There is a saying that where there are two Jews there are three different opinions but here are my two cents about Obama handling the Louis Farrakhan question at the debate last night in Ohio. Obama handled it fine, and had a great selling point, even with Hillary's attempt to create a perception that his answer was not good enough.

What was the great selling point? Israel? No, since we know his position as far as Israel is concerned, but he wishes do something that the Jewish community is longing for which is to bridge the once strong relationship (until fairly recent history) between blacks and Jews.

Jews were involved in establishing the NAACP in the beginning of the 20th century, African American newspapers were among the first newspapers to denounce Nazism, most civil rights attorneys in the South during the 1960s were Jews, and both groups were eager to express the similarities rather than the differences between the Jewish and Black experiences in this country.

However, from the 1960's to recent history this relationship has deteriorated and as a Jew, I have to show my appreciation for the prospect of a president Obama coming in and attempting to build a new bridge between two groups that have mostly worked side-by-side but have encountered an unfortunate series of misunderstandings that ruptured a once strong Black-Jewish alliance.

The Jewish community would love to restore this relationship and this pitch from Senator Obama is a big seller.

I found Barak Obama's response to the Louis Farrakhan's question to be fine, no matter how people try to spin this using a context attempting to hurt Senator Obama.

I thought Obama did a great job handling the situation (conceding the point to Clinton) when Senator Clinton tried to create a perception that his response was not good enough.

The positive debate in Washington a couple of weeks ago left me feeling good about both Clinton and Obama and proud of both candidates. Clinton focused on her strengths trying to sell her abilities assuring she would make a fine president. But what has been turning me off about her and her campaign is the divisiveness and the negativity that was over the top in January, with Bill Clinton messing things up for her, and the current aggressive tone from her campaign. I have to admit I was rooting for her to win New Hampshire, but since, I have been turned off by her husband and by the tactics of her campaign. I think that if Hillary kept a more positive campaign to show America that she is not as divisive as people make her out to be, she would be in a better position today and she'd probably have my support.

...and appreciate the work of progressive Christians. That's not what's in question.

I even understand Jesus saying "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil" afterall, he was a Jew.

But the Ten Commandments are part of the covenant of the Jews. It's not a Christian obligation to follow. So what is the conservative Christian explanation for emphasizing the Ten Commandments so much? Perhaps the "Jesus Seminar" you mentioned has a FAQ about these issues somewhere.

This Bishop here (Bishop Spong) explains how the Christians killed God and he wants reformation by going back to the Hebrew way:


"The Hebrew Biblical View


The hebrew God

The Hebrew Biblical View
In the biblical time of the Old Testament the Hebrew God and the world were not antithetical, nor were they identical. God was the creator; the world was the creature. God was bigger than the creation, but the creation revealed the creator’s glory. The Hebrew creation story affirmed the goodness of life. God made it all, and when it was complete God surveyed it and pronounced it good indeed. The physical world was the object of God’s love. It was showered with God’s blessings: sunshine and rainfall. For human life a garden was built called Eden. God walked in the garden “in the cool of the evening” (Gen 3:8). Material things were good; they were meant to be used. Physical things were good; they were meant to be appreciated. Life was good; it was meant to be lived. The world was good; it was the object of the divine love and was therefore meant to be engaged. With great joy the Hebrews could sing of God’s world and God’s creation. To be spiritual for the Hebrews meant to be alive to God and alive to the world. It did not mean to be pious or otherworldly. To have faith, for the Hebrew, was to have the courage to enter life, for that is where God is to be found.


The Early Christian Dualistic View


The early Christian God

Christians took on a dualistic view, which was adapted from the Greeks. There is a separation between the spiritual and the physical, between God and the world. Christianity and the church were identified with the realm of the spirit, and all worldly pursuits and physical concerns were identified with the realm of the physical. The world became a place to be escaped, not to be engaged. Christians who followed the “higher calling” turned their backs on life and gave themselves to the “spiritual” pursuits of prayer, meditation, contemplation. The goal of the Christian life was now not the transformation of the world but the beatific vision. Otherworldly concerns became dominant. The meaning of life was not found in life but beyond it. The goal of life was heaven, not earthly fulfillment. As the church grew in dominance the realm of the spirit with which the church had made its special identification grew in importance, while the realm of the physical began to shrink as an object of concern. This attitude reached its culmination, its highwater mark, in the thirteenth century.


