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Comment by davemel37 | Hacker News Reader

To be fair, it takes 7.5 years to study the entirety of the Talmud doing one two sided page a day for about an hour...and this barely scratches the surface... to have an opinion of religion without putting in the effort is equally as ludicrous and meaningless.

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Just as I don't need to study homeopathy or alchemy for a decade to have an informed opinion of it, I've had more than enough education on and experience of religion to take a view. Most of it appears to be holdover from ancient and medieval periods when people of a powerful group set the rules. Which is not discounting faith itself.

Which is by the by to the point -- if the rules are there, the amount of effort spent to creatively discount them feels like nothing other than blatant cheating. A sleight of hand.

I can appreciate your perspective but I strongly disagree with your reasoning. It comes off as shallow and founded with preconceived notions and biases. Not to say i dont have my own biases and perspectives...but it would be easier to take you seriously if you simply said, I havent studied it and dont feel a need to focus my energy there. You are free to use shortcuts and heuristics in all your decision making, we all do...but its a mistake to have a strong opinion and call something meaningless or blatant cheating without even having a minute understanding of how jurisprudence of Jewish law is established.

Well without going into why and how I arrived at those views, or any religious heritage I may have had... That's far too deep an exploration for HN, and not likely to be productive.

Note also my response to your second comment to my original -- OP said nothing of it needing to be used before the sabbath. In terms of the eruv, what may be a gentle convenience or exception for a few neighbouring houses, or relations, seems to really stretch when it encompasses tens of thousands+ in multiple city regions. Though I note from other comments regarding Feinsten, if accurate, that some noted Jewish scholars appear to have thought the concept stretched the point too.

Fair enough about how you arrived at your views. For what its worth, my views are not as rigid as these comments suggest. They are nuanced and ever evolving... I suspect Eruv is a complex topic with more reasons than just "convenience."

I am not an eruv or even a Jewish law expert, but I can assure you though that Rabbi Moshe Feinsteins positions were widely accepted in the Orthodox Community and his opinions are not only well documented and sourced, they are studied today much like court precedents are set. There are obviously differing view points, but in order to disagree with him and be listened to, one would need to extensively show their math and support their dissenting opinion with reliable sources and case history...

In general, the rule of thumb around Jewish law atleast for Orthodox Jews is, "ask your local orthodox rabbi." And interestingly enough, when interviewing for synagogue and pulpit positions, one of the common questions asked of Rabbi Applicants is "who do you ask your religious and halachik questions to?" Central to the faith is collaboration and discussion at the highest levels and if you arent stumped constantly and discussing with mentors and peers, you by default disqualify your credentials to most Ultra Orthodx Jews.

Fair point, and I suspect I would find why Feinstein seems to have objected to (this|all) eruv as interesting as the root article, until discussion descends to minutiae anyway. Like most atlasobscura the article barely scratches the surface of what underlies.

Faith is a personal construct to help people cope with the vast desolation of life in the universe. Nabokov's "the cradle rocks above an abyss" and all that.

Religion is an exploit of faith to allow power to beget more power, just like any other "isms" like capitalism, fascism, socialism, etc etc.

In theory, I can also argue that your view above is also a personal construct to help you cope with existence...

I wont pretend to understand consciousness or the human experience...but I like to be pragmatic, and from a pragmatic perspective, I dont see the utility of your belief about religion and faith and power structures...its an almost helpleas viewpoint that rejects everything as imaginary and malleable...and I dont see the value in that in my own beliefs and philosophy.

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