#your assumptions that based on my being a Jew I hate Palestinians or want them to be killed is fucking antisemitic

[imlittlebitdie]

Just love when a visit to the coffee shop turns into me getting antisemitic bullshit from a white trans dude.

The minute he learned I was a Jew shit went south. I’m so fucking sick of White Leftist goyim.

[mikhalsarah]

RIP Open Orthodoxy, eaten alive by parasitic “Wokeness”...

There are already three streams of Judaism where women can be rabbis (Conservative/Masorti, Reform, and Reconstructionist), I should know, I belong to one of them. I’ve never entirely understood the Orthodox commitment to sidelining women in this day and age, but the simple fact is, people who are unhappy with Orthodox halakhah in this area have other places to pray, and the stubborn refusal to pray in any of “those places”, yet fighting tooth and nail to make their own shuls become just like them, smack of a weird sort of snobbish attachment to the word “orthodoxy”....even though the rest of Orthodox is but a hair’s breadth from considering them a treif liberal “fake” Judaism like the rest of us already.

As difficult, but possible, as the issue of female rabbis would be to bring about, (seeing as it is a rabbinic prohibition based largely on cultural attitudes no longer in play in western society), the issue of getting the Orthodox to accept gay couples is another matter. Again, not an insurmountable issue, Centrist Orthodox Rabbi Schmuley Boteach has written quite openly about the need to find a place in Orthodox shuls for gay and lesbian Jews. However Orthodox culture is never going to let them hold hands during service or kiddush, for the simple reason that public displays of sexual/romantic affection, even between heterosexual married couples, are frowned upon everywhere from the sanctuary to the grocery store, due to the strong feeling that sexuality should be put aside, or sublimated, when encountering certain kinds of holiness (engaging in prayer etc). Of course, that does not mean that in Judaism sex is the opposite of holiness in some way, or else it would be forbidden to have sex on Shabbat. Since marital sex is a mitzvah (commandment, meritorious act) on Shabbat, better to understand it as a different kind of holiness, one that is not compatible with some other mitzvot (like prayer) or with public life in general. Sexuality itself is a sort of holiness surrounded by taboos and necessitating the utmost privacy in Judaism, so this is ironically probably the hill Orthodoxy would die on, not figuring out how to tolerate the gays.

I heartily agree that it’s time to stop being racist to the Palestinians. Strange though that a “Woke” rabbi still can’t bring himself to call them what they call themselves, and in typical Israeli/Zionist  fashion emphasizes their Arab otheness, rather than their indigenousness...thus making it seem rather like a favour being granted to them out of the goodness of his Woke heart, rather than an acknowledgement of their intrinsic belongingness. (This kind of stuff is typical for Woke social justice, which consistently cares far more about virtue-signalling and screaming at “white people”, or whomever else is deemed an Oppressor in the situation, than listening and paying attention to those who are actually oppressed.)

I spent decades of my life as a vegetarian, years of that as a vegan. Even though for medical reasons I had to adopt a diet which relies on meat for sufficient protein, I still try to limit my meat consumption. I am very pleased that so many people are seeing the value of vegetarian and vegan diets, and that even regular omnivore folk are adopting “meatless Mondays” and so forth. I’d be even better pleased with governments helping to encourage it by working to make it less expensive if/where possible. I’d nod my head approvingly if rabbis suggested meat-eating be reserved for Shabbat, if one didn’t feel able to give it up entirely. However, even when I didn’t practice (Judaism) and was secular it would never have occurred to me to ban it wholesale. I’m just not Puritan enough for banning things, I prefer the Quakerly ways of  “convincement”. The Woke, on the other hand, are full-bore Puritan, convert-the-heathen-masses.

