Worked with a bunch of Orthodox guys at an older job. Christianity, including Catholicism, tends to talk about the "spirit" of the rules. After all, most Christians ignore a huge swathe of very clear, very explicit rules in the Bible. Like eating pork, which you can't get much clearer than how it's stated in the Bible.

Orthodox Jews aren't like that. The book is the word of their deity. What is written is the law. The spirit doesn't come into it. If the deity didn't want you working around it, he'd have written that into the law.