Understanding Judaism

[bananabrain]

I don't really believe in the divine origin of Torah, not [nor?] that it hasn't been changed.

that would kind of put you into the reconstructionist camp i would have thought. what are your thoughts on whether it could have been Divinely inspired? the way i see it is that if G!D Exists, it is unreasonable to think that the Divine is incapable of revelation, or has chosen not to give any, especially given that so many people, not just us, believe in it. otherwise you're more like a deist than anything else; it's hard to imagine why you would do anything jewish other than "because it's tradition". sorry if i'm being obtuse, but i'm trying to understand your perspective. i was brought up in UK reform, but even there i was taught that revelation was possible, even if the Text itself was considered subsequently altered.

I have no strong beliefs about if people will be divinely rewarded or punished

actually, reward and punishment are considered to be a very much lower order of motivation by our sages, this is why the Mishnah says that we should not be like servants who serve in the expectation of a reward and why we are supposed to emphasise the zayin in the third paragraph of the shema - "lema'an tiZkeroo": ie we should remember why we're doing something, rather than expect to be rewarded or punished as per the second paragraph. basically we should aspire towards "ahavah rabbah" - receiving Divine love.

and tend to have a fairly agnostic approach to life after death, if there is any.

i have to say that i was in my mid-twenties before it occurred to me to ask what is supposed to happen after we die. the tradition says "look, we can't know anything for certain, so we have to find ways that work while we're alive". i would have thought that this was covered by the intrinsic goodness of achieving "ahavah rabbah".

I find the coming of the messiah unlikely although I do think a utopian future is a good thing to work for.

look, Moshiach is not expected to be able to have wings, or antennae growing out of his head or anything. they are both supposed to be great [religious/political] leaders. this is why various exceptional individuals, from cyrus the great to the lubavitcher rebbe, have been considered potential messiahs. is it possible you're being overly influenced by the supernatural nature of christian messianic thought? naturally, the utopian future is an intrinsic good too and part of the traditional approach. i guess that i'm saying that it's not all that radical an idea - i mean, gene roddenberry's earth is pretty bloody utopian and messianic if you ask me.

I don't have any strong beliefs about resurrection of the dead.

again, it's not something that most people can get that excited about, as it doesn't exactly impact on your daily life.

I don't think the Rambam's 13 principles are a good judge of what is Jewish

aha! well, i'd be really interested to know what 13 principles you'd choose - not in a "well, mr clever-pants" kind of way, but 'cos i'm genuinely interested. i never used to think much of them, but nowadays i think they have much to recommend them.

But here it's as if the two of us are speaking a different language, because all of the historically informed information coming to me tells me that smicha doesn't really connect those rabbis to Moses

where is this historically informed information? have they really disproved moses' existence, or that of joshua, the prophets and the "men of the great assembly"? this is what i don't get, how people think it's possible to disprove something like that.

It's that if a guy I know meets a guy I know and they know each other, according to the Torah God has a problem with that. It has nothing to do with them being ostracized by the community.

in practical terms, it really does. Torah is meant to be lived and to affect your entire life and, frankly, apart from the Text itself, there's actually nothing to suggest G!D disapproves, even biologically. HIV, for example, is far from being the "gay plague" that was suggested by bigots. there is also a distinction drawn between sins that are "person-to-person" and sins that are "person-to-G!D" and person-to-person ones are considered to be far worse. the "wasting sperm" thing is a different (person-to-G!D) prohibition and affects heterosexual males equally. so in terms relative to the Text itself, it's not so much that homosexuality is a sin, but that there is a practical penalty.

I view the intense slander of Amalek -- akin to the New Testament's portrayal of the Pharisees if not worse -- as teaching an important lesson: Hate Amalek. That's another one perhaps you can explain to me better. I don't think I've heard any approach to that phrase that wasn't an apologetic.

i'll do my best. i think you're starting from a weird position, basically. for a start, slander is only slander if it's not true - and the reason for the proscription of amalek is in the text, namely that they attacked us from behind, going for the women and children first, when we were wandering and vulnerable in the desert. in response to this particularly, hate is a real human emotion and cannot be repressed, only managed. the way the tradition does this is by directing it towards an appropriate target, which means that it is necessary that the aforementioned target actually exists in some form. practically speaking, the best metaphor is the nazis, i suppose - am i not entitled, even obliged to hate fascism and nazism? the state obliges us to condemn racism and bigotry - is this not in a sense "commanded hatred"? however, to be a little more true to the plain meaning of the Torah, the text actually says that we must "remember" amalek, at the same time that we must "blot out the memory" of amalek. so you have a designed-in paradox there to resolve. going back to the nazis, i would therefore say that this would translate into "remember what happened" as well as "do not allow it to happen again" - and if that's an apologetic, i am unapologetic. i don't see why i should feel some kind of guilt for how i feel about this. continuing on into the practical application of the mitzvah, we learn that even an amalekite can be converted if he repents. similarly - and even more practically - we learn that there are no longer identifiable members of the *tribe* of amalek (haman, i believe, was the last descendent of agag) or indeed any of the seven canaanite nations we were commanded to get rid of, so this can no longer be observed except metaphorically, with those who behave in an amalekite way, like the nazis. similarly, the taint is not on modern germans who do not commit amalekite acts.

Who decides which standard is the objective standard? To me it seems far more like society decides the standard and when societies clash it is because they have embraced different standards.

so that's a clash between two relative, subjective viewpoints, then. furthermore:

When people have trouble in society it is because they are not meeting that standard.

yes, but that is a social sanction and condemnation according to the subjective viewpoint of the society, not an objective condemnation. i just don't believe that human beings can possibly describe anything they do as objective.

Some very basic morality seems intuitive to me but I'm not so sure.

this is the basic difference between mishpatim and huqqim - the former would be deduced as self-evidently beneficial and the latter require Divine commandment, because there's no earthly reason you'd come up with that rule otherwise.

there is also community, both ancestral and present, to weigh our actions against, along with the behavior of the rest of society.

and the community as a whole can be wrong - this is an inherent problem of democracy, that it something isn't right just because people vote for it (look at the social taboos we still have!) but that is considered the standard by many.

But to me this can't be a free-for-all, because that is the abandonment of a basic approach to living shared by the members of a given group. There has to be an understanding of the middle so all of the people involved can find their place to the left or the right of it.

well, judaism totally gets this! that's what hillel and shammai are about, as well as all the rules about leniency or stringency and particularly the episode of the oven of achnai - majority rules, but minority opinions must be safeguarded, because they may one day become the majority (indeed this is what some people say about the messianic age) but, again, this is a *subjective* human opinion about an interpretation of an objective (ie Divine) Text.

Nobody ever has any more grasp than anyone else.

nonsense. there are some people that definitely don't have as much grasp as you and i and it's false modesty, or absolute relativism to give equal credence to an informed opinion and one that isn't. this is not to say, of course, that an uninformed opinon is necessarily worthless - but it may be. the issue is actually authoritativeness - whether you yourself actually trust the opinion. for example, i rather like michael lerner, but he isn't always right (i was rather cheeky to him last time i met him because he was a bit of a windbag) - but i'll happily support an opinion of his if it's a good opinion, of which he has many!

b'shalom

bananabrain

 

[dauer]

that would kind of put you into the reconstructionist camp i would have thought. what are your thoughts on whether it could have been Divinely inspired? the way i see it is that if G!D Exists, it is unreasonable to think that the Divine is incapable of revelation, or has chosen not to give any, especially given that so many people, not just us, believe in it. otherwise you're more like a deist than anything else; it's hard to imagine why you would do anything jewish other than "because it's tradition". sorry if i'm being obtuse, but i'm trying to understand your perspective. i was brought up in UK reform, but even there i was taught that revelation was possible, even if the Text itself was considered subsequently altered.

It may be divinely inspired, or it may be divine because we have designated it as such. One section of the intro to the Stone Chumash seems to support my claim.

8. I believe with complete faith that the entire Torah now in our hands is the same one that was given to Moses, our teacher, peace be upon him...
These principles [there was another that was not relevant] are essential parts of the faith of the Jew, and they are also fundamental to the way one studies the Torah. For the attitude of one who approaches a book as the immutable word of God is far, far different from that of one who holds a volume that was composed by men and amended by others over the years. As we begin to study the Torah we should resolve that this recognition of its origin and immutability will be in our conciousness always.

That's from page xix in my edition. My point is that he makes it very clear, without wishing to make it clear, that the Torah is sacred because a group of people agrees it is sacred. Personally, it does not matter to me whether it is sacred because God made it sacred or it is sacred because man made it sacred in order to have a way to approach God. To me, the Jewish rituals are simply a way of spreading holiness and God-mindedness into our lives -- besides the ones with more specific purposes. I don't know if this does put me in the reconstructionist camp. I really don't know much about them. My view of God tends to lean more to the mystical, but I am a rationalist when it comes to things like crossing the sea. I don't say they didn't happen and I think I will always remain at least slightly agnostic about most things, but I do find it unlikely. I believe in revelation as God reaching out to man, sometimes in response to man reaching out to God, but I consider any writing as a reaction to revelation to be nothing more than that.

actually, reward and punishment are considered to be a very much lower order of motivation by our sages, this is why the Mishnah says that we should not be like servants who serve in the expectation of a reward and why we are supposed to emphasise the zayin in the third paragraph of the shema - "lema'an tiZkeroo": ie we should remember why we're doing something, rather than expect to be rewarded or punished as per the second paragraph. basically we should aspire towards "ahavah rabbah" - receiving Divine love.

I'm aware of that. I was just responding to beliefs suggested by the Rambam.

i have to say that i was in my mid-twenties before it occurred to me to ask what is supposed to happen after we die. the tradition says "look, we can't know anything for certain, so we have to find ways that work while we're alive". i would have thought that this was covered by the intrinsic goodness of achieving "ahavah rabbah".

I'm aware of that too, but I'm also willing to consider that there may be no life after death. I believe that's what one of the Karaite groups was criticized quite harshly for.

look, Moshiach is not expected to be able to have wings, or antennae growing out of his head or anything. they are both supposed to be great [religious/political] leaders. this is why various exceptional individuals, from cyrus the great to the lubavitcher rebbe, have been considered potential messiahs. is it possible you're being overly influenced by the supernatural nature of christian messianic thought? naturally, the utopian future is an intrinsic good too and part of the traditional approach. i guess that i'm saying that it's not all that radical an idea - i mean, gene roddenberry's earth is pretty bloody utopian and messianic if you ask me.

Not at all. I'm quite aware of the Jewish idea of the moshiach. I was reading a lot of counter-missionary material for a while, and even before that I knew about the Jewish beliefs. But if the idea of the Moshiach is built around the mythical David, and David wasn't such a nice guy in real life, then perhaps the whole thing was just a way to get people's hopes up. I do think that there are many moshiachim like the moshiach, people who, when a society is getting into a bad situation, help to bring hope and help. Gandhi is an example of this. It is also possible that the prophets were just using a familiar myth to tell something they needed to tell, but I still find it unlikely. The greatest prophesy is a vague one.

again, it's not something that most people can get that excited about, as it doesn't exactly impact on your daily life.

So at this point, how good are Rambam's 13? The way you are speaking, it sounds like I can disbelieve most of them. Does it matter which ones I disbelieve? If I believe God is material and lives in the sky, I think we'd both agree that's not a valid Jewish belief.

aha! well, i'd be really interested to know what 13 principles you'd choose - not in a "well, mr clever-pants" kind of way, but 'cos i'm genuinely interested. i never used to think much of them, but nowadays i think they have much to recommend them.

