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in fact, what it makes clear that you cannot become truly human without knowing the difference between good and evil. adam, in the edenic state, was not truly human - he had neither free-will, nor, consequently, did he have to bear the consequences of his actions, namely, the potential for sin...

er, yefet; the talmud mentions neither ze'ir anpin nor nuqba in any explicit sense, nor would i leap straight into kabbalistic terminology in this discussion at this time to make this point - particularly if you're dealing with someone that actually splits G!D into god and mrs god, G!D Forbid...

well, my question stands. now i don't know much about science, but as i remember there's no way we evolved our brain cases and jaws without being carnivorous. as for wearing clothes due to increasing hairlessness, i presume that has other perfectly good evolutionary reasons. i don't see how the...

because then i wouldn't be answering that question as a traditionally-minded jew. naturally, i cannot expect that everyone else has the same assumptions as myself. yes, so you keep saying on numerous threads, but, not even you can be *absolutely* sure of that. and, indeed, the original text...

no, it really isn't. "wedlock" doesn't have anything to do with it; a child is only a "mamzer" if the parents would have been disqualified from marriage by reason of incest or adultery. i don't think this is correct. the issue of jewish children of rape by non-jews has been unfortunately a...

oh, ffs, not this again. what you are talking about is not judaism, but the idolatry referred to from the book of joshua till the destruction of the first Temple. it certainly happened, but it isn't judaism. it is what judaism rejects. b'shalom bananabrain

er, yes. hello to you. b'shalom bananabrain

well, ok then - the "plausible deniability", in our view, is there to remind us that no matter what we think, we cannot be *absolutely* sure what G!D Wants, so ascribing something to a "miracle" does not enable us to know precisely what G!D happens to Be up to in any given situation. we cannot...

*snort* that made me grin. ok, it's like this. free will is the ability to make choices, to choose. if there is no such thing as time, then there is no real difference between before you chose and after you chose, they're both existing in the same space. in linear time, therefore, choice can...

of course it can, particularly if you rule out such things a priori. however, the typical jewish position on this is that G!D Maintains "plausible deniability" on miracles, both to prevent sloppy thinking and complacency and to encourage responsible behaviour by humans. in fact, there's a famous...

so, not a discussion thread then? one of the things i like most about as a theory of miracles is the sort of "half-life" concept you find in the daily prayers: the "miracles that are with us every day". if you think about it, we only really get through every day as a result of horrible stuff...

and, let me tell you, jesus was, if the gospels are to be believed, extremely good at backing his stuff up with text and, in many cases, with his knowledge of the halakhah. b'shalom bananabrain

based on what? verses 1-4 provide part of the lead-up to the flood, there's no lack of context, it's all about the wickedness of society. and from that to "ezra did it" is a ridiculous leap. b'shalom bananabrain

pluckyali: firstly welcome back and i hope you have had fun at uni. i have heard the same thing that abdullah says. i work with a hanafi chap who also adheres to this interpretation, that the whole ankle-showing thing is nowadays itself a manifestation of pride, so he doesn't approve of it. in...

well, as i say, samson is not someone who we particularly venerate; i mean, compared to, say, elijah, or deborah, or solomon. we were never much for action man heroes, even of the flawed type. however, in the context, samson was one of the best of a rather poor bunch - i mean, look at jephthah...

as a babylonian (i.e. iraqi) jew, i can pretty much tell you that it is also literally true, or the 2nd Temple would never have been built, nor would we distinguish between the Oral Law that was written in israel (the mishnah and jerusalem talmud) and that which was written elsewhere (the...

as ben alludes earlier, why not find out what we actually *mean* rather than quoting tired old chestnut polemics. we do *not* think "chosen" means "better". clear enough? it is "chosen to do what we do and be whatever we are", not "chosen to be #1". and, indeed, that is what we maintain. G!D...

oh, arafat did actually understand what was necessary - he just didn't have the balls to do it and take on the entrenched opinions he had spent so many years building and supporting. he saw what happened to rabin, he saw what happened to sadat and king abdullah I - and he bottled it, preferring...

OH, DO BE QUIET.

i think it makes rather a large difference that samson was actually a captive of the philistines at the time and they were publicly humiliating him in order to blaspheme against G!D; he did not wake up one day and go down to their temple to attack them on market day. if you put anyone in a...