How Jews Circumvent the Rules They Made Up (4K Years of Malicious Compliance)
Episode script. Originally published 2026-09-30 at https://basedcamppodcast.substack.com/p/how-jews-circumvent-the-rules-they
Malcolm and Simone explore lesser-known Jewish legal mechanisms for navigating strict biblical and rabbinic restrictions, especially around the Sabbath. The discussion covers travel limits, carrying objects, cooking rules, inheritance practices, marriage agreements, and community boundaries while contrasting approaches to rule interpretation.
They examine how these workarounds developed historically, their practical modern applications, and the underlying philosophy of fulfilling the letter of the law. The conversation highlights specific examples like food placement for extended travel, specialized belts, unusual action methods, rabbinic approvals, and wire enclosures.
Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction to Jewish rule workarounds
4:06 Sabbath travel limit of 2000 cubits
7:47 Carrying keys as a burden
8:09 Using food to mark Sabbath residence
9:43 Shared community food posts for travel
11:47 Debate on Sabbath rule intent
13:23 Dangers of excessive legalism
15:17 Unusual methods for prohibited acts
16:23 Keys as functional clothing or belt
25:51 Contract versus intent in divine rules
27:12 Permission of 100 rabbis
31:45 Shemitah produce distribution
35:17 Festival cooking before Sabbath
38:38 Food cooked by non-Jews
45:29 Inheritance shares for daughters
47:28 Halakhic prenuptial agreements
52:43 Cooked wine for non-Jewish handling
57:02 Eruv wire enclosures explained
57:27 Eruv wires merging household domains
58:29 Differences in children’s play behavior
1:01:23 Structuring Sabbath as true rest
1:07:47 Evolution of hair covering customs
1:10:23 Techno puritan video game narrative
1:11:55 Episode conclusion and future plans
Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today, we are going to be discussing ways that Jews get around biblical or rabbinic rules that they have on them.
Simone Collins: I’ve been looking forward to this for so long.
Malcolm Collins: And I am going to focus on the ones that you are unlikely to know about. So we won’t spend a lot of time on the fishing wire around Manhattan or anything like that. We are going to go deep. It is genuinely interesting. I might, for a few of them, even ask Simone if she can come up with how she thinks they get around the rule Oh. Before we get to how they get around the rule.
Simone Collins: Game, and people can leave their guesses in the comments.
Malcolm Collins: I love these games.
Speaker 3: I want your Jew gold. Okay. Fine. Here. Now let’s go. Do you think I’m stupid? I know all that Jews carry fake bags of gold around their necks to keep the real bags of gold around their neck safe. Hand over the real Jew, Gokav.
Malcolm Collins: I will note here to everyone who is like, look at the Jews. Like, the them and all of this overstrict rule following and everything like that. This came up for us When I was studying the Sabbath, because I was like, it appears that this is one of the 10 commandments. Right? You know, why are we not following this?
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: And we know that Jesus was raised after the Sabbath, and that was on Sunday. So the Sabbath is clearly not Sunday in the Bible. Right? Like, it’s named in the Bible as being def definitionally not Sunday and in old Christian things. So I will voice this all with the caveat of at least they attempt to follow them for all the Christians that don’t even follow the Sabbath. Right?
Simone Collins: Yeah. Give them credit where credit is due. I I will give them credit there. And
Malcolm Collins: the the second thing, the Christians will be like, well, Jesus fulfilled all the old laws. Oh, okay. So the rest of the the 10 commandments don’t matter anymore? Oh, okay. So every one of the 10 commandment were still matters. How does that work?
Simone Collins: So that you you don’t need to murder anymore? How how would he have fulfilled No.
Malcolm Collins: No. Christian actually believes this is
Simone Collins: the point. But the commandments are just their rules to live by also. I don’t I don’t get it.
Malcolm Collins: Like The joke I’m making, Simone, is that Christians are very hypocritical in the way they treat the 10 commandments, and Jesus is fulfilled them.
Simone Collins: For most jokes. You know this.
Malcolm Collins: They they say something they obviously don’t believe, which is that Jesus fulfilled all of the moral rules tied to the 10 commandments so we can just ignore them, whereas they only ignore the one that is inconvenient within a modern context and that made them look a little Jewy back in the day.
Speaker 18: It’s just something that I can’t bring myself to believe. Like, the idea that Jesus was sacrificed for our sins. Oh, and so we didn’t have to practice the Sabbath. So that one thing there, the the Sabbath, that 10 commandment as well. That that one of the 10 commandments, he was also sacrificed. That seems ludicrous to me. If if God thought that these were important back then, he probably still thinks that they are important today, especially given that Jesus also practiced the Sabbath. And even when he and his followers were questioned on it, like, when they were picking the grain in the field and they said, your your people are doing something unlawful. He agreed that they were doing something unlawful, but then he made a broader argument that we’ll address, more in the future.
Speaker 20: And some Christians will come to me, they’ll be like, well, don’t you know that this council said that we don’t need to take the Sabbath seriously anymore? or that we actually, there was one council around the year 300 that said that you were supposed to work on the Sabbath. In which case, I’m just like, well, that’s why I focus so much on what the Bible says rather than what is tradition within Christianity. what happened to us I mean, this is only us recently, right, is we were talking about the 10 commandments and which ones we didn’t follow enough. And when Simone called out this one, I was like, wait. That’s one of the oh, yeah. That is one of the 10 commandments. Why why weren’t we doing that? And then we went through every line in the Bible that could be used to argue that we don’t need to take it seriously anymore, and I just didn’t find them very compelling arguments. And so because I had grown up in a society where nobody took it seriously, I thought it was normal for Christians to not take it seriously, and that’s something we’re trying to change in our lives.
Malcolm Collins: And then it’ll we’ll get on this in the next episode on the Sabbath. That’s not the point of this episode. Okay. So rule number one, you cannot move 2,000 cubits from where you live. How do they get around this amount?
Simone Collins: Oh, you mean on the Sabbath? Okay.
Malcolm Collins: On the Sabbath, you cannot move 2,000 cubits from where you live, but you might need to go to a synagogue or something like that that’s 3,000 cubits away, or you may need to go do some tasks at 3,000 cubits away. How do you do this? And I and I will note they do keep the rule that you cannot move more than 2,000 cubits from where you live, but now there’s a synagogue that 3,000 cubits from their house that they need to go to the next day. They must establish around it.
Simone Collins: Residence as being your community. So where you live is your community, not your address, like your home address.
Malcolm Collins: That’s actually partially already true, so that wouldn’t get around it at all. Like, I’m I’m talking about a scenario where
Simone Collins: Oh, then it’s even outside the community? Yeah. Oh. Some kind of metaphorical, like, tether rope, you know, like oxygen line from the community to the so you didn’t Kind of.
Malcolm Collins: Kind of. You’re getting close. Yeah. Okay. Tell me. Somebody can travel 2,000 I’m an audience. You’re you’re in this too. Do not change the rule around not being able to travel further from 2,000 cubits from where they live. But their home is more than 2,000 cubits from where they need to go. How do they get around it? Do you leave behind a part of yourself, like,
Simone Collins: a representation of yourself? So, like, the the goal is to do So
Malcolm Collins: they change where they live technically to be halfway in between their house and where they need to go. Oh.
Simone Collins: How do you do that? How do you give a temporary change of address that gets you there?
Malcolm Collins: Okay. So we’ll get into that. But first, I’m gonna give some other rules here.
Simone Collins: So Okay. Where you live
Malcolm Collins: on Shabbat, the Molkoshavate, the place of rest. Yeah. In an opal country, this is a circle or share as measured by a compass of 2,000 cubits around the spot. Okay. In a town, the built up area counts as being one place. Houses within 70 cubits of each other are a cluster, and you may walk around the whole town past the 2,000 cubits. no. 2,000 Cubits is 0.6 to 0.7 miles, if you’re wondering for for context here. If you’re wondering and you’re like, wait. You can walk all around the town on Sabbath, but you wait. Sorry. I I I note here, we don’t think that Christians are subject to all of these Jew status laws. We’ll we’ll get into that in just a second. But Jews clearly believe it and are very, very strict about it. Well, actually, that’s just a whole other episode. That is not for this episode. But then why do they need the of the, you know, the fishing line that goes around Manhattan at all if you can travel anywhere in Manhattan on the Sabbath if you live in Manhattan? And the answer is, well, one, because you can’t drive a car. You you are sort of functionally. But I guess can you have the subways count? I’ll add that in post.
Speaker 10: The answer is no, by the way. specifically because carrying a fare card would be considered carrying something, and you would be doing work by walking through a turnstile.
