Wandering Monk
Well-Known Member
Joseph Campbell had a story about a Jewish student of his. He noted that her identity was almost totally wrapped up in being Jewish and had little sense of her own individuality.
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Techelet: The Blood of God.
- Thread starter John D. Brey
- Start date
Joseph Campbell had a story about a Jewish student of his. He noted that her identity was almost totally wrapped up in being Jewish and had little sense of her own individuality.
Is that bad? I think in philosophical terms, he witnessed a case of tensions between the classical opposites: Athens and Jerusalem. Being part of the community, of the people of Israel is a key factor in one's Jewish identity. Yet Western civilization is entrenched deeply in individualism. It seems that Campbell (based merely on how you put it, as I don't know what really went on there) could not grasp the importance of the community aspect of Judaism, being a Westerner.
John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
. . . You wouldn't by chance have a reference for that statement from Campbell would you? I'm not familiar with it and would like some context if you have a citation?
Fwiw, Rabbi Neusner, in his rather brilliant, "A Rabbi Talks with Jesus," claims that he concedes Jesus is the greatest Torah scholar of his day (and gives reasons why) but that he still wouldn't follow him as a disciple for one reason. He says Jesus looked the individual Jew in the eye and said, can, will, you follow me, while Moses called to the community. . . That's the reason Rabbi Neusner gives for rejecting Jesus. Jesus wants individuals who can swallow him, while Moses and his angel want a clique, ethnicity, or race.
John
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Wandering Monk
Well-Known Member
No. It was in his series Mythos I believe. I watched it several years ago, but I don't know when the series was produced.
John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
. . . But you acknowledge that a person who isn't ethnically Jewish (doesn't acknowledge or practice any such ethnic proclivity), and who isn't religiously Jewish (doesn't acknowledge or practice any such religion), is still Jewish?
Which implies Jewish identity, at least for them, isn't religious or ethnic?
John
John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
. . . The problem is it goes beyond everything. In other words, you don't have to read or believe the Torah, or the God of the Torah, don't have to be religious, don't have to consider yourself Jewish, can be an atheist, can have never read or done anything Jewish, and yet according to the requirements of Judaism, you can still be Jewish.
It isn't racial. It's not biological. So it can't really be passed on in utero. So what is it if it doesn't require genes/biology, religion, or ethnicity?
John
Not at all.
That's not how ethnicity works. I don't know where you're getting your definitions from. Ethnicity isn't based on a person's acknowledgement. If that were true, then yes, Elizabeth Warren would, indeed, be a Native American and different people claiming to be people of Israel, would, in fact, be people of Israel. Black Hebrew Israelites would be Jews just because they say they are. You get the gist, right?
If you check what the Jewish religion has to say, then in fact, everyone has to keep the religion. That's an important thing to point out.
However, yes, sinning doesn't cancel one's "Jew card".
Well, it certainly is ethnical. You just decided to invent a new meaning for ethnicity. The requirements of joining the Jewish ethnicity are deeply grounded in the Jewish religion. Whosoever is considered a Jew by Halacha, passes there Jewishness over.
As to why the Nazis hated Jews, I have something of an answer, but it's a religious one. Probably won't float your boat.
John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
You've agreed that you don't have to be ethnically Jewish to be Jewish. You've agreed you don't have to be religiously Jewish to be Jewish. And though you and Judaism claim having a Jewish mother makes you Jewish, that would imply that it can be passed on in utero, which would make it biological.
John
John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
Then are you associating ethnicity with biology? Is it passed on genetically? And if so, then why would someone converting to become a Jew have to pass a test on Jewish religion? Can Jewish religion be passed on in utero?
In other words, why can a Jewish mother who is an atheist, and whose mother, and mother's mother were atheist, give birth to a Jew, who say is also an atheist, while if I want to become a Jew I have to pass a religious exam? I can't become a Jew while remaining an atheist.
Do Jews just have religion in their genes . . . such that even if they're atheists, the genetic religious component in their biology covers for them?
John
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John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
To become a Jew I can't be an atheist. I have to accept Jewish religion. So how can someone be Jewish even if they're an atheist just because their mother, who might also be atheist, was allegedly Jewish.
The question is what does it mean to be Jewish if to become a Jew requires Jewish religion, but to be born one has nothing to do with, nor does it require, Jewish religion.