This is perhaps the strangest part of entire essay. This newly minted “rabbi” is publicly expressing the desire to not just overhaul a big chunk of halakhah in order to make Judaism less restrictive and bring it further into line with the mores of the gentile world... a process that has been going on forever, whether excessively quickly (Reform) or excruciatingly slowly (Haredi)... but is calling to make Judaism more restrictive in other ways, by banning things permitted by halakhah which happens never or so infrequently that I can’t recall an instance offhand. And he’s willing to use secular governments to achieve it by force.

I recall hearing conservatives decades ago saying “Inside the heart of every liberal is a fascist screaming to get out” and laughing derisively at how they could think that. I laugh no more, though I contend that it is a particular species of illiberal liberal, known as the progressive activist, that is to blame rather than liberals in general. Still...there it is, and the regular liberals are generally no help opposing their own extremists because deep down they harbour that intrinsic liberal guilt that they are never doing enough or being enough to be truly authentic and useful. For authenticity and “real change” they look ever to the fringes, on the assumption that the more wildly opposed to society in general an ideology is, the better it is, if only they weren’t too cowardly and comfortable to join up and suffer like the “real” activists. 

I have to add here, how nice it is despite not having set foot in any shul in over a year, to still have something of the religious Jewish mindset, which makes impressive demands on your time, money, and moral fastidiousness, but at the same time reminds you constantly that you’ll never be perfect and will never accomplish everything you want or that God asks of you and God already accepts that as a given. “It is not yours to complete the task (of repairing the world), but neither are you free to desist from it.” -Pirkei Avot 2:21. Despite the reputation Judaism has for being guilt-inducing, at least we are free from the overwhelming and psychologically destructive levels of guilt induced by secular liberalism, which now has decided, via Wokeness, that merely existing in a society that is imperfect is a damnable offense, even if it is, on balance, one of the least imperfect societies around. This is how Jews like me know that Wokeness is not just a new religion, it’s an offshoot of Christianity, where just being born damns you to a state of perpetual sin.

This authenticity-of-the-extremists mindset blinds them to the fact that while the fringes are the birthplace of some excellent critiques and paradigm-changing ideas that have been of great benefit, those benefits most often only come when those ideas are tempered by counter-critiques and more pragmatic people who can tolerate the loss of ideological purity required to make them work in practice. Also invisible to the liberal mind are those historical moments when progressives have backed ideas that were...well, the term “clusterfucks” springs to mind.

 Progressives less than a century ago were enamoured with ideas ranging from Eugenics to Italian Fascism (less so with Naziism, but even that had its adherents until the war and the atrocities of the camps coming home to roost). They backed Communism to such a degree that it took Kronstadt to shake most of them loose, and they still idolize Che Guevara, the gay-hating, probably racist, illiberal who put people to death without trial and “really liked killing” (his words) and can’t hear a word against Communist China (”That’s racist to the Chinese!”) or Islamic extremists (”That’s Islamophobic!), despite the fact that Communist China is “re-indoctrinating” the Muslim Uighers and using them as slave labour (in part for the profits and in part because keeping the men and women separated prevents them breeding more Muslim Uighers), and despite the fact that the Islamists throw gay men off roofs in public executions. When you do get a left-liberal to admit something on the Left has gone wrong at all, they immediately shift to rationalizing it as somehow really being the fault of conservatives all along...even in a case like Eugenics where religious and other conservatives were fighting it tooth and nail.

(NB: This is not an endorsement of conservatives, who have their own sets of problems but who, when they finally do change their mind on an issue, don’t try to rationalize their former wrongheadedness by claiming it was really the fault of left-liberals that they ever believed such things in the first place)

And that brings us back to Zionism and the Woke. The Woke cannot for the life of them admit that it was secular, and often quite far left, Jews that birthed Zionism directly out of the leftist “liberation” traditions of the day (albeit with a healthy side of pro-Western colonialism-admiring fervour for being “an outpost of the West” shining the light of rationality on the barbaric, backward, religiosity of the Middle East). They don’t want to see it. It disturbs their comfortably simple narrative, which prefers to maintain that it was the “whiteness” of the original Zionist Jews and their early followers that was the problem, not their politics.

