Sunday, November 8, 2009
Comment of the Month
By Vashty. From here.
Hmm, I think I'll make up the lovey-dovey explanations that Chabad might use...
There's always the "separate but equal" argument. Women have a special kedushah in the eyes of Hashem. There are female sefirot which come together with the male sefirot when a husband and wife do their Friday-night duty. But this doesn't work as well when the woman's organ has lost its keter. A retarded woman or an old maid of thirteen do not need the keter because who will marry them? As for the three-year-old, our sages lived before a time when our minds were polluted by genetics and evolution. They lived in a time of pure Torah study, a time when hymens grew back if broken before the age of three. Let us follow their example and live a life of pure Torah, scrubbed free of scientific practicalities. Just as the Sages believed that a hymen grows back if broken before the age of three, so, too, we should believe in seven days of creation, spontaneous generation of insects, and the immutable status of women as helpmeets and chattel, whose kedushah lies in the great mitzvah of enabling their husbands to do mitzvos. Amen selah.
Then there is the blame-the-victim argument. If there were no witnesses and the woman could not cry out, what was she doing violating the laws of yichud anyway? Why didn't she bring a male relative to chaperone her? Why was she not weaving and baking in the home at the time of the rape? This is Hashem's way of telling us that the kedushah of a woman's tzniyus must be guarded by her and her family at all times- asu seyag latorah! By extension, we can say that this applies to all aveiros: in order to avoid committing a sin, we must avoid chicken with milk, kitniyot on Pesach, secular books, and fraternization with goyim who might lead us astray.
As for my interpretation, the rabbis were probably following the practices of the late antique Near East with a little dose of Greco-Roman influence and a dash of Persianization. Plus, the rabbis had little authority to enforce these mostly theoretical laws...
Hmm, I think I'll make up the lovey-dovey explanations that Chabad might use...
There's always the "separate but equal" argument. Women have a special kedushah in the eyes of Hashem. There are female sefirot which come together with the male sefirot when a husband and wife do their Friday-night duty. But this doesn't work as well when the woman's organ has lost its keter. A retarded woman or an old maid of thirteen do not need the keter because who will marry them? As for the three-year-old, our sages lived before a time when our minds were polluted by genetics and evolution. They lived in a time of pure Torah study, a time when hymens grew back if broken before the age of three. Let us follow their example and live a life of pure Torah, scrubbed free of scientific practicalities. Just as the Sages believed that a hymen grows back if broken before the age of three, so, too, we should believe in seven days of creation, spontaneous generation of insects, and the immutable status of women as helpmeets and chattel, whose kedushah lies in the great mitzvah of enabling their husbands to do mitzvos. Amen selah.
Then there is the blame-the-victim argument. If there were no witnesses and the woman could not cry out, what was she doing violating the laws of yichud anyway? Why didn't she bring a male relative to chaperone her? Why was she not weaving and baking in the home at the time of the rape? This is Hashem's way of telling us that the kedushah of a woman's tzniyus must be guarded by her and her family at all times- asu seyag latorah! By extension, we can say that this applies to all aveiros: in order to avoid committing a sin, we must avoid chicken with milk, kitniyot on Pesach, secular books, and fraternization with goyim who might lead us astray.
As for my interpretation, the rabbis were probably following the practices of the late antique Near East with a little dose of Greco-Roman influence and a dash of Persianization. Plus, the rabbis had little authority to enforce these mostly theoretical laws...
Nach
One of the last things I did as a frum person was learn Nach. If I remember correctly, I had been skeptical of religion for a long time, and I decided to learn all of Nach to see if there was anything to my religion. You know, to give it one last chance to make its case before I dumped the whole darn thing.
In most yeshivas, you’re not supposed to learn Nach. It’s highly frowned upon (as is not learning until 11:00 every night). You’re not even really supposed to learn Chumash. It’s pretty much gemara all the way, folks. There’s a very strict set of what is learned and isn’t learned (usually decided by some rabbi) and I darn sure hope you like it, because hey, you don’t got a lot of choice, kid. And I should mention gemara is full of some pretty insane shit, and if I remember correctly, I didn’t learn a single teaching that might be considered moral in today’s day and age in all my years of learning gemara. So maybe before spouting your sacred myths that your religion is extremely *moral*, maybe crack open a damn book, goddammit.
