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Radical Traditional Jewish Person Profile picture
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5 Oct, 4 tweets, 1 min read
Cool cool cool. Let's talk about why doing word counts is silly.

First off, I'm gonna guess that the count of 39 incidences in Exodus was arrived at by running a query on a website that provides the text in multiple translations. There's only 16 independent instances I find.
Of course, I am also looking for the English word "smite" - so it could, second of all, be a matter of some translations using different synonyms for one word, or translating multiple words all as "smite". The text isn't actually in English.
Putting that aside, though, of the 16 independent instances of "smite" I find in Exodus:

5 are about what the consequences are when humans smite each other
4 are about smiting inanimate objects
The other 7 are all about one event in Egypt, not multiple events.
And things like this are how we end up with the antisemitic fallacy of "Old Testament God is mean, New Testament God is nice and cuddly".

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More from @JustSayXtian

Radical Traditional Jewish Person Profile picture
6 Oct
As someone who is raising kids in this context, I can confirm that counteracting white-Christian hegemony is no small feat. And one of the things that makes it hard is that progressive Christians and Christian atheists sometimes confuse "strong connection" with "indoctrination"
And I do get the fear around indoctrination, especially from people who themselves grew up in authoritarian religious systems and are dealing with the trauma of that. It's a real thing, with real consequences, and it's not bad to watch out for it.
But a lot of the time, when you are raising kids in a non-Christian tradition in a hegemonic Christian culture, you have to be pretty clear and direct about saying 'this is OUR culture, these are OUR traditions, these are OUR beliefs. They are not co-equal options or curiosities'
Read 17 tweets
Radical Traditional Jewish Person Profile picture
1 Oct
There's this thing that happens whenever we discuss generally applicable things about Jewishness where the halacha-heads show up with edge cases and technicalities, and it's an example of what I think is a deep misunderstanding of what halacha is and what it's for.
As @N_S_Dolkart puts it here - halacha means the way of walking. The idea that it's a static, monolithic thing that can be referenced as an Eternal Truth is counter to the whole way (I think) it was meant to be used in the first place.
Throughout the Talmud, rabbis do exactly what we do on Twitter today. Someone says "Here's the rule" and someone else says "Okay, but what about X example that clearly contradicts your rule" and the answer is "Well that's different."
Read 23 tweets
Radical Traditional Jewish Person Profile picture
26 Sep
A thing that I bring up often on here is that Judaism is an ethnoreligion - one indivisible thing, not two separate things, which means every Jew is ethnically Jewish and no non-Jews are ethnically Jewish. But does that also mean all Jews are religiously Jewish?
Yes, yes it does. Which I think can be upsetting to hear for some Jews who do not consider themselves religious, who are staunchly atheist, or who have major struggles with problematic parts of Judaism, so I would like to explain what I mean by way of a joke:
A man is walking one day, and as he passes a synagogue the rabbi steps out. "Excuse me, are you Jewish?" the rabbi asks. "Actually, yes" the man says. "Oh good," says the rabbi, "Could you come in for a minute? We need one more so my friend can say kaddish."
Read 8 tweets
Radical Traditional Jewish Person Profile picture
20 Sep
Over the high holidays I heard a teaching that helped with a section of Torah I've always found troubling - the that God visits the guilt of the parents upon the children, upon the third and fourth generations. This repeats several times in the Torah.
It's softened a bit by what follows: "but showing kindness to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments".
But it still seems pretty harsh. What kind of God would punish children for the wrongs their parents did? And aren't we told elsewhere God *doesn't* do that?
Read 22 tweets
Radical Traditional Jewish Person Profile picture
15 Sep
It isn't "by religion" if you're only comparing between denominations of one religion. This is egregious.
And look, this is from a public health study, not a religion study. If you're not *trying* to get a statistically significant sample of non-Christian religions then it's not surprising it problematic to not have a statistically significant sample. There aren't a lot of us.
But if that's the case it should be reflected in the visualization title and labels. Don't just pretend we don't exist.
Read 4 tweets
Radical Traditional Jewish Person Profile picture
15 Sep
I would like to invite any Christians who feel like observing Yom Kippur to do so by reading Galatians and reflecting on how your own Bible is super explicit about how gentiles not only don't have to, but *should not* engage in Jewish observances.
Additional contextual material on what exactly Paul is talking about in that time and place:

In Hebrew 'circumcision' is called brit milah - literally "covenant of cutting". The rite of circumcision, in Judaism, is the rite of bringing someone into the Jewish covenant
When Paul is warning against circumcision for Christians, he is warning against signing the contract that says they are bound by The Law. The Law is literally the mitzvot - the set of practices and observances and behaviors that Jews follow.
Read 6 tweets

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