THOU SHALT NOT ENTER A ZOOM ROOM

 We might call the year of 2020 "The Rise of the Zoom Room" as schools, businesses, families, and churches gathered not in common pews, cubicles, classrooms, or dens, but in Zoom Rooms. 

 But there is one religious group to whom it was forbidden to enter a Zoom Room: orthodox Judaism.  They were forbidden to employ the technology of Zoom on their Sabbath because they were taught it would violate the 4th of the 10 Commandments: Deuteronomy 5:12-15 "Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the LORD your God has commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your ox, your donkey or any of your animals, nor the alien within your gates, so that your manservant and maidservant may rest, as you do. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and that the LORD your God brought you out of there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God has commanded you to observe the Sabbath day."

As generations came and then shuffled off this mortal coil, definitions of the word "work" emerged from the rabbis so as to give the people just what was and was not "work." In fact, they defined work with 39 definitions, so as to guide the people of whom Paul said, "For I testify of them that they have a zeal for God, but not in accordance with knowledge" (Romans 10:2).

With each definition, their rabbis made the Jews more burdened and heavy laden, more under a yoke they could not keep. Christ said of the religious elite, "They tie up heavy burdens and lay them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as their finger." (Matthew 23:4).

Today, the hammer and tongs of rabbinic legalism gives new meaning to the "heavy burdens on people's shoulders."Here are only 7 of the 39 "works" an orthodox Jew cannot do on the Sabbath:

1. Tie a knot

2. Untie a knot

3. Trace lines

4. Erase two or more letters

5. Erase two or more letters

6. Start a fire

7. Put out a fire

And it is at the 6th in that list that the Zoom Room enters the picture: Orthodox Jews refrain from driving or riding in a car or any other powered transportation, using a telephone, or any other electrical appliance. Entering a Zoom Room involves "kindling a fire" in that a person must turn on a computer to do so. One must not switch on anything that runs off electricity. Therefore, the clever Jews will turn on a light in the kitchen and the living room just before the Sabbath that stays on during the Sabbath, but is turned off the day after.

Paul looked with compassion on his people and, seeing their staggering under the yoke of the legalistic traditions of men, wrote with tears, "For I could wish that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ for the sake of my countrymen, my kinsmen according to the flesh . . ."