levite

So, since a couple of people in Dlish's awesome "Ask A Muslim" thread have expressed interest, the "Ask A Jew" thread is now open for business. I am not a bottomless well of Jewish knowledge, but I have good resources to find out what I don't know, and I know some stuff. As many of you know, I'm about to start my fifth and (hopefully) final year of rabbinical school, so it actually is my field, so to speak, and not only my religion.

I should note here that I know there are at least a couple of other forum members who are observant Jews, and I sincerely want to acknowledge them and their knowledge, and not make it seem like I'm shutting them out. You guys, if you want to add, or disagree, or present counterpoints, don't feel like I think this is my party. I'm just a mouthy bastard who's gung-ho for his work, I don't claim any provenance over things Jewish.

That said, note to all that I am nominally a Conservative Jew, although I tend to think of myself more generally as simply a liberal traditional Jew, rather than as a part of a movement. This means that I have a certain frame of understanding Judaism and Jewish law. I was raised Orthodox, and my fiancee is a Reform rabbi, so I do have some understanding of how other movements see things, and I promise I will try always to give a spectrum of answers reflecting that. But if I default to an unspecific answer, know that what you're hearing is a liberal traditional view, and take it as such.

OK, 'nuff said. The sign is flipped to open, and the Jew is in!

__________________
Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.

(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)

Borla

How strictly do you adhere to the rules on what you are to eat?


I only ask because my wife works for a Jewish doctor. He will not order a sausage and cheese pizza, or a shrimp eggroll. But if someone else does, he eats it and pretends to ignore the fact that it has things in it he's restricted from.



What specific preparations do you make for the Sabbath, and what do you avoid doing that most people take for granted?

__________________
Coimhéad fearg fhear na foighde!!!!

Willravel

Levite steps up to the plate...
How prevalent was Zionism before World War 2?
I'm assuming you still believe the Messiah is coming, what do you think Jewish people are looking for so far as indications or signs?
Maimonides made a list of 613 commandments, do you follow them or attempt to follow them?
I remember reading somewhere that the woven thread around the outside of a tallit had specific meaning. Am I remembering that correctly?
Is it just a coincidence that more comedians are Jewish, or is there something more going on?

Reese

This question isn't so much about the Jewish religion. Why are there so many self-deprecating jew jokes?

__________________
“It is better to be rich and healthy than poor and sick” - Dave Barry

levite

Wow, that was fast! OK, boys and girls, here we go...!!!


Even amongst the Orthodox communities, there are variations, and even a spectrum of how strictly one interprets the rules of kashrut (keeping kosher, both in terms of what you eat, and in terms of the various rules of your kitchen and your table, is collectively referred to as kashrut). So there is no one perfect way of observing the laws of kashrut.

That said, from a traditional standpoint, your wife's employer is doing a little bit of friendly cheating. His standards of kashrut seem to me to fall into a fairly common spectrum of center to left-wing non-Orthodox Judaism. Which, being ever-so-slightly to the right of center myself, I find understandable, but regrettable.

Then again, anyone to the right of me, which would include a small slice of the Conservative Movement, and the entirety of Orthodoxy, both Modern and otherwise, would say the same for my practice.

I am pretty firm on that I will not eat forbidden creatures (we'll get back to what falls into that list in a moment), nor will I eat any mixture of meat and dairy, nor will I eat non-kosher meat of any kind. That said, I will sometimes go to non-kosher restaurants, and there consume dairy meals, even though a more Orthodox interpretation of kashrut would say that there is simply no way for a hot (cooked) dairy meal in a non-kosher restaurant to be free from the taint of non-kosher meat. The key difference to me between what I do and what many more loose practitioners of non-Orthodox kashrut does is that I have the opinions of several Conservative rabbis whom I trust that say that to eat dairy in a non-kosher restaurant is halakhically permissible in some cases, and I have researched the issues of Jewish law myself also, to determine how and why I ought to be able to do so, and under what circumstances.

To non-Jews, I understand that this can sound so esoteric and obsessed with minutiae that it's nonsense. I sympathize with that, but this is what comes of Christianity not being a law-based religion. It creates a vastly different experience of what constitutes observance....

In short, I guess I would say my observance of kashrut is stricter than most liberal Jews, less strict that most Orthodox Jews.

BTW, forbidden creatures. The short version is this. If it's a land animal it needs to have split hooves and chew its cud. Basically, ruminants like cows and goats and sheep are kosher. Camels, for example, chew their cud but have no split hoof: not kosher. Pigs have split hooves, but don't chew their cud: not kosher. If it's a bird, the short list is chickens, ducks, geese, pigeons, partridges, quails. There might be a couple of exotics I missed, but that's the basic list. When it comes to fish or things that live in the water: it's got to have fins and scales. Catfish have fins but no scales: not kosher. There's a debate about swordfish: Orthodoxy says they have skin not scales, Conservative Judaism says they have skinlike scales. Crustaceans, cetaceans, anything with tentacles-- all that stuff is not kosher.

Well, I cook all the food I plan to eat over shabbat (the sabbath) on Friday, because cooking is forbidden by traditional Jewish law on shabbat. I keep the stove on warm, and a burner going under an iron plate, so that I can bring foods cooks before shabbat up to temperature on shabbat, because lighting fire is forbidden on shabbat. Before shabbat, I empty my pockets of car keys, money, wallet, coins, etc., because I do not drive on shabbat, nor will I carry money of any kind, or any instruments of doing business (like credit cards). During shabbat (that is, from sunset Friday to after sundown on Saturday) I will not go into stores or restaurants or cafes, and I will not travel. Right before shabbat begins on Friday, my fiancee lights the traditional candles, and says the traditional blessing to mark the beginning of shabbat. Then she sets the table, and I wash up from having been cooking all afternoon and shopping all morning. After that, we sing the traditional prayer service to begin shabbat, and then begin a meal (usually the nicest we can afford) by reciting the blessing sanctifying shabbat over a glass of wine, then making the traditional blessing over bread. We eat, we talk, we have a good meal, and then we finish by singing the grace after meals, and we sit and sing traditional shabbat songs.

So far, all of this is not really anything different than an Orthodox person would tell you. The differences are with things like electricity, which the Orthodox equate with fire, and therefore do not use on shabbat: I will use electricity on shabbat because like most Conservative Jews, I don't equate it with fire. I will write on shabbat if I have to, though traditionally it is forbidden, but I try very hard not to...and mostly, I don't. I don't play music on shabbat, or watch television or dvds, and I mostly don't use my computer, although I believe these things are not technically forbidden (the Orthodox do believe so) on shabbat, I think they distract one from keeping a peaceful, spiritual focus. I will answer the phone on shabbat (Orthodoxy will tell you that's forbidden), but only to chat with close friends and family. I will not talk to co-workers or discuss business of any kind. There are some other things that Orthodoxy would tell you are forbidden on shabbat that I don't hold the same opinion regarding, but nothing earth-shaking.

So what do I do on shabbat? In the morning, technically, I should be going to synagogue, but I don't care for the one near me, so I usually get up and pray at home, and study the weekly portion of Torah (it is customary that every year the Torah [Pentateuch] is read aloud in the synagogue, a portion every week, along with a selection from one of the books of the Prophets), then my fiancee and I have lunch, do some more singing of traditional shabbat songs, then spend the afternoon reading and talking in the pool or hot tub. Often, friends will drop by and hang out with us, talking; or we'll take a nap and make love, until it's time for a light dinner, often accompanied by some more singing, and some discussion of Torah, until shabbat is over, and we ceremonially mark its ending by a ritual involving a candle, spices, and wine.

A lot of non-Jews, I find, are weirded out by shabbat, and their reaction seems to be: "so many things you can't do! don't you get bored?!" But I never do. I look forward to it all week. It's the one day of the week I don't think about work, or school, or money problems, or the problems of the world. All that stuff goes away for that 25 hours, and it's just peacefulness, restfulness, good food and wine, nobody around but friends if we want them, song and leisurely talk of literature and philosophy and spirituality, admiring the world, being happy and grateful for our good lives. I don't know how that could get boring. It keeps me going. There's a saying, "The Jews don't keep Shabbat, Shabbat keeps the Jews."....