Well, I have a problem giving Judaism any rigid beliefs. This was Rambam's response to faith-based religions, of which Judaism is not one. I'd work with some of his beliefs.

1. Openness to the possibility of God.
2. Belief in the absolute and unparalleled unity of God.
3. Belief that God is non-corporeal and cannot be affected by physical occurances.
4.Imperative to recognize only God as God, even as other gods may be understood as other reflections of God.
5. Openness to possibility of prophesy.
6. Understanding that Torah is central to Judaism.
7. Openness to the Torah as a sacred document.
8. Recognition that Jewish life is shaped by the mitzvot regardless of what degree they are accepted.
9. Willingness to find God through the mitzvot.

But I, myself, disagree with these because they are too rigid.

where is this historically informed information? have they really disproved moses' existence, or that of joshua, the prophets and the "men of the great assembly"? this is what i don't get, how people think it's possible to disprove something like that.

Who said anything about disproving the existence of any of these people? I am putting forward that Moses did not recieve an Oral Torah and pass it down all of the way to the sages, who codified it. The simplest Historical evidence is the fact that there is no evidence such a thing ever happened. I do feel that the Torah cannot, to a degree, be understood without the general understanding of the people it was given to. But that doesn't account for all of the laws that pop up in the mishna and gemara with no mention in the Torah, explicit or otherwise. Some of these things probably developed over time, like candlelighting before Shabbat and the eruv, or starting the month by the astronomical new moon instead of the sliver moon, or started the year at Rosh HaShana instead of at the barley harvest, but they are not present in the Torah.

I understand your need to validate everything by connecting it back to Moses. At a site for Hasidut Kabalah, they asserted that Moses also recieved the Kabalah. I know, it's because nothing's supposed to be added or taken away from the Torah. The rabbis did it too by claiming a direct line. Deuteronomy does it too by claiming to be given by Moses. It's the way Jewish law works.

in practical terms, it really does. Torah is meant to be lived and to affect your entire life and, frankly, apart from the Text itself, there's actually nothing to suggest G!D disapproves, even biologically. HIV, for example, is far from being the "gay plague" that was suggested by bigots. there is also a distinction drawn between sins that are "person-to-person" and sins that are "person-to-G!D" and person-to-person ones are considered to be far worse. the "wasting sperm" thing is a different (person-to-G!D) prohibition and affects heterosexual males equally. so in terms relative to the Text itself, it's not so much that homosexuality is a sin, but that there is a practical penalty.

If the text is God-given, doesn't that mean God disapproves?

i'll do my best. i think you're starting from a weird position, basically. for a start, slander is only slander if it's not true - and the reason for the proscription of amalek is in the text, namely that they attacked us from behind, going for the women and children first, when we were wandering and vulnerable in the desert. in response to this particularly, hate is a real human emotion and cannot be repressed, only managed. the way the tradition does this is by directing it towards an appropriate target, which means that it is necessary that the aforementioned target actually exists in some form. practically speaking, the best metaphor is the nazis, i suppose - am i not entitled, even obliged to hate fascism and nazism? the state obliges us to condemn racism and bigotry - is this not in a sense "commanded hatred"? however, to be a little more true to the plain meaning of the Torah, the text actually says that we must "remember" amalek, at the same time that we must "blot out the memory" of amalek. so you have a designed-in paradox there to resolve. going back to the nazis, i would therefore say that this would translate into "remember what happened" as well as "do not allow it to happen again" - and if that's an apologetic, i am unapologetic. i don't see why i should feel some kind of guilt for how i feel about this. continuing on into the practical application of the mitzvah, we learn that even an amalekite can be converted if he repents. similarly - and even more practically - we learn that there are no longer identifiable members of the *tribe* of amalek (haman, i believe, was the last descendent of agag) or indeed any of the seven canaanite nations we were commanded to get rid of, so this can no longer be observed except metaphorically, with those who behave in an amalekite way, like the nazis. similarly, the taint is not on modern germans who do not commit amalekite acts.

I am against the demonization of all people, including the Nazis. I do my best to understand what was going on inside of them as people so that I don't begin to label them as a mythic enemy. I don't care what is to gain. I disagree with any move to demonize a group of people. We're all human. I think what it would be like, to be a member of Amalek. I can't believe the hate directed against them. And why? Because they were a native tribe and had to be exterminated to make room for the 12 tribes.

yes, but that is a social sanction and condemnation according to the subjective viewpoint of the society, not an objective condemnation. i just don't believe that human beings can possibly describe anything they do as objective.

I wouldn't either, except to say that any objective morality is simply a subjective morality that has been around long enough that it can't be argued with. However, I do believe it's possible there is a basic morality for man that can then go in many directions.

and the community as a whole can be wrong - this is an inherent problem of democracy, that it something isn't right just because people vote for it (look at the social taboos we still have!) but that is considered the standard by many.

If enough people agree it is right, it is right except for the dissenters. What makes a community wrong? Your answer, I'm guessing, would be Torah? Does that mean Hindus are wrong as well as Native Americans who have held onto their traditions? If we want to call the seven laws a basis for moral living in a brand new society, we're gonna have to get rid of anything Judaism considers idolatry, right? it's still subjective.

well, judaism totally gets this! that's what hillel and shammai are about, as well as all the rules about leniency or stringency and particularly the episode of the oven of achnai - majority rules, but minority opinions must be safeguarded, because they may one day become the majority (indeed this is what some people say about the messianic age) but, again, this is a *subjective* human opinion about an interpretation of an objective (ie Divine) Text.

The difference is how far to the left we consider is acceptable.

nonsense. there are some people that definitely don't have as much grasp as you and i and it's false modesty, or absolute relativism to give equal credence to an informed opinion and one that isn't. this is not to say, of course, that an uninformed opinon is necessarily worthless - but it may be. the issue is actually authoritativeness - whether you yourself actually trust the opinion. for example, i rather like michael lerner, but he isn't always right (i was rather cheeky to him last time i met him because he was a bit of a windbag) - but i'll happily support an opinion of his if it's a good opinion, of which he has many!

I meant it more about the things we cannot know, like whether the Torah was given at Sinai, the nature of God, if there is God. Here, the playing field is mostly equal.

Dauer

 

[dauer]

I was thinking about Jewish beliefs, and to me it would be simpler to say what Jews don not belief than what Jews do believe.

Dauer

 

[Sacredstar]

I will read this with interest when I have more time as I also have a part Jewish heritage, but I must admit my interest is in the esoteric wisdom of all of the religions, hence why I feel the Kabbalah is so popular nowadays. Aided by celebrity status Madonna and Mick Jaggers ex-wife.

Maybe someone would like to start a different thread on this.

Love beyond measure

Sacredstar

 

[dauer]

Sacredstar,

To me, this popular trend is just watered down kabbalah. It's a big moneymaking scheme with kabbalah water and expensive red strings that are nothing more than a fashion statement. It is sad that Madonna makes such a joke of it by tatooing herself and strutting around in almost no clothing. There is no kabbalah without Torah. It is not an independent system.

Dauer

 

[bananabrain]

to me it would be simpler to say what Jews do not believe than what Jews do believe.

apart from replacing "do not" with "should not" i agree - perhaps we should rewrite the thirteen to be in the negative!

he makes it very clear, without wishing to make it clear, that the Torah is sacred because a group of people agrees it is sacred.

yes, but that is actually about our attitude to it rather than its intrinsic nature, the perception of which is circumscribed by human limitations - this is the philosophical problem of the "privacy of experience" - and, again, this goes for the stone editor just as much as it does for you and i. i'm not exactly disagreeing with you, but i'm not agreeing either!

Personally, it does not matter to me whether it is sacred because G!D made it sacred or it is sacred because man made it sacred in order to have a way to approach G!D.

to my mind, this is expressed by the categories of de'oraita and de'rabbanan; for me, it is important to know where these boundaries are and how it actually affects me in practical terms.

To me, the Jewish rituals are simply a way of spreading holiness and God-mindedness into our lives -- besides the ones with more specific purposes. I don't know if this does put me in the reconstructionist camp. I really don't know much about them.

well, for them, as far as i understand it, it's about the "folk tradition" of judaism; essentially it's treating judaism as an ethnic culture. now i don't deny that this view has a lot of validity, but the power of ethnicity to command one to behave in a certain way is completely suspect if you ask me.

My view of God tends to lean more to the mystical, but I am a rationalist when it comes to things like crossing the sea. I don't say they didn't happen and I think I will always remain at least slightly agnostic about most things, but I do find it unlikely.

i am also slightly agnostic about such things - but that's the nature of miracles. it's also the case that the tradition itself states that we should respect our doubts and the necessity of questioning such things, because nothing is more dangerous than a human being who believes absolutely that they are 1000% in the right. it is for this reason that G!D cannot be demonstrably seen to be acting, which is why, in the verse before the red sea splits, it states that "a strong east wind blew all night" - in other words, it's deniability! the only case of a miracle where this deniability does not operate is, in fact, the revelation at sinai.

I believe in revelation as G!D reaching out to man, sometimes in response to man reaching out to G!D, but I consider any writing as a reaction to revelation to be nothing more than that.

i couldn't agree with you more - except that i don't believe that the Torah is a *reaction* to revelation, but the actual substance of it.

I'm also willing to consider that there may be no life after death. I believe that's what one of the Karaite groups was criticized quite harshly for.

i think it's significant that it is not specified *why* we are supposed to believe in life after death - if you can find a reason that works for you, then hurrah. personally, i would say that it is important to believe in it (and in reward and punishment) as a primary mechanism for those people not capable of reaching the level of serving G!D because of "ahavah", but who only react to paragraph 2 of the shema.

But if the idea of the Moshiach is built around the mythical David, and David wasn't such a nice guy in real life, then perhaps the whole thing was just a way to get people's hopes up.

this sounds to me a bit more like the statements made by the rishonim and aharonim about how the nations will get their comeuppance and that's a valid view. the moshiach for me is more about the *ultimate purpose* of the jewish people - the big M is the catalyst for it to be realised. i suppose the difference is really between how universalist and how particularist that is interpreted as being; and, this being aggadah, a multiplicity of interpretations are possible.

I do think that there are many moshiachim like the moshiach, people who, when a society is getting into a bad situation, help to bring hope and help. Gandhi is an example of this.

you see, i don't think of this as the function of the moshiach - moshiach is a specifically *jewish* role, but i have no problem with other righteous individuals leading their people to a new dawn, as it were. this is part of the function of the "thirty-six hidden tsaddiqim" for me. maybe gandhi-ji was one of them. i don't know, but it's enough for me to consider him in that role. again, it's about the particularism and "chosenness" - i would think from what you've said that you probably have a problem with that as well!

I'm quite aware of the Jewish idea of the moshiach.

yes, of course - i hope you don't think i'm being patronising; i don't know you very well yet, so excuse me.

So at this point, how good are Rambam's 13? The way you are speaking, it sounds like I can disbelieve most of them. Does it matter which ones I disbelieve? If I believe God is material and lives in the sky, I think we'd both agree that's not a valid Jewish belief.

er.... no, it's not that you can disbelieve them, but that it's easier than you might think to find a way to say i believe them without it flying in the face of other things that you feel to be true. take life after death - it only requires you to believe it, not to actually do anything about it, other than live a good life, which you are presumably trying to do anyway. basically as long as i can say "i believe in Torah me'Sinai" without someone trying to force a particular interpretation of that down my throat i'm happy enough; in short, like you, it's easier to say what i don't believe than what i do.

