Yesterday I gibbered on about Calvinists, as you probably noticed.
One of my regular readers (Spiros) also noticed the posting, and commented: "I am a goy and I am intensely disloyal to the little baby Jesus."
Which gave me the title to today's post.
"I am a goy and I am intensely disloyal to the little baby Jesus."
Neat-o.
It is quite possible that whatever search-programs or blog-aggregators are favoured by the born-again fundie morons will now turn up this post, because of the key-word in the title, and yield me tonnes of angry vituperation.
Misspelled, ungrammatical, totally batty.
And just ever so entertaining.
I like reading hate mail.
People who write hate mail often say goodbye to mister Spell-check, and hello to mister I-need-medication.
Yes, I am a sadist - I enjoy poking at idiots.
And I too am intensely disloyal to the little baby Jesus.
BAD JESUS, NO BISCUIT!
Neither the little baby Jesus, nor his evil twin grown-up Jesus have any place in my life.
I have not found him, I have no intention of finding him, he can remain lost for all I care.
If he ever finds himself, I'm sure we'll all find out.
I suspect he's actually in an ashram south of Pondicherry contemplating his navel. The sign on the door says 'gone fishing', and his mail is being returned by the current tenant - Jesus doesn't live here any more. Stop forwarding your questions, he really couldn't care less.
He's almost certainly blotto on bhang, like ninety percent of all the self-indulgent westerners who seek spirituality in India. He probably doesn't know what day it is, and may not even realize what month.
"Tewdally out of it, man, like wow!"
Bhang.
In other news, today's profound religious revelation is that navel lint is caused by the alignment of stomach hairs - as you move and twist, the stomach hairs guide the minute textile fibres towards the navel, where they come to rest. At the end of the day there will be a fuzz-clump there.
The innocent baby Jesus probably did not have navel lint, but grown-up evil Jesus does. Once he wakes up from his zotsed-out stupor, tell him that someone else already figured it out. Stomach hair. Waxing solves that problem. Hallelujah.
Showing posts with label Sweet lil baby cheesewhiz. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sweet lil baby cheesewhiz. Show all posts
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
I DESPISE PROTESTANTS
Yes, you read it correctly. But not ALL of them. There are some Protestants I do not despise. That being, of course, my ancestors. Who were Dutch Calvinists.
Willem van Deursen (b. 1542) and his son Peter (b. 1575), left Brabant and fled to Haarlem to escape Spanish repression. In 1607 Abraham Pietersen van Deursen was born there, who would emigrate to New Amsterdam (d. 1678). His son Isaac Abrahamsen van Deursen was born in the new world in 1635.
[Why the names Abraham and Isaac? Well, Abraham left the place of his fathers, and journeyed into a land not his own..... ]
The descendants of Abraham remained fairly religious till a few generations ago.
I do not know if my great-grandfather (who was descended from Abraham on both sides, and whose wife was also descended from Abraham) still attended church - I doubt it, but I am fairly certain that my grandfather did not. Same goes for my mother's side of the family.
Consider us Jack-Calvinists. Run-aways, if you will. Force us into a church, and we'll burn the damn' thing down.
I mention all this because of Ann Coulter.
ANN COULTER
In her latest venomous piece of dreck, ms. Coulter writes:
"Then there's Barry Lynn, alleged "Christian minister," whose stock in trade is to denounce any mention of religion anyplace, anytime. Look, I'm a Christian minister, but even I have to admit that the sight of a kindergartner praying is terrifying to most folks. (The first person to post Barry Lynn's bar mitzvah photos or birth announcement (mazel tov!) wins a free copy of my latest book, "Guilty: Liberal 'Victims' and Their Assault on America.")
[END QUOTE]
Source:http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=106696
The only reason for her sneering dig at the reverend Barry Lynn is that he wishes a division to be maintained between church and state - which, in the eyes of the odious Coulter and many of her fans, smacks of disloyalty to the little baby Jesus. Something apparently only Jews are capable of.
What Coulter and people of her ilk need to understand is that if we lessen the boundary between Church and State, people like me will come busting out of the woodwork. And we won't be happy.
Heck, I'll gladly lynch any number of members of the heretic denominations that threaten my irreligious freedom - Anglicans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, Adventists, Southern Cretinist, whatever. The only version of Christianity I would even want to see empowered is Dutch Calvinism. I am not particular about which obnoxiously stubborn and opinionated pissant version of it, either - I've got relatives all over that creed, and most of us haven't been Church-going in generations.
But still.... shtrenge Dutch Calvinists are infinitely superior to all those Anglo-protestantisms. Punkt.
Yes, I really do find most English-speaking versions of Christianity to be loathsome. Totally icky poo.
The psalters of Petrus Datheen and Marnix van St. Aldegonde make what would be mere pedestrian praedestinationism sparkle and shine - in Dutch, in poetic Dutch, and only in Dutch.
Still wrong (far too gnostic, too Christic, not old-testamentarian enough, and not nearly of an acceptable liberality or liberalistic), but eloquent and given to great lyric.
Bugger the English language versions of religion. Including, especially, typical American fundamentalist versions. They are intolerable.
You superstitious backwoods heathens are barely one step above savages.
The separation between Church and State is the only thing that keeps me from wanting to shoot you. Please count your blessings.
================================================
APPENDIX
For those of you who are baffled as all git-out by this mention of Calvinists, the following opinionated backgrounder may be useful. It is brief.
CALVINISM
In 1533 Jean Cauvin (John Calvin, 1509 - 1564), an argumentative student of theology and law at Paris, fled for his life, eventually ending up in Geneva. His weltanschauung was influenced by much of the theological ferment then current in Europe at that time, including Lutheranism and Anabaptism.
Two basic themes that he developed were Biblical authority as opposed to Church authority in matters of the faith, and praedestinationism.
Two major ethno-denominational groupings eventually formed that were based on Calvin's thought: Scotch Presbyterianism, and Dutch Reform.
The less said about Scotch Presbyterianism the better - those people never had to fight a super-power for freedom for their faith, and in consequence have a self-satisfied priggishness wich is quite unstomachable.
DUTCH REFORMED
At the same time as Calvin was contemplating his navel in Switzerland, Netherlandish cities and nobles were getting steamed over Philip the Spaniard's attempts to unify the Netherlands into one coherent legal and administrative system.
The Netherlands which Philip had inherited were a loosely unified mess of conflicting law codes and civic privileges, sporadically called to order by a grand meeting of the States General in Brussels. While all territories were represented in the States General, not all played along with its decisions, and even fewer had any intention of doing so in any consistent manner. Other than in name, their unity lay in resisting Philip and disagreeing with each other.
The situation exploded in 1567 when Philip sent the Duke of Alva (may his name be erased!) into the Netherlands to eradicate dissent and destroy heresy. In 1568 Alva had two of the grande seigneurs of the Netherlands (counts Egmont and Hoorne), executed in the Grande Place in Brussels.
Their crime was not disloyalty or treason, but that they had been too permissive of religious dissidence, even though they themselves had remained Catholic.
The executions may have been pointless. But they did serve as tinder.
For the next four years, Alva savagely suppressed all dissent, political and religious, throughout the Netherlands, painting a swath of blood and murder across all the provinces. The tide turned in 1572 when the Sea Beggars captured Briel in 1572, gaining a foothold along the coast. Within the next few years the rebellion gained strength and territory, eventually unifying all of the northern provinces. Protestants, who faced certain death in the south, fled north in large numbers, and contributed their skills and their lives to the cause of the rebel republic .
The war between Spain and the Dutch lasted until 1648, by which time Protestantism, in it's rather severe Dutch Calvinist form, had become entrenched in the north. Thenceforth Netherlandish quarrelsomeness would have the perfect medium in which to manifest itself - religion.
[Not until twentieth century politics would another so perfect vehicle for petty dispute and despicion come along (and how the Dutch enthusiastically jumped on that bandwagon is another story).]
Among the first actions that the Calvinists theocrats took was the banning of Catholicism in Protestant cities (and permitting Judaism).
Thereafter they started fighting among themselves.
Not only in the Netherlands.
DUTCH CALVINISTS IN AMERICA
The first Dutch Reformed church in the new world was established in New Amsterdam in 1628, and the first church was built in 1633 on what is now Pearl Street in Manhattan. The Brits eventually seized the property for military purposes, and a new church was built in 1693 on Exchange Place. By the end of the century Dutch Reformed congregations had arisen all over New York and New Jersey, including areas which are now Hareidi strongholds such as Brooklyn, Flatbush, Hempstead, Monsey, Paramus, etcetera. By 1792 the Dutch American churches split off from the Dutch churches, at which time they already consisted of various splinter groups on both sides of the Atlantic.
MY CHURCH, HIS CHURCH, AND THE ONE NEITHER OF US WOULD BE CAUGHT DEAD VISITING
In 1816 Dutch government meddling created even more splinter groups, all disunited in opposition to the official approved Dutch Reformed denomination. In 1822 more seceders split off from the Reformed Church in America to form the True Dutch Reformed Church, while in 1834 dissidents left the Reformed Church in the Netherlands to form two new denominations, the Christelijk Afgescheiden Kerk (Christian Separatist Church - CAK) and the Gereformeerde Kerk onder het kruis (Reformed Church under the cross, aka the Cross Churches).
It gets worse.
In 1841 pastor Ledeboer and his group in the Netherlands set up shop separately, along with others (forming the Ledeboerian faction). A number of these people headed for the U.S. in 1846 under the leadership of Pastor Albert Van Raalte, becoming the second group of people to immigrate to North America to get away from religious freedom (the Puritans having been the first). They established the settlement of Holland, Michigan (gosh what an imaginative name for a settlement of Dutchmen!). By 1850 they had more or less united with the Reformed Church in America.
Shortly thereafter, a group of dissenters split off from the Second Reformed Church (in Grand Rapids) and the Fourth Reformed Church (in Pella) to form the Christian Reformed Church. The True Dutch Reformed Church joined with the Christian Reformed Church in 1890, forming their own classis within the movement - Classis Hackensack. In 1908 most of Hackensack withdrew from the Christian Reformed Church in a dispute over the faithful joining civic lodges or fraternal organizations.
Second Christian Reformed is actually a term for split-offs from the Fourth Christian Reformed church (Pella), which itself is a split-off variant of Dutch Reformed.
Second Christian Reformed should not be confused with Third Christian Reformed or First Christian Reformed, even though most Christian Reformed Churches adhere to the same source documents: The Apostle's Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Belgic Confession, and the Canons of Dort.
Many Christian Reformed Churches in America, when they still worshipped in Dutch (in some places up until the nineteen-seventies or eighties!) still held to the Psalter of Petrus Datheen (1531 - 1588), though some "Reformed" Churches held instead to the Psalter of Marnix Van St. Aldegonde (Philip van Marnix, lord of St. Aldegonde, 1538 - 1598), and a few sick deviants had long since switched to either the first or second Statenberijming ("State's Rhyme" - the official version of the psalter), which dates from governmental meddling in church affairs starting in 1816 under William I.
In the Netherlands, several of the congregations of the Christelijk Afgescheiden Kerk and the Cross Churches combined to form another denomination - the Christelijk Gereformeerde Kerk (Christian Reformed Church, but not the same as the Christian Reformed Church in the American Midwest).
In 1886 Doctor Abraham Kuyper and his followers split off from the official Dutch Reformed Church to unite with Christelijk Gereformeerde Kerk.
The Ledeboerian churches in the Netherlands joined with the remaining Cross Churches in 1907, forming a denomination which called itself the Gereformeerde Gemeenten (Reformed Congregations).
The remaining Ledeboerians in America had meanwhile formed the Netherlands Reformed Church in Michigan in 1877.
RECENT HAIRSPLITTING
In 1924, Reverend Herman Hoeksema of the Eastern Avenue Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids refused to agree to the teaching of the doctrines of common grace and presumptive regeneration, and left the church with most of his own congregation, plus a congregation in Kalamazoo, and other dissidents. In 1926 they organized the Protestant Reformed Churches. Their unity lasted less than thirty years, nearly half of the members splitting off in 1954 to form the Orthodox Protestant Reformed Churches - which joined up with the Christian Reformed Church in 1961.
During WWII a new denomination arose: Gereformeerde Kerk Nederland - Vrijgemaakt (Reformed Church Netherlands - disassociated). By the nineteen fifties, this new denomination was also present in the U.S. and Canada.
A group seceded from the Gereformeerde Gemeenten (Reformed Congregations) over a doctrinal point that is totally incomprehensible, and became the Gereformeerde Gemeenten in Nederland (Reformed Congregations in the Netherlands). Their American branch is called the Reformed Congregations in North America.
