From: S
To: Rebelprofiler
Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2012 6:25 pm
Subject: Re: religion and stuff
Ah, sorry to hear about your work b.s.
I really like your first point. In particular the part that "it is impossible to know Gd entirely, but possible to have a direct relationship." Lack of certainty (on a lot of religious matters) is something I'm kind of dealing with right now, so I dig on that concept of a deep relationship without being sure of entirely everything.
So, what are your specific views on Jesus? Obviously, as a Jew, you do not believe he had any sort of divinity. But as a historical figure or a prophet (depending on which you'd view as a more correct term for him), what do you think of his ideas? Do you respect his ideas, or find some trouble in them?
I'm actually in the midst of reading the Christian Bible right now. Unfortunately, between work, school, and reading multiple books at once (terrible habit, that), it's been rather slow-goings. I've yet to really get in the thick of it, so I'm yet to truly figure out what I think about it. That's an interesting take on the importance of the Torah, the point about the cryptic nature of it. Normally--at least in my experiences--people "explain" why they believe their holy book through a terrible cyclical argument about their book being holy because it is the word of their deity who they know is divine because of their holy book. You actually have some deep reasoning behind it.
So, because I know more Christians than people of other faiths, I know that with Christianity there's a bit of an argument about judging sin. Some claim that some sins are worse than others, while the other side argues that "ranking" of sin is Dantean silliness. Drawing from that, do you believe any mitzvos are more important to follow? Or is simply trying to keep all 613 mitzvos as best you can in general more important?
Religious law v. civil law is another point of yours I agree on. It seems a simple concept, but obviously isn't to some. I feel like, in the U.S., religious arguments rather muck stuff up. Given that a) we have freedom of religion and no official state religion and b) there are a wide variety of faiths throughout the country, you can't make effective political arguments based on religion--though some seem damn determined to do so.
Interfaith marriage ceremonies simply confuse me. That is, ceremonies that include aspects of one or both religions. I understand perhaps loving someone not of the same faith, but having that wedding incorporate religion... that's just illogical.
Yes, that sounds like crappy inter-politics. Certainly obviously human problems. It seems like the divider and such you were talking about--and disagreed with. People over-complicating and causing issues.
No, no, not too much. You're quite well spoken on the matter. Very interesting.
From: Rebelprofiler
To: S
Posted: Sat Apr 28, 2012 9:00 pm
Subject: Re: religion and stuff
The thing to keep in mind, especially when looking at Judaism and Islam from an American viewpoint is that Americans all seem to think that Judaism = Christianity - Jesus and Islam = Christianity + Mohammed. We're never ENTIRELY too clear on how these are fundamentally different but I would venture to argue that Christianity is not a religion (which is just a series of rituals ascribed to a higher power) but instead simply a FAITH. Yes there are rituals, but the sum total of Christianity is that if you believe Jesus to be your personal Lord and Savior, who died on the cross for your sins, you're a Christian. You don't ever have to DO anything to prove you're a Christian. You just simply are because you believe.
Judaism (and to a large degree Islam as well) is a totally different concept. Theoretically you don't have to believe in ANYTHING to be Jewish. I personally find that concept bizarre but there is a subset of Orthodox Judaism called the "Orthoprax" who are essentially Atheist Orthodox Jews. And other than the belief that Mohammed was a prophet and wrote the qu'ran, TECHNICALLY you don't have to believe in Gd there either. My big huge problem is that you lose the translation of the Mitzvos when you drop Gd out of the equation. Why avoid shellfish and pork if you aren't trying to be closer to Gd? Why do any of them matter without Gd? But that is a right afforded all of humanity, Jewish and Goy alike, and while I find myself deeply saddened to hear that they're violently refusing to believe in a higher power.
