#halakha

halakhah is a law code, but you can also think of it like a self-sufficient, self-enclosed academic system. when one tries to explain an academic argument or conclusion to someone who doesn’t, for example, know what the word dissertation means or how to present a thesis, they do so knowing their audience lacks the tools to evaluate this information according to its own standards of academic rigor.

now, it is not that halakhah is explicitly too mystical to explain, or that non-Jews are somehow not smart enough to understand it. anyone CAN come to learn all of the necessary information about how halakhah functions if they set their mind to it; but doing so is a lot of work that most people simply won’t dedicate to a topic they aren’t professionally interested in or which possesses no relevance to their life. Jews routinely dedicate that amount of work because it is indeed very, very relevant to our lives.

So, let me get this straight... the entire religion (of Judaism) is built around legal loopholes? Is that what I’m gathering here? (Feel free to correct me!)

And it remains relevant to people (gentiles) who characterize Judaism as rules lawyering or all about loopholes or worse, who imply we are trying to be "sneaky" or "pull one over on God."

My answer:

the religion is built around living in an ethical society per our contract (covenant) with G-d. but you can’t just have a bunch of words without putting them to use, & understanding them in practice, you know? the fulfillment of the covenant is a living discussion.

it’s not legal loopholes, because a loophole is often an inadequacy in the law that gets taken advantage of, but these are all built-in, part of our understanding. In this case, we have a contract (covenant), and we’re going to put it to use in every way possible, explore every inch of it, turn it inside out, and apply it to real life examples, define the parameters, argue those definitions, and then survey the conclusions.

I can say “you need to say the evening shema (a prayer) in the evening” but we can’t just say that, we need to explore a bunch of related things, like:

when in the evening does this happen? is there a difference between twilight and evening? if we say the evening prayer can be said from the time the priests partake of teruma, then when is that? if it’s the first watch of the evening, how many watches are there? if you were out all night for a wedding, but it’s not yet dawn, is it too late to recite the evening prayer? — IN SEVERAL THOUSAND YEARS, KE$HA WILL WRITE TIK TOK, AND WE’LL NEED TO KNOW WHAT TO DO IN CASE OF PARTYING UNTIL YOU SEE SUNLIGHT!

— when do they (the priests) ritually bathe in preparation for this [taking of teruma]? what about when poor people who cannot afford extra candles - do we consider how early they eat an evening meal in order to make sure they can afford the light [when we define evening]?

why did we discuss evening prayer before morning prayer? why does torah give us night before day? when is bedtime for most people? can we say the evening prayer until dawn? if yes, people might put off the prayer until dawn, which could lead to laziness or mistakes.

Also, when is dawn? but more prudently at the moment, when is evening? evening is when the stars are visible, but...how many stars? also, if you are lying alone in a dark house and can’t see the sky, how do you determine if it is too early or too late for your evening shema?

and that whole discussion is from the beginning of the Talmud, in its hyper-condensed form. That is what we do.

It’s not a series of loopholes and ways to weasel out of doing something. It's an intentional exploration of how something is done right, what doing it means, how we can accomplish it.

nothing gets taken for granted, everything is questioned, debated, discussed until it is understood enough to be applicable. and there may be lots of ways to understand.

if someone sees this line of thinking and goes “ah, loopholes to get out of it/wiggle away from it,” then you are mistaking lacework for loopholes.

....and if Kesha sees sunlight, it is now too late for her to say her bedtime shema. she should recite morning shema instead.

(Also, I presume that - like in Christianity - this varies across denominations. If so, how?)

So there's a few different points, but the main one is the minyan (quorum). Judaism can be conceived of in many ways, and one of those is as a legal system that creates certain obligations. One of these is prayer, and specifically reciting certain prayers; primarily the Sh'ma (Hear, O Israel...), the Amida (a prayer usually consisting of nineteen blessings), and the Mourner's Kaddish (said by those in mourning or commemorating the day of someone's death).

The Sh'ma and Amida can be recited at home (and thus fulfill the obligation), but not in their entirety. Each has a section that can only be performed with a minyan. It's not wrong to perform them without a minyan, but with a minyan is better (I suspect this is analogous to receiving the Eucharist in e.g. a hospital bed as opposed to in the sanctuary). The Mourner's Kaddish can only be recited with a minyan. Reciting the Mourner's Kaddish is a legal obligation and it's impossible to recite it without a minyan (not literally, it's not a ten-part harmony or anything, but it's no more valid as the Kaddish than unblessed bread and wine are as the Eucharist). If you don't personally need to recite the Kaddish, you still have a duty to your fellow Jews to enable them to do so by showing up to services.

a few years ago, i was getting a little less religious, and i started showering on shabbos.

since then, i've gotten more religious than i was as a kid (no more tablet k for me), but i still (somtimes) shower on shabbos.

why? because, contrary to popular belief, there isn't technically anything halachically problematic with the act of immersing yourself with water and cleaning yourself with soap on shabbos.

it's everything else that's a problem

so, here are my list of rules for how to shower on shabbos

you cannot break even a single strand of your hair. one of the 39 av melachot is shearing, and this applies to your own hair as well. there are several restrictions associated with this: - don't brush or comb your hair like you normally would. use a giant brush that has no chance of breaking any of your hairs - if your hair gets wet, don't mess with it at all. hair is weaker when it's wet personally, i just don't wash my hair when i shower on shabbos. it's too much of a hassle, and i don't want to take any risks

no hot water. look, some people will say that it's fine to use hot water, because the act of turning on the hot water is not what directly causes water to be boiled in the heater. but boiling water is explicitly banned via the av melacha of cooking, so i personally don't think it's a good idea to even get close to violating that. so, when i shower on shabbos, i use only cold water. it sucks

no bar soap. using a bar of soap is really close to the av melacha of grinding, which also bans grating. so i don't use bar soap when i shower on shabbos

no wringing out towels. wringing garments is banned by the av melacha of washing clothes, and people wear towels. even if you don't like that logic, there are still plenty of gezeirot barring the wringing of anything - from sponges to loofahs to washcloths - because it falls under the category of separating things (and if you don't like that either, well, that's a lot more established halacha from shulchan aruch 320.)