accident, you are dying and need an operation immediately… but it’s the sabbath, so come back tomorrow and if you are still alive…””
Exactly
Well, not that the cause of the original tragedy is not stupidity… it is. But this bit about the doctor who says “come back tomorrow” would never happen with an Orthodox Jewish doctor. The Talmudic teaching are very clear in saying that every single “commandment” can be broken to save a life. So, no Orthodox doctor would ever let someone go unhealed because of the Sabbath. The tragedy that we are talking about here results from a combination of dogma and stupidity. But I think it’s really stupidity that caused the problem (though I constantly rant about the idiocy of dogmatism). If you are intelligent enough to consider the dangers then you are intelligent enough to know that unplugging the hot plate is increasing the chance of saving a life so you should do it. No Jewish teaching, however silly or inane, must be followed when it puts a human life at risk. The problem here is that, just like the extreme believers of any religion, these people are just plane stupid. The bit about “come back tomorrow” is not plausible under Jewish law. There are 1000s of other examples of religious idiocy but the doctor comment isn’t one of them. You have to at least give Judaism credit for being a religion founded on not taking things literally and elevating human life above all the nonsense. This could have been avoided even while following Jewish Law. Sadly, the great religionists rarely give a damn about even trying to fit their dogma into the 21st century.
I still wouldn’t want such a person for a doctor.
It demonstrates a lesser capability for rational thought.
exactly. just like I wouldn’t allow Dr. Oz to treat even a hangnail!
Thirded!
you know what I said about the Dr. was a joke, right? Not that I wouldn’t put it past any religious nut job, but still it was in jest.
However, considering a family I know, who’s adult son, my age, has become so religious that he won’t allow his daughters to play with dolls unless the dolls are dressed in appropriate religious garb, and are not even allowed to look at a book that has a pig in it, or that has a drawing of anyone that shows the skin of any human being other than the face or hands…I cannot and will not give judaism, or any other religion, any credit for “not taking things literally”. That is exactly the problem, or more to the point, they take things literally, and then expand upon in and reinterpret it to fit things that didn’t even exist at the time their holy books were written, as is the case with the hotplate. I would not choose any doctor whom I discovered was fundamentalist, orthodox or what ever you wish to call them, as my primary care physician (I’d have less chance of knowing this about surgeons or some other one-off specialist). You are giving far too much credit to judaism if you think that it elevates human life above all nonsense. If that were true, then these children wouldn’t be dead, and I’d still have a foreskin.
oh, and then there’s this article…
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4229767,00.html
so how about that for stupidity? One jewish doctor treats a gentile on the sabbath: FORBIDDEN! Two jewish doctors, and it’s OK?! and two people holding a scalpel together? yeah,that sounds safe. There is no level of stupidity that is out of bounds when it comes to religion, jewish, hindu, muslim, christian, whatever. no room for apologetics here. period.
His kids probably can’t read Charlott’s Web either!
This is just wrong. In Judaism, saving human life takes precedence over any other religious rules. So this would never happen.
wrong. see above linked Y-Net news article. gentile lives don’t matter so it is a violation to save them on the sabbath, or so says the kindly rabbi yosef.
It is almost always wrong to seek an advice from clergy (in the broadest sense). Their reflex is to say something restrictive in order to assert their authority while making life of others more difficult.
My people (Orthodox Christians) have a proverb, “He who asks ends up fasting.” They mean that if you ask a priest whether you are allowed to eat X food on Y day, he will invariably reply, “No, you are not.”
(To some degree, this is valid also for bosses and other secular authorities.)
I remember those Saudis who asked a cleric whether it was OK to make snowmen and of course he said that it wasn’t.
Like the old Army saying, “Forgiveness is easier to obtain than permission”.
Don’t worry, he probably wouldn’t want to treat a woman anyway because they are yucky.
Good point. I would not have wanted to share my cooties with him.
Technically, this has nothing to do with “work”, forbidden on Sabbath and all festivals, but with “fire”, forbidden only on the Sabbath and Yom Kippur, when you are not allowed to kindle or extinguish. And some wretched 19th C rabbi decreed that electric power was a form of fire, and no orthodox rabbi dare dissent for fear of being labelled inauthentic.
