For A Confederation Of Noachides (Rabbi Shmueley Boteach On Attracting Non-Jews To Monotheism Alert)

Jerusalem Post ^ | 10/11/05 | Rabbi Shmueley Boteach

[hlmencken3]

I believe a lot of the comments are missing the point.

Boteach is hesitantly making reference to the traditional Jewish 'Seven Laws of the Children of Noah' which are the basis for any real civilization:

1) not to worship idols
2) not to curse God
3) not to murder
4) not to steal
5) not to engage in sexual immorality
6) not to eat the limb of an animal torn from it while it was still alive
7) to establish courts of law to enforce these laws

http://www.moshiach.com/action/morality/introduction.php

Boteach is proposing this as an alternative for those who can't swallow Christianity.

[goldstategop]

The Noachide rules are the basis of ethical monotheism. Act justly and believe in One God. That's all that's required to attain eternal life.

(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)

[Steve_Seattle]

"And you're it, in both cases, regardless of your skin color."

I never said anything about skin color. Obviously, there are pale European Jews and swarthy Middle-Eastern Jews, and Sephardic Jews with Spanish blood, and a few black African Jews, etc. I was saying that Judaism creates the impression of being ethnic-based because - unlike in Christianity or most other religions - you "inherit" the religion solely based on your parentage, and you do not lose that Jewish identity even if you do not practice the religion. Even if you apostize to Christianity, you are still in some sense a Jew. For immigration purposes, the state of Israel makes a distinction between apostate Jews who convert to Christianity, between non-Jewish Christians, and between non-practicing Jews.

[goldstategop]

Even a Jew converts to Christianity, his Jewish essence doesn't disappear. A Jew can refuse to practice Judaism altogether. But at no point is it possible for him to deny who he is. When even an Jewish atheist insists he doesn't want to buried as a Jew, in effect he is acknowledging what he can never escape. God has seen to it the Jewish people will always survive.

(Denny Crane: "Sometimes you can only look for answers from God and failing that... and Fox News".)

[Steve_Seattle]

Boteach is proposing this as an alternative for those who can't swallow Christianity.

For those who can't "swallow" Christianity, there are other alternatives - Islam, Unitarianism, the Eastern religions, New Age, and even liberal Christianity. :-) The problem, however, with adopting "alien" religions is that we are so immersed in the cultural assumptions and images that we are brought up in that it's difficult to fully embrace a world view that isn't buried deep in your psyche. It's probably better to come to terms with the religion of your youth than try to convert to something completely different.

[hlmencken3]

Maimonides, perhaps the foremost authority on the Seven Laws, holds that only those who adhere to the Seven Laws because they come from G-d via Moses merit a portion in the World to Come.

Obeying the Seven Laws because they make sense, or out of habit, rewards one with living a stable life in a stable society, but doesn't entitle one to a portion in the World to Come, says Maimonides.

[the-ironically-named-proverbs2]

Golgotha ping to you

"BUT ALL this took place before quantity – sheer numbers – became so important. All civilized nations in the world today are, thankfully, democracies, and their governments, and their direction, is decided by numbers. And without sufficient Jewish numbers, we cannot influence the direction of world policy to reflect Jewish and biblical values, the way that evangelical Christians have done so successfully in the United States because of their enormous voting bloc. "

[Steve_Seattle]

"Even a Jew converts to Christianity, his Jewish essence doesn't disappear."

Sabramerican would disagree with your reference to a "Jewish essence." His/her point in this thread has been that there's no such thing as a Jewish ethnic identity or a Jewish "essence."

[Sabramerican]

you "inherit" the religion solely based on your parentage

What you are missing over and over again is that you are misreading your own "solely".

Inheriting it from your mother is but one way. Converting is another.

Suppose for some strange reason the daughter of the Emperor of Japan would properly convert to Judaism. If she had a child that child would be Jewish. If that child, a girl, married a Cohen, and had a male child, the great grandchild of the Japanese Emperor would be both Jewish and a Cohen..... and Japanese ethnically.

What Israel does regarding their immigration policies is political.

[Zionist Conspirator]

"Not a word about another deep chasm between Evangelicalism and Catholicism--that the former accepts that the Torah was Divinely dictated and inerrent while the latter for the most part accepts (and promotes) the documentary hypothesis and the notion of the Torah as didactic mythology"

Obviously similar distinctions exist within Judaism itself, between Reformed and Orthodox.

True, but Rabbi Boteach, a CHaBa"Dnik, is supposed to be a spokesman for Orthodoxy, and not the conventional "four branches." Furthermore, while all Orthodox Jews are supposed to subscribe to the Divine dictation of the Torah, orthodox Catholicism is quite comfortable with modern historical criticism, blasphemous though it is.

I'll never understand why Orthodox Jewish spokesmen never bring this issue up. Never.

[mvpel]

Yes, a convert is a full-fledged Jew, but it is also true that in some sense he is being grafted on to a people with a historic memory that he does not fully share.

With all due respect, I tend to doubt you're in a position to know what's true or not in this respect in the heart of an adopted Jew.

There's a Talmudic tradition that states that every Jew ever to be born was present in spirit at Sinai to witness G-d and accept the Torah (Talmud Shavuot 39a, from Deuteronomy 29:13), but some of those present didn't happen to be born into Jewish families.

About.com has an article on this subject, by Rabbi Shraga Simmons.

[hlmencken3]

It's probably better to come to terms with the religion of your youth than try to convert to something completely different.

Jewish tradition mostly agrees with you, which is why the Seven Laws are mostly considered theoretical and applying to the time of Mashiach, or at least to the time when Jewish courts rule in the land of Israel.

[Alouette]

there's no such thing as a Jewish ethnic identity or a Jewish "essence."

Jewish law states that if a person has a Jewish mother, that person is Jewish, even if it is a maternal great-great-great....grandmother from a few hundred centuries or millennia ago.

[SilentServiceCPOWife]

*

[Alouette]

Rabbi Boteach, a CHaBa"Dnik, is supposed to be a spokesman for Orthodoxy

Shmuley speaks for Shmuley. No way does he (or has he ever made the claim) speak for Chabad or for Orthodoxy.

[Sabramerican]

According to Jewish tradition, all souls living at the time or to live at the future were at Mt Sinai.

Including every future convert.

So the Jewish soul could be in anyone. And the corollary, I imagine is that it wasn't in those who choose to leave Judaism.

But then there are stories of people who are somehow attracted to Judaism who discover a long forgotten ancestor was Jewish. So maybe that soul was just confused.

The discussion here has been about the Jewish religion. Jews/Israelites/Hebrews as a people is a different issue.

[Steve_Seattle]

"There's a Talmudic tradition that states that every Jew ever to be born was present in spirit at Sinai to witness G-d and accept the Torah (Talmud Shavuot 39a, from Deuteronomy 29:13), but some of those present didn't happen to be born into Jewish families."

Well, what can I say about that? Since the subject is religion, I don't want to come down too hard in a spirit of modern rationalism, but . . . You are throwing a tradition at me which has a nice sound as myth, but no such thing could ever be demonstrated rationally.

[Sabramerican]

That should be:

"all Jewish souls living at the time or to live at the future"

[hlmencken3]

Rabbi Boteach, a CHaBa"Dnik, is supposed to be a spokesman for Orthodoxy

Boteach is not a member in good standing of Chabad in particular or of orthodoxy in general.

[Sabramerican]

The rationality is in the practice.

If one converts, it is assumed that soul was at Mt Sinai, accepted Judaism, and is therefore a full Jew.

Regardless of ethnicity.