Well, I have a problem giving Judaism any rigid beliefs.

surely that can't be right. judaism is defined by such rigidities as, say, an absolute opposition to idol-worship, murder, etc. in other words, we rigidly believe that certain things are right and certain things are wrong. of course there is a certain amount of flexibility as to *exactly* which things we are talking about, but that's in terms of whether a certain thing fits into a Torah-based category of permitted or forbidden. or am i misunderstanding you.

1. Openness to the possibility of G!D.

actually, this is exactly my point, you slippery eel! for as you well know, the delightfulness of this phrase lies in its very openness to interpretation - so, while one person might interpret it as "the possibility of G!D existing", another might take it as "the possibility of finding G!D anywhere" - thus, both of us could say "i believe in this" and agree on that, whilst completely disagreeing on the content. rambam's 13 are quite open, although probably not to the same degree. again, i can't believe someone as clever as him wasn't fully aware of this.

But I, myself, disagree with these because they are too rigid.

that's a shame, i rather like them.

Who said anything about disproving the existence of any of these people?

aha - well you said that "all of the historically informed information coming to me tells me that smicha doesn't really connect those rabbis to Moses". that's what i'm reacting to; i shouldn't have said "existence", but to me their very existence implies a chain of tradition - nonethelesss, i don't see how a historian could disprove the line of smicha.

I am putting forward that Moses did not recieve an Oral Torah and pass it down all of the way to the sages, who codified it.

oh, i see. well, for a start, the tradition says that much of the oral law predates sinai. this is for a number of reasons, eg people used to get married before the Torah was given and so they must have had laws about it; similarly, much of our tradition can be deduced from first principles revealed to the patriarchs, or from simple rationality. when the Written Law was Revealed, it would have been designed by G!D to harmonise with the Oral Law as an integrated system, whereas a historian would naturally rule out the possibility of Divine interaction and assume that the Written Law had been adapted over time to be in harmony with the Oral Law.

of course both points of view are essentially circular reasoning and can't be definitively proved, but the point is that the traditional view cannot be definitively disproved. the problem for me is that you seem determined not to give the traditional PoV the benefit of the doubt, which i find puzzling and not a little harsh considering how concerned you are to be nice to amalek.

Historical evidence is the fact that there is no evidence such a thing ever happened.

at the risk of sounding like donald rumsfeld, just because you've never seen something doesn't mean it couldn't be possible. it seems to me kind of arrogant to assume that this evidence is the only standard, especially considering it rules out a priori a whole slew of possibilities. it also makes it an unfair playing field - what sort of evidence could actually ever be accepted by a historian of the possibility of the Divine? you're also flying in the face of the philosophical problem that scientific empiricism never actually provides proof - only *support* for a *hypothesis* that stands until it is *disproved*; even richard dawkins accepts that his atheism is nonetheless a belief, albeit strongly supported.

Some of these things probably developed over time, like candlelighting before Shabbat and the eruv, or starting the month by the astronomical new moon instead of the sliver moon, or started the year at Rosh HaShana instead of at the barley harvest, but they are not present in the Torah.

well, that's exactly what the tradition says, with the difference being that they actually *have* linked everything back to a Torah source - with *no* exceptions. which came first is then a matter of what you happen to believe - it's not an automatic win for historicism.

If the text is G!D-given, doesn't that mean G!D disapproves?

G!D told adam and eve not to eat the fruit, too. i prefer to think of this as one of the paradoxes that we must come to terms with if we are ever to live at peace with our limited understanding.

I am against the demonization of all people, including the Nazis. I do my best to understand what was going on inside of them as people so that I don't begin to label them as a mythic enemy. I don't care what is to gain. I disagree with any move to demonize a group of people. We're all human. I think what it would be like, to be a member of Amalek. I can't believe the hate directed against them.

firstly, like i said before, it's about your actions - if you don't act like an amalekite, you are not one. therefore, we are not demonising people, but a concept of absolute evil; the tradition repeatedly states that amalekites (and the rest of the seven nations) are no longer an identifiable people, therefore this text can only be applied to the *conceptual* amalek. consequently, anyone that labels a particular group as "amalek" is being completely self-serving and denying the possibility for them to change - which is itself an amalekite PoV. secondly, you *should* think about what it would be like to be an amalekite - so you can make sure you don't ever turn into one. as you know, we are both commanded to *remember* amalek *and* obliterate the memory of amalek - how can we do both? the tradition responds that we do so by remembering their deeds and by obliterating the possibility of their recommission.

And why? Because they were a native tribe and had to be exterminated to make room for the 12 tribes.

no, that's simply not right. the given reason for destroying amalek is because they attacked us in the desert - they started it. as for the seven nations, they had to be wiped out because they were the worst kind of idolaters - but by the same logic as amalek, once they ceased to act in an idolatrous fashion, they were effectively "wiped out".

If we want to call the seven laws a basis for moral living in a brand new society, we're gonna have to get rid of anything Judaism considers idolatry, right? it's still subjective.

actually, this is why the tradition states that the yetzer of idolatry no longer exists. this, of course, has major implications for all of our laws about avodah zara and the "akum", many of which are still interpreted stringently, due to the experience of antisemitism, which is my most extreme criticism of the current parlous state of halacha - it tends to get applied to groups, not actions and that will create an insoluble problem if it continues.

i applaud your determination to deal with this most difficult of issues - if only more people were so assiduous. however, i do think there is a point beyond simply apologising for our mythos when it is taken to such a degree that it becomes namby-pambying, fluffy-bunny 'tree-hugging hippy crap', to use eric cartman's immortal phrase.

The difference is how far to the left we consider is acceptable.

exactly. labels stretch, but hook's law applies to them as well.

and our opinions on the kabbalah centre are in agreement, too! i guess what i'm trying to say is that you're actually more traditional than you seem to think in a lot of ways, even if i think you are expecting the universe to be a lot, well, nicer, than it actually is.

b'shalom

bananabrain

 

[Virtual_Cliff]

Didn't this thread begin in another place? Could it possibly be re-started where it began because I was all set to learn something new about how the Jewish faith is mis-conceived by others, and then it wandered off into a corner somewhere.

 

[dauer]

VC,

you are entirely correct. BB, I'm going to continue this via PM so this thread can get back where it was supposed to be.

Originally this thread was supposed to be a place for questions about Judaism be it Jewish belief, practice, or other. I created it knowing that's what this part of the board is for, but hoping to invite it because I noticed someone admitted to knowing very little about Judaism in another thread and said, I think but am not sure at this point, that it would generally be a good thing to increase general knowledge about Judaism. Thank you, VC, and hopefully this thread can get back where it was supposed to be.

Dauer

 

[iBrian]

Personally, I'm finding this thread to provide some of the most interesting reading of the forums at the moment. I would therefore much rather the discussion be kept in the public sphere, as much as possible.

Perhaps if you felt there's need for a new thread to continue the discussion, then you're welcome to start one.

 

[dauer]

Brian,

I'm glad you're enjoying our conversation. I've already e-mailed BB so I guess it will be up to him to create a new thread whenever he has some time.

Actually, if you're reading this BB, if you could even just start a new thread with what I sent you and get back to it whenever you have a chance, that would probably be easiest. I sent it through this site so I don't think I can retrieve it.

Dauer

 

[bananabrain]

will do - i'm also enjoying this thread enormously. i'd actually say it was a better option to continue the discussion dauer and i are having, which i suppose i'd call "what are the fundamentals of jewish belief?" and start other threads for different and more specific areas (like seems to be happening with the ark of the covenant) - dauer, i will mail your mail back to you so you can post it under your own moniker - is that OK?

then i can start to demolish your arguments and grind them into powder. muwahahahahah. (as if)

b'shalom

bananabrain

 

[dauer]

Alright. So you're suggesting we continue our conversation in this thread and that new threads be created for specific issues about Judaism? If that is what you are suggesting, it makes sense to me as we've already re-routed this thread. I'm going to put the e-mail in this message and try to clean it up a little because right now it's hard to follow. Some of this message will still be a little confusing.
-------------------------------------------------------

This didn't copy over the way I wanted it to, so hopefully I will be able to decipher who said what.

*On The 13 Articles of Faith*

bb:apart from replacing "do not" with "should not" i agree - perhaps we should rewrite the thirteen to be in the negative!

Dauer: I was thinking this before, except that in that case it would read "Jews do not believe the messiah won't come." I still feel they're too specific at times, but I have said to people that is more like the way he approached God, and everything must be said in negatives.


*Nature of Sacredness of Torah*

earlier quote from Dauer: he makes it very clear, without wishing to make it clear, that the Torah is sacred because a group of people agrees it is sacred.

BB: yes, but that is actually about our attitude to it rather than its intrinsic nature, the perception of which is circumscribed by human limitations - this is the philosophical problem of the "privacy of experience" - and, again, this goes for the stone editor just as much as it does for you and i. i'm not exactly disagreeing with you, but i'm not agreeing either!

Dauer: I don't consider it possible for God to write words or tell someone to write words, however it happens. Couldn't we just as easily say the NT is true as well, or the Tao Teh Ching, or the Bagavad Ghita, or any other book that people decide is holy, to the absence of the other books, historicity, and science?

Earlier Dauer: Personally, it does not matter to me whether it is sacred because G!D made it sacred or it is sacred because man made it sacred in order to have a way to approach G!D.

BB: to my mind, this is expressed by the categories of de'oraita and de'rabbanan; for me, it is important to know where these boundaries are and how it actually affects me in practical terms.

Dauer: But as I see it, it's not de'oraita and de'rabbanan. If God had a hand in Torah, he probably had a hand in the changes too. And any more changes we make. Otherwise, we wouldn't be making them. It's a slippery slope which tends to make less sense to me, which is why Itend to believe it is sacred because we make it so.


*Purpose of Ritual*

Earlier Dauer: To me, the Jewish rituals are simply a way of spreading holiness and God-mindedness into our lives -- besides the ones with more specific purposes. I don't know if this does put me in the reconstructionist camp. I really don't know much about them.


BB: well, for them, as far as i understand it, it's about the "folk tradition" of judaism; essentially it's treating judaism as an ethnic culture. now i don't deny that this view has a lot of validity, but the power of ethnicity to command one to behave in a certain way is completely suspect if you ask me.

Dauer: I agree with you. It doesn't make sense to do something for such a reason. I do it because for me it has spiritual value. Even when I don't feel like acting in a certain way, it falls under something drilled into me at a school I went to, "Act as if." Live it and then feel that way. I suppose that's a Jewish view anyway.

*Nature of Miracles*

earlier Dauer inserted to maintain readability:My view of God tends to lean more to the mystical, but I am a rationalist when it comes to things like crossing the sea. I don't say they didn't happen and I think I will always remain at least slightly agnostic about most things, but I do find it unlikely.

BB: i am also slightly agnostic about such things - but that's the nature of miracles. it's also the case that the tradition itself states that we should respect our doubts and the necessity of questioning such things, because nothing is more dangerous than a human being who believes absolutely that they are 1000% in the right. it is for this reason that G!D cannot be demonstrably seen to be acting, which is why, in the verse before the red sea splits, it states that "a strong east wind blew all night" - in other words, it's deniability! the only case of a miracle where this deniability does not operate is, in fact, the revelation at sinai.

me:I go further than doubt. I say it probably didn't happen, but who knows? And maybe Muhammad did ascend to heaven. I doubt it. Who knows? I go far enough to say that I don't know, but in some cases that comparitive textual analysis and other techniques may increase doubt exponentially.