__________________
Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.

(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)

Trisk

As someone who is becoming a Rabbi and engaged to a Rabbi, perhaps you could give me some advice?

I am in my mid-20s and Jewish by birth. I have always identified strongly with Judaism. However, my mother is a non-observant Jew and not the one that instilled me with this sense of identity. I never went to Hebrew school, was never Bat Mitzvah'd, and only brought to a temple (an Orthodox one...very strange to me at the time) as a young child.

I have been curious to get more involved in the spiritual side of Judaism for some years now, but it is scary to me, as someone so ignorant of the prayers, songs, traditions, and the Hebrew language. I once tried to attend a Conservative temple for a few months with a friend of mine but if anything, it actually made me feel more alienated.

How would you advise someone like me? What's a good place to start? I have several books on Judaism, know ABOUT many holidays, customs, history, belief...but going in, praying, being part of a congregation? Adding belief and traditional values to my own, thoroughly modern life? Gah. Do you know anyone who has done this?

Thanks

levite

It depends on where you were. In the USA, not very. It was here, but it was very much lost in the jumble, just another enterprising Jewish idealist movement (at least until the onset of troubles associated with the rise of Nazism gave significance to Jews having somewhere to flee).... On the other hand, it was huge in Eastern Europe. Probably because life was good for Jews in America, and it sucked donkeys in Eastern Europe. When you're a penniless Russian peasant, and even if you're a penniless Soviet peasant, the adventurous, idealistic life of a kibbutznik (a worker on a socialist farming collective, which was what most early Zionist settlements were becoming by the end of the 1910s, and had become by around the 1920s or so) seemed pretty freaking sweet. So they made aliyah (emigrated to British Palestine, as it was then called) by the thousands. And not just Russians, either, but from all over the lands that were becoming the Soviet bloc after 1917.... And the support for it was enormous in those quarters. Slightly less in Western Europe, but still more than in America. I think Western European Jews saw this as their great chance to fulfill the Enlightenment dream at last, and be a regular nationalist entity among other nations.

Messianism is a tricky business. I'll be honest with you, there are so many different ideas about messianism floating around the Jewish people, I have no idea what other people are looking for. Except the Chabad hasidim: they're looking for their dead rabbi to come back, and they don't get why the rest of us find that appalling.... I think some people are looking literally for a savior from the House of David to appear. Some are just looking for a Great Leader. The wiser ones aren't looking for a person but for events: Rambam (Maimonides) says that you'll know a man is the messiah if he fulfills the prophecies by reconquering the Land of Israel, building a Third Temple, making peace with the nations, etc. If the events come to pass, the one who led in them is the messiah, if not, claims are worthless.

Myself, I don't necessarily believe in that laundry list of events. But even to the extent I do, it's pretty plain to see none of them will be happening any time soon. There isn't even peace among the Jewish People, let along peace among the nations. And there won't be a Third Temple anytime soon given that the spot it's supposed to be built on is currently occupied by the Dome of the Rock and the Masjid al-Aqsa, whose owners don't strike me as likely to volunteer to move their buildings to one side.

But I do believe in a messiah that will come, and I think Rambam was right to look for events, not people. Because I personally think that the messiah will come not to lead us into a new age, but to inaugurate such a new age with leadership once we have brought it about. I think finding peace among ourselves and the nations is our task as a whole people. And when all those problems are solved, it won't be a problem to build the Temple where it's supposed to be built, nor will the Muslims object to moving their buildings, because the Third Temple will be a joint venture of the Sons of Abraham, and it will be open to all, not just Jews. This, I think, is what Isaiah means when he says, "Even them will I bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer...for mine house shall be called an house of prayer for all people." (Is. 56:7)

If you actually read the list-- which I recommend, it's a fascinating little book-- you'll note that it's actually impossible to follow all 613 in one lifetime, since some are specifically commandments for priests, and not regular-joe-israelite Jews, and there are even a couple that are mutually exclusive, although I can't bring them to mind at the moment.

There are some that are inoperable without a Temple, and no Jew can follow them at present, nor will be able to until the time of the messiah.

And there are some that I personally believe must be misunderstood in their classical interpretations, or even perhaps that their phrasing in the Torah constitutes a misinterpretation of what God was attempting to convey to the prophet who wrote them down first. These I do not follow, nor do I demand their observance from others: so, for example, the laws of menstrual purity I find utterly stigmatizing and without redemption. I don't demand of my fiancee that she follow them, and she doesn't, and I don't bother with the business of not coming into contact with a menstruating woman. Any Orthodox person who heard me say that would be horrified, and would consider it a gross betrayal of a fundamental principle of Jewish observance. But there you are. Likewise, the prohibition on homosexuality. I personally am not gay, but I don't demand that anyone follow that prohibition because I refuse to believe in a God who creates gay people and then tells them they must live in celibate shame because they are abominations. Whatever God was trying to convey, the prophet must have been confused, because that verse could not be a word of God. These two items, by the way, are notable not because they represent a vastly different observance from Orthodox observance, but because they are two things that there are currently no legal decisions in halakhah supporting my practice. I am, suffice it to say, researching the precedents in halakhah as part of writing teshuvot (legal decisions) to back up what I am saying here. But generally I don't refuse to do things unless there is a legal decision or precedent in halakhah that supports me.

I follow what I can of those that are possible to follow, there being no Temple, and me not being a priest. With just a couple of exceptions, like those I mentioned above, if I miss some, it's mostly unintentional.

I can only presume you mean tzitzit, the fringes on the corners and sometimes the edges of the tallit (prayer shawl)? The tzitzit are generally four long fringes of interlaced and tied thread on the corners of the tallit, but some people also tie smaller, puffier knots along the edge. Let's see if I can manage to get pictures in here.... You ought to be able to see what I mean-- the close-up shows the usual fringe, the wider shot shows the difference between the tzitzit on the corner and the puffier knots along the edge. So, the little puffy ones are not necessary: they are there, some say, as a reminder of the decorative bells and gold pomegranates that adorned the edges of the high priests outfit in the days of the Temple. But the long tied-thread fringes on the corners are required. They fulfill the commandment that you will find in Numbers 15:37-41. The intricate tying of the fringe varies from Ashkenazi (North/Eastern European) tradition to Sefardi (Spanish/Portuguese tradition) to Mizrahi (North African/Arabian/Persian), with differences in some Hasidic communities, but in all cases is reflective of Kabbalistic notions about patterns and numbers and magical protection.

If you don't mean tzitzit, I'm not sure what you mean.


No, we have a plot.

Just kidding, of course. I dunno. We play to our strengths. Why are most basketball players black? Why are there so many Asians involved in technology? Who knows? But we all seem to be enjoying the fruits of the coincidence....

Attached Images

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__________________
Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.

(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)

levite

Because maybe if we get there first and say them as jokes we can get other people to stop saying it and mean it.

I'm only guessing.

__________________
Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.

(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)

Trisk

That's partially it. From what I understand, American-Jewish humor is strongly rooted in Yiddish/Eastern European humor that developed in Shtetls (the very religious Jewish communities that existed in 19th century Eastern Europe). The Russian empire has always been kind of oppressive and tolerance of the Jews has been an on-off thing throughout history. Pogroms were an unfortunate risk of life.

Jewish/Talmudic teachings encourage us to find the joys in life, to analyze and criticize ourselves, our communities, and that which we don't understand. The next step after finding these flaws, surely, is to then find the humor in them?

The Eastern European Jews developed a dry sense of humor about their uncertain life and humor had to be subtle to avoid the wrath of the people in power when mocking them. You may notice that a lot of Jewish humor is very sarcastic, or brings humor into the way things are said (which words are emphasized, etc). This is very Yiddish. A lot of American-Jewish comedians are really just stealing material from their grandparents or great-grandparents

levite

OK, I am so glad you asked this question! First of all, take heart. I have met bunches of people in your situation, and I know that it can seem unbelievably hard to find your way in, and that if you weren't given certain tools, some people just don't know how to open the door for you. Which sucks, and feels bad, and must be ridiculously offputting. And I'm sorry you've found it so. But I want you to know it can be done: you can get in touch with the traditon, and you can find spiritual satisfaction in it. It can be tough, but I have heard many say (and I agree) that it's worth it.

