How Jews Circumvent the Rules They Made Up (4K Years of Malicious Compliance)

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.

Episode Transcript

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