Anyway, I remember being extremely excited for my new project. Opening my fresh Artscroll translated Tanach, I was going to delve into the ancient books of my religion and see if there was anything worthwhile there (as it turned out, there wasn’t much. Sure, it was a bit better than gemara, but it’s the narcissism of small differences).
I spent a few months poring over my artscroll Tanach. I went from the beginning right through to the end, reading mostly only the English side. I remember experiencing the whole gamut of emotions, from exhilaration to severe depression (okay, I’m overdoing it). Being shocked, appalled, and sometimes even surprised at what the “prophets” had to say. One hell of an experience, I assure you.
What really struck me was the power of the literature. Some beautiful, epic stories, and you could really see how some of them affected Western civilization and the Jewish people. Some really impressive stuff, and some really shameful stuff, too, I daresay. What really impressed me though, was the utter consistency of it, in that Divrei HaYamim (Book of Chronicles) was hardly distinguishable from say, Genesis. A lot of the books looked so similar internally, it was hard to tell who wrote what. I hadn’t been formally introduced to biblical scholarship and the Documentary Hypothesis beforehand, but it was almost obvious to me that the writing styles through so many of the books were practically the same, and there was hardly any reason to believe that, say, the Five Books of Moses, were written by God, or dictated by any sort of deity. Plenty of talented writes for thousands of years could have written the same kind of thing, and it would have looked just about the same. That was one of the things that really hit me, the linguistic implausibility of any of these books being authored by anyone other than human beings. Belief in TMS down the toilet.
What really really really blew away though was when I came across verses in II Kings 22:8 and Nechemiah 8:13 that said the Children of Israel “forgot” the words of the Torah for many years before people like Ezra “reminded them” of it. That really blew me away. I had often heard the Kuzari “proof” of the historicity of the mass revelation at Sinai. Essentially the argument goes: we have a chain going all the way back to Sinai saying that we received the Torah by revelation at Sinai. In front of millions of people! And why would so many people lie about such a thing? I had always bought the Kuzari argument (pretty much hook line and sinker) but here I had staring me in the face from the Bible itself problems with this. We all know a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and if the Children of Israel “forgot” the Torah for a while and then were “reminded” of it by a couple priests, what kind of mass tradition is that? So we don’t have a chain going back all the way to Sinai (though it sounds really nice). We have a chain going back at best to several hundred years *after* Sinai, and anything before that is really fuzzy. So what kind of BS is this?
Perhaps it is for this reason that rabbis don’t generally allow their students to learn Nach. Maybe it gives them a sense of irreverence for certain holy books, and makes them aware that most of Orthodoxy is just castles built in the air by rabbis over the millennia, and that there’s not much support for anything they say in Tanach, and Tanach could easily be used by any number of other religions, to say things wildly different than what rabbis say (I think Christianity does that to an extent, although I’ve always wanted to study the New Testament. Must stay on topic.) It’s ironic, because in the gemara the rabbi are always cherrypicking verses from Tanach to support what they say, or to attack someone else, or their opinion. They never quite in-depth study Tanach, instead they mostly dissect Mishnas, which are just the ramblings of other, older rabbis about mostly thing like halacha, and have even less to do with Tanach. Sure, it’s an ancient religion, and it’s about some old myths, traditions, and practices, but it would be nice if there was a truth factor involved, as well.
If your own holy books contradict your beliefs, what do you want from my fucking life?
In most yeshivas, you’re not supposed to learn Nach. It’s highly frowned upon (as is not learning until 11:00 every night). You’re not even really supposed to learn Chumash. It’s pretty much gemara all the way, folks. There’s a very strict set of what is learned and isn’t learned (usually decided by some rabbi) and I darn sure hope you like it, because hey, you don’t got a lot of choice, kid. And I should mention gemara is full of some pretty insane shit, and if I remember correctly, I didn’t learn a single teaching that might be considered moral in today’s day and age in all my years of learning gemara. So maybe before spouting your sacred myths that your religion is extremely *moral*, maybe crack open a damn book, goddammit.