The Thirteenth Century


The Thirteenth Century God

By the thirteenth century life on earth was considered only temporary and therefore just something to be endured. In such a world no passion for life was exhibited, no war against injustice was fought, no reform movements were initiated. This world was considered too unimportant to be worthy of serious efforts at change. There was a sanctified mood of resignation, of acceptance of one’s status or circumstances, because life here did not really matter that much.
This fact has had its ramifications in our later history. Because efforts to reform life in this world, to increase justice among men and women, to throw off the shackles of human bondage were not the concern of Christians, they inevitably had to become the concern of non-Christians. This spiritualized, benign neglect by the church of the festering sores of injustice guaranteed that reform movements in Western civilization would be violently anti-Christian movements. One has only to look at the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Spanish Revolution to see on which side the institutional church took its stand. It was the pious, otherworldly attitude in the face of overt oppression and injustice that caused Karl Marx to write his famous words, “Religion...is the opium of the people.”

Given the anti-world, anti-physical reality stance of thirteenth-century Christianity, the science-versus-religion battle was unavoidable. When scientific pursuits emerged in Western civilization, they were inevitably anti-Christian and antireligious...

...The Church vs. Science

By the sixteenth century scientific facts begin to confront Christian theological dogma. God is no longer required to explain what science can explain without God. God becomes a gap-filler God. Wherever gaps in human knowledge or experience exist God is cited to explain it. As science expands the role of God diminishes. Step by step, from contest to ultimate conquest, in every single conflict of Fact with Faith, the Church has been defeated and has retreated -- put to shaming rout. It has been a slow and tortuous progress,--


"For faith, fanatic faith, once wedded fast
To some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last"!


The process of adjustment for the Church has throughout a thousand instances been the same: Faith is confronted with a discrediting Fact; it curses it and denies it. It viciously persecutes anyone who sides with science rather than with the Church because the Church desperately wants to retain its power. Any scientific knowledge which diminishes the role of God also diminishes the power of the Church.

When a scientific fact is finally crammed down the Church's throat and they are forced to change their dogma they then claim the Bible supported the scientific view all along and they just made a "mistake" in interpreting scripture, oh and sorry for all those people they burned at the stake.

But the self-inflicted damage the Church does to itself takes its toll. Their ultimate infallible authority is brought into question and the Church is irreversibly humiliated. People loose respect for the Church. People gain respect for science..."

More: http://members.cox.net/deleyd/religion/whe...

God today:



On edit: added Quotes

"Jesus certainly COULD have been made up, but not in that short a time frame. That is where it defies common sense. Not in a generation or two, not in response to anything to the many people who could have known him. It would be far more believable that Moses was made up."

Most certainly it could have been made up in that time frame. Just as the pharisaic and aronide revolution were put in place for the same purpose and it did not need a long period of time to be established. It's a political force that brings forth a new idea and the process of accepting it starts immediately and grows from there. By the time Josephus wrote anything about the followers of Jesus that was plenty of time for this revolution to be in place and for Jesus to have a considerably big following by that time having the historical Jesus existed or not.

"I would add that the various books of the Old Testament had hundreds of years of evolution and were not canonized until after Christ was on the scene, and the rise of rabbinical Judaism came in response to the Jewish sect of Jesus."

Where did you get that from? Based on literary evidence (different forms of hebrew used from specific times), political (interest of the people who put it together), cultural and geographical evidence (the location and under whose rule they were at the time) you could say that the Torah had hundreds of years of evolution and that the rest the old testament had the same. However this evolution based on these evidences could not go beyound fifth century BCE for the Pentateuch or beyound 2nd century BCE for the rest of the old testament. The Tanach (old testament) needed to be canonized in the second century BCE in order for the Pharisees to have their revolution and exist as a power before Jesus time.
What is your evidence for your hypothesis that the old testament had evolved during or after 1st century CE and that was only canonized after Jesus was around?

