Mama's Pajama Party

What Will Matter?

2012-01-18T19:55:00.007-06:00

Ready or not, some day,
it will all come to an end.
There will be no more surprises;
no minutes, hours, or days.
All the things you collected,
whether treasured or forgotten,
will pass on to someone else.
Your wealth, fame, and temporal power
will shrivel to irrelevance.
It will not matter what you owned
or what you were owed.
Your grudges, resentments, frustrations,
and jealousies will finally disappear.
So, too, your hopes, ambitions, plans, and to-do lists will expire.
The wins and losses, that once seemed
so important, will fade away.
It won't matter where you came from
or what side of the tracks you lived, at the end.
It won't matter whether you were beautiful
or brilliant.
Even your gender and skin color will be irrelevant.
*****************

So, what will matter?
How will the value of your days be measured?

****************
What will matter is not what you bought,
but what you built;
not what you got, but what you gave.
What will matter is not your success,
but your significance.
What will matter is not what you learned,
but what you taught.
What will matter is every act of integrity,
compassion, courage or sacrifice that enriched,
empowered, or encouraged others
to emulate your example.
What will matter is not your competence,
but your character.
What will matter is not how many people you knew,
but how many people will feel a lasting loss
when you're gone.
What will matter is not your memories,
but the memories that live in those who loved you.
What will matter is how long
you will be remembered,
by whom, and for what.
Living a life that matters
doesn't happen by accident.
It's not a matter of circumstance but of choice.
Choose to live a life that matters.
***
author unknown

THANK YOU CAKE CITY (WHO OBTAINED THIS FROM HER FRIEND SALLY)

Refuting Fallacious Debate and History Revisionism

2012-01-18T10:43:00.007-06:00

I can't link to IT from here until the question closes, but If you're reading this here now, it is likely you arrived via my "EDIT" link asking you to read my response to the playground taunts that I have nothing I could say to refute them.

This post is made to address ad hominem, and other fallacious debate techniques used to try to circumvent objective evidence that I gave in an answer to a baiting question on an online question and answer forum.

I realize I might just be giving a bigot the jollies with this by a page devoted to address one notorious Jew hating disrupter. However, he is one who joins others that long ago hijacked a section of the internet to promote war mongering and hate propagandizing. My values do not permit me to remain silent to that. I also hope this will help at least a few people understand a complex situation a little better once they can clearly see common methods of propagandizing and abuse being employed by those who want to hijack efforts to peace in the Middle East and in the World at large.

While I am addressing the words of only one known Jew hater’s comments, note the techniques he uses aren’t unique to him and this isn’t the only topic his methods of propagandizing are used to support. He makes false allegations, twists what someone else said then demands his perversion be justified by the person falsely accused, project bigoted ideation and canards, make unsubstantiated claims and then demand proof for everything the other person said while either providing no evidence to substantiate his claims or giving references that if actually read, discredit his own claim. He is certainly not going to like this post today. Those methods are becoming increasingly commonplace online. Another thing that such people depend upon is to only appeal to others with a similar irrational bias. These methods always fail to convince objective thinkers. His methods are not focused on that sort of person, anyway. They focus on people who are ignorant on a topic and do not have the time or inclination to investigate for themselves.
They may or may not refer to a claimed source, to support some of their claims, but upon investigation, the objective reader discovers that *is* their Achilles' Heel. The easiest way to discover how duplicitous they are is to go to their claimed sources and read what is actually written in context. This is another reason why you might see the most detailed answers I give on controversial issues such as bigotry to Jews and the efforts to eliminate Israel, and *especially* if they are well referenced with scholarly sources, with the most thumbs down. They want to hide the fact that their own words led to the discovery of just how egregious they lie.

I have not even begun to address this particular question and one user’s attacks upon my answer yet. In addition, since I first wrote down an address to all his attacks and asked people to email me for them at the q..He added another attempt to deflect with escalated deceptiveness by perverting another user’s answer, too.

With that particular user, the correct answers that he’s most likely to try to discredit by method I call..baffle with bullshit..are either answers that max out the space allotted or are very long. He chooses those specifically because he knows that the person he is attacking must remove some of the information that he did not want seen in the first place to address his false charges. It is a form of moving the goalpost. Then he will give a list of nonsensical misrepresentations or false claims as charges against the correct answer and claim the person *cannot* refute them. It is only SPACE that doesn't permit refutation in those instances as he certainly knows.

To the answer that called me out..I copy paste (his misspellings and all) and then address them… I don’t claim to be a good writer myself, so excuse my grammar boo boos. His comments are in quotes followed by my response after a <
You may note that I’ve written most of this as if addressing HIM since I first typed most of this rather stream of consciousness when he first made the charges in case he actually writes to me. I won’t hold my breath waiting because I know he knows I can refute lies with evidence.
I also emailed much of this to the asker, unsolicited. Prior to my posting this and a link at the q, only two readers wrote to me to see what I had to say to his charges. I emailed them draft versions of this. The response was as expected. :)

Now to eviscerate the fallacious debate techniques that were there to try to discredit my answer:
“Does that mean there is no sch thing as Metis? Cajuns? Celts?" < Strawman…easily knocked over.. The people who comprise “Palestinian” identity in history are many different ethnicities, nations and peoples. If he wants to talk about who was historically called Palestinian, he’s going to have to admit that it didn’t refer to Arab Muslims in any exclusive manner and in almost all instances of historical reference, it was speaking exclusively of the indigenous Jews. He’s even given historical evidence throughout his claimed refutation that the Jews are the indigenous people referred to as Palestinian, as I wrote, and as the Mark Twain reference HE gave a little further on to support that mark Twain referred to the Palestinians…he omits that Mark Twain was talking about Jews when he said it! . Also a little farther on, the Jew hater’s comments also gave evidence to support continual Jewish presence by referencing the “Palestinian Talmud. “ A term used in English that was coined as a later reference for the texts titled “תַּלְמוּד יְרוּשָׁלְמִי‎, Talmud Yerushalmi, often Yerushalmi for short. HIS claim is to insinuate that “Palestinian Talmud” is the title, when that certainly isn’t the case. Objective evidence proves that beyond doubt.
In addition, the Palestinian Orchestra was a completely Jewish orchestra that existed prior to the formation of the State of Israel. I could keep going on and on, but why? Palestinian wasn’t the identity of any ONE people, although the world at large always equated it with Jew..and that’s another reason why for centuries, the non-Jews who were also living in the region didn’t like it.
"If they really wanted peace they would give up their farms and homes and leave" (paraphrasing) What kind of logic is that? So if Arabs occupy Israel, when did this happen? < He certainly is not paraphrasing me or any answer I could find there. He has pulled that one completely out of his tuches. He’s right, that’s not logical and it is only his illogical claim. Next..he says, “if Arabs occupy Israel”. Arab refers to an ethnicity now, and while Arabs most certainly “occupied“ and conquered many lands in the Middle East, this ethnicity and language has now permeated the region for a long time among many different peoples. There are more than a million and a half Arab Jews in Israel whose families were expelled from Arab lands and were taken in as citizens, not kept as political pawns and permanent refugees.
“Can you point to a period in time when the entire population was removed and Arab introduced?” < Can YOU point to anyone’s claim that the entire population was removed? Your desperation to obfuscate is glaring like a spotlight here. http://www.imninalu.net/myths-Arabs.htm No one said the entire population was removed…another straw man and other fallacies …this link will help the uninformed learn of the ancient history and expansion of the Arab empire. Different peoples living in the ancient Levant have come and gone and largely due to the conquest of various empires and either extermination, expulsion or assimilation. This doesn't obfuscate that the homeland of the Jews is Israel or remove the archaeological evidence and continual Jewish presence however meager at times, despite ALL efforts to remove Jews completely.

“Why is the Cohanim genetic marker MORE prevalent in Palestinians then any Jewish group?”< “Palestinians” as I’ve shown, historically WERE Jews, Cohenim genetic markers are not found in any non-Jewish group more than in any Jewish group. Many Jews that it is found in are Palestinian..you’re using fallacious debate technique. I don’t care to pull out all the genetic studies, but will note that your claim even notes that there is ancient genetic evidence of the Cohenim..tHe Jewish people present in the region. Thanks.
“For your claim to be correct you must have an answer to these.@mama pajama Mark Twain's book "Innocents Abroad" was written in the nineteenth century- it refers to Palestinians- the indigenous inhabitants.” < Yes, it most certainly does, and thanks you for noting that he recognized the Jews as the indigenous peoples. Many sites reference his writing about the Holy Land and how few people inhabited it http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Arabs_in_Palestine.html
He mentions some places as entirely devoid of people, which some modern Palestinians claim their families had large communities and had owned at the time, too. So, who is right Mark Twain or the claims of the “refugees”?
"Seven Pillars of Wisdom" by TE Lawrence speaks of the Palestinians. < Of course, a British citizen would use the British term to refer to all inhabitants of British Mandate Palestine. Doesn't TE "Lawrence of Arabia" also refer to some of the individual peoples by their nation names?
“Khayr al-Din al-Ramli was a Muslim scholar who lived in Ramla in the seventeenth century; he wrote of "Palestine" and "Palestinians". < NOT QUITE.. This cleric famous for his fatwas briefly referenced the Roman province of Palaestina Prima, or as it was known in the early Islamic period, Jund Filastin, one of several sub-provinces of the Unmayad and Abbasid Caliphate province of Syria , organized soon after the Muslim conquest of Syria in the seventh century. I searched Islamic sites for several hours and could find no quote claiming he called himself Palestinian in this writing. That was one of your claims attacking the OTHER person’s answer.

Misleading using Muslim references is just as disrespectful to Islam as your lies about Jews.

“ In fact could you provide an example of a Palestinian humiliated because the British called them "Palestinian"? in fact I just bet you won't.” < The claim I made was that they continually charged that the term was created to humiliate them. They did this for a very long time. Here is only one of the quotes that aren’t difficult to find at all if you bother to look. Here you go..a complaint to the British rejecting the very term Palestine.
"There is no such country as Palestine. 'Palestine' is a term the Zionists invented. There is no Palestine in the Bible. Our country was for centuries part of Syria. 'Palestine' is alien to us. It is the Zionists who introduced it". - Auni Bey Abdul-Hadi, Syrian Arab leader to British Peel Commission, 1937
I’ve got more..and some even delivered at the UN..so..it is very clear that you lost your bet.
What did I “win”? I am not clear what you wagered. I won’t hold my breath waiting for you to admit it.

“Even being referred to a "Palestinian" was so humiliating, then why would a JEWISH writer (Philo) refer to the "Jews of Palestine" in FORTY CE (BEFORE the fall of Jerusalem and Bar Kokhba revolt under Hadrian.” < Philo was a Hellenized (Greek) Jew. When you quote that he said “Jews of Palestine” he notes that Jews were OF the region! You’ve shot your own lie in the foot. Therefore, you admit that Jews were of the larger region the Greeks called Palestine. There goes the lie that Jews are foreign to the region.
Then you twist both my words and history. Philo didn’t live during the British Mandate and wasn’t issued the ID card that the different Arab nations complained was so humiliating and humiliating because they didn't want to be mistaken for the Jews who had historically been referred to for so long as Palestinian, some of them ( as I gave evidence already) falsely even claimed Jews created the term!
The term 'Palestine' is derived from the Philistines. In the fifth century BCE the Greek historian Herodotus used the term Palaistine Syria (= Philistine Syria) to refer to the whole region between Phoenicia and the Lebanon mountains in the north and Egypt in the south. (While the exact meaning intended by Herodotus is debated, later *Greek* writers certainly used 'Philistine Syria' in this very broad sense.) The Greeks felt a great kinship to their ancient kin, the Philistines. Greece was the HOMELAND of the Philistines and they even shared the same religious practices as archaeological evidence exists to support!
Palestine wasn’t the name of a country or an indigenous people to the region, it was the name referred to a region by Greek and Roman conquerors.
Until the early part of the twentieth century, the word Palestinian simply referred to the inhabitants of the region, whether they were Arab, Muslim, Jew, Samaritan, Christian or Druze. Moreover, even they did not use the term widely. Only since 1948 has the term come increasingly into use to refer to all the non-Jewish inhabitants.
Just as the modern term “ARAB WORLD” was only coined in the 20th century by the 21 members of the “ARAB LEAGUE” to designate their member countries and to promote a political goal and strategy for the conquest of a form of empire, so too, was the term “Palaistine Syria” applied to a REGION that comprised many countries/kingdoms/ and peoples who all had their OWN names for their own lands and countries.
　
“Why would they refer to the "PALESTINIAN" Talmudh if it were so insulting? A good refutation to Thomas McCall's claim can be found here http://www.churchhistory101.com/century1-palestine.php “
< I can’t also help but notice that you ignored the objective physical evidence of the Arch of Titus in Rome and the coins they designated as capturing JUDEA. The massive amounts of objective archaeological evidence in museums in Israel and around the world stand as testimony revealing who is “manufacturing” history to try to HIDE the evidence of history. Actually if you read that link, the claim that Thomas McCall is wrong isn’t refuted at all there. They simply refer to the earlier use of “Palaistine Syria “by the *Greeks* who refer to their term of conquest. The term didn’t refer to native peoples, but was a name given to the region by conquerors. This is clearly noted at his OWN website reference if you read. He also ignores that no archaeological evidence exists to support that people IN the region used the term at that time, but that other names WERE used in archaeological evidence.

Thankfully, the objective reader sees these things.

“But I know none of this means anything to "Mama pajama" who will just ignore the facts and refuse to acknowledge or refute.” < Easy taunt to make when my Answer already maxed out the space permitted. It is the FACTS that you are so obviously desperate to obfuscate. Did you forget that that not everyone is desperate to project hate, or too lazy to look for themselves?
“My purpose is to show the facts and pose this question "If the Zionist position is so strong, why must they manufacture history to belittle an entire people?" < This is perhaps the most topsy turvy claim made…and one that anyone reading can now see crystal clear that your accusations and question are obviously the fallacies...as the objective physical evidence has proven once AGAIN. The only people who are being “belittled” under that question are your unfounded, irrational charges and insults to the Jews, and by those who are in utter denial of overwhelming objective physical evidence. It is those who wish to negate the existence of another people and their entire history who “manufacture” a collective Arab identity as “Palestinian” existing thousands of years for peoples who rejected such a thing until the Arab nationalistic movement of the 1960s. You must assume that all readers will be too lazy to read references.
Next time you think that by posing so many fallacious claims as taunting charges and then assert because they weren’t addressed in the q, they .prove the person you’ve trolled can’t address them..Don‘t forget that there will always be at least a FEW people who are interested in actually discovering the truth. Truth will out.
That’s *always* going to be your Achilles’ Heel…and honest answers always your enemy. Seek help for your obsessive desire to project the behaviors you openly display without hint of conscience, onto others. Professionals can help if you seek it.
Here is much more of the evidence you claimed I couldn’t “produce”
http://www.imninalu.net/myths-Arabs.htm
See my references here:
http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110521103725AA1LFrV
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100303171017AADaIdW
Note that in Roman usage the name Judea applied to the whole country, to all of Israel. In fact, the Province of Judea and the earlier Kingdom of Judea ruled by Herod, a client king of Rome, included Samaria, Galilee, the Golan Heights, and the east bank of the Jordan River. Sometimes, as in several verses of the Christian New Testament, Judea is used in a narrow sense together with Samaria as separate regions. Nevertheless, this was a reflection of Jewish usage, not Roman. Jews sometimes used Judea to translate Judah [Yehudah], the ancient southern kingdom of the Israelites after the split of the monarchy.
　
PalestineThis place name, connected with the Philistine population, is first found in the classical [Greek] sources in Herodotos [5th century BCE]. It was introduced as the official name for the region by the Romans after the events of 132-5 [CE], deliberately counterposing it to the official name Iudaea, traditionally used up to that time, in the setting of a series of repressive actions. As such it is often rejected in Jewish circles who prefer "Land of Israel." Yet another ACTUAL Historian in addition to Thomas McCall, Elsa Laurenzi < also not Jewish btw
The BCE sources were affirmation of the Hellenist connection to the origin of the Philistines…that Aegean seafaring people who occupied five coastal city-states and vanished as a people, long before Christianity began.
The Province of Judea and the earlier Kingdom of Judea ruled by Herod, a client king of Rome, included Samaria, Galilee, the Golan Heights, and the east bank of the Jordan River. Sometimes, as in several verses of the Christian New Testament, Judea is used in a narrow sense together with Samaria as separate regions. But this was a reflection of Jewish usage, not Roman. Jews sometimes used Judea to translate Judah [Yehudah], the ancient southern kingdom of the Israelites after the split of the monarchy.
Here is more to refute the lies with objective evidence:
http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_early_palestine_name_origin.php
I have *much* more, but I think I have already made the points.
And because this is already so long, for those of you who want to see those medieval and antique maps he claims doesn’t exist….use the search terms “antique maps of the holy land”, map of Judea and Samaria in the middle ages, “antique map of Judea” “antique map of Samaria”. There are even links where you can purchase maps from the 15th -19th centuries clearly showing those terms he said didn’t exist on maps…but being so old they are a bit pricey..$450 and up. I don’t link them because I’m not trying to sell what they offer…I just told you how you can go find for yourself with a few clicks of a mouse, what he said doesn’t exist.
For him to rationalize his hate, I am sure none of the overwhelming mountains of objective evidence exists.
I pity such overwhelming hate that blinds people to evidence.
Last admonition to the Jew hater: Seek help for your hate. You may then desire to seek peace.
Shalom y’all.

Happy Chanukah!

2011-12-26T11:34:00.006-06:00

I know I'm a little late to post a Chanukah greeting, considering that tonight is the 7th night.

Do you have any idea how hard it was to find a Jewish Zebra?

Best of Answers

2011-10-28T11:01:00.004-05:00

I've answered many hundreds of questions about Jewish identity with variations of an essay that derived from a lesson plan I'd used long ago with teens. Some of them had many more outside references listed than did others. At some, I used Jewish history sites; others showed references to secular historical evidence, international linguistic scholarly references, and to web sites of different respected Rabbis. At others I detailed the history of the false notion of Jews as a race and used award winning Biology web references.
The photo there is of one of my answers to the question of Jewish identity that someone nominated to Yahoo and Yahoo Answers chose to feature as a Best of Answers. While all the information in it is correct and contains much of the information I provide elsewhere, if *I* were going to choose one of the thousands of times I've answered this question asked on a daily basis, I would have chosen one of the better referenced answers I'd posted many times.

Here is a link to the above question: http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101027162339AAi9CII
Here is a link to another of the many hundreds of times I have answered this question:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AgEGzRemtJg1A2CbyhoQKfPty6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20111020175125AAigOTe
I might be back later with more.

Can anyone identify this species of ant?

2011-07-23T13:56:00.005-05:00

I change the water in my birdbaths and bowls several times a day since it is so very hot outside. After lunch during the regular "refill time”, I looked out on the back patio to see the bowl right next to the door filled with these squiggling and drowning winged ants. At first glance I wasn't sure if it was some form of wasp or ant, but I decided upon ant after closely looking at its head and especially upon finding a much smaller version of this winged creature alongside its larger relatives also squirming in the bowl. That one has no wings and is easily identified as an ant, but I still don’t know what species. I’ve never seen one like it before. I’ve seen “cow killer ants” with hair on their abdomen, but their bodies were completely covered with hairs. This one only has concentric circles of short black hair with the orange abdomen *very* slightly visible through each circle if you look very closely through a magnifying lens. I couldn't get a clear photo of that or the smaller ant ( it came out blurry), but it looks almost identical to the winged creatures except for being much, much smaller. The most distinctive feature is the black hair rings circling like a bulls eye around the lower 2/3 of the abdomen to the anus.
What is this? I've been searching for an hour in online identification guides and in my own books on insect identification and so far, it eludes me.
Any help would be appreciated. If this many winged ants dropped into this water bowl this morning, I must have a colony very near, looking to expand. I wonder how many didn’t drop into the bowl?
I have a couple of other photos that look similar. I put all the winged ants in a jar with tiny air holes..until I discover just what I'm dealing with here, before I either exterminate or release them. Three of the winged ants didn’t survive, but 7 still remain, along with one of their tinier ant relatives
==============================================================================
UPDATE JULY 26, 2011

While I received many emails giving guesses as to the species, I actually discovered the answer today on my own. I discovered is that it is technically a WASP,
even though the very small male has no wings.
I discovered this is a type of "velvet ant", a type of ant some call
"cow killer ants" or "cow ants" because they can inflict painful stings. I'd never
seen one like this one before, but I have seen several other very
colorful species on my property. As the orginal entry indicated, I had already thought of them, based on the behavior of these creatures, but they just looked so very different from the other velvet ants I'd seen here I ruled that out initially.

http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/misc/wasps/mutillidae.htm

You'll find one that looks SIMILAR to what I have pictured scrolling
down at "Subfamily: Sphaeropthalminae

Tribe: Sphaeropthalmini
Genus: Sphaeropthalma
subgenus Sphaeropthalma Blake
pensylvanica floridensis Schuster
pensylvanica pensylvanica (Lepeletier)"

The pensylvanica pensylvanica (Lepeletier)is the one it looks like.
I'd thought it reminded me of the velvet ants I'd seen in behavior but
the fact that the head and thorax didn't have many hairs threw me
off...and the fact I'd never seen more than one velvet ant at a time
before.

To Answer: How is it a Hate Site?

2011-07-19T09:30:00.001-05:00

I've decided to come back to my long neglected blog to post something I’ve had in my computer for quite a while and have sent in many email requests since 2005. In that time I’ve also discovered new incriminating information as a result of Glen Beck’s scandalous recommendation of a notorious Nazi sympathizing author. I’ve given most of this information so often I decided to post it here so I can just give a link to it rather than have to try to keep finding it in my own computer and copy pasting the whole thing. I must admit that today I’m posting it in a hurry in response to yet another request and I have not gone back to any of these links to make sure they still work. Someone write me if any of the links are now broken/not working. I probably should also return to clean up grammar or spelling that I also didn’t check. Having said all that, I hope this will be useful for your purpose today.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Come and Hear site touts itself as presenting the real Talmud , however, I discovered through reading the page on copyright issues that Come and Hear had taken the Talmudic texts it presents from a book titled, "The Plot Against Christianity" by Elizabeth Dilling, which apparently had published hundreds of pages from the Soncino Press edition. The Plot Against Christianity is antisemitic screed. Elizabeth Dilling was a notorious antisemitic rabble rouser who worked very hard to present herself as a scholar. http://www.roytov.com/downloads/ElizabethDillingTheJewishReligion.pdf
Glen Beck was appropriately catching all kinds of flack for his recommendation of a book by that notorious antisemite whose works appear all over Come and Hear, Elizabeth Dilling. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71L1ojJ_InY
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/menachem-rosensaft/glenn-becks-nazi-loving-t_b_604021.html
PLEASE also note following
http://www.jstor.org/pss/30037654
Only the first page is available there. More if you are a member.
However while*some* pages of that Talmud are legit, there are pages where the debate or extreme ideations that rabbis were often arguing against or condemning, are highlighted out of context in a manner not seen in the Talmud or the actual Soncino edition. Such editing actually alters meaning of the discussion. Since the altered portions come from Dilling’s book rather than the actual Soncino edition, somehow Carol Valentine has gotten away with altering the Talmud without being called on it legally.

Noontide Books is the publisher of Elizabeth Dilling’s book. They also published David Duke's autobiography, "My Awakening: A Path to Racial Understanding". David Duke, one of the most notorious antisemites in the United States, is a former Ku Klux Klan leader who has attempted to make white supremacy and antisemitism respectable.
The Come and Hear web site, aside from its on-line Talmudic publication, has many essays written by the web site owner, Carol A. Valentine, and others, under the heading of America under the Talmud. For example, in her essay, Holy Atrocities and Judaism, she presents cherry picked out of context portions of the Talmud and other Jewish writings through a hostile, antisemitic lens using classical propagandizing canards. Carol Valentine's purpose appears to be to promote that the United States is quickly becoming a nation governed by Talmudic law. Her web site promotes the exact forms of propagandizing used in past generations as another way to say the Jews control everything.
The author, Carol A. Valentine, also owns another web site called “Public Action, Inc” There she writes on other inflammatory topics . One of her favorites appears to be Waco and the Branch Davidians, the Seventh Day Adventist version of “Messianic Judaism” and the group notorious for David Koresh. Her web site also prominently promotes a list of Holocaust Revisionist web sites.

Many people stumble upon the Come and Hear website thinking they find something very useful, a web site that offered search capabilities for a significant part of the English translation of the Babylonian Talmud. Upon discovering that the web publication of the Soncino Talmud translation wasn’t authorized by the Soncino Press, and that the web master who put up this site uses it to attack Jews and Judaism, it becomes clear this is a site dedicated to perpetrate malicious fraud in a most insidious method.

In between the double lines below are just a few things you will find there. If you cannot see the rabid Jew hate in these portions found at the Come and Hear site, copied verbatim from the web site's perversions of Talmud, Torah and Judaism they post there, then you are likely to be blinded with it yourself. If you want to learn what Jew haters spread among themselves to justify their sickness read that disgusting offal.
I will NOT give direct links to the precise pages I copied this from on that site because I do not want to advertise for it. I have the links handy, but I’m not going to popularize that garbage.
================================================================================
“Blasphemy Approved
Not content with consistent reviling or blasphemy of God's Word, this subterfuge is taught by the Talmud to permit blaspheming the Divine Name: "Blasphemy is an indictable offense only if it is mentally directed against God. If, however, one reviles the Divine Name, whilst mentally employing it to denote some other subject, he is not punished!"
The Darwinian theory of evolution, like the Spinoza theory of "immanence," pantheism, are similar Cabalistic ideas in new word form.
The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, will tell you how when the Dutch began to call the theories of Spinoza by their right name - Atheism - his own Cabala teachers who were members of the Beth Din (Talmud law court) quickly excommunicated him to prevent more unpopularity from fastening upon the already unpopular Jewish community. But, ever since, he has borne in Judaism the title of "Blessed Spinoza." All that he did was to voice the Cabala, a foundation of the basically atheistic "Jewish" Babylonian Talmudic religion. Karl Marx, himself son of a Jewish Rabbi, called the "En Sof" by a still fancier name, "dialectical materialism," the mindless bashing of germ to fish to mammal to ape to man, with the Jewish-spawned Marxist revolution as its crown and triumph
Stripped of its deceptions and falsehoods, there is nothing monotheistic about Judaism, nor does it have anything in common with Christianity to which it is irrevocably and diametrically opposed. “
----- from another page there
“The Talmud is divided into six main divisions called "Sedarim" (orders), but each division and each volume is a hodge-podge of every subject imaginable. The main and overall characteristics of the Talmud are: pomp, silliness, obscenity and more obscenity, a setting up of laws seemingly for the purpose of inventing circumventions, and evasions; delight in sadistic cruelty; reversal of all Biblical moral teachings on theft, murder, sodomy, perjury, treatment of children and parents; insane hatred of Christ, Christians and every phase of Christianity. “
===============================================================================
Now back to honest information to dispel that despicable site:
The Talmud makes no mention of Jesus. The Talmud makes no mention of Mary. The Talmud does not condone sexual immorality.
http://people.ucalgary.ca/~elsegal/TalmudMap/Gemara.html
The Talmud is many volumes of Rabbinical debate and discourse of how to apply the laws of Torah to the lands of the Diaspora.
This is the opening of the link below
" Talmud: The Real Truth About The Talmud

Talmud: Statement of Purpose
There are many lies circulating the internet about the Jewish Talmud. These allegations are supported by "direct quotations" from the Talmud that are frequently wrong or taken out of context. However, most people lack the scholarly background to verify these claims. Most people have no way of knowing that these accusation are false and malicious. What we are attempting is to demonstrate in detail how these accusations are both wrong and intentionally misleading. We are trying to show to the world the real truth about the Talmud."
Now back to my own words. Jesus is not taught about in Judaism. He is insignificant to the Jewish religion. He is not an object of hate, he is simiply a non-issue to the faith of the Jewish people. He is no more a part of Jewish teaching than Buddha or Mohammed or any other leader of any other religion would be.
Below are some real ethics of the Talmud :
"They said of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai that no man ever greeted him first, even idol worshippers in the market" [i.e., Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai was the first to greet every person, even idol worshippers] (Berachot 17).
"[it is proper to] support the idol worshippers during the sabbatical year …. and to inquire after their welfare [commentators: even on the days of the holidays of their idols, even if they do not keep the seven Noahide commandments] because of the ways of peace." (Shevi'it 4,3)
'We support poor Gentiles with the poor people of Israel, and we visit sick Gentiles as well as the sick of Israel and we bury the dead of the Gentiles as well as the dead of Israel, because of the ways of peace." (Gitin 61a)
Helpful references to help you learn why perverting the Talmud is definitely antisemitic.
http://www.angelfire.com/mt/talmud/
Also read this http://www.adl.org/presrele/asus_12/4232_12.asp
http://www.jewfaq.org/gentiles.htm

Dispelling a Longstanding Bloody Lie

2010-03-09T11:21:00.007-06:00

I've often found that because New Testament followers have a perspective of Judaism that is foreign to and contradicts what Jews believe and entirely from their doctrine rather than from the laws of Judaism, I often see misrepresentations of Judaism in telling others *about* Judaism. The often made claim that a “blood“ sacrifice for sin was the "only means of atonement for Jews"/the covenant of Torah, is something that is not found IN the Torah and in fact violates and negates what God shows from Genesis throughout the entire Hebrew Bible.

To dispel this false statement about Judaism to such a person who was raised to believe that "blood" had to be shed for "atonement" in Judaism, I find that contrasting of the concepts found in each religion best helps them understand. I’ll use a modern example of how Jews are presented with their concept of atonement and forgiveness and then show the Jewish religion’s laws from the eternal covenant of Torah.

The following scenario was long ago given to me on a Hebrew Christian missionary pamphlet (dishonestly calling itself Messianic “Judaism“) with the tag-line "This is you.” or something like that. I can’t seem to find it now to quote it verbatim, but I’m hopeful some reader out there may also have a copy to forward to me so I can post a copy of it online and illustrate with objective evidence how completely opposite to Jewish belief it‘s statements about Judaism really are. I know I can't be the only person who had that flyer handed out to them.

First of all, the Jewish people are forbidden to worship anything on earth or in heaven before or in lieu of God. The Torah declares that God is not and does not become a man (this was to separate Jews from this common and widespread belief in the ancient Levant in godmen and men/rulers becoming Divine) Believing Jews have always trusted that God did not lie to us in these statements.

The gist of the missionary pamphlet was to try to show that one is following Torah to consider a Jew as a sacrifice to atone for sins! It was supposed to show the enormous capacity of mercy from Jesus (Yahsuah) that is available to all humans who have the “blot” of “original sin” and all the accumulated sins that humans have engaged in action, past, present and *future* if one simply relies on the sacrifice of Jesus to “pay” the “price” for them. I recall that it had a story line to it:

It instructed you to pretend that you are an inmate on death row for being a murderer and a rapist. You were tried and are guilty, that is not in dispute. The day before you are to be executed, a stranger offers to take your place and receive the lethal injection and die in your place instead. The court accepts this and the sentence is carried out on the stranger who dies in your place. You are now a free man.
It went on …but I’m going to stop here
What struck me right at that point was how strongly this differs from the focus of mercy through justice and accountability taught throughout the entire Tanakh and especially in the eternal Torah (law/teaching) of Judaism. How does that pamphlet's scenario in any way resemble justice?
Torah demands that “Justice, justice, shall you pursue”.
Letting someone else die in place of the guilty does not change the guilt of the guilty, nor serve justice in any sense of the definition of the word. There is no mention of any attempt on the part of the guilty to try to make amends or ameliorate any resulting damage or pain caused by their sin, no mention of regret or repentance on the part of the sinner or a desire to refrain from the same sin again. Not one mention of individual accountability or outward demonstration of an effort toward atonement by the sinner is shown, only abdication of personal responsibility...However, later, the pamphlet referred to an obligation to be eternally grateful for the death of that innocent person and their suffering for what you did.
Moses once offered himself to do that for the covenant nation, Israel, and God declared outright that was not permissible, that every person is directly accountable to God for his/her own sins. Jews believe God didn’t lie to Moses about this, or to the covenant nation, Israel with regards to the precepts of mercy and justice.
Repentance and acts of restitution are prerequisites to the act of any sacrifice, either animal or non animal sacrifice in the Torah.

