OK, Judaism is a religion and an ethnicity. But this thread is more about the religious than the ethnic side. Presumably, someone who just wants to do the secular Jewish stuff wouldn’t speak of “converting”. And honestly, I don’t “get” religion, but I get the idea of signing up to the rules of Judaism without either a) believing God exists and wants you to follow them or b) having some kind of pre-existing attachment to Judaism, even less.
I fully agree with **Malthus ** on this.
My 8 year old daughter has been attending religious school since she was in kindergarten, as my wife and I think the shared cultural heritage and knowing the rituals is important. I had a discussion with her recently during which she asked me if God was real. In good Jewish tradition, I turned the question back on her and she told me that she thinks the idea of God helps people get along. The actual existence of God doesn’t really matter.
In a nutshell, an 8 year old could explain the concept of Tikkun Olam, a shared duty to make the world a better place. To me, this is central to Judaism.
But you don’t need to be Jewish to attempt to make the world a better place. I mean, someone needs to save the world on Saturdays, too.
Seriously, though, a good or noble heart to a religion isn’t justification for the less-useful trappings that come with it.
When and by whom and on what authority? Who exactly are you to suggest I bow out?
I suggest you go back and re-read my very first post and then come back with your completely unfounded accusation of threadshitting, or an appropriate retraction.
What exactly in that post makes you think I don’t like the discussion. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is a worthy discussion and good for the OP to hear all sides.
I neither know nor care who has the correct definition regarding reform vs orthodox judaism (which is why I passed no comment on the validity of anyone’s opinion) I merely state that the back and forth over such details merely reinforces negative perceptions of religion in general, hence the link to the Monty Python video.
I’ve been trying to put some thoughts into words, and I see that Malthus and FinsToTheLeft said what I was thinking better than I could.
This is another example of Christian-centric thinking. The seeking of a personal relationship with God or of individual revelations from God just doesn’t seem…Jewishy.
And as a secular agnostic non-practicing Jew, I agree with you.
By a moderator. See post #12
Hi there, rolandftw. Welcome to the board, I hope you’re getting some good food for thought. Before I chime in, I’m hoping you can share a few details which I think are important. They’re less about Judaism and more about the difficult situation you have found yourself in…
[ul]
[li]About how old are you? (or maybe more importantly) Are you financially reliant on your parents, and if so, about for how long?[/li][li]Where do you live (roughly)? Is it rural or urban?[/li][li]You speak a lot about your dad but not much about your mom. How does she factor into your father’s transformation?[/li][li]What was your father’s/parents belief like before his transformation?[/li][li]What role does spiritual belief play in your life?[/li][li]To you, why is logic and reason so important in matters of faith?[/li][/ul]
Absolutely. Which is why, as I pointed out, Jews aren’t interested in encouraging people to convert to Judaism. It isn’t necessary. Being a “Noahide” is sufficient.
However, if someone wants to, or feels a real tie with, the laws and rituals of Judaism, then why not?
Are there any human institutions that don’t have “less-useful trappings”? The job of people, in my opinion at least, it to take the good and discard the bad - as much as humanly possible, of course - to keep the “good heart” and get rid of the “less-useful trappings”. That is, to attempt to improve themselves, their communities, and their relations with others.
Which is, not coincidentally, a central precept of Judaism as I understand it, as mentioned by FinsToTheLeft: “tikkun olam”. Note again, it isn’t necessary to be Jewish to believe in this.
This inevitably gets back to the notion of sectarian differences. The Orthodox, I understand, will likely take the position that attempting to get rid of what may be termed the “less-useful trappings” risks getting rid of the heart of Judaism, and what you have left is a bunch of platitudes that are attractive to modern folk but essentially meaningless. Respectfully, Jews such as myself would disagree.
Again, there are always going to be disagreements about what is the “good”.
That’s an incomplete answer.
First: it’s not so much that you get bar mitzvah’ed. It’s that you ARE bar mitzvah - the words mean “son of the commandment.” (Bat = “daughter.”) At age 13, you are subject to the commandments, the 248 positive and 365 negative rules found in the Talmud. No ceremony is necessary to confer this status. Naturally it is often celebrated with a party, and naturally it is often commemorated by the new bar mitzvah doing things that only an adult can do, such as serving as a reader from the Torah, leading prayer services as chazzan, and blessing the assembly with the priestly blessing if he is a kohen.
Secondly: depending on how observant one is, there are certain things you cannot do in the practice of Judaism as a gentile. For example, an observant Jew may well refuse to drink a glass of wine if the wine was owned or poured by a gentile, regardless of how studied or practiced the gentile was and what congregation he joined.
