> Texting is not only a waste of time, the [rabbinical] authorities found, it encourages "immodest" exchanges which would not happen on the telephone or face to face.
I just... I know religion is a difficult topic for many people. I was raised Catholic (CCD once a week through 8th grade, completed all the sacraments, attended Mass nearly every weekend until I was 18 and left home), but became an atheist when I was in my early teens (privately, as my parents would have punished me had they known). I found a lot of things wrong with Catholicism, but one of the big issues I had was many parishoners' blind adherence to dogma, and their sudden inability to think critically where any aspect of religion was concerned. This struck me as something that could be -- and it turned out, is -- easily abused by religious leaders.
So this prohibition on texting just seems like a method of control to me. It feels cherry-picked, and the reason for banning it seems contrived. There are so many other ways to be "immodest" that it feels weird to focus on something like this. Where do these things come from? It seems so arbitrary and capricious.
Orthodox Judaism seems full of things like this, especially the prohibition on doing certain things on the Sabbath. I remember reading about how it's not ok to use an elevator on the Sabbath, and workarounds like elevators that automatically always stop at every floor, or waiting for a non-Jewish person to use the elevator to piggyback on their usage. It just feels so intellectually dishonest, like finding ways to follow the letter of the rules while completely ignoring their spirit.
[0] https://www.pri.org/stories/2012-01-25/kosher-phones-britain... (linked as a source from the posted Wikipedia article)
Orthodox Jews aren't like that. The book is the word of their deity. What is written is the law. The spirit doesn't come into it. If the deity didn't want you working around it, he'd have written that into the law.
> After all, most Christians ignore a huge swathe of very
> clear, very explicit rules in the Bible. Like eating pork,
> which you can't get much clearer than how it's stated in
> the Bible.
There is actually a whole group of people who believe in Orthodox Jewish teaching but don't adopt a Jewish identity or follow Jewish laws. The Rabbis teach them that it's enough just to follow the 7 Laws of Noah – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Laws_of_Noah
Specifically Orthodox Judaism. Most Jewish people (at least the ones I know) don't bother with all that stuff.
Same as Christianity, there are a lot of non-religious Jews. They follow Jewish culture (e.g. holidays, cuisine, and tradition), but don't adhere to strict dogma. Most of my Jewish friends will eat pork if you offer it to them, even if they wouldn't usually eat it at home because it's not a cultural norm.
But that's not really the point. There exist people who do strictly follow the religious aspects, and that's what I'm confused about.
When you keep going down the "why chain", you just end up with "I dunno, the holy book just says not to do it", or the more creative among believers will invent something they think isn't arguable, like "we do this to show our respect for our god". Which, to me, just reduces to people willingly allowing religious leaders -- fallible, corruptible humans -- to control them for whatever purpose they desire. And no matter how much I see how religious people get to where they are (indoctrination from birth, followed by unconscious fear of being rejected by their in-crowd), it still utterly puzzles me why so many people still go along with these systems of control that are largely there for the benefit of the leaders, not the followers.
I feel like people don't understand how mitzvos work, and therefore can't understand why we can sometimes "break" them.
Oftentimes one is allowed to use the loophole and still is rewarded for adhering to the mitzvah, even if they didn't do it (e.g. other comments here use examples of shabbos goy, shabbos elevator, selling chametz etc.). These cases are built into the mitzvah itself inherently, allll the way from way back when.
Jewish law is extremely complex, and we're allowed to use loopholes that the rabbis find, AND STILL we get rewarded for it if done properly and within the confines of Jewish Law.
That all said, I have no position in the kosher cell phone debate, let them have it if it makes them feel more comfortable. Besides the anti-porn arguments for it, it's less of a religious thing.
In this way, yes, the ban against texting is cherry picked, but only as much as everything else. The rabbis have basically decided that texting is bad, but being available for calls is good (a not unreasonable opinion), so they’ve called it “kosher” to invoke the authority of G-d to support their decision.
You can listen to Edward Feser on youtube for some the reasoning behind Catholic dogma.
I never said it was impossible to think critically when you are Catholic (or any other religion). But I do believe people willingly (or unconsciously) shut off their critical thinking centers whenever many topics surrounding their religion come up.
