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Let Us Violate Shabbat So As To Sanctify It – The Holy Day and the Tel Aviv Railway “He who wants to enter the holiness of the [Sabbath] day must first lay down the profanity of clattering commerce, of being yoked to toil. He must go away from the screech of dissonant days, from the nervousness and fury of acquisitiveness and the betrayal in embezzling his own life. He must say farewell to manual work and learn to understand that the w |
No if you are Jewish you would still have to walk to synagoge even if there is a subway and or light rail. See this all the time in Buffalo NY on Hertel Ave which has light rail, Bus and Bikeway.
Isn’t “Modern Orthodox” an oxymoron?
I am inclined to believe so.
I once saw a “Progressive Primitive” Baptist church off US-58 in Virginia once.
'Modern Orthodox" generally refers to Orthodox Jews that attempt to obey all that tradition requires but still dress, work, and generally live like the surrounding population. The others try to live traditional lives and dress traditionally like their ancestors, either Europe or the Mediteranian countries. In the USA, Canada, and Europe, but not in Israel, many modern Orthodox will wear a yarmulke only in Synagogue, home, and Kosher restaurant.
Rabbi Marc Angel was my primary New York rabbi and teacher. He said, “David, you can certainly carry a subway token in your back pocket, and if the heavens open up, use it.” This was in reference to my
Sabbath walk from 16th Street and Third Avenue to the fifth building, now about 125 years old itself, of North America’s first Jewish congregation, formed in New Amsterdam in 1654, at 70th Street and Cenetral Park West. Rabbi Cardoza in Israel and Rabbi Angel New York are very good friends and on occasion visit each other’s schools.
In my opinion, not at all. You can follow the dictates of the Eternal (the wishes of the Eternal in Protestant Christianity) and still be ‘modern’ in all other respects.
I cannot, however, quite figure out (either in Torah or Talmud) how working to build a railway could possibly count as permissible Sabbath activity in any strict Orthodox sense. (Perhaps if the only purpose of the railway were to bring worshipers to temple who would not otherwise go … but even then, the mitzvah would be in the driving, not in the building, no?)
If I recall correctly, one of the points of irritation the Orthodox community in Los Angeles expressed polemically, concerning Jesus Christ as Mosiach, was the Biblical account of ‘the Sabbath was made for man’. If harvesting food for the hungry or poor is not permissible in Orthodoxy, how much less is working ‘down upon the railway’?
Actually, Orthodox Judaism is a label that doesn’t make sense that is specific to America, and I believe that in Israel, they don’t use it.
From Greek, orthos means “straight” and doxha means “glory” – this is translated to pravoslavni in Serbian (slava is glory). To say that someone is Orthodox (or Pravoslavni) means they are Christian, and worshiping in the “correct” way.
I went to a public lecture by the Bishop of North America for the Coptic (Oriental Orthodox) faith. This was sponsored by an engineering colleague who is from Egypt. The Bishop explained that they trace their faith community back to the 1st Century, and that their’s is one of the communities ringing the Eastern Mediterranean from that include Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Ephesus (Anatolia or West-Coast Turkey).
Of the established Christian communities and traditions, there were some deemed to be heresies, and the people who “won the argument” got to call themselves Orthodox. So Orthodox is the original “P.C.” but applied to the Christian religion.
Furthermore, Christianity arguably supports the principle of Separation of Church and State from the “render unto Caeser those things that are Caeser’s.” Actually, the ancient Jewish State had a king for secular authority and a prophet for religious authority, many times the king just went ahead and did things that the prophet preached against but the king did anyone, and the king and the people accepted the consequences.
If Mr. Netanyahu insisted “we must work on Saturday to complete the rail line for state security reasons” and some rabbis criticized him as violating a crucial Commandment of Jewish faith expression, and the “modernist” newspaper editors criticised “those religious extremists”, that would be the proper state of affairs.
For a rabbi to generate excuses as wh
ὀρθοδοξία, orthodoxia = an adherence to accepted and traditional beliefs, creeds or views. From orthodox, ortho = straight or true; doxa = opinion.
Briefly, the various Orthodox Christian churches (Greek, Russian, Coptic, Oriental, etc.), generally referred to as the Eastern Church are a consequence of The Great Schism of 1054, in which Christianity split into an Eastern Church centered in Constantinople and a Western Church centered in Rome, which later became the (Roman) Catholic Church.