But Zionism is merely the predictable result of what happens when you take an oppressed people and tell them that their oppression entitles them to do whatever they need to in order to end their oppression and that violence is not violence when perpetrated by the oppressed. That the world owes them, and their descendants, something in perpetuity for having oppressed them, some sort of special treatment, and that it must never withdraw that special dispensation because that itself would be oppressing them again. The fact that what the Jews would feel like they needed to do was ethnically-cleanse their former homeland of people who had once shared it with them (both Jews and Palestinians can be traced to a shared ancestry in the region going back about 50,000 years) and necessitating a whole new liberation movement to free them was an unintended consequence of th\e liberation movement, but a consequence nonetheless.

The Woke cannot admit that Zionism is, in large part, a direct consequence of the leftist liberation project, and Woke Jews (who are almost invariably “white”) can’t admit that the rest of the Woke movement hates them. They truly deserve each other.

Ah, well, at least this “woke” rabbi isn’t trying to qualify for the cognitive dissonance finals by being Woke and a Zionist at the same time like the current rabbi of my (rapidly sinking) former synagogue. We’ve had rabbis that horrified the congregation by being too right-wing (mostly on halakhic issues rather than politics), and we’ve had rabbis that horrified (the older portion of) the congregation by being too left-wing and running off to march in Selma. Thanks to this rabbi haranguing the congregation daily about LGBTQ issues to the point that even the LGBTQ Jews got tired of hearing him (our sexuality is NOT our whole fucking existence...no pun intended) and marching around the Sanctuary with the Israeli flag on Shabbat (an honour reserved for the Torah even by the most fervently Zionist among us, none of whom are yours truly) we now have the dubious distinction of being a congregation horrified by a rabbi being both too left-wing and too right-wing simultaneously. 

Apropos of nothing, there is now a “For Sale” sign on the front lawn of my former synagogue and the membership at the Orthodox synagogue has grown with astonishing rapidity. We can extrapolate from this that in 4 years time, should the U.S. Republicans run any candidate remotely sane, they will sweep the election.

[nathaniel-galadima]

MADE BY THE SOCIETY

A society could be a cluster of people concerned in persistent social interaction, or an oversized grouping sharing an equivalent spatial or social territory, subject to an equivalent political or religious authority and dominant cultural expectations. Patterns of relationships (social relations) characterize societies between people, sharing a particular culture and institutions. Societies construct patterns of behavior by deeming bound actions or speech as acceptable or unacceptable. These patterns of behavior inside a society are referred to as social norms. Societies, and their norms, bear gradual and perpetual changes. The Wiktionary definitions of society are as follows: - A long-standing group of people sharing cultural aspects such as language, dress, norms of behavior and artistic forms. 2. A group of people who meet from time to time to engage in a common interest; an association or organization. 3. The sum total of all voluntary interrelations between individuals. 4. The people of one’s country or community taken as a whole. 5. High society. 6.  A number of people joined by mutual consent to deliberate, determine, and act toward a common goal. And I base this article on the definition 1, 2, 4, and 6.

DOES A SOCIETY HAVE INFLUENCE ON MAN?

