Posted on 07/20/2011 8:23:11 PM PDT by decimon
Recent protests in Israel highlight the differences between the country's religious and secular Jewish communities.
Hundreds of right-wing Jews have taken part in demonstrations outside Israel's Supreme Court over the brief detention of two prominent rabbis in the last few weeks.
There were clashes with police on horseback on the nearby Jerusalem streets and several arrests were made.
Rabbis Dov Lior and Yacob Yousef had endorsed a highly controversial book, the King's Torah - written by two lesser-known settler rabbis. It justifies killing non-Jews, including those not involved in violence, under certain circumstances.
The fifth chapter, entitled "Murder of non-Jews in a time of war" has been widely quoted in the Israeli media. The summary states that "you can kill those who are not supporting or encouraging murder in order to save the lives of Jews".
At one point it suggests that babies can justifiably be killed if it is clear they will grow up to pose a threat.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
http://www.thesanhedrin.org/en/index.php/Hachrazah_5770_Cheshvan_30
Concerning the book “Torat haMelech (Laws of the King) - Capital offenses between Israel and the Nations”
1. There are two kinds of books in Jewish law: books published which have been universally accepted by all the scholars of Israel for practical rulings in Jewish law (probably the last one of this type was published in 1965[1]) and study books; Shapira and Elitzur’s book “Torat haMelech” is a study book. Even a partial review of the material shows it contains a study of mostly medieval material and the opinion of the researchers, and does not attempt to survey modern halachic authorities on the subject.
2. The book is one of about 30,000 study works published by thousands of researchers in our time. This book is one of the studies, and like the rest, it does not obligate anyone.
3. It is not meant to be a ruling in Jewish Law, but rather a summary of some of material written on the subject. Even the endorsements of rabbis who gave their endorsement were praising the efforts to study, not suggesting to use this book in the application of practical Jewish Law.
4. The book is not sold in stores, and obviously it is not meant for the general public unfamiliar with the material, and can only be obtained by direct request to the authors[2] The authors are not known as halachic masters or decisors in Jewish Law...
I'm no Jew, but I seem to remember the most oft-repeated command in the Torah is, "Do not oppress the stranger who is among you, for you were strangers once in Egypt."
I appreciate the context. If I understand you, he is saying that collateral damage can be justified if a greater morality requires it? If so, this is nothing new.
When HaShem gave the Torah to Moshe Rabbeinu ( Moses), he was instructed to give it to each of the tribes.
This definition of the Torah can only contain the five books of Moses. The Nevi'im (Prophets) and Ketuvim (Writings) were not written until centuries after Moses. Jews themselves refer to the entire Old Testament as the Tanakh or Miqra. If the Torah is what was revealed to Moses then it is only the five books of Moses. If the Torah is the entirety of the revelation of Sacred Scripture then it also includes the New Testament.
Jews do not accept Jesus as a Moshiach, nor as G-D.
I am well aware of the rejection of Jesus by Rabbinical Judaism. The question is not what modern Rabbinical Judaism believes or does not believe; the question is what is the truth. We could both go round and round in an academic debate on whether or not Jesus fulfills the prophecies or not. I would not convince you and you would not convince me. The true question is what happened that first Easter Sunday two thousand years ago. We have the testimony of the Apostles that they witness his Resurrection. Now there are only three possibilities: 1) what they said they witnessed was not true and they knew it was not true, i.e. they were liars; 2) what they said they witnessed was not true but they thought that it was true, in which case they would have been crazy; or 3) what they said they witness was indeed true.
Whenever someone lies he does so for a reason. If the Apostles had lied about being witnesses to the Resurrection they would have had to do it for personal gain. But they received neither wealth nor power. They left their homes, were rejected by their own people, subject to persecution and all, except for John, were killed for what they preached. Not one recanted what they claimed to have witnessed. In law great respect is given to deathbed testimony since at that point the person has nothing to gain by lying. The witness of the Apostles shows that, at least in their own minds, what they were proclaiming was true. They were not liars.
Nor can we hold that what they said they witnessed was false but they thought it was true. For someone to claim to have witnessed someone rise from the dead, to have spoken and eaten with him over a period of forty days, and not to be true he would have to be mad. But this was the testimony of not just one person but of all the Apostles. Nor was the Resurrection witnessed by them alone. Scripture records that Jesus appeared to hundreds of people after his Resurrection, even to five hundred people at one time in Jerusalem. Were all of these people mad? We have the writings of the Apostles. They contain some of the most beautiful writings the world has ever known and show no sign of madness. No, the Apostles were not mad.