Malcolm Collins: But but Oh, the line around New York is not for moving from place to place. It’s carrying a thing from place to place, which is a separate and additional rule set that they need to find a way to
Simone Collins: get I remember reading that part about carrying burdens.
Malcolm Collins: And we’ll get around that. The next thing we’re gonna go is how they how they get around that with things that they actually need, like keys and stuff like that.
Simone Collins: Keys aren’t a burden. What on oh, no.
Malcolm Collins: They’re very strict with the rules. Remember, in the in the first Sabbath, a guy picked up sticks and was literally, God said, you gotta stone the guy to death. Like, Moses was like, they they they detained him. They’re like, what are we gonna do with this guy? And god’s like, well, of course, you beat him to death with stones because this stuff is very serious for Jews. Naturally. So here’s how it works. There’s two methods. You can be there at twilight. You walk to the spot before shabbat. Stay through buying harassment dusk. Declare it your place. You go home afterwards. The center has already moved. Or you can leave the food there before Shabbat. this is the usual. You do not have to spend dusk there. The legal idea is a person’s home is where their Shabbat food is, so the food stands in for you. Oh. And here are the rules. The rules for food. Okay. It has to be enough for two Shabbat meals per person who will use it. Yeah. Red on the order of six to eight egg volumes. Condiment, peanut butter, oil, chocolate spread are common, or drink works and takes less so, actually, why do they use why is peanut butter the default for this?
Simone Collins: I genuinely don’t know. I don’t I don’t think I’ve
Malcolm Collins: seen peanut butter in a Jewish meal before. It’s because it’s incredibly calorically dense. So to fit the other rule about you need needing to have two meals of it, you can technically have two meals of peanut butter with, like, not very much peanut butter. So if you’re just eating pure peanut butter, it it covered the one thing, and then you need to recite a blessing. But it gets crazier. Alright? So suppose you’re in a community where a lot of people need to do this regularly. Alright? The community will set up, like, a little post. Think of it like a rating nook is sort of the impression I got for what these look like. Okay?
Simone Collins: Rating nook?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. You know, like, they have, like, little stands with a house looking thing on it where people go to get books or leave books. It’s like take a book, leave
Simone Collins: a book places. Oh oh, yes. Like a neighborhood lending library raiding nook.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. Whatever you wanna call it. Look. And and these things need to be locked because if a wild animal eats the food Uh-oh. Then it no longer counts as your place, and now all of a sudden you’re breaking rabbinic law.
Simone Collins: Are we eating the food? Is this food that people are eating?
Malcolm Collins: I don’t think it’s actually really meant to be ever eaten. It’s more like a symbolic thing. I mean, somebody might eat it. I’ll I’ll look it up in post.
Speaker 12: You need to regularly check if it is still edible so people would eat it regularly. just practically, I imagine, usually, it doesn’t get eaten because that seems I mean, if you’re buying peanut butter just used for one of the things, then there’s some part of a community exercise. Probably just stays there until it spoils. But, presumably, a lot of people do eat it. I don’t know. I I I think they don’t. That’s my guess if if I was using something like this.
Malcolm Collins: But they
Simone Collins: have a separate system. Peanut butters or whatever, shelf stable peanut butter that’s sealed.
Malcolm Collins: Take the food. And then for anybody walking on a particular trail, this is in, like, more rural places where you have a minyan, which is like a group of Jewish families. It it doesn’t fully matter. The point being, is that they’ll all have, like, a contract around, like, one jar of peanut butter thing. And it automatically transfers ownership to whoever is using the road at that time so they don’t need to reset it up for everyone.
Simone Collins: So it’s like two atoms sharing an electron for a little bit, but then you, like, move on and I
Malcolm Collins: don’t know. Oh, this is very strange. This is very strange. But if you’re not eating I just I if you’re not gonna
Simone Collins: eat the Sabbath food, no. I I don’t think
Malcolm Collins: that If you guys get our weekend episode on this,
Speaker 11: We have a Patreon slash Substack episode where we argue about this a lot. That’s our weekend episodes.
Malcolm Collins: this is what happens if you start going down the path of every rule, Simone,
Simone Collins: like you tried to
Malcolm Collins: do for the Sabbath. When we had a big argument in Norweka No.
Simone Collins: See, I was gonna honor the rules. I don’t I’m very uncomfortable with this rule bending.
Malcolm Collins: I I It’s not rule building. It’s about interpreting the intent of the rule. This is the entire core difference between Christianity and Judaism. This is what Jesus meant when he said the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. Is the Christian path is to say what was the intent of the rules, and the Jewish path is to say what was the and I understand. You if you look for the intent of the rules, you can end up bending them too much till you end up like most Christians today where they’re just like, I don’t know. Think about God and go to church that day, and maybe you don’t
Simone Collins: play bending the rules too much. Like, oh, not only can we use tech and and whatnot, but I’m just gonna build a video game on the Sabbath.
Malcolm Collins: Absolutely. Because I take it to me.
Simone Collins: Productive work.
Malcolm Collins: Nope. It was me
Simone Collins: taking a
Malcolm Collins: You can’t If you if you go with that then, Simone, if you go with that, then learning becomes productive work. Then educating yourself becomes productive work. The further you go with your legalism, the more you break the intent. The intent is, are you doing something you wouldn’t have otherwise done on that day that’s focused on but that’s for another video. Okay? This is why you can’t go down this pathway.
Simone Collins: Sir, he stole that bread. What do you have to say for yourself? Nope. Sorry. Okay. Keep going. Wait.
Malcolm Collins: I’m sorry. What was your point there?
Simone Collins: Just, like, the answer to my accusation being nope. I find oddly entertaining. I will accept it. That is an acceptable answer. Because
Malcolm Collins: if it’s designed to help us improve ourselves, doing something you have been putting off that involves a new type of rest pursuit, like something that you wanted to do as a form of rest, is of value.
Speaker 4: By this, what I mean is you have to ask why did God mandate a day of rest? Did he mandate a day of rest so we would have a day without technology? Did he mandate a day of rest? Like, what’s the purpose of that in our wider lives? Did he mandate a day of rest so people wouldn’t have to cook on that day? What’s the purpose of that in our wider lives? He mandated the day of the rest of... I think of him as not being an idiotic entity who had some sort of, like, wider plan for us for our own benefit. Again, this is what it means. The Sabbath was made for man, not mad for the Sabbath. So if you make arbitrary restrictions that end up lowering the value of the Sabbath to you as a tool for rest and improvement, then you have lost the purpose of the Sabbath from our perspective.
Malcolm Collins: This is why the legalism is so dangerous. What we’re talking about right here is why Okay. If if the point isn’t actually the legalism. The legalism can have positive externalities. I mean, look at all the Jewish lawyers who make all that money. Maybe we’d be good at lawyering too if we I mean,
Simone Collins: look. It’s working for them. They have a covenantal relationship with god. The rest of us are on our own. Okay? They get to play the rules game. That’s not for us. But let’s hear more about these rules.
Malcolm Collins: I’m looking at these rules.
Simone Collins: This is unhinged keys. Keys. Oh, yes. Burdened keys.
Malcolm Collins: If you carry a key, that would be considered a burden. The only thing that you but then you could say, but, like, I see Jews outside all the time on the Sabbath, and they aren’t naked. So, like, clearly, you’re allowed clothing. Right? And it’s like, yes. You are allowed clothing and some types of jewelry. How do they get around keys?
Simone Collins: How? Well, I mean, now you can just have a combination lock on your door,
Malcolm Collins: or you could have a thumbprint. So they actually those created a whole other set of problems, and we’re not gonna get that. Because a lot of those were like, okay. Now you’re engaging a mechanism. And if you engage Oh, you’re requiring
Simone Collins: the gremlins that make your code lock to work to to labor. Oh, yeah. You are kind of making a mechanism work. Oh oh, goodness gracious. Just
Malcolm Collins: don’t they
Simone Collins: don’t lock their doors.
Malcolm Collins: No. Okay. You’re allowed to wear clothing.
Simone Collins: Yes. Oh, so you it’s
Malcolm Collins: a key necklace. It’s like jewelry. Keys into your clothing, but they have to be, like, a functional sort of a part of the clothing. So you can
Simone Collins: get zipper? Like, a zipper pull?
Malcolm Collins: It’s like a look up a a Shabbos belt. It’s a s h a b b o s belt. Oh, Shabbos.
Simone Collins: Oh, yeah. Oh, is that okay?
Malcolm Collins: And you see the keys actually hold together the clothing.