So how is it so widely accepted that Jesus’ supposed sacrifice *paid* for anything at all? There is no justice in an innocent person being punished and dying in place of a guilty one, so why would God accept this gesture and agree to redeem all souls who recognize the sacrifice, unless God is unjust?

Living in a society/civilization that believes in justice, I'm sure all of you would have a problem letting a death row inmate go just because a stranger was executed for him. Again, I ask how does this fit with God's commandment to pursue justice?

So the New Testament concept of god in that scenario doesn't appear to care about justice or demonstration of acts of sincere repentance or individual and personal accountability and instead focuses on blood sacrifice as mere *appeasement* versus the Tanakh's Scriptural contextual concept of ATONEMENT..meaning to be at one with the Creator in striving to honor the gift of life. Atonement is more compelling to me than appeasement.

Animal sacrifice (zevachim) was never the exclusive means to atonement. *"A Korban Chatas (sin sacrifice) was only brought for an accidental transgression of the most severe sins. A Korban Asham Talוi (A sacrifice for doubtful guilt) was only brought if a person was uncertain if they had transgressed a sin for which they were compelled to bring a Korban Chatas.

In the days of both First and Second Temple, a king or Kohen Gadol (High Priest) had to bring a bull. All others (including other Kohenim) had to bring a female lamb, a poor person brought two birds (either pigeons, doves or swallows- the exact species is subject to debate) and a really poor person brought flour, oil and frankincense."* this portion in between single asteriks from allonyoav

There is no blood in flour, oil and frankincense. Thus, animal sacrifice was shown as NOT mandatory for atonement. In addition, No sacrifice for sin was considered acceptable unless you had done the necessary steps of teshuvah beforehand. Teshuvah refers to repentance of the wrongful deed, amends for anything you could rectify and a return to righteousness, eschewing the wrongful deed. The important thing was the repentance you did prior to this offering and the *acts* of showing you had done what was necessary before you asked God to forgive you. The fact that even amid the instructions on the specifics of animal sacrifice it shows that flour, oil and frankincense could be brought INSTEAD..reveals that what was important was that you were offering something meaningful as a sign you had done your part before you sought God to accept your offering.

According to Torah, there is a three-step formula for "repentance" (teshuva = returning to G-d by returning to the proper path). Quoting from Mishneh Torah by the Rambam (Maimonides):
"And what is repentance? It is when the sinner abandons his sin, removing it from his thoughts [i.e. he will from now on push out from his mind any idea to do or to imagine doing this sin], and is completely resolved not to do it again.
Consequently, he [verbally] regrets what has happened in the past [i.e. what he thought, said or did] and [verbally] accepts G-d, the Knower of secrets, as his witness that he will never return to such a sin again.
And he needs to confess verbally and state the resolutions that he made in his heart."

***The centrality of the animal sacrifices ceased, not with the second destruction of the Temple by the Romans, but rather with the first destruction of the Temple by the Babylonians. Please remember that the vast majority of Jews never returned to the Promised Land under Cyrus of Persia. They remained in Babylonia. By the time Jesus was born, eighty percent of the world's Jewish community lived outside of the Promised Land, and could not have cared less about the cessation of the animal sacrifices. When the Temple was reestablished, the Jews of Babylonia made an annual financial gift for the maintenance of the Temple, and the land, but never worried that God was not going to forgive them their sins without a blood sacrifice, just as Diaspora Jews do today. And the reason why they had no such fear, was that the Bible makes it explicitly clear that no blood sacrifice is necessary for the forgiveness of sins, or that the exclusive means for the God-man relationship was through the animal sacrifices.***
The important thing was and remains “teshuvah” This is represented using two concepts, nicham (to feel regret or sorrow) and shuv (to return)
`When a man or woman wrongs another in any way and so is unfaithful to the Eternal, that person is guilty and must confess the sin he has committed. He must make full restitution for his wrong, add one fifth to it and give it all to the person he has wronged. [Numbers 5:6-7]
30:8 You will repent and obey God, keeping all His commandments, as I prescribe them to you today.
Ve'atah tashuv veshamata bekol Adonay ve'asita et-kol-mitsvotav asher anochi metsavecha hayom.
Deuteronomy 30:8
note the Hebrew word tashuv there

For the person who has sinned to acknowledge the wrongdoing is the first step, then one must regret the wrongdoing and do your best to make amends, lastly, is to turn away from doing the wrong and not do it again.

***For intentional sins to be atoned for, there had to be repentance and restitution and often punishment because the sins were committed on purpose!
A thief must certainly make restitution, but if he has nothing, he must be sold to pay for his theft... If a man grazes his livestock in a field or vineyard and lets them stray and they graze in another man's field, he must make restitution from the best of his own field or vineyard... If a fire breaks out and spreads into thorn bushes so that it burns shocks of grain or standing grain or the whole field, the one who started the fire must make restitution... But if the animal was stolen from the neighbor, he must make restitution to the owner... If a man borrows an animal from his neighbor and it is injured or dies while the owner is not present, he must make restitution. [Exodus 22:3, 5, 6, 12, and 14]

Whoever kills an animal must make restitution, but whoever kills a man must be put to death. [Leviticus 24:21] ***

It is hard not to go and refer to the many places throughout the Torah and the rest of the Tanakh that show that the commandments of Torah obligate those who follow it to be accountable to both our fellow humans and to God for our behaviors to all living beings.
The religion of Judaism through the precepts of the Torah is a path that guides humans to individual and collective accountability for our behaviors and to promote justice and mercy and restoring the world to a righteous state. “Justice, justice shall you pursue”.

Torah outlined the steps of repentance and return whether or not the sin ( violation of God's commandment) was unintentional, or intentional. So, in order to fully understand the Jewish Bible’s ( Tanakh’s ) concepts of sacrifice in relation to atonement, you need to study much more than the laws regarding just the *rituals* surrounding the sacrifice. An out of context passage that refers to the prohibition of *consuming* blood, to claim that blood must be shed and justify a human sacrifice for appeasement..has no bearing upon the Torah’s commandments, nor does it fit with what Jews have ever believed or practiced.
There can be no real justice without mercy and no real mercy without justice..but then that leads us into a whole new discussion :)
The Tanakh shows that Jews and Gentiles came to both First and Second Temples to pray and seek atonement. Blessing, repentance and atonement have and shall forever remain equally available to all human beings and does not limit this to membership in one particular group of people. God is not exclusive to the Jewish people, but demands that Jews remain exclusive to God. There is a difference.

*thanks also to allonyoav, for that portion of the above that I've tweaked with my own words as well..I appreciated using the Hebrew names for the particular sacrifices offered in between the single asterisks above.
***http://whatjewsbelieve.org/ portions asterisked with this copied from that site. Permission from my friend Rabbi Stuart Federow to use his site to help educate as long as I always credit him with his words.
Lastly.. a reminder even though I omitted the many narratives that clearly show that human sacrifice is condemned in the harshest terms throughout the Tanakh and it has no place within Judaism, I only referred to the scenario and the NT doctrine to contrast their concept of sacrifice for sin with that of the Torah's and of Judaism.

Mama Pajama ~ Defender of Bunnies and Jews

2010-02-24T00:05:00.010-06:00

If you see me in Y/A and wonder why the recent (temporary) name change to: ✡mama pajama✡ Jew-kissing bunny

And why do I have a muscle bound Blonde, Mogen David chested, blue bunny-slipper wearing femme fatale super hero image here?

First, I’ll tell you what it isn’t about. I don’t spend my days in either bustier or bunny slippers, nor do I parade around with a massive Star of David on my chest, though I do often wish to return to the days when my figure was closer to the shape of that Super Hero than that of the bunny slippers.

It's all about trying to overcome the desire to cry in astonishment at the hatred of others, to overcome feeling helpless and trying to keep from feeling hopeless for a new generation of children whose minds are being utterly abused into the mental illness of extreme bigotry to incite them to want to murder. Yes, murder.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqobBa_tB1M

After I saw this link on a question in Y/A, I thought, what better commentary to a child abusing sick person dressed up as Jew-killing Jihad bunny teaching hate to children could there be than a real bunny actually kissing the hand of a Jewish child that was already there on my avatar!

So, I answered:
While fantasy Jew-eating bunnies are being used to teach children to hate and want to kill Jews and Danes, take a peek at a real bunny, (an Eastern Cottontail Rabbit), *kissing* the hand of a Jew!

my avatar is a photo of just that event!

Shalom y'all

Then my son, the owner of the bunny-kissed hand said, that's you Mom, “Defender of Bunnies and Jews“

And that’s what inspired me to go create my "alter ego" in Super Hero style

Mama Pajama, Defender of Bunnies and Jews

edit: I post this edit after I notice that today, 1 day after I received the "Best Answer", the *question* was removed. I am sorry I do not recall the exact question, but the gist of it was to ask what passages in the Quran support the teaching of a "Jew-eating Jihad bunny" teaching Muslim children to kill Jews and Danes. I know that I am still genuinely curious what passages or teachings of Islam they could possibly use to support that. I guess I'll never know...

A Side by Side Analysis Can Reveal Much

2010-02-22T14:30:00.016-06:00

What is the difference between “Messianic Judaism”, Judaism and Christianity?
This question has been asked a half dozen times in the past week with variant wording. I will do a little side by side comparison to contrast what some New Testament doctrine adherents call “Messianic Judaism” with the religion of Judaism from the Tanakh and with Christianity based directly on the statements of one who claims to represent "Messianic Jews" on an online forum.
I begin each one with a direct quotation of what a self-proclaimed “Messianic Jew” has explained as their belief in contrast with what he thinks of Christianity. Then, I will preface my own writing with double asterisks ** to give my understanding of the beliefs and practice of Judaism from the eternal Torah (law/teaching) of the covenant of Israel/the Jewish people. I will also often explain how either are similar or differs/contradicts what New Testament adherents believe.

“Messianics observe traditional Jewish holidays such as Purim, Chanukah, etc. Christians do not.”
**The New Testament adherents insert Jesus into holy Jewish observances, thus violating the commanded meanings in the Torah and Tanakh, such as replacing the reason Exodus explicitly states for the Paschal lamb to represent the Hebrews slaughtering and eating the representative of one of the Egyptians false gods(i.e., either lamb of sheep or goat) in their presence without recourse as an act of defiance and allegiance to the God of Israel, to claim Jesus was the Paschal lamb and that it was a sin sacrifice. (the Paschal lamb was never and shall never be a sin sacrifice for the covenant of Israel)
Hanukah is an observance of a victory over forced assimilation by the Syrian/Greeks that sought to impose worship of man gods and adopt Hellenist beliefs such as being born with a sinful nature and a notion of a fiery underworld hell. For the few apostate Jews who have assimilated into the religion of the New Testament replacement theology among their numbers, imposing those beliefs into Chanukah observance negates the very purpose of Hanukah.
Those who call themselves “Messianics” worship Jesus/Yeshuah as a manifestation of their god. The eternal Torah forbids such a notion and the Prophets in the Tanakh condemn a notion of any man as God outright.
--
“Messianics observe the biblical feasts of Vayikra (Leviticus) 23 such as Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), Rosh HaShanah (Feast of Trumpets), Sukkot (Feast of Booths) and Passover. Christians do not.”

**see above re: Passover and
The ways in which New Testament adherents redefine and negate Biblical precept for each of those holy observances for Israel would take up an individual essay, space won’t permit it here.
Each of those observances in the Tanakh are done to honor the role and purpose of the covenant of Israel as a nation people exclusive to God and obligated to a life that honors this life and rejects obsession with the afterlife and maintains personal accountability to both God , our fellow humans and all living.
Imposing foreign god belief/avodah zarah into the observances commanded in the Torah to honor faith in God exclusively is an egregious violation of those commandments and cannot be called “observant” of the Torah. The adherents of the “New” covenant of the Gospels are not a part of the eternal covenant of Israel so they are not bound by this covenant in the first place. The few apostates of their numbers will be judged by these laws, but for the majority this does not apply.
--
“Messianics do not observe Christian holidays that were borrowed from paganism, such as Christmas and Lent or were simply concocted.”
**but they do have the pagan concept of being born with a burden of sin and having a sinful nature that must be reconciled by the death of their savior mangod such as found directly in the widespread ancient religions of the Levant of Mithras, Tammuz and Adonis
They also adhere to the pagan Roman/Greek concept derived from Tartarus of hell ..ruled by a demon deity of the underworld they call Lucifer, also not found in the Torah.
--
“Messianics do not use Easter bunnies, Easter eggs, Christmas trees, etc., (which are part of Christian tradition in many parts of the world although they are not part of official Christian theology)”
*** But Easter is still a very important time for them. It is the basis of the doctrine of the NT that his death and resurrection are reliant upon for salvation to its adherents. They do reject many of the ancient pagan fertility symbolic remnants, but because the New Testament doctrine itself reveals Hellenist influence, they're still an influence to New Testament dogma.
TAMMUZ
täˈməz, ancient nature deity worshiped in Babylonia. A god of agriculture and flocks, he personified the creative powers of spring. He was loved by the fertility goddess Ishtar, who, according to one legend, was so grief-stricken at his death that she contrived to enter the underworld to get him back. According to another legend, she killed him and later restored him to life. These legends and his festival, commemorating the yearly death and rebirth of vegetation, corresponded to the festivals of the Phoenician and Greek Adonis and of the Phrygian Attis. The Sumerian name of Tammuz was Dumuzi. In the Bible his disappearance is mourned by the women of Jerusalem (Ezek. 8.14).

Hmm Man/god born of virgin dies and Ishtar resurrects him in the spring...Ishtar ( Easter) spring resurrection...striking isn't it?

Sunrise services in honor of Tammuz and praying for his resurrection is an ancient heathen custom. It is actually described and condemned in the book of Ezekiel.

12. And He said to me, "Have you seen, son of man, what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the darkness, each one in his paved chambers? For they say, 'The Lord does not see us; the Lord has left the earth.' "
13. And He said to me, "You will yet see again greater abominations that they are doing."
14. And He brought me to the entrance of the gate of the house of the Lord that is to the north, and behold there the women were sitting, weeping for Tammuz.
15. And He said to me, "Have you seen, son of man? You will yet see again greater abominations than these."
16. And He brought me to the inner court of the house of the Lord, and behold, at the entrance of the Temple of the Lord between the porch and the altar, about twenty- five men, their backs to the Temple of the Lord and their faces toward the east, and they were prostrating themselves eastward to the sun.
17. And He said to me, "Have you seen, son of man? Was it [too] trivial to the house of Judah to prevent them from performing the abominations that they have done here? For they have [already] filled the land with violence, and repeatedly provoked Me, and behold they send disgrace into their nose.
18. I too, shall act with fury; My eyes will not spare, neither will I have pity, and they will call into My ears with a loud voice, but I shall not listen to them."

This was a warning prior to the destruction of the FIRST Temple. The Second Temple was destroyed just after another man/god was being worshipped in Jerusalem. Coincidence?

Tammuz and Mithras, both sacrificed savior deities, had followers of apostate Jews in the North (Galilee) and areas of Paul's travels. Tammuz and the Romanized version of the Zoroastrian deity Mithras, were both born of virgins (a concept having nothing to do with the Davidic Messiah or Tanakh) and their death was said to have brought their people reconciliation to their sinful natures. Tammuz was said to die and be reborn each spring. Tammuz worship was so widespread and it was condemned in Tanakh. There is still even a Hebrew month named for this pagan man/god despite such Jewish condemnation of his worship. Sir James Frazier's work The Golden Bough is useful to learning about the concept of Savior Kings that was not only widespread in the Middle east but in Europe and helped to aid the rapid spread of Christianity. Noted Oxford scholar and award winning Historian Richard Fletcher's The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity also helps one to understand the development of many beliefs and rituals found in modern Christianity.

Belief in a savior man/god whose blood and death atoned for the sinful nature of his people was common to many in the ancient Levant. Original sin (born with a burden of sin) is foreign to Torah and Judaism.

The name Easter is believed to derive from the name Ishtar, the goddess responsible for the resurrection of Tammuz. The offerings given to Ishtar in gratitude for resurrecting Tammuz who would ensure a good spring for their crops and to Ishtar herself for the fecundity of women, are the source of the Easter Basket and the eggs and bunnies, both ancient symbols of fertility. So there IS a difference between the "messianics" and mainstream Christianity in their rejection of those symbols.

--
“Messianics worship on the biblical Sabbath, i.e., Friday evening till Saturday evening, not Sunday. HaShem says the Sabbath is an eternal covenant between Him and the descendants of Israel. (Sh'mot/Exodus 31:16). “

**The house of Israel refers to members of the covenant people of Israel. The covenant of Israel is indeed eternal. The reliance on Jesus as a medium of atonement and salvation for a sinful nature and sins is the doctrine of the “New covenant” or New Testament and contradicts the eternal covenant of Torah.

There is no "Old Testament" meaning old covenant, for the people of the eternal covenant. There is no "New Testament" or replacement covenant. The Jewish people are the people of the eternal covenant
The prophetic vision of the Davidic messiah in the Tanakh speaks of the age when the eternal covenant will no longer be taught to one another when the universal knowledge and understanding of God will encompass the earth. The early church father Tertullian, early in the third century CE named the Christian amended version of the Tanakh the "Old Testament" specifically to designate it as having been superseded and done away with in contrast to the "New", despite the assertion within it's texts dozens of times from Genesis forward that it is an eternal testament (covenant).

Adherents of the religion of their New Covenant (Testament) are not a part of the covenant nation for whom the Torah’s commandments for Israel apply.
God isn’t exclusive to Israel, but there are many commandments that are so in the Torah
--
“Messianics cant the Shema, and traditional Jewish blessings that most Christians have never heard of, e.g., the kiddush and the Aaronic benediction“.

** Of course they mimic every portion of Jewish custom and observance in outward appearance, but when you reassign every act to a contradictory meaning and even redefine the holy language of Torah itself, you’re not honoring the Torah and you’re violating that Affirmation of Faith that is made to affirm yourself as a member of the covenant who worship God and God alone to the exclusion of all other entities.

Messianics redefine the word Echad to claim it means “unity” to impose their trinity concept of the nature of God in direct contradiction to this affirmation of faith, rendering it utter blasphemy and one of the most egregious violations and sins that a Jew could commit. Such a behavior actually separates their soul from the Jewish people according to the Torah.

I once saw Perry Stone spend more than half an hour trying to convolute Hebrew grammar to explain that the Hebrew word echad, meaning one, could only *ever* refer to a "compound unity". He ended this by saying that within the Shema is the "proof" that "Yeshua" (Jesus) and his Holy Spirit (Ruach Kodesh) is their "echad" or " tri-unity" of God. The Hebrew in the Torah and how the word echad is used does not support this at all. It is as absurd as saying to an English speaker that the word "one" can only refer to one of a group or cluster and that unless you use a qualifier it does not mean a sole, single unit. One means one. period.

Tell a Hebrew speaking boy who learns to count, "echad, shnayim, shlosha, arba,etc that he's really saying, unity, two, three, and look at the reaction you'll get.

Sometimes they’ll try to justify it by saying they worship Yeshuah as their “Elohim” and claim that the suffix IM denotes the plurality of his nature.

Elohim as a title for God..the "Supreme Deity" over all their idolatrous neighbor's false gods, no more refers to a plurality of their own or a trinity than saying "Supreme Deity" in English refers to many deities.

The word El derives from the Canaanite El or Al that at one time referred to their primary deity's NAME perhaps thousands of years prior to Abraham. By the time of the writing of the Torah, the word EL became the word for deity rather like the English word god means that same thing.. Our English word God has a very similar path to meaning of deity. The ancient Visgoth's, a Germanic people worshipped Gott as their primary deity. Gott became God. In German, the word Gott still means God. When a German today prays to Gott or an English speaking person prays to God we are no more praying to that Visgoth deity than the ancient Hebrews were praying to the Sumerian deity or pantheon of Canaanite deities.
In Hebrew grammar the suffix IM denotes EITHER plurality OR Importance. If one is to determine if a NOUN is a singular or plural with the suffix IM, the use in the Torah shows us whether or not it is a singular noun or a plural noun..meaning if it refers to more than one thing or just one thing. There are other Hebrew words that end in IM when it does not refer to a plurality..chayim ..life, for instance.

Hebrew grammar is odd in that a suffix denoting plurality may also be used to impart great importance to the noun it is placed upon.
--
“Messianics cant the Torah portion in Hebrew at worship services.”

***I’d be curious to see how their evangelical Hebrew Christian clergy translate it for their overwhelmingly Christian audience who knows little Hebrew since the Torah contradicts their New Testament.
--
“Messianic preaching is mainly from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), although references to the B'rit Chadasha are common.’
**This would be surprising if it’s “mainly” from the Tanakh as their Statements of Faith below are primarily found in the New Testament they’ve renamed in Hebrew to make it sound Jewish. It is also extremely rare that they refer to the Tanakh to explain their doctrine in Y/A either, except to note how Jesus/Yeshua changed things.

By the logic of one who claims that there is a “New” covenant ( their renamed in Hebrew New Testament of B’rit Chadasha) why are they not following the Quran? And then in turn..why are they not following the Book of Mormon? If Israel's *eternal* covenant with God can be "superceded" why can't yours?

The people of the eternal covenant of Israel have no Holy Scriptures named “Old Testament or New Testament” . Using the Hebrew translation for New Testament doesn’t make that Bible a Jewish Bible, just as Israeli Christians praying to Jesus in Hebrew doesn’t morph them into Israeli Jews.

--
“Messianic Judaism emphasizes the special relationship between G-d and the Jewish people, whereas Protestantism and Catholicism hardly ever mention it.”

Judaism emphasizes the direct relationship between God and humanity and the role of Israel as a covenant nation dedicated to God exclusively to demonstrate living this path as a light unto the nations. Torah teaches that we are always directly accountable to one another and directly to God.

The New Testament focuses on teaching that one must accept on faith belief that Jesus death and blood "reconcile" a sinful nature (being born with a burden of sin is also foreign to Torah) and then awareness of God will change their behavior. Judaism teaches us that it is how we live and interact with one another that opens us up to the awareness and direct connection to the Divine. For many people, it appears to be a slow process of growth into an awareness of our connection to God, rather than some kind of overwhelming divine revelatory moment.

Judaism is a path of LIVING and honoring this life God gave us and the lives that come after us while we build on the wisdom of those who came before us. I think that was part of the hard lesson of coming out of slavery from Egypt. The bonds of idolatry and superstition that enslaved the mind were broken when Israel came to the recognition that all those man/gods and animal gods were powerless over this life. It wasn't only deliverance from physical bondage that is told about at Passover, but the deliverance for each generation when we remember of the kind of enslavement that focusing on concern for another world than this one is made priority.

Judaism is a world-affirming, not world-denying faith. We use the gifts and blessings we have in this world to make it better for ourselves, for our families and for the rest of the world.
The Christian concept that before Jesus, God was exclusively for the Jews,, has ALWAYS been foreign to Jewish belief. The book of Kings records Gentiles worshipping at the Temple , Torah teaches that every human can directly connect to God and the righteous of all nations are blessed. It is Christianity that has introduced dogma that one must be Christian to connect to God, not vice versa.

---

“Messianic Judaism emphasizes Jewish traditions that do not conflict with the Bible, whereas Protestantism and Catholicism totally ignore those traditions.”

**This is simply so wrong in light of all the evidence I’ve presented thus far. I can’t find one practice of so called “Messianic Judaism” that does not utterly corrupt the very core of the covenant of faith of Klal Yisrael. Worship of or through a Jew is the most egregious violation of Torah to do! If you can find a Statement of Belief of a “Messianic Judaism” web site that does not present Jesus as an aspect of the Divine, please show me.
---
“Messianic Judaism asserts that the Torah (literally, "teaching") is still in effect (as modified by Yeshua). Christianity claims that once Jesus "fulfilled the Law" it no longer applies.”
** Ah HA! This is a smoking gun to show it isn’t “Judaism” at ALL! The Jewish people and believers in the religion of Judaism follow what we believe God said about the Torah. NO one can alter even the tiniest portion of Torah..There you have it ADMISSION that they believe that “Yeshua” had the authority to usurp God’s eternal commandment. ( oh wait..that user has said more than once they believe Yeshua to be their god so..that’s how they justify this and their Statements of Faith show they believe he‘s God so apparently they believe God changed his mind those more than dozen times He said ETERNAL before that)
The Jewish people, those who belong to and adhere to the covenant of Torah know that God is the same incorporeal ONE who states does NOT become a man in the Torah and whose Torah does not change.
Jews may argue and debate over how to apply the eternal Torah in our lives throughout the world and changing times..but we ALL agree the Torah does not and cannot change or be MODIFIED.
--
“Messianic Jews bar-mitzvah their sons and bat-mitzvah their daughters. Christians don't.”

**THIS reflects that the writer has no clue what bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah means and since they are not of the eternal covenant..enacting a meaningless ceremony does NOT make their children sons and daughters of the covenant.
A Jew becomes a bar or bat mitzvah upon attaining the age they become responsible for this…whether or not they ever have any ceremony. The act of becoming a Bar Mitzvah – or Bat Mitzvah (translated as “son or daughter of the commandment(s)” – raises a Jewish child to the status of adult in the religious community. It marks the beginning of many obligations and privileges.
For a Jewish boy this is age 13, for a Jewish girl this is age 12. One cannot be dedicated to two CONFLICTING covenants of faith.
Does the evangelical Hebrew Christian realize what harsh feelings of conflicted fear and loathing they are stirring up within their very own children in teaching them a false identity and teaching that believing Jews who adhere to the nearly 4000 year old eternal covenant who do not and will never “accept Yeshuah” "hate them for their beliefs"? The claim that Jews hate others for their beliefs fuels centuries of antisemitism. To be raised this way is not to become a bar or bat mitzvah. This teaches those children to mistrust Jews and believe that the very people they identify with in name, reject them as their own out of hate! These young people then go on to ally themselves with evangelical Christians (because their beliefs are identical) while cloaking their dogma in Jewish custom and practice that is often more outwardly Jewish “looking” than that of modern Orthodox Jews! They also assign meaning to deeply reverent Jewish customs such as the calling to Torah of the Bar and Bat Mitzvah, which were never intended and usually offensive or contradictory to the aspect of faith the custom is intended to honor.
The customs and rituals of Jewish people around the world developed to honor the laws of Torah and teach each generation about honoring our eternal covenant and faith of Judaism. To see these customs and rituals used to honor a replacement theology is extremely disturbing to the believing Jew for whom these things have deep spiritual significance.
---
“A Jewish person who converts to Protestantism is referred to as a Hebrew Christian, not a Messianic Jew. “
**This statement appears to be to willfully confuse. Compare and contrast the statements of beliefs of all the largest “Messianic Jewish” organizations you can find with Protestant Christianity. The only difference I see is Hebraicised terminology.

The whole movement called itself Hebrew Christian until 1967.
Yes, honest Jews who find that their faith calling is to follow the doctrine of the New Testament, if they convert to a belief fitting the statements of faith of Protestant Christianity will honestly call themselves Christians.
Hebrew Christians is a more honest terminology than “Messianic Jew” because ALL of Judaism remains messianic in nature. The concepts are simply contradictory.

--
“Messianic Judaism and Protestantism teach the biblical doctrine that salvation is a free gift from G-d, by faith in Yeshua.”

**And they teach that God is exclusive to those who worship Jesus.
Torah, on the other hand shows from Genesis forward that God has always been and shall forever remain directly accessible and that repentance, and a path of righteousness is honored by God for all people, Jew and Gentile.
The Christian concept that before Jesus, God was exclusively for the Jews,, has ALWAYS been foreign to Jewish belief. The book of Kings records Gentiles worshipping at the Temple , Torah teaches that every human can directly connect to God and the righteous of all nations are blessed. It is Christianity that has introduced dogma that one must be Christian to connect to God, not vice versa.

Note this person is actually admitting the shared core faith of Protestant Christianity and their "Messianic Judaism" that is Hebraicised New Testament dogma. They know very well that the doctrine of Torah and Judaism is contradictory to it.
--

“Messianics do not need to be proselytized into Christianity. We already know who Messiah is and what he did to provide salvation for his people.”

**Huh?? The whole movement is evangelical. MILLIONS of dollars a year are spent evangelizing to Jews. TV programs, books, tapes, lectures. It is now big business, too. More than a billion dollars in the past decade has been spent in efforts to convince people they can claim Jewish identity while adhering to a faith dogma whose beliefs and practices are prohibited by the laws of Judaism from the Torah and would render any Jew who professes them to be apostate to the Jewish people.

However, they’re attracting primarily other Christians to join them over Jews, because after all, for a great many who already adhere to their doctrines of belief that match the Baptist and other Protestant denominations, they don't have to change anything at ALL about WHAT they believe, just change how they practice it. Just change the terms they're already familiar with to Hebrew terms, impose those beliefs into Jewish holy observances and disregard the purpose and reasons the Torah demands that Jews observe those holidays and customs and call it "Torah observant". Christians don’t have to give up their beliefs in any way to join, they just add some nifty new holidays, words, songs, dances and get to play dress up and call themselves “completed Jews” while completely disrespecting the laws of Judaism, often in utter ignorance of this fact.

Torah has never taught that salvation was exclusive to the Jewish people. God is not exclusive to the Jews. God commands the Jews to be exclusive to God. Restating Torah precept, both Isaiah and Jeremiah affirm that the righteous of all nations have a place in the world to come. Micah sums up Torah very well, "What Does the Lord Require of You? To act Justly and to Love Mercy and to Walk Humbly With Your God"

There are several Christian TV networks and many televangelists who would disagree that Christians don't "need" proselytizing..their paychecks depend on it.
They depend upon people being ignorant of Jewish law and upon people relying on the doctrine of another religion to Reinterpret and impose views upon it in contradiction TO Judaism. The New Testament has been since it's introduction..a replacement theology. It isn't ever going to be Judaism.

EDIT: I wish to make it clear that the quotations I gave that represent the "Messianic", are a copy-paste from a writing that has been repeatedly posted by one claiming to represent Messianic Judaism. I did *not* fabricate those quotes to "make Messianic Jews look bad" as one claiming to be from Israel commented to me. I did not omit one word, nor did I alter the order or add a thing to the quotes. Because I am *not* out to try to embarrass people, I did not put their user name.

When I say that the "Messianic" Hebrew Christian evangelist appeals primarily to their own co-religionists (Christians) who are ignorant of Judaism and Tanakh, that doesn't imply I think they're stupid people at all. It is apparent that they must appeal to people whose knowledge of Torah and Judaism is either ABSENT or from their New Testament exclusively. I believe that people can educate themselves and no longer be ignorant. If I didn't believe that ignorance was able to be remedied, I wouldn't be wasting my time with any of these things I share.

In fact, something that many of them did NOT account for is that by appealing to the sensibilities of Judaism and claiming to be Torah observant, many of their numbers DO begin to actually study Torah and the rest of Tanakh in context and discover these things on their own. They speak of Jews "persecuting" them for their belief in Jesus when Jews don't care if they believe in Jesus..we care they call it Judaism in falsehood.

I also believe that it took a great amount of intelligence to devise convincing deceptions that have created dissention between Jews and Christians and eroded more than a generation of good-faith efforts of genuine dialog between religions and peoples. They're not stupid people who promote this. Make no mistake..I've never thought that for a moment.

Carter apologizes now it's Keilor's turn

2009-12-27T16:26:00.005-06:00

While Googling for other things, somehow a link to this article shows up:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.keillor16dec16,0,225627.story

This was a surprise. I had often laughed listening to A Prairie Home Companion while driving my car. I doubt I’ll ever listen again. Consider me xenophobic if you want, but when someone like this rants at Jews in a bizarre diatribe, it is simply yet another bit of evidence to me that it’s become socially acceptable to scapegoat Jews under the guise of being a good Christian once again.

I would have expected something like this in 1939, but looks like we close 2009 with the same sorts of potshots coming round again.

Please read the article and then click on the page that says “readers respond to Keilor’s Christmas rant” comments from readers. I really like the response from David J Ansel below.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-keillorgallery1218,0,196967.storygallery

I also found this blogger's page interesting
http://trueslant.com/ginawelch/2009/12/17/garrison-keillor-please-leave-nonbelievers-alone/

Where does this sense of Entitlement to negate the right of Jews to Jewish law lead next?

