I’m sure that once the sun sets, one of the more observant Hebrews will be here to correct you. They will point out that Jews are supposed to have a ‘special closeness to G-d’ and certain other bonuses.
Personally, I think we got the short end of the deal.
frankly, i hope after the sabbath, some more observant jews WILL chime in–i am really struggling to find the point in being jewish.
judaism is one of the religions i have the most respect for. they don’t typically have violent tendencies, the torah seems way less messed-around with than the christian bible, and there is a level of tolerance that i could really get on board with.
but if some hindu, christian, Buddhist, or just extremely kind, moral a-religious deist can go to ((whatever the concept of a positive afterlife jewish people believe in)), i fail to see the point of being jewish–especially when there are such strict limits placed on daily life and the sort.
this is a very new concept to me. as i said i grew up the son of a protestant christian pastor, so the idea of “salvation” is so engrained in me that i equate it as the point of all religions…
i sort of think all religions are variable human interpretations of how to achieve oneness with their God-model.
Some of us don’t believe anyone goes anywhere.
Rabbi Telushkin points out that no one has come back to tell us about it.
The thing to strive for is to make the world a better place.
I’m not too good at it. 
Telushkin’s Jewish Cultural Literacy is a fantastic book. It should answer most of your questions on Judaism. Telushkin also proved his intelligence by breaking down the book into sections ranging from half a page to three pages. I’d turn to my copy for some answers, but I loaned it to a friend.
There is no “point in being Jewish”. If you’re born of a Jewish mother, according to Halacha you are a Jew. You can’t stop being one. So you have a choice of being a good (better) Jew or a bad (worse) Jew - that is, fully observant, more observant or less observant (or completely non-observant) one.
Now, you may ask what’s the point of converting to Judaism. In my opinion, there is none. That is why we have to try to talk a convert out of his decision. Only if he seriously persists, he is allowed to convert.
If tomorrow I found out, from my mother, that I was adopted from a non-Jewish family and I am not Jewish, would I convert? No, I definitely wouldn’t. Why should I take on a burden of Judaism when I can be a perfectly good goy with no additional obligations?
one could make the same argument for any religion.
Even if one truly and earnestly believes that Judaism is The One True Faith, they are not required to convert. They may become Ben Noahide. Basically they say ‘I acknowledge Judaism as the OTF. But being Jewish is hard and I may do a bad job. Instead, I will just renounce my old faith and follow the Seven Laws Of Noah.’
You make it sound painless. And, were someone who did so were to have put it in your terms (the Noahide framework), that person would still “carry with him” a Jewish construct. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
I am very pleased with the tricky sequence of tenses in the second sentence. If only I could do that in Spanish.
The process is simple. I never meant to imply that it was easy. It IS easier than converting to Judaism. And while the person may carry a Jewish construct, they would not be a Jew.
Ask Nava.
I don’t think you can. You may have misunderstood - if I found out I was a goy, I would still think Judaism is “the true religion”. But according to that “true religion” I wouldn’t have to be Jewish and follow all the rituals in order to be a good person and, spiritually, be just as good as someone who is and does.
Seems to me that what one gets out of being Jewish more than any other religion is a feeling of participation in an long and unbroken narrative. It is a sense of authenticity, a connection with the ancient world. Jews were worrying about what it meant to be a Jew when most Europeans were running around painted blue with woad. 
Moreover, as a sort of dubious bonus, much of the world’s population is also obsessed with the Jewish narrative - though of course they consider themselves the inheritors of it. It is, for reasons I suppose of random survival, widely considered significant even by people who are not Jews. Other tribes of the time, and even great nations far more important in their day, are wholly forgotten. Who now remembers the Hittites?
It reminds me of a short story by Borges, in which a family was the inheritor of an ancient secret - the content of which they had long forgotten.
One of the most difficult things for those raised in a Christian cultural millieu to understand is the importance of ancestral ritual. Naturally enough, because Christianity is at least in part a reaction against that and makes a point of stating that ritual is empty and meaningless without belief and without “reward” in the form of salvation.
great point. i think that is why the american christian right is so terrified of liberalism and political correctness. they think when you don’t use the bible as the jumping off point for morality, there simply will not be any morality. they think “remove ‘God,’ and everyone is a heathen.” but that’s just silly–a lot of the ethical concepts of “right/wrong,” “good/evil” are universal across humanity and pertain to survival of our species. it actually really bothers me how much the semantics of specific religions can step all over that universal goodness, often leading to war and death (which is a fundamentally opposite approach to the survival of the species).
it is an idea very much in-line with your comment about needing the reward–otherwise, what’s the point?
this is kind of why i posted this in GD to start with, i had a feeling it’d get into a lot of editorializing (note: i just deleted about 3/4ths of what i just wrote to avoid TOO much editorializing since we are in GQ).
dontbesojumpy:
The point of being Jewish is to gain a better understanding of G-d, which is what the soul naturally yearns for. Being incarnated means that there is a physical aspect which pulls a person in the other direction. When a person has trained his nature to be more oriented toward his soul’s desires than toward his body’s desires, then the soul will have an easier time in its ultimate destination - the afterlife - than if it hasn’t been properly “attuned.” If one’s physical life is lived for the body rather than for the soul, then when the body dies, the soul, which remains, has a very difficult time adjusting to its new surroundings.
This, rather than Dante’s or Milton’s images of clouds and harps on one side and lava and pitchforks on the other, is Judaism’s view of heaven and hell. The imagery certainly has its origins in classical Judaism, but it is meant as a metaphor for children to understand, not as a genuine depiction of spiritual existence.
We do not believe that non-Jews cannot be bound for heaven. Non-Jews who live unselfish, spiritually focused lives (in the limited way required of them in the Jewish world-view) are certainly bound for a decent afterlife. What, then, is the point of being Jewish? We believe that the Torah is the way to be more finely attuned to the needs of the soul, to be specially close to G-d.
An illustration: Imagine that access to the goodness of G-d is a 220-volt electrical outlet, with three holes. A good non-Jew might be compared to a two-pronged plug, which fits well and can draw some degree of power from the outlet. However, accepting and fulfilling the covenant of the Torah adds the third prong to the plug, which allows a more complete experience. In this analogy, an evil person (whether Jewish or non-Jewish) might have deformed the prongs of their plugs during life, which would require being bent back into shape - quite painfully, for the plug - before it could be inserted into the socket at all.
But not on Shabbes, for the “evil” Jew. Unless QED.