• It’s not allowed to pick your nose on the Sabbath.
• It’s not allowed to comb your hair on the Sabbath, except if using a soft brush.
• It’s forbidden to kill lice and mosquitos on the Sabbath.
• It’s not allowed to put lemon in hot tea on the Sabbath.
• If life is at risk, it’s okay to operate an electrical appliance on the Sabbath. In such a case, you should insert the plug into the outlet not directly, but try doing it using your mouth, elbow or head.
• If life is at risk, it’s okay to use the phone on the Sabbath, but one must dial using a pencil rather than using the fingers.
• Video pictures from security video cameras in religious neighborhoods, must be displayed on two screens alternately during the Sabbath.
• It’s okay to download software from the Internet on the Sabbath, provided you begin downloading before the Sabbath, you turn off the screen’s power supply, and the web site is operated by non-Jews.
• For children younger than thirteen years, it’s okay to play with Lego on the Sabbath.
• It’s not allowed to watch movies on computers.
• It’s not allowed to use cellular phones with color screens.
• The Internet should not be used, even for professional purposes.
• If you drop your Palm computer, which contains religious prayers in it, then you must kiss the computer when you pick it up.
• A visit to the planetarium is forbidden.
• Baking of cakes in army bases is forbidden.
• Blood transfusion from a secular source is not recommended.
• It’s forbidden for a Jew to donate organs to a non-Jew.
• Jews of priestly heritage (e.g., those who carry the last name of Cohen) should not fly over cemeteries.
• Tattoos are forbidden, with the exception of a small heart on a man’s arm.
• It’s forbidden to use the services of a non-religious court.
• It’s forbidden to participate in a census. The recommended way to count the population is by using coins.
• It’s not allowed to read a Hebrew newspaper while in the toilet.
• A person in the toilet is not allowed to talk to a person outside.
• It’s forbidden to kiss during the marriage ceremony.
• It’s not allowed to step on ants.
• Sex is allowed only at night, preferably in a room with no flies.
• A woman should not wear a wig.
• Organs such as eyes, ears or arms should be removed from toy dolls.
• A man should not walk between two women.
• It’s strictly forbidden to swim in a pool that contains both men and women.
• Women should not pray while cleaning the house.
• In case of political dispute between a husband and a wife, it’s recommended for the wife not to vote in the elections.
• If a paramedic has two patients – a man and a woman – the man must be taken care of first.
• Women should board a bus from the back door.

It should be emphasized that many of these strange rules are generally not kept by most people, and often are not even known. Sometimes they simply represent the result of some internal argument between various religious subgroups.

It should further be mentioned that religious belief fills a whole spectrum of shapes and forms. In most Western religions, there are many people who “sort of believe”. They keep some of the rituals, abandoning others, not even knowing about most of them. Sometimes they claim to carry the flag of “keeping the tradition”.

Is it better or worse? Does it make sense to avoid pork but eat a cheeseburger (welcome to McDonald’s in Israel!)? Or does one avoid both but sell things on Saturday (welcome to Burger King in Israel!)? Isn’t it kind of hypocritical to fast on Yom Kippur but drive on Saturdays? Is it forgiven to go to church on Sunday but perform adultery on Wednesday? Don’t you piss off God more when you disobey your rabbi, and wait only three hours between a juicy steak and a cheesecake?

The answer, like always, is in what you decide. It’s the god in you that is pissed off by some details and is ready to accept others. It’s the god you’ve created.

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And we’ll finish this saga, telling the intriguing story of Kiribati.

As you know very well, when we travel eastward we lose some hours, as the Sun seems to travel in the opposite direction. However, when we travel westward, we gain some hours because we now move in the same direction that the Sun seems to move. Since our planet is round, this means that somewhere far to the east (or west), there must be a line where the time changes drastically between its two sides. This line indeed exists and is called the International Date Line. The U.S. Naval Observatory, Astronomical Applications Department, states on its web site:

The International Date Line is the imaginary line on the Earth that separates two consecutive calendar days. That is the date in the Eastern hemisphere, to the left of the line, is always one day ahead of the date in the Western hemisphere. It has been recognized as a matter of convenience and has no force in international law.

Without the International Date Line, travelers going westward would discover that when they returned home, one day more than they thought had passed, even though they had kept careful tally of the days. This first happened to Magellan’s crew after the first circumnavigation of the globe. Likewise, a person traveling eastward would find that one fewer days had elapsed than he had recorded, as happened to Phileas Fogg in “Around the World in Eighty Days” by Jules Verne.

