Friday, August 15, 2008

God workaround

Our stove is acting funny and the repairman came yesterday. We need a new igniter. Sounds perfectly reasonable, considering that a stove only has a few key functions and igniting is certainly one of them.

He told me that our stove has a "Sabbath" feature. At first I thought I misheard him, or that he was setting up an Ozzy Osbourne joke. But no, the Sabbath feature apparently keeps the stove at a constant temperature all day so that you can use it without pressing any buttons.

We can debate the existence of God all we like, but can't we all agree that if there is one, He would not be fooled by this?

"Hey! Thou shalt not... Oh wait, it's a KitchenAid. Enjoy the meatloaf."

5 comments:

aisha said...

A Sabbath feature huh. Gotta get me one of those...

Jeff Pomerantz said...

My favorite God workaround is the "sabbath goy": a non-Jew who you ask into your home to do the tasks you're not supposed to do on the sabbath. Generally you even pay them, though since you're not supposed to handle money on the sabbath either, you just leave money on the table and tell the goy to take whatever they think the job was worth. Could be a good gig for the sabbath goy, I suppose. Still, what's the logic here? God says I can't turn on the oven, but he doesn't give a rat's ass about you, pal.

Karen said...

You guys are too, too funny. And Conrad is so cute! Thanks for sharing!

Anonymous said...

There are biblical (i.e. laws that are god given) and rabbinic (i.e. laws that are man made) jewish laws.

Generally the "work arounds" are for rabbinic laws, not biblical laws. So anything one is doing with the workaround would have been ok by god.

Anonymous said...

We haven't laugh that hard in a while. We opened the link and could not believe all the details. Glad fatherhood hasn't interfered with your sense of humor. Kathy and John