Today I open it, it's still all sports, all the time, with some personal smack tossed in... except I see TWIS needs to change his .signature. I don't mind him having it, it's just that it's old and inappropriate for him. For me, it was one of those fundamental questions of existence, like, how can one be a Catholic without ever observing any of the rites of Catholicism or believing in the tenets of Catholicism? It was around the time when that story had come out about the (jewish) contractor who had sold shoddy armor to the U.S. government at a premium... and then had turned around and hired 50 cent to play at his little girl with the grown up body's bat mitzvah, a bat mitzvah that went into the million dollar range. That dollar amount was offensive to me, 50 cent's presence offended me (like the piano player's, Herbie Hancock?, presence in Indecent Proposal offended me), but the religious identity of that contractor offended me most of all. It was bad enough to have an American cut the tendons of American soldiers for the sake of the almighty dollar; but for that American to also be Jewish stuck an arrow in the back of why America was in Iraq and Afghanistan in the first place. If America is going to trip over it's own dick for the sake of Israel, have the decency -- particularly if you're Jewish -- to provide America with decent armor while it goes down. But that was me. And that was what was really behind my asking about real jews, fake jews and rich jews.
It's offensive to me to claim a religion that you don't really give a fuck about. Kind of like the Kennedy's fake Catholicism. Except Catholicism has always been fake even when it was real, and is the 'we'll accept anything' ying to Jewishness 'god has some pretty specific damn rules' yang.
So anyway, I looked up the question 'real jew', and ignored those responses dealing with Mormons and Christian Identitiers (both of which are white superiority cults). The answers are strange to me, and are not satisfying to me.
If she was secular Jew because her mother was secular Jew, then what (and where) was her father? Did she really feel less Jewish because of how often or not her family attended temple, or because of her Mexicanness? Why couldn't an orthodox rabbi raise a non-Jew?http://www.jewishjournal.com/home/preview.php?id=17900
What makes a 'real' Jew?
By Rebecca Suchov
After being alive for 16 years, I would think it would be easy to classify myself into a certain category, and that by now I would know what, who and why I am what I am. But as I grow older, it has become more complicated for me to label myself -- secular, religious, Jewish American Mexican, Mexican American Jew. This is probably a result of the fact that the older I get, the more in-depth I learn about my religion and the more I begin to formulate my own thoughts and opinions about it and about myself...... For example, I was a secular Jew because my mother told me that she was a secular Jew. I considered myself to be a Mexican American teenage girl, who happened to be Jewish, as well, because that was the way I was raised. We would celebrate Shabbat when it was convenient to, and would observe only the "famous" Jewish holidays -- Chanukah, Pesach, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot. I considered a Jew to be a person who knew about the Torah, kept kosher, celebrated Shabbat and who went to temple every Friday night -- and anyone who did not, was, in my eyes, not a "real" Jew. This consequently meant that I was not a "real" Jew. The thought of this not only made me hate the religion's standards -- which I myself had set -- but it caused me to feel very confused about myself. I wasn't sure which temple I liked, how to celebrate each holiday, and even how to eat.
Although we had Judaic studies every year, I felt unable to drift away from my parents' beliefs and create my own.
I was relieved to find that one of my friends, Tali, happened to be in Israel at the same time, on a separate school program. Tali, a girl I met at tennis camp, was one of the only people I knew who shared my beliefs -- we both agreed that it was not necessary to follow all of the rituals of the Jewish religion. It was not until we reconnected in Israel that I found out her father is an Orthodox rabbi who works at Chabad. This immediately made me wonder how a rabbi, an Orthodox rabbi, a "real" Jew, could raise a "fake" one. I asked Tali what she considered herself to be, and whether or not she felt comfortable with her decision of moving away from her family's opinions and creating her own. She answered that she respected her parents' beliefs but did not completely agree with what they stood for. When I asked her if she felt as Jewish as her father, she responded without any hesitation, "I am just as Jewish as my father and mother and you are just as Jewish as them as well." Hearing those words finally come out of someone's mouth besides my own was like lifting the world off my shoulders. From that point on I no longer felt uncomfortable with my beliefs, and I no longer felt out of place.