*Beliefs about believing in an afterlife*

Earlier Dauer: I'm also willing to consider that there may be no life after death. I believe that's what one of the Karaite groups was criticized quite harshly for.

BB: i think it's significant that it is not specified *why* we are supposed to believe in life after death - if you can find a reason that works for you, then hurrah. personally, i would say that it is important to believe in it (and in reward and punishment) as a primary mechanism for those people not capable of reaching the level of serving G!D because of "ahavah", but who only react to paragraph 2 of the shema.

Dauer: I agree with you that it should not serve as a motivation. I do not believe one should put a huge amount of effort into "trying" to believe. I'd rather remain in complete doubt all of my life that force myself into a belief just to go along with a particular creed. I don't doubt though, in this case. I am entirely agnostic.

*Understanding prophesy and the Moshiach*

Earlier Dauer: But if the idea of the Moshiach is built around the mythical David, and David wasn't such a nice guy in real life, then perhaps the whole thing was just a way to get people's hopes up.


BB: this sounds to me a bit more like the statements made by the rishonim and aharonim about how the nations will get their comeuppance and that's a valid view. the moshiach for me is more about the *ultimate purpose* of the jewish people - the big M is the catalyst for it to be realised. i suppose the difference is really between how universalist and how particularist that is interpreted as being; and, this being aggadah, a multiplicity of interpretations are possible.

Dauer: That's not really what I was saying. I was saying that if David was not a nice guy and he is the archetype for the messiah, then it's possible none of it is true. He is used positively as an archetype, not negatively. I'm skeptical of most prophesies, though I do believe there is more than one level to understanding a prophesy than saying it is talking about a specific event.


Earlier Dauer: I do think that there are many moshiachim like the moshiach, people who, when a society is getting into a bad situation, help to bring hope and help. Gandhi is an example of this.

*Also Chosenness*

BB: you see, i don't think of this as the function of the moshiach - moshiach is a specifically *jewish* role, but i have no problem with other righteous individuals leading their people to a new dawn, as it were. this is part of the function of the "thirty-six hidden tsaddiqim" for me. maybe gandhi-ji was one of them. i don't know, but it's enough for me to consider him in that role. again, it's about the particularism and "chosenness" - i would think from what you've said that you probably have a problem with that as well!

Dauer: Well, I don't have a problem with chosenness in that I consider it wrong. The Jewish version I have no problem with. Just seems unlikely God would single one nation out of them all to be chosen, and if the Torah is sacred because we say so, certainly God did not choose us. If all texts are sacred, for each people that has a sacred text, because they say so, then it seems unlikely any particular one of these people has been singled out. But I have no problem with the Jewish idea of chosenness.

I also agree that the Jewish moshiach is Jewish. I am saying that in the case of that particular reading of the text, there will be no Jewish moshiach. It's not talking about a specific person. And it can be understood to be about those who fit the general idea.


*Potential believing in the 13*

Earlier Dauer: So at this point, how good are Rambam's 13? The way you are speaking, it sounds like I can disbelieve most of them. Does it matter which ones I disbelieve? If I believe God is material and lives in the sky, I think we'd both agree that's not a valid Jewish belief.


BB: er.... no, it's not that you can disbelieve them, but that it's easier than you might think to find a way to say i believe them without it flying in the face of other things that you feel to be true. take life after death - it only requires you to believe it, not to actually do anything about it, other than live a good life, which you are presumably trying to do anyway. basically as long as i can say "i believe in Torah me'Sinai" without someone trying to force a particular interpretation of that down my throat i'm happy enough; in short, like you, it's easier to say what i don't believe than what i do.

Dauer: But I can't say I believe in life after death. That would be a lie. I don't disbelieve or believe it. I have absolutely no idea and I probably won't until I'm there.

 

[dauer]

*Role of Beliefs in Judaism*

Earlier Dauer: Well, I have a problem giving Judaism any rigid beliefs.


BB: surely that can't be right. judaism is defined by such rigidities as, say, an absolute opposition to idol-worship, murder, etc. in other words, we rigidly believe that certain things are right and certain things are wrong. of course there is a certain amount of flexibility as to *exactly* which things we are talking about, but that's in terms of whether a certain thing fits into a Torah-based category of permitted or forbidden. or am i misunderstanding you.

Dauer: I'm not talking about believing one thing is wrong or right. I'm talking about Judaism as a belief system with beliefs about the afterlife and the nature of God and things of that nature. I don't think Judaism fits that type of category. (addition: and to clarify I don't think, for the most part, that Judaism tries to but I think Rambam pushes the envelope.)


*New Articles of Faith as a lense into the original ones*

Earlier Dauer: 1. Openness to the possibility of G!D.


BB: actually, this is exactly my point, you slippery eel! for as you well know, the delightfulness of this phrase lies in its very openness to interpretation - so, while one person might interpret it as "the possibility of G!D existing", another might take it as "the possibility of finding G!D anywhere" - thus, both of us could say "i believe in this" and agree on that, whilst completely disagreeing on the content. rambam's 13 are quite open, although probably not to the same degree. again, i can't believe someone as clever as him wasn't fully aware of this.

Dauer: I thought he didn't intend for it to be said in services, and was writing it as a response to the faith-based religion. I know there were other formulations by other people up until that time. This is what I head heard. Also, he explained in detail what each one meant, even if it wasn't actually included in the statements, yes? And I did plan on many interpretations. That's why this one allows for a complete agnostic or even an atheist with an open mind. But the next statements I made would make it more difficult for atheists and agnostics because it assumes God.


*A Challenge to the Historicity of religious history*

Earlier Dauer: Who said anything about disproving the existence of any of these people?


BB: aha - well you said that "all of the historically informed information coming to me tells me that smicha doesn't really connect those rabbis to Moses". that's what i'm reacting to; i shouldn't have said "existence", but to me their very existence implies a chain of tradition - nonethelesss, i don't see how a historian could disprove the line of smicha.

Dauer: I've been challenged by atheists in regard to God, "Can you dispove Zleebl, the invisible gerbil I talk to every day?" or something like that. So... Can you disprove that a member of a talmudic circle wrote a mystical guidebook and hid it until it was found and published many years later? Okay, that's been done. I'm not going to bother offering disproofs of the oral torah. You probably know what's out there anyway. If you don't,

http://www.amhaaretz.com/cat_critique.html

Starting at the bottom it has numbered disproofs. Going up there are responses and additions to them. That being said, Historians can't disprove that Jesus came back to life three days later either, but they can cast a lot of doubt against it. The same can be done with the oral torah. I have no problem with that. It teaches me a spiritual way to live. Like I said, that it may be the work of man in an attempt to extend holiness into our lives, whatever the presumptions of the mentioned rabbis is, it still works for me.


*A traditional and contemporary view of the oral law and how to respect tradition*

Earlier Dauer: I am putting forward that Moses did not recieve an Oral Torah and pass it down all of the way to the sages, who codified it.


BB: oh, i see. well, for a start, the tradition says that much of the oral law predates sinai. this is for a number of reasons, eg people used to get married before the Torah was given and so they must have had laws about it; similarly, much of our tradition can be deduced from first principles revealed to the patriarchs, or from simple rationality. when the Written Law was Revealed, it would have been designed by G!D to harmonise with the Oral Law as an integrated system, whereas a historian would naturally rule out the possibility of Divine interaction and assume that the Written Law had been adapted over time to be in harmony with the Oral Law.

of course both points of view are essentially circular reasoning and can't be definitively proved, but the point is that the traditional view cannot be definitively disproved. the problem for me is that you seem determined not to give the traditional PoV the benefit of the doubt, which i find puzzling and not a little harsh considering how concerned you are to be nice to amalek.

Dauer: I'm not anti-tradition. I love the tradition. It's what got us where we are today. I have nothing against Hillel or Shammai or anyone else. So I don't see at all how this relates to my assertion that we need not turn people into two-dimensional embodiments of all that is wrong with the world and that is better to see them as fully human. Maybe you are forgetting that I also strongly doubt the divinity of the torah, in any form, or even who the historical Moses was. So don't take it personally that I doubt the divinity of the oral torah. I also hope to have enough Hebrew in the next year or two to begin studying the Hebrew texts of the oral torah directly. I view it as an integral part of our religion, one that should be given the attention and respect it deserves.

I do actually enjoy the traditional view. I don't look to it for Historical truths. I look to it for deeper meaning. It would be boring to just take the more likely Historical truth behind the Torah and ignore the fact that the Torah has become so much more than that through the many commentators who have blessed and been blessed through it. I have nothing against the traditional pov. I just think that on Historical issues it is often wrong.

Where does it say all of the miracles were written from the beginning of time? I think that's on the right track, by recognizing the primacy of the laws of the universe. I'd take it one further.


*potential truth of all claims to truth*

Earlier Dauer: Historical evidence is the fact that there is no evidence such a thing ever happened.


BB: at the risk of sounding like donald rumsfeld, just because you've never seen something doesn't mean it couldn't be possible. it seems to me kind of arrogant to assume that this evidence is the only standard, especially considering it rules out a priori a whole slew of possibilities. it also makes it an unfair playing field - what sort of evidence could actually ever be accepted by a historian of the possibility of the Divine? you're also flying in the face of the philosophical problem that scientific empiricism never actually provides proof - only *support* for a *hypothesis* that stands until it is *disproved*; even richard dawkins accepts that his atheism is nonetheless a belief, albeit strongly supported.

Dauer: I think I've said before that these are my views and I recognize that. It would be presumptuous to say otherwise. Could Noah have floated above a great many waters? Who knows? Could the world have been created by aliens trying to make us into slaves? Who knows?

*Development of oral law*

Earlier Dauer: Some of these things probably developed over time, like candlelighting before Shabbat and the eruv, or starting the month by the astronomical new moon instead of the sliver moon, or started the year at Rosh HaShana instead of at the barley harvest, but they are not present in the Torah.


BB: well, that's exactly what the tradition says, with the difference being that they actually *have* linked everything back to a Torah source - with *no* exceptions. which came first is then a matter of what you happen to believe - it's not an automatic win for historicism.

Dauer: Yes, but some of their sources are either not direct or finding meanings that are said to be implied, right? If everything is a hypothesis, historicism does seem to have more support. (Addition: for clarification, they find meanings that are not pshat)


*Demonization and Amalek*

Earlier Dauer: I am against the demonization of all people, including the Nazis. I do my best to understand what was going on inside of them as people so that I don't begin to label them as a mythic enemy. I don't care what is to gain. I disagree with any move to demonize a group of people. We're all human. I think what it would be like, to be a member of Amalek. I can't believe the hate directed against them.


BB: firstly, like i said before, it's about your actions - if you don't act like an amalekite, you are not one. therefore, we are not demonising people, but a concept of absolute evil; the tradition repeatedly states that amalekites (and the rest of the seven nations) are no longer an identifiable people, therefore this text can only be applied to the *conceptual* amalek. consequently, anyone that labels a particular group as "amalek" is being completely self-serving and denying the possibility for them to change - which is itself an amalekite PoV. secondly, you *should* think about what it would be like to be an amalekite - so you can make sure you don't ever turn into one. as you know, we are both commanded to *remember* amalek *and* obliterate the memory of amalek - how can we do both? the tradition responds that we do so by remembering their deeds and by obliterating the possibility of their recommission.