Can you see that this looks like spiritual racism? Jews can be born to an atheist, and be a card carrying atheist, and God still gives them their Jew card, as you say. But anyone else has to pass the Jewish religion test. How can that not be bigotry? Jews are born good. Non-Jews must pass a religious litmus test. And if they flunk they're not good enough to be Jews.
It actually gets even weirder, since if I convert and become a Jew (say I pass the religion test and get my Jew card), I can't pass that on to my offspring. But if my sister converts and becomes a Jew, she can pass it on to her offspring, will pass it on to her offspring, whether they're atheist or want to be Jewish or not.
John
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I have not. The Jewish ethnicity has decided who is considered a member of the group. I've already said this.
Yes and no. A child of a Jewish man and a non-Jewish woman is not Jewish. It's genetics based on the ethnical terms ascribed by the Jewish religion. It's not as simple as 1+1=2.
Because life is not fair.
Do you want a religious answer or a scientific answer?
"Jews are born good", as opposed to non-Jewish babies who are pure evil, said no serious Jewish authority ever.
To be clear, you've moved from what makes a person a Jew to why born-Jews are different from Jewish converts.
I'll start off with the basic answer. Life isn't fair. Some young woke Americans that do nothing to contribute to society and whine all day long and protest and riot and take down statues and burn Bibles were born Americans, while immigrants have to put in a lot of work and move through several levels of bureaucracy and wait, I believe, five years, whilst proving that they can be contributing members of the American society, just to get citizenship. That's not fair, is it? But the ethnic group or society has the freedom to decide who gets to be a part of their group.
On a deeper level, there is a difference between a Jew and a non-Jew. Both are called goyim, because all of mankind are divided into different nations. Each nation has a role to fulfill in the world. Jews have one role, non-Jewish nations have other roles. As former reverend, current Noahide J. David Davis put it, when asked by a Jew why he didn't pursue Jewish conversion: "Just like it's your job to be the best Jew you can possibly be, it's my job to be the best goy I can possibly be."
Part of the Jewish role in the world is not to remain a bunch of secularists. That's not a good thing. I cannot stress this enough. No one thinks Jewish secularism is good. At best, it has some value in shaping the Jewish people, but inherently, it's not good.
Going deeper, born Jews inherent a kind of spiritual seed or kernel. One term for it in Hebrew is Segulat Yisrael. Arguably, non-Jews have their own seeds. Americans have Segulat America. Greeks have Segulat Greece. To each nation their own inherent value. I can love the Italians as much as I want, but I won't be able to become an Italian in the deep, spiritual sense because I did not inherent their Segulah.
Now, if non-Jews really want something more in terms of Godly worship and are not satisfied with their roles as non-Jews, they have the ability to pursue conversion. As stated above, that comes with certain terms in order to gain access to the Jewish Segulah. Know that their Jewish children will be 100% Jewish in all ways as those descended from the Israelites of ancient times. But like immigrants to the US, the converts themselves are not exactly like the kids born in the US.
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@John D. Brey another thing, clearly at this point you're realizing that there many things in Judaism that you disagree with. Merely based on your last few threads, I can say that there are many more things, you just aren't aware of them. Why would you even want to be Jewish? Non-Jews can get into the world to come along with Jews and need to put in much less work.
Wandering Monk
Well-Known Member
And there are those who convert. They have no in utero connection at all, so biology is ALSO ruled out.
It seems ultimately to boil down to whether you are accepted as Jewish by other Jews.
John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
I don't question the logic or truth of any of the strange nuances related to Jewish identity. Imo, they're all legitimate and brilliant, as are all the decrees given to Israel.
It's only the interpretation and lack of insight whereby Jews, who don't know the spirit of a given chok חק, a decree (in this case Jewish identity), make up ways to explain it, them (chukkim), as though the true meaning, which hasn't been given to them, needn't ever be known, or isn't even real.
Many decrees, like say circumcision, are said to be "signs." And in scripture, a "sign" signifies something it's merely the signifier of. Ritual circumcision is a sign. It signifies something it's not. Ritual circumcision points to a reality that it's merely pointing to. It's not the reality itself. Just the symbol pointing to the reality.