Really, “ethnicity”, while close, isn’t the best discriptor. Usually you cannot chose your “ethnicity”, while you can join the Jewish people via conversion. I prefer “tribe”, as being more exact: a tribe can accept new members from among people who accept its folkways, or you can be born into it. When you think “conversion”, think “being accepted into a new tribe”.
Judaism isn’t simply a belief in the Jewish god on the one hand, and a method of self-identity on the other. It is also a prescription for living life in a certain manner. Judaism is much more about “how you do things” than “the content of what you believe”. Someone who wanted to live life the Jewish way may wish to convert, whether or not he or she in their hearts believed in the Jewish god.
Why would anyone want to life life the Jewish way? Well, that’s a good question. More to the point, it is a very Jewish question, the sort that Jews are constantly (and have cionstantly) asked themselves over the centuries, and written vast treatises of opinion on. The fact that Jews are always asking themselves this (and love nothing better than threads like this to discuss the matter in ) maybe is part of the answer.
Nonsense, had I been threadshitting the mods would’ve called me out by name and quite rightly. It was a general warning to everyone lest thing get out of hand.
At no point did I disparage religion in general and certainly not the OP’s specifically, my posts are there for all to see.
You obviously hear what you choose to hear. I’ll leave you to get on with it.
You have made many good points and you seem to have an excellent intellect and knowledge.
I want to respect your opinions and I want to like you as well.
But I’m very disappointed that you would make the above statement. Because you cannot possibly know whether that is true or not.
I have not said anything that acknowledges just what religion I practice and I choose not to admit to practicing to any religion or to having been born into any religion.
After reviewing this thread, it is clear to me that nowhere is there any evidence that states just what religion I practice or in what religion I was born.
Unfortunately, most all of your posts demonstrate a superior intellect and knowledge. But this one post is very disappointing because you cannot possibly know whether that is true or not.
The fact that I may not know certain facts about Judaism or may not understand certain principles in no way evidences my religion.
So, I would ask you to reconsider the above statement. In my opinion, it is not worthy or your intellect.
I live in Kansas City. Not financially reliant on my parents but they have helped me out in the past.
My mom was always a fundamentalist Christian apparently. I don’t know, but I would suspect she has tried to influence him for years like she has the rest of the family.
My father is Jewish, but beliefs were agnostic.
As far as logic and reason goes, I just think religion should be a serious decision. And not one made based on a quick emotional response to something. Doesn’t make sense to me to dismiss other religions as inferior without truly knowing anything about them. It just seems to me, in the case of my dad, that he felt an emotional response to some songs on the radio. And then he assumed everything else that station was saying was accurate. But that’s just my opinion.
If someone were to tell me that the Bible is inerrant and literal, I’d at least expect someone would have read the text before.
Heh. I used to live in KC too! For about 6 years. I left just before the Power & Light District went in. Anyway…
I asked about your situation a little bit because although your Title had to do with converting to Judaism, the bulk of what you shared was about the difficulty you’re experiencing with your parents’ fundamentalism. And was wondering if you were asking a question about Judaism so much as how to cope with parents who don’t respect religious boundaries. Since evangelizing is encouraged in fundamentalism and they’re your parents, they would feel like they’re being negligent if they didn’t try to save you. They don’t see how disrespectful and ignorant they are being to your own religious convictions. If you haven’t tried it already, I would sit them down and have a “come to Jesus” moment of your own: tell them that you understand that what they are doing is coming from a place of love and care and that you appreciate that intention. But that they should know by by now that you have religious convictions of your own that you do not take lightly, that you know more about the texts they profess to believe and that if they keep this shit up it will drive you from their lives. Lay some New Testament down on them: Matthew 7:1; John 8:7.
With regards to why people come to a belief from an emotional standpoint, you need to appreciate that we human beings are driven by emotional drivers. System 1 thinking is fast, automatic, subconscious, and emotional. System 2 thinking is slow, logical, conscious and requires effort. [see Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman] And there is plenty of evidence that suggests that the human animal is naturally a reflexive magical thinker. [check out The Believing Brain by Michael Shermer and Why Religion is Natural and Science is Not by Robert McCauley] So I think it is a bit wrongheaded to be bewildered that an emotional “conversion on the road to Damascus” is all that unusual in conversion. I would posit that people who feel emotionally empty and need something bigger to believe in are particularly susceptible to this kind of event.
Given your stated aversion to religious dogma, I’d say branches of Judaism could fit right in with your disposition and if you’re feeling an attraction to the culture and the traditions and its approach to religion, I’d say go for it.
That said, you made a passing comment about how secularism wouldn’t be a good choice because of something to do with anger. Would you mind expanding on that a bit? I’m not sure what one has to do with the other.
