Shalom friends. I've seen a lot anti-semitism on this board and as a certified rabbi I wanted to clear some things up.
1. Jews have persecuted because of the envy of others, period.
2. 6 million Jews were deliberately murdered at the holocaust, period.
3. Modern Jews are the direct descendent of Abraham and Israel is rightful Hebrew clay
Thank you for your time Veeky Forums.
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1: not necessarily
2: true
3a: assuming abraham's line didn't end his descendents would mix with the general population and there would be millions of "descendents" today
3b: most reasonable systems of ethics judge people on a case by case individual basis not by religion or race, Hebrews have a right to live and work in Israel but no more than other Israelis
Yes
Maybe
Modern Jews are mongrels
>a certified rabbi
I fucking wish a rabbi would come on here to talk more about Jewish theology. That shit would be interesting as fuck in between all the shitposting.
We could always talk about the Kabbalah.
Well why the fuck not. It'd be better than this obvious troll thread.
I'm not a Rabbi myself, but I come from a family with 2 rabbis and I'm reasonably educated in Modern Orthodox Jewish theology. I can't promise to answer any question you have, but I can make a fair stab at it.
>/pol/
>anti-Semitic
Wew lad
The thread would turn into absolutely hilarious shitfest the moment /pol/ddit arrives.
That's the thing. I don't know the first thing about Jewish theology other than the Old Testament being drawn from the Torah.
Shit, I don't know, how about starting with the Tabernacle and the Holy of Holies?
Aren't Arabs also descendants of Abraham through Hagar meaning Israel is also rightful Arab clay?
Who's to say modern palestinians aren't ancient hebrews mixed with arabs and aramaeans?
Well, Judaism at least claims a semi-nomadic lifestyle after the exodus of Egypt, and along the way, they built what would literally translate to the "Tent of meeting". It was a repository for a lot of sacred relics, and also a center of animal sacrifice. Later, as they spread out in Israel, it would lose some importance, but the town where they stuck it in, Shiloh, would be a fairly important place primarily because it's still there; but animal sacrifice would decentralize into a bunch of private altars, which would be stuck up wherever. It would only be much later, when you have the temple that is attributed to Solomon, that these private altars would be stamped out.
The Mishkan, and later the Temple that was modeled off of it, had 3 major sections. One was open to the general public, primarily for bringing sacrificial offerings. A second was open only to the hereditary priesthood, and contained a lot of relics, as well as stuff used for ritual purity of the said priesthood.
The innermost part, the "holy of holies", would be cut off from the rest of the temple/tent by a curtain, and contained the Ark, which supposedly had the pieces of the two tablets that got smashed in it. It would only be entered once a year by the high priest, who would make certain atonement offerings on behalf of the people on Yom Kippur. There's a lot of stories about how the unworthy high priests were struck down if they did this service improperly, but on the other hand, none of these stories mention high priests who died in such a manner.
/pol/ is a zionist board
Interesting. I assume that the hereditary priesthood was abolished with the final destruction of the Temple?
>antisemitic used to mean those who hate jews
>then it started being used even for people who only criticized israel
>now only people who oppose israel can be antisemitic, those who support israel can shit on diaspora jews and post le happy merchant all they want
How far we have come!
No, it's still around. Doesn't do much, mind you, since there's not a temple anymore, but for instance, the first person called to a Torah reading in synagogues is always supposed to be a Kohein/priest, and they're still considered obligated to a number of laws concerning ritual purity, like not going near dead bodies.
It was never really abolished (and who would abolish it anyway) it just kind of fell into disuse. Some of that though, has to do with the power struggle going on, which had been going on for a long time even by the time of the destruction, between the priesthood and the rabbinate. You've heard of the Sadducees and the Pharisees? While not exactly the same, the Sadducees were primarily a priestly movement and the Pharisees were primarily headed by rabbis, and they had been butting heads over issues of doctrine (and power) for literally centuries at that point.
While you do seem to have more of an influence in the Pharisees anyway (for instance, the big Jewish revolt that started in 66 C.E. was essentially a Pharisee one that dragged the Sadducees along with them in their wake, not the other way around), the destruction of the temple really was the nail in the coffin for the competing branch of theology that was centered around the priesthood. The much more decentralized (and literate) Pharisee movement was able to survive. And with them ascendent, the priesthood's importance was de-emphasized.
There's a difference between a priest and a rabbi? I thought that a rabbi WAS a Jewish priest.
I'm so sorry for coming off as so insensitive, I just don't know much about Judaism.
No, no it's fine.
