From: RFaussette@aol.com
Date: Fri Feb 21 2003 - 18:37:50 EST
In a message dated 2/21/03 1:12:35 PM Eastern Standard Time, gmurphy@raex.com
writes:
> To the extent that Jews continue to live as a minority - & often a
> threatened minority - it's understandable that there are attempts to
> maintain the type of policy
> established under Ezra &
Frank Salter, evolutionary anthhropologist at the Max Plank Insitute in
Germany uses the Blalock model (I=RM) to demonstrate that organized Jewry is
the most powerful ethnic group in the United States today. Your argument is
hardly current and hardly applicable in this context. We are still the most
compassionate country in the world. The reference I gave you urged genetic
segregation and was distributed in local Pathmark supermarket, not in the
Pale of Settlement. This is not a reaction to persecution. This is their
religion.
> exile. Simply read the
> Book of Ruth which virtually rubs the reader's nose in the fact that the
> heoine is "the Moabitess" & concludes with the statement that she is the
> great-grandmother of David.
>
You are asking me to consider with equal weight a reference in ruth "One of
the proto-canonical writings of the Old Testament" to refute a fact in
genesis, a fact for which I provided pre-exilic and post-exilic support.
Compare ruth:
In the series of the sacred writings of the Old Testament, the short Book of
Ruth occupies two different principal places. The Septuagint, the Vulgate,
and the English Versions give it immediately after the Book of Judges. The
Hebrew Bible, on the contrary, reckons it among the Hagiographa or third
chief part of the Old Testament. Note the Hebrew BIble does not even consider
ruth as highly as the Septuagint, the vulgate or the English Version.
To the first book of the torah: genesis
"Torah" is applied to the books containing the teaching of the Mosaic
revelation and the Law, that is, the Pentateuch. In Jewish theology Torah
signifies, first, the totality of Jewish doctrine, whether taken as a basis
for religious knowledge and conduct, or as a basis for study.
> Of course earlier there are concerns about marriage outside the immediate
> family or tribe. That isn't peculiar to the Jewish tradition. But in the
> Bible these concerns are not absolutized & they aren't always given
> religious significance. Note that nobody seems to care that Joseph marries
> an Egyptian & that therefore the tribes of Ephraim & Manasseh are,
>
Joseph does not marry any Egyptian. He marries the daughter of the chief
priest of On, the highest dignitary in the Egyptian religion save the Pharoah.
You - & many Orthodox Jews - are simply
> retrojecting later concerns into the pre-exilic period. Perhaps there are
> good reasons for Jews to try to maintain such a position on intermarriage
> today, but that's another matter.
>
In the 18th century there was a hasidic renewal in eastern europe among
orthodox Jewry. In the messianic Idea in Judaism Gershem Scholem calls it the
greatest spiritual renewal of all time. It is hasidic orhtodox jewish
communities that refuse to leave the occupied territories of Palestine and
are at the very epicenter of the crisis in the Middle East for their
insitence on the rebuilding of the temple. Ariel sharon appeased them with
his visit to the temple mount that sparked the current intifada. Our
president told sharon to withdaw. he refused. hardly helpless, persecuted
people. Incidentally, orthodox Jews don't consider reformed or conservative
Jews (only extant since the enlightenment) real Jews.
I respectfully suggest you are stretching your argument.
rich
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