Posted on 01/25/2005 11:35:24 AM PST by stevejackson
And then, on July 27, 1656, Spinoza was issued the harshest writ of cherem, or excommunication, ever pronounced by the Sephardic community of Amsterdam; it was never rescinded. We do not know for certain what Spinoza's "monstrous deeds" and "abominable heresies" were alleged to have been, but an educated guess comes quite easy. No doubt he was giving utterance to just those ideas that would soon appear in his philosophical treatises. In those works, Spinoza denies the immortality of the soul; strongly rejects the notion of a providential God -- the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; and claims that the Law was neither literally given by God nor any longer binding on Jews.
Actually, it is possible that if you are orthodox, you may become Christian.
If you want to know the future of Judaism, you only need look to the seventieth week of Daniel, Ezekiel and the book of Revelation.
It was taught to me by a very great teacher that at one time the 'Sadducees' represented a majority of the Jewish population, and at a later time, 'Karaites' represented a majority of the Jewish population.
Of the Sadducees, no one remains. Of the Karaites, the number remaining is in the thousands, and they are irrelevant to Judaism whether or not they are considered Jews.
http://tarkus.pha.jhu.edu/~ethan/jFAQ.html
"...the genetic evidence supports the notion that the Ashkenazim are descended from a small ancestral population...estimated by Risch et al. (1995) to have been as small as several thousand people about 500 years ago..."
If half the Jews alive today come from as few as 5000 Jews as recently as 500 years ago, it does not matter who is currently in the majority or even considered 'normative'. Whose descendents will be Jewishly thriving 500 years from now?
Ron
PS. Although not Jewish, I find it reassureing that there are about 750 Samaritans left.
Not true... the Karites consider themselves Jews -- it's the Orthodox who don't. I went to the Karite museam in Jerusalem a few years ago -- all 1 room of it.
I think you misread my post. Of course the Karaites consider themselves Jews. They are Jews. Its the Rabbinical orthadox who have a problem with them, for the reasons mentioned above. You might also like to know that the Isrealis consider them Jews and they have their own Synagogues in Isreal that they had to fight the orthadox to get built.
There are also a large number of them in the Washington DC area, and also in California. They just don't like to draw attention to themselves, so they usually just say they are Saphardic Jews and leave it at that.
The reason the museum is so small is that most Jews are taught that the Karaites died out centuries ago, but they are still around. I wonder if any religion or branch of religion really ever goes away completely.
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