By Ron Nutter, Ph D
I wear a necklace made of silver created by a craftswoman in Carmel, IN. In my years of teaching philosophy and religion I would on occasion make a rhetorical point about Judaism and Christianity by holding up one side of the necklace, displaying the Christian Cross, and saying, “One cannot possibly understand the full meaning of this without a deep and abiding understanding of this,” whereupon I would flip my necklace and show the Star of David on the other side.
Over the years that little demonstration had greater and greater effect as I developed a course on the Shoah in which the first half of the semester was spent exploring Jewish traditions and beliefs with a guest rabbi, the anti-Jewish rhetoric of the early Church, and the anti-Jewish legislation of early Church councils and secular governments. Over time Jews were restricted in where they could live, how they might make a living, banned from owning land, ordered not to converse with Christians, prohibited from appearing in public during Christian holidays, denied education in the professions, forced to wear distinctive clothing so everyone would know them to be a Jew, and more.
All of this was long, long before Adolf Hitler came on the scene. In fact, with the exception of organized bureaucratic and technology-based extermination, there is hardly anything in the Nuremburg Laws against the Jews that was not passed in an earlier time by a Church council or a Church-influenced state government.
The course would come to the nineteenth century and discuss the progressive and scientific theories of race and eugenics, which were popular at the time. Up to then, the problem with Jews from a Christian perspective was “bad thinking” and “spiritual blindness and stubbornness” which leads to their ongoing rejection of Jesus Christ. Theories of race introduce the notion that it’s not bad thinking, but bad blood. Thus the anti-Jewish rhetoric of the past is transformed into anti-Semitism.
There is a logic – a tragic one – to hatred of Jews. The early Church essentially said, “You shall not live among us as Jews.” Thus the attempts to convert Jews to Christianity, sometimes forcibly. In the medieval period that was transformed to “You shall not live among us.” This was the period of either forced expulsions or the ghettoization of Jews. This was followed logically by the next step: “You shall not live.” Which brings us to Hitler’s attempt to exterminate Jews in the Shoah.
The second half of the course reviewed the rise of Hitler and the mechanics of the Shoah. Most students had some idea, having heard in general terms about the Holocaust, but nearly all were completely dumbfounded to learn of the anti-Jewish activity of the early Church and of the anti-Semitic views which came to influence many Western states and eventually dominate the politics of Nazi Germany.
I am now retired from teaching. I still wear that necklace, and have since the day I was married on August 21, 1982. Curiously, it is only now I am beginning to feel the weight of my necklace. Seeing the emotions unleashed recently during the conflict in Gaza I am fearful of what I once thought could never happen: Anti-Semitism again stalks the land looking for Jewish blood. What I have spent my life trying to expose so that it might never happen again seems to be back, often with a quite sinister and maniacal passion.
It is at this time of increasing anti-Semitic activity that I am compelled to write so that others might be aware of the long tradition of anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic rhetoric and activity. This is needed so that all will realize that the current rise in anti-Semitism is not exclusively caused by Gaza or the Palestinian question or by Israel. Rather, it is simply an extension of what has gone on for 2,000 years.
It was a happier time when I first had the necklace made. I was a student at a Christian seminary at the time. Among classes I had taken was one co-taught by Clark Williamson, a Christian theologian, and Jonathan Stein, a Jewish rabbi. Spending a semester in intensive study of the Jewish religion was eye-opening and led to a great respect for the roots of Jewish beliefs and traditions. That course was followed by another taught by Williamson in which the history of anti-Jewish thought within the Church was exposed. More than eye-opening, it was a shameful legacy that Christians must bear, though I dare say most have no idea of the injustice and violence heaped on Jews through the centuries. It is for good reason that this anti-Jewish sentiment is known as The Longest Hate.
What I have come to learn in subsequent years is that anti-Jewish rhetoric is repeated, and expanded, by nearly all of the Church Fathers. Melito of Sardis, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Augustine, Tertullian, Origen, Hippolytus, Gregory of Nyssa, Cyprian of Carthage, and Novatian of Rome all expressed contempt of Jews and Judaism. And this is only a partial listing of those engaged in the Adversus Judaeus preaching of the early Church.
One voice of anti-Jewish rhetoric needs to be highlighted. In 1543 a truly malevolent attack on Jews was written by Martin Luther, the father of the Reformation. The title of the pamphlet was On The Jews and Their Lies. In it, using the most risible insults imaginable, Luther lays out what he believes should be done with the Jews. It was a seven-fold plan, including
1) the destruction of synagogues and Jewish schools,
2) that Jewish homes should be razed and destroyed and the Jews forced to live in a communal barn-like structure or barracks,
3) that all prayer books and Talmudic writings should be taken from them,
4) that rabbis should henceforth be forbidden to teach on pain of death,
5) that safe conduct for Jews on the highways of the land should be ended and they should be forced to remain indoors,
6) that usury should be ended for Jews as it is for Christians and that Jewish wealth through money-lending be confiscated, and
7) a recommendation that tools be placed into the hands of Jews and that they be forced to work.
When you look at that list, it kind of looks like a Nazi concentration camp, doesn’t it? Not an extermination camp, but the typical work camp. In fact, one of the defendants at the Nuremburg war crimes trial, Julius Streicher, editor of the notoriously anti-Semitic newspaper Der Stürmer, defended himself at trial by claiming he merely advocated and did what Martin Luther recommended be done.
Luther ended on a flourish, pleading:
[T]hat our rulers. . . . must act like a good physician who, when gangrene has set in, proceeds without mercy to cut, saw, and burn flesh, veins, bone, and marrow. Such a procedure must also be followed in this instance. Burn down their synagogues, forbid all that I enumerated earlier, force them to work, and deal harshly with them, . . . I have done my duty. Now let everyone see to his. I am exonerated.
I have to say there is always fallout when one exposes for public view a man who is seen as a paragon of faith and virtue. Teaching my course there was a young woman who was a devout Lutheran. Learning what Luther had to say about Jews in class one day she was literally reduced to tears. There is no joy to be taken in seeing another’s ideals tarnished. I could only hope that in the wisdom of her years she is able to separate what theological wisdom Luther had to offer from his contemptuous disdain of Jews.
Simultaneous to the ravaging of Jews verbally and theologically there was anti-Jewish legislation passed by Church councils and synods as well as secular governments. To name just one, in 1215 at the Fourth Lateran Council it was proclaimed that all Jews in all provinces must wear distinctive clothing so that all who see them in public will know them to be Jews. This comes as a shock to those who think Hitler started that policy with his ordering Jews to wear the Star of David in public. Their rights being restricted or outright denied from state to state, region to region, Jews found themselves stateless, with few ways of making a living. The church and the state appeared to be working in concert to make the lives of Jews more and more impossible.
