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Not a Children posted:I was raised conservative, wherein most people are for gay rights, but I did my birthright trip with an orthodox group. There, it was more like a "spiritual and community needs are a higher calling than physical urges. Refrain from homosexuality because it does not benefit the community and is explicitly prohibited by our holy books." They have no personal beef with it, but it's an immutable no to the more hardcore sects. Most Jews know that it is prohibited in the torah, and there is no real loophole that permits homosexuality, but in my experience it's seen as being approximately as bad as not keeping Kosher, i.e. not really so bad at all. Here is a take from one orthodox rabbi: Rabbi Avi Weiss posted:Over the years, I have met countless gay people and gay couples who live loving, exemplary lives. I know this firsthand as some are members of my synagogue. Of course, there are gay people who live unethical lives; this fact, however, is a reflection of their humanness, not their sexual orientation. The same is true for heterosexuals. And another: Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz, 2013 posted:Granting basic rights to the LGBT community is an issue of basic economic justice, legal equality, and human dignity. Traditional Jewish law has no established model for gay marriage, but this is an entirely separate matter. We have no right to coercively prevent, by force of civil law, an individual from enjoying true happiness and fulfilling their life potential when it poses no harm to any other. Our stance on religious law and our stance on political law are not intertwined. This is not about any particular religious rule or custom but about the grander ethos of the Torah. Denying gay people the right to marry is contrary to basic justice and therefore contrary to Jewish ethics. We must support all safe families for children and build our society around strong, loving homes. The Jewish tradition cherishes values of love, intimacy, family, and creating sacred homes where G-d can dwell and mandates that we support them. It is very important, imo, to recognize that Orthodox Judaism, especially within the US, is not homogeous. I think that a lot of secular Jews and non-Jews think that all orthodox Jews are hasidim or haredi. The terms modern orthodox, open orthodox or simply 'observant' have been adopted by some orthodox Jews to build distance away from the association with hasidic and haredi sects. I have talked with three of the orthodox rabbis in my area (Phoenix/Scottsdale, AZ) and all of them are receptive to converting atheists because 'everyone has their own starting point' and the commitment they all have made to be patient teachers striving to do good for their community and the world in which they live. The orthodox Jews in my area tend to be a lot more focused on positive social actions with less of an emphasis on the (controversial) topics that more secular Jews seem to cleave to (mostly the Protect Are Gun Rights/Freedom and reactionary, rabid Zionism/support for military action against civilians, etc). As a socialist I feel much more at home politically when interacting with Conservative, Orthodox/Modern Orthodox and some hasidic folks; the congregation that I spend holidays with is a mix of families and individuals that range from being very loosely observant Conservative Jews with some people leaning more towards being 'Conservadox '. The belief in a literal supernatural deity ranges from 'Yes, of course', to people that are atheists that are practicing religious rituals as a social/cultural gesture of solidarity and/or are affiliated with Humanistic Judaism. My very, very basic observation/stereotype is that secular American Jews are bonded together, and identify as Jewish, more based on trauma bonding/post-memory of atrocities committed against Jews in the Holocaust and focus on preventing another genocide at any cost, while many of the more observant Jews that I know focus more heavily on actively repairing the damage done to the world (Tikkun olam).
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# ? Jul 18, 2015 02:41 |
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# ? Apr 27, 2024 08:05 |
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Cuddly Tumblemumps posted:Here is a take from one orthodox rabbi: I respect your viewpoint since I was raised in a "Conservadox" (A theological mixture of adapting to the current world "Conservative" and retaining Biblical Law "Orthodox") family. However, I have always struggled with the concept of Tikkun Olam - repairing the world. I try to contribute to acts of Tzedakah - loving kindness, doing what is just and contributing to charity. The world can be improved, but I have never understood how it is inherently broken or flawed. Tikkun Olam has always seemed to me a Kabbalist teaching that G-D lost power or was reduced through creating the Universe - making a "broken" world. Enophos fucked around with this message at 07:12 on Jul 19, 2015 |
# ? Jul 19, 2015 06:02 |
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Enophos posted:Tikkun Olam has always seemed to me a Kabbalist teaching that G-D lost power or was reduced through creating the Universe - making a "broken" world. Is this like a Demiurge type of thing?
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# ? Jul 19, 2015 09:23 |
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OK, I gotta ask. Why no eating of live animals? Is it a rule against cruelty and sadism or just a public health law?
