[Sca-cooks] Judaism- was Re: Seder, etc

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Also sprach Philippa Alderton:
>--- Randy Goldberg MD <goldberg at bestweb.net> wrote:
>
>>  Judaism, at least, has never claimed to be The One
>>  True Way. It claims
>>  only to be The Right Way For Jews. If you're not
>>  born a Jew, you don't
>>  HAVE to do it our way. There are seven basic laws
>>  (called the Seven Laws
>>  of the Sons of Noah) you must follow if you're not
>>  Jewish, and that's
>>  about it.
>>  1. Don't kill
>>  2. Don't steal
>>  3. No polytheism or idol worship
>>  4. No sex crimes
>>  5. Keep laws and justice in your society
>>  6. Don't commit cruelty to animals
>>  7. Don't blaspheme G-d
>>  Of course, if you ARE born Jewish (or decide, more
>>  fool thou, to
>>  convert), you ARE obligated to the whole kit and
>>  kaboodle.
>
>OK, that mostly makes sense to me. Only objection I
>can see right off, would be to number 3- I don't
>really see where Jews would have the right to dictate
>non-Jews' beliefs.

I think it's more a matter of acceptable limits of social deviance
from a locally perceived norm. We don't agree with these people but
at least we can deal with them... which is actually more tolerant
than many people's view of liberals in 2002 America.

>  Considering how much we've
>discussed about the appearance of things being
>important, I can see that this might cause some strife
>with Christians, for example, with the Trinity being
>perceived both as thrre separate Persons, and aspects
>of One, and the ever-present Crucifixes, with or
>without a bleeding Jesus on them. But otherwise,

The single most basic, uniting tenet of all Christian beliefs seems
to be the acceptance of certain obvious paradoxes on faith. To
paraphrase Rhea Perlman, "It's not a religion for wusses." On the
other hand, there's sometimes a difference between perceptions and
reality, and it's usually more the perceptions that cause the
problems.

Adamantius