Hannah sent us something this week, and it's one of those questions where you think you know the answer until you actually try to list everything out. She's asking about the Israeli army and Shabbat — specifically, all the inventions and workarounds they've come up with so observant soldiers can serve without violating halakha. She mentioned the famous Shabbat pen as an example, the one where the ink disappears within twenty-four hours so it's not considered permanent writing. And she wants to know what else exists — other devices, how being on call works, the whole system. And the truth is, once you start digging into this, it's not just a few clever gadgets. It's an entire parallel infrastructure built around a single constraint.
It really is. And you have to understand the scale of the problem first. The IDF has mandatory conscription. You've got religious soldiers serving alongside secular ones, and the army has to function continuously — wars don't pause for Shabbat. So the question becomes: how do you maintain operational readiness while respecting the religious obligations of a significant portion of your force? And the answer, over decades, has been this astonishingly creative engineering and legal effort.
The halakhic engineering, as it were.
It starts from a foundational principle. Jewish law operates on the concept of pikuach nefesh — the preservation of life overrides almost all other commandments. So if there's a genuine operational necessity, a soldier can and must do whatever's required, Shabbat or not. But here's the thing about the IDF — they don't just use pikuach nefesh as a blanket excuse. They've put enormous effort into minimizing the violations even within that framework. The idea is: if you can achieve the same operational result with a permitted action instead of a prohibited one, you take the permitted path.
It's not just "war overrides Shabbat, problem solved." It's "war overrides Shabbat, but let's make sure we're only overriding the parts that genuinely need overriding.
And that's where the inventions come in. Let's start with the famous Shabbat pen. The prohibition here is kotev — writing that's permanent. The Shabbat pen, developed in Israel, uses ink that chemically breaks down and fades away after somewhere between a day and a week. So technically, you're not creating a lasting mark, so it doesn't violate the prohibition.
Which raises the question — is that a loophole or is it consistent with the law?
It's consistent. The prohibition on Shabbat is specifically against permanent writing. Temporary writing has a different status — there's a whole discussion in the Talmud about writing with fruit juice or dust, things that won't last. The Shabbat pen is just a modern application of that principle. The ink oxidizes in air and gradually disappears.
Which seems like it creates its own operational problem. You write something important during Shabbat, and by Sunday morning it's vanished.
That's why these pens are typically used in conjunction with other systems. You might use the Shabbat pen for immediate temporary notes during an operation, then transcribe them properly after Shabbat ends. Or you use them for things that don't need to persist — marking a map during a briefing, jotting down coordinates you'll act on immediately. The constraint forces a kind of discipline.
"Write it down and use it now, because in twelve hours it's gone." There's something almost poetic about that.
It's the Snapchat of military stationery.
There it is. The Herman Poppleberry analogy.
The pen is just the most famous example. Take the Shabbat phone. The prohibition here involves completing an electrical circuit, which is considered a form of "building" or "kindling a fire" depending on which authority you follow. The IDF worked with engineers to develop phones that use a grama system.
Grama — explain that.
Grama is a halakhic concept of indirect causation. Instead of you directly closing the circuit by pressing a button, the phone is designed so that pressing the button triggers a scanning mechanism. The scanner is already running continuously — it's always scanning for button presses. When you press a key, you're not completing a circuit. You're just interrupting an existing scan pattern, and the device interprets that interruption as input. The actual electrical change happens indirectly.
It's the difference between flicking a light switch and walking past a motion sensor. The light turns on either way, but in one case you directly caused it, and in the other you just happened to be there.
That's the idea. And these phones are deployed across the IDF. They look like regular military radios, but the internal switching mechanism works on the grama principle. Some also use a modified Shabbat clock — a timer set before Shabbat that activates and deactivates the device at predetermined intervals. The soldier isn't turning anything on or off during Shabbat; the decisions were all made beforehand.
This is where it starts to feel less like loophole-hunting and more like a genuine engineering philosophy. You're redesigning the fundamental interaction model of the device.
It extends way beyond phones. The IDF has developed Shabbat-compatible electronic locks for gates, armories, and vehicles. Instead of a keypad that completes a circuit when you press it, you have a system where the circuit is already complete, and pressing the keypad modifies the resistance in the circuit, which the system reads. Again, indirect causation.
I'm picturing a soldier standing at an armory door on Shabbat trying to explain grama to his secular commanding officer who just wants to get the equipment.
The beauty of the system is that the secular officer doesn't need to understand it. The door opens. That's the whole point — the IDF's approach has been to make Shabbat observance as seamless as possible within the operational environment, so it doesn't create friction between religious and non-religious soldiers. The technology absorbs the halakhic complexity.
What about being on call? Hannah specifically asked about that.
This is where it gets really interesting, because it's not just about gadgets — it's about entire duty structures. If you're a religious soldier assigned to a base that operates on Shabbat, there are several models. One is the Shabbat shift — you're on duty for a specific block, and during that block you're in a state of operational readiness where pikuach nefesh applies. But the moment your shift ends, you return to full Shabbat observance. There's no "well, I'm already carrying my weapon, so I might as well keep working.
The boundary matters.
The boundary is everything. Another model is the "Shabbat observer" role — a religious soldier who remains in a designated area, doesn't carry anything outside the eruv if one exists on base, but is available to respond if something happens. And many bases have an eruv — a ritual enclosure that turns a public space into a private one for the purposes of carrying on Shabbat. The IDF actually constructs and maintains eruvin on its bases.
Military-grade eruvin.
With regular inspections. There's a halakhic authority assigned to check the eruv on every major base before Shabbat. If a wire is down, they fix it. It's treated with the same seriousness as checking that the communications equipment works.
Which, in a sense, it is. If the eruv fails, you've got religious soldiers who suddenly can't carry their gear.
Then there's the question of travel. Driving is prohibited on Shabbat. The IDF has a system where, if the call-up is urgent and pikuach nefesh applies, they'll send a vehicle. But for routine Shabbat duty, soldiers typically arrive before Shabbat begins and stay on base. Religious soldiers will often do longer continuous Shabbat shifts — arriving Friday afternoon and staying through Saturday night — rather than asking them to travel on Shabbat.
The army has essentially built a scheduling layer on top of its operational requirements that accounts for a twenty-five-hour period where certain personnel can't move.
It's been working for decades. But let's get into some of the more obscure inventions, because this is where it gets delightful. Have you heard of the Shabbat keyboard?
I assume it's not just a keyboard with a "Shabbat mode" sticker on it.
It's a keyboard where the keystrokes are registered through a grama mechanism similar to the phone. But it goes further. Some versions have a randomized delay built in — you press a key, and the character appears somewhere between zero point five and two seconds later. The delay is random enough that you can't reliably intend to cause the electrical effect at a specific moment. You're pressing keys, and the computer is doing its own thing on its own time.
That sounds maddening to actually use.
It's not meant for writing novels. It's for situations where you need to input data into a system during Shabbat for operational reasons — checking a database, updating a log. The randomized delay is a halakhic feature, not a bug.
The feature that makes you want to throw the keyboard out a window is the feature that makes it kosher.
There's also the Shabbat mouse — same principle, the click doesn't directly complete a circuit. And there are Shabbat-compatible touchscreens that work on optical recognition rather than electrical capacitance. The screen detects your finger optically, so you're not changing any electrical state by touching it.
This is starting to sound like an entire parallel consumer electronics industry.
It practically is. The Institute for Science and Halacha in Jerusalem has been working on these problems for decades. They have engineers and rabbis sitting together, going through each military system and asking: what's the melacha here — the prohibited category of work — and how do we design around it?
That's the thirty-nine categories of work prohibited on Shabbat, derived from the types of labor used in building the Tabernacle.
Each one has subcategories and derivatives. So when the IDF introduces a new system — say, a biometric scanner for access control — the Institute will analyze it. Is it writing? Is it kindling? Is it building? And then they'll propose modifications.
What about cooking? That's one of the thirty-nine. How does food work for religious soldiers on Shabbat?
This is less about invention and more about procedure, but it's just as carefully engineered. Food for Shabbat on military bases is prepared before Shabbat begins and kept warm using blech systems — metal covers over the stovetops — or slow cookers that were turned on beforehand. The IDF's logistics corps coordinates with the military rabbinate to ensure that every base with religious soldiers has hot food available on Shabbat without any cooking taking place.
What about the field? You can't exactly set up a blech in a forward operating position.
In the field, religious soldiers rely on cold food prepared in advance, or on heated meals that use chemical heating packs activated before Shabbat. The army has developed MREs — meals ready to eat — that are certified kosher for Shabbat use. The heating element is either activated before Shabbat or uses a chemical reaction that was initiated beforehand.
Even the field ration has a halakhic design consideration baked in.
Literally baked in.
I walked into that.
