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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: D. Long who wrote (590273)	12/29/2015 12:49:08 PM
From: Sdgla	Respond to of 793914

The reason for that restriction is not the cud chewing it is eating bodily waste. Purely hygienic.

To: D. Long who wrote (590273)	12/29/2015 2:18:50 PM
From: Stan	1 Recommendation Recommended By skinowski Respond to of 793914

It's true many Rabbis argued endlessly over such things, but they missed the forest for the trees - a disservice to their charge. These laws were not as arbitrary as it might seem. Many of the Torah's 613 laws that dealt with physical items such as food, clothing or washings were parabolic, not just busy work. The idea was to teach spiritual truths by constant daily examples from life. What's more constant in life than food and clothing? It's a great way to reinforce things you want to teach. For example, chewing the cud could stand for meditating on God's law over and over until the soul was able to discern and comply with things the first 'chewing' couldn't assimilate. Cloven feet stood for standing firm on one's convictions. Kosher animals' diets were vegetation, bloodless, a reminder of Paradise. Pigs ate anything - showing, figuratively, a lack of distinguishing between things. Their cloven feet showed they were 'firm' in their 'unclean' ways. Rabbits chewed the cud but were not firm in their footing - educated but a pushover. Put these things together they would have a strong meaning for the observer - if they had a mind to - a big "if." But, probably the biggest thing they were to learn from these 'kosher' ordinances was to make distinctions - what's acceptable, and what's to be rejected, IOW, clean vs. unclean. But all people must learn such things. What's a political ideology all about? - making a distinction about what works in society best, clean vs unclean. So, it's not all that far-fetched. If you want to be sure-footed, be so on what's best, not on what's bad - so sheep were used for the former, pig for the latter. Parents and teachers use all kind of methods - many of them parabolic - to get their points across. Kids need to learn to make distinctions about all kinds of things in life. So do students, soldiers, apprentices. Actually no one's ever too old to learn. Sometimes some simple thing in life gets across a profound truth no other way ever does. We've all had experiences like that, I'm sure.

To: D. Long who wrote (590273)	12/29/2015 3:17:10 PM
From: alanrs	1 Recommendation Recommended By robert a belfer Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793914

I thought it was based on a pig parasite, mysterious at the time but with identifiable symptoms, but I might be wrong. Wikipedia probably knows. ARS

To: D. Long who wrote (590273)	12/31/2015 8:12:34 AM
From: Pogeu Mahone	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793914

The Jews realized the importance of hygiene Circumcision HALVES the risk of STDs by reducing levels of bacteria that cause infectionsStudy shows circumcision is the more hygienic option Procedure is thought to work because it dramatically reduces growth of bacteria on the penisBy RACHEL REILLY PUBLISHED: 22:00 EST, 15 April 2013 \| UPDATED: 01:38 EST, 16 April 2013 135 View comments Circumcision offers protection against HIV and other viruses because bacteria cannot multiply under the foreskin, a study has found. It has been known for some time that circumcision reduces the risk of sexually transmitted diseases such as genital warts and herpes, but until now, experts were not entirely sure why. Scientists now think that the surgical procedure drastically alters the living conditions for microorganisms that live on the penis. Tradition: Circumcision is a rite of passage in Jewish culture This in turn reduces the risk of catching HIV or other sexually-transmitted diseases by over half. Lead researcher Dr Lance Price and his colleagues at George Washington University set out to determine whether circumcision significantly alters bacteria growth on the penis. The research, published in the American Society for Microbiology, used swab samples from a large circumcision trial in Uganda. Share The scientists compared samples from uncircumcised men with samples from circumcised men that were taken both before the procedure and one year later. One year after having undergone the procedure, the total bacterial load had dropped significantly and the prevalence of anaerobic bacteria – organisms which thrive in locations with limited oxygen – declined. Dr Price said: ‘The change … is dramatic. From an ecological perspective, it's like rolling back a rock and seeing the ecosystem change. Undergoing the procedure reduces the risk of contracting the HIV virus (pictured) by half 'You remove the foreskin and you're increasing the amount of oxygen, decreasing the moisture - we're changing the ecosystem.' Future studies plan to further investigate precisely how the penis' living conditions affects HIV transmission by studying links between changes in the conditions and cytokine responses, signalling mechanisms that can activate the immune system. Dr Price added: 'The work that we're doing, by potentially revealing the underlying biological mechanisms, could reveal alternatives to circumcision that would have the same biological impact. ' Read more: dailymail.co.uk Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter \| DailyMail on Facebook