John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
My position is not that Jews or anyone else should be forbidden from labeling themselves any way they chose. Far from it. My position is that Jews, or anyone else, who distort the distinction between a subjective judicial label (based say on Jewish law) versus an objective real label (based on objective/universal logic, science, reason, fact, biology, physics) are creating a dangerous situation by skewing, or denying, the distinction between subjectivism versus objectivism.
For instance, earlier you implied that I "deny" the Jewish meaning of Jewish identity and instead implement my own meaning to the Jewish identity. Your statement has, implicit to its semantics, the idea that the Jewish understanding of Jewish identity is not just subjectively true (by Jewish law, and Jewish consent, both of which are totally legit) but that it's also objectively true such that my interpretation of the logical facts presented to explain Jewish identity are somehow wrong based on your collapsing of the distinction between a subjective truth (Jewish law), versus an objective truth (biology, physics, universal logic, etc.).
Jews can define their identity any way they choose. But if they choose to identify themselves in a manner that makes no sense to non-Jews, and they claim that it doesn't make sense to non-Jews precisely because they're not Jewish, that is a flawed circular position in that it makes Jewish subjective understanding, belief, and truth, objectively true, not because it abides by universal logic, objective, understanding/reason (biology physics, etc.), but because it collapses the very distinction between what is true or factual for a Jew, versus what is true or factual for a non-Jew, therein separating Jews from the universal logic, reason, understanding, of non-Jews, and doing it in a manner that devalues, demeans, and delimits, non-Jewish logic, reason, and understanding. In effect it says, as Jews have said to me for decades: ". . . don't worry about it, your not Jewish and can't understand it for that reason."
In this unique Jewish hyper-exclusive theological construct, Jews literally have a communal reality (Jews only), which is not just their own subjective conceptualism, or their shared theology, it’s not just theory, or lived practice among Jews, for their own sake (all of which is legitimate), but is believed by many orthodox practitioners to be really, physically, literally, and metaphysically, immune from certain realities (facts & truths) which no other human being can jettison like the Jew believes he can. For instance, the universal requirement to obtain a mediator in order to have contact with a wholly other being (even if the mediator can be jettisoned after the mediation is established).
It's one thing to say, for the sake of not wanting to offend, that Jesus Saves is fine for you non-Jews. A knock yourself out (kind of a statement). . . . But it becomes potentially sinister when, and if (only “if” mind you), a Jew really believes that even if Jesus Saves non-Jews, if Jesus is truly the Messiah and God/man for all non-Jews, that reality, even if universally true, (i.e., Jesus is the Savior of all mankind) is meaningless, and doesn’t hold true for the Jew. . . . It's like saying, we share your country, we share your President, we share the physics that make up our bodies and which make the world go round, but we are, know, have, something that isn't even real for non-Jews, such that Jesus, even if he saves the whole universe (really, truly), doesn't matter to a hill of beans to Jews because we aren't fundamentally the same as everyone else and therein don't require the same things non-Jew might actually require (but which we don’t think or worry about).
We're not talking about subjective beliefs here. It's fine for Jews or anyone else to believe whatever they want, and share those beliefs with whomever wants to believe them. It's fine to believe Jesus is a fraud (and not God), and that the idea of a man-God is false through and through. But hyper-exclusive Jewish theology appear to go dangerously further by implying that universal truths, or truths that are completely and unequivocally true, about the world, and mankind in general, and God in general, are not true for one singular group, Jews. And for one singular, meontological, reason, and one reason alone, they are Jews and not non-Jews.
There's no other reason, no other rhyme, for such a division-causing belief, for if there we're, then some shared objective understanding of the division, some rhyme or reason that rings as true for the non-Jew, as for the Jew, about Jewish exclusivity, would stand to mediate, and thus mitigate somewhat, the very division the mediation bridges.
If there were some objective reality, shared by Jew and non-Jew, that could explain the nature (essence) of Jewish identity which makes the Jew wholly other from all others, then that objective knowledge, shared between Jew and non-Jew, would bridge the gap and close the fissure, rendering Jewish exclusivity true only for a time, i.e., before the shared knowledge that forms the mediation closes the fissure, and for the sake of some higher principle requiring, for a time, the division and absolute exclusivity of Jewish identity (but only for a time).
