Glanced at the list - looks OK to me. (Which don’t you think are literal?)
Anyway, re the OP, just saw this
Same here…no disrespect intended, but I find it unbelievable that ANYONE could be a good Jew under these rules! Mostly I’d like to know the logic behind some of the more perplexing ones.
To answer your leg of lamb question, EchoKitty, the sinew of the thigh is not eaten in remembrance of the injury done to Jacob, when he wrestled the angel near the brook (Genesis 32:32)
IzzyR – I once was involved with a Jewish girl, considered converting, and, as is my wont, began to study the topic in some depth. The love of halakhah study stayed with me even after the girl left my sights, and even after I returned to the Catholic Church…
- Rick
Any converts here? I was just wondering if people go through the motions because they love the person so much, or if they actually fall in love with the religion as well. Anyone?
If I can continue the hijack - how are you continuing your studies? This falls into the area of things I’m interested in and would like to learn more about, but not being Jewish, I have no idea where to even start looking.
Izzy,
Well I am confused by #s 23, 39, 62, 75, 82, 244, 426, 558, and 594 to start with.
And certainly the current Israeli army, which I presume includes a few Orthodoxim, don’t seem to care about #s 409 and 529.
Echo, the converts I have known are much more knowledgeable and devout than the vast majority of those I know who were Jewish by birth.
amarinth: Currently, I’m taking an online course at Yeshivat
Har Etzion, in Talmudic Methodology. It walks you through the various methods of analysis the traditional commentators use to resolve apparent conflicts and contradictions in the Law.
This is probably not the best place to leap in as a beginner, however. If on-line reading is your thing, I’d suggest The Torah Primer, which starts out with … well… the basics.
There are undoubtedly many excellent resources availabel on-line… something I wish I had had in the mid-1980s, when I was first exploring the topic!
- Rick
#23: The Torah gives certain “first” items to the priestly class, in exchange for their service in the Temple. One is the firstborn sons - the children themselves are not given to the priests, but a monetary amount is specified in the Torah as being the “redemption”. In the case of a firstborn donkey, the “redemption” is a lamb. In the case of someone who refuses to redeem it, he would forfeit the monetary value of the donkey.
#39: Directed at idolatry. This was once much more prevalent than it is today, obviously. Does not apply to two-dimensional figures.
#62: Straightforward. (As a practical matter, any crime involving the death penalty requires a Court of ordained judges. This ordination can only be passed down through the generations - according to most opinions - and is thus lost until the Messiah comes. Also, enforcing death penalties required a lot of technicalities - the Talmud says that it was rarely carried out).
#75: Sinners who have sinned for monetary gain are suspected of being bought off, and their testimony is not accepted in Jewish courts. If they demonstrate that they repented, they’re OK.
#82: Requires a higher standard for conviction in a capital case (at least 13-10 judges ruling to convict; 12-11 would suffice elsewhere).
244: Straighforward.
426: Refers to praising idolatrators.
#558: A rapist can sometimes cause his victim to be seen as “impure” in the eyes of some potential mates. For this reason the Torah commanded that he marry her himself - if she so wishes. Having been forced to marry her, he cannot simply turn around and divorce her either.
#594: There are some violations that are punished in this manner. The maximum number is 39, subject to a doctor’s assesment. (As with capital punishment, this requires a court of ordained judges.)
#409: Civilian law. Similar to US laws on murder, which would not apply in an armed conflict.
#529: Refers to wanton destruction, not that which is necessary for the military campaign (otherwise you would not be able to destroy the enemy’s tanks etc.)
In general though, I would not assume that everything done by the Israeli army conform to Halacha. (I think they make an effort to let individual soldiers practice halacha, but the generals planning strategy don’t keep halachic advisors on hand to make sure they follow the Torah rules for warfare).
Old joke:
Father brings up his son without any Jewish education at all, but he always told him “Don’t marry a Gentile!”. But of course, the day comes when the son brings home his Gentile fiance and introduces her to the father. The father is horrified, a furious argument ensues, and ultimately a compromise is reached. The girl agrees to study Judaism, and the father agrees not to object to the marriage.
Comes the first Saturday morning after the honeymoon, and the son gets up to go open the family store. But his new wife objects: “uh…I learned in Judaism class that you can’t work on Saturday”. And the husband says: “yeah, but my father will kill me if I don’t show up today”. But the wife is insistent - she knows what she was tought and this is forbidden.