Judaism claims that when Messiah comes, he'll reveal the significance of the decrees and signs that have no known rational meaning prior to his coming.
Unfortunately Messiah is a couple thousand years late. So Judaism has unified the decree and its sign as though they're some strange new reality that doesn't have to be rational or logical (ala your attempt to make rational/logical sense of Jewish identity) though Judaism fails, as they must, because they don't have the "spirit" of Jewish identity required to make the decrees logical or rational.
The "spirit" of the decrees, belongs to Messiah. So in his absence, Jews have taken to treating signs as though they don't signify anything but that Jews are the good guys, so leave it at that: you just can't understand it because you're not Jewish.
Jewish identity is logical, rational, knowable, and undeniable (within a universal logic and rationality). What Jews do when, not knowing the spirit of the identity (because they don't know Messiah), they pretend it's either just inscrutable, or is inscrutable to non-Jews who won't accept it blindly like they will, or worse, that they understand the logic and reason of the sign/decree, when they don't, that's extremely problematic and leads very intelligent and open-minded people to start questioning what's going on in Judaism.
When you pretend that biology and religion can mix, or that it's not mixing it just looks like it is, or that for Jews its not mixing though all other rational thought says it's mixing, that's a farce. And it's a farce based on conflating a sign so that it doesn't have to signify the spirit it's merely designed to signify.
The decrees concerning Jewish identity are the "sign" of a spiritual identity that's not subsumed in the decrees or the flesh and blood of the people who carry the decrees in their flesh and blood. Until the arrival of Messiah, Jews are merely the fleshly guardians of the spirit of a covenant that begins with Messiah. The guardians were not given the meaning of the decrees and signs even though they were the legitimate guardians of those signs and decrees, and are immeasurably faithful to their mission as guardians.
Today we live in a bizarre bifurcated dimension whereby, by the councils of God's own will, for reasons only he fully understands, Messiah came, revealed himself not to the guardians of the covenant, but to the other nations . . . leaving Israel's revelation of Messiah undone for a time and a season and a reason, that I strain with all my might to decipher from the spirit of God and the written text that guards that spirit.
John
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John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
. . . As I quoted Raphael Patai suggesting. . . .But that's a farce so far as a universal logic and reasonableness are concerned.
And I don't say that to deny a single decree related to Israel or Judaism. I not only believe in them (the decrees) 100%, but I believe they can all be understood rationally, and logically, if you possess the spirit necessary to make the logic work.
Take for instance the Jewish law that Jewish identity is only passed on through the mother in utero (the father contributes nothing to the process so far as the Jewish element is concerned). Logically that's absurd. Rationally that's absurd.
And yet there's a way to make it make perfect, even scientific, sense. There's a way to make every decree, every sign, given in the Tanakh, make perfect logical, rational, scientific, sense. And not just to Jews. They can be brought into a universal sign language that makes sense to anyone, even an atheist, within a reasonable, logical, context.
John
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You say you don't question the Jewish identity.
Then you say:
So you do question the Jewish identity.
In other words, you deny the Jewish meaning of the Jewish identity and instead implement your own meaning to the Jewish identity.
What can I say, this has been done by several mainstream religions and many cults over the last couple of millennia. This is nothing new.
Notice, everything you write on your threads is your own interpretation of Jewish concepts. You continuously deny real Jewish ideas, preferring your own instead. What little of what you write that can seemingly be grounded in Jewish scholarship, you bring those sources as purported evidence. I notice that the only Orthodox source you bring is Rabbi Hirsch. I wonder why you bring Rabbi Hirsch, but I don't wonder why you don't bring any other Orthodox scholars. It's because in your mind, all Orthodox scholars, those that continue the tradition of thought going back at least to the Second Temple era Pharisees, are wrong. Dead wrong. They have no clue about Torah. On the other hand, you like folks like Boyarin, presumably because he's part of the "reclaiming the Jewish Jesus" movement. Now there's a guy who know what he's talking about! And why? Because he actually finds something worthwhile in Jesus and the early Christians. I have much to say about that movement (having played around with the notion myself in the past), but that is not the topic at hand. In truth, your religious title as "Christian" suits you perfectly, because you bring nothing new to the table. It's been hashed out many, many times before this thread. Jews of course do not understand Judaism; the true Jews are the Christians or the Muslims or the Baha'is or the Black Hebrew Israelites. Whatever may be the case, but the bottom line is: Jews are fakers and know nothing of scripture.
