Talk:Judaism

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This article really sucks. Judaism should be criticized just like any other religion.

Seriously, why are the idiots who run this place so scared of criticizing Jewish culture? It's about the only culture you racist/anti-religious dorks won't bash. ^{— Unsigned, by: 98.22.215.97 / talk / contribs}

Probably because there are so few Jews that the nutty ones have little power or fame, unlike Christian or Muslim nutters. FüzzyCätPötätö (talk/stalk) 03:20, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

In its current format, this article barely meets mission. It's so freaking dull it could be from that other wiki.--TheroadtoWiganPier (talk) 14:26, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

"Secular Jews"

Says "Almost exclusively an Israeli concept, secular Jews identify as Jewish culturally but not religiously... A sizable portion of Israeli Jews consider themselves secular, but the concept is virtually unheard of in other countries." What absolute crap. Many American Jews identify as secular - i.e. ethnically/ancestrally identifying with the Jewish people but not following the Jewish religion. (And not just Americans - I'd say the same would be true of a significant chunk of Jews in many other Western countries.) No way this is "almost exclusively an Israeli concept". Blacke (talk) 09:11, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Do you know any Greek people? Do they worship Athena? Same thing; people that identify as part of the Jewish nation but treat the religion the way modern Greeks would treat Zeus. CorruptUser (talk) 14:12, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

What about this speech by David Silverman? He makes a fairly good point that the idea of "secular Jews" or "atheist Jews" is BS. ^{— Unsigned, by: 2A02:908:1B6:1080:ECB6:5D40:E4F5:AB17 / talk}

Would you mind summarizing for those of us who either do not have the time to watch a one hour video or do not have the bandwidth? ☭Comrade GC☭^{Ministry of Praise} 21:03, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

Yes. It's been quite a while since I listened to his lecture, so I hope I remember things correctly: David Silverman used to call himself an "atheist Jew" until the day he wanted to explain what this actually meant. Since he is an atheist it couldn't be the religion that'd make him jewish. What else would there be to warrant such an identification? Race came to his mind. But Judaism can't be a race since it doesn't follow the common race identification markers: A child of parents of different races is identified as "mixed race" - 50:50 so to speak. But according to jewish tradition, one is either a "full Jew" (in case one's mother is jewish - no matter what the father's race is) or a "non-Jew" (even if one's father is jewish). - As a side note: IMO the idea of Judaism being a race is BS because the idea of human races in general is pseudoscientific BS. Even if you take the fairly constructivist idea of race being "a set of physical characterics a society deems important" - there are no specifically "jewish" physical characteristics. You will find self-identified Jews of all skin-colors, eye-shapes etc. - Secondly, Silverman thought of Judaism being a culture. But after doing some research he realized: There is no distinctive secular jewish culture. Yes, there are some cultures that are considered jewish, like the Ashkenasim, Mizrahim, Sephardic etc. But the only elements all these cultures share are of religious nature. In all other aspects they totally differ. He gives the example that Ethiopian Jews don't eat bagels, which is considered typically "jewish" food. Amaf the only thing a New Yorker Askenasi Jew and an Ethiopian Jew have in common is the religion. Aside from it, all so-called "jewish" cultures are much more similiar to their historically surrounding cultures of different religious backgrounds than to each other. Ashkenasi (which means "german" BTW) language, customs, music, food etc. are much more similar to their german or eatern-european counterparts, than to Mizrahim or Sephardic traditions (Amaf Ashkenasi language Yiddish is really some variant of German. Most Germans will understand it, but arabic Jews certainly not). - Also, personally I doubt many of the people labeled as "secular Jews" actually engage in "secular" Ashkenasi culture. I bet hardly any of them actually speak Yiddish or play Klezmer music or the like. - Therefore Silverman concludes that there is no jewish race and no jewish culture, but only a jewish religion. And since he doesn't follow this religion, he cannot rationally call himself jewish. So, a "jewish atheist" is an oxymoron. - Personally, I consider this completely convincing. The idea of Judaism being something other than a religion is plain wrong and therefore the idea of being "secular jewish" should be dropped entirely. Just the same as there is no such thing as "secular christian". ^{— Unsigned, by: 2A02:908:1B6:1080:D816:939D:587D:47CA / talk}

Judging from this article, Israeli historian Shlomo Sand basically makes the same case: "Not only, he argues, is there no Jewish culture that is not derived from religiosity, but the very notion of secular Judaism is indeed an empty one, since no such thing exists." I think the article should be edited. Since it is protected I cannot do it myself. Would somebody help out?

Homophobia category

I have a huge problem with putting this article in the homophobia category. Exclusion and homophobia is a very real thing in Orthodox and Haredi communities; however, the Reconstructionist and Reform denominations (as well as most Conservative groups in the US, particularly USCJ) are explicitly LGBTQ+-affirming. Heck, I attended queer Torah study this past weekend. I think putting an article on Judaism in the homophobia category portrays the entirety of Judaism as homophobic, which I hope you can tell from what I've said is not accurate. Quantumgeek333 (talk) 00:01, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

From my understanding, the category means that the article covers homophobia, not that the entire religion is inherently homophobic. GeeJayK (talk) 01:51, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Oh, shit, I didn't think of that. I might be a complete walnut. I'm going to browse through the other pages in this category. Quantumgeek333 (talk) 01:53, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

But, looking at this article again, I would also argue that it doesn't really cover homophobia. Unless I'm missing something, I think the only LGBT-related content here is mentioning that more liberal groups are "Many liberal Jewish congregations...as a general rule tend to be more tolerant of homosexuality and intermarriage". Quantumgeek333 (talk) 01:56, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

This is horrible

This article is way, way biased. Judaism is literally the root of the other two fairy tales. Why is this article written in such a way to give Judaism a legitimate status? It's the same as the other religions. BS. Fehmgericht (talk) 20:58, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Compare this article to the page on Christianity and Islam, as you suggest, and you'll see that these articles aren't dissimilar. They're relatively dry, general rundowns of the theology and history. The main difference is that Islam has a section on criticism, but the Christianity page doesn't have that. If anything, maybe the Islam page needs an edit. Monochroma (talk) 08:58, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Lockdown?

Should we bump the protection back up? Since July almost all the edits have been either vandalism from (presumably) the same freak and then reversions. And when it was switched back to autoconfirm they just came back. I don't know what the protocol is, and it seems like that jerk goes all over the place. Monochroma (talk) 08:49, 18 October 2024 (UTC)