Over a year ago, I posted this item about a conversation I overheard. In a nutshell, someone was having trouble with the idea that rational numbers are countable. His problems boiled down to the fact that he didn;t understand the precise definition of "countable." The rational numbers don't meet his intuitive definition.
I was thinking of another example where words have specific meanings, and people get confused because they aren;t quite aware of it. That example is halakhah -- Jewish law. People know that, observant Jews cannot perform work on the Sabbath. But it can seem confusing. You can't carry a housekey with you when you go for a walk (unless you stay inside an enclosure -- the definition of which is more complicated than I will go into here). I've known people to have housekeys made into pins or tie-bars so they can take them with them by wearing them. Meanwhile, though carrying a key is "work" and against the rules, you can carry a 50-pound sack of concrete back and forth in your living room. For hours. No problem.
How is carrying the concrete in your living room not "work"?
The answer is that the prohibition isn;t against "work" (whether that be as defined by physics or colloquial usage). The prohibition is against a class of activities, the Hebrew word for which is "melakhah." I won't attempt to give a definition of melakhah or list the activities in the class. "Melakhah" is often translated as "work" because that's proved useful as a shorthand. But the key is to remember that it's just shorthand, and sometimes it's wrong.
but don't carry that key (to remember) on shabbos.
ReplyDeleteor something
Wikipedia correctly calls it creative activity...
ReplyDeleteThough melakha is usually translated as "work" in English, the term does not correspond to the English definition of the term, as explained below.
The Rabbis in ancient times had to explain exactly what the term meant, and what activity was prohibited to be done on the Sabbath. The Rabbis noted Genesis 2:1-3:
Heaven and earth, and all their components, were completed. With the seventh day, God finished all the work (melakha) that He had done. He ceased on the seventh day from all the work (melakha) that he had been doing. God blessed the seventh day, and he declared it to be holy, for it was on this day that God ceased from all the work (melakha) that he had been creating to function.
Specifically, the Rabbis noted the symmetry between Genesis 2:1–3 and Exodus 31:1–11—the same term melakha ("work") is used in both places, and that in Genesis 2:1–3 what God was "ceasing from" was "creation" or "creating".
The Rabbis noted further that the first part of Exodus 31:1-11 provides detailed instructions for the construction of the Tabernacle, and that it is immediately followed by a reminder to Moses about the importance of the Shabbat, quoted above. The Rabbis note that in the provisions relating to the Tabernacle the word melakha is also used. The word is usually translated as "workmanship", which has a strong element of "creation" or "creativity".