Quite a number of Jews have no problem believing in the revealed Torah without cottoning to the worst interpretive excesses of the Haredim. They pick and choose. If they didn’t suffer at least as much hermeneutic stress as the rest of us, they wouldn’t send their males to Torah school for life. Are you really suggesting it’s not possible to be a Jew without endorsing this garbage?
Jews don’t have a central authority. We don’t have organizationally sanctioned dogma. Everything is contested, it has been for millennia, and will be for as long as Jews are still here. What are you trying to achieve with this line of inquiry?
Point 1: I am a Jew.
Point 2: Ultra Orthodox Jews tend to be jerks.
Point 3: There should definitely be a law protecting these kids from herpes if the science ends up proving that there’s a serious risk from the act.
Point 4: The various posts stopping juuuuuuuust this side of outright calling these mohels out as paedophiles and then blinking all wide-eyed and going “What? Show me where I explicitly wrote those exact words!” are pretty childish, but I guess I get that for most people in this thread, this isn’t really about this precise part of the bris but more about painting another layer on the “Jewish people are monsters for circumcising their kids” argument.
Point 4 is more like many Jews like myself sick and fucking tired of stupid ultra orthodox practices and people who defend them. Circumcision has some medical benefits and can be justified on those grounds. The sucking blood from a baby’s penis does not.
All the hand-wringing about sucking baby dicks reminds me of the overdone sitcom gag where one character gets a snakebite on his ass and begs the other character to suck it out, and then there’s ten minutes of “Suck it ou-! But it’s! And I’m not one of THOSE-! OHHHH DEAR!”
It’s really fucking weird, but it’s harmless. Now if we’re going to talk about UO Jews who throw rocks at people on the sabbath? I’m all over that pitting.
Read my point 3 above. If the science pans out, then it’s clearly not harmless. I’m referring more specifically to the whole “sucking baby dick” rhetoric.
No. I do not agree that most Jews believe that the answer to “Is there a G-d?” is unknowable. You are confusing this with question about the nature of G-d; most Jews agree that G-d is unknowable. Nor did I ask a thing about the hereafter, did I?
And I don’t defend any of those practices.
This is a phenomenon I see a great deal at the SDMB, though. Because a person or a group is generally bad, it becomes acceptable to say anything, factual or not, about them.
“I don’t think Idi Amin was tone-deaf.”
“Bricker, how dare you defend Idi Amin?”
“I just don’t think there’s any evidence he was tone–”
“He murdered thousands? Bricker supports a murderer!”
Ok. No, no, and no.
Now, you tell me: is there any pedophilia involved in this story?
And if there isn’t, why, on a board supposedly having some interest in eradicating ignorance is it acceptable to sniggeringly suggest there is?
Obviously I know all that. But if I am talking to someone who rejects even the existence of G-d, it’s a different situation than someone who says Rabbi Zecharias Frankel may have had a couple of good ideas.
There are a lot of Jews who aren’t entirely sure about the existence of god. It’s a perfectly reasonable stance. The attitude really often is that you’ll find out day so just chill and be a good person. It most certainly does tie into the hereafter question. But, as someone pointed out to you, there is no Jewish pope so there are often many answers to the same question. Again if you knew about Judaism (which you do not) you would know this.
You are defending a stupid practice and have done so multiple times. These mohels are doing the same. Hence the sniggering. In the meantime could you answer my question about what other assinine religious practices you wish to defend? Clitorectomy? The Haredim and their shielding of pedophiles? I believe at one point you grotesquely defended the insane Catholic stance that a woman with an ectopic pregnancy should undergo surgery rather than have a methotrexate shot (because she’s not sacred but a fertilized egg that endangers her health most certainly is :rolleyes:) so nothing would surprise me.
Then WHY are you defending this? Why bother with this bullshit of your’s?
I don’t believe anyone was seriously, honestly saying these rabbis are pedophiles. Merely being sarcastic.
Take your extreme literalism, rules lawyering, nitpicking thread-shitting and shove it straight up your ass where it belongs. The Dope is not a court of law, and I can’t be the only one who’s sick of your acting like Jack McCoy in every single thread.
Judaism is not Catholicism, there’s no Pope, no ex cathedra, no I have spoken, etc.