Let's talk about weapons. Normally, carrying in a public domain is prohibited. But there's a principle that something which is "a garment" or "an adornment" can be worn, not carried. A weapon, for a soldier on duty, is considered part of their uniform — it's worn, not carried. This is an established halakhic ruling that the IDF relies on.
The rifle is an accessory.
In halakhic terms, yes. It's a functional adornment. During operational necessity, loading and manipulating the weapon are all permitted under pikuach nefesh. But during routine guard duty where there's no immediate threat, religious soldiers are trained to minimize handling. The weapon stays slung. If you need to check it, you do it in a way that doesn't involve unnecessary actions.
I'm curious about the legal framework underpinning all of this. How does halakha actually get operationalized across an entire army?
The military rabbinate issues detailed protocols. There's a whole body of IDF halakhic rulings developed over seventy-plus years. And they're binding on the system, not just advisory. When the rabbinate says a particular device is Shabbat-compatible, the army procures it. When they say a certain procedure needs to follow a specific sequence, it gets written into the standing orders.
There's effectively a parallel legal system running alongside the military code.
Sometimes they intersect in fascinating ways. For example, the IDF medical corps has specific protocols for how religious medics should document patient information on Shabbat. The preferred method is to use a Shabbat pen. If that's not available, they can use a regular pen under pikuach nefesh, but they're trained to write with a shinui — an unusual method, like using their non-dominant hand — which downgrades the prohibition from a biblical to a rabbinic level.
The severity of the transgression is being modulated in real time by how you hold the pen.
This is standard training for religious medics. They learn which medical actions are permitted, which require a shinui, and which require rabbinic consultation if time permits. The whole system is graduated.
What about electronic warfare? Signals intelligence, radar operation. You can't really grama your way out of operating a radar screen.
This is where the pikuach nefesh principle really does the heavy lifting. Intelligence and early warning systems are considered continuous operational necessities. A religious soldier assigned to monitor a radar screen for incoming threats is not just permitted to do so — they're obligated to. But even here, there are minimizations. When the threat level is low, shifts might be structured so religious soldiers aren't on console during Shabbat unless necessary. When they are on console, they follow protocols that minimize non-essential interactions with the system.
It's not binary — permitted or prohibited. It's a spectrum of "how much violation is actually necessary right now?
That spectrum is constantly being recalibrated based on the security situation. During peacetime garrison duty, the standards are stricter. During active conflict, they're more permissive. The halakhic system is dynamic.
Let's go back to inventions for a moment. What's the weirdest one you've come across?
There's a Shabbat-compatible automatic door system deployed on certain bases. The problem: automatic sliding doors typically open when you break an infrared beam or step on a pressure sensor. That's considered directly causing an electrical effect. The solution: the doors operate on a pre-programmed cycle. They open and close at regular intervals regardless of whether anyone's there. So when you walk through, you're just timing your movement to the door's pre-existing schedule. You didn't cause anything.
You're essentially surfing the door's schedule.
You're a door surfer. And there's something almost philosophical about it — you're aligning your movement with a rhythm that was set before Shabbat began. The door doesn't open for you. You walk through when the door happens to be open.
It's like the halakhic equivalent of a pedestrian crossing where you wait for the light rather than pressing the button. Except the light is on a timer that was set on Friday afternoon.
Speaking of lights, the Shabbat lamp is one of the oldest examples, predating the IDF. But the military versions are more sophisticated. There are tactical flashlights with a Shabbat mode — the light is already on, but a cover is rotated mechanically to block or reveal the beam. You're not turning anything on or off. You're just moving a physical shutter.
Mechanical solutions to electronic problems.
When you can solve the problem mechanically, you avoid the electrical prohibitions entirely. The IDF has Shabbat-compatible vehicles with mechanical overrides for electronic systems. There are modified Jeeps where the ignition system works on a grama principle, and the lights and indicators have mechanical shutters rather than electronic switches.
Do these vehicles get used outside of Shabbat? Or are they special-purpose?
They're general-purpose. They work exactly the same way on Tuesday as they do on Saturday. That's actually a design principle — the Shabbat compatibility shouldn't impair normal use. It should be invisible unless you need it.
Which is good engineering, period. Universal design that accommodates a specific constraint without making things worse for everyone else.
That principle shows up everywhere. The Shabbat phones work as regular phones. The Shabbat keyboards work as regular keyboards, just with a delay you can turn off when it's not Shabbat. The design philosophy is: add a mode, don't create a separate device.
