Ask a Jew Part Too; Commentary

A Play on Words -


The Jewish Torah is also known as the first five books of the bible; or the Five Books of Moses.
Every week, we read a different portion of the the Torah, called the weekly Parsha, until, every year, the entire Torah is read, including additional sections read on Holy Days (Yom Tovim) and other days of special significance.


So, Ask A Jew Part Too would be - perhaps y'all would like to ask me more specific questions on the Torah or, the Weekly portion - Part of the Torah, too!
Because:
As with all of the Torah, there are a multitude of commentaries and discussions in the Talmud on the significance of each section; each parsha; each idea; each word and how they relate to every other part of the Torah and, how they relate to the Jewish people and mankind.


And so,
This week, using Torah commentaries, I am trying to understand how this week's parsha - Parshas Emor; Vayikra (Leviticus) 21 through 24, relates to our world today.


Rav Shimshon Refoel Hirsch has a long commentary on the pasuk (verse) of this week's parsha that reads:
"They shall not make a bald spot on their head, nor shall they shave off the corners of their beard and they shall not make a wound in their flesh."
These actions are prohibited as a sign of mourning when someone dies.
Rav Hirsch notes that these actions were specific signs of sacrifice and mourning among the pagans, who literally scarified themselves or offered bits of their flesh to their particular "god" who ruled over death.
From Rav Hirsch: "Heathenism, both ancient and modern, tends to associate religion with death. The kingdom of god begins only where man ends. Death and dying are the main manifestations of divinity. For, in the heathen view, the deity is a god of death, not of life...
The most exalted manifestation of G-d is not in the power of death, which crushes strength and life. Rather, G-d reveals Himself in the liberating and vitalizing power of life, which elevates man to free will and eternal life. Judaism teaches us how to live, so that even in life we may overcome death, an unfree existence, enslavement to physical things, and more weakness. Judaism teaches us how to live every moment of earthly life as a moment of eternal life in the service of G-d; how thus to live every moment of a life marked by moral freedom, a life of thought and will, creativity and achievement, and also pleasure."
Rav Hirsh also notes that the above prohibitions are yet another way for us to differentiate "between sensual bodily servitude and man's godly moral freedom.... Even during his lifetime, man is a plaything in the hands of compelling physical forces. He submits to their control not only after the departure of his soul; rather, even while still alive he is at the mercy of his own heart, which is ruled by the dark forces of urges and lusts.
Heathenism - both ancient and modern - not only deifies the power of death, but also embraces the deification of the sensual powers. Heathen priests build their edifices not only on man's fear of death, but also on the power of sin, which exerts control over man..."


My understanding of Rav Hirsch's commentary is that the Torah puts strictures in places in place to remind us to keep separate from those who worship Death in any of its forms and that we are enjoined to exert our own moral Free Will to live life to its fullest in a godly, moral, fulfilling manner. Or, as I have noted elsewhere - "Life is Beautiful All the Time."
It is brought down elsewhere that this desire to submit to the physical, sensual forces of death in this world is found in the yetzer hora; literally "the evil inclination," of every human being that has ever lived.
We are commanded to suppress our "natural" inclinations to revel in the sensual power of death and immorality.
As Hashem commands us elsewhere in the Torah, we are to "Choose Life."


These choices face us every moment of every day in our modern world.
There is a large swathe of humanity that have made a religious cult out of choosing Death. Their world is one where the sensual pleasures and immorality are to be pursued by murdering others at random and, indeed, murdering themselves.
But, it is not only these Death Cultists who have rejected G-d's Torah prohibitions, but all those who believe that "even while still alive he is at the mercy of his own heart."
The world in which we live sees a tipping of the scales towards the Heathenism that insists on Man's unfree existence and enslavement to physical things.
G-d is the G-d of Life. Torah commands us to use our own Free Will to Choose Life and reject the Cult of Death.

 

This makes me think about Boston last week, and the Muslims who proudly tell the world that Islam reveres death while Christians and Jews revere life.
Yet they bow to a Koran which insists it better explains the Torah it is actually founded upon that what the Jews have made of their own writings.