Simone Collins: Right? Oh, good lord. I have to
Malcolm Collins: yeah. It’s like using the key as, like, part of a button or something like that. Right?
Simone Collins: Like adorable. Oh, guys, look. It’s it’s an attempt was made. An attempt was made. I feel good looking jewelry, but it works. What’s great is you don’t actually have to, like, get your custom key made into the belt. It looks like you can just you you just kind of attach it in with this a a very cheap looking. Well, the page can load. Oh, for you don’t need a security verification. Judaica World is not okay. Yeah. It looks like a very cheap, inexpensive, really? Trudeiko World, do better.
Malcolm Collins: These are the yeah.
Simone Collins: Funny. The cheapest.
Malcolm Collins: At least there’s lot of stab it. We have some
Simone Collins: seat belt attachers for our car that we we could just cannibalize to make our own Shabbath belt, actually. I have all of these parts at home. I don’t need to spend how how much am I how much what what is this? This is
Malcolm Collins: wouldn’t make your own. This is all
Simone Collins: the parts. Every single stupid car seat
Malcolm Collins: comes billing. Simone is descended from Jews. She Jew maxes. The moment she looks at a Jewish invention, she goes, I bet I can get that cheaper and without paying someone. You maxing right here, Simone.
Simone Collins: Well, I can. We have all the pieces at home. You too can make your very own Shabbos belt at home. Maybe we
Malcolm Collins: should do for No, Simone. The point is the Sabbath is made to help you rest in a way where you otherwise wouldn’t. We both did projects that day that we had been putting off for very, very long times that were both tied to self integrity.
Simone Collins: Studied the Bibl. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Malcolm Collins: I did some bible study, and I also made a game.
Simone Collins: But I also made
Malcolm Collins: a tower an awesome game. It actually looks
Simone Collins: pretty cool.
Malcolm Collins: It’s a game about techno Puritans, so it’s also meant to spread the message.
Simone Collins: Oh, oh, I see. Yeah. So you’re just spreading the good word. You’re a tower defense game.
Malcolm Collins: On one side, it was about techno Puritans. On the other side, it is about committing genocide. So
Simone Collins: Perfect. Great. Well, look. The the the bible is also very much of an old testament god. It’s all like, hey, guys. Hey, guys. Let’s do genocide.
Malcolm Collins: And and they were like, because it was a guy whose show we were on, and he goes, well, your ideas are very unchristian. What are what are these ideas around, like, genocide or, like, you know, sterilizing a population? I’m like, I’m pretty sure Saul would like to have a word with you. I mean, he sort of had his life ruined when God was mad at him for not. And note here when people are like, war was just like that back then. I’m like, no. You can’t use that excuse because it wasn’t just they happen to do war that way. God actively decided to punish him for not doing war that way. Right? But that’s a whole other thing. I think you could be like, well, God grew up morally from the old to the New Testament. What are you talking about, man? Like, clearly, that’s not a I don’t think that these people really believe in God. They believe in Buddy Christ. Like, it’s it’s literally the guy from Dogma. That’s Buddy Christ. That is who they worship
Speaker 5: The crucifix. While it has been a time honored symbol of our faith, holy mother church has decided to retire this highly recognizable yet wholly depressing image of our lord crucified. Christ didn’t come to earth to give us the willies. He came to help us out. He was a booster. So it is with great pleasure that I present you with the first of many revamps the Catholicism Wow campaign will unveil over the next year. I give you the Buddy Christ.
Malcolm Collins: .
Simone Collins: Not that’s a nice entity.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Not like the maximally good entity. Right? You
Simone Collins: know? Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: I I I feel I have far more theological kinship with Jews who try to follow all these rules than with Christians who are buddy Christ type. Right?
Simone Collins: Totally. 100%.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I ignore everything in the bible. It’s not you know? Anyway, so at the door, it gets picky. Many guidelines say you do not pull the key off in the street. Walk the last steps with a loose key in your hand and step into the house. The last bit would be carrying. So the typical procedure and no No. You don’t with that with the the the belt. You just Yeah.
Simone Collins: Straight in there from the couch.
Malcolm Collins: On the belt while you turn the lock. Yeah. Or take the belt off at the door, use the key, then put the belt back on. It’s like traveling in basketball. You gotta be very careful not to hold the ball while you’re walking Good lord. Or you end up incurring the the rules.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Careful, guys. Don’t get a a shabbit shabbit.
Malcolm Collins: But you also don’t see this because a lot of neighborhoods have a roofs, those fishing line things that that I mentioned, we’ll talk about later. Okay. That I do yeah.
Simone Collins: Well, I do wanna be briefed on those. It’s I I I wanna know more about them.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. Next. This one, I think you’ll find very fun. And, fall shows that my workaround for the rules or at least the spirit of the rules are not that out of line with some of the Jewish ones. So there is something called, which means doing the act in a weird way. So That’s cute. Okay. A Torah level, Shabbat labor is defined as doing the act in the normal weekday way. No. When I said don’t do rote entertainment, but you get new forms of entertainment. You have
Simone Collins: to do
Malcolm Collins: in a
Simone Collins: weird way. Yes.
Malcolm Collins: This is exactly what I’m talking about. This is why I said when I was coming up with the laws for this, and we’ll come up with this later, like, how how to do this. If you spend your week as a neuroscientist, you know, working on on on crazy inventions at home, you can’t be a neuroscientist working on crazy inventions at home on on Shabbat. But if you spend your week in a lab working on crazy neuroscience inventions and you wanna work on your own thing at home, then that would be allowed. but if you’re in a lab during it’s it’s about the type of thing that you need rest time to do. Okay? or at least that’s how we define it in in our reading of the the New Testament. But, anyway, classic example is writing left handed if you are right handed. Pick something up with your elbow or teeth. Turn a switch with a knuckle or the back of the hand. What it does
Simone Collins: not describes my everyday experience. So I just have to
Malcolm Collins: do things. Can’t touch things. Like, you have to do it sorry. I she’s autistic. Again, Jewish. and so she struggles with, I know this is a weird thing to say, she struggles with touching doorknobs. And so the way she gets around it is, like, turning them with her elbows and stuff like this. She’s very masterful at it. Very good. This is my But, yeah. Yeah. I I could see the the inner Jew coming out there, Simone. Oh, jeez.
Simone Collins: So that makes it acceptable. So if they really need to do a work thing, if they do it super weird, like, it’s okay.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. So you can’t just do it easily. Like, you can’t just do anything with your left hand. The writing is the big exception there. It’s also debated whether, like, elbow flipping a light switch counts. Some say Malaka is the circuit closing, which happens the same way no matter what part of the body hits the plate. So that is not a real. Others so, basically, the plate the electric plate is still hitting in the same way. So even though you used a weird action to do it, it doesn’t count. At least they’re trying to get the rules right. Like Yeah. They’re they’re rules. So here is an example of where you really see this. Hospitals, a Jewish doctor or nurse who must use a badge reader elevator button, chart computer presses with a knuckle, thimble, or back of the hand when a non Jewish colleague cannot do it. Or if you’re sick at home but not in danger but miserable and you need to turn a light on or the AC in an awkward way, if your rabbi holds electricity without heat filament is only rabbinic. Calling a taxi or doctor, some allow the phone with an unusual grip or when there’s a serious need. So, basically, you’re not supposed to do it. Like, this is one of those, like, it’s bad, but it’s not as bad. So you have to do something. Do it looking like a goof. Okay? Put put the chicken hat on first. Do a dance, then do the thing, which is not different from the rules that we came up with that we’ll have in the full. Simone said I wasn’t allowed to do the Sabbath episode unless I had a different episode on this. And now I’m really thinking this is probably gonna be two episodes at least because there are a lot of these rules. I love these rules. These are so fun. They’re pretty endearing, actually. They are. They’re they’re also very different. I mean, as I pointed out, the relationship that I think Christians are called to have with God, and I I think this is why there’s such a focus of the idea of the father, Right? It’s it’s like a parent who’s given you a set of rules. Whereas with Jews, it’s like a contract. And that’s why and it might be a contract you have with your parent. Like, I, as a parent, could treat the rules I have with my children as if they were contractual with some hypothesis that might lead them to be better when they grow up. Right? you know, they can find a way around my rules because I haven’t been strict enough, then No. It that it
Simone Collins: is 100% our attitude with our kids. When we make up a rule or when and they, you know, find a way to do the thing that we don’t want them to do anyway, we’re like, you know what? Touche. You outsmarted me. I’m gonna have to make there’s a new rule now.