Some felt a justification was needed to attack the Jews, and indeed justifications were found in certain popular charges against Jews. One was the “ritual murder” charge, sometimes known as “blood libel.” The charge is that Jews would kidnap a young Christian boy and drain his blood for the making of matzos for holiday meals. The charge was first made in Norwich, England, in 1144. By the end of that century the charge was being made everywhere Jews lived among Christians. The charge has been made in the twentieth century in Germany, Russia, and even in New York State. Bernard Malamud’s novel The Fixer is based on the famous 1913 trial in Kiev,
Russia, of Mendel Beiliss. He was accused of killing a young boy, and a witness for the prosecution, a Catholic priest, explained the murder in terms of the “blood libel” ritual.
Unfortunately, as chronicled by The Middle East Media Research Institute, the ritual murder charge is still with us as Islamic Imams and Muslim media incessantly claim Arab children are kidnapped and their blood drained for the making of matzos. The Associated Press recently reported a variation of the ritual murder charge when it passed along the charge that Israel’s IDF soldiers were taking body parts from Palestinians killed in the recent Gaza fighting. The AP quickly removed the story, but no doubt it is still preserved in Muslim media archives.
Another popular charge against Jews was “desecration of the Host.” Interestingly, this charge never arises until after the Church establishes its teaching of Transubstantiation, which proffers that during the Eucharist the actual body and blood of Christ are present in the bread and wine. The desecration of the Host charge essentially says Jews would steal into Catholic churches and steal the consecrated Host and then stab it repeatedly, thus killing Christ again.
A third popular charge was that Jews were “poisoning the wells” of Christians. This is associated with the Black Plague of 1347-49. No one at the time understood the epidemiology of the disease, but they did see that Christians were being affected and Jews were not. Thus it was concluded that the Jews must be doing it. There is, however, a simple explanation for why Jews were not affected: they took baths. Personal hygiene among Christians was negligible to non-existent at the time. It is for good reason writers of this period would make much of a young woman with “sweet breath” because it was quite rare.
A critical turn in attitudes toward Jews takes place with the coming of theories of race in the nineteenth century. Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau was an early nineteenth-century French aristocrat who became known for advocating white supremacy and developing a racialist theory of the “Aryan Master Race” in his book An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races. He developed the term “Semite” to refer to Arabs and Jews in the Middle East who represented to him the bottom of the racial ladder. He set the stage for what came to be known as the “Nordic Theory.”
The Nordic Theory, prevalent in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Western Europe and the United States, was a major influence on Nazi ideology. The theory claims that Nordic peoples constitute a “master race” because of their “innate racial capacity for leadership.” The chief representative of the Nordic Theory in America was Madison Grant, who lived from 1865-1937. He was a eugenicist who employed the Nordic Theory in an effort to restrict entry into the U.S. of Mediterranean peoples. He declared the mixing of the races to be “race suicide.” Unless eugenics was practiced, he claimed, the Nordic race in the U.S. will be supplanted by the “inferior” races.
Grant was very influential among government policy makers and even in popular culture. The character of Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby is a clear and outspoken advocate of the racialist positions of Grant. Tom is reading a book titled The Rise of the Colored Empires “by this man Goddard.” This is a combination of Grant’s very popular Passing of the Great Race, written in 1916 and reprinted many times thereafter, and another book written by a close colleague, Lothrup Stoddard, titled The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy. Grant wrote the introduction to that book.
“Everybody ought to read it,” the character of Tom Buchanan explains in The Great Gatsby, “The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be — will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.”
The Passing of the Great Race, Grant’s very popular book, detailed the “racial history” of the world and affirms the Nordic Theory. It was the first non-German book ordered to be reprinted by the Nazis when they took power in Germany. Adolf Hitler later wrote to Grant personally to say, “The book is my Bible.”
It would be worthwhile to print a little of Grant’s ideas in his own words:
[Eugenics] is a practical, merciful, and inevitable solution of the whole problem, and can be applied to an ever widening circle of social discards, beginning always with the criminal, the diseased, and the insane, and extending gradually to types which may be called weaklings rather than defectives, and perhaps ultimately to worthless race types.
This kind of thinking came to a head in the Supreme Court decision Buck v Bell in 1927. The issue before the court was whether a state had the right to compel sterilizations of those considered unfit “for the health and protection of the state.” The decision was seen as an endorsement of “negative eugenics” in that it allows the state to eliminate from the gene pool those deemed defective or otherwise unsuitable. Oliver Wendell Holmes delivered the majority decision, including the classic line of eugenics: “Three generations of imbeciles is enough.” He couched his decision as a health policy issue, declaring sterilizations were like immunizations against possible contagion.
The Nazis already had a contempt for the Jews. With eugenicist theory and putting it on the basis of health policy, the Nazis began their T4 program of killing the institutionalized feeble-minded and other “life unworthy of life” by gassing them inside compartments of trucks. Eventually, the problem of the Jews was presented by the Nazis as a massive health issue. This is why Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister, would produce films comparing Jews to rats. One exterminates rats for health reasons, the argument would go, and so too should the Jews be exterminated.
One more figure in the development of race theory should be mentioned: Houston Stewart Chamberlain. In 1899 he wrote his most important work, The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century. The book grouped all European peoples — Celts, Germans, Slavs, Greeks, Latins, et al. — into the “Aryan” race, with the Nordic and Germanic people at the helm. According to Chamberlain, the Germanic people are the heirs of the empires of Greece and Rome. When Germanic tribes sacked and ended the Roman Empire it was already in decline because it was controlled by Jews and other non-Europeans. Thus, according to Chamberlain, the Germanic peoples “saved” western civilization from Semitic domination. The concept of an “Aryan” race was an ideal of a racial elite. Chamberlain’s works had a marked effect upon German nationalist movements, such as the NSDAP (i.e. the Nazis). Hitler was a student of his works, and praised him as “The Prophet of the Third Reich.”
During this modern period the Jew was being rhetorically ravaged on every level. If one was a defender of the capitalist economic system the enemy of all was the Jewish communist or socialist feeding the fire of revolution. If one was a member of the oppressed working class the enemy of all was the Jewish banker or capitalist oppressing the people. No matter where one stood on the political spectrum, the Jew was the universal enemy. There was no escape for Jews.