They support this by insisting that Ishmael MUST have been Abraham's "only son," since Abe later had Isaac, and therefore had two sons at some moment after the sacrifice described in Gen 22.
They use this to argue that the Jews changed the Torah, hence, with that accusation, they proceed to change a lot of stuff.

How do the Jews maintain the argument for Isaac as the sacrifice???

 

Because it is in the Torah. That's it.

 

Hmmm,...

Well that is the point they are making, though.

The Jews copied the story, and passed it down to other Jews for 1828 years, (long) before Islam appeared.
So the argument that they changed the story only to oppose Islam from entering into the Bible as a religious aspect doesn't make any sense either.

But I thought maybe you had some argument that some how excluded Ishmael as "a son, and only son."

Because it is NOW in the Torah, it seems to support them in the accusation of changing Torah, not the people who say, "Its now in the Toah."

Since I do not see why it makes a difference in the story or the meaning, I tend to give them that one, when discussing religion, since it does make sense out of a father pushed by his wife, Sarah, to disown a son by another woman, even to the point of considering what he was doing back then.

It seems impossible to deny that Abraham had two sons at the time, were he actually about to kill Isaac.

 

It would be nice to see Jews step up and lend assistance on the "life" issues, i.e. abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, etc. What think you, Moishe?

 

Even though I am Jewish, I am extremely skeptical that Moses wrote anything; or that any of the stories in OT are older than perhaps 200 BC. There is presently no ark in existence, and even the bronze scrolls that listed all the treasures of the world do not mention the ark (which is supposedly gold and jewels). Additionally, the process of building the Jewish Tanach didn't happen until between 200 BC and 200 AD. How old is the Septuagint - maybe 100 years before Christ? I believe the oldest artifact that even has any words from Old Testament are the two Silver Scrolls; and I think those just have a few words at most. I think the oldest bible in existence is the Codex Sanaiticus from the mid fourth century and I think most of Genesis and Numbers is missing. My point to all this is that we have nothing empirical until 2,000 years after Moses allegedly lived; and quite candidly most archaeologists and Egyptologists believe the Exodus story is a fairy tale. So Sarah, Isaac, Abraham - who knows..... Interestingly I was named after Abraham and my daughter after Sarah. But those stories - chances are it's all just fiction including the main characters. And we all know deluvial flood geology can't be true, nor can the earth stop spinning or orbiting the sun. So clearly there is no truth to the books.

 

How can we lend assistance? USA is 86% Christian. They don't care what we think. Heck, most of them don't even like us. We all know how USA turned their back on the Jews until the very end of WW II. I am pretty darn sure though that we have laws on abortion, assisted suicide, etc. in Israel. I doubt those laws are much different than here in USA.

 

Euthanasia and assisted suicide are totally against Jewish Law and all Torah observant Jews (Orthodox) oppose such practices.
Abortion is also against Jewish Law except that there are exceptions according to Jewish Law, which is quite different than the Christian point of view.
However, the majority of Jews are not Torah observant and do not follow Jewish Law.

 

Right now Israel is aborting babies, permitting Gays to rally and march thru the main streets of Jerusalem, and behaving pretty much the way of the gentile whoredoms that the Bible attacked so directly right from the start.


Birth rate in Israel:
17.97 births/1,000 population (2006 est.) = 5,000,000/1000 X 18 = 90,000 births vs 20,000 abortions, @ 20%

Source: United Nations Abortion Policies: A Global Review, Jerusalem Report, (February 12, 2001), Jerusalem Post.

In America, the birth of babies is evenly divided, 50% and 50% between bastards and legitimates.

 

If you are right, the Bible has reached us with almost no cry from any source around the ancient world against such a coup d' etat in religion.
When we ask for evidence that you are wrong, it is understandable that after 3362 years only scraps can be found.
The small number of Jews and their insular society which has always tended to avoid Gentile interaction while maintaining rituals and religious customs that intentionally excluded foreigners would leave us with mostly the Jewish people as the real living witnesses to these questions you raise.