Dauer: But we still demonize the Amalek that has passed, the nation. It has nothing to do with when these people lived. We make them less than human so that we may have something to call other, and it encourages us to do it with other people to. I knew of a group who wanted to design a pastry after Arafat's nose.(Addition: Like we learn from proverbs, celebrate the deaths of the wicked, but not those of our personal enemies. I have no problem with celebrating the end to someone who caused great suffering. I do have a problem with ignoring their humanity. And I include people who are not personal enemies.)


Earlier Dauer: And why? Because they were a native tribe and had to be exterminated to make room for the 12 tribes.


BB: no, that's simply not right. the given reason for destroying amalek is because they attacked us in the desert - they started it. as for the seven nations, they had to be wiped out because they were the worst kind of idolaters - but by the same logic as amalek, once they ceased to act in an idolatrous fashion, they were effectively "wiped out".

Dauer: I never said it was the given reason. If the torah was written by man, the early story can be seen as a justification for the later action. They demonized them, like Jews still do today.

*Justifications for a modern Teshuva on sacred parts of Judaism*

BB: i applaud your determination to deal with this most difficult of issues - if only more people were so assiduous. however, i do think there is a point beyond simply apologising for our mythos when it is taken to such a degree that it becomes namby-pambying, fluffy-bunny 'tree-hugging hippy crap', to use eric cartman's immortal phrase.

Dauer: I'm not doing this because I am ashamed of the way it makes Judaism look. I am doing it for me. It makes me sad. I really don't think it's any better than justifying the way Jews are portrayed by Christian books.

*Summation*

BB: and our opinions on the kabbalah centre are in agreement, too! i guess what i'm trying to say is that you're actually more traditional than you seem to think in a lot of ways, even if i think you are expecting the universe to be a lot, well, nicer, than it actually is.

dauer: ritually, I am not traditional. [I am] Moving that way because I am starting at the beginning. But I have no problem not following a mitzvah if I can take the time to fully examine every meaning that it's ever had [and recognize why after deliberation and wrestling I would choose to disregard it.]

In belief, I doubt anything that appears to break natural law and doubt torah was given at sinai. So I'm not sure what you mean that my views are more traditional than I thought.

I'm not expecting the universe to be nicer. There are cruel people in the world. This is a reality. But these people aren't just "cruel people." They are human beings. For me it is important to recognize this. There were nazis. If I grew up in their situation, maybe I would have manned the showers.

What I am hoping for is a developed human conciousness of the multidimensional nature of every person that ever lived.


Dauer

-----------------
I think that makes some sense.

 

[bananabrain]

*on the sacredness of Torah*

Dauer: I don't consider it possible for God to write words or tell someone to write words, however it happens.

well, doesn't this fly in the face of the "possibility of G!D" that you were talking about before? seriously, dauer, if it isn't possible for G!D to communicate with human beings, however indirectly, then what is G!D to us? a less than omnipotent Divine is surely not G!D as i understand it. this makes you sound like a deist - in fact, this contradicts what you're saying about the mystical nature of the Divine - it seems to me to make no sense to have mysticism without some sense of cosmic interaction. it sounds to me in fact like you're effectively denying the reality of G!D in any sense that anyone religious could understand, which would for me beg the question of what exactly the point of judaism is, if it isn't simply an ethnic group that you happen to belong to with some quaint folkloric traditions.

Couldn't we just as easily say the NT is true as well, or the Tao Te Ching, or the Bhagavad Ghita, or any other book that people decide is holy, to the absence of the other books, historicity, and science?

i don't have a problem with saying that other holy books may well draw upon the wisdom of the Divine insofar as they cannot be logically deduced from first principles. as for whether they are "true" or not, that depends on your criteria for something being "true" - and these criteria are themselves axiomatic and thus a matter of belief.

If G!D had a hand in Torah, he probably had a hand in the changes too. And any more changes we make. Otherwise, we wouldn't be making them.

well, like i say, i don't believe that Torah has ever changed - at least as far as the letters of the written Torah themselves as given at Sinai are concerned - which is actually a fairly minimalist position. however, i do believe that *interpretations* of Torah have changed over time, in accordance with "it is not in Heaven", which isn't really terribly controversial either. now you could, if you wish, argue that as human interpretation is explicitly authorised by lo bashamayim hi, so G!D has an indirect hand in this. this is not the same as change. and, furthermore, it's not the same as a reductio ad absurdum which says "any change is therefore inspired by G!D" - because the one simply doesn't follow from the other - at least not where the necessity for authority is admitted. by the same logic, you wouldn't trust someone to innovate in neurosurgery unless they were a doctor with the relevant advanced qualifications - and even so, he wouldn't question the existence of the brain, or indeed brain activity itself! something isn't neurosurgery simply because everyone agrees it to be; so i think this is a completely specious, albeit seductive argument.

*on the nature of miracles*

I go further than doubt. I say [the crossing of the red sea] probably didn't happen, but who knows? And maybe Muhammad did ascend to heaven. I doubt it. Who knows? I go far enough to say that I don't know, but in some cases that comparative textual analysis and other techniques may increase doubt exponentially.

oh, i agree, but any religious system worth adhering to ought to be able to stand up to this scrutiny - and, to be quite honest, there are a lot of Torah-observant biologists, physicists, historians, archaeologists, philologists and so on and they seem pretty OK no matter how fiercely people attempt to debunk Torah, G!D etc. perhaps i'm naive, but i have to trust the learning of others from time to time. part of what i believe in is the people that lived before me and passed on the Torah to our generation. now, this doesn't entitle them to immunity from criticism, as some people seem to think, but neither does it assume their complicity in what amounts in the eyes of many of their critics, to an enormous con.

It doesn't make sense to do something for such a reason. I do it because for me it has spiritual value. Even when I don't feel like acting in a certain way, it falls under something drilled into me at a school I went to, "Act as if." Live it and then feel that way. I suppose that's a Jewish view anyway.

oh, absolutely, it's na'aseh ve'nishma (we shall do and we shall hear) and the rabbinic principle that observing mitzvot for the wrong reason is better than not observing them at all and will lead to observance for the right reason.

I'd rather remain in complete doubt all of my life that force myself into a belief just to go along with a particular creed. I don't doubt though, in this case. I am entirely agnostic.

nonetheless, it is surely better to doubt than to deny, especially if the denial cannot possibly be substantiated. as it says, "everything is in the hands of heaven - except the awe of heaven". however, what upsets me about your position is that you seem to completely distrust traditional sources and give them no credence whatsoever, as opposed to scientific/historical sources, which seem to be the only ones you trust. i just don't understand that. is there no traditional source you feel you can trust?

Just seems unlikely G!D would single one nation out of them all to be chosen, and if the Torah is sacred because we say so, certainly G!D did not choose us.

which implies, actually, that if the Torah is sacred regardless of whether we believe it to be so or not, then the 'chosen' bit is true as well. the thing is, 'likelihood', or propensity or probability or whatever you want to call it, is a lousy indicator of anything to do with jewish history. this is actually at the root of why i think judaism and history are always at loggerheads - it *makes no logical sense* that judaism should still be around. we should have died out, been assimilated or murdered or whatever. statistically, we shouldn't have survived. in fact, judaism is actually an impossiblility. nevertheless, here we still are, and am yisrael hai - and not only this, we came back from the edge of extermination within a decade to return to our ancestral land: an impossibility, by any yardstick of historical 'likelihood'! historians, in effect, don't like judaism because it's an anomaly that disrupts their tidy little theories of how stuff happens. that, for me, explains the sheer spite of it all. if that's what chosenness is, or uniqueness, then that's OK by me.

But I can't say I believe in life after death. That would be a lie. I don't disbelieve or believe it. I have absolutely no idea and I probably won't until I'm there.

but you surely couldn't discount it entirely as a possibility? after all, which of us could really circumscribe possibilities in such a definitive way? that's what i would call the requisite complexity of the cosmos. there is necessarily stuff that is beyond our understanding - the difference is in whether this frustrates us or inspires us with wonder and awe.

Also, he explained in detail what each one meant, even if it wasn't actually included in the statements, yes?

and this got him - maimonides, of all people! - criticised as a heretic in some quarters, because he was being far too categorical. after all, he was wrong about quite a few things, but i don't have a problem with that. i do have a problem with people who don't let me criticise the gedolei ha'Torah on principle. i'm not suggesting he was a faker or a charlatan, but my problems with him tend to be philosophical rather than halachic.

"Can you dispove Zleebl, the invisible gerbil I talk to every day?" or something like that.

oh, that old chestnut. look, it relies on basically an implicit assumption that our first reaction is "well, that's obviously bollocks", to which the atheist then responds "aha!" - except that the difference is that if the existence of G!D were so obviously bollocks, the hypothetical atheist is essentially insulting anyone that could believe something so self-evidently stupid - but the point is that what may be self-evident to him is not necessarily self-evident to everyone but, rather, a matter of opinion on which he happens to differ.

So... Can you disprove that a member of a talmudic circle wrote a mystical guidebook and hid it until it was found and published many years later? Okay, that's been done. I'm not going to bother offering disproofs of the oral torah. You probably know what's out there anyway. If you don't, http://www.amhaaretz.com/cat_critique.html

er, that site has disappeared (spooky, eh) but seems to be in the google cache, fortunately. there's a lot of stuff there, but i have to say that the stuff i have read so far doesn't seem terribly earth-shattering. take this for example:

It's difficult to imagine that bishul in this passage could mean cooking in liquid. Then again, it might just be that I do not know all there is to know about ancient culinary.

now, for me, this isn't a "disproof". the author might find it 'difficult to imagine', but i don't. and he freely admits that there are gaps in his knowledge. furthermore, the tools that he is using for his disproofs are from outside the system of categories that they purport to analyse - essentially, greek philosophical logic. he keeps asking for "evidence" - but it is nigh on impossible that such evidence could ever be produced and, as i said before, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. the point that i am trying to make is that the logical system that is used to link the oral to the written and vice-versa doesn't work the same way. it works according to the "baraita of rabbi ishmael", the 13 principles from the introduction to "torat kohanim" and the 32 principles of talmudic interpretation (i forget where they are, but look in your steinsaltz talmudic reference guide) - metaphorically, it's like saying "angels don't exist because they don't show up on radar" - it means you're using the wrong set of tools and 'proves' nothing. my approach to this was basically derived from spending an awful lot of time with a convert to judaism who is also a philosophy graduate. the only way you could "disprove" the oral Torah would be by showing that a halachic principle was itself in contradiction with the agreed rules of interpretation. i don't think either of us have the tools to do that, let alone here.

I have nothing against the traditional pov. I just think that on Historical issues it is often wrong.

and so do i - but i don't expect history to conform with the categories of Torah any more than i expect the opposite. they're different ways of seeing the world and you can't support one by adducing the other.

If everything is a hypothesis, historicism does seem to have more support.(Addition: for clarification, they find meanings that are not pshat)

yeah, but because something has "more" support doesn't mean it's necessarily more correct. this isn't democracy. similarly, there is quite a lot of, ahem, evidence, that pshat itself has shifted meaning over time. some of what is described as "pshat" earlier in the process would be described as "drash" by later authorities - if it hadn't already been labelled as "pshat". the mind boggles.