This is all kind of my point, or one of them. You don’t need to find an institution, especially a religious* (or similar) one, because they’re full of extra stuff. If you want to make the world better, by all means do. And if you don’t want to eat shellfish, don’t. Tikkun olam is a nice concept but it’s not a selling point of Judaism because there is no package deal - you can mix and match.
If you just happen to fall into a religion and some form of it all makes sense to you, that’s OK. But deciding you need a religion, then window shopping to find the one that is a “best fit” isn’t, in my opinion, the right way to go about discovering what works for you. That goes for all kinds of lifestyles - not just religion - but religion has the added difficulty of requiring belief in unverifiable things which you can’t force upon yourself. Belief in a deity either exists or it doesn’t - you can’t choose to believe. Proactivity doesn’t really work here.
*I’m still reading the original point of this thread as being about religion and religious beliefs, including God.
Your father was Jewish, but he’s now a Christian Fundamentalist? Wow. Sounds to me like he’s reacting against HIS parents. How were you raised? You might want to have some conversations with a therapist (psychologist or psychiatrist or social worker) about coming to grips with your anger, before leaping into a religion.
Having said that, I’d like to add a stereotypical generalization): For Christianity, it’s all about belief. For Judaism, it’s primarily about actions and deeds. For Christianity, the goal of life is to get to an immortal after-life. For Judaism, the goal of life is to live as well as one can, meaning doing good and tikun olum helping to “fix” the broken world. Hence, you find a lot of different opinions here, including a lot based on ritual observance as a Jew (which is almost a non-issue for Christians.)
You need to decide what you want in life (in terms of spiritual fulfilment and sense of self-worth), and then look at whether/how Judaism can help you with that. If you decide to pursue Judaism, do lots of reading on your own. If/when you find an individual rabbi to help you, be careful about whom you choose – rabbis are as fallable as anyone, and if you’re looking for a mentor, you need to select one you can really work well with.
Judaism doesn’t think that there’s only one “right” religion; different peoples/ethnicities/communities can have different religions (so long as they conform to basic morality.) And Judaism thinks of religion as a community matter, not an individual matter. Community provides support in trouble and in joy. So, again, you need to pick a rabbi/synagogue/community where you feel very comfortable.
Good luck, however you go. Keep us posted, we hope you’ll become active in other areas of our Message Boards.
I’ve told them both to please not discuss it again because I am not interested. But it usually gets brought up. Have mentioned certain Biblical verses, but they just say they are not interested in looking at those verses. They just disagree with them being there.
But yeah, my question was both about Judaism and also trying to cope with my parents when I interact with them.
I will admit I haven’t read those books that you suggested. I get that someone could have an emotional appeal to something. For instance, I’ve always loved a lot of Jewish music. But wouldn’t want to convert just for that reasoning.
I could understand being drawn into something based on something emotional, but I would also think making such a drastic change from once believing all people should be equal in our country to believing some people should have their rights restricted wouldn’t be made exclusively on that emotional response.
This is particularly troubling in my dad’s case because he always used to be someone that was very much about accessing a situation, and seeing what the best course of action was to take. There are many times where I was angry and emotional about something and he helped to calm me down or make me access that situation and make the best possible decision. Maybe it is unfair of me. I could accept my dad’s opinion if I felt he was not biblically illiterate and came to a conclusion based on study. But I can’t accept the conclusion that all religions are inferior but one, and a 100% switch in political views without the extensive study or research behind it.
This is difficult for me because I oppose fundamentalism in all its forms. I believe it is bad and dangerous for the country overall.
I feel it would be an emotional response to what my parents are. They believe in God, but also believe other people are inferior/want to restrict rights of people that don’t fit into what I would see as their narrow world view. I could easily conclude that if that is what God does to peoples lives that it is really a detriment to a person, and that I and anyone else would be better off not believing at all. Not saying there is or is not a God for sure, just I want to make my conclusion with study and research and not just being mad at my parents or fundamentalism as a whole. If my experiences with religion are mainly negative, then I will probably see religion as mainly negative.
Well, he wasn’t raised in a Jewish setting. Never went to synagogue or anything like that. But his mother and father were Jewish, just not particularly observant obviously.
Aw rolandftw, that breaks my heart, it sounds like you used to have a great relationship with your dad that guy is missing in action.
Hopefully some more Jewish Dopers will chime in and offer some their wisdom on the religion, but you might also consider starting a new thread in this forum with a subject line something like “How to cope with close friend or family member becoming fundamentalist?” You might get some people who have gone through what you’re experiencing who might not have self-selected themselves out of a thread about Judaism.
Best of luck.
If that is true my rabbi has alot of explaining to do.