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As on Orthodox Jew, while I don't have anything against this and it sounds like a fun hobby project, I don't like that it misleads regarding what Jewish law act

As on Orthodox Jew, while I don't have anything against this and it sounds like a fun hobby project, I don't like that it misleads regarding what Jewish law actually requires. As several others have mentioned, there is absolutely no problem with keeping a server running on the sabbath - computers aren't Jews (Jewish law only expects Jews to keep the sabbath). If it's Jews working to generate the electricity (most "modern" or "yeshivish" Orthodox Jews don't believe this is a problem; I don't know what fraction of "ultra-" Orthodox Jews disagree with that), any public cloud outside of Israel should suffice. If you're concerned with electricity, why not worry that Jews may be working to maintain the server's internet connection (again, this is trivially solved by not hosting it in Israel - all it takes is a non-Jewish majority to provide a reasonable presumption that the workers probably aren't Jewish)? If you're worried about Jewish users accessing it on the sabbath (in my opinion the least far-fetched concern, but not one addressed by the site), the complete solution would be to shut it down for ~49 hours every week starting from ~sunset on Friday in east Asia - this doesn't require using batteries or really anything special about the site's hardware or even software. Finally, why call it a 'kosher' search engine when almost anyone interested in such a thing would understand that as being about filtering the search results? Edit: If you assume that using electricity and/or internet that are maintained by Jews on the sabbath is a problem, I guess you might be able to make a case for avoiding indexing sites in Israel or at all during the sabbath, since then you'd be benefitting indirectly from the work of the Jews that maintained the infrastructure - however, I think it's safe to assume that the vast majority of the internet is not served using infrastructure actively supported by Jews during the sabbath so even assuming you're concerned about this, the final answer would probably still be that indexing during the sabbath is fine.

