[emosenkis]

As on Orthodox Jew, while I don't have anything against this and it sounds like a fun hobby project, I don't like that it misleads regarding what Jewish law actually requires.

As several others have mentioned, there is absolutely no problem with keeping a server running on the sabbath - computers aren't Jews (Jewish law only expects Jews to keep the sabbath). If it's Jews working to generate the electricity (most "modern" or "yeshivish" Orthodox Jews don't believe this is a problem; I don't know what fraction of "ultra-" Orthodox Jews disagree with that), any public cloud outside of Israel should suffice. If you're concerned with electricity, why not worry that Jews may be working to maintain the server's internet connection (again, this is trivially solved by not hosting it in Israel - all it takes is a non-Jewish majority to provide a reasonable presumption that the workers probably aren't Jewish)?

If you're worried about Jewish users accessing it on the sabbath (in my opinion the least far-fetched concern, but not one addressed by the site), the complete solution would be to shut it down for ~49 hours every week starting from ~sunset on Friday in east Asia - this doesn't require using batteries or really anything special about the site's hardware or even software.

Finally, why call it a 'kosher' search engine when almost anyone interested in such a thing would understand that as being about filtering the search results?

Edit: If you assume that using electricity and/or internet that are maintained by Jews on the sabbath is a problem, I guess you might be able to make a case for avoiding indexing sites in Israel or at all during the sabbath, since then you'd be benefitting indirectly from the work of the Jews that maintained the infrastructure - however, I think it's safe to assume that the vast majority of the internet is not served using infrastructure actively supported by Jews during the sabbath so even assuming you're concerned about this, the final answer would probably still be that indexing during the sabbath is fine.

[refurb]

Just random observation - when I visited Israel I was astounded how nearly complete the sabbath shutdown is. In the US, the only day that comes close is Christmas Day and it’s still not even close. My wife and I struggled to find dinner and drove around for an hour or so until we found an Arab place that was open. Pretty much the only place in town that was open.

Then sunset comes and everyone comes out. If you travel to Israel, plan for it!

[bszupnick]

I live in Israel and always felt terrible for tourists who accidentally got stuck! Depending where you are you can end up with no public transportation, no grocery stores, restaurants, shops, museums, anything!

[Auracle]

My wife and I arrived in France the same day as a holiday. All the grocery stores and restaurants were closed and we had absolutely no food - we spent an hour driving/walking from place to place. Defeated and on our way back to our car to go to our rental, our savior appeared.

A pizza truck.

[apexalpha]

Do all shops and restaurants stay open on holidays in the US?

[refurb]

It’s not too hard to find open shops and restaurants in the US during holidays.

The only day I’d say things really shutdown is Christmas Day, but even then many grocery stores have limited hours (open from 9am to 2pm).

[ludamad]

Is there a party scene at all on the Sabbath?

[ponsin]

sure, in cities with a large non-religious population like Tel Aviv or a large Arab population like Haifa

[snovv_crash]

Come to Switzerland, it's like that on Sundays. Only kiosks at train stations and a small fraction of restaurants are open.

[refurb]

It used to be like that in Canada when I was growing up. Stores were fined for opening on Sundays. That went away in the 1990's.

But Israel truly stops. No buses, no trains, no stores, no restaurants. In the town of 50,000 we were in, we found 1 single fast food place.

[saargrin]

its all fun and games until you live here and you dont have a car

[asdfman123]

As a guy who's 1/8th Jewish, I still don't feel comfortable clicking on that URL at work for fear someone might get the wrong idea on what it's about.

[sulam]

I'm confused, is there a usage of the word 'kosher' that isn't safe at work? Are you worried that they may think you're Jewish and discriminate against you?

p.s. You may know this, but from the religious POV, you are either Jewish or not, there's no 1/8th Jewish. If your mother was Jewish, you are too, all the way up your family tree. Either that or if you converted. :)

[kevinschumacher]

probably referring to the domain name...

[sulam]

Ha, I didn't even notice the domain, thanks!

[perl4ever]

>the religious POV

There is no "the religious POV" and for some purposes, it seems practically and morally compelling to use a similar definition to what persecutors of Jews use, rather than a traditional religious one.

[ponsin]

Jews don't define themselves based on how antisemites defined them.

[perl4ever]

To some extent they do, and as I mentioned it's both a matter of practicality and morality. There's obviously a problem with saying that people who are or may be persecuted as part of a group, are excluded from help by that group if they don't belong due to some technical definition.

According to the Wikipedia article on Israel's Law of Return, in 1970, it was extended to people with one Jewish grandparent or married to a Jew.

"There are several explanations for the decision to be so inclusive. One is that as the Nuremberg Laws did not use a halakhic definition in its definition of "Who is a Jew", the Law of Return definition for citizenship eligibility is not halakhic either. Another explanation is the 1968 wave of immigration from Poland, following an antisemitic campaign by the government. These immigrants were very assimilated and had many non-Jewish family members."

[asdfman123]

Just to get pedantic, aren't we all relatives if you go back 1000+ years?