So here's the deal. I won't lie: getting maximum meaning out of Judaism is not always easy, and will always represent effort on the part of the individual. You're going to have to commit to some hard work: I say that up front.

First thing, most important: you've got to learn Hebrew. Now, don't worry, there are things you can be doing while you're learning Hebrew to begin practicing, to begin using the tools of the tradition for your own spirituality. But you've got to be learning Hebrew. I don't know where you live, but unless you're in a rural area, there probably ought to be some options. If you live in a city, then I recommend community college or the local university. If they don't offer Hebrew, which would be surprising, your local synagogues will be able to direct you to where you can find such a thing. But the Jewish tradition is written in Hebrew, and is designed around Hebrew, and Judaism is a system designed under the presumption that Jews will learn Hebrew; and it is next to impossible to get more than a fraction of the totality of Jewish traditional experience without the Jewish language.

In the meantime, second of all, read up. You've got some books, that's good. I can recommend more-- pm me. But also, get the tools of the trade. So, for example, you need a siddur (prayerbook), but you need one geared to learning. Look for a set called the Schottenstein Edition Interlinear Siddur-- there's one for weekdays, one for shabbat and festivals-- and you'll find an accurate translation interwoven with the Hebrew text. If you don't have a Tanakh (Hebrew bible), get a bilingual edition. JPS (Jewish Publication Society) has a nice one for cheap.

Third of all, contact your local synagogues-- don't be afraid to use synagogues of different movements: nothing says you have to commit-- and ask about what kinds of classes and learning groups they have. If they're worth their salt, they should have some classes or learning groups on liturgy, ritual practice, theology, philosophy, and whatnot. If not talk to the rabbi, ask if they would study with you privately. Again, if s/he is worth his/her salt, s/he should be willing, or at least able to direct you to someone of equivalent knowledge who is. Don't be afraid to study. Finally, ask your local Conservative synagogue if they have a learner's minyan (a minyan is a quorum for prayer; a learner's minyan is just that: a service specifically geared to people just learning the liturgy). If they don't have one, ask them why not? Because they should. I say Conservative and not Reform or Orthodox because the Reform movement does not use the traditional liturgy, and the Orthodox movement will not teach you sufficient skills with prayer and prayer leadership because you're a woman, and according to Orthodoxy, you have no requirement to say many prayers, nor can you be a public prayer leader. So that's not really worth your while, but you should learn the traditional liturgy...so that puts you in the Conservative zone for learning prayer liturgy.

Judaism is not always an easy religion, in part because your best usage of it is going to be in vigorous exploration and confrontation of it. Israel, which is our ancient name, means "The one who struggles with God," and that is, in fact, what a practicing Jew does. Judaism is complex. Torah is elusive and full of multiple meanings. Halakhah (Jewish law) is voluminous and intertwined. The many theologies of Judaism range from frustratingly simplistic to frighteningly condemnatory to shockingly transcendent and full of love and compassion, but no theology is easy. Judaism requires effort to make it work, which I think is why so many people these days are giving up on it-- it must seem hard to put in so much work, when you already have so much to do. But as frustrating and paradoxical as it seems, at least know that, if it doesn't get less complex as it goes, it does get easier to understand and follow and reshape.

But to be comfortable with it, to find a comfortable niche in practicing Jewish society, you have to throw yourself into learning, and fearlessly claim the tradition for yourself. Don't let youself be put off by people acting like you should know X or Y, or (God forbid) telling you that you can't ask that question (a rare attitude to encounter among Jews in my experience), or what have you. You are a Jew. This entitles you to question, to dig, to confront, to reinterpret, to reshape-- so long as you do so from a place of learning and education. Which may be in process, I hasten to add-- you don't have to wait to confront until your Jewish education is complete!

Listen, if you don't like the shul (Yiddish for synagogue) near you, try another. Don't worry about movements for now, just play musical shuls and see what grabs you. If you don't like any of them right now, well, that's bad luck, but it happens. I myself don't care for any of the shuls near me right now, and I do most of my davening (Yiddish for praying) at home. It's unfortunate, but there's nothing wrong with it. But that's all the more why you need to learn: because you've got to be your own community when none is available to support you.

Do you have Jewish friends-- either practicing, or interesting in practicing more, like you are? If not, ask about events at your local shuls and Jewish Community Center, and see if you can get some practicing Jewish friends. I'm not saying you shouldn't be friends with non-Jews! I would never say that! But it's key to have some Jewish friends to share Jewish experiences with. Try having some people over for shabbat dinner, and talk about the week's Torah reading. Even if you don't go to shul, make it a habit to keep shabbat, learn the weekly Torah portion. As you begin to learn Hebrew, find some Jewish music, and start learning some songs to sing on shabbat. Don't worry if you're singing alone. I've spent some time living in places where I was the only observant Jew, and I sang to myself on shabbat, and was happy.

While you're learning the formal liturgy, start praying informally. Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, a famous Hasidic master, taught that everyone should just go out into the fields every day and speak to God, pouring out your heart and troubles to God as to a friend. Even if all you can say is: "Master of the World: oy oy oy!" Our liturgy is in Hebrew, and should be learned because it is beautiful and ancient and we are mandated to use it in part. But prayer doesn't always need liturgy, nor does it need to be in Hebrew. Talk to God. Try to feel God's presence. If you meditate, I heartily recommend using that as a tool. Read Jewish Meditation: A Practical Guide, by Aryeh Kaplan, for some good practical background on this. He has some other books that are useful, also. Also, for more philosophical background on this, read Man's Quest For God, by Abraham Joshua Heschel. A lovely little book about the philosophy of Jewish prayer and its experience.

Finally, if you're a twentysomething, you may be eligible for Birthright, which is a program in the Jewish community to bring young people to Israel for a brief encounter tour, as a way of finding out more about your roots, and strengthening your connection to your people and your ancestry. Go to Taglit-Birthright Israel: The Trip, look around, and see if anyone near you is organizing a trip. If not, or if you don't fit the age restrictions-- don't give up. Call them. There's sometimes room for flexibility. But it's a free trip to Israel, and builds relationships, friendships, and an incredible sense of belonging.

In the meantime, to get more practical, to determine some other steps, and to see if I can help you more, PM me, and tell me whereabouts you're located-- maybe I can hook you up with someone who can help. And don't be afraid to ask me more, either publicly or by PM.

And don't settle for feeling left out. There is room for every Jew in Judaism. If that room doesn't present itself, make it, because it is yours by right.

__________________
Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.

(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)

fresnelly

I'm curious about (orthodox?) fashion. Why is it that all the men wear the same suits and wide brimmed hats?

I can guess that there are edicts about dressing modestly with certain fabrics and so on but how does this translate into such uniformity? Why do some men have the curls on the sides?

What are the tenets in play here?

__________________
Building an artificial intelligence that appreciates Mozart is easy. Building an A.I. that appreciates a theme restaurant is the real challenge - Kit Roebuck - Nine Planets Without Intelligent Life

loquitur

I'm finding the questions very interesting, mainly because they are mostly asked from the perspective of people for whom the baseline concept of religion is Christianity. That's natural, because most of the western world is Christian and thinks of religion that way. Judaism is much, much more prescriptive than Christianity. (I'm leaving Reform out of this because Reform is something of a hybrid of tradition and self-governance, and doesn't recognize the primacy of traditional jewish law other than as a source of tradition and history.) If you view religion as a set of beliefs, which is the basic Protestant view (I know I'm oversimplifying), much of Judaism looks unbelievably weird. But Judaism puts much more emphasis on law, deeds and conduct - both as to how a person relates to others and how a person relates to god. It's much more of a prescription as to how a person is supposed to conduct him/herself. And yes, some of it seems arbitrary and picayune, and is in fact arbitrary and picayune, but it all can be sourced back into specific commandments and sifted through traditional sources.

