Hamentashen

That photo is of some Hamentashen my son and I delivered to friends tonight. As you can see, while they may not be quite as picture perfect in appearance as *some* recipe site photos I’ve viewed, I guarantee that if you follow the directions I give here, you’ll have people asking you for the recipe, too.
What I share here is based upon the very basic recipe I discovered more than 20 years ago in a Chabad Jewish Calendar. They still have this same recipe posted in their current calendar. If you have access to one, you can see this is very close to it, but I’ve made a few important clarifications and tweaks to make it even better. I’ve noted them primarily with parenthesis or asterisk or detailed explanation. This is NOT the same recipe I’ve seen on the Chabad website and that recipe isn’t nearly as good as their OLD CLASSIC recipe you’ll find on the calendar. I don’t like the recipe they have on the Chabad kids site, and it doesn’t even have the amount of flour correct. So be careful.
The first time I tried making hamentashen on my own I had an awful time. It was a MESS. My kitchen was a mess, I was a mess and the hamentashen was, too. The recipe I used wasn’t as good as this one and the dough never did taste as good. I’ve used several other recipes over the years. Some used apple juice, lemon juice, and vanilla extract, butter or other ingredients. I don’t use any of those anymore. The best tasting and most consistently praised dough is the one I share here.

Sometimes the mess of making hamentashen can be half the fun, and it’s been a family thing since my son began helping me when he was 2. Now he can make hamentashen as good as mine (He says better!)

With every other recipe, my dough was either too sticky or too dry or I couldn't get the sides to stick or my fillings were too runny or too much and oozed out or made the sides open, or despite using the required temperature setting and time indicated, I baked them too long and the bottoms were too dark. Or when I glazed them with just beaten egg alone as the Chabad recipe called for, the glaze was too hard and just too shiny.

So after more than 30 years of trial and error, here is the method I use to make Hamentashen
Ingredients:
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup vegetable shortening
3 extra large eggs * original recipe didn’t note size of egg but it IS important
1/2 cup orange juice (through trial and error I believe it’s best if you can use fresh squeezed juice from Texas sweet oranges..and it really does make a difference)
4 cups unsifted *all purpose flour*
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
You’ll also need one more egg for later on in the recipe.
For the filling: The original recipe I started from said 2 pounds mohn filling ..I never measure how much I actually have to start with but it’s at least one can of prepared poppyseed filling and then other things as the whim strikes me or my family as to what we want to try inside!
Traditional filling is poppyseed (mohn) or prune or apricot fillings. Other common fillings include any fruit pastry or pie filling or combinations with chopped or crushed nuts. There are some recipes to make your own poppyseed filling or almond filling, but I choose not to go to that much trouble. I use the Solo brand that is available at Kroger and their almond filling alone and in combination with other ingredients.
This is the first year I've not made blueberry hamentashen. Since my son was 2, it was one of his favorites.
It requires a THICK blueberry pie or pastry filling or add
blueberries to anything thinner or it makes a mess and tries to open
the hamentashen while baking.