heisbsissi 6y ago
As a gentile, it seems pretty obvious to me that this is borderline satire. You sound like Devin Nunes apoplectic about how it is not actually one of his farm animals criticizing him on twitter.
- emosenkis 6y ago
  Sorry if I came across as apopleptic - I'm mostly not at all confident that most gentiles or secular Jews would readily identify it as satire - when I clicked on the link, I expected to see something real.
  - helge9210 6y ago
    If there are kosher phone numbers, kosher internet, and plans to build kosher power plants, why not kosher search engine. Whatever makes more money to issuers of kashrut compliance papers and kashrut inspectors.
  - monkeycantype 6y ago
    I'm hoping that it is something more warmer than satire, that the author is willingly embracing self aware absurdity. The whole thing, from the choice of domain name jewjewjew.com, with the ridiculous triple repetition, to me suggests a person with a wonderful and kind sense of humour. If that's not what this is, then it's something so strange I don't think I'm going to get my head around it.
    - wtracy 6y ago
      The hacker community has a tradition of pet projects that take an arbitrary requirement to the logical extreme just to see what's possible. I don't really see this as any different from the people trying to browse the web from a Commodore 64, or implement a web server entirely in Bash.
  - heisbsissi 6y ago
    Yeah fair enough, I just figured especially with the url it's some Borat subtle type with technical know how, not some work will set you free nut.
- rsynnott 6y ago
  I think this sort of thing reads as absurd in Christian majority cultures mostly because mainstream Christianity does not currently have many restrictions which inconvenience people day to day. Back when it did, they did stuff that was at least as weird; did you know that both beavers and certain types of geese were regionally considered to be fish to get around the no meat on Fridays thing?
sukilot 6y ago
Jews exist outside of Israel. Saying that an organization with majority non Jews probably has no Jews working on it is bizarrely innumerate.
- amadeuspagel 6y ago
  From: http://www.thebigquestions.com/2020/04/15/goofus-gallant-and-the-law/ http://www.thebigquestions.com/2020/04/15/goofus-gallant-and... >You have three pieces of meat, two kosher, one not. You lose track of which is which. Can you eat them? Answer, according to (my memory of Sternberg’s account of) the Talmud: Each individual piece of meat has a 2/3 chance of being kosher. So if you choose one of them and ask “Is this kosher?”, a “yes” answer gives you a 2/3 chance to be right and a “no” answer gives you only a 1/3 chance to be right. A 2/3 chance is better than a 1/3 chance, so you should say yes. Repeat three times and you’re allowed to eat all of the meat. >There is much that is troubling here, because that strategy actually gives you a 100% chance of eating a non-kosher piece of meat, so it matters whether you inquire about each piece separately or whether you inquire about all three as a group. I’m not sure what principle the Talmud invokes to settle that issue. But that’s not the point that concerns us here. The point here is that we’re instructed to focus strictly on probabilities, without regard to any measure of how bad it would be to be wrong in either direction. >You’re traveling to town with a left pocket full of coins designated for charity and a right pocket full of coins designated for your personal expenses. (In certain circumstances, you’re required to designate these coins in advance, and cannot substitute a coin from one pocket for a coin from the other, even if they’re otherwise identical.) You fall off your horse, and the coins all spill out into one great heap. >If there were more coins in your left pocket to begin with, then each individual coin has a greater-than-fifty-percent chance to be a charity coin, so each individual coin must be given to charity. If there were more in your right pocket, you can spend all the coins on yourself. >You take in an abandoned child. Should you raise him as a Jew? It depends on whether he was born as a Jew. Suppose you don’t have that information. Answer: If the majority of your neighbors are Jewish, you assume he’s Jewish. If not, not. >(A later commentary amends this prescription by directing your attention not to the majority of your neighbors but to a majority of those neighbors who are of such character that they would abandon a child.)
helge9210 6y ago
>people or Jews I like the distinction you make here.
- warrenpj 6y ago
  I don't see the distinction. The context is >computers are not people or jews Jews are a subset of people.
  - helge9210 6y ago
    As non-jewish citizen of Israel I see this distinction every day. I'm surprised Orthodox Jew would admit it in the open.
    - emosenkis 6y ago
      I'm still not sure what distinction you think I made... what I intended was: 1. All Jews are people 2. Computers are not people 3. Therefore computers are not Jews As a Jewish citizen of both Israel and the US, I understand that it can be hard to exist as a minority in your own country, and I'm sure it's harder in Israel, which doesn't have separation of religion & state.
      - compsciphd 6y ago
        it even worse than that for people trying to take issue with you. if one has a problem with the statement "people or jews", one would generally assume this removes "jews" from the group of "people". and hence jews aren't people.
- rsynnott 6y ago
  Inclusive or, I assume (from my limited understanding, Judaism considers some rules to only apply to Jews, so it would make sense to consider Jews and Gentiles separately here). Total side note, but I’ve noticed that programmers (including myself) are more prone to read English or as xor than, for want of a better term, normal people. Not sure why this is.
onyva 6y ago
Also nothing to do with "Judaism", rather more of the ludicrousness of Eastern European rabbinical orthodoxy holier than though attitude that made them the most hated social group in Israel, mostly due to their blatant hypocrisy (i.e. object the legalization of prostitution in Israel, while they are the largest beneficiaries of it by percentage). Sort of kidnapped and suffocated to the death the essence of Judaism and reduced it into a cult.
- Jekyll-Jacobson 6y ago
  We need to fend off the hijackers and reclaim OUR religion. Hiloniism is rather the coward’s way.
- hevelvarik 6y ago
  Only a Jew speaking about other Jews gets away with this type of shitpost on hackers news.