Anyway, I remember being extremely excited for my new project. Opening my fresh Artscroll translated Tanach, I was going to delve into the ancient books of my religion and see if there was anything worthwhile there (as it turned out, there wasn’t much. Sure, it was a bit better than gemara, but it’s the narcissism of small differences).
I spent a few months poring over my artscroll Tanach. I went from the beginning right through to the end, reading mostly only the English side. I remember experiencing the whole gamut of emotions, from exhilaration to severe depression (okay, I’m overdoing it). Being shocked, appalled, and sometimes even surprised at what the “prophets” had to say. One hell of an experience, I assure you.
What really struck me was the power of the literature. Some beautiful, epic stories, and you could really see how some of them affected Western civilization and the Jewish people. Some really impressive stuff, and some really shameful stuff, too, I daresay. What really impressed me though, was the utter consistency of it, in that Divrei HaYamim (Book of Chronicles) was hardly distinguishable from say, Genesis. A lot of the books looked so similar internally, it was hard to tell who wrote what. I hadn’t been formally introduced to biblical scholarship and the Documentary Hypothesis beforehand, but it was almost obvious to me that the writing styles through so many of the books were practically the same, and there was hardly any reason to believe that, say, the Five Books of Moses, were written by God, or dictated by any sort of deity. Plenty of talented writes for thousands of years could have written the same kind of thing, and it would have looked just about the same. That was one of the things that really hit me, the linguistic implausibility of any of these books being authored by anyone other than human beings. Belief in TMS down the toilet.
What really really really blew away though was when I came across verses in II Kings 22:8 and Nechemiah 8:13 that said the Children of Israel “forgot” the words of the Torah for many years before people like Ezra “reminded them” of it. That really blew me away. I had often heard the Kuzari “proof” of the historicity of the mass revelation at Sinai. Essentially the argument goes: we have a chain going all the way back to Sinai saying that we received the Torah by revelation at Sinai. In front of millions of people! And why would so many people lie about such a thing? I had always bought the Kuzari argument (pretty much hook line and sinker) but here I had staring me in the face from the Bible itself problems with this. We all know a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and if the Children of Israel “forgot” the Torah for a while and then were “reminded” of it by a couple priests, what kind of mass tradition is that? So we don’t have a chain going back all the way to Sinai (though it sounds really nice). We have a chain going back at best to several hundred years *after* Sinai, and anything before that is really fuzzy. So what kind of BS is this?
Perhaps it is for this reason that rabbis don’t generally allow their students to learn Nach. Maybe it gives them a sense of irreverence for certain holy books, and makes them aware that most of Orthodoxy is just castles built in the air by rabbis over the millennia, and that there’s not much support for anything they say in Tanach, and Tanach could easily be used by any number of other religions, to say things wildly different than what rabbis say (I think Christianity does that to an extent, although I’ve always wanted to study the New Testament. Must stay on topic.) It’s ironic, because in the gemara the rabbi are always cherrypicking verses from Tanach to support what they say, or to attack someone else, or their opinion. They never quite in-depth study Tanach, instead they mostly dissect Mishnas, which are just the ramblings of other, older rabbis about mostly thing like halacha, and have even less to do with Tanach. Sure, it’s an ancient religion, and it’s about some old myths, traditions, and practices, but it would be nice if there was a truth factor involved, as well.
If your own holy books contradict your beliefs, what do you want from my fucking life?
Morality?
I’ll never forget the image.
A grown man crying.
I was in seventh grade. The teacher was a good family friend of ours, a baal teshuva. A wonderful man, with a heart of gold. I remember being excited to be in his class, and I remember he was excited to be my teacher. The first day, after being subjected to the most cruel taunts by my classmates. In the staff room, crying his heart out. I’ll never forget it. A grown man, a big guy. I’d never seen him cry before, I’ve never seen him cry since. Had been frum for a long time, and never imagined frum people could be so cruel.
