[bradrn]

Not at all. The Jewish perspective is essentially that Jewish law stems from the creation of an all-knowing God, and therefore any seeming ‘loopholes’ must not only be known to Him but explicitly intended to exist. On this basis, it must be perfectly valid to use them!

[nehal3m]

That's just a loophole to justify exploiting loopholes.

[lazide]

Now you know why there are so many Jewish lawyers. Also Catholic.

[WJW]

Only if you believe the loopholes to be actually loopholes. I'm not religious, but taking the word of God and declaring that it means something else than what it actually says would be a textbook example of the sin of hubris, no?

[nehal3m]

That would remove all interpretability as a side effect, wouldn't it? I'm not religious either, but I imagine that would make all sorts of literal claims problematic as measured against modern ethics, and make it impossible for contradictory claims to be resolved.

Personally I do think interpreting rather than following the word of your chosen supreme being is the height of hubris. Intentionally interpreting it such that you can ignore the ostensibly obvious meaning even more so.

Then again if a text allows for ways to skirt the spirit of a prescription then maybe the 'supreme' being that is supposed to have dictated it isn't all that.

[like_any_other]

"Loophole" is a bad term. "Deliberate misunderstanding" is more accurate.