The problem is very complex. Most of Israel's water comes from the lake of Galilee, the Kinneret. If an Arab pisses in the Kineret, does it make the water non kosher? The answer is not. You can drink it without violating the Halacha. Now if a Jewish fisherman uses bread crumbs to trap the fish, will the water become Hametz (unfit for the Pessach when leavened bread is forbidden). The answer is, yes. The kashrut of whole the Israeli water supply system will be doubtful. קיים חשש לחמץ = a really pious Jew will not drink water during Pessach.
The solution? Jerusalem water system disconnects itself from the national network for the duration of the Passover. They dont let in even a drop of that suspicious impure water. So Jerusalem's water is fit for a Haredi during the Passover. But what about the poor Haredi who lives in Bney Brak near Tel Aviv? Drink bottled water? Dig a well in the yeshive? Collect rainwater?
8 comments:
In New York, it was discovered a few years ago that a microscopic arthropod lived in the city's water supply - there were (very tiny) shrimp swimming in the water. Obviously this is treyf - the Orthodox all bought water filters.
K
Now if a Jewish fisherman uses bread crumbs to trap the fish, will the water become Hametz (unfit for the Pessach when leavened bread is forbidden). The answer is, yes.
False. If you can't see it, it's not hametz. Israel's water supply is as acceptable to drink on Pesach as on every other day of the year.
Genius, you are being too logical. Modern Orthodoxy is not about logic or real halacha as taught by Rambam and observed by our ancestors - it is about competing to see who can invent the most strictures in order to prove themselves frummer (and therefore holier and better) than you. As people with too much time on their hands are wont to do. Our ancestors were too busy trying to make parnosah enough to stay alive, having no welfare state to live on, and so did not have time to worry about invisible breadcrumbs.
The "breadcrumbs in the lake" thing is real (in the heads of the Orthodox with nothing better to do). http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3yzeqaRMPrMJ:www.hashkafah.com/index.php%3F/topic/3213-kinneret-may-not-be-kosher-for-passover/+passover+water+hametz+lake&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=safari&source=www.google.com
K
At some point, this kind of stuff becomes maladaptive.
Anon.
The bread crumb logic may seem bizarre to the uninitiated, yet that is the way Haredi Jews think. They live in a world full of permitted and forbidden symbols, a magic world of complicated rules. What is surprising is that they do not ignore the real physical world, on the contrary, in the case of the bread-crumb pollution of Jerusalem's water they studied the system in detail, but that they can carry in their head two visions at the same time: one reality as it is and the other, a magic world of unseen influences. And there is no confusion between the two systems. Many of them manage to prosper in the real world. They dont confuse the ral world with their fantasy world. In one hemisphere they know that bread crumbs in the Kinneret could never reach to them through the faucet (it will degrade and be consumed by the biomass in no time), yet in the other hemisphere it will pollute the water and make it impure.
Yes, I appreciate this, but my sense is that whatever evolutionary and/or social utility these rules once held, beyond a certain point they lose functionality; yet the adherents, many of them at least, do not seem to be able to "move on".
However smart they may be, they will end up wasting their time and this in the long run is an enormous, pointless tax upon themselves, and those around them.
Anon.
"Modern" people are no better - they fear invisible pollutants, radiation, bacteria, etc. which are no more likely to harm them than breadcrumbs. This is part of human nature - little bugs in our programming that must have been adaptive at one point.
K
Yes, K is right. I see this phenomenon in my own family: a can of sardines will turn unhealthy and trashed a split second passed the sell-by-date hour. Today I bought my wife a bag of black Russian sunflower seeds her people loves, but she will not touch it because doubt about its content of unhealthy lipids. She munches some exotic, unheard of kind of white seeds. She feeds me only "natural" grains like quinoa and whatisname. She travels to the end of the city to buy these things. Meat? We dont eat meat. The world apparently is full of very dangerous foodstuff. And it is not only what they eat or drink. They have esoteric rules when to walk and when to take the lift. And so on. Apart from this "tax" my beloved family is normal most of the time. They excel on the job and the university. Extreme Kashrut (Kashrut Bet Ha Din shel Ha Edah Ha Haredit) would give them same peace of mind with less uncertainty.
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