The world Jewish community has recently been shaken to its core by the tsunami of anti-Semitism that has broken out in the wake of Israel’s third Gaza war. We have been horror-stricken as the world media has condemned the Middle East’s only democracy for the simple act of defending itself against terror rockets and tunnels.
We have watched with mouths agape at the tens of thousands of people marching in the streets of London and Berlin chanting “Hitler should have finished off the Jews” and “Ham-As rhymes with poison gas.” We have been gob-smacked with scenes of pogroms against Jews hiding in synagogues in Paris. Most of all, we have wondered how could a civilized world with liberal humanistic values choose the women-honor-killing, gay-murdering, free-speech-suppressing Hamas terrorist death cult over democratic Israel.
Why isn’t this being effectively combated? Simply stated, there aren’t enough Jews in the world.
The greatest challenge facing the world Jewish community is its puny size. The number of Jews in the world has fallen below a critical mass and our scarcity raises the specter of unpleasant consequences.
Foremost among them is our inability to defend the State of Israel properly.
The point is easily demonstrated. In the United State where nearly 6 million Jews represent about 2 percent of the population, our large size and well-organized numbers enable us to create an effective political lobby that has yielded concrete positive results in the form of American support for Israel. Compare that to the 230,000 Jews of Britain who live in a population of 64 million, a minuscule percentage of the population. Such a paltry number has condemned the supporters of Israel to being virtually overwhelmed by the growing Muslim community of Britain, with support for Israel falling precipitously as a result.
Even in France, where there are 500,000 Jews, they are outnumbered by a Muslim population of 5 to 6 million representing about 10% of the population.
But security issues aside, we Jews, whose biblical mandate is to be a light unto the nations, are meant to leave a mark on the world. Real influence, to be sure, depends more on quality than quantity, but even as the smallest of nations, Jews have arguably been the most influential over the long term.
Yet numbers still matter greatly. Just look at the United Nations as an example of how Israel is treated with contempt mostly because we are too small to influence a world body.
Kicking up Jewish numbers isn’t going to be easy, and vastly increasing the Jewish birthrate, as well as reversing assimilation, is vital. With intermarriage in the United States at 50%, millions of offspring in the world who have a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother are not considered halachically Jewish. But even with one Jewish parent, the connection is strong.
Should we not be approaching these people and inspiring them to connect with their Jewish roots? The same applies to hundreds of thousands, and perhaps millions, of Europeans who stem from Jewish ancestry, like the growing community in Spain and Portugal of former Marranos. These people feel themselves to be partially ‘Jewish.’ but we allow them to founder and never connect them with the Jewish people, even though they have Jewish antecedents.
But it is high time we considered actively proselytizing non-Jews to Judaism. The number of people without any religion at all is a group to which we ought to offer Judaism as a monotheistic alternative and actively promote the Torah as the word of God.
Should they resist becoming Jewish because they are reluctant to embrace Judaism’s exacting standards of ritual observance, we can promote a confederation of Noachides, as the Bible calls them, men and women who identify with Jewish spirituality but do not embrace Judaism’s ritual tenets. In effect, these people would be explicitly adopting Jewish values without converting to Judaism.
We should fund billboards with Jewish teachings for non-Jews, offer classes in synagogues where gentiles can discover Jewish spiritual essentials, and engage in social media outreach to those unaffiliated with a faith.
There are likewise millions of Christians today who would be happy to discover the Jewishness of Jesus in order to better understand their own faith.
Two thousands years ago a still-mysterious man named Saul of Tarsus saw that the ideas and values behind Judaism were so rewarding that they could appeal to the entire world, if only they were stripped of Judaism’s tough ritual demands and embodied by a human god who was more comprehensible than Judaism’s invisible God. Thus, Christianity, and later Islam, was founded on Jewish spirituality. It’s time to facilitate access to the original source, not necessarily by converting others to Judaism – although this too must be a possibility – but also by reviving an ancient “associate” status that allows non- Jews to live lives deeply influenced by Jewish spiritually and values while retaining their own identity.