Naturally, the recent mega-merger in the Netherlands of the Nederlandsch Hervormde Kerk, the Gereformeerde Kerk Nederland, and the Dutch Lutheran Church has (of course) resulted in even more break-aways.
The end is not in sight. Dissidence is a sign of health.
================================================
FURTHER NOTES
1. If at this point you are reminded of that scene in Life of Brian where they discuss the differences between the People's Front of Judea, and the Judean People's Front, that is perfectly appropriate. They are SPLITTERS, and it is entirely unknown whether they support your RIGHT to have children even if you are biologically incapable of it.
2. Decades ago I ceased believing that the Messiah already came, and I am skeptical that he will ever come. I await his first coming, even though he may tarry. And I was always dubious about the theory in any case.
No, I don't particularly feel like dealing with 608 more commandments. Why do you ask?
Willem van Deursen (b. 1542) and his son Peter (b. 1575), left Brabant and fled to Haarlem to escape Spanish repression. In 1607 Abraham Pietersen van Deursen was born there, who would emigrate to New Amsterdam (d. 1678). His son Isaac Abrahamsen van Deursen was born in the new world in 1635.
[Why the names Abraham and Isaac? Well, Abraham left the place of his fathers, and journeyed into a land not his own..... ]
The descendants of Abraham remained fairly religious till a few generations ago.
I do not know if my great-grandfather (who was descended from Abraham on both sides, and whose wife was also descended from Abraham) still attended church - I doubt it, but I am fairly certain that my grandfather did not. Same goes for my mother's side of the family.
Consider us Jack-Calvinists. Run-aways, if you will. Force us into a church, and we'll burn the damn' thing down.
I mention all this because of Ann Coulter.
ANN COULTER
In her latest venomous piece of dreck, ms. Coulter writes:
"Then there's Barry Lynn, alleged "Christian minister," whose stock in trade is to denounce any mention of religion anyplace, anytime. Look, I'm a Christian minister, but even I have to admit that the sight of a kindergartner praying is terrifying to most folks. (The first person to post Barry Lynn's bar mitzvah photos or birth announcement (mazel tov!) wins a free copy of my latest book, "Guilty: Liberal 'Victims' and Their Assault on America.")
[END QUOTE]
Source:http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=106696
The only reason for her sneering dig at the reverend Barry Lynn is that he wishes a division to be maintained between church and state - which, in the eyes of the odious Coulter and many of her fans, smacks of disloyalty to the little baby Jesus. Something apparently only Jews are capable of.
What Coulter and people of her ilk need to understand is that if we lessen the boundary between Church and State, people like me will come busting out of the woodwork. And we won't be happy.
Heck, I'll gladly lynch any number of members of the heretic denominations that threaten my irreligious freedom - Anglicans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, Adventists, Southern Cretinist, whatever. The only version of Christianity I would even want to see empowered is Dutch Calvinism. I am not particular about which obnoxiously stubborn and opinionated pissant version of it, either - I've got relatives all over that creed, and most of us haven't been Church-going in generations.
But still.... shtrenge Dutch Calvinists are infinitely superior to all those Anglo-protestantisms. Punkt.
Yes, I really do find most English-speaking versions of Christianity to be loathsome. Totally icky poo.
The psalters of Petrus Datheen and Marnix van St. Aldegonde make what would be mere pedestrian praedestinationism sparkle and shine - in Dutch, in poetic Dutch, and only in Dutch.
Still wrong (far too gnostic, too Christic, not old-testamentarian enough, and not nearly of an acceptable liberality or liberalistic), but eloquent and given to great lyric.
Bugger the English language versions of religion. Including, especially, typical American fundamentalist versions. They are intolerable.
You superstitious backwoods heathens are barely one step above savages.
The separation between Church and State is the only thing that keeps me from wanting to shoot you. Please count your blessings.
================================================
APPENDIX
For those of you who are baffled as all git-out by this mention of Calvinists, the following opinionated backgrounder may be useful. It is brief.
CALVINISM
In 1533 Jean Cauvin (John Calvin, 1509 - 1564), an argumentative student of theology and law at Paris, fled for his life, eventually ending up in Geneva. His weltanschauung was influenced by much of the theological ferment then current in Europe at that time, including Lutheranism and Anabaptism.
Two basic themes that he developed were Biblical authority as opposed to Church authority in matters of the faith, and praedestinationism.
Two major ethno-denominational groupings eventually formed that were based on Calvin's thought: Scotch Presbyterianism, and Dutch Reform.
The less said about Scotch Presbyterianism the better - those people never had to fight a super-power for freedom for their faith, and in consequence have a self-satisfied priggishness wich is quite unstomachable.
DUTCH REFORMED
At the same time as Calvin was contemplating his navel in Switzerland, Netherlandish cities and nobles were getting steamed over Philip the Spaniard's attempts to unify the Netherlands into one coherent legal and administrative system.
The Netherlands which Philip had inherited were a loosely unified mess of conflicting law codes and civic privileges, sporadically called to order by a grand meeting of the States General in Brussels. While all territories were represented in the States General, not all played along with its decisions, and even fewer had any intention of doing so in any consistent manner. Other than in name, their unity lay in resisting Philip and disagreeing with each other.
The situation exploded in 1567 when Philip sent the Duke of Alva (may his name be erased!) into the Netherlands to eradicate dissent and destroy heresy. In 1568 Alva had two of the grande seigneurs of the Netherlands (counts Egmont and Hoorne), executed in the Grande Place in Brussels.
Their crime was not disloyalty or treason, but that they had been too permissive of religious dissidence, even though they themselves had remained Catholic.
The executions may have been pointless. But they did serve as tinder.
For the next four years, Alva savagely suppressed all dissent, political and religious, throughout the Netherlands, painting a swath of blood and murder across all the provinces. The tide turned in 1572 when the Sea Beggars captured Briel in 1572, gaining a foothold along the coast. Within the next few years the rebellion gained strength and territory, eventually unifying all of the northern provinces. Protestants, who faced certain death in the south, fled north in large numbers, and contributed their skills and their lives to the cause of the rebel republic .
The war between Spain and the Dutch lasted until 1648, by which time Protestantism, in it's rather severe Dutch Calvinist form, had become entrenched in the north. Thenceforth Netherlandish quarrelsomeness would have the perfect medium in which to manifest itself - religion.
[Not until twentieth century politics would another so perfect vehicle for petty dispute and despicion come along (and how the Dutch enthusiastically jumped on that bandwagon is another story).]
Among the first actions that the Calvinists theocrats took was the banning of Catholicism in Protestant cities (and permitting Judaism).
Thereafter they started fighting among themselves.
Not only in the Netherlands.
DUTCH CALVINISTS IN AMERICA
The first Dutch Reformed church in the new world was established in New Amsterdam in 1628, and the first church was built in 1633 on what is now Pearl Street in Manhattan. The Brits eventually seized the property for military purposes, and a new church was built in 1693 on Exchange Place. By the end of the century Dutch Reformed congregations had arisen all over New York and New Jersey, including areas which are now Hareidi strongholds such as Brooklyn, Flatbush, Hempstead, Monsey, Paramus, etcetera. By 1792 the Dutch American churches split off from the Dutch churches, at which time they already consisted of various splinter groups on both sides of the Atlantic.
MY CHURCH, HIS CHURCH, AND THE ONE NEITHER OF US WOULD BE CAUGHT DEAD VISITING
In 1816 Dutch government meddling created even more splinter groups, all disunited in opposition to the official approved Dutch Reformed denomination. In 1822 more seceders split off from the Reformed Church in America to form the True Dutch Reformed Church, while in 1834 dissidents left the Reformed Church in the Netherlands to form two new denominations, the Christelijk Afgescheiden Kerk (Christian Separatist Church - CAK) and the Gereformeerde Kerk onder het kruis (Reformed Church under the cross, aka the Cross Churches).
It gets worse.
In 1841 pastor Ledeboer and his group in the Netherlands set up shop separately, along with others (forming the Ledeboerian faction). A number of these people headed for the U.S. in 1846 under the leadership of Pastor Albert Van Raalte, becoming the second group of people to immigrate to North America to get away from religious freedom (the Puritans having been the first). They established the settlement of Holland, Michigan (gosh what an imaginative name for a settlement of Dutchmen!). By 1850 they had more or less united with the Reformed Church in America.
Shortly thereafter, a group of dissenters split off from the Second Reformed Church (in Grand Rapids) and the Fourth Reformed Church (in Pella) to form the Christian Reformed Church. The True Dutch Reformed Church joined with the Christian Reformed Church in 1890, forming their own classis within the movement - Classis Hackensack. In 1908 most of Hackensack withdrew from the Christian Reformed Church in a dispute over the faithful joining civic lodges or fraternal organizations.
Second Christian Reformed is actually a term for split-offs from the Fourth Christian Reformed church (Pella), which itself is a split-off variant of Dutch Reformed.
Second Christian Reformed should not be confused with Third Christian Reformed or First Christian Reformed, even though most Christian Reformed Churches adhere to the same source documents: The Apostle's Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Heidelberg Catechism, the Belgic Confession, and the Canons of Dort.
Many Christian Reformed Churches in America, when they still worshipped in Dutch (in some places up until the nineteen-seventies or eighties!) still held to the Psalter of Petrus Datheen (1531 - 1588), though some "Reformed" Churches held instead to the Psalter of Marnix Van St. Aldegonde (Philip van Marnix, lord of St. Aldegonde, 1538 - 1598), and a few sick deviants had long since switched to either the first or second Statenberijming ("State's Rhyme" - the official version of the psalter), which dates from governmental meddling in church affairs starting in 1816 under William I.
In the Netherlands, several of the congregations of the Christelijk Afgescheiden Kerk and the Cross Churches combined to form another denomination - the Christelijk Gereformeerde Kerk (Christian Reformed Church, but not the same as the Christian Reformed Church in the American Midwest).
In 1886 Doctor Abraham Kuyper and his followers split off from the official Dutch Reformed Church to unite with Christelijk Gereformeerde Kerk.
The Ledeboerian churches in the Netherlands joined with the remaining Cross Churches in 1907, forming a denomination which called itself the Gereformeerde Gemeenten (Reformed Congregations).
The remaining Ledeboerians in America had meanwhile formed the Netherlands Reformed Church in Michigan in 1877.
RECENT HAIRSPLITTING
In 1924, Reverend Herman Hoeksema of the Eastern Avenue Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids refused to agree to the teaching of the doctrines of common grace and presumptive regeneration, and left the church with most of his own congregation, plus a congregation in Kalamazoo, and other dissidents. In 1926 they organized the Protestant Reformed Churches. Their unity lasted less than thirty years, nearly half of the members splitting off in 1954 to form the Orthodox Protestant Reformed Churches - which joined up with the Christian Reformed Church in 1961.
During WWII a new denomination arose: Gereformeerde Kerk Nederland - Vrijgemaakt (Reformed Church Netherlands - disassociated). By the nineteen fifties, this new denomination was also present in the U.S. and Canada.
A group seceded from the Gereformeerde Gemeenten (Reformed Congregations) over a doctrinal point that is totally incomprehensible, and became the Gereformeerde Gemeenten in Nederland (Reformed Congregations in the Netherlands). Their American branch is called the Reformed Congregations in North America.
Naturally, the recent mega-merger in the Netherlands of the Nederlandsch Hervormde Kerk, the Gereformeerde Kerk Nederland, and the Dutch Lutheran Church has (of course) resulted in even more break-aways.
The end is not in sight. Dissidence is a sign of health.
================================================
FURTHER NOTES
1. If at this point you are reminded of that scene in Life of Brian where they discuss the differences between the People's Front of Judea, and the Judean People's Front, that is perfectly appropriate. They are SPLITTERS, and it is entirely unknown whether they support your RIGHT to have children even if you are biologically incapable of it.
2. Decades ago I ceased believing that the Messiah already came, and I am skeptical that he will ever come. I await his first coming, even though he may tarry. And I was always dubious about the theory in any case.
No, I don't particularly feel like dealing with 608 more commandments. Why do you ask?
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
WHY YOU MIGHT WANT TO RETHINK CELEBRATING THE TRINITARIAN FESTIVAL OF GREED
Occasionally, I rip-off other people's fine texts. This is not because I have nothing to say (I would say something anyway), but because I like what they wrote, and I like people reading my blog, and I think it good to combine the two.
Read what the famous and infamous "THEY" wrote, on MY blog - It's win-win.
Today's featured rip-off-ee is Tzipporah, who suggests pertinent ways to 'discourage' people of the Jewish ilk from celebrating Christmas.
1. "Hey did you know that latkes, unlike that giant gingerbread cookie you're eating, have NO calories, so long as you eat them with applesauce? No, really, it's true -they cancel each other out in your digestive system."
