“You shall not plow with an ox and a donkey together.

Ooh! I know this one! The rabbi taught it to us in fifth grade. It's because an ox is so much stronger than a donkey, that hitching them to the same plow might lead to the donkey getting hurt.

Orthodox Jews still do the tassels thing, too. At Jewish summer camp one year, we learned how to make the series of twists and knots to make the tassels the right way. That was fun.

Although the Duggars just might do that one, which is why their clothes are all so bad.

bwah! yes

“A woman shall not wear man’s clothing, nor shall a man put on a woman’s clothing; for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD your God.

I remember seeing some discussion about whether this meant that a woman should not wear men's style clothes and vice versa (which is the commonly accepted interpretation), or whether it meant that a woman shouldn't wear clothes that belong to a man or a man shouldn't wear clothes that belong to a woman.

This is just too damn cute.

The ox and donkey thing always reminds me of the story of Odysseus trying to get out of his promise to fight the Trojan war: he pretends he's mad, puts on a skullcap, hitches an ox and a donkey together and plows ten furrows and sows them with salt. Agammemnon proves he's sane by placing the infant Telemachus in the last furrow, so that Odysseus will have to run him over or turn the plow aside.

Given the symbolic hoo-hah already in that passage -- ten salted furrows for ten wasted years of war; the name Telemachus basically means "and then, we kick their asses!" at the end of the last furrow/year -- I think it's also interesting that it's exactly the same ill-suited hitch as in Jewish lore. (Though I think the Homeric sagas predate the writing down of the Bible, or anyway it's unlikely one of them influenced the other.)

Apparently some brands will use a linen/wool mixture as the lining in the lapels of suits

I've been reading a whole lot of early-mid 19th C. history, and linsey-woolsey is amazingly ubiquitous, as the general cloth middle-class and poor people (anyway, poor gentiles) wore. I finally realized that it was linsey- woolsey because cotton was still an expensive fabric, hard to gin and uncommonly cultivated, until mid-century. I have to imagine that the reason to combine the two is to get the strength, stretchiness, and waterproofing of wool without completely stifling yourself to death in the summer.

Or Jay-Z! Who occasionally refers to himself as "Hova", short for Jehova, no??? Coincidence? I THINK NOT!

Hahaha! Jay-Z is my god now!

Speaking of Jay-Z, I am randomly obsessed with this song "Lucifer" off the Black Album right now. ---WAIT. I didn't even realize the religious part there, too!

It's because an ox is so much stronger than a donkey, that hitching them to the same plow might lead to the donkey getting hurt.

Seems to me that there are a lot of "religious" laws that were created to make people/things safe, and they threw the God label on it to make people do it, i.e. I've heard that the prohibition against pork and shellfish was because people used to get sick eating those foods because they weren't cleaned properly (i.e. trichinosis), so they slapped a trayf label on it.

Seems to me that there are a lot of "religious" laws that were created to make people/things safe, and they threw the God label on it to make people do it

Yeah, that sounds about right. "OK, people, here's the safest way to do this." "Says who?!?" "Um... God! That's who!"

Linen's also fairly flimsy compared to either wool or cotton, so combining it with either helps to stretch out supplies of both.

It's also been suggested that the prohibition of pork was as much to help keep the ancient Hebrews as herders of sheep and goats, as pig-keeping in a town alters the way you set it up. Not to mention the eating-something-that-eats-trash aspect (which is also true of filter-feeders like shellfish).

Well... or God really DIDN'T want people getting sick from eating shellfish. OR shellfish are innately evil in ways we don't know about.

Which seems unlikely, but the more I read about shit we've fucked up because we thought we fully understood something we didn't, the more likely it sounds. Shellfish - evil! Linen - innately inimical to wool! Cats and dogs - lying down together! Why not?