The American religious sociologist Rodney Stark explains in One True God, Historical Consequences of Monotheism that “Jews constituted 10% of the Roman world, and attracted many pagan God-fearers to their synagogues…. Jews in general and the synagogue in particular were attractive to non-Jews. The simplicity of Jewish theology (belief in the one God), the ethical standards (the Ten Commandments), and the many festivals exercised a certain fascination among many in the Greco-Roman world. Some made a full conversion to Judaism. Others remained in a kind of ‘associate’ status – what Luke in Acts refers to as ‘God-fearers’ – perhaps unwilling to take upon themselves the peculiarities of Judaism.
A vast movement existed in Rome before the birth of Christianity, based on an ancient concept called “Judaizers.” It is very likely that many of the non-Jews who embraced Christianity were first exposed to the Jewish scriptures and Judaism through their association with the urban Diaspora synagogues in the Roman Empire.”
Jewish values and spirituality can be integrated into their existing identities of practically all groups. Becoming a Judaizer would entail a seven-step program of living: 1. Observe Friday night as family night by tuning out all electronic interference and focusing on children, friends and community.
2. Eat kosher food (20% of Americans already look for kosher symbols as a symbol of cleanliness and purity) and separate milk from meat as a symbol of the affirmation of life and its negation of all forms of corrosion and death.
3. Celebrate the themes of the Jewish festivals. Passover Seders, which emphasize the human capacity to rise above material enslavement. (President Barack Obama already hosts his own annual Seder at The White House.) Dismissing material comforts by returning to the essentials of nature on Succot. Lighting lamps on Hanukka as a symbol of the human capacity of illuminate a dark earth and heal a painful life, etc.
4. Studying Judaism’s great texts, from the Torah portion of the week to selections of the Talmud to the epistles of Maimonides to mystical and kabbalistic works.
5. Observing the marriage laws, including the monthly barrier to sexual and erotic involvement, thereby enhancing desire and lust.
6. Appreciation of, and respect for, the feminine, including codes of alluring modesty for women and domesticity of men based on reinforcing marital commitment.
7. A commitment to acts of communal kindness like regular visits to hospitals and to homes for the elderly and giving 10% of one’s income to charity.
There is a definite need to offer Judaism as a religion to those who wish to become deeply committed, Torah-observant Jews.
If we could agree on moderate yet essential halachic norms of conversion that focus on observance of Shabbat and festivals, a kosher home, and the laws of Niddah (mikve and sexual purity), we could add millions to the Jewish people and strongly redress depleted Jewish numbers.
I envision a seven-week class offered every Wednesday night at 7 all over the world on the seven essential values and teachings of Judaism, a single curriculum that is promoted to non-Jews. The venues would be synagogues, schools, Jewish Community Centers and other Jewish educational centers.
A massive media campaign would be launched to promote Judaism as a way of life. Imagine billboards throughout the United States with a single teaching in one of four areas: child-rearing, happier marriages, spiritual purpose, and commercial and business ethics. The ads would be changed monthly and would be augmented by TV, radio and social media. People would get the message that Judaism has much wisdom to offer in the area of mastering life and finding purpose.
The campaign would funnel people into the weekly classes. From there people would decide which of the three categories most appeals to them: 1. Living a life of Jewish values as a non- Jew.
2. Being a Judaizer, an “associate Jew,” a practitioner of essential Jewish values and selected Jewish ritual, without becoming legally Jewish.
3. Formal conversion to Judaism.
It’s time for a true, worldwide push to offer the resources of Judaism as a religion to the world’s inhabitants that focuses not on heaven but on earth. Not on salvation but on redemption. Not on perfection but on spiritual struggle.
I believe that through this effort we could, in just 20 years, increase the number of Jews in the world from 14 million to 20 million, and push the number of fans of the Jewish people and Israel into the billions.
With Israel’s survival threatened on all sides, the time has come to promote a global Jewish spiritual effort that shuns Jewish insularity and promotes the Jewish people as a light unto the nations.
@ bernard ross:
I don’t need to. Told you, slimebag, I’m not the county DA.
If I were prosecuting somebody charged with a crime (or even of taking an ‘antisemitic’ tack toward posting on a Jewish website), then I would, in fact, have the burden of proving the ACCUSATIONS against him. But this is not the case here. Unlike an accusation of wrongdoing, a simple statement of somebody’s emotional makeup or motivational configuration stands on its own merits until such time as it is shown to be inaccurate.
Which you have failed utterly to do.
Indeed, you have never been able to show a single instance of my being ‘WRONG’ about someone’s emotional stressors & related vectors.