[ricree]

As I understand it, the strict definition of Jewish descent is purely. You have to go back around 100-200k years to reach the most recent common matrilineal ancestor, and I'm reasonably confident she was not Jewish.

[asdfman123]

How many ancestors you have it just a function of how many generations you look back, and with each successive generations it doubles. At some point in the past, the entire world is your ancestor.

https://www.nbcnews.com/sciencemain/all-europeans-are-relate...

[tw04]

100-200k years? Based on... what? Judaism's earliest trace lies at about 1500BC... so not even close to 100k years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_Judaism

[ricree]

Sorry for being unclear. I meant the most recent matrilineal ancestor for all of humanity, not for Judaism.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve

[ashtonkem]

B&H photo (run by Orthodox Jews out of NYC) stops accepting orders during the sabbath in their time zone. You can keep browsing, but you can’t generate work for them. This seems like a decent compromise, and it’s definitely not hurting their business.

[Wowfunhappy]

> And it’s definitely not hurting their business.

I would question that conclusion. There have been times in the past I've wanted to order from B&H, but could not because it was on the Sabbath. In most cases, I just keep looking until I found the item on a different website.

I'm sure they consider the loss of business worthwhile to comply with their religion, but there is a cost.

[beenBoutIT]

Chick-Fil-A does the same thing domestically with their respective Sabbath on Sunday and it's reported to cost them over $1 billion a year in lost sales. Remembering the Sabbath day to keep it holy is extremely expensive, especially when the business is online and serving a worldwide customer base.

[smabie]

A private equity company should LBO that shit and then open on Sundays. If you Guaranteed profit.

[nullc]

> but there is a cost.

It may be less than you suspect because the regular bubble in their ordering pipeline might give them time to deal with suppliers, maintain stock, improve their website, maintain systems, relax and refocus, etc.

I doubt it works out better than not doing it at least economically, but there may be enough benefit to offset most of the costs.

The times I've run into the B&H sabbath outage, I just waited and ordered later. There are more thing in my life than just ordering things as fast as possible, and I respect a business for having other priorities. (Plus, B&H is just generally a really good supplier)

[m-zuber]

>It may be less than you suspect because the regular bubble in their ordering pipeline might give them time to deal with suppliers, maintain stock, improve their website, maintain systems, relax and refocus, etc.

the thing is, the bubble they have includes not doing anything on this list :)

[nullc]

Not during the time but presumably the lack of orders during that period results in reduced work the following day. Otherwise, they'd be like many businesses: closed on sunday, but handing sunday's orders on monday.

[Wowfunhappy]

> There are more thing in my life than just ordering things as fast as possible.

On a purely personal level, it's not so much the speed as it is the need to get it done and move on with my life. If I need to order something, I want to just do it and forget about it for a few days (or whatever) until it arrives in the mail. If I have to come back later, that's one more thing for my mental to-do list.

[snapetom]

B&H is also very competitive in price and still doesn't charge sales tax in many states.

Save twenty bucks by placing the order tonight instead of right now? Sure, why not.

[Fripplebubby]

This is actually my favorite thing about B&H, because I'll be impulsively browsing on a Friday night or Saturday online, and sure enough coming back one day later is enough to re-evaluate whether I did really need to have that gadget.

I also find it charming that they've managed to become a massive retailer while sticking to their religious values, although there are plenty of examples of that in other chains in the US that don't sit as well with me, personally (Chick-fil-A, Hobby Lobby, etc).

[snapetom]

It's extra impressive considering that not only are they closed on the Sabbath, but also the major and mid-importance Jewish holidays. Count on them being shut down for weeks during September and October.

[telcal]

Every single time I've walked by the physical store location in NYC on a Saturday (or holiday), there's always people approaching the entrance expecting it to be open. They're certainly losing business at the store too.

[ashtonkem]

B&H also has a stellar reputation for service, support, and selection. Lots of people will choose to wait another day in order to do business with someone they trust.

[bandhphoto]

Thank you all for participating in this conversation. We are aware our Sabbath schedule is an inconvenience, however brief, for a few. We regret the inconvenience. It is also, based on our owner's beliefs, unavoidable. -- Henry Posner / B&H Photo-Video

[AdamN]

My understanding is that making a non–Jewish person work on the Sabbath is also forbidden. Granted, this was just a schoolmate of mine in Brooklyn saying this but I have no reason to doubt the claim.

It does seem like electricity gets a huge carveout though as long as the initial startup wasn't initiated on the Sabbath. One sees that with Sabbath elevators where all the buttons are on and you can walk on without pushing a button and walk off at the correct floor. It still consumes electricity, you're just not making a spark to initiate the work.

[compsciphd]

consuming electricity isn't a problem. doing things defined as "work" is a problem.

work is in quotes, as it doesn't mean doing a job. it also doesn't mean the physics meanin.

As the simplest example: take rabbis in a synagogue. They are doing their jobs.

Another more complicated example: there's no fundamental difference between what an individual can do to prepare a meal they are serving on the sabbath and what caterers can do. Both can't do things defined as "work", but obviously the caterers are doing their job.

Then there's is the whole interplay between biblical law and rabbinic law

[sukilot]

Jews exist outside of Israel. Saying that an organization with majority non Jews probably has no Jews working on it is bizarrely innumerate.