First, I would suggest that many things which seem "arbitrary and capricious" could be seen as signal to the listener that perhaps they don't quite understand the reasons behind the "arbitrary" thing (related: Chesterson's Fence [0]). Orthodox Judaism has a tradition of intense discussion and debate on _every single_ law, precept, and injunction, which leads to very few wholly arbitrary results. You may not agree with the outcome, but it's extremely unlikely that a law was enacted due to arbitrariness or malicious intent.
Regarding Shabbat ("Sabbath") elevators, do you understand the spirit of the law? What is the intent (spirit) of prohibiting usage of electricity on Shabbat? It is, broadly, to preserve something known as the "spirit of Shabbat" – a feeling of rest, calm, and cessation from weekday productive, creative, or goal-oriented, pursuits. I can tell you that in today's hyper-connected tech world, lack of active electronics on Shabbat is one of the nicest parts of my existence. It feels so good to turn off, disconnect, and spend time with people who are similarly focused on what's in front of them: food, family, friends, and deep discussion. When nobody is using devices, everybody is wholly present, and interactions are much more satisfying.
Halakha ("Jewish law") is very sensitive to the psychological state of its practitioners. Allowances which may appear as arbitrary "sneaky" loopholes are, in fact, carefully considered balances between necessities of life, psychology, autonomy, and community. To ignore any of those elements is to miss the point of the balance that halakha strives for. For instance, the Kosher Phone was produced for _some_ Orthodox Jewish communities whose constituent decisors (TFA: "by some interpretations") decided that children texting was harmful to the character of their kids.
To state that conversation style and allowances change with the medium (ie. text vs voice) is, I think, a fairly reasonable assertion. Children will communicate differently via voice vs. text. Whether you want kids in your community (or your own children) to engage in that style of conversation is up to you, and your community's values and perceptions, but to state that disallowing such discourse is "arbitrary" "cherry-picked" "dogma" is to say more about your own understanding than the decision itself, and the thinking that went in to making it.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence
Prohibitions against work were made because Jewish people have been exploited to exhaustion by enslaving Egyptians and additionally to make a day for worship. It's self-serving, though. not altogether bad. The exact rules made were quite arbitrary though, less exacting rules suffice to keep a day off and as "work" gets easier, the prohibitions should be delicately relaxed without essentially cheating around strict letter.
The thing about both (some) Amish and (most) Orthodox Jews is the scorched earth approach. If they wanted to prevent the problem such as the excess, there are better solutions like limits. Time and amount.
From my perspective, I see the idea of the "Shabbos goy" to be, at best, weird, and at worst, acting in bad faith. To me, an Orthodox Jew is saying "I'm not allowed to do these things, and do not want to do them because I prefer the comfort and equanimity of being disconnected", but then turning around and using the fruits of others who do not adhere to those restrictions.
Essentially people who use a Shabbos goy, to me, are trying to have their cake and eat it too. They want to benefit from the existence of the technology they are taking a break from, while pushing responsibility for that technology on others. Perhaps acting in this manner allows a practitioner to feel like they're preserving the spirit of Shabbat and gain benefit from the whole things, but to me, it's just dishonest. Obviously practitioners disagree, as is their prerogative. Just as it is mine to believe that people will often go through as many mental contortions as needed to justify their actions.
Once teenagers started buying their own subscriptions, it was decided to move the blacklisting into the HW - hence the kosher phones.
Fun fact: since the Jewish orthodox community is relatively poor, yet a strong "buying force" due to their big number, they were able to negotiate very low rates with the MNOs. To prevent secular people from taking advantage of these rates, the Kosher Lines include big fines if used for incoming/outgoing call on Sabath...
For more info: the translated page from Wikipedoa - https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...
I wish there was an "old folk" interface to switch on in Android ... spent the entire Saturday hiding and removing unnecessary clutter so she can only see the dialer, contacts, sms , camera, gallery and whatsapp on her home page.
There is a pretty interesting market for various internet-interface devices among religious cultures.
No web browser. No Instagram.
Just podcasts, Music, and Netflix.
AirPods work perfectly, and Overcast syncs my podcasts with my main phone. Seamless.