What about communication systems?
The military rabbinate has approved voice-activated radio systems for Shabbat use by religious soldiers in operational roles. The reasoning is that speaking into a microphone isn't the same as directly operating an electrical device — it's more like talking to another person, where the electronics are incidental. But this is controversial. Some authorities hold that voice activation is still a form of direct causation. It depends on the specific technology and the operational context.
There's not universal agreement even within the halakhic framework.
Far from it. The IDF has to navigate between different halakhic opinions. The military rabbinate tends to take a relatively permissive approach compared to some civilian authorities, because the operational stakes are higher. But they're still operating within the bounds of Orthodox halakha. It's not "anything goes." Every ruling has to be defensible.
I want to circle back to something Hannah mentioned — the idea that even non-observant soldiers are affected by this infrastructure. The army runs in a way that allows for Shabbat observance regardless of who's on duty.
This is actually one of the most interesting aspects. The Shabbat infrastructure shapes the entire rhythm of the IDF. The weekend in the Israeli military is effectively Friday afternoon through Saturday — and the army plans around it. Major training exercises are rarely scheduled for Shabbat unless there's a specific operational reason. The default is that Shabbat is a reduced-activity period. Even secular units observe a kind of informal Shabbat rhythm — things slow down, non-essential activities pause, there's a festive meal on Friday night. The religious requirement created a cultural pattern that benefits everyone.
Mandatory rest, built into the system.
It's one of the things that makes the IDF unusual as a military organization. Most armies operate on a continuous twenty-four-seven model where weekends are just administrative conveniences. The IDF slows down for Shabbat. It's not a complete halt — operational units are still active, intelligence is still flowing — but the pace changes. The non-essential activity drops off.
There's something almost counterintuitively efficient about that. A forced pause that prevents burnout.
There's research on this, actually. Units that observe Shabbat consistently report higher morale and lower fatigue-related errors. The religious soldiers get their observance, and the secular soldiers get a guaranteed rest period. It's one of those rare cases where accommodating a religious requirement produces a secular benefit.
What about the naval side? Ships at sea can't exactly pause for Shabbat.
The Israeli Navy has its own set of protocols. Ships on patrol during Shabbat operate under continuous pikuach nefesh — the vessel has to function. But the navy has developed Shabbat-compatible systems for its vessels. The bridge equipment on some Israeli naval vessels includes grama-modified controls. The galleys have Shabbat food-warming systems. And there's an interesting halakhic discussion about whether a ship at sea is considered a public or private domain for carrying purposes.
I imagine the answer is complicated.
The short version is that a naval vessel is generally considered a private domain — a karmelit, technically — which means carrying within the ship is permitted in ways it wouldn't be on land. The enclosed nature of the ship creates a different halakhic environment.
The ship itself becomes a kind of eruv.
In effect, yes. The hull is the boundary. And this has implications for how religious sailors move around the vessel with their gear on Shabbat.
Let's talk about the human side of this. What's it actually like being a religious soldier navigating all these systems?
It's a skill set. Religious soldiers learn to operate within a complex matrix of permissions and prohibitions that changes based on context. A given action — pressing a button, writing something down, carrying an object — might be permitted in one context and prohibited in another, and the determination depends on factors like the operational urgency, the availability of alternatives, and the specific technology involved. Soldiers develop a kind of halakhic situational awareness.
Which sounds exhausting, but also kind of impressive. You're running two decision trees simultaneously — the tactical one and the halakhic one.
For the most part, it works because the infrastructure has been designed to make the right choice easy. The Shabbat-compatible equipment means that in most routine situations, the soldier doesn't have to make difficult judgments. The default path is the permitted path. The hard cases only arise in genuine emergencies, where pikuach nefesh provides clear guidance.
That's good design thinking, period. Make the desired behavior the path of least resistance.
The IDF has been doing user-experience design for halakhic compliance for decades without calling it that. They've essentially built a choice architecture that guides religious soldiers toward permitted actions.
What about new technologies? Drones, AI systems, cyber warfare. How does halakha keep up?
This is an ongoing challenge. The Institute for Science and Halacha has a working group specifically on emerging military technologies. When the IDF introduces a new system, the halakhic analysis happens in parallel with the technical integration. For drones, for example, there are questions about whether operating a drone console constitutes direct flight control or indirect causation. Some drone control systems have been modified to use grama interfaces. Others rely on pre-programmed flight paths that are set before Shabbat and only monitored, not actively controlled.