himinlomax 6y ago
So how do you know if you're compliant? Can you do some A/B testing?
asdfman123 6y ago
As a guy who's 1/8th Jewish, I still don't feel comfortable clicking on that URL at work for fear someone might get the wrong idea on what it's about.
- sulam 6y ago
  I'm confused, is there a usage of the word 'kosher' that isn't safe at work? Are you worried that they may think you're Jewish and discriminate against you? p.s. You may know this, but from the religious POV, you are either Jewish or not, there's no 1/8th Jewish. If your mother was Jewish, you are too, all the way up your family tree. Either that or if you converted. :)
  - kevinschumacher 6y ago
    probably referring to the domain name...
    - sulam 6y ago
      Ha, I didn't even notice the domain, thanks!
  - asdfman123 6y ago
    Just to get pedantic, aren't we all relatives if you go back 1000+ years?
    - ricree 6y ago
      As I understand it, the strict definition of Jewish descent is purely. You have to go back around 100-200k years to reach the most recent common matrilineal ancestor, and I'm reasonably confident she was not Jewish.
      - tw04 6y ago
        100-200k years? Based on... what? Judaism's earliest trace lies at about 1500BC... so not even close to 100k years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_Judaism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_Judaism
refurb 6y ago
Just random observation - when I visited Israel I was astounded how nearly complete the sabbath shutdown is. In the US, the only day that comes close is Christmas Day and it’s still not even close. My wife and I struggled to find dinner and drove around for an hour or so until we found an Arab place that was open. Pretty much the only place in town that was open. Then sunset comes and everyone comes out. If you travel to Israel, plan for it!
- bszupnick 6y ago
  I live in Israel and always felt terrible for tourists who accidentally got stuck! Depending where you are you can end up with no public transportation, no grocery stores, restaurants, shops, museums, anything!
  - ludamad 6y ago
    Is there a party scene at all on the Sabbath?
    - ponsin 6y ago
      sure, in cities with a large non-religious population like Tel Aviv or a large Arab population like Haifa
  - AuryGlenz 6y ago
    My wife and I arrived in France the same day as a holiday. All the grocery stores and restaurants were closed and we had absolutely no food - we spent an hour driving/walking from place to place. Defeated and on our way back to our car to go to our rental, our savior appeared. A pizza truck.
    - apexalpha 6y ago
      Do all shops and restaurants stay open on holidays in the US?
      - 6y ago
ashtonkem 6y ago
B&H photo (run by Orthodox Jews out of NYC) stops accepting orders during the sabbath in their time zone. You can keep browsing, but you can’t generate work for them. This seems like a decent compromise, and it’s definitely not hurting their business.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  > And it’s definitely not hurting their business. I would question that conclusion. There have been times in the past I've wanted to order from B&H, but could not because it was on the Sabbath. In most cases, I just keep looking until I found the item on a different website. I'm sure they consider the loss of business worthwhile to comply with their religion, but there is a cost.
  - nullc 6y ago
    > but there is a cost. It may be less than you suspect because the regular bubble in their ordering pipeline might give them time to deal with suppliers, maintain stock, improve their website, maintain systems, relax and refocus, etc. I doubt it works out better than not doing it at least economically, but there may be enough benefit to offset most of the costs. The times I've run into the B&H sabbath outage, I just waited and ordered later. There are more thing in my life than just ordering things as fast as possible, and I respect a business for having other priorities. (Plus, B&H is just generally a really good supplier)
    - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
      > There are more thing in my life than just ordering things as fast as possible. On a purely personal level, it's not so much the speed as it is the need to get it done and move on with my life. If I need to order something, I want to just do it and forget about it for a few days (or whatever) until it arrives in the mail. If I have to come back later, that's one more thing for my mental to-do list.
    - m-zuber 6y ago
      >It may be less than you suspect because the regular bubble in their ordering pipeline might give them time to deal with suppliers, maintain stock, improve their website, maintain systems, relax and refocus, etc. the thing is, the bubble they have includes not doing anything on this list :)
Wowfunhappy 6y ago
...so, any theories as to who made this and what the purpose was? I mean, maybe it is just a hobby project, but it's a bit of an odd one if the requirements that don't exist at all.
AdamN 6y ago
My understanding is that making a non–Jewish person work on the Sabbath is also forbidden. Granted, this was just a schoolmate of mine in Brooklyn saying this but I have no reason to doubt the claim. It does seem like electricity gets a huge carveout though as long as the initial startup wasn't initiated on the Sabbath. One sees that with Sabbath elevators where all the buttons are on and you can walk on without pushing a button and walk off at the correct floor. It still consumes electricity, you're just not making a spark to initiate the work.
- compsciphd 6y ago
  consuming electricity isn't a problem. doing things defined as "work" is a problem. work is in quotes, as it doesn't mean doing a job. it also doesn't mean the physics meanin. As the simplest example: take rabbis in a synagogue. They are doing their jobs. Another more complicated example: there's no fundamental difference between what an individual can do to prepare a meal they are serving on the sabbath and what caterers can do. Both can't do things defined as "work", but obviously the caterers are doing their job. Then there's is the whole interplay between biblical law and rabbinic law
ebg13 6y ago
> As several others have mentioned, there is absolutely no problem with keeping a server running on the sabbath This is not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that Borer (separating/filtering) is one of the forbidden categories of work.
- compsciphd 6y ago
  this is too inside baseball, but a cute joke.