I wonder, does your religion teach you to be good? I know Christianity does. And Reform, and other forms of non-Judaism. But Judaism? From what I remember, it was more about halacha and emunah and mussar (which was mostly about emunah) and Torah, above all. Morality? Not so much. It’s a Christian thing anyway, you know.
I think it’s sad that kiruv places give people such an unrealistic glimpse of what they can expect in their new cult. (Can anyone say used-car salesmen?) It’s too bad they can’t be honest.
I think anyone who claims Judaism makes people do good has clearly never stepped foot inside a yeshiva classroom. I still remember my class priding themselves on going through, I don’t know, six? teachers in one year. But we’re better than those public school goyim!! Where do they get their morals from?!! Hahaha.
A grown man crying.
I was in seventh grade. The teacher was a good family friend of ours, a baal teshuva. A wonderful man, with a heart of gold. I remember being excited to be in his class, and I remember he was excited to be my teacher. The first day, after being subjected to the most cruel taunts by my classmates. In the staff room, crying his heart out. I’ll never forget it. A grown man, a big guy. I’d never seen him cry before, I’ve never seen him cry since. Had been frum for a long time, and never imagined frum people could be so cruel.
I wonder, does your religion teach you to be good? I know Christianity does. And Reform, and other forms of non-Judaism. But Judaism? From what I remember, it was more about halacha and emunah and mussar (which was mostly about emunah) and Torah, above all. Morality? Not so much. It’s a Christian thing anyway, you know.
I think it’s sad that kiruv places give people such an unrealistic glimpse of what they can expect in their new cult. (Can anyone say used-car salesmen?) It’s too bad they can’t be honest.
I think anyone who claims Judaism makes people do good has clearly never stepped foot inside a yeshiva classroom. I still remember my class priding themselves on going through, I don’t know, six? teachers in one year. But we’re better than those public school goyim!! Where do they get their morals from?!! Hahaha.
What an idiot
Listen to this shit.
The guy is a fucking idiot. And he's one of the most respected chinuch people in the world. Maybe the problem is not kids and OTDers. Maybe the problem is the leadership, and your holy leaders, and the morons who fall for this shit. Not the lucky few who see past all this BS. It makes me sick.
HT.
The guy is a fucking idiot. And he's one of the most respected chinuch people in the world. Maybe the problem is not kids and OTDers. Maybe the problem is the leadership, and your holy leaders, and the morons who fall for this shit. Not the lucky few who see past all this BS. It makes me sick.
HT.
The Consequences of Morality
I think it’s very simple why people do “good” or “bad”: they have free choice.
It’s one of the things I find ridiculous about religion: How can you claim that your religion teaches people to do good, and keeps them on track if you acknowledge that they have free choice? Even if your religion tells people to do good, one’s relationship with their religion, or with God if you will, is an intensely personal thing, and there’s no way of knowing who’s sincere and who isn’t (my guess is no one is sincere, but that’s just me). Everyone is free to believe and act as they like, even if they’re told to do good, because remember, they’re free, so that’s no way to police a society. It’s kind of like saying, “everyone who goes to ninth grade is probably moral” but acknowledging they’re free to act immorally. It’s kind of absurd and cruel too, to tell people that certain people are *probably* moral, when you know good and well that they’re probably not, and you have no way of knowing if they are, in any case.
I think this is one of the greatest challenges to the absurd claim that religion makes people moral (I have yet to meet a single person who religion hasn’t made him *less* moral). What’s the point of free will? And also, what a cruel trick for God to play on humanity. He could have taken away our free will, and eliminated human corruption. Instead, he made us free to choose, and that explains why so many assholes exist. You know who’s fault Hitler is… Oh, silly me, I forgot. God only cares about Jews. Nobody else. Am I allowed to say goyim don’t count? Or is that a Chillul Hashem? Shhhh.
