Hello, I was reading the quran when I stumbled upon an ayah (Ch:7, Ver:163), which made me wonder if Jewish people are not allowed to work on Shabbat then what do the doctors, police officers do if there is an emergency? Do they strictly adhere to their religion and refuse to work during say a road accident. Thank you!!

SAHIH INTERNATIONAL Sahih International – Ayah: 7:16

Today’s question is quite a common one and it is one I am going to explain in a bit of detail. For anyone reading wondering why your question isn’t answered yet – I got three questions that go into quite some depth and I have not yet to have time to research them. Quite good questions as they go into both Judaism as a race and skin colours.

For those that do not know, the lines in the Qu’ran above is as follows.

And ask them about the town that was by the sea – when they transgressed in [the matter of] the sabbath – when their fish came to them openly on their sabbath day, and the day they had no sabbath they did not come to them. Thus did We give them trial because they were defiantly disobedient.

In Judaism there is something that is very important and honestly one of the most important things to worry about – the idea that Jews are to save other lives where possible (Pikuach nefesh) and this also applies to most laws and that includes many of the Sabbath ones.

Before I go on, it is worth saying defaming G’ds name is never allowed, forbidden sexual acts, murder (excluding self defence where it is NOT possible to do so otherwise), or to trade your own life for another (risking it however is fine).

So let’s get to the question. Can doctors, police officers (and in fact anyone) break the Sabbath in order to answer to an emergency? It all depends on what the emergency is. If it was something that is not threatening someone’s life. So if there was a crash and urgent medical care is needed then yes, there is an obligation to help within your means. In general practice there will be many other doctors, police officers and such that it is unlikely a Jew would need to work on the Sabbath but if they were needed urgently because there was no one else and someone will die if not, then the answer would be yes.

So in short, I play a role playing game with around 50 people working together in a guild. 5 of them are new and were playing another gaming while chatten in the guild chat, so that we all could read it. In this other game dropped an item that one of those 5 people wanted to have. He then wrote “JUUUUUDDDDEEEEE” in the chat. So I thought that he wanted that item, didn’t get it and called the winner a jew.so.. For me that was antisemitism. I said I the chat, that there is no room here for this behavior and that he should tibk about it. He then chatted with me privately an said that I got it all wrong. It wasn’t a slurr, but he is called a jew by his gaming friends for bering lucky and greedy with items. He won that item and then psted “juuudeee” in the Chat. I said that it is still anti semitism, positive but still… He said that is bullshit and I am over sensitive. What would you say?

Today’s question is related to antisemitism. The very short answer is yes, this is antisemitism and now for the longer answer.

While I do understand that the person isn’t “using” it as a slur and likely hold no bad feelings to Jews nor his friends – it keeps a stereotype going that all Jews are greedy and this is bad to keep passing around.

So are you overreacting with it? I would say no. It is quite possible himself and his friends are annoying people who do not want to speak up but more importantly, it just shows how accepted this is still nowadays and if people like yourself don’t speak up, it will never change.

I have bee asked to provide Talmud books for a theatre prop. I will print the back cover and spine but don’t know what to put on the other (right cover. Is there anything printed? I cannot find any pictures online. Thank you?

So today’s question is about the Talmud. Honestly, your question doesn’t really have much of an answer as the Talmud (and assuming you ain’t speaking about the Torah would have a far different answer) comes in many different styles.

Talmuds written in Hebrew are read right to left and the covers are done accordingly and languages read left to right have a cover like a typical book. The cover typically says what version of the Talmud and the back the publisher and such. If you just pop on Amazon you will see many versions of the Talmud being sold with most of them just looking like a typical book.

So in your case, I would just find a Talmud published in the area of where your performance is based on and recreate based on that.

Today’s question is as follows.

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Today’s question is one that I imagine a lot of people who live in a Jewish community may not even have seen and sadly something that also is not that common in the United Kingdom.

I am trying to learn more about Eruv. I understand that it is a boundary helping Orthodox Jews be able to move about on Shabbot. Is the line that looks like fishing wire continuous? I tried to follow it but it ended and is not visible along the map the local synagogue posted.

Shela

In the most simple way to explain this that an Eruv is a “pole with a wire” on it that encloses an area that symbolically “merges” an area so that private homes and public areas are “merged” into one private area thus avoiding transferring domains which allows a Jew in order to do things that otherwise would not be allowed outside of their homes on the Sabbath. Such examples are carrying keys, medication, baby prams and more.

I think before I carry on it may be worth discussing what a domain is. There are four types of domains which are.