2009-12-23T17:34:00.009-06:00

After reading a few recent answers on a popular online q and a forum this week, I’ve a few questions of my own. I will write about them here because these are the kind of questions that I know from experience would have Jew haters swarming them with reports to hide them and would see all correct Jewish answers from all over the world with massive numbers of thumbs downs for that same purpose. It has been so disturbing to see that Answers forum being rendered ineffective for people to obtain accurate information about Judaism and to see it being used daily (with apparently the q and a forum condoning much of it) used as a platform to propagandize hatred to Jews by some willful misinformation (blatant lies)

The following things run through my mind, and especially after reading answers from a few who claimed to be actual Christian clergy. I hope very much that they also lied about that. I know they lied egregiously about Judaism and history.

I often wonder how many Christians believe that they have entitlement to use their New Testament to redefine the laws of all other people? Is it considered ethical in Christianity to disrespect the laws of another religion and claim that the other people do not have a right to their own laws?
Do Christians believe that the world's Jewish people do not have a right to Jewish law that Jews have always and still believe is eternal? Do Christians believe that if Jews state that worship of anything other than God violates it we are "persecuting" those who hold to those other beliefs?

Then tell me why statements such as the following remain unchallenged or uncorrected by so MANY other Christians?

"So to answer your question, yes, of course Messianic Jews believe in Christ, and are therefore part of Christendom---but that in no way negates nor abrogates the fact that those who were a part of the house of Israel (I.E. were Jews) continue to be a part of the house of Israel after coming to faith in Jesus Christ. Today, Messianic Jews (as well as other Jews who believe in Jesus) are simply standing their ground and refusing to allow their detractors to define who they are FOR them---they are refusing to allow themselves to be disenfranchised and run out of the Jewish community---and more power to them for doing so!"
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It isn’t up to Jews to determine who or what defines a Christian. It isn’t up to Jews to define the laws of other religions or other peoples. However, I often see Christians claiming with authoritative speech that they support people who wish to negate or redefine Jewish law in opposition to it.
First of all, what determines identity as the "house of Israel" the Jewish people, is Jewish law.
If or when a Jew adopts a belief in another entity other than the incorporeal, indivisible singular God/Creator of the Torah, according to unalterable Jewish law recognized by every movement of Judaism across the world and for more than 3500 years, that renders that Jew as apostate and estranged from membership in the covenant nation people Israel ( the Jewish people ) unless they repent and return.

That paragraph up there I quoted reflects what Jews the world over are experiencing from some evangelical Christians who demand and insist that Jews accept as Judaism, aspects of dogma that God directly prohibits FOR the Jewish people. When Jews say this we aren’t running anyone out of the community. A Jew who has chosen to worship Jesus left Judaism of their own free will. Judaism has never permitted worship of anything other than God and never will. People can freely join or leave Klal Yisrael (the community of Israel)To add insult, as that paragraph indicates, they're telling others that Jews are hateful to apostates because we refuse to permit forms of worship that are forbidden by unalterable, eternal law from the Holy Scriptures of Judaism, the Torah. Not to mention that the apostates among them worldwide number about fifty thousand out of the approximately 400,000 to 500,000 Gentiles call themselves “messianic Jews” . it is only because of massive media and evangelical campaigns that such a small group has so much attention and because of their outspoken antisemitic claims while claiming to be the “real” Israel and “real” Jews.

Why is this unchallenged by Christians when statements like this are said daily and now taught with evangelical campaigns on television and at churches? Don't Christians also follow the commandment You shall not bear false witness?
Why are Christians falling for this new form of antisemitism from people who claim to love Jews while they falsely demonize Jews for simply speaking to the truth of what Judaism has always been about?

I quoted a small portion of a much longer answer that was really so over the top with lies about Judaism I think I’ll share it here to show just how desperate and how intense the hatred in this individual must be. If someone spends a great amount of time and effort to fabricate some really absurd lies about another..you know they’re not doing it out of love. NOTE: I will comment at the < mark from time to time below:
Now, read on to show some real “Christian love” for Jews from that same individual:
“This issue gets confounded by a few false premises that are vocally promoted by some Jews today. The first is the silly notion that being Jewish is merely a matter of religious belief. This idea is a ludocrous farce because the original Jews were the physical descendents of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. While the scriptures plainly teach that God's covenant was established with Abraham and "in Isaac shall thy seed be called", and while it used to be universally recognized that Jacob (Israel) had twelve sons, whose descendents were the ancestors of the Jewish people, we're being told today that any reference to Jewish peoplehood constitutes adhering to "Nazi propaganda" and saying that Jews are a "race".” < What a way to try to pervert what Torah says and Jews have explained. NO, Jews say we are a people, and those of Abraham’s “seed” who passed along the covenant were only those who accepted the covenant. Not all his descendents according to the Torah were the Jewish people. It is a non jewish and Nazi propaganda notion of Jewish identity being based on blood or race rather than law. This particular person has had this explained in detail. Not all Jews follow Judaism or are “good Jews” but if they follow something else they’re definitely no longer Jewish.

“Obviously, there is no Jewish race, but there IS such a thing as Jewish peoplehood. Others can JOIN them (I.E. convert and become Jews), but in doing so, they are becoming an entire part of the Jewish people, not just adopting a new religion.” < correct..but to JOIN they MUST adopt the “new religion”..that’s been a part of the process of BECOMING a member of the Jewish people since the time of Abraham. You can't convert to Judaism if you believe in other deities. You can't convert to Judaism if you don't make affirmation of faith in God and to uphold Torah.

“Besides, the entire line of thinking that being a Jew is merely a matter of religious belief is a nonsensical yarn from git-go. Even FULL-BLOWN ATHEISTS can be considered Jews (so much for it just being a matter of religious belief)! “< Jewish identity is based on Jewish law. Jews don’t say that it is “merely a matter of religious belief”. We say Jewish identity is based on Jewish law. JUDAISM..the religion IS a belief and the laws DEFINE that belief and the membership criteria of who and what is Jewish. An Atheist can’t CONVERT to BECOME a Jew since affirmation in the faith of Judaism is required to convert.

“There is even one major, recognzied, so-called branch of Judaism that won't even affirm for sure that there is a God in Heaven--and they focus almost ENTIRELY on Jewish peoplehood! There are totally secular Jews, and Jews whose defiance of the Torah is absolutlely shocking. There are Jews who practice witchcraft ("Jewitches"), homosexuality, even Buddism (Jew-Bu's), yet their Jewish status isn't even questioned.” < This guy knows this is false because he’s been told it was a lie every time he’s said that libelous charge in yahoo and in a year he hasn’t been able to provide one bit of evidence of Jews accepting any other form of theism as Judaism. A Jew who would leave Judaism to take up theistic Buddhism and goddess worshipping Wicca are just as apostate with avodah zarah as would be a Jew who decides to worship Jesus and this person has been told this directly by more than one Jew including me. oh..and the "humanistic" Judaism isn't a "major" "recognized" "so called" "branch"..it is a small and controversial group that simply focuses on the ethical precepts of Torah ..however it also does not promote worship that is forbidden by Torah! That one small portion of his writing had so many lies..that is what is "shocking" to see from someone claiming to be clergy. notice how he includes also "homosexuality" as if it is a religion! sheesh.

“Some Jews pick and choose which commandments from God they find personally "meaningful"--and flatly reject the rest--yet they are considered Jews.” < isn’t this interesting, someone who wants Jews to IGNORE the core commandments of Torah for Jews complaining about cherry picking Jews!

“But you let a God-fearing, Torah-observant son of Israel--circumcised on the eighth day, Bar Mitzvah'ed, and reared on synagogue life study the evidence and reach the conclusion that Jesus is the Messiah, and <> Presto-Chango, merely for this belief alone, he has supposedly lost his Jewish status and has morphed into a gentile. Could a bigger bunch of hogwash possibly exist? “<< First of all, I’ve never met or seen such a person who knew Judaism and followed it as a "God fearing, Torah observant" Jew who would decide that everything about it was wrong and then leave it for another religion and STILL claim he’s still following Judaism, but…even IF a Torah observant Jew were to decide to follow Jesus and rely on his sacrifice for atonement of sin rather than follow the Torah's and Judaism's precepts regarding these things..that person would most likely know enough to realize he can’t follow contradictory belief systems and would hopefully be HONEST and recognize based on his knowledge of Torah that human sacririce is an abomination for Jews and worship of a Jew or through a Jew is an egregious violation of Torah to do. Honest Jewish converts to Christianity usually call themselves Christians.

“And what's even more laughable (and so ridiculous that it leaves one reeling) is when you realize that JESUS CHRIST HIMSELF was a JEW! He never lost HIS Jewish status.”< who knows..nothing was written about him until more than a generation after his death. If Jesus wasn’t a Jew he couldn’t have even been a messiah potential. That he finds his extreme perversions of what he's read from other Jewish posters, Rabbis included and his misrepresentations of Jewish law and history enough to make him “reel” in laughter is revealing of the glee he takes in trying to create hatred and animosity to Jews by bearing false witness. I don’t want to sidetrack here so I’ll get back to addressing his absurd perversions of Judaism and history..

“In fact, the entire early Christian movement was simply an outgrowth of Judaism. The historical reality is that Jesus, the original apostles, and the entire original church were all Jewish. There were literally THOUSANDS of Jews who believed in Jesus, they were a part of the Jewish community, and they didn't somehow "stop being Jews" when they recognized Jesus as the Messiah.’ < Hmm..how is it that somehow these “thousands” of Jews never wrote down anything during Jesus’ lifetime about him? We’ve got librarires full of Jewish writings contemporary to Jesus lifetime.

“This is the reason why the Jews lost the Second Jewish Revolt---Rabbi Akivah tried to acclaim Simon Bar Kokhba as the Messiah--which caused all of the Jews who believed in Jesus to have to step down rather than march under the banner of a false messiah. Rather than placing the blame on Rabbi Akivah for proclaiming a false messiah or on Bar Kokhba for BEING a false messiah, they blamed the Jews who believe in Jesus!!!! It was only after this point that this foolishness of trying to somehow renounce the Jewish status of believers in Jesus got started. It continues to this day“. < this is an extremely absurd and bizarre attempt to pervert history.

BEFORE the Bar Kochba revolt and before Rabbi Akivah ..Rome had already considered Christians a separate group as evidenced by the objective historical fact that the emperor Nerva (96-98 C.E.) freed the Christians from paying the Fiscus Judaicus, the Jewish capitation tax decreed as a punishment for the revolt of 66-73 C.E.

Clearly, the Romans already regarded the Christians as a separate religion group. The Temple treasury was raided in 66CE by the Roman governor of Judea, Florius and a massacre of Jews in Jerusalem took place.

The early Christians did not take part in the FIRST revolt..they had separated from the customs, beliefs and from the Jewish people themselves by this time and the Romans recognized and rewarded this!

Christianity has never been a unified belief, from the earliest days of the Didache (instructions to the apostles on how to conduct church affairs) there were conflicts on how much Judaic influence should remain (was Jesus a god or not?) and it was often a very nasty affair. The Gnostics were largely killed off by their fellow Christians, but some Gnostic aspects do remain. A study of the Nag Hammadi library (translations from the Coptic are online) can help you discern this. Christianity really has little to do with Judaism. It's a mixture of Roman and Greek mystery religions and focuses on death with Hebrew names and mistranslated texts.
Things that I once thought must have been fabricated outright I later discovered were beliefs of the ancient Greeks and Romans. This was the longstanding battle for souls going on..the Hellenized Jews, those who had become apostate to Judaism, desired to entice other Jews to worship as the Greeks that they believed superior in philosophy and knowledge, so they created texts that tried to say..see this is what it was supposed to have been all along. However, reality was that those beliefs were identical to the beliefs and practices that the Torah demonized
Once one begins an in-depth study of the religious practices and beliefs of all the peoples surrounding the Jews in the centuries just preceding the beginning of Christianity, one can see these developments take place. It was a concerted effort to do away with Israel and Judaism.
A large percentage of the early church father's who became martyrs did so at the hands of their co-religionists of competing sects when Christianity was not so clearly defined as a tool of the Roman empire.

Any entity that would threaten Roman authority would be persecuted by the Romans. Early Christians ( a band of followers of a messiah hopeful would threaten Roman rule, since the prophetic vision of Judaism of "the messiah" is of a RULER, a king, who breaks the yolk of political oppression and persecution for all and brings about universal brotherhood, peace and knowledge of God) would most certainly have been a threat. But once the doctrine of the New Testament gelled, that changed the Tanakh concept of messiah meaning an anointed king, to mean a sacrifice for sin and a "kingdom" not of this world, this had effectively changed the Christians from being enemies of Rome to tools of Rome.

Thus began the conversion of the Romans!

Emperor Hadrian later attempted to wipe out Judaism after they revolted against the previous Emperor, Trajan. He built a Roman temple to Jupiter on top of the ruins of the old Jewish temple in Jerusalem, which had been destroyed in 70 CE, and is said to have burnt the Torah on top of the Temple Mount in 135 CE .
He then renamed Judea, Palestina, a Latinized version of the name of the Philistines, to insult the Jews and eliminate the history of Jewish presence.

The early followers of Jesus who had been awaiting his reincarnation separated themselves publicly from the Jews around the time of the 2nd revolt, and once again refused to ally themselves with the Jews and allied themselves to the Romans. This led to another messiah hopeful, Simeon Bar Kochba to view them as the enemies of Israel, thus, after the defeat of the Jews and the murder of Bar Kochba, the Chistians were not expelled along with the Jews.

After Constantine - First Christian Emperor of Rome (285-337 CE) the Roman empire was Christian.

That poster knew all of this before he concocted his revision of the history. He knew this because he’d read these things in answers I’d written before and pointed out to him when he tried to claim that both the Roman expulsion and the Holocaust were punishment from God for “rejecting” Jesus.

How’s that for love, eh?

If these perversions are the kinds of things that are becoming commonplace in churches is anther Holocaust soon to follow?

I did not alter any portion of the other person's words.

Those who hate Jews don't want you to read this

2009-11-04T11:09:00.010-06:00

The question asked Why are Jews being accused of hate

and the additional details said:
when we state that "Messianic Jews" are not practicing Judaism?

My answer:

Two things that would become glaringly apparent to anyone who peruses the Y/A R&S section for questions asking about Judaism.

1) It is a rare thing when a question is asked about Jewish belief that there are not answers that appear from people who hold to beliefs that are utterly contradictory to Judaism (New Testament doctrine) and that violate the most basic core precepts of Torah, yet claim they are Torah observant.

2) These accusations of Jews hating people for belief in Jesus are antisemitic attacks on Jews. That is a fact. Antisemitism is hatred of the Jewish people. One does not lie about Jews, Judaism and falsely accuse Jews unless they hate them. It makes no difference if they're calling themselves the "real" Jews, that's a common ploy. The people at "Elohim City" in Arkansas also considered themselves the real covenant people of Israel. So do the Covenant Sword and Arm of the Lord groups. All have in common their desire to take on the identity of the Jews, incite hatred to the Jews and do away with us. Unfortunately the "Messianic Jews" have somehow fooled many good hearted people that they have a right to do this, whereas the other groups who engage in this behavior are rightly identified as hate groups. When Jews declare in all honesty that Christian doctrine is not Judaism, those are not attacks to the right of people to believe in the New Testament that tells them they must worship to or through Jesus or consider his crucifixion a sacrifice to atone for their sins.

The *first* time I asked for an example of the hate Jews are supposed to be displaying in Y/A to Christians, I was accused of speaking in hate for stating that belief in Jesus was not Torah observant! If that is the logic of that accusation, then there is no way to avoid that accusation as believing Jews will ALWAYS have to speak to the truth of the fact that the eternal covenant forbids worship of or through a human and that God does not become a man. Believing Jews do not believe God lied to us in the Torah. If speaking to the truth of Judaism is hateful to you, then don’t believe in Judaism. Find another path. Just don’t project hatreds onto a path that teaches us that all humans are worthy of God’s love and all able to directly connect to God and our fellow man in honesty.

It is not hate to say that Christian doctrine ( the New Testament ) is not Judaism.

If a Christian were to declare in all honesty that worship of the Devil is not Christianity, is it not the same logic to say that the Christian is displaying "hate" to the Devil worshipper who insists he is an observant Christian? The Devil worshipper may well have a document of his particular religion that tells him that he is the real Christian because Jesus is really the Devil and therefore, anything that the Christian religion says is irrelevant and they no longer have a right to define themselves.

So, who would be the one displaying hatred in that situation. The Christian who spoke out in truth that worship of the Devil can never be considered following their New Testament, and who says it is utterly offensive to call Jesus a devil? or the Devil worshipper who is perverting every aspect of Christian faith and hijacking the identity of the Christians while lying about them?

Christianity isn't Judaism. The New Testament doctrine is not and shall never be a form of Judaism.

"We are told that Christians don't get to define what Judaism is and who is or is not a Jew but when you tell us that Messianics are Christians or that belief in Jesus makes you a Christian you are doing the same thing in reverse."< Jews have also repeatedly said on questions that you have also appeared on that it isn’t up to Jews to give them a name but they cannot hijack the name of Judaism, and we have no other name by which to refer to one whose spirituality, religious tenets and doctrine are from the books of the Christian Old and New Testaments. Those texts have never been a part of Judaism. We repeat these truths until the cows come home and they’re ignored and then the attack to sidetrack soon follows..yup, there it is:

"You want us to treat you with respect but you are unwilling to reciprocate." <<< (user name removed here) Excuse me? And when or where have any Jewish users been disrespectful to anyone who was behaving with a modicum of respect? Identity theft and utter falsification of the doctrine, tenets and beliefs of Judaism in a question and answer forum, false personal accusations, and other antisemitic attacks are not something that should be respected by ANY decent human being, Jew or Gentile.

The *last* time I asked for an example of the hate you accuse, the only response was for someone else to take an out of context quote from another respected Jewish user here about how Christian doctrine applied to Judaism and claim it was hate against Christians! Jews teaching what is and is not Judaism does not define hate to another for their choice to believe in whomever or what ever they choose.

What I do see is that every time Jews speak out to correct someone who has said in utter falsehood that any form of worship to or through another human being could be compatible with Torah observant Judaism is that the Torah reasons given for this obvious statement are ignored and false ad hominem and strawman fallacy are given with these horrible accusations that Jews in Y/A are speaking out in hate to Christians. This is done for no other purpose than to create antisemitism. They continue it because it's working as the answers that appear alongside them to agree and further demonize illustrate.

It is a Torah obligation to Jews to speak out against anyone bearing false witness against Jews, Judaism and hijacking our very identity. Jews simply have no other name to give to a group whose tenets of faith are found in the New Testament, utterly contradict Torah in their assigning of the ability of a human to pardon sin, to be a sacrifice for sin and other violations of direct commandments. If they do not wish to be called Christian, that's not a Jewish issue. It IS a Jewish issue when they insist on hijacking Jewish identity.

Every branch of Judaism on every continent speaks in unison on this issue. This isn't a schism within Judaism. The only good thing to have come about this attack on Judaism in the 40 years since it first began is that it has actually brought the various branches together in understanding that we are much closer alike in our beliefs and understanding and that it is more a difference of how we choose to observe and honor what the Torah teaches us than what we read in the Torah.

This is why it has confused and often angered the Messianics so much and why they sometimes try to divide Jews here...but you will note that Jews from Europe, Africa, North America, South America and the Middle East, from Orthodox, Reform, Reconstructionist and Conservative appear regularly in full agreement over this issue. I'm connected to nearly a 100 Jews from all over the world and not once have I seen any of them do what has been accused here.

Yes, we do reach out to our fellow Jews across the world. We have all said that teshuvah, repentance and return as taught in Torah are always open and available to any apostate who wish to return. King Solomon even displayed his change of heart in the last chapters of Ecclesiastes upon his return from his apostacy of following false gods and witchcraft.

And I also connect to and respect Christians of integrity who live as shining examples of their faith in treating their fellow Yahoo users with respect.

I shall also continue to speak out against bigotry and misrepresentation when I see it. I am here in Y/A to learn and to help others learn what I know, and that includes to speak out against willful misrepresentation of my religion and other Jews when I see it.
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My answer ended above that line..now I add these comments regarding that incident.
The question was asked and deleted in January, 2009. I recall that at that time I had 12 thumbs ups and no thumbs downs for several hours, then within a half hour, the most *amazing* thing happened, 53 thumbs downs appeared to "hidden due to low rating" the answer. Before the q closed, the asker chose it as Best Answer, so that rendered that hiding ineffective. I guess that there were a few users who were desperate to hide that answer because within hours of that BA, I had a VN in my mailbox for "not a question or an answer". Appeal was denied with a form letter.

The escalation of accusations to Jews that we display "hate" to Christians for simply declaring the doctrine of the Jewish religion has been astonishing in it's display in Y/A.

I see it as illogical to consider every university Comparative Religion course as hate to Christians. If it is hate to say Judaism isn't Christianity as any Comparative religion course would of course note,wouldn't it be hate to say any other religion that also is contradictory to Christianity is hate to Christianity?

The Real Pharisees

2009-10-07T17:08:00.006-05:00

Unless you’re well versed in Jewish history and Judaism, most people who hear the term Pharisee have the knee-jerk reaction to associate that label with “ hypocrite”. If that is the case for you, dear reader, I'll bet your notion of a Pharisee is from the New Testament doctrine that demonizes them because they refused to abandon the eternal covenant of Torah to worship a Hellenized man/god.

Their depiction in the New Testament is hardly flattering to say the least. I doubt that my information regarding the Pharisees will be taken seriously by Christians for whom their New Testament is believed to be infallible. The Christian Bible presents Jesus as having a great conflict with the Pharisees. I cannot assume that Jesus had such a problem with the Pharisees, especially since so many of this most popular "quotes" are the precise teachings OF the Pharisees who came before him!

I think that it was the writers of the New Testament who had the problems with the Pharisees and their strict adherence to Torah and refusal to assimilate into the Roman empire.

The Pharisees were a sect of Judaism that promoted education and literacy for all classes, not just the wealthy or elite. They believed that Torah should be able to be read and understood by all. The Pharisees also accepted converts as fully Jewish and some other sects did not (and ironically enough including the one sect so often mentioned as being one that Jesus perhaps had received training from, the Essenes) The Pharisees were self-named because they wanted to keep Torah SEPARATE from pagan, foreign influence (Hellenized and Roman man/gods) They arose as a separate group during a time when the Greek rulers were working to assimilate the Jewish people by mixing their deities with Judaism. For some, it worked. There were quite a few Hellenized Jews, so impressed with Greek philosophy and literature that they believed it superior to the ways of the conquered Israel.

The legacy of the Pharisees writings and the Jewish history of their lives do not indicate they were hypocritical elitists as the New Testament depicts, but dedicated to keeping the covenant of Israel intact without corruption from idolatry. Any group or entity that would try to alter meanings of halacha (Torah law) within Judaism would be dismissed by the Pharisees.

The Pharisees of the New Testament are depicted as people for whom observance of rote custom and ritual were all important. They were viewed as going through the physical motions and outward observances without the deep spiritual meanings or connection. The New Testament depicts them as being spiritually devoid.

It is in FACT the form of Judaism that the Pharisees sought to protect that teaches that each individual ..no matter who..rich or poor, Jew or Gentile, connects to God directly without intermediary .in a very real, living relationship. It is the Pharisees that taught that how we live toward one another is a reflection of our connection to our faith. The Pharisees did not demonize others because they did not believe AS they do, but they would speak out just as the Jews today..modern day Pharisees..speak out when we are told that we must accept AS JEWISH, beliefs and practices that are directly forbidden by the eternal covenant of Israel.

I have often read people claim in falsehood that the Pharisees and later Rabbis who came from them corrupted Torah by adding to it. It was not Pharisees who sought to either add to or take away from law. They rejected any and all attempts from anyone who would try to do such a thing. It is because they REFUSED to add and take away from the law of Torah that they were hated by first the Hellenists and Romans, and then the Christians whose concepts of Jesus as divine and of human sacrifice to atone for sin are also forbidden by the Torah.

The Sadducees were the elitists and collaborators with Rome and whose followers included many of the most Hellenized Jews. The Pharisees were the group that included the common people and the convert. The Pharisees did not have the attitude of being SEPARATE from other Jews or from the common people..but separate from FOREIGN (Hellenizing) influences..that was the purpose of their formation. They in fact, promoted education of ALL,not just the wealthy or elite. They also embraced converts from the Gentiles as fully Jewish. The most egregiously mistaken notion promoted about the Pharisees and their purpose for SEPARATION is that they were elitist who held themselves above others, including other Jews!. Torah put forth that God was not a distant deity that only spoke to emperors and kings or became one Himself ..but personal deity that ALL can connect with directly. The very identity of the covenant nation was established when every man woman and child who left Egypt had a personal divine revelation at Sinai ('You have been shown in order to know that God, He is the Supreme Being. There is none besides Him. From heaven he let you hear His voice in order to teach you, and on earth He showed you His great fire, and you heard His words amid the fire.' (Deut. 4:32-36) That is just one of several passages in Torah that refer to this collective and personal Divine revelatory experience.

The reason the Pharisees were demonized is a new religious sect came along and tried to replace the former..and what do groups who do this tend to do to the group they're trying to replace? They blame every ill of the world on the other and assign to them (projections) sometimes even attributes that they themselves possess or that they know their TARGET AUDIENCE will FEAR and loathe so that the demonized group will be viewed with disdain and their words not taken seriously.

Hellenized Jews and Romans believed the philosophy and wisdom of the Greeks could and should be combined with Torah. The Pharisees ..then and today..still reject this as it is forbidden

"The conflict between the high priesthood and the people led to the split between the Sadducees and the Pharisees. The elitist Sadducees (who generally controlled the high priesthood) were supported by the Hasmonean royal family and later by the Romans."

"The Pharisees. These were mainstream Jews who wanted nothing to do with the Romans, but they were pragmatic. They wanted Judaism to survive and short of giving up their religious principles were willing to make the best of the Roman domination. They disapproved of the other Jewish factions - those that tried to curry favor with the Romans and those that advocated open rebellion. " < this from aish.com

Here are just a few words of some Pharisees:
"They said of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai that no man ever greeted him first, even idol worshippers in the market" [i.e., Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai was the first to greet every person, even idol worshippers](Berachot 17). ( This is the FIRST Pharisee to be given the title Rabbi)

"[it is proper to] support the idol worshippers during the sabbatical year …. and to inquire after their welfare [commentators: even on the days of the holidays of their idols, even if they do not keep the seven Noahide commandments] because of the ways of peace." (Shevi'it4,3)

'We support poor Gentiles with the poor people of Israel, and we visit sick Gentiles as well as the sick of Israel and we bury the dead of the Gentiles as well as the dead of Israel, because of the ways of peace." (Gitin 61a)

Paul is often brought up as an example of a Pharisee..let's just see how that holds up to scrutiny.
No Jewish writings of the 1st or 2nd century so much as mention a renegade student of Gamaliel who had a faith altering vision. No mention of a star pupil of Gamaliel who became a heretic and urged his followers to disregard Torah's laws of diet and Sabbath observance. No mention of a former student who pronounced the Law and circumcision obsolete. Surely such a renegade could not have completely escaped the attention of the scribes? No writings attributed to Gamaliel or his later students refer to such a man.
A claim that such a thing was removed or hidden is unlikely since from the Torah onward, no Jewish writings have evaded the wrongdoers or those who stray or violate Torah as the Tanakh so clearly reveals.
An more unbiased view based on the evidence would more likely indicate that NT claim was a latter insertion to support Paul’s self proclaimed status.
The writings of Paul do not support that he was a master pupil of Gamaliel. Paul clearly had difficulty with the Hebrew language: all his scriptural references are taken from the Greek translation of Jewish scripture, the Septuagint. The only portion of what is now commonly called the Septuagint translated by “the 70” Jewish scribes was the Torah, the Prophets and Writing were translated over the course of several hundred years by unknown translators. The evidence of Paul's own writings reveal he was a Hellenized, apostate Jew.

"Nothing in his letters suggests that Paul had any official standing in his treatment of Christians ... Hence, in opposition to what Luke says, he could not have used arrest, torture or imprisonment as a means of forcing Christians to recognize that they had been misled." – Murphy O'Connor, Paul, His History, p19

The writings of the Pharisees that we have handed down to us today reveal lives that are nearly opposite to the depictions of them in the NT replacement theology.
The history of the Pharisees is the living legacy of the eternal Torah that they preserved by refusing to assimilate idolatrous concepts into Jewish practices.

Unfortunately, for millions of people who believe their New Testament demonization that depiction is inerrant fact, no matter what evidence may exist to the contrary to show the sole reason was their rejection of introduction of Hellenized and Romanized god/man concepts.

I thank God that not all Christians have focused on the hundreds of demonizing passages in the New Testament and actually focus on the more Jewish (and Pharisee taught..Hillel school of thought ) teachings regarding teshuvah. An example of that would be the Sermon on the Mount including Lord's prayer..

Today, the Hebrew Christian evangelicals who give all outward appearance of strict adherence to Torah and kashrut claiming to be "Torah observant" Messianic Jews, while forcing foreign and forbidden beliefs and contradictory meanings to the rituals and laws to violate core precepts of faith of Judaism, fit the New Testament definition of Pharisee precisely. It is utmost hypocrisy to claim Torah observance if your observance or acting out of a rituals is honor a contradictory belief to the beliefs that the rituals and customs were commanded in Torah to honor for eternity or arose through practice in Diaspora lands to honor Torah and God exlusively.

http://www.aish.com/literacy/jewishhistory/Crash_Course_in_Jewish_History_Part_28_-_Greek_Persecution.asp
A good place to get background on Pharisees and Sadducees.

http://www.jewfaq.org/movement.htm < another EXCELLENT page to help you

Judaism survived primarily because the Pharisees refused to abandon Torah and dishonor God’s commands for the eternal covenant people.

A quote from the jewfaq site above:
"The Pharisaic school of thought is the only one that survived the destruction of the Temple. The Zealots were killed off during the war with Rome. The Sadducees could not survive without the Temple, which was the center of their religion. The Essenes, who were never very numerous, were apparently killed off by the Romans (they were easily recognizable in their isolated communities).

For many centuries after the destruction of the Temple, there was no large-scale, organized difference of opinion within Judaism. Judaism was Judaism, and it was basically the same as what we now know as Orthodox Judaism. There were some differences in practices and customs between the Ashkenazic Jews of Eastern Europe and the Sephardic Jews of Spain and the Middle East, but these differences were not significant. See Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews"

Even though Christianity demonizes the Pharisees for its rejection of the replacement of the eternal covenant, Christianity is also dependent on a concept that was taught by the Pharisees. Belief in the eventual resurrection of the dead is a fundamental belief of traditional Judaism. It was a belief that distinguished the Pharisees from the Sadducees.

There is no mention of the Pharisees in the Tanakh. The reason being that the sect of the Pharisees, or separatists, did not yet exist. They originated in the third century BCE long after the last of the texts of Tanakh appeared. They were trying to keep the Torah "separate" from outside influence being imposed upon it by the Greek and later Roman conquerors who wanted the Jews to add their Emperor mangods and other deities into Jewish belief, after all, that‘s what other nations conquered by the Greeks and Romans did!

Modern day Pharisees continue to be a thorn in the side of those who want us to assimilate out of existence by abandoning our eternal covenant to take upon ourselves, beliefs and forms of worship forbidden by God's commandments in the Torah for the Jewish people.

Am Yisrael Chai!

Some of the Values and Ethical Precepts of Judaism

2009-09-16T22:31:00.003-05:00

The tenets of Judaism teach one to live ethically.

"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am for myself alone, what am I? If not now, when?" And "What is distasteful to you, do not do unto another." both ethics from Torah as expounded by the sage Hillel

Also the prophet, Micah sums up Torah pretty well when he says," What does God require of you? To do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with thy God."

Judaism is more deed than creed. How we live and treat one another and how we care for the world and all life around us are a direct reflection of what we believe. The Jewish faith is all about the relationship of the covenant nation working side by side with God as partners in restoring the world to justice and in helping better the world for the generations to come in the ongoing creation.

The concept of tikkun olam or repairing the world through social action, is one of the traditional categories of tzedakah (righteousness and justice). The word "tikkun" first appears in the book of Ecclesiastes (1:5; 7:13; 12:9), where it means "setting straight" or "setting in order." The most notable early rabbinic source for the phrase tikkun olam is the Aleinu prayer, where the phrase expresses the hope of repairing the world through the establishment of the kingdom of God.