Even in popular culture Jews could not escape public contempt. Henry Adams, a Harvard historian and grandson and great-grandson of Presidents, was a leading intellectual in America. His Mont Saint Michel and Chartres as well as The Education of Henry Adams, while brilliant and insightful in many ways, also contain dyspeptic anti-Semitic references throughout. Adams felt marginalized in a world of growing industrialization, and preferred a medieval “universe” inspired by the Virgin to a “multiverse” symbolized by the Dynamo. He became particularly virulent toward Jews after the Panic of 1893, seeing the economic calamity as a result of the manipulations of Jewish bankers.
Adams wrote a very popular novel, Democracy, in which one of the main characters was named Hartbeest Schneidekoupon. He is described as familiar with “the mysteries of currency and protection, to both which subjects he was devoted.” He is described as rich, with “a reputation of turning rapid intellectual somersaults.” He is also said to be “descended from all the Kings of Israel, and … prouder than Solomon in his glory.”
Schneidekoupon’s goal is to befriend over dinner Senator Ratcliffe, expected to become the new Secretary of the Treasury, in order “to keep him straight on the currency and the tariff.” He complains when the Senator at first refuses to attend the dinner that Senators are “all like that. They never think of anyone but themselves.” The irony fairly drips from the page.
Adams then introduces what is described as “a much higher type of character” than Schneidekoupon in a Nathan Gore. Gore is then described by Adams as “abominably selfish, colossally egoistic, and not a little vain.” But, in Adams’s view, he is nonetheless “a much higher type of character” than Schneidekoupon.
Adams presents Schneidekoupon as capitalistic, materialistic, self-centered and carnal, whose “rapid intellectual somersaults” suggest a lack of steadfastness when it comes to inner spiritual or ethical principles. The not so subtle message is the anti-Semitic image that these are the intrinsic traits that indicate the nature and character of the Jew. The overall effect is to present the Jew as something less than human.
Here is an interesting little item: Can you figure out what the following list of words have in common – “usurer, extortioner, cunning, heretic, lickpenny, harpy, schemer, crafty, shifty.” They are synonyms for the word Jew listed in Roget’s Thesaurus at the turn of the twentieth century.
So why do I bring up this laundry-list of anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic activity? Because they each, in their own way, played a role in the greatest crime ever perpetrated on humanity, the Shoah. So why did I teach the course? Because I believed – still do – that exposing the truth will prevent it from ever happening again.
There are those, though, who claim the Shoah never happened. And they, unfortunately, are being heard more and more in our irrational age. I am reminded of Yeats’s poem “The Second Coming”:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer,
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
There are anti-Semitic voices currently in the land – not just in the Middle East but in Europe and the U.S. – demanding the blood of Jews. This may be as a result of a misguided support of “the oppressed” against their “oppressors” mixed with a belief in moral equivalency, or it may be the curdling voice of contempt spawned by generation after generation of hatred. Regardless, it is an anti-Semitic appeal to the bestial in the human heart.
Academia plays a role with its attempts to isolate Israel and its Jews though support of the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement. George Orwell, in a 1944 letter to John Middleton Murry, wrote that the test for intellectual honesty is a willingness to criticize one’s own position. It is that lack of intellectual honesty that is bothersome with academics pushing the BDS movement. Of course, they will say they are not anti-Jewish, but anti-Zionist. Well, to quote Shirley Temple in the film Fort Apache, “Pishtosh!”
The hypocrisy can be seen in the recent move by the Presbyterian Church USA to divest from companies doing business with Israel. Leading up to the vote by its General Assembly a program was put together titled Zionism Unsettled by a group called the Israel Palestine Mission Network. This “study guide” was written in consultation with various academics and Palestinian groups. Edward Said and Rashid Khalidi, well known spokesmen for the Palestinian cause, are presented as authoritative voices in this document with no attempt to take a critical view of their positions. In fact, despite heavy criticism of Israel there is no criticism of the Palestinians. There isn’t even any condemnation of the terrorist acts against Jews. None. Thus for those Presbyterians who put this study together, as well as those who supported it, they have failed Orwell’s test for intellectual honesty.
Their unwillingness to criticize Palestinian views was replicated in the recent fighting between Israel and Hamas. No criticism of Hamas could be heard from those academics of the BDS movement despite the indiscriminate targeting of Israeli civilians with thousands of rockets and mortars. Indeed, all the criticism was directed only toward the Israelis.
This uncritical acceptance of the views and actions of Hamas while rejecting as genocidal the actions of Israel is documented in an August 31, 2014, American Thinker article by Cinnamon Stillwell. After noting various Hamas supporters among the professoriate, mostly in Middle East Studies departments, she writes that “such cheerleading for Palestinian terrorism and willful disregard of historical facts discredits the individuals who advance it and the academic culture of Middle East studies that rewards it. It is politicized rather than objective, propagandistic rather than principled. American interests at home and abroad are ill-served by these apologists for terrorists.” But what is truth, when anti-Semites are motivated and justified by centuries of hatred?
Speaking of Said, he is perhaps best known for his book Orientalism, in which he criticizes and condemns Westerners for unthinkingly adopting a “discourse” about the Middle East established by “experts” and reified in the scholarly tomes of Western libraries. According to Said, such discourse has marginalized the peoples of the Middle East, including the Palestinians, making them less than human in the eyes of Westerners. There may be something to that argument. All I would say is that there is a 2,000-year-old anti-Jewish and anti-Semitic “discourse” that has marginalized Jews through the centuries and made them something less than human. The current anti-Israel voices, whether knowingly or not, are drawing from that discourse of prejudice and hatred in their condemnation of Jews. They simply echo what has been with us from generation to generation.
I firmly believe the situation is better now than it was before World War II. Many have come to recognize how Jews have been victimized through the ages and have worked to make amends. But then I was brought up short one day by Yale professor and one-time diplomat Charles Hill. Reading about his experience in Asia during China’s Cultural Revolution it was demonstrated that whatever cultural strides are made can be undone in a generation.
That is my concern today. A new outbreak of anti-Semitism, having no knowledge of anti-Jewish thought and action through the centuries, and having no desire to know, is propagating a renewal of anti-Semitic discourse that will propel us to ever more tragic consequences if we are not mindful. One sees the evidence all around us, with reports world-wide of rising attacks on Jews and Synagogues in Europe and even in the U.S. The Guardian on August 7, 2014, published a lengthy article on the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe that is making Jews in Europe fearful of a re-play of their Nazi experience. On August 20 of this year the New York Times published a column by Deborah Lipstadt noting the acts against Jews in Europe.