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# ? Jul 19, 2015 14:33 |
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Animal-Mother posted:Is this like a Demiurge type of thing? No, not really. From what I recall, at the creation of the world, God created ten pure vessels to contain the Divine Light. However, the vessels shattered, spreading sparks of the Light all over the world. The act of repairing the world, Tikkun Olam, helps gather the sparks, and when the sparks are all gathered, the Messiah will come. There's probably more to this story (Kabbalah, like much mysticism, is pretty weird and complex), but I don't remember much more. It's worth pointing out that the blossoming of Kabbalistic teachings generally comes after a community suffers a great tragedy; it first emerged in Jewish thought after the Spanish exile. Likewise, Chasidism (also associated with Kabbalah), showed up about a century after the Shmeilnitski massacres. So this branch of thought is influenced by Jewish communities looking for answers after a tragedy, where traditional thought did't seem to provide much of an answer. So why do bad things happen to good people? Because the world is broken. Go fix it. On a more general level, Judaism heavily emphasizes charitable work, so the concept of Tikkun Olam fits very nicely into traditional thoughts. I've heard plenty of Jews use the term/concept in order to talk about charity and good works in a context separate from the Kabbalistic meaning. waitwhatno posted:OK, I gotta ask. Why no eating of live animals? Is it a rule against cruelty and sadism or just a public health law? The Bible says so.
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# ? Jul 20, 2015 02:52 |
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Hey guys. Raised Orthodox, currently still nominally Orthodox in practice but very distant personally. I'd like to toss my hat in on a few things.Obdicut posted:You've really got to clarify what form of "Jew" you're talking about. OP is Reform. Reform Judaism has actively campaigned for gay rights, mostly. Orthodox are just flat against it. Conservatives are divided. For atheism, it's much the same. Orthodox are also not tolerant of homosexuality in 'others', either, really. I think what you might be getting at is that even among orthodox Jews, there's a pretty strong level of support for separation of church and state, but that's pragmatic--that Orthodox Jews are not, nor will be, in the majority in the US. Enophos posted:Stoning faded out over time after the destruction of Judea. Jews have traditionally lived according to the laws of the nations they reside in and this punishment has disappeared in most of the world. I am not aware of any modern cases, but Jews who live in countries that still allow stoning might in theory still practice it. (There's also a discussion in the Talmud where several opinions are put forth on how often a court should kill people - one says that one capital punishment over seventy years is considered unacceptably "destructive".)
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# ? Jul 20, 2015 16:10 |
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waitwhatno posted:OK, I gotta ask. Why no eating of live animals? Is it a rule against cruelty and sadism or just a public health law? Traditionally there are three types of Mitzvah (singular Mitzvot) or commandments in the Torah: 1. Those with an explicit reason given. 2. Those with a reason that can be inferred. 3. Those with a reason known only to G-D. This Mitzvot is probably of the second type. It could be inferred as stemming from a health reason (raw meat contains diseases) or a compassionate reason (unnecessary suffering to a creature), but no reason is given in the text.. Enophos fucked around with this message at 03:46 on Jul 21, 2015 |
# ? Jul 21, 2015 03:34 |
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theshim posted:Hey guys. Raised Orthodox, currently still nominally Orthodox in practice but very distant personally. I'd like to toss my hat in on a few things. Well, as I said, there's still very strong support for separation of church and state, which equates out to gay rights and equality. However, I don't know any Orthodox who believe that homosexual behavior is fine, any more than I know any orthodox who believe adultery is fine. I'm not saying that they want the state to repress it, but I do not think there is any sort of common idea in Orthodox Judaism that gay behavior is sanctioned. For some wonderful rabbinical-style hair splitting, here's the The Gay and Lesbian Yeshiva Day School Alumni Association's take on it, which basically says that the prohibition against gay sex amounts to a prohibition against anal. http://www.orthogays.org/faq.html#q_torah
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# ? Jul 21, 2015 15:30 |
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Last Buffalo posted:I don't think Sephardim ever suffered discrimination from other Jews in America. If anything it was the other way around. From what I know, the first communities in America were Sephardim. A lot of them came to America and Israel after the 1960s when most of the Muslim world's Jewish communists were no longer welcome. As a Sephardim and one on the more brown desert-people side of things, I can assure you this is categorically false when it comes to the Ashkenazim. Like, my father, an Ashkenazi Jew, had major problems trying to find a Hebrew School that would take me in Suburban New York back in the 1980's which led to me never having my Bar Mitzvah. TyroneGoldstein fucked around with this message at 16:34 on Jul 21, 2015 |
# ? Jul 21, 2015 16:31 |
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Enophos posted:Traditionally there are three types of Mitzvah (singular Mitzvot) Enophos posted:This Mitzvot Mitzvah is singular, mitzvot is plural
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# ? Jul 23, 2015 23:41 |
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Somewhat related: http://petapixel.com/2015/07/23/photographs-of-orthodox-jewish-culture-in-israel/
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# ? Jul 28, 2015 13:28 |
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Haledjian posted:Mitzvah is singular, mitzvot is plural Huh, thanks - good catch. I've been making this mistake for years.
