One of the Muslim families that I know are definitely “relaxed”. When all of their children left the house, they adopted a Latin-American brother/sister, so they sent them to Catholic school… They were fairly involved in school activities and got to be friends with many of the other parents – they were quite surprised when a parent asked them to become god-parents (but not as surprised as the parent when they told them that they couldn’t be the kids god-parents because they were Muslim and not Catholic).
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Never underestimate the power of a rabbi with a blowtorch.
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That’s derived from an old Babylonian delicacy, where part of the frisson of the dish was that the calf (I believe, not lamb) was boiled in the milk of its mother – the whole decadent irony thing. Cruelty, from our perspective, was the whole point. So “don’t mix milk and meat” is a we’ve-lost-the-metaphor-but-obey-the-rules descendant. IMHO.
eh, I was close.
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Well then, that makes sense (at least for why it was included) - basically “Hey, the pagans do this as part of their religion, so let’s ban it!” Thanks for that.
Edit: wait! I didn’t read the whole thing. Lol.
I appreciate the clarification. I genuinely wanted to know the answer (:
Yeah, I get that. I’m pretty happy with the decisions and priorities in Reformed Judaism. It’s a lot more about being a good human and a lot less about living according to arbitrary rules that were developed ages ago for a completely different civilization.
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I could feel my brain cells committing suicide… linking to that should be considered a crime 
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Cruel; No.
Disrespectful; Yes.
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What I find funny or interesting, is I have never heard a Jew use Leviticus to condemn someone or something, even though they would have more of a reason to continue to do as they don’t have the new Covenant the Christians have. Maybe there are those that do, but they are so small in number you never hear about it.
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How would that work with voice-operated electronics?
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Good point. I wonder what the stance on that would be.
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Honestly I don’t know all the minutiae of it all. I do know that a lot of Orthodox Jews have lights set on timers, or crockpots that they set up on before sundown, so I know they are using technology to work within their beliefs. But I doubt they would be allowed to actively engage with computers on the Sabbath. Again, probably depends a bit on their particular group.
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Yeah, it’ll be interesting to see how many Kim Davis supporters get behind this woman. It’s not even quite the same, either - this woman wasn’t preventing others from serving alcohol, nor is failing to get a drink the same as failing to get a marriage license.
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Curious if vegetarians can serve meat?
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Isn’t there something specific about making fires or causing fires to be made that relates to this?
I’d bet that a Hindu would find it distasteful to serve beef at least. It depends on your reasoning for it. On that note, never have a Jain waiter.
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From the wiki:
Nobel prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman recounts that he was approached by young rabbis in a seminary who asked him "is electricity fire?". He replied, "no", but asked why they wanted to know, and was shocked that they weren't interested in science at all, but just wanted to interpret the Talmud. Feynman said that electricity was not a chemical process, as fire is, and pointed out that there is electricity in atoms and thus every phenomenon that occurs in the world. Feynman proposed a simple way to eliminate the spark: '"If that's what's bothering you, you can put a condenser across the switch, so the electricity will go on and off without any spark whatsoever—anywhere.' But for some reason, they didn't like that idea either".
So yeah, “using switches” counts as “making fire”. Which is ridiculous, but so is the commandment to murder teenagers. (anyone that curses their parents is to be stoned, for they have cursed their parents, their blood is on their hands.)
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Actually, that’s one of the requirements for adoption in the Muslim world: you must raise the child in their own religion, not yours. They also get to keep their own name.
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Double-so ridiculous if we count the more and more prevalent SCRs. Solid-state switches don’t make a spark. (Handy when controlling switching power supplies, whose massive input capacitors cause enough inrush current to weld 16-amp relay contacts in just a few switching cycles. Five computer monitors on one relay taught me this.)
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