heisbsissi 6y ago

As a gentile, it seems pretty obvious to me that this is borderline satire. You sound like Devin Nunes apoplectic about how it is not actually one of his farm animals criticizing him on twitter.

emosenkis 6y ago
Sorry if I came across as apopleptic - I'm mostly not at all confident that most gentiles or secular Jews would readily identify it as satire - when I clicked on the link, I expected to see something real.
- helge9210 6y ago
  If there are kosher phone numbers, kosher internet, and plans to build kosher power plants, why not kosher search engine. Whatever makes more money to issuers of kashrut compliance papers and kashrut inspectors.
- monkeycantype 6y ago
  I'm hoping that it is something more warmer than satire, that the author is willingly embracing self aware absurdity. The whole thing, from the choice of domain name jewjewjew.com, with the ridiculous triple repetition, to me suggests a person with a wonderful and kind sense of humour. If that's not what this is, then it's something so strange I don't think I'm going to get my head around it.
  - wtracy 6y ago
    The hacker community has a tradition of pet projects that take an arbitrary requirement to the logical extreme just to see what's possible. I don't really see this as any different from the people trying to browse the web from a Commodore 64, or implement a web server entirely in Bash.
- heisbsissi 6y ago
  Yeah fair enough, I just figured especially with the url it's some Borat subtle type with technical know how, not some work will set you free nut.
rsynnott 6y ago
I think this sort of thing reads as absurd in Christian majority cultures mostly because mainstream Christianity does not currently have many restrictions which inconvenience people day to day. Back when it did, they did stuff that was at least as weird; did you know that both beavers and certain types of geese were regionally considered to be fish to get around the no meat on Fridays thing?

sukilot 6y ago

Jews exist outside of Israel. Saying that an organization with majority non Jews probably has no Jews working on it is bizarrely innumerate.

amadeuspagel 6y ago
From: http://www.thebigquestions.com/2020/04/15/goofus-gallant-and-the-law/ http://www.thebigquestions.com/2020/04/15/goofus-gallant-and... >You have three pieces of meat, two kosher, one not. You lose track of which is which. Can you eat them? Answer, according to (my memory of Sternberg’s account of) the Talmud: Each individual piece of meat has a 2/3 chance of being kosher. So if you choose one of them and ask “Is this kosher?”, a “yes” answer gives you a 2/3 chance to be right and a “no” answer gives you only a 1/3 chance to be right. A 2/3 chance is better than a 1/3 chance, so you should say yes. Repeat three times and you’re allowed to eat all of the meat. >There is much that is troubling here, because that strategy actually gives you a 100% chance of eating a non-kosher piece of meat, so it matters whether you inquire about each piece separately or whether you inquire about all three as a group. I’m not sure what principle the Talmud invokes to settle that issue. But that’s not the point that concerns us here. The point here is that we’re instructed to focus strictly on probabilities, without regard to any measure of how bad it would be to be wrong in either direction. >You’re traveling to town with a left pocket full of coins designated for charity and a right pocket full of coins designated for your personal expenses. (In certain circumstances, you’re required to designate these coins in advance, and cannot substitute a coin from one pocket for a coin from the other, even if they’re otherwise identical.) You fall off your horse, and the coins all spill out into one great heap. >If there were more coins in your left pocket to begin with, then each individual coin has a greater-than-fifty-percent chance to be a charity coin, so each individual coin must be given to charity. If there were more in your right pocket, you can spend all the coins on yourself. >You take in an abandoned child. Should you raise him as a Jew? It depends on whether he was born as a Jew. Suppose you don’t have that information. Answer: If the majority of your neighbors are Jewish, you assume he’s Jewish. If not, not. >(A later commentary amends this prescription by directing your attention not to the majority of your neighbors but to a majority of those neighbors who are of such character that they would abandon a child.)

