Agree to disagree? We believe that the world was instructed by G-d on how to live and how to make it into a G-dly dwelling-place. 613 commandments for Jews and 7 for non-Jews. You believe something different.
You see dietary law to differentiate from pagans only. We don’t refute that, in fact our scholars have codified that...and there is a deeper level still.
Imagine if G-d spoke to you, HiTech RedNeck, and said, HTRN, please dig a hole for me, then fill it in. Would you balk at the instruction of fulfill His will? Jews know what G-d told us to do. We follow everything (optimally) with joy and love. Imagine to be commanded by the King of Kings! If your experience with Jews and your study of them doesn’t reflect that, I don’t think it can be changed—nor need it be.
Well, Phin, I would hope for the level of faith that would, in fact, do just what you described, if that was genuinely God and not a distortion brought from some other source. If I were not sure, if it seemed uncharacteristic based on what I knew, I’d ask God for some way of being surer.
I hope you can bear with me spelling out God. If you feel the most respect is paid to Him by the polite hyphen, go ahead and keep on doing it. I want to maximize His name and so do spell it out. If someone printed this out and willfully disrespected it (unlikely, and please don’t do that of course) that is their responsibility not mine. (And still it wouldn’t be unforgivable and God would kindly teach them a lesson through the consequences, if they were willing to learn.)
I do believe that you, yourself, look like a person who is making efforts towards the best of what is in his knowledge to honor God. If in fact you’re looking for salvation and not just to keep out of trouble (the second one need only be for warning’s sake not to your own pride, and should be secondary in a holy life) you have looked to the correct deity. What Christians preach is not a different God but more details about God. And Christianity began as a Jewish story, not a gentile story. We gentiles are the B team. You Jews are the A team, and only because the A team bowed out did God go to the B team (seeking that the A team would see and rejoin the event).
I would agree there has to be a spiritual augmentation to the biblical texts to make sense of them. It’s not just Hebrew that has ambiguity issues. Greek does, Latin does, English does, any human language in this mortal coil does. Where we disagree is the nature, ministry, and content of the spiritual augmentation. You’re applying the only spiritual augmentation you’ve heard of, which is this “Oral Torah.” We Crazy Christians too believe in a way it’s “Oral” but from the mouth of God through His Spirit in a spiritual way, and ministered to any serious student of His word.
Anyhow, I wish you blessings as you keep on seeking to carry out the will of God. If you look to God for salvation from a state of sin (i.e. being renewed from missing the mark to righteousness, to put it in positive terms) you will be favorably answered. God is not fundamentally mean. As Someone you might not think a lot of said, if you ask your father for an egg, will he give you a scorpion? Or if you ask your father for a loaf of bread, will he give you a stone?
The thing I would add as a Crazy Christian is that you’ll also learn sooner or later that God did it for you through, yep, the cross of Christ.
I wish you every blessing of God.
P.S. In a way I can also believe that the “Oral Torah” doesn’t make sense to gentiles (or in fact to Christians of any background).
I like Jewish food and I Googled for gefilte fish last night. (I live in Nashville, TN and wish they had a source of pickled herring, another Jewish favorite of mine. The major grocery here, Kroger, knows naught of it, though only a few hundred miles north in Lexington, KY you can readily get it.)
In doing so I came across some Reform Jewish magazine writing. Now I know you aren’t Reform, you are Orthodox, but Reform still often tries to keep a sense of their Hebraic roots though with a decidedly liberal take on the Torah. Well, I came across a sockdollager, and I hope the Reform (who didn’t disagree) didn’t distort it in the rendering. The “evil inclination” (yetser hara) is supposed to be held under control and yet NOT extinguished, as it is responsible for motivations to such things as getting married and building houses!
Well I will confess gladly this is where a Crazy Christian will go TILT. And if we’re supposed to understand that, no we don’t. Well we do, in a way, but we see it as where sinful human philosophy might go. Something that is commonly polluted by sin might be seen as being due to sin. Or all sacrifice might be seen as obedience to this impulse (whereas Christianity boldly posits that it is not, there is such thing as sacrifice to the pure good). Christians look at this thing from the upside. We’re sinners being saved, and so our sin will become less and less as we live (if we’re being serious about the Lord). And sin is the negative that reflects the lack of the positive, which is God’s righteousness.