While the sage Hillel and the prophet Micah summed up Torah to essentiallly declare that treating our fellow human in justice and mercy are the ultimate observance of Torah..here is a list of Jewish values and ethical behaviors taught from Torah and explained in greater detail and how they are applied in various situations in Talmud.

Dina D’Malchuta Dina – The law of the land is the law – Jewish law
asserts that, so long as they do not require us to violate Jewish law, local civil laws must be followed
(T.B. Gitten 10a; Shulchan Aruch, Choshen Mishpat 369:8).

Adam Yachid– a single human being – The rabbinic concept that one human being was created originally so that no one can say, „my father was greater than your father.‟ In other words, every human being is unique and inherently precious (M ishna Sanhedrin 4:5).

Ahavat Ger – love of “the stranger in your midst” – A series of laws insisting on compassionate behaviour towards strangers, empathy with foreigners, and their inclusion in every aspect of society
(Exodus 22:20,;23:9; Deuteronomy 16:14; Tractate on Strangers, Minor Tractates of Talmud).

Ahavat Ha-Beriot – love of all of God’s creations – A principle that encourages appreciation for the world and all of its inhabitants
(Leviticus 19.18; Avot of Rabbi Nathan 16).

Anei Ircha Kodmin = “the local poor are the priority”/ The concept that your primary tzedakah responsibility is to those closest to you (your family, then the poor of your city, then the poor of other cities).
(Bava Metzia 71a)

Arevut – the concept that Jews have a special obligation to other Jews – A series of ideas and laws encouraging commitments of mutual aid and devotion among Jews
(Sanhedrin 27b; Shevuot 39a).

Bakesh Shalom V’Rodfehu – seek peace and pursue it – The obligation to actively reduce conflicts. A series of laws and ethical teachings advocating peace, conflict resolution methodologies, and prohibiting violence against the innocent (Psalms 34:15; Chapter on Peace, Minor
Tractates of the Talmud).

Bechirah Chafshit – freedom of choice – The Jewish philosophical assumption that all human beings have the ability to freely choose actions, and are responsible for those choices (Deuteronomy 30.19; M. Avot 3.19; Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Laws of Repentance 5:4).

Chesed, Rachamim – compassion, especially for those who are disadvantaged or vulnerable (Zechariah 7:9; Hosea 2:21; Sabbath 151b; Bezah 32b; Sotah 14a).

Chillul Ha-Shem – the desecration of the Divine Name – Discouragement of actions that may bring shame to the reputation of the Jewish people (M. Avot 4:4,6; Yoma 86a; Moed Katan 17a;
Berachot 19b; Yevamot 79a).

Dan L’Kaf Zechut – the presumption of innocence – We should never initially believe someone has acted wrongly, even if it may be difficult to find merit in their actions (M. Avot 1:6).

Darchei Shalom - ways of peace – Talmudic rulings intent on preserving societal peace and maintaining positive inter-ethnic relations; includes directives to feed the poor of the gentiles and
care for their vital needs (M. Shevi’it 4:3; Gittin 61a).

Derech Eretz – proper behaviour – We must behave in a respectful, socially acceptable manner when interacting with others, including family members (Shabbat 114a; Yoma 4b; T.B. Hullin 84a).

G’zelah – the prohibition against unlawfully seizing other people’s property, particularly the poor and vulnerable (Exodus 20:13, Leviticus 19:13, Jeremiah 20:12; Proverbs 22:22; Job 24:9; T.B. Sanhedrin 108a).

Hakarat HaTov – [recognition of good]; gratitude – Much of Judaism is based upon the principle of gratitude and thanksgiving )Comments of Rashi on Exodus 7:19 and 10:12).

Hakaim Takim Imo – you shall surely lift up with him – A law designed to encourage aid to one in distress, even one‟s enemy
(Exodus 23:4; T.B. Baba Metzia 32a).

Halbanat Panim – avoidance of humiliating someone in public – The loss of personal dignity at the hands of others is considered one of the gravest wrongs in Judaism, akin to murder
(T.B. Moed Katan 9b; T.B. Baba Mezia 58bff.; Tractate Kallah, Minor Tractates of the Talmud).

Halva’at Chen – loan of grace – basis for the establishment of an interest-free loan society of the medieval Jewish community
(Leviticus 25:35-36; Exodus Rabbah 31).

Hochai’ach Tochee’ach – you shall rebuke – The obligation to be a social critic when you see that society or individuals are making terrible mistakes.Such criticism is viewed as an expression of care for others (Leviticus 19:17; Genesis Rabbah 54).

K’doshim Tihiyu – you shall live a holy life – Specifically, you should remove yourself from sexually provocative situations, but this principle is extended to include avoidance of inappropriate, albeit permissible, actions (Leviticus 19:2; Leviticus Rabbah 24:6; Commentary of Nachmanides (Ramban) and Rashi on Leviticus 19:2).

K’vod Ha-B’riot – honor for all human beings – A set of values and laws designed to encourage dignity and respect for all human beings
(M. Avot 2:10; 4:1; 4:3).

K’vod Nashim – the honor of women – A rabbinic value and law designed to encourage the dignity and honor of women
(T.B. Baba Metzia 59a; T.B. Yevamot 62b).

Kashrut – The specific dietary restrictions for Jews which apply to the eating of meat, fowl, fish and insects; the prohibition against mixing milk and meat together; the commandment to eat meat and
fowl properly slaughtered and deveined. The stated purpose of these laws is to make the Jewish people a holy nation (Leviticus, ch. 11; Exodus 23:19; Exodus 34; 26; Deuteronomy 14:21; T.B. Hullin, chapters 1,7 & 8; Shulchan Aruch - Yoreh Deah, Section 1).

Kibbud Av va’Em – honor your father and mother – The Biblical obligation to honor, revere, respect, and heed your parents. Only under specific conditions, when violation of other Jewish laws is at issue, may this value be overridden (Exodus 20:12; Kiddushin 30b; Maimonides, Mishne Torah, Laws of Mamrim; chapter 6).

Kupah – community fund for the needy – It is the obligation of every
Jewish community to establish a communal agency to collect resources and distribute them to the needy (M. Avot 2:7).

Lashon Harah, Rechilut - tale bearing – Rechilut prohibits statements
which are not true, whereas lashon harah expands this prohibition to include even factually truthful speech if it might possibly malign an individual or ruin a reputation. The gravity of the offence results from the fact that it is nearly impossible to retract these types of statements (T.B. Erchin 15b; Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Laws of De’ot, chapter 7).

Leket, Shichechah, Pe’ah -agricultural provisions for the poor – A series of ancient agricultural laws designed to guarantee that a portion of agriculturally produced products were left untouched in the fields for the poor to gather (Leviticus 19:9; 23:22).

Lifnei Iver Lo Titen Michshol - do not place a stumbling block
before a blind man – Applied to the sin of keeping someone in ignorance from information that will protect him/her, or to the sin of making it easier for someone else to commit crimes (Leviticus 19:14; Maimonides, Book of Commandments, neg. 299).

Lo Ta’amod Al Dam Rei’echa - do not stand by the blood of your
neighbor – The prohibition against passivity in the face of violence to others (Leviticus 19:16; T.B. Sanhedrin 73a).

M’sirah - [the prohibition] against delivering fellow Jews into the hands of unlawful non-Jewish authorities (Gitten 7a; Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Laws of Batterers and Damagers {Chovel u’Mazik} 8:9).

Ma’akeha L’Gagechah -erect a railing for your roof – The obligation to ensure that your own home does not prove dangerous and, more generally, to provide safe living conditions for other(Deuteronomy22:8).

Ma’aser -tithes – A series of taxes levied to support the Levite priests, who were originally designated as a landless tribe, and the poor, underscoring the community‟s obligation to provide the basic
necessities of life (Deuteronomy 26:12).

Milchemet Chovah -obligatory war – Laws that insist on war as a last resort in order to defend oneself (T.B. Sotah 44b).
Mishpat, Din – justice, law – A foundational set of rabbinic assumptions about the need for good government and a just legal system (Zechariah 8:26; M. Avot 1:18; 3:2; Deuteronomy Rabbah 5;
Sanhedrin 7a, 8a).

Mitzvah Haba’ah B’aveirah – a good deed made possible from a
wrongful act – The Talmudic version of stealing from the rich to feed the poor; the resulting mitzvah is voided (T.B. Sukah 30a).

Ona’at D’varim – verbal humiliation – Laws aimed at preventing people from verbally abusing one another ( Leviticus 25:14; Leviticus 25:20; T.B. Baba Metzia 58b).

Pidyon Sh’vuyim – the redemption of captives – The obligation to do everything in one‟s power to help release people who are trapped and suffering in some way (Isaiah 58:6; 61:1; Baba Bathra 8a; Talmud Yerushalmi Gittin 4:4; Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Laws of Gifts to the Poor 8:10).

Pikuach Nefesh – the saving of life – The highest Jewish obligation that overrides almost every other law
(Yoma 85b; Sanhedrin 4:5; Baba Mezia 62b).

R’tsichah – the prohibition against murder
(Exodus 20:13; M. Avot 5:9).

Rodef – pursuer – The obligation to actively intervene to prevent the murder or injury of innocent victims, even to the point of killing the aggressor (Leviticus 19:16; T.B. Sanhedrin 73a).

Sameach B’Chelko - one is rich if satisfied with what he/she has in life– Underscoring that happiness stems primarily from one‟s attitude rather than from material and spiritual possessions
(M. Avot 4:1).

Shalom Bayit -for the sake of peace in the house – The need to ensure that there are peaceful relations in one‟s home and family. This can also be extended to one‟s synagogue, workplace, or community
(Sanhedrin 76b; Yevamot 62b).

Sheker - falsehood – A set of laws and values designed to discourage falsehood, duplicity or hypocrisy (Exodus 23:7; Leviticus 19:11).

Shoftim = Judges – The only positive mitzvah of the seven Noachide laws; the universal obligation to set up a system of justice. This requires any human society to guarantee equal treatment
before the law for all people
(T.B. Sanhedrin 56-60).

T’shuvah -repentance – The obligation to provide individuals with the opportunity to repent for wrongful behavior. Jewish tradition provides means for a person to “cleanse his/her soul” of illicit
behavior towards both God and man (Maimonides, Laws of T’shuvah, chapters 1-10).

Tza’ar Ba’alei Chayyim - the pain of living creatures – A set of laws
prohibiting cruelty to animals and obligating acts of compassion and proper treatment of animals used to perform labor
(Shabbat 117b; Deuteronomy 22:9).

Tzedakah – righteousness; charity – One of the best known aspects of Jewish communal and religious life, encompassing a wide range of Biblical, Rabbinic and medieval institutions of Judaism
(T.B. Bava Batra 8b).

Tzedek Tzedek Tirdof - justice, justice, you must pursue – The obligation to actively promote justice (Leviticus 19.36; Deuteronomy 16.20; Zechariah 8.16-17; M. Avot1.18).

Tzelem Elohim -image of God – The foundational principle of Jewish ethics that every human being is created in the image of God and must be treated accordingly (Genesis 1:27; Genesis Rabbah 24).

Tzniut - modesty – Laws requiring people to conduct themselves, in dress and attitude, in a
non-ostentatious manner, designed to limit the power of the ego
(Micah 6:8; Numbers 24:5 - see commentary of Rashi).

Umot ha-Olam - other nations of the world – A set of principles recommending care and respect for gentiles, especially those who are vulnerable or in need (Kiddushin 33a; Pesachim 113b; Berachot 17a).

Ush’martem Et Nafshotaichem - and you shall protect your health
– The obligation to protect the general health of oneself and one‟s society (Deuteronomy 4.15; Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Book of Knowledge, Laws of De’ot, chapter 4).

V’Shinantam L’Vanecha - and you shall teach your children – The mandate to teach and transmit the Torah to one‟s own children, one of the most important tasks of any Jewish parent (Deuteronomy 6:7; Maimonides - Laws of Talmud Torah).

Yatom, Almanah - orphan, widow – Series of laws obligating special care for orphans and widows (Deuteronomy 24:17; Isaiah 1:17; T.B. Ketubot 50a; Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Book of Knowledge, Laws of De’ot, 6:10).

http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/5708/jewish/Ethics-of-the-Fathers.htm

Shanah Tovah!

2009-09-16T11:43:00.002-05:00

The Jewish New Year 5770 begins at sunset September 18, 2009. The following message isn’t new. I had this on a blog that has now disappeared..for last year’s New Year message. I liked it so much I’m repeating it again THIS year.

The following is from a year old copy of The Arkansas Jewish Times published by Lubavitch of Arkansas. I do not have their permission to borrow from it, but since Chabad wants to reach out to everyone (and they managed to get me on their mailing list), I figure they would not mind if I share with you. Obviously, I do not always agree with them on everything or I would be a Chabadnik or Orthodox. I loved the following article so I‘m going to share it with you, too.
The portion I will share does not list the author on that page; I will assume and give credit to the editor Dassie Ciment. I am also going to edit it a bit for emphasis.

Our List vs. His List
“May you and yours be blessed with health and happiness throughout the coming year.” “May the blessings of health, peace and contentment be yours.” “May you be inscribed and sealed for a good, sweet year.”

At this time of year, wishes to friends and family for the upcoming year ahead abound. And our wishes usually contain what we hope we will have in our own lives, health, happiness, prosperity. We are, in essence, blessing our friends and hoping that God will hear our blessings and fulfill them.

That’s what we want from God. But what does God want from us?
Midrash records:
God tells the Jewish people, “My children, what do I ask from you? Only that you should love one another and respect one another.”

We ask God for health. All He asks is that we love each other.
We ask God for good jobs. All He asks is that we respect each other.
We ask God for emotional strength to get through hard times. All He asks is that we honor each other. We ask God for children whom we can be proud of. All he asks is that we be kind to each other.

Day after day, year after year, we present our lists of requests of what we want from God and what we want God to give to our loved ones.

Like a child let loose in Toys “R Us, we want this and that, and can’t we get one of these and two of those?

And like the ever patient parent, God says to us, “You are all my children. I would be happy to fulfill all of your requests. All I really need to see is that you treat each other with love and respect. That you are sensitive to each other’s needs and that you care for one another.”
Is this not what our parents wanted from us? Isn’t it what all parents want from their children? “Don’t give me the cards, the presents, the box of chocolates. Just be nice to each other. Just behave yourselves, “ our memory tapes replay, “ Don’t fight. Look, you made him cry! You don’t have to like her, but you do have to be nice to her because she’s your sister, she always was and she always will be!”

“My children, what do I ask from you? Only that you love one another and respect one another. “
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

For my brothers and sisters all over the world no matter if theist or atheist, Jew or non-Jew:

L'Shanah Tovah Tikatevu - May you be inscribed for a good year!

Shalom y'all!

On A Lighter Note

2009-08-22T18:30:00.004-05:00

An elderly couple had been dating for some time and decided it was finally time to marry. Before the wedding, they had a long conversation regarding how their marriage might work.

They discussed finances, living arrangements and so on.
Finally the old man decided it was time to broach the subject of their physical relationship.

"How do you feel about sex?" he asked, rather hopefully.

"Well, I'd have to say I like it infrequently," she responded.

The old guy paused .... then he asked, "Was that one word or two?

*************************************************************************
1. The sport of choice for the urban poor is BASKETBALL.

2. The sport of choice for maintenance level employees is BOWLING.

3. The sport of choice for front-line workers is FOOTBALL.

4. The sport of choice for supervisors is BASEBALL.

5. The sport of choice for middle management is TENNIS.

6. The sport of choice for corporate officers is GOLF.

AMAZING CONCLUSION:

The higher you are in the corporate structure, the smaller your balls become.

The Kirk Douglas Smoking Cessation Method

2009-08-15T00:45:00.016-05:00

(EDIT: I return here to note that of all the blog entries I've ever posted, this one is the second most popular. The #1 goes to "Some of the Values and Ethical Precepts of Judaism" by only 4 hits as of this date, OCT. 20, 2011. Every day there are still multiple *hits* from all over the world that view this page according to the "Stats". While it has been here only a couple of years, I first had it posted on a previous blog page where it was also one of the most popular. I hope it continues to be helpful!)

Kirk Douglas doesn't have some kind of school or program he sells for this purpose, that's just the name I created for the method he described that he used to quit smoking. I share his method here in desire to continue to help others. Over the past 18 years my sharing has helped many people to successfully rid them of the nicotine addiction. I have had many people tell me that the advice helped them even if they did not use the exact steps I describe to quit. Many others have said they used the exact method with success.

The physical withdrawal from cigarettes can be severe and very unpleasant. However, I believe that is only one part of why so many fail. I think that much of the failure lies in the thinking that takes place *before* the attempt to quit.

I would like to explain a few things to keep in mind before I begin explaining the exact steps I used to quit smoking. I am not offering medical advice here; see your physician for that. I am not claiming to be an expert on smoking cessation or in substance abuse. I want it to be clear I am relating personal experience and what I believe may help motivate you to overcome cigarette smoking.

While the physical withdrawal can be severe, it does not last beyond 10 days once you have stopped smoking. After that, it is the emotional habit and pattern of behavior that must be overcome and is still a very strong draw to smoking. I am not going to get too deeply into behavior modification techniques for overcoming habits, but will relate a few that I used. I am primarily addressing the physical symptoms of withdrawal and suggestions how to cope during that time. Some people feel no physical symptom after 7 days and that is generally when most at least begin to start to feel like a sane human again.

Even if you want to give yourself more time, by the end of two weeks, your body will be completely free of the physical addiction. It is out of your blood stream entirely. If you want to see how it stays in the pores, and perhaps a disgusting sight to help inspire you to quit, go wrap yourself in a white sheet and spend some time in a steam cabinet. If you are a heavy smoker, when you come out the sheet will be yellow wherever it was closely touching your body. It does not matter how clean you are before you enter that steam cabinet, if you are a smoker you will stain that sheet. The yellow stain is from the tars and nicotine that have oozed out of your pores, residue from smoking.

Here is where I begin telling how I quit:
I discovered the following simple method by reading Kirk Douglas' autobiography called "The Ragman's Son". In his book, he describes what I now call the Kirk Douglas Smoking Cessation Method. He said that he took all of the cigarettes and ashtrays out of the house except for one cigarette and one book of matches that he kept in his shirt pocket. Every time he would get the urge to light up, he'd pull out that cigarette from his pocket and say to it determinedly "Who is stronger, YOU or ME?" He would hold up the cigarette and tell it, "I stronger."

Yes, it is a form of “cold turkey” and the only thing unique about the Kirk Douglas method is how you relate to that cigarette and tell it who is boss. In my instance, it took me to day 10, and by that time I had shaken that cigarette in front of my face so often it was about to fall into pieces. That self-pep talk and thinking of that cigarette as an *entity* that was controlling me helped me to muster willpower I was not sure I had. I just knew I did not want to have a substance to have that kind of mastery over my will.

I have a few more suggestions to add. First, you cannot allow yourself to have an out. If you have not yet reached the point where you are disgusted that a substance is controlling you, then perhaps you will not be able to master the addiction. Once you make up your mind, and have just a bit of planning you can and will succeed. If you say, "I'll TRY to quit" you are leaving yourself the option to fail. If you say, I am quitting on such and such a date, and plan ahead for that date you help to ensure your success. I believe it is crucial to set a definite date and time, then when that day arrives, it is your quit date. Never call it the date you TRY. It is the date you become stronger than the cigarette.

Also, I strongly suggest to plan this to take place at a time when you can more easily avoid people you might wish to do bodily harm if they look at you crossways. Don’t laugh. Nicotine withdrawal is not nice and you may not be nice either…for a time.

You are not going to be pleasant to be around for at least a week. And you're not going to like yourself much that week, but you'll really be proud of yourself when it's over.

So, mark off 10 days on your calendar you can set aside to be an ogre. Then each day of the horrible withdrawal you can say, “ OK another day down and I have just THAT many more until it is OVER!”

If the end is in sight and you KNOW ahead when it ends, you can stick it out easier than if you are slowly weaning yourself with no end in sight. People who spend months slowly weaning themselves down over a long period DRAGGING the withdrawal out for weeks make themselves more miserable than if they did it all at once. A slow reduction in cigarettes leaves you wanting more and maintains enough of the nicotine in your blood to prolong the addiction and keep your body craving. You can put yourself through months of anxiety and craving rather than just a couple of weeks at most.

Of course I want to reinforce all the old standard helpful suggestions. Anything that works for you, go for it. Do all the usual suggested oral fixation things: chew gum, suck on sugarless candy. Those well known suggestions will help a little. However, the best help is simply to say repeatedly to yourself, this awful withdrawal is only going to last a week.

Quitting smoking was one of the toughest things I have done and one I am proud that I overcame an addiction I was not proud of having. Everything that lives dies, however, cigarettes are a major cause of some miserable ways to go. I know I smell a whole lot better than I did when I was a smoker, too.

The method I describe here may not be one that will work for you. If there were one sure-fire method for everyone, there would not be so many different places to go for help with smoking cessation. My hope is that whether or not my method here helps, if you smoke, you will find the way you can quit, too.
I am smoke free now since 1991.

While I read about this in his autobiography, Kirk Douglas’ story of “My First Cigarette, and my Last” appeared in the New York Times in 2003. This is a slightly amended and shorter version than what appears in his book.
Below is the link to the online telling.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/16/opinion/my-first-cigarette-and-my-last.html

I stronger.

Are you?

Shalom y'all

Mother In Law's Tongue five stalks of blooms!

2009-08-10T00:14:00.004-05:00

This is the third year in a row it has bloomed, but it is the first time I've seen five stalks of blooms on one plant. The sweet smell attracted hummingbirds away from the feeder a few times and the scent wafted into the house every time someone walked in the back door.

I've had really good luck with all my flowers this year, an especially wet summer.
I couldn't get all the stalks to show in one photo, the fifth stalk is hidden behind the long leaves on the right. If I turned the plant to show it, only one other stalk shows in that view so I turned it where the most were visible.

This was taken a few weeks ago. I posted it today because a friend said she had never seen one bloom before.

No One Can Outstare A Rabbit

2009-08-08T16:11:00.002-05:00

I dare ya.

Some Thoughts on Facing Antisemitism

2009-08-06T14:57:00.003-05:00

To my fellow Jews

Some things to think about when facing antisemitism. This includes things I say to myself with increasing frequency related to the escalation of antisemitism I see daily online.

No one is beyond getting riled to anger. Remember that the bigots who want to do away with us *want* us to take on and display their inner turmoil and irrational hatreds. Work hard to control your emotions so you can recognize when you're being manipulated.

Antisemitism is growing at an alarming rate in the world once again. We cannot stand by silently, but if we speak only from emotional reaction our voice isn't likely to be heard by even rational people, many of whom can be fooled and swayed to do evil in the guise of good as history repeatedly shows. Your neighbors and mine are not unlike the neighbors of Jews in past generations who permitted the Holocaust. Too many people do not realize that simple truth. It took a great many“good people” to do nothing and turn a blind eye to allow hate to escalate to such a point. Is that happening again?

I would suggest to you that you learn as much as you can about Judaism and Jewish history...the older I grow, the more truth I see in the adage that those who "forget" the past are doomed to repeat it. We have new methods of spreading the same forms of hate being directed to us now (fundamentalist evangelicals hating us because we declare Christian dogma isn't Judaism!) and we've got seeming intellectuals buying into the history revisionism of the oil-rich Arab countries and extremist Islamo-facists regarding Middle East history inciting Jew hate to obliterate Israel. If enough rational people aren't involved in trying to stop hate, violence and bloodshed, in another generation if not sooner, the Holocaust may only look like a prelude. Others who claim to love Israel work for the day to bring about their Armageddon to punish the Jews who “reject” Jesus. I pray I AM wrong about that dread, but I cannot help but see parallels to previous waves of violent persecution that were preceded by several decades of precisely the same escalation of antisemitism, the same forms of propagandist accusations and stereotypes. I never thought I would see Jew hate existing in my life to the level I now see on a daily basis on the internet and in my own community and across the world.

Another adage can be applied here by replacing the word woman with Jews and man with gentiles. It may not be fair, but the fact remains that for a woman to be considered half as good as a man at a job she must perform twice as well. In the business world this double standard still applies in so many places. For Jews to be considered half as legitimate with rights to exist as Jews, the Jews must excel and show twice the level of ethical values as the Gentiles surrounding them. Jews understand this, non Jews do not. In the larger world view, Israel is held to standards that no other country on earth is expected or demanded to adhere to, and the countries that want Israel destroyed are ignored and aided in their duplicitous double standard. Jews across the world are held to the same double standard.

We are supposed to be a light unto the nations. That is the task that every Jew is obligated to do when we affirm our place as members of the eternal covenant of Israel, and Jews the world over are held to that role even if we did not choose it for ourselves individually. Do not forget that. We are also teachers whether or not we want to be. A majority of non-Jews in the world know very little about Judaism. Their ideas of modern Jews are formed by what they read in the news (biased against us despite the antisemitic canard of Jews controlling the media) the stereotypes of TV, what the New Testament says in error about Judaism with it’s demonization of Pharisees, and an important factor we must always keep in mind, the behavior of people around them they identify as Jews. Every Jew is a role model whether you want that role or not.

That's why Jews may sometimes be the hardest on one another when a Jew acts badly. We are a tribal family and we also expect more of our own while we work together for the benefit of all our extended human family in Tikkun Olam

How Intolerant of Me?

2009-08-06T11:05:00.008-05:00

I've said this many times in a few different ways. Once in a while I think it bears repeating:
I raise my child as my parents raised me, to be respectful and tolerant of the right of individuals and groups to have their own unadulterated culture, customs and beliefs. My tolerance extends to the point where the expression of those beliefs violate certain standards of behaviors: If they attempt to violate another’s civil rights, seek to incite harm to anyone, willfully deceive another or misrepresent the beliefs of others then my tolerance ceases.

Since coming to Y/A and answering questions addressed to Jews about Judaism, I have been repeatedly called:
intolerant
hate-monger
bigot
of my "father" the Devil (that I do not believe exists btw, since I'm Jewish and that concept is outside my religion)
and chastised for "persecuting with jealousy and spite"
and far worse..
All of the above accusations were hurled at me for simply saying that the New Testament doctrine of scriptures is outside of Judaism and that the Christian religion is not Judaism!

The New Testament is incompatible with Judaism because of unchangeable Jewish law from the Torah. That is a plainspoken fact regarding the laws of the religion and not personal opinion. I don't demand or ask that anyone take on that aspect of faith. I do not demonize people who wish to follow New Testament doctrine as their spiritual path in life.

Would Christians be subject to similar insults if they answer questions that worship of Odin or Vishnu are outside of Christianity?

Then why should Jews be repeatedly subject to sometimes rabid insults if we note that the worship of Jesus is forbidden to Jews by our laws of Torah?

Torah teaches that God does not become a man. That is a core part of Judaism and what differentiated it from most of the religions of the ancient Levant. That won’t ever change about Judaism.

Christian Bible's concept of messiah fits Jesus. The beliefs of those who call themselves “Messianic Jews” fit the New Testament doctrine of the nature of God, sin, and their concept of messiah is at odds with that of the Jewish religion. When Jews are explaining the differences, not once has any Jew told the Christian that they're damned or evil for choosing to believe their doctrine of the New Testament.

This is all about being told that we do not have the right to explain Jewish law that has existed for more than 4000 years prohibiting worship of men as deities and human sacrifice and demanding that we worship God alone and rely on God alone for atonement.
When Jews declare that any other form of worship is OUTSIDE of Judaism and IRRELEVANT to it, we are accused of hate.

Jews are told to be “tolerant” of people who have no legal ties to the Jewish people who demand that they be considered the “real” and “fulfilled” Jews as Jewish and following Judaism. We are told to be "tolerant" of people who take every aspect of Jewish practice and impose concepts into them that are forbidden to Jews and call it “practicing Jewish custom”. We are told to be "tolerant" of people who have never been Jews claiming to be “Torah observant Jews” who turn that phrase meaningless by violating every aspect of Torah! We are told to be "tolerant" and call their preachers of the New Testament *Rabbi*! I refuse to call someone who has fraudulently appropriated the title of Jewish clergy by a title that was created by the Great Assembly after the destruction of the Second Temple, to refer to one great in knowledge and honor of Torah. They can call themselves "Messianic Jews", call their Christian seminaries "yeshivas", and call their evangelical clergy "rabbis" if they want, but anyone who knows Jewish law will know they're dishonest to do so. A real Rabbi is devoted to Torah, does not preach the New Testament, and takes years of study before this title is conferred by other Rabbis with an ordination (semicha). An evangelical "Messianic" title can be purchased online for $250. If you can prove you have "Jewish blood" you're a superstar and get a special gold seal title on your certificate where they'll trace your "tribe" by your name at different site. sheesh.

It does not change the fact that Jews know and God knows that as long as they worship to or through a man or assign to a dead Jew the power of God to atone, they are lying that their dogma is Judaism or Torah observant and committing sins against every other Jew, living and dead. Whenever they teach lies about Jewish belief and then claim to love Israel, they are committing acts that are no different from any other group of the past who has tried to eliminate the faith and covenant people Israel. When they claim that they are the "real" Israel and that the world's believing Jews are "cut off" and "hate then for their faith" they repeat centuries old antisemitic libel with new labeling. Should they die without teshuvah,they will be held accountable for this egregious sin, as were all apostates in Tanakh who tried to get Israel to worship false man/gods.

Judaism is more about deed than creed. The deed of deception about Jewish belief speaks far louder than any self-professed love for Torah and Israel. I see them as no different from any other group who is out to destroy Judaism.

Yet Jews do not even need to address that point or refer to it to be demonized and verbally attacked with the label hate monger.

We are told that if we say that human sacrifice and deicide are considered abhorrent in Judaism we are hate mongers when we are simply and straightforwardly describing what the Holy Scriptures of Judaism say directly. How is it bigotry to say that human sacrifice is abhorrent to our religion? How is it bigotry to anyone else to say that Judaism declares that God does not become a man?

Go figure

The divinity of Jesus, virgin birth, original sin, the Devil/Lucifer, vicarious atonement and an eternal hell for those outside the sphere of faith and membership in the covenant nation Israel are all contradictory to Torah and Judaism. To define the boundaries and beliefs of a religion according to it’s doctrine/law is NOT bigotry.

If questions or answers that simply explain core differences between religions and doctrines can be defined as "hate", then that would mean that every comparative religion class must be defined as hate. There is no hate involved in recognizing and understanding DIFFERENCES as well as looking to find common ground with our fellow humans.

The above includes an adaptation of an answer I gave recently IN Yahoo answers to a very good question by a contact there, The angels have the Arc Light. She asked, Is it intolerant to point out that certain beliefs fall outside the criteria for inclusion in your religion?

And the Best Answer chosen by her was succinct, “Providing factual corrections isn't intolerant. And when one is factually correct, it is more than annoying to have someone inform you that you're wrong. It's the Humpty-Dumpty syndrome - "words means whatever I want them to mean" - I suspect. When you're pointing out that the name of one's religion does have a definite meaning and that some beliefs fall outside what is included in that perfectly clear and well-understood (by the rest of the world) term, you are not being intolerant. Someone else is being crazy, tediously obstinate and totally narcissistic.” This answer was from another Jewish user and contact, Ambivalent LAUghter.

It is obvious that these accusations are upsetting and it is also obvious they are escalating and increasing in antisemitic tone.

I could fill pages of examples of this form of topsy turvy accusation of bigotry, but I’ll only show one here.
So I won’t be considering assaulting individuals, I’m not going to give their Yahoo names. The question was later deleted anyway, but I had saved portions of it at the time as it was simply astounding to me the level of hate directed to Jews that answers addressing Jewish belief inspired when all the Jews there agreed in simple straightforward language that the New Testament was not Judaism.

A few months back a question had appeared that asked about Judaism’s view of sin and repentance. One of the answers that appeared had absolutely nothing to do with Judaism, but gave New Testament doctrine in lieu of Jewish belief. The person claimed to be a “Torah observant Messianic Jew”. There was nothing at all mentioned about the Jewish religion’s concept of sin and repentance in the answer at all. The rest of the answers gave straightforward answer to Jewish doctrine. One quoted passages of Tanakh and the other three gave detailed references.

