Comments on: Judaism, a religion of peace and tolerance?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 08:30:13 +0000

I completely agree. moses totally killed an Egyptian who was about to kill another person. That is so intolerant. I sure am glad i never had to deal with someone so intolerant when i murder, and I am sure moses never regretted killing man. lets not forget that as a result of killing a man, the lord said he was not allowed to be a pries. Keep in mind that it was totally wrong of the Jews to fight amalek who attacked the Jews as soon as they left Egypt. lets not forget how stupid the Jews were for NOT taking spoils from the nations they fought. and how horrible those Jews were when, according to the book of Joshua,they did not exile an entire nation who tried to deceive the Jews by telling them that they would convert to Judaism and then once a “part” of the nation destroy them from the inside out.
a violent intolerant nation would of course want people who are sneakily tying to kill them to live in harmony with them and avoid blooshed.
I would say more of the idiocy behind celebrating holidays like Hanuka and purim. but I was beatin to it. so instead I will point out that you forgot how intolerant the Jews were for even leaving Egypt. after all, those Egyptians needed slaves to build stuff. Why wouldn’t the Jews tolerate that? those stupid insensitive schmuks. In fact, they were so intolerant, that I still do not understand why they would poor out wine for the pain the Egyptians suffered during the plagues.
O you better not forget the opinions of famous rabbis, such as the Arizal, who said to remember that love everyone means everyONE not just Jews.
personally I just do not understand how some people can be so intolerant. I just cannot take them. I wish we could throw them all in the ocean.

By: melanie

melanie — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 21:38:25 +0000

where do judaism people live???

By: Danny the Admin

Danny the Admin — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 18:07:08 +0000

How come Martin Buber is a religious philosopher? He’s an atheist. No more religious than Kant. His “Judaism” is a bunch of Hasidic tales (twisted or edited at that).
Homosexuality is a case of “man lying with man is with woman.” I guess, given your Orthodox background, you can find this verse in the Torah.
I don’t know how to make it more clear than Hannah – and millions of Jews beside her – accepted imminent death not because of the single instance of observance, but as her “five cents” (that’s an inappropriate term here but I use it for clarity’s sake) into the struggle of national survival.
Suicide is not a crime, but in obligation in cases like Hannah’s. Suicide is a prescribed alternative for murder, incest, and idolatry.
Scores of biblical examples attest to the faith’s priority over life: take Nadab and Abihud, for example.
You keep saying that the post calls Seleucids liberals. No. There were plenty of liberal Jews who supported Seleucids – re-read the Maccabees, if you care.
Where, just where does Judaism says we should accept each other’s differences? After Buber, you invented a moral theory for yourself and call it Judaism, but tell me, where does the Torah asks us to live happily with deviants ignoring the differences? We were commanded to smash foreign altars and kill deviant Jewish priests at Shiloh. Where’s the tolerance?

