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To: Poet who wrote (7963)	4/9/2002 6:43:16 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21057

Message 17307421

To: Poet who wrote (7963)	4/9/2002 6:54:23 PM
From: Solon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 21057

You are well aware of my opposition to racism, slavery, misogyny, and other violations of human rights and decency. A number of posts ago, I mentioned that many religions had a component of racial favoritism within them. This, of course, has been researched and understood since scholarship took her first steps. He denied that the Old Testament had any racism, thus impugning either my character, or my honesty. I asked him several times to leave it alone. I did not wish to drag any of the racist people on other threads back into the limelight. He refused to leave it alone, and continued to debate what he knew was unquestioned: that the Jewish bible is about the special status of Jews; it is THE Jewish religion. Judaism does not recognize anything in the New Testament, which is fine. I state that so there is no misunderstanding as to what we were discussing...entirely against my will, as I said 3 times to him). Rather than either debate the issue decently, or leave it alone as I asked him to...he indulged in one of his favourite things. He prepared about 6 or 7 silly posts so as to overwhelm me with silliness. When I responded with the facts, he recognized immediately that his gambit had been called and had failed (I suppose he hoped or thought me a fool), and he immediately responded with a racial slur against me...referring to me as a person who is antipodal to semites. I will not qualify intellectual honesty except in the most intimate and personal circumstances. I am certainly not intimate with Neo, and I will not permit him (in declaiming to me) to play with facts as if they were unimportant.

To: Poet who wrote (7963)	4/10/2002 10:50:55 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 21057

It is very simple. Belaboring an untenable thesis, to wit, that Judaism is racially based, shows a particular animus. First, the concept of race has no place in the primitive tribalism of the early Bible. Abraham, for example, is from Ur of the Chaldeans, and the various wives that marry Isaac and Jacob are drawn from outside his entourage or any collateral tribes. The kind of ethnicity denoted by being the Children of Israel is not hardened into a notion of race. Second, in various instances, the early Israelites embraced those not of their lineage, as in the Book of Ruth. Third, Job is about a pious Gentile, who is commended for his faith, and the Rabbis praise the Noahides, and consider them worthy of heaven, thus showing that one need not even conform to the cult, much less be of the blood, to be deemed righteous. Fourth, Prophetic Judaism puts forth an image of all nations being at peace, worshipping the One God. Fifth, Judaism speaks highly of proselytes, and there were many conversions during the Hellenistic and early Roman period, including the "half- converts" known as the God- fearers. Sixth, looking at historical Jewish communities, one sees that intermarriage was common, such that Jews in Ethiopia became black, Jews in India (originally Portugese) took on the physical characteristics of the South Asians, and Jews from China (again, originally Portugese) ended up looking Chinese. Again, if Judaism were racially based, none of this would happen. To my mind, no one can grind such an axe against Judaism unless he has a particular contempt for Jews.