All those examples would fall under fornication or adultery, which are prohibited by all Abrahamic religions, and yes she is being a bit of a hypocrite by sleeping with the guy at all out of wedlock. There is no such thing as “two legal wives” in any western country, and I assume she is in one.
The full line prohibits marking the flesh for the dead or making incisions in the flesh. The second part is generally considered the reason for an absolute ban on tattoos.
Jewish law, however, is rarely as simple as making a logical conclusions about biblical passages. Hundreds of years of Talmudic scholarship carved out the “official” interpretations of the laws, many of which are more proscriptive than what seems to be necessary. Maimonides says no tattoos (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Idolatry 12:11), so there’s no tattoos.
It’s in the same vein as banning the consumption of all meat with all dairy because of the biblical prohibition on boiling a kid in it’s mother’s milk. It doesn’t matter if you happen to know that this cheese didn’t come from the mother of this animal. It doesn’t even matter if the meat in question comes from an animal that doesn’t produce dairy: you can’t claim you’re keeping kosher and wash a chicken sandwich down with a glass of milk.
Yeah. South Carolina, really.
So my takeaway here is that she’s not lying, per se. Group sex, threesomes and suchlike are out-of-bounds via the talmud.
However, the lady in question is already showing signs of a certain…flexibility…toward other talmudic restraints so this is also one she could get past if she wanted to.
Maybe I’m wrong - and I’ve never met her, I’ve just been told - but I still think my original thesis of ‘she just doesn’t want to do them with him’ is the most likely scenario.
I suspect the majority of people wouldn’t be agreeable to threesomes or swinging, no matter who the partner is. I’m not sure why you think that your friend or the woman’s religion is the main reason for her reluctance.
Telemark:
My misunderstanding, I thought you meant that the existence of such rabbis in the Orthodox camp meant she might still be adhering to Modern Orthodox Judaism even with the tattoos.
RivkaChaya:
No, not at all. A man can never be married to two sisters while the first one he married is still alive (even if they’d gotten divorced) at all. And threesomes are out. I’ll have to find the exact source later, but a man is not even supposed to be thinking about another woman - not even another of his own wives - while having sex with his wife. Certainly having them both at the same time is more severe than that.
Chronos:
It prohibits scarring one’s self for the dead, and tattoos for any reason. It’s two distinct phrases, “the Dead” is mentioned only in the first.
Boozahol Squid, P.I.:
“Seems” being the operative word. Said Talmudic scholarship carved it that way because when the total body of law is considered, it provides evidence that that was the actual intent of the Biblical verses (even if, taken in isolation, they seem more limited in scope…or in other cases, more broad in scope).
Actually, in that particular situation, it DOES matter. The Biblical prohibition - Talmudically determined - only applies to animals that give milk. Fowl with milk is prohibited as a Rabbinical precaution because it’s too easy to mistake fowl for mammalian meat.
I don’t think so. I’m an atheist and I would not be able to get past it.
Moderator Explanation
A post previous to this one was made by a troll impersonating Jonathan Chance. The troll has been banned and his posts removed. I am posting this explanation since the post was reported, in order to answer questions as to why it was disappeared.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
That makes sense, and I was shocked to see “Jonathan Chance - BANNED” there…how did the troll do that? Extra blank space?
Definitely it’s forbidden to “make cuttings in your flesh for the dead”. I’ve seen several translations of the second part, varying between “printing”, “tattooing”, “incising” or “making” marks on one’s body so that’s the part I see argued.
Since I can’t read Biblical Hebrew and don’t have a a Bible in that (presumably) original text I have to rely on translators and what other people say.
To me (for whatever pittance my opinion is worth) I would interpret the passage as “no tattoos” but a lot of Jews violate a lot of the rules and still keep being Jewish. It’s just that, unlike eating bacon, there’s a permanent reminder of what the person did that was a no-no.
I’m pretty sure a lot of Jews have gotten tattoos over the centuries (and I’m excluding those who were tattooed against their will).
DEFINITELY a no-no would be tattoos connected to another religion, particularly a polytheistic one.
Tattoos for medical reasons are more likely to be seen as acceptable, since nearly all rules give way to saving a life.
Some does, some doesn’t. That which does can cause issues if an MRI is necessary. There have been cases of burn injuries induced by an MRI in tattoos, particularly those with dark or black ink, but it hasn’t been really studied and the results aren’t entirely consistent.
I found this:
Tangent:
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What is the particular objection to polytheistic religion? Wasn’t Baal a sort of monotheistic god?
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Is there an easy example of a rule that does not give way to saving a life?
“I am the Lord thy God and thou shalt have no other Gods before Me.”
Really, it’s that simple - Jews have one and only one God, and are not allowed to venerate any other gods. That is taken to mean never using anything involved in another religions rites and rituals (if the view is that the God of Christianity and Islam are the same God that allows for some wiggle room - remember, neither of those two upstart religions existed at the time the ten commandments were written), not participating in any way in other religious rites/rituals, and not using their symbols.
According to the “Damascus Document” found at Qumran, King David had more than one wife because he was unaware of the law — The Book of Law which prohibited polygamy had been sealed up in the Ark of the Covenant in the time of Joshua, and the Ark hadn’t been opened again to read The Book until the time of Zadok(?).
It seems Baal could be an epithet of a number of gods, not necessarily Yahweh. Once upon a time the Israelites were more or less OK with polytheism, like Melbourne says, but definitely not Jews now, for a couple thousand years already.
“Baal” is an appelative meaning “Lord”–. Baal was another regional (Philistine, Caananite) deity. Cf. “Beelzebub,” <בַּעַל זְבוּב Baʿal Zəvûv, meaning “Lord of the Flies.”
The Hebrew deity is, like all deities, syncretic. El, YHVH, El Shaddai, Elohim (a plural), and other deities were incorporated into a central monotheistic deity in a process similar to, “No, look, your earth mother goddess is really the Virgin!”
In realist (as we would say in Hebrew, דַּוְקָא, davka, “in fact, to the contrary”), monotheism, especially with an intangible deity, is hard to do. People like intercessors, symbols, and concrete representations of the numinous. Judaism is monotheistic but full of accreted deities that float about like bits of stray code. For example, depending on the zeitgeist and how literal the interpreter is being, G-d has a wife, who’s also maybe the spirit of the people of Israel.
Per my understanding; Sikhism the fifth largest organized religion is monotheistic with a diety that is shapeless and timeless.