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Comment by js2 | Hacker News Reader

It's for keeping food warm. Observant Jews don't cook on Shabbat. All the food is prepared on Friday before Shabbat starts.

Elevators in some Miami Beach hotels have a Shabbat mode where they simply stop on every floor, open the doors, wait a minute, then close the doors. It's to allow observant Jews to use them without operating a switch.

We Jews are a funny bunch, finding ways to work around our 613 commandments without breaking them. You're generally not allowed to tear things on Shabbat, so observant Jews will pre-tear toilet paper and set aside a bunch of squares for the day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabbath_mode

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/613_commandments

https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/484233/jewish...

There are Eruvim all over the world, almost wherever there is a concentration of Orthodox Jews:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_places_with_eruvin

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In Israel, the cooking beforehand is done even by many non-observant Jews, just because those long-boiling recipes or the preparation of a big meal by sundown on Friday became such a big part of both Ashkenazi and Sephardi culture. My own friends in Israel are non-religious (so much so that how much they despise religious people is a frequent topic of their conversation) but their Shabbat food rituals seem impeccable, and indeed it is at people’s Shabbat dinners that I have done most of my socializing when visiting Israel.

I have a good friend who WAS observant of the Sabath when we were roommates. His new girlfriend, who was also Jewish, lived in the same apartment building 1 floor down. He'd frequently ask me to be his "Shabbat Goy". On Friday nights he and his girlfriend would like to watch a movie on their TV (VHS at that time). They'd start to watch the movie before Shabbat started, and I'd go down to their apartment at the designated time (after the movie), and turn off their TV for them. That arrangement was made BEFORE Shabbat obviously, as Jews can't ask a non-Jew to do "work" after Shabbat has started. I also attended many Shabbat dinners at his parents house. There were always a lot of questions I had, about the fridge light coming on when it was opened (they would unscrew the light(s) before Shabbat). They had an alarm system too, with motion sensors that would turn on the red LED whenever someone walked by them, so they covered the motion sensor during Shabbat. It was pretty fascinating to learn all this stuff as a non-Jew.

I cannot get over the irony of this religion of a famously malevolent and punitive god coming up with things like some fishing line on telephone poles to cheat that same god

It's not cheating! If the bible is supposed to be the word of god - perfect - then obviously any creative interpretations which a less faithful person might see as "loopholes" were actually intentionally left in there by him. Frankly, thinking you can second guess his lawmaking by deciding that you, a puny mortal, know what GOD HIMSELF meant better than he did when he had it written is arguably heretical!

My understanding is that it's the entire point actually. Jewish people believe that these loopholes are explicit rewards for studying God's teachings. They don't believe they are "tricking" god or doing anything untoward, but rather that they and their god are sharing a shit eating grin of "yup solved your puzzle, pretty great"

That being said, I have to laugh at a lot of the "Sabbath" mode stuff, because it's purposeful self deception. If you use an elevator at all, even in sabbath mode that is fully automated, just your physical presence is actuating several physical switches and logical systems, with plenty of sparks generated from relays opening and closing.