A priest, at least in Judaism, is a hereditary caste of temple caretakers. You become a priest by your father being a priest, and they all supposedly trace their patrilineal ancestry to Aaron, Moses's younger brother. You don't need to do or know anything in particular to be a priest, and the High Priest is usually selected by primogeniture; oldest son of the last high priest. You have stuff in the Mishnah about what to do if the High Priest is illiterate, or worse, mentally defective.
A Rabbi is someone who is knowledgeable and ordained about the Jewish religion. They're the ones who teach, and study, and usually lead prayer services, answer peoples' questions about proper adherence to Jewish law, that kind of thing. You become a Rabbi by taking a course and eventually getting certified by another Rabbi in good standing. Nothing stops a priest from being a Rabbi, mind you, but you can't be born into it, they'd have to study and take the tests same as everyone else.
So while a Rabbi is more equivalent to a priest if you use the Christian sense of "Priest" they're not really in any way related to a כהן, the Jewish sort of priest. And because it is a caste, that's why you get a lot of them with the name of "Cohen", or some variant thereof.
Fascinating. How many of them are still around? I didn't think there were any Western castes still left.
Shoo shoo false jew
>Fascinating. How many of them are still around?
To be honest, I don't know. As far as I'm aware, nobody's ever done a Kohein "census" in modern times. On a VERY rough estimate, we have about 200 people in my synagogue, and there are 4 Kohanim, so we have a 1/50 chance of a random Jew being a Kohein, which would mean that of about 13 million Jews worldwide, you'd have about 260,000 Kohanim, but this is very back of the envelope rough calculations, I don't have any idea really.
> I didn't think there were any Western castes still left.
Well again, it doesn't actually come to much in modern times, about the only privileges I can think of offhand that a Kohein still gets is that they read the Torah first and they're supposed to lead the after-meal prayer if one is around. It's not really a big deal anymore.
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In maccabees the Jews and Spartans call each other brothers under Abraham. Do modern Jews believe a relationship exist?
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you should atleast post where you get your shitty infographics from
>The Evil Bible
>Joy of Satan Ministries Bible
I've never heard of it. And I would point out that modern Jews don't consider Maccabees as part of the canon, and I personally have never actually read it, although I do have a copy around somewhere.
That's actually in part of the strife between the priesthood and the rabbis I mentioned earlier, in fact, where it pretty much started in the second temple period, but that's a bit of a tangent and I don't want to go off on it unless you're interested.
Still, that's very interesting. It's incredible that they've been able to maintain any kind of cohesion after 2000 years; you'd think that an exclusive caste would eventually die out once its purpose for existing was gone.
So, uh, with all that said, what actually IS there to Judaism beyond the worship of the God of Abraham? The common conception from the outside looking in (if people even HAVE a conception of Jewish theology) is that Jews worship the Christian God minus the Holy Trinity and all that brings, but that's extremely simplistic at the very best even if it's anywhere near correct.
And yes, I would be interested.
Good graph. Now post one that shows how many practicing Jews were in the regime.
1. No
2. No
3. No
Don't Jews celebrate Hanukkah though? Isn't Maccabees what Hanukkah is about?
Regardless here is the verses.
"20King Arius of Sparta to Onias the High Priest, greetings. 21 We have found a document about the Spartans and the Jews indicating that we are related and that both of our nations are descended from Abraham. 22 Now that we have discovered this, please send us a report about your situation. 23 In reply, we will send you a letter indicating that we are willing to share our possessions, including cattle and property, if you will do the same. We have given orders to our ambassadors to give you a full report about these matters."
>So, uh, with all that said, what actually IS there to Judaism beyond the worship of the God of Abraham?
That is a fairly complicated question and is hardly agreed upon even by Orthodox Jews, let alone other denominations. There's a reason for the old saw that 2 Jews need 3 synagogues.
At least in my little sub-sect, I would answer as follows: Judaism is a set of information, beliefs, commands, and elaborations of commands revealed by a singular, enormously powerful, benevolent and wise (but not necessarily omnipotent, omnibenevolent, and omniscient assuming you can even come up with a coherent definition of those terms). This mass of stuff has later been expounded upon by scholars who have studied it extensively, and on occasion, even added their own laws in addition to the divine commands, based on authority rooted from certain lines in scripture, which is a recording of said divine revelations.
The purpose of such is not entirely revealed, although a lot of it is. While there are rewards promised for compliance, and punishment promised for non-compliance, serving God for reasons of acquiring reward and avoiding punishment is non-optimal. Rather, these actions and beliefs should be undertaken because they are the Right Thing To Do, an objectively superior way of living than one that could be attained by human wisdom alone. One should be spreading this belief, but non-actively, as that causes problems; rather, one should be a light on the hill, an inspiring example, and have others come to you in order to inquire what makes the system tick.