“Poor”? — hardly. Until you can point to at least one instance where I’ve been wrong, my “record” remains pristine.
I certainly got YOUR number right, even from the jump. It’s plain to see that you don’t even dare deny, in your own words, the overriding Envy I saw in you some years ago.
There’s no “BTW” about this, Bernard. It’s no afterthought.
It’s actually the central core of your own desperate delusion about me. And how you’d love to be able to sustain it. Your recurrent need to return to it is impossible to miss.
I haven’t told any lies about you — or anything else on this site. (This is just another of YOURS about
me.) So there was nothing for me to ‘admit’ — let alone, ‘avoid’ admitting.
Don’t need to tell lies about YOU, weasel; you are a treasure trove of deceit & duplicity. Your words REEK of it. To ‘lie’ about that would amount to gilding the lily.
You can keep on playing your twisted little skullgames till doomsday.
— But you won’t get anywhere with them. No non-paranoid person will ever take you seriously as long as you resort to them.
You did. It’s no lie — not even a teeny weeny fib — and everybody knows it.
You may not have used those precise words in your demand; but that’s utterly irrelevant. You left no doubt WHATSOEVER as to your intent. (Slimebags never do.) — I can read between the lines, dickhead. And so can other readers of your shit; they aren’t as witless & dense as you assume.
I’m still waiting for you to prove your claims that I ‘AM’ delusional, and that my observations ‘ARE’ myths. You know damned well that you CAN’T
— if you could, would you hesitate for a NANOSECOND to do so?????
Yea verily, you are the eastern end of a westbound horse.
@ bernard ross:
Now that you’ve provided your working definitions for the word, it’s clear that the term does NOT represent MY usage of psych language. Just as I use the jargon of engineering, medicine, electrical design, and legal procedure, I also the language of psychology — because it’s handy & serviceable (nobody has an exclusive franchise on its use); yet my application of it frequently differs HUGELY from the way shrinks use it.
But my usage of such language is quite precise, always relevant, never trite, nor superficial; hence, not ‘psychobabble.’ Quite the contrary in fact, it is typically every bit as substantive as (and usually a lot more profound than) that of the psychological industry — which is itself far, FAR from being an exact (let alone, ‘accurate’) science
— and that’s assuming that ‘science’ is even a suitable designation for what they do. I don’t think it is.
So, now that we are on the same page in re the definition of psychobabble, it’s clear beyond cavil that I do NOT employ ‘psychobabble.’ However, it’s equally evident that YOUR assessment of my of my observations does INDEED qualify as psychobabble, as you’ve defined the way you choose to use the term — no question about it.
Manifestly, the party who has been routinely employing psychobabble around here is none other than YOURSELF — and, lately, Yamit as well, it appears.
dweller Said:
Why not? You keep posting your psychobabble shit at posters.
dweller Said:
well, its just like all your other psychobabble
For the essence of your psychobabble pay attention to the words above in bold.
AND, for the credibility and accuracy of your psychobabble re-read the familiar words below:
Now there is a fact you should ponder every time you attempt to analyze someone, your record is quite poor. 🙂
(BTW I notice you avoid admitting the lie you told about me, it was of course predictable.
As a reminder, your lie was that “I asked you to prove you were NOT delusional”. Apparently you also lie when you say that you never lie. tssk, tssk.)
@ bernard ross:
Don’t give me your shit, Bernard; you didn’t ‘have’ to wonder. You CHOSE to ‘wonder.’
Yamit had just accused me of always correcting his spellings. That was patent horseshit. I showed him how and why it was horseshit.
That’s just more of your own projection, Bernard. You are, far and away, the MOST anal retentive poster on this board. (Howzzat for ‘psychobabble,’ eh bubbeleh?) When it comes to that dept, nobody else is in your LEAGUE.
The remark you blockquoted was itself the point of the reply. (If you have difficulties with reading comprehension, maybe you can find a remedial reading clinic somewhere?)
Bilge.
Unlike yourself, I don’t have a “great deal of time” to spend online at all, so I COULDN’T spend a lot of time dealing with such things even if I wanted to.
Unlike yourself, of course.
Frankly I’d rather not have to hunt in the archives — but if I’m shot at, I shoot back; and as straight as I can. (This all you got today, slimey?)