The International Date Line can be anywhere on the globe. But it is most convenient to be 180° away from the defining meridian that goes through Greenwich, England. It also is fortunate that this area is covered, mainly, by empty ocean. However, there have always been zigs and zags in it to allow for local circumstances.

Over the years, the exact position of the International Date Line has changed several times. The most recent change happened in 1995, when the island country of Kiribati (in the Pacific Ocean) decided to move the International Date Line, so that the line wouldn’t divide their country as it used to. During the change, large parts of Kiribati skipped a whole day in a one-time six-day week. Older similar changes included other places such as the Philippines and Alaska.

So, when should Sunday school be conducted in Kiribati nowadays? And when should Muslims pray the holy Friday prayers? And when should Jews keep the Sabbath? Should Jews still count periods of seven days, which will result in keeping all Sabbath rituals now on the local Sunday? Or should they obey the local calendar, as used to be the case before? In short, does God follow man’s authorities and decisions on the International Date Line? Or is God’s week always and unconditionally seven days?

Quoting Richard L. Fix from his Internet web site:

Is the Sabbath so trivial that man can place it on the Earth where he wills, so that he can worship at his convenience, in a manmade time frame? As recently as 1994, we could have had brethren in Midway Island (US) and Phoenix Island, Kiribati, both keeping the Seventh Day Sabbath together, at exactly the same time, down to the very hour of the same day. Then in 1995, the brethren of Kiribati began keeping the Sabbath twenty-four hours earlier than the brethren on Midway Island! This was a man made convenience. Furthermore, does it even matter whether there were brethren there or not? Even if there were no brethren on either island then, if one were to go there now, when would you keep the Sabbath, the “old” way or the “new” way? Better yet, if YOU were to go there now, which day would YOU keep as the Sabbath? Who decides? Man? God? The Church? The Jews? So far, it would seem that the answer has been man. Man continues to modify the International Date Line to please “his” own needs, and whims.

You may want to consider a somewhat similar issue: Millions of Jews fast every year during the holy day of Yom Kipur. Towards the end of the day, the gates of Heaven are allegedly closed and prayers (asking God for forgiveness) find it more difficult to break through. There is of-course an exact known minute when God is no longer accepting new calls. Yet, the day of Yom Kipur may once every few years be postponsed by a whole month, due to the old complex calculation of the Jewish calendar, inherited from the ancient Babylonians and Greeks. It’s truly amazing how God seems to have adapted the management of Heaven’s gates to this early remarkable man-made invention of Babylonian and Greek astronomy.

The above topics, as well as thousands of others, occupy religious books full of discussions and instructions. What do you think people learn in years of religious study? How do ultra-Orthodox Jews, for example, spend their time in Yeshiva for Bible studies? Do they keep praising Moses and the State of Israel all day long? Not really. They spend most of their time discussing these very fine details, from picking one’s nose to crossing the date line on Saturday. And there is always an answer for everything. There ought to be one. God cannot leave the small things unanswered. God is in the details.

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“Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.” – Vincent van Gogh

Picking your nose in public is certainly not a nice thing to do. Picking your nose in private is probably okay… unless it’s Saturday and you’re one of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef’s followers. The interesting verdict was widely published in 1998 by the spiritual leader of the Orthodox Jewish Shas political party in Israel, which represents about 10% of the Israeli population.

In spite of what you may think about this ridiculous forbiddance, it makes perfect sense, given certain axioms. Assuming there is a god who is watching everything we do, and assuming he handed his instructions to the Jewish people through the Bible and the Talmud, then one should not perform any kind of work in the holy day of Saturday. The definition of work by this same codex of rules is very detailed, and includes for example things like cutting your hair. When you pick your nose, there is an obvious danger you’ll tear out some hair, therefore the act is strictly forbidden on Saturdays.

In a totally different place and environment, but approximately at the same time, Bishop Tikhon Fitzgerald and The Orthodox Church in America published a series of instructions for priests. The Orthodox Christian God, so it appears, seems to require the priest who is hearing the confession of another priest, not to bless the head of the priest who is confessing with his hand only. Instead he must hold a cross on the head and bless with it. Further instructions describe the exact direction that priests should face during various ceremonies, and many other exhausting details.