Malcolm Collins: But but no. But we don’t do it that way. And the reason why I do. I don’t do it that way, my kids break like, if they’re breaking the intention, I because what ends up happening if you do things that way is essentially what’s happened to Judaism, which is the rules keep piling up for all of the ways that you found to get around it. And then the new rule that was really just to prevent the way you found to get around it ends up applying to a bunch of other things because Jews have this mechanism of argument called from the little to the big. this is a common rabbinic style of argument, which then means that now this little rule that you made up for something small ends up applying to a bunch of other things in a big way, and then you get rule explosion. Right? Rule explosion. Rule inflation. Rule inflation. This one I found interesting. This one’s called or the permission of a 100 rabbis.
Simone Collins: Yeah? So if you can get a 100 to write off on it, it’s okay? This is about having
Malcolm Collins: a second wife. If you can get a 100 rabbis to say that you get a second wife
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: Are there cases of this? Yes. But it’s not for the reason you think. And and note, it’s not just a 100 rabbis. Okay? So you have to get a 100 rabbis from three different countries at least. Alright. So here’s how it works and when you would actually want this. Okay. Suppose you are married to somebody, and they go into the woods, and they disappear. Oh. And they’re never found again. Or suppose they go into a permanent coma. Or suppose they run away or you’re getting a divorce and they stop responding to all your letters. What do you do? You can’t get a formal rabbinic divorce.
Simone Collins: Totally fair point. Totally fair point. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: the way that they handle this is, the the 100 rabbis, which used to actually be incredibly hard to do. but now it’s basically email lists where, like, a single rabbinic court decides it, and then that rabbinic court has, like, a 100 rabbis taken email. And they’re like, okay. We need your guys sign in on this, and it gets signed out on, and it happens almost instantly. Yeah. So it’s much easier to do now. But I found that one particularly interesting.
Simone Collins: I really like that.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. So, again, you’re not supposed to like the this is too much. If if somebody disappears, you should just say they disappeared. Okay? I’m marrying another woman. They’re probably dead. I can’t live my life like this.
Simone Collins: Okay. Fair. That that is a lot more efficient.
Malcolm Collins: This is the techno puritan versus the Jewish way of
Simone Collins: doing things.
Malcolm Collins: It’s why we went when You’re right. We were deciding between Christianity and Judaism. And you can see in our earlier videos, we genuinely, was a point where we were really thinking about Judaism very seriously. and, it was the rules lawyering that was a major factor for me. I was just like, okay. If I’m thinking about, like, God is actually real, how do I think I’m supposed to relate to him? And I think that God probably doesn’t care that I’m traveling with a key accidentally or something. I don’t think that, like, in the cosmic order
Simone Collins: I’m pretty sure the burden carrying just was a thing that people did for work. You know, they’re delivering grain or something. I I don’t don’t think that
Malcolm Collins: is outlawed because just Jewish burgers. Law is very clear. They mean, like, everything. Right? Like, you were even the one who pointed out that in the Old Testament, it shows them preparing the food beforehand. Yeah. So because that’s work.
Simone Collins: I mean, that was work back then. Spend all of your time doing that. You would have to mill the grain and then do the thing.
Malcolm Collins: She’s about three hours to do in a historic context for a woman, so it made sense back then. Yeah. Doesn’t necessarily make sense today. Here, I’m gonna do the South Park clip about that. Right?
Speaker 6: What exactly do you suggest we change, father Maxey? Well, for one, no sex with boys.
Speaker 7: The holy document of Vatican law states that a priest, bishop, or cardinal cannot get married. So where are we to get our sex?
Speaker 6: Well, then perhaps we could change the holy document of Vatican law to say that it’s okay for a priest or bishop or cardinal to have sex with women. Women? The Gilgamesh vagina is three feet wide and filled with razor sharp teeth. Do you really expect us to have sex with them? I’m gonna just say, what works on planet Gilgamesh isn’t necessarily going to work for the rest of us here on Earth. You see? That’s the problem we’re having here.
Malcolm Collins: Because I think they this is why I relate to it this way. But, again, to continue here, you’ve got the Azat Bit Din, the Shimada and it yeah. There’s a lot of stuff that I think is quite silly within Judaism and and we joke about. Right? The reason so people think that we’re overly being sympathetic about this stuff. This stuff, I think, is a different way of relating to your relationship with god. It is not something that I actively condemn like aggressive kabbalic mysticism. Oh, yeah. I I I wanna put these things in two different camps here. Okay? This stuff would be perfectly compatible with a Jewish techno Puritan. Right? Yeah. He was attempting to create something like this, Whereas the other things simply wouldn’t be. Okay. So to continue here, the Ozat bin Dym, this one was so hard to understand. Okay. So a rabbinic court acquires the crop and stores it and distributes it, and then farmers are paid for the land, not for selling the holy produce as private owners. I was so freaking confused by this.
Simone Collins: Is this about how to distribute grains on this Sabbath, or is this not a Sabbath rule? This is something else.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Okay. So you’re supposed to leave land fallow, I think, one in seven years. and what it really was actually more of about is, like, if you had an orchard or something like this or a grain field, it was, like, known in the community historically which ones were the ones that were just growing that year. And so you, like, poor people or whatever people in your community, could come and get food from your thing when they needed it. The problem is is that doesn’t work remotely in a modern context. Okay. So imagine if one in every seven years, you had a giant industrial orchard. Okay? And you’re like, I’m gonna leave it fallow so people can come and pick from it, right, when they need to pick from it. Right? Well, the vast majority of people who your orchard served live in this city. Right? So there’s really only one of two things that could happen. One is most of the food rots. You get lots of hornets and stuff like that. It’s bad for everybody. Okay? The second is do we have apples of the tree? The kids should be picking the apples in the near future, by the way. Right? We’ll do that when the film crew comes. Okay. So one is everything rots. Okay. You don’t want that. The other is is that you have people come in with trucks, and they end up picking all the food. And then they drive to the city, and then they sell it, and then they make all the profit, which defeats the entire purpose. It’s now just going to somebody who came to your land with a truck. Okay?
Simone Collins: I had thought anyway that the crop rotation was about letting fields actually, like, fallow. I thought that But that wouldn’t make
Malcolm Collins: sense for orchards. That is not what I read.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Okay.
Malcolm Collins: So it wouldn’t make sense for orchards. So I think it probably changes depending on the type of crop. Doesn’t matter.
Simone Collins: Yes. Point being. Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: What do they do now? They do one of two things. One is is for that year, they rent it to a a non Jewish person. But then the other is, which I find to be more interesting, is they have sort of a a council, a court that takes it over for that period, and then that court organizes laborers to go and get the food. And then they sell the food at the cost of acquiring the food through special means. Through special means. I don’t fully understand. Basically, it’s Basically,
Simone Collins: the person the landholder isn’t profiting from anything.
Malcolm Collins: That’s the idea.
Simone Collins: Because it’s understood that basically this food’s gonna go to waste. They’re trying to just make sure that it gets to people. And so they Is it expensive to people?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. And I bet it I wonder I’ll look at how much cheaper they are on average or how you could get access to this type of food, but very interesting
Speaker 13: So two quick additions here. The textual reason for this explicitly says that it’s for, like, poor people and stuff like this, not for the land. But, obviously, this would have a positive effect on the land, and that might be why it evolved as a tradition. The second thing is where you would buy something like this. It is only a rule for Jewish farms in Israel, so you wouldn’t see these in The United States. But in Israel, there’s ways for grocers to buy this type of food.
Malcolm Collins: . Anyway, next one here. I told you we’re gonna go into ones that you haven’t heard of frequently today. So weird. Yeah. The. Okay? So this one really confused me. It took me a while to get my head around.
Simone Collins: Right.
Malcolm Collins: Alright. So there’s a number of Jewish festival days where you can only cook food that’s going to be eaten on that day. Okay? And so you don’t do a bunch of extra work. Like, you’re not doing bakery work or you’re not doing meal prep for the week or anything like that.
Simone Collins: Like, you can’t have leftovers. You whatever you’re making that day
Malcolm Collins: is Yeah. It’s sort of like a Sabbath, but with the condition that you can cook food for that day. Okay? Now But only that day. But only that day. Oh. These days are variable, though. And so they can land right before the Sabbath. Now this creates a problem because Oh, dear. Right.
Simone Collins: Because if it’s the Friday before the Sabbath, well, but then can’t you just make your Sabbath food on Wednesday or Thursday?
Malcolm Collins: That’s what I would do, frankly. I’m like, oh, but we have rules that Jews don’t have. So keep in mind, we are allowed to reheat food. And Jews, if they’re reheating food, they have rules like so there’s this Jewish invention, which is the thing that keeps water boiling. So you boil water before the Sabbath, and then there’s a special device that keeps it boiling overnight and throughout the next day that you can use it when you need to use it without reboiling water.
