To which fundamentalist Protestant sect were you particularly referring? Because I bet the ones in the US who do that considerably outnumber the Hassidim and other extreme Orthodox.
Every major religion has its fruitcakes and extremists. Even atheism has Richard Dawkins, who is not a fruitcake but whose views are rather extreme. I imagine very, very few of the people who take account of the eruv fall into that category. The “some of these people are extremists” argument just doesn’t cut it.
It’s ridiculous to be sure, but I kind of like the fact that people are ridiculous. I guess it just appeals to my sense of humor, and keeps me from taking people – and myself, by extension – too seriously.
And contrary posts not withstanding, I’m pretty sure that they are not the folks who would be inventing jet packs if they weren’t tied up in such pursuits. My speculation is that this kind of thing is the best things for folks like this to be involved in.
If you’re the kind of person who thinks this is a good way to spend your time, I hope you spend most of your time on it, and not, for example, getting involved with politics.
Yes, they have. In the worst possible way.
@everyone, can we just not mock religious belief? Not only is mockery of deeply held tenets offensive, on a practical level it betrays the process of understanding why they exist.
Which is why, for Lent, I gave up fish puns. (The Catholic irony!!!)
A continuity tester or telegraph could do the job.
— …
Wait, so they have rules but then the rules get suspended because of a wire? WTF have the rule then?
Tradition!
Seriously, it sounds like a punch line.
Thank you! I was raised Reform Jewish and consider myself a committed agnostic (leaning toward atheist, fer sure, but hey), but I’ve always been repulsed and baffled by the way some Orthodox practice the Finding of Loopholes.
Like the “Shabbos Goy:” Not widely practiced, but yeeeghh: God commands us to honor the seventh day as the Sabbath, for on the seventh day God rested. The Orthodox are commanded that they must not work, must neither create nor destroy, must neither so much as light or extinguish a flame. Today that means not turning on or off a light.
But, but, what about… the lightbulb in the fridge? Okay, the Orthodox rebbe says: You can open and close the fridge, but only if you have unscrewed the bulb before sundown on Friday night.
But, but, what about… If I’m somewhere where someone didn’t unscrew the bulb?
Hmmm, the Orthodox rebbe ponders… Well, I’ve got it! You can get a non-Jew to do it for you! Since the non-Jew isn’t commanded to follow the Sabbath the way you are, you can get the non-Jew to open and close the fridge!
Or, uh, push the button to get the elevator!
Or, if you really, really need, to drive a car for you! Sure!
This kind of crappy reading around the intent of the law while fulfilling the letter in a lawyeristic way… It almost makes me want to start my own Orthodox sect, one that MUST HONOR THE INTENT of God’s Law by repeatedly cutting that wire at different points all around Manhattan.
I kinda like that idea. I dunno, maybe send a bit of scripture or something similar through it as a test signal before Shabbat.
Of course, I’m assuming there’s some form of consecration, ceremony or ritual before one is put up, rather than just slinging up a bit a cable.
ETA: This sort of thing’s a bit out of my experience, so I’m going by what seems right to me. Always open to better info on this. 
But synagogues and festive meals are much more accessible when you can bring your children in a stroller, and carry your house key in your pocket, and bring along a dish for the potluck. None of which you can do without an eruv if you abide by certain Jewish laws.
In theory an eruv simulates the walls of an ancient city, separating what’s inside from what’s outside in a clearly defined way. There are lots of debates about what is valid and what is not, but simply declaring the whole world inside an atmospheric eruv clearly wouldn’t be good enough.
Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, who was one of the great rabbinic thinkers of the 20th century and lived and taught on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, actually held that a Manhattan eruv based on a string or wire alone wasn’t enough–because the city is so big and so busy, his position was that you had to block traffic on the streets for the eruv to be legit (and a bunch of other stuff that I don’t fully understand). As a result, the rabbis of the Lower East Side refused to be a part of the Manhattan eruv for decades, and the lack of an eruv contributed significantly to the decline of the Orthodox Jewish community in the neighborhood (particularly the Modern Orthodox community, who have historically been the drivers of eruv building in NYC and aren’t as beholden to Rabbi Feinstein). Only in the last couple years did a couple of relatively liberal Orthodox rabbis step up and make a Lower East Side eruv happen.
Bottom lines: (1) it’s not that simple, and (2) there are real, thinking people who care a lot about this stuff and whose lives are actually impacted by it.
God: Well you went outside so I guess you have to go to Hell.
Dead Jewish Guy: Ah, but there was a wire!
God (shrugging): OK, you got me. LET HIM IN, PETER!
I have, however, no personal objection to mocking or otherwise being rude about specific examples of individuals misusing or exploiting religious belief for their own ends. There should be no barriers behind which evil people can hide.
Why do you have a claim on those resources?
And isn’t that the prerogative of MinPlenty, anyway?
Awww, but I like making fun of xtians dancing around definitions of “the eye of a needle”…
Just to appease some of the engineers in here, some eruvim do use the equivalent of a telegraph to determine if the eruv is intact or not. It still requires inspection prior to Shabbat, but there is an “alarm” that indicates if it still integral at the synagogue. St. Louis’ eruv had this circa 2002 or so, last I was there.
And as noted above, there are a lot of rules about eruvim, and the implications and definitions of “public ways” and so forth that can’t be enclosed. I know that the folks supporting one of Manhattan’s unhook it and run it across a busy street then re-hook it once a year to demonstrate it’s a “gate,” for example.
Simon Peter was not a good jew. Why would be be in charge of “heaven”?
i was thinking that, too: i would suspect that it needs to be visually approved by a person of some ranking, perhaps with a ceremony of some sort, otherwise testing it remotely would’ve been ok.
Which particular views did you have in mind?
If it’s a symbolic city wall, doesn’t that predate electricity? In a sense, the important thing is the inspection, not the wire.
Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain. (Ps 127, KJV) The builder or watchman must be doing the Lord’s work.
His views on the mental inferiority of people who adhere to a religion and his categorisation of atheists as “bright”.
A real imaginary line? So a complex line? Like a phasor?