Many people argue the effect of influence on man. They say that they are what or who they are today as a result of their choices; they deny the fact that what and who they are today was gradually informed and influenced by someone else's actions and societal factors. But this is not wholly true. I don't deny the role of one's choice in becoming what and who they are today—because one has to choose to be what and who they want to be—but one's choice only happens from the storehouse of the vast options one has, and these options are nothing but influences or incentivized by influential factors; one cannot choose out of nothing. Choosing to become someone, good or evil, is influenced by someone's actions, good or evil, a historical figure or someone you know or you heard of, who their way of life appals you and you regard them as your model. This could even be your parent. Donald J. Trump once stated: "When you live in a society where the firefighters are heroes, little kids want to be firefighters. When you live in a society where athletes and movie stars are heroes, little kids want to be athletes and movie stars. In Palestinian society, the heroes are those who murder Jews." The above-mentioned is a categorical fact, depicting that our societies play a pivotal role in engineering our individuality. Our societies have influences on us. I would like you to note that this article focuses on your country, your Province or State in your country, your local area in your State or Province, the city, town or village you live in, your religion or belief as regard to atheism, your family, your ethnicity, your peer group, your religious group denomination, etc., as your societies. And when you read further, we will realize that these aforementioned societies and many others (irrespective of how insubstantial they are), have impacts on various areas of our lives. And sometimes, those impacts are irresistible.

1. SOCIETIES INFLUENCE OUR CONDUCTS

No man is born wicked (evil) or good. Every man is born with a mind that is almost like a plain paper, any information written into it, produces who the man is today. And this starts from the family (society), the closest people around them, such as mother, father, or siblings. A child begins to signalize insult with fingers at a person even before the child can speak and reason because they see an adult, a member of their family do likewise. A child is not born with hate for a person from a different race; they are not born with hate for black, white, or any colored person, they grow up to see people around them being racists, and they just incorporate the racism into their life. Etc. Beyond the family circle is the neighborhood. As the child grows in the neighborhood, every day or recurrently being exposed to the doings of the other people in the neighborhood, the child gets accustomed to them, and they could be bad doings. Other than the neighborhood, it could be campus. In campuses, people learn a lot of things they see others do. And these things could be bad things. Some became gays and lesbians, occultists, armed robbers, and many more evil identities. And also we have peer groups, religious groups, and many other groups of people by which some people become what and who they are today. In fact, there are examples of groups that stand as societies in the context of this article that almost seem exhaustible to be listed. In any of the societies you find yourself, from your family to any other category, you acculturate or the society ingrains or inculcates into your life either of the two classes of conduct, good or bad. And afterwards, people describe you with the one you chose to make part and parcel of your life. Like here in my country, Nigeria, children that live in barracks, especially military barracks, are known by some common conducts or behaviors however their temperamental dispositions: Be it sanguine, melancholy, phlegmatic, or choleric. These common conducts they are known by are ingrained into their lives by the society they live in, the barracks. Whatever societal information we allow ourselves to be informed by is what is going to make us and our conducts. Have you ever heard some parents or some persons say "this or that is not a good place to raise children"? They are simply saying that the society has bad impact on children. Jesus told a parable. He said: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared. The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’ ‘An enemy did this,’ he replied...." (Mathew 13:24-28 NIV). Though the above parable is talking about the Kingdom of God, in relation to the context of this article, it can be used to refer to the nature of the mind of a man newly born into the world as it's, like I said earlier, like a plain paper, every information written into it, produces what the person is today. The tares in this parable stand as the bad impacts of a society on a man's good conduct. If, for instance, a man cultivated and ingrained good conducts into their life, and later changes a society to a society that has a herd of unscrupulous elements that are steadily venting out bad conducts on that good conduct or the person with the good conduct, such a person, if they aren’t careful, they may be influenced by that social factors to incorporate the bad conducts into their good conducts; their conducts may be adulterated with the bad conducts. And that's why today a person that was known to be very good in conducts, when they change environment or society, they become very naughty in their conducts. And you will hear people saying "he or she was not known to be this bad." The tares are the bad impacts of societies on man. The impact, especially bad one, of a society is just like a smoke of fire, especially fire made with woods. When you perpetually make the fire on a particular side of the wall of a building, in no distant time the wall will begin to turn black.

2. SOCIETIES INFLUENCE OUR MINDSETS

Mindset is simply a mentality: A way of thinking; an attitude or opinion, especially a habitual one. Or In decision theory and general systems theory, it is defined as a set of assumptions, methods, or notions held by one or more people or groups of people. A mindset may be so firmly established that it creates a powerful incentive within people or groups of people to continue to adopt or accept prior behaviors, choices, or tools.