...Every day it became clearer to me that there was not one specific way to define a "real" Jew. By observing the amount of pride and devotion that all the Jewish Israelis felt toward their religion, I began to understand that simply believing in God and being proud of the fact that you are Jewish automatically makes you as Jewish as you can get. I was able to see on many different occasions the variety of Jews, and how I did not have to fit into any one of them in order to be Jewish. When our group went to the Kotel, for example, I was able to see ultra-Orthodox Jews, Conservative Jews, Modern Orthodox Jews, and Jews that don't fit into any of the categories praying toward the Wall, and every one of them accepts the other as a member of the Jewish faith.
How can simply believing in God and being proud of belonging to a faith (without actually observing any of the beliefs or rites of that faith), mean that you are of that faith?
This was printed in the teen section of the Jewish Journal. Something is amiss here. Or am I the only one who feels it? A lot of that unease I feel has to do with what's written in the Bible itself. There are some very specific rules set down, and each time the rules were broken, Yahweh went Chernobyl on the Jewish people... at which point Yahweh pulled the guilt-ridden abusive husband act, and after lots of sacrifices and public atoning, everything was supposed to be copacetic between Yahweh and the Jews until the next time Jews thought being born into the faith without actually acting as the faith demands was good enough. The Bible is filled with example after example of what happens when Jews try to leave Yahweh while still enjoying the benefits of wearing his ring (so to speak).
That's what is beneath my discomfort. Beside the backstabbing of the Jewish contractor without loud religious and moral condemnation from fellow Jews. (I mention that, again, because of how Muslims across the spectrum are always taken to task for not raising their voices loudly enough for non-Muslims, against radical Muslims. Why are there different rules for Muslims, versus Jews?)
Is the covenant truly no longer in force?
Am I experiencing fear of the spiritual abusive Father, or jealousy? Another 'real jew' states:
So you can be a Jew without being circumcised, if you are a man, as long as you are 'inwardly jewish' -- whatever that means?http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f ... drelig.DTL
FINDING MY RELIGION
Philosopher Jacob Needleman asks in his latest book, 'Why Can't We Be Good?' (Pt. 2)
David Ian Miller
Monday, April 16, 2007
...
Were you raised in a particular religion?
I was raised Jewish, but I was pretty allergic to my religion as I was growing up. Now I see that aversion to religion is much more about the fact that our churches and synagogues, in my humble opinion, have lost contact with the real depth of their teachings. People try to do ethics without realizing that it needs to be connected to deep philosophical, metaphysical and spiritual experience. People are trying to figure out ethics with just their minds or their reactions. And as a result, everybody criticizes everything.
Do you still consider yourself Jewish?
Yes. I also just as deeply respect Christian tradition and Buddhist tradition. I've spent 45 years studying the inner meaning of these great religions, and believe me, they all converge. If I could be a Christian, I'd be just as happy as if I could be a real Jew.
What do you mean by that last statement?
It takes work to be a Christian. You have to choose it. And you can't choose it just once and forget about it. You have to choose it again and again, and it's an inner struggle. It's an inner struggle that the great mystics have put on paper.
Is that different from being a real Jew?
That's the same thing with being a real Jew. A real Jew is not just someone who goes to the synagogue and follows the diet and says the words, but the real Jew is someone inwardly Jewish.
...
What does it mean to be 'inwardly' anything? I may have been raised Catholic and Southern Baptist; but it would be wrong for me to describe myself as either Catholic or Southern Baptist, with no qualifiers attached, because I do not observe either faith and do not live as either faith. Familiarity (for me) is not enough.
What is the true convenant? and if the covenant is not contained within the Bible, where is it?
