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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Emile Vidrine who wrote (26301)	11/28/1998 7:34:00 PM
From: E	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 108807

A characteristic of individual religions is that they deny the validity of all other religions. As your post acknowledges, Jews developed a counter-myth of the Christianity that had come to be so cruelly oppressive to them. The real question is, how did this defensively-developed counter-myth about Christian origins translate into social action by Jews? It did not lead to pogroms, physical attacks, systematic humiliation, restrictions, or exclusions. The Talmud (there are actually two Talmuds) is hardly to be considered an authoritative document for Jews in the same way that the Bible is considered an authoritative document for Christians. The Talmud registers the results of discussions on points of Jewish history and law in which there is often a range of opinion presented, and no single conclusion held to be definitive. In any case, the gossip included in the Talmud about the character and origins of Jesus played no part in Jewish liturgy or practice. As to the perception within Judaism that Christians were idolators, one can certainly understand how, given the spectacular development of religious iconography in the Christian Church as it became powerful, such a perception might take hold. Again, the question is, what evidence is there that either of these notions translated into murderous actual, historical violence. There is none. Despite these notions about Christian idolatry and the supposed character of Jesus (on Jesus's parentage, unfortunately there is no birth certificate, but it would be hard to come up with a more indefensible theory than the one Christianity proposes) normative Judaism developed a social practice characterized by submissive non-confrontation toward those who exercised temporal power over them, however cruelly. 4. Judaism combined with nationalism and the holding of state power, which is represented by the state of Israel, leads to novel problems for believing Jews. Israel Shahak, whose work I know and admire, is troubled by the effect that the increase in Jewish fundamentalism has on the making of policy. That fundamentalism, Jewish fundamentalism, like the mirror-image fundamentalism you inhabit, leads to the introduction of irrational elements into the making of what should be rational policy. Shahak is an honorable man. If he knew the uses you were making of his work, he would be deeply distressed. [husb. talkin' -- E]