Aaaah why did I have to see all this? Now I have a voice in my head and it says:
***** COLLECT. THEM. ALL. *****
8 Likes
Need this in my eurorack
6 Likes
Maybe you could wire the chemtrail switch to activate a fog machine for live performances? Haha 
7 Likes
Well that’s my Hanukkah shopping done.
2 Likes
it even has those bars… so if you crash into it it won’t upset somebody
But is it an actual electric switch? Or just a physical switch? I didn’t check.
20A at 120VAC heavy duty switch.
3 Likes
Right, but if it’s forbidden for me, but not for you, and I compel you to do it on my behalf…
Never mind, I’m trying to apply some sort of logic to religious rules…
1 Like
I’ve never understood the idea that anyone who believes in an omniscient, omnipotent god thinks they can rules lawyer he/she/they and win, as if someone else sets rules and that god is obliged to follow them. 
4 Likes
Right?
It’s like the poophole loophole; if an omniscient voyeur god is watching your premarital rear getting reamed, he (because we know which God we’re talking about here) is going to say “Oh you clever kids! You got me there! I guess it doesn’t count if it’s in your butt!”.
Owning a car, then hiring someone else to drive it, because the rules say you can’t operate it is exactly the “lawyer logic” that I’m talking about (but again, trying to apply logic to religion…)
2 Likes
The wire (plastic fishing line, apparently) around Manhattan comes to mind, or thinking that T***p is a godly exemplar of human virtue in spite of objectively being a selfish, lying, sociopathic adulterer. Weird.
1 Like
Lol that’s kinda central to Judaism, actually. Have a look at this excerpt from Talmud, tractate Bava Mezia 59b for example, around half way down the page, where the rabbis basically overrule heavenly decree.
On a more somber note, Elie Wiesel tells of something he witnessed as a teenager in Auschwitz, when God was put on trial for failing to defend us in the Shoah. He was not found guilty exactly, but also not innocent:
At the end of the trial, they used the word chayav, rather than ‘guilty’. It means ‘He owes us something’. Then we went to pray.
Calling it “rules lawyering” kinda misses the point though. The point is that whatever tradition says God said, it’s all up to us in the end to make our own choices and decide what’s right or wrong. Observing Shabbat rigorously can be challenging, and having a friend or hired staff help out with these things helps make it easier.
If you ask “then why observe it at all?”, well, that’s a whole nother conversation and I gotta get to work now…
3 Likes
“Mouth stuff?! What sorcery is this??!”
1 Like
I (a Goy) once asked an observant Jew about the “rules lawyering”.
He told me that the laws were more about worship in a day to day manner; that the observation of the laws were the important part, because it was part of the worship of Y***h. By doing the rule lawyering and finding loopholes and ways of doing it, you were studying the laws and thinking about their application and meanings and limits, and this is a form of worship in and of itself. The outcome may be skirting a rule, but the process is observance of the rule, and is thus maintaining the law.
I have no idea how widespread this view is, or how accurately I understood it. But I have always found it to be a very beautiful expression of piety.
2 Likes
And it costs a six figure amount to maintain? This is bizarre. If you’re going to change the rules, just change them, and say “this has been updated and no longer applies”.
Just think how far $150-200k a year could go to feed homeless people or some other mitzvah eh?
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
