Kitzur Shulchan Aruch: The Start

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The Kitzur Shulchan Aruch (the quick and dirty handbook to Jewish law — see previous post) begins by outlining the order of the day for an Orthodox Jew. There aren’t too many overarching themes so I’ll just list the hodge-podge of points that piqued my interest.

No sleeping in

I’ve already posted about being so “modest” you get dressed under the covers of your bed, but what about getting up in the first place? Here, the Jewish law seems actively anti-hedonistic. It’s bad to sleep in or lie in when you’ve woken up (1:4). Instead you should get up immediately — for there is much Torah to learn! In fact, the desire to stay in under covers on a cold morning is taken to come from the yetzer hara (the “evil inclination”, something akin to the bad angel that appears above the shoulder of a cartoon character).

It’s a bit like a Christian who says Satan is testing you by sending you a lucrative job offer that will take you away from YHWH. What makes this even more poignant is that the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch was written in Poland where staying in bed for a little longer might have meant putting off getting up at really really freezing temperatures. Although I’m sure many religious Jews sleep in they shouldn’t be.

Hands becoming impure through demonic influence

The next thing that’s made a big deal of is the ritual impurity of hands. The Talmud lays out a huge number of highly complex laws of ritual purity, largely to do with Temple service. The impurity of the hands was a minor point, an extra stringency created by the rabbis not part of “Torah law proper”. However, with no Temple (and some other contingencies), all Jews are impure based on Torah law. The rabbinic laws about hand impurity and getting rid of it by hand washing still apply though — which is why I think they’re a much bigger deal than they seem to have been in Talmudic times. Either way there’s not too much justification for it being such a big deal.

Either way, a Jew is pretty much not allowed to do or touch anything when the hands have become impure (2:12), which they can from sleep, touching your shoes and a host of other things. The Kitzur also inserts a very woo-like interpretation that sees this impurity as the result of demonic influence — thereby a person who (say) eats with impure hands without washing is placing his/her soul in great peril (2:13). This is a trend I’ve found quite a bit: an element of Jewish law will have a fairly non-supernatural rabbinic origin; but then centuries of the law being interpreted, used and propagated through the lives of ordinary people insert mystical and bizarre overtones into it.

Clothes must be different to those of gentiles

Jewish law stipulates that a Jew must not imitate any significant custom of the non-Jews surrounding him/her. This is down to the clothing: all dress must be different to that of gentiles (3:7). The degree of fanaticism is apparent in the standard example that’s used: if the gentile custom is to tie your belt in one way, a Jew must tie it using another way. This is just one example of a law deliberately imposed on the community to maximise insularity. Also, when you see a Chassidic Jewish man with an outfit that preserves the fashion of 18th century Polish gentry, he is actually following the law. It is arguably the person who wears modern clothes in an attempt to integrate with society that’s breaking it.

Thoughtcrime

Finally, like the other Abrahamic religions there is such a thing in Judaism as thoughtcrime. Or at the very least, Jewish law permeates every possible sphere of life which includes thoughts. For instance, it is forbidden to think Torah-related thoughts while near poo (5:2) or in the bathhouse or anywhere else that’s dirty (5:10). Because you wouldn’t want to mar the “sacredness” in such an unworthy environment. Or something.

Here endeth the first few chapters. In the next installment: the health tips of Jewish law.

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