The war in Gaza no doubt acts as a spark. But it also occasions a renewed use of long-time canards used against Jews, as when a Hamas spokesman again raised the specter of “ritual murder.” Even an established hoax like the pamphlet The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a forgery put out by Russian agents to support the Czar against what were perceived as Jewish revolutionaries, is a staple of booksellers in the Islamic world. In that work one “learns” how the economic and political systems of the world are manipulated by secret Jewish cabals.
So I am concerned, and I feel the weight of my necklace around my neck. I know there are places in the world where wearing my necklace could cost me my life. Is that overwrought? I recall an interview of the novelist Mary Doria Russell in which she spoke of her conversion to Judaism. In it she remarked that her conversion was such that it could get her killed. I thought that was overwrought at the time. Now I am not so sure. Because I feel the weight of my necklace.
Ben Stein in a recent American Spectator article sums it up about as well as anyone. He comments how much we’ve learned this past summer: “We learned this summer that when terrorists kill Jews, that’s legitimate anger and frustration. When Jews defend themselves, that’s genocide. We learned that Europe, which Henry Ford called ‘that slaughterhouse of nations’ or something similar, is still chock a block with anti-Semites who are wildly happy to join hands with the emerging Muslim majority in Europe to torture the Jews. We learned that the elite media, especially the New York Times, will turn on Israel and the Jews and seek to curry favor with the enemies of Jews and of America in any way they can.”
God only knows what will come. I comfort myself by saying I am old and will soon depart this world, but then I think about my son. What kind of world will he have to negotiate and still maintain his integrity and a willingness to speak out against those who would do violence against Jews? I have tried to speak out in the classes I have taught, and can only hope my students are able to take what they learned and with integrity speak out on their own against those who would do violence against Jews. And I write because I want to continue to educate and do whatever I can to prevent unjust violence against Jews. I still believe that knowledge can be a balm to hatred.
We appear to be in a kind of limbo now that a ceasefire in Gaza has taken. Reports are that the West Bank and the Golan Heights are restive, contemplating open hostilities against Israel after seeing the Gaza fighting as inconclusive. Should such fighting break out, no doubt Israel will again be subject to worldwide condemnation as it yet again fights for its very life.
Israel will be subject to the new tropes of anti-Semitism extending 2,000 years of lies and hatred of Jews. It will be claimed that Jews are the “new Nazis” and that Gaza or the West Bank is the “new Auschwitz” and that Palestinians are the “new victims.” When that happens I shall again stand with Jews and Israel against the 2,000-year-old forces of darkness and hate, all the while feeling the weight of my necklace. It is what I must do.
M Devolin Said:
I am a Yehudi. My father’s family were weapon makers in the Ottoman Empire, but had to flee from there to the Russian Empire in the late 19th century
I am not a ‘political’ Zionist, and in fact I don’t like any other label applied to myself other than that of my tribe and occasionally Yisrael
yamit82 Said:
It is because I live in an English speaking country that I use kh to transliterate kaf rather than the French transliteration of ch
yamit82 Said:
It is changing what Hashem gave. G_D had an intention to give part as written and part as oral.. if he wanted the oral law written then why not give it all as written. By writing down that which G-D intended to be oral man changes the nature of the vehicle. Perhaps Hashem intended the oral law to change according to the normal laws of nature that govern oral transmission,and by writing it down there occurs a type of freezing of the transmission…. the interpretations begin to take precedence and to be revered…. I cannot know what G_D intended but if he gave the law in two forms I must assume he did that intentionally and therefore it proceeds that its nature(oral) should not be changed by man. Man seeks to fix(freeze) the motion of things to make them comprehensible but I assume that an all knowing G_D knows how that which he intentionally did not freeze will change according to HIS own Laws. I am a simple fool but if I accept the omnipotence of G_D then I cannot presume to know his intentions or that my logic can comprehend His ways and methods. this appears to me to be vain.
yamit82 Said:
the logical constructs of men are severely limited. We have seen how men could not understand the big bang, and recently the two second massive expansion of the universe. More importantly quantum physics has exposed the limitations of mens minds of the past. Experiments have been performed to demonstrated that actions in the present can affect the past. G_D would already have known all this, therefore how can men presume to apply their puny logical constructs of even todays era to that which G_D gave. Perhaps G_D wanted exactly what would naturally happen if the Law continued as he originally gave it, as oral and written.yamit82 Said:
It appears that the explaining often takes first place and even becomes revered. I am always suspicious of men who presume to speak for G_D, who complete his intentions and his actions in sync with their own minuscule minds.
I have other questions: Are rabbis of a higher quality a thousand years ago than today? Was understanding frozen to that time? I see lots of low quality rabbi’s today, were they the same then? How can the same Torah lead jews in opposite directions and perhaps that leading is intentional like the Tower of Babel. Torah True naturei Kartei dance in Polish black hats and peyot with the Jew killers. Is G_D confusing us, making us clowns? Did he send all these torah babblers as punishment? If the galut was a punishment was everything born in the galut also a punishment sent as confusion?
LOL, inquiring minds want to know 😛
mrg3105, are you a Zionist? I’ve told you a little bit about myself, about my Noachism, now perhaps you’ll reciprocate with a little bit about yourself. My question to you about whether or not you’re a Zionist (preferably merely so and not the complicated kind) or not will cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time.
@ bernard ross:
Bernard, I’m going to heed Ted’s request
‘Jewish’ means Torah
This forum IS centred on Israel, and Israel gets its name from the People, named after their three forefathers
If there wasn’t a Torah, Israel h”vs would not exist
I say what I want to say.
You can ignore me if that would make your life easier.
I’ll leave the rest to Ted.
Perhaps people would learn something about the current events in and around Israel by looking at Torah
I don’t know what Yamit82 relates to
Scientia potential est – correct translation – “Wisdom is His power” Meditations Sacre 1597 Francis Bacon; ideas lost in translation
In any case, I look forward to seeing an argument from Yamit82
Whom did I insult, and how?
If I ran away, you would not be getting any replies from me, right?
Dispossession, i.e. theft, includes hijacking, and so I didn’t need to use every synonym to say what I wanted to say.
Theft is dealt with in halakha
Yamit82’s citations where not appropriate to the discussion, never mind delivered out of context
I ignored them as irrelevant
Yes, it also irks me that I get Torah text in translation and referenced from Vatican.