Snarkiness aside, humanists like myself often have a high regard for human nature, no religion necessary. Actually, we find religion often interfering with humanism. Say my father’s brother married a shiksa. Humanism would certainly tell you, by all means, to have a relationship with your brother. Yet religion might tell you to never speak to him again. Interesting. Or humanism might tell you to hang out with your family and break bread with them. Religion might tell you that their food is unkosher, they’re a bad influence on your children, and avoid them unless you can convert them to your faith. What fun!
As I said before, I have a high regard for human nature. You might even say I went from believing in God to believing in people. Decent tradeoff, if you ask me. You go from believing in imaginary (albeit powerful) friends to believing in real ones. I think humans (all humans, by the way. Probably not Garnel though.) have a highly developed moral conscience. We have the ability to teach ourselves to be kind and to treat others with respect. In short, I think we can and do teach ourselves and others morality. Unfortunately, it sometimes comes with strings attached, but even then, it’s all humans teaching humans. Sure, some believe in sky-fairies, but most don’t, and thankfully, no sky fairies are necessary for a healthy moral compass. (Although I’m sometimes tempted to think they *are* necessary for an ass-backwards, corrupt, insane, and above all, unjust one.)
There’s even support for this in the Mishna (Word of God, you know). In Avos (probably the only useful book ever penned by barbarians/rabbis) it says, “The reward for a mitzvah is a mitzvah, and the reward for an aveira is an aveira.” Often, fear of death and hell is dangled in front of believers (do good, you go to heaven. Bad, you go to hell), and if the rabbis believed in the afterlife (and this might be evidence that it’s a later fabrication and plagiarization from other tribal myths) wouldn’t they say so in the Mishna? If you’re going to fry in hell for not praying hard enough, or checking your mezuzas often enough, and oh, also for killing other people, wouldn’t the rabbis say so? Instead, it says your punishment is the aveira itself? What the hell? What kind of morons wrote this thing? Hey, if I’m going to give you a million dollars for something, you think I would find it necessary to give you other reasons?
Perhaps the rabbis sensed a fundamental secret of human nature. Humans don’t need promises of an afterlife, or even divine/rabbinic orders to do what they feel is right and to not do what they don’t feel is right. Say I hurt someone; do something wrong. No one may ever know. But *I* know. And I’ll sleep a little less easy at night, knowing the awful thing I’ve done, and I’ll have a harder time looking myself in the mirror in the morning. Conversely, if I do something thought of as “good”, I’ll sleep a bit more restfully at night. I’ll feel better about myself. I’ll hold my head just a little bit higher as I walk down the street. The reward or punishment for a deed is the deed itself. If I do something bad, I’ll forever be haunted by the memory. If I do something good, I’ll forever be buoyed by the memory. The rabbis tapped into the great secret of human morality: our conscience and guilt. To hell with hell.
Of course, another point to mention is it’s often in my own best interests to do good. If I help a friend, it’s not only for selfless purposes that I do so. And if I feel a sense of connection with all of humanity, why would I want to hurt anyone? So much good can be done for purely selfish purposes as well. My company donates a lot of charity. I’m sure they do it for altruistic purposes, but I’m sure they also have an idea that it does great things for their reputation to be known as a corporation that’s active in the community. A lot of morality is simple win/win strategies, you-scratch-my-back-I-scratch-yours. I put a smile on your face, you put a smile on mine. Remind me why we need religion again?
Update: I just repaid a sixteen year-old favor. I feel like a million bucks.
It’s one of the things I find ridiculous about religion: How can you claim that your religion teaches people to do good, and keeps them on track if you acknowledge that they have free choice? Even if your religion tells people to do good, one’s relationship with their religion, or with God if you will, is an intensely personal thing, and there’s no way of knowing who’s sincere and who isn’t (my guess is no one is sincere, but that’s just me). Everyone is free to believe and act as they like, even if they’re told to do good, because remember, they’re free, so that’s no way to police a society. It’s kind of like saying, “everyone who goes to ninth grade is probably moral” but acknowledging they’re free to act immorally. It’s kind of absurd and cruel too, to tell people that certain people are *probably* moral, when you know good and well that they’re probably not, and you have no way of knowing if they are, in any case.
