Jesus Week

[JohnT]

You ARE aware that the rationale for the exile is one of the crucial debates withing the Jewish religion these last two thousand years? Oh wait, youre arguing the Christian religion, no one really cares about Judaism, never mind.

By this, are you saying that Jews have been trying to figure out how things turned out the way they did? I'm sure that what actually transpired looks, at best, like bizarre reasoning to Christians, while being quite the betrayal from the Jewish perspective.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by JohnT

You ARE aware that the rationale for the exile is one of the crucial debates withing the Jewish religion these last two thousand years? Oh wait, youre arguing the Christian religion, no one really cares about Judaism, never mind.

By this, are you saying that Jews have been trying to figure out how things turned out the way they did? I'm sure that what actually transpired looks, at best, like bizarre reasoning to Christians, while being quite the betrayal from the Jewish perspective.

five perspectives, just off the top of my head

1. Traditional - we were exiled for our sins. In particular the 2nd temple was destroyed, on account of "baseless hatred" the bitterness between Zealots and more moderate Jews during the first revolt against Rome. We will be restored when G-d sees fit to redeem the world. Meanwhile the sufferings of exile should serve as spiritual lessons, and we should be thankful for the blessings we do get, etc, etc.

2. Classical Reform - we were exiled not as punishment, but to fulfill our "mission" laid clear in the prophets, to bring spread the ideals of ethical monotheism in the world. Today we should express that by supporting social justice, while being faithful to monotheism.

3. Mystical - exile is a spiritual phenomemon, not a geographical one. "Exile" really began right after creation, and involved an exile of G-d from himself (dont ask me to explain here - you can always buy a Madonna record) By prayer and following commandments/doing good deeds, we hasten the restoration of G-d to himself, and the end of our own exile

4. Religious Zionist twist on 1 and 3. By fulfilling the commandments to restore the land, we are actually ending the geographical exile, and will usher in the end of spiritual exile. That "we" (religious people) are doing it in coopertion with secular Jews, is a reversal of the baseles hatred that created the exile, and so will end it.

5. Secular Zionist - like man, stuff happens. We stayed in exile so long cause we listened to fairy tales instead of doing something about it. Better to do stuff about it.

[JohnT]

What's wrong with the "Nothing has gone like promised - other people even killed God's son and then we get blamed for it. Fah! I've spent my life believing in something that which the historical evidence makes a mockery of! WTF? Why are we wasting our time" perspective?

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by JohnT
What's wrong with the "Nothing has gone like promised - other people even killed God's son and then we get blamed for it. Fah! I've spent my life believing in something that which the historical evidence makes a mockery of! WTF? Why are we wasting our time" perspective?

Getting blamed for the execution of that misguided Jewish lad from Nazareth, is NOT the central feature of Jewish history. Jews were persecuted before Constantine. Indeed the three priniciple remembrences of persecution in the Jewish calendar are 1. Purim - haman and the persians 2. Tisha b'av - destruction by the Babylonians and 3. The persecution of the rabbis after the bar Kokhba revolt. (commemorated on Yom Kippur)

all involve pagans. The sense that paganism may be better for the Jews than Chritianity, attributed to Nachmanides in the film "disputation" is already a somewhat secularized view - in any case a Jew who can make sense of earlier Jewish history in theological terms, can do so with the rest.

Are their Jews who reject the Jewish religion - sure there are. That is what I meant in mentioning secular Zionism. There are of course Jews who rejected their Jewish identity AS WELL as Judaism, but since I was discussing a debate WITHIN the Jewish world, i didnt think that POV particularly relevant.


a song for jon t, thanks to Chabad (note Galus = exile)

"The little bird is calling
He wishes to return
The little bird is wounded
He cannot cry but yearns
He's captured by the vultures
And is crying bitterly
Oh to see my nest again
Oh to be redeemed

The little bird of silver
So delicate and rare
Still chirps among the vultures
Outshining all that's there.

How long, how long it suffers
How long will it be
When will come the eagle
And set the little bird free

The little bird is Yisroel
The vultures are our foes
The painful wound is Galus
Which we all feel and know
The nest is Yerusholayim
Which we yearn to see once more
The eagle is Moshiach
Whom we are waiting for"

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by JohnT
"Nothing has gone like promised - other people even killed God's son

er, you DO realize that no Jew, religious or secular, would make the above statement? Or is this an example of the sarcasm I dont get?