Will, that's part of the reason why, for the most part (not uniformly, obviously), worrying about the Messiah and the next world just isn't all that central to day-to-day Judaism. There is very, very little agreement on details about what the next world is, what will bring the Messiah, how reward and punishment works - and there is certainly nothing like the elaborate system of hell, purgatory, limbo, etc that classical Christianity has. Jews have their hands full trying to comply with the everyday laws that govern life in this world, and the general feeling is that if you do right on earth, the afterlife takes care of itself.

Overall, in my view at least, the details are less important than the fact that the community they fostered over the last few thousand years has managed to retain its coherent identity as a people, even though it was dispersed across much of the world. Whatever it did, has worked remarkably well - not necessarily in all its details, but in gross, Jews are probably the most successful and long-lived nationality in history. And it's at least fairly inferrable that it is the result of various traditional cultural practices that trace back to the religion, such as revering learning, primacy of family and community, emphasis on charity, and things like that.

Grasshopper Green

What is the Jewish view of sex before marriage (dlish, I'm going to ask the same question to you if you're reading this)? My mother is what she calls a "non traditional" Christian - she fervently believes in God, Jesus, and the Bible but does not attend services of any kind, but she knows her Bible and is happy to give me passages when I ask her questions (I consider myself agnostic and am fairly ignorant as far as religion is concerned) I recently asked her about sex before marriage and she said that the Bible says if a man lays with a woman, she is his wife...meaning they technically don't have be married, but once they have sex they are. I don't know if this is a mainstream Christian belief...I know that some Christian churches believe sex before marriage is a sin. Anyway, I'm interested in hearing your answer

One more - how does the Jewish community in general view dating outside of your religion? If the couple decide to get married, is conversion mandatory?

__________________
"They say that patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings; steal a little and they throw you in jail, steal a lot and they make you king"

Formerly Medusa

Strange Famous

Well, I am ethnically Jewish, and somewhat identify myself as Jewish, but I dont really follow Judaism in any sense.

I believe in the God of Judaism/Christianity/Islam in a broad sense, but I also believe that Jesus was probably (but not definitely) a true prophet. I have never been to church (any kind of church) in my life, I practise sex before marriage, in some occassions of my life I have committed crimes of violence and theft.

Do you think it is possible to reconcile a sense of Jewish identity when one is not religiously Jewish?

__________________
"Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate,
for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing
hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain
without being uncovered."

The Gospel of Thomas

Toaster126

Here's the one I always have confusion on: Why do Jews, Christians, and Muslims kill each other over their faiths if they are all acknowledging they are worshiping the same dude?

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dlish

how do jewish athletes reconcile their beliefs with the sabath since most sport is played on weekends?

Do jewish athletes that find it restrictive? how do they work around it?

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loquitur

dlish, that one is easy - most Jews are non-observant, and just about all Jewish athletes are. They don't work around it, they just don't do traditional Sabbath observance.

Toaster, that one is unanswerable. You might as well try to find out why different Christian faiths went to war with each other for hundreds of years until they all got tired of it.

Halx

Having once been a fan of a Jewish athlete, Shawn Green, I can tell you that he only sat out on the holiest of Jewish holidays.

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loquitur

yeah, Hal, that's right. So did Sandy Koufax, IIRC. But they played on Saturdays.

levite

Let's leave aside for a moment the question of peyot (that's the name for those side-curls you mentioned), what you see at work in the black and white dress amongst traditional Orthodox men (Modern Orthodox men generally don't wear the black and whites, except sometimes on shabbat and festivals) is actually not Jewish law, it is custom of comparatively recent standing, based in an ascetic stream of thought called mussar, which means "knowledge passed along and received [i.e., from generation to generation]."

The custom in mussar, originally, was that a person should dress modestly, in simple colors and fabrics, in order not to divert their attention, or the attention of others, onto things of this world, but rather to allow their attention to more easily rest on things of the spiritual. In the 19th Century, this teaching became paradoxically conflated with a folk custom among Hasidim in Eastern Europe to dress as much as possible like a lord on Shabbat, and they decided that "a lord" indicated a lord in Eastern European lands during the time of the founding and first great flourishing of Hasidism, which is to say, the 18th Century. So even today, you find many Hasidim dressing not only in black and white, but in the long black coats, knee stockings, fur hats, and so forth of 18th Century Polish nobility.

Nonetheless, the black and white clothes all the time did not become dominant in the traditional Orthodox world until midway through the 20th Century, when, due in part to the mass emigration of Eastern European Jews to the US surrounding WWII, and due in part to the rise of assimilation as a problem for Jews in America, the Orthodox movement as a whole began moving sharply to the right, and more and more centrist and Modern Orthodox Jews began feeling pressured to become more stringent and strict. Sixty or seventy years ago, Modern Orthodoxy was the dominant form of Orthodoxy in America: now it is barely hanging on, with a handful of synagogues in New York, Los Angeles, and a couple other places on the East Coast. Most Orthodox Jews are traditional, and often if not usually wear some variation on the black and whites. The difference is that non-Hasidic Orthodox Jews don't retain the old Polish styles, but simply wear black and white suits of a modern cut, and instead of the very wide-brimmed hats of the 19th century that Hasidim favor, they wear the fedoras common to New York gentlemen of the early 20th century, when most men wore hats, and most immigrants were coming through New York.

What is extremely amusing to me is that in Israel, many Sefardim and Mizrahim (Jews of Spanish or Middle Eastern ancestry), who have nothing whatsoever in their backgrounds to connect them to Eastern European interpretations of mussar, much less the folk customs of Hasidim (who all came from Eastern Europe), have now begun adopting the black and white suits as a way of marking their ultra-Orthodoxy. That cracks me up.

In any case, the side-locks of hair, called peyot, represent a particularly zealos interpretation of Leviticus 19:27 ("Do not shave a tonsure on your head, and do not obliterate the corners of your beard"). The reasoning is that it could be unclear what obliterate means: perhaps it means one should never, ever cut those hairs. Therefore, lest they mistakenly violate this commandment, they grow the hair at the temple (which is as close as one can come to having a corner of the beard) long; some never trim them, others only trim them after they reach a certain length. Some wrap them around the ears in various ways, some curl them, and some twist them in ways attributed to teachings from the mystical text Zohar. In fact, it appears that much of the popularity of growing payot to extra-long length seems to have originally derived from the popularization of the Zohar, and historically, most Jews probably did not wear peyot as we see them today. But today, they are universally recognized as a symbol of being ultra-Orthodox.

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Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.

(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)

fresnelly

Thanks Levite!

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levite

OK, so the real answer is that it depends on who you ask. If you ask most Orthodox authorities, they will say sex before marriage is absolutely prohibited to women, and men should refrain from it, but we all understand that sometimes men have uncontrollable urges, so they still shouldn't have sex before marriage, but it's not such a huge sin if they don't. But it's still shameful.

What I will tell you, not being Orthodox, is that modern Judaism is very pro-monogamy, and very pro-marriage. It is clear to all Jews, I think, that the beau ideal of Jewish sexuality is sex between husband and wife. That said, it is less than clear that other kinds of sex are prohibited. It needs to be understood that, in the Torah, and in the Rabbis' explanation of the laws of marriage in the Talmud, they were all working in societies wherein female virginity was highly prized, and not only aesthetically, but given that marriages involved the payment of bride-prices and the giving of dowries, considerable financial dealing was dependent upon women being virgins, as virgins commanded higher bride prices and came with larger dowries than non-virgins. Thus, marriage, which traditionally was based in the laws of acquisition (the man acquiring the woman and her dowry, having purchased her with the bride price and the agreement to pay her ketubah, or gift of divorce-- should he ever divorce her, he would agree to pay her X amount of money as recompense, since remarriage was difficult she being now 'damaged goods'), involved a contract, a payment, and sexual intercourse to seal the deal. That it involved contracts demanded that transactions be free of fraud, putting great pressure on women to keep their hymens intact. That it involved sexual intercourse meant that legally, one could make an argument that sexual intercourse was universally intended to effect marriage, which was a positive in their society, because it meant that players couldn't fuck 'em and leave 'em, they had to make good on the financial support of this poor girl whose best opportunities they had just ruined.