Each of the Jewish respondents had also noted that the answer that gave New Testament belief or referred to Yeshua or Jesus , did not give an answer coming from Judaism. No personal insult was made, no one said anything demonizing or hateful, but my answer did express dismay that “once again, a question asking about Judaism has had a response giving the doctrine of a religion that is incompatible with Judaism as an answer.” I said that, “Jesus is insignificant to Judaism. The New Testament concepts of messiah, atonement and the nature of God are incompatible with Judaism and thus irrelevant to this question.” The asker then gave an additional detail that went off on an absolute diatribe demonizing Jews for saying that and accused me personally of violating Yahoo‘s rules.

I then added an edit to my answer, and oddly enough I have had more than one occasion to use a variant of this edit after giving a correct answer about Judaism since this first time posting it:
“I am at a complete LOSS as to why the asker is making the accusation of a "flood of hate" in responses here and claiming I am breaking the rules. Giving honest information about Jewish belief, reputable references to support this information and doing so in a polite and straightforward manner are hardly hate. I see five answers here, four of them giving detailed and accurate information about Judaism and supporting the right of the Jewish people to maintain Jewish law for the purposes of self-determination and identity.
Three movements of Judaism are represented in the four answers, as well. All four answers are stated without hatred, without rudeness and three of them (my own included ) give many reputable Jewish references to support the facts of our answers. So, unless it is the case that I simply missed answers that were posted earlier and now do not show up here at all..the respondents who have so far posted are owed an apology for this additional detail from the asker>>>"That no one can apparently even mention Messianic Judaism without a flood of hate and insults from anti-messiah people. Even a top contributor here couldn't resist breaking the rules to persecute their own who embrace their Jewish messiah." (I was the only one with a TC badge that appeared so that had to have been directed to me)

Lastly, believing Jews are definitely not anti-messiah people, so I must also assume that comment was made to someone whose answer does not now appear. I am glad that apparently I missed that hate as there is far too much of it in Y/A.. Remember, Judaism is a messianic faith, the original messianic religion.

-------------------------------------------------

Then today a QUESTION appears that has this whole premise as the basis of the question..that Jews are bigoted to Jews who believe in Jesus. After receiving several polite and detailed answers that he proceeded to insult and call the users names, the asker removed his own question..that is the message that was posted when I went to edit a typo in my response that I’ll show here. I did not save all the other answers but I did save my own and had used my “back’ screen to save the question as I’d answered it.

OK I have a question on Messianic Jews *braces self* and LDS etc?
Apparently I am being dismissive and uncaring about how passionately these people are hated by the Jewish community. Help me understand (in a simple and brief way please)

Truly I can't get my head around it or like the way they are demonized by some. Not just that they are saying they can't be Jews, but that they are pretending to be jews in order to bring them all down from the inside. Perhaps they are idk... but how is that different from any religious sect.

I also don't get how Christians claim different sects aren't Christian, like Protestants, Catholics, LDS... all of them.

So really I want to know what makes them different, and why we can't all just get along.

I don't need it explained to me how Jesus wasn't the messiah or anything btw. I just want to know how people can be considered Jews and be practicaly secular, if anything just "bad Jews", but people who observe Jewish practices and just think Jesus DID fulfill the prophecies are excluded (even if YOU think he didn't)
--------------------------------------------
Before I post what I answered, I want you the reader here to now think carefully about how that question is phrased.

Do you see that accusation of hate and demonization hurled at Jews in the question?
He declares they observe Jewish practices..that’s a misnomer. Jewish practices are performed to honor Jewish belief. Performing behaviors of certain Jewish rituals but imposing dogma of the New Testament that contradicts the beliefs those rituals were created to honor does not entail Jewish practices.
He considers them a ‘sect” of Judaism. This is not a schism from within the religion or the Jewish people and all movements of Judaism are in complete agreement over this.
This isn’t about “bringing them down from the inside” at all, but an attempt to hijack and replace and have the world believe that the “real” Jews are New Testament believers and the rest of the world’s Jews are impostors..it is an attempt at identity theft and an assault TO Judaism. Period. This is the topsy turvy nature of all of this.

The saddest part of this is that this evangelical movement has now existed long enough and grown fast enough in the Christian populace that there are now a few thousand children who have grown up with a false sense of identity and understanding of Judaism. They believe themselves to be Jews, but have no idea that their concept of Judaism, Jewish law and identity is utterly contradictory to Judaism. They were raised to believe they were being persecuted for their faith in their Jewish messiah and actually fear the people that they claim to love and be a part of.
They claim love of Israel and the Jewish people while spending millions of dollars a year to remove our identity and faith in evangelizing efforts. That’s a very misguided love at best.
Now here is the answer that I gave there. It’s long, but thorough and if you read nothing further, at least scroll down to the bottom and read the ISRAEL INSIDER article.

HERE is what I answered. The questioner removed the question less than 10 minutes after this posted there:

I will also not be responding to any question of a schism within Christianity. It is sad this question includes a false accusation against Jews as well.

There is no branch of Judaism known as "Messianic Judaism" because ALL of Judaism *is* messianic. The principles of faith contain promises by God of a Davidic messianic age. Judaism is the original messianic religion. The concept and job description of the term messiah in the Tanakh is simply VERY different from that of the New Testament

ALL movements of Judaism are in complete agreement that this is an assault to Jewish identity by people who profess faith in the doctrine of the New Testament. Jews are not telling these people what to believe, but just trying to inform the world that these people are not being honest when they hijack the identity of the Jewish people. Not only do they try to hijack our identity, but their teaching attempts to remove from the Jewish people aspects of our faith as they often use the insulting term, "non messianic" to Judaism, the original and still existing messianic religion.
Their religion is not Judaism and this was not a schism within Judaism.
We currently have no other honest name to call them than what they were FORMERLY identified themselves to be before they decided that appropriating the name of Judaism to eliminate authentic Jewish identity was an accepted method of evangelizing., Hebrew Christians. The Messianic Jewish Alliance of America was known by the name Hebrew Christian Alliance from it's beginning in 1915 until 1975. Jews consider them Christian since their statements of beliefs are Christian New Testament doctrine and not Judaism. It is not the function or job of Judaism to give other religions their own names.

The term "Messianic Judaism" began around 1967 according to "Christianity Today" magazine. Their statements of faith are in contradiction to the statements of belief of every form of Judaism on planet earth. Every Chief Rabbi and Jewish organization of every branch on every continent you find Jews and every Jewish user from five continents here in Yahoo that I've seen posting on this issue are in full agreement. This isn't a schism within Judaism, It isn't Judaism.

If they called themselves something else you wouldn't see Jews showing up on questions such as this. BUT because Jews are obligated by the commandments of God in Torah to speak up to the truth of the covenant of Israel and because the Jewish people should also have the same rights as all other nation peoples according to the Declaration of Human Rights. It is the basic human right of the Jewish people and obligation to speak up for the right of Jews to continue to use Jewish law for self-determination!

Y/A is supposed to be a place where people seek knowledge and factual information. If Jews did NOT speak out when Judaism and Jewish identity is being misrepresented and Jewish people were being maligned as bigoted toward the rights of others to believe in whomever they want, that would mean that false information is condoned as fact. That should not be acceptable to ANY honest person using Yahoo as it is intended, Jew or Gentile. In fact, because Jews are so few in number, we hope that more people will stop turning a blind eye to this and also speak out for honesty.

Jews and Christians can and do get along wonderfully when there is honesty and integrity in communication. As a believing Jew of course I respect the right of others to their own beliefs and understand as Torah teaches that the righteous of all nations merit blessing. Misrepresenting the beliefs of others is deception and that is a behavior condemned by both religions, no matter how different our religions may be to one another on many levels.

These groups are considered antisemitic and are harming Jewish-Christian relations. A recent Jewish Herald Voice I received in the mail had a headline article about how “Messianics pervert Passover at some Houston-area churches” with a subtitle, “Deceptive tactics harm healthy Jewish-Christian relations, experts say.” I have personally been involved in interfaith groups and dialog for 30 years and it is my strong belief that the different deceptively named "Messianic Jewish" groups have done just as much to increase antisemitism as the propaganda of the Middle East. Daily insults and false accusations of bigotry to *them* and false accusation that Jews are persecuting them because they believe in Jesus in Y/A is clear evidence of this.

The New Testament is replacement theology and no more relevant to the Jewish people than the Quran is to the Christian.

This is NOT OPINION but Jewish LAW of the eternal covenant. They are not of the Jewish religion so they may not speak to DEFINE Judaism.

Torah does not teach Jews that one must be a member of the covenant nation, Israel, the Jewish people, to know or connect to God.

All humans are equal before God. God is not exclusive to the Jew. God commands the Jew to be exclusive to God. Isaiah and Jeremiah both echo that the righteous of all nations have a place in the world to come. Micah sums it up well, "What Does the Lord Require of You? to Act Justly and to Love Mercy and to Walk Humbly With Your God"

They are most definitely free to believe whatever they want to believe. Mazel Tov on their choice of following the New Testament doctrine.

They simply will never ever be able to call it Jewish belief without Jews being forced to speak out to declare that is not true if they wish to call worship of or through a human a form of Judaism.

If a worshipper of Odin were to call themselves a "completed Christian" I think it would be expected that if a Christian said that Odin worship is outside of and irrelevant to Christianity, there would be no outrage displayed to the Christian for bigotry. Jews do not like to see Judaism misrepresented and Jewish identity attempted to be hijacked. If genuine respect and tolerance were being honored and there is someone who insists on misrepresenting Jewish belief and Jewish law and claims false identity, when Jews point that out with clear evidence that isn't something that should be declared hostile .

The assault to the rights of Jewish people to maintain Jewish identity through Jewish law is hostile to Jews and is creating antisemitism because they falsely claim that Jews persecute them for their faith in Jesus. That essentially says Jews hate Christians for their belief and fuels centuries of antisemitism. We just want them to stop calling themselves as following Judaism so that we don't have to keep coming along behind them to say..no, you're not. God defined in the Torah what is and isn't of the eternal covenant and the New Testament doctrine is contradictory to it. It is not Judaism.

it is not bigotry to declare that Judaism is not Christianity. It is fact.

Judaism IS a messianic faith but there is NO separate branch or sect of Judaism called "Messianic Judaism". The people who identify themselves as such follow the New Testament doctrine/scriptures and are thus, not of the Jewish faith by ANY stretch. More than 90% of the people who call themselves "messianic Jews" have no Jewish ancestry and are thus, not even apostate Jews. A group of people comprised of less than 10% apostate Jews who do not follow any form of Judaism, but only take Hebrew language, customs and holidays and impose replacement theology into then, does not get to redefine or hijack the identity of the Jewish people without the whole world's Jewish population of EVERY branch on every continent speaking in unison that they are not following Judaism. If they do not want to call adherence to the New Testament Christian, that's not a Jewish concern. Jews simply do not want them to hijack Jewish identity.

I am a Jewish believer. I am a real "messianic" Jew since my concept of the Davidic messiah is from the Tanakh. It has nothing to do with Jesus or the New Testament.

I am a monotheistic Jew. There is no trinity or tripartite deity in Judaism. There is absolutely no need to designate any particular branch of Judaism as monotheistic. It is every bit as illogical and redundant to have a phrase naming a separate branch of the Jewish religion as "Messianic Judaism"

I pray for the day when these explanations are no longer needed and such disrespect is no longer displayed to the Jewish people.

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Under source I listed these links:

http://israelinsider.ning.com/forum/topics/messianic-synagogues-target < a very enlightening and informative article
http://mamaspajamaparty.blogspot.com/2009/04/jewish-position-has-been-clear-for-two.html Position statements from the world's Jews on this issue.
http://mamaspajamaparty.blogspot.com/2009/04/because-there-are-groups-and.html < Regarding Jewish law to determine identity.

Serenity From Self Acceptance

2009-07-30T12:22:00.006-05:00

The following is an essay I first wrote in 1999, then copyrighted in 2000. It appeared on an old blog but I repost it today for a few reasons. While at the time I wrote it I was recognizing that bigotry of all forms and in particular, antisemitism was rising, I now see that escalation has taken a sharper rise.
I grew up the child of parents who promoted civil rights and like them, joined both interfaith groups and civil rights groups so that how I lived demonstrated the values they taught in both word and deed. Perhaps something of what I've learned may help another. I give a link at the end that I hope all parents will view.
Now here is the short (for me anyway!) essay, reposted again.

The serene and straightforward manner I most often maintain in responding to bigots comes from both faith in God and in self-acceptance of my human nature. My self-esteem is neither defined nor validated by the approval of bigots whose values I see as harmful. Instead, I focus on opinions gleaned from respectable people; insights gained from interactions with the wise and not so wise. I begin with the premise that each individual is worthy of respect. Since I claim no sainthood, it is no hypocrisy to reveal I can lose all respect for people who behave in a willfully ignorant, disrespectful, dishonest or hateful manner. I believe they have a right to their choice. I don’t have to respect all choices, or disrespectful people; that is my choice.
Some people are so maladapted to human interaction they enjoy conflict. I do not enjoy conflict. A conflict addict spends much time devising or refining new methods to propagate it. When someone tries to make a well-mannered person feel bad about civility, they do so to project the discomfort they feel in the presence of respectful behavior. A taunt of “ goody goody” on the playground by a bully a perfect example. Quite often we hear the adult bully replace that with other words and phrases, “ politically correct” is one that comes to mind. Recognizing and correctly labeling another’s behavior as that of a bully or bigot based on their actions or words may even inspire them to try to make the victimizer the victim to shift the focus and blame. I don’t have to view another as inferior or demonize them to boost my ego or justify my values. Like a moth drawn to a flame, the social misfit conflict addict is drawn to the more peaceful whom they view as weak to be the target of their venom. However, a serene demeanor does not imply weakness. Serenity is not found in a mind that is self-absorbed with the bliss of religiosity from either psychosis or indoctrination into a cult.
It is unfortunate that an above average intellect conveys no immunity to bigotry. While there are many reasons for bigotry that I won’t begin to address here, often a choice to create conflict is derived from attention seeking. Think of former classmates, the child who was bright but overlooked at home or in school by others unless he acted out. The temporary vindication they feel when anyone agrees and the reward of being the center of attention by belittling others becomes like a drug. This attention gives a short-term sense of belonging, reinforcement of their beliefs, and helps to elevate self worth. It can then escalate until their self-concept has risen to a delusional superiority over all others. They hold out the worst venom, not for those who may truly exhibit inferior intellect or moral or social inadequacies, but for those whose presence, demeanor and wisdom expose their own most deeply feared frailty. Their maladapted manner of life and self-concept has made them a part of the weakest link in humanity and the most widely detested of all.
Serenity that isn’t easily shaken comes from cognizance of human frailty and foible, self-knowledge and acceptance of the kinship of all humanity. It carries no fear that you’re going to be exposed as less than perfect. Some of the most dangerous dogs are “fear biters” and some of the most dangerous humans behave that way, too.
Copyright © 2000 mama_pajama_1
http://www.teachingtolerance.org
Shalom y'all

"Racism is evil, and it is our duty as Jews to fight evil."

2009-04-23T13:47:00.008-05:00

This is a comment that was posted as an additional detail under a very inflammatory question posted in Yahoo Answers. I was composing an answer when the asker chose, what IMHO was the worst answer and one whose statements about the links given, did not even accurately reflect what was portrayed by the content.

Therefore, I will address this issue here.

I certainly agree with that comment I quoted above as the title here. That is what Torah teaches all Jews.

The Jewish people, especially in the United States, have been at the forefront of combating racism and in fact, my experience is that we are doubly hated by those who hate black people because of it.

Some of this answer will have also appeared elsewhere on this blog but I repeat it to make the point very clear that Judaism does not support or condone racism and actively teaches against it.

If you believe that being black is being held against you in your Jewish community then your community needs to be called out and chastised and educated as they’re NOT living Jewishly

Period.

Now as to the Korean Jew who wrote on one link that Jews need to “expand” the definition of a Jew that did not equate Jewishness with race..and acts as if that is a Jewish idea to begin with, read absurd to anyone who knows Jewish law regarding Jewish identity. The notions he is speaking out against are those that Jews have spoken out against in the world for generations. The following link was posted on the question.

http://www.isabellafreedman.org/pdfs/ThePlightofthenonwhitejew.pdf

For my entire life I have ONLY seen Jews speak out AGAINST the false notion of defining Jewish identity as based on race, an idea born out of antisemitism and imposed into widespread notion so strongly he doesn’t even recognize that what he is trying to say as a Jewish notion is NOT and contradicts Jewish law itself…and doesn’t know enough about Jewish law, Judaism, the history of Jews speaking out against this …to know that his essay appears absurd. One has only to read HUNDREDS of Jewish explanations here on Yahoo Answers alone to see that clearly, too.
When he says this:
“Closer to home, Asian Jews are not taken seriously. I, as a Korean Jew, must every year explain to teachers and friends why I will not be coming in on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Everyone I meet must first be introduced to the idea of an Asian
Jew. The common response is:
"You're Jewish?!?
To which I must respond "Yes".
My friend, an Aryan-German Jew, must calmly explain to people that race and religion are independent of each other. Many people seem to believe that Judaism is a race. A common exchange is as follows:
"You're Jewish?!?" "Yes".
"But you're German!"
"Yea, well they didn't get all of us".
A long explanation should not be required to convey one's religion. This is why a change is in order.”

He is NOT speaking of the Jewish definition of who is a Jew! He is speaking of the antisemitic definition of Jewish identity and IGNORANCE about Jewish identity based on Jewish law as he so openly displays himself by not recognizing that Jews continually speak out against such definitions. And Jews have done this for GENERATIONS.

Many white Jews such as myself have not seen many black Jews simply because there are very few of them to see. If I have often been the ONLY Jew that many people in my community have said they have ever met..and I’m a blonde haired blue eyed Jew who gets told ALL the time that I can’t be a “real Jew”..then I can certainly imagine that a black Jew would get the same reaction…but not from any Jews who understand Jewish law.

In fact, when my synagogue had a black family who appeared and joined who were all fluent in Hebrew, appeared to be knowledgeable and they claimed to be and gave appearance of being observant and whose children were all well behaved and the adults wanted to help teach our children in the small congregation one on one Hebrew lessons..we jumped at the chance. The family was involved with every aspect of our synagogue life, I danced with them at a Bar Mitzvah, sat next to them at services, had invited them to my home (they never took up the invitation) and our children studied together at the synagogue.

Then..I began to feel suspicious about them, not because of skin color, but because of behavior, things like..trying to work too hard to convince me how Jewish they were when I had never asked or given any indication that I doubted their Jewishness..that is often a clue that someone is posing as a Jew, oddly enough..then next I recognized phrases coming from the mother that I often heard from fundamentalist Christians speaking of certain concepts, but using Hebrew to do it. Concepts that are essentially foreign to Judaism, but things that many Christians mistakenly think Jews believe..this I thought may be to do with the fact that she had not been raised in Judaism but converted and was having a hard time ridding herself of self-concepts foreign to Judaism.

Then I overheard one of their children using phrases right from the New Testament, but in Hebrew. This let me know for certain that they were not of the Jewish religion. So then I voiced my concern to our Rabbi that it appeared we had Messianics in our midst who were teaching our children. I was also a teacher there, third generation of my family at this synagogue. I would not make an unfounded accusation. As a 30 year member of the NAACP, member of the SPLC for 20 years and I also was the only person to have two whole rows of black friends come to my Confirmation decades before (until a black church group came one Shabbat, that was the most black faces in our synagogue ever before), so there was no reason to suspect that I was being bigoted based on color…yet the first response out of my Rabbi's mouth to me was.."Just because they are black isn’t a reason to assume they’re not Jews”.

I was really taken aback at first, astonished at the implication but, I was glad to see that the Rabbi who was not from the south, and perhaps had her own stereotypes to deal with and who had only known me a year since first becoming our Rabbi, wanted to make sure that was not a part of it. It wasn’t until months later when other objective and irrefutable evidence of their family membership in a Christian group was established and it was discovered that one of them was trying to mix in Christian doctrine with their teaching that they were asked to leave the synagogue and their membership rescinded. We do not like fraud. They had presented themselves as observant, ORTHODOX Jews (there is no Orthodox synagogue within an hour of this community) and they were as far from that as a tiger is from being vegan.

They wouldn’t have gained the positions within the community they did so RAPIDLY if they had been discriminated against because of skin color. Some people, like myself think that they actually “got away“ with fraudulent membership for longer because of fear that it would be assumed and accused that they were discriminated against for being black in a small rural southern synagogue.

Accusations of any nature regarding one’s legitimacy of being a Jew or not being a Jew are taken very seriously within the Jewish community. Jewish law is the standard to determine Jewish identity…not race. NEVER has it been about race.

The Ethiopian Beta Yisrael ..unlike what the Korean Jew states…have been in existence since Solomon, and were only discovered by the “outside world” in the years he claims their existence began..for many hundreds of years, they believed themselves to be the ONLY Jews. So their concept of Jews would have been that all Jews are black. There isn’t anything inherently racist in thinking that the people of your group are like what you know and experience..and especially if you combine it with direct Torah teachings that forbid such notions..what is bigoted is to call Judaism racist.

Jewish children growing up in areas where Jews are only one ethnicity or culture..will assume UNLESS taught of the diversity within Judaism..that Jews are all like them. Luckly, even though I never set eyes on a black Jew in person until I was grown ( and I’m not talking about the Christians posing as Jews who had no tie to Judaism whatsoever) I knew that Jews come in all races and ethnicities.

If you are LUCKY enough to live in an area with a large enough Jewish population you may see MANY Jewish ethnicities and cultures represented..or even in a smaller community you may see more than one. Sometimes NOT. This is why EDUCATION for DIVERSITY..as that second link is about..is important. It isn’t about combating racism in JUDAISM. Judaism has always been against such a thing. That there are some Jewish bigots ( apparently of more than one color) is most likely a fact, however that isn’t acceptable in any Jewish community. Jews have always been at the FOREFRONT of civil rights and speaking out against racism.

My parents were members of the NAACP and I joined at age 18. I grew up as a child being called “ nigger lover” because of my parents being outspoken for civil rights.

Even here in the rural south..the Rabbi would rather risk assuming that a respected white Jewish woman who had worked in interfaith and intercultural activities my whole life, and whose mother and grandmother did the same in a much more prominent capacity could be biased rather than first risk offending someone because they were black. At first I was angered by not being believed when I reported what I heard and that it took others to report similar things before it was investigated. But now after reading the lies on Yahoo..I can certainly see why such CAUTION might be taken. After all..bigotry against blacks does still exist in a very widespread manner and I KNOW that someone both black and Jewish would get more than a double whammy of it.

To any black Jew..I know that to remain Jewish..you possess a commitment that is as great as that of any Orthodox, Ashekanzi white skinned European Jew who lives in a community surrounded by their cultural peers. I know this because I also know that even living as a white skinned Jew in an area where there are few Jews requires greater commitment than what I think we’re often given credit for possessing.

While you as a black skinned Jew may feel extra discrimination because of your skin color..if it is coming from other Jews..then speak out about it to your Rabbi because that is something that should NEVER be tolerated in a Jewish community. I do not know of any Jew who would not support you in this. If Jews of my parents generation were lynched and terrorized right alongside Christian blacks to support their civil rights, then how on earth could any Jew not assume that white Jews would not stand up against anyone who discriminates against our own!!!

Do not think that because you are asked if you are a “real Jew” that it is because of BIGOTRY inherent in Judaism or promoted in Judaism at all. I am a blonde haired, blue eyed Jew and if I had a dollar for every time in my life I have been either asked “ are you a real Jew?” or “ are you a convert?” or “ who in your family converted?” or simply stated or ARGUED with me that “YOU can’t be a real Jew!", I would be wealthy.

I have even been asked this by Jews…of course Jews ignorant of Jewish law and far, far less than by non Jews. Not every Jew in the world knows Judaism or Jewish law. Shocking huh?

My SON was asked by the sister of a prominent Jeweler from a well known Jewish family..at his Bar Mitzvah..” When I saw you I thought you must have been adopted to be a Jew, then I saw your mother and wondered if she was a convert?” ( My husband is the non Jew but he has dark hair ..she assumed he was a Jew)

My son’s jaw dropped, but I chimed in matter of factly..nope, He’s the fourth generation of his family to read from the Torah here..my maternal grandmother was a member since 1914 and her family goes back to the Kohenim and his paternal ancestry has rabbis too. This isn't somnething we usually hear from Jews, but from non-Jews who do not know Jewish law about Jewish identity.

Then came the confession from the woman that while her parents were Jewish and they would come for High Holy days and Bar and Bat Mitzvahs and some other celebrations, she really had no formal Jewish education or upbringing and apologized for her ignorance.

So, once again. It is NOT Judaism that promotes bigotry or bias to anyone but ignorance OF Judaism.

And if your community is biased to you because of your skin color.. You will have ALL believing Jews in your corner to speak out against it. Simply provide the evidence and I guarantee you’ll have other Jews there toe to toe in their face to tell them they’re violating Torah

If I lived near enough to you to do so I would have no hesitation doing so myself and I can vouch for any Jew I know personally to do the same.

When I read the headline of a recent article in my local newspaper titled " Black and Jewish", I thought perhaps it was going to be referring to a well known website in the Jewish community and group by that name ”Black and Jewish”, since there have been black Jews since the days of the Torah and Jews the world over have accepted this because it is simply a part of Judaism. We know that there were and are black Jews and Jews of every race on the planet, the ‘question’ of whether or not someone’s Jewish identity is even at question because of race is not a Jewish way of looking AT Jewish identity.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ghGk5Lj6-e5KJOZMpIzs-pBPVnTAD97ECNBG1

The above article by Kathy Matheson of the Associated Press includes some egregiously misleading phrases that come from a very non-Jewish perspective of Judaism.

When she says that “the group has been working to persuade Jews to break through the racial divisions that have alienated African-American, African and other ethnic minority Jews from the larger community” that is most assuredly NOT speaking from the perspective OF the Jewish community. On further reading, it is in fact, a thinking of those groups that are outside of Judaism that wish to make it about race. Race has never had a thing to do with it.

It is a NON-Jewish notion of Jews as a race, or being confined to one “race”. That has been a core truth of Jewish identity since the days OF the Torah. This is one reason why Jews were also at the forefront of abolitionism and civil rights movements, since Torah teaches us all humans are of equal worth, Jew and non Jew. Now with regard to Jewish identity, the sole issue with acceptance of that group highlighted in the article was something very different than race. Race did NOT have a thing to do with whether or not they were considered Jews by the Jewish community. The article only briefly referred to it in a later quote as almost an afterthought or byline. However that quote addressed that the real issue is whether or not they qualified to be Jews according to the laws of Jewish identity…the Torah.
“ What makes somebody Jewish is not the congregation you belong to, but whether you were converted appropriately,” said Jeffrey Gurock, a professor at Yeshiva University, an Orthodox school in New York.

THAT is the issue. It has NOTHING to do with them being black.

I repeat, race had nothing to do with this and the article was false because it’s premise was based on that false assumption.

While that quote is from an Orthodox professor, the same holds true for all branches. The determination of Jewish identity is based on Jewish law, and even among the most liberal branch, Reform, of which I am a member, there are laws that define Jewish identity. Again, race has never had a thing to do with these determinations.

Because there are groups and individuals who wish to purposely misrepresent Jewish identity and confuse others for agendas of either bigotry, identity theft, replacement theology or all of the above, there remains much confusion among many when that is really unnecessary. Jews who know Judaism and Jewish law don’t have these confusions, and once non-Jews learn these facts of Jewish law and recognize that Jews have the same rights of self-determination that are afforded to all nation peoples, they lose these confusions as well.

Jews are a nation people, Israel (tribal origin) bound by an eternal covenant of the faith (religion) of Judaism. We are like a huge family and only the family through our laws can determine who is a member of it. It is the laws of Judaism, given to the covenant nation, Israel, in the Torah, that determine Jewish identity. It is not a matter of “blood” but of self-determination through the laws of the Jewish people. I know that sounds repetitive but I repeated that because that appears hard for some to grasp.

People related to one another share genetic markers. Jews began as a family, then as a small group of tribes and has remained tribal in nature. However, Jews are NOT considered a race. Jews are not *an* ethnicity. There is simply NO single Jewish ethnicity. Neither ethnicity or race define Jewish identity. I repeat, it is Jewish law that defines Jewish identity.

We are Klal Yisrael, the community of Israel. . **MANY** different and distinctly Jewish cultures and ethnicities have developed over the millennia in Diaspora lands. The Diaspora refers to the Jewish presence outside of Israel after the destruction of the First and Second Temple periods and the Bar Kochba revolt.

There are many ethnicities that are distinctly Jewish. There are the Mizrahi (from the Middle East and North Africa).The Sephardi (Spanish) and the Ashkenazi, (German, Polish, Russian and other Eastern European), the Beta Yisrael of Ethiopia, and the Bene Israel, Cochini and Baghdadi of India and there are even others. Each are different as to cultural practices and foods, but it is the faith and covenant that binds them all together as Klal Yisrael.

The Jewish people are considered both a nation and a religion. Our connection is primarily one of faith (religion) through the covenant of Israel, yet membership is also conferred by birth, through matrilineal descent. One may also become a part of the nation Israel by adoption of the faith of Judaism and formal procedures of conversion.

One who converts to Judaism is considered as FULLY Jewish as one born Jewish and their children are Jews. This has been the case since the times of the Torah.
However, one may technically be a Jew if their mother is a Jew, but apostate to the covenant of Israel and no longer considered a member of the nation if they leave it for the covenant of faith of another religion.

The Jewish nation began as a group of tribes and our connection to one another is still from the perspective of a tribal nation. (example: as the Lakota nation has tribal procedure and law to determine who is a member of their tribe, who is not, who is expelled and who is adopted, so does Judaism)

One born a member of the tribal covenant nation Israel (Jewish) may not be observant or even believe in God and they’re still a full member, a Jew. They may not be a good member or an active member but they’ve not renounced membership by following something ELSE instead of Judaism. An atheist or a secular Jew is not trying to call something ELSE Judaism. That is how one may be an "atheist Jew". Not believing that there is such a thing as deity, any deity is not following a false deity. An atheist Jew may live Jewish ethics and identify with their people, but they did not take on foreign beliefs contradictory to the monotheism of Torah. An atheist may not convert *to* Judaism to become a member of the tribe because an affirmation of faith in the God of Israel is required to JOIN.

Now if one born into the covenant becomes apostate through rejection of the covenant by adoption of another belief contradictory to the covenant, they are still be considered a Jew, but for all intents and purposes, they're not given the status of a member. According to Jewish law they're not counted in a minyan,(the minimum number of adults required for certain prayers and other mitzvot), they can't be buried in a Jewish cemetery, they cannot be given honors to go up to read Torah at a synagogue, and they may not be allowed to speak for the Jewish people. Their membership status can be restored in full without formal conversion should they repent of their idolatrous or foreign god worship. Only then may apostates be embraced again as full members. One who has left the Jewish people for the foreign faith of another people must undergo the steps of teshuvah , which means repentance and return to the God of Israel. Some groups may require that the individual also requires immersion in the mikveh before being accepted back, but they do not require the formal steps of conversion should the person wish to return.

Jews are in NO way a *race* other than as members of the human race. For those of you who want to claim Judaism doesn't accept converts as fully Jewish, how about Ruth in the Bible? She was a member of the Moabite nation that was condemned to be separate from God for their evil. However, she was a righteous woman who converted and adopted the faith of Israel and was the ancestor of King David. The New Testament depicts her as being an ancestor of Jesus, too. I like to bring this up when some Christian groups want to declare that converts aren't "real Jews" or that Jews are a race. It is Jewish law alone, not Christianity or any other entity that determines the status of who and what is Jewish.

When a Jew adopts a belief that is in conflict with the Jewish religion, the belief does NOT become a " Jewish belief" just because a Jew chooses to believe in it. THAT is the conflict Jews have with some Christian groups who call themselves Jews if they deceptively try to present their Christian belief AS Judaism. A Jew who converts to Hare Krishna is just as apostate, but there exists no Jews for Hare Krishna or Hare Krishna Judaism evangelical groups spending millions of dollars a year in campaigns to convert secular Jews by convincing them it is a form of Judaism.

You can become a member of a tribe or nation if you meet the criteria of citizenship. And the covenant people, Klal Yisrael, remain as in the earliest days of the covenant..a nation. It hasn't changed.

