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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35021 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 3, 2023

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the Tanya

Googling while wondering if you misspelled Talmud ... this is a religious philosophy book published in 1796, whose general philosophy is subscribed to by nearly 0.7% of Jewish people? The Book of Mormon is nearly as old, and represents approximately the same fraction of followers of Jesus. That doesn't prove you wrong (hey, there are tons of Book of Mormon verses that most non-Mormon Christians would agree with, too, even if they think the reason was just "Joseph Smith wrote Bible fan-fiction"), but supporting a broad claim would require citing a broader source.

If you're not making a broad claim, that's fine too, but "extremists of X can't coexist with non-X" is a depressingly broad claim in another way: you can't say it's anything special about Judaism. Muslims who think apostasy should be a capital crime are currently supermajorities in whole countries. Modern Christians are mostly better, but that seems to be a result of exhausting the alternatives first (the European Wars of Religion killed millions; some German states would have seen less population loss if they'd had another Black Plague instead) and remembering their problems (they now know that the next step beyond "we all have to be Christian" is "yeah, friend? which kind?"...). There are some religions that specifically disclaim violent and extremist ... wait, no, not Buddhists too? If you step away from religion completely, it's true that atheists have needed to find some other holy sacred all-important cause to kill millions of people for, and this seems like an improvement because then the cause at least isn't directly tied to the atheism, but it does make me fear that there's some nearly-inextricable tie to human psychology.

I take issue with your 0.7 percent figure. While it may be accurate in the context of all jews, it is unhelpful here, where the topic is orthodox or ultra-orthodox Jewry, of whom Chabad is a far larger percentage. Tanya is not only the foundational text of Chabad, but is also studied by many non-Chabad Jews interested in Hasidic thought. In that sense it is worth far more than 'fanfiction', it is one of the main theological works of Hasidism, even if it is not the foundational text of any sect other than Chabad. I do, however agree that it is insufficient as a source from which to make broader generalizations about jews. My earlier reply to Coffee Enjoyer was based on the Nefesh Hachaim, which is a work written against Tanya. I should not have made that point in the form of "Judaism believes."

Chabad is a wildly influential center of Jewish culture in America. There are Chabad houses on many major college campuses and they influence Jewish culture at large. There are 2900 Chabad “houses” of influence in America. Their official membership is not the extent of their influence. This is something I ought to have clarified in my comment, which is my mistake. Just quoting from the Wikipedia, which you are free to disagree with but hopefully for a reason,

Unlike most Haredi groups, which are self-segregating, Chabad operates mainly in the wider world and caters to secularized Jews.

The number of those who sporadically or regularly attend Chabad events is far larger; in 2005 the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs reported that up to one million Jews attend Chabad services at least once a year.[9][10][11] In a 2020 study, the Pew Research Center found that 16% of American Jews attend Chabad services regularly or semi-regularly

In recent years, Chabad has greatly expanded its outreach on university and college campuses. Chabad Student Centers are active on over 100 campuses, and Chabad offers varied activities at an additional 150 universities worldwide.[124][failed verification] Professor Alan Dershowitz has said "Chabad's presence on college campuses today is absolutely crucial," and "we cannot rest until Chabad is on every major college campus in the world

Yes, that Alan Dershowitz. We’re not talking about a few devout Amish-like Jews. Chabad has huge, growing influence on the Jewish world.

Chabad has set up an extensive network of camps around the world, most using the name Gan Israel, a name chosen by Schneerson although the first overnight camp was the girls division called Camp Emunah. There are 1,200 sites serving 210,000 children – most of whom do not come from Orthodox homes.

Further reading

Does Chabad influence Jewish beliefs about Gentile souls? That purported inherent Jewish contempt for Gentile souls was the bailey, right? I thought "You can find such awful beliefs in one subsect's founder's centuries-old book" was a small motte to retreat to, but "The sect gives Jewish college kids community centers and only 84% of Jews aren't 'semi-regular' service attendees" is a motte so tightly walled in I can't even find a window from which to see out. Wait until you hear about the Salvation Army.

Even the "network of camps" stuff needs fleshing out. I went to (Christian) religious summer camp at one point as a kid. We never got an "unbaptized babies end up in hell" lesson there, though, despite it being fairly fundamental to the denomination's roots. Do Chabad camp attendees get the adults' "Gentile souls are crummy" lessons, or is "eh, gloss over the creepy stuff in front of the kids" a common trait?

We did get the "Abraham was great for being willing to kill his son when the voices only he could hear told him to" lesson occasionally in (again, Christian) church. Likewise for Noah's Ark and non-Noahs' Watery Graves, though that was treated as more parable than literal. I also reached the "Moses getting chided by God for not quite being genocidal enough" parts when reading the Bible by myself. There is indeed lots of really awful stuff in actual Jewish scripture! The catch is that it got eagerly adopted by billions of Christians, too, because "form moral judgments independently" and "treat all human life as equally sacred, yes even some of those outsiders" haven't been very popular among any groups. That Chabad book actually predates the last time some Christian authorities hanged a man for heresy! ("according to Ripoll, it was not necessary to hear Mass in order to save one's soul from damnation"? String him up, for that?) The claim that Judaism has "moral quandaries" is impossible to argue against, but suggesting that it's somehow special in this respect can't be done without ignoring all other human ideology, and then picking out one subsect to speak for a whole is like a willful rejection of all the tragicomedy of religious belief, Jewish belief in particular.

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