After a while, the father shows up, demanding to know why his son did not show up to the store. So the son explains - it’s his wife’s insistence, based on the Judaism classes. So the father exclaims: “See what I told you!!! DON’T MARRY A GENTILE!!!”
The answer was no all that wacky, if it were me, I would have declined to do business with him. Anyone who chooses to not shake my hand because I am a woman, can do without the benefit of my business as well. He has every right to refuse, but by refusing women only, he loses my business.
In diversity training at the U of C hospitals, I was taught that if we women are on the elevator with a Jewish man* who strictly observed certain Jewish laws that we should offer to punch the button for him because he was not supposed to touch anything that a woman on her period touched. If we touched all the buttons without pressing any, he could be trapped there.
The reason this angers me is that if you expand that bit of advice, I should not knowingly use a keyboard that a Jewish man might have to use, because I could make it unclean. If he sees me using it he may not in good conscience use it! It makes for an argument that women should not touch anything in public places, or be hired to do jobs that require them to touch things that men might need to touch. I fix computers. I sit in chairs and type at keyboards. It is an odd thought that I may render them unclean by doing so. Odd they did not instruct us to send a male tech to repair computers that were used primarily by Jewish men.
When in an elevator, I did offer to push the buttons, partly because I do try to be polite, but also because the kid in me still enjoys pressing the elevator buttons.
*Note, they never said how one could tell if someone were Jewish. As someone who grew up in small town Illinois, I had no idea what stereotypes there are of how Jewish people look, except Hassidic Jews, cuz they were on some TV shows occasionally as plot devices. The subject literally never came up. As an enlightened grown up, I know that you never can tell by looking anyway and although I have learned some stereotypes, I know that is all they are and diversity abounds.
Sorry, but they tought you wrong at the diversity training. This - as well as the rest of your post that follows - is completely incorrect. (See my earlier posts on the subject).
It’s a shame that you would be moved to anger over a non-existent issue, but such is life, alas.
As IzzyR suggests, there is no such rule, and lee’s “diversity” training was in error.
A moment’s thought should render the logic that lee says she was taught suspect: what sort of guarantee might an observant Jew have entering an elevator that it was not used moments before by a menstruating woman? If the rule were as lee’s class claimed, it would effectively bar a Jewish man from interaction with the rest of the world.
That said, there is a circumstance under which the situation lee describes may arise. During the Sabbath, observant Jews must refrain from work. As you can imagine, the kinds of things that constitute “work” have been discussed and analyzed in some depth. One of the activities that clearly constitutes work is making fire – and in modern times, the press of a button that completes an electrical circuit is considered to be the making of fire, and, thus, work.
An observant Jew may certainly ride an elevator, then, but on the Sabbath, may not press any of the buttons. In Israel, major hotels have elevators set automatically to open at every floor, or hire Gentiles to operate the elevators, thus ensuring that the prohibitions against work are observed.
It is possible that this was the original idea behind what lee was taught, and the details got lost from origin to implementation… a pretty shoddy approach for a “diversity” class, if you ask me.
- Rick
As IzzyR suggests, there is no such rule, and lee’s “diversity” training was in error.
A moment’s thought should render the logic that lee says she was taught suspect: what sort of guarantee might an observant Jew have entering an elevator that it was not used moments before by a menstruating woman? If the rule were as lee’s class claimed, it would effectively bar a Jewish man from interaction with the rest of the world.
That said, there is a circumstance under which the situation lee describes may arise. During the Sabbath, observant Jews must refrain from work. As you can imagine, the kinds of things that constitute “work” have been discussed and analyzed in some depth. One of the activities that clearly constitutes work is making fire – and in modern times, the press of a button that completes an electrical circuit is considered to be the making of fire, and, thus, work.
An observant Jew may certainly ride an elevator, then, but on the Sabbath, may not press any of the buttons. In Israel, major hotels have elevators set automatically to open at every floor, or hire Gentiles to operate the elevators, thus ensuring that the prohibitions against work are observed.
It is possible that this was the original idea behind what lee was taught, and the details got lost from origin to implementation… a pretty shoddy approach for a “diversity” class, if you ask me.
- Rick