Why does that strike you as myopic? Just the opposite, if the Rabbinate decided that they've never heard of these little bugs in the water and so they don't cou

Why does that strike you as myopic? Just the opposite, if the Rabbinate decided that they've never heard of these little bugs in the water and so they don't count, that would be myopic. The fact that this is a question which was debated a bunch in the orthodox world shows a flexibility that I think is underrated in orthodoxy. Is religion incapable of fitting their model over the continuum of life, or does it continue to adapt to new information? I'm reminded of a discussion in the talmud. A rabbi says that he heard from an Athenian scholar that there is a type of... mouse? bug? The aramaic isn't clear, some kind of little animal. Anyway, there's this creeping thing which comes to live when the sunlight hits a certain type of mud at a certain time of day. There's a whole discussion about whether these things are really "alive", vis a vis whether or not you can "kill" them on shabbat (this discussion is had elsewhere about lice, which were thought to have generated spontaneously. Jewish law has always been flexible and adaptable and shifted along with changing understanding of ourselves and our surroundings. I don't see how this anecdote suggests any differently. P.S. most (probably like 98% of) orthodox rabbis I have talked to permit drinking tap water even though it has little bugs in it, because they're too small to see with the human eye and thus are not forbidden to eat. If they were big enough, you would have to filter them, just like you have to check for bugs before you eat lettuce.