“Work” is any of the activities involved in building the tabernacle in the wilderness, for we are told that all of them stopped on the Sabbath. From this, the rabbis constructed their list. Riding an animal or vehicle – not allowed. Walking 5 miles instead – fine. I regularly did that, in my benighted youth (long story).
What is pre-programmed is permissible, but things like motion sensor electric lighting are not, because your activity on the Sabbath is what’s making them go on and off.
I describe.I do not excuse.
Further on the subject of electric lights with motion sensors:
http://www.irreligion.org/2009/07/19/religious-row-as-orthodox-jewish-couple-sue-neighbours-for-imprisoning-them-with-automatic-hallway-light/
I followed this case. Unfashionably here perhaps, I’m on the side of the aggrieved couple. Something was done in a communal space without their consent that affected them and that, given the pre-existing situation (which included their beliefs) had serious consequences for them.
The couple offered to pay for the lights to be kept on full time. IIRC, this offer was refused. I don’t know why.
And what about the ever more ubiquitous automatic doors, all worked by electricity and doing far more ‘work’ than a light? How can they go *anywhere* on the sabbath?
Thanks quiscalus for this litany of idiocy!
you’re welcome (I think?)
Now if only they could find a way to prevent their motor proteins from transporting vesicles along cytoskeletal microtubules…
I recently read that the “crock pot” (should be familiar to most US readers) was invented for just this case: So observant Jewish women (women of course!) could cook the day before the sabbath and still have a hot meal to eat for the family.
This is such a tragedy. And when a device exists for the purpose! We use our crock pots all the time.
so, was the original name for a crock pot the “crack pot”?
Only if you were cooking crack. Wonder if they tried small batches in Breaking Bad?
not just “small batches”, it’s “artisan” crack. you know, for hipsters.
I think it was very much a religiously themed name before it was widely commercialized.
From the oracle of Wikiness:
The story I heard was on NPR and the motivation was “not-working” on the sabbath.
I grew up believing in Hinduism. But I am not that religious. I am just religious for cultural reasons. Hinduism and it’s cousin Buddhism gets a free pass by most people. They naively think both faiths are “tolerant” and “forward thinking”.
For example, a central theme of Hinduism is reincarnation and karma. Hindus actually believe that the reason why some people are born into extreme poverty or bad things happen to them is because of evil acts they did in prior life times. See, that settles it then. Why give a shit about the down trodden or folks with blindness or cerebral palsy. It is all their fault anyways.
A gentleman I know had a newborn. The child had severe medical issues. People at his Mandir told him that his son did evil acts in his previous lifetime. What a crock of shit.
Every religion is full of you know what and based on irrational nonsense. I am sorry, it is time to do away with nonsense. If I told you that “I believe I lived many prior lives”. You would say I am crazy. But under the guise of “religion” society has to respect my irrational beliefs.
From Wikipedia: In Mea Shearim, residents have been known to throw stones at those driving through their neighborhoods on Shabbat.
Throwing stones is not working…
Throwing stones must be having fun – playing:-(
Happens in the U.S. too. I was lucky that person wasn’t brave enough to throw anything bigger than bits of gravel and I missed whatever they shouted at me.
Of course not. If it were how could you kill sabbath breakers?
If a Christian throws rocks at a Jew, he’s an “anti-semite.” If a Muslim throws rocks at a Jew, he’s a “terrorist.” If a Jew throws rocks at a Jew, he’s “Orthodox.”
bingo
Long as we are dissecting this tragedy where were the smoke alarms/fire alarms that are suppose to be in place but never seem to be. Did it not cover this in the old testament.
but smoke alarms have a beeping mechanism and a flashing light when set off, so that would constitute “work” and thus, I assume, cannot be allowed! and if I fire starts, then is putting it out forbidden, because wouldn’t that be “work” too? oy vey mashugana!
I wouldn’t be surprised if there were a religious exemption from the fire code requiring smoke detectors.
You probably couldn’t have them on on the Sabbath.