But here's where Judaism stems off of Christianity: It is a religion of DOING, rather than one of BELIEVING. You do Jewish things, eat Jewish foods, commune with Jewish people, pray to a Jewish Gd in Jewish places, and you're living a good Jewish life. Nobody asks you if your faith wavers or gives a shit about your personal relationship with Gd. It's irrelevant to the larger question. If your faith is wavering, do more mitzvos! If you're not feeling Gd's presence, go to Jewish places! Be around more Jews! Read more Torah! The reason we DO mitzvos is to deepen our personal relationship with Gd and for us, Gd comes AFTER mitzvos. First you do Mitzvos, then comes Gd. And if you're doing mitzvos and there's still no Gd, do more. And if there's still no Gd... well, do more. Nobody in the Jewish community does all 613 mitzvos all time perfectly. There's always more work to be done. And if all else fails and you're really struggling, go volunteer. That's a mitzvah. You probably forgot about that one! DO MITZVOS!
None of the mitzvos are more important or less important than the others. All 613 are equally important and it is considered a pleasure to do one, which is why you will see a Jew bristle when you call it a "commandment." We Jews USUALLY tell other people that "Mitzvah" means "Good Deed" and to some large degree, that's the truth. But the word LITERALLY means commandment. Sin is a commonly misinterpreted word when it goes from the Hebrew scriptures to the Greek to the arabic. A "sin" is not a black mark on your permanent record. It is simply missing the mark. Maybe you kept kosher all year but you said the wrong bracha (blessing) over the food once. You have sinned. But it's okay. On The Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) Gd shows up and we make note of our errors and start over from scratch. Now this doesn't work to ALL sins... sometimes we commit a sin against another human being. We use the month leading UP to Yom Kippur (the month of Elul) as a time to reflect on the year past and apologize to people we have wronged.
With Christianity, when your faith falters, they pray. They tell you to pray. And pray more. But there's no DOING anything really and your faith faltering shows you that have a defect of character. Just go to church, talk to other Christians, read your Bible, and pray a lot. Jews are like "Go out into the world and do shit. Look for Gd in the small crevices instead of a grand gesture." Jesus said that "actions are like dirty rags to the father" but Moses (who wrote the fifth book of the Torah, by the way) said otherwise. The 613 mitzvos are USUALLY just good deeds in general - pay your debts, don't rip people off, be honest, be faithful, do good in the world - but they're mostly designed to help us be more like Gd.
See, Gd is a very loving and compassionate Gd. She's not as angry, hateful, bitter, and mean as she's portrayed in "The Old Testament." The Gd of Torah is a totally different Gd. When Joshua was conquering cities, Gd specifically commanded him to only kill the men who stood in the way and do not loot the city "for all that lies within belongs to Adonai your Gd." when there were Israelites looting and killing and raping women, Gd commanded they be stoned to death. However in nine times out of ten, when the Israelites were storming some strong hold, Gd was very clear that they needed to have their heads on their shoulders about it. The whole "Thou shalt not kill" verse is WAY thrown out of proportion. The actual word means "murder" not kill. All of the generations of man following Noah were allowed to kill because this is how we got meat. We also did a lot of killing our own because they were being bad Jews and spreading the cancer of dissension among the people.
Being an observant Jew, I now see Jesus' last week alive in a whole new light. First of all, Jesus was alive in a period where the Romans felt threatened by Judaism and randomly crucified Jews. 125k Jews were crucified during the Roman occupation of Jerusalem. Not just Jesus.
So what I see happening in the gospels are one uppity Jew trying to instill FAITH into our religion. I don't think this is a BAD idea (and one that was put into place by our most prized scholar Mamonides in the 1300s) and I rather like what Jesus himself said, most of the time (that shit about stoning your parents if they refuse to follow him bugs the ever living crap out of me though). A lot of what Jesus said was scholarly and righteous. He made mention several times that he was never looking to create a new religion but to help his fellow Jews find their way back.