helge9210 6y ago

>people or Jews I like the distinction you make here.

warrenpj 6y ago
I don't see the distinction. The context is >computers are not people or jews Jews are a subset of people.
- helge9210 6y ago
  As non-jewish citizen of Israel I see this distinction every day. I'm surprised Orthodox Jew would admit it in the open.
  - emosenkis 6y ago
    I'm still not sure what distinction you think I made... what I intended was: 1. All Jews are people 2. Computers are not people 3. Therefore computers are not Jews As a Jewish citizen of both Israel and the US, I understand that it can be hard to exist as a minority in your own country, and I'm sure it's harder in Israel, which doesn't have separation of religion & state.
    - compsciphd 6y ago
      it even worse than that for people trying to take issue with you. if one has a problem with the statement "people or jews", one would generally assume this removes "jews" from the group of "people". and hence jews aren't people.
rsynnott 6y ago
Inclusive or, I assume (from my limited understanding, Judaism considers some rules to only apply to Jews, so it would make sense to consider Jews and Gentiles separately here). Total side note, but I’ve noticed that programmers (including myself) are more prone to read English or as xor than, for want of a better term, normal people. Not sure why this is.

onyva 6y ago

Also nothing to do with "Judaism", rather more of the ludicrousness of Eastern European rabbinical orthodoxy holier than though attitude that made them the most hated social group in Israel, mostly due to their blatant hypocrisy (i.e. object the legalization of prostitution in Israel, while they are the largest beneficiaries of it by percentage). Sort of kidnapped and suffocated to the death the essence of Judaism and reduced it into a cult.

Jekyll-Jacobson 6y ago
We need to fend off the hijackers and reclaim OUR religion. Hiloniism is rather the coward’s way.
hevelvarik 6y ago
Only a Jew speaking about other Jews gets away with this type of shitpost on hackers news.

himinlomax 6y ago

So how do you know if you're compliant? Can you do some A/B testing?

asdfman123 6y ago

As a guy who's 1/8th Jewish, I still don't feel comfortable clicking on that URL at work for fear someone might get the wrong idea on what it's about.

sulam 6y ago
I'm confused, is there a usage of the word 'kosher' that isn't safe at work? Are you worried that they may think you're Jewish and discriminate against you? p.s. You may know this, but from the religious POV, you are either Jewish or not, there's no 1/8th Jewish. If your mother was Jewish, you are too, all the way up your family tree. Either that or if you converted. :)
- kevinschumacher 6y ago
  probably referring to the domain name...
  - sulam 6y ago
    Ha, I didn't even notice the domain, thanks!
- asdfman123 6y ago
  Just to get pedantic, aren't we all relatives if you go back 1000+ years?
  - ricree 6y ago
    As I understand it, the strict definition of Jewish descent is purely. You have to go back around 100-200k years to reach the most recent common matrilineal ancestor, and I'm reasonably confident she was not Jewish.
    - tw04 6y ago
      100-200k years? Based on... what? Judaism's earliest trace lies at about 1500BC... so not even close to 100k years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_Judaism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_Judaism

refurb 6y ago

Just random observation - when I visited Israel I was astounded how nearly complete the sabbath shutdown is. In the US, the only day that comes close is Christmas Day and it’s still not even close. My wife and I struggled to find dinner and drove around for an hour or so until we found an Arab place that was open. Pretty much the only place in town that was open. Then sunset comes and everyone comes out. If you travel to Israel, plan for it!

