Jewish-Arab peace

Post Reply New Topic

You probably mean Jewish-Muslim peace. The majority of Muslims are NOT Arabs.

ruveyn

Probably do, I just liked the quote, thought it was humorous

Are the majority of Arabs Muslims? That was my understanding.


Peace ellomo

Depends on how you look at it...in Lebanon, for example, there is a significant Arab Christian population (Mennonite, I think, but I might be wrong)...it's significantly large enough that it affects Lebanese politics. Egypt also has a large Christian population, mainly Coptic Christians. Some Arab countries also have a tiny Jewish population, although most Arab Jews have made aliyah--Iran has a significant (~25,000) Jewish population, but Iran is an Aryan country, not Arab.

Overall though, most Arabs are Muslims...however, the country with the largest Muslim population is Indonesia.

I have heard of some passages in the Koran concerning Jews and other non-believers that might very well shock uninformed people.
Still, many Jews like to refer to Muslim Spain as some sort of golden age for the Jewish people, which is interesting.
Btw, the Talmud contains some unflattering words about gentiles too.

As if I'd believe some nationalist, ultra-conservative about a culture that isn't his own.

You're not thinking. Firstly, I do not need to be an expert or an admirer of a certain religion to make an accurate prediction as to how members of my own "culture" might perceive a few passages in that religion's holy book, and to make such a prediction concerning such passages is not even the same as making a moral judgement of my own. There are plenty of people out there already whose liberal sensibilities are offended by aspects of Islam, which only lends support to my statement. It's interesting you think you should dismiss my small, mild observation on the basis that Islam is not "my own" culture and yet you feel free to make dozens of posts pontificating about the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Secondly (and this was perhaps less clear) I was only half agreeing with parakeet. My post, taken as a whole, was also meant to point out to him that the dual code of morality that so offends modern Western sensibilities is not unique to Islam (in fact, I would go further and say that it is extremely common).

You also missed that I'm an atheist. I have a problem with pretty much all the delusional people but I have more of a problem with racism and bigotry based off of ignorance and hearsay. Religion is a disease. Bigotry is the summation of varied forms of laziness from intellectual to personal and it is destructive to the fabric of society. The whole middle eastern scenario is a result of racism against the area combined with the benefit of that apathy that the racism incurs. The government can set up concentration camps in Iraq and no one cares because they're either a) a dangerous threat (which is wrong); b) a lower race than them; or c) the wrong religion that only encourages violence and intolerance (as if any j-c religion were to do otherwise).

Also, I thought being against government intervention in foreign lands was a conservative stance considering that being against intervention encourages smaller government and less spending and also discourages the passing of unnecessary "safety" laws to protect you from the big bad invisible evil.

Good question. Believe it or not, many Mexican Americans in the southwest are actually jewish. They are crypto-jews who's ancestors began practicing catholicism externally to avoud persecution yet still clung to their jewish faith. As a result, you have Mexican American jews who celebrate and participate in many catholic traditions.

The Israeli rabbinate is headed by haredi jews, however, and they generally refuse to recognize these crypto-jews as jews on the basis that mainstream judaism follows maternal descent and the argument is that the crypto-jews of the southwest descend from jewish men and not jewish women.

However not all groups of jews follow maternal descent.

My point was that anything tying to bloodline/heritage tends to get very muddled and is fairly hard to prove. For all I know, I may be part Jewish but it wasn't that important and for my ancestors who moved here, they were all very adamant that when they moved to America, they were Americans and nothing else (including abandoning their previous languages and not teaching their children) so with an attitude like that, generations previous to the immigration tend to get lost to history.

Mind that I will be speaking of the Israeli religious authorities below and not the citizens of Israel (who are largely secular and generally do not agree with the rabbinate).

Yes, it can be difficult to prove it to the rabbinate standards. Quite frankly, they are very ethnocentric.clique-ish and generally d!cks.

They generally require you be able to furnish the names of rabbis who can vouche for you, synagouge records, testimonials from those known to be jews by their standards. As you can understand, this can make it very difficult for a jew from a secular family to claim Israeli citizenship or jewishness. It's actually a big problem for Russian jews trying to emigrate to Israel or gain jewish status within Israel.

Another big issue, which I mentioned above, is the ethnocentrism. There are two head rabbis, one for the Ashkenazim and one for the Sephardim, but by and large, the Israeli government is very Ashkenocentric and there is a lot of discrimination and poor treatment of sephardic jews.

The Israeli rabbinate seems to be of the opinion that the jewishness of European jews is more valid than the jewishness of other groups of jews, even if their history is better documented than that of European jews, and the rabbinate will quite frequently claim that these groups are not real jews because they MUST have descended from jewish men and not jewish women (so are not jews)under the pretense that the men must have come into contact with other groups of people through trading expeditions, which woman did not accompany their husbands on. Of course there is usually no merit to this.

This was the basis for initially denying Ethiopian jews jewish status within Israel (they were given Israeli citizenship despite this, for being "righteous people" and "protectors of the Torah" though). They will also determine jewish validity of these groups based on how many traiditions and books the community has in common with European jews, with the perception that the European jews are the real deal.

The rabbinate maintains for a convert to be considered a jew, they must have undergone a European style orthodox conversion, and have extended the stringent requirements by insisting the conversion is only valid if done by a rabbi from a list of rabbis the rabbinate has deemed trustworthy, and had retroactively declared all other conversions invalid.

This last issue caused a huge outcry, as you can imagine, and they may have since rescinded it.

Keeping that in mind....

The members of a group that does not have the Babylonian Talmud as part of it's religious arsenal are likely to be denied jewish status within Israel, unless they agree to a lengthy European orthodox conversion and maintain essentially a haredi lifestyle.

However, when Ethiopian jews were evacuated to Israel and denied jewish status within the country, the rabbinate eventually bent to pressure to recognize them as jews, and did a mass conversion, declaring them all jews with the stroke of a pen.

I might add, there is nothing in the Torah which describes the proper way to do a conversion.

I should add the Israeli rabbinate is equally skeptical of reform jews as reform jews consider one jewish if the person was born to a jewish mothers, or born to a jewish father and raised jewish, or converted by non-orthodox standards.

So there you have it. Have I destroyed the illusion of the concept of jews as a single, cohesive, united entity for you all?

You pretty much reinforced what I was implying by asking: there isn't an effective way to really determine and that it's most likely little more than a farce.

The model conversion in TNKH is that of Ruth, the Moabite, the great grandmother of King David.

Ruth followed the calling of her heart to make her God the God of her mother-in-law Naomi.

ruveyn

according to john hagee of cornerstone church the whole jewish-arab fighting is because easua sold his birthright for a bowl of beans to jacob. if this is true, its absolutley hilarious