"Actually, no, as I don't consider myself a Christian, except in the broadest possible sense, and I don't think that it is all that important that he actually did live, because it is what people believe about him that is important, rather than anything else. I just think the idea that he was completely made up completely implausible."

My perception with your attitude is that to you it is important there to be a historical Jesus since you say that the idea that he is completely made up is implausible when it is not at all given all that's been presented.

You are trying hard but sorry, the idea that Jesus did not exist is not implausible.

The belief that Jews are the Chosen People has often provoked antagonism from non-Jews. In the 1930s, as Nazis were tightening the noose around the necks of German Jews, George Bernard Shaw remarked that if the Nazis would only realize how Jewish their notion of Aryan superiority was, they would drop it immediately. In 1973, in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur War, Yakov Malik, the Soviet ambassador of the UN, said: "The Zionists have come forward with the theory of the Chosen People, an absurd ideology. That is religious racism." Indeed the most antisemitic document in history, the forgery known as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, is based on the idea of an international conspiracy to rule the world by the "Chosen People".

In the light of these attacks you can't blame Jews who wanted to do away with the belief in chosennes. And some have out of fear.

In judaism, the notion of the one God became known to the World by the Jews. And according to Jewish sources, that is the idea of chosennes: to make God known to the world.

Does Judaism believe that chosennes endows Jews with the same special rights in the way racists ideologies endow those born into the "right race"? Not at all.

The most famous verse in the Bible on the subject of chosennes says the exact opposite: "You alone have I singled out of all the families of the earth. That is why I call you to account for all your iniquities" (Amos 3:2). Chosennes is so unconnected to to any notion of race that some Jews believe that the Messiah himself will descend from Ruth, a convert to Judaism. You cannot convert to a race. Once a person converts he/she becomes part of the Chosen People.

Why were Jews chosen? Because they are descendents of Abraham. And why were Abraham and his descendants given the task of making God known to the world? The Torah (first five books of the Bible) never tells us. What God does say in Deuteronomy, is that "it is not because you are numerous that God chose you, indeed you are the smallest of people" (7 ). Because of the Jews' small numbers, any success they would have in making God known to the world would presumably reflect upon the power of the idea of God.

"Ména will continue to inform its readers of the evolution of the situation, by way of continuous official statements on this site for the minor developments, and by emailing “breaking news” to its subscribers, in the case of major events.

The politicians, journalists and intellectuals of Lebanon have, of late, been experiencing the shock of their lives. They knew full well that Hezbollah had created an independent state in our country, a state including all the ministers and parallel institutions, duplicating those of Lebanon. What they did not know – and are discovering with this war, and what has petrified them with surprise and terror – is the extent of this phagocytosis.

In fact, our country had become an extension of Iran, and our so-called political power also served as a political and military cover for the Islamists of Teheran. We suddenly discovered that Teheran had stocked more than 12,000 missiles, of all types and calibers, on our territory and that they had patiently, systematically, organized a suppletive force, with the help of the Syrians, that took over, day after day, all the rooms in the House of Lebanon. Just imagine it : we stock ground-to-ground missiles, Zilzals, on our territory and that the firing of such devices without our knowledge, has the power to spark a regional strategic conflict and, potentially, bring about the annihilation of Lebanon.

We knew that Iran, by means of Hezbollah, was building a veritable Maginot line in the south but it was the pictures of Maroun el-Ras and Bint J’bail that revealed to us the magnitude of these constructions. This amplitude made us understand several things at once : that we were no longer masters of our destiny. That we do not possess the most basic means necessary to reverse the course of this state of things and that those who turned our country into an outpost of their islamic doctrine’s combat against Israel did not have the slightest intention of willingly giving up their hold over us."

http://www.menapress.com/article.php?sid=1...