By: David

David — Fri, 21 Sep 2007 08:06:59 +0000

Sorry. I tried using the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the page, but I’m still getting emails about new comments on this discussion. Can you unsubscribe me, please? Clearly, we’re not on the same page about the Torah or “authorities” on Judaism or the distinction between suicide and murder:
- if the greatest religious philosopher of the 20th century is not an authority to you;
- if you believe that the concept of Homosexuality as a sexual orientation even existed in the Torah, which it clearly doesn’t; the term and concept was only created in the mid-19th century, by a German; it or anything like it couldn’t possibly be included in the (written) Torah; of course, I won’t make any assumption about your take of contemporary Jewish Law;
- also there’s the basic misunderstanding between us about people “wanting” to die: I think – and judging from your arguments, you don’t – that people who make a choice for themselves to observe a law and are murdered for it by another person, have no real say in the matter, because the murderer alone controls whether he will go through with his murder, not the victim; assisted suicide would be a drugist selling tons of sleeping pills to someone who clearly already intends to kill himself to begin with; these are no arguments to you, I understand that, and yours are no arguments to me; even if you cite instance upon instance to back your claim that won’t help my understanding your point because I do not subscribe to your basic reasoning, which turns antijudaist murder into assisted suicide;
- this could also attest to a different basic conception of Jewish history; maybe, you would like to believe that Jews always are in full control of their own destiny (which would make every martyr into someone who committed suicide, which in turn I hold to be the ultimate crime in Judaism, but apparently you think suicide is fine) whereas I see Jewish history as one of persecution and diaspora and of coping with its circumstances (which essentially allows the martyr to be a victim not of his faith but of murder).
So there’s really no use in this discussion. It’s not your fault or mine. I think it is the axioms and values we have learnt to accept as children (or maybe at a later time). I, like many others, was taught that life supercedes everything and that justice and the law are only there to uphold our values, first and foremost that of life. You may have been taught or may have found that Judaism, for you and probably many others, is about ritual observance for its own sake and can conflict with other values, like life. Also your understanding of criminal responsibility is completely different from mine. These are basic, usually unuttered differences that make a discussion on this specific topic quite senseless. I see that now. I couldn’t see that basic misunderstanding in the original post, which was admittedly brief and distorting (when it turned Seleucids into liberalists). The beauty of Judaism (for me, and probably you’d have to say something about htat as well) is that we all should be able to accept each other’s differences (I’m talking only about Jews now).
So again, without further ado, please unsubscribe me, because I couldn’t manage to do it myself, although I copied the link into my browser and loaded it. I have no idea why it didn’t work, but it obviously didn’t. You can go on commenting all you want; I really don’t mind if you get in the last word. It’s your page. I just don’t want to read any more of your comments, because I just don’t find them very enlightening.

By: Danny the Admin

Danny the Admin — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 19:47:09 +0000

Martin Buber is the least authority on Judaism I can imagine. I gave you major examples proving that Judaism is a communal faith: caret, Temple observance, all the way unto the High Priest’ atoning for the nation’s sins. The fact that various sects of Judaism disagree on particular details of observance means nothing. Each sect is a huge community. Attorneys and prosecutors disagree on every criminal case; does that mean that common law is not a communal affair?
“Nothing in Jewish Law can be construed to forbid sexual orientation.” Ah? Er? Try reading the Torah.
The Second Temple was rebuilt without a messiah, so why would we need messiah for the Third Temple? For an unobservant, gay-neutral Jew like you, an appeal to messiah is odd. You allude to messiah only to argue against rebuilding the Temple. Rambam is clear that any person who starts rebuilding the Temple deserves the title of messiah.
It is a major commandments to extinguish non-Jewish worship in the Land of Israel. It is therefore unimaginable to tolerate Al Aqsa alongside the Third Temple.
“Gearing down observance” removes Jewish isolation from Gentiles and allows interbreeding and assimilation. That process is unmistakable in America. Secular Jews actively interbreed even with Germans.
Female singing has nothing to do with Judaism. R.Caro banned it as an ethical matter, and observing it is not a religious issue.
You ask, “where exactly is the incentive of staying Jewish?” It’s a matter of axioms, David. Of values. Unless you believe in Judaism, staying Jews – and dying to save our faith and the nation – makes no sense whatsoever.
“People didn’t die because they wanted to die to set an example.” Wrong. Recall another example from the Maccabees, the old man who refused his friends’ offer of eating kosher meat pretending its pork. He refuses the offer and dies horrendous death specifically to avoid giving a wrong example to others, lest they think he transgressed Jewish law.
Just think for a moment: how did Russian soldiers uphold their ideological believes when tens of thousands of them undertook suicide missions during the WWII? The people who closed machine gun windows in German underground forts with their bodies? They died to save the larger entity, their nation. How did Jewish teenage fighters ascended the gallows refusing to ask the British occupiers for clemency? How did Jeanne d’Arc refused to retract? Life is not everything, and almost nothing compared to ideological values.

By: David

David — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 17:22:34 +0000

Moses had already killed one man, and hoping nobody had witnessed it, tried to cover it up. He had the scruples and bad conscience everybody should have after killing a man even in defense of another. It was the Jew who “smit” the other who told Moses that he had killed an Egyptian and was not morally superior to him.
Also, though the use of the same word may be construed as an indicator of equality of intensity, one has to take into consideration that the punishment an Egyptian faced for injuring a slave would be light compared to that of a slave injuring a slave. Even though at the moment of the act, the intensity of injury was the same, the Egyptian might have continued the beating creating a lethal risk, while the same is less likely concerning two Hebrew slaves.
From a Jewish point of view, history and salvation may be collective, but observance/faith is individual. Look it up in the writings of Martin Buber. How could religion be communal when you can’t get the rabbis to reach a consensus on anything, much less all of us.
You started talking about other legal systems, making wholesale statements. If I pointed to German Law it was only to prove you wrong on 2 points. Which I have. 1: “No legal system would classify killing somebody to save someone else from being “smitten” as legitimate defense.” 2: “Religion is definitely and without exception a communal or mass phenomenon.” I used German jurisprudence because it’s what I know best.
I’m Jewish, I live in Tel Aviv, and I couldn’t care less about gays in Israel. Nothing in Jewish Law can be construed to forbid sexual orientation.
As for the Temple Mount. It’s huge. There’s Al-Aqsa and Omar and still there’s lots of free space. I don’t see how one is exclusive of the other when the entire old city of Jerusalem consists of churches, mosques and synagogues with much less space between them. I don’t see how one would go about rebuilding a temple without the Messiah coming first. I also don’t see how one would do it without knowing where the Holiest of Holies originally was. We’d never be able to use such a Temple.
Assimilation is not the equivalent of Christianization. Lots of Jews in Germany effectively became members of the “secular” bourgeoisie wearing secular clothes, fighting – like my Great Grandfather – in the German (Prussian) Army, without starting to interbreed. When I spoke of Assimilation, I thought we were talking about gearing down observance, not about conversion.
Ritual usually dies last, not first. The Marranos have kept some rituals like lighting candles even though they have no clue anymore why they do it. Look at the Christians. They’re still praying to their pagan gods using the same rituals (eggs on Easter), but hardly anyone knows that any more.
So: I’m just a regular Jewish guy, mostly observant, but I like to listen to other women singing than just my mother (just an example). I see somebody murdered because he refuses to convert to X. I see another one surviving by converting to X. Tell me: where exactly is the incentive of staying Jewish. Because I honestly can’t see it. If Hannah really thought she would actually make people want to follow her example (and die), either people are a lot less like me than I think they are or Hannah was reaaaaaaally stupid.
Judaism survived not because of it’s martyrs but because of people coping with the circumstances and hardships of persecution as best as they could.
Antiochus could have and would have had every observant Jew killed. People have perpetrated unspeakable acts against us just because we are who we are. But you’re the first one I’ve ever “met” that blames it on our faith and on our will to keep it.
People didn’t die because they wanted to die to set an example. These people loved life. They were not suicidal, they were murdered. You’re so good at finding notions that are exclusive of each other. Somebody who is murdered cannot have committed suicide. Somebody who is murdered because he refuses to convert to another faith has not chosen to die. The person trying to force him to convert and that ends up killing him makes that choice.
How could anybody possibly uphold the faith by committing suicide? Suicide is the ultimate crime in Judaism. He would not uphold his faith but completely relinquish it.
But you have made it perfectly clear to me that you will not accept my reasoning. Let me make it perfectly clear to you that I will not accept yours. I am disgusted by it. This discussion is over.