Again, you don’t have a problem, so you take up the discussion
Sometimes simple questions have very complex answers
I did answer on Shabbat
The oral part of the Torah was written down to prevent its loss because of persecution
The oral Torah was not intended to be written down. When it was, this was done in such a way as to preserve its true meaning for those that are able and therefore worthy to continue its preservation and growth
It is a ‘living’ system, and therefore inherently ‘imperfect’ given there is only one example of perfection in the Universe and that is the Creator. The written Torah is also imperfect for it requires to be copied for perpetuity
This is a lesson for those who bear the burden of mesorah
Are you referring to Greek logic?
Peter, though assimilated, was still born an Israelite, and living in what used to be kingdom of Yehudah. The cultural immersion must have been harder to escape than he supposed
Am Yisrael of the ‘Second Temple’ times was careful with words, even in Greek. If something wasn’t stated, it didn’t exist.
Why don’t you correct me and find the citation from apostolic texts contemporary to Peter that say Jesus ate ham?
You know there is a reason it says in the Torah Bnei Yisrael and Avinu Malkeinu?
TaNaKh is accepted as part of the Christian scriptures.
That it is misinterpreted and misused is another issue.
bernard ross Said:
Correct Hebrew pronunciation transliterated would be ‘Hacham’
I think he lives in Australia.
@ bernard ross:
mrg3105 Said:
nobody here is trying to be a “Hakham” but everyone here attempts to support their arguments….. unlike you who appears to seek a pulpit while disguising what you are. Perhaps it is time for you to reveal exactly from what station point you take your perspective on “Torah”. You keep pretending to allude to Torah but you never quote or cite it. Fess up.
Do you live in Kiryat Joel?
mrg3105 Said:
pathetic, is that the best you can do?
mrg3105 Said:
do you think we are idiots and unaware of this? You use this generalization to avoid dealing with your own crap of accusing others of loving the galut and yet you cling to the galut. mrg3105 Said:
A jew making Aliya to Israel is NOT like moving to any other country. since you say at this time in Jewish history perhaps it is time that you revealed your agenda, your religion,… are you a naturei karta, a satmar, ….. do you dance with the jew killers, in your polish black hat and peyot; do you live in Kiryat Joel? Are you ultra orthodox? Reveal yourself, I beleive your cryptic MO is a cover for your agenda.
Prov. 30:5, 6: “Every word of God is pure: He is a shield unto them who put their trust in Him. Add you not unto His words, lest He reprove you, and you be found a liar.”
The Oral Law however is not an addition to the Divine Words but rather an exposition of them.
The Rabbis were always careful in making their rulings to distinguish between what was written expressly and what they had learnt through studying the Hebrew expressions employed in Scripture and applying logical constructs. Their aim was always to discern the intention of the written word and to apply it. This is their duty.
To learn and study the Word of the Almighty is what we are commanded to do.
Joshua was commanded:
[Joshua 1:8]THIS BOOK OF THE LAW SHALL NOT DEPART OUT OF THY MOUTH; BUT THOU SHALT MEDITATE THEREIN DAY AND NIGHT, THAT THOU MAYEST OBSERVE TO DO ACCORDING TO ALL THAT IS WRITTEN THEREIN: FOR THEN THOU SHALT MAKE THY WAY PROSPEROUS, AND THEN THOU SHALT HAVE GOOD SUCCESS.
Adding to the commandments would appear to be contrary to a written injunction which says:
Deut. 4:2 says “You shall not add unto the word that I command you, neither shall you diminish from it, that you may keep the commandments of God that I command you.”
Deut. 12:32 says, “What thing soever I command you, observe to do it: you shall not add thereto, nor diminish from it.
In general terms, the Oral Law is not so much an adding to the Commandments but rather an explaining of how existing Commandments must be kept.
The Rabbis have never really added any commandment. They have made enactments based on the Commandments.
mrg3105 Said:
DUH???? even a hypothesis requires a shred of evidence, a reasoned argument, some shred of support….. YOU GIVE NOTHING!!!!!
mrg3105 Said:
a discussion is not a soapbox, you merely use the forum as your pulpit. Why not just go down to the corner and get a soapbox as you obviously just came to preach.
mrg3105 Said:
I did not ask for Talmud Torah arguments, simply to show a basis for the declarations you made, cite something, quote something…. perhaps you are used to discussing your opinions with parroting clones who nod approvingly at your every word.
Apparently your declaration that “arguments and evidence are everything” is just a bag of hot air.
mrg3105 Said:
LOL, seriously? In other words you have NO SUPPORT, NO ANSWERS AND NO ARGUMENTS. Your answer is that of an empty suit…. the answer of a loser running away from the fact that he has nothing left to say… the last refuge of a coward who must blame the other for his own impotence.
bernard ross Said:
My flavor of choice is karaite,. There are still a few who walk among us. 😉
yamit82 Said:
LOL, this is the excuse he gives for being unable to give any support for his opinions
yamit82 Said:
by doing that he does not have to answer questions, support his declarations and opinions, and avoid the obvious
What is the base from which he interprets “Torah”? He could be a naturei karta, a satmar a karaite, etc. He never tells you what his support is.
mrg3105 Said:
their version and revison of the torah might be their foundation…it is absurd to believe that those who deviated from torah in the most basic of ways would be required to keep kashrut. How many angels dance on the head of a pin?
your declarations are chock full of presumption and assumption….the Torah according to mrg3105
@ mrg3105:
This blog has more non Jewish readership than Jewish ones.
Most of the Jewish ones I’m sorry to say wouldn’t recognize an Aleph from a Taph… Using Hebrew nomenclatures for reference would not only be of any value it would confuse and reduce effectiveness to what I was trying to convey….
This site is not programed for Hebrew in any event.
That said I find it curious that you would request of me even demand of me that which you yourself have never done.
As for me playing shrink with you? Wouldn’t consider it and it would probably be beyond your scope of comprehension of I did …..
If you have something to say it’s possible to say it directly and to the point. Each of us here bring unique and special talents, education, life experiences and knowledge to the table. We even at times learn something from each other in our discussions. So far I have not learned a damn thing from you except you like to play games. It’s 4am here in Israel and I can digest simple straightforward exchanges not a lot of pseudo crap pretending to be esoterically cryptic.
Try KISS always works for me….
M Devolin Said:
No you didn’t.
Firstly, what do you understand posek to mean?
And what relevance has you rabbi having served in combat to answering my question?