Monitoring versus controlling — that's a crucial distinction.
It's the difference between watching a security camera feed and actively steering the camera. Watching is passive, permitted. Steering is active, and requires a halakhic justification. The IDF trains operators to distinguish between these modes and to use the monitoring mode when possible on Shabbat.
That's a whole different category of action.
Cyber operations raise fascinating halakhic questions. Is typing a command that launches a cyber attack considered a form of "kindling" — since you're initiating an electronic process? Or is it more like "shooting" — which would be permitted under pikuach nefesh? The military rabbinate has issued classified rulings on this that I'm not privy to, but the general principle is that defensive cyber operations are treated like any other defensive military activity — permitted when necessary, minimized when possible. Offensive cyber operations on Shabbat would generally require a specific operational justification.
I'm struck by the fact that some of these rulings are classified. There's a secret body of halakhic military law.
There absolutely is. And it makes sense when you think about it. The halakhic analysis of a particular weapon system reveals details about how the system works, its capabilities, its operational use. That's sensitive information. So the rulings are kept confidential, shared only with the soldiers and commanders who need them.
A classified responsa.
That's exactly what it is. And it's probably the only military in the world with a classified rabbinic literature.
Let's zoom out for a moment. What does the existence of all this infrastructure tell us about the relationship between religion and the state in Israel?
It tells us that the integration is deep and practical. This isn't symbolic accommodation — a prayer room in the corner, a kosher option in the mess hall. This is the military redesigning its equipment, its procedures, and its entire operational rhythm around a religious requirement. The IDF has decided that accommodating Shabbat observance is worth the engineering effort, the logistical complexity, and the operational constraints.
That decision reflects a broader social contract. Religious soldiers serve, and the army makes it possible for them to serve without violating their convictions.
It's a two-way street. The religious community contributes to national defense, and the state invests in making that contribution possible. The Shabbat pen is a symbol of that bargain — a small object that represents a much larger commitment.
Are there limits to this? Things the IDF won't do, accommodations it won't make?
The limit is operational effectiveness. If a particular accommodation would impair the military's ability to function, it won't be made. Shabbat observance is accommodated up to the point where it conflicts with mission requirements, and then pikuach nefesh takes over. The system is designed to make that threshold as high as possible — to accommodate as much as possible — but the threshold exists.
Which seems like a reasonable balance. The question is always where to draw the line.
The line moves. During the 2023 war, the IDF issued blanket halakhic rulings that effectively suspended many Shabbat restrictions for soldiers in combat zones. When the operational tempo is that high, the accommodations narrow. When things calm down, they expand again. The system breathes.
What about the soldiers themselves? Is there resistance to all these accommodations? Do some religious soldiers feel like the grama workarounds are a kind of cheating?
There's a spectrum of views. Some soldiers are strict constructionists who use the accommodations minimally and only when absolutely necessary. Others are more comfortable with the halakhic engineering. The military rabbinate's position is that the accommodations are valid and that soldiers should use them — that it's better to use a Shabbat pen than a regular pen, better to use a grama phone than a regular phone. The accommodations aren't loopholes to be avoided; they're legitimate halakhic solutions to be embraced.
The official position is: use the workaround, it's there for a reason.
Use the workaround. It's not second-best. It's the correct way to do the thing in this context.
I want to ask about something that's been in the back of my mind throughout this conversation. How much of this infrastructure is about halakha, and how much of it is about creating a sense of Jewish character for the military? A kind of national-religious identity expressed through technology?
That's a sharp question. I think it's both. The halakhic concerns are genuine — the rabbis who issue these rulings are serious about Jewish law. But there's also a cultural dimension. The Shabbat infrastructure signals that the IDF is a Jewish army, not just an army that happens to be composed mostly of Jews. It's a statement about the character of the institution.
The Shabbat pen as a national symbol.
In a small way, yes. It says: we take Shabbat seriously enough to redesign our writing implements. That's not nothing.
Alright, what haven't we covered? Hannah's prompt was broad — she wanted to know about the inventions, the on-call systems, the whole picture.
We should talk about the Shabbat ammo count. During Shabbat, religious soldiers who need to account for ammunition are trained to count using pre-printed tally sheets where they mark boxes rather than writing numbers. The marking is done with a Shabbat pen or with a method that doesn't create lasting marks. Some units use mechanical counters — clickers — that were set to zero before Shabbat.
Even counting bullets has a Shabbat protocol.