Simone Collins: I thought there were other things where, like, your oven was Set
Malcolm Collins: to go off at a certain time.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Like, everything’s just set to a timer, and so you you didn’t do it then. It was all set before, so that didn’t work. Right? So That’s what I thought. I saw
Malcolm Collins: some orthodox houses. Yeah. I figured this would be easy, but they I don’t know. For somebody, it was a major issue that you not leave food sitting for two days, probably a bigger issue before refrigeration. But Yeah. Do you know how they got out of this?
Simone Collins: No. I I would just assume that they have to eat very shelf stable foods on that Sabbath.
Malcolm Collins: So if they take something cooked and something baked from the previous day Okay. Say something words on it. So Thursday. And then what they make on that Thursday counts as the meal for that Friday.
Speaker 22: Or maybe not. This was incredibly confusing to me when I was fact checking with AI. It might be just a ritual that you do on Thursday that then allows you to cook more on Friday. It’s unclear. The Jewish rules are very complicated.
Malcolm Collins: And what they make on that Friday, they’re not allowed to make on the, you know, on the Sabbath because they already got the work that they were going to do on that festival day out of the way the day before by saying a special prayer and making the food. That just seems like deleting the rule because then they’re just It does, Simone. I don’t I don’t like that one as much.
Simone Collins: I don’t like that one at all. No. Just eat Wednesday’s food on Saturday. If it has to be cold, it’s cold. But, like, we’ve all made it we’ve all done it before. Like, in college, it’s not like it’s hard. Well, okay. Interesting. Yeah. My least favorite so far.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So here’s another one, and I didn’t even know about this rule. Okay. This is called Bishul Akkum. So did you know that while this is not in the Torah, by rabbinic decree in the Talmud, Jews are not supposed to eat what is it? I I think it’s like a full proper meal that was cooked by a non Jew.
Simone Collins: Really? No. I mean, how would you ever travel?
Malcolm Collins: So there are ways around it. Okay. Can you guess what they do to get around this one?
Simone Collins: No. You know how you used to take, like, hot sauce with you to restaurants and other seasonings, and you would just sort of finish cooking your food at the table.
Malcolm Collins: You would, like, spice it. Better answer than
Simone Collins: the And so I feel like that way, a Jew cooked it. Like, if I mean, assuming you’re Jewish, and then you’re you’re finishing your food at the table. You know, you just, like, add your some salt and a little pepper, or maybe you, like, add a hot sauce to it.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Get dips. Anything with a dip, you’re you’re partially cooking.
Simone Collins: Like, brought your own dips with you? Like, yeah.
Malcolm Collins: No. You don’t even need your own dip or anything. I go to a restaurant, and this is how I would handle it if I was a Jew. I’d be like, well, salsa. Right? So salsa and the chip, I put the salsa on the chip.
Simone Collins: So Oh, you’ve already you’ve already yo. Yeah. So, basically or you order the hamburger with everything on the side like I do because I I need to weigh everything separately. And then you you assemble the burger. So you did some of the work there. You know? You did the assembly. Yeah. Yeah. Or you could just go to, like, hot pot places where you actually
Malcolm Collins: put the food at the table. So this everything you’re saying is the way I would do it. It’s not the way they do Oh. Although they go with a similar rule, which is to say if a Jew participated in the cooking, it counts. And so what you have is you will have kosher restaurants where a Jew turns on, like, the ovens at the beginning of the day. And I’m like, that kinda defeats so the reason this rule exists
Simone Collins: Oh my god. I wonder if there’s, like, the oven turning on Jew who just, like, goes from restaurant to restaurant and, you know, hey, guys, turns on the oven.
Malcolm Collins: I mean, I’m sure there are in some communities.
Speaker 14: Yes. This is a real job, and it’s called a magician or supervisor in a kosher restaurant, a hotel, or kitchen, or catering hall with non Jewish cooks. The magician often arrives before everyone else, unlocks the kitchen, and lights every cooking fire, ranges, oven, grills, etcetera. there are two types of setups, the magician tendi, which is a full time in the kitchen all day, and the Yosha vicious who drops in and out more common in factories. They like boilers and pilots, etcetera.
Malcolm Collins: Wow. Get your oven Jew. Your oven Jew. Restaurant turning on. Wow. So this is now note here, this one really gets me.
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: And the reason it gets me is because it goes against the exact purpose of this rule Okay. Which is why I’d say I really hate rules lawyering and instead focusing on the purpose of the rule. Okay. If you read the Old Testament, there are so this is even the part that, like, all the Christians read. I’ve read. You see this throughout. Lots of rules. Lots of times when Jewish people were tempted by pagans who were living among them, and then they they went out and they started to do more pagan things. Yeah. And they intermarried a bunch, and there had to be rulings against this. And so it was just like, look. The more you interact with these pagan people, the more you become like these pagan people, and that’s really dangerous. And so this is seen throughout. This is not a crazy takeaway that somebody had. It’s it’s it’s something I would have thought reading it. And it’s a rule that if the techno puritan community ever becomes large enough to mostly just interact with other techno puritans, I would be very comfortable putting as a a general rule that you should not be eating or socializing with non techno puritans unless it’s for career purposes, or converting somebody or bringing in a new potential spouse to the village. but for them, this is about not marrying out of the community, stuff like that. Right? Like, it’s about not socially. So if you’re doing it in restaurants and stuff like that, specifically so that you can share food and proper meals with non Jews, you’re you’re breaking the point.
Simone Collins: I didn’t realize that was the point. I just figured, like, if someone if a non Jew is preparing food for you, they’re way more likely to put, say, cheese on your hamburger by mistake or butter, god forbid. I mean, keep in mind, you have most most restaurants that make hamburgers or steaks or whatever are going to use at least the really higher high end ones are gonna use a nice butter in their pans. And if you’re cooking steak or hamburgers or meatballs and stuff with butter, then you’re breaking one of the key rules. So I thought it was more just that you need to make sure that a Jew is involved in the cooking process because otherwise, you’re not you’re you’re likely to have broken some major rules that they just don’t know, someone benignly wouldn’t know that they’re breaking.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. That’s not why it exists. But but this is this is where it gets yeah. Interesting to me. I I I this one was was I was like, that’s not good, and that shows exactly the worst way a rule can break.
Simone Collins: Yeah.
Malcolm Collins: Actually. And it’s why I wouldn’t want that to be if I was saying, generally, you know, socialize with our own people so you do not get tempted, especially easier for to socialize then. Don’t do that. Especially for younger people, I would argue. Right? You know, this is where it gets really dangerous for younger people. They consume too much content from outsiders. They and and, obviously, for Jews, it’s an extra when people talk about, like, woke Jews ruining everything, these are almost exclusively Jews who have left the Jewish community. Right? Like, they are reformed Jews. Okay. Maybe they’re still in the Jewish community, but, I mean, like, they’ve they’ve stopped following most of the rules. They’ve become what we would consider, like, a Unitarian Universalist Christian or something like that. So, like, all of society is hurt when Jews get pulled by the dark side because then they go and run some movie studio and make a bunch of, what was I gonna say? Was gonna say, like, gay cowboys eating pudding movies, and we have to consume that thought. You know? No good.
Speaker 8: are you to judge my womanly soul? The goddess flames that burn in my memory aren’t dark. Dare you call them dark. Here lies the goddess truth of my body. Oh, brother. The goddess that cries. Freedom. Here is the goddess truth of my womanly being. You are my blossom, my flame. When we make love, it’s like the sun is right outside the door. Then make love to me right now. Dudes. Dudes. do you have any pudding left? I ate all mine up, silly. Well, why don’t we just explore our sexuality? Oh, good idea. Let’s.
Malcolm Collins: but to continue here. Okay. Inheritance. So we’re gonna do the inheritance walk around so daughters get a share. So according to, like, if you do the correct or, you know, by the bible, numbers 27, daughters of Zephelim and numbers 36, Torah inheritance is through the male line with a limited exemption when there are no sons. The later, documents are tools to honor this. Okay. So what do you do? Right? now if you live in a society where everybody only passes inheritance down through their sons, I think that that can work because then women have to get married to get anyone’s inheritance, and the inheritance they get is through the family of the that they’re joining. Right? But today, a lot of Jews don’t want their daughter who goes unmarried or whatever to starve to death. I know. So stupid. That’s exactly the daughters that should be starving to death. but, they, they get around this. How do you think they get around this?