They can have smoke detectors. They don’t need to be manually turned on or off on the Sabbath, so there’s no prohibition. According to what I read, the 1st and 2nd floors of the house involved in this tragedy had no smoke detectors. We can’t blame that part on religion. In fact, if anything good can come out of this it’s that hundreds if not thousands of Orthodox Jews have now hopefully installed smoked detectors or put new batteries into theirs.
ok, but how is it that they are not allowed to have any sort of other flashing light, fans that turn on automatically, and so on? I’m glad that they are allowed smoke detectors, but why the arbitrary line between what you can and can’t have as far as lights, motion detectors, fans, timers, and the like? It makes no sense. Of course, not that I expect something made up 2000+ years ago, then shoe-horned into the 21st century to make any damn sense what so ever. If you can have a smoke detector that can “do work” detecting smoke, setting off an alarm and a flashing light, then you can have a damn timer that turns off a hotplate, and a fridge light and fan that works even if you open the door. arbitrary idiocy, pure and simple, but in this case, it killed people.
Orthodox Jews are usually OK with setting timers before the Sabbath starts, so attaching the cooking device to a timer and setting it so that it goes on Saturday morning when people are around to monitor it may be one way to go.
Their issue with the motion detector, the refrigerator light, etc, is that you’re doing something on the Sabbath itself to cause the light to go on.
Some won’t even request a Shabbos goy to turn on lights or anything, because that would be causing ‘work’ to be done on your request. Instead they’ll play a weird hint game to sort of give an appearance that the person wanted to do it themselves rather than answering a ‘work’ request.
kinda passive aggressive?
Mostly silly.
Religious, non-religious, stupid rules, no rules… a smoke alarm would have saved them. When I first read this story I knew there must not have been one. Details came out and indeed there was no alarm. I think the smoke alarm is by far the most important lesson to learn from this tragedy.
“No flippping of light switches, either: for that you can have automatic lights”. I don’t think all Orthodox Jews would agree with this. Here in the UK about 3 or 4 years ago a couple sued their landlord who had installed automatic switches in the corridor outside their flat. They claimed that this forced them to stay trapped in their flat one day a week. The court did not find in their favour.
i believe a bigger problem was the lack of smoke alarms….
I am an atheist, however I used to live in an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood when I was a student. I routinely turned ovens on and off because it was the “neighborly” thing to do. Of course I thought the practice was ridiculous, but I didn’t want to have a religious debate with my neighbors and/or watch the numerous children not eat a hot meal. The families were always very thankful for my expert “services” and would schedule meals around my availability to push buttons. I never thought what would happen if I wasn’t there to turn something off. This is tragic.
You should have charged for your services and made it a business. I suspect robots will one day do this job.
From the NY Times:
Describing the children’s death as a sacrifice and explaining that everything was in God’s hands, he said:
“We are only reflecting back the light. We do not understand the plan.”
http://tinyurl.com/mvmxafz
The plan is simple. Its practical manifestation is known as the Darwin Awards.
Whether or not the refrigerator light comes on when the door is opened should be a moot point for an observant Jew since they shouldn’t be opening the door in the first place!
Olin, you beat me to it. Why would the bloody light that turns on and off due to the door switch make any difference? It’s opening the bloody door that’s work.
I’m glad I’m an atheist — I can go to the gym and lift things up and put them down on any day of the week!
Kind of Schrödinger’s fridge…
What happens when the true Messiah returns?
He can turn the lights on and off as needed…
Kudos for your post about this, Dr. Coyne. I would just note that Orthodox Jews, as well as many if not most of the more liberal religious Jews, very much believe in an afterlife, even though it’s not really talked about in the Hebrew Bible. They believe that good Jews go to Gan Eden (Garden of Eden – i.e. paradise), and others go to Gehinnom – a purgatory that’s usually temporary. Then someday they’ll be resurrected in this world. I believe that’s why the Mt of Olives cemetery in Jerusalem is prime real estate, because when the resurrection happens, the walking dead there will be closest to YHWH’s presence in Jerusalem.
And while most of the Sabbath restrictions are related to the prohibition on doing “work,” the turning on/off electricity prohibition is tied to “You shall kindle no fire in all your dwelling places on the Sabbath day (Exodus 35:3),” as commenter Paul Braterman pointed out.