I write the same way everywhere — online, in emails, and for publication. It’s no more time-consuming here than there.
Not upset. Weary.
I used to think the worst thing about you was your malevolence. But I was wrong; there IS something decidedly worse.
— You’re boring.
dweller Said:
and yet, I had to wonder why did you bother to “point it out”? Certainly the word occurs in a phrase where the meaning is quite obvious “are you ____________”? I especially wondered because you had asserted the following:
dweller Said:
what was the point of pointing it out?
Perhaps you are driven to correct the world, like the character “Monk” who is obsessed with correcting, fixing, straightening pictures.
dweller Said:
and yet you spend a great deal of time with your response to the “moronic” game. You look up the archives to find the quotes, you arrange your sentences some in bold some in italic, inserting brackets and hyphen for effect, you painstakingly assemble, like Monk, your petty work of art and all for a “moronic” game. 😛
dweller Said:
Really? You appear upset 🙂
@ bernard ross:
The specific exchange was with me. His question — “Are you also dyslectic?” — had been addressed directly to me.
The ‘word’ he used appeared to be a mix of two others. I pointed them out. See the rest of my post [repeated here]:
“I have recently offered, by way of suggestion, the WORD that you seemed to be looking for when you used a similar sounding one which was spelled somewhat differently and meant something else.
E.G., the other day you used the word acquaints when you apparently MEANT equates. That kind of thing has happened a few times, of late.
But even in correcting the choice of word, I have done so only for the purpose of being sure that I understood what you MEANT to say — so that I could answer suitably.
But your spelling itself? — no, that has never interested me. It’s absurd to think it would. A sheer distraction.”
As with Yamit, this pettiness of yours is just one more approach to your moronic game of “Gotcha!”
— Nothing more, nothing less.
Sit on it & rotate, dork.
@ bernard ross:
@ dweller:
@ yamit82:
I smell better then I spell.
dweller Said:
didn’t you recently correct, or bring attention to Yamits spelling of dyslectic in a conversation he was having with HB?
https://www.israpundit.org/archives/63599714/comment-page-3#comment-63356000138257
@ yamit82:
No lie. I don’t correct your spellings. (Check the archives.)
I have recently offered, by way of suggestion, the WORD that you seemed to be looking for when you used a similar sounding one which was spelled somewhat differently and meant something else.
E.G., the other day you used the word acquaints when you apparently MEANT equates. That kind of thing has happened a few times, of late.
But even in correcting the choice of word, I have done so only for the purpose of being sure that I understood what you MEANT to say — so that I could answer suitably.
But your spelling itself? — no, that has never interested me. It’s absurd to think it would. A sheer distraction.
No (since you asked). Caring is grounded in objective reality.
A perfervid imagination is divorced from reality, and caught up in itself.
— Excitement and excitability have a way of doing that.
@ yamit82:
Only in the estimation of one who has no internal lodestar (and even acknowledges as much).
Not the least bit fabricated. Stark, uncluttered fact.
What you mean is that if YOU had given that as the reason, it would embarrass YOU, and that therefore you wouldn’t leave YOUR ass out there exposed that way, even if what I said WERE true for you.
You see, boychik, you ARE a coward — afraid of what people might think of you, afraid of “embarrassing yourself.”
Oh? — you DON’T make a practice of butting in on my posts (which hadn’t even been directed to you) with personal gibes unrelated to the subject matter in my posts??? (Maybe I’m ‘delusional’ about that along w/ all the OTHER stuff I’m ‘delusional’ about?)
Repeat, you’re a coward.
— You won’t risk losing the support and regard of those you decline to criticize, and they RETURN the ‘favor’ (for the same self-serving reasons as you) by, in turn, refraining from telling YOU how the cow ate the cabbage.
What I am is dweller; stay on-point. I mentioned Spock merely to illustrate a principle.
We had an ongoing exchange, Yamit. Actually, I recall a couple of threads which had such exchanges. Here is one of them (I haven’t time to hunt down the other). In this one, it was you who had first raised the subject of Spock by comparing me to him. Post #23 on the final page of this long thread from last November.
What “empirical results”? Examples, please?
Well, as a matter of fact, sin WILL short out the circuit. . . . Sometimes a short most certainly does constitute the evidence that “sin lies at the door.” As for the “voice’ I keep ‘hearing,’ the Voice is ALWAYS perfect.
