Humans are funny creatures. To believe on the one hand a god laid down these rules, and then in the same thought think "Well I bet he didn't think of this loophole"
I remember having this same thought when I learned about the existence of "Islamic finance." Apparently, Islam has a strong doctrinal prohibition against charging interest, and there's an entire thriving sector of Islamic law and business dedicated to structuring transactions in ways that don't technically charge interest but still yield a return on principal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_banking
This reminds me of a little kid beating up his classmates on the playground being told by the playground monitor to stop touching them, and then turning around going back to tormenting them by starting to punch them and stopping just short of making actual contact, and saying "neener neener, I'm not actually touching you." Except here, instead of a playground monitor, it's...an omnipotent creator deity.
My understanding is that a generous portion of Rabbinic legal theory is about tapdancing around the Mosaic law.
Because most observant jews would not, I can only assume, want their children to be stoned to death for giving them a bit of cheek. Or have to be beaten up because they shaved. And so on.
What strikes me odd about biblical law is how little of it is devoted to elucidating the big questions. Such as: what about the corner cases to the Ten Commandments? Is killing in a war forbidden? What about self-defence? And so on.
Islamic finance is a fairly complicated subject. As someone who has no background in finance, I have been trying to understand some basics.
But overall, what I understand is that for a bank to give out loans, they must also provide every opportunity to help those who are borrowing money.
For example, they can extend the payment, provide advice etc
The main thing about Islamic finance is that it is all asset based. You can take a loan to buy a car, but you can't take a loan to renovate a house etc. This is to stop people from borrowing when they can't possibly pay back.
There are few models for unsecured loans. But, as I said, its very complicated.
One of my favorite Talmud stories illustrates that the opinion of the community is more important than the voice of God - which, in my opinion, is one of the many things that make my religion great.
Going to badly paraphrase here, but a group of Jews were debating an obscure point of law, and a single person was in the minority. He said something like 'if I am correct, let this tree demonstrate it!' The tree was suddenly torn from its roots and flung far away. The rest of the people scoffed - 'a flung tree doesn't prove anything.' The solo dissenter cried out 'if I am correct, let this stream prove it!' And all of a sudden, the stream began running backwards. Everyone else said 'what does how water flows have to do with this issue?' Finally, the one guy said 'If I'm right, let the voice of God cry out!' And they all heard the voice of God, saying 'why do you keep disagreeing with this man, when all the forces of Heaven keep demonstrating his correctness?'
A rabbi spoke up - 'it's nice that you say so, but it's not for Heaven to decide - the Torah is not in Heaven, it's down here with us. You gave us the Torah at Mount Sinai, and from now on, it's up to us to interpret it.'
God was delighted, and burst out laughing, saying 'My children have defeated me, my children have defeated me!'
So yes, you might think of them as loopholes, but we prefer to think of them as the legitimate interpretations of the community. A good thing, too - have you ever read the Torah (aka the Old Testament)? Without the wisdom of the community, the religion would be unworkable - many of the laws within aren't remotely relevant for modern life.
Yes. One instance is the law that says that a child should be executed if he disrespects his parents (one of the ten commandments).
The text says the parents must "speak with one voice" of their child's disrespect. The rabbis interpret this to mean the parents must speak literally with the same voice as though some divine entity is speaking through them.
And of course that's not possible so there is no record of any child being executed under that law.
And the justification for this radical interpretation is that "the Torah is not in heaven" [1]. Essentially this means that even if there is some divine indication that an interpretation is incorrect, it is irrelevant. God comes down to tell the rabbinate that they've made a mistake and the rabbis tell God that his opinion doesn't matter.