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# ? Aug 1, 2015 05:40 |
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TyroneGoldstein posted:As a Sephardim and one on the more brown desert-people side of things, I can assure you this is categorically false when it comes to the Ashkenazim. I'm Sephardic and have seen that most of my Jewish friends and colleges in the U.S. assume that Ashkenasi traditions are the most "correct." I find this strange since the Ashkenazi tradition is rooted in European culture. Not to take anything away from the Jewish experience in Europe, but I can't understand how it can be seen as the most "authentic" since it incorporates centuries of cultural traditions alien to the Jews of Levanite.
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# ? Aug 1, 2015 05:53 |
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Shanah Tovah (happy new year 5776) to all who read this thread!
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# ? Sep 18, 2015 02:27 |
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I know almost nothing about Jewish mythology. Can anyone tell me about golems and the dozen righteous men who exist at any one time who convince the creator to not destroy the world? And Lilith and any other Old Testament apocrypha, which I'm assuming is Jewish in origin?
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# ? Sep 18, 2015 16:08 |
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it's beautiful to be a jew
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# ? Sep 20, 2015 12:46 |
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What are your experiences of people trying to convert you to Christianity, If you tell them you are Jewish do they kind of awkwardly say goodbye or does that make them even more interested in converting you? What do you think of the Kimberley Plan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimberley_Plan ? What other unusual plans did the Jewish Community have after WW2? What do you think of Australia? Have you ever eaten something non-kosher offered to you at a party or something because you wanted to avoid causing offence/awkwardness? Avshalom posted:it's beautiful to be a jew Hi Avshalom
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# ? Sep 25, 2015 03:58 |
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What do you think of the Madagascar Plan, OP? Would it have been a preferable alternative to the Holocaust?
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# ? Sep 28, 2015 02:00 |
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Noctis Horrendae posted:What do you think of the Madagascar Plan, OP? Would it have been a preferable alternative to the Holocaust? What kind of question is that? What do you think the SS would have done with the Malagasy people that were already...you know...living on the island considering it was their homeland? So I think a better way to phrase the question would be: "Would the extermination of several million other people be worth it to avoid the holocaust?" lovely question. Get lost.
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# ? Sep 28, 2015 16:14 |
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Is there any out and out violent conflict between Ashkenazi and Sephardi groups or is everyone generally fairly chill even if they do look down on one group or the other? Like as a Muslim (and even just as someone who knows about history) I know that poo poo between the Sunni and Shi'a has gotten nasty at times and ISIS has more or less murdered Shi'a for being Shi'a. For practicing and non-practicing Jews, have you been to Israel and if so what was it like for you personally? Like in the Islam thread I and others have mentioned what people have said about the community feeling of Hajj and how it's so amazing to be around so many Muslims especially if you're from a non-Muslim-dominant place like the US or Europe. Was it the same thing? Was it more than you thought/less than you thought? I'm really curious about this as none of the people I know personally who are Jewish by religion/history have been to Israel.
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# ? Sep 28, 2015 16:20 |
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Tendai posted:Is there any out and out violent conflict between Ashkenazi and Sephardi groups or is everyone generally fairly chill even if they do look down on one group or the other? Like as a Muslim (and even just as someone who knows about history) I know that poo poo between the Sunni and Shi'a has gotten nasty at times and ISIS has more or less murdered Shi'a for being Shi'a. Sephardim and Ashkenazim isn't like the difference between Shi'a and Sunni which is a religious distinction within Islam. It's more of an ethno-geographic distinction, Sephardim being people's from the Iberian peninsula and North Africa, and Ashkenazim from Europe. The differences are mostly traditions, and customs as opposed to religious differences. No one hates the other really and plenty of Sephardim and Ashkenazim intermarry. The closest "comparison" that would be similar to Shi'a/Sunni would be that between Judaism and Samaritanism. But even that's not really a great comparison.
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# ? Sep 28, 2015 16:43 |
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Oh, cool, thank you for answering! I knew it was more geographical than anything but I wasn't aware how deep the divide ran if at all. Now I have to go read about Samaritanism because I haven't ever seen that before.