If its the same rabbi that is telling you not to learn Ivrit, he is wrong.
Do you understand what being a ‘poor man’ means in Torah?
So here are a few concepts.
Noakhide laws are so known because they were given to Noakh.
Noakh was the last SPIRITUALLY-PURE man left standing.
From these laws the entire Torah can be derived if one is very very good.
So HaZaL tells us that Yaakov learned in the yeshiva of Shem and Ever…direct descendents of Noakh. What laws do you think they taught?
How did Yaakov get to their yeshiva? Is it because Avraham and Yitzhak also learned there?
HaZaL tells us that masekhet Avoda Zarah Avraham had was much larger than our current version. Since the oral Torah and the written Torah are two sides of the same ‘coin’, we can elaborate that Avraham kept the whole Torah, though perhaps a little differently. Its God’s promise to him that Am Yisrael was merited NOT to be destroyed, but to be led out of Egypt by Moshe, the last SPIRITUALLY-PURE man (Levi) standing, who subsequently received the Torah laws, i.e. Noakhide laws elaborated in detail.
Why are they so much longer than the Noakhide laws?
Because over time since Noakh people became less ‘spiritually’ sensitive, so everything Noakh just ‘got’, Am Yisrael after Mitzrayim ‘didn’t get’ and had to be told in detail. So much so, Moshe had to explain even the detail. What we have is not an explicit record of this, hence the need to apply one’s insight.
As far as I’m concerned rabbis telling people to ‘just keep the Noachide laws’ is wrong, because they are asking these people to step into the shoes they cannot possibly fill, those of Noakh.
For this reason there are laws of conversion (geirut) in the Torah, and those that convert become ben Avraham (male). This is because anyone that works out ON THEIR OWN there is THE God, and are willing to accept Torah authority (i.e. His authority) over their own, is standing Avraham’s ‘shoes’.
But earlier you said you are 100% goy?
You are yet again wrong!
A goy can not be understood without the context of goy kadosh. Kadosh does not mean ‘holy’, but means different. Goy is something akin to hol, i.e. mundane. The fact that you accept there is only THE God, and its the THE God in the Torah makes you very different from the vast majority of Canadians, so you are goy kadosh whether you like it or not.
The only problem is that you have accepted upon yourself, and your family an impossible task – to live in the present World as a tzadik that Noakh was in HIS World, something that even Avraham struggled to do, hence the story of Yitzhak, Yaakov and the shvatim.
Does your combat veteran rabbi have tiltilim?
By the way, I’m not telling you to convert. As far as I’m concerned, no one knows how to do that either.
bernard ross Said:
still waiting for your explanation
mrg3105 Said:
did you read their texts from beginning to end to come to this conclusion? Perhaps they ate spare ribs instead, or perhaps they weren’t interested in giving you the detail of their bbq’s. really? you gotta be kidding!
mrg3105 Said:
really? this was the argument you submitted to support your statement the following:
bernard ross Said:
really? you call that an argument?
mrg3105 Said:
Absurd! Illogical! according to your logic this is also a logical conclusion:
If no one said it wasn’t done then the logical conclusion is that it was done….DUH????? You apparently never took a basic course in logic. If this is the “logic” you use to arrive at your various declarations here then I submit your conclusions may be faulty.
mrg3105 Said:
No, I would like you to stop avoiding simple answers to simple questions posed to you, a number of them which you ignored….e.g. my comment on christians not accepting shabbat or circumcision, etc. etc etc
but answer this question from an ignorant fool like myself: if Hashem gave an oral and written Law I must assume He did it with intention. When one writes down oral law he immediately begins to place the limitations of mens minds upon that law. Why would Hashem give oral law if he wanted it written down. What was his reason? Anything transmitted orally will change, when written down it can only change within the rules of men. I must assume that Hashem knows what changes will occur in the transmission of oral law and that putting into writing circumvents His will. Anything arriving through men is imperfect.
mrg3105 Said:
He was trying to how you how petty your comment was. If you know your translations then you will know when there is a disagreement in translation e.g. between chrristian and hebrew Jewish sources. yamit has often pointed out these specific situations here. You are using general petty comments in order to avoid specific issues.
mrg3105 Said:
you are using this red herring to avoid the substance. yamit has often cited Hebrew sources in arguing translations and the different meanings. It is doable but your avoidance allows you an escape hatch.
M Devolin Said:
You could say I specialise in KOs 😉
I referred to the Ortiz fight.
‘Rabbis’ today don’t understand…er, the ‘situation’.
Even the ‘modern orthodox’ that do serve in the IDF rarely receive semiha, but the mesorah is not there so they very rarely connect combat with Torah.
And yet, there it also says that God is a God of War
mrg3105 Said:
I call it hijacking whether culture, bible or land (yeh, I said bible)
mrg3105 Said:
Apparently your Torah study has not made you observant or self-critical. go and re read your posts, it has been obvious to at least a couple of poster. You usually insult when you have no argument towards a rebuttal of your assertions. start with Jewish nazi, and love of galut. If you are unable to find the posts in question then we can see that YOUR “Torah” study leads to the disingenuous in the same way that torah true Naturei Karta Torah study leads them to cavort, dance and celebrate with Jew killers. “Studying Torah” is not an acceptable fig leaf for dishonesty nor an acceptable excuse for running away from supporting your assertions…. even catholic priests do it.
mrg3105 Said:
what do you mean by Jewish? You said Judaism did not exist…are you referring to Karaite Jews who do not accept oral law or transmission through the mother; “Torah true” Naturei Karta jews who dance and celibrate with Jew killers, Satmars, black hatters who worship the polish galut fashions and told the Jews to die in the galut?
This is a forum primarily centered around Israel it is not a Hebrew school, a yeshiva class or a beit Midrash. Here are christians, Secular Jews, religious Jews, etc. We discuss many things which are not Jewish. But all this is moot because you cite NOTHING except one source once. You simply declare your opinions just like the guy on the soapbox telling us the world is ending today or jesus saves.
mrg3105 Said:
it is petty, we are not in Torah study here. Torah is cited here by some but unlike you it is related to the world outside of the Yeshiva. You could learn from Yamit as he relates Torah to science and logic. I have no idea what your culture is that you are asserting: are you asserting the culture of the “true Torah” Naturei Karta or perhaps the Satmar, maybe that of Karaites?
If your Torah perspective is unable to support itself outside your walled ghetto then I would submit that your Torah perspective is inaccurate or you are blowing hot air. Yamit regularly is able to argue Torah perspectives with logic, science, argument and evidence. I do not believe that Torah is unable to withstand arguments of logic, evidence, etc. and science.
