I’m not sure that’s true… I’m trying to remember something I think Zev posted once - someone did, anyway - but wasn’t all teaching among ancient Hebrews done orally? Jews are still not supposed to write god’s name, which I remember being explained as a carry-over from that time.
ouisey:
I’d ask them if they had ever read the old testament. The Jews did a whole lot of killing every man woman and suckling child, or so they claim.
Well, the OP did say “recent history”. And if you read the Old Testament, there were actually rules governing warfare and the conquering of other tribes – reading between the lines, I get the impression that these rules are relatively humane * for the time and place *.
Yes and no. The Torah consists of two parts, the Written Torah (i.e. the Pentatuch) and the Oral Torah (which eventually evolved into the Talmud). While the Talmud was taught orally for many generations, one was still required to be able to read and write so that you could follow the Written Torah.
Zev Steinhardt
Finagle:
He said that the Jews haven’t had any power in recent years not that this was the only period he was interested in. My point is that back when they did have power they did commit atrocities on par with any other religion and actually brag about it in their religious text thus giving them no moral high ground.
Bullshit. Slaying entire cities including the women and children as you capture the territory isn’t humane. Neither is running the inhabitants down and killing them as they try to escape into the wilderness. Taking captured inhabitants and torturing them by having them sawed up, torn to pieces by iron harrows and baked in brick kilns as King David did to the people of Rabbah isn’t “relatively humane” compared to any time and place I can think of.
This is not a thread to discuss the Palestinian issue, but what makes you think that virtually every Palestinian woman can read anyway, despite being quite poor there among one of the best educated populations in the region.
What do you mean by Superior?
That their religion is the only “TRUE” religion?
Or that they are good business people, who are clanish and
stick together? Because they educate their young?
I don’t like the term Superior, when used in the text of people,
or religions, it is a racist term.
*can’t in my last post.
Well, by gum, the literacy rates among Palestinians are much higher than I thought, mostly due to recent economic improvements and initiatives. Female still lag well behind males, though.
In that case, I’ll expand my earlier proposal: Israel should offer classes in literacy and community-college type vocational training to Palestinian women. And that’s enough of a hijack, I think.
The reason I menationed it because Palestinian education is much maligned (for example fals eallegations of antisemtism about antisemtism:
http://www.mideastweb.org/paleducation.htm)
I’ll just add a couple things, education of Palestinian people (except there own Palestinian population) is not Israel’s resonsibilty and tertiary education is and has been for a long time the main success in Palestinian education.
I still don’t think it’s a coincidence that Palestinian literacy figures have risen dramatically over the last 30 years or so. Whether or not Israel was directly involved in achieving this is, perhaps, unknowable - I think that the fact Israel actually sort of enforced local school laws in the 70’s and 80’s might have something to do with it… A 30-year old literate Palestinian went to school while Israel still had a lot to do with all walks of life in the OT. But maybe it’s just something in the air.
Dan Abarbanel
Their claim was that Judaism is not a religous framework that could support extreme cruelty. Christianity can support it: note the inquisition, crusades, etc. Islam can support it: note al quaeda or other violent groups.
In the last 1000 years cruelty in the name of religion has not been perpetrated by the Jews on the scale that it has by Christians and Muslims…in their mind that makes Judaism superior.
I have heard or read on a number of occasions that Jews have higher IQs than Christians. What if this is because the religion causes less brain damage than Christianity.
It is not so much the religion itself as the brainwashing techniques used to indoctrinate people with the religion. I went to Catholic schools. Stand up, kneel down, genuflect, genuflect. I thought those people were going to drive me crazy.
Science fiction was my antidote.
Dal Timgar
I think it would be a little bit cheeky for Israel to take any responsibilty for the high standard of Palestinian education, as they frequently closed down schools and universities and even conducted mass arrests of students on the day of their marticulation exams.
Here’s a documen on palestinian education: