Alright, I’ll bite. I’m a fundamentalist atheist, and consider 99.9% of religion bunk. Ze problem is that Judiasm has an amazingly good track record as far as interpreting G-d’s will into behavior that makes sense to us hardcore rationalist types. So, I shall ask: is there any reason for not working on Saturday, or not eating meat and milk concurrently, that would make sense to an atheist? I ask because you nailed kosher butchering and circumscision on the head, biology-wise.
For the most part, the answer is no.
Ultimately, we keep the commandments because God told us to. Yes, there may be some side benefits (eating kosher prevents trichinosis, etc.), but that’s not the reason for the commandments.
At the same time, that also helps explain why Jews don’t believe that non-Jews are responsible to keep the commandments. God never instructed them to, and, as such, they cannot be expected to keep them.
Zev Steinhardt
zev, a follow-up.
One attitude I have almost never heard emanating from Judaism is “obey the rules or you are going to Hell.” Several Jewish friends have told me that the real concern with violating the commandments (at least the ones that don’t constitute secular crimes) is that by doing so, you isolate yourself from the Jewish community.
What is the deal? I guess what I’m really asking is what is the Jewish concept of sin and of the effect of sin, both on earth and in the afterlife.
Sua
robertligouri:
As Zev already replied, the reason we keep the commandments is because G-d told us to.
Nonetheless, Zev oversimplifies. While we (talking from a religious standpoint here) cannot truly fathom the full reasoning behind G-d’s commandments, we can definitely speculate a bit.
As far as Sabbath goes, the real, religious reason for it is that by resting on the seventh day, we are testifying to our belief that G-d did something analagous to that in creating the world. However, a day of enforced “rest” has its benefits beyond that. It’s not easy to tear one’s self away from the mundane concerns of the “rat race.” I’m sure we all know people who even when they’re on “vacation” they have their cell phones and laptops with them in order to work. Forcing one’s self to stop working one day a week allows for more spiritual (even to you as an atheist, that term must have some meaning - let’s say, at least, any activity that does not contribute to acquisition of wealth or property or improvement of same) pursuits, allowing one to reflect on one’s life from a detached perspective, This is not really possible to do while one is caught up in one’s daily grind.
Milk and meat: Milk is a substance that nourishes life; meat is the result of destroying the life that the milk. By being forced to keep these objects separate in a concrete, symbolic way, it is a mental aid to us in not dealing callously with all creatures - humans as well as animals. If we would not (symbolically) be so cruel as to mock the milk by shoving “in its face” the point that what it nourished is dead, then far be it from us to act with cruelty toward living, feeling beings.
Chaim Mattis Keller
It all depends on who you talk to. 
I’ll give you the Orthodox perspective (and a guess on the Reform perspective).
Firstly, Orthodox Judaism does subscribe to the concept of punishment for sins. The punishment could be during one’s lifetime, or it could be in the afterlife. So, one who willfully disobeys the commandments, could indeed end up going to Hell (putting aside the differences in the idea of Hell between Judaism and Christianity…)
In any event, isolating yourself from the community is also a danger and a valid concern. Al tifrosh min ha-tzibur (do not separate yourself from the community) is a common Jewish expression. One reason to give a son a bris, to go to shul on Shabbos, to keep kosher (besides the primary reason of “God said so”) is because it gives us a commonality as a community.
This factor may be all the more important in Reform Judaism in that they (for the most part) don’t believe in the concept of punishment for sins in the afterlife and, as such, for the rituals that they do keep (going to shul on the High Holidays, bris, the Passover seder), the community aspect may be all the more important. But that’s just my guess.
In the end, God did not (with a few exceptions) tell us the reasons for the commandments. As such, I cannot tell you for certain that God did or did not have the community aspect in mind when He gave the commandments.
As for the concept of sin…
The Jewish concept of sin is, very simply, not doing what God says. He says (to the Jews) “don’t eat pig.” If you eat pig anyway, that’s a sin. It should be stressed, however, that there are generally three different levels of culpability for a sin:
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Willfull sinning. Someone who knows that driving a car is forbidden on the Sabbath, but does it anyway.
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Negligent. Someone who either (a) forgot that driving on Shabbos is forbidden or (b) someone who forgot that today was Shabbos.
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Ones (literally: “Compelled”): Someone who is “forced” to drive a car on Shabbos (to save a life for example).
People in the first category are sinners and are responsible for their action until they repent. People in the second category are also responsible, but to a lesser extent, and a degree of repentence is required of them as well. People in the third category are not responsible at all.