This year the chocolate chip/walnut/almond pastry filling has proven to be the favorite. I also enjoyed mixing strawberry preserves with the almond pastry filling.
The first batch I made with the chocolate chips was with white and
dark chocolate chips (and the white chocolate melts better) so you
can get away with just both of those. Then I ran out of the white chocolate and decided to just use dark chocolate chips and crushed walnut. I only made about a dozen of those and they were tasty but I felt needed more moisture since the chips didn’t melt enough so I added the Solo brand almond pastry filling and created a new family favorite. It was a perfect texture and the blend of flavors is yummy.
You can experiment with many different fillings before you find what you like best but you must at least try the traditional poppyseed hamentashen! They all taste excellent dunked in a cold glass of milk. Oh, I’m getting ahead of myself..back to the recipe.
Now here is how you put it all together:
In a large bowl mix sugar, oil and shortening to creamy texture together. Then scramble up 3 extra large eggs in a separate bowl, add to sugar/oil/shortening mix then add the 1/2 cup orange juice. Mix these ingredients until you have a very creamy smooth texture. Next, add the 4 cups flour, the baking powder and the salt. Mix all of those ingredients to form the dough. Now, another tweak to make a better dough to work with is to divide it into at least two sections, put in a covered container and refrigerate for a MINIMUM of an hour. You can make your dough one day and refrigerate the dough overnight to finish baking the next and that’s fine, too.
Next, spread out a sheet of wax paper on your work surface. Lightly flour the paper and take one of your portions of chilled dough and lightly flour to roll it out with
a rolling pin about ½ a centimeter thin. Using a drinking glass or mug as a dough cutter, cut a circle (about 3 inches across is the size glass I use). Then
place a dollop of the filling into the middle of each circle. If you
put too much in, they will either tend to open or the contents spill
out while baking. For us old fogeys to get an idea of the proportion of filling to put on the dough circle, think of an old 45 record..and the center label section and you'll get an idea of the proportion of filling to the dough. Think of the filling as the label. If you’re not old enough to get a mental image of a 45 record, the original recipe says 1/2 to 2/3 tsp but that's just a guideline. In those pictured above, I believe I used closer to a whole teaspoon of filling. Then pinch up the sides tightly to make a triangle.

The original calendar Chabad recipe tells to put them on greased cookie sheets. I don't do that. I use aluminum foil on my cookie sheet and take each batch off the sheet by lifting the whole foil and setting them to the side to cool and then
place more foil on for the next batch :) I've never had them stick to the foil.
I often make 2 or 3 'sets" of dough as I did yesterday with 2 batches of dough. While I'm rolling, cutting and filling the next dozen hamentashen on a sheet of aluminum foil, the first set is baking.

The very last step before you put them into a preheated 350 degree oven: take
that last egg and beat that with 1 tablespoon of water until it is fluffy then brush it over each hamentashen for a light glaze.

The recipe says bake approximately 20 minutes and it is important to pay attention to that word approximately.

I discovered a long time ago that for my oven and this recipe, it takes exactly 18 minutes...20 minutes is too long for my oven. Experienced bakers know that altitude and humidity and other factors also may make a difference and will learn to adjust recipes for that, too. I recall that across town with a different oven I always baked them 21 minutes. So it is important to pay close attention that "ovens may vary".

When the bottom is slightly golden, they're done. Don’t overcook them.

The Chabad calendar recipe said it yields 4 dozen hamentashen. I’ve never managed to make that many out of it. With the 3 inch diameter glass I use to cut the dough I get anywhere from 36 to 40 hamentashen, not 4 dozen. Yesterday I made 75 hamentashen from 2 batches of dough.

Making hamentashen with kids is a very fun thing to do. It can still be fun as they grow older and then it becomes a family tradition. Many small Children LOVE to roll the dough and cut it and get sticky icky with all the fillings. It is also a longstanding tradition for children to deliver baskets and trays of hamentashen to friends, neighbors and shut-ins. Son and I delivered the tray of 18 hamentashen pictured above to some friends across town this evening. When I can, I prefer to give 18 rather than a dozen because Jews often give gifts and donations in multiples of 18, which is called "giving chai". Since Purim is a celebration of the fact we survived an attempt to eliminate us, the 18 hamentashen is my way of focusing on Judaism honoring LIFE itself.
Shalom y’all.

Enjoy!

EDIT: I forgot to mention that sprinkling confectioner's sugar over the top is also a nice added touch. Obviously, I also forgot to buy some to sprinkle on the hamentashen I made yesterday!