[JohnT]

I understand that a practicing Jew would never put it that way, but I wonder why more people don't look up and say "dammit, it's been 3,000 years - instead of a Promised Land, we get the Holocaust. Instead of being God's chosen people, we get to watch the world get taken over by a offshoot Jewish sect taken up by the very people who killed the starter of that sect, these people who then largely blame us for the death of Jesus! WTF is up with that?

"Ahhh, **** this. After 3,000 years, it just ain't worth the wait anymore."

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by JohnT
I understand that a practicing Jew would never put it that way, but I wonder why more people don't look up and say "dammit, it's been 3,000 years - instead of a Promised Land, we get the Holocaust. Instead of being God's chosen people, we get to watch the world get taken over by a offshoot Jewish sect taken up by the very people who killed the starter of that sect, these people who then largely blame us for the death of Jesus! WTF is up with that?

"Ahhh, **** this. After 3,000 years, it just ain't worth the wait anymore."

do you think an Atheist jew would say

"other people even killed God's son "?

We're kinda not in the habit of refering to Jesus as "God's son"

No matter how intense the atheism, someone raised in a Christian world still takes certain turns of phrase for granted. Reminds me once again that "we" are a distinct civilization, not just a different religion.

KInda like the Woody Allen joke about the Atheist and agnostic who couldnt agree on what they didnt believe in. Only this time substitute Jewish atheist and gentile atheist.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by JohnT
I understand that a practicing Jew would never put it that way, but I wonder why more people don't look up and say "dammit, it's been 3,000 years - instead of a Promised Land, we get the Holocaust. Instead of being God's chosen people, we get to watch the world get taken over by a offshoot Jewish sect taken up by the very people who killed the starter of that sect, these people who then largely blame us for the death of Jesus! WTF is up with that?

The classic response

shrug. goyim. sigh. Id like some more gefilte fish.



No wonder so many Jews are attracted to Zen

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by JohnT
I understand that a practicing Jew would never put it that way, but I wonder why more people don't look up and say "dammit, it's been 3,000 years - instead of a Promised Land, we get the Holocaust. Instead of being God's chosen people, we get to watch the world get taken over by a offshoot Jewish sect taken up by the very people who killed the starter of that sect, these people who then largely blame us for the death of Jesus! WTF is up with that?

"Ahhh, **** this. After 3,000 years, it just ain't worth the wait anymore."

you mean like this?

Upon the Slaughter

Heavenly spheres, beg mercy for me! If truly Gd dwells in your orbit and round,

And in your space is His pathway that I have not found,-

- Then you pray for me!

For my own heart is dead; no prayer on my tongue;

And strength has failed, and hope has passed: O until when? For how much more?

How long? Ho, headsman, bare the neck--come, cleave it through!

Nape me this cur's nape! Yours is the axe unbaffled!

The whole wide world-my scaffold!

And rest you easy: we are weak and few. My blood is outlaw.

Strike, then; the skull dissever!

Let blood of babe and graybeard stain your garb-- Stain to endure forever!

If Right there be,--why, let it shine forth now!
For if when I have perished from the earth The Right shine forth, Then let its Throne be shattered, and laid low!

Then let the heavens, wrong-racked, be no more!

While you, O murderers, on you murder thrive,

Live on your blood, regurgitate this gore!

Who cries Revenge! Revenge! --accursed be he!

Fit vengeance for the spilt blood of a child The devil
has not yet compiled... No, let that blood pierce world's profundity,

Through the great deep pursue its mordications, There east its way in darkness, there undo,

Undo the rotted earth's foundations!

--Haim Nahman Bialik

[Elok]

Don't worry, man. At the end of the day, regardless of our faith or nationality, we can all agree that Woody Allen is more annoying than funny. And the thing with the little Korean girl was just creepy.

On a more serious note, I'm not entirely sure what JohnT is trying to get at. The Gospel stories go that Jesus was killed by an (at worst) indifferent Pilate at the urging of the Jewish leaders. One of the versions has them basically blackmailing Pilate into doing their dirty work, IIRC. And anyway, there's no particular reason why we (speaking from the Xian perspective) should believe that bad stuff happening in this life must be a punishment for our own actions. See the parable of the rich man and Lazarus the beggar. Sometimes horrible things are just the actions of one man against another. If you start seeing everything that happens as just a deliberate extension of divine will, you're well on the way to becoming a Calvinist.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Elok
Don't worry, man. At the end of the day, regardless of , you're well on the way to becoming a Calvinist.

who oddly, as ive pointed out before, were generally alot better for us than the Catholic-Orthodox-Lutheran Christians.

