I am in the process of teaching a friend of mine who is a religous Jew how to unicycle. (Well he allready rides but I have to get him up to MUni level!)
Anyway religous Jewish people will not work on Saturday. There is a whole debate on what is considered work but that is another story. The thing is that putting a bicycle chain back on the sprocket is considered work. Therefore very few religous Jewish people will ride a bicycle on Saturday because if the chain happens to fall off they are not put it back on. Now my friend does unicycle on Saturday because the KH24 does not have this problem! Pretty cool!
My group (NYUC) has several orthodox Jewish members. None of them will ride on the sabbath, but all of them acknowledge that this is partly because of their skill and general unicycle knowledge. If they were better riders and had more faith in their equipment, they’d probably ride on the sabbath. But because they’re afraid that something might break, they don’t want to take the chance.
I was first introduced to unicycling at my Hebrew high school (it’s like Sunday school but it was on Tuesday nights). Anyway, during break these 2 kids sometimes brought their unis with them and would ride them at break. So I probably wouldn’t even know about unicycling if it wasn’t for them.
Wouldn’t wheeling the unicycle out of it’s stowage, preparing to ride, inflating tires, unfolding maps, putting on protective wear … etc.etc.etc. constitute “work” ? Riding muni seems pretty hard work to me.
Whatever your delusion of choice is, it shouldn’t get in the way of exercising and having fun on an arbitrarily chosen day - Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday, Friday 13th, Hallowe’en …
It’s not Just Conversation. Mere conversation is smalltalk about the weather. This is Conversation About Recreation, about Sport, about Unicycling. If only we had a forum for that…
A single interest not connected with anything else out there in the cosmos ? … now wouldn’t that be tedious ? Unicycling is fun and interesting - but not THAT interesting.
No, not the Amish. I know a guy who observes some strict Sabbath practices, and one example I recall is that before the Sabbath he turns on any lights or heaters he thinks he might need during the Sabbath so that they are already on when he needs them, because to flip a switch to turn something on is considered work according to his schema. As Unicorn mentioned earlier, there can be debate over what constitutes work, but there are definitely those who consider turning machines or or off to be work.
I agree. Can’t you as a monitor just move it there?
By the way, pushing buttons on a microwave, or pushing an elevator button is considered a violation of Sabbath rules (so Sabbath elevators just go all the way up and all the way down, stopping at each floor, only on the Sabbath).
But if pushing a button is work, then pushing your unicycle (whether it breaks down, or by pedaling) is also work.
You can look it up: It was actually handed down by Abraham in the covenant with G-D: No unicycling on the Sabbath.
The purpose of this thread was not to suport the Jewish faith or anything. I just though that it was cool that my friend would Unicycle on Saturday but not ride a bike on Saturday. Just one more positive aspect of the unicycle! It is very similair to another Jewish custom of not riding a horse on Saturday. Riding a horse is fine but breaking a branch off the tree to use as a switch is considered work. Therefore religous Jews will not go horse riding on the Sabbath so that they will not be tempted to break any branches! Yes, it is true orthadox Jewish people will not turn on lights or ovens or open electronic garage doors on Saturday. Allthough I do believe that according to Judiasm saving a life is more important than observing the Sabbath so religous Jews will call the police or firemen in case of an emergency.
I don’t agree with the calls to move this to JC. It’s relevant to unicycling, not like all the pointless religious threads in JC. If it were to develop into a “let’s discuss Judaism” thread then that would be out of place, but the original post was on-topic IMO.
It’s interesting that riding a unicycle is considered less likely to entail “work” than riding a bicycle.
(and of course it does go to show just how ridiculous religion is, but that would be JC material so I won’t say it).
