Jesus and the hair-splitters

 Tim Woodcock writes: With the bad weather this week, I found myself with a snow day followed by virtual learning day (meaning a teach-from-home day) and the chance to catch up on various neglected projects, including this blog.

One of the pleasures of recent days has been getting into a series of online Scrabble games with Steve, a friend from high school, who now lives in largely COVID-free New Zealand. This led me to pick up a book I bought years ago called Word Freak by Stafan Fatis. It’s an incredibly readable look at the subculture of hardcore Scrabble players, some of whom can make decent money playing; however, it is not especially robust scene and players cannot go fully professional in the sense that a poker player or chess player can.

Don’t worry: This blog post will connect to faith … I’ll get there eventually …

One paragraph late in the book jumped out at me, describing Danny, a top-rated teenage player and an Orthodox Jew. Tournaments ordinarily happen at the weekend, and organizers are accommodating in giving Danny a modified schedule that limits how many games he would need to play on the Sabbath. Scrabble is considered “an intellectual pursuit” and is therefore Sabbath-compatible. But “how you play is the issue,” Fatsis writes.

Within the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox traditions, “writing, measuring and touch” are considered “forbidden labor” on the Sabbath. In Scrabble you form words with tiles but that is not considered writing; a distinction is made that says placing letters temporarily on a flat board is different from permanently creating a record with letters. However, for Danny using electronic timers and clocks is forbidden on the Sabbath (although a wind-up clock is acceptable) and he tracks his score with a self-devised system involving washers and nuts to avoid writing.

The lectionary reading right now, Mark 1, jumps straight into Jesus’ ministry with little preamble and by Mark 3 we get the story of Jesus stirring up controversy by healing people on the Sabbath. Had it existed, would Jesus have played Scrabble against the disciples on the Sabbath? Who knows?

But the passage from Word Freak about Danny gave me a great insight – one that’s psychologically truthful rather than historically relevant – into the hair-splitting debates of the Pharisees, and just what it was that Jesus the liberator was up against.

PHARISEE, by the way, would score you 13 points in Scrabble.