Simone Collins: they look. As soon as you’re gestating in your mother’s body as a little girl, you have all the eggs you’re ever gonna have, and some of those are gonna be boys. So we count those as the next generation of boys that are sitting
Malcolm Collins: inside the girls. This one’s way simpler and easy to do.
Simone Collins: Oh, then okay. Tell me.
Malcolm Collins: Just give them the money before you die?
Simone Collins: Oh, well, yeah, like a lot of, rich people do with their kids to avoid Taxes. Yeah. Taxes and probate and all that other
Malcolm Collins: Skydex is here.
Speaker 21: K. So when I was going over it, this is the one that it... AI said that we got the most wrong. Uh, specifically, there is another mechanism, which is a father will say that I owe my daughter a huge sum worth more than my entire estate, And the daughter can then claim this against the sons if they don’t give her 50% of the estate when he dies. um And this is called a Shar Shazizakar. I I can’t pronounce any of these Jewish words.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. So now we’re gonna talk about a Halakhic prenup, an RCA BDAA agreement. Okay. Before the wedding, the husband signs that if the marriage is over according to a BitDin, he will pay a high amount of support or get until he gives a Jewish divorce. So note here. a Jewish husband could just decide he doesn’t wanna get divorced. Right? Like, this is a problem for Jewish communities. It’s such a problem for Jewish communities that one of the things that orthodox Jewish women have taken to do have you heard of this, Simone? No. Okay. So suppose there’s a guy who tells his wife, I just won’t divorce you even though the relationship’s clearly not working, and she’s in a really bad place. And the other women in the community are very distressed by this. What can they do?
Simone Collins: Threaten to not have sex with their husbands?
Malcolm Collins: Exactly what they do. Okay. They do the entire Orthodox Jewish community of women will deal
Simone Collins: a strike.
Malcolm Collins: A sex strike. Wow. Like that famous Athenian play.
Simone Collins: That’s what I was, yeah, I was thinking about that. What is it? Aries Aristria? No. I’m not gonna remember it.
Malcolm Collins: But that’s just too highbrow for our audience.
Simone Collins: Too highbrow. Too highbrow. That’s You get the reference.
Malcolm Collins: You can comment. You can comment. Okay? But, anyway, they they they go on sex strikes, and it’s meant to pressure the other men to force the guy to give the divorce papers. But there’s a type of prenup that they can also do, which helds to Jewish law, where the guy has to pay her a $150 every day or some, like, large amount or something like that. We shouldn’t seem that large. It must have been a large amount in the past. To to her every day that he doesn’t, Obviously, a problem of inflation hits. Maybe they need to attach them. Yeah. But, another fun marriage one, I’m joking about this being fun here, is given that you need the other party, what do Jewish people do? Like, recently, a lot of young Jewish men went to war. Yeah. A lot of our fans of our show went to war. Yeah. And they have since come back safely, many of them. Thank goodness. I saw all of them, actually, which is very good to see. So I saw I saw one of them on our paid subscriber call.
Simone Collins: Yay. Okay. Good.
Malcolm Collins: Great. So yes. and he had just had a son, so he was asking questions about that. He’s like, I’m going to war. It may not be coming back. I just had a son. Do you have any advice? I was like, holy Like, it’s really I know everybody acts like the whatever. But, like, they they were in a tough spot to to have to deal with a hostile group that was, like, raiding their country. But they dealt with it and are continuing to deal with it.
Speaker 9: And I’d note here, if Mexico did to us what was done to Israel on October 7, we would absolutely be doing the same thing to Mexico. And I would note here where people would like, woah. They treated Gaza. We have done a lot to Mexico that Israel did to Gaza. We took a land from them, you could argue, with an unfair war. In fact, I I I’d argue that we’re sort of in a worse moral position vis a vis Mexico than Israel was vis a vis Gaza because they’re regularly sending, you know, aid and basically supporting the population there, which is we’re not doing with Mexico.
Speaker 17: And if you’re like, well, it was basically an open air prison. It’s like, well, okay. What about the wall that we tried to build around Mexico? Right? Like, you can say the same thing. The the anything can be stretched to mean that when you go with the loose definitions that have been made around Gaza. What I will say is that if you’re asking why are you so pro Israel, it’s because of the allies that we have right now, they’re the one that’s still gonna be relevant in fifty years. Europe’s not having kids and is replacing their population. Canada is not having kids and is replacing their population. so they’re not relevant to us in the long term But Israel is a country that is high technology and high birth rate and better when contrasted with countries like Canada and Europe that are willing to let other countries abuse them, harvest their resources with no repercussion. Israel actually punishes bad actors and people who f with them, which is something we need to see more of in the global stage.
Malcolm Collins: But, anyway, so one of these guys, what do they do for their wives before they leave for war?
Simone Collins: Freeze their sperm?
Malcolm Collins: no. They give, provisional divorce papers.
Simone Collins: Oh, that’s sweet. So if they go missing in action.
Malcolm Collins: So if they go missing in action, it’s really
Simone Collins: easy for,
Malcolm Collins: like, to get divorced.
Simone Collins: So dark, but also incredibly very dark. Right? Unless, like I don’t know. Unless they don’t want them to remarry, in which case, presumably, they won’t do that. But, yeah, I guess they want them to remarry for the sake of the kids. And I’m surprised that there would be that many men who’d be comfortable with their wives remarrying, I guess. But whatever. Other than them.
Malcolm Collins: So this one was also very hard for me to figure out. Okay. This was around wine. Okay. So wine that has been boiled or flash pasteurized may be handled by non Jews. Uncooked wine generally may not.
Simone Collins: And I was very what? Wine isn’t normally cooked, is it? Like, pasteurized milk?
Malcolm Collins: Wine is normally cooked, and we’ll get into that. Does that change the flavor? It does. And wine connoisseurs don’t like it, but a lot of wine that you get at a store has actually been cooked so that Jews can get into this.
Simone Collins: Wine. Oh my gosh. Next I mean, I guess we’re never in liquor stores or whatever.
Malcolm Collins: If you if you go to a store, you can find they’ll have, like, a thing that said, we’ll we’ll get into it. Okay. So gotta
Simone Collins: look at that. That’s so interesting.
Malcolm Collins: So wine used to be used for pagan libations. And then later layer social mixing, cooking was, taken to ruin it for the ritual. So the idea was that cooked wine couldn’t be used for pagan rituals.
Simone Collins: Dude, that’s so fun. Just sticking it to the pagans. I like this one.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Alright. So to to go into this more, rabbis then needed to add a fit. So ordinary wine for non Jews, even if nobody saw a libation, is treated as suspect because you don’t know if they’ve used this for a pagan god. And keep in mind, from a Jewish perspective, a lot of Christian ceremonies use wine. I I I poisoned that as well. Yeah. So, even even dealing with the Christians, they’ve gotta worry about this. although, typically, we don’t take the same wine that’s used in communion and then use it at a restaurant, but I guess that used to be more of a problem. so, later when open idolatry faded, the fence was kept as a partial social barrier. Basically, don’t linger if it made it harder to drink wine with non Jews for a period, which was important because, like, suppose you’ve got young people of different genders drinking a lot of wine, and one of them is non Jewish. And then you end up with a non Jewish husband in the community, and that could create problems, or baby mommy or whatever. Right? So that’s that’s why they they moved it to cooked wine. So okay. How does this work now? Uncooked kosher wine, non mishra. So a Jew must make it, bottle it, and the bottle is open. You pour it. If a non Jew was part of the making it or pours it or sometimes even gives it a significant nudge, many authorities claim it is now suspect. It’s now forbidden to drink. So Why? Because they put pagan wine in it or accidentally treated it as Jesus’ body. They may have accidentally done a a pagan ceremony with it. Okay?
Simone Collins: Wait. Just so does, like, does Christian count as pagan here? What’s going on?
Malcolm Collins: Well, so you gotta keep in mind from a Jewish perspective Yeah. Christians are policyists often. Because So
Simone Collins: when you mean when you say pagan ritual, you mean, like like, used in a Catholic church service. Don’t they have special mind for that?
Malcolm Collins: Most look. So you so you’ve gotta keep in mind from our perspective, from a techno Puritan perspective, I actually agree with Jews on this. Okay? So this is like, obviously, I think that if you treat Jesus as god and as a totally distinct entity, but also the same entity Yeah. That’s just multiple gods, but you defining it as not multiple gods. You saying, no. But I have defined it as not multiple gods, which to me is just wordplay. Right? Like so this is another weird part of techno puritanism. A lot of people wonder why we but I just can’t get over that that’s polytheism. So I can see why Jews feel this way. But most Christians wouldn’t feel this way, and this is, again, one of our weird, overly strict things about some parts of the bible. Okay. But to continue here, wineries run the wine through a heat exchanger, which is called flash pasteurization, up to roughly 175 to a 195 Fahrenheit for a short time. And then labels will say that you can find on mini wine bottles.