As mentioned above, sometimes the “price” for sin (if not repented) is paid in this world, sometimes in the next. For example, the Talmud notes that a murderer who was executed by the courts has paid his price for his crime. As Brutal said in The Green Mile “he’s square with the house again.” Sometimes, the price will be paid in the afterlife. The same, BTW, applies to good as well. One can be paid for his good deeds (and EVERYONE is paid for thier good deeds, even the truly evil) in this world or the next. There are several passages in the Talmud that tell of people who, while otherwise being rotten, miserable human beings, did one particular good deed and notes the reward they received for it.
I’m not sure if that’s the info you’re looking for Sua. If not, please feel free to ask a more specific question and I’ll try to answer.
Zev Steinhardt
SuaSponte:
Well, the Jewish concept of sin is that sins are acts which separate one from G-d. This is true both on Earth and in the afterlife, although on Earth, we are somewhat removed from feeling that separation, as it’s a spiritual sensation not well translated by the physical senses. After death, though, such separation is very much felt…painfully so.
Chaim Mattis Keller
Well said, Chaim.
Zev Steinhardt
I can try to answer this, but please understand, this is just my understanding of it, and people who have a better understanding should correct me.
When you do a mitzvot (follow a commandment), that improves your relationship with G-d, and sometimes with other people, also. It also improves you as a person. When you have a chance to do a mitzvot and don’t, this hurts your relationship with G-d and with other people, because you’re not living up to your potential.
So, after you die, you get to see what your life was like and what sort of a person you were, but you also get to see what your life would have been like and what sort of a person you would have been, if you had obeyed the commandments. Hell is that realization, and the understanding of the discrepency between what you were and what you could have been.
Thanks for the answers, Zev and Chaim. They fully answer my question, but they do raise a follow-up –
What are the “conditions,” for want of a better word, that leads one to end up in Hell under Jewish belief? Particular severity of earthly sins? Dying without repentance (or earthly punishment) for sins, regardless of the severity of sins? Etc.
Sua
Good question, which I don’t really have an answer for.
Since everyone has some sins, it could reasonably be said that everyone goes to Hell (whatever the reality of that is) for some duration to purge themselves of that sin. For the truly righteous, it might only be momentary. For those of us that are less so, it may be even longer.
The Talmud asks the question: Why don’t we know the reward for the commandments? Why don’t we know that keeping Shabbos is worth “10 points” and not eating pork is worth “4 points?” The answer is because then people might be less careful with the “lighter” commandments. Even so, of course, it is possible to guess as to “weight” of some of the commandments (for example, you can guess that murder, idolatry and sexual immorality are “biggies” in that one is required to give one’s life rather than violate them).
This may also help to explain why Hell in Judaism is not an eternal concept. Almost no one has “never ending” sin. Hitler may have enough evil to keep him busy for several eons, but for the rest of us, we pay for our sins and then go on to our reward.
Zev Steinhardt
Upon some reflection, I should probably reword my last response. It’s not that “everyone is going to Hell,” but that everyone who has sins that they haven’t repented for at their death and that they haven’t already been punished for, will, to some degree, experience punishment in the afterlife.
Zev Steinhardt
So would a women who doesn’t resist a rape for fear of dying be guilty of a sin?
No, because she’s not committing an action. She’s the victim of an action (the rape) being committed on her.
The two commandments in the Torah for which the reward is specifically mentioned, are not taking the egg from a bird while its still in its nest, and honoring ones parents.
For both commandmants, the Torah says the reward is a long life.
It is noteworthy that these two commandments are perhaps the easiest and hardest to obey, respectively, yet they have the same reward. Perhaps their rewards were mentioned specifically to teach us to not concern ourselves with what the reward for each commandment is.
Queen Esther, of “Book of Esther” fame is a biblical example of this. The Talmud relates that she was married to Mordechi. Yet, she cohabitted with King Achashverosh against her will.
The Ryan:
A married woman, or a forbidden relative, yes. (An unrelated single girl having sex is not in that category of prohibition.)
The same, by the way, would be true of a man.
No one said it was easy.
Chaim Mattis Keller
And those were the two that really pissed of Rabbi Elisha ben Abouya.
Not necessarily. The position suggested by Captain Amazing is that of some Rishonim.
But wouldn’t forced rape come under the category of being ‘forced’ to break a commandment and therefore make the victim not responsible?
Disagreeing with cmkeller on Torah makes me feel like I’m arguing physics with Einstein, but what I’ve read is that a rape victim has not sinned.
The historical context of the whole forbidden sexual union thing is that in the Middle Ages, people thought you could cure VD by performing certain perverse acts. The prohibition was the rabbis way of saying, “No, you may not have sex with a 3-year-old; I don’t care what disease you have.”