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Yes, buddy, I know about the New Covenant. And I'm also quite familiar with Islamic jurisprudence and interpretation (and disputes) over hadiths.
The problem is, the vast majority of religious practitioners of all faiths are not theologians or lawyers. This is why some Christians actually quote those Old Testament verses when it's convenient, and then fall back on "But Jesus" when the ones they'd rather not follow are quoted back at them. I don't think Christians are particularly hypocritical or unlearned about this, relative to anyone else. But by the same token, some Muslims and Jews are aware of the bad stuff in their holy books and handwave it away, and some don't. Most Muslims don't approve of marrying 9-year-olds, most Jews don't approve of taking gentile slave girls, most Christians don't approve of stoning children to death.
There is no difference, except the artificial one you create in an attempt to gotcha Jews.
Now, you can claim that means most Muslims and Jews aren't really following their orthodox doctrines (though I don't know why we should consider a hostile outsider more qualified to interpret their scriptural fidelity). Maybe you can even make a theological argument that under the letter of their respective laws, Christians are correct to ignore their bronze age genocidal covenants while Muslims and Jews are incorrect to ignore their bronze age genocidal covenants. But that would presumably be between them and their gods. If you want to convince us that Jews don't really follow the Talmud, go argue with a rabbi. If you want to convince us that Jews are actually that evil and slimy because they secretly follow all your uncharitable Talmudic interpretations, your case is entirely scriptural nutpicking, and it's fair to ask if you've stoned any children or damned yourself with polyester lately.
Maimonides is not obscure esoterica, he is considered a top 5 important Rabbi to be consulted in Rabbinical rulings, and the passage I quoted comes from a renowned book still taught to this day, not from the Bronze Age but from the 13th century. If the Jews don’t believe it, they don’t have to teach it. The medieval Catholics made them expunge the verse on killing Christians and cursing Christ, but they reinserted it. And today it is taught in most Orthodox schools. I can find you more quotes from the Talmud regarding the ban on showing mercy to idol-worshippers (a category in which they universally and firmly place Trinitarian Christians). But I don’t think you would be able to find me a counterfactual verse in the Talmud or Mishneh or major redactions. I would be very surprised if you could find me a verse that said “be compassionate to idol-worshippers”, as I cannot find such a verse in the Talmudic literature.
There’s an interesting rabbinical controversy that will give a good idea of how important Maimonides is. Are Muslims idol-worshippers? The Rabbis debate this. They debate this because, while dozens of important rabbis and most councils have ruled that Muslims are idol-worshippers, there is one Rabbi who singularly disagreed with them all: Maimonides.
And there is one more way for us to discern the importance of Maimonides. Chabad’s Daily Torah Study website includes only five sections of study. One of them is dedicated exclusively to Maimonides (Rambam). And if you happened to read this daily study on March 15th of this year — as tens of thousands of Jews likely had — you would read a Chabad-summarized lesson from Rambam:
It would be nice to believe that this is just one “nut”, or just one “nutty passage”, but it’s a bit more serious than that.
I’m not judging a collective of individuals here, but rather the lessons they receive as part of their religious indoctrination. The lessons of Orthodox Judaism are kind of antisocial, and this could carry over into other spheres of life. As an example from this week, Ben Shapiro was criticized for asking his viewers to donate to the infamous Kars4Kids charity over the years. This is an Orthodox Jewish charity that rakes in hundreds of millions in revenue under the pretense that a donated car goes to “kids”. In fact, the money mostly goes to Orthodox Jews, and a small amount goes to Orthodox Jewish kids. The donation page (code: Ben) doesn’t tell you this, only slime-ly tells you that it’s a Jewish charity. Ben Shapiro very likely knows this given how confroversial this charity is, but doesn’t care, just like he didn’t care when the orthodox schools in New York misappropriated 1 billion in educational funds (Shapiro called the NYTimes exposé “a war on Hasidic Jews”). Certainly in this case, there’s a lot of slimy evilness afoot.
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