I'm not sure, however, if that answer is meaningful to someone who doesn't start with a bundle of Jewish theological assumptions and beliefs. If you want me to expound on that, please, let me know what isn't clear.
>false flag: the post
this reeks of a /pol/poster trying to pose as a jew that appears to obnoxiously push an agenda
Please do when you can. "A bundle of Jewish Theological Assumptions and Beliefs" is still unknown thinking to me.
Jews do celebrate Hannukah, and it's coming up shortly, but the worship and special rituals for Hannukah aren't rooted in Maccabees, rather the Mishnah, a long after the fact transcription of contemporary Jewish oral teachings. IIRC, Rabbi Yehudah Hanassi, the guy who compiled the Mishnah, drew more from Josephus than he did from whomever wrote Maccabees.
As for why Maccabees is largely rejected as scripture (although I want to point out, it's not a forbidden book, and there's nothing theologically problematic with reading it or using it as a historical source, for whatever value it has at that), let's turn back to the background. For time immemorial, you had three loose power centers in Jewish society, you had the hereditary priesthood centered around the Temple, you had a much looser body of rabbis who were the educated class of ancient Israel, who did things like education and a lot of the law enforcement, and you had the monarch, or some sort of regent or foreign plenipotentiary that stood in place of the monarch.
320ish B.C.E., the Jews are living as subjects of the Persian empire, pretty happily. Alexander comes through and conquers the region, and it's a meet the new boss, same as the old boss sort of situation, the Jews don't really offer much resistance, and are now subjects under Alexander. Alexander's empire fractures, and Judea becomes part of the Selucid empire. For reasons that I'm not 100% sure of, you get a lot of tension around the 2nd century B.C.E., and a revolt breaks out.
1/2
2/2
This revolt is primarily guided by the Priesthood. The founder of the Maccabees was Mattitiahu the priest, and when he dies, his son Judah takes over. Eventually, they manage to carve out a bit of territory near Jerusalem (not all of Modern israel) and are nominally independent. They continue trundling along, slowly absorbing territory as the Selucids fall apart more and more, and eventually, around 100 B.C.E., they actually fully declare themselves kings. The first king of this new dynasty is Simon Maccabee, Judah's younger brother or cousin, I don't remember exactly.
And that crossed a huge line in Judean society. The thing they were "supposed" to do, at least according to the rabbis of the time, was to go hunting for a descendant of the old davidic dynasty, and put him on the throne. Claiming the throne for a priestly family gave the priesthood too much power, and the rabbinate tried to combat this confluence of power. One of the things that they did, since they decided what was and wasn't proper scripture, was keep the books that talked about the revolt and victory out of the canon.
Winding back to the celebration of Hannukah; very little of it has to do with the war, which is what I understand Maccabees is mostly about. The main rituals done have to do with candle lighting and certain stand-ins for the missed sacrifices of that year's Succot festival, i.e. very core priestly functions, and not the battles that made it all possible.
Was there anything in particular that didn't make sense?
>Was there anything in particular that didn't make sense?
No, just that "Jewish Theological Assumptions and Beliefs" is a category I don't know much about either, beyond what you had just said in that same post.
>One of the things that they did, since they decided what was and wasn't proper scripture, was keep the books that talked about the revolt and victory out of the canon.
Oh damn, that's ice cold.
what cuck took the time to make this rofl.
Well, offhand (it's hard to nail down things that you just take as part and parcel to be true, you know?) I'm talking about things such as
>God exists
>There is one and only one God
>God has an interest in what humanity does
>God has the power to act on this interest
>God makes "deals" with people, and feels obligated to uphold His end of the bargain.
>God is a rather alien, frightening figure, direct contact with God is rare primarily because it is dangerous. Contact with the divine mind without sufficient preparation can quite literally kill you.
>God makes certain judgments collectively; rewarding or punishing based on what other people did.
> You have certain statuses that are not primarily physical in nature but nonetheless affect a person.
>You have a soul, an animating force, that is not primarily physical and survives bodily death.
>You can adopt Jewish beliefs and practices without formally converting to Judaism; it is unclear whether this is meritorious to do so in absence of formal conversion.
>Laws and temporary commandments from God are primarily for the benefit of the people who perform them, and not for God.
>God not only set up spiritual structures, but temporal ones, who is to be in power and under what circumstances
>People with said power have the authority to change religious laws, but not to change the covenants, the deals between God and certain people; they have to be very clear when they're acting in their own name and not God's.
I'll be sticking around the thread, but I want to go make some lunch, I'll be off for a bit.
1) No
2) What if it was 5,999,999?
3) The former is true, the latter is partially true (Jews deserve Tel Aviv and some of the places they built from the ground up).
Nice try /pol/
Is it true God created and destroyed dozens of worlds before this one? How do we know?