Orthodox Judaism is an entirely different matter.
The struggle between the concept of a secular state and a theocracy has a long and often bloody history, including most major faiths.
I would not expect a reply from DaveKlepper untill after the Sabbath aka Shabbat is over. Matter of fact I probaly should not be on here either.
We won’t argue.
None of these fine doctrinal points has a place in secular governance, the only kind that has held out hope for mankind since the Declaration and Bill of Rights.
For the other kind, see Islam, Sharia Law and the replay of the Crusades we’re engaged in today.
Many countries border between secular and religious. The Queen or King of the British Commonwealth must be a member of the Anglican (and Episcopalian) Communion. Only an Anglican clergyman can publicly criticize the concept of Trinity. A`Jew is prohibited from doing so unless in a synagogue. Netanyahu defines himself as a mostly Secular Jew. While it is certainly possible that a Muslim or Christian or Druze could be elected Prime Minister or President of Israel (no law against it), it is extremely unlikely. In deferene to the religious, Muslims as well as Orthodox Jews, pork is not raised or sold. But although Netanyahu is careful to don a yarmjulke when attending any State occasion that involves prayer, as well as visiting Orthodox Jews, synagogues, Kosher restaurants,etc., he definest himself as mostly secular. Freedom of worship is protected, and there are even a few “Messianic” synagogue-churches for Jews who have converted to Christianity. The World Center of the Bahai Church is in Haifa!
The USA was founded on the principal of freedom of religion, and most Colonial era immigrants were escaping religious persecution. Freedom to vote actually came later. This was not important to USA political leadership during the post-WWII era, when the whole economiy was hitched to highway transportation, car sales, and cheap imported oil. This blind spot continues today with the current Administration that early-on replaced Mururak with Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood, with the “Arab Spring” supposed to bring in Democracy but brought in a horrible nightmare for Christian Cops. But all administrations were guilty, not just the latest. Replacing the Shah with Ayatollas. Blindness to Saudi involvement in Pentagon-World -Trade-Center. I have been arguing against this for possibly 70 years of my 84; and this, to me, goes hand-in-hand with favoring public (electric where economically feasible) transportation vs
What are you saying?
Again, what are you trying to say? Much of the above is only partially factual, if that.
Associated Press, Sept. 4
JERUSALEM — Israeli commuters began their work week Sunday with massive traffic jams and a cancellation of train service along one of the country’s busiest routes following a religious and political scuffle that had threatened to shake the governing coalition.
The crisis erupted over the weekend after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, under pressure from ultra-Orthodox coalition partners, made an 11th-hour decision to halt routine railway repairs scheduled on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath.
Orthodox Jewish law forbids work on the Sabbath, and a religious party in the coalition had threatened to quit the government unless Netanyahu halted the repairs.
Netanyahu’s transport minister, Yisrael Katz, canceled a key train route on the Tel Aviv - Haifa line Sunday because of the delayed repairs. The government dispatched extra buses for some 90,000 affected commuters.
The resulting traffic jams offered a physical illustration of the outsized power the leadership of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish minority wields in Israeli politics.
Schlimm, money for cheap oil went to educate against tolerance and for terrorism.
Only partially true? Point out the error, please.
Sure – and money for cheap consumer goods buys Chinese missiles aimed at the United States, helps prop up China’s mad puppet in North Korea and build “islands” in the South China sea.
It’s called “world trade,” holiest of holies. There’s nothing uniquely wrong with cheap oil bought from the Middle East – it helped our economy hum for a long time. Cheap domestic oil is much better, but just try to keep some politicians and their greenie retainers from monkey-wrenching that!
And the Saudi’s make sure they supply more cheap oil so the US producers go bankrupt trying to meet or beat the Saudi delivered price. The Saudi’s just ‘turn the spigot’; in North America they have to work for it.
You may disagree with my analysis, but again, without massive transfer of funds to states preaching “to kill an infadil is to get into heaven” and defining any non-Muslim as an infadil, we would not have ISIS and much else that is bad in the world today.
But now the terror that some of these countries produced has turned against some of them.