-----------------

I have to admit, I don't know much about the site (the source of the article) since the main page is in French and I didn't have time to browse and investigate. But it is an interesting piece...

"We are grateful for the analysis that we will hear tonight. It is important for us to understand as best we can the terrible conflict that rages on Israel’s northern border.

Still, as much as we appreciate analysis and commentary, it seems to me that the distinguishing feature of this conflict is the utter clarity of the issues and of the moral choices that it presents.

This is a war in which the rights and wrongs are beyond all doubt.

Southern Lebanon is taken over by Hezbollah after Israel’s withdrawal. Supported by Syria and Iran, Hezbollah amasses an arsenal of 13,000 missiles and rockets. Over a period of 6 years, it launches dozens of unprovoked attacks into Israeli territory— striking at military installations or launching rockets at civilian targets. All the while, Hezbollah’s leaders proclaim their genocidal intentions: Israel is to be wiped off the map.

And then, after it attacks again, kidnapping and killing Israeli soldiers, Israel finally strikes back. After 6 long years, it has had enough. But without hesitation, Hezbollah unleashes a barrage of 2500 rockets against Israel’s northern cities, each and every rocket aimed at civilians, each and every rocket intended to kill, or to maim, or to terrorize.

And terrorize they have. A half million Israelis have been driven from their homes; nearly a million pass most of their days in bomb shelters. Life in the northern half of the country has come to a standstill. And not only that. Hezbollah intentionally operates from civilian areas, knowing that this will increase civilian deaths, no matter how precise Israel’s weaponry. And these deaths in turn will be used to ratchet up the violence and the hate.

Could the rights and wrongs of this conflict be any clearer? If Israel’s cause is not just in this war, then no cause can ever be just..."

http://urj.org/Articles/index.cfm?id=11224

Many here probably know that Rabbi Yoffie is a HUGE critic of Bush and the war in Iraq. Many may also know him from the remarks he has made criticizing the religious right back in November 2005 that caused a big stir.

Rabbi Yoffie is the president of the Union of Reform Judaism (the US body of the World for Progressive Judaism).

First I would like to begin this thread by saying that it is being posted to explain the definition and origin of the term "antisemitism" and not a way to say it exists here in DU or to accuse anybody of antisemitism. So there is no need for anybody to be on the defensive.

I felt the need to post this here since there is a controversy here when we have discussions where many here argue that anti-Arab sentiments or hatred against Arabs is synonym with antisemitism using the logic that since Jews and Arabs are both Semites therefore anti-Arab equals antisemitism.

Many people don't know that the word "ANTISEMITISM" was coined by Wilhelm Marr, an antisemite himself. Ironically, Wilhelm Mars created the expression "antisemitism" in 1879 with the intention to be known among all future antisemites as a leader of a powerful movement of Jew-haters but today he is only known to Jewish scholars.

Marr wanted to replace the German word "judenhass" (Jew-hatred) with a word that would make Jew-haters sound less vulgar and even somewhat scientific.

The problem is that the term he created is misleading since it conveys the impression that antisemites oppose Semites. This has enabled Jew-haters in the Arab world to deny they are antisemites, on the eminently logical grounds that they are themselves Semites. But for Marr, Hitler, and other Jew-haters, the term "antisemitism" has always been a code word used exclusively against Jews.

Hitler himself had not compunctions about welcoming (Semitic) Arab leaders, including the Mufti of Jerusalem, to Berlin during World War II. For this reason, many writers today have adopted the practice initiated by several Jewish and Christian scholars and write antisemitism as one word. Spelling antisemitism as "anti-Semitism" in the conventional manner, only fosters the false impression that there is a wider ethnic entity against which "anti-Semitism" is leveled.

Throughout history, antisemitism has been directed against Judaism and its values.

The term "antisemitism" defined by the The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language:





The term "antisemitism" defined by WordNet 2.0, © 2003 Princeton University: