14/15 --The one about Jewish Sabbath threw me. Damned lunar calendar/solar calendar conversion. *Technically* I was right, but it wasn't the answer they wanted. By the lunar calendar, a day begins at sundown, so Jewish Sabbath begins on the Hebrew calendar's equivalent of Saturday, which in Gregorian terms is Friday evening.

The reason why a Jewish day begins at sundown (instead of at midnight, as in our civil calendar and also some other lunar calendars) is entirely because of scripture in the Torah and traditional interpretation of that scripture in the Talmud. In the book of Bereshit (Genesis), the scripture reads: "And there was evening and there was morning, one day." The Talmud interprets this to mean that night comes first, then the daylight, for each new day.

-- Nephele
Who may have had an unfair advantage in that quiz because it seemed that a lot of those questions related to Judaism.

Yep --I knew the reason why, cos of Catholic school, and so I also knew that the Gregorian calendar is solar because of when Rome switched from lunar to solar. The Hellenic polytheist calendar is lunar because it's directly tied to the phases of the moon, and while I don't recall any note in Hesiod's Theogony or Works & Days that dictates "a day begins at sundown because of X...", it just makes sense to start a day at sundown when there's a clear mythology that states outright "no, really, Night was here first, and Daylight was born of Night".

I still say I was right and this quiz was wrong. I'm technically correct -- that's the best kind of correct there is!

ETA:
Also --aha! so the avatar pic of Theodosia Goodman is signalling all kinds of things, oui?

Haha! Anagrams, Jewishness, and gothiness, all rolled into one avatar. I think you deserve at least a couple of goth points for noticing that!

-- Nephele

Fun test. Scored 13/15, so relatively well compared to American average, apparently. Never heard of the great awakening or whatever it is called, though, so I guessed that one wrong. Plus one stupid mistake, but I somehow knew both questions on the rulings of the supreme court (and no, I did not guess). Not bad from someone who lives on the other side of the Atlantic ocean, I thought.

Not really to be rude, and I don't want to highjack a thread, however I would have to disagree with your "technicality" correct. You see "The Sabbath" is a religious event, not a "Day". It is referred to as a "day of worship or rest" but it's more of generalization. The recurring weekly "event" of the sabbath begins at sunset of Friday. If this were a "24 hour day" type thing you could claim your correctness, however given it's nature, the correct answer to the question is "Sunset Friday". There isn't really a "technically" to this sort of thing.

12/15 for me.

That may be how you and your sect (or that which you grew up in, or your Jewish bestie, or whatever... I'm assuming nothing) interpret it. My guess is you're from and living in the States? Are most familiar with rather Liberal forms of Judaism? When I lived in London during my teens, I lived in a predominantly Jewish neighbourhood, and it was pretty Orthodox; granted, what I know is mostly from the deli and butcher my brother-in-law loved and my (then-)band's bassist, whose family was Jewish, lived a few doors down, and was considered very "Liberal" by the neighbours, even though they'd be incredibly Orthodox compared to, average American Jewish standards.

Cos the passage Nephele quoted, and the explanation she provided, does exactly mean that I am correct. "And there was evening and there was morning, one day" very literally means that days are counted sunset-to-sunset, and "Yom Shabbat" of the Hebrew calendar very much is generally accepted to be equivalent to Saturday on the Gregorian calendar; thus the "event" of Shabbat, which takes place at the beginning of that day (not "at the end of Yom Shishi" --my old bassist's mother would be more horrified at that suggestion than at her youngest boy playing loud Gothic glam rock) takes place on "Saturday", as per the standards of translation from Hebrew to English. The Gregorian calendar has nothing to do with it; it's a solar calendar, it counts days and weeks by the rotation of the Earth on its axis, and its rotation around the sun, and so it counts days in spans of 24-hours --something completely foreign to the Hebrew calendar, which counts the span of a day as starting at sunset, and ending when the sun sets again, and furthermore is a lunar calendar, counting months by the rotation of the moon.