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# ? Sep 28, 2015 16:51 |
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I have a question that just came up as I was making a post, since I don't know who reads what threads I'll post it here because I'm really kind of curious as to the answer: In Islam, the search for knowledge is an obligation according to many scholars. It's pointed out in the Qur'an, it's pointed out in the hadith, it's basically a pretty unshakable tenet of the faith. In a lot of writings about it there's the implication that one isn't truly faithful unless they're trying to seek knowledge, and somebody who is, is seen as being a fuller practitioner of the faith: "A person setting forth for the acquisition of knowledge is like the one who struggles in the way of Allah." So my question is, is that onus applied in Judaism as well? Obviously knowledge is a good thing, but the explicit nature of "learn about things and know things, shitlords, or you're not being as good a Muslim as you should" in Islam isn't something I remember from reading the Old Testament or what I've read about Judaism (that could also be my notoriously poo poo memory). I'm curious as to whether it's considered as essential a part of being a "good" member of the religion as it is in Islam.
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# ? Oct 1, 2015 15:23 |
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TyroneGoldstein posted:What kind of question is that? The real question is - could the island of Madagascar feasibly sustain six million Jews?
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# ? Oct 2, 2015 03:01 |
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Noctis Horrendae posted:The real question is - could the island of Madagascar feasibly sustain six million Jews? According to Wikipedia, the current population of Madagascar is over 22 million, so I'm going to take a wild guess and say "yes."
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# ? Oct 2, 2015 18:08 |
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Tendai posted:Is there any out and out violent conflict between Ashkenazi and Sephardi groups or is everyone generally fairly chill even if they do look down on one group or the other? Like as a Muslim (and even just as someone who knows about history) I know that poo poo between the Sunni and Shi'a has gotten nasty at times and ISIS has more or less murdered Shi'a for being Shi'a. To expand on SeaWolf's answer--it can get a little muddled because typically "Sephardi" refers to Spanish/North African Jews and "Mizrahi" to Middle Eastern Jews, but in Israel "Sephardi" is often used to refer to anyone who's not Ashkenazi (including Mizrahim). Early Ashkenazi settlers in Israel definitely imported a fair amount of cultural prejudice and there are lasting effects today--Mizrahi Jews tend to occupy lower economic strata and are less represented at high levels of government--but they're diminishing fairly rapidly. And like SeaWolf said there's a lot of intermarriage. Outside of Israel I think it's less of an issue. Here's a good video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm2h5P7LPgE Haledjian fucked around with this message at 19:26 on Oct 2, 2015 |
# ? Oct 2, 2015 19:23 |
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I had read a little in various histories and historical fiction books like Michener about the economic situation and a little bit of the social friction in the 20 years or so after Israel's official founding, I wasn't sure how deep the division actually ran in today's Judaism or Israeli society. Thank you for the detailed answers, I'd never heard about Mizrahim before or how that further division plays into things.
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# ? Oct 2, 2015 19:31 |
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PT6A posted:According to Wikipedia, the current population of Madagascar is over 22 million, so I'm going to take a wild guess and say "yes." You're not getting the implied joke, and that makes me sad.
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# ? Oct 3, 2015 20:24 |
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How the poo poo do you go from "do not cook a kid in its mothers milk" to "construct your entire dietary system around a strict separation of all meat products from all milk products, up to, including, and beyond having separate dish sets for each"? I know the Ethiopian Jews are just like... "k, we won't cook kids in their mothers milk. If we want to be extra-extra strict about that poo poo, we won't cook goats in milk, period".Tendai posted:
Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rywVlfTtlMY Xander77 fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Oct 5, 2015 |
# ? Oct 5, 2015 19:09 |
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Xander77 posted:The (or at least a) a point of the "Good Samaritan" allegory is "out with the old ethno-religious divides, in with the new all-embracing order. Cohens and Levis can (and often are, specifically due to the limitations of the old code) be terrible people, while Samaritans - your traditional enemies - may well save you".
