FALSE RELIGIONS

On Dovbear's blog (here: http://dovbear.blogspot.com/) there was recently a posting about our friend Mel Gibson, his drunken tantrum, and his defenders from two years ago.
[See this post: http://dovbear.blogspot.com/2006/07/another-of-of-our-very-best-friends.html ]


One of the commenters (a recent visitor) got a little upset about a perceived anti-Christian slant to both the blog and the comments.


Perhaps I'm just too jaded, I honestly didn't notice an anti-Christian slant.
Or maybe I'm just too used to the anti-Christian message, as in my environment Christianity is as much up for debate as someone's execrable taste in single-malt Scotch.

But the commenter, who goes by the nomen 'RR', not only got a little steam up, but also veered off into Christian theology of sorts.


[I should mention that Dovbear is not a Christian. I'm sure you already figgered that out, but it must be stressed. Not a Christian. ]


Often, communicating with dogmatic Christians is much like communicating with Communists and Fascists. They have the same linguistic rigidities, the same entrenched ideas, and the same legitimacy granted to certain ideas and definitions - just because their preprogrammed responses differ does not mean that they don't swim in the same swamp.


RR asked: "Explain to me how it makes ANY SENSE THEOLOGICALLY for it to be OK to be a secular or atheist but not a Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Kabbala, or whatever? Since either way you are turning your back on Judaism."


Me:
Wellllll, let's give it a shot.

A secular Jew remains a Jew. One is a Jew through either being born of a Jewish mother AND niplet snipping, OR conversion and niplet snipping.
The Torah expresses that it is both a contractual issue (between a deity, the party of the first part, and a people, party of the second part, who serve as the paradigm of all peoples), and an issue of being sanctified - the people in question are to remain sanctified to the deity (which, upon intermarriage, is in doubt, upon conversion, utterly negated).

The niplet snipping serves as the token and reminder of the consecration of the males of the tribe to Hashem. If it was done with that intent.


A Jew is not a believer in a particular theology (although there is indeed a particular range of theologies which are desirable for a Jew to be vested in), but a theologically defined people.

Either you inherit it and stay with it, OR you convert to it and stay with it. With "it" being more a negative characteristic - not worshipping other gods, not following other religions - than a positive characteristic. One is required to hold certain beliefs - but UNTIL you prove that you do not, you are Jewish. Though sometimes just not a particularly good Jew.

A Christian, on the other hand, is absolutely not a Jew. Though he may be of Jewish ancestry. Adderabah, Muslims, Buddhists, or whathaveyous.

Now, you wanted a theological explanation. Theology is a symbol system. Which means that this either makes sense to you if you understand the symbol system, or it doesn't if you do not understand the symbol system. The symbol system of Christianity and the symbol system of Judaism are not the same, just so you know.

As regards Christianity having or not having it's very own virulent strain of anti-Semitism, I wonder what the Sefardim who went to Amsterdam thought of that? What about the survivors of the several pogroms in Germany (Rindfleish et seq.) throughout the middle-ages? What about the Polish Jews (Chmielnicki), Russian Jews (Czarina Catherine the 'great'), Ukrainian Jews (Petliura)?

No offense, my dear RR, but they probably would agree with Dovbear on that score. And yet consider his condemnation too mild.

There is much within the structure of Christianity that can and has been interpreted in an anti-Semitic way. Just as Communism has a version that is related to the Christian version, deriving ideas from many of the same sources and from the same cultural layers. Which the Muslims imported into their environment scarce changed - Mein Kampf and the Protocols both sell well in Arabia, and it has been conclusively shown that the blood libel did not exist in the Arab world until the French became involved in the Levant.

All of these things originate in the Christian world. None of them originated with secularists, or atheists, or humanists. The roots of all current forms of anti-Semitism lie with the church. Who may have inherited the anti-Semitist drang from the Romans, Greeks, and Egyptians - but Lordy did they expand upon it.

One might even argue that good old fashioned Muslim anti-Semitism has ceased to exist since the importation of the superior Christian version - something that must give many retrogrades a glow of pride, I imagine, though only the Klan and the Nazis would publicly kvell about it.

Oh, and just for the record, so that you understand where I'm coming from,
I am not a Jew, nor am I intending to convert. I am too much a doubter and a cynic to commit to any religion - I never 'had' Christianity, and refuse to 'have' anything else. Consider me however in many ways a fellow traveler - a Ger perhaps, sort of dancing in and out of the gate, and dithering around the outskirts of the city staring at all the interesting edifices.

[Oh, and the only thing I seek to convert people to is hotsauce. I love hotsauce. Hotsauce is great. Hotsauce saves. Hotsauce HAS saved me..... it made English food bearable while I was there. I have complete and perfect faith in the salutory quality of hotsauce.]