2. "Wow, nice tree. Looks just like the one that caught fire and burned down Joshua's house last year. Oh, you didn't hear about that?"
3. "Oh, thanks for the gifts, but we follow the Hanukkah tradition of just giving gelt. But if that's what you like, I guess we'll just keep the $500 we were going to give you and go buy you some kitsch, instead."
4. (loudly) "Yes, sweetie, Aunt Mira IS just like the Hellenized Jews that got slaughtered by our heroic Maccabean ancestors. But it's really not nice to point that out."
SOURCE
This comment string:http://www.haloscan.com/comments/dovbear/2939109936100349944/?src=hsn
Appended to this post:http://dovbear.blogspot.com/2008/12/if-you-know-jew-planning-to-observe.html
On this blog that is very-well-worth reading :http://dovbear.blogspot.com/
TZIPPORAHTzipporah is a not-infrequent commenter on Dovbear's blog - and it seems as if her best moments are the short, snarky, and to-the-point comments that she leaves there.
This is unfortunate, because she has both a grasp of the material, and insightfull intelligence, and should be able to express both well independently and at length. But she has an infant, you see, and that takes away from her time - so much so that dimsum-like sparks, and the very occasional short piece, are all that we can expect from her for a while.
But just wait until the kid goes to school.
Tzipporah's own blog:http://www.midianitemanna.blogspot.com/
==========================================================
Note: The use of ilk in my intro: Not in a negative sense, but instead of the term 'persuasion'.
Persuasion, in my view, indicates a general system of beliefs which are adhered to by the persuadee. Much like one could convert to Buddhism, Idol Worship, Christianity, or Astrology-Witchcraft-Tarot Reading.
[Or even the latest crackpot faith: '700 Billion Bail-out Solves All Woes'. Which is probably better than self-castration followed by putting on black shirts, Nikes, purple sheets, and drinking phenobarbitol mixed with vodka. But hey, who am I to judge other people's weird avodah zara? If YOU like the black shirt and sneakers thing, go right ahead. Do it. It's cheaper than sucking the treasury dry.]
Judaism, however, includes membership in an ethno-culturo-religio-ritual unity. An 'ilk', in other words.
[So, in short: Jews are members of an ilk, somewhat Jewishy bloggers have a persuasion. ]
I consider myself largely Jewish-persuaded, but I am not a Jew, nor likely to become one.
I am too stubborn, and too much a skeptic to convert (i.e. to sincerely and formally assume membership of the 'ilk', and be accepted as a member).
And for those exact same reasons, I will not celebrate Christmas - I am too much a skeptic, and much too stubborn.
[Plainly stated, resolutely neither a member of any Trinitarian 'ilk', nor in any way persuaded by the Nicene credulity either.]
I will nevertheless be giving gifts this season. This is NOT in celebration of Christmas, but in very grudging acknowledgement of the tradition of skeptics, apikorsim, agnostikim, and atheists buying-in to the general custom, and overlapping our giftery with the Trinitarian Festival of Greed™.
[No, it's not festivus! There is no pole, there are no feats of strength - stop trying to win converts!]
It is a purely pragmatic approach. We do not wish to be burned at the stake, and there are no other convenient occasions to hijack.
We celebrate chocolate. And cynicism. And hugely uncomfortable weather.
Possibly also fine pottery.
But we do not have a tree-cadaver anywhere on the premises.
Read what the famous and infamous "THEY" wrote, on MY blog - It's win-win.
Today's featured rip-off-ee is Tzipporah, who suggests pertinent ways to 'discourage' people of the Jewish ilk from celebrating Christmas.
1. "Hey did you know that latkes, unlike that giant gingerbread cookie you're eating, have NO calories, so long as you eat them with applesauce? No, really, it's true -they cancel each other out in your digestive system."
2. "Wow, nice tree. Looks just like the one that caught fire and burned down Joshua's house last year. Oh, you didn't hear about that?"
3. "Oh, thanks for the gifts, but we follow the Hanukkah tradition of just giving gelt. But if that's what you like, I guess we'll just keep the $500 we were going to give you and go buy you some kitsch, instead."
4. (loudly) "Yes, sweetie, Aunt Mira IS just like the Hellenized Jews that got slaughtered by our heroic Maccabean ancestors. But it's really not nice to point that out."
SOURCE
This comment string:http://www.haloscan.com/comments/dovbear/2939109936100349944/?src=hsn
Appended to this post:http://dovbear.blogspot.com/2008/12/if-you-know-jew-planning-to-observe.html
On this blog that is very-well-worth reading :http://dovbear.blogspot.com/
TZIPPORAHTzipporah is a not-infrequent commenter on Dovbear's blog - and it seems as if her best moments are the short, snarky, and to-the-point comments that she leaves there.
This is unfortunate, because she has both a grasp of the material, and insightfull intelligence, and should be able to express both well independently and at length. But she has an infant, you see, and that takes away from her time - so much so that dimsum-like sparks, and the very occasional short piece, are all that we can expect from her for a while.
But just wait until the kid goes to school.
Tzipporah's own blog:http://www.midianitemanna.blogspot.com/
==========================================================
Note: The use of ilk in my intro: Not in a negative sense, but instead of the term 'persuasion'.
Persuasion, in my view, indicates a general system of beliefs which are adhered to by the persuadee. Much like one could convert to Buddhism, Idol Worship, Christianity, or Astrology-Witchcraft-Tarot Reading.
[Or even the latest crackpot faith: '700 Billion Bail-out Solves All Woes'. Which is probably better than self-castration followed by putting on black shirts, Nikes, purple sheets, and drinking phenobarbitol mixed with vodka. But hey, who am I to judge other people's weird avodah zara? If YOU like the black shirt and sneakers thing, go right ahead. Do it. It's cheaper than sucking the treasury dry.]
Judaism, however, includes membership in an ethno-culturo-religio-ritual unity. An 'ilk', in other words.
[So, in short: Jews are members of an ilk, somewhat Jewishy bloggers have a persuasion. ]
I consider myself largely Jewish-persuaded, but I am not a Jew, nor likely to become one.
I am too stubborn, and too much a skeptic to convert (i.e. to sincerely and formally assume membership of the 'ilk', and be accepted as a member).
And for those exact same reasons, I will not celebrate Christmas - I am too much a skeptic, and much too stubborn.
[Plainly stated, resolutely neither a member of any Trinitarian 'ilk', nor in any way persuaded by the Nicene credulity either.]
I will nevertheless be giving gifts this season. This is NOT in celebration of Christmas, but in very grudging acknowledgement of the tradition of skeptics, apikorsim, agnostikim, and atheists buying-in to the general custom, and overlapping our giftery with the Trinitarian Festival of Greed™.
[No, it's not festivus! There is no pole, there are no feats of strength - stop trying to win converts!]
It is a purely pragmatic approach. We do not wish to be burned at the stake, and there are no other convenient occasions to hijack.
We celebrate chocolate. And cynicism. And hugely uncomfortable weather.
Possibly also fine pottery.
But we do not have a tree-cadaver anywhere on the premises.
Friday, July 25, 2008
THEY MUST NOT READ MY BLOG
On a daily basis I receive a fairly large amount of spam e-mail. On the basis of which I can understand what the spambrains think of me. Or at least what they fondly imagine that I am.
PROFILE
I am a short middle-aged bald person with a tiny penis and mediocre breasts, who is passionately interested in Britney Spears naked and the sex-lives of female celebritities. I need more fake watches, university degrees, and designer handbags. Plus excercise equipement, diet pills, and a tummy tuck.
And I want money desperately - hence the lottery e-mails from Europe and bank-account queries from Africa. As well as the circulars telling me to buy this stock now now now before Wall Street discovers it.
Lonely girls in Russia wish to share their vacation photos (I think that's what those are) with me, and I must learn one foreign language right now while I sleep - probably so that I can communicate with my insta-girlfriend in ANY city in the continental United States.
Quite the portrait, eh?
JEEBUS
Oh, and apparently I am a Christian. This according to Amazon, who cannot figure out that someone who buys Toratot (well, chumeshim), commentaries, and biographies of rabbis, as well as much stuff about the Talmud, may, probably, with a certain degree of likelihood, not be passionately committed to the best Christian fiction of 2008.
Echt. And b'emmes.
I am in gonzen not interested in reading about the first tentative married steps of a shy young virgin with Jesus in her heart. The uplift, the end of days, and the mark of the beast are not major themes I look for in romance fiction. Feeling sadness for those who are left behind in massive car-crashes on the freeway, after the heavens rain fire and blood, is not an emotion that figures heavily in my appreciation of paperback novels.
In fact, unlike you I could probably go for weeks without needing the words Christ, sin, Eden, rapture, salvation, Revelations, and The Damned. Normally they do not figure prominently in my vocabulary.
The only prolonged conversation I've had in recent years about Jesus was when I explained to a coworker that Torah study with a friend did not, would not, and never had, involved her dear lord in any way imaginable. Jesus and Torah study do not go hand in hand. They are in fact more or less mutually exclusive. This surprised her, and she barely spoke to me for at least the next two years. I believe she still wonders when I'll burst into flames.
It is a darned good thing that the coworker in question does not read my blog. She might take to wearing garlic and silver if she did.
READ THIS NOW
If many people had read my blog, it would have saved them much time and effort.
Hundreds of people in west-Africa might have realized that all the heartfelt missives they sent me over the years have fallen on deaf eyes. I am not their target audience.
The lonely Russian girls would know that I am only interested if they are petite, have dark hair, and blush prettily.
Amazon would cease telling me about wholesome Protestant novellas.
Various people in major European cities would know that I do not gamble, and have not played any games of chance outside of California.
The sellers of herbal supplements, breast enhancers, and three inch augmentifiers would appreciate that I am an enormous hairy manly man built like a rampaging stallion, and the Christians would grasp the utter nonsense of their ideology.
If you have sent me any of the spam mentioned above, please stop.
I do not need it.
I am only interested in panties, wombats, blushing schoolgirls, and elderly rabbis. Whether you want to sell these to me, or merely show me zesty pictures, is up to you.
PROFILE
I am a short middle-aged bald person with a tiny penis and mediocre breasts, who is passionately interested in Britney Spears naked and the sex-lives of female celebritities. I need more fake watches, university degrees, and designer handbags. Plus excercise equipement, diet pills, and a tummy tuck.
And I want money desperately - hence the lottery e-mails from Europe and bank-account queries from Africa. As well as the circulars telling me to buy this stock now now now before Wall Street discovers it.
Lonely girls in Russia wish to share their vacation photos (I think that's what those are) with me, and I must learn one foreign language right now while I sleep - probably so that I can communicate with my insta-girlfriend in ANY city in the continental United States.
Quite the portrait, eh?
JEEBUS
Oh, and apparently I am a Christian. This according to Amazon, who cannot figure out that someone who buys Toratot (well, chumeshim), commentaries, and biographies of rabbis, as well as much stuff about the Talmud, may, probably, with a certain degree of likelihood, not be passionately committed to the best Christian fiction of 2008.
Echt. And b'emmes.
I am in gonzen not interested in reading about the first tentative married steps of a shy young virgin with Jesus in her heart. The uplift, the end of days, and the mark of the beast are not major themes I look for in romance fiction. Feeling sadness for those who are left behind in massive car-crashes on the freeway, after the heavens rain fire and blood, is not an emotion that figures heavily in my appreciation of paperback novels.
In fact, unlike you I could probably go for weeks without needing the words Christ, sin, Eden, rapture, salvation, Revelations, and The Damned. Normally they do not figure prominently in my vocabulary.
The only prolonged conversation I've had in recent years about Jesus was when I explained to a coworker that Torah study with a friend did not, would not, and never had, involved her dear lord in any way imaginable. Jesus and Torah study do not go hand in hand. They are in fact more or less mutually exclusive. This surprised her, and she barely spoke to me for at least the next two years. I believe she still wonders when I'll burst into flames.
It is a darned good thing that the coworker in question does not read my blog. She might take to wearing garlic and silver if she did.
READ THIS NOW
If many people had read my blog, it would have saved them much time and effort.
Hundreds of people in west-Africa might have realized that all the heartfelt missives they sent me over the years have fallen on deaf eyes. I am not their target audience.
The lonely Russian girls would know that I am only interested if they are petite, have dark hair, and blush prettily.
Amazon would cease telling me about wholesome Protestant novellas.
Various people in major European cities would know that I do not gamble, and have not played any games of chance outside of California.
The sellers of herbal supplements, breast enhancers, and three inch augmentifiers would appreciate that I am an enormous hairy manly man built like a rampaging stallion, and the Christians would grasp the utter nonsense of their ideology.
If you have sent me any of the spam mentioned above, please stop.
I do not need it.
