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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   1913 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 3, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Do you consider Israel culturally part of the West? Partially part of the West?

I've been thinking about this, and I think it's an interesting and not necessarily straight forwards question. I think secular Jews and those in the Reform tradition are undeniably Western; one of the core points of the Reform tradition was to integrate Judaism into Western Traditions and vice versa. The Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox I think are their own distinct, more ancient civilization. My answer to the above question is I think Israel is mostly Western, given the cultural roots of the Reform/Seculars, but not entirely.

Yes. I've had many Israeli friends, and many more Jewish friends who had lived and worked in Israel for a time. There are large parts of Israel where I'm confident that if you dropped me there, I'd navigate with no more difficulty than I have in any other Western city.

The existence of a large (13%) haredi population doesn't invalidate Israel's western status any more than the existence of a small (10%) Amish minority removes Lancaster County from modernity.

Yes, my definition of western is essentially a place I feel comfortable.

Israel has a mix of cultures, but the overall direction is generally Western, yes. There's of course Judaic part of the culture, which predates what we call modern Western culture by a couple of millennia (of course, it did not stay static for all that time too), so there's that. Even secular Jews are influenced by it. Paradoxically, Reform Jews may be the least influenced here. A comparison I liked about this - it's like being a non-religious person in a Catholic country (say, Italy or Poland) vs being a Protestant. If the former case, you may not be an actively religious person but still you play by the Catholic culture rules, in the latter, it's a different (though related) culture. The culture that Reform trends towards the most is the liberal woke culture. I guess that's part of Western culture too, it can be argued?

Do other Western countries have signs like this in public neighborhoods?

Yes, in certain places you could have it. Note that this (Mea Shearim) is in no way typical neighborhood in Israel - it is considered very odd and exceptional by Israeli standards.

Yeah, we get them next to the highway.

That’s not really what I was getting at. Public display of religious attitudes isn’t forbidden in Western culture, but different neighborhoods having completely different rules kind of is.

It’s becoming more common as our culture becomes less Western, but that’s the point

I'm pretty sure the Vatican has similar signs, as do some cultural sites (cathedrals) across the EU. Also occasional bans on specific types of garments: Switzerland bans face-covering headwear.

I've definitely encountered my share of "tourists go away" graffiti in a few EU countries with lots of tourism, which seems like the subtext of the sign there too.

You can just look up the signs at the entrance to the Vatican banning tank tops and shorts.

Orthodox Judaism is not older than Christianity- it's a branch off of ancient Judaism, yes, but one that developed in response to events that were arguably put in motion by Christianity and which aren't older than Christianity even if they weren't. Rabbinic Judaism is not the religion of the old testament.

That depends on what you mean by "Orthodox Judaism". As any tradition that is not dead, it changes constantly. Yes, modern Judaism (which is not a singular religion anyway, with all the Reform, Conservative, Hasidim, Misnagdim, Mizrahim, and so on) is not the same Judaism as it were in times of Judges or the times of Mishnah, but Mishnah itself is contrary to the previous tradition - it is written down oral tradition, which is a pretty fundamental change already. Things always change.

one that developed in response to events that were arguably put in motion by Christianity

That is a very questionable proposition, unless you mean it as "in the response to events that involved people, some of whom also been Christians". Rabbinic Judaism came about as a solution to absence of central authority and dispersed nature of Jewish diaspora. The starting point of it would probably be the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, and then it developed with the codification of the Talmud since then. At that point, Christianity did not have much influence on the events. Later, of course, as Christianity became more dominant, it influenced a lot of events, which in turn influenced also the development of Judaism. But I don't think tracing the emergence of Rabbinic Judaism to Christianity in any causal meaning makes a lot of sense.

Also, of course, while Rabbinic Judaism is different than what came before - I don't think it's right to say it's a different religion. I am sure what early Christians practiced would be also different from what we find in modern Vatican or Russian Orthodox Church, but we still call it Christianity, don't we?

The basic confines of apostolic Christianity are old enough to be recorded in the New Testament- churches are organized by city, and the city’s church is headed by a bishop who ordains other ministers. Christians gather on Sunday and have Vice rules as well as mutual aid; they believe that Jesus Christ is a superior being who died and rose from the dead, and that this frees believers from hellfire and damnation, and that He was born of a virgin. They believe that God created in addition to the world also angels, and some of those angels went bad and seek to do us harm.

Old Testament Judaism was a priest-centered religion whose sacred rites were sacrifices. Religious authority was vested in a college of priests, and scholars played a secondary role. Rabbinic Judaism is a scholar-centric religion with very little role for priests and no sacrifices.

You are mixing basic religious dogmas (like "Jesus Christ is a superior being" etc.) with rites ("gather on Sunday", etc.) and with organizational structure ("churches are organized by city, and the city’s church is headed by a bishop"). The latter two of which is in no way shared by all Christian denominations (and we can have a long long talk about the first one but let's leave it aside for now). If you talk about basic dogmas, in Judaism they have not changed. If you talk about rites, they did change a lot (and continue to change - for example, there are prayers for state of Israel and for IDF, as you may imagine, they do not come from Mishnaic times), and so did Christian rites, and different Christian denominations have very different rites. If you talk about the organizational structure, it definitely changed a lot for Judaism - and is also diverse for Christians, some denominations don't have bishops at all, and for those that do, the roles vary greatly.

Thus, I think if we are allowed to say that the modern Christianity, in all its diversity, is the same religion that had been taught by Jesus and Paul, then we should be allowed to say the modern Judaism is the same religion that had been practiced by David and Solomon. And if we say those are different religions, then the question of "what is older" becomes rather arbitrary, because the whole definition of what is being compared eludes us.

Apostolic Christianity is meaningfully the same; it's totally fair- but not general practice- to make the claim that low church protestantism isn't. This is because it is recognizably within the same family as Orthodoxy and Catholicism, defined by trinitarianism, baptism, and a shared new testament canon. In contrast, the continuity of old testament Judaism is Samaritanism- which both calls itself, and is called by mainstream rabbinic Judaism, a different religion.

I'd say it's the Western periphery, like Russia or Turkey or Georgia and Armenia. Less Western than the US or even Mexico, more Western than Japan.

I like the Mexico/Latin American comparison. Those nations are a mix of clearly western populations, criollos mestizos, and pardos, and non-western populations, the unassimilated indios.

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