tag: #halakha

The wrong question is whether you can use a phone on Shabbat. The right question, for those of us who build the systems, is what halakhic status the work of our machines holds while we rest.

The English word charity descends from Latin caritas, love. The Hebrew word tzedakah descends from tzedek, justice. Translating one as the other does not just lose a connotation; it inverts the underlying legal and ethical structure. The classical Jewish concept is harder, more demanding, and more interesting than what English makes of it.

The popular reading of Judaism imagines a single Torah, written, sufficient on its own — and the rabbinic literature as commentary added on top. The classical sources tell a different story, and the structural argument for it is harder to dismiss than most readers realize.