SUPERIORITY COMPLEX AND INFERIORITY COMPLEX

A superiority complex is a behavior suggesting that a person believes he/she somehow is superior to others. People with superiority complex often have exaggerated opinions of themselves. They may believe their abilities and achievements surpass those of others. They often have boastful attitudes to people around them. But these are only a way to cover up feelings of failure or shortcomings. An inferiority complex is an intense personal feeling of inadequacy, often resulting in the belief that one is in some way deficient or inferior to others. Either of these two beliefs or opinions is ingrained into one's mind or made into one's mentality by the kind of society one's grows or lives in. For instance, when someone has an inferiority complex in their mindset, it might be because they are being consistently compared unfavorably to others; being treated unfavorably by one's peers due to belonging to a different race, economic background, or gender. In consequence, this situation causes feelings of physical and mental limitations, or experiences of lower social status in a person. And today because of an inferiority complex, some people however how good and adept they are at doing something, they lack self-confidence; they hold onto the opinion they still can't do it better than the others they hold with high esteem. It could be people of different religion, age, race, tribe, class, etc. As a result, we see some countries only consume products of other countries even when they themselves can manufacture those same products. Or even when some capable individuals manufacture the products, the locals may refuse to patronize them because their mindset is wired to think that their fellow compatriots cannot manufacture standard products, only substandard, and such a situation prompted Jesus Christ to say “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home.” (Mark 6:4 NIV). And because of superiority complex, others take themselves high above others as though God. No matter their shortcomings, no matter how dumb they are, they still feel they are better than others; they still hold others with contempt and underestimation. All these are caused by the societies we were brought up in. Today in some societies, once a man says to a lady that he loves her, even before they are married, the lady tends to put all her responsibilities on the man even while she is still under her parents. While in other societies this is otherwise. This is nothing but a mindset. The mindset with which others are parenting is not the same as others, the same thing with running a family as a husband or wife. Etc. In all these, societies play fundamental roles in creating our different mindsets.

3. SOCIETIES INFLUENCE OUR BELIEF SYSTEM

A belief system is an ideology or set of principles that helps us to interpret our everyday reality. This could be in the form of religion, political affiliation, philosophy, or spirituality, among many other things. These beliefs are shaped and influenced by a number of different factors. Our knowledge on a certain topic, the way we were raised, and even peer pressure from others can help to create and even change our belief systems. The convictions that come from these systems are a way for us to make sense of the world around us and to define our role within it. We have several religions in the world. These religions vary by, especially population, mode of worship or piety, belief in God or god. The population of a religion in a particular country differs from the population of the same religion in a different country. And even in a particular country that has more than one religion, maybe having one religion more prevalent than the others or other, or having both religions sharing the same number of population, competing in predominance, you will figure out that the population of the religion or religions differ in the local areas or regions of the country. The perfect example of this is Nigeria. In Nigeria, it's common to see Christianity more predominant than Islam in some States, while Islam predominant than Christianity in some other States. And these States where Christianity is predominant, you may find out that in some local government areas of the States, Islam is predominant than Christianity. While in these States where Islam is predominant, you may find out that in some of the local government areas of the States, Christianity is predominant than Islam. While in Nigeria as a country, the two major religions, Christianity and Islam, share almost equal number of population; it's absolutely impossible for one to say "Christianity is populated than Islam or Islam is populated than Christianity in Nigeria." Sometimes ago, I was fond of criticizing and condemning some Muslims, especially the extremists for their barbaric and cruel way of life with regard to how the extremists take pleasure in bloodbath, killing innocent people just for not believing in Islam as a religion. But my wife said something to my hearing that put a stop to my recurrent criticism of the Muslims. She said that "we should thank God that we were born in Christian homes or by Christian parents not Muslim homes or parents, otherwise we would have been as barbaric as they are; we would have been doing the same irritating and abhorrent acts they are doing thinking it's the right things to do." This is nothing but the truth. After all, no one chose before their conception, by which home or parents they would come to this world; we didn't choose to come to this world through Christian or Muslim parents or home, we only see ourselves in either of them, though we still retain the liberty to make a choice; to choose to either continue being a Muslim or Christian or to either convert to become a Christian or Muslim. This phenomenon is influenced by the society. In a society where Islam is predominant, of course, you know the parents are Muslims and as they give birth to children; the children become automatically Muslims. And also in a society where Christianity is predominant, the parents will be Christians and as they give birth to children, the children become automatically Christians. This is the same with any society having a certain predominant religion or as with regard to atheism. Morality is also a part of our belief system. Morality is a recognition of the distinction between good and evil or between right and wrong; respect for and obedience to the rules of right conduct; the mental disposition or characteristic of behaving in a manner intended to produce morally good results. Or is a set of social rules, customs, traditions, beliefs, or practices which specify proper, acceptable forms of conduct. Or is a set of personal guiding principles for conduct or a general notion of how to behave, whether or not respectable. There is discrepancy in what is morally acceptable or unacceptable, or morally good or morally wrong irrespective of the moral-objectivism of the act. And this is caused by the differences between our societies that impact our belief system. The acts you regard today as evil or morally wrong that were ingrained into your belief system by the society you were brought up in, religious, family, or any other society, people may consider it acceptable acts. In fact, killing innocent person who is from different religion is considered by others from certain religions as acceptable act; as a good act required by their god. The same with some habits like sexual immorality, smoking, drunkenness, etc.