By: Danny the Admin

Danny the Admin — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 07:51:52 +0000

Frankly, I couldn’t care less about what German courts think about Judaism. I don’t believe that underlying opinions substantially changed in the past 70 years.
From Jewish point of view, religion is definitely communal. Recall many commandments with the threat of caret (expulsion from the community is the most liberal interpretation). All morals are communal, in fact. You would resist have someone eating excrements in a public place. Likewise, I do object to seeing homosexuals in the Land of Israel. Or take the relevant example of the Temple Mount. It’s not an individual issue: either Muslims have a temple there, or the Jews; can’t be both.
Marranos ceased to be Jewish in a few generations. Judaism, like any religion, revolves around external rites and observances.
I cannot agree with you that “Judaism sticks.” It doesn’t. The fact that Germans exterminated even Christianized Jews relates to Germans’ hatreds. Assimilated Jews have nothing to do with Judaism after 2-3 generations. They interbreed with Gentiles and dissolve.
You say, “Lots of people have abandoned Judaism for a variety of reasons, and the faith has not died.” That’s the other way around: Lots of Jews clung to our faith, often risking their lives or sacrificing their lives in the process, and therefore our faith survived. Judaism survived and flourished despite some assimilated Jews.
Why do soldiers undertake suicide missions? To save the larger entity, from their company to their nation. The same way many Jews died throughout the ages refusing to abandon their faith. They posed a two-fold example: of steadfast faith to other Jews, and of the Jewish courage – to our enemies. Antiochus could kill Hannah and her seven sons, but not every Jew. It is because people like Hannah absolutely rejected Antiochus’ demands and denounced his liberal collaborators among Jews, did our faith survive.
How can you be sure that Moses didn’t merely defended the Jew but exacted vengeance? Read Exodus 2:11 and listen to the emphasis: “Moses went to HIS BRETHREN, and saw THEIR BURDENS, and saw an Egyptian a Hebrew, ONE of his BRETHREN.” The next day Moses saw a Jew smiting another Jew (the same verb as for the Egyptian, so presumably same intensity of beating). Moses merely asks the Jew, why is he beating his fellow. Moses was quite a nationalist.

By: David

David — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 21:30:24 +0000

Upholding the freedom of religion to allow the slaughter of animals in accordance with certain Muslim beliefs not shared by the entirety of Islam, the German Federal Constitutional Court held that religion is not a mass phenomenon based on a formally institutionalized code but an individual phenomenon or at most a group phenomenon of informally – non-coordinated – shared beliefs (in the sense of Art. 4 of the German Basic Law). As you see, there is really no uniform definition of religion.
The Marranos may have openly converted to Christianity according to Roman-Catholic ritual. But according to the Halachah, that doesn’t make them any less Jewish. And their offspring often continued Jewish practices such as lighting Shabat candles even at a time when they had long forgotten they were Jewish.
The thing is that there is no abandoning Judaism to save your life. Judaism sticks to you. You’re born with it. Hundred thousands of German Jews were assimilated before the Holocaust, and the ones without the money or means to flee the country were killed although they had fully integrated themselves into German society. They were even less likely to survive if integrated, because many of them could not believe that their own people, the Germans, would turn on them, while the ones who were not integrated were a lot more mobile and quicker to recognize the early signs of impending persecution.
Your logic is deficient when you say that Judaism was contingent on Jews not leaving the faith. Lots of people have abandoned Judaism for a variety of reasons, and the faith has not died. But not abandoning Judaism isn’t automatically a death sentence for the practicioner either. If your logic were correct, Judaism could not survive either way, because those who’d die for the faith would be dead and those who’d abandon the faith to survive would be lost to the faith.
You say that Moses killed out of vengeance and not really to defend or protect. Do you have any proof to back that up? Or is that one of your assumptive conclusions again like the one where a Seleucid king prohibiting kashrut becomes a liberalist reformer?

By: Danny the Admin

Danny the Admin — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 10:16:40 +0000

Faith is communal phenomenon, as opposed to individual incident of observance. If Hannah and many Jews like her would abandon Judaism to save their lives, there will be no Judaism by now. Think of Marranos.
Life might take precedence over individual act of observance, but not over the faith of the nation. Moses killed the Egyptian not really to defend the Jew but as a symbolic act of vengeance on the Egyptian oppressors of Jews.

