Ivanka and Jared and Shabbos observance

Should we even care? And how does a Torah-observant Jew who requires time off for Shabbat and Yom Tov explain to an employer not versed in Jewish law or custom how he or she is different from Jared and Ivanka?

Here are links to three articles that were posted this week on this subject.

Ivan, Jared, and the Jewish Sabbath: What employers need to know, by Rabbi Gil Student

Employers should understand that their observant Jewish employees need to spend the Sabbath at synagogue and at home, resting as God commanded them. …

The Orthodox Jewish ambulance service, Hatzoloh, operates on the Sabbath because saving lives is a part of the Sabbath.

This is not a carte blanche. These medical personnel receive detailed training concerning which circumstances merit Sabbath violation and which do not. The Israeli army has a military rabbinate trained to advise on these issues and authorized to instruct religious soldiers what is permitted and what is forbidden. Orthodox Jewish doctors regularly consult rabbis concerning what they may do on the Sabbath. …

Careful consideration must be given to each circumstance, recognizing the weight of thousands of years of Jewish tradition.

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Statement about the Kushners and the Sabbath by TORA (Traditional Orthodox Rabbis of America)

Many of our fellow citizens do not understand that Jewish law, like all Western law systems, is complex and nuanced. Rabbis do not rule permissively because they are licensed to suspend the law, or issue dispensations and indulgences. Rather, the various laws are of different levels of gravity, much as first-degree murder is a graver offense than manslaughter, which is more serious than jay-walking. …

We state unequivocally that whatever such arguments may have been in the case of the Kushners, they do not remotely apply to the hundreds of thousands of Orthodox Jews whose jobs are quite different.

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Jared and Ivanka: WE are the ones to blame. A reply to Sherwin Pomerantz by Avrohom Gordimer

As committed as they may be to traditional Judaism, Jared and Ivanka are not thoroughly observant/Orthodox, and this is public information. … The vision of Jared and Ivanka being “Shulchan Aruch Jews” (Jews who are totally committed to keeping codified Halacha) is a contrivance of the Jewish community, and is not being promulgated by Jared and Ivanka themselves. … The image of the “publicly Orthodox/halachic First Family” is a product of the Jewish community, some of whose members are overly ambitious to project themselves onto those in the limelight. …

The halachic halo placed over Jared and Ivanka … is fomenting useless controversy, and it is causing finger-pointing at rabbis who are accused of permitting that which would appear to be forbidden. Let’s please stop focusing the blame on others; we should instead focus some blame on ourselves for the harm engendered by our creating something that never was.