Of course, today, things work differently, and it is a problem in Judaism that the halakhah (Jewish law) has not adequately kept pace with the times in the matter of marriage. So there are various solutions being employed to try to resolve the issues surrounding acquisition, and some people are introducing the concept that not all male intercourse is intended to effect marriage. Meaning that men are permitted casual sex before marriage. Among the Orthodox community, female virginity is still valued, but the truth is that it need not be. By the rules of the tradition, she could just as well not be a virgin, and simply list a lower bride-price on her marriage deed. But Orthodoxy still clings very much to the aesthetic of virginity, which has resulted, embarrassingly enough for Orthodoxy, in a burgeoning trend among Orthodox youths in America of developing the skills of oral sex, and of anal sex.

Now, I will tell you that I think that there is adequate halakhic precedent to say that virginity need only be an issue if we make it one, and while it may be reasonable to assume that all sex is intended to effect marriage in a context where marriages are made very young, and all Jews live under Rabbinic law only, in a situation where people are marrying later and later, and Jews mostly are bound by the laws of the lands in which they live, vis-a-vis their daily legal framework, there should be nothing to prevent Jews from having sex before marriage. Although in the interests of supporting a healthy attitude about sex to bring into one's future marriage, I would advise young Jews not to be unduly promiscuous, as IMO, the more casual sex one has, the more one is apt to lost sight of the value of sex as a means of two people communing with one another, sharing deep feelings, and mutual care and affection. In other words, I'm not telling anyone to wait until marriage, just try not to fuck anything that comes by.

The universal traditional view is that if a Jew and a non-Jew wish to marry, the non-Jew must convert to Judaism. This is especially key when a Jewish man wishes to wed a non-Jewish woman, because Judaism is traditionally matrilineal (identity is passed through the mother's line), and therefore, one is Jewish if one's mother is Jewish. There are other reasons also, but that's the chief and primary reason. Reform Judaism has attempted, in the past thirty years, to get around this view by introducing a doctrine of patrilineal descent, meaning that so long as one parent is Jewish, the child is Jewish. This has backfired miserably, since both the Conservative and the Orthodox communities have violently disagreed, and a crisis is now ensuing of Reform youths who have been told they are Jewish wishing to wed Conservative or Modern Orthodox youths who are unable to marry them without them converting. But basically, if you're Orthodox, Conservative, or are among a minority of the Reform movement, the answer is that a Jew and a non-Jew cannot be married. A plurality of the Reform movement (and most of the tiny leftist fringe movements) hold that a Jew and a non-Jew can be married, but they have been ostracized over this by the traditional movements.

Regarding dating, again, it varies. Technically, nothing forbids a Jew from dating a non-Jew. Many do so. We often advise our youth to avoid doing so after a certain age, since it may be painful if marriage arises as a possibility, but their non-Jewish partner refuses to convert.

I myself, I will say, dated mostly non-Jewish girls during my life. And twice, I wanted to marry someone non-Jewish, and ended up having to end the relationship because she was not interested in conversion. It was extremely painful, but absolutely necessary.

My fiancee is, as I mentioned, Jewish...thank God.

---------- Post added at 05:56 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:21 PM ----------

I think it depends on what you want from your Jewish identity. If you're just looking for an understanding of your heritage and background, sure. Learn some Yiddish or Ladino or Hebrew, read up on Jewish history, enjoy the cultural trappings of Judaism. We have great jokes and we invented bagels. What's not to love?

If you want to connect to the deepest meanings of what it is to be a Jew, then, personally, I don't think so.

There are many who would disagree with me. If you read the writings of Mordecai Kaplan, founder of the Reconstructionist movement, or some other adherents of that movement, they would tell you very differently. But I very much believe otherwise.

In my opinion, Judaism is an ethnicity, a culture, and a religion, all inextricably intertwined. Separating the elements from one another would be like trying to disentangle DNA: if you get it completely unravelled, it no longer is what it was. The greatest achievements of our people have had their covenant with God at the heart. I don't know how to preserve that greatness while excising the covenant.

As for your theology, Judaism has room for many kinds of theology. As I mentioned above, sex before marriage is by no means a dealbreaker. I do think that a Jew should refrain from crimes of theft or violence, although we all make mistakes. I myself, when in college, did some shoplifting, which I regret now, and would not do again, but I did do it, and it is done. Was Jesus a prophet? Who knows. Maybe. I won't say for certain that he was or he wasn't. All I know for sure is that the Rabbis who founded the tradition of Judaism of which we are currently the inheritors did not accept Jesus' prophecy as authentic. Does that mean it was false? Maybe, maybe not. But it does mean that, according to our tradition, it is not relevant or applicable to the Jewish people.

I want to make clear, although this is my honest answer, I say it without judgment or condemnation. I believe, personally, that Jews should embrace their tradition. I would not seek to force anyone. I believe that Jews who do not embrace the fullness of their tradition are, in some ways, disconnected from it. But that in no way means I think such people are bad, or immoral. You can be a good person without being an observant Jew. I just think that it's unfortunate that there are beautiful and deeply spiritual parts of one's heritage that such Jews choose not to experience in their lives. But the door is always open....

I'm sorry I can't give you a more pleasant answer. But it is honest, and offered with respect.

---------- Post added at 06:00 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:56 PM ----------

If I had the answer to that....

The real answer though, is that generally, wars fought over religion are not actually being fought over religion. Usually they're fought over land, sometimes over money, and occasionally as a means of diverting attention away from problems at home that the government doesn't want to solve (often because the government is the problem at home).

I'm not saying this is always true, just mostly.

---------- Post added at 06:03 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:00 PM ----------

D, loquitur is quite right. Nearly all Jewish professional athletes are relatively non-observant. We're lucky if they decide not to play on the High Holidays. Shabbat? Good luck, buddy. Never gonna happen.

Incidentally, it was a version of that problem that caused me to give up being a working actor/director-- everybody wants a Friday night show or Saturday matinee....

__________________
Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.

(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)

loquitur

That's a really good point, and undoubtedly true. Religion was being invoked as cover for other power-plays.

Leto

I see this alot in Toronto (where Fresnelly is from as well) and if that is the intent, it fails incredibly. Nothing draws attention more than the groups of men & boys striding along the streets on a Saturday dressed in such a manner.

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Sticky

I never heard of this ans idea of Orthodox Judaism- sex before marriage being considered a a sin for women but an acceptable sin for men.

Further to what levite was saying regarding this. If you pay ver close attention you will see that there are many differences in the dress of the Orthodox - of those who do have specific dress.
From those who wear suits and fedoras, you will see that some groups wear larger brimed fedoras. Some other groups wear the fedoras a specific way.
You will then see those that wear suits with very long jackets (capoteh).
Others with high socks.
Other were the capotehs are not black but beige or gry with stripes.
Usually all these groups are decendants or followers of the teachings/opinions (halachic opinions on discussions and arguments raised in the talmud) or certain rabbis from certain geogrphic areas, towns, shtetls, yeshivas (jewish religions schools where torah [jewish law] is studied.

Here is an interesting story of a junior hockey player faced with this issue. How does on in this situation make such a hard decision especially at such a young age? Making the NHL or any professional league is considered very special and anybody who is on the cusp believes they can make it. What a hard decision.
But is this really any different than anybody working in any job? What does an observant Jew do on a Friday afternoon when the sabbath is approaching and you just need to finish the closing of the big deal? What if your boss wants you to come infor a meeting with a prospective client on a Saturday morning. Observant Jews face these dilemas all the time it is just that athletes are much more high profile so we all hear about these cases.

Sports on the sabbath are not strictly forbidden.
Some won't play sports becuase they consider it not in the spirit of the sabbath. Others, becuase sports are not forbidden find that it is something that they can do that relaxes them, helps them unwind, or is just plain fun and permissable.