So then the Sanhedrin convenes because this uppity Jew is getting press and we're all in the middle of being horribly oppressed by the Romans so we're a little on edge. I kinda liken this to the Holocaust. I can't even imagine if there was an uppity Jew wandering around preaching out against Hitler. But the fact is, it was a very similar genocide going on at the time. We pull him in front of our courts and ask him questions. He answers with shit that just flies in the face of Judaism (like that he's Gd and answers to no man) and has no desire to repent and go back to being a good Jew who keeps his head down. Then the Sanhedrin views him as a direct threat to our safety and well being as a whole. So we sell him out. We were gonna stone him ourselves but it was Pesach and there are laws about working on a holiday. So we turned him over to the Romans, who crucified him - as they crucified 125,000 other Jews.
I think that no matter what had happened at the Sanhedrin, he would have been crucified by the Romans.
As to how I feel about him... I think he was a righteous man - a tzaddik. I think he was knowledgeable in Torah and spoke of a loving, compassionate Gd, kinda like the one I know. But he in no way shape or form matches the messiah outlined in the Torah, starting with the fact that Jesus was never a great military leader, he never minted money, and there's no world peace where Israel is at the center of business and commerce.
As to the certainty - that's one thing I like about Judaism. It's okay to have no idea what the fuck is going on. We're not EXPECTED to know what the fuck is going on. There are men who have spent their whole LIVES studying Torah, Talmud, Kabbalah, Mishnah, Gemara, and all of our other resources of knowledge and still have no fucking idea what is going on. Rabbi doesn't mean "expert." It means "teacher" and my Rabbi's all say that the fact their synagogue can run without them proves that they're doing their jobs. Judaism doesn't have leaders. Just people who may know a little more than you. We're all equals. There's no hierarchy. I frequently challenge my Rabbi with shit I have read and sometimes change HIS opinions on how Torah is interpreted. If you don't like what Rabbi A says, go ask Rabbi B. Though I will say one thing: much of my learning takes place with men who are not classified as Rabbis but rather just people (men and women) who know an answer to a question. The running gag is that if you ask 2 Jews the same question, you'll get four answers. And really, at the end of the day, you just go with the opinion you like best. Unless it is CLEARLY laid out in Torah (hence written by Gd), everything else is commentary and opinions.
People try too hard to make something nonsensical make sense and that's where you get the circular reasoning you find in Christianity. I will admit that some of the shit outlined in Torah is a bit on the ridiculous side (the laws about rape are a few) but almost all of the laws make SOME sense when put into perspective. About the only rules I can't argue the logic of are the dietary laws. Those ones don't have a reason behind them. Just "Gd said so." I get to listen to a lot of non-Jews try to rationalize this by using the "pork was an unclean meat because of disease" or "Jews were pig farmers and they got more money not eating pork" (which is illogical because Gd said in Torah that we are not to make profit on pigs) or whatever but the true reason is just simply that Gd said "this is how to eat holy and all this shit over here is not holy" so we eat holy. I personally imagine that Gd is very fond of pigs and keeps them as pets the way we do with dogs (as we Jews are allowed to have pigs as pets, we just can't eat them or make money off of them). That's my own personal rationale though. Nobody would argue the logic of it if Gd said "don't eat dogs" which technically she DID say as well (the official law is that you cannot eat any four legged animal that does not have a cloven hoof or chew it's cud - i.e. have multiple stomachs). But everyone points at pigs like it was CLEARLY outlined "no pigs. everything else, but no pigs" It's not. I can't eat a rabbit any more than I can eat a pig, and if we want to go into the kosher/not-kosher fishes you'll start to see the most RANDOM shit. On that same note, Jews are forbidden in Torah from breeding dogs and profiting from their sale. It's really a very weird law but it has nothing to do with pork meat making you sick anymore than dog meat would make you sick. Fun fact - there's a sect of Judaism that won't eat turkey because it wasn't clearly outlined as "yes you can eat that" in Torah. MOST Jews eat turkey, and most orthodox authorities say it's kosher, but there's a sect in Israel that wants nothing to do with turkey.
I think that about covers it! Talk to you soon.
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