Ancestral pride

[supergee]

Comments

[necturus]

The essential difference between Judaism and Christianity is, I think, that the observant Jew abstains in accordance with a covenant binding his people, the Children of Israel, with their God; whereas the Christian moralist acts out of belief in a universal set of beliefs and moral values his God makes obligatory for all mankind. In that he is like the Muslim who is commanded to "enjoin good an forbid evil"; but his Qur'an acknowledges the rights of Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians to follow their own scriptures. Christianity's New Testament makes no such exemption.

[lavendertook]

I am glad we Jews can be smug about this in the US, but I'm not sure it would still be the case if we actually had power here, seeing how the ultra orthodox act in Israel, alas.

The control freakishness of the ultra orthodox takes a different form than it does for Christian fundamentalists--it wouldn't be about keeping non-Jews from eating a forbidden food, I think, because orthodox Jews don't care about the non-Chosen being righteous in the face of the deity, but it might be about making it very hard for them to get that food by forbidding its production where Jews are present. The ultra orthodox are quite willing to levy control over other Jews, and if it involves controlling non-Jews in the process, so be it.