Thank you, that does make things clearer.
There's a kabbalistic tradition that holds such. I'm not an expert on Kabbalah, and I personally think the Zohar, the book that's the foundation of a lot of it, is a 13th centuryish Portuguese fraud, so I don't hold much stock in it. If you do, on the other hand, that's your source.
You are of your father the devil and you do his works.
Retarded pic, refuted a million times. There's as many articles mentioning other quantities, there was nothing special about the 6 million figure before the holocaust.
>For reasons that I'm not 100% sure of, you get a lot of tension around the 2nd century B.C.E., and a revolt breaks out.
There's several theories around - one of them is that that the Seluecids were equally tied up trying to keep down revolts in Parthia at the same time and it was a very good opportunity.
Where is the money?
bait harder christfag
> 1: You dont get kicked out of so many countries for not doing anything wrong. Jewish customs are extremely tribal and often they segregate themselves outside of society causing mistrust between both groups.
>2: If you say "YES" your ignoring the nuance of evidence from both sides. Most likely a clear cut 6 million/gaschamber/carrying wet bags of salt is not true however "NO" is also inaccurate because we do have evidence that not all deaths in the holocaust were caused by starvation (due to allied supply line sabotage) and diseases that we have evidence of the Nazis trying to prevent.(Typhus)
>3: Who knows, it really doesn't matter because later religious works indicate that all converts (even gentiles) who worship the lord are the decedents of Abraham. Definately isnt any of that silly WE WUZ EGYPTIANS AND THE JEWS garbage that you see on world star and youtube.
Veeky Forums /pol/ posters need to read up on their memes. Banker kikes are cool now, liberals and non-Israel or banker jews are the big bads.
Titus 1:10
>open troll thread
>get Jewish theology instead
Worked out pretty well desu.
It's why I love Veeky Forums sometimes
The autism here is greater than other boards and results in pretty neat shit to learn.
>1. Jews have persecuted because of the envy of others, period.
Nah
>2. 6 million Jews were deliberately murdered at the holocaust, period.
Of course
>3. Modern Jews are the direct descendent of Abraham and Israel is rightful Hebrew clay
Not really. I'm descended from British people, but I don't have any claim to the UK.
1) Envy and other unfounded things
2) Yes
3) No
I'm curious, what are Jewish beliefs regarding the afterlife? When I was in a seminary we were told a little about that, or that at least what's described in the Old Testament is different from what Catholic theology teaches, but I don't know much beyond that.
There is no one unified belief set regarding the afterlife, except for a notion that there will be a mass revival of the dead in the Messianic era, implying some sort of soul that survives the body after death.
The general attitude, at least in my little sect, is that trying to find out more about the afterlife isn't really something you should be doing, since that skirts up against the whole "serving God for a reward rather than because of its intrinsic rightness", so I don't do much study in it.
You do see a lot of denominations though with a pretty similar (as I understand it) belief set to Christians, with you get judged upon death and have an afterlife that is commensurate with your holiness in life; although you don't really have a concept of hell and eternal damnation, more of one similar to purgatory, where the soul is cleansed prior to entering the afterlife proper. You do also get a few sects, (mostly Hasidic ones) with reincarnation notions, but usually asserting that reincarnation is rare and isn't the norm, usually when a soul has one outstanding good deed, or perhaps truly heinous sin, that doesn't fit with the general character of the soul, so it's given more time to firmly come one way or the other.
>1. Jews have persecuted because of the envy of others, period.
Partly, maybe
>2. 6 million Jews were deliberately murdered at the holocaust, period.
fair enough
>3. Modern Jews are the direct descendent of Abraham and Israel is rightful Hebrew clay
lel nope.
Decent bait though.
So, i once read an article about Jewish approach on the story of Adam & Eve, Abraham, Moses and other OT figures and their relevance in the modern era. In that article it explains that the dual concept of fact & fiction was not something important in Judaism and that the lesson or understanding of God achieved from that story is what is more important,
Sorry i can't find the article again, just curious what's your take on it.
There is a temple. It's the Western Wall. It fulfills most of the common people's need in a temple.
>Modern Jews are the direct descendent of Abraham and Israel is rightful Hebrew clay
Then why don't you let us DNA test all those ancient Israelites tomb remains. Oh yeah, because they're (((sacred))).
Can someone explain the triple parenthesis meme to me?
It means "jewish".
the holocaust is a hoax
you gotta admire the effort
Daily reminder that Jews worship the devil, even their father, not the God of Abraham.
>Modern Jews are the direct descendent of Abraham and Israel is rightful Hebrew clay
Autism
Sounds like an ancient Jewish version of the Nigerian Prince scam.