Ask about Judaism

[agricola]

Got time for a few more?

Noachide Laws: I had only recently heard of these, and as I understand, according to Jewish teaching, and Gentile to adheres to these laws is considered a righteous gentile, and has a place in the world to come.

The Noachide Laws - the covenant with the Sons of Noah - is DERIVED FROM Torah but not exactly IN it. Judaism sees God's covenants as building upon previous covenants. The first known covenant was with Adam and Eve, and the commandments for Adam and Eve were pretty simple: grow stuff, have babies...

The next time God deals with humans is during the Noah story, so the next covenant is the one with Noah - I think the early compilers of the Torah could not imagine (or did not consider) that God might interact with humans WITHOUT a covenant type thing: that was their context. So what 'laws' or commandments of God would be binding on all humans?
Also seven is a very lucky or significant number.

They aren't so much 'laws for the non-Jew' as they are 'ways to recognize which non-Jews are righteous (i.e., good, reliable, decent) people. Different sages came up with slightly different laws, but there are always seven, and they are really judged pretty leniently. By that way - like all previous covenants (that is, the one with Adam), the Noachide one is incumbent on everyone, including Jews.

So they define, minimally, what a good society (or good citizens) look like: honest, moral, just. The requirement to 'worship God', as I said, is viewed very leniently. Polytheists are typically okay, if a bit weird - as long as their culture follows the rest of those rules. Most of them are normal to human societies, right? Not an anarchy, trustworthy in business (interpersonal relations), just court systems. Not 'eating the limb of the living' is usually considered as a form of kindness/good treatment of animals.

When Jews say that we have 613 commandments, the Noachide laws are 7 of them.

[agricola]

Got time for a few more?


The World to Come: what is this, exactly, and how does it relate to the Christian view of heaven? Would it be true to say that Jews tend to be more focused on the affairs of this world than those of an afterlife?

As for the Olam Haba'a - the World to Come - some say it is 'heaven', others that it is the Age of the Messiah. There is no consensus. It is an ideal time, however, when God's reign/rule is recognized by all the earth.

It would be TOTALLY fair to say that Jews tend to be more focused on the affairs of this world than those of an afterlife.

BTW if you want to read some good fiction about Jews who DO think/talk a lot about Olam Ha'ba'a, then see My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok. It's main characters are members of a Hasidic sect (unnamed in the book, but almost certainly Lubavitcher hasidim) which has a strong attachment to the idea of the World to Come. For a more academic (but still popularization) of the subject, Neil Gillman's The Death of Death: Immortality and Resurrection in Jewish Thought (also a good resource about the ideas of resurrection and the idea of the soul, which you also asked about).

[agricola]

Got time for a few more?



The Resurrection: obviously there was some disagreement during the days of Jesus. Do views still hold differing views about it today?

Immortality of the soul: Yes or no?

No urgency in responding. I'm just genuinely curious.

The idea that there would someday be an end of time, and that God would judge the dead (and living) and that there even WAS an afterlife, arose during the Babylonian exile. Zoroastrianism is extremely important in this whole topic, and barely anybody knows anything about it, unfortunately. Those ideas, and the belief in demons and angels with names and hierarchies, etc and the whole elaborate 'heavenly court', all came from Zoroastrianism. A very interesting religion and once upon a time, very powerful -

The big difference is that Zoroastrianism was dualistic. There were two gods. Good God, and Evil God were in constant conflict. Good God was represented by Light and Evil God by darkness. Good God had legions of Good Angels and Evil God had legions of Evil Angels (demons). Humans could choose - Evil God ruled this world and Good God rewarded you afterwards (after death).

Genesis chapter 1 was almost certainly written originally as a confrontation and repudiation of the dualistic deity story of Zoroastrianism. I have no time to go into it now (have to go to a meeting) but you should check it out.

Anyway -
Those ideas came back from Babylon when the Jews returned from Babylon, and they were popular ideas with the regular folks and totally repudiated (and considered false) by the scribes and levites and Priests - the Sadducees. But EVERYBODY else did believe in aspects of those ideas, maybe 70 or 80% of the Jews of first century Judea believed in some parts of those ideas. The Pharisees taught them as normal Judaism, derived from certain verses in the Torah and Prophets. The Essenes believed in some of those ideas too - see the Book of the Wars of the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness in the Dead Sea scroll documents, or the Rule of the Community.

The NT lists major differences between Pharisees and Sadducees, except it places Christians in the Pharisees' division (which is fair): the Sadducees do not believe in the Judgment, nor the resurrection of the dead.