Reform Judaism (of which I am a member) will consider as Jewish one whose father is a Jew IF the child was RAISED in Judaism actively and exclusively. Even in Reform Judaism, simply having a Jewish father without exclusively Jewish upbringing, would require conversion on the part of the person with only a Jewish father to become a Jew. Reform Judaism also recognizes that only Orthodox conversion is considered acceptable to all branches.

It is against Jewish law for any Jew to discriminate against a convert to Judaism. Since the time of the Torah converts have been accepted as fully Jewish, and this is the case in all branches. We are not even supposed to refer to the fact that they are converts! It is up to them if they wish to identify themselves as such. They are Jews, period.

The covenant people, Israel have been MULTIRACIAL since the days of Torah, Moses' wife, Zipporah was a black woman. I was raised to believe that the “mixed multitude” that came out of Egypt referred to the fact that there were Jews of every race who came out of Egypt and in every generation this is what we celebrate and honor at Passover all over the world among Jews of all races. There have been Ethiopian Beta Yisrael since the days of Solomon! And I repeat, one cannot convert to a race. One may convert and become fully Jewish.

There are several groups who claim Jewish identity but are not recognized by any branch of Judaism in any part of the world as being a part of the Jewish community. None of the groups who follow the New Testament as a form of belief are recognized by any branch of Judaism as being Jewish. At least one of these is a black group, called the Black Hebrew Israelites. This cult is recognized by the FBI and civil rights organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama and the Anti-Defamation League of the B’nai Brith as a racist hate group.

http://www.cesnur.org/testi/FBI_006.htm
excerpts from the FBI report above
This movement has been associated with extreme acts of violence in the recent past, and current intelligence from a variety of sources indicates that extreme factions of BHI groups are preparing for a race war to close the millennium.
Violent BHI followers can generally be described as proponents of an extreme form of black supremacy. Drawing upon the teachings of earlier BHI adherents, such groups hold that blacks represent God’s true “chosen people,” while condemning whites as incarnate manifestations of evil. As God’s “authentic” Jews, BHI adherents believe that mainstream Jews are actually imposters. Such beliefs bear a striking resemblance to the Christian Identity theology practiced by many white supremacists. In fact, Tom Metzger, renowned white supremacist, once remarked, “They’re the black counterpart of us.” [28] Like their Christian Identity counterparts, militant BHI followers tend to see themselves as divinely endowed by God with superior status. As a result, some followers of this belief system hold that violence, including murder, is justifiable in the eyes of God, provided that it helps to rid the world of evil.
[32] Neither the Israeli government nor the Orthodox rabbinate recognize the legitimacy of BHI claims to Judaism. According to Jewish law, an individual can be recognized as Jewish if he/she was born to a Jewish mother or if the individual agrees to convert to Judaism. [33] At present, BHI in Israel have legal status as temporary residents, which gives them the right to work and live in Israel, but not to vote. They are not considered to be Israeli citizens. While BHI claims to Judaism are disregarded by Israeli officials and religious leaders, the BHI community is tolerated and appears to be peaceful. [34]
*** my note ..their race war hoped for in 2000 did not materialize, but they haven't given up preparations for it as the other articles from the Southern Poverty Law Center reveal:
They do not follow Judaism and are not recognized as Jews by any branch of Judaism.
BRB with information on them
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=941
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?sid=433
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?sid=55
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=448
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?sid=169
THAT is the only “black” group I know of that Jews have a major problem with in regard to Jewish identity and it is because THEY consider their identity based on notions of race rather than Torah and the fact that they follow beliefs that are utterly outside of and contradictory to Judaism, as some of the other groups who hijack Jewish identity are known to do.
Because this group that they are referring to in the article has a history of association with the other black groups who also followed Christian doctrine and the notion of Jews as a RACE, even adopting the notion that the white skinned Jews were all somehow not really the descendents of the tribes of Israel because of a long disproved notion that all European Jews are from the converts of the Khazar empire. The Khazars were a small ethnic group of Turkey that chose to convert to Judaism rather than to either Islamic or Christian armies that had threatened them. The notion that light-skinned Jews, or Jews from Europe are all Khazars and somehow imposters is a hallmark of the White supremacist and antisemitic Christian Identity ideology. Oddly, the Black Israelite Hebrew Christian groups while rejecting white racism in other regards, adopted this notion about the Jews while claiming to be the sole “real “ nation of Israel. In addition to the fact that this group is comprised of people who , with very rare exception, have no legal tie to the Jewish people through formal conversion or birth, are associated with non-Jewish and often racist beliefs is one reason that their Jewish identity has been questioned. Please refer to this article
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/magazine/05rabbi-t.html?hpw=&pagewanted=all
From the article in the New York Times:
Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the head of the Reform Movement, is, like Potasnik, ready to consider new possibilities. “The fact that men and women sit separately in the Israelite congregations might be a problem for us on gender-equality grounds,” he told me. “But race would certainly be no problem for us.”
Once again, the notion of RACE to determine identity is not a Jewish notion and violates Jewish law
It is a NON Jewish notion that was created out of antisemitism. That some black groups wish to define Jewish identity on race is also repugnant to the larger world Jewish community, no matter their skin color or “race”. Jewish writings always dispel this long held view that unfortunately because of the widespread nature of it’s acceptance decades ago, is sometimes held by people in innocent ignorance without knowing its origins. Many people who even know this notion is insulting to Jews mistakenly believe the Nazis were the first to disrespect the Jewish laws regarding Jewish identity by claiming Jews are a race rather than a covenant nation people who practice Judaism. However, it did not begin with the Nazis. It was firmly entrenched into European consciousness among a great many non-Jews before Hitler ever rose to power.
This false notion was begun in the mid 1800's among some of the 'philosphers" of Europe, particularly French and German who were developing pseudo-scientific concepts of race. One in particular was highly influential in spreading this toxic notion, and he did not confine his racism to Jews, but his particular form of Jew hate spread to influence millions. Ernest Renan, who lived from 1823-1892 and was from Brittany is credited with popularizing this false notion. Renan has been criticised for antisemitism because of his comments on the alleged limitations of the Semitic mentality. Renan claimed that the Semitic mind was limited by dogmatism and lacked a cosmopolitan conception of civilisation. For Renan, Semites were "an incomplete race".

Ernest Renan's ideas about how "Semitic races" were inferior to "Aryan races." These pseudo-scientific theories concerning race, civilization, and "progress" had become quite widespread in Europe in the second half of the 19th century. Others, especially Prussian nationalistic historian Heinrich von Treitschke did much to promote this form of racism. In Treitschke's writings Semitic was synonymous with Jewish.

This pseudo-scientific notion had become so widespread it was even allowed to influence United States immigration policies in 1914 who placed quotas on "Hebrews". That was what Jews were designated on immigration forms under “race”. Other immigrants had quotas, but they were listed by country of origin and their religion or ethnic status was not referred to on the ships manifest.

The quotas specific to Jewish immigrants began being strictly enforced in 1914 and the quota for Jews was dramatically reduced in 1924. This went on until after World War 2. Many Jews who later tried to flee Nazi Germany for the United States were turned away because of these quotas, and many of them were killed. This meant that if let's say, the quota for immigrants from Hungary had not been met, but the quota for "Hebrews" from all of Europe had been met, the only immigrants that could continue to arrive for that year would be non-Jews. No other religious group had such identifiers placed on their passports and ships' manifests. One may go to the Ellis Island web site and view ship's manifests and see how non-Jewish passengers were listed as Lithuanian, Polish, Russian etc, while Jews from those same countries were all listed as "Hebrew". This was the case for my own grandparents and aunts and uncles in 1920 as well. On many of the different manifests, there is a column even designating "race" and that is where Hebrew is listed, on others, it is listed under "Nationality" and then a separate column lists "country of origin". They were clever in how they could discriminate using this false notion of race.
Both false ideas, that the dogma of a contradictory religion to Judaism or the pseudo scientific ideas of antisemites who created the concept of Jews as race have authority to determine Jewish identity OVER the right of the laws of the people in question , reveals utter disregard and disrespect of the right of the Jewish people to self-determination according to Jewish law with regard to who is or is not a Jew.

The laws of Judaism forbid Jews from making distinctions between convert and born Jew and Jewish law does not teach us that God is exclusive to the Jew. Therefore, understanding what Jewish law teaches Jews about Jewish identity and our identity in relation to others helps promote greater understandings between Jew and non-Jew, rather than the confusion, misconceptions and misrepresentations that lead to dissention and bigotry.
The Jewish Bible ( Tanakh ) tells from the beginning book to the end that the righteous of all nations ( Jew or Gentile ) have the capacity to connect directly to God, merit blessing and a place in the world to come. Every human is equal before God according to the Jewish religion. Atonement is directly from God.
Shalom

References for the purpose of definition, Jewish identity and belief, different Jewish cultures and practices:
http://geography.about.com/cs/politicalgeog/a/statenation.htm
definitions of nation, country, state. Torah calls us the covenant NATION many times.
http://www.jewfaq.org/judaism.htm
http://www.whatjewsbelieve.org/
An EXCELLENT resource to learn the differences between Judaism and Christianity from a Biblical perspective.The author, Rabbi Stuart Federow is a well respected Rabbi who also co-hosts an interfaith radio program with a Catholic Priest and a Protestant Minister.
http://www.jewish-languages.org/ This is a link to a source that is a scholarly study of the development of Jewish languages. It will help you if you are interested in studying the different Jewish cultures and ethnicities..note PLURAL

Here is a great site for you about REAL black Jews:
http://www.angelfire.com/ca/dorseydon/f3main.html

http://www.beingjewish.com/identity/race.html
http://www.beingjewish.com/basics/beliefs.html both good references on Jewish identity and belief

Now..this was another re4ference given at that question that was supposed to be EVIDENCE of a problem within Judaism of racism. This checklist reads to me as a problem that may exist perhaps within that person's community, but also within their own misconception that some of the things they mention they appear to believe are exclusive to Black Jews OR that they have a thing to do with RACE and not some other issue entirely that affects all Jews. Please read my point by point notes on why most of those things can't be "checked" in the manner the author assumes people will read this.
http://garretandstudio.wordpress.com/2009/02/06/ashkenazi-privilege-checklist/

___ I can walk into my temple and feel that others do not see me as outsider.
I can walk into MY Temple and feel that as I grew up there.
Any stranger, of any skin color, walking into a synagogue may be considered an outsider today with security issues.

___ I can walk into my temple and feel that others do not see me as exotic.
“exotic”? what is this supposed to mean? I have no way to answer this yes or no

___ I can walk into my temple and feel that my children are seen as Jews.
Yes, but how does this have a thing to do with skin color? This is a non sequitor
The only reasons one would have their Jewishness doubted is NOT because of skin color but other issues…parentage, beliefs espoused, etc.

___ I can walk into temple with my family and not worry that they will be treated unkindly because of the color of their skin.
Correct, and so can any dark skinned person, as they have done so for decades in my community.
___ I can enjoy music at my temple that reflects the tunes, prayers, and cultural roots of my specific Jewish heritage.
At my synagogue, yes..but sometimes there are tunes, and prayers reflecting other ethnicities besides my own. And increasingly they’re more Sephardic than what I’m familiar with.
___ No one at my synagogue will attempt to assign me to a ethnicity to which I do not belong (e.g., assuming all Jews of African descent are Igbo or Ethiopian).
I have been assigned to ethnicities to which I do not belong by other members..once told I looked “Irish”, another time that I looked “Sweedish”

___ I can easily find greeting cards and books with images of Jews who look like me.
Nope, as often the images are stereotyped with dark hair and I’m very fair and blonde.

___ I can easily find Jewish books and toys for my children with images of Jews that look like them.

In the bookstores I've been in there were actually more children’s books for Jews with images of black skinned Jews than there were showing blonde haired jews. We laughed about it at the time. No blonde Jews in the children’s books we saw there.
I'm serious. I thought it was ODD.

___ I am not singled out to speak about and as a representative of an “exotic” Jewish subgroup.
Nope, I’m not.
But my son is often singled out to speak as a representative of Judaism as an "exotic" ( if you mean very different from everyone else) member of his school community.
___ When I go to Jewish bookstores or restaurants, I am not seen as an outsider.
This isn’t a thing to do with skin color. Jewish restaurants and bookstores are open to ALL people Jew or NOT so the “outsider” business is nonsequitor
___ I find my experiences and images like mine in Jewish newspapers and magazines.
I see images of black Jews in every Jewish publication I subscribe to, even though black Jews comprise only about two percent of all Jews.
___ I do not worry about access to housing or apartments in predominately Jewish neighborhoods.
I don’t because there aren’t any such things in my entire STATE that I am aware of.
___ My rabbi never questions that I am Jewish.
Skin color would never be a reason for a rabbi to question that one is Jewish
___ When I tell other members of my synagogue that I feel marginalized, they are immediately and appropriately responsive.
If there is a legitimate reason other than what has been posted above, I would definitely respond as a synagogue is NO place to promote violoation of Jewish law and bigotry!
___ There are other children at the religious school who look like my child.

Well, we used to have other blonde children there, but right now, no, my son is the only one. We don't have any black Jews here. There are 200 Jews total in a population area of more than 100,000 people.
___ My child’s authenticity as a Jew is never questioned by adults or children based on his/her skin color.
I would say this is applicable to all Jews. Skin color no..affiliation with other NON Jewish beliefs , yes.
___ People never say to me, “But you don’t look Jewish,” either seriously or as though it was funny.

I get this ALL the time..my son was sick of hearing how he didn’t’ look Jewish by the time he entered first grade.

He even got it from someone at his Bar Mitzvah, and they thought it was funny.

___ I do not worry about being seen or treated as a member of the janitorial staff at a synagogue or when attending a Jewish event.
No, I don't. I would think that this would be more of an issue in a NON Jewish setting for a black person, actually. If a black is in a group of almost all whites, yeah, you stick out as "different" but I really can't imagine thinking that a black would be assumed to be the janitor...seriously, And sticking out as different doesn't imply that others are going to be having that difference tied to bigotry..I know I stuck when I have attended funerals at all black AME churches, or when I went to a black missionary Baptist church to see a friend's husband give his first sermon. I do know the odd feeling of being the only person of my color in a group before. Yeah, there is a sense of ...how are these people looking at me?
My son’s favorite religious school teacher was once mistaken for a janitor ( he’s white) by a visitor at the synagogue. What is this supposed to show?

___ I am never asked “how” I am Jewish at dating events or on Jewish dating websites.
Well, I never used such a thing so I can't answer this question as asked.
I’ve often been asked if I’m a convert because “ You don’t look like a jew” and I’m white. Again..this question is absurd to try to prove “white privilege” in Judaism..when bigotry is FORBIDDEN by our laws!

___ I can arrange to be in the company of Jews of my heritage most of the time.

Since black Jews comprise less than 2 percent of the 6 million Jews scattered in this country where all jews are only 2 percent of the popu,ation I would imagine unless you live near many other Jews “of color” you’re not going to be able to guarantee that.
.

___ When attempting to join a synagogue or Jewish organization, I am confident that my ethnic background will not be held against me.

Every Jew can say this if the Jewish organization and synagogue is following jewish law!
The only thing that would be held “ against” someone attempting to join a synagogue is if they aren’t Jewish according to law. Again, SKIN color has nothing to do with that.

___ I can ask synagogues and Jewish organizations to include images and cultural traditions from my background without being seen as a nuisance.

If the traditions are jewish traditions..why would it be a nuisance?

___ I can enroll in a Jewish day school, yeshiva, and historically Jewish college and find Jewish students and professors with my racial or ethnic background.

I have no idea, I don’t live close enough to see the faculty at any of those things.

___ People of color do not question why I am Jewish.
Nope, they have, I have indeed had black people ask me if I am a “real jew” since “real jews” aren’t “blonde” More than one in fact.

___ I know my racial or ethnic background will not be held against me if I attempt to join a minyan in prayer.

You should know that bias against race or ethnicity should not be tolerated in Judaism. Every Jew knows that Jews have been multiracial since the time of the Torah!

___ I know my ethnic background will not be held against me in being called to read the Torah.

All Jews should be able to say yes to this. Ditto to above answer.

___ I am not discriminated against in the aliyah process as a Jew of my particular ethnicity.

Ditto.

So I end this by repeating something I said early on.

If you believe that being black is being held against you in your Jewish community then your community needs to be called out and chastised and educated as they’re NOT living Jewishly.

Period.

More About Antisemitism And It's Reasons

2009-04-22T14:17:00.004-05:00

Human nature being what it is, it is not difficult to demonize "the other".The doctrines chosen by the Church were intended to be a way to eliminate the Jewish people, it also helped to make sense of the various waves of antisemitism and persecution since then. It goes in cycles but the underlying justification for the past 2000 years plus..has been based on eliminating the Jew justified by their righteous belief that they are placating their deity ( by whatever name called).

The believers of the polytheistic religions of the ancient world were somewhat "used" to their political leaders telling them what gods were to be venerated during their rule and which deity their ruler was representative of in human form. Adding a new deity or giving a new name to an ancient deity whose belief was already established was not that big a deal for most of the Gentile population. Tanakh recorded that any time such a practice of a Jewish king telling the Jews that they were to worship a foreign deity...the entire Jewish people suffered, and most often at the very hands of the people whose deity they had left God to serve! That lesson is told right in our Jewish Bible, the same one the Christians have as an adaptation of their Old Testament, yet they rarely see this in the story because their New Testament also imposes topsy-turvy meaning to the context of the stories in so many places.

Christians did not want their flock to know the Paschal lamb represented a false man-god of Egypt, so they changed it into a sacrifice for sin to justify human sacrifice (or deicide depending on whether or not they are calling Jesus God in human form). Rather than his blood expiating sin, the blood on the door was an act of defiance showing the Egyptians that the life force (blood) representing their deity was spilled by the Hebrew slaves and their god was powerless over the God of Israel to do a thing about it. It was an act of rejection of the gods of Egypt and alliance to the God of Israel, and that’s in the Torah in Exodus in context. Rather than show that Isaiah was slamming a man for calling himself a man/god, Christian dogma personifies and makes a proper name for their Latin translations word for star and turns that story into something about a fall of angels (no where mentioned in that narrative at ALL) and justifies creating of the "name" Lucifer for a demi-god of the underworld Devil. (That isn’t in the Tanakh but fits the underworld described in Plato’s narrative recalling the ancient the Myth of Er) Every aspect of Jewish belief is given a new spin. Things that I once thought must have been fabricated outright I later discovered were beliefs of the ancient Greeks and Romans. This was the longstanding battle for souls going on; the Hellenized Jews, those who had become apostate to Judaism, desired to entice other Jews to worship as the Greeks that they believed superior in philosophy and knowledge, so they created texts that tried to say, see,this is what it was supposed to have been all along. However, reality was that those beliefs were identical to the beliefs and practices that the Torah demonized (Baal, Tammuz and Mithras worship and customs play most frequently)

Once one begins an in-depth study of the religious practices and beliefs of all the peoples surrounding the Jews in the centuries just preceding the beginning of Christianity, one can see these developments take place. It was a concerted effort to do away with Israel and Judaism. When Hadrian renamed Judea, Palestina, a Latinized version of the name of the Philistines, it was only done to insult the Jews. The Philistines had long since completely assimilated into the surrounding peoples, and the only vestiges of those ancient Agean seafaring people were artifacts and place names by the year 135 when Hadrian changed the name of Judea. The Philistines were not only the ancient enemies of the Jews, but the Jewish people had demonized their practices and deities to the extent that the name of their primary deity became the name of a type of demon. Beelzebub is a name now associated with evil or the Christian devil..but it had it's origina as the Philistines' "Lord of the Flies".

Do you think that Christians would be focused on Jews at all if their doctrine was not created to replace and do away with the Jewish people?If you are indoctrinated to believe that the eternal covenant was replaced by a covenant of belief in a Jew as a deity, you then begin to see the people who hold to the Torah precept that God condemns the very notion of men as deities as blasphemy against your deity.If you are indoctrinated to believe that Jews are blinded to your god and that the eternal covenant of Israel has been superseded by a different covenant your perspective is one of the Jew as "the other". If you believe Jews refuse to follow the way of God from that perspective and therefore deserve punishment because of that, you can easily justify any behavior done to Jews.

It is that sort of thinking that fueled the Holocaust. It is that sort of thinking by people in your own communities now that show that Germany was no different than small-town America. Jews everyone are living alongside people who believe that we should suffer torture and death because we do not abandon our God for what they offer.
Or at the very least, turn your back in apathy when others do so , saying to yourself that, if only they had believed in Jesus, this wouldn‘t have happened to them. History has shown this time and again. Personal encounters with Christians who tell me they love me to try to convince me to abandon my faith for theirs and then turn vicious with insult when I politely decline reveal this, too. Religious Jews believe that abandoning the faith of God through the eternal Torah, the relationship that is believed to have kept Israel alive through all such previous attempts, would be worse than anything that anyone could do OR HAS done to Jews.

I believe that there is sincerity in the heart of many Christians when they claim that they try to convert us out of love and concern for our souls, but it is a misguided love at best. If you love someone, you would not ask them to abandon the very thing that makes them who they are and the thing most dear to them, and my faith in God is most dear to me. The path of Judaism is such a part of me that I will never abandon it.

When we refuse to recognize their "truths" and abandon Judaism to embrace their replacement theology, history has shown that this love often allows many Christians to act out in hatred or turn a blind eye to others who do because of a belief that is repeated from church pulpits, "Jews deserve to be punished for rejecting Jesus and only when they come to embrace him will their suffering end." Not only have I heard this sentiment come straight from the mouths of Christian clergy in person and on television, I’ve read this virtually hundreds of times from people who professed their Christian belief all over Yahoo in the past 10 years. If you think this is not a socially acceptable attitude among a significant number of Christians, one has only to look at the enormous success of the "Left Behind" series and their horrid video game that has children at their TV sets, torturing the Jews and Muslims and other "non-believers" who were not taken up in their "rapture".

Jewish philosopherm, Emil Fackenheim, who spoke several years ago at the West End Synagogue, put it this way. "The Holocaust was the culmination of a 2,000-year campaign by the Christian world against the Jews. It began early on with them telling us, `You cannot live here as Jews.' And in country after country, they forced us to convert. Later the message became, `You cannot live here.' And in country after country, they forced us to leave. Hitler's message was, `You cannot live.' And they exterminated one-third of our people." Christianity was a rallying cry to justify what the Nazis were doing in Europe. Every soldier wore a belt buckle emblazoned with "God is with us" in German. To deny this abuse and perversion of the "Great Commission" is to deny the darkest chapter in Christianity’s history. I bring this up not to condemn Christianity, but to condemn using ANY religion’s tenets to justify demonizing "the other" and declare that any other people deserve eternal torture and punishment. And my HOPE is that by TEACHING YOUR Christian children how your religion was so HIJACKED in the past in Nazi controlled Europe, that you may better guard against the possibility of it ever happening again.

Right now in the world I see fundamentalist Islam using the self-same methods to entice their followers to believe in the rigtheousness of the violence they perpetrate on civilians.

My spirit soars in hope for humanity when I see Christians working together to speak out against those of their own fold who try to justify intolerance and bigotry with their religion.

When Christian groups form to combat the Wesboro Baptist Church fringe element, or when Christian groups speak out against the white supremacist Christian Identity movement, that speaks of a path of righteousness. When Christians promote the "Left Behind" series and encourage children at public schools to read them, promote an agenda of divisivness that all who don’t worship Jesus are of the devil and deserving of punishment, that tells this Jew, they are the kind of Christian that would have been easily swayed by the message of the "positive Christianity" of Nazi party. It was largely Christians who were their downfall, but make no mistake, it was largely a Christian fervor that allowed that atrocity to happen in the first place.May a narrow fundamentalist belief that others deserve torture or punishment NEVER again take hold in the world as it did in my parents generation. Already I’m witnessing Jew hate increasing to a degree I never hoped to see in my life and I’m witnessing people justify suffering in Israel once again, because of a "refusal to accept Jesus".

It was "godlessness" of the Communists that were the greatest political enemies of the Nazis and they focused on that by presenting themselves as the "positive Christian" alternative. They had the support of both Catholic and Protestant leaders and across Europe, where they took over areas formerly occupied by the Communists they were hailed as being sent by God to restore God to their communities. I ALSO recognize that it was LARGELY CHRISTIANS who were Hitler's DOWNFALL and I thank God for that! I do not intend to demonize Christianity in this answer..I intend to look at the harsh reality of what happened so that by examining it..people can RECOGNIZE when any leader tries to use ANY religion to incite hatreds and injustice to any group.

While there were Christian religious protests and movements against the Nazi party, it did not represent the majority opinion and they had often been former supporters who came to a realization too late of what atrocities they actually enabled. As one pastor's life gives witness: On 5th June 1945 pastor Martin Niemöller gave a press conference in Naples. He admitted that he had offered to join the German Navy in 1939. He also confessed that he had "never quarrelled with Hitler over political matters, but purely on religious grounds". This resulted in a savage attack on Niemöller from those newspapers that had presented him as a symbol of resistance to Hitler's government. In 1946 Niemöller wrote a poems that illustrated the role that the Church played in the development of Nazi Germany:First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a communist;Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a socialist;Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out - because I was not a trade unionist;Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out - because I was not a Jew;Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Now back to my own words. The presence of the Jews in the world and that of the eternal covenant still before their presence attests to the futility of a claim I've seen repeated quite often in Y/A, that it was "nailed to the cross". From ancient times until the present, every attempt to obliterate the eternal covenant and the people of the covenant has failed. It shall continue to fail. If nothing else is believed from the Tanakh, that message is crystal clear thousands of years after the beginning of this covenant, when Tanakh states until heaven and earth and the sun and stars pass away, that’s what it meant. Each time Israel strayed from the covenant for adoption of foreign beliefs, turned their heads when wicked kings were perverting Torah, bad things happened to the Jewish people, often at the hands of people who were supporting the very causes and beliefs that Jews had forsaken Torah to take up. This has been a clear message to those of Israel who have read Torah in each generation.

The Tanakh represents God as the Creator of all humanity and every human can connect directly to God without need for mediator, and in fact, explicitly forbids praying to or through anything on earth or in heaven before God. The righteous of all nations merit blessing and a place in the world to come. The Christian notion is that unless one believes in a particular manner and prays to or through Jesus, they merit eternal torture in a fiery underworld hell "ruled" by a demi-god of that underworld, the devil.The terms of the covenant between God and Israel mean that in every generation, this does not change. Jews have often been demonized and persecuted because as a people, we do not and shall not ever bow to or pray through any man/god deity. That fact is not going to change. You would think that nearly after the covenant people saying this to the world for 5000 years they would get it. Prophecy in the Tanakh tells us that one day the world will get it and everyone will recognize each other as brethren and all know God. The state of the world and the existence of missionaries are a de-facto admission that the Messianic age has not arrived. No one will need a sales pitch to know when it happens. Jews aren’t awaiting anyone like Jesus since the eternal covenant and the prophetic vision of the Davidic Messiah are as different between the two religions as the very nature of God is. Right now, humanity is living as a dysfunctional family that doesn’t yet recognize that we are all family, even those who don’t want the Jewish part of their family to be around. We’re not going away so you might as well get used to it.

The importance of acknowledging that passages in the New Testament exist that demonize Jews for being of the Jewish faith is really is not as much about concern of angering the Jews, but MORE so about what has been done and said to Jews in every generation since those texts appeared. While it is upsetting to see Jewish belief demonized in a book supposed to be holy, the critical thing to recognize is that those passages have been used and continue to be used to Jews to justify antisemitism.

Ever since the first appearance of the New Testament, Jews have been persecuted with violence in waves every few decades or so, by groups of fundamentalist believers who use these passages to justify that they are doing God's will.From the Crusades, to the Inquisition, to the Blood Libel charges, to the ghettos of Italy, to the Black Plague charges, to acts of violence inspired by Martin Luther's On Jews and Their Lies, to the Pogroms to the Shoah, those passages were used. My own Great Grandfather Rabbi Yoshpe was beaten by a mob led by priest. They had just left Easter services, and then the angry mob drug him to his doorstep and beat him to death in front of wife and children because he was a Rabbi. This was several decades before the Nazis arrived on the scene. Is there any doubt their acts were not fueled by the charges that Jews killed their savior?

In addition, do not forget the hundreds of speeches of Adolph Hitler who peppered them with references to the New Testament. He used them to great effect to justify the antisemitism and his "Final Solution" among a German populace who believed themselves to be God fearing Christians. He was enormously popular because he spoke against his greatest political enemies he characterized as Godless Communists. While those Communists in Russia had also victimized Jews, the German Propaganda was that they were allied with the Communists to destroy Christianity!

I will only post a couple of the hundreds of speeches I have read with similar reference to Christianity in Hitler's speeches: "My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before in the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.... "And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people.... When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom to-day this poor people is plundered and exploited."

Adolf Hitler, in his speech on April 12,1922 [Note, "brood of vipers" appears in Matt. 3:7 & 12:34. John 2:15 depicts Jesus driving out the money changers (adders) from the temple.]

Hitler addressed the world at the passion plays of Oberammergau in 1942

He said: "his blood be on us and our children... [Matt 27:25], maybeI’m the one who must execute this curse... I do no more than joinwhat has been done for more than 1,500 years already. Maybe I renderChristianity the best service ever!" (Adolph Hitler)

Lastly, take some time to research the q's and a's asked of Jews in Yahoo Answers and you will often see antimerism directed to Jews often using those same passages.

In Yahoo Answers we have people even trying to turn commandments forbidding the leaving of Torah as a topsy turvy justification for condemning us because we have not! Take this one example of many:

"The NT clarifies that all true believers are now considered God's chosen people: this includes Messianic Jews and gentile Christians. Since unbelieving Jews have refused to accept the New Covenant (Jer. 31:31-36) brought by Jesus (Matt. 26:26-28), they are condemned by God (Deut. 28) and are no longer considered "chosen." (In fact, Deut. 28:62-63 explains why God permitted the Holocaust: because the Jewish people have disobeyed Him by refusing their Messiah.)"
Thankfully, when that comment was made, both Jew and many Gentiles present loudly condemned that attempt to justify one of the worst atrocities of humanity as rabidly antisemitic. The scary thing is there were also others, believing themselves to be God-fearing and decent, who support that view. And still, people ask HOW could the Germans have allowed it.
Yahoo Answers is a good place to learn how.
THAT's why Jews see Jew hate in the New Testament..because Christians in large numbers HAVE seen it and ACTED on it repeatedly and they still quote us those passages today. You may also better learn what it is Jews really believe from a Biblical context by navigating through http://www.whatjewsbelieve.org/
I'm not here to demonize Christians or the faith Christians have thorugh their new covenant of the Christian Bible. Judaism doesn't teach a thing about Christian dogma; it is simply insignificant to the eternal covenant of faith of Israel. It isn't a part of Jewish teaching at all..any more than the Quran is to a Christian.

Christianity appears to require justifying it's beliefs by negating and turning Judaism topsy-turvy. Judaism is a complete and fulfilling faith without Christianity. I cannot see the opposite to be the case since the first 2/3 of Christianity's holy scriptures are an ADAPTATION of the Tanakh.Countless times, those who have ACTED on Jew hate have justified and given reason for their actions of Jew hate on those passages. It is not for me to decide their reasons FOR them.

I am thankful that a majority of Christians do NOT take those passages at face value and use them in that manner. I am thankful to know and connect to many Christians who do not do this. I pray that more Christians will become aware of how those passages have been used for 2000 so that such abuses stop. It is important to recognize that for any belief system, not just Christianity, religious fundamentalism can be used to incite people to do uncivilized things in a civilized nation. The Christian majority populace in Europe who gave him massive popular support did so because they believed they were also serving the interests of THEIR faith. If millions can be brainwashed by such things, we need to KNOW HOW it happened! Denial that he used Christianity is so dangerous in my view. Denial that people are using Christian doctrine today to create and spread antisemitism is dangerous, too.

For any Christians reading this, it is my sincere hope that now that you've become aware of the history and the antisemitism that exists in the New Testament that you will help to dispel the hate through your own individual actions and then help to inspire others.

http://www.messiahtruth.com/anti.html <>

Is that REALLY why there is Jew hate?

2009-04-09T17:24:00.006-05:00

This is another essay that first appeared on my Yahoo360 page on March 21, 2006. I repost it here in response to a question I answered today in Yahoo Answers, once again seeing people who don't appear to believe they're harboring any antisemitism, USING some canards of the antisemite to try to explain why Jews are hated.