So yes, I'm correct. Jewish sacred texts lends very easily to counting days as going from sunset-to-sunset, enough that one could easily say that is the literal meaning of the relevant passage. "Yom Shabbat", when translated to English, is typically translated as "Saturday". Shabbat or "Jewish Sabbath", as an event, happens at the beginning of Yom Shabbat, not at the end of Yom Shishi (Friday, according to the dominant tradition of translation into English), as per the tradition of worldwide Orthodox and Conservative sects of Judaism, and (or so I'm willing to bet on) at least half of all Liberal and Reform sects. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt (as I can't be arsed to look up stats at the mo') and assume for a bit that a majority of US Jews are Reform or Liberal and of a sect that counts the "Shabbat event" as you have here. Fair enough --except that the US houses less than half of the worldwide population of Jewish people (which may or may not even count those who observe the Jewish religion --comedian Lewis Black is Jewish, but also an Atheist), and a dominant (if not overwhelming) majority of Jews outside the States and Scandinavia are Conservative or Orthodox. Hell, even some prominent Jews in the US, such as television actress Mayim Bialik (currently on The Big Bang Theory, most famous as the title character on Blossom) are Conservative, Orthodox, or (as Bialik identifies) "Conservadox", which is somewhere between the two. It is therefore reasonable to assume that a majority of religiously-observant Jews worldwide absolutely do not consider their Shabbat event to be occurring "on Friday", if they were to put it in English terms. Of course, to be fair, said people aren't likely to be thinking of it in English, Gregorian calendar terms, anyway --which is technically more important then whether or not I'm correct, technically or otherwise, in this disagreement.

The facts still stand: Shabbat is an event of the Hebrew calendar. The Hebrew calendar is lunar, in nature, and as is typical of lunar calendars (and, most importantly, is generally considered to be outlined by the Jewish sacred texts), counts a day as beginning at sundown. Shabbat, as an event, occurs at the beginning of the day "Yom Shabbat". Yom Shabbat is typically translated into English as "Saturday".

I think we seem to have a misunderstanding of words, I took your original statement to mean you thought that it was "Saturday on a whole, without a part of Friday, ie:starting at midnight" but after reading your last post I am assuming you got the answer wrong due to the semantics on when Saturday starts. As opposed to removing "Friday evening" from the event. But you seem to be saying that you answered "saturday" because by technicality, when the sun sets it becomes Saturday and the religious affair begins, even if the "western world" still calls it "Friday" until midnight.

This is where we are misunderstood?

Technically (at least, what has developed into custom), Shabbat begins about eighteen minutes before official sunset on Friday, unlike all other days in the Jewish calendar. The reason for this is so that Shabbat might not be desecrated should one's calculation for the exact moment of sunset happen to be off by a few minutes.

-- Nephele

Yes, that's exactly what I meant: When the sun sets, it's "the next day", because that's how the calendar counts days.



Ah, so my house-mate is thus fair in his joke (which he claims started with a university room-mate, who was himself Jewish) that "Judaism is a religious form of OCD" --though he's usually referring to the very specific dietary laws, and modern Orthodox interpretation of said (which, I think, often excludes catfish from kosher definitions of fish for some reason that doesn't immediately spring to mind --but I may be wrong).

...and yes, I did know that Shabbat observance started at a specific time, regardless of the time of actual sundown at one's latitude --and I *think* this was mainly formalised for Jews at global latitudes that may produce a far earlier or far later sunrise or sunset, dependent on the season. Like Norwegian Jews, who have several weeks in summer of midnight sun (or damned near it), and thus no "sundown" for a significant portion of summer. The important part is that all Jews of that time zone, which is longitudinal, observe Shabbat, regardless of whether or not they have the experience of a day, as defined at the time and place the Torah was written.

Yep, there are a lot of meticulous rules in Judaism. I think I'm glad that my parents were rebels.

-- Nephele

I knew them all, but got three wrong. One was the Pakistan question, which for reasons I don't know my brain read as "India" instead. I actually took the quiz a 2nd time to see whether it really did ask about India or Pakistan. Then two I had the right answers but unknowingly clicked on the wrong answers, without meaning to. If I had taken it orally I would have gotten a perfect score but apparently my brain still can't do quizes or forms yet [and it only took me three attempts to get my mom's address right on the mail I sent out yesterday ].

There are also more rules to Catholicism than I really knew about, and my parents even sent me to a Catholic school run by Felician nuns --who are typically regarded as the strictest orders of nuns in the States. Hell, my school still pushed fish on Fridays, Lent or not, even though that was given a pass long before I was born.

...but then, one of the nuns gave me the D'Aulaire book of Greek Myths when I was eight, so clearly not all of them cared if I paid attention.

I know a few bars which still follow fish-friday rules, and won't serve any other meat that day.