“But before going there, let me ask you what you understand by being a Noachide means?”
Seriously? Why don’t I just cut and paste? I already have a posek. He is an Israeli combat vet and an Orthodox Jew. But I will tell you this: What I have learned from being a Noachide is that there are many Noachides who pretend to be Jewish, who meddle in Jewish halachah. I’m not one of those. I do not observe Shabbot. I know a lot of Noachides do, but I have a Rabbi who tells me I should go to work on Jewish Shabbat. I take him at this word. I have refused to learn Hebrew phrases because of the contempt I feel when hearing Noachides spouting off like they’re Jewish. I knew a Noachide who attended a shul in Toronto and never told them he was a gentile until the night I showed up to hear Rabbi Skobac and told everyone he was a goy. We haven’t spoken since. What Noachism has taught me most is honesty. Also it has taught me that HaShem does not drop “blessings” from open windows in the sky as the Christian evangelists used to tell us. HaShem wants us to work for them, to construct them ourselves. There, that’s all you’re going to get out of me. And oh yes, I’m a poor man. You probably wouldn’t speak to me if you met me on the street. So, do I past muster?
yamit82 Said:
Cultural dispossession
yamit82 Said:
Yamit82, if you are an amateur psychologist, I think you should pick another hobby.
If you are quoting from Chinese sources, you give Chinese source names, and if you Quote from Latin sources you give Latin source names. So, when quoting from Torah sources, give name in Ivrit. This isn’t ‘puririst’ or ‘superficial’ but logical and consistent IMHO.
yamit82 Said:
Are you happy at the murder of Arye ben David? I would not be alive if it wasn’t for him.
yamit82 Said:
A Yehudi is a member of shevet Yehudi
Collectively the People are known as Yisrael, or Ivrim when gairim are included
Those that do not know which shevet they are from are Yisraelim until Moshiakh lets them know.
Yisrael is further subdivided for ritual purposes into Yisraelim, Laviim and Kohanim. Each has a role to play, and without all three God cannot be served as required (whatever that means)
These should not be mixed. See halakhot on ‘mixtures’.
And what do you think to be a ‘Jew’ means?
I see I am in the “moderation” cell. Oh well.
Ignore the post #17: it wouldn’t let me change the brackets to their proper place.
I have so much more respect for those Christians who come out to stand with the JDL on the street (as opposed to sitting in front of a computer in the safety of their home spouting off about my expletives). I shake the hand of the former and I thank them for coming out. They get it. And they are now bringing their children out so their children will one day get it too. “Deeds speak louder than don’ts.”
I have so much more respect for those Christians who come out to stand with the JDL on the street (as opposed to sitting in front of a computer in the safety of their home) spouting off about my expletives. I shake the hand of the former and I thank them for coming out. They get it. And they are now bringing their children out so their children will one day get it too. “Deeds speak louder than don’ts.”
yamit82 Said:
That is a silly question to ask in an English language website
yamit82 Said:
No Yamit, this is how it USED TO WORK.
It is the reason that Am Yisrael is in the bind it is in now because of this process.
Quite simply the process is wrong.
In fact ideas should come from Torah, but I just don’t have the time to do so here and now.
Traditions (minhagim) on the other hand are not Torah, though at least one was incorporated into the Torah by God because He recognised it was a great minhag. Minhagim were instituted to be community-specific to deal with a community-specific problem. People that keep these regardless of the changed circumstances just don’t get this, or the reason for the original tradition.
The stupidest thing is for a ‘Jew’ to call himself ‘traditional’, meaning they do all the things that were optional, and no longer relevant…but of course thats not what they mean. They mean they THINK they do all the hagim that are halakha, but AS IF they were minhagim.
Authoritative ‘Jewish’ sources are….the Torah, i.e. TaNaKh and HaZaL. That’s it.
What followed were some 25 generations of svaraim of which we know only a few names. They were not mekabel the mesorah.
So that you know, the word opinion comes from the Latin stem of opinari “think, judge, suppose”.
However, because ‘Latin’ is a Shemiti language, there is a similar word/expression in Ivrit, aph inyan (also a matter), inyan also meaning ‘interest’.
The question is – are ‘inventions’ relevant?
The answer is that there is a well proverb (3:18) ‘It is a tree of life to those who take hold of it, and those who support it are fortunate’.
It may be a hidush to you, but a tree is not a piece of 2×4 stuck in the ground, but a living organism that requires looking after for it to be healthy and produce. Every flower it produces that becomes a fruit is a new creation. Without it there can be no orchard, no harvest, no consumption of the produce, etc.
To accept Torah as a gift actually means to become a part of it. It is for this reason that in a couple of places ‘man’ is likened to a tree. A living being must produce, or die. If there is no production, its not a part of the ongoing process of Creation. Its a dead thing.
Anyone who occupies their time with Torah, yet sees nothing new, may as well be looking at a piece of quartz. Only hidushei Torah keep it ‘living’ It is not for nothing that the first Hellenised ‘Jewish’ Christians called their texts ‘new testament’. This was so well known and understood at the time, that even appikoraii knew it.
Those ‘orthodox’ that insist on 0 innovation are in fact stumping the Torah.
yamit82 Said:
Despite Ted’s request, I would prefer if you quote or at least mention message # so I know what you are referring to
@ yamit82:
HaZaL says that God first created the Torah, then looked into it for 2000 years, then created everything else.
The Torah is written ‘black fire on white fire’.
So deal with this first.
The word art comes into English from Greek arti which means ‘just’. So how did it assume the connotation of creative arts? Greeks as usual simply got something wrong. Because they were illiterate, they didn’t understand the concept of writing right to left, and simply thought of letters as having same meaning regardless of which direction they were read. So reading arti backwards becomes itra, or allowing for corruption in vowels and omissions, haTorah
Latini (aka ‘Romans’) on the other hand were Shemites just like Yisrael, so they preserved the etymology better, with the word nature derived from natura, i.e. lit. ‘birth’, Na Torah, the ‘birth’ of everything. In Latin natura is also sometimes used to mean Universe.
@ Teshuvah:
bye bye don’t let the door hit you on the way out, maybe your friend wants to follow you all the way to NZ, he likes sheep too.
“I am not going to argue with the demon possessed…”
Those damn demons! They’re either running herds of pigs into the sea or they’re inhabiting old ex-fighters.
Good riddance. Your vain pietism means absolutely nothing to me.