But we still demonize the Amalek that has passed, the nation.

yes, because they fecking deserved it, just as the nazis still deserve to be demonised!

It has nothing to do with when these people lived. We make them less than human so that we may have something to call other, and it encourages us to do it with other people to.

now, you see, that is far more of a problem for me. i wouldn't approve of people doing their own definitions of amalekism, precisely because of what would be likely to happen. as for denying their humanity, that's actually not what is going on - the amalekites and the nazis were very, very human; that's precisely what made it possible for them to be so evil. i think you and i differ on precisely what humanity means.

b'shalom

bananabrain

 

[dauer]

well, doesn't this fly in the face of the "possibility of G!D" that you were talking about before? seriously, dauer, if it isn't possible for G!D to communicate with human beings, however indirectly, then what is G!D to us?

I never said God doesn't communicate with humans. I believe that it's on God terms and not human terms, so that we cannot fully comprehend what is going on. Everything that comes from it is just our reaction to the Divine. I consider God reaching to us sometimes and other times us inviting God.

This is why I believe mystical systems differ. There are no words, so they reach back into mythos for language about the Divine.

I believe God does communicate with humans directly, experientially.

a less than omnipotent Divine is surely not G!D as i understand it. this makes you sound like a deist - in fact, this contradicts what you're saying about the mystical nature of the Divine - it seems to me to make no sense to have mysticism without some sense of cosmic interaction. it sounds to me in fact like you're effectively denying the reality of G!D in any sense that anyone religious could understand,

I consider God present in everything and constantly the reason for existence. It's like the personification of God with all of the sefirot of each of the four worlds as his robes. I thought I said before I consider myself a rational panentheist. It's not that I think Kaballah is any more true than anything else and at this point I'm not really getting into it very deeply. I consider some of it a useful tool for increasing awe and awareness of the Divine.

which would for me beg the question of what exactly the point of judaism is, if it isn't simply an ethnic group that you happen to belong to with some quaint folkloric traditions.

The point of Judaism for me, you mean? Many people find different points. I consider the mitzvot extremely helpful in spreading holiness and an awareness of God in my life, and sometimes helpful in other ways depending on the mitzvah. If I had instead been brought up to eat only the meats that are unkosher rather than the kosher ones, that would serve my purposes just as well. But why reinvent the wheel? I may decide to fix it with a new type of rubber that works better on modern asphalt, but this is a small change.

Because I consider the Torah sacred, I allow the stories within it to become deep wells of meaning. Study can deepen my awareness of God. As I have explained, for me the Torah makes God more accessible. When I invest in it, I invest also in my own spiritual growth.

i don't have a problem with saying that other holy books may well draw upon the wisdom of the Divine insofar as they cannot be logically deduced from first principles. as for whether they are "true" or not, that depends on your criteria for something being "true" - and these criteria are themselves axiomatic and thus a matter of belief.

I agree with you. It is all a matter of belief. This is why most people believe their way is Truth and other ways are only truth when they agree. I hear it from Christians, too, and Muslims.

now you could, if you wish, argue that as human interpretation is explicitly authorised by lo bashamayim hi, so G!D has an indirect hand in this. this is not the same as change. and, furthermore, it's not the same as a reductio ad absurdum which says "any change is therefore inspired by G!D" - because the one simply doesn't follow from the other - at least not where the necessity for authority is admitted. by the same logic, you wouldn't trust someone to innovate in neurosurgery unless they were a doctor with the relevant advanced qualifications - and even so, he wouldn't question the existence of the brain, or indeed brain activity itself! something isn't neurosurgery simply because everyone agrees it to be; so i think this is a completely specious, albeit seductive argument.

I agree with you, and that's why I dismissed it immediately after. I remain pretty agnostic on these things. I have also considered that perhaps God stacks the deck, setting people up in an order so they will inevitably bring human civ where He wants it to be gradually over time. This I find unlikely as well, but it is a thought. I'm not really anti-Divine Plan. I just don't believe that if there is one God ever interferes with the laws of physics to put it into motion. I disagree with your arguement though because in the case I presented, the person isn't innovating. God is behind it. This does not eliminate free will. The person chose in the way God planned for them to choose in order to create appropriate change.

oh, i agree, but any religious system worth adhering to ought to be able to stand up to this scrutiny - and, to be quite honest, there are a lot of Torah-observant biologists, physicists, historians, archaeologists, philologists and so on and they seem pretty OK no matter how fiercely people attempt to debunk Torah, G!D etc. perhaps i'm naive, but i have to trust the learning of others from time to time. part of what i believe in is the people that lived before me and passed on the Torah to our generation. now, this doesn't entitle them to immunity from criticism, as some people seem to think, but neither does it assume their complicity in what amounts in the eyes of many of their critics, to an enormous con.

As I recall, Aryeh Kaplan was a brilliant physicist. Now this isn't to say he didn't do a lot of good work, but he also seemed to write whatever supported his ideas about the history of the Jewish people. There are plenty of educated people who are unwilling to look objectively at the sources of their own beliefs. However, I do the same as you in that I claim the experiences of mystics as reason for belief.

nonetheless, it is surely better to doubt than to deny, especially if the denial cannot possibly be substantiated.

I don't deny. I am as open to the miracles of my tradition as those of any other. I find them unlikely, but who knows?

however, what upsets me about your position is that you seem to completely distrust traditional sources and give them no credence whatsoever, as opposed to scientific/historical sources, which seem to be the only ones you trust. i just don't understand that. is there no traditional source you feel you can trust?

I said it in another thread I think. It's like relying on the old history books from communist Russia or China. I do believe that there are things in traditional sources that are true and get ignored, kernels of truth. But for the longest time all histories have been at least somewhat self-serving. I also don't trust established truths of Church History, like the reason for Constantine's conversion.

I guess I could explain it this way. I do trust traditional sources but I also recognize that they will be subjective many times and interpretation of the Torah is likely from a later age even if it is the oldest that we have. I commend the Talmud for not showing everyone as a saint. What I've been struggling with lately is the letters of Bar Kokhba that were found. They were his and it looks like he was some sort of ruffian trying to take over Israel by force, working like a mob boss almost, roughing people up.

I'm trying to understand why, based on what has been found, Akiva supported Bar Kokhba. He was a smart guy. I'm wondering if maybe he was blackmailed. I mean I have no idea at all but I approach this thinking the traditional source isn't going to lie to make Akiva look bad. Of course, it may have wanted to show that he wasn't perfect, but still. It's just something that's been confusing me lately.

which implies, actually, that if the Torah is sacred regardless of whether we believe it to be so or not, then the 'chosen' bit is true as well.

Sure, but I don't believe it's sacred whether we believe or not. I believe it's sacred for us because we believe and we can't really know anything more than that. That's what my quote was showing earlier.

the thing is, 'likelihood', or propensity or probability or whatever you want to call it, is a lousy indicator of anything to do with jewish history. this is actually at the root of why i think judaism and history are always at loggerheads - it *makes no logical sense* that judaism should still be around. we should have died out, been assimilated or murdered or whatever. statistically, we shouldn't have survived.

Why should we all be murdered? There's no way for us to assimilate because of how immersive all of the ritual laws are and also in some cases because of the atitudes of Christian society. It's true we've been persecuted for a long time and survived. Zoroastrianism has survived for a long time as well.

but you surely couldn't discount it entirely as a possibility? after all, which of us could really circumscribe possibilities in such a definitive way? that's what i would call the requisite complexity of the cosmos. there is necessarily stuff that is beyond our understanding - the difference is in whether this frustrates us or inspires us with wonder and awe.

Nope. I never did. I clearly stated I don't believe or disbelieve in the afterlife. But I still don't believe so I don't fit that particular of Maimonides' statements. It doesn't stay "I am open to the possibility that when my body dies my experiences may continue." It's much more rigid than that.

and this got him - maimonides, of all people! - criticised as a heretic in some quarters, because he was being far too categorical.

I was responding to you because you said he wrote em to be flexible and would have had an idea of how he was designing them, which he clearly did not. It was the people who came after him who saw their potential to be used in a particular way outside of their original usage.

lot of time with a convert to judaism who is also a philosophy graduate. the only way you could "disprove" the oral Torah would be by showing that a halachic principle was itself in contradiction with the agreed rules of interpretation. i don't think either of us have the tools to do that, let alone here.

I disagree. If the oral Torah does not come from Torah, any method can be used to examine it and show it is in conflict with Torah. Your technique presumes there is an oral Torah and only after that tries to refute it.

and so do i - but i don't expect history to conform with the categories of Torah any more than i expect the opposite. they're different ways of seeing the world and you can't support one by adducing the other.

Agreed.

yeah, but because something has "more" support doesn't mean it's necessarily more correct. this isn't democracy. similarly, there is quite a lot of, ahem, evidence, that pshat itself has shifted meaning over time. some of what is described as "pshat" earlier in the process would be described as "drash" by later authorities - if it hadn't already been labelled as "pshat". the mind boggles.

I don't see how the meaning of pshat shifting means anything. I did look for that book. It sounds fascinating. Quite expensive though. Maybe after Hanukah, the festival of assimilationism. I agree more support doesn't make more correct, but it does mean more likely.

yes, because they fecking deserved it, just as the nazis still deserve to be demonised!

Totally disagree with this though.

now, you see, that is far more of a problem for me. i wouldn't approve of people doing their own definitions of amalekism, precisely because of what would be likely to happen.

Has nothing to do with that. We demonize other people by seeing them as nothing more than wicked, evil, cruel, heartless, or some other adjective that's appropriate. Our tradition teaches children that this is okay. I saw arguements about this after Arafat died. Some people happy, some celebrating, some mocking and cursing the guy, and some feeling pity for the mocking and cursing, analogical dancing on his not dug grave.

as for denying their humanity, that's actually not what is going on - the amalekites and the nazis were very, very human; that's precisely what made it possible for them to be so evil. i think you and i differ on precisely what humanity means.

I agree. I'm not talking about the potential for someone to make decisions. I'm talking about the human experience with all of its nuances. Nobody is just one way or another. Nobody is purely wicked. Nobody is purely good. We all make mistakes, some of us more than others, some of us willfully, but we're all also coming from different situations thanks to nature and nurture. Some of us rise far beyond our environments, while others do not. But we are all human being with many dimensions to our character and an array of experiences and emotions. Nazis were also fathers and brothers, some of them probably felt guilt and remorse, but continued for fear of their own lives. I'm not condoning the behavior. I'm acknowledging the humanity. We're all in this together.

Dauer

 

[bananabrain]

I never said G!D doesn't communicate with humans. I believe that it's on G!D terms and not human terms, so that we cannot fully comprehend what is going on. Everything that comes from it is just our reaction to the Divine. I consider G!D reaching to us sometimes and other times us inviting G!D.

so, basically, you're saying that communication can take place, but you're ruling out text as a transmission matrix, even if "we cannot fully comprehend what is going on". i think that's an unwarranted stricture which is based on the fact that text itself is tangible, unlike other communication media. i still don't see why our reaction to the Divine cannot be to write the message down accurately. what happens after that, of course, is a different matter.

This is why I believe mystical systems differ. There are no words, so they reach back into mythos for language about the Divine.

but precisely because of that, in the words of karen armstrong, 'mystics tend to agree'. i've read enough mystical texts to recognise commonalities, even if the derived systems differ - probably because they have to cope with the exoteric systems of the target audience.

