[1]: Eating pork is forbidden in the Old Testament in Leviticus 11:7-8 and Deuteronomy 14:8.
I always thought these workarounds were odd - does God have no objection to using proxies to get around the rules? Then again, my friend is not Jewish, so perhaps he can freely break the Sabbath because he’s outside the scope of the rule? Or is damned anyway?
The current Israeli administration is governed by hard line Jewish leaders and don’t seem to abide by pikachu at all.
For a great example see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eruv . Look carefully and you'll see these in Jewish areas of NYC like Williamsburg.
Another time he asked my friend to tear him some toilet paper
Apparently, the consensus is that the God does not just approve of working around the rules, but actively _expects_ it. Otherwise the rules wouldn't have these loopholes, would they?
I’m not Jewish but it’s easy to see similar mental gymnastics on myself or around. Remarking it on others before myself would show a great lack of introspection. When someone is surprised, the wise thinking is to question his own beliefs before the object of his discovery.
There's a lot of crossover between Judaism and DnD player mentality. You're very much encouraged to learn the source material, the commentary and to discuss and debate it. Workarounds don't actually break the rules; and you need to put a lot of study into doing them properly.
Sometimes you need to take a sensible decision and choose to just flat out break the rules. In those situations one is encouraged to do so in an uncommon or abnormal way so it doesn't become habitual. This makes sense to me - I didn't smoke inside for the first 3 years of moving into my house, but the first time I did break that rule it made breaking it much easier the second, third, or subsequent times.
In your example given I can see a situation that isn't actually a risk to life (which comes under different rulings), but is still serious enough you need to take some action before waiting for Shabbat to end. A burst pipe would be a good example; it's not going to kill anyone but it could cause extremely serious damage if left. Asking for help rather than just picking the phone up and treating it like a regular day sorta makes logical sense in that context, though it's probably not what I'd choose to do.
Jewish laws only ever apply to Jews [1]; they have no expectation, want or desire for it to apply to anyone else, through conversion or otherwise. If your friend isn't Jewish then he's welcome to do what he wants. There is no damnation in the Christian sense for anyone, Jewish or otherwise. It's also possible to get into Jewish heaven without being Jewish, but you do have to obey a small subset [1] of the laws.