Simone Collins: We’ve gotta look for that next time.
Malcolm Collins: Now we’ll end with should we wrap this one up here and do a separate episode on this? Because I was gonna get into the weird sex stuff.
Simone Collins: Well, let’s do the weird sex stuff on the next one, but can you tell me about the wires before we before as our as our as our last little thing? Because I don’t I don’t remember. I just remember that they they need a wire around a thing, but I don’t remember why you need a wire around your community, say. Okay. So What does it keep you safe from? What does it do?
Malcolm Collins: You are not allowed to work on the status. Right?
Simone Collins: Yes. Right.
Malcolm Collins: And Jews love categorizing things. So they categorize
Simone Collins: Resistematizers just like the rest of the autists that are functional.
Malcolm Collins: Oh my god. This is why you have kids with a Jewess, and then all of your kids line up their toys by size and color. And that’s their favorite game. Makes me so happy. Absolutely. Go screw yourself. So cute.
Simone Collins: It’s so cute.
Malcolm Collins: This is and you see she even likes this behavior.
Simone Collins: Oh, come on. You do too when you come upstairs, and they’re so weird. Weird.
Malcolm Collins: They’re little Jubies. I love them so much. More often than not, they’re more backwards. More often than not, they’re ready to jump on you
Simone Collins: from outside. Than not, our house is just a tripping hazard. And and screaming. The other day,
Malcolm Collins: it was so funny. I come into the room, and one of my kids is dressed up. And I don’t know if it’s genetic or something like that. He looked like he was in pyctis war paint. He had taken a marker and told Simone that he wanted to go draw something.
Simone Collins: He wanted to take an art break from homeschooling lessons.
Malcolm Collins: So I come in. He hasn’t drawn a thing on the whiteboard. He was looking in the mirror, and he had drawn, like, lines around, like, his eyes and then, like, things all over and then a rib cage on himself. So it looked looked very Did you get any pictures of it?
Simone Collins: Oh, I have pictures. Yeah. Hold on. And the whole time, he’s going
Malcolm Collins: I come up doing his work right. Screaming at the time. He’s like Yeah.
Simone Collins: Hold on.
Malcolm Collins: You’re pulling it up?
Simone Collins: Yeah. I am. I have it right here.
Malcolm Collins: Okay. Okay.
Simone Collins: Gotta share my screen. Yeah. This is him homeschooling after, but he he just take he completely and it wasn’t just his face either. It was his his stomach too.
Malcolm Collins: The lines around his eyes. He’s so
Simone Collins: proud of himself. Yeah. He was very he was very pleased with himself. Just, like, constantly. Crazy boy. That’s our boy. Our little Torsten well, you named him Torsten. You named him. I we we chose this. Actually, this was more of a me name, Torsten Savage, because Torsten was my old family name. So
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But now he’s got his little he did too Scandinavian this one. Uh-oh.
Simone Collins: Getting that off was a doozy. That was I don’t think
Malcolm Collins: they’d fit well. It is actually, so we have a a number of Orthodox Jewish friends, and pretty much every kid around their own age our kids have played with in their entire life has been Orthodox Jewish kids, except for True. Except for The one exception that we won’t name. Well, I mean okay. Whatever. The the but other than that, it’s always been and it’s always been a problem because they are far more naturally aggressive and rough in the way they play than Orthodox Jewish kids.
Simone Collins: Yeah. I was just at the mall with our our kids. And for whatever reason, both me, the boys that is, like, Tex, Torsten, and Octavian, And then one Orthodox Jewish family with three kids were shopping at the Rivian store and the Tesla store at the same time or fantasizing about cars we made some day afford. And they are dressed so nicely. The boys are wearing their, I can’t remember the garments with the the the tassel things on them. Like, they’re they’re properly like, they’re they’re they’re in it to win it. and their boys are, like, you know, politely walking around the cars. Our boys are, like, in the car, like, fully trying to drive it away, like, slamming the doors, climbing around. I’m like, no.
Malcolm Collins: No. No. No. And
Simone Collins: there they are, these sweet little children just like But this is
Malcolm Collins: the way we had traditionally raised our kids. This isn’t, like, a mistake of parenting. It’s just a cultural difference and and likely a genetic difference between population groups. And and that’s why there are different rules for different population groups in different periods. And the set of rules that works for one people isn’t necessarily gonna work for another people. I would personally find the Jewish system it would not be restful to me. I’ll tell you what. Sabbath would not be restful to me if I did it in the Jewish way. It would be a complete nightmare that I would not look forward to at all and would just make me less productive. And I’d see it as, like, a duty rather than a gift. And I think it’s very important to organize a Sabbath that you see as a gift that you are excited for.
Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, it it in the end, it is a cessation.
Malcolm Collins: But it needs to be a real gift, something you are actually excited for in the way that you structure it. A real rest.
Simone Collins: A real No one said that you’re supposed to be happy on the Sabbath. You’re supposed to take a beat, and that’s that’s what you’re doing. That’s what
Malcolm Collins: we did. No. That’s actually wrong. It’s a cessation. You the point of the rest is your mental well-being. That is the point of the rest. That is why god commands it. They don’t say that. You are approaching this with Jew rules against it on. I gotta talk about the Jew gold now. I gotta let let out all the Jew rules because you got the the the Jew mindset there. God gave this to us to help us.
Simone Collins: God rested. As an addition the seventh day, and we do what God did because he’s figured something out.
Malcolm Collins: God didn’t do it because he had to do it. He didn’t do
Simone Collins: it because it was the wise thing to do, and now we can do it too.
Malcolm Collins: He didn’t do it because there was some fun was involved. He did it because he worked real hard for seven days. Okay? Then he he took a beat. That’s I think I I’m glad that I could take the two hundred, three hundred years from now, there’s gonna be two branches of techno puritanism. One that strictly follows the Simone rules and one that strictly follows the Malcolm rules. If you wanna see our law and argument about this There
Simone Collins: are Simone rules. There no. I I ultimately came to agree with you. And This is why men teach.
Malcolm Collins: Right? Like, this is why we can’t let women teach or they No.
Simone Collins: The big takeaway that I had was basically having when you take Malcolm’s approach to the Sabbath and you’re trying to constantly orient with the spirit of the law rather than the letter, you have to do a lot more thinking about what actually is in alignment with your religion and what actually is in the spirit of the law. And that in itself brings you closer in alignment with your religion. Requires more moral difficulty. Yeah. Than thoughtlessly adhering to a bunch of rote rules. And, therefore, it is better to think about, should you leave your house? You know? Should you give
Malcolm Collins: a parent’s crown? My way is actually morally more difficult. I I had to tell her it was the harder, technically stricter way
Simone Collins: Oh, great.
Malcolm Collins: For her to be okay with it. Because yeah. You see, I used I used what they call I had to learn Jew logic. I had to uno reverse her with strictness.
Simone Collins: Don’t worry. It’s actually harder. Don’t worry. I hate you so much. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.
Malcolm Collins: I did my Bugs Bunny thing there with her. See?
Simone Collins: Yes. You did. You are look. Bugs Bunny is just repackaged Jack Tails, and you are just repackaged Jack Tails. So It’s harder. It’s easier. Harder.
Malcolm Collins: It’s really the other side of the branch. Anyway okay. So the. Alright? Yes. One form of work, because the Jews came up with all these types of work, is carrying something from one place to another place. Okay? Okay. And, by way, any of these that I’ve gotten wrong, Jews can talk about in the comments. Obviously, fake Jews who don’t really follow the rules, they are not gonna follow any of these. But I think that if you are actually Jew Jew, you are supposed to follow most of these. And that is, like, part of the Jewish identity. Right? And I think you lose
Simone Collins: a lot pretty good about it. You know?