I thought I said before I consider myself a rational panentheist.

not so explicitly! mind you, i could have missed it - we have both written a lot. i'd consider my own position to contain a healthy dose of rationalism, albeit aware of its own limitations.

If I had instead been brought up to eat only the meats that are unkosher rather than the kosher ones, that would serve my purposes just as well. But why reinvent the wheel? I may decide to fix it with a new type of rubber that works better on modern asphalt, but this is a small change.

i see what you mean, but i'd still check out the great tyre-makers of the past and trust what they had to say as far as i could. it saves time!

Because I consider the Torah sacred

but i can't accept your definition of sacredness, because that would effectively allow our friend zleebl the gerbil to be sacralised by intent and my concept of sacredness is circumscribed by the concept of kedushah, which requires the recognition of areas outside human experience, which includes the paradoxical inclusion of text within this sphere. i guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

The person chose in the way God planned for them to choose in order to create appropriate change.

agreed!

but [kaplan] also seemed to write whatever supported his ideas about the history of the Jewish people. There are plenty of educated people who are unwilling to look objectively at the sources of their own beliefs. However, I do the same as you in that I claim the experiences of mystics as reason for belief.

i actually disagree with a lot of kaplan's mussar, despite my enormous respect for him and my large collection of his work. i think the major point i am trying to make here is not that people won't examine their preconceptions (are you listening, richard dawkins?) which is an accusation that can be levelled on all sides, but that there is an assumption that religion, not just judaism, is somehow infantile because it doesn't let human rationality act as judge, jury and executioner. aside from the influence of the so-called 'enlightenment', this largely arises, imho, because most people stop their religious education either before or during their teens, whilst their secular education continues to be refined into their later lives - and, as the fundie world sometimes shows, the reverse can also be true. how on earth can one expect someone who comes from a not particularly knowledgeable family environment, went to cheder until their bar mitzvah and then went on to become a scientist or philosopher, to not think that religion is something you "outgrow"? in the west, we are encouraged to find what is "correct" and "true" - without understanding that because one thing is true, it doesn't preclude other things as well.

It's like relying on the old history books from communist Russia or China. I do believe that there are things in traditional sources that are true and get ignored, kernels of truth. But for the longest time all histories have been at least somewhat self-serving. I also don't trust established truths of Church History, like the reason for Constantine's conversion.

ok, so for you it's axiomatic that the self-serving memetic nature of an idea induces it to favour orthodoxy and even cheat to ensure its own propagation - but why do you consider academia to be above this? what i am saying is that even if you can't trust religious texts, you equally well can't trust academics. so, in the end, it actually comes down to prejudice whoever one favours, unless one accepts that all human endeavour is limited and that categorical attributions of value are inevitably based fundamentally upon beliefs and attitudes.

What I've been struggling with lately is the letters of Bar Kokhba that were found. They were his and it looks like he was some sort of ruffian trying to take over Israel by force, working like a mob boss almost, roughing people up. I'm trying to understand why, based on what has been found, Akiva supported Bar Kokhba. He was a smart guy. I'm wondering if maybe he was blackmailed. I mean I have no idea at all but I approach this thinking the traditional source isn't going to lie to make Akiva look bad.

i think, if akiva was prepared to be martyred by the romans, he is unlikely to have been susceptible to blackmail. i think i would say that even the greatest scholars and mystics make mistakes in their application to current affairs - it's a risky business to nail your trousers to the mast like that. the best explanation i can think of is that akiva saw that BK had the *potential* to become moshiach and supported him for that purpose and, much like some other people with the correct qualities, failed to realise his potential. don't forget that moshiach ought really to be identifiable with hindsight once he fulfils the qualifying credentials, such as building the third Temple - ergo if someone doesn't do that, he can't have been Moshiach. circular, i know, but at least workable.

Why should we all be murdered?

er, well people have been trying to exterminate us for ages and still haven't managed it. sometimes a population can't recover - what i'm saying is that on the basis of your own test of likelihood, it is so unlikely as to be effectively impossible under the "rules of history", which means that the hypothesis should be challenged.

There's no way for us to assimilate because of how immersive all of the ritual laws are and also in some cases because of the atitudes of Christian society.

OK, but that hasn't stopped people assimilating, converting or getting killed at quite a rate in spite of that. and, of course, it's been a lot worse since a version of non-jewish society arrived during the enlightenment which was actually attractive to jews who were understandably fed up with the ghetto.

Zoroastrianism has survived for a long time as well.

well, that's because they've pretty much never left the area that they came from, in iraq and iran, as well as establishing a presence in the tolerant religious environment of india. similarly, an attractive non-religious society hasn't existed for them until more or less the last hundred years, with the net result that now, they have got a demographic problem because they don't accept converts. the point is that the rules of historical inevitability aren't nearly as clear as those who subscribe to them believe.

It doesn't stay "I am open to the possibility that when my body dies my experiences may continue." It's much more rigid than that.

but that's not what judaism says 'life after death' means, though.

I was responding to you because you said he wrote em to be flexible and would have had an idea of how he was designing them, which he clearly did not.

i don't agree - besides, neither of us can say with any degree of certainty what he was really thinking. just to complicate things further, i read a combination of books which more or less convinced me that he was a mystic, even if he wasn't a mekubal.

I disagree. If the oral Torah does not come from Torah, any method can be used to examine it and show it is in conflict with Torah. Your technique presumes there is an oral Torah and only after that tries to refute it.

equally, your technique presumes that the oral Torah doesn't come from the written and, to be quite honest, i think there's more evidence that my presumption is more reasonable - but if we don't agree, we don't agree.

I don't see how the meaning of pshat shifting means anything.

that's why it's a cool book!

We demonize other people by seeing them as nothing more than wicked, evil, cruel, heartless, or some other adjective that's appropriate.

i disagree. people retain their free will. even if "G!D hardened pharaoh's heart", he failed to assert his humanity and therefore made himself nothing more than evil. and as for arafat, as much as i said "good riddance", i also considered it undignified for people to publicly curse him in such a manner. as peres wrote recently in the times, arafat was the father of his people - and an abusive, flawed father is still a father. it doesn't make his people intrinsically evil - they retain their free will.

Nobody is purely wicked. Nobody is purely good.

i agree - but actions are not the same as people and, in judaism both action and intention count - and not all nazis were coerced or in fear of their lives. the fact that many germans who were both coerced and in fear nonetheless asserted their humanity to fight the evil that had taken over their society is evidence enough.

b'shalom

bananabrain

 

[dauer]

so, basically, you're saying that communication can take place, but you're ruling out text as a transmission matrix, even if "we cannot fully comprehend what is going on". i think that's an unwarranted stricture which is based on the fact that text itself is tangible, unlike other communication media. i still don't see why our reaction to the Divine cannot be to write the message down accurately. what happens after that, of course, is a different matter.

I consider it not to be a transmission so much as an experience. You can blame Campbell, and Heschel who probably would have constantly argued with Campbell on most every point. As a disclaimer, I'm not a staunch supporter of Joseph Campbell but I do believe he is correct to some degree about the nature of myth.

but precisely because of that, in the words of karen armstrong, 'mystics tend to agree'. i've read enough mystical texts to recognise commonalities, even if the derived systems differ - probably because they have to cope with the exoteric systems of the target audience.

They agree on the transcendant experience of Oneness and disagree on the other stuff. Compare the Gnostic view of the physical world with the Jewish one. The two systems may be related -- and it's really not worth getting into how because I don't think anyone is entirely sure -- but on some things their views are so extremely different.

Look at Shamanism, which validates all experiences, including those of the imagination. In our own tradition compare those Jews who were body-denying ascetics to those who believed all of the world around us is filled with Godness and through it God can be experienced.

What they share is the transcendant experience, which they then take and do with differently.

i see what you mean, but i'd still check out the great tyre-makers of the past and trust what they had to say as far as i could. it saves time!

I don't disagree with you. There have been some amazing models out in years past like the 6o417g or the 88fr2w and I don't see any reason to completely reconstruct them. I tend to be pretty traditionalist when it comes to most observances, moral and ritual, even if I'm not there yet. Still, road conditions have changed. I don't see any reason to get flashy rims that spin every time the subwoofers go off. But I would have nothing against adapting the structure to handle the changing conditions.

but i can't accept your definition of sacredness, because that would effectively allow our friend zleebl the gerbil to be sacralised by intent and my concept of sacredness is circumscribed by the concept of kedushah, which requires the recognition of areas outside human experience, which includes the paradoxical inclusion of text within this sphere. i guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

We will have to agree to disagree, as on many things. I'd just like to say that for me it is simply another paradox, and one I am fully aware of. I have considered that if we are making it sacred perhaps it is akin to idolatry. Still, I couldn't accept Lord Zleebl as sacred because ultimately that limits God, and I reject even Jewish definitions of God feeling more comfortable saying God is unknowable. It's not as if this is a radical idea, just how I approach things. I view the Torah as other people coming to terms with God. I can't even entirely validate my own panentheist views and so I accept that while I may be correct, it may also only be for my benefit to call God such and that God is far beyond my reach of comprehension.

Sometimes I refer to God as She -- I know I know tits in the sky -- and I don't do this because I believe God is female. Why would I believe God has a gender? I don't believe God changes when I do this, but my perception of God changes. It changes me. I usually use masculine language. Analogies in Judaism get weird if I call God "She" too often.

So I couldn't accept Lord Zleebl because that would place greater limitation on God, unlike what it seems can be found in Hinduism in which a physical representation is representative of much more and I believe all of them being a manifestation of Brahman.

Now after all I've said that's not to say I don't find Jewish definitions useful. I do. They give me something I can relate to.

ok, so for you it's axiomatic that the self-serving memetic nature of an idea induces it to favour orthodoxy and even cheat to ensure its own propagation - but why do you consider academia to be above this?

I don't.

what i am saying is that even if you can't trust religious texts, you equally well can't trust academics. so, in the end, it actually comes down to prejudice whoever one favours, unless one accepts that all human endeavour is limited and that categorical attributions of value are inevitably based fundamentally upon beliefs and attitudes.

Yep. It's like what Steinberg said through that heretical scoundrel Elisha ben Abuyah in As a Driven Leaf. He searched and searched for something he didn't have to believe in, and he thought he found it in Euclidean Geometry, but he realized that even Euclid's system made basic assumptions about the world.

i think, if akiva was prepared to be martyred by the romans, he is unlikely to have been susceptible to blackmail. i think i would say that even the greatest scholars and mystics make mistakes in their application to current affairs - it's a risky business to nail your trousers to the mast like that. the best explanation i can think of is that akiva saw that BK had the *potential* to become moshiach and supported him for that purpose and, much like some other people with the correct qualities, failed to realise his potential.

You could be right. It just seems so odd because the picture of Bar Kokhba that becomes clear from his letters is he was the type of guy to strong-arm everybody until they did what he wanted. There was a special on I think Nova about the papers.

er, well people have been trying to exterminate us for ages and still haven't managed it. sometimes a population can't recover - what i'm saying is that on the basis of your own test of likelihood, it is so unlikely as to be effectively impossible under the "rules of history", which means that the hypothesis should be challenged.

I'm not so sure it's that impossible. There are many factors that come into play. That's not to say it's likely, just not beyond reason.

OK, but that hasn't stopped people assimilating, converting or getting killed at quite a rate in spite of that. and, of course, it's been a lot worse since a version of non-jewish society arrived during the enlightenment which was actually attractive to jews who were understandably fed up with the ghetto.