Next time you wonder why you are not being accepted by Jews, it's for this reason.
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As are the USA's conditions for citizenship, right?
@John D. Brey you know what else defies logic? That a so-called deity would say that a covenant is eternal and then change his mind about that.
John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
Your charge pivots on the distinction between an "interpretation" versus a "meaning." You don't appear to think of the Jewish interpretation of the Torah text as one interpretation among many, but as the sole "meaning" of the text.
But the Torah text is subject to more than one interpretation. And "meaning" comes out of interpretation. Interpretation doesn't, legitimately, come out of meaning (as you seem to be implying).
Case in point:
The statement above assumes that "real Jewish ideas" aren't "interpretations" but sole meanings. It implies that Jews, and Jews alone, know what the Torah text means. And thus that they interpret the text correctly since they already know what it means, because they're Jewish.
But that's simply false in every way. The text must be interpreted before its meaning can be deciphered. Meaning comes out of interpretation, interpretation doesn't come out of meaning.
Truth-be-known, I've quoted hundreds of pages worth of Rashi, Ibn Ezra, Nachmanides, Abarbanel, and too many others to list. I quote Rabbi Hirsch the most because he's my Jewish mentor. I love him more than I can express. He is closest to my own thinking of any of the other Jewish sages or scholars whom I also quote extensively.
I rarely quote any Jewish sage to imply he's wrong. I imply he's right, and since he's right . . .
Have you read Boyarin? He is a very brilliant Jewish scholar. He is in no way an apologist for Jesus or Christianity. He's as Jewish as you are. . . Like me, he subjects all his thoughts and arguments to a universal logic and reason that doesn't consider Jewish or Christian orthodoxy to be ways of thinking that trump logic, reason, and truth.
I would say that for Boyarin, as for myself, Judaism is true, while Jewish orthodoxy is often weak, and transitory . . . sometimes willing to lie, and deceive, if they don't know the true answer, or can't bring logic to explain what they know to be true but can't show to be true.
John
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John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
In an excellent book by Professor Moshe Idel, Hebrew University, Absorbing Perfections, he quotes a Jewish sage from the Middle Ages saying:
And the Rabbi, our master R. Elijah ha-Kohen, may his memory be blessed, the author of Shevet Mussar, and more [books], has written in a manuscript treatise [Quntres]: It should be assumed that this [nonvocalized] Torah, which was in front of the Holy One, blessed be He, before it was delivered to the mundane realm, its letters were in the [same] number in His front, but it was not formed into words as is the case today. And the reason for its arrangement [in words] is [to reflect] the way the world behaves. Because of Adam's sin, He arranged the letters in front of Him, according to the words describing death and the levirate and other issues. Without sin there would have been no death, and He would not have arranged the letters into words telling another issue. This is the reason the scroll of the Torah is neither vocalized nor divided into verses, nor does it have cantillation marks, thus hinting at the original state of the Torah, [consisting in] a heap of unarranged letters. And the purpose of His intention is that when the king messiah will come and death will be engulfed forever, there will be no room in the Torah for anything related to death, uncleannes, and the like, then the Holy One, blessed be He, will annul the words of the scroll of the Torah, and He will join a letter of one word to a letter of another word in order to create a word that will point to another matter. And this is [the meaning of] "A new Torah will proceed from Me." Is not [however] the Torah eternal? [The answer is] the scroll of the Torah will be as it is now, but the Holy One, blessed be He, will teach its reading according to the arrangement of the measure of the letters that He will be joining to each other to form one word, and He will teach us the [new] division and the joining of the words. [All bracketed words are in Idel's translation.]
The covenant is eternal. But it's subject to more than one interpretation. In his wisdom, grace, and love, God designed a way, a text, that can serve one covenant in its many manifestations without contradiction existing between the various manifestations of the covenant.
All contradiction between the Tanakh and the Gospel and Apostolic Writings are contradictions based in arrogance and ethnicity publicizing pablum. There are no contradictions between the Tanakh and the Gospels and Apostolic writings. Only misinterpretations of the text based on the two primary orthodoxies positioning themselves for glory in the kingdom while they stab their brothers in the back.
John