Comment by davemel37 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by davemel37 | Hacker News Reader

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The only thing an eruv makes permissible is carrying an item from one domain to another. (I.e. a personal house to the public street to a public synagogue.) It's not so much a hack as a way of making the boundry of the two separate domains part of the same domain. The same way, a row of houses can also be a block or a group of streets can also be a neighborhood...there were laws around moving things from one boundry to another, but all boundries are fictions, so its not really doing anything thats tricking anybody...its not really different than buying your neighbors house and putting a big fence around both properties... I think this is actually why an eruv needs permission from the city or mayor. Its actually a legal boundry in this context...

The point about watching the game...thats not really permissible according to many Rabbis, its just an excuse your friend made because its much worse to take an action that completes an electrical circuit (similar to biblical prohibition of lighting a fire) than to just look at something happening...but there is clear guidance about what you are allowed to even read or look at on Shabbos. This is just human nature...we all do the best we can with who we are at any given moment...the Eruv though is a very different mechanism.

Another important point is that the eruv was instituted because of the rabbinic prohibition on carrying in a semi-public area.

According to Jewish law there are 4 categories of domains: 1) Public (Large area, heavy traffic), 2) Semi-public (most of what we would consider public), 3) Private, 4) Permitted (a small distinct area in the public domain). Carrying in the semi-public domain is biblically permitted, but rabbinically prohibited due to its similarity to a public domain. An allowance was made to carry in the semi-public domain if a symbolic eruv is put up to distinguish it from a public domain.

>... its much worse to take an action that completes an electrical circuit (similar to biblical prohibition of lighting a fire) than to just look at something happening...but there is clear guidance about what you are allowed to even read or look at on Shabbos.

Knowing very little of the "rules" and on the way they are followed, I have always been intrigued by this thingy here (Halachic switch):

http://www.kosherswitch.com/live/

Excerpt for the lazy:

> When you slide the on/off button, you’re moving an isolated piece of plastic. It is purely mechanical, and is not attached to anything electrical (electro-mechanically isolated). This is done at a time when you see a green Status Light, which provides 100% assurance that the relevant components within the switch are inactive. Subsequently, after a random interval, the device will activate and determine the position of the plastic by flashing an internal light pulse. The attached light fixture will be triggered only after the switch overcomes two failure probability processes – one prior to this light pulse and one after it. Halachically, your action is simply the movement of an isolated piece of plastic with no implications of causation.

This has been rejected by most rabbinic authorities. The designer is an engineer, not a an expert in Jewish law.

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