Not Jewish myself but married to an Israeli; it was explained to me like this:
- There are rules, passed on to humanity from God.
- God is perfect.
- Therefore if you find a loophole in the rules you are not outsmarting God or anything like that, God is Perfect and cannot be outsmarted by mere mortals.
- Therefore if you find such a loophole, you are not committing some form of heresy as most Christians would see it. Rather, you are extra virtuous because you found the loopholes that God put there as "easter eggs" for those of His followers that were attentive and clever enough to spot them.
- Repeat this for several millennia and you get the New York fishing line shenanigans.
I'm not sure I agree with some of the axioms, but I must admit that if you accept the first few points then "New York fishing line" follows pretty much linearly from those. I also quite like the idea that mortals cannot "outsmart" a deity by finding loopholes, because the idea a human could outsmart God always seemed like the very height of hubris to me. Then again, I am a (drunk) atheist so my opinions about gods are probably not too reliable. :)
- There are rules, passed on to humanity from God.
- God is perfect.
- Therefore if you find a loophole in the rules you are not outsmarting God or anything like that, God is Perfect and cannot be outsmarted by mere mortals.
- Therefore if you find such a loophole, you are not committing some form of heresy as most Christians would see it. Rather, you are extra virtuous because you found the loopholes that God put there as "easter eggs" for those of His followers that were attentive and clever enough to spot them.
- Repeat this for several millennia and you get the New York fishing line shenanigans.
I'm not sure I agree with some of the axioms, but I must admit that if you accept the first few points then "New York fishing line" follows pretty much linearly from those. I also quite like the idea that mortals cannot "outsmart" a deity by finding loopholes, because the idea a human could outsmart God always seemed like the very height of hubris to me. Then again, I am a (drunk) atheist so my opinions about gods are probably not too reliable. :)