There are some sports that would be considered inherrently forbidden according to halacha depending the situation and others that have very few issues.
With football becuase of carrying of the bal while you run, if there is no eruv (a demarkation of a geographical area usually with a combination of fence, wire, and string that surrounds a neighborhood or city within which carrying on shabbat would be considered permissable) then it would be considered forbidden. If there is an eruv then those who feel that playing sports is OK to do will be allowed.
Soccer, since there is no carrying involved would not require an eruv and if you are of the type that would play sports it would not be a problem at all.

An eruv has much more practical benefits than sports and is a huge discussion in itsefl.

Something else interesting is the way that commandments are approached.
As levite said, there are 613 commandments and some are just not possible to keep due to circumstance. Some are positive commandments - do this. And some are negative commandments - refrain from doing this.
While an observant Jew (of any denomination) will try to follow as many of the laws as he/she can (in the ways their specific denomination follows those laws), each of those laws is seperate and the non-observance of one law does not keep one from observing others. Each commandment followed is a mitzvah and is good.
There is an understanding that it is impossible to be perfect and that intent is often the most important thing. As you can see from levite's explanation above the list of 613 is not even possible.

I have a question:
- levite, are you a Levite?

---------- Post added at 11:01 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:57 PM ----------

They are less concerned about drawing attention from those outside their group as they are from drawing attention within their group.
Is this effective, I don't know.

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dlish

how do eruvs work?

from what i understand, it allows you to do things on the sabbath that you usually cannot do. can anyone decide what an eruv is, or do you need a rabbi to declare the equivelant of a fatwa?

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An injustice anywhere, is an injustice everywhere

I always sign my facebook comments with ()()===========(}. Does that make me gay?
- Filthy

Sticky

This is the modern Zionism as we know it today. An active Zionism started in the late 1800s by Herzl. But Zionism as part of Judaism goes way back to Abraham, Issac, Jacob, and most notably Moses. Issac lived his whole life in the land of Israel (or the future land of Israel - the land that God promised him and his father, and his children). Jacob insisted that when he died his body should be burried in the land of Israel. Moses yearned to enter Israel but was not allowed.
throughout Jewish history there is this undercurrent of desire to emigrate to the land the Jews feel was promised to them and their children.

---------- Post added at 11:38 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:15 PM ----------

There is alot of good information here:
Eruv - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

But the basics are that an eruv makes it permissable to carry. it does not really allow for much else.

What happens in most cities where there is a large Jewish populations is that there is a group fo rabbis who oversee certain services that the community feels is important
- kashrut certification for local restaurants
- kashrut certification for local food businesses
- Overseeing of kashrut at events that want to have kosher food served to guests
- one or more eruvs
- Jewish courts to settle halachic matters should the two parties agree to go to these courts
- conversions
- Death and Burial rituals

This group of rabbis is appointed by the community and changes now and then. Most often they come from the denominations (gorups) more to the right on the observant spectrum. This often ends up in those on the left having their own similar groups to cover the same services.

Back to the eruv.
So an eruv is essentially is a contiguous series of acceptable objects that surruound an area. Fence and phone or electrical wires are often make up part of the eruv and where there is nothing to continue the connection a thin string is setup. The eruv ends up completely surrounding an area. Rabinical interpretation of what is halachicaly acceptable to be part of an eruv is what ends up making up the eruv. Once setup it is checked every week sometime on Friday by volunteers. Some communities have a website or some other way of notifying people if there is a problem with the eruv and that it can't be relied on that shabbat. The general rule is that unless you hear otherwise you assume that it is in good order. The idea is not to overburden yourself with worries and stringencies.

The need or desire to have an eruv (and some groups don't want or don't follow this leniency) is really based on praticality.
There are alot of simple things that you would not be able to do without one.
- You would not be able to bring young childdren to synagogue as pushing a stroller would not be permitted. Many groups fel that synagogue is a family experience.
- You could not carry the key to your house in your pocket.
- You could not carry some tissues in your pocket
- You could not cary your talit (prayer shal) or siddur (prayer book)

Many feel that it really makes the observance of the sabbath better and becuae the law allows for it why not use it. Others feel that it is a leniencey and would prefer to be more stringent.

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levite

I'm not saying that they would actually put it in those words. But the fact is, I have known plenty of Orthodox girls whose mothers would absolutely massacre them if they were to lose their virginity, but who know that their sons are almost certainly not virgins, and their reactions are, "just don't disgrace the family." There is a famous sugiya (a section of text) in the Talmud, in the second chapter of tractate Hagigah, that says, "if a man is overcome by his needs, and cannot focus on learning Torah, he should go to a town where nobody knows him, dress in black, and go do whatever he needs to do [i.e., get laid] in secret, and then go home and go back to studying Torah." From the point of view of traditional halakhah, men should control their sexual needs, but if they don't...that's a shame. If women don't control theirs, it's shameful, disgraceful, and potentially fraudulent, if they don't disclose their status on marriage.

As for the rest, that's just the attitude, I'm not saying anyone has formalized it as doctrine.

Yes, indeed I am!

---------- Post added at 09:56 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:24 PM ----------

Yeah. I never said it was a good idea....

So Sticky gave a pretty good rundown of this. I might just want to sum up: eruvim (pl) are artificial enclosures that make it permissible to carry or otherwise transfer belongings, or to move things. On shabbat, one is prohibited from moving items from one's personal domain (inside the house, for example) to the public domain (for example, it would be forbidden for me to be standing by my window, and pass you a slice of cake if you were standing in the street outside my window). And once outside, one is prohibited from carrying items anyplace, or even picking them up. For legal purposes, a walled city, or part of a city that is a completely walled enclosure, is deemed to be a private domain, and thus one may carry and so forth inside it.

An eruv is a gorgeously designed legal fiction. By the norms of halakhah, a door is considered to be part of the wall it is in, not a hole in the wall. Therefore, halakhically, one could in theory construct an entire wall of nothing but doors. Which is what an eruv is. By running a wire or string along the tops of tall posts (like telephone poles), a de jure wall of open doors is created. This wall of nothing but open doors qualifies as a legal enclosure, making the area within halakhically a private domain, meaning one can carry within it.

To be effective, many Jews within the area must give their approval that they wish the eruv be there; and some must commit to helping oversee it (both physical oversight, to be sure wind or rain hasn't damaged or torn down the wire, but also maintaining it, as to be effective at least two or three families must pool some resources, indicating that this domain is private, but jointly shared. Some food usually suffices for the shared resourced).

Sticky is correct in that most towns with eruvim get them as the result of a local committee of rabbis who oversee things like that. But they need not come from there. Many communities have independently built and maintained eruvim, either in areas the local rabbinical committee has been unable to secure permission to make an eruv, or in neighborhoods where the ultra-Orthodox don't trust the local committees of rabbis to make or oversee the eruv properly. In theory, any group of people can put up an eruv, initiate its effectiveness, and oversee it, so long as they are familiar with the halakhot (pl) pertaining to eruvim.

You're 100% right, of course. But I prefer to separate Zionism, which is usually used specifically to describe the modern political movement, begun in the mid-1800s, to establish, somewhere in the world, a national homeland for the Jewish people, from the eternal connection of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel, and their millenia-long yearning to return there. Zionism as a 19th- and early-20th-century political movement was always dominated by a socialist, deeply secular rhetoric. It embraced the notion of a Jewish people independent of Jewish religion-- which personally I question-- and advocated the advent of a Zionist national entity for reasons having nothing to do with the traditional teachings of the Jewish religion. Religious Zionism existed, sure, but it was always a minority movement, until late into the 20th century, well after the establishment of the State of Israel.

