Feb 14, 2011 -- 9:18PM, Kingdom357 wrote:

For heaven sake, can you people open your minds just one time and understand that originally there were only Jews.  In the first century Yeshua preached to Jews, Christian was not even a word much less a faith, it hadn't even been established yet.  ....

BS"D

True, but by the time there became such a thing known as "Christianity" Jews were not only wholly ABSENT from the non-Jewish faith but any forms of Jewish practice that Jesus himself would have allegedly practiced as a Jew were outlawed by the new faith and carried the death penalty (for the capital crime of "judaizing.")  So it is highly UNLIKELY that there were ANY Jews practicing Christianity by the time the Christian canon - the primary source of Jewish knowledge for the majority of Christians as inaccurate and full of lies as it is with regard to actual Jewish practice and history - was created.

Feb 17, 2011 -- 6:30PM, Kingdom357 wrote:

...You call yourselves Jews, but the faith is too much for you to follow, you can't do as you please.

BS"D

No, the Jewish people and Torah calls us Jews, not ourselves alone.  For me Torah was first spoken orally at Sinai, then written down, then commented upon by the prophets and other writers, then redacted into what is known as the canon of Jewish holy texts; the TeNaCh.  After that period it has been commented upon by every generation in many halakhic, homiletic and kabbalistic works. 

All of this, to me, is an historical continuum of Judaism which is the religion practiced by the Jewish people.  There are variants of Judaism, but no variants in Jewish identity.  Either one is identified with the Jewish people or one is not.

MJ is a Christian religion and its brand of Christianity can be practiced by Jews (as an apostasy) and non-Jews.  But it is not the religion of the Jewish people so it cannot be identified with Judaism or the Jewish people.   Rather, MJ is the brand of Christianity that some Jews practice, mostly out of ignorance or because their native Jewish environment lacks some basic sociological functions that they need - so they seek elsewhere.

The majority of Jews I know that were in MJ were there not because of any merit of Christianity or any of its tenets, but because of the human contact and the meeting of their needs in areas other than obedience to the divine.  It is roughly the same draw to the vulnerable as a cult IMHO, even though I would not classify MJ as a cult.

Judaism only functions within the community.  It is very difficult if not impossible to live as a Jew outside a Jewish community.  Likewise it is impossible to formulate an accurate picture of Jewish life outside of a Jewish community.

There are so many variants of Judaism and Christianity that when you make the claim that both are mistaken in some way it is a strawman argument.  It is better simply to state what you believe and others will grant you that right to believe as you will rather than pretending to be opposed to the many variants of the two faiths and all their intricacies.

The absolute line of demarcation is the unique divinity of Jesus.  That is where there can be no common ground between Judaism and Christianity.  On this issue alone MJ has declared itself as Christianity and not Judaism.

There are concepts of divinity which permeate all of Creation and include all human beings, but Judaism maintains the separation of the Creator from the Creation as an absolute.  Christianity makes the equation between divinity and Creation as an absolute in the case of Jesus.  There is no way to reconcile these two diametrically opposed viewpoints.

Likewise, there is no "middle of the road" between the extreme viewpoints where you can claim to be opposed to both.  Both have ideologies of integrating Creation with their respective positions, but none has room for accommodating the opposing viewpoints.  Therefore one cannot adopt pieces of one and pieces of the other and claim to have an alternative whereby both originals are wrong.  The only way to reconcile the two opposing viewpoints is to eliminate the validity of both.  But if you do that you cannot claim elements from either, so you have painted yourself into a corner.

To me, it would be better to declare oneself on one side or the other rather than trying to play both sides against a non-existent middle ground.  Judaism has a purpose for its severe iconoclasm and Christianity has a purpose for its own opposite tenets.  You can easily refute both purposes if you desire but you cannot claim to have severe iconoclasm and be against Judaism at the same time.  Likewise you cannot claim to have any relationship or impute any meaning to Jesus and be against Christianity at the same time.  MJ tends to play both sides of the argument rather than refute both sides of the argument (the argument being either something in Creation is the divine - Christianity - or it is not - Judaism.)