I am only interested in panties, wombats, blushing schoolgirls, and elderly rabbis. Whether you want to sell these to me, or merely show me zesty pictures, is up to you.
Friday, August 24, 2007
THE ANTI-CHRIST IS ALIVE TODAY AND IS A MALE JEW
I received the text below from a correspondent deep in the American south. For obvious reasons, I will not name him, but I will vouch for character and truthfulness.
----------------------------------------------
The Pastor in a Pentecostal church my wife attends (both of which will remain unnamed) gave a statement that caused me some surprise. He stated that "the Anti-Christ is probably alive today and is a male Jew.
Slack jawed I approached the Pastor after the service and asked "Is he alive and here today?" "Probably" answers the Pastor. Because when he appears during the Tribulation period he will be a full-grown counterfeit of Christ." "And he will be Jewish" I ask? "Of course he'll be Jewish" he said. "Further, he'll pretend to be Christ. The fact is the Lord is coming soon, and he'll be an adult at the presentation of himself, he must be alive somewhere."
Apparently there is still a measurable amount of anti-Semitism in our Southern States, although acts of violence are quite rare. The 2005 survey by the Anti-Defamation League reported 1432 acts of anti-Semitism in Florida, Georgia, Alabama and so on. The figure included 877 acts of harassment, including verbal intimidation, threats and physical assaults.
It seem the viewpoint of Southern Evangelical Christians is that all people must accept Jesus Christ as their Savior in order to find salvation. It follows that from their point of view all people should be given the chance to convert to Christianity, regardless of race, color or current creed. Not to evangelize to Jews would be tantamount to discrimination irregardless of how distasteful Southern Jews find effort.
The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant Christian denomination in the U.S., has explicitly rejected suggestions that it should back away from seeking to convert Jews, a position that critics have called anti-Semitic but that Baptists see as consistent with their view that salvation is found solely though faith in Christ. In 1996, the SBC approved a resolution calling for efforts to seek the conversion of Jews "as well as for the salvation of 'every kindred and tongue and people and nation."
The Christian Identity movement, the Ku Klux Klan and other White supremacy groups claim to be very strongly Christian in nature; they are vehemently anti-Semitic, as well as racist. The Klan is also demonstrably anti-Catholic preferring Southern Baptist or my friends the Pentecostals as well and some other smaller sects.
I'm finding that a racial belief common among these groups, is an alternative history doctrine. This doctrine absolutely denies that modern Jews have any racial connection to Israel of the Bible. Instead, it is widely believed the true racial Israel and true humans, are the white race. Wild huh!
Many other Evangelicals agree with the position, and some have similarly been supporting efforts specifically seeking Jews' conversion. Among the controversial groups that has found support from some Evangelical churches is Jews for Jesus, which claims that Jews can find their Jewish faith become complete by accepting Jesus as the Messiah. In fact, in my wife's church they like to point me out as a Completed Jew as if they had beat the Jew out of me and formed me into a more complete human being.
Seems to me that the Christians and the Muslims have the same agenda they just compete against each other for market share.
----------------------------------------------
I got the writer's permission to post this to my blog. I welcome comment, as I'm certain he does also. But I would also like to request some sensitivity to the fact that the writer is in between worlds, so to speak.
Still, if you thought that Christians were a nice safe bunch of tolerant softies, please note that you were mistaken. There is much about Christianity, even today, which can be hard and brutal. Even, dare I say it, unaccepting of the 'other'.
----------------------------------------------
The Pastor in a Pentecostal church my wife attends (both of which will remain unnamed) gave a statement that caused me some surprise. He stated that "the Anti-Christ is probably alive today and is a male Jew.
Slack jawed I approached the Pastor after the service and asked "Is he alive and here today?" "Probably" answers the Pastor. Because when he appears during the Tribulation period he will be a full-grown counterfeit of Christ." "And he will be Jewish" I ask? "Of course he'll be Jewish" he said. "Further, he'll pretend to be Christ. The fact is the Lord is coming soon, and he'll be an adult at the presentation of himself, he must be alive somewhere."
Apparently there is still a measurable amount of anti-Semitism in our Southern States, although acts of violence are quite rare. The 2005 survey by the Anti-Defamation League reported 1432 acts of anti-Semitism in Florida, Georgia, Alabama and so on. The figure included 877 acts of harassment, including verbal intimidation, threats and physical assaults.
It seem the viewpoint of Southern Evangelical Christians is that all people must accept Jesus Christ as their Savior in order to find salvation. It follows that from their point of view all people should be given the chance to convert to Christianity, regardless of race, color or current creed. Not to evangelize to Jews would be tantamount to discrimination irregardless of how distasteful Southern Jews find effort.
The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant Christian denomination in the U.S., has explicitly rejected suggestions that it should back away from seeking to convert Jews, a position that critics have called anti-Semitic but that Baptists see as consistent with their view that salvation is found solely though faith in Christ. In 1996, the SBC approved a resolution calling for efforts to seek the conversion of Jews "as well as for the salvation of 'every kindred and tongue and people and nation."
The Christian Identity movement, the Ku Klux Klan and other White supremacy groups claim to be very strongly Christian in nature; they are vehemently anti-Semitic, as well as racist. The Klan is also demonstrably anti-Catholic preferring Southern Baptist or my friends the Pentecostals as well and some other smaller sects.
I'm finding that a racial belief common among these groups, is an alternative history doctrine. This doctrine absolutely denies that modern Jews have any racial connection to Israel of the Bible. Instead, it is widely believed the true racial Israel and true humans, are the white race. Wild huh!
Many other Evangelicals agree with the position, and some have similarly been supporting efforts specifically seeking Jews' conversion. Among the controversial groups that has found support from some Evangelical churches is Jews for Jesus, which claims that Jews can find their Jewish faith become complete by accepting Jesus as the Messiah. In fact, in my wife's church they like to point me out as a Completed Jew as if they had beat the Jew out of me and formed me into a more complete human being.
Seems to me that the Christians and the Muslims have the same agenda they just compete against each other for market share.
----------------------------------------------
I got the writer's permission to post this to my blog. I welcome comment, as I'm certain he does also. But I would also like to request some sensitivity to the fact that the writer is in between worlds, so to speak.
Still, if you thought that Christians were a nice safe bunch of tolerant softies, please note that you were mistaken. There is much about Christianity, even today, which can be hard and brutal. Even, dare I say it, unaccepting of the 'other'.
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
WHAT'S ALL THIS ABOUT A MASHIACH?!?
One of the pillars of Judaism, in which it differs significantly from Christianity, is the hope and faith that the Messaiah is yet to come.
[Christianity seems to have given up on waiting for that event, and redigested some upchuck from Mithraism to argue that it has already happened, it was a life-altering experience, and you never loved them anyhow. Juvenile angst or something. As they grow up they might get over it.]
Judaism holds that the Messiah will come when there is the most need for him, to restore the kingdom and the house of David to glory. More or less.
What is one to make of this? We say bimhaira biyameinu, speedily and in our time, but do we really want that to happen?
It will mean the end of faith if it does.
It will also redeem a lineage whose signal redeeming quality is that it derives from a series of kings -- who both collectively and as individuals were not particularly exemplary.
Let's review, shall we?
David: Adulterer and murderer. Didn't build the Temple.
Solomon: Polygamist and 'accidental' heathen. Built Temple.
Rehovoam: Responsible for the division of the kingdom. Both morally and spiritually bankrupt.
Abiyam: Daddy's boy, 'nuff said.
[Update, Thursday May tenth: Regarding Aviyam, Steg ((dos iz nit der šteg) http://boroparkpyro.blogspot.com/ has a very good post, and a pertinent observation about this name: http://boroparkpyro.blogspot.com/2007/05/nomen-omen-theophorica-wanax.html
Read it, and leave a comment underneath to let him know you where there.]
Asa: Decent fellow, albeit somewhat unremarkable otherwise.
Yehoshafat: Very decent fellow.
Yehoram: Not a decent fellow at all.
Ahaziyah: Offensive idolater and mama's boy.
Ataliyah: Murderous interregentess, Ahazia's mom. Daughter of Jezebel, and a daemon worshipper.
Yehoash: Reign started with matricide, continued on to kohenicide, and finished with idolatry.
Amaziyah: Employed mercenaries to whack the Edomites. Then ruined the effect by worshipping Edomite idols.
Utziyah: Popularly appointed to replace his father Amaziyah. His successes made him arrogant, and he committed sacrilege in the temple with incense, in consequence of which became leprous (untouchable).
Yotam: Not a remarkable man, but probably a good man.
Ahaz: Headstrong and degenerate. There is nothing good to report about his reign. But at least he was not afflicted with tzaaras, unlike his grandfather
Hezekiya: A king worthy of praise, who was in many ways admirable. He sought to eradicate heathen behaviours that had crept in, and reassert independence from the Assyrians.
Menashe: Upon his succession at twelve years of age he promptly undid the good works of his father. Imprisonment by the Assyrians may have made a man out of him - he abandoned idolatry and got his kingdom back. He is not counted as a splendid success, even though his reign was longer than most.
Amon: Degenerate idolater.
Yoshiyahu: A reformer who got rid of much idolatry, who was both a good man and God-fearing. His reign ended badly for him and his people.
Yehoahaz: An idolater who was taken captive by the Egyptians. He died in exile.
Yehoyakim: Half-sibling to Yehoahaz, whom he replaced at the behest of the Egyptians. He was a book burner and tyrant whom the Babylonians waged war against. His body was disposed of with a marked lack of respect.
Yehoyachin: Son of Yehoyakim. Other than that he was hauled off to captivity in Babylon, there is little worth saying about him.
Tzidkiyahu: Brother of Yehoahaz and Yehoyakim. He was brought to power by the Babylonians, but conspired with Egypt against them, because of which Jerusalem was destroyed, his children were slaughtered before his eyes, and his eyes were then put out. He remained a captive the rest of his life in Babylon.
Shealtiel: Son of Yehoyachin. Heir to the kingdom of Judah, which remained in Babylonian hands.
Zarubavel: Grandson of Yehoyachin, who returned with the exiles from Bavel. Last royal of the line of David.
All in all, a line remarkable for the sheer number of idolaters and their misrule. One can well imagine why the exiles in Bavel dreamt of a restoration - there was much in need of restoring.
Clearly the promise of the redeemer is a question of faith - not only in the rectification of the world, but also in the rectification of a family.
Perhaps the family of David is a paradigm for all families, the tribe a paradigm of all tribes, the events that culminate in the redemption a paradigm of events.
The prophets have seized upon the redeemer as a rhetorical device for simultaneously castigating the Israelites while promising a relief from injustice. Carrot and stick.
On the other hand, the reason for the continuing hope for the redeemer is probably not all that different from why the Israelites wanted a king in the first place.
[Christianity seems to have given up on waiting for that event, and redigested some upchuck from Mithraism to argue that it has already happened, it was a life-altering experience, and you never loved them anyhow. Juvenile angst or something. As they grow up they might get over it.]
Judaism holds that the Messiah will come when there is the most need for him, to restore the kingdom and the house of David to glory. More or less.
What is one to make of this? We say bimhaira biyameinu, speedily and in our time, but do we really want that to happen?
It will mean the end of faith if it does.
It will also redeem a lineage whose signal redeeming quality is that it derives from a series of kings -- who both collectively and as individuals were not particularly exemplary.
Let's review, shall we?
David: Adulterer and murderer. Didn't build the Temple.
Solomon: Polygamist and 'accidental' heathen. Built Temple.
Rehovoam: Responsible for the division of the kingdom. Both morally and spiritually bankrupt.
Abiyam: Daddy's boy, 'nuff said.
[Update, Thursday May tenth: Regarding Aviyam, Steg ((dos iz nit der šteg) http://boroparkpyro.blogspot.com/ has a very good post, and a pertinent observation about this name: http://boroparkpyro.blogspot.com/2007/05/nomen-omen-theophorica-wanax.html
Read it, and leave a comment underneath to let him know you where there.]
Asa: Decent fellow, albeit somewhat unremarkable otherwise.
Yehoshafat: Very decent fellow.
Yehoram: Not a decent fellow at all.
Ahaziyah: Offensive idolater and mama's boy.
Ataliyah: Murderous interregentess, Ahazia's mom. Daughter of Jezebel, and a daemon worshipper.
Yehoash: Reign started with matricide, continued on to kohenicide, and finished with idolatry.
Amaziyah: Employed mercenaries to whack the Edomites. Then ruined the effect by worshipping Edomite idols.
Utziyah: Popularly appointed to replace his father Amaziyah. His successes made him arrogant, and he committed sacrilege in the temple with incense, in consequence of which became leprous (untouchable).
Yotam: Not a remarkable man, but probably a good man.
