61–70 of 165 posts
I've always been idly curious as to what happened in Israel (as in the geographic area) between, say, 35 A.D. and 1948. It seems, though, as if everybody who might have some insight there also has an agenda that makes any concrete information they might have to share indecipherable.
Mostly 1,400 years of Muslim rule besides a short period of Catholic rule during the crusades.
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There is little in the way of ethnicity. Ashkenazi Jews are an ethnicity, Jews in general, aren't. They even spoke different languages before Hebrew became a thing in early XX century, and many of them still do.
You goyim have no heart. All you want is lehashpil otanu.
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I was born Jewish and was pretty religious for most of my life, but even when I was religious I never understood why we should be proud of this, or why this is a good thing in and of itself. I would be really interested if you could explain more your way of thinking about it, because to me when my father explains that we should be proud of having the same meal our ancestors did Xthousand years ago I don't feel impres…
Its a personal thing, I am not in a position to persuade anybody. I think that our present is explained by the context of the past, and that you can't understand the present without looking at the past. Now the past is a complex thing that can't be reduced to some simple formula, I still believe that you can still learn out of it, because human nature didn't change to much throughout the ages. Our reality may be quit…
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Indeed, this fact this makes me proud to be a Jew. (A happy Passover to all whom it may concern). As a young boy my father used to take me to the Pergamon museum in Berlin - one major exhibit is the Babylonian street of processions (it dates to the neo-Babylonian empire) He used to say - here you see our heritage, we were around the show when Berlin (and all the other great capitals of the world) were still a swamp.
I was born Jewish and was pretty religious for most of my life, but even when I was religious I never understood why we should be proud of this, or why this is a good thing in and of itself. I would be really interested if you could explain more your way of thinking about it, because to me when my father explains that we should be proud of having the same meal our ancestors did Xthousand years ago I don't feel impres…
Im not a rabbi or in kiruv or anything, so take this with a grain of salt...but I would point to Jordan Petersons position about the longevity and survival of the bible stories and his response to atheists around it all sounding made up. There is a reason these stories survived through the ages. There is wisdom and much to learn from the ideas in the Torah even if you dont buy into their accuracy. It's just too shallow to dismiss it as superstitious ancestors who werent as smart as us.
From a purely pragmatic standpoint, the very fact that we are finite beings in a world that will survive our existence means that our life will face tragedy...and the best way to cope with a tragic existence is to find meaning in life and in our actions.
Most fundamentally is buying into the idea that we can bargain with the future and that decisions we make today matter and have an impact on the future and future generations.
From that context, ritually connecting with the past and exploring how things that happened to your ancestors have an impact on your existence today is about the best way I can think of to get you to internalize the idea that what you do today matters to tomorrow.
The idea of mesorah(transmission from generation to generation) is framed as a way to verify the validity of the stories...but I really think its more along the lines of showing the unbroken chain between the past and the present...so you can internalize the responsibility of the chain between the present and the future...
It sounds like you've decided to start a new chain for your children and sever that connection to your past. For me, I think the responsibility and ramifications of that decision are massive and at the very least deserve a reckoning with the significance of how the decision impacts future generations regardless of what you finally decide...it feels to me that because you werent able to internalize the ideas (regardless of the factual nature of them) of "Hashem took ME out of mitzrayim" or "had the exodus not taken place, we would still be slaves" ...and never connected with the powerful idea that we eat matzah to commemorate what our ancestors ate rushing out Egypt...you either feel the decision for keeping your future generations connected to the past is inconsequential, or the past is blatanly wrong.
Considering you grew up religious, I am assuming you had a modern Yeshiva education...like many others, it sounds like they failed to show you the pragmatic wisdom in yiddishkeit and instead left you feeling unconnected with your brilliant history.
I would encourage you to try to pass on the parts that you did connect with and the pragmatic wisdom in much of the torah and halacha to atleast give your children the chance to make their own decisions.
You can reject the bible and reject religion and put science on a pedestal...but the idea that what you do matters and that you can bargain with the future...and that who and where you are today is a product of decisions your parents and their parents made...that lesson is too important not to pass on. It would be a shame to be passedover!
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Whether Jews (like myself) are an ethnicity/religion/culture/nation/etc is a complicated question with a lot of strong feelings involved. These Wikipedia articles have a lot of good material for those who aren't aware: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_peoplehood and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_is_a_Jew%3F
I think it's a similar quandary with Arabs, minus the shared religion of course. I'm Tunisian and I consider myself Arab, but many other Tunisians consider themselves (ethnically) Maghrebi and/or Amazigh. Tunisia and the remaining Maghrebi countries are part of the Arab League, though. I'm sure it's even more complicated for Tunisian Jews :P
I recently had the opportunity to try one a few months ago. So good.
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I don't see any condescension (it doesn't diminish the present greatness of the great capitals at all), it is a factual observation (also you might need a sense of humour to see the irony on the part of what used to be a persecuted minority, after all - and I used to be in east Berlin before the frigging wall came down)
Could be. What I do know is that I have Greek friends who express the same feeling and they weren't a persecuted minority. There's a certain hubris about nationalities with a rich past. It's not necessarily bad, but it's still hubris :)
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Indeed, this fact this makes me proud to be a Jew. (A happy Passover to all whom it may concern). As a young boy my father used to take me to the Pergamon museum in Berlin - one major exhibit is the Babylonian street of processions (it dates to the neo-Babylonian empire) He used to say - here you see our heritage, we were around the show when Berlin (and all the other great capitals of the world) were still a swamp.
I was born Jewish and was pretty religious for most of my life, but even when I was religious I never understood why we should be proud of this, or why this is a good thing in and of itself. I would be really interested if you could explain more your way of thinking about it, because to me when my father explains that we should be proud of having the same meal our ancestors did Xthousand years ago I don't feel impres…
I don't think that all long lasting things are particularly interesting. Rocks have been around longer than the Jewish people but we don't celebrate that as extraordinary. It is considered perfectly natural. It is noteworthy when something is unnaturally long lasting; when other peoples/belief system were put under similar pressures the results have been drastically different. Imagine 50 people are dragged under water on a beach by a horrible undertow and held underwater for an hour. 2 out of the 50 survive while the other 48 don't; the 2 who survived are definitely of interest because we would want to know how they survived.
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Could be. What I do know is that I have Greek friends who express the same feeling and they weren't a persecuted minority. There's a certain hubris about nationalities with a rich past. It's not necessarily bad, but it's still hubris :)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_Greece
Greeks were still the majority in Greece and they were a well regarded minority in the empire. They were persecuted after WW1 (see the population exchanges and the Smyrna massacre).
But Greeks don’t view themselves as a persecuted minority, historically. It’s all about the mindset and self-perception.
how is this relevant to hacker news?
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I was born Jewish and was pretty religious for most of my life, but even when I was religious I never understood why we should be proud of this, or why this is a good thing in and of itself. I would be really interested if you could explain more your way of thinking about it, because to me when my father explains that we should be proud of having the same meal our ancestors did Xthousand years ago I don't feel impres…
>I really just can't understand this frame of thinking that says Judaism is good because it's been going on for long. Im not a rabbi or in kiruv or anything, so take this with a grain of salt...but I would point to Jordan Petersons position about the longevity and survival of the bible stories and his response to atheists around it all sounding made up. There is a reason these stories survived through the ages. There…