I think this is one of the greatest challenges to the absurd claim that religion makes people moral (I have yet to meet a single person who religion hasn’t made him *less* moral). What’s the point of free will? And also, what a cruel trick for God to play on humanity. He could have taken away our free will, and eliminated human corruption. Instead, he made us free to choose, and that explains why so many assholes exist. You know who’s fault Hitler is… Oh, silly me, I forgot. God only cares about Jews. Nobody else. Am I allowed to say goyim don’t count? Or is that a Chillul Hashem? Shhhh.
Snarkiness aside, humanists like myself often have a high regard for human nature, no religion necessary. Actually, we find religion often interfering with humanism. Say my father’s brother married a shiksa. Humanism would certainly tell you, by all means, to have a relationship with your brother. Yet religion might tell you to never speak to him again. Interesting. Or humanism might tell you to hang out with your family and break bread with them. Religion might tell you that their food is unkosher, they’re a bad influence on your children, and avoid them unless you can convert them to your faith. What fun!
As I said before, I have a high regard for human nature. You might even say I went from believing in God to believing in people. Decent tradeoff, if you ask me. You go from believing in imaginary (albeit powerful) friends to believing in real ones. I think humans (all humans, by the way. Probably not Garnel though.) have a highly developed moral conscience. We have the ability to teach ourselves to be kind and to treat others with respect. In short, I think we can and do teach ourselves and others morality. Unfortunately, it sometimes comes with strings attached, but even then, it’s all humans teaching humans. Sure, some believe in sky-fairies, but most don’t, and thankfully, no sky fairies are necessary for a healthy moral compass. (Although I’m sometimes tempted to think they *are* necessary for an ass-backwards, corrupt, insane, and above all, unjust one.)
There’s even support for this in the Mishna (Word of God, you know). In Avos (probably the only useful book ever penned by barbarians/rabbis) it says, “The reward for a mitzvah is a mitzvah, and the reward for an aveira is an aveira.” Often, fear of death and hell is dangled in front of believers (do good, you go to heaven. Bad, you go to hell), and if the rabbis believed in the afterlife (and this might be evidence that it’s a later fabrication and plagiarization from other tribal myths) wouldn’t they say so in the Mishna? If you’re going to fry in hell for not praying hard enough, or checking your mezuzas often enough, and oh, also for killing other people, wouldn’t the rabbis say so? Instead, it says your punishment is the aveira itself? What the hell? What kind of morons wrote this thing? Hey, if I’m going to give you a million dollars for something, you think I would find it necessary to give you other reasons?
Perhaps the rabbis sensed a fundamental secret of human nature. Humans don’t need promises of an afterlife, or even divine/rabbinic orders to do what they feel is right and to not do what they don’t feel is right. Say I hurt someone; do something wrong. No one may ever know. But *I* know. And I’ll sleep a little less easy at night, knowing the awful thing I’ve done, and I’ll have a harder time looking myself in the mirror in the morning. Conversely, if I do something thought of as “good”, I’ll sleep a bit more restfully at night. I’ll feel better about myself. I’ll hold my head just a little bit higher as I walk down the street. The reward or punishment for a deed is the deed itself. If I do something bad, I’ll forever be haunted by the memory. If I do something good, I’ll forever be buoyed by the memory. The rabbis tapped into the great secret of human morality: our conscience and guilt. To hell with hell.
Of course, another point to mention is it’s often in my own best interests to do good. If I help a friend, it’s not only for selfless purposes that I do so. And if I feel a sense of connection with all of humanity, why would I want to hurt anyone? So much good can be done for purely selfish purposes as well. My company donates a lot of charity. I’m sure they do it for altruistic purposes, but I’m sure they also have an idea that it does great things for their reputation to be known as a corporation that’s active in the community. A lot of morality is simple win/win strategies, you-scratch-my-back-I-scratch-yours. I put a smile on your face, you put a smile on mine. Remind me why we need religion again?
Update: I just repaid a sixteen year-old favor. I feel like a million bucks.
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