This leaves only one possibility, that they are truthful witnesses of the Resurrection. It is by his Resurrection that Jesus proves who he claims to be, the unbegotten Son of God incarnate as man. Modern Rabbinical Judaism can refuse to believe this but it cannot discredit the eyewitness testimony of the Apostles.
…if G-D gives something a name, in this case, the Torah, unless it is G-D that comes forward and reveals Himself to people like he did to 3 million Jews at Mt. Sinai, and specifically tells people to change it,- it is a Blasphemy to change it. Thus, you commit a very, very grave sin, a “Chillul HaShem”.
God did not reveal the Torah to 3 million Jews at Mt. Sinai but only to Moses. Israel accepted this revelation on the authority of Moses. In the Resurrection God did reveal Himself to his people. Indeed there were more witnesses to the Resurrection than to the Torah given to Moses.
If it is blasphemy to refer to the Old Testament by a name other than the Torah, is it also blasphemy when Jews refer to it as the Tanakh or Miqra?
That, of course, is why the Japanese decisively defeated the Allies in World War II.
In Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, etc, we were dropping bombs on cities full of civilians. During the Cold War, we were prepared to incinerate a good chunk of the Soviet population if we were attacked.
By WW2 Allied standards, the Israelis would be justified in carpet bombing the Gaza Strip in response to rocket attacks.
For the military machine, that may have been true. However, it broke the morale of the Germans. Dresden was a jewel of a city and burned to the ground. The government was still fighting but the people were weary. Repeated carpet-bombing was causing some factions within the German government to turn against Hitler. The nuclear bombings of Japan caused some factions within the Japanese government to turn against their military generals.
Israel must keep this capability of a total all-out response to Arabs as a viable option. Firebomb Arab cities if attacked.
“If you single out infants for slaughter, as opposed to making war on an enemy population, you are one with Herod.”
Megabump. Nothing else needs to be said about this issue. Religious kooks and their enablers ought to be ashamed of themselves.
Unfortunately, no. You must be able to read Hebrew, and be a Rabbi/ Rabbinic/Torah scholar, as well. The sefer ( book) was written by Rabbis for Rabbis- for deciding, ruling on, debating upon, and understanding various military ethics. It is a book meant to be used to examine various theories. That is what is so taken out of context.
Halacha- Jewish Law, is a very, very complex thing, and it is forbidden to rule unwisely from it. Therefore, everything, down to the most minute detail, must be looked at very, very carefully and from every conceivable circumstance.
The 2 Rabbis who authored Torat HaMelech have not slandered the Jews. The authors of the BBC article, who do not even read Hebrew, and those with a leftist agenda, who also do not have this background, have.
If you read Hebrew and are involved in Judaic studies, it is obvious what is being done here: The Jew haters want a new Protocols of the Elders of Zion to play with.
The Jew, Jesus is my Lord. Anything else is only commentary.
You don’t know war. Your arrogance is impressive, though.
Rabbi Hillel.......lol
“What you yourself hate, don’t do to your neighbor. This is the whole law; the rest is commentary. Go and study.”
-Rabbi Hillel
Pretty good, eh? Like zero, I have a gift.
LOL!
LOL!
Sorry about the above post.... don’t know why it did that, but it did. My apologies.....
Rabbinical Judaism is a continuation of the ancient Pharisees but remember that there were also Sadducees and Essenes. I also use the term "modern Rabbinical Judaism" to highlight the fact that Christianity is, contrary to the denials of Jews, a continuation of Judaism.
The Torah has not changed. HaShem forbid it to be changed and commanded that all Mitzvot are FOREVER binding, HaShem also warned that anyone who changes it, is a false prophet (Deuteronomy 13: 1 through 4).
Let us take a look at Deuteronomy 13:1-4:
1 Every command that I enjoin on you, you shall be careful to observe, neither adding to it nor subtracting from it. 2 If there arises among you a prophet or a dreamer who promises you a sign or wonder, 3 urging you to follow other gods, whom you have not known, and to serve them: even though the sign or wonder he has foretold you comes to pass, 4 pay no attention to the words of that prophet or that dreamer; for the LORD, your God, is testing you to learn whether you really love him with all your heart and with all your soul.Verse 1 states that you shall not add or subtract from the commands given by God. But God Himself is free to change the Law. Indeed through the prophet Jeremiah God states that in the future He will make a new covenant with his people:
27 The days are coming, says the LORD, when I will seed the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man and the seed of beast. 28 As I once watched over them to uproot and pull down, to destroy, to ruin, and to harm, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, says the LORD. 29 In those days they shall no longer say, "The fathers ate unripe grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge," 30 but through his own fault only shall anyone die: the teeth of him who eats the unripe grapes shall be set on edge. 31 The days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 32 It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers the day I took them by the hand to lead them forth from the land of Egypt; for they broke my covenant and I had to show myself their master, says the LORD. 33 But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD. I will place my law within them, and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people.Nor will it do to say that this is just a renewed covenant since it says explicitly: "It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers the day I took them by the hand to lead them forth from the land of Egypt."
Following this verses 3 and 4 state: "If there arises among you a prophet or a dreamer who promises you a sign or wonder, urging you to follow other gods, whom you have not known, and to serve them…" The warning is against those who would lead the people astray from the worship of the one God. It does not state that the Law of Moses is eternal. Jesus is not in violation since his claim as the Son of God is a question of the nature of the one true God, not the introduction of another god.
The Biblical verses in what you call the "Old Testament" are so grossly mistranslated Jews are constantly amazed at it. For an example: The Moshiach: The word "Messiah" is an English rendering of the Hebrew word "Mashiach", which means "Anointed." It refers to a person initiated into God's service by being anointed with oil. … The Jewish concept of Messiah/Moshiach is from the Biblical prophecy of the promise of a future age of universal peace and recognition of God. But the Moshiach- Messiah is NOT G-D, nor any deity, what so ever.
Christian scholars are well aware of the meaning of the word "Messiah". You have added nothing new here. Our understanding of Jesus as the Son of God does not stem from a preconceived notion of the Messiah. Indeed the Gospel is clear that this part of the identity of Jesus as the Messiah was unexpected.
Virgin: The word "alma" has always meant a young woman. Christian theologians came centuries later and translated the Hebrew as "virgin." This is incorrect. "Alma" is a young woman- she could be married or un-married. The Hebrew for virgin is "betulah."
Again, Christian scholars are aware of the distinction between "alma" and "betulah." But it was not Christian theologians who came centuries latter who translated "alma" as virgin but the Jewish translators of the Septuagint between the 3rd and 1st centuries B.C. Nor is the equation "alma"=virgin / "betulah"=young woman as simple as you would imply. There has been much ink spilt on this subject. The Christian use of "virgin" in Isaiah 7:14 is not a simple mistranslation based on ignorance of the original Hebrew but a disputed translation based on the Jewish Septuagint and a study of the use of the word "alma" in the Old Testament. The insistence that "alma" cannot mean virgin is only a latter development in reaction to Christian use of the passage.
The prophecies are written in the singular form because the Jews ("Israel") are regarded as one unit…
This is merely an interpretation of the Isaiah passages and I feel no compunction to be bound by it. As I said, we could go round and round on the question of prophetic fulfillment and come to no agreement. While Christian see the Old Testament prophecies fulfilled in Jesus his identity as the Messiah and the Son of God is based primarily on his testimony and the apostolic witness of the Resurrection. Say what you will about Rabbinic interpretations of the fulfillment of Messianic prophecies, the tomb was empty and the Apostles went to their deaths proclaiming that they witnessed Jesus risen from the dead. This is fact, the rest is interpretation.
In the Revelation at Mt Sinai. HaShem did indeed reveal Himself to his people, 3 million of them. And to those 3 million, HE taught them the Commandments, prayers, and did something else- he allowed the people to see sound, hear colors and HE took the mountain and inverted it above their heads. Face to face, HaShem spoke to 3 million people. He distorted nature itself to prove that HE created it and thus, controlled it.
God did indeed reveal Himself on Mt. Sinai. I never denied this. What I said is that the Torah was revealed only to Moses. God gave the Torah to the people through Moses.
All I am trying to get across is that if you are going to use our scriptures, call it by it's proper name, The Torah, or if you wish, Tanakh, and use the correct translation from the original Hebrew. To do otherwise is a Chillul HaShem, and you don't want that upon you.
First, as heirs to the Covenant the Scriptures of the Old Testament belong as much to Christians as to Jews. Second, if Jews can call the Old Testament the Tanakh, which is an acronym and not even a real word, I see no reason I cannot call this part of the Sacred Scriptures the Old Testament. Nor do I have much concern what you or the rabbis consider blasphemy.
Shalom.
"Say what you will about Rabbinic interpretations of the fulfillment of Messianic prophecies, the tomb was empty and the Apostles went to their deaths proclaiming that they witnessed Jesus risen from the dead. This is fact, the rest is interpretation."Whatever. There is actually very little that is known to be a fact about the historical "Jesus" existence besides the so-called "New Testament". It becomes even more controversial if we examine the apocryphal Testaments which were not retained as a part of the canonical body of the mainstream Christian doctrine, after all the subsequent councils and disputes.
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