I am a religious Zionist, so clearly I support the State of Israel, and I believe that at heart, it doesn't matter what all those socialists thought, the establishment of the State of Israel is of some religious significance. But I am not, in theory, invested in the form of the State, or the makeup of its populace, or how religious its society is. I think that it is a first step on a long, long road to the messiah coming. But it's only that first step. It is only important in that it brought Jews back to live in the Land of Israel, speaking Hebrew, a country of free Jews on our ancestral homeland, acting as a shield for the rest of us by keeping a free space for any Jew to flee home, if need be, acting as our sword by keeping a strong Jewish army to remind people that Jews will no longer be anybody's prey, and keeping the torch of Judaism burning in the center of the Jewish world.

But socialism means nothing to me, and it was everything to political Zionists before the State was established. They couldn't care less about God, and I couldn't care more. It was a fortunate coincidence that their goals and the goals of many religious Jews met and ran parallel for a time. The great poets of Judaism who wrote about the eternal longing of Jews for the Land of Israel, and the City of David were not thinking about nationalism or post-Enlightenment geopolitics, but about God, covenant, and spirit.

I understand the desire to conflate the two, but I think it's important to keep them separate.

__________________
Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.

(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)

Sticky

Good points.

__________________
Sticky The Stickman

Xazy

My quick replies from my vantage as an orthodox Jew.

I will avoid zionism, since it is a topic I am passionate about, and well I like to keep this very simple, on religeous point of view.
Since you are over 12 Mazel tov, happy bat Mitzvah, there is no special ceremony or anything that makes you an adult. It is a big misnomer that you need to be called up or something to turn Bar or Bat Mitzvah, if you hit 12 as a girl or 13 as a boy you made it, just forgot the party and did not get the gifts. As far as getting involved that is up to you, there are a ton of organizations and ways to get involved, and if you want send me a private message where you are located and I can help you find some local organizations.


Jewish Law prohibits you from cutting your sideburns, there is slight difference depending from where in Europe they were from in how they have their sideburns. Chassidish world tend to have the curls on top of a beard, lot of other orthodox jews just do not cut their sideburn below the bone beside the ear. Which is always a thing to pay attention to when getting a haircut.



Sex before marraige, is a no no. Lot I can expound on the topic, but basically men have a sin not to waste their seed. No ding with no ring.

Jewish wedding is done in 3 ways. A Kassubah a contract. The ring, which is money. And the Yichud rooom.

Part of the Jewish wedding ceremony is a yichud room. After the Chupah where they have the ceremony the bride and groom are led (with singing and dancing) to a private room. Two witnesses are kept at the door so no one can go in and out. The room is a room where there is no entrances or exits. And they stand and watch the door for probably 7-10 minutes. Basically it is long enough for them to be able to have sex.

Those are the three ways to get married, contract, sex, and money. To put it simply having per-marital sex outside without marriage, can technically lead to that issue, but it does not cause marriage since there is no witnesses, etc... This is a very simplistic overview, of something I spend about 2 years learning in depth in the Talmud.

Sex also leads to technical problems for women, since they have issues marrying a person who is a Kohen (from the priest group), and again that marraige issue I mentioned. Since technically by Jewish law polygamy is allowed by the Torah (only rabbinical decree do we not allow it), it is not the same problem with the guy, he instead has the sin of not wasting the seed. But who are people to say one sin that G-d decreed is worse then an other, it is just a simpler sin, but not necessarily less important.

As far as marrying a non-Jew it is a no no. Can not get married to a non-Jew.

Not my place to judge you, I think if you are interested in finding out more about Judaism, just send me a message and I will be glad to point in the right direction. Otherwise as far as Jewish belief is if your mom is Jewish you are part of the tribe.

Ain't gonna work on Saturday, I Ain't gonna work on Saturday, double double triple pay won't make me work on Saturday. No get out of Shabbos clause for athletes.


Basic rule on Shabbos, I can not carry anything when I go out, that includes keys. Now if I am in an enclosed area, like a fenced in backyard, it is private and then I can carry. Simple fenced in backyards is an 'eruv'. But for instance in a town if they wanted to enclose an area using different methods, it gets very technical. The rules on Shabbos and eruv, are very intense and difficult, so I would always recommend consult your local Rabbi (and if you need more information please just message me)

levite

Xazy, can I just thank you for coming in and giving us the frum [traditional, Orthodox] answer. I really appreciate that. I am trying to do my best to separate, in my answers, what is and is not traditional and/or Orthodox, but I am sure by Orthodox standards I am missing things, or not making a clear enough distinction. I was raised frum, but am now liberal, and the transition involved some negative feelings on my part with how I perceive things being done in the Orthodox world, and I am sure that sometimes colors my vision.

I may not always agree with the Orthodox viewpoints, but I respect where they come from, and I would hate to think this thread wasn't reflective of the totality of Jewish experience we have here.

__________________
Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.

(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)

guy44

As a Jew, I find this thread fascinating. Partially, this is because there are a couple of things I didn't know that have been spelled out. But mostly, it is because it highlights just how much of a role context and perspective have in your world view. I grew up in a relatively Jewish social circle, attended a relatively Jewish college, and now live in a very Jewish part of Pittsburgh (next door to a yeshiva!). I tend to forget that most people aren't as familiar with Judaism as me or my friends. This is a great thread - keep it up Levite!

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If I as a Catholic were to attend a Jewish synagogue service in the interest of curiousity, what would I expect as far as the service is concerned. Special seating, readings, sermons, etc. Basically walk me through a Jewish service.

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troit

So why Hollywood?

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levite

Well, it depends on several things. First of all, it depends on when you're going. A weekday service, a shabbat service, a festival service, or a service for the High Holidays. The liturgies for the different services, although the cores are in common, have a fair amount of distinction from one another, and different theological imperatives are given show at different times.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, it depends on where you are going: what kind of synagogue or independent group is running this service? First off, is it Orthodox, Conservative, or Reform; or is it Reconstructionist or Renewal or one of the small fringe movements; is the congregation Ashkenazi (that is, following the customs of Northern/Eastern Europe) or Sefardi (Spanish customs) Mizrahi (Middle Eastern customs, or is it a small, independent rite, like Yemenite, Damascine, or Italian? All of these represent potentially substantial differences in what you might see.

What I can tell you in all likelihood is that, if you are in the US, chances are your random Jewish friend will take you to an Ashkenazi synagogue, because those predominate in the US, probably on a shabbat, because most Jews who attend synagogue on anything like a regular basis go on shabbat, but not daily (and probably not every shabbat, and statistically you're more likely to see a shabbat service than a festival or High Holiday service). Statistically, your random Jewish friend is probably Reform, or maybe Conservative, if they identify with a movement.

Whichever movement's services you end up at, know that customs and rites vary somewhat from congregation to congregation, but fundamentally, the liturgy you'd see in the siddur (prayerbook) would be par for the course for whatever movement it is.

First of all, let me explain that there is a great difference between Jewish services and Christian services, at least as far as I have observed Christian services. Christian liturgy is much sparser and less dense than Jewish liturgy: in Protestant services I have witnessed, prayers are much more improvisational, and little seems formalized except for psalms, hymns, and The Lord's Prayer. Even then, the rites seem quite flexible in which psalms and hymns may be sung, and when or even if The Lord's Prayer is recited. Catholic or Eastern Orthodox services seem a little closer to the Jewish model, with specific set prayers at different times, a more formalized framework of which psalms are recited and when, what hymns are sung and when, when there is to be a recital of Pater Noster or Ave Maria, etc.

Jewish liturgy is fixed, and consists of psalms and (more or less) hymns set into a complex and lengthy framework of prayer, all serving as brackets for several key prayer-units, defined by the arrangement of formalized blessings or benedictions (micro-prayers invoking God's name, rulership of the universe, and usually, creatorship, plus some other relevant aspect of God's benificence, justice, authorship of some kind of phenomenon, etc.); the like of which is entirely lacking in Protestant, or even Catholic, analogue. I will try to attach an example, in translation.