Jews, like everyone else, are free to believe anything they like, about themselves and others, about God and the universe. No one should argue otherwise. But there's one belief that's singularly unique to Jews, exclusive to Jews, that crosses (so to say) the line, into a meontology that’s unmediatable with non-Jews by reason of the meontological nature of the alleged, or real, division.
It's the belief that Jews inhabit a separate reality from non-Jews. Not a separate thought-space, or idea-realm, or theological worldview (all of which are fine and dandy), but a genuinely real separation that allows truths that are concrete, tangible, real, non-negotiable elements of every other human’s existence (we're talking objective reality not mere Gentile subjectively), are just as objectively, really, and genuinely, not real for Jews for the singular and expressed reason that they’re Jews, and not non-Jews. Jewish identity ---itself--- alone--- being the meontological essence whose essential nature is that it’s not an essence like any other, nor mediate-able by means of any shared, essential, non-Jewish reality.
The Chosen חשן.
If anyone were to understand the argument being made about Jewish identity above, the ultimate paradox, of shocking dimensions, would be when I tell them that I actually accept the legitimacy of the Jewish position as described above. I agree with the meontological nature of Jewish identity and reality, such that my only qualm is with Jews who don't know, admit, understand, that their identity, according to their law and their scriptures, is meontological, and not logical, is tautological, and not essentialist, such that they try, because they believe it to be the case, to explain, or defend, to their own psyche, and others, their Jewish identity as though it's explainable, or understandable, when tautologies and meontologies cannot be made logical in a universal sense.It's one thing to say, for the sake of not wanting to offend, that Jesus Saves is fine for you non-Jews. A knock yourself out (kind of a statement). . . . But it becomes potentially sinister when, and if (only “if” mind you), a Jew really believes that even if Jesus Saves non-Jews, if Jesus is truly the Messiah and God/man for all non-Jews, that reality, even if universally true, (i.e., Jesus is the Savior of all mankind) is meaningless, and doesn’t hold true for the Jew. . . . It's like saying, we share your country, we share your President, we share the physics that make up our bodies and which make the world go round, but we are, know, have, something that isn't even real for non-Jews, such that Jesus, even if he saves the whole universe (really, truly), doesn't matter to a hill of beans to Jews because we aren't fundamentally the same as everyone else and therein don't require the same things non-Jew might actually require (but which we don’t think or worry about).
We're not talking about subjective beliefs here. It's fine for Jews or anyone else to believe whatever they want, and share those beliefs with whomever wants to believe them. It's fine to believe Jesus is a fraud (and not God), and that the idea of a man-God is false through and through. But hyper-exclusive Jewish theology appear to go dangerously further by implying that universal truths, or truths that are completely and unequivocally true, about the world, and mankind in general, and God in general, are not true for one singular group, Jews. And for one singular, meontological, reason, and one reason alone, they are Jews and not non-Jews.
There's no other reason, no other rhyme, for such a division-causing belief, for if there we're, then some shared objective understanding of the division, some rhyme or reason that rings as true for the non-Jew, as for the Jew, about Jewish exclusivity, would stand to mediate, and thus mitigate somewhat, the very division the mediation bridges.
If there were some objective reality, shared by Jew and non-Jew, that could explain the nature (essence) of Jewish identity which makes the Jew wholly other from all others, then that objective knowledge, shared between Jew and non-Jew, would bridge the gap and close the fissure, rendering Jewish exclusivity true only for a time, i.e., before the shared knowledge that forms the mediation closes the fissure, and for the sake of some higher principle requiring, for a time, the division and absolute exclusivity of Jewish identity (but only for a time).
Jews, like everyone else, are free to believe anything they like, about themselves and others, about God and the universe. No one should argue otherwise. But there's one belief that's singularly unique to Jews, exclusive to Jews, that crosses (so to say) the line, into a meontology that’s unmediatable with non-Jews by reason of the meontological nature of the alleged, or real, division.
It's the belief that Jews inhabit a separate reality from non-Jews. Not a separate thought-space, or idea-realm, or theological worldview (all of which are fine and dandy), but a genuinely real separation that allows truths that are concrete, tangible, real, non-negotiable elements of every other human’s existence (we're talking objective reality not mere Gentile subjectively), are just as objectively, really, and genuinely, not real for Jews for the singular and expressed reason that they’re Jews, and not non-Jews. Jewish identity ---itself--- alone--- being the meontological essence whose essential nature is that it’s not an essence like any other, nor mediate-able by means of any shared, essential, non-Jewish reality.
The Chosen חשן.
John