SECOND EDIT:
I received the following today in my email:
Top Ten Reasons for Celebrating Purim
by Kenneth Goldrich

1. Making noise in shul is a MITZVAH!!
2. Levity is not reserved for the Levites
3. Nobody knows if you're having a bad hair day. You can tell them
it's your costume
4. Purim is easier to spell than Chanukah, I mean Hanukah, I mean,
KHanukah, I mean Chanuka, I mean the Festival of Lights.
5. You don't have to kasher your home and change all the pots and
dishes.
6. You don't have to build a hut and live and eat outside (but you
could volunteer to build a new Purim booth for next year's Carnival)
7. You get to drink wine and drink wine and drink wine and you don't
even have to stand for Kiddush (I guess you can't!)
8. You won't get hit in the eye by a lulav
9. You can't eat hamantaschen on Yom Kippur
10. Mordecai - 1 ; Haman - 0 !!!!

Kashrut

What Will Matter?

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

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!

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

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?

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
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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 tiny female 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. But this close up photo here also fails to show that there is red visible in between each circle of black spiky hairs on the abdomen http://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/misc/wasps/Mutillidae_38.htm
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?

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.
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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.
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“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. “
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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

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 sin sacrifice, called a Korban Chatas, was only required for accidental transgressions of severe sins. If someone was unsure if they had transgressed a sin for which they would be required to bring  a sin sacrifice they brought a sacrifice called a Korban  Asham Taluy.  The Chatas ( sin ) offering was not for intentional or malicious sins.   Some sin offerings could not be eaten, but for the most part, for the average person's personal sin, the chatat was eaten by the Kohenim, the Temple priests.
The animal offerings differed as to who was giving them, for a king or the High Priest, the Kohen Gadol  the requirement is the sacrifice of unblemished bull. A normal person had to bring a female lamb, but if they were too poor to provide that, they were asked to bring two birds (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. 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..remains antithetical to 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.



***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

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

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.

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“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
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“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.
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“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.
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“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.

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“Messianic Judaism emphasizes the special relationship between G-d and the Jewish people, whereas Protestantism and Catholicism hardly ever mention it.”
This is as deceptive as everything else they've said.  They claim that the world's believing Jews deserve hell and eternal torture because we REFUSE to give up our special relationship with G-d to deny what God told all Israel at Sinai! They are forever telling us that unless we come to rely on Jesus for atonement that we will go to their hell.  That is clearly not honoring the relationship that believing Jews have with God.  IF they emphasized the relationship between God and Israel they would not be missionizing to us to LEAVE it.  They claim that they have exclusive blessing from "Yeshua" whom they worship as a god and call the god of Israel in utter blasphemy rather than even respect the fact that God has a relationship with the Jewish people. But then, they also call themselves the "real" Jewish people, too.  Just like other of their NT groups that claim Jewish identity while having no relation..like the Black Hebrew Israelites, the Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord white supremacisst group, the "Elohim City" group and the Branch Davidian's , the Seventh Day Adventist offshoot that considers ITSELF the "real Messsianic" Jews, so they even have competition among other New Testament adherent/Christian groups.
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.

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“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.
Actually, they don't emphasize Jewish tradition, they pervert Jewish traditions that are from the Jewish Bible.  Every custom and observance Torah commands to honor Israel as a covenant nation that worships only our incorporeal Creator, they impose idolatrous Jesus worship upon, in complete blasphemy.  Thus when they entice any actual Jew to do such a thing, they are leading that Jew to commit an act that God says in the Torah separates that Jew from their people, their purpose, and from God unless they repent and return.  A very serious sin.
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“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 "as modified by Yeshua) shows how they dishonor Torah that God commands cannot be changed.   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, showing it is idolatry..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.
While the Christian is free to believe God lied to all Israel, the Jew is not.

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.
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“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.
That sentence reads as if it is something that they must do to a Jewish child for them to become a bar or bat mitzvah.
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 parent can't make the son or daughter a bar or bat mitzvah, but if the child was born to an apostate Jew, the child isn't held as guilty as the parent...for the act of the parent making the child sin in idolatry and enact a meaningless ceremony to claim identity in a covenant they disrespect. Few are actual Jews, most are gentile parents whose gentile childen enact mock ceremonies and impose forbidden Jesus worship upon one claiming to dedicate the child to the covenant of Israel, a very different covenant of faith than the New Testament one.
 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.
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“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.

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“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.
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“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.