This liturgy is quite fixed, and makes for a long service. By many Christian standards, an excruciatingly long service, although those who have defined it so to me have generally admitted it would be easier if they knew Hebrew-- as all traditional services are entirely in Hebrew, save for the sermon (though ours are mercifully brief by comparison to some I have heard at Christian services-- 10-20 minutes is average in Conservative synagogues, 7-15 minutes in Orthodox synagogues-- one case I heartily side with Orthodoxy). Some Christian services I have witnessed took barely an hour. The longest I recall was two. Shabbat morning services in a traditional synagogue (Orthodox or Conservative, or an independent unaffiliated body using traditional prayer customs) average 2 1/2 hours, and it is by no means unheard-of for them to run 3 hours, though generally not longer unless there is some additional special occasion, like someone's bar or bat mitzvah.

To be fair, if one knows Hebrew, the prayers are exquisite poetry. Since you likely won't want to learn Hebrew before going-- quite understandable, really-- your consolation will be that, though the translations are generally much drier than the Hebrew, much if not most of Jewish services are sung aloud, and I am told that the melodies are just as pleasant to non-Jews as we find them. At best, I have been told by non-Jewish, non-Hebrew-speaking friends who came with me that it was not unlike being at a community a capella concert.

The congregation all sings, but generally there is one prayer leader, sometimes per service, sometimes for the morning. This may be the rabbi, the cantor, the two of them in tradeoff, or one or more congregants.

On any given shabbat morning, there would actually be four separate services, although they would appear fairly seamless. The first, called Pesukei d'Zimra (more or less, "Phrases of Song") is mostly a collection of psalms and Biblical texts, making an introduction to the main service.

This is called Shakharit (meaning roughly, "Morning Service"), and consists of a couple of mystical hymns and a fair amount of poetic prose punctuated with blessings, which bracket two things, the first being the recitation of what might be called the Jewish credo, known as the Shma, based on the first word. This is a recitation of Deuteronomy 6:4-9 (it begins with the phrase "Hear, O Israel: YHVH our God, YHVH is One," although this translation could be debated), Deuteronomy 11:13-21, and Numbers 15:37-41, which together constitute a single liturgical unit. The second bracketed liturgical unit is a prayer called the Amidah (meaning, "Standing Prayer," because it's said while standing. Sometimes we arbitrarily shun complexity, what can I tell you), comprised of a series of blessings invoking our covenant with God, praising God for his holiness, thanking him for the shabbat, and then for other good things, and then asking for peace. Versions of this prayer constitute the heart of every Jewish prayer service.

The next service is actually comprised of little prayer, but is rather focused on the ritual taking out of one or more Torah scrolls [public readings of the Torah must be done from a hand-calligraphed text written upon sheepskin parchement scrolls in the ancient style] from the Sacred Ark at the front of the sanctuary, and a portion of the Torah [Pentateuch] is then chanted aloud, while the congregation follows along in bound, bilingual copies of the
text. This is usually referred to as The Torah Service. Following that, a designated selection from one of the Books of the Prophets is chanted aloud. The Torah scroll/s are then ritually put back into the Ark, concluding this service.

It is customary in many, if not most, American congregations to have the sermon at this time. This is invariably in English, save in the most Orthodox of ultra-Orthodox synagogues, where it is still sometimes in Yiddish-- a sight you are, statistically, unlikely to see. In many congregations, the rabbi always gives the sermon. In a growing number, different congregants give the sermon each week.

Finally, we have what is known as the Musaf service. Musaf means "additional," and this is because during the times of the Temple, an additional sacrifice was made on shabbat, over and above the daily sacrifice. Since we no longer practice sacrifice, this has been replaced with an additional service. The bulk of this service is constituted by another variation on the Amidah prayer. Some congregations have the sermon at the end of this service, rather than before it.

Generally, at the end of the Musaf service come community announcements, news of births, deaths, marriages, etc. The service is generally followed, in an adjoining room, by the ritual blessing over wine-- wine is served, along with grape juice, and sometimes liquors-- the blessing over bread-- bread is then served-- and generally either a large snack or a light lunch is served.

Reform services are shorter, mostly in English, and generally feature longer sermons, and more often are led decisively by rabbi and cantor, rather than congregants. This is because most Reform Jews do not have the Hebrew skills for the full traditional liturgy, and in any case, the traditional liturgy was much edited by the early Reform movement due to its perceived incompatibility with Enlightenment sentiments (Reform Judaism is very much a product of the Enlightenment). Thus much of the traditional liturgy is severely abridged or absent from the Reform siddur, and there is much use of English translations of the traditional text, modern meditation texts, poetry, etc. Thus, the rabbi and the cantor often use the service as an opportunity for Jewish remedial education. Also, their services are geared toward a Reform theology, which is different from traditional in various ways we can get into at a different time, if there is a desire to do so.

That said, if you visited, you would be greeted, you would be free to take a seat where you liked (in Orthodox synagogues, men and women are separated, but in non-Orthodox synagogues, anyone can sit where they like). There would be a copy of the siddur available, and also a bound copy of the Torah. It is customary for men, and some in the non-Orthodox world say women also, to cover their heads during services, and kippot (yarmulkes, skull caps, beanies) are provided. Jewish men (and in the non-Orthodox world, also many women) wear tallitot (prayer shawls), but generally non-Jewish visitors do not do so. My guess is that you would find it an interesting experience, although occasionally frustrating in not knowing Hebrew, or the nuances of the service (although this latter point can be remedied by reading an introductory book or two on Jewish prayer prior to attending-- I can recommend a couple, if you like). Most likely, after the services had concluded, people would introduce themselves to you, ask after you, and inquire whether you had someplace to eat lunch (despite a light lunch often being served in the synagogue after services, many if not most people just snack a little and then go home for a 'real' lunch).

Although there is nothing wrong with just showing up at a synagogue on some random shabbat morning and just checking it out-- and please, do feel free to do just that-- my personal recommendation would be that you go with a Jewish friend, if you have one. It's good to have a guide, someone to help clue you in on what's happening, and so forth.

But if you go, I recommend going several times, to several different congregations, if possible. Go on shabbat. Go on some holidays. High Holidays are their own thing. Save them for your advanced education tour. But for example, Sukkot falls October 3-9 this year (I phrase it this way because Judaism works on a modified lunar calendar, so Hebrew dates don't always match up with the same Gregorian dates), and that's a fun holiday to watch. We build these little huts called sukkot, as a remembrance of our dwellings in the wilderness after the Exodus, and in remembrance of the harvest in the Land of Israel, when we built such huts during the wheat threshing that took place at that time of year. We eat and drink and study in these sukkot every day for eight days. And in synagogue, we sing Psalms 113-118, a service called Hallel (meaning "Praise"), during which we wave palm fronds which have been bound together with willow and myrtle branches, and we hold them with a citron (a fruit rather like a giant lemon), and we process around the synagogue, singing and waving the palm fronds (called lulavim, or lulav in the singular). It's very musical, and quite a spectacle. The palm ritual, BTW, is what people were doing in the story in Mark 11:8-10, Jesus' entry into Jerusalem-- it was Sukkot. In any case, if you have any interest, it's probably worth your while to see a couple of Jewish services. If you don't know any Jews, just show up to synagogue on shabbat morning. We're really usually pretty friendly. Let me know if you want me to expand on anything....

Sorry, there was probably more to this question than you expected....

PS- The attached translation of a section of shabbat morning services is mine, and is copyrighted to me. Please don't pass it around. Thanks.

Attached Files

Nishmat Kol Chai.doc (42.5 KB, 2 views)

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Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.

(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)

levite

Who doesn't love picture shows??!

__________________
Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.

(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)

ColonelSpecial

Levite, that was a great answer. I knew going in that it was going to be very different from Christian services. You answered all my questions. Thanks!

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"Mommy, the presidents are squishing me!"

"Using the pull out method of contraceptive is like saying I won't use a seat belt, I'll just jump out of the car before it hits that tree."

Sara

dlish

so if you cant take your keys with you on the way to the synagogue on the sabbath, does that mean that you leave your house unlocked?

---------- Post added at 12:29 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:27 AM ----------

edit - ok, maybe thats not a good thing to ask publically...

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Leto

Is Frum and Liberal analogous to Catholicism & Protestantism? If not, is there a similar movement in Judaism to the Christian Reformation?

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