By: David

David — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 09:08:00 +0000

Why am I even bothering?

Antiochus prohibited the practice of Judaism. He was not going to liberalise religious practices, but to restrict them. Today, you have a choice. No one forces you to be a Liberal Jew. You can observe kashrut or not. I have a rabbi student friend, she’s a Liberal Jew and she keeps perfectly kosher. I come from an orthodox background and I don’t keep kosher, and I don’t consider myself a Liberal Jew (that’s a whole other bag o bones, so forgive me for not elaborating). But Antiochus killed people for observing kashrut. Ask a Liberal Jew if he would kill somebody for not eating pork. I don’t think so.

Again, I don’t know why you make assumptions about German courts when I just told you what a German court would and has decided. German courts are extremely lax when it comes to legitimate defense.
Of course, if somebody throws stones at a car that can safely drive off and is shot and killed, that defence is simply not the mildest adequate one (second stage). Driving off would be just as fine. Shouting is hardly as efficient as killing, the risk that the attacker would not be swayed by it subsists, so it would be considered inadequate (first stage). You can of course try (if you want to wait until the Egyptian foreman kills the Hebrew slave without consideration or scruples and wonders why an Egyptian prince would even bother about a slave). But German law will not ask you to commit an act of legitimate defense in stages of intensity unless you provoked the attack yourself or even caused it by some kind of risk augmenting behavior.
Threatening to use a gun would probably be considered adequate and necessary, but then again, Moses didn’t have a gun now, did he?
As to the *deliberate* killing part. If you don’t do it deliberately, conscious of the attack and with intent to defend, it wouldn’t even be qualified as legitimate defense in Germany. There are different opinions on the subject of non-conscious defense: some people would not grant the “defender” any alleviation of guilt at all, since he wasn’t willfully defending someone but had other motives for the crime, others would say that the existence of objective circumstances warranting legitimate defense would erase the unlawfulness of his actions and their consequences, leaving only his criminal intent, a basis for a verdict of attempted homicide or murder, depending on his motive and the circumstances of the killing.

Of course, American legal systems will not allow just anybody to kill people claiming legitimate defense. You’d at least have to claim that you thought the person you shot was a burglar or tresspasser and your or someone else’s life was threatened. I’m thinking teenage daughters coming home past curfew. I’m thinking Texas. But in a country so gung-ho on guns, I completely understand if they take a more restrictive stance on legitimate defence. In Germany, guns are extremely hard to get by and the courts are more liberal.

I don’t know what makes a “decent rabbi”, but the ones I asked told me that life is above ritual. When you’re starving to death on an island and all you can find to eat is a ham sandwich, enjoy. Life takes precedence.

The people in Massadah were dead. Their bodies just hadn’t caught up to it yet. If they hadn’t died at the hands of their friends, the Romans would have killed them – probably only after torturing them. There was this little thing called crucifixion. Maybe you’ve heard of it. In German law, the “Gefahrerhöhungstheorie” (theorie of augmentation of risk) tells you that there is no crime where the consequence of the crime can already be deemed as achieved. The soldiers in Massadah were really only lessening the pain accompanying their inevitable deaths.

Assisted suicide would be conditional on Hannah coming up with the intent of killing herself by herself. Clearly, she didn’t go to the market that day thinking “What a nice day to die.” If she wanted to uphold the faith, suicide is a rather dodgy way to do it. It’s considered the ultimate crime in Judaism. How did you put it? Go, ask “any decent rabbi”.

I by the way don’t get the difference between dying for the faith and upholding an individual instance of observance. How would you go about upholding the faith other than by upholding an individual instance of observance? And how exactly can you separate an individual instance of observance from the faith in its entirety? Do you think Hannah grandstanded but secretly had shrimps at home the night before and routinely held classes in idol pottery for bored housewivew? She was an observant Jew, no more and no less. Scripture made her into something else maybe, but that scripture (2 Maccabees) isn’t even part of the Bible.