[JohnT]

On a more serious note, I'm not entirely sure what JohnT is trying to get at. The Gospel stories go that Jesus was killed by an (at worst) indifferent Pilate at the urging of the Jewish leaders. One of the versions has them basically blackmailing Pilate into doing their dirty work, IIRC. And anyway, there's no particular reason why we (speaking from the Xian perspective) should believe that bad stuff happening in this life must be a punishment for our own actions. See the parable of the rich man and Lazarus the beggar. Sometimes horrible things are just the actions of one man against another. If you start seeing everything that happens as just a deliberate extension of divine will, you're well on the way to becoming a Calvinist.

Eh, to the victors go the history books - and the religious texts.

Regardless of the political situation in AD33 and how Pilate had to couch the argument to earn his objective (hey! Perhaps he should've said that Jesus had WMD's!), Jesus' life was in Pilates' hands and Pilate let him be crucified. Blame who you want, it's quite obvious who the authority was - Pilate.

Jesus was God's son. Pilate was Italian. The Italians gain control of Jesus' church (at least 1/2 of it), glory in the Renaissance, and kick-start the Scientific Revolution.

Regardless of how it looks to Jews (which, of course, I am not an expert), what a bizarre notion to pass on to Christians!

"What does it profit Western Civilization to kill God's son? It profits Western Civilization the world!"

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Elok
On a more serious note, I'm not entirely sure what JohnT is trying to get at. The Gospel stories go that Jesus was killed by an (at worst) indifferent Pilate at the urging of the Jewish leaders. One of the versions has them basically blackmailing Pilate into doing their dirty work, IIRC.

which of course totally disagrees with the picture of Pilate in the Jewish sources, notably Josephus, and Philo of Alexandria. While they had reason to blacken Pilate (by way of making Tiberius look better) the gospel writers had very strong motivations to deny that Pilate was responsible for the crucifixation.

[Elok]

Originally posted by lord of the mark
who oddly, as ive pointed out before, were generally alot better for us than the Catholic-Orthodox-Lutheran Christians.

For you Jews specifically, yes. They were too busy fighting with everybody else to bother killing minorities. The Mormons haven't touched you either; nor have the Scientologists or the medieval Assassin cult. If you'd lost one relative to a mudslide, another to an earthquake, and still others to blizzards, thunderstorms, floods, and famines, but none to disease, I don't doubt that you'd have a pretty high opinion of the plague.

From a spiritual perspective, Calvinism is horrific. They've somehow managed to take the positive and loving philosophy of the original Nazarene, with its emphasis on individual choice, and turned it into a fatalistic existential gloom. It's like a church run by Goths. The fact that they're too busy contemplating the imagined misery of their own existence to really persecute is just a fortunate side effect.

I know that there are arguments over the validity of the Gospel accounts, but those are the accounts people have gone by, so JohnT's argument doesn't really work. The fact that he was in charge and caved to political pressures (according to the story) makes him revoltingly spineless, but the bigger villains would be the ones doing the extortion. Peter "betrayed Christ" three times, but we blame Judas more for doing it deliberately for money rather than from the temporary weakness of fear. And for submitting to despair afterwards instead of trying to atone or repent, as Peter did.

But as I said, this doesn't matter anyway, because we don't believe in blood guilt for the most part (the exceptions mainly being Calvinists, such as Philosophizer-remember him?). Which was why I assumed JohnT's post was just a spectacular troll at first. Maybe it is.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Elok


For you Jews specifically, yes. They were too busy fighting with everybody else to bother killing minorities. The Mormons haven't touched you either; nor have the Scientologists or the medieval Assassin cult. If you'd lost one relative to a mudslide, another to an earthquake, and still others to blizzards, thunderstorms, floods, and famines, but none to disease, I don't doubt that you'd have a pretty high opinion of the plague..

They did more than just overlook us. Oliver Cromwell opened England to the Jews. The Dutch republic took in Jewish exiles from Spain and Portugal, and gave them toleration before anyone else. And, though it drives Molly Bloom crazy, i still see Calvinist roots in New England liberalism and English Non confonformist radicalism, which were generally friendly to us.

Neither Scientologists nor Assasins have such a record.

(jews and mormons are another thing, and ive had a number of positive interactions with mormons, and more to say on the matter)