HEY JEWS

Why would the basic features of the Torah have assumed literary shape from the late 8th century and thereafter? It is because this is when the states of Israel and Judah faced momentous political challenges.

The Assyrian armies conquered the kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE. The earliest biblical authors realized that if Israel were to survive this political catastrophe, it would be in a new form: as a people without a king. Now the kings of Israel may have the ones who originally promulgated accounts of Yhwh’s great deeds, such as the Exodus story. After all, Israel’s kings would have seen themselves as the representatives of the state’s chief deity, as was the case in directly neighboring lands. Yet what sets the pace for the formation of the biblical tradition is a demotion of the king and a shift of attention to the people as a whole (“all Israel”) under the aegis of its God. Judahite authors, already before their subjugation to Babylon in 587 BCE, inherit this “demotic” project from Israel.

The Torah is the beginning of a longer history (stretching from Breishit to Melakhim) that tells how Israel emerged and existed for a long time as a people before its kings established centralized states. The history ends with the demise of these states, affirming the central message: All Israel is in direct covenant with its God. Its kings are, accordingly, not essential to its identity and its survival. What’s determinative is the nation’s corporate adherence to the conditions of the covenant (the mitzvot).

This message, which pervades the Torah and the rest of the history, is the reason why the Torah owes its penultimate form to the 8th-6th centuries, the time when Israel and Judah ceased to be ruled by native kings.

cool. i find this stuff fascinating

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00vFNzlXmNU

http://www.theonion.com/articles/jews-to-celebrate-rosh-hashasha-or-something,4532/

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-life-and-religion/143410/rosenzweig-yom-kippur-conversion

presented essentially w/out comment except that even the highest intermarriage percentages were smaller than i would've guessed:
http://www.simpletoremember.com/vitals/will-your-grandchild-be-jewish-chart-graph.htm

idgi

what are they using to denote Jewish identity - strictly genetics?

fwiw I married a non-Jew, we're raising our children in I guess what falls under the "Secular" grouping there (ie we don't belong to a temple but we celebrate the holidays and identify as Jewish, when they're old enough for Hebrew school I will probably look around for options etc.)

i don't know what they're using for that particular study by the two metrics i've seen commonly used are self-identification or halachic judaism (matrilineal descent)

It's obvious that that "study" is using "intermarriage = non-Jewish children" as an assumption which is blatantly false.

That's just clear from the numbers.

Or at least it's assuming a pretty low rate of "Jewish" children to intermarried couples.

yeah I don't really understand it, it looks like an intermarried couple that has one kid actually only has "one half" of Jewish child and then if they intermarry their kids are automatically not Jewish... I dunno this runs counter to my experience with intermarried couples, there isn't this strict algorithm involved.

it's also worth noting, at least, that the authors of the study are not demographic researchers by trade, although I'm sure they're bright people, and that if you read their actual article it's pretty clearly agenda-driven and thus requires a grain of salt. Also, their assumptions that birthrates will remain constant are belied by their own statements that birthrates have recently shifted.

Antony (Chanan) Gordon is a Sir Abe Bailey Fellow (1988) and Fulbright Scholar(1989) who graduated with a Masters in Law from Harvard Law School (1990). Mr. Gordon was a SeniorVice President at Morgan Stanley until the beginning of 2001 when he left to launch his own firm and hedge fund.

Richard M. Horowitz received his MBA from Pepperdine University in California. Mr. is the President of Management Brokers Insurance Agency, and Chairman of Dial 800 L.P. Mr. Horowitz also serves on the Board of Triotech (OTC) as well as numerous non-profit organizations. (Copyright 2007)

lol

what the hell is a masters in law anyway

ah ok he was a foreign lawyer who got an LLM, he is apparently from south africa

I think a more interesting question, and a really hard one to answer about whether you will have Jewish grandkids is "why do we care?" I'm not asking that sarcastically or smugly, I just feel like it's the question no rabbi ever addresses in the annual haranguing high holiday sermons. Like why do we care if there are Jews in 300 years? Why do we care if there are reform, conservative, or "secular" Jews in 300 years? I mean even I will admit that I do in a certain sense care about this, but I'm not entirely sure why.

I worry more about the species as a whole than my particular tribe

plus I figure there will always be a few of us around just out of sheer orneriness

can you imagine how insufferable The Last Jew would be

I care a lot about having Jewish grandchildren. It's near the top of the list of things I care about.

A rabbi with whom I have studied told me that it is her policy NOT to convert a person in the case where it would create an intermarriage (i.e. someone like me, married to a non-Jew). I'm like WTF, you net one for the Jews!

Another rabbi with whom I have studied (and who currently leads a LGBT-oriented congregartion) has zero problem performing same-sex marriages, but only if both spouses-to-be are Jewish. No same-sex intermarriage!

Discuss.

Any explanation for why it matters for the Jews to continue to exist requires discussing the Torah, mitzvot and religion. If you don't believe in any of those things than you're right to be skeptical about tribal continuity for its own sake.

Well I'm not sure I am skeptical, because somehow I do care about it. I mean not to the point that it's more important to me than having happy, healthy, well-adjusted, successful grandchildren, or that I'd rend my clothes if I had non-Jewish grandchildren or anything, but somehow it still seems to matter. So I feel like there is some kind of tribal continuity instinct at work there.