And, I believe that scripture tells us this, too, as it refers to them as the two witnesses before God.
I also believe that the Greek Bible can be supported back to @ 350BC.

Nevertheless, you raise the question which has in the last century or two become rather popular as Christianity and Judaism, both, have fallen out of favor in the West.

My defense for the OT rests upon recent genetic evidence that supports things written in Exodus/Deuteronomy/Leviticus augmented with recent archaeological evidence that at about the exact same time as that Exodus story was reportedly occurring, a mysterious appearance of monotheism, for the first time in history, appeared in Egypt.
These two concurrent pieces of evidence support the argument from a Moses and for the Bible report of the events he experience, IMHO.

The genetic evidence that has been found verifies that the sons of Aaron (who became the Jewish priests forever in 1362BC) are all, those living today, in fact, related to just one man who lived that long ago, about 3362 years ago.
That pretty much dates the Exodus story, Deuteronomy, and Leviticus back to the time Judaism claims the Torah appeared.

That all Egypt underwent a massive conversion to monotheism in spite of the power of all the Pharaohs before and after the same date, 1362BC, implies that something happened, monumentally, overpoweringly, and clearly related to what we know Exodus reports.

I tend to accept this as the strongest evidence for the Torah dated to 1362BC.

 

The point of the Bible is that all peoples, everywhere, have always hated the Truth and tended towards killing the messenger.

Christ was that sacrifice that prevents the Jews from duplicating this tendency, in regard to Judaism, while the Holocaust likewise restrains America from forcibly attacking the Jews, should they stand up and confront the Christians with the Truth:

As the social issue of Abortion tears the nation apart,... politically,... the truth is that Christian America is responsible for 66.6% of all the Abortion they complain about.
Two out of every three young girls getting an abortion check off "Christian" as their Religious Affiliation.
It the Right really wants to oppose Abortion, they out first throw stones at Christian churches and Christian mothers and fathers.

The Religious Right can lower Abortion by 2/3rds, or 800,000 each year just by avoiding an abortion themselves.

 

I once heard of a "conspiracy" that claims Jews are from Judea and Israelis are from Israel. I understand that at one time a larger portion of historic Palestine was once called Judea even when it incorporated other "city-states". Is there any reason for the term "Jew" instead of some other term since, Judea no longer exists?

 

If one studies Torah and Jewish Law with all of its attendant commentaries and analysis's, one might come to a different conclusion.
I suspect that "there are more things in Heaven and Earth... than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

The Torah is neither a history book nor is it a science text.
It is a moral instruction manual for mankind; a blueprint for the human race on who is Man and what are his duties to G-d, his Creator.

 

Yehuda (Judah) was one of the twelve sons of Yaakov/Yisroel (Jacob/Israel). The tribes of Yehuda and Benyamin (Benjamin) were given the land containing the area around Jerusalem and the Holy Temple when the Children of Israel conquered the Land of Israel.
After Solomon, the Kingdom of Israel was split into two. The Northern part, containing Ten Tribes of Israel, was called the Kingdom of Israel. The Southern part, containing the Temple and Jerusalem, and the tribes of Judah and Benjamin was called the Kingdom of Judah.
The Kingdom of Israel and the ten tribes of Israel were conquered by the Assyrians around 720 BCE, and the people were led into captivity. These are the "ten lost tribes of Israel."
The remaining people - Levites; Judah; Benjamin; and some of the tribe of Simeon, all were absorbed into the Kingdom of Judah.
Judah was conquered around 586 BCE.
So, for 150 years, Judah was the only "kingdom of Israel." Whatever remnants of the "lost ten tribes" that survived were absorbed into Judah.
So, the Yehudis were the ones that eventually made it back to the Kingdom of Israel and reestablished the 2nd Temple in the Land of Israel. They were subsequently conquered by first the Greeks and then the Romans.
By the time of the destruction of the Second Temple, the people of Israel were also known by the name of the last dominant tribe - Yehudis or "Jews."