Sure. But as long as Jews kept the mitzvot there would be Jews. Shabbos kept the Jews... along with kashrut, the mikvah, talmud torah, daily davenen. When Jews left these things they assimilated or converted like anybody else.

well, that's because they've pretty much never left the area that they came from, in iraq and iran, as well as establishing a presence in the tolerant religious environment of india. similarly, an attractive non-religious society hasn't existed for them until more or less the last hundred years, with the net result that now, they have got a demographic problem because they don't accept converts. the point is that the rules of historical inevitability aren't nearly as clear as those who subscribe to them believe.

I'm not sure if you put me in that group of believers in historical inevitability. There is much leeway. It's more fun that way.

but that's not what judaism says 'life after death' means, though.

All I was suggesting is that according to Judaism there is something that happens after we die, whereas for myself I consider it just as possible that when we die we end completely and nothing happens. Like I've said, I'm agnostic on this issue.

i don't agree - besides, neither of us can say with any degree of certainty what he was really thinking. just to complicate things further, i read a combination of books which more or less convinced me that he was a mystic, even if he wasn't a mekubal.

On the first point, what about the fact that the 13 articles were not vague and were in fact each dealt with to a great degree, defining what they meant?

On the second point, I had read something that also hinted at this but I don't remember what. I think it might not have been a book and actually was some material at myjewishlearning.com but I'm not sure.

equally, your technique presumes that the oral Torah doesn't come from the written and, to be quite honest, i think there's more evidence that my presumption is more reasonable - but if we don't agree, we don't agree.

Well, just one thing. A fundamentalist Christian could also say that any approach we have to their text presumes Jesus was not the son of God or that the authors of the gospels were not really those named by the books or that the Pharisees were not hypocrites oppressing the masses who wouldn't cut a brutha some slack or that we are not all sinners so I can't really buy your arguement. It's true we all mostly enter into things with presumptions. We are biased. On the matter of who has greater evidence, here it will simply be a matter of agreeing to disagree.

i disagree. people retain their free will. even if "G!D hardened pharaoh's heart", he failed to assert his humanity and therefore made himself nothing more than evil. and as for arafat, as much as i said "good riddance", i also considered it undignified for people to publicly curse him in such a manner. as peres wrote recently in the times, arafat was the father of his people - and an abusive, flawed father is still a father. it doesn't make his people intrinsically evil - they retain their free will.

Has nothing to do with free will. Has to do with how we choose to approach the issue of people in the world and their actions. Yes, if they do things that are hurtful they're not nice people, but this doesn't mean we all have to focus on that and consider them an embodiment of evil.

If you're talking about nature vs nurture, I look at it this way. We all have things we need to learn in life. But we all don't need to learn or even do the same things. So we end up in certain lives, some of which are much more difficult than others. Due to my mental illness I can personally say that sometimes certain types of people are in a situation where they become irrational and act in a way not within their nature. Thanks to medication and some work on my part I'm beyond this. I cherish these experiences because they have made me who I am today. It has also helped many people around me come to terms with things in their lives, like my father who used to snap and have a bad temper.

So I believe God needs evil in the world in order to promote good, and that evil is good because it helps us grow. God did say that all of creation is good, yes? And good did create good and evil, right? It's not our job to promote evil but it serves a sacred purpose in the world and those who are labelled as evil can be viewed as part of God's plan.

i agree - but actions are not the same as people and, in judaism both action and intention count - and not all nazis were coerced or in fear of their lives. the fact that many germans who were both coerced and in fear nonetheless asserted their humanity to fight the evil that had taken over their society is evidence enough.

That's not the point. The point is that they were still human. Were we born in Nazi Germany we may have taken great pleasure in the torture of those filthy Jews.

Dauer

 

[bananabrain]

You can blame Campbell, and Heschel who probably would have constantly argued with Campbell on most every point. As a disclaimer, I'm not a staunch supporter of Joseph Campbell but I do believe he is correct to some degree about the nature of myth.

well, i'm very heschelian in my outlook myself, but i haven't read campbell yet. i'm going to have to eventually i suppose.

Compare the Gnostic view of the physical world with the Jewish one.

that's a good point, although many writers, from scholem on, have found great similarities in the idea of the world being in some sense a domain of evil. the difference is that despite this, the jewish mystics see the world as essentially redeemable, which i don't get from what i've read about the gnostics. actually, they're a bit like philip pullman's view of religion, if you ask me - and their heirs are really the sort of christians who thought of the world as essentially the bailiwick of the devil. it's a subtle but important distinction.

In our own tradition compare those Jews who were body-denying ascetics

like who, the kotzker rebbe? the hasidei ashkenaz? really, this approach is not terribly acceptable within judaism; the AR"I used to have 12 challot on his Shabbat table. but, yes, i get your point.

But I would have nothing against adapting the structure to handle the changing conditions.

the only thing that would remove the necessity for wheels would be hovercars. and even hovercars would require some method of interaction with the ground. a wheel is essentially the method by which friction between the vehicle and the ground is overcome - from my PoV, the principle of overcoming friction remains valid.

Analogies in Judaism get weird if I call G!D "She" too often.

i tend to avoid pronouns entirely if i can and use expressions like "ha-Maqom" - "The Place"; but presumably you know that rehem (as in rahamim) is a womb and shadaim (as in E-l Sh-a-Dai) means "breasts".... so actually, it's less weird than you might think. one of the things i like most about the traditional sephardic liturgy is its copious use of the feminine when addressing the Divine.

He searched and searched for something he didn't have to believe in, and he thought he found it in Euclidean Geometry, but he realized that even Euclid's system made basic assumptions about the world.

yeah, that's my point.

I'm not sure if you put me in that group of believers in historical inevitability. There is much leeway. It's more fun that way.

no, i'm not putting you in that group, because i don't agree with it, really, whereas you seem rather sensible.

On the first point, what about the fact that the 13 articles were not vague and were in fact each dealt with to a great degree, defining what they meant?

i think it was the qualifications that maimonides stuck on his articles that people objected to, rather than the articles themselves.

Yes, if they do things that are hurtful they're not nice people, but this doesn't mean we all have to focus on that and consider them an embodiment of evil.

well, i understand, but the whole point of amalek is as a paradigm for a group of people that had not one redeeming feature, or carried out one redeeming action. in practice, you and i agree, i think, on how we would approach a real human being in a real situation.

Due to my mental illness I can personally say that sometimes certain types of people are in a situation where they become irrational and act in a way not within their nature.

i wouldn't put mental illness in the category of evil. i think that's a case where your free-will becomes detached from your control mechanisms - it's a form of paralysis, as it were, rather than a spiritual problem, although it can be affected (for good or ill) by spiritual factors. i hope you don't think me too glib, but this is a also a subject very close to home for me, i'd say.

and those who are labelled as evil can be viewed as part of God's plan.

in hasidic terms, the "short longer way", perhaps.

b'shalom

bananabrain

 

[dauer]

well, i'm very heschelian in my outlook myself, but i haven't read campbell yet. i'm going to have to eventually i suppose.

He says, basically, that myths are like dreams and all of them share common symbols and archetypal language. Then he goes on to demonstrate this throughout his entire career. He said "Dreams are private myths. Myths are public dreams." And in that he meant they could both be understood using similar tools. I disagree with him for the same reasons I disagree with strict psychoanalysts who interpret dreams. I really don't agree with most any theory that tries to fit a broad structure in a rigid system, because it will end up cutting corners to support itself. But that doesn't mean I don't support his general premise.

like who, the kotzker rebbe? the hasidei ashkenaz? really, this approach is not terribly acceptable within judaism; the AR"I used to have 12 challot on his Shabbat table. but, yes, i get your point.

I was thinking of the hasidei ashkenaz. It's certainly not an acceptable approach but it has existed.

the only thing that would remove the necessity for wheels would be hovercars. and even hovercars would require some method of interaction with the ground. a wheel is essentially the method by which friction between the vehicle and the ground is overcome - from my PoV, the principle of overcoming friction remains valid.

I don't want to get rid of wheels. We all need wheels. I'm not a radical who wants to turn the system upside down. I'm a liberal who thinks the system's great but could use a little tweaking. And yes, I know, according to the traditional perspective I have no authority to tweak.

i tend to avoid pronouns entirely if i can and use expressions like "ha-Maqom" - "The Place"; but presumably you know that rehem (as in rahamim) is a womb and shadaim (as in E-l Sh-a-Dai) means "breasts".... so actually, it's less weird than you might think. one of the things i like most about the traditional sephardic liturgy is its copious use of the feminine when addressing the Divine.

Yeah, I agree with you. And usually I too avoid pronouns. But sometimes I need something I can more personally relate to. I knew what those words meant. But El Shadai is still masculine. And most English translations avoid anything suggestive of the feminine in rahamim and El Shadai, not that the translations really matter. I really mean that it gets confusing when the Shekhinah becomes a factor, or the people of Israel filling the role of the Shekhinah. I read of someone calling God Noga when trying to avoid concepts of gender.

Actually most often I only use feminine pronouns right along with masculine ones in a few sentences in an attempt to shatter the concept of a gendered God when speaking with people, at least to help them understand that when I say He it is for lack of a genderless singular pronoun.

i think it was the qualifications that maimonides stuck on his articles that people objected to, rather than the articles themselves.

Well, this is what I'm not understanding. And perhaps you can explain it to me. It seems like they were written with each statement as a heading for the explanation. Were they published separately first? I really have no problem with understanding them loosely but at this point I don't really understand where you're coming from about his intentions.

well, i understand, but the whole point of amalek is as a paradigm for a group of people that had not one redeeming feature, or carried out one redeeming action. in practice, you and i agree, i think, on how we would approach a real human being in a real situation.

I think the difference is that I am unwilling to accept that any group ever had not one redeeming feature because I don't believe Torah is from God and I am unwilling to think of any group that way based on what I consider to be a biased text. If I believed what you believe about Torah, I would agree with you. But I don't.

in hasidic terms, the "short longer way", perhaps.

Can you explain? I think you were speaking to what I said about evil being an integral part of the divine plan that is beneficial for our growth and is good along with the rest of creation.

Dauer

 

[dauer]

I don't think I can edit my post so this is an addition.

You said that what happens because of mental illness should not be considered "evil." But if a person who is mentally ill shouts the unspoken name of God, marries a prostitute, and maybe a fish, and a torah, and proclaims themself the messiah, encouraging people to this day to follow their path, surely this is evil. Now you can argue that he was not mentally ill if you'd like. The encyclopedia Judaica has a wonderfully thorough article on him. I believe him to be bipolar, like myself, and that he was completely taken advantage of by Nathan who, rather than helping him through his delusions when he sought help, fed them and continued to convince him over their pilgrimage to Jerusalem. I've said some of this elsewhere on the site. This is just an example of the extreme of mental illness and its negative effects on the world and he is not my arguement.

You could argue that he wasn't mentally ill, but this type of illness is still a breach of free will and his symptoms are similar enough to mine to confirm this type of thing can be a mental illness. If it is because of a genetic condition, or even due to experiences in early childhood, it is still from God, either biologically or part of a divine plan, unless you are arguing that only some of life is part of the divine plan and the rest has nothing to do with it. But the biology is still part of the contruction of the universe.

I don't believe this breach is negative and I believe that it contributes to the greater good, for the reasons I've stated before, perhaps at the self-sacrifice of the individual who offered themselves up for that role in life, in which case it was still their choice. But it does seem like it conflicts with free will.

Dauer