It is arguable that forcing one day of rest per week, or assisting people in distress by confession, are of some value. In fact, it is relatively safe to say that most religious laws and rituals can be associated with one noble cause or another, especially if you ask a talented preacher. Yet, religion – like any other authority – must translate its values into day-to-day details. The point is that in this case, it’s God’s will that allegedly propagates through all the fine details. As if His Holiness actually keeps an eye on our nasal hair on Saturdays.

It’s very likely that Judaism is the champion of small details. Many instructions were generated at different times due to the notion of fences, which are like safety zones around various things considered to be God’s will.

Thus, you are not allowed to tear toilet paper on Saturdays. You have to wait a minimum of six complete hours between eating something with meat and eating something else that contains milk (see also the chapter ‘From Now to Eternity’ above). However, you only have to wash your mouth after eating something with milk components, before enjoying a good hamburger. Also, you generally need to immerse your kitchen pots and pans in boiling water to prepare them before Passover, if they have previously been used to cook things above 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit).

While a wife is having her monthly period, the married couple is not supposed to have sex. What are the exact instructions for “family purity”? Just a few of the many fine details: The couple is not allowed to sit together on the same sofa if its structure transfers one’s movements to the other. They are not allowed to eat from the same plate. The termination of this period must be checked well by the wife, with a white piece of cloth, in a rotational movement, and she must wait for the sunset after being considered clean to attend the mikve (a mikve is a ritual immersion bath that restores purity). Not to mention the exact set of rules for going to the mikve afterwards to be so-called purified.

Calculating the exact minute when Saturday begins or ends has become an art by itself. In fact there are now special software programs available to assist in this complex task. Similarly, calculating the exact day when a month starts (according to the Jewish calendar) also requires great skill and vast knowledge. Nevertheless, Jewish holidays and fasts are based unerringly on this difficult calculation.

This trend (of not leaving anything for self interpretation) raises a whole new set of questions. Nowadays it’s a real challenge dealing with new knowledge and technologies, which were unknown to the ancient legislators. The results may be extremely funny sometimes: How do you avoid breaking the Sabbath when you’re orbiting Earth in a space shuttle? How do you bless the New Moon while you’re on it? Is it okay to speak near a recording device on Saturday, knowing that by speaking you are generating small electrical currents?

And indeed the modern rabbis, bishops and sheikhs leave very little for further inspection. Everything is dealt with. God seems to have an opinion on every little aspect of our modern lives as well. Want some real life examples? Have patience – here they come!

During the first Gulf War (Operation Desert Storm), Iraqi Scud missiles fell on populated areas in Israel. People got advanced warnings and directions through television and radio. But how do you get good advice from the media on the Sabbath without turning something on? So the chief rabbis found a creative solution: They issued a ruling that Orthodox Jews should leave a radio turned on over the Sabbath, tuned to the silent channel that the government had set aside to broadcast announcements in an emergency. Furthermore, Saturday radio operators were instructed to push the appropriate button not directly, but by using a small stick.

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“Answer the person who is asking, not only the question … Use his first name … Compliment him for the question … When you don’t want to refer to some question (because it’s foolish or shallow), say: ‘Maybe we can join a couple of more questions from the audience’ … Instead of saying ‘When can we meet?’ say: ‘Do you prefer we meet in your home or in your office?’”

In order to make the message clear: Everybody does that. Every salesman, whether selling used cars or Christianity, is a good salesman when using such techniques. Sometimes they are taught, and many times they are part of one’s natural skills. It’s the need to sell religion like selling used cars, which should be noted.

Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler is known for his book ‘A Letter from Eliyahu’, published in English under the name ‘Strive for Truth’. Yet, the “truth” by Dessler is not what one would learn in logic class. He explains how “in the beginning of our education” we understood that ‘truth’ was when someone told the facts, while ‘lie’ was when the facts were changed. Then he explains how this is only one way of putting things. A better way – according to Dessler – would be to define ‘truth’ as something that brings us closer to “God’s will” and define ‘lies’ as things that help the “Devil’s business”.

Hence, if the “Devil’s business” is to tempt innocent people into cursing God (see the Biblical book of Job), it would be the truth to say how merciful that God is. If God supposedly wants us to praise Jesus, it would be a lie to describe Mr. Christ’s sexual life. By definition, the truth is not necessarily the facts. The truth is wrong.

By the way, “God’s will” to his creatures depends on the exact type of god one creates. Most people create gods whose will is difficult to grasp, but easy to preach.

