Naw, even religious battles never descend to that level of sheer mutual hatred. :eek:
Sincere question - which came first, the Jewish religion or culture?
Certainly. There are plenty of tribal and clan type rivalries brewing to keep the place on a low simmer of violence even if you take religion completely out of the equation. Then you have all the rivalries and tensions at the nationalistic level, as nation states (which were in many cases artificial constructs to begin with) vie for regional dominance. Finally you have the fact that the region is considered to be of strategic importance on a global level, and I don’t see how there could NOT be violence there.
So yeah…taking away religion would only lower the violence level a bit. Even taking away the oil and strategic location would only lower it to a certain level. You’d still have those tribal and factional tensions, as well as the tensions from the regional nation states bubbling away.
-XT
The conglomerated phenomena which we identify as modern Jewish culture has several points of (no pun intended) genesis. In Europe during the middle ages during the days of the ghettos, moneylenders, forced conversions and expulsions. In eastern Europe during the pogroms and the days of shtetls and the rise of the Soviet Union. In western Europe during the Dreyfus Affair and the pervasive climate of racism. In America during the days of the Borscht Belt and collegiate quotas for Jews, and so on.
The religion (basically) dates back millenia with variations of course down through the ages.
I’d say the culture.
If you read the Torah, it is pretty obvious (to the extent the document has historical content) that “Judaism” the religion was involved in a struggle for centuries with non-“Jewish” religious elements - hence, all of those Israelite kings castigated for “backsliding” and “hankering after foreign gods”.
What seems likely is that originally the Jewish god was simply one tribal deity among many, and that over the centuries its cult became more & more powerful among the tribes that already identified as “hebrew” based on common language and cultural origins, so as to displace all other cults, and become the strict monotheism that has been so influential.
The process was by no means painless, and the losers feature prominently in the OT as villians.
I’d have to disagree… and agree. (I think that’s an example of Jewish culture.)
In any case, yes, to the extent that we can take the Tanakh as historical writings, it would seem that there was a tribal identity that was often not a 1:1 correlation with the religious identity. In that context there was something approximating a ‘Jewish culture’, but I’d argue that the Jewish ethnic identity came first, and then the cultural/religious tangle came next.
But even then, Jewish culture[sub]500 BCE[/sub] is not the same sort of Jewish culture[sub]1940 CE[/sub], but the religion stayed pretty much intact. So if we’re talking about Jewish culture in general, it’s arguable that it came before the religion. But if we’re talking about modern Jewish culture, then the religion came first. Unless we’re talking about Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism too, and then all bets are off. 
Yeah, that’s fair enough.
Modern Judaism quite clearly was originally based on a Jewish religious identity that formed in antiquity (or more precisely, on the triumph of the rabbinnical branch of Judaism following the Roman destruction of the Temple). That formation, though, was not straightforward and most likely a tribal/ethnic identity preceded it.
I would expect a sharp decline in suicide bombing.
Only for the last 1,400 years or so. Before that, Egyptians weren’t Arabs.
Gotta say my interpretation is closer to FinnAgain’s. I mean, if we go far enough the first “Jew” was someone who came out - or was planning to leave - Africa. But until whatever Middle Eastern tribe identified themselves as God’s chosen people and decided to follow his “laws”, I think it stretches things to identify those tribal members as “Jews.”
It always confuses me a little bit as to what Jews consider culture as opposed to religion. What Jewish cultural practices do not have their origins in some historical religious beliefs and practices?
Sorry if my questions are hijacking this thread.
This confusion comes from viewing Jews through a cultural lens created by Christianity, in which religious belief is central to self-identification as “Christian”. It isn’t so with Jews.
Jews are more a creature of laws, rituals and traditions - which have a religious origin it is true, but which can be followed even by folks who have no belief in God whatsoever.
Take holidays for example. Many of these celebrate more-or-less historical incidents albeit in some cases mythological, like Passover, Hanukkah and Purim. While these all have a sort-of religious gloss, the events being celebrated - liberation (of the hebrews) from Egyptian slavery, tossing-out the evil Macedonian Selucids, and a an Israelite concubine hotty saving the Jews from your original evil Persian Grand Visir, respectively - aren’t, particularly. They are above all national celebrations.
Yeah, but if these laws, rituals, and traditions did not arise from their religious origins - i.e., if there were no religion - then there wouldn’t be any Jewish culture for folk to “secularly” follow these days, no? So I have a hard time getting my mind around someone claiming the practices they are celebrating/following/honoring are not religious - at least in origin.
I was raised Catholic. I have issues with Christmas, but am able to point to clear pre-Christian antecedents, as well as arguable widespread secular aspects. In my mind, tho, what I celebrate at the end of December is primarily the solstice. And my x-mas is about santa and good will, rather than a supposed miraculous birth.
But Easter is a lot tougher to try to view as a pagan spring celebration. And if I said I was giving something up for “Lent” just to respect my family’s culture, I think I’d be disingenuous if I tried to attribute that to anything other than religion.
That’s just the point - Christianity is impossible to imagine without the “religion”. It is fundamentally different from Judaism in this respect.
Judaism is a tribal or national affiliation. While it is of course heavily identified with the Jewish God (in particular, because the Jewish scriptures were so influential on Christianity and Islam), it would remain a tribal or national affiliation even if that God didn’t exist - although in all probability it may have died out or become absorbed into other tribes or nations along the way.
Look at it this way. Being “Greek” rather than being “Turkish” has as much to do with religion than ethnicity these days - many inhabitants of what is now “Turkey” are, in ancestry, Greek, as what is now Turkey used to be part of the Byzantine Empire; they were converted to Islam. However, it is perfectly possible to imagine there being a “Greek” people, even if Christianity had never existed.
Similarly, it is perfectly possible (however historically unlikely) to imagine a Jewish people without belief in a Jewish God. The fact that there are many, many self-identified Jewish atheists sort of demonstrates that fact.
Sometimes human beings join together into groups just so they can join together into groups - for the purpose of mutual identity, mutual protection and a sense of belonging. What, really, do you have in common with other members of your family? Isn’t it nothing more than “families look after each other”, and without a family, there would be no-one to look after you?
There’s a Hebrew saying, “All Jews bear responsibility for one another”. I think people identify themselves as Jews so that someone will be responsible for them.
Wait. YOU’RE JEWISH?
Funny…
Yes, there is.
Fifty years ago virtually all the governments in the Middle East were strictly secular. The more radical strains of Islam that are now producing terrorists barely existed at that time. The proto-typical Arab government would be Nasser’s government in Egypt, which had nothing but enmity for Islamic religious movements.
Yet neither Nasser nor any other Arab leader had any hesitation about going to war with Israel.
No need. It’s an excuse to cook up a glazed ham and the next day buy up a bunch of candy at half price.
I appreciate your efforts, Malthus, but I still don’t get it. Unlike Judaism, neither Greeks nor Turks historically based their cohesiveness on a religious practice.
At what point in history do you believe a significant percentage of Jews abandoned the religious part? My suspicion (with no cites) is that it occurred somewhat recently - after the majority of Jews had existed as a religious community for at least a millenium or more.
I think the claim that taking religion out of the picture wouldn’t mean much because other factors would just fill in the gap is wrong. You can negotiate with individuals, small groups, political parties and even governments, but, for the most part, you cannot negotiate with gods. Eternal bliss and eternal damnation-what the hell can someone bring to the table to counter those offers? Even threats of death don’t matter to True Believers.
Neither side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict originally based their position on religion, yet it has proved a most intractible problem.