Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/07/19/heres-the-best-washington-po.html
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I dunno about this headline. It’s vaguely worded. It sounds like it’s about kidnappers targeting rabbis, not rabbis who are kidnappers. It doesn’t represent the weirdness as well as it could.
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This sounds like a plot to a Guy Ritchie film, for some reason.
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I’ve heard of some women having a real hard time getting a get, but this is a rather extreme way to go about it.
For those not familiar with Orthodox halacha, a divorce (in accordance with Jewish law) is not possible without this, and the husband is under no obligation to actually grant it, so this has been a long-standing problem for Orthodox women seeking divorces.
I kinda don’t blame the rabbis, because husbands who withhold a get are dicks, but sheesh…
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“Stun-gun-wielding rabbi kidnappers fail to convince court they were just practicing their faith.”
Religion is invisible poison.
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I read that article this morning and was shaking my head the whole time. Religions can be so weird!
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Sorry, I just realised this is quite shitty for someone so desperate, but getting the get with a cattleprod was just to much for my brain not to have musical hiccups.
Holy shit, Batman. Religion is weird.
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Mmmm, religious fundamentalism. The ingenious institution where the men who serve as its pillars can at once uphold and excuse extreme sexism as being fundamental to its moral tenets, while also thinking that torture is a good way to mediate that sexism in specific situations.
“Hey, we had to electro-toture a few guys, but at least we didn’t have to let women openly and independently decide when they wanted to get divorced!”
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You’re not wrong…
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Hey c’mon, exploiting loopholes to avoid the strictures of religious law is a long-standing rabbinic tradition.
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NY state adopted no-fault divorce in 2010, like a week ago. I wouldn’t act too superior to the zappin minyans if I wuz you.
Off topic, sorry, but if they have a five ton bull, I imagine the meat and dairy industries would like to hear about it.
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No mention of cattle prods in the Torah whatsoever. All good.
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See: Richard Feynman on elevators. He was visiting a rabbinical school and some of the students asked him, as a physicist, if electrical arcing was fire. This was because the school was having a debate on whether or not they needed to hire a gentile to work the elevator on the Sabbath because sometimes the connections might make sparks, so did that count as starting a fire, which is forbidden? What Richard got out of the exchange was, in so many words, that religion can be dumb.
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Ah yes, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Thank you Bill Clinton!
Clinton Signs Freedom of Worship Law November 16, 1993, Ron Fournier, Associated Press
Scientology uses that one too.
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I kinda do. The fact that the FBI agents were able to hire the rabbis to do the job when there was no actual target tells me the rabbis were in it to get paid and probably rationalized it to themselves as their victims had it coming anyway. Extrajudicial kidnapping and torture isn’t the way to solve the problems created by religious fuckery.
Unless you’re the CIA. ⇐ (That last sentence is sarcasm.)
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The world being the way it is, I think we’ll see even stranger ways that the ‘religious freedom’ envelope can be pushed.
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“But Moloch REQUIRES child sacrifice…you can’t infringe on my religion!”
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So you’re saying they aren’t forbidden? 
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