Ahaz: Headstrong and degenerate. There is nothing good to report about his reign. But at least he was not afflicted with tzaaras, unlike his grandfather
Hezekiya: A king worthy of praise, who was in many ways admirable. He sought to eradicate heathen behaviours that had crept in, and reassert independence from the Assyrians.
Menashe: Upon his succession at twelve years of age he promptly undid the good works of his father. Imprisonment by the Assyrians may have made a man out of him - he abandoned idolatry and got his kingdom back. He is not counted as a splendid success, even though his reign was longer than most.
Amon: Degenerate idolater.
Yoshiyahu: A reformer who got rid of much idolatry, who was both a good man and God-fearing. His reign ended badly for him and his people.
Yehoahaz: An idolater who was taken captive by the Egyptians. He died in exile.
Yehoyakim: Half-sibling to Yehoahaz, whom he replaced at the behest of the Egyptians. He was a book burner and tyrant whom the Babylonians waged war against. His body was disposed of with a marked lack of respect.
Yehoyachin: Son of Yehoyakim. Other than that he was hauled off to captivity in Babylon, there is little worth saying about him.
Tzidkiyahu: Brother of Yehoahaz and Yehoyakim. He was brought to power by the Babylonians, but conspired with Egypt against them, because of which Jerusalem was destroyed, his children were slaughtered before his eyes, and his eyes were then put out. He remained a captive the rest of his life in Babylon.
Shealtiel: Son of Yehoyachin. Heir to the kingdom of Judah, which remained in Babylonian hands.
Zarubavel: Grandson of Yehoyachin, who returned with the exiles from Bavel. Last royal of the line of David.
All in all, a line remarkable for the sheer number of idolaters and their misrule. One can well imagine why the exiles in Bavel dreamt of a restoration - there was much in need of restoring.
Clearly the promise of the redeemer is a question of faith - not only in the rectification of the world, but also in the rectification of a family.
Perhaps the family of David is a paradigm for all families, the tribe a paradigm of all tribes, the events that culminate in the redemption a paradigm of events.
The prophets have seized upon the redeemer as a rhetorical device for simultaneously castigating the Israelites while promising a relief from injustice. Carrot and stick.
On the other hand, the reason for the continuing hope for the redeemer is probably not all that different from why the Israelites wanted a king in the first place.
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
FIGHTING WORDS
Back in April of last year I wrote “Part of the Judeo-Christian tradition is reaction towards each other, and there is also some influence on each other's thought. Neither side lived in a vacuum. But there is no shared focus. The sharing, or overlap, is in source texts. So, chucking the gospels etcetera out of the window, one is left with a Judaic foundation.”
[See comments on this post: http://atthebackofthehill.blogspot.com/2006/04/haskafic-miscellany-faith-versus.html]
This was in response to Lipman, who wrote: "I'm afraid there is no Jewish-Christian heritage. If you subtract all things Christian, there'll be nothing left. Christianity did away with anything Jewish."
At that time I agreed with him in the main, while still stubbornly holding on to the term "Judeo-Christian".
BUT LOOKING AT IT AGAIN.......
The problem is that the term "Judeo-Christian" only works if one is standing entirely outside of the Judeo-Christian tradition, looking in. Much like an angry Jihadi speaking of the 'Zionist-Crusader Alliance'.
If you are on the inside, as anybody reading this blog is bound to be, it is a loaded term.
A Jew using the term would by doing so seem to admit that there is a parity, while a Christian would probably imply that there is an equivalence. A Mormon would use the term inclusionarily, with an un-said assumption that Mormonism perfects the tradition.
In point of fact, there is no such thing as a Judeo-Christian Tradition unless you're an anthropologist, nor is it correct to speak of shared Judeo-Christian values. Yes, Christianity is in some ways derived from a Judaic root, but the moment you accept the Nicaene creed, you have chucked Rabbi Akiva out of the window. Along with the mitzvos, the ikkarim, and much else.
When a Jew suggests such a commonality, that Jew is perilously close to the position of the messianics, and dangerously close to the precipice. One cannot remain Jewish if one accepts Jesus and the teachings of Christianity as within the tradition, or even as a reflection of the tradition.
Likewise, if one acknowledges the Jewish roots of Christianity, one must also recognize that Jesus, like one's own appendix, is not necessary and serves no purpose. Anything else fudges the distinctions.
One need not go so far as to label Christianity a form of idolatry, like the Rambam called the superstitious practices current in his day, but there can be no such thing as common observance, worship or prayer. Anything that has observant Jews and practicing Christians involved together in a religious context is, from both a Judaic and a Christian point of view, ab initio invalid - though both creeds assert the singularity of the deity, they do not share a deity. The Christian conception of the divine differs so much from the Judaic conception that there is no point of commonality, and from a Jewish point of view, taking part in a religious ritual with a believing Christian must be considered either heretical or heathen - in any case, a perverse waste of time.
WHO USES THAT TERM ANYHOW?
Another problem with the term Judeo-Christian is that the people most likely to use it are also often the ones who seek to convert Jews or who think that Jews should be converted.
The term contains the suggestion that there is much that both sides have in common and that the differences between Christianity and Judaism are mere details of hue and not of content. Consequently, because a secular non-observant Jew will likely know very little about Judaism, and may not have ever seriously studied any part of the texts, there is a great danger in the use of the term Judeo-Christian - the term, though resonant, is entirely false.
It is a seductive lie.
[More than mere suppresio veri, suggestio falsi - the usage and context of "Judeo-Christian" is blatanly destructive, in that it can twist and subvert truth. ]
If Jews convert to Christianity they lose much. When Christians convert to Judaism, it may turn out well. But Judaism does not demand converts.
There is only one side that needs to mind its own business. And stop using certain words.
[See comments on this post: http://atthebackofthehill.blogspot.com/2006/04/haskafic-miscellany-faith-versus.html]
This was in response to Lipman, who wrote: "I'm afraid there is no Jewish-Christian heritage. If you subtract all things Christian, there'll be nothing left. Christianity did away with anything Jewish."
At that time I agreed with him in the main, while still stubbornly holding on to the term "Judeo-Christian".
BUT LOOKING AT IT AGAIN.......
The problem is that the term "Judeo-Christian" only works if one is standing entirely outside of the Judeo-Christian tradition, looking in. Much like an angry Jihadi speaking of the 'Zionist-Crusader Alliance'.
If you are on the inside, as anybody reading this blog is bound to be, it is a loaded term.
A Jew using the term would by doing so seem to admit that there is a parity, while a Christian would probably imply that there is an equivalence. A Mormon would use the term inclusionarily, with an un-said assumption that Mormonism perfects the tradition.
In point of fact, there is no such thing as a Judeo-Christian Tradition unless you're an anthropologist, nor is it correct to speak of shared Judeo-Christian values. Yes, Christianity is in some ways derived from a Judaic root, but the moment you accept the Nicaene creed, you have chucked Rabbi Akiva out of the window. Along with the mitzvos, the ikkarim, and much else.
When a Jew suggests such a commonality, that Jew is perilously close to the position of the messianics, and dangerously close to the precipice. One cannot remain Jewish if one accepts Jesus and the teachings of Christianity as within the tradition, or even as a reflection of the tradition.
Likewise, if one acknowledges the Jewish roots of Christianity, one must also recognize that Jesus, like one's own appendix, is not necessary and serves no purpose. Anything else fudges the distinctions.
One need not go so far as to label Christianity a form of idolatry, like the Rambam called the superstitious practices current in his day, but there can be no such thing as common observance, worship or prayer. Anything that has observant Jews and practicing Christians involved together in a religious context is, from both a Judaic and a Christian point of view, ab initio invalid - though both creeds assert the singularity of the deity, they do not share a deity. The Christian conception of the divine differs so much from the Judaic conception that there is no point of commonality, and from a Jewish point of view, taking part in a religious ritual with a believing Christian must be considered either heretical or heathen - in any case, a perverse waste of time.
WHO USES THAT TERM ANYHOW?
Another problem with the term Judeo-Christian is that the people most likely to use it are also often the ones who seek to convert Jews or who think that Jews should be converted.
The term contains the suggestion that there is much that both sides have in common and that the differences between Christianity and Judaism are mere details of hue and not of content. Consequently, because a secular non-observant Jew will likely know very little about Judaism, and may not have ever seriously studied any part of the texts, there is a great danger in the use of the term Judeo-Christian - the term, though resonant, is entirely false.
It is a seductive lie.
[More than mere suppresio veri, suggestio falsi - the usage and context of "Judeo-Christian" is blatanly destructive, in that it can twist and subvert truth. ]
If Jews convert to Christianity they lose much. When Christians convert to Judaism, it may turn out well. But Judaism does not demand converts.
There is only one side that needs to mind its own business. And stop using certain words.
Friday, February 02, 2007
DAVID PASZKIEWICZ OF KEARNY HIGH SCHOOL IN NEW JERSEY: A CHRISTIAN AND AN UNFIT TEACHER
Matthew LaClair, a junior at a public high school in New Jersey, taped his American History teacher saying some rather stupid things.
No, this posting is not about privacy. Whatever a teacher says in the classroom is not private, and the teacher has no right to claim it as being said in confidence.
What the teacher, David Paszkiewicz, said was that evolution and 'the Big Bang are not scientific, that dinosaurs were aboard Noah’s ark, and that only Christians had a place in heaven'.
[Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/01/nyregion/01tape.htm?_r=4&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1170448459-oKr/wYMXtqWb7q3bnrfcYw ]
The student taped the statements because he was afraid that without solid evidence the school administration would dismiss the allegation or simply not believe it. The 'it' in question being that the teacher was, with the voice of authority, saying things that are inappropriate for a classroom and immaterial to the subject that he was supposed to be teaching.
All three of Mr. Paszkiewicz's statements fudge the Constitution’s separation of church and state. And clearly they are partisan and discriminatory towards non-Christians. Naturally I have a problem with this, as some of my best friends are non-Christians. Even some of my relatives are non-Christians. Heck, I too am a non-Christian. And Mr. Paszkiewicz is a moron and a bigot who should certainly not be teaching, and arguably not be on the public payroll in any function whatsoever.
Bernadette McDonald, the president of school board for the Kearny School District, has since ordered that teachers should receive instruction on the Constitutional separation of church and state and how it applies in the classroom. She has also asked the school board to adopt a policy showing "its strong commitment to the principle that the personal religious beliefs of our instructional staff have no place in our classrooms."
School officials have taken unspecified corrective action against Mr. Paszkiewicz.
That's not enough. The bozo should be fired. He does not belong in front of a classroom. Whether he belongs in the municipality of Kearny in New Jersey, or even anywhere in North America is a different matter.
No, this posting is not about privacy. Whatever a teacher says in the classroom is not private, and the teacher has no right to claim it as being said in confidence.
What the teacher, David Paszkiewicz, said was that evolution and 'the Big Bang are not scientific, that dinosaurs were aboard Noah’s ark, and that only Christians had a place in heaven'.
[Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/01/nyregion/01tape.htm?_r=4&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1170448459-oKr/wYMXtqWb7q3bnrfcYw ]
The student taped the statements because he was afraid that without solid evidence the school administration would dismiss the allegation or simply not believe it. The 'it' in question being that the teacher was, with the voice of authority, saying things that are inappropriate for a classroom and immaterial to the subject that he was supposed to be teaching.
All three of Mr. Paszkiewicz's statements fudge the Constitution’s separation of church and state. And clearly they are partisan and discriminatory towards non-Christians. Naturally I have a problem with this, as some of my best friends are non-Christians. Even some of my relatives are non-Christians. Heck, I too am a non-Christian. And Mr. Paszkiewicz is a moron and a bigot who should certainly not be teaching, and arguably not be on the public payroll in any function whatsoever.
Bernadette McDonald, the president of school board for the Kearny School District, has since ordered that teachers should receive instruction on the Constitutional separation of church and state and how it applies in the classroom. She has also asked the school board to adopt a policy showing "its strong commitment to the principle that the personal religious beliefs of our instructional staff have no place in our classrooms."
School officials have taken unspecified corrective action against Mr. Paszkiewicz.
That's not enough. The bozo should be fired. He does not belong in front of a classroom. Whether he belongs in the municipality of Kearny in New Jersey, or even anywhere in North America is a different matter.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
EVANGELICAL EXCESS IN THE MILITARY -- MIKEY WEINSTEIN INTERVIEW ABOUT FUNDAMENTALIST ATTACK ON RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
One of the blogs I regularly read ('melech hagawblinim') alerted me to an interview with Mikey Weinstein about evangelical excess in the US military.
The interview is here:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/12/13/weinstein/index.html
Now, you may be asking why you should take time out from your busy schedule to read it - after all, it is a good thing that our soldiers have a faith to succour them when the shells are coming right at them, isn't it?