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# ? Oct 5, 2015 19:41 |
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Xander77 posted:How the poo poo do you go from "do not cook a kid in its mothers milk" to "construct your entire dietary system around a strict separation of all meat products from all milk products, up to, including, and beyond having separate dish sets for each"? I know the Ethiopian Jews are just like... "k, we won't cook kids in their mothers milk. If we want to be extra-extra strict about that poo poo, we won't cook goats in milk, period". Basically it comes from there being the written and the oral Torah. The written Torah is what most people know, but the oral Torah is considered just as important. The oral Torah is like case law for the legislation that is the written Torah. So from don't cook a kid in its mother's milk, you get a whole bunch of things about how you're supposed to respect an animals life, and eating meat (dead animal) at the same time as milk (life giving substance) is disrespectful, and you shouldn't combine them in a meal. Kashrut also has a ton more laws to it regarding what you can and can't eat and how to properly cleanse eating materials. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashrut
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# ? Oct 5, 2015 20:14 |
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Jewcoon posted:Basically it comes from there being the written and the oral Torah. The written Torah is what most people know, but the oral Torah is considered just as important. The oral Torah is like case law for the legislation that is the written Torah. So from don't cook a kid in its mother's milk, you get a whole bunch of things about how you're supposed to respect an animals life, and eating meat (dead animal) at the same time as milk (life giving substance) is disrespectful, and you shouldn't combine them in a meal. Kashrut also has a ton more laws to it regarding what you can and can't eat and how to properly cleanse eating materials. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashrut quote:Since the Book of Genesis refers to young goats by the Hebrew phrase g'di izim,[18] but the prohibition against boiling a kid... only uses the term g'di (גדי), Rashi, one of the most prominent talmudic commentators, argued that the term g'di must actually have a more general meaning, including calves and lambs, in addition to young goats.[19] Rashi also argued that the meaning of g'di is still narrow enough to exclude birds, all the undomesticated kosher animals (for example, chevrotains and antelope), and all of the non-kosher animals.[20] The Talmudic writers had a similar analysis,[21] but believed that since domesticated kosher animals (sheep, goats, and cattle) have similar meat to birds and to the non-domestic kosher land-animals, they should prohibit these latter meats too,[22] creating a general prohibition against mixing milk and meat from any kosher animal, excepting fish.[23]
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# ? Oct 5, 2015 20:23 |
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What are some funny and/or cool things people here have said to Lubavitchers to get them to go away? I live not too far from their headquarters in Crown Heights and I don't always have a snappy remark at the ready. Nothing mean, please- as far as ultra-Orthodox Jews go, they're not bad. The other day, I told a couple of them "don't talk to me please" and they just smiled and said "have a nice day." I guess they're used to it. I used to walk through their part of the neighborhood to get to my now-ex's place. At first I was afraid I'd get mobbed by questions because I wasn't wearing the proper ultra-Orthodox attire, but I can count on one hand the amount of times I was asked if I was Jewish. Why are they not as aggressive in their own turf? Not a Children posted:Judaism, as a rule, is not compatible with atheism.
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# ? Oct 6, 2015 11:32 |
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A Strange Aeon posted:I know almost nothing about Jewish mythology. Can anyone tell me about golems and the dozen righteous men who exist at any one time who convince the creator to not destroy the world? And Lilith and any other Old Testament apocrypha, which I'm assuming is Jewish in origin? Most apocrypha is Christian/Gnostic in origins. Lilith is straight up apocrypha and non-canonical in both the Christian and Jewish traditions. If you want to set up a musical festival or start a White Wolf campaign around Lilith then go for it. Nobody outside some confused Wiccans and chicks who haven't shaved their legs in the past 20 years, but I repeat myself, think Lilith is actually a thing. thrakkorzog fucked around with this message at 12:09 on Oct 6, 2015 |
# ? Oct 6, 2015 12:03 |
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Y-Hat posted:
Eh. Depends on what you mean by "Jewish". I'm an atheist, but I'm ethnically/culturally Ashkenazi Jewish. If anyone's singing all the words at the Passover seder it's going to be me. But that's because I enjoy singing and it's part of my tradition (and because I learned all the words at school), not because I'm a believer.
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# ? Oct 6, 2015 12:20 |
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Y-Hat posted:
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# ? Oct 6, 2015 13:04 |
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# ? Apr 27, 2024 08:05 |
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Jewcoon posted:Basically it comes from there being the written and the oral Torah. The written Torah is what most people know, but the oral Torah is considered just as important. The oral Torah is like case law for the legislation that is the written Torah. So from don't cook a kid in its mother's milk, you get a whole bunch of things about how you're supposed to respect an animals life, and eating meat (dead animal) at the same time as milk (life giving substance) is disrespectful, and you shouldn't combine them in a meal. Kashrut also has a ton more laws to it regarding what you can and can't eat and how to properly cleanse eating materials. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashrut A few of my friends observe some Jewish customs along with their Christianity, and I've never really felt any need for them. This really makes sense to me, though, and I thank you for sharing it.
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# ? Oct 7, 2015 03:41 |