• Private (such as your home)
• Public (such as a shopping mall)
• Neutral (something that isn’t really either
• Carmelit (everything else that isn’t above)

If it is still hard to understand imagine a square that is your house. Now imagine a bigger square around your house – this bigger square is the Eruv which encloses your house so you live within the Eruv – your house happens to be apart of it as long as the whole thing is always connected. The logic being you are no longer going from private to the public domain when leaving your house – you never left as long as it is within the Eruv as the domains have been merged!

Now to answer the question – yes they are continuous. The boundary of them is not to be broken otherwise it is no longer valid until it is repaired. You will also find that it is not always a line as other things such as a fence and walls are also included.

There is much more to it than a simple wire or fence in order to make it valid but for the sake of the question, I feel I gone into enough detail but if anyone is interested in the conditions needed in order for this to be valid then do let me know!

Hello, I just heard the Jewish call to prayer and the second verse says “Hashem is our God” and the third verse says “Hashem is the one and only” who is Hashem in the Jewish faith? I’ve never heard that name in the Jewish faith before.

Today’s question I got pretty much about 10 minutes ago before I was going to head out for the day but it is to do with the name – Hashem.

Hashem (or in English simply “the name” is a way of referring to G’d without saying his name (or one of his many different names). It helps to never use his name in vain and to treat it with respect. You will find this name is commonly used outside of reading the Torah.

If you are a Harry Potter fan its kinda the same logic as with Voldermort and with the whole “he who shall not be named”.

Today’s question is quite an interesting Biblical one!

Question about the plague of the first born.

So in a family that has half brothers which one would be killed? Example: mother and father have a son, father dies, mother remarries and has another son. Would they both be killed as the second son is the first born of the new dad?

The truth to this is we do not really know and sadly I am unable to find any sources that even remotely hints about merged families during that time nor could I find anything about twins being within the plague to see what happened there.

An educated guess and this only goes by the logic of the time that I would assume both be killed as the father was seen as very important in the family household and that it was “their bloodline”.

Sadly however it will only be an educated guess on my behalf but should I ever find an answer to this I will update this at a later time.

What do you say to people who say that the Jews killed Christ? (I am Jewish)

Ah, the time-old question that has fueled so much anti-Semitism in many years but there is quite a simple reply which is: ” Yeshua was killed by politicians, any that were Jewish is irrelevant”.

Yeshua regardless of which accounts you look into – the Christian Bible or documents from said time would have caught the attention from politicians for causing a stir within the Jewish community and the temple and this would have happened regardless who did it or why.

Sadly at the end of the day, Yeshua was one of many Jews that were executed, and one of even more that suffered violence at the hands of the Roman Empire and if you believe in Christianity or the person that asks you this question does should know anyway it doesn’t matter who was the agents of his death – he willingly died for them and wanted it to happen.

Was listening to talk about origin why sin is the way it is today and it was said that some Jews would say it stems from more than one incident. 1. Adam 2. Noah’s day because of Angels interaction with man. Is this statement correct? One more questions who are the the Watchers according to Jewish understanding?

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Hello. I actually have 3 questions. What are your personal and family jewish practices? What aspect of Judaism is particularly attractive to you? What challenges do you think someone from the United States would have with being a Jew? What are your strategies for passing active religious beliefs to the next generation? Thank you!

I have a feeling my contact form is not working correctly on this website as I am noticing a lot of questions are not being sent to me and sorry that I just have seen this one.

No worries about the three questions and I will divide them accordingly.

What attracts me to Judaism?

As I have written before on the old Ask a Jew website, the reason I converted to Judaism is the same things that still hold true to this day. The first is the overall Jewish community is united and deeply cares about each other regardless of where you are from and so on. It is this large family so to speak which means it matters little where you are in the world you feel welcomed.

The second is G’d. When I was born I was baptised as a Catholic and as irony would go, as a child I wanted to become a Priest in Éire but there was something I could not understand about Catholicism or Christianity itself – why would G’d punish someone that was not even born? This idea of the original sin started to come across to me as a “method” to keep people in the Church.

For the rest of this question, I am going to answer using terms of the Catholic faith so my terminology does not get confusing.

The more I researched further into the Catholic Bible, the more it came across that Jesus was a man who wanted to help everyone – both Jew and Goy. Furthermore, it comes across to me that Jesus wanted to reform the faith.

It was due to this I decided to look solely at the Old Testament and it is from there I started to study the Torah and my interest in the Jewish faith came about.

What challenges do you think someone from the USA would have to be Jewish?

I can’t speak about the United States directly but in Europe, I think the biggest challenge is culture itself is swinging back to anti-Semitism being an okay thing to feel/

Passing religious beliefs to the next generation?

Education and adapting the Talmud is something that I believe will help the Jewish faith in the long run. We need to accept that people understand text differently in years to come and that the Talmud shouldn’t be a shut book now – we should still have debates on it and publish new findings as we go