Hacker News Reader

Comment by jliptzin | Hacker News Reader

I am Jewish and don't observe but know a lot that do and also talk about how great it is to be able to leave everything behind on the Sabbath. I can definitely see the value in disconnecting one day a week. However, they also do a lot of really weird things that I can imagine creates even more stress, just for the sake of interpreting religious law as strictly as possible. For example, my friend's cousin accidentally left groceries in the trunk of her car, but since opening the trunk would cause the trunk light to go on, she couldn't do it (nor any jewish person with her apparently) and so food was left to rot in a hot car. I have countless stories like this being around observant Jews my whole life and it seems that is way more stressful, at least to me. Do people really believe God is maintaining a database of all the times someone is technically breaking Shabbat law?

View on HN

My oven has a Shabbat mode: when you activate this mode, touching the controls doesn't make any sound anymore, opening the oven door doesn't trigger the light, and when touching a button the effect is delayed by a few seconds so you're not technically getting any result from touching the button while still getting the effect from touching the button.

I always find these things kind of funny. How important are these rules if god is so easily tricked?

God is not tricked. There is no restriction against cooking on Shabbat. There are restrictions against eg. making a fire and building. If you can somehow cook without doing any of those things, then there is nothing wrong with it.

I was talking about this: "when touching a button the effect is delayed by a few seconds so you're not technically getting any result from touching the button while still getting the effect from touching the button."

The concept is called Grama and its not universally accepted for these ovens and the like. For the reason you stated, if something is going to happen, just we are not 100% sure exactly when, then some don't consider it grama.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grama_(halacha)

Grama really only helps you for rabbinically prohibited actions. (i.e. man made law, man made loophole). Not law that is considered biblical in nature.

Most people who wonder about all the "loopholes" don't realize that its talking about what jews considered rabbinic law.

to make an analogy, congress can't legislate a loophole around the constitution, they can legislate loopholes around their own laws.

It all sounds a bit legalistic. I say that with a grin.

Don’t you trigger an electronic counter by pressing the button?

If I recall, some of these modes activate a random timer, so you don’t directly trigger an action. More like indicating that an action should occur, without directly starting it.

Yes, the delay is random. According to the manual, this was validated with experts Rabbis and is congruent with the way things should be done on Sabbath.

"it is in God's hands... As long as it's within the next 10 seconds"

People will always interpret the words of their God to better fit their own needs. They're having a hard enough time as it is to keep people close to religion. This means artificially taking down some of the barriers that no longer fit in today's world view is a must.

I mean breaking this commandment in particular is punishable by death. So I guess there isn't much choice if the religion is to have any followers.

But I'm waiting for the first person that, after consulting with expert clergy, comes at the conclusion that all they did was press the trigger. The gun and projectile did the rest, with great assistance from the target who decided to be in the line of sight :).

Whatever action it is, it's triggered by your intention and your button press. You close a circuit for a very specific action and this tells a microcontroller to start counting a (random) number of seconds before initiating the exact action you intended. This is how all electronics work. In this case you don't start the device, you just start the electronic timer of the device.

At least start that timer the day before.

Maybe if your oven just turned itself on randomly and you quickly ran to put the pot in... It would probably be served a lot better by a digital assistant that you could tell to do things, as long as that's not considered a "slave".

This just feels like a "trick". As it stands today you turn on one device instead of another. And you certainly do the "work" part of the "you shall not do any work".

"Do people really believe God is maintaining a database [...]"

Well what do you think Oracle is ;) ?

Actual book title, look it up on Amazon: The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison: *God Doesn't Think He's Larry Ellison

Reply on news.ycombinator.com