@ M Devolin:
I am not going to argue with the demon possessed nor suffer fools gladly. dweller, please email me when you have time.
Goodbye, Israpundit.
“As long as Jews on this board use foul and hateful language, they are a reproach to Jews, Judaism and the light of the world concept.”
As a gentile, you are in no position to lecture Jews about rules of behaviour and etiquette.
I am 100 percent pure goy. I am a real Gentile and not a fake Jew.
bernard ross Said:
Oh, you want me for a havruta 🙂
“Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.”
Then you must be full of shit.
bernard ross Said:
Whom did I insult, and how?
One of my sons, mrg3105, was sparring with 25-30 year old heavyweights when he was 13 years old. Aviel, the son I mentioned in the story about the school yard, is also a prodigy. They haven’t trained all summer as they both say they’re getting bored lately. The heavyweight son counterpunched a kid who took a shot at him on the street last summer. With one punch, a right uppercut, he cut the guy’s cheek and almost broke his cheekbone. Took the guy right off his feet. He was trying to walk away when the guy tried to hit him, telling my son that he’d heard he “hits like a pussy.” My son picked him up off the street and asked him, “Still think I hit like a pussy?”
mrg3105, where did I say I debated? You missed my point, which is your point.
“So if a boxer finds himself in a street fight situation, he too is free of ring rules.”
I’m impressed. People usually think that boxers/ex-boxers are incapable of fighting outside the parameters of ring rules. Well, they’re not. I went in with this guy a couple years ago. He was a light heavyweight. He was amused that this old trainer volunteered to spar with him (there was no one to go in with him on this night as he arrived late). During the first round he attempted to slip under my punches and when he did so I by habit caught him with an elbow across the side of the head just behind his eye, right on the temple. Didn’t do so intentionally, it just happened. I’m impressed that you know this.
You mean May-never: “may never” fight Manny Pacquiao. Can’t stand him myself. Runs around instead of fighting, especially the last rounds if he knows he’s ahead on points. This is why he won’t fight Pacquiao, because he can’t match Pacquiao’s foot work. This is why Hatton lost. In amateur there is a rule that penalizes a fighter for being “non-combative”. They should apply this rule to Mayweather.
All non-boxers (whether Muslim or Christian or whatever they are) are out to prove something when they step into the ring. In most cases all they prove is that they have to “un-learn” all the bad habits they developed on the heavy bag in their basement. As Tyson said, “Everybody’s got a plan…until they get hit.”
I learned nothing by argument but only that those who are not Noachides now will not change their minds, no matter what the greatest Rabbi says to them. I read and I studied and I pondered and reflected and this is how I got to where I am today. That and a few digs across the ears from Jewish friends.
I agree with you: debate is a waste of time and not the ideal way to learn. “Cavil will enter at any hole.”
@ M Devolin:
As long as Jews on this board use foul and hateful language, they are a reproach to Jews, Judaism and the light of the world concept. Such language speaks of darkness in the heart, not light. Truly intelligent people need not speak nor write that way. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.
M Devolin Said:
M Devolin, where did I say DEBATE’.
Debates were forced on ‘Jews’ by the Christian Church in order to gain legitimacy.
It is one of the greatest misunderstandings that Torah learnign is based on ‘debating’, one perpetuated by the Greeks that in observing the ‘Jews’ missed the point.
The point of LEARNING-BY-ARGUMENT is to arrive at NEW DEPTH OF UNDERSTANDING.
Debating is not learning, but simply the juxtaposing of opinions. “Without data you’re just another person with an opinion” W. Edwards Deming
The Talmud is a collection of SHORTHAND recordings of such arguments, all connected into a single whole, but due to lack of appropriate technology, they are preserved in a document form. A 3D projection would have been better.
If HaZaL engaged in an argument, it was because it led to somewhere, and not for argument’s sake, or to prove how clever they were. People that call this ‘hair-splitting’ don’t really ‘get it’.
So when engaging in a ‘debate’ with a Christian or a Muslim, the point is to NOT allow them to use this debate to legitimise their opinions. In terms of boxing it works like this. I come to you and I say (hypothetically) “I had sparred with Witherspoon, and went all 10 rounds” and you will say WOW. What I omit though is that this was after his retirement, and he was just illustrating how to maintain breathing when faced with an opponent that is likely to last for ten rounds. No punches were thrown.
This is what Christian-‘Jewish’ debates were like. Often Christians would insist on not allowing use of oral tradition, which is also Torah. The written tradition is really just chapter headings, so HaZaL says we don’t derive halakha from written Torah just as no one reviews a book just from chapter headings.
Knowing the Christian and Muslim texts then becomes necessary because they are internally flawed. Its like a street fighter stepping into the ring with a professional boxer. He may be fit and knows how to throw a punch, but not by the rules. So if a boxer finds himself in a street fight situation, he too is free of ring rules. The point is, in a fight, no matter when or where, one always has to be ready. In this Floyd Mayweather Jr. is my ‘rabbi’ 🙂
In fact most Christian – Jewish ‘debates’ were not only forced in that they even took place, but also in content. Most could have been finished in minutes, but the Church also has this thing inherited from the Greeks called ‘oration’, where the length one speaks for is supposed to be an indication of value produced in the spoken word. Another Greek misunderstanding of Torah teaching methods.
And this is why HaZaL says “Know how to answer” R. Eliezer said: Be diligent to learn the Torah and know how to answer an Epikoros. R. Johanan commented: They taught this only with respect to a Gentile Epikoros; with a Jewish Epikoros, it would only make his heresy more pronounced. [Sanhedrin 38b]
The current use is ‘apicoris’ by the ‘orthodox’, but this is a play on the word Epicurians, who were Greek philosophers that argued human beings should have no constraints in their life. So the first ‘Christians’ were ‘Jews-by-birth’ and Greeks by culture-of-choice, and that should give you a bit more of an insight into Christianity.
So a street fighter (Muslim) that steps into the boxing ring is out to prove something, and the professional knows this, but a professional boxer (purportedly Christian) that does not fight by professional rules in the ring is a criminal.
The good part is that most Christians I think do not see themselves in this way at all. This is why people can make the comment ‘I like many Christians, but hate Christianity’. Most Christians, if allowed the education, would not continue to be Christians, and indeed this is how agnostics and atheists came to be. They however haven’t had the benefit of hearing the ‘Jewish’ side yet.
mrg3105 Said:
No they were very Jewish sources.
Why don’t you enlighten me my education is far from complete