Malcolm Collins: Hebron, in the Old Testament, God told the Jew to, like, literally beat a guy to death with stones for breaking these. And so if you don’t have some, like, good rabbinic reason for augmenting them significantly, which I think a lot of the reformed Jews really don’t, I think you’re still held to them unless you get some, like, big thing like the Jesus arguments. Trace, that was really good. Did Jesus use a number of rabbinic style arguments to argue against them, which we’ll go over in our episode on that. He was a Jew. He was a Jew, and he argued in a Jewish fashion against the way that the Jews had come to teach treat the Sabbaths, to argue that it went against the point. but what they do is they put a wire, which is okay. So how do I do this? Okay. So households put a loaf in one house, air shaved something, and then used a beam and pole wire doorway around so a lane counted as one domain
Speaker 15: Okay. So I had to look this up to get a clearer description because this is still very confusing to me. Essentially, happened is, historically, multiple houses might share their food. And if they were sharing their food on the Sabbath, then they would count as one house. Then what ended up happening is if you had, like, a small lane in between your houses, what people would do is you could either put a door at the opening of that lane or then just a wire at the opening of that lane, and that would count the two houses on either side of that lane as the same house. And then it was that ruling that later got extended to all houses in a wired in area.
Malcolm Collins: . King Solomon is credited with requiring the food share so people would not forget the origin of the ban. A city Europe, a committee of leases or gets permission for utility poles, string, fishing, etcetera, line or wire above head height and checks it every Friday and then publishes that your roof is up as a text to everyone, especially, like, after a storm or something like that. So they Oh, good heavens.
Simone Collins: See? Look at that. They’re they’re still being careful about the rule. If it’s broken, you’re SOL.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. That that then you’ve gotta do the teaching thing and all the other stuff and all the stuff that, you know, Jews do everywhere else in the world.
Simone Collins: Okay. So you don’t have to do all these other things if you
Malcolm Collins: If no. If you live in one of those, depending on. So some Jews are like, the wire doesn’t count. That’s clearly breaking the point of the rule.
Simone Collins: Okay. So interesting. There there is variation in interpretation here. Some people are like, I’m not falling for that. That’s not so oh, is this why some Jews actually wear just head coverings like any reasonable person would, whereas others wear the wig?
Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Note here what she’s talking about is, in one Jewish something, it’s it’s written that married women’s hair is erotic. and so they cover their hair, but then 11 wear wigs. And we always think that the funniest one because it’s, like, wearing fake breasts or something like that and and thinking it’s it’s okay. And, like, just tons of Jewish women do this. But it’s interesting. This is an example of, like, rule creep. That only got into the Jewish rule because in a temple ceremony, if you thought a woman was cheating on you, you would the priest would, like
Simone Collins: Remove her.
Malcolm Collins: Say a bunch of mean things to her and then rip off her her hair pins or whatever in super mean girlish. Tear her outfit, and then she’d, you know, walk out. And and so it was like, well, that’s what a woman looks like after they’ve been caught cheating. So, like, a normal woman doesn’t do that, and then it became erotic. And then it’s weird. It’s just rules piled on rules. God never came down and told Jews, like, women need to have their hair covered. Like, I I believe he did Christians, though, is women female hair coverings.
Simone Collins: Well, I know they’re, I mean, Christians are expected to cover their hair in church at least. I mean, it’s it’s, like, practicing proper ones. Right?
Malcolm Collins: I mean, yeah.
Simone Collins: I mean, I know it it like, trad cats trad cats will cover their hair. And
Malcolm Collins: I think you were supposed to. Yes.
Simone Collins: Yeah. And and now, like, women in fact, some women have converted just because they’re so into, like, the cute lacy wig.
Malcolm Collins: When are you gonna start wearing your bonnets again on on air?
Simone Collins: I I think what I’m more into instead of the bonnets is the middle ages style head covering.
Malcolm Collins: Give it
Simone Collins: The band that’s pinned down. But it’s just it’s a lot, and I can’t wear it if I have a baby on the back of me because I’ll pull it off. And techs will pull off anybody.
Malcolm Collins: You don’t have a baby on your back now. So I, as your husband, am demanding Oh my god. That you stop showing your robotic hair to our audience because they’re gonna get off. And what am I supposed to do with that?
Simone Collins: It’s so funny the varying things that societies have decided are erotic, like hair, ankles, facial expressions.
Malcolm Collins: What are you gonna do? You know? Whereas in techno puritanism, you’re just supposed to not dwell on any of that.
Simone Collins: Yeah. Like, maybe just get over yourself. Focus on what you’re supposed to do.
Malcolm Collins: Focus on what you’re supposed to do. This is a in the in the video game that I’m making, one of the the plots has a character who is supposed to be, like, a effective altruist parody. Right? And you’re a techno puritan wiping out their species of eusocial insects. And one of the factions you can ally with is effective altruists who are like, they think that they’re gonna use you to, like, take over afterwards. They’re like, well, we’re actually smart. We’re actually on your level. You know? But they start being happy because you’re destroying data centers or a city with a data center, and they think that they can manipulate you, and they’re very stupid about it. but they’re they’re like, oh, you know, why don’t you we got all these women, right, that you can sleep with, you know, all these poly people who work for us. Right? Like, why don’t we send them to your ship? And you’re just very confused. You’re like, wait. You have sex with them, but not for breeding. And they’re like, yeah. Not for breeding. And it’s like, so what why would you do that? And they’re like, well, because it feels good. And your character’s like, what? Have you not figured out masturbation yet? Like, why are you doing this? This seems like an enormous waste of time, which is genuinely the way I feel about these the those sorts of communities.
Simone Collins: This has been fascinating, and I want more. And I really appreciate
Malcolm Collins: And we’re gonna get more and very fun. And it is we’ll probably just do the direct next episode on this because I I I think it’s a fascinating topic. It’s a really interesting topic, and I hope you guys join us next time to learn more about weird stuff. Malicious compliance. Malicious compliance.
Simone Collins: Yes. I love it. Thank you, Malcolm. You’re gorgeous.
Malcolm Collins: You are gorgeous, and I love you.
Simone Collins: I love you too. You’ll think I’m even more gorgeous when I’m covered up in a freaking what are those called? Cowls? I don’t even know. I just think they’re actually the most practical looking head coverings. I know what I’m talking about. Right?
Malcolm Collins: Dinner tonight, we’re doing a reheat of your last sites. You did a pretty good job with that.
Simone Collins: Yeah. And then I do you want me to thaw out more steaks, or are you staked out at this point?
Malcolm Collins: No. I could never have enough steaks. I’ve I’ve got if I moved to a meal that’s, like, mostly steak, the way you cook steak is spectacular. You are one of the best steak cookers I have ever had in my life. Every bite is one of the best things I’ve ever had.
Simone Collins: that’s because you were gifted very good steak by a very generous family member.
Malcolm Collins: Well, I think you’ll probably be able to do it even when we run through all the steak. I don’t know about that.
Simone Collins: Well, we’ll find out, I guess. There’s still a lot of it left, though, because we were sent that giant chunk that I just spent hours.
Malcolm Collins: We might make enough of money that we can get
Simone Collins: No. I’m sure when you see the prices of that stuff, like, to buy a half of a cow or whatever it is that was sent to us. I remember cutting it up on the counter and Torsten being like, is that muscle like we have on our bodies? And I’m like, yeah. Toasty, that came from a cow. And he’s like, are you going to eat my muscle? Toasty, you’re too small.
Malcolm Collins: And he’s very sweet when he asks these questions.
Simone Collins: He’s so sweet when he asks if we’re going to eat him.
Malcolm Collins: And now you have to go to the doctor because you have been putting it off. And she’s like, I’m in enormous pain every day. And I was like bloody nubs that are on my Simone, then go to the doctor, and you’re like, but doctors cost money and take time. And I’m like, shut Simone, get your butt to the doctor.
Simone Collins: Okay. Off I go. I love you so much.
Malcolm Collins: Love you too.
Simone Collins: Bye. Looking forward to this We all didn’t get our morning time together, and I hate that so much. And we only get one hour together now.
Malcolm Collins: My video coming through okay?
Simone Collins: Yes. It looks clear today. It does not look messed up.
Malcolm Collins: But you’ve been wanting to do this one for ages. So
Simone Collins: My chair has creeped into your background. It’s very pronatalist.
Malcolm Collins: Very pronatalist. Yes. Yeah. Alright. I’ll get I’ll get started on this one right away because it’ll be a tough one. Good.
Speaker 16: Room, and he has decided to ambush me. Are you gonna let me through? Right? I you’re not gonna jump on me by trying to walk through. Right? Oh, Oh, I’m not leaving you, buddy. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. I’m not allowed. You don’t give up. You don’t give up. Is that what they it’s you know, it’s an ambush when they’re yelling ambush. Oh, I’m coming in. I think I’m gonna Owl attack. Ready? Uh-oh. An owl? Yeah. We beat our kids every day. You see how good we are at it? Oh my god. Yes. I want to swim. I need to run. Yeah. I love you, Aki. Bye. Are you trying to say your love and your have a backup plan? Did you know I have a backup plan?