madmark.myfastforum.org

Mark · Site Admin Joined: 13 Nov 2007 Posts: 1052

I was born Jewish but I am not a practicing Jew. I'm an atheist and while I don't think people should be killed due to their beliefs or who they are, I don't like patriarchy because it inevitably leads to wars and suffering. The more equality females have in any given society, the better the quality of life for everyone in that society. But most of the world's religions are patriarchal in nature.

The thing about beliefs is that they are beliefs, so they don't have to make sense. People believe them if they want to and in the U.S. they are usually allowed to believe whatever they wish. There are many Americans, for example, who drive cars fueled by petroleum that comes from oil deposits that geologists find on the basis of the fact that they are millions of years old, yet who still believe that the world was created 5,000 years ago. You can't argue with beliefs.

But some beliefs are just plain silly. For example the Orthodox Jews believe that a person is only Jewish if they have a Covenant with God consisting of a circumcized penis. That's the Covenant. Without the Covenant, you're not a Jew. Since females don't usually have a penis or a foreskin that can be circumcized from it, logically females can not be Jewish and, indeed, the Orthodox will not allow females to be part of a Jewish prayer group, or minyan, which has to have a minimum of ten participants, even if there is an urgent need for a minyan, such as the need to fulfill a time-sensitive ritual or say the prayers for the dead, etc. The minyan has to consist of ten Jews so if there aren't ten males around and there are plenty of Orthodox females around who know the Hebrew prayers and wish to pray, they can't have a minyan because females aren't Jews. They also don't allow females to be rabbis. This just applies to the Orthodox branch of Judaism, the reform branch does not segregate the sexes and they do allow female rabbis.

Anyway what makes this remarkably silly, at least in my mind, is that the Orthodox also believe that nobody is Jewish unless they are born of a Jewish mother. And since females don't have the Covenant with God, and therefore aren't Jewish, logically nobody at all is born of a Jewish mother and there are no Jews.

Now there are some pretty silly beliefs in the world, but the belief that you don't exist has got to be one of the sillier ones.

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