India’s Ganges River has become famously polluted, in part by reverent Hindu pilgrims who toss “offerings” (such as clothing, statues and the cremated ashes of loved ones) into it in hope of prosperous lives and holy afterlives.
Hindu immigrants in New York City, without access to the Ganges, have called upon Jamaica Bay as a stand-in.
The formerly quiet waters adjacent to JFK International Airport now ebb and flow with similar offerings that ultimately litter the bay’s federal recreation area shoreline.
Hindu community leaders in New York, with only mixed success, constantly urge greater environmental sensitivity.
Nothing is really
new under the sun 
From time to time, clever rabbis suggest ways of bypassing ancient Talmudic laws that restrict observant Jews’ behavior on the Sabbath (a day of “rest”).
Rabbi Dror Fixler, an electro-optics expert from Bar-Ilan University in Israel, said he could foresee a day when even driving a car might be permitted on the Sabbath.
The driver would wear an encephalography helmet that could catch brain signals and transmit them to a car’s operating and steering system, removing the need for “action” on the driver’s part (thus theoretically leaving him “at rest”).
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