[emosenkis]

To elaborate on another comment: Jewish law is seldom concerned with absolute certainty; it much more often is a question of degrees of doubt. In many cases two disjoint causes for reasonable doubt about facts that would impact the whether a certain action is forbidden are sufficient to render it permitted. When coming from a mindset of mathematical/logical proof, it can seem like "fuzzy logic" or, as you said, innumerate, but in actuality it's typically more like a hypothesis and the body of evidence that supports it (and depending on the specific hypothesis, a higher or lower degree of certainty may be considered sufficient).

[amadeuspagel]

From: http://www.thebigquestions.com/2020/04/15/goofus-gallant-and...

>You have three pieces of meat, two kosher, one not. You lose track of which is which. Can you eat them? Answer, according to (my memory of Sternberg’s account of) the Talmud: Each individual piece of meat has a 2/3 chance of being kosher. So if you choose one of them and ask “Is this kosher?”, a “yes” answer gives you a 2/3 chance to be right and a “no” answer gives you only a 1/3 chance to be right. A 2/3 chance is better than a 1/3 chance, so you should say yes. Repeat three times and you’re allowed to eat all of the meat.

>There is much that is troubling here, because that strategy actually gives you a 100% chance of eating a non-kosher piece of meat, so it matters whether you inquire about each piece separately or whether you inquire about all three as a group. I’m not sure what principle the Talmud invokes to settle that issue. But that’s not the point that concerns us here. The point here is that we’re instructed to focus strictly on probabilities, without regard to any measure of how bad it would be to be wrong in either direction.

>You’re traveling to town with a left pocket full of coins designated for charity and a right pocket full of coins designated for your personal expenses. (In certain circumstances, you’re required to designate these coins in advance, and cannot substitute a coin from one pocket for a coin from the other, even if they’re otherwise identical.) You fall off your horse, and the coins all spill out into one great heap.

>If there were more coins in your left pocket to begin with, then each individual coin has a greater-than-fifty-percent chance to be a charity coin, so each individual coin must be given to charity. If there were more in your right pocket, you can spend all the coins on yourself.

>You take in an abandoned child. Should you raise him as a Jew? It depends on whether he was born as a Jew. Suppose you don’t have that information. Answer: If the majority of your neighbors are Jewish, you assume he’s Jewish. If not, not.

>(A later commentary amends this prescription by directing your attention not to the majority of your neighbors but to a majority of those neighbors who are of such character that they would abandon a child.)

[gorgoiler]

Ah yes: the Monty Challah problem.

[Shermanium]

well played

[smabie]

So I could start a Kosher meat factory that mixed in non Kosher patties 49.999% of the time and then all the meat would be Kosher? Sounds like a great way to launder my non-Kosher meat!

[compsciphd]

for the record, no, it can't be done purposefully. i.e. all students of jewish law no inherently the concepts of a priori and posteriori. i.e. many things are prohibited a priori (i.e. to purposefully do), but would be permitted posteriori.

A simple example example is one can't mix milk and meat at all apriori. But if accidentally mixed a small amount of milk into a meat dish (example: one wasn't thinking and took a spoon directly from a milk pot directly into a meat dish), it would be permitted posteriori. But that's only because the act wasn't intentional.

[nonesuchluck]

Outside of Israel, there are enough people of non-Jewish faith to be able to arrange labor schedules around individual needs. I work in a diverse company with a number of co-workers who observe Sabbath, and it has never been any hardship to arrange on-call schedules so they will never be paged on their day of rest.

[compsciphd]

on the flips side, observant jews in tech companies sometimes struggle with this in Israel, as the on call people who take over for them will still be jews. Even if said jew doesn't mind not observing the sabbath, the observant jew doesn't want them to do it on their behalf (so to speak).

[wbl]

It's about the degree of certainty. OP isn't doing the work directly and hasn't hired them to specifically do it. They might not. They also are probably not Jewish. Two doubts and it's not a violation of a d'Rabbanan prohibition. (Note I am not orthodox nor a rabbi so this explanation may be mangled).

[prvc]

Compared to secular best practices, here we're working with different logic and different epistemology, among other things. A religious worldview not just about agreeing to this or that proposition.

[ebg13]

> As several others have mentioned, there is absolutely no problem with keeping a server running on the sabbath

This is not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that Borer (separating/filtering) is one of the forbidden categories of work.

[compsciphd]

this is too inside baseball, but a cute joke.

[himinlomax]

So how do you know if you're compliant? Can you do some A/B testing?

[Wowfunhappy]

...so, any theories as to who made this and what the purpose was? I mean, maybe it is just a hobby project, but it's a bit of an odd one if the requirements that don't exist at all.

[onyva]

Also nothing to do with "Judaism", rather more of the ludicrousness of Eastern European rabbinical orthodoxy holier than though attitude that made them the most hated social group in Israel, mostly due to their blatant hypocrisy (i.e. object the legalization of prostitution in Israel, while they are the largest beneficiaries of it by percentage). Sort of kidnapped and suffocated to the death the essence of Judaism and reduced it into a cult.