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1. 

   fennec said, 4 days ago

   Took me a minute, but i guess this one is about the ultra-Orthodox picketing Intel for working on Saturday. Yes, omQ?

2. 

   dtroutma said, 4 days ago

   Do they object to building more nukes on sabbath?

3. 

   omQ R said, 3 days ago

   Me? I’m not the resident expert on Israel!
   Yep, I picked this up on The Register actually. They objected to Intel’s plans to work on the Sabbath (Saturday) for their Jerusalem chip plant. After the protests (which got a little ugly) Intel has instead offered to just let non-Jewish staff work the 3 shifts, which is about 60 people.

   It also promised to recruit workers from the ultra-Orthodox community for other positions. Except it will now need to train up new staff to do the weekend jobs. I have no idea if they had any ultra-Orthodox staff before but I suppose most likely they would have. It would be really strange that they would demand their ultra-Orthodox work on a Sabbath.

   While I was “working” in Haifa & Yokneam, my Israeli hosts from the Nbase-Xyplex plant warned us, the foreign visitors, to stay away from ultra-Orthodox neighbourhoods during the Sabbath as they could possibly go as far as to stone anyone who drove into their neighbourhood (operating a machine is considered working).
   The secular Israelis I met seemed to be a little more peeved at the ultra-Orthodox than most others.

   I lived in Upper Clapton, London for a couple of years, just a block away from Stamford Hill, with a large Hasidic community and always half-expected some intolerance from them from what I was told in Israel but never saw it. (except perhaps at zebra crossings…hmmm, I always got the impression their Volvos or Ford Galaxies would accelerate..)