- the term kosher applies directly to food, not technology; this is a metaphor
- the insularity of a particular subgroup of Jews should not be considered to apply to all the rest of us. Even for most Orthodox Jews, turning off your phone Friday evening and turning it back on Saturday evening is a perfectly cromulent option.
> the term kosher applies directly to food, not
> technology; this is a metaphor
Source: דובר עברית
But most of the world is goyim, and an awful lot of people don't know what they're talking about. They hear "kosher phone" and immediately their minds turn to wondering if there are phones that Jews can't use. I have been asked on multiple occasions if I only buy kosher pickles, and once whether it was cultural appropriation for non-Jews to buy kosher salt.
So when someone decides to label a phone as kosher, I think an explanatory note is in order. There are no halachic requirements for phones that don't also apply to lights and fireplaces.
Interestingly, the opposite of kosher in this mishna is פסול, which I'd translate as "invalid".
Also interesting is the apparent relationship between the word כשר and the modern Hebrew מכשיר, meaning "device", or "thing that does something specific".
Edit: took me another moment to realize the root is used a lot in modern Hebrew, such as in the word כושר (ironically pronounced like the English kosher), which means (physical) fitness.
[0] https://he.m.wikisource.org/wiki/%D7%9E%D7%A9%D7%A0%D7%94_%D...
[1] Pashkevil from an ultra-orthodox community warning people off the internet and not to use non-kosher phones: https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%90%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%98%D7%A8...
Everyone here is discussing Hebrew and semantics but I see what you did.
It's common to see orthodox jewish doctors who are on call, walk out of a synagouge while praying to take a call. Or for emergency medics to have a walkie talkie that they can be buzzed on if they have to go to an emergency call.
We could get into a discussion about the details of what that means and how a society can function when people would die if certain things aren't taken care of (say maintaining the electrical grid), but that's beyond the scope of this forum. At the most simplistic level, I'd equate it to round the world tech support. We don't need people in one place being able to stay up 24/7 to provide 24/7 support, we can have people located in many different parts of the world handing off the baton as planet rotates. So the same would be true for the sabbath observant techie on call. Most likely its possible for someone else to do it. Of course, this is more complicated in Israel (than say in the US) where the person doing the call will more likely be jewish, but again, that's getting into the weeds and beyond the scope of this forum. In the US, you'd probably see orthodox jewish tech coworkers doing sat night/sunday calls but not friday night/saturday calls for weekend calls.
They aren't supposed to be using the internet, speaking to people of other genders... sending and receiving multi-media, etc.
Secular society is battling many problems (tech addiction, isolation, burnout, collapse of community etc) which religious society is protected from because of these superficially backwards practices.
As we watch our society grapple with issues that the religious community doesn't suffer from, won't at some point it make sense to question whether we are the rational ones?
To make this point another way, the more people on HN learn about the issues of tech addiction, lack of privacy etc, the more their technological preference "converges" to what you are currently making fun of.
The real hard question we each need to answer is to determine which really dumb things we believe despite our intelligence.
PS Isaac Newton spent a large portion of his life on alchemy and the hidden mysterious of the Bible. We all have blind spots, we just don't know they're there.
The Christian god wants people to behave in a certain way, and has made laws accordingly. Following the letter of the law but not the spirit is defying god, and is bad.
The Jewish god has made laws as a test of faith. Following the letter of the law but not the spirit is creative, and is fine.
After all, "it is not in heaven": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oven_of_Akhnai
But I fail to see how this is relevant to kosher phones. How is God being tricked? The claim is that God desires purity, which is damaged by unfiltered exposure to the outside world, and so adherents who want cell phones must purchase models that will not give them easy access to temptation.
It's a pretty reasonable position if you accept the initial premise. It's like not buying heroin because you know it's harmful.
If by "them" you mean religious community as a whole, this statement is true.
If by "them" you mean actual users, this statement is a lie
This kind of devices are forced on users by community leaders as a method of limiting access to independent information.
Large scale consumer technology has a lot of central planning in it, by nature of how specialised the skills required to produce many aspects of it are.
But central planning has its tail risks and other downsides as history attests.
I'm curious about how communities can be better empowered to make these choices for themselves, be it how moderation is done on social media, or what features are prioritised in consumer electronics.
The problem is that _my_ two important features are different from _your_ two important features. Almost by definition, no reduced feature phone would be fit for a large audience, unless that large audience has a single common denominator. Like with this Kosher Phone and it's religious target demographic.
We're still a long way from there RE smartphones, though projects like the PinePhone with hardware switches for things like microphone, camera, WiFi etc, along with a less locked down OS perhaps show a path to achieving this.
They have a severe lack of information which brings them to rely upon their leaders (rabbis) for every single piece of advice, even not pertaining to their religious needs directly.
An interesting challenge. I imagine the market is large enough to support such a device.
I remember helping a family member still in the community, but after I had left, using an email-as-the-browser service to get around the kosher phone some time back (not sure if this is still possible with the current kosher phone version). I realized something like that must exist so I found https://www.labnol.org/internet/receive-web-pages-by-email/1... for them. But that service doesn't seem to work anymore.
A different family member works on the opposite side, people call him to whitelist websites from their kosher filtering software so they can visit it. He has to check it out and then allows it if it is ok. But having these filters is a requirement for having a PC.
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