An argument for continuity based in the Torah, mitzvot and religion seems kind of circular.

well - the origin story of tikkun olam is that the first world that g-d created was the world of tohu - which was kind of a perfect complete world. but it was unable to hold the presence of g-d in it and so it shattered and the sparks fell into the second world that he created -the world of tikkun (repair) aka our world. he gave the jews the torah bc by fulfilling the will of g-d by doing the mitzvot they can elevate the sparks and repair the world, and it's only through repairing an imperfect world that g-d's presence can finally dwell below (dirah b'tachtonim) -- more here if you're interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tohu_and_Tikun -- so acc to this (kabbalistic/chassidic/gnostic) interpretation jews have a special role to fulfill in the world by doing the mitzvot and their continuity is required for g-d's plan to make the world a dwelling place for his presence.

also tho i love being jewish and it's one of the most important things to me in my life and i love teaching my children about jewish holidays. d came home from chabad preschool today jabbering about the sukkah and when we got to her bubbe + zeide's house she ran out to their already built sukkah to play. it's such a joy to see and i would be so sad if one day that was all gone.

presented essentially w/out comment except that even the highest intermarriage percentages were smaller than i would've guessed:
http://www.simpletoremember.com/vitals/will-your-grandchild-be-jewish-chart-graph.htm

― Mordy , Thursday, 12 September 2013 19:00 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i remember seeing this a couple of years ago and reading a whole load of analysis on it. it's rather misleading because it looks like the ultra orthodox ends up swamping reform and conservative in the long term but it fails to take into account the huge interdominational switching rate from orthodox. i think something like less than half of ppl raised orthodox stay orthodox and instead become conservative/reform/secular, while reform actually has a higher percentage of ppl staying within that denomination of judaism (tho more end up marrying out).

the origin story of tikkun olam is that the first world that g-d created was the world of tohu - which was kind of a perfect complete world. but it was unable to hold the presence of g-d in it and so it shattered and the sparks fell into the second world that he created -the world of tikkun (repair) aka our world.

huh I don't think I've ever heard this. v gnostic

oh i found the link

http://www.threejews.net/2008/09/will-your-grandchildren-be-reform.html

loved this blog so much when it was running

i've personally been raised central orthodox but i'm not going to stay that way, being gay just makes it too problematic and difficult for me. my parents were always obsessed with ensuring my siblings & i marry in (like thx for casually mentioning nice jewish girls 2 me weekly), but they've gone quiet since i came out. tho they've become vocal in supporting reform as ~real judaism~ all of a sudden so i'm taking the hint they'll just be glad i stay observant on some level. would love to eventually settle down with a jewish guy, but that feels pretty needle in a haystack ;_; will have to see where life takes me i guess.

oh man yom kippur is Saturday? I was going to figure out someplace to go at the last minute so I could get off work but now I dunno if I'll bother.

Maybe I'll just see if I can sneak in to kol nidre at the reform shul up the street.

suck at fasting, tbh

Well, I think this is absolutely going to be the last year I don't go to services on YK -- wife and I decided we're going to join a temple. For me it feels like a betrayal of what I know from growing up not to do it, and for my wife, who was raised atheist in Israel, it's about wanting our kids to learn all the stuff that she learned anyway in regular school.

sukkot is definitely one of the best holidays, esp when the weather is nice.

chag sameach!

Looking forward to this being the first holiday that I think K will really "experience" on some level.

next pesach I will actually have a table and therefore I intend to have a kickass seder.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_O0F5AaJmk4/UkMHXDs59lI/AAAAAAAAZwo/0vZmdMAhWFo/s1600/st4.jpg

now i sing the title of thread in my head to the tune of the theme song of "the new girl"

http://forward.com/articles/184795/jews-bound-by-shared-beliefs-even-as-markers-of-fa/

This might not really be specific to Judaism, but I don't know where else to put this.

What do people think of this post? http://www.simpletoremember.com/articles/a/time/

I started thinking of what that post is about with relation to irony and sarcasm. Can what this rabbi says be reconciled with living 'ironically' or being sarcastic? It's one of those things which should be obvious, but I'm kind of in a weird mood today.

Is the post Judaic reductionism or does there seem to be some substance to it?

I just want to get people's perspectives, if they have any on it.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/christinebyrne/thanksgivukkah

I was just about to post that! Some recipes worth checking out, and wow, t-shirts and stuff too.

Torn between forwarding that along and fuck a Buzzfeed.

Feel a bit bad for sukkotees (is that a word? heh) in my city. cos we have had an awful blast of nasty, gale force wintery weather lately. Cantve been nice sitting out in it.

Wait am I to believe that Jews roll their eyes at noodle kugel? Because that is one of my favorite (and one of my first) Jewish foods!

no way. lokshen kugel is delicious.

Ha! Googled "lokshen kugel" and the first result is from the Shiksa Blog. So appropriate.

one more jew for noodle kugel

i haven't read this review of the pew survey yet but dr brill always has something brilliant to say so i assume must-read:
http://kavvanah.wordpress.com/2013/10/06/reflections-on-the-pew-survey/