There’s absolutely a basis. By definition, they hew very faithfully to the laws in the Torah. They go so far as to prohibit a bunch of practices on the Sabbath because they might have been prohibited by a very ambiguous word relating to the building of religious sanctuaries. But there are a lot of laws in there that are not ambiguous in the least, commanding genocide, sexual slavery, all kinds of commandments I would safely call “benighted”:
So you are definitely supposed to slaughter the Palestinians (“Canaanites”), since they are squatting on “your” land. “Do not leave alive anything that breathes.” Not even babies! This is not optional: you MUST do this.
Deuteronomy 21 has a weird mix of reasonable and abhorrent laws. The latter would include these two passages:
Marrying a Captive Woman
10 When you go to war against your enemies and the Lord your God delivers them into your hands and you take captives, 11 if you notice among the captives a beautiful woman and are attracted to her, you may take her as your wife. 12 Bring her into your home and have her shave her head, trim her nails 13 and put aside the clothes she was wearing when captured. After she has lived in your house and mourned her father and mother for a full month, then you may go to her and be her husband and she shall be your wife. 14 If you are not pleased with her, let her go wherever she wishes. You must not sell her or treat her as a slave, since you have dishonored her.
A Rebellious Son
18 If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, 19 his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. 20 They shall say to the elders, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.” 21 Then all the men of his town are to stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All Israel will hear of it and be afraid.
Again, it’s not–as religious conservatives, both Jewish and Christian, like to disingenuously claim–about descriptions of atrocities, but commandments that you MUST commit these atrocities to “purge the evil from among you.” “All Israel will hear of it and be afraid”. Just absolutely unambiguous.
And don’t tell me these horrendous commandments don’t inform the ultra-Orthodox parties’ actions as key blocs in the Israeli Knesset.
Deuteronomy 22 gets into some similarly eclectic territory. There’s a lot of talk about how to properly treat donkeys, oxen, and birds who have fallen out of nests. Kind of sweet, really. But then…
5 A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s clothing, for the Lord your God detests anyone who does this.
Well, I suppose that’s just old-fashioned–but why aren’t the ultra-Orthodox getting any of the heat that seems reserved for JK Rowling? Anyway, then there’s stuff about how to make your roof safe, how you can’t weave wool and linen together, and other picayune oddities. But further down:
Marriage Violations
13 If a man takes a wife and, after sleeping with her, dislikes her 14 and slanders her and gives her a bad name, saying, “I married this woman, but when I approached her, I did not find proof of her virginity,” 15 then the young woman’s father and mother shall bring to the town elders at the gate proof that she was a virgin. 16 Her father will say to the elders, “I gave my daughter in marriage to this man, but he dislikes her. 17 Now he has slandered her and said, ‘I did not find your daughter to be a virgin.’ But here is the proof of my daughter’s virginity.” Then her parents shall display the cloth before the elders of the town, 18 and the elders shall take the man and punish him. 19 They shall fine him a hundred shekels[b] of silver and give them to the young woman’s father, because this man has given an Israelite virgin a bad name. She shall continue to be his wife; he must not divorce her as long as he lives.
20 If, however, the charge is true and no proof of the young woman’s virginity can be found, 21 she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death. She has done an outrageous thing in Israel by being promiscuous while still in her father’s house. You must purge the evil from among you.
Uff da.
28 If a man happens to meet a virgin who is not pledged to be married and rapes her and they are discovered, 29 he shall pay her father fifty shekels[c] of silver. He must marry the young woman, for he has violated her. He can never divorce her as long as he lives.
So the takeaways here are:
–You’d better hope you bleed on that cloth, and that your parents keep it in a safe place (ewww, gross).
–If you’re a dude who spots a hot chick you’d like to make your wife, just rape her and pay her dad fifty shekels of silver, and you’re all set! I mean, it’s not as good a deal as the one with the captive woman (you know, the one whose parents you killed), where you can just cut her loose whenever, and you don’t have to pay anyone anything…but hey.
This is the very definition of a benighted ideology. It’s right there in black and white.
Because you can’t choose whether to be Black or not! It’s an inborn/immutable characteristic. Being an UO-J is not. It is an ideology and affiliation that people can and do reject as adults. Why is this so hard?