 

Jews are smart people who question and so are not easily duped.

It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that a single human cell is not a living human from a scientific perspective.

From a religious perspective, the OT commands abortion. The problem with the religious right is that they do not well understand the book they claim to believe in.

 

What?
Could you be a tad more specific?
I don't know of anywhere in Tanach (your "old testament") that "commands abortion."
Where do you find this?

 

Numbers 5:11-21 God tells the people that if a woman is suspected of adultery she is to take a bitter potion which will case an abortion.

Obviously any pregnant women would fall into this catagory and be killed, effectively aborting the child as well. Obviously God does not have regard for these innocent fetuses.

 

This is incorrect. I explained this on another thread but, the bottom line is that the procedure in the passage about Sotah would cause the woman to die if she were, indeed, guilty.
It has nothing to do with abortion.

This is not a useful analogy. Your scenario has nothing to do with abortion.

 

Of course it does has everything to do with abortion because the fetus dies too if the woman dies. If God cared about the fetus he could wait until after the pregnancy ended in order to kill have the woman killed.

The passage in question however does not say that the woman dies and is clearly talking about an induced abortion.

God commands abortion in this passage and you have stated nothing that refutes the obvious.

How does the intentional killing of a fetus have nothing to do with abortion. You are going to have to do a little better than "that is not a useful analogy" and come up with an explanation of why the analogy is not useful if you want to be taken seriously.

 

Foolishness in that every first born child that opens the womb belongs to the lord.

These girls who have never been married and get pregnant by promiscuous sex are killing their first child.
Doing these things is the worship of Molech, and the adults that allow this force their adolescences to walk through His fire.


Ezekiel 16:20
Moreover thou hast taken thy sons and thy daughters, whom thou hast borne unto me, and these hast thou sacrificed unto them to be devoured. Is this of thy whoredoms a small matter,
Leviticus 19:29
Do not prostitute thy daughter, to cause her to be a whore; lest the land fall to whoredom, and the land become full of wickedness.

Then I will set my face against that man, and against his family, and will cut him off, and all that go a whoring after him, to commit whoredom with Molech, from among their people. Leviticus 20:5

 

It IS a Social Science book though.
And, though it does not teach Physical Science it does not say anything that is scientifically incorrect.

In regard to History, it is hard to avoid, that the intent of scripture to record the story of the Jews isn't history, a history which the Jews certainly hold dear.

 

I got a simple question. Why would, or did a Jew raise pigs since they couldn't eat them ?

 

The Israelits were sacrificing Children throughout most of their history prior to the Babylonian captivity. Nothing new here.

Im not sure how this relates to the fact that God commands abortion in the Mosaic laws and orders the killing of pregnant women (which of course kills their fetus)

Bottom line. God does not seem to put any significant value on the fetus in general unless, he had designated that fetus to become a prophet.

 

You may want to consider the market for pork bellies.

 

Your inferences and suppositions regarding what you believe scripture states, are incorrect.

The specific passage in the Torah that you are quoting reads:

[TABLE="class: Co_TanachTable, width: 100%"]
[TR="class: Co_Verse"]
[TD]22. For these curse bearing waters shall enter your innards, causing the belly to swell and the thigh to rupture," and the woman shall say, "Amen, amen."[/TD]
[TD="class: Co_Spacer"][/TD]
[TD="class: hebrew, align: right"]כב. וּבָאוּ הַמַּיִם הַמְאָרְרִים הָאֵלֶּה בְּמֵעַיִךְ לַצְבּוֹת בֶּטֶן וְלַנְפִּל יָרֵךְ וְאָמְרָה הָאִשָּׁה אָמֵן | אָמֵן:[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

The Hebrew word -

[FONT=sbl_hebrew]יָרֵךְ means thigh or hip, and [/FONT][FONT=sbl_hebrew] וְלַנְפִּל means, literally "to fall away" or rupture.[/FONT]​