4. SOCIETIES INFLUENCE OUR DESTINIES

Many may disagree with me because many believe that destiny is that to which any person or thing is destined; a predetermined state; a condition predestined by the Divine. And this implicitly means anything that happens to an individual, good or evil, is their destiny. I agree that is a condition predestined by the Divine (God) but I don't wholly agree that when evil happens to someone is still their destiny. Some believe that destiny is unchanged because it's believed to have been predestined by God, but I believe one still retains the power to alter their destiny. God says "For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future" (Jeremiah 29:11 NIV). This is God or Divine predetermined destiny for man. But do you think when you live in a thuggery-oriented society, where young people do drugs, smoke weed, cigarettes, get drunk, do prostitution, robbery, cultism and any other kind of vice, and you become one of them, participating in one or more of the vices, like robbery or cultism, or drug, and you later get killed, will be said that, that is your destiny predetermined by God? No. God’s destiny or plan for you is a good one but along the path, if you allow your society to negatively have impact on you, the God good plan for you may be altered. And therefore, we will say that your society influences your Destiny. Another example is, if your destiny is to become, one day, the President of your country and you are born and brought in a society that is devoid of the opportunity to acquire formal education which unchangeably stands as the credential demanded for being a President, and you do nothing to get formal education, will it be said that it's God's will that you do not become the president? No, but rather will be that it's you or your society that alters your destiny.

5. SOCIETIES INFLUENCE OUR WELL-BEING

A society that is very careless in keeping its environment clean will have a very adverse effect on the well-being of the people living in it. And as a result, when there is an outbreak of a disease like cholera, the people are most vulnerable to it. A society that is careless in its choice of food, it negatively influences the well-being of its people. And also that's why some countries have a higher number of people with some certain sicknesses, like cancer, than other countries.

CONCLUSION

Therefore, having read about some of the areas our societies have influences on, you now know that a society can either make you or mar you because 80-90% of who and what you are today are influenced by the society you live in; the kinds of society I discuss in the context of this article like family. When you live in a moral society, it will have a good influence in some areas of your life. When you live in a corrupt society, it will have a bad influence on some areas of your life, and especially that of your children. Accordingly, choose a better society. Read the full article