Have you ever heard someone insist on his or her right to settle in some piece of land that is under dispute? In a way, this relates very well to our little discussion here. Mostly, for a right to have some significance, it should be verifiable against some set of rules (such as the constitution, or international law). Therefore, claiming some rights without specifying the relevant set of rules often carries an unspoken claim about the existence of such a set of rules. What is this set of rules? You guessed right… the speaker’s god’s rules!

We interrupt this program to bring you a special joke about the manipulative use of words and truths. The joke about the blond and the lawyer is yet another masterpiece widely spread over the Internet, and quoted here word for word:

A blonde and a lawyer are seated next to each other on a flight from Los Angeles to New York. The lawyer asks if she would like to play a fun game? The blonde, tired, just wants to take a nap, politely declines and rolls over to the window to catch a few winks. The lawyer persists and explains that the game is easy and a lot of fun. He explains, “I ask you a question, and if you don’t know the answer, you pay me $5.00, and vise versa.”

Again, she declines and tries to get some sleep.

The lawyer, now agitated, says, “Okay, if you don’t know the answer you pay me $5.00, and if I don’t know the answer, I will pay you $500.00.”

This catches the blonde’s attention and, figuring there will be no end to this torment unless she plays, agrees to the game.

The lawyer asks the first question. “What’s the distance from the Earth to the Moon?”

The blonde doesn’t say a word, reaches into her purse, pulls out a $5.00 bill and hands it to the lawyer. “Okay, ” says the lawyer, “your turn”.

She asks the lawyer, “What goes up a hill with three legs and comes down with four legs?”

The lawyer, puzzled, takes out his laptop computer and searches all his references, no answer. He taps into the air phone with his modem and searches the net and the library of congress, no answer. Frustrated, he sends e-mail to all his friends and coworkers, to no avail. After an hour, he wakes the blonde, and hands her $500.00.

The blonde says, “Thank you, ” and turns back to get some more sleep.

The lawyer, who is more than a little miffed, wakes the blonde and asks, “Well, what’s the answer?”

Without a word, the blonde reaches into her purse, hands the lawyer $5.00, and goes back to sleep.

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“The meaning of things lies not in the things themselves, but in our attitude towards them.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

How long has it been since you last practiced your math? Let’s put it to a test with two simple riddles. We’ll start with this one: Suppose you randomly pick an integer (that is, whole) number from the set of all positive integer numbers, what’s the probability of picking an even number? … What was that? Did I hear you say “50 percent”? Sounds reasonable indeed!

So let’s proceed with the second riddle: Have a look at this specific set of numbers: {1, 3, 2, 5, 7, 4, 9, 11, 6, 13, 15, 8, 17, 19, …} – hope you get the idea. Now, if you randomly pick an integer number from this set, what’s the probability of picking an even number? Did we hear you say something like “33 percent”? Sounds reasonable again!

The point is that “the set of all positive integer numbers” is identical to this strange set above (since for the term “set”, the internal order of its members is irrelevant, as long as we talk about the same members altogether). Therefore, the last two questions are actually the same question.

So what’s the trick here? What is the correct answer to these questions? We’ll get back to that later in this chapter. In the meantime, let’s return to our boring discussion about religious preachers: “Why were you born into this world?” “What’s the purpose of your life?” – it’s common to come across such questions. If we look at them closely, we find that they are more answers than questions. “Why” in this context generally means “for what purpose”. Since lifeless entities usually don’t set any goals and purposes, then the question implies there is some living entity involved in your being here and alive. “Why did you come to this world?” therefore stands for “Someone brought you to this world – what was his goal in doing so?”

After we’ve already agreed on the creation of your soul, the argument about the goal of the creator may well be less important. Hiding an answer in what seems to be a question, is something we often do. Many times we don’t even think about it, yet sometimes we plan it carefully. Look at the following examples:

Question: Cash or charge?

Actually: We’ve already agreed you pay. We’re only left with the minor issue of how you pay.

Question: Was the light on when you were in the room?

Actually: You were in the room! Was the light on then?

Question: Have you read the Holy Bible?

Actually: The Bible is holy. Have you read it?

The correct answer to the above math questions is that there is a problem in the questions themselves. Without going too deeply into the probability theory, let’s just say that the action of randomly choosing something from an infinite set is not clearly defined.

Undefined questions and self-conflicting questions constitute other interesting categories. They often confuse words with ideas. “What happened before time began?” “Can God create a rock so heavy that he cannot lift it?” – Note that in a way, most statements that discuss ‘God’ also express a hidden claim about the existence and qualities of that ‘God’, as if it is well and uniquely defined.

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