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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34907 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023

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I don't think Israel is descended from a Christian culture, and it's a lot closer to Western morality than its neighbors. I don't think Japan is descended from a Christian culture either, but if you went to Japan and started preaching about how you should sail down the coast and rape and enslave, people would think you're insane.

if you went to Japan and started preaching about how you should sail down the coast and rape and enslave, people would think you're insane

Boy of all the examples to pick. Japan was precisely that way within living memory. What changed?

As to Israel, modern Judaism is younger than (and a reaction to) Christianity, and also Israel is heavily populated by Western (somewhat Christianized) Jews, and if you go ask the Jews who are still fairly un-Christianized they'll gladly tell you that non-Jews are only there to serve Jews.

Boy of all the examples to pick. Japan was precisely that way within living memory. What changed?

One could argue that they ended up that way because of forced contact with Christian cultures (i.e. Japan's history before and after the Meiji Restoration). Japan had something approaching a democracy before an ultranationalist junta sent it down the path to the 1930's and beyond.

Speaking of which, perhaps one could have argued that, from a Shintoist perspective, the Empire's actions had so offended the gods that they didn't lift a finger to stop the Enola Gay when she took off on that fateful day. Or, for the Buddhists, perhaps the sheer karmic weight of everything going on caused Shiva himself to manifest in the world, and J. Robert Oppenheimer's recollection of that quote from the Bhagavad Gita was no mere coincidence...

Okay, okay, more seriously, I think it's generally more that religion is necessary, but perhaps not sufficient when it comes to morality--or at least morality at scale. As per Hoffmeister's thread above, the requirements to prevent chaos and destruction--the things that work--may well change as you increase the size of civilizations. When things don't look anything like the Jesus-era Roman Empire, you need something else to enforce civility and niceness.

if you go ask the Jews who are still fairly un-Christianized they'll gladly tell you that non-Jews are only there to serve Jews.

What? No.

What? No.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ovadia_Yosef

Ovadia Yosef (Hebrew: עובדיה יוסף, romanized: Ovadya Yosef, Arabic: عبد الله يوسف, romanized: Abdullah Yusuf;[2] September 24, 1920 – October 7, 2013)[3] was an Iraqi-born Talmudic scholar, a posek, the Sephardi Chief Rabbi of Israel from 1973