[Avodah] reactionary takanos and gezeiros

[Akiva Miller via Avodah]

.

R' Sholom Simon asked:

> Can anybody think of a secular (ideally, American) law or
> common custom/practice that is done in order to distinguish
> ourselves from some other group/idealogy?

R' Micha Berger's response of yichud is a great example of where
secular society has grasped the importance of gezeros which help
protect us from ourselves. Similarly, secular society understands the
concept of Mar'is Ayin and Chashad, and they express this in the term
"Appearance of impropriety". (There's even a short Wikipedia page with
that title.) But I don't think either of these is what RSS was asking
for. He wants examples where the purpose is specifically:

> in order to distinguish ourselves from other groups (often,
> from Jewish breakaway groups).
>
> Probably the most famous one is to eat hot food on shabbos
> (to distinguish ourselves from tzadukim).

The answer that first came to my mind is that the original American
colonists adopted various practices to distinguish themselves from
their European origins. I'm sure there were others, but the main one
that comes to my mind is the spelling differences between British and
American English. For example, the Wikipedia article "Comparison of
American and British English" says: "One particular contribution
towards formalizing these differences came from Noah Webster, who
wrote the first American dictionary (published 1828) with the
intention of showing that people in the United States spoke a
different dialect from Britain, much like a regional accent."

Akiva Miller

PS: Along similar lines, I have long searched for a secular idea that
is similar to our concept of l'chatchila and b'dieved, where we are
uneqivocally supposed to do it one way, but the other way is
grudgingly acceptable after the fact. (Speeding limits are *not* a
good example of this. The policeman will probably not stop you for
going slightly over the limit, but he certainly could. That would be a
Chetzi Shiur at most - a clear violation, even if not a punishable
one.) If anyone has good examples, please start a new thread.