Thanks for all you do, and, as our people would say, we should hear good news,
FTJ
Turning electricity (closing the electric circuit) is considered “building”. This is the main reason for banning electricity of the Sabbath.
“Crazy Sabbath restrictions…”
I’d say Idiotic is more like it.
Although this tragedy would not have happened if this family did not observe Sabbath (and found ways around the restrictions), I don’t think we can blame religion for their deaths.
I agree.
If “this tragedy would not have happened if this family did not observe Sabbath” how can we not?
/@
Precisely.
I was hoping you’d write about this, Jerry. I completely agree that the root cause of this tragedy was the ridiculous Orthodox Sabbath rules.
What’s always bothered me the most about those rules is the way believers conspire to get around them in so many foolish and conniving ways. Assuming they think the restrictions are holy, then how is it they scheme and cheat to get around them? Whatever happened to “the spirit of the law?” (Heh, spirit.)
Yahweh is just too stupid to see through them. That’s the only possible conclusion.
I could never see how hiring someone else to do [whatever it is] lets you off the hook. You hire the hitman, you’re equally guilty.
Right!
And I guess Yahweh must indeed be pretty dense.
A letter in the NY Times this morning:
“Eating cold food for a day is a small price to pay for your life”
http://tinyurl.com/kpyvh2m
There are so many great cold meals one can eat that I can not understand the need to even try to get around the rule with a loophole.
Risking the life of your family because you are not creative enough to serve cold food amazes me. Being unable to bear eating cold food amazes me.
The risk taking behavior amazes me.
When I bought my oven, I couldn’t figure out why it didn’t work and wouldn’t display the time. I came preset in Sabbath mode. The supplier said that it saved them service calls, as the majority of sales they have in my area are to observant jews. Boggled my mind. Not long after, a friend of mine started a side business restringing fallen wire on Saturdays to delineate properties. Still make a good dollar doing it.
Very odd looking from the outside.
Why are there so few people rushing to say ‘This has nothing to do with Judaism?’
For all the people talking about how this definition of “work” is stupid and illogical, “work” is only an English approximation of the Hebrew word “melacha”. That Hebrew word has a specific religious meaning in Judaism, which is acts of creation in an abstract sense, and Judaism is very clear on what is or isn’t melacha. There are many things to criticise about Shabbat, but criticising that the fact that this Jewish concept which is loosely translated as “work” doesn’t match up with your English or physics definition of “work” is just stupid. It’s a different language, it’s a different culture, it’s a different semantic space, critique the reality, not the way the words are translated. It’s like how people criticise the story of Jonah for calling the whale a “fish” when it’s actually a mammal. But the whole taxonomy and nomenclature of how we define “fish” and “mammals” is modern English is just that, a culturally dependent semantic categorisation. It doesn’t mean that the Biblical Hebrew is “wrong”, it means that in Biblical Hebrew, their word “dag” probably referred to anything that swam in the water that was fish-shaped.
What I’m saying is there is so much to criticise about Judaism; don’t get stuck up about terms that are being used with a different definition to the one you’re thinking of. Because that’s not actually in itself a *problem*.
Thanks for your comment but please try to be a little more polite in future comments (like implying someone was “stupid”). Thanks!
OK, I was among those criticising the interpretation of ‘work’. I’ll concede that translation may alter the meaning.
But even conceding that, there are two points that still stick out:
First, it’s still an archaic, arbitrary and absurd set of rules, however it is expressed.
And second (this is a different point entirely), the translation problem makes a nonsense of any (Xtian fundamentalist) talk of ‘biblical inerrancy’.
Judaism traditionally holds the value of preserving life (or Pikuach Hanefesh). For this reason, when a life is in danger, Sabbath rules can be (and probably MUST be) violated to take whatever measures necessary to save the life. So that’s the first thing.
I don’t think it’s good judgement to leave a hot plate on unattended, period. For any reason. In our modern world we have advanced to have other, safer options, such as induction cooktops and other appliances that have keep warm functions. But yes, this is a terrible, worst case, unimaginable scenario and i think no one had thought out the possibility of such an event happening, so that when it did happen, it was too late.