I'll come back to this - but a very good source is Rabbi Gillman's book (The Death of Death).

[agricola]

Anyway - a reasonably straightforward reading of Jewish scriptures PRIOR TO the Babylonian exile shows no belief in any sort of 'afterlife' and in fact that entire topic was avoided like the plague. Possibly a reaction to the cult of death which was so important in Egypt? who knows.
At any rate, people lived good lives, died and that was it. The body decayed and the bones were 'gathered to their fathers' - that is, after a year or so in a cave, you'd go back in gather up the bones after the flesh decayed, and drop dear old dad in the pit under the floor of the cave along with the bones of grandpa and great grandpa etc.

In later times, the hole in the floor evolved into an actual BOX, called an ossuary (bone box).

But the idea that there was 'more to life than that' eventually became widespread. However, the Sadduccean party - the priests and levites, generally - did not teach it and did not believe it was true. Their opinion was that this life was it, and the truly good way to live was to obey all the rules and support the Temple.

The Pharisaic party, on the other hand, found support in the scriptures for the existence of an 'after life' and therefore a 'resurrection'. This resurrection was a physical back to life resurrection, where the body and God-given soul were reunited and the dead would rise and live again. This was envisioned as occurring at (or just before) the End of Time, when God would Judge the Living and the Dead, etc.

All of that was decidedly NOT believed by the Sadducees. They thought it was false, and a borrowing from Babylon (which it was - a borrowing from Babylon, that is).

Nobody is really exactly sure what the Essenes believed, but they apparently had similar beliefs to the Pharisees about some things, including an after life, an End of Days, and Judgement.

Jesus' teachings align rather closely with Pharisaic teachings in most respects, except for the 'son of God' passages which are simply so far outside anything from Judaism that it seems to a lot of people that he never actually said much of that, if any, and it is added by later Jesus-followers to bolster the teaching that Jesus was God, or at least semi-divine. The Greek and Roman worlds were very comfortable with 'sons of gods'. It was common to view major heroic figures as actually being sons of a god (like Alexander, or Hercules) and the emperors were seen as adopted 'sons' of the gods, who became actual gods after death.
So a lot of that kind of passage in the NT can readily be seen as claims to an imperial sized throne, and a direct challenge to 'worldly authority' such as the Roman emperor.

[Letmethink]

Anyway - a reasonably straightforward reading of Jewish scriptures PRIOR TO the Babylonian exile shows no belief in any sort of 'afterlife' and in fact that entire topic was avoided like the plague. Possibly a reaction to the cult of death which was so important in Egypt? who knows.
At any rate, people lived good lives, died and that was it. The body decayed and the bones were 'gathered to their fathers' - that is, after a year or so in a cave, you'd go back in gather up the bones after the flesh decayed, and drop dear old dad in the pit under the floor of the cave along with the bones of grandpa and great grandpa etc.

In later times, the hole in the floor evolved into an actual BOX, called an ossuary (bone box).

But the idea that there was 'more to life than that' eventually became widespread. However, the Sadduccean party - the priests and levites, generally - did not teach it and did not believe it was true. Their opinion was that this life was it, and the truly good way to live was to obey all the rules and support the Temple.

The Pharisaic party, on the other hand, found support in the scriptures for the existence of an 'after life' and therefore a 'resurrection'. This resurrection was a physical back to life resurrection, where the body and God-given soul were reunited and the dead would rise and live again. This was envisioned as occurring at (or just before) the End of Time, when God would Judge the Living and the Dead, etc.

All of that was decidedly NOT believed by the Sadducees. They thought it was false, and a borrowing from Babylon (which it was - a borrowing from Babylon, that is).

Nobody is really exactly sure what the Essenes believed, but they apparently had similar beliefs to the Pharisees about some things, including an after life, an End of Days, and Judgement.

Jesus' teachings align rather closely with Pharisaic teachings in most respects, except for the 'son of God' passages which are simply so far outside anything from Judaism that it seems to a lot of people that he never actually said much of that, if any, and it is added by later Jesus-followers to bolster the teaching that Jesus was God, or at least semi-divine. The Greek and Roman worlds were very comfortable with 'sons of gods'. It was common to view major heroic figures as actually being sons of a god (like Alexander, or Hercules) and the emperors were seen as adopted 'sons' of the gods, who became actual gods after death.
So a lot of that kind of passage in the NT can readily be seen as claims to an imperial sized throne, and a direct challenge to 'worldly authority' such as the Roman emperor.

