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When I first read this thread's headline, "Do you pray for Restaurant meals?" my thought was "No, I pray for world peace." :rolleyes: Seriously, the best prayer before a meal I ever heard was "May we be worthy of heaven, and earth, and all those who toiled to create this food." I suppose it...

I find the concept that "the King Jame's Version is the only true version" utterly bizarre. Here's a translation of a translation of a translation. Yes, I can understand a church standardizing on it because that's what most of the congregation grew up on, and also because it's very beautiful as...

Different times. People didn't publicly come out of the closet in those days. Everyone may have known, but he didn't want it talked about. Actually, I suspect it had little to do with it, beyond funding it.

But only in the temple, which no longer exists.

Accurate with Jehovah, but not quite with Yahweh. In ancient times, the Hebrew alphabet lacked vowels. God's name was thus spelled out in 4 consonants, which roughly transliterate to the Roman YHWH. God's name can only be pronounced by the high priest, in the temple, on Yom Kippur. But, by...

Wishful thinking. Fanatics don't respond to reason.

It was your use of the words "the whole point of Jews not believing in Jesus is..." that offended me. There is no single, simple point. I don't know how many Jewish leaders called themselves the Messiah or were called that by their followers. Usually, the followers go away after the leader dies...

<smile> How true.

Very true--at least as far as I understand Buddhism, which isn't much. Another similarity: You can be an atheist and still be a Buddhist or a religious Jew. But here's the big difference--as I understand it. Buddhism encourages its followers to emotionally distance themselves from the...

No. The whole point of our not believing in Jesus is that we're not Christians. It's that simple. Your statement is as ridiculous as saying "The whole point of Christians not believing in Buddha is that they can't hear the sound of one hand clapping." As far as the Messiah is concerned, it's...

Sorry, but Moses did not prophesise the Messiah. The fact that Christians later re-purposed his words doesn't make it so.

One of the great Jewish teachers, Hillel was supposedly asked to summarize the Torah while standing on one foot. His response: "What is hateful to you, do not do to others." That's as good a summation as anything.

There's no mention of that prophecy in the Torah portions that discuss Yom Kippur. And even if that was the earliest reference to that holy day, so what? Yom Kippur is the day that we fast and atone for our mistakes of the last year. That's what's important here.

According to James Carroll's excellent book, Constantine's Sword, the concept of Papal Infallibility is quite recent. It became doctrine in the 19th century. I don't remember the year--or the Pope--but Carroll didn't think much about that particular Pope. Also, it doesn't mean that the Pope...

I never could reconcile the ideas of Hell and a loving God. You can't have both. Purgatory, maybe, but not Hell. But then, Heaven causes problems, too. A while back, I attended a Christian funeral where the minister, noting that the deceased loved to shop, could now spend all eternity shopping...

Chasids take the Torah literally. I don't think many Orthodox do. Of course, they could still think it was dictated by God and the creation stories aren't literal truth. I'm pretty sure that, once you get away from the Orthodox, pretty much no one believes the Torah was dictated by God to...

In a separate thread, wil asked me to discuss my views of the various branches of Judaism. Here they are, in what I believe is the correct chronological order (although I'm not bothering to check my facts). Orthodox: Practicing the religion as it has been for centuries, with a real attempt to...

That seems like a separate discussion. Maybe I'll do it in another thread.

Actually, there isn't an official branch called Ultra. Very orthodox Jews are casually called ultra-orthodox. I'm completely at ease with Renewal Judaism. In fact, the last large synagogue I belonged to is renewal. And I spent this last Yom Kippur at another Renewal group.

A Christian is someone who believes in the Christian religion. Same with a Muslim, Hindu, etc. Being a Jew is a lot more complicated. It's an ethnicity and a religion. I like to compare it to being an Irish Catholic. You can be a Jew the way someone is Catholic. But you can also be a Jew the way...