From: dic5340@hertz.njit.edu (David Charlap)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish
Subject: Re: Torah is the center of every Jew? (was Orthadox Judaism and women)
Date: 11 Jan 93 22:36:04 GMT
Organization: New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, N.J.

In article <abramwtz-110193135937@citrine14.bucknell.edu> abramwtz@coral.bucknell (Jon Abramowitz) writes:
>I must disagree.  I am Conservative and Torah is certainly at the center
>for me.  For one, I study psychology and believe that the mind and brain
>are the same thing.  I believe in evolution.  But, I am a practicing Jew
>and celebrate most of the holidays.  When taking part in Jewish customs, I
>am not intentionally doing it because of Torah (how could I if I havn't
>devoted my life to understanding it like more religious people have.

Why does psychology and evolution have to contradict the Torah?  A
unified mind/brain theory does not contradict the concept of Man
having an immortal soul - who said the mind was the soul, anyway?  And
evolution doesn't have to contradict creation either - God DID create
life over a span of time (most I know hold that seven "days" is
figurative, and that it took much longer in our "human" time frame) in
an order that resembles evolution.

>Yes this is probably so- and another reason why Torah is not a part of my
>life...too many inconsistencies and internal contradictions.  No wonder
>there are so many opinions- the Torah has to make up it's mind before we
>can try to interpret it! (ex:  the abortion issue!!!)

Perhaps that's why you should learn and study and live it.  The Torah
is not something like Christian dogma, where you either obey or go to
Hell.  It's something that must be studied and learned to be properly
understood.  Unless you learn and study, you can't possibly know it
all.

Exactly like anything else worth knowing.

>Forgive me, but you are contradicting yourself too!  If Torah was the
>center of all Jews, there would be no need to have this conversation since
>we'd all be in touch with his argument, hmmm?

True, it isn't the center of all individual Jews' lives.  But it is at
the center of all the major Jewish movements and organization.

>Well, I would like to make MY last point- going back to the 'sexist' thing.
> First of all, we call G-d "He".  Suppose it's a "She" and She is mad as
>hell that we've been refering to Her as a man!  That is sexist.

Of course, "he" is merely a mistranslation.  The Hebrew language has
no neuter forms.  This includes pronouns.  You must either say "he" or
"she" in Hebrew.  You can not say "it" like in English.  Common usage
has one normally use the male form when in doubt - a group of people
that is not 100% women is referred to with the male form of "they",
and an individual whose gender is not known is "he".  This isn't
sexist, that's the language.

A proper translation of the Hebrew documents would translate "he" to
"it" or some other neuter form when referring to God.

But I don't know what this has to do with Judaism, anyway.  Jews have
always known that God has no form and no sex anyway.  Your supposing
that God's a female is completely alien to Judaism, sine Jews don't
consider God to be male.

>All this argument above does is twist the writings from thousands of
>years ago around to sound good- to back up your point.  But today,
>women in certain Jewish sects are treated as inferior- they must
>serve men and can not take part in the same religious customs that
>man can.  It extends further than just this.  Why not look at the
>world we live in now and evaluate the status of different sexes?  It
>probably makes much more sense! 

You haven't been reading the rest of these 'sexist' threads, have you?
Women are not barred from any aspects.  But they have different
obligations, and obligations always come before optional things.
Surely, you wouldn't want a woman to have all of a man's obligations
in addition to the ones that only she can perform (like bear children,
which is a real biggie.)  That would be cruel, and you know it.
-- 
  |)  David Charlap          | .signature confiscated by FBI due to
 /|_  dic5340@hertz.njit.edu | an ongoing investigation into the
((|,)                        | source of these .signature virusses
 ~|~