At that point you’re just trying to cheat God, and what’s the point of that if you’re so religiously devote that you follow such laws anyway?
Rules lawyering appears to be an ingrained part of Jewish culture. You're (essentially) not allowed to leave your house during the Sabbath, so Orthodox communities lay string around entire towns, so their "house" can be considered the entirety of the town.
---
As the story goes, my father—an atheist with jewish heritage—was once on a Ski trip with his friend Steve, an orthodox Jew. During the Sabbath, Steve couldn't go skiing, so he had to stay behind in the pair's little hut. The hut had a TV, but Sabbath rules forbade Steve from turning on the TV, and Steve couldn't ask someone with jewish heritage to break Sabbath.
So instead, Steve says:
"Y'know, there's a really good game on TV today!"
Unfortunately, my father didn't get the hint.
"That's great Steve! See ya tonight!"
All of his grandparents were Jewish. I don't know if my father called himself Jewish at this point in his life, but he never had a bar mitzvah, never went to temple, and neither he nor his parents believe in god. But Steve would have considered him Jewish.
> If your father was Jewish and had turned on the TV Steve would not be permitted to watch it.
Well, I guess Steve didn't know that? Steve told my father years later he was trying to get him to turn on the TV.
Keep in mind that of course I was told this story second-hand.
The eruv (string around the neighborhood) is to get around the prohibition on carrying things between a "public" domain and a "private" domain. This prohibition is very broad - having your house keys in your pants pocket as you leave your house counts as "carrying" as does pushing a stroller. The eruv allows the whole neighborhood to be considered a "private" area and sidesteps this prohibition.
However there are definitely Jewish communities that don't have an eruv or wouldn't make use of it if there is one in the neighborhood.
> This prohibition is very broad - having your house keys in your pants pocket as you leave your house counts as "carrying"
If you can't bring your keys, you effectively can't leave, no? Or am I getting something very wrong here?
Because yeast is often used people sometimes think that yeast is what's forbidden on Passover, but that's not correct.
Of course there's a huge body of literature on the subject of God and science, including contributions by some of the most important theoretical physicists.
But leavened bread? It doesn’t seem as abstract to define as “work.”
https://www.npr.org/2019/05/13/721551785/a-fishing-line-enci...
St. Ives has many Jews, many from South Africa IIRC.
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/nsw-council-approves-jew...