On accommodating religious traditions

[sesquipedality]

http://nypost.com/2015/08/01/orthodox-jewish-tenants-sue-building-over-electronic-key-fobs/

This strikes me as an interesting ethical dilemma. Presumably it is only a small subset of Judaism that regards activating a motion activated light switch or electronic lock to be a violation of the Sabbath laws, but it does render it very difficult for them to deal with some aspects of the modern world. The interesting question is how much the modern world should have to accommodate that. The easy response is to say "they don't have to live in that block of flats", but bear in mind these measures weren't in place when they moved there. Someone actively (albeit unintentionally) rendered their own home massively inconvenient for them. I regard these restrictions as absurd, but isn't the point of tolerance that if you only tolerate things that you agree with, then it's not really all that tolerant?

Comments

[damerell.livejournal.com]

The outside world is completely full of motion detectors, like those lights that come on and blind you when you're cycling past someone's house in the dark, grumble. I wonder if it is actually possible to comply with this rule?

[sesquipedality.livejournal.com]

I think unintentional activations are OK.