Everything has a Shabbat protocol. The depth of this system is what's so striking. It's not just the big obvious things like phones and vehicles. It's the ammunition counts, the guard logs, the kitchen timers, the door locks. The IDF has halakhically analyzed an astonishing range of routine military activities and developed Shabbat-compatible procedures for all of them.
It's the comprehensiveness that's impressive. This isn't a handful of accommodations. It's a full alternative operating mode for the entire military.
It's been built incrementally over decades. The first major Shabbat accommodations in the IDF date back to the early years of the state, when David Ben-Gurion reached an agreement with the religious community about military service. The infrastructure has been growing and evolving ever since, as new technologies create new halakhic challenges and new solutions.
Ben-Gurion's deal — that was the "status quo" arrangement, right?
The understanding that the state would respect religious observance in public institutions, including the military. And over time, that broad principle got translated into specific technologies and procedures. The Shabbat pen, the grama phone, the Shabbat-mode vehicles — these are all downstream consequences of a political agreement made in 1947.
Politics becomes engineering. That's a pattern you see in a lot of places, but it's unusually literal here.
The system works. Religious soldiers serve. The military functions. The accommodations are real without being crippling. It's one of the few examples of large-scale religious accommodation in a mandatory military setting that has sustained itself for decades without major breakdown.
Are there failure modes? Situations where the system breaks?
The main failure mode is when the pre-Shabbat preparations aren't completed properly. If someone forgets to set the Shabbat clock for the gate, the gate doesn't open on Shabbat. If the eruv isn't checked and there's a break in the wire, suddenly carrying becomes a problem. The system depends on advance preparation, and when that preparation fails, soldiers have to fall back on pikuach nefesh justifications or simply accept the violation.
It's a high-reliability system with a single point of failure — Friday afternoon.
Friday afternoon is the crunch point. Every base has a pre-Shabbat checklist that includes setting timers, checking the eruv, preparing food, distributing Shabbat-compatible equipment. It's a flurry of activity in the hours before sunset. And if something gets missed, the consequences ripple through the next twenty-five hours.
The Friday scramble.
It's a scramble that the entire military participates in, religious and secular alike, because the Shabbat infrastructure affects everyone on base.
One more thing I want to ask about — what about soldiers who aren't Jewish? The IDF has Druze, Bedouin, Christian soldiers. How does the Shabbat infrastructure affect them?
They're not obligated to observe Shabbat, so the accommodations don't apply to them halakhically. But practically, they're embedded in a system that slows down for Shabbat. The mess hall serves Shabbat food. The operational tempo drops. Some non-Jewish soldiers find it frustrating; others appreciate the guaranteed rest. The IDF's approach has generally been to allow non-Jewish soldiers to continue normal activities in their own quarters during Shabbat, as long as it doesn't disrupt the observant soldiers.
A kind of parallel coexistence.
Which is Israel in miniature, really.
Alright, I think we've covered the territory. The Shabbat pen, the grama phones, the keyboards with intentional lag, the door-surfing, the classified responsa, the Friday scramble. Anything major we missed?
We could talk about Shabbat-compatible medical devices — there's a whole field of halakhic medical engineering — but I think we've given Hannah a pretty comprehensive tour.
She asked for the inventions, and I think we delivered. The Shabbat pen is the celebrity, but the supporting cast is extensive.
The underlying principle — design around the constraint rather than ignoring it — is applicable beyond the military context. It's a case study in how to take a hard requirement seriously and build a system that honors it.
Which brings us to...
Now: Hilbert's daily fun fact.
Hilbert: In the seventeen-eighties, explorers recorded that a single ice cave on the island of Bioko in Equatorial Guinea contained frozen layers estimated at over eight hundred tons — roughly the weight of a fully loaded Boeing seven-four-seven.
Eight hundred tons of ice on an equatorial island.
I'm trying to picture a seven-four-seven made of ice and now I can't stop.
Truly the frozen jumbo jet of Bioko. For Hannah, for everyone listening — the Israeli army has built an entire parallel operating system around Shabbat, and it works. The question it leaves me with is whether other militaries, other institutions, could learn something from this. Not about Shabbat specifically, but about taking religious and cultural obligations seriously enough to redesign your tools around them, rather than treating them as inconveniences to be worked around.
This has been My Weird Prompts. Thanks to our producer Hilbert Flumingtop. You can find every episode at myweirdprompts.
If you enjoyed this, leave us a review — it helps. I'm Herman Poppleberry.
I'm Corn. See you next time.
