I am sitting in the living room in my parents house, hunched over the coffee table. On my right, there are several toilet paper roles. On my left, a growing pile of separated toilet paper squares. I am to finish separating it all, then stack it all neatly for future, personal use. I am 10 years old, and I am prepping wiping resources for “kosher” use on Shabbat, the holy day of the week.
No, I am not making this up. Jewish law actually extends to the specifics of ass-wiping.
In fact, I can’t really think of an area which Jewish law does not cover. Judaism is – by far – the most complex religion known to man. The restriction to “work” on Shabbat has resulted in laws about the proper way to break an egg-shell on the holy day, what people can carry in their pockets and how many steps we are allowed to walk in public. The use of umbrella is prohibited on Shabbat due to the “construction of a new structure”. Tearing toilet paper is the demolishing of an existing one, and therefore also prohibited.
The neurotic nature of the religion extends to the non-holy days of the week. There are laws regarding the prayers we must utter before traveling, washing our hands, going to sleep, peeing or having sex – you name the activity, there is a prayer for it. The order of prayers is critical, too, since some are more important than others and must be spoken in proper sequence. Food is another major topic – what is kosher, how it must be killed/cooked/eaten/blessed upon - it goes on and on.
Collectively, it seems that we Jews suffer from a mild form of autism. The rational, intellectual, masculine mind is working overtime, resulting in some kind of an obsessive-compulsive tendency to logically analyze everything around us. This disposition yielded some of the most brilliant minds known to humanity (Freud and Einstein, to name a few). It is also the reason why Israel has more Nobel prize winners per capita than the United States, France and Germany; that it produces more scientific papers per capita than any other nation by a large margin, and that it has attracted the most venture-capital investment per capita in the world, 30 times more than all of Europe combined. No wonder we are so hated.
However, when curbed by the shackles of organized religion, the over-analytical Jewish mind is forced into what can best be described as a manic form of “mental masturbation”.
Allow me to provide an example.
Take the simple biblical statement known as “thy shall not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk”. A well balanced mind would clearly understand the spirit of this restriction – we must always exercise tactfulness and compassion, especially when engaging in a potentially cruel act of eating other beings. Now, I can see how the overzealous conscious-objector might even prohibit the consumption of scrambled egg fajitas (thanks Andy). It’s a stretch, but I can see the connection. To sum it up, cooking a baby animal in its mother’s offering is simply an act of insensible cruelty.
Yay Bible.
Now let us peek into how Jewish law deals with this straight forward statement. Orthodox Jews are prohibited from consuming, mixing or even sharing kitchenware between any type of dairy or meat products. A Jewish kitchen will always have two sinks, to ensure the separation extends to the final cleaning process. Kosher Restaurants can either be dairy or non-dairy, and the average orthodox Jew waits at least 3-4 hours between the consumption of meat and dairy to avoid mixing them internally. Thank god – no pun intended - we are not required to have two separate toilets. Jewish law-books are filled with literally thousands of pages containing discussions between rabbis about the specifics of dairy/meat laws.
As I said - Mental Masturbation.
Modern days have produced ample opportunities for Rabbis to develop this pointless art. I recently read an “Ask the Rabbi” column that discussed whether the use of a bionic eye is permitted on Shabbat. And don’t get me started on the complexities introduced by Internet and Smartphones.
Since as a Jew you are under the obligation to practice 613 base laws and their derivatives (regardless of your religious beliefs), it is practically impossible for one to go through life without sinning. The result? An endless mind-fuck of rules, regulations and analytic discussions, designed to guide you through the ocean of looming offenses.
I’ll end with a short anecdote which beautifully captures the point of this piece. A dear friend who is also a strict observing Jew has visited me as of late and stayed for Shabbat. Me and a few other friends were sitting around the table, laughing and conversing, when we noticed he was eyeing a water-pipe with an expression of longing and envy. He could not, of course, use it – it is forbidden to light a fire on Shabbat. But worry not - one of my non-Jewish friends found a creative, rationally kosher solution – he filled the pipe with smoke, took out the burning bud, and handed it to my Jew-Bro who inhaled it with a satisfied smile.
The only question which still remains is for the Rabbis to contemplate - what Jewish blessing should one say before he or she puffs the magic dragon?
Amen.