bszupnick 6y ago
I live in Israel and always felt terrible for tourists who accidentally got stuck! Depending where you are you can end up with no public transportation, no grocery stores, restaurants, shops, museums, anything!
- ludamad 6y ago
  Is there a party scene at all on the Sabbath?
  - ponsin 6y ago
    sure, in cities with a large non-religious population like Tel Aviv or a large Arab population like Haifa
- AuryGlenz 6y ago
  My wife and I arrived in France the same day as a holiday. All the grocery stores and restaurants were closed and we had absolutely no food - we spent an hour driving/walking from place to place. Defeated and on our way back to our car to go to our rental, our savior appeared. A pizza truck.
  - apexalpha 6y ago
    Do all shops and restaurants stay open on holidays in the US?
    - 6y ago

ashtonkem 6y ago

B&H photo (run by Orthodox Jews out of NYC) stops accepting orders during the sabbath in their time zone. You can keep browsing, but you can’t generate work for them. This seems like a decent compromise, and it’s definitely not hurting their business.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago
> And it’s definitely not hurting their business. I would question that conclusion. There have been times in the past I've wanted to order from B&H, but could not because it was on the Sabbath. In most cases, I just keep looking until I found the item on a different website. I'm sure they consider the loss of business worthwhile to comply with their religion, but there is a cost.
- nullc 6y ago
  > but there is a cost. It may be less than you suspect because the regular bubble in their ordering pipeline might give them time to deal with suppliers, maintain stock, improve their website, maintain systems, relax and refocus, etc. I doubt it works out better than not doing it at least economically, but there may be enough benefit to offset most of the costs. The times I've run into the B&H sabbath outage, I just waited and ordered later. There are more thing in my life than just ordering things as fast as possible, and I respect a business for having other priorities. (Plus, B&H is just generally a really good supplier)
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    > There are more thing in my life than just ordering things as fast as possible. On a purely personal level, it's not so much the speed as it is the need to get it done and move on with my life. If I need to order something, I want to just do it and forget about it for a few days (or whatever) until it arrives in the mail. If I have to come back later, that's one more thing for my mental to-do list.
  - m-zuber 6y ago
    >It may be less than you suspect because the regular bubble in their ordering pipeline might give them time to deal with suppliers, maintain stock, improve their website, maintain systems, relax and refocus, etc. the thing is, the bubble they have includes not doing anything on this list :)

Wowfunhappy 6y ago

...so, any theories as to who made this and what the purpose was? I mean, maybe it is just a hobby project, but it's a bit of an odd one if the requirements that don't exist at all.

AdamN 6y ago

My understanding is that making a non–Jewish person work on the Sabbath is also forbidden. Granted, this was just a schoolmate of mine in Brooklyn saying this but I have no reason to doubt the claim. It does seem like electricity gets a huge carveout though as long as the initial startup wasn't initiated on the Sabbath. One sees that with Sabbath elevators where all the buttons are on and you can walk on without pushing a button and walk off at the correct floor. It still consumes electricity, you're just not making a spark to initiate the work.

compsciphd 6y ago
consuming electricity isn't a problem. doing things defined as "work" is a problem. work is in quotes, as it doesn't mean doing a job. it also doesn't mean the physics meanin. As the simplest example: take rabbis in a synagogue. They are doing their jobs. Another more complicated example: there's no fundamental difference between what an individual can do to prepare a meal they are serving on the sabbath and what caterers can do. Both can't do things defined as "work", but obviously the caterers are doing their job. Then there's is the whole interplay between biblical law and rabbinic law

ebg13 6y ago

> As several others have mentioned, there is absolutely no problem with keeping a server running on the sabbath This is not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that Borer (separating/filtering) is one of the forbidden categories of work.

compsciphd 6y ago
this is too inside baseball, but a cute joke.