RR: "So, you would have me to believe that atheist and secular Jews are niplet splitting? And you just contradicted the "lost forever" nonsense, as all they have to do is convert back to and niplet - split, right?
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Now, if it is a matter of niplet splitting, then fine ... encourage Jewish converts to Christianity to niplet split themselves and their kids. As a matter of fact, I have read that Hebrew Christians are niplet splitting and keeping all of the other Jewish traditions as well. That would make them just as Jewish as any Marxist who lives his entire life laughing at, mocking, and living in rebellion to God, right?"
Me:

My dear RR,

Converting (back) to Judaism, for those born of mixed marriages, or those who accidentally fell into Christianity, would be a good thing.
But a belief in Jezus as anything other than the Graecified version of an originally Hebrew name (with or without a loaded and dangerous set of associations), is absolutely incompatible with Judaism - as Saint Paul understood well, which is why he aimed his propaganda at the Greeks and Romans primarily.
A Jew who combines adherence to the law AND a belief in Jezus is not a Jew, merely misguided.
A Christian who obeys the law is a Christian, with mighty strange habits for a Christian.
Jews for Jezus, Hebrew Christians, and other variations on Messaianic Judaism, are not Jews. There is indeed much in their makeup that may be considered Jewish. But al pi halacha they cannot be considered Jews.
Now if they completely give up their meshune ideas about Jezus, formally renouncing that error, and formally state their desire to return to Judaism......
It's not just hair-splitting. Believing in a god made flesh and separate as the son of that same god, along with a personal saviour who died and (was) resurrected, just cannot be fit into any form of montheism, let alone so specific a form as Judaism.
The deity is unknowable, indefinable. Christianity claims to know, and defines in several ways. The two cannot be reconciled, no matter how much material they share.
The pantheic insistence on fitting Jezus into ones beliefs is probably the major stumbling block. It is in multiple ways a heresy, idolatrous, rank superstition, and absolutely odious.
Sorry.
On a personal level, I also feel it too much a fairy-tale to take any part of Christianity seriously, other than the dictum that 'salvation is by faith alone'. I attempt to have faith that there is a divine. I refuse to go beyond that point with any certainty.




RR: "The Back of the Hill:You have done a great job of explaining why Jews reject the legitimacy of Christianity, but you have not explained why a mixed marriage between a Jew and a Christian is any worse than a mixed marriage between a Jew and an atheist.
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And then there is this issue: the incontrovertible FACT that atheism and secularism ARE INDEED RELIGIONS! They cause man to worship himself and to worship the earth and the things in it: humanism, naturalismm and mammon. THOU SHALT NOT HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFORE (BESIDES) ME! There isn't a person on the planet who believes in NOTHING and worships NOTHING because we all know that the world existed before we got here, it will exist when we leave here, and that we have to cope with life while we are here. So "you can still be a Jew so long as you do not worship another religion" my foot."





Me:
My dear RR,

Firstly, Jews do not reject the legitimacy of Christianity. Jews do not accept that Christianity has any legitimacy to begin with. There is no question, therefore, of rejection. Do not take this as a sign of rejection.
Now then, an atheist can still be Jewish (in the sense of NOT being not a Jew), a Christian is by definition not Jewish (in that a Christian does not adhere to acceptable beliefs).
If that atheist was not Jewish to begin with, OR, as you put it, worships the earth and the things in it, then he is not Jewish.
There are some pretty horrific passages in parshas re'eh (Deut. verses 11/26 through 16/17) that make clear that the focus in Judaism is one of group adherence - private doubts, as long as they do not lead others astray, are 'sort of' accepted as an unnecessary evil, albeit one that might get one into hot water. The doubter can improve, learn more, come to a different understanding, or repent of his error.
But publically, one sticks pretty much to the party line, partially because one is an example to one's brethren.
I mentioned parshas re'eh in this context because it is one of my favourite bloody-minded parshayos.
Verse 13/7 If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son or your daughter, or the wife of your bosom, or your friend who is like your own soul will incite you secretely, saying let us go serve other gods, which you did not know of, and your fathers did not know of 13/8 of the gods of the surrounding peoples, close or far, from one end of the earth to the other 13/9 you shall not take kindly to him and you shall not listen to him, nor shall you be mercifull 13/10 Rather, you shall surely kill him; your hand shall be the first against him to put him to death, and the hand of the entire people afterwards.
One could also argue that there are many other aspects of Judaism as practised that stress group ideology over individual intellectual variances, the examples are infinite.
But what must also be kept in mind is that there are many ways of understanding Torah and Talmud. A famous phrase (shivim ponim le Toireh) expresses it as seventy faces to the Pentateuch (and seventy, as you undoubtedly know, expresses the concept of a multitude). There is a flexibility there that is deliberate - one must find one's own understanding of Torah, merely absorbing what one is taught is not considered enough. Passivity is not intellectual or spiritual involvement.
Your assertion that secularism and humanism are religions is an interesting tack... as a secular humanist, I don't quite know how to respond. I am as flabbergasted as I would be if you accused me of being an alien from a distant galaxy.
I shall have to ask some of the commies I know how they worship the earth.... pray for me as I do that, as I'm sure I'll get slapped.
Lastly, three things:
1. Please stop using so much upper case. When I see nothing but majuscule, I feel that I am being shouted at. That merely gets my dander up.
2. "So "you can still be a Jew so long as you do not worship another religion" my foot." I do not worship feet. I am not perverse.
3. Rabbi Chananiah Ben Teradion said: "If two sit together and no words of Torah pass between them, theirs is the conversation of scoffers" (Pirkei Avos, prk 3 psk 3). With that in mind, what can be said of a conversation in which there is little Torah, but far too much of Christianity? I fear that arguing about Christianity (for or against) may make some of the other readers here unwell, especially as one should not know too much about the false religions, nor study them save for the purpose of defending against them. Let us, therefore, shy away from so much Jayzits. I too am getting a little unwell.

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Now then, dear readers, please comment, and point out the holes in my ideas. Be my sounding board. Points of halocho and hashkofo are most welcome.
And feel free to keep in mind the famous line from Rav. Shakespeare, in Melech Richard Ha Shlishi: "A chizzuk, a chizzuk, my malchus for a chizzuk"