One of them was that Jews keep to themselves with our strange customs...well that only describes a very small percentage of Jews if you're talking about a somewhat cloistered environment, and the worst antisemitism the world has known happened to the MOST assimilated group of Jews in the world first..in Germany. Now here is the essay as it appeared there, addressing other forms of stereotype and bigotry that some don't recognize as such and perhaps why:

Every time I think I’ve heard all the excuses or stories to justify Jew hate, I’m amazed all over again. Despite years of study of trying to figure out why there is bigotry in the world particularly Jew hate and hate against blacks, the two forms I’ve seen first hand the closest, I’m coming across new versions of propaganda daily. These two types of stories may not be new to you, but they were to me. They also show me how our human nature is so easily led to believe tales that can seen quite plausible at first glance and help bigotry to grow when the tales are passed along from people who aren’t intentionally promoting prejudice.
First, the story that inspired me to pen this today: It came from someone that I view as intelligent and not one prone to promotion of bigotry or hate, yet his telling of this helps to clearly show how bias can grow from mistaken notions and even become accepted by people who do not like bigotry! He made mention that the Germans hated the Jews of Germany not so much because of religious differences but because during the Depression the Jews were much better off than the gentile Germans and would not “ share” their wealth as Germans. They were indifferent to the poor gentiles and only took care of their own.. Now, in his assuming that this was true to begin with, that the gentiles of Germany were all poor and the vast majority of Jews were all very wealthy and that the hate was from jealousy and from the greed of the wealthy Jew, he fell prey to many false stereotypes; so many that I was even hesitant in the conversation to start listing all the problems wrong with that assumption. Instead, I made mention rather feebly of the fact that the vast majority of the Jews of Germany suffered equally in the failing economy of Europe. I was rather dumbfounded at seeing these words from someone I thought educated and someone who did not believe he harbored an antisemitic bone in his body.
Here I shall try to address a few other misconceptions, just in case there are other people out there who think similarly. While there WERE wealthy Jews in Germany, there were statistically still far greater number of wealthy Gentiles, who were far less philanthropic toward their fellow Germans. Don’t take my word on this. I’m not going to provide various historic resources in this essay because it’s primarily based on my memory of things I’ve read over many years, in books, magazines, and on the internet. I’m sure it would not be difficult to ascertain the statistics from a reputable site on the percentages of various groups and their economic status. Then as now, the greatest wealth in the world is not in the hands of the Jews despite the propaganda. The Jews of Germany were in fact, quite philanthropic to their nation in the years before Hitler took power, this despite the fact that Germany’s wealthy Jews had already been supporting attempts to save hundreds of thousands of very poor Eastern European Jews from the many pogroms that had been raging for already 40 years. Yes, many of the wealthy Jewish Germans did only concentrate on helping Jews and saving Jews and purchasing land in Eretz Yisrael starting in the 1880s, because NO ONE ELSE WOULD LIFT A FINGER to stop the hatred and very real persecution that led to the Holocaust.
Because of the dire straits of the Jewish populace in Europe in the 19th century and early 20th century, German Jewish business owners were often chastised at the time in Jewish newspapers both in Europe and the U.S. for donating more to non-Jewish charities than Jewish charities. Those were the German Jews and the American Jews who had assimilated the most and who were accused of identifying themselves much more with their German nationalism or their American nationalism than with their Jewishness. In the years before the Holocaust it was not uncommon for the more assimilated German Jew to place some of the blame the hatred their Jewish brethren were experiencing on their unwillingness to become more “ modern". It was also hard for the non-Jew to realize that one could be both for one’s own smaller group AND for the larger group as a whole. Even their charity toward non-Jew was often seen as an attempt to “ Judaize” the populace. They were stuck between a rock and a hard place, and could not appease either group. Often when Jewish groups would seek donations for charity and aid for Jews, the wealthy assimilated Jew responded to say that they felt that it was more important to care for the community as a whole rather than just the Jews. They wanted to show the rest of the Germans that they were true Germans like everyone else. After all many of them had roots going back centuries there, too. And Tikkun Olam or Repair of the World doesn’t mean just the Jewish community, and this is what they claimed to be honoring.
Judaism stresses deed over creed and that was a time when no one else would aid Jewish poor other than Jews. Therefore, I cannot fault the wealthy German Jew for first aiding their own. Nor can I see that their so doing even if it were true that most would only aid their own would have implied they were being cruel to the poor gentile or taking away from them unscrupulously. There were many more gentile wealthy and elite who took from both Jew and gentile than greedy Jew, by sheer numbers alone. I don’t justify greed here at all; I’m trying to show that the accusation is yet another way to justify hate. Many Jews were trying unsuccessfully to help their own in a time of growing hate and persecution. The Nazis didn’t create Jew hate and the Depression didn’t either. It had been growing for centuries. Jews were fleeing Europe in the 1800s in massive numbers. This is why all ship's manifests coming from Europe had special quotas to limit Jews specifically, and they kept track by designating them as “ Hebrew”. Go check for yourself at Ellis Island.org on any ships manifest from those days with immigrants from Eastern Europe. Non-Jews did not have their religious status designated.
The Depression allowed for the wealthy Jew to be put in a position where no matter what he did, he could not justify his existence in the mind of the antisemite. In trying to lend a hand to give to non-Jewish poor, he was accused of Judaizing and propagandizing to undermine Germany. If he chose to only help his fellow Jew, he was accused of being against gentiles! Another thing not taken into consideration in accepting the notion that wealthy German Jewish behavior was provoking a backlash to greed ignores that in the Depression, many poor German Jewish families and poor Jews from all over Eastern Europe were sometimes kept alive through harsh factory work and Jewish mother wet-nurses to gentile babies from wealthy Christian European families.
This leads to another episode of my running into a seemingly intelligent person who presented me with an absurd notion of Jewish culture and history. History has become so perverse as of late, that upon hearing a woman here in Arkansas try to claim that Jewish women all over Europe and particularly in Germany wouldn’t nurse their own babies and so they farmed them out to poor gentiles rather than be bothered and they didn’t care about their own babies, the other women present didn't even raise an eyebrow. She gave me this bit of “information” when I was discussing breast-feeding with some mutual acquaintances and she overheard me to say I’d nursed my child until he was 2 years old. She expressed shock and said to me that I couldn’t possibly really be Jewish or must have learned that from the non-Jews I lived with here as she never knew Jewish mothers breastfed, and exclaimed, “ None that I’ve EVER heard of did so, especially in my mother’s generation, they think it’s beneath them!” I asked her how many Jewish mothers she knew and she fell silent. I was astounded at this absurd and false tale, an almost opposite portrayal from what I knew to have really happened. I once spoke with a non-Jewish woman of Jewish ancestry at a breastfeeding support group years ago and she told of her grandparents escape from Nazi Europe. She said her mother as a baby shared her grandmother’s breast with the child of a German gentile who grew up to serve in Hitler’s army. She bitterly said that she wished Jewish mothers had not nursed those babies to grow healthy and strong to later persecute and try to kill her grandmother and her children. How ironic that a number of the anti- semites who placed Jews in camps were once suckling at the breast of a Jew! Perhaps this thought enraged them so much that now the story is twisted to make the European Jewish mother image into a cold and uncaring woman. How this contrasts with the other stereotype of the Jewish mother who is overly concerned with every aspect of the life of her children. They can’t seem to make up their mind about what kind of bad mothers Jewish women are, can they? My Jewish grandmother breastfed my father and all his 8 siblings until they were toddler age. That was the common thing to do at that time. My maternal Jewish grandmother did not breastfeed but not because she didn’t desire to do so. My Jewish mother breastfed me and my brother In fact, with my own extended family, it is the Jewish babies who were almost exclusively the one’s who were breastfed rather than the babies born to the mothers who either converted to Christianity or who were Christians who married the Jewish men in the family. I never even bothered to think about such differences until I was presented with such an absurd bigoted statement. I’ve never polled or done studies to see if breast feeding had any corelation to religion, but I knew that such a claim that Jewish women did not breastfeed was utterly absurd.
Observant Jewish mothers would never have allowed their babies to be nursed by women who did not eat a kosher diet. In communities where Jew and gentile lived side by side, I am sure it was not an uncommon thing for a Christian woman to wet-nurse a Jewish child. However, this incensed the Church; Pope Gregory XIII in 1581 in his list of conditions that he commanded a Jew must be submitted to the Inquisition included the act of having a wet-nurse empty their milk after having taken the Eucharist. (Like it should be a surprise that a Jewish mom wouldn’t want her baby eating the body and blood of Jesus, even if only symbolically?)
All over Europe with Jew and gentile alike, the wealthier, cosmopolitan European woman did not breast feed their own child. Royalty for centuries did not breastfeed their own. This was not a Jewish invention. I do not doubt that many of the wealthier secular Jewish German women who were trying to assimilate to fit in with the upper classes adopted the practices of their social peers and had someone else breast feed their child rather than ruin their figure, but even in that instance I cannot imagine that the job would be preferentially given to a gentile woman (I wonder if this too will be made into discrimination against the gentile to justify their hate, eh?) The kosher diet, which was seen as “ cleaner” than the diets of many very poor gentiles was also why the poor Jewish wet-nurse was so highly sought out over the poor gentile wet nurse among the wealthy cosmopolitan European woman who at that time was being taught that such a thing was left to what they sometimes called the “ vulgar masses”. And the poor wet nurse was more often than not from a religious or Orthodox family. . My very own grandmother was one such Jewish wet nurse but not in Germany, in Slonim, Poland for a time. This had been an established practice long before the Great Depression. My grandmother luckily was able to leave in 1920. I have a brief story about that in another essay.
I don't tell this narrative to point out that Jewish wet nurses were somehow superior or more caring. I have no reason to assume they were much different than any other poor mother who had to supplement her family’s meager means by giving nourishment of her own body and sometimes taking away from literally the mouth of her own flesh and blood. The poor wet nurse if she was not getting adequate nutrition and fluids risked not having enough milk for her own offspring as the child she was being paid to nurse had to come first. And not every woman, Jew or gentile, who wet nursed another's child was poor and did it for money but fed the child of another who could not do so, simply because they were doing what had to be done to ensure the life of a fellow human.
I bring up these stories to illustrate that in trying to justify hatred, often quite absurd notions are used and with enough time and telling, start to become viewed by intelligent people as plausible. This is human nature. I’m sure there are things I’ve been told about aspects of other cultures that have been quite mistaken, in fact, since I’ve met some traditional Native American Indians, I know it for a fact. But I do try to educate myself and try to use a bit of reasoning to see if what is being said to me is congruent with the larger picture.
In the instance of both these stories, the wealthy German Jewish greed as the justification for Jew hate there, and the Jewish woman who was cold and farmed out her babies for the gentile poor to nurse at horrible wages and nearly starving their own child does not fit at all with the known customs or accepted cultural norms, let alone the many personal histories of the Jews who survived that time. They’re simply excuses to be used to deflect accountability and obfuscate the more deep-seated reasons that have been passed down for generations.

A Question of Identity

2009-04-06T17:19:00.003-05:00

Because there are groups and individuals who wish to purposely misrepresent Jewish identity and confuse others for agendas of either bigotry, identity theft or both, there remains much confusion among many when that is really unnecessary.
Jews are a nation people, Israel (tribal origin) bound by an eternal covenant of the faith (religion) of Judaism. We are like a huge family and only the family through our laws can determine who is a member of it. It is the laws of Judaism, given to the covenant nation, Israel, in the Torah, that determine Jewish identity. It is not a matter of “blood” but of self-determination through the laws of the Jewish people. I know that sounds repetitive but I repeated that because that appears hard for some to grasp.
People related to one another share genetic markers. Jews began as a family, then as a small group of tribes and has remained tribal in nature. However, Jews are NOT considered a race. Jews are not *an* ethnicity. There is simply NO single Jewish ethnicity. Neither ethnicity or race define Jewish identity. I repeat, it is Jewish law that defines Jewish identity.
We are Klal Yisrael, the community of Israel. . **MANY** different and distinctly Jewish cultures and ethnicities have developed over the millennia in Diaspora lands. The Diaspora refers to the Jewish presence outside of Israel after the destruction of the First and Second Temple periods and the Bar Kochba revolt.
There are many ethnicities that are distinctly Jewish. There are the Mizrahi (from the Middle East and North Africa).The Sephardi (Spanish) and the Ashkenazi, (German, Polish, Russian and other Eastern European), the Beta Yisrael of Ethiopia, and the Cochin of India and others, that are different as to cultural practices and foods, but it is the faith and covenant that binds them all together as Klal Yisrael.
The Jewish people are considered both a nation and a religion. Our connection is primarily one of faith (religion) through the covenant of Israel, yet membership is also conferred by birth, through matrilineal descent. One may also become a part of the nation Israel by adoption of the faith of Judaism and formal procedures of conversion.
One who converts to Judaism is considered as FULLY Jewish as one born Jewish and their children are Jews. This has been the case since the times of the Torah.
However, one may technically be a Jew if their mother is a Jew, but apostate to the covenant of Israel and no longer considered a member of the nation if they leave it for the covenant of faith of another religion.

The Jewish nation began as a group of tribes and our connection to one another is still from the perspective of a tribal nation. (example: as the Lakota nation has tribal procedure and law to determine who is a member of their tribe, who is not, who is expelled and who is adopted, so does Judaism)
One born a member of the tribal covenant nation Israel (Jewish) may not be observant or even believe in God and they’re still a full member, a Jew. They may not be a good member or an active member but they’ve not renounced membership by following something ELSE instead of Judaism. An atheist or a secular Jew is not trying to call something ELSE Judaism. That is how one may be an "atheist Jew". Not believing that there is such a thing as deity, any deity is not following a false deity. An atheist Jew may live Jewish ethics and identify with their people, but they did not take on foreign beliefs contradictory to the monotheism of Torah. An atheist may not convert *to* Judaism to become a member of the tribe because an affirmation of faith in the God of Israel is required to JOIN.
Now if one born into the covenant becomes apostate through rejection of the covenant by adoption of another belief contradictory to the covenant, they are still be considered a Jew, but for all intents and purposes, they're not given the status of a member. According to Jewish law they're not counted in a minyan,( the minimum number of adults required for certain prayers and other mitzvot), they can't be buried in a Jewish cemetery, they cannot be given honors to go up to read Torah at a synagogue, and they may not be allowed to speak for the Jewish people. They CAN however, return without formal conversion should they repent of their idolatrous or foreign god worship and then be embraced again as full members. One who has left the Jewish people for the foreign faith of another people must undergo the steps of TESHUVAH , which means repentance and return to the God of Israel. Some groups may require that the individual also requires immersion in the mikveh before being accepted back, but they do not require the formal steps of conversion should the person wish to return.
Jews are in NO way a RACE..other than as members of the human race. For those of you who want to claim Judaism doesn't accept converts as fully Jewish, how about Ruth in the Bible? She was a member of the Moabite nation that was condemned to be separate from God for their evil. However, she was a righteous woman who converted and adopted the faith of Israel and was the ancestor of King David. The New Testament depicts her as being an ancestor of Jesus, too. I like to bring this up when some Christians want to declare that converts aren't "real Jews" or that Jews are a race. It is Jewish law alone, not Christianity or any other entity that determines the status of who and what is Jewish.
When a Jew adopts a belief that is in conflict with the Jewish religion, the belief does NOT become a " Jewish belief" just because a Jew chooses to believe in it. THAT is the conflict Jews have with the Christians who call themselves Jews if they deceptively try to present their Christian belief AS Judaism. A Jew who converts to Hare Krishna is just as apostate, but there exists no Jews for Hare Krishna or Hare Krishna Judaism evangelical groups spending millions of dollars a year in campaigns to convert secular Jews by convincing them it is a form of Judaism.
You can become a member of a tribe or nation if you meet the criteria of citizenship. And the covenant people, Klal Yisrael, remain as in the earliest days of the covenant..a nation. It hasn't changed.
Reform Judaism (of which I am a member) will consider as Jewish one whose father is a Jew IF the child was RAISED in Judaism actively and exclusively. Even in Reform Judaism, simply having a Jewish father without exclusively Jewish upbringing, would require conversion on the part of the person with only a Jewish father to become a Jew. Reform Judaism also recognizes that only Orthodox conversion is considered acceptable to all branches.
It is against Jewish law for any Jew to discriminate against a convert to Judaism. Since the time of the Torah converts have been accepted as fully Jewish, and this is the case in all branches. We are not even supposed to refer to the fact that they are converts! It is up to them if they wish to identify themselves as such. They are Jews, period.
The covenant people, Israel have been MULTIRACIAL since the days of Torah, Moses' wife, Zipporah was a black woman. There have been Ethiopian Beta Yisrael since the days of Solomon! And I repeat, one cannot convert to a race. One may convert and become fully Jewish.
The Jewish Bible ( Tanakh ) tells from the beginning book to the end that the righteous of all nations ( Jew or Gentile ) have the capacity to connect directly to God, merit blessing and a place in the world to come. Every human is equal before God according to the Jewish religion. Atonement is directly from God. Shalom

http://geography.about.com/cs/politicalgeog/a/statenation.htm
definitions of nation, country, state. Torah calls us the covenant NATION many times.
http://www.jewfaq.org/judaism.htm
http://www.beingjewish.com/identity/race.html
http://www.whatjewsbelieve.org/
This is always a good place for comparative study, too.
http://www.jewish-languages.org/ This is a link to a source that is a scholarly study of the development of Jewish languages. It will help you if you are interested in studying the different Jewish cultures and ethnicities..note PLURAL

How can the Jews expect the messiah to be just a human?

2009-04-06T00:01:00.009-05:00

If someone were to tell you that a human being will one day raise his hands and a whole sea part in two so that dry land appear, would you think…that can’t happen. No human could do such a thing. Well, Moses did that. Yet, it wasn’t really Moses’ own power that did it, it was God’s power that did it. Moses wasn’t God. The Hebrews did not see him as a god because he performed miracles. The Hebrews did not believe that God took on Moses' form when he performed all those miraculous events before their eyes.

You’re free to not believe it happened at all, I'm not going to try to convince anyone who thinks it was simply a myth that it happened. But for the purposes of this discussion on the Jewish faith and our prophetic vision of a Davidic messiah and a "messianic age" we will take it on “faith” ( that’s the focus of this discourse now) that the account in the Torah that depicts the whole nation of Israel as witnessing this really took place.

After the entire multitude that had been delivered from Egypt witnessed this miraculous event, Israel did not bow before Moses as a god. They had just been through a whole series of events that clearly told them that God doesn’t become a man, men are not deities and such false notions of deity are powerless over the real God. Jews don’t believe that men become deities. Torah says this directly.

Jews aren't awaiting "Jesus return" or awaiting their notion of messiah at all! Christians rely on Jesus for "salvation", Jews know that God has been our salvation for four thousand years! Torah never taught us that we were born with a burden of sin that we had to have salvation from in the first place. The focus of faith is also very different between Christianity and Judaism.In Egypt the Hebrews were surrounded for over 400 years by a culture that was OBSESSED with the "afterlife" more than this gift of life we have in the here and now. I think that was part of the hard lesson of coming out of slavery from Egypt. The bonds of idolatry and superstition that enslaved the mind were broken when Israel came to the recognition that all those man/gods and animal gods were powerless over this life. It wasn't only deliverance from physical bondage that is told about at Passover, but the deliverance for each generation when we remember the kind of enslavement that focusing on concern for another world than this one is made priority.

The Christian concept that before Jesus, God was exclusively for the Jews, has ALWAYS been foreign to Jewish belief. The book of Kings records Gentiles worshipping at the Temple , Torah teaches that every human can directly connect to God and the righteous of all nations are blessed.

Jews trust that if God promises that an anointed ruler, a human, will lead the world to universal brotherood, peace, understanding and worship of God, then that’s what God will do. Many of us believe that it is the very role of all of Klal Yisrael (the community of Israel) to bring this about through Tikkun Olam, or "repairing the world" through human actions.

Humanity's responsibility to change, improve, and fix our earthly surroundings implies that each person has a hand in working towards the betterment of his or her own existence as well as the lives of future generations. Tikkun olam forces people to take ownership of their world. Many of us believe that it is our responsibility, not God, who will bring the world back to its original state of holiness. We trust that if we do our part, God will do what is promised. That is our faith and that is our trust in God. We are still here as a covenant people despite thousands of years of every form of attempt to do away with us and our faith.

While it is an aspect of our faith that we believe God will do as promised, Judaism is a fulfilling faith and path without the messiah and messianic age being here yet. We hope our actions help bring about the age of the messiah, but we focus on fulfilling our purpose as humans to all living. Because our concepts of the role and function of the messiah and so many other things are different,the focus of our religion is also different. Judaism focuses on the gift of this life and our responsibilities to the lives that come after us. Jews are obligated to participate in repairing the world by participating in tzedakah (justice and righteousness) and g'milut hasadim (acts of loving kindness). As the prophet Micah so succinctly stated : What does God require of you, Do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with your God. Practice living as if you are in partnership with God in perfecting the world and then one day you'll understand that is exactly what you were doing.

Jews test and scrutinize everything..we are taught to do so in Torah. If something is real and valid, it will stand up to any test put before it. Blind faith isn't a path of Judaism.

Now back to that original question, as to how Jews expect just a human do what is prophecied?

How did Moses do what he did? That’s my best answer for that.

For those who observed the events at the Exodus, it was evidence for them that they happened. Until the events of the messianic age transpire, we don’t really know what precise methods will be employed, we just know what the results will be…..On faith. Once they happen, the objective evidence will let us know that is the case and we won't need to rely on faith to accept the reality before us.

We expect that the prophetic vision will be congruent with the eternal covenant of Torah.

Anything that is not, is not a fulfillment of the Torah.

Shalom

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Add to the list of upcoming topics: The Biblical explanation why believing Jews have always refused to bow to man/gods and shall forever eschew that notion. Torah teaches Israel that God is not and does not become a man...period.

Ideas rather appropriate for this time of year leading up to Passover on Wednesday.

The Hummingbird Friend

2009-04-04T15:30:00.006-05:00

When I first came to Yahoo chat in June of 1999, I felt overwhelmed with responsibilities and was so stressed that my time in chat was like therapy to me. I had just begun working at the hospital as an RN on weekend nights, my son was very small, and I was caring for my ailing mother with increasing frequency. My Dad had his hands full as the primary caregiver to my mother. He was doing a wonderful job. Nevertheless, he also had a martyr complex going and was only grudgingly beginning to accept that he could not care for her all alone. He took more help from me and my husband only as each new crisis arose. That was as hard as watching my mom decline. My mother had Alzheimer’s.

She passed away in the spring of 2001. I often spoke and wrote of the issues and frustrations of watching a loved one disappear from you years before they actually die . There are so many sad things about Alzheimer’s that often one may not recognize some of the wonderful blessings that may have also happened until your loved one really is gone. I could write reams about how I dealt with changing roles. I could write of how I learned to live in the moment with her, how my husband, my father and I grew close and strong through all of this. However, today I want to write about some of those odd little profound events that taught me something else. It taught me lessons of kindness and understanding. It contains a precious memory I hope I will never lose. It does not start out reading like it is a precious thing at all to remember but if you hang on and read far enough you may get the point.

My mother had a very long decline with her Alzheimer’s. In the latter years, she was often in her own reality. She enjoyed children’s cartoons and fantasy along with my toddler son and had the same looks of wonderment and enjoyment spread across her face while they sat side by side watching the screen. She would almost always immediately forget what she saw but enjoyed it while she watched.

We had to be careful what she watched on television because even though she would forget most programs immediately after she watched them, sometimes she would remember the program, but not as she saw it. Violent police story shows would be remembered as something that happened to her in the recent past or she would think someone she knew experienced it. A particularly upsetting show might be remembered for days that way and there was no way you could reorient her to the fact that it was not a memory of a real event. Sometimes her world would be very different in how she saw her surroundings. She would see things that were not there or much more commonly, she would see something and her brain would decipher the image as something very different.

That is a very common thing in Dementia/Alzheimer’s Disease.

No matter how you tried to show otherwise, her delusions were her reality. At the beginning of this “stage”, the first psychiatrist my Dad had taken her to see was adamant in instructing my Dad the importance to “reorient her to reality”. I disagreed with that approach and still do. Most physicians now do as well. The Alzheimer’s patient is not going to get well. In the very early stages, reorienting may help ease anxiety. In the latter stages, this approach increases anxiety and frustration. Figuring out ways to help them cope with their reality and overcome their anxieties and fears rather than always working to orienting to reality is most important. The difficulty is sometimes in determining which path to choose. They live in the moment.

One afternoon we had a terrible thunderstorm with unusually heavy rain. My Dad made the mistake of saying “it’s raining cats and dogs out there”. Mother got up from the sofa and looked outside through the living room blinds. It was raining so hard you could barely see to the road. Immediately on looking out the window, she clutched at her heart and cried out “Someone has to go get that poor puppy!” I jumped up, looked outside and could see nothing but what appeared to be a white sack from some fast food place thrown by a litterbug into the ditch. I asked her, “What puppy?” She said. “There, in the ditch, Look, there is a tiny poodle huddled down there scared in the rain!” I looked out again, thinking perhaps in that torrent of rain I overlooked it. No, I don’t see anything other than that white paper sack. I tell her. “I see a white sack.” She grabbed at me, "OH no, no! See that POODLE! There is a puppy there, its right there, can’t you SEE it!? Look, I’m pointing RIGHT at it! It’s right there, in plain sight! Do I have to go get it or are you going to?” I try to calm her down and tell her again, “It isn’t a dog; it’s a paper sack someone threw in the ditch”.

Dad tells her to go sit down. He is scowling and trying to just ignore the whole thing. She is getting quite frustrated, hysteria creeping into her voice. She starts to go out the front door. She had a fall recently and neither one of us want her out there in the lightning that is crackling all around us and it is raining VERY hard. We tell her, "Please don’t go out there, it is a SACK, it is not a dog." She begins cursing at us, how can we be so cruel to leave a poodle out there! It is lost; we are so horrible not to let her go get that. She demands that if she can’t go get it that I do it. She is screaming at me. She is entirely hysterical now because we do not see it, do not believe her and she thinks we are conspiring against her amid her astonishment at our apparent indifference to this poor puppy. Dad is fussing at ME now out of frustration, “Don’t you go out there in that rain!” I get him off to the side and tell him, "Let me go get the “dog” and I’ll take it “home”." I told him I will throw the sack away if he can just keep her calm and in the living room. I decided to make up that I am going to go to the neighbors and see to whom it might belong.

I headed out the door and made a dash in that rain for the sack. Despite using a small umbrella, I am already drenched clear through to my underwear by the time I reach it. I grabbed it just as a clap of thunder and flash of lightning hit and I damn near add pee to the wetness in my underwear. Then I made a dash for the side of the house Mom cannot see from the living room window. That is also where the outdoor trashcan is located. Plop...paper bag dog has found his “home”. As I close the can I then realized that I cannot go right back in the house because the “dog” had to go home. So I stood out there under the carport, drenched to my underwear and shivering, counting off to a thousand very slowly. I thought, "Who knows, she may have even forgotten the whole incident when I walk in." Her memory was that bad it sometimes happened that she would do that, forget something the moment you leave a room.

After perhaps two or three minutes, I walked into the house and Mom pounced at me, “Where is the puppy?” I told her that I took the puppy home to the neighbor on the next block and it is doing fine. Then I walked down the hallway and changed clothes. She sat down quietly and then forgot about the whole thing. Nothing is ever again said about paper bag dog.

A few weeks goes by and she is looking out the window and tells us about how cute a baby squirrel looks as it is running up and down the driveway. Animal lover that I am I go look. It is a large oak leaf, blowing in a circular path in the wind. I pacify her rather than orient her, "Aww, yes, it sure is cute Mom." We walk away from the window. Event over. That was so much easier. Dad sees this and shrugs to me as if in realization after those two events that he was not going to try to tell her that what she “sees” is not real anymore.

She is happier in her own world than in the real world sometimes. Why deprive her of those little moments?

She also developed a weird thing about collecting tiny rocks and gravel from the backyard. She would spend hours poking around in the dirt looking for small rocks she thought "pretty".She had jars of those rocks lining the dining room windowsill. She would go outside in the backyard for an hour or so each day to look for "pretty crystals" (sometimes I would take her for actual crystal digs and a couple of times to the diamond mine at Murfreesboro and she adored this but that's another story) So, one day when she came in from her outside dig and announced to my Dad and me that she had a hummingbird friend who would let her pet it at the hummingbird feeder, we gave each other a” knowing" look. We nodded and said things like "how nice", "Uh huh, that's great." Both of us thought it was another delusion; we will pacify her and move along.

The next week when I came over for one of my days to help care for Mom and relieve my Dad, as I entered the house, I called out for Mom. Dad came out of the kitchen and said, “She is in the backyard.” I looked out the dining room window to see her standing at the hummingbird feeder I always kept full so we could enjoy watching them eat while we ate, and there stood my mother...

petting a hummingbird!

She is stroking its little back with her index finger and talking to it sweetly. The hummingbird is dipping her beak into the feeder, looks back at my Mom every few seconds, and then dips her head again.

I quickly call out to Dad, “DAD YOU GOTTA SEE THIS QUICK! And I mean HURRY AND LOOK!”

He comes running to the window and we both look at each other with our mouths agape.
“OH MY GOD SHE WAS TELLING THE TRUTH! This one wasn't a delusion! She really DID have a hummingbird friend!” She came in and was just as calm as could be as if it was not at all out of the ordinary to have a hummingbird friend.

That summer we watched her pet that little female hummingbird another half dozen times. Each time we stood there astonished. My only regret is that we did not take a photograph. I do not know why it never even entered the minds of either of us to try. They were brief encounters that put us both in awe to witness.

*** Note*** I copied that image a long time ago and don't have a page to credit so if anyone knows, I'll be happy edit for credit. It isn't my Mom's friend :)

IDOLATRY, HUMAN SACRIFICE AND THE DESTRUCTION OF THE SECOND TEMPLE

2009-04-04T13:57:00.008-05:00

The Torah teaches repeatedly that human sacrifice is something God does not want and finds abhorrent, so the concept that Jesus could be a sacrifice for sin is contradictory to the Torah. That alone would invalidate for all time even the most remote possibility of his being a "messiah"using the Hebrew definition of that word, an anointed ruler. I am not going to address here the many changes in word definition that took place with the development of Christianity, suffice it to say at this point that the Christian definition and purpose of "Messiah" bears little resemblance to the Hebrew Bible's prophetic vision.

Sometimes in order to explain what it is that Jews believe now or believed in ancient times it is necessary to dispel mistaken notions that appear commonplace and are directly related to what the New Testament says *about* Jewish belief and practice, versus what the Torah and Tanakh directly state.There is a concept in Christianity *alone* that only blood (animal) sacrifice may atone for sin. That concept has ALWAYS been foreign to the faith of the covenant nation, Israel. Before I can even begin to explain the sacrificial system adequately using the laws of Torah in Leviticus, I must first show that the perspective of Christianity on this issue is dependent on having taken a few key passages out of the Torah. They take them completely out of their context to try to support a human sacrifice as being compatible with the Temple sacrificial system.

In addition, rather than spend this entire entry on the topic of "blood" in sacrifice, I will copy-paste a brief portion from of an excellent web site devoted to understanding the differences between Christianity and Judaism. I sincerely hope you will read the thorough explanation in full there at the link. Rabbi Stuart Federow has read both religion's Bible's and has addressed the differences of many concepts very well in explanations from a Scriptural perspective what it is that Jews believe about things that differ from Christianity.

First, Jews do not have a concept of "original sin", meaning that humans are born with a burden of sin that must be reconciled. Blood sacrifice has never been the exclusive means to seek atonement. God does not become a man. There is no demon-god Devil in Torah. There is no fall of angels. Please read the portion at http://www.whatjewsbelieve.org/ regarding the question that Blood is not necessary for atonement. Jews then and now trust that God will do as promised if we do our part.

Animal sacrifice was never the only way to atonement.

*A Korban Chatas (sin sacrifice) was only brought for an accidental transgression of the most severe sins.