Many of these points are conclusions that I have casually arrived at over the years when considering the evolution of the various belief systems in the scriptures. thanks agri.

[agricola]

Here's an interesting book you might like - it is called 'Meet the Rabbis' and it is by a Christian guy - Brad Young

Meet the Rabbis: Rabbinic Thought and the Teachings of Jesus

h**ps://smile.amazon.com/Meet-Rabbis-Rabbinic-Thought-Teachings-ebook/dp/B00FSJQIWM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1492805495&sr=8-1&keywords=Meet+the+Rabbis

But what the book does really is introduce you to what the RABBIS (the sages) of the first century (or early period) were interested in and talking about, and show that JESUS was in fact (and specifically in the Sermon on the Mount) ALSO talking about and was interested in the exact same topics.

It's pretty decent. You should check it out.

[agricola]

topic change:
Question showed up in the facebook feed of a private group I'm in, for Jews - about 60% or more are orthodox and it is a very LARGE group - over 10,000 members -
So someone's child asked why God made the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil if God KNEW that Adam and Eve would eat from it?

One poster's answer (not me):

It's a good question. Some people say it was a test that Adam failed. Some people compare it to the legend of Pandora's box. And one article I read argued that the entire story portrays God as an abusive monster.
I actually have a somewhat unorthodox interpretation. Just as toddlers feel comfortable running around naked and have no fear of death, so too did Adam and Eve. Upon consumption of the fruit of the tree, they were aware of shame and realized their mortality. Many parents look back at the days when the children were young with longing for the innocence of childhood. But it's the way of humanity to grow up. The tree of knowledge was a vital step towards maturity and self-awareness. And God, just like a parent who wishes his child had never become a teenager, is upset that his children are growing up. But the tree was always there because the way of humanity is to grow up, to grow wiser but also more cynical.

[agricola]

What was the response of the survivors when Israel became a nation again after going through the horrors of the Holocaust?
Elke Weiss
Elke Weiss, Israeli-American
Answered 23h ago

Saba, my grandfather (who is joining us via the Skype, and thinks he’s answering my friend Cora) and is partially in Yiddish (which is why it sounds so poetic)

What was it like? I don’t know how to explain to you, Kitten. There was once a Jewish world, a Jewish world of holiness. And then it was burned to ashes. Everything we built, it was gone.

My wife and I met after the Holocaust. We were almost entirely alone, our families were murdered. We couldn’t go back, our neighbors had taken our homes and weren’t giving it back. So we both swore to go to the one place where we’d never be “dirty Jews” again, a place called Israel.

When I got off the ship, I immediately was told to enlist. I had served in the Russian army as an officer, and was useful. I was recruited to the army. I told her that if I live or die, I will do it on my own terms, as a Jew, defending my people. Either we die here, or we live here, we have nowhere else to go.

When I heard the announcement on the radio, my wife and I cried. We cried and then we did something we hadn’t done since the war. For the first time, my wife, who had survived Auschwitz, who was pregnant and ill, and I, we laughed. We laughed and felt like human beings again.

We were no longer refugees. We were citizens of the Jewish state. After two thousand years, we were home.

We were a nation again. It couldn’t restore the lives lost, but our dignity was restored.

We were a free people in our land.

Hand in hand, we ran out into the streets to sing and dance. My wife had been so weak, but she danced like a bride. We were religious, so usually, we didn’t dance in public, but this was once in a lifetime, I grabbed her and waltzed her around, kissing her and singing.

I remember how beautiful she looked. Her face was filled with happiness and light, for the first time in three years of marriage, I saw her as she was, before the Nazis had ravaged her life.

You know, Israeli Independence Day, It was our real wedding day. Not a hurried ceremony in a Displaced Person’s Camp, but a joyous party, filled with song and dance.

I watched my friends, men and women who had endured Auschwitz, and Majdanek and Treblinka, men and women who had survived the Death March, who had lost hope, they were reborn again. They laughed and sang and danced, and raised toast after toast. They were free.

At one point, she sat down, the excitement being a bit much for a pregnant woman. I thought of my child. My little son or daughter, they would be born Israeli. For 2,000 years, we dreamed of this day.

I knew war was coming. I would have to go fight. I knew we might not survive. But they couldn’t take this moment from us.

We were home. We had our dignity back.
2.6k Views · 302 Upvotes

I'm trying to post a few things which are 'about BEING Jewish' rather than 'about Judaism'. Hope nobody minds!

[Moogy]

That was a very touching story. Thanks for sharing.

[FinallyFree]

Agricola, in Judaism, is the Noah's Ark story considered to be literally true?