This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
The Talmud includes many thousands of prescriptive and proscriptive rules. It also includes other stuff. But if you’re a kosher-keeping Jew, the rules from a book like mishnah chullin are absolutely binding, though modified according to sect / kosher process. It’s not accurate to say that the Talmud is only a collection of opinions and debates. If you walk through Williamsburg or imagine Ben Shapiro’s daily life, these are the most rule-following people in the world, and all of the rules are in the Talmud and accompanying literature. And you can’t just not follow them, as that would get you ostracized and banned.
The criticism against the Talmud is as follows: among the very many authoritative rules which religious Jews follow with extreme care, are also rules that appear evil. The evil rules are not currently followed, but for what reason? Is it only because they can’t get away with it? Are they just biding their time until they can? For instance, if you read chapter 10 of Maimonides’ Avodat Kochavim in the Mishneh Torah, which is a Talmud redaction (highly authoritative and taught at most Yeshiva), you’re going to find rules about being merciless to outsiders:
Jews, Christians, and Muslims all conveniently ignore some of the uglier stuff in their holy books that if taken literally would oblige and/or excuse them from behavior considered repellent in the modern age. And all three love to point at the ugly stuff in the other religions' scriptures as some kind of gotcha: either they are not "really" following their own religion, or they secretly practice and defend this stuff and hide it from outsiders.
I don't have time (or maybe inclination) to dispute this but for calibration purposes could you offer some examples? Or don't, if that seems too onerous a request.
The Jewish examples from the Talmud have been given above - lots of rules about how you can treat gentiles (badly). The Bible has Leviticus and Deuteronomy, with the various laws about what you can and cannot eat, and also that you should put to death adulterers or disobedient children, and exhortations to slaughter enemy tribes. There are also some ugly stories in Judges. The Quran and the hadiths, likewise have verses about taking women as sex slaves, slaughtering the Jews, and everyone's favorite story about Mohammad and Aisha.
All three religions have a large body of jurisprudence explaining how these laws or parables were very specific and contextual, or were superseded by later precedents, or by the New Testament, and so on. So no, you don't need to explain to me that the Bible does not actually require you to stone your disobedient son or prohibit you from eating shrimp. I know that. But all these apologetics require accepting that these prescriptions were, in fact, contextual and open to interpretation, and just taking one snippet all by itself and its literal meaning is basically scriptural nutpicking.
People like @coffee_enjoyer who enjoy those long lists of horrible Talmudic prescriptions as evidence of all the secret evil things Jews believe are doing exactly this (and will likewise happily take at face value the less savory Quranic verses and hadiths). But of course Deuteronomy 21 and Leviticus 20 and all the stories in Judges about enslavement, rape, and genocide, those are nuanced.
The nuance is that for Christians, what Jesus says on a topic supercedes everything to the contrary in the Old Testament. The “law” of the Old Testament is very specifically abrogated (though the word “fulfilled” is insisted). For instance,
This supersedes Exodus 21:24, Leviticus 24:19-20, Deuteronomy 19:21. The abrogated / fulfilled Old Testament Law is kept by Christians for reasons of historical and symbolic reference, because Christ is held to have satisfied and completed the Law. This is an important nuance to make and not at all an evasion; the “1st primary” text of Christianity is the New Testament, which specifies how parts of the Old Testament have been deprecated; the “2nd primary” text is the OT, understood only in relation to the 1st. But what Christianity lacks is the rich orthopraxic secondary literature like you find in Judaism and Islam. I say “secondary”, but really these works are orthopraxically primary.
If an Islamic “Sahih Hadith” in a given jurisprudential tradition specifies something, then it simply must be held by all adherents of that school of jurisprudence. It’s just how Islam works; the “sunnah” as clarified by the authentic transmissions of secondary literature have authority. It’s what Muslims spend most of their time reading. The Muslims who do not believe in the secondary literature are called Quranists and they are as insignificant as the “Kairites” of Judaism who only believe in the Old Testament. The only real case of orthopraxic literature in Christianity akin to Hadith or the Talmud is if you’re a priest engaging in a mass, or if you’re being advised on when to do something at a mass or which sins must be confessed.
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.
Yes, I know who Maimonides is. I also know you're giving a hostile reading of what "Jews believe and are taught" that Jews would not agree with. Why should I take your word over a rabbi's? Is your premise (1) You actually know Jewish law better than Jews do or (2) Yeah, that's what they actually believe and they're lying to the goyim?
Your entire argument, from the hostile readings of selected Talmudic passages to Ben Shapiro's involvement in a shady charity, is nutpicking. Sure, there are slimy evil Jews. There are also slimy evil Christians, Muslims and atheists.
The passages I selected are mainstream, discussed openly by Orthodox Rabbis, hosted on the official Chabad website, and even part of Schneerson’s recommended reading for all Jews (he chosen the Mishneh Torah). So I don’t see how that is “nutpicking”. It seems like normative-picking. Same with Ben Shapiro; he is the most well known Orthodox Jew in America. If you think that the Talmud actually recommends compassion for Christians, then you are welcome to trace down a source in the Talmud which references compassion and love for idol-worshippers.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link