— It’s the listener that isn’t.
honeybee Said:
🙂 🙂
dweller Said:
The truth and you are a rare serendipitous happening.
More fabricating dweller. Your pile of manure is getting deeper by the word. Give it up you are really embarrassing yourself and are too obtuse and delusional to see it.
dweller Said:
The truth and you are a rare serendipitous happening.
More fabricating dweller. Your pile of manure is getting deeper by the word. Give it up you are really embarrassing yourself and are too obtuse and delusional to see it.
First of all I know when to mind my own business and when to but in which I seldom am guilty of and am able to accept criticism when I overstep boundaries. A quality you lack.
You also just don’t know when to shut up.
You are projecting againin in your creative attributions you ascribe to me. You don’t knoe and can’t know what I do or how I relate and act in person with others and that include 2 and 4 legged creatures. Again you are being presumptuous.
Also consider your standards and values are not mine thank G-d.
Now you are Spock? I thought you were yeshu??
I don’t recall such a comment but if you wrote it how do you know I read it? I don’t read many maybe even most of your comments… Boring and inane mostly.
I prefer going to my local witch who reads coffee grounds in a cup to your constant injecting psychobabble attempts at analyzing. My witch is more accurate than you from empirical results. Seems coffee grounds got you beat 4 ways to Sunday on that score. Seems there must be a short circuit between you and that voice you keep hearing. What happened to PERFECTION?
Liar you always correct my spelling in one manner or another in direct Comments to me. Unlike you I don’t care even find your attention to such trivial matters amusing. No one else would or has only you.Self styled perfectionist can’t control the urge it’s a way in your dementia of getting in a dig.
Since I have a perfervid personality, stands to reason so is my imagination but that’s all part of caring isn’t it? 😛
@ dweller:
I miss-spell because I think faster then I type and I am to lazy to re- check my post !!!!!!!! I am a sinner!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@ yamit82:
I care — first & foremost — about the truth.
So I raised the issue of spelling in the context that I did.
Your idea of “caring” apparently amounts to ENABLING (which is never constructive) as well as soft-hearted — & soft-headed — blubbering, which is objectively WORSE than not giving a roly-poly turd at all.
Told you before, yamit (maybe 8-10 months ago?):
The “Spock” character (original series) was — by FAR — the most caring figure on the ship.
Your reply at the time indicated that you didn’t get it then — and, like as not, you won’t get it this time either. All-the-same, though, it wouldn’t hurt for you to think about it. . . .
@ yamit82:
LMSS. . . . Cute embroidery. (Do you do caps, visors & T-shirts also? — group discounts?)
IDENTIFY the post, Yahnkeleh. Let’s have a look at it.
Any normal person wouldn’t have bothered to point out a spelling error in the first place — I’ve ignored (quite literally) hundreds of Yamit’s — as non-germane to the discourse, but not Yamit. He had an axe to grind, and a NEED to grind it.
Only in Yamit’s perfervid imagination (where such musings always get a major workout). Nowhere else.
dweller Said:
A kiss on the cheek, Sweetie.
yamit82 Said:
oil, it is like Christianity, it allows to cover up you misteaks.
@ honeybee:
I once caught one of his spelling mistakes and advised him. He went blue in the face stammered and stuttered and even felt it necessary to make an excuse that he had to rush because the library was closing and hit the wrong key.
Now who in their right mind would reply to such an event with a long winded excuse and justification for a spelling error? Only dweller.
Any normal person would have shrugged it off and not responded but not him. He was ashamed and embarrassed.
That’s sick with a cpital S!
(*Spelling error made on purpose)
dweller Said:
I thought it was because of your caring nature? 😛
ROTFLMAO….. Pathetic!!!!
@ honeybee:
Do you paint in oil, water color or pastel?
@ honeybee:
And if I do discover the afikomon, what am I likely to get for it? (as if I can’t guess. . . .)
Actually, it’s nothing to me personally, HB, whether you can or cannot spell — just so long as I can DECIPHER your spellings sufficiently to tell what words you intended to use (and I do seem to be able to do that).
I’d raised the issue of spelling ONLY, and specifically, in a context of childhood emotional traumata and their connections to learning disabilities.