ONE WORD: EVANGELICAL EXCESS.
[Many members of my family served in the military, and on both sides we've been here since well before the civil war. I make mention of this to clarify that I am as American as you, just so you don't go overboard on ad-hominem xenophobia.]
AGAIN: EVANGELICAL EXCESS
Some juicy quotes, to convince you that you should read the interview, and not only read it, but take it to heart, and alert others to it.
1. "We have a virulently dominionist, fundamentalist evangelical Christian element within the Pentagon. They would prefer this to be the "Pentecostalgon," not the Pentagon. That's what they would prefer. They're trying to turn the Pentagon into a frickin' faith-based initiative, and that is not what our military is about. "
2. "...it's also blatantly violative of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights, and at least as important it's violative of Clause 3, Article 6 of the Constitution -- you don't even have to get into the Bill of Rights -- which states that we will never have a religion test for any position in the federal government, which was brilliantly prescient of our Founding Fathers. "
3. "...like that one person, Catton, whom I knew when I was a kid at the [Air Force] Academy, and he goes, "I share my faith, that's who I am, and let me tell you right now, the hierarchy as an old-fashioned American is that your first duty is to the Lord, second to your family and your third is to your country." That is the exact opposite of what is taught, and for anyone who understands anything about the military, it is always the country first. "
4. "These are Christians being preyed upon by evangelical Christians and being told that you're not Christian enough, therefore you're going to burn in a hell of fire. "
5. "When you have the leadership believing that to be a good soldier, good Marine, good airman or sailor you have to be not just a Christian but the right type of Christian, we're no better than al-Qaida."
If, at this point, your dander ain't up, there's something very wrong with you.
Your dander IS up, isn't it?
Or are you one of those people? You know, those fundamentalist bigot screwball whackjobs all hepped up on your sacred duty to insult everyone else unless they convert to your own brand of self-righteous idiocy.
If you are, please fee free to leave comments - I love reading the rabid spew of your type, and ripping you apart (I admit it, I like a cheap dirty battle of wits with unarmed people, I'm kinda vicious that way).
The interview is here:
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/12/13/weinstein/index.html
Now, you may be asking why you should take time out from your busy schedule to read it - after all, it is a good thing that our soldiers have a faith to succour them when the shells are coming right at them, isn't it?
ONE WORD: EVANGELICAL EXCESS.
[Many members of my family served in the military, and on both sides we've been here since well before the civil war. I make mention of this to clarify that I am as American as you, just so you don't go overboard on ad-hominem xenophobia.]
AGAIN: EVANGELICAL EXCESS
Some juicy quotes, to convince you that you should read the interview, and not only read it, but take it to heart, and alert others to it.
1. "We have a virulently dominionist, fundamentalist evangelical Christian element within the Pentagon. They would prefer this to be the "Pentecostalgon," not the Pentagon. That's what they would prefer. They're trying to turn the Pentagon into a frickin' faith-based initiative, and that is not what our military is about. "
2. "...it's also blatantly violative of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights, and at least as important it's violative of Clause 3, Article 6 of the Constitution -- you don't even have to get into the Bill of Rights -- which states that we will never have a religion test for any position in the federal government, which was brilliantly prescient of our Founding Fathers. "
3. "...like that one person, Catton, whom I knew when I was a kid at the [Air Force] Academy, and he goes, "I share my faith, that's who I am, and let me tell you right now, the hierarchy as an old-fashioned American is that your first duty is to the Lord, second to your family and your third is to your country." That is the exact opposite of what is taught, and for anyone who understands anything about the military, it is always the country first. "
4. "These are Christians being preyed upon by evangelical Christians and being told that you're not Christian enough, therefore you're going to burn in a hell of fire. "
5. "When you have the leadership believing that to be a good soldier, good Marine, good airman or sailor you have to be not just a Christian but the right type of Christian, we're no better than al-Qaida."
If, at this point, your dander ain't up, there's something very wrong with you.
Your dander IS up, isn't it?
Or are you one of those people? You know, those fundamentalist bigot screwball whackjobs all hepped up on your sacred duty to insult everyone else unless they convert to your own brand of self-righteous idiocy.
If you are, please fee free to leave comments - I love reading the rabid spew of your type, and ripping you apart (I admit it, I like a cheap dirty battle of wits with unarmed people, I'm kinda vicious that way).
Monday, August 28, 2006
VICIOUS CHRISTIAN NUTBALLS
Jackie Mason is suing the Jay Fer Jays over a pamphlet.
Extract from the AP article:
Saying he's "as Jewish as a matzo ball or kosher salami," Jackie Mason filed a lawsuit against Jews for Jesus for using his name and likeness in a pamphlet.
The $2 million lawsuit seeks the immediate destruction of the pamphlet, which members of the missionary group have been handing out at various points around New York City.
"While I have the utmost respect for people who practice the Christian faith, the fact is, as everyone knows, I am as Jewish as a matzo ball or kosher salami," the 75-year-old comedian said in documents filed in state Supreme Court in Manhattan."
Of course this isn't the first time Jackie Mason has been involved in something faintly (hugely) putrid - he made some comments about Islam that can only be considered incendiary (contradicting our beloved leader, who called Islam a 'religion of peace'), and he's also made some remarks about blacks that were quite the opposite of complimentary.
There have been times when he has been wrong, yes.
But what has justifiably got his knickers in a twist is that his face is in a Jay Fer Jay pamphlet, next to the words "Jackie Mason ... A Jew for Jesus!?"
The suggestion that anyone is a Jew for Jayzits is vicious and slanderous...... ghastly barely describes it. Kinda like a mogen Dovid on one side of an equals sign, and Nazi emblem on the other side. It's like gossip that someone is related to Henry VIII.
No wonder he's angry. He should be. He should sue the pants offa those bozos. He should sue for damages and trauma. Take 'em to the cleaners.
Oh, you ask "what about peace and love, acceptance and tolerance, and all the rest of that stuff?"
Those are all good things, yes, and even here they apply.
As legal concepts.
I tolerate Jews for Jayzits, I do not advocate banning them.
I would refuse to sit at the same table with them, or any one who fell for their depraved and ridiculous cult (though I would pay good money for the entertainment of seeing them at the same table as ArtScroll), and I consider anyone who walks into their trap as being a soul lost forever.... poor little priceless Yiddishe neshamas be damned, if they got suckered into that demented cult they were hopeless little moronic nutzoids to begin with (though evenso, deprogramming is probably justified).
But I tolerate JayferJay. I am legally required to do so. Which is a good thing. The fact that so insane a bunch of crackpots can spew their nonsense protects the rest of us. I tolerate them.
That stops at slander.
-----------------------------------------------
ADDENDUM:
Why do I consider Jews fer Jayzits crazier than any other creed, cult, or ideology?
Because if you believe in Jayzits, yer a Christian.
If you do not believe in Jayzits, you ain't.
The term 'Jews for Jezus' is a falsehood.
There ain't no such critter as a Jew who believes in Jayzits. Anybody who keeps all mitzvos except that one about "no other gods" is not a Jew, but someone with inexplicable personal habits.
Once you've accepted Jayzits as your close, personal, and totally imaginary friend, there is utterly no further reason for obeying the taryag mitzvos.
[At that point there are several very good reasons for seeking psychiatric help.... surely as an adult you know that imaginary friends are problematic? And that the big white bunny rabbit with the bowtie isn't really following you around? You do know you're stark raving bonkers, don't you? Haven't your few remaining friends already told you so?]
What I also find repulsive about the JayferJay crowd is that they are directed by and funded by missionary outreach organizations with scarcely anyone of any certifiable Jewish background. It's false advertising. It's like calling Hezbollah a social welfare organization. It hides the evil agenda within under a smiling veneer of chicken soup.
As a final note, suggesting that Rabbi Hyman Krustofski, father of Krusty the Clown, is not a mensh but a madman is hideously offensive.
Extract from the AP article:
Saying he's "as Jewish as a matzo ball or kosher salami," Jackie Mason filed a lawsuit against Jews for Jesus for using his name and likeness in a pamphlet.
The $2 million lawsuit seeks the immediate destruction of the pamphlet, which members of the missionary group have been handing out at various points around New York City.
"While I have the utmost respect for people who practice the Christian faith, the fact is, as everyone knows, I am as Jewish as a matzo ball or kosher salami," the 75-year-old comedian said in documents filed in state Supreme Court in Manhattan."
Of course this isn't the first time Jackie Mason has been involved in something faintly (hugely) putrid - he made some comments about Islam that can only be considered incendiary (contradicting our beloved leader, who called Islam a 'religion of peace'), and he's also made some remarks about blacks that were quite the opposite of complimentary.
There have been times when he has been wrong, yes.
But what has justifiably got his knickers in a twist is that his face is in a Jay Fer Jay pamphlet, next to the words "Jackie Mason ... A Jew for Jesus!?"
The suggestion that anyone is a Jew for Jayzits is vicious and slanderous...... ghastly barely describes it. Kinda like a mogen Dovid on one side of an equals sign, and Nazi emblem on the other side. It's like gossip that someone is related to Henry VIII.
No wonder he's angry. He should be. He should sue the pants offa those bozos. He should sue for damages and trauma. Take 'em to the cleaners.
Oh, you ask "what about peace and love, acceptance and tolerance, and all the rest of that stuff?"
Those are all good things, yes, and even here they apply.
As legal concepts.
I tolerate Jews for Jayzits, I do not advocate banning them.
I would refuse to sit at the same table with them, or any one who fell for their depraved and ridiculous cult (though I would pay good money for the entertainment of seeing them at the same table as ArtScroll), and I consider anyone who walks into their trap as being a soul lost forever.... poor little priceless Yiddishe neshamas be damned, if they got suckered into that demented cult they were hopeless little moronic nutzoids to begin with (though evenso, deprogramming is probably justified).
But I tolerate JayferJay. I am legally required to do so. Which is a good thing. The fact that so insane a bunch of crackpots can spew their nonsense protects the rest of us. I tolerate them.
That stops at slander.
-----------------------------------------------
ADDENDUM:
Why do I consider Jews fer Jayzits crazier than any other creed, cult, or ideology?
Because if you believe in Jayzits, yer a Christian.
If you do not believe in Jayzits, you ain't.
The term 'Jews for Jezus' is a falsehood.
There ain't no such critter as a Jew who believes in Jayzits. Anybody who keeps all mitzvos except that one about "no other gods" is not a Jew, but someone with inexplicable personal habits.
Once you've accepted Jayzits as your close, personal, and totally imaginary friend, there is utterly no further reason for obeying the taryag mitzvos.
[At that point there are several very good reasons for seeking psychiatric help.... surely as an adult you know that imaginary friends are problematic? And that the big white bunny rabbit with the bowtie isn't really following you around? You do know you're stark raving bonkers, don't you? Haven't your few remaining friends already told you so?]
What I also find repulsive about the JayferJay crowd is that they are directed by and funded by missionary outreach organizations with scarcely anyone of any certifiable Jewish background. It's false advertising. It's like calling Hezbollah a social welfare organization. It hides the evil agenda within under a smiling veneer of chicken soup.
As a final note, suggesting that Rabbi Hyman Krustofski, father of Krusty the Clown, is not a mensh but a madman is hideously offensive.
Friday, August 11, 2006
JOSTEIN GAARDER - AFTENPOSTEN
In today's Ha'aretz mention is made of an opinion piece by the author of Sophie's World which is causing quite a stench (see: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/749493.html).
QUOTE:
The article compares Israel's government, the Afghan Taliban regime and South African apartheid, and states, "We no longer recognize the State of Israel" and "the State of Israel in its current form is history."
So I looked it up. The opinion piece. And translated it. I post the translation below. Please bear in mind that Norwegian is not a language that I am fluent in, wherefore my translation might be flawed. I have tried to represent the author's ideas accurately, but because I find his spew repellent I may have been handicapped.
[The original ('Guds Utvalgte Folk') may be found here: http://www.aftenposten.no/meninger/kronikker/article1411153.ece
For those who read Norwegian. And I would appreciate your letting me know of any mistakes I made in the translation. Thanks in advance.]
GOD'S CHOSEN PEOPLE
By Jostein Gaarder
ISRAEL IS HISTORY. We no longer acknowledge the State of Israel. There is no way back. The State of Israel has violated the recognition of the world, and will get no peace until it lays down its weapons. The State of Israel in its current form is history, writes Jostein Gaarder.
It is time to learn a new slogan: We no longer recognize the State of Israel. We can't recognize the apartheid regime in South Africa, we didn't recognize the Afghani Taliban-regime. There were many who didn't recognize Saddam Hussein's Iraq, or the Serb ethnic cleansing. So now we must get used to the thought: the State of Israel, in its current form is history.
We do not believe in the pretensions of God's chosen people. We laugh at this people's misapprehensions and cry over its misdeeds. To pretend to be God's chosen people is not only stupid and arrogant, but an offense against all humanity; we call it racism.
LIMITS OF TOLERANCE
Patience has limits, and so does our tolerance. We don't believe in divine promises as a basis for occupation or apartheid. We have left the Middle Ages behind us. We are farklempt by those who believe that the god of plants, animals and galaxies had could make one people his favourite, and given them silly stone tablets, burning bushes, and a license to kill.
We call child-murders child-murderers, and shall not accept that such a people have a god-given or historical mandate that can excuse their reprehensible acts. We say: shame on all apartheid, shame on ethnic cleansing, shame on all terrorist strikes against a civilian population whether committed by Hamas, Hezbollah, or the State of Israel!
THE UNSCRUPULOUS ART OF WAR
We recognize and accept Europe's deep responsibility for the Jewish fate, for the scandalous mobbings (?), pogroms, and the Holocaust. It was historically and morally imperative that the Jews got their own home. However the State of Israel has, with its unscrupulous art of war and horrific weaponry, massacred its own legitimacy. It has systematically violated international laws, international conventions, and several UN resolutions, and can no longer expect amnesty from any responsibility. It has carpet bombed the world's recognition. But fear not - the perilous time is nearly over. Israel has seen its own Soweto.
We are at the brink, there is no retreat. The State of Israel has violated the world's recognition and will not have peace until it lays down its arms.
WITHOUT FORBEARING, WITHOUT SKIN
Let both wills and words blow Israel's apartheid walls over. The State of Israel does not exist. It is without forbearing now, without skin. May the world show mercy on the civilian population Our doomsaying is not directed at civilians.
We wish the people in Israel well, everything well, but with our reservation that we will not eat Jaffa oranges as long as they taste vile and poisonous. It was also easy to manage without the blue grapes of apartheid.
CELEBRATING TRIUMPH
We don't believe that Israel has greater sorrow for more than forty Lebanese children than f the three thousand years of lamenting over 40 years in the wasteland. We note that many Israelis celebrate such triumphs as once they celebrated the plagues, as appropriate punishment for the Egyptian people. (In this tale the Lord of Israel acts as an immeasurable sadist). We ask if for Israelis one Israeli life is worth more than that of forty Palestinians or Lebanese.
Because we have seen the pictures of Israeli girls who wrote spiteful messages on the bombs that were to be released over the civilian population of Lebanon and Palestine. Israeli girls are not charming when they rejoice in death and suffering on the other side.
VENGEFULL PAYBACK
We reject the rhetoric of the State of Israel. We reject the blood-drenched spiral of vengeance of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth". We reject the principle of thousands of Arab eyes for a few Israeli eye. We reject collective punishment or population purges as a political weapon. Two thousand years have gone by since a Jewish rabbi criticized the knackered doctrine of an "eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth".
He said: "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." We reject a state that is built on anti-humanitarian principles and the ruins of an archaic nationalist religion and warlike faith. As Albert Schweitzer explained, "humanity is to never sacrifice a human for a cause."
CHARITY AND MERCY
We do not recognize the old kingdom of David as being normative for the 21st century's map of the Middle-East. That Jewish rabbi asserted two thousand years ago that the kingdom of God is not a rebirth of the kingdom of David, but that the kingdom of God is within us and among us. God's kingdom is charity and mercy.
Two thousand years it has been since the Jewish rabbi unweaponed and humanized the knackered rhetoric of war, yet already in his time there the first Zionist terrorists operated.
ISRAEL DOES NOT LISTEN
For two thousand years we have stressed the concept of humanity, yet Israel does not listen. It was not the Pharisees who helped the man who lay on the side of the road because he had been attacked by robbers. It was a Samaritan, what today we would call a Palestinian. Because before everything else, we are human - whether Christian, Muslim, or Jew. Or as that Jewish rabbi said: "And if regard only your own, how are you different from others?" We reject the kidnapping for ransom of soldiers. But we also reject the deportation of entire groups of people and the abduction of lawfully elected parliamentarians or government functionaries also.
We recognize the State of Israel of 1948, but not of 1967. That is the State of Israel which doesn't recognize, respect, or yield to the legitimate state of 1948. Israel wants to have more - more water and more settlements. To achieve that some wish a final solution to the Palestinian problem, with god's help. "Palestinians have so many other countries", some Israeli politicians assert, "while we have just one".
USA OR THE WORLD
Or as the state of Israel's greatest protector puts it: "May God continue to bless America." A little child noticed this and turned to his mother, and asked: "Why does the president always end his speeches with 'God bless America'? Why does he not say 'God bless the world?'"
A Norwegian poet exclaimed the following childlike heart-sigh: "Whence mankind's slow progress?" He was the one who wrote so strikingly about "the Jew" and "the Jewess". But he rejected the the fantasy of a chosen people. He called himself a Mohammedan.
MERCY AND TOLERATION
We do not accept the State of Israel. Not today, not in this hour of writing, not in sorrow and wrath. If the nation of Israel should fall because of its own actions, and parts of its population must flee the occupied area and into another diaspora, then we say: May their hosts show them mercy and toleration. It is eternally an unjustifiable crime to lay a hand on refugees and the stateless.
Peace and the right of passage for an evacuating civilian populace that have no state shall protect them! Do not shoot at refugees! Do not target them! They are as vulnerable as snails without their shells now, vulnerable like the slow-moving columns of Palestinian and Lebanese refugees, defenseless as women, children, and old folks, in Qana, Gaza, Sabra and Shatila. Give the Israeli refugees shelter, give them milk and honey!
Don't let a single Israeli child die. Too many children and civilians have been murdered already.
Source: AFTENPOSTEN
Først publisert: 05.08.06 Oppdatert: 11.08.06 kl. 18:14
I'm not quite sure what he's getting at. But I will say that rather than exploring the causes of Middle-East strife in any depth, and examining the issues in detail, he shows the usual superficial judgementalism.
The inclusion of that reference to Jesus (whom he erroneously calls a rabbi) is disturbing, along with the accusations that immediately follow. Either one must assume a remarkably dense and blithering ignorance, OR, as is much more likely, he deliberately parrots the standard slanders of the church regarding Jews.
The mention of the Norwegian poet is baffling. Or a misapplied show of literacy.
The final part of his disquisition is vile. Utterly.
I do not think Jostein Gaarder ignorant. I cannot forgive him because he might not know what he is saying. This is an educated man, who is more than capable of becoming informed and doing the necessary reading. Yet he deliberately chooses to write such a hateful, shallow, and glibly moralistic condemnation, playing on well-known imagery and canards, with an unmistakable bias.
Some have defended this man as merely trying to discuss the policies of the state of Israel.
Balderdash!
He is an anti-Semite.
He's something rotten in the state of Norway.
QUOTE:
The article compares Israel's government, the Afghan Taliban regime and South African apartheid, and states, "We no longer recognize the State of Israel" and "the State of Israel in its current form is history."
So I looked it up. The opinion piece. And translated it. I post the translation below. Please bear in mind that Norwegian is not a language that I am fluent in, wherefore my translation might be flawed. I have tried to represent the author's ideas accurately, but because I find his spew repellent I may have been handicapped.
[The original ('Guds Utvalgte Folk') may be found here: http://www.aftenposten.no/meninger/kronikker/article1411153.ece
For those who read Norwegian. And I would appreciate your letting me know of any mistakes I made in the translation. Thanks in advance.]
-----------------------------------
TRANSLATION:
GOD'S CHOSEN PEOPLE
By Jostein Gaarder
ISRAEL IS HISTORY. We no longer acknowledge the State of Israel. There is no way back. The State of Israel has violated the recognition of the world, and will get no peace until it lays down its weapons. The State of Israel in its current form is history, writes Jostein Gaarder.
It is time to learn a new slogan: We no longer recognize the State of Israel. We can't recognize the apartheid regime in South Africa, we didn't recognize the Afghani Taliban-regime. There were many who didn't recognize Saddam Hussein's Iraq, or the Serb ethnic cleansing. So now we must get used to the thought: the State of Israel, in its current form is history.
We do not believe in the pretensions of God's chosen people. We laugh at this people's misapprehensions and cry over its misdeeds. To pretend to be God's chosen people is not only stupid and arrogant, but an offense against all humanity; we call it racism.
LIMITS OF TOLERANCE
Patience has limits, and so does our tolerance. We don't believe in divine promises as a basis for occupation or apartheid. We have left the Middle Ages behind us. We are farklempt by those who believe that the god of plants, animals and galaxies had could make one people his favourite, and given them silly stone tablets, burning bushes, and a license to kill.
We call child-murders child-murderers, and shall not accept that such a people have a god-given or historical mandate that can excuse their reprehensible acts. We say: shame on all apartheid, shame on ethnic cleansing, shame on all terrorist strikes against a civilian population whether committed by Hamas, Hezbollah, or the State of Israel!
THE UNSCRUPULOUS ART OF WAR
We recognize and accept Europe's deep responsibility for the Jewish fate, for the scandalous mobbings (?), pogroms, and the Holocaust. It was historically and morally imperative that the Jews got their own home. However the State of Israel has, with its unscrupulous art of war and horrific weaponry, massacred its own legitimacy. It has systematically violated international laws, international conventions, and several UN resolutions, and can no longer expect amnesty from any responsibility. It has carpet bombed the world's recognition. But fear not - the perilous time is nearly over. Israel has seen its own Soweto.
We are at the brink, there is no retreat. The State of Israel has violated the world's recognition and will not have peace until it lays down its arms.
WITHOUT FORBEARING, WITHOUT SKIN
Let both wills and words blow Israel's apartheid walls over. The State of Israel does not exist. It is without forbearing now, without skin. May the world show mercy on the civilian population Our doomsaying is not directed at civilians.
We wish the people in Israel well, everything well, but with our reservation that we will not eat Jaffa oranges as long as they taste vile and poisonous. It was also easy to manage without the blue grapes of apartheid.
CELEBRATING TRIUMPH
We don't believe that Israel has greater sorrow for more than forty Lebanese children than f the three thousand years of lamenting over 40 years in the wasteland. We note that many Israelis celebrate such triumphs as once they celebrated the plagues, as appropriate punishment for the Egyptian people. (In this tale the Lord of Israel acts as an immeasurable sadist). We ask if for Israelis one Israeli life is worth more than that of forty Palestinians or Lebanese.
Because we have seen the pictures of Israeli girls who wrote spiteful messages on the bombs that were to be released over the civilian population of Lebanon and Palestine. Israeli girls are not charming when they rejoice in death and suffering on the other side.
VENGEFULL PAYBACK
We reject the rhetoric of the State of Israel. We reject the blood-drenched spiral of vengeance of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth". We reject the principle of thousands of Arab eyes for a few Israeli eye. We reject collective punishment or population purges as a political weapon. Two thousand years have gone by since a Jewish rabbi criticized the knackered doctrine of an "eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth".
He said: "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." We reject a state that is built on anti-humanitarian principles and the ruins of an archaic nationalist religion and warlike faith. As Albert Schweitzer explained, "humanity is to never sacrifice a human for a cause."
CHARITY AND MERCY
We do not recognize the old kingdom of David as being normative for the 21st century's map of the Middle-East. That Jewish rabbi asserted two thousand years ago that the kingdom of God is not a rebirth of the kingdom of David, but that the kingdom of God is within us and among us. God's kingdom is charity and mercy.
Two thousand years it has been since the Jewish rabbi unweaponed and humanized the knackered rhetoric of war, yet already in his time there the first Zionist terrorists operated.
ISRAEL DOES NOT LISTEN
For two thousand years we have stressed the concept of humanity, yet Israel does not listen. It was not the Pharisees who helped the man who lay on the side of the road because he had been attacked by robbers. It was a Samaritan, what today we would call a Palestinian. Because before everything else, we are human - whether Christian, Muslim, or Jew. Or as that Jewish rabbi said: "And if regard only your own, how are you different from others?" We reject the kidnapping for ransom of soldiers. But we also reject the deportation of entire groups of people and the abduction of lawfully elected parliamentarians or government functionaries also.
We recognize the State of Israel of 1948, but not of 1967. That is the State of Israel which doesn't recognize, respect, or yield to the legitimate state of 1948. Israel wants to have more - more water and more settlements. To achieve that some wish a final solution to the Palestinian problem, with god's help. "Palestinians have so many other countries", some Israeli politicians assert, "while we have just one".
USA OR THE WORLD
Or as the state of Israel's greatest protector puts it: "May God continue to bless America." A little child noticed this and turned to his mother, and asked: "Why does the president always end his speeches with 'God bless America'? Why does he not say 'God bless the world?'"
A Norwegian poet exclaimed the following childlike heart-sigh: "Whence mankind's slow progress?" He was the one who wrote so strikingly about "the Jew" and "the Jewess". But he rejected the the fantasy of a chosen people. He called himself a Mohammedan.
MERCY AND TOLERATION
We do not accept the State of Israel. Not today, not in this hour of writing, not in sorrow and wrath. If the nation of Israel should fall because of its own actions, and parts of its population must flee the occupied area and into another diaspora, then we say: May their hosts show them mercy and toleration. It is eternally an unjustifiable crime to lay a hand on refugees and the stateless.
Peace and the right of passage for an evacuating civilian populace that have no state shall protect them! Do not shoot at refugees! Do not target them! They are as vulnerable as snails without their shells now, vulnerable like the slow-moving columns of Palestinian and Lebanese refugees, defenseless as women, children, and old folks, in Qana, Gaza, Sabra and Shatila. Give the Israeli refugees shelter, give them milk and honey!
Don't let a single Israeli child die. Too many children and civilians have been murdered already.
Source: AFTENPOSTEN
Først publisert: 05.08.06 Oppdatert: 11.08.06 kl. 18:14
-----------------------------------
-----------------------------------
I'm not quite sure what he's getting at. But I will say that rather than exploring the causes of Middle-East strife in any depth, and examining the issues in detail, he shows the usual superficial judgementalism.
The inclusion of that reference to Jesus (whom he erroneously calls a rabbi) is disturbing, along with the accusations that immediately follow. Either one must assume a remarkably dense and blithering ignorance, OR, as is much more likely, he deliberately parrots the standard slanders of the church regarding Jews.
The mention of the Norwegian poet is baffling. Or a misapplied show of literacy.
The final part of his disquisition is vile. Utterly.
I do not think Jostein Gaarder ignorant. I cannot forgive him because he might not know what he is saying. This is an educated man, who is more than capable of becoming informed and doing the necessary reading. Yet he deliberately chooses to write such a hateful, shallow, and glibly moralistic condemnation, playing on well-known imagery and canards, with an unmistakable bias.
Some have defended this man as merely trying to discuss the policies of the state of Israel.
Balderdash!
He is an anti-Semite.
He's something rotten in the state of Norway.
Friday, August 04, 2006
NEGATIVE OPINIONS OF CHRISTIANS AND CHRISTIANITY
In a comment thread on Dovbear's blog (see this post: http://dovbear.blogspot.com/2006/07/another-of-of-our-very-best-friends.html ) I responded to a defense of Christianity by a visitor (RR).
Now bear in mind, bloggers truly like visitors. But there are visitors, and there are visitors..... And sometimes the visitor's comments veer so far off agenda that it is better to continue the discourse elsewhere -- such as right here, for instance. Welcome.
[My previous posting regarding this comment thread was here: http://atthebackofthehill.blogspot.com/2006/08/false-religions.html]
Now, let's take up the conversation where it was left off the last time.
What follows in large Italic is RR speaking, the text in regular type underneath is my response.
RR: "Like South Park, I declare "shenanigan" on the notion that atheism is in any way "an acceptable belief", especially since many atheists are required to hold "unacceptable beliefs" in order to deny God. "
[B.O.T.H.] Actually, atheists are not required to do so - there is no agency requiring anything at all of them. They merely do not believe.
RR: " "(Deut. verses 11/26 through 16/17)" That is just more evidence that it is possible to be Jewish and Christian "just as long as you do not tell anyone", and it is CERTAINLY preferable to being a proud, publicly declared, and evangelical atheist or secularist."
[B.O.T.H.] Not from within the context of those verses it ain't. It specifically refers to holding or doubting Jewish beliefs in one's public expression. Though Christians may have their own interpretation (as indeed they do about nearly everything), those verses can only be seen in light of the long speech by Moses, at the end of his years, to the Jews who will enter the land, telling them what they must do. And what they must do is be Jews. The Torah is not a book of random rules - everything in it must be seen in the context of the rest of it. And there is no other context to it than a Jewish context. What non-Jews do with the text has no validity in a Jewish context.
RR: "Now be perfectly honest with yourself: people can talk about Christianity and Jesus as much as they want around you so long as they are being negative about it. Right?"
[B.O.T.H.] Wrong. I much prefer not to even hear the name of that man, far less listen to any discussion about him. Stating negative things about him would scarce qualify as conversation - in that hardly anything at all of his life can be proven, and it is doubtful that he even existed. Lashon hara about a mythical personage would be rather silly, don't you think?
RR: "If you desire to hold onto negative opinions of Christianity and Christians so strongly that you cannot countenance someone objecting to blanket condemnations and correcting outright untruths, well then your problem is not with Christianity or Christians but with yourself."
[B.O.T.H.] My opinions of Christianity and Christians are based on much exposure to and familiarity with Christianity and Christians. So much so that I feel I have had enough exposure and familiarity, and do not need more.
-----------------------------------
Charlie Hall (whose blog is here: http://charliehall.blogspot.com/ ) wrote this in the comment thread:
RR,
WADR, you clearly do not understand Judaism. Several of us have tried to explain some basic concepts to you and you have rejected them. In particular, there is NO Jewish group that is accepted as Jewish that accepts the idea that it is possible to be both a Jew and a Christian. A Jew who rejects part or even all of the Jewish tradition is still a Jew. But a Jew who actually joins a different religion is no longer considered a Jew for most purposes.
You don't have to like that. You don't have to think it makes any sense. You don't even have to accept it. But that is irrelevant. It is the way it is. We didn't make it up. And we aren't going to change it.
But if you can't accept it, please comment on other kinds of blogs than Orthodox Jewish blogs. We aren't here to debate religion with non-Jews. In fact, according to some of the most distinguished rabbis of our times, we can't -- it violates Jewish law. All we can do is state the facts.
I'm not anti-Christian. But many Jews are, in part because of the refusal by many Christians to accept Jewish teaching as legitimate. Please don't help to create more anti-Christian Jews.
Charlie Hall 08.04.06 - 2:48 am #
I am sorry - I just felt I had to gild the lilly, and expand a little on Charlie Hall's message.
I wrote:
RR,
One thing which Charlie Hall failed to mention must also be said. Namely that arguing from a pro-Christian point of view here does not advance our understanding of Jewish issues, and could well make those who are only marginally negative about Christianity much more so.
I will not claim for myself to be a halachic or hashkafic expert - but debating Christianity with you will certainly not make me one. Nor will it make you one either.
Again, I cannot speak for others here.... but you are certainly not the first convinced Christian I have encountered. I've already been exposed to the Christian points of view regarding these matters. I suspect (and correct me if I'm wrong, folks) that the others here have also been through versions of this before.
Lastly, I am not Rabbi Moises ben Nachman, and you are not Pablo Cristiani - is it not ridiculous to even have this conversation?
With each iteration I become more convinced that Christianity is utterly defective, whereas you merely become more convinced that I am wrong.
The Back of the Hill Homepage 08.04.06 - 6:14 pm #
The main reason why I've posted about these matters is because to a certain extent I needed to clarify my own point of view. Secondarily, of course, I often have this slightly tingly feeling in my solar plexus everytime that someone gets defensive about Christianity - it isn't like it's a religion in any great danger, except from its practitioners. Why then must one vociferously defend it?
Those who truly wish to delve into its mysteries can surely find a host of welcoming websites, libraries, and ritualariums, in addition to all manner of outreach?
Unlike Judaism, Christianity is a missionary religion. It has a marketing department.
Now bear in mind, bloggers truly like visitors. But there are visitors, and there are visitors..... And sometimes the visitor's comments veer so far off agenda that it is better to continue the discourse elsewhere -- such as right here, for instance. Welcome.
[My previous posting regarding this comment thread was here: http://atthebackofthehill.blogspot.com/2006/08/false-religions.html]
Now, let's take up the conversation where it was left off the last time.
What follows in large Italic is RR speaking, the text in regular type underneath is my response.
RR: "Like South Park, I declare "shenanigan" on the notion that atheism is in any way "an acceptable belief", especially since many atheists are required to hold "unacceptable beliefs" in order to deny God. "
[B.O.T.H.] Actually, atheists are not required to do so - there is no agency requiring anything at all of them. They merely do not believe.
RR: " "(Deut. verses 11/26 through 16/17)" That is just more evidence that it is possible to be Jewish and Christian "just as long as you do not tell anyone", and it is CERTAINLY preferable to being a proud, publicly declared, and evangelical atheist or secularist."
[B.O.T.H.] Not from within the context of those verses it ain't. It specifically refers to holding or doubting Jewish beliefs in one's public expression. Though Christians may have their own interpretation (as indeed they do about nearly everything), those verses can only be seen in light of the long speech by Moses, at the end of his years, to the Jews who will enter the land, telling them what they must do. And what they must do is be Jews. The Torah is not a book of random rules - everything in it must be seen in the context of the rest of it. And there is no other context to it than a Jewish context. What non-Jews do with the text has no validity in a Jewish context.
RR: "Now be perfectly honest with yourself: people can talk about Christianity and Jesus as much as they want around you so long as they are being negative about it. Right?"
[B.O.T.H.] Wrong. I much prefer not to even hear the name of that man, far less listen to any discussion about him. Stating negative things about him would scarce qualify as conversation - in that hardly anything at all of his life can be proven, and it is doubtful that he even existed. Lashon hara about a mythical personage would be rather silly, don't you think?
RR: "If you desire to hold onto negative opinions of Christianity and Christians so strongly that you cannot countenance someone objecting to blanket condemnations and correcting outright untruths, well then your problem is not with Christianity or Christians but with yourself."
[B.O.T.H.] My opinions of Christianity and Christians are based on much exposure to and familiarity with Christianity and Christians. So much so that I feel I have had enough exposure and familiarity, and do not need more.
I am sorry (but NOT repentant) that it seems that it seems to you that I have negative opinions - I merely meant to convey that I have no positive opinion of Christianity and Christians.
-----------------------------------
Charlie Hall (whose blog is here: http://charliehall.blogspot.com/ ) wrote this in the comment thread:
RR,
WADR, you clearly do not understand Judaism. Several of us have tried to explain some basic concepts to you and you have rejected them. In particular, there is NO Jewish group that is accepted as Jewish that accepts the idea that it is possible to be both a Jew and a Christian. A Jew who rejects part or even all of the Jewish tradition is still a Jew. But a Jew who actually joins a different religion is no longer considered a Jew for most purposes.
You don't have to like that. You don't have to think it makes any sense. You don't even have to accept it. But that is irrelevant. It is the way it is. We didn't make it up. And we aren't going to change it.
But if you can't accept it, please comment on other kinds of blogs than Orthodox Jewish blogs. We aren't here to debate religion with non-Jews. In fact, according to some of the most distinguished rabbis of our times, we can't -- it violates Jewish law. All we can do is state the facts.
I'm not anti-Christian. But many Jews are, in part because of the refusal by many Christians to accept Jewish teaching as legitimate. Please don't help to create more anti-Christian Jews.
Charlie Hall 08.04.06 - 2:48 am #
I am sorry - I just felt I had to gild the lilly, and expand a little on Charlie Hall's message.
I wrote:
RR,
One thing which Charlie Hall failed to mention must also be said. Namely that arguing from a pro-Christian point of view here does not advance our understanding of Jewish issues, and could well make those who are only marginally negative about Christianity much more so.
I will not claim for myself to be a halachic or hashkafic expert - but debating Christianity with you will certainly not make me one. Nor will it make you one either.
Again, I cannot speak for others here.... but you are certainly not the first convinced Christian I have encountered. I've already been exposed to the Christian points of view regarding these matters. I suspect (and correct me if I'm wrong, folks) that the others here have also been through versions of this before.
Lastly, I am not Rabbi Moises ben Nachman, and you are not Pablo Cristiani - is it not ridiculous to even have this conversation?
With each iteration I become more convinced that Christianity is utterly defective, whereas you merely become more convinced that I am wrong.
The Back of the Hill Homepage 08.04.06 - 6:14 pm #
------------------
The main reason why I've posted about these matters is because to a certain extent I needed to clarify my own point of view. Secondarily, of course, I often have this slightly tingly feeling in my solar plexus everytime that someone gets defensive about Christianity - it isn't like it's a religion in any great danger, except from its practitioners. Why then must one vociferously defend it?
Those who truly wish to delve into its mysteries can surely find a host of welcoming websites, libraries, and ritualariums, in addition to all manner of outreach?
Unlike Judaism, Christianity is a missionary religion. It has a marketing department.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
THE BLESSED FEET
After a few days at work dealing with old white rightwing conspiracy paranoiacs in Marin I am perhaps not as perfectly tolerant as could be ...