A Korban Asham Talוi (A sacrifice for doubtful guilt) was only brought if a person was uncertain if they had transgressed a sin for which they were compelled to bring a Korban Chatas. In the days of both First and Second Temple, a king or Kohen Gadol (High Priest) had to bring a bull. A normal person (kohen or otherwise) had to bring a female lamb, a poor person brought two birds (either pigeons, doves or swallows- the exact species is subject to debate) and a really poor person brought flour, oil and frankincense.*

There is no blood in flour, oil and frankincense. No sacrifice for sin was considered acceptable unless you had done the necessary steps of teshuvah beforehand. Teshuvah refers to repentance of the wrongful deed, amends for anything you could rectify and a return to righteousness, eschewing the wrongful deed. The important thing was the repentance you did prior to this offering and the act of showing you had done what was necessary before you asked God to forgive you.

***The centrality of the animal sacrifices ceased, not with the second destruction of the Temple by the Romans, but rather with the first destruction of the Temple by the Babylonians. Please remember that the vast majority of Jews never returned to the Promised Land under Cyrus of Persia. They remained in Babylonia. By the time Jesus was born, eighty percent of the world's Jewish community lived outside of the Promised Land, and could not have cared less about the cessation of the animal sacrifices. When the Temple was reestablished, the Jews of Babylonia made an annual financial gift for the maintenance of the Temple, and the land, but never worried that God was not going to forgive them their sins without a blood sacrifice, just as Diaspora Jews do today. And the reason why they had no such fear, was that the Bible makes it explicitly clear that no blood sacrifice is necessary for the forgiveness of sins, or that the exclusive means for the God-man relationship was through the animal sacrifices.***

Please read at the link below (topic on the left side of the page) for the scriptural references as to what it is that believing Jews do for repentance and atonement. I will also address in another essay my explanation of the Jewish concept of forgiveness.

Some Christians try to tell Jews that the Second Temple was destroyed because we "rejected" Jesus. I have seen that given as justification for every exile, inquisition, pogrom and even the Holocaust. They will also claim that he is the reason the sacrifices ended and claim he is a "one time" sacrifice for all. The sacrifices continued unabated for many decades before the Temple’s destruction, and if Jesus or his followers had something to do with its destruction, it certainly wasn’t because of the Jews who did not abandon worship of God to worship a deified Jew or rely on the sacrifice of a human.

The New Testament especially demonizes the Pharisees, the sect of Judaism whose writings and teachings actually agree more with the quotations of Jesus, and barely mentions the Sadducees.
The Pharisees, referring to those who keep separate , were so self-named because they wanted to keep Torah SEPARATE from pagan, foreign influence ( Hellenizing influences). They were not hypocritical elitists as the New Testament depicts, but dedicated to keeping the covenant of Israel intact without corruption. Any group or entity that would try to alter meanings of halacha (Torah law) would be dismissed by the Pharisees. The Sadducees were the Hellenized Roman collaborators whose sect has disappeared. The writers of the New Testament did this to those who were dedicated to keeping the Torah “separate” from all Hellenized and idolatrous influence to remove the blot of crucifixion of Jewish rebels from the Romans onto the Jews to justify their desire to do away with the Jews and Judaism.

Here is a bit of background and a Jewish perspective to show why that they may wish to reconsider the opinion that the destruction of the Second Temple happened as punishment from God because Jews did not worship Jesus.

Tammuz was a very ancient nature deity worshiped in Babylonia. A god of agriculture and flocks, he personified the creative powers of spring. The fertility goddess Ishtar, who, according to one legend, was so grief-stricken at his death that she contrived to enter the underworld to get him back, loved him. According to another legend, she killed him and later restored him to life. These legends and his festival, commemorating the yearly death and rebirth of vegetation, corresponded to the festivals of the Phoenician and Greek Adonis and of the Phrygian Attis. The Sumerian name of Tammuz was Dumuzi. In the Bible, the women of Jerusalem (Ezekiel. 8.14) mourn his disappearance.

Sunrise services in honor of Tammuz and praying for his resurrection is an ancient heathen custom. It is actually described and condemned harshly in the book of Ezekiel.

Hmm, Man/god, born of virgin dies and Ishtar resurrects him in the Spring. Ishtar/Easter? Annual spring resurrection celebrated with sunrise services...striking, isn't it?

12. And He said to me, "Have you seen, son of man, what the elders of the house of Israel are doing in the darkness, each one in his paved chambers? For they say, 'The Lord does not see us; the Lord has left the earth.' "

13. And He said to me, "You will yet see again greater abominations that they are doing."

14. And He brought me to the entrance of the gate of the house of the Lord that is to the north, and behold there the women were sitting, weeping for Tammuz.

15. And He said to me, "Have you seen, son of man? You will yet see again greater abominations than these."

16. And He brought me to the inner court of the house of the Lord, and behold, at the entrance of the Temple of the Lord between the porch and the altar, about twenty- five men, their backs to the Temple of the Lord and their faces toward the east, and they were prostrating themselves eastward to the sun.

17. And He said to me, "Have you seen, son of man? Was it [too] trivial to the house of Judah to prevent them from performing the abominations that they have done here? For they have [already] filled the land with violence, and repeatedly provoked Me, and behold they send disgrace into their nose.

18. I too, shall act with fury; My eyes will not spare, neither will I have pity, and they will call into My ears with a loud voice, but I shall not listen to them."

This was a warning prior to the destruction of the FIRST Temple.

The Second Temple was destroyed just after another man/god began being worshipped in Jerusalem.

Coincidence?

Rather than a Mosiach (anointed ruler) restoring all exiles to Israel and ushering in a world of universal brotherhood, peace and worship of God for all humanity centered in Jerusalem at the Temple, the beginnings of the Christian religion as a dominating force saw the exile of those who held steadfast to the eternal covenant and the destruction of the Second Temple. Despite thousands of years of every form of attempt to obliterate the eternal covenant nation, Israel, we remain and we remain steadfast in worship of God alone.

Shalom y'all

References:

***http://whatjewsbelieve.org/ portions asteriked with this copied from that site. Permission from my friend Rabbi Stuart Federow to use his site to help educate as long as I always credit him with his words.

*thanks also to allonyoav, a Yahoo Answers contact, for a portion of the above using the Hebrew names for the particular sacrifices offered.

http://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/63255/jewish/The-Bible-with-Rashi.htm The Tanakh

A Few Reasons Why I Write What I Write

2009-04-04T13:08:00.006-05:00

A great deal of the first few entries I have already posted and many of the upcoming essays I will be posting will be familiar to some of you. You may have first read some of them or portions in many of my answers in Yahoo Answers, many of my essays on my previous Yahoo360 blog, and many things I wrote in the old "Friendly Jewish Chat" room from 2000-2005 until Yahoo closed the user chat rooms. I first began coming to Yahoo chat in June of 1999. I’ve seen the same questions asked of Jews daily.

None of the beliefs I explain from my understanding are new or my own ideas, but my own way of expressing these ideas in my own individual way. A few of the things I'll explain from a Torah perspective I may not even believe precisely as written. My explanations and essays are primarily to do my little part as one small voice to help counter misinformation and misunderstanding. There are many Jews who blog about these things on the internet and there are many books written about these topics. Some of them you may find much more interesting than my words. I always hope that if there is something that I've said here that challenges you, that you will investigate on your own. I never write to missionize and I will always be happy to give you reputable references to support any claims I make about Jewish belief.

If all I was doing here was to teach about Judaism and Torah, I would not be mentioning a thing about the Christian religion or their texts. However, because most people I personally encounter who ask Jews about Judaism and who harbor misconceptions come from a Christian perspective, how Judaism contrasts with Christian doctrine will often be addressed here.

Jews live in a world surrounded by religions and cultures much more dominating public perception. Christianity, Islam, Hindu, Buddhism, all have far larger numbers of adherents. Overall, in my every day life, I don't bother to think about Christian beliefs much. I am friends with many Christians. I have a few family members that are Christians. Until or unless they're trying to convert me, they misrepresent an aspect of my faith or they're hateful to me and try to justify their hate on their belief, I get along with most folk. I try be respectful and tolerant of the right of individuals and groups to have their own unadulterated culture, customs and beliefs. My tolerance extends to the point where the expression of those beliefs violate certain standards of behaviors: If they attempt to violate another’s civil rights, seek to incite harm to anyone, willfully deceive another or misrepresent the beliefs of others then my tolerance ceases.

I do not feel I have to respect every other belief out there, but I do need to recognize and live in a manner that respects the right of others to have their different beliefs. That’s what we generally mean when we say we want them to respect us. I don’t care if someone doesn’t like Judaism, as long as they are basing their dislike on the reality of what Judaism really is and teaches. Don’t tell me how wrong Judaism is and base your dislike or hatred on misconceptions or misrepresentations, strawman arguments or bigotry. If you think Judaism is wrong, fine, don't be Jewish. Just don't tell me that Jews are wrong and evil because of things we do *not* believe and expect me to respect *you*. No one of the Jewish faith respects another when they misrepresent Judaism, either to convert us, demonize us, or justify attempts to do away with us altogether.

Shalom y'all

*******************
Soon to come - topics of upcoming essays to explain from a Jewish perspective:
Human Sacrifice, Idolatry and the Destruction of the Second Temple

Forgiveness

Worship of or through a Jew is not a Jewish thing to do

Christianity is of far less Jewish origin than many think

Judaism has been complete and fulfilling for 3500 years

Tikkun Olam

Identity Theft on a National Scale

THE JEWISH POSITION HAS BEEN CLEAR FOR TWO THOUSAND YEARS

2009-04-04T12:31:00.009-05:00

The New Testament doctrine is NOT any form of Judaism.

Excerpts from various Position Statements:
In 1993, the Task Force on Missionaries and Cults of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York (JCRCNY) issued a statement which has been endorsed by the four major Jewish denominations: Orthodox Judaism, Conservative Judaism, Reform Judaism, and Reconstructionist Judaism, as well as national Jewish organizations.

Based on this statement, the Spiritual Deception Prevention Project at the JCRCNY stated:On several occasions leaders of the four major Jewish movements have signed on to joint statements opposing Hebrew-Christian theology and tactics.

In part they said: "Though Hebrew Christianity claims to be a form of Judaism, it is not ... It deceptively uses the sacred symbols of Jewish observance ... as a cover to convert Jews to Christianity, a belief system antithetical to Judaism ... Hebrew Christians are in radical conflict with the communal interests and the destiny of the Jewish people. They have crossed an unbridgeable chasm by accepting another religion. Despite this separation, they continue to attempt to convert their former co-religionists."

CHIEF Ashkenazi and CHIEF Sephardi Rabbis of Israel:
"There are Christian groups that call themselves "Messianic Jews" whose faith is totally alien to the Jewish faith, and members of these groups who were born to Jewish parents have a status of apostates who removed themselves from the Jewish Nation."-Official proclamation of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, 1998.
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Rabbi Y. Eliezer Danzinger of Tzefat, Israel (Chabad)
"Messianic Judaism is both a logical and theological absurdity. It's perverse goal is to seduce uneducated Jews away from their heritage and people, without the ensnared realizing the enormity of their betrayal.""Although Jews who subscribe to such heresy are clearly apostates--and as such, forfeit all rights as Jews, including the right of being buried in a Jewish cemetery--the gates of repentance are open to them."
--------------------------------------
Hebrew Union College / Jewish Institute of Religion (Reform)
....being Jewish and accepting Christ is entirely incompatible. In the Winter 1996 issue of Reform Judaism, Mark Washofsky, called Messianic Jews "apostates." "We see Messianic Jews as dishonest, deceptive and ultimately dangerous to our existence as a religious community."
---------------------------------
Central Conference of American Rabbis (Reform)For us in the Jewish community anyone who claims that Jesus is their savior is no longer a Jew and is an apostate. Through that belief she has placed herself outside the Jewish community. Whether she cares to define herself as a Christian or as a "fulfilled Jew," "Messianic Jew," or any other designation is irrelevant; to us she is clearly a Christian. We should, therefore, consider a "completed Jew" [Messianic Jew] as an apostate.....they should be seen as outsiders who have placed themselves outside the Jewish community. This should be made very clear to them and to the Jewish and general community, especially as many such individuals are active proselytizers. Such individuals should not be accorded membership in the congregation or treated in any way which makes them appear as if they were affiliated with the Jewish community, for that poses a clear danger to the Jewish community and also to its relationships with the general community.We certainly do not want these individuals to speak for Judaism in any public forum. In conclusion, we should make the distinction between ourselves and these individuals very clear to them, to the Jewish community and to the general community around us.-proclamation September 1983.
---------------------------
Resolution Adopted by the CCAR
Deceptive Proselytization of Jews
Adopted by the CCAR at the 96th Annual Convention of
the Central Conference of American Rabbis
1985
The Jewish community is concerned about ongoing deceptive efforts to proselytize Jews. We recognize the constitutional right of religious groups to practice their faiths and to share their beliefs with others, but we condemn the deceptive practices employed by certain Christian missionary groups in their zeal to win converts.
Of paramount concern to the Jewish community is the claim of certain Christian missionary groups that they legitimately represent Jewish tradition. So-called "Jews for Jesus," "Messianic Jews," "Hebrew Christians, " and other such groups, in claiming to be part of the Jewish community, make four misleading claims: 1) They misrepresent themselves as another branch of Judaism alongside the Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist branches. 2) Some of their leaders misrepresent themselves as duly ordained "rabbis." 3) They deceptively call their places of worship "synagogues."" And 4) they misquote and misinterpret traditional Jewish sources to support their beliefs.
The accepted bodies of Judaism, while differing on points of theology and practice, unanimously agree that belief in Jesus as God, the Messiah, Savior, or the Son of God is Christian doctrine, which is wholly apart from Jewish tradition and theology. Therefore, any movement that professes such belief cannot be considered a part of Judaism and cannot legitimately represent itself as such.
The use of these deceptive practices that distort Judaism in order to convert Jews is a moral issue of great concern, not only to the Jewish community, but to society at large. We call upon our congregations and organizations to publish this stand in their newsletters and temple bulletins. We call upon our colleagues to share this statement with leaders and friends in the Christian communities. We call upon all fair-minded Americans to condemn deception in the name of religion and not to support or sponsor such organizations.
-------------------------------
Conservative Judaism:
...there is no place for so-called Messianic Jews or Hebrew-Christians within our congregations and within the Jewish community."Hebrew Christian, Jewish Christian, Jew for Jesus, Messianic Jew, Fulfilled Jew. The name may have changed over the course of time, but all of the names reflect the same phenomenon: one who asserts that s/he is straddling the theological fence between Christianity and Judaism, but in truth is firmly on the Christian side.…we must affirm as did the Israeli Supreme Court in the well-known Brother Daniel case that to adopt Christianity is to have crossed the line out of the Jewish community."by Rabbi Jonathan Waxman, United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism
-----------------------------
Reconstructionist:
"What is ALEPH's position on so called messianic Judaism? ALEPH has a policy of respect for other spiritual traditions, but objects to deceptive practices and will not collaborate with denominations which actively target Jews for recruitment. Our position on so-called "Messianic Judaism" is that it is Christianity and its proponents would be more honest to call it that."Position statement of ALEPH the Allianced for Jewish Renewal
---------------------------------------
Canadian B'nai Brith:
"One of the more alarming trends in antisemitic activity in Canada in 1998 was the growing number of incidents involving messianic organizations posing as "synagogues". These missionizing organizations are in fact evangelical Christian proselytizing groups, whose purpose is specifically to target members of the Jewish community for conversion. They fraudulently represent themselves as Jews, and these so-called synagogues are elaborately disguised Christian churches."
--------------------------------------------------------------
Orthodox Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, writing for the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, wrote:
'Christianity negates the fundamentals of Jewish faith, and one who accepts it rejects the very essence of Judaism. Even if he continues to keep all of the rituals, it is the same as if he abandoned Judaism completely.

Older Rabbinic Decisions:

A Rabbi in the later Middle Ages named the Hai Gaon, as quoted by Aderet in Responsa, VII #292, stated that a Jew who converted out of the faith was no longer a Jew. This was shared by numerous rabbis, which can be seen in the Responsa literature of Simon ben Zemah of Duran, Samuel de Medina, Judah Berab, Jacob Berab, Moses ben Elias Kapsali, and others in the Middle Ages.

Most recently this can also be seen in the Responsa of the Satmar Rov in his Divrei Torah, Yoreh Deah #59, paragraph 5, as well as in the Responsa of Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, Even Haezer Volume 4 Number 53.

The very famous rabbi, Moses ben Maimon, called Maimonides, also wrote that if a Jew converted to Christianity, he or she was no longer a Jew. See Maimonides, Hilchot Mamrim Perek 3, Halacha 1-3, as well as in Maimonides's Mishnah Torah, Avodat Kochavim 2:5.

Rabbi Moses Isserles demanded a formal conversion back to Judaism for those who converted out of Judaism but who then wanted to return to Judaism. He demanded ritual immersion (mikveh) and repentance before a court of three (beit din). You will see this also in other Responsa literature: Radbaz, Responsa III, 415; Moses Isserles to Yoreh Deah 268.12; and Hoffman, Melamed Leho-il II, 84

EDIT April, 2010: While the information from this post first appeared in my Yahoo360 blog in 2005, that original entry also included the INTERFAITH groups that respected the religious freedom/rights of Jews. I'm trying to reconstruct from my own writings via Google, my past emails and what I find saved in my computer..Here is what I had copied from my blog and sent to a Catholic friend in 2007 and a Y/A user in 2008. I don't recall if this was copied verbatim from my own 2005 entry or edited:

The Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington met in
the summer of 1997 in Washington D.C.. This group is an umbrella organization that includes Baha'í, Buddhist, Hindu, Jain, Mormon, Zoroastrians, Muslims, Jews, and church groups from the Roman Catholic, Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran and Presbyterian churches. IFC's stated goal is "(1)to increase understanding, dialogue, and a sense of community among persons of different faiths, representing diverse races and cultures, and (2)to address issues of social and economic justice in defense of human dignity."

It is an affiliate member of The Washington Theological Consortium, an ecumenical organization with its regular membership composed of Christian theological schools that cooperate and share resources.
They created a statement in response to a resolution of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, calling on its members to redouble their efforts to evangelize Jews. Particularly singled out for criticism was the "Messianic Jewish" movement as promoting activities "harmful to the spirit of interreligious respect and tolerance." The conference denounced “deceptive proselytizing efforts”, though recognizing evangelism is an important tenet of Christian theology due to the Great Commission. The conference stated that when”deceptive proselytizing efforts” were practiced on "vulnerable populations" such as the young or the elderly, these efforts are "tantamount to coerced conversions."“

The Conference concluded with an official statement condemning the proselytization efforts of the “Messianic Movement“ (published in Summer, 1997 "Interfaith Connector" Vol. 8, No. 2) which stated:

“We condemn proselytizing efforts which delegitimize the faith tradition of the person whose conversion is being sought. Such tactics go beyond the bounds of appropriate and ethically based religious outreach.

"Examples of such practices are those common among groups that have adopted the label of "Hebrew Christianity", "Messianic Judaism", or "'Jews for Jesus".

"These groups specifically target Jews for conversion to their version of Christianity, making claim that in accepting Jesus as the savior/messiah, a Jews 'fulfills' his/her faith.

"Furthermore, by celebrating Jewish festivals, worshipping on the Jewish Shabbat, appropriating Jewish symbols, rituals and prayers in their churches, and, sometimes, even calling their leaders 'Rabbi', the seek to win over, often by deception, many Jews who are sincerely looking for a path back to their ancestral heritage.”

"Deceptive proselytizing is practiced on the most vulnerable of populations - residents of hospitals and old aged homes, confused youth, college students away from home. These proselytizing techniques are tantamount to coerced conversions and should be condemned."

And now that the Yahoo360 blog is gone and all I can find are a couple of emails where I'd sent some of this to others and where I'd posted some of the IFCMW information to the "New Statesman" magazine in January, 2008, I can't find all of my reference *souces* for the above compiled items that I began gatheing on the internet in 2000. The information from the Task Force on Missionaries and Cults came from a now DEFUNCT web page of their own,(of course the one link I had isn't there now) the info on the Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington came from the IFCMW but I'd almost swear I first found the link via Wikipedia, but I can't seem to find it on their entry now. (I see on the Wiki history page, deletions were made in 2004)
http://www.ifcmw.org/ is their home page now.
Here is another citation for them revealing their lofty aims and efforts to brotherhood and understanding between peoples: http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst;jsessionid=L8pfXrQcqCTjMQ6FT6Rx53ykhLtknFTQnnBDKJkBpx2lthpp9J3K!-348092591!1902166629?docId=5001526931

I may still turn up my original writing in all my many saved writings. I know I had other official position statements and references posted there that I wanted to include with *this entry* when I first posted it on *this* blog. My titles for saved essays don't always jog my memory as to what was in them. I may return with more edits.

From May 17, 2007- Free Will VS Determinism

2009-04-03T22:44:00.004-05:00

I can imagine the groans right now based on the title, alone. I considered an attempt to be clever and use somoething like; Fruit Fly Free -Will Finding Far Fetched or Fetching? (Now say that three times really fast). I better stop before you stop reading and miss the reason why I posted this!
Go to any philosophy chat room or religion and beliefs room and odds are this debate will be circling at least once on any given day. I use the circle because it is never resolved and the same arguments are cycled through repeatedly. I've not ever joined either side because I don't believe it is an either or situation. Moreover, the middle position I’ve argued since I was 18 and first butted heads with a Philosophy Professor, now seems to finally have a little nudge of credibility from the scientific community!
I have contended for 30 years that it is not a distinct choice between the two, but a debate over how much of each aspect is involved. I believe we have free will within the confines of limited parameters of physical existence. The physical properties of the universe, our earth, our biological composition including genetic variables and our physiologic mortality and our place and time in the world predetermine certain choices. I assert they do not control all of them.
Yesterday I found an article that suggests there is some evidence to support that a creature we do not generally consider capable of having any free will, may indeed possess at least a “spark” of it. I have always thought it absurd to mete out judgment or punishment of people if they had no free will in their decisions, and believe it equally absurd to condemn things for which there is no free will whatsoever. It feels good today to have discovered some validation for my belief on this matter.
http://www.livescience.com/animals/070515_fruitfly_freewill.html
This is an excerpt from the above article:
"Free will is essentially an oxymoron-we would not consider it 'will' if it were completely random and we would not consider it 'free' if it were entirely determined," Brembs said. In other words, nobody would ascribe responsibility to one's actions if they were entirely the result of random coincidence. On the other hand, if one's actions were completely determined by outside factors such that no alternative existed, no one would hold that person responsible for them."We speculate that if free will exists, it is in this middle ground" between randomness and determinism "that is currently not well understood or characterized," said mathematical biologist George Sugihara at the University of California, San Diego.
This article also makes important points about certain dysfunctions that create difficulty with self-control or impulse control. If human physiology is acknowledged to have such dysfunctions then by default that is an assertion we have ability to control our will as a part of our genetic blueprint. Free will within limited parameters is what our biology shows, philosophy must catch up.
I see this as no more different than the nature vs. nurture argument over personality or IQ that was once as polarized but over time with new evidence, now focuses on the realization that it is both.
Shalom,
Malkah

P.S. In case you were wondering, there was no particular reason why I put that cute little mouse face up there over this particular article other than I thought it was cute. And I had the free will to do it.

Quotes About Animals

2009-04-03T22:30:00.002-05:00

Ask the experimenters why they experiment on animals, and the answer is: "Because the animals are like us." Ask the experimenters why it is morally okay to experiment on animals, and the answer is: "Because the animals are not like us." Animal experimentation rests on a logical contradiction. ~Charles R. Magel
Thoreau, Henry David (1817-1862) - No humane being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature which holds it's life by the same tenure that he does.
It should not be believed that all beings exist for the sake of the existence of man. On the contrary, all the other beings too have been intended for their own sakes and not for the sake of anything else. Maimonides - Moshe ben Maimon (1135-1204)
"To insult someone we call him "bestial." For deliberate cruelty and nature, "human" might be the greater insult." Isaac Asimov
“Near this spot are deposited the remains of one who possessed Beauty without Vanity, Strength without Insolence, Courage without Ferocity, and all the Virtues of Man, without his Vices. This Praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery if inscribed over human ashes, is but a just tribute to the Memory of Boatswain, a Dog." Lord Byron
"I often prefer the company of dogs over people because I would rather be around wagging tails than wagging tongues" - Malkah Sarah
"What kind of world will my children inherit? How much more can the earth endure? If there is any way to save this fragile, blue-green ark, it will be by coming to recognize that we are not the captains of the boat, but rather fellow passengers with all that lives." Reverend Gary Kowalski
"When you believe there is no love in the world, just gaze into the eyes of the cat in your lap or the dog on your hearth." Traditional Welsh Poem
As often as Herman had witnessed the slaughter of animals and fish, he always had the same thought: in their behaviour toward creatures, all men were Nazis. The smugness with which man could do with other species as he pleased exemplified the most extreme racist theories, the principle that might is right. ~Isaac Bashevis Singer
I ask people why they have deer heads on their walls. They always say because it's such a beautiful animal. There you go. I think my mother is attractive, but I have photographs of her. ~Ellen DeGeneres
Animals give me more pleasure through the viewfinder of a camera than they ever did in the crosshairs of a gunsight. And after I've finished "shooting," my unharmed victims are still around for others to enjoy. I have developed a deep respect for animals. I consider them fellow living creatures with certain rights that should not be violated any more than those of humans. ~Jimmy Stewart
Why should man expect his prayer for mercy to be heard by What is above him when he shows no mercy to what is under him? ~Pierre Troubetzkoy
The animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren; they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth. ~Henry Beston, The Outermost House, 1928
If a group of beings from another planet were to land on Earth - beings who considered themselves as superior to you as you feel yourself to be to other animals - would you concede them the rights over you that you assume over other animals? ~Attributed to George Bernard Shaw
Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child as it is to the caterpillar. ~Bradley Millar
I had bought two male chimps from a primate colony in Holland. They lived next to each other in separate cages for several months before I used one as a [heart] donor. When we put him to sleep in his cage in preparation for the operation, he chattered and cried incessantly. We attached no significance to this, but it must have made a great impression on his companion, for when we removed the body to the operating room, the other chimp wept bitterly and was inconsolable for days. The incident made a deep impression on me. I vowed never again to experiment with such sensitive creatures. ~Christian Barnard, surgeon
Animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men. - Alice Walker
Cruelty is one fashion statement we can all do without. ~Rue McClanahan
Ever occur to you why some of us can be this much concerned with animals suffering? Because government is not. Why not? Animals don't vote. ~Paul Harvey
If any kid ever realized what was involved in factory farming they would never touch meat again. I was so moved by the intelligence, sense of fun and personalities of the animals I worked with on Babe that by the end of the film I was a vegetarian. - James Cromwell
I don't believe in the concept of hell, but if I did I would think of it as filled with people who were cruel to animals. - Gary Larson
"There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face." Ben Williams
Beecher, Henry Ward (abolitionist) - For fidelity, devotion, love, many a two-legged animal (man) is below the dog and the horse. Happy would it be for thousands of people if they could stand at last before the Judgment Seat and say I have loved as truly and I have lived as decently as my dog. And yet we call them only animals
Bhagavad Gita - One is dearest to God who has no enemies among the living beings, who is nonviolent to all creatures. (Sanskrit word ahimsa means nonharm to all life).
Carson, Rachel - Until we have the courage to recognize cruelty for what it is whether it's victim is human or animal we cannot expect things to be much better in this world. We cannot have peace among men whose hearts delight in killing any living creature. By every act that glorifies or even tolerates such moronic delight in killing we set back the progress of humanity
Day, Doris - Killing an animal to make a coat is a sin. It wasn't meant to be and we have no right to do it. A woman gains status when she refuses to see anything killed to be put on her back. Then she's truly beautiful!
Life is as dear to a mute creature as it is to man. Just as one wants happiness and fears pain, just as one wants to live and not die, so do other creatures. - The Dalai Lama
Schopenhauer, Arthur - Compassion for animals is intimately connected with goodness of character and it may be confidently asserted that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.
The assumption that animals are without rights and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality. Arthur Schopenhauer(1788-1860).
I know of no more beautiful prayer than that which the Hindus of old used in closing: May all that have life be delivered from suffering. - Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

For some of you who were readers of my old blog, yes, this is another one you read there first. I'm still learning how to work this one. I'm probably going to fill a few more entries with some of my favorite things or things I still feel important enough about to share, so bear with me, please.

I'll Begin With Something Old: Favorite Quotes From A Favorite Author

2009-04-03T22:14:00.002-05:00

Elie Wiesel
Nobel Peace Prize winner and Boston University Professor Elie Wiesel has worked on behalf of oppressed people for much of his adult life. His personal experience of the Holocaust has led him to use his talents as an author, teacher and storyteller to defend human rights and peace throughout the world.
Wiesel's efforts have earned him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States Congressional Gold Medal and the Medal of Liberty Award, the rank of Grand Officer in the French Legion of Honor, and in 1986, the Nobel Peace Prize. He has received more than ninety honorary degrees from institutions of higher learning.
His more than forty books have won numerous awards, including the Prix Medics for A Beggar in Jerusalem, the Prix Livre Inter for The Testament and the Grand Prize for Literature from the City of Paris for The Fifth Son. The first volume of Wiesel's memoirs, All Rivers Run to the Sea, was published in New York (Knopf) in December 1995. The second volume, Et la mer n'est pas remplie, published in Paris (Le Seuil) in 1996, was published in English, And the sea is never full, in New York (Knopf) in late 1999.
A native of Sighet, Transylvania (Romania), Wiesel and his family were deported by the Nazis to Auschwitz when he was fifteen years old. His mother and younger sister perished there, la two older sisters waived. Wiesel and his father were later transported to Buchenwald, where his father died.
After the war, Wiesel studied in Paris and later became a journalist in that city, yet he remained silent about what he had endured as an inmate in the death camps. During an interview with the French writer Francios Mauriac, Wiesel was persuaded to end that silence. He subsequently wrote La Nuit (Night). Since its publication in 1958, La Nuit has been translated into twenty-five languages and millions of copies have been sold.
A devoted supporter of Israel Wiesel has also defended the cause of Soviet Jews, Nicaragua's Miskito Indians, Argentina's "disappeared," Cambodian refugees, the Kurds, South African apartheid victims, famine victims in Africa, and more recently the victims and prisoners in the former Yugoslavia.
Three months after he received the Nobel Peace Prize, Marion and Elie Wiesel established The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. Its mission is to advance the cause of human rights and peace throughout the world by creating a new forum for the discussion of urgent ethical issues confronting humanity.
A selection of my favorite quotes of Elie Wiesel:
"There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest."
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A destruction, an annihilation that only man can provoke, only man can prevent.
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I have not lost faith in God. I have moments of anger and protest. Sometimes I've been closer to him for that reason.
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I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.
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I write to understand as much as to be understood.
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Indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil.
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Our obligation is to give meaning to life and in doing so to overcome the passive, indifferent life.
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The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.
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Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.
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Mankind must remember that peace is not God's gift to his creatures; peace is our gift to each other.
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I do not recall a Jewish home without a book on the table.
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An immoral society betrays humanity because it betrays the basis for humanity, which is memory. An immoral society deals with memory as some politicians deal with politics. 'A moral society is committed to memory: I believe in memory. The Greek word alethia means Truth, Things that cannot be forgotten. I believe in those things that cannot be forgotten and because of that so much in my work deals with memory... What do all my books have in common? A commitment to memory.
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I rarely speak about God. To God, yes. I protest against Him. I shout at Him. But to open a discourse about the qualities of God, about the problems that God imposes, theodicy, no. And yet He is there, in silence, in filigree.
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Terrorism must be outlawed by all civilized nations — not explained or rationalized, but fought and eradicated. Nothing can, nothing will justify the murder of innocent people and helpless children.
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After the war we reassured ourselves that it would be enough to relate a single night in Treblinka, to tell of the cruelty, the senselessness of murder, and the outrage born of indifference: it would be enough to find the right word and the propitious moment to say it, to shake humanity out of its indifference and keep the torturer from torturing ever again. We thought it would be enough to tell of the tidal wave of hatred which broke over the Jewish people for men everywhere to decide once and for all to put an end to hatred of anyone who is "different" — whether black or white, Jew or Arab, Christian or Moslem — anyone whose orientation differs politically, philosophically, sexually.
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If someone had told us in 1945 that in our lifetime religious wars would rage on virtually every continent, that thousands of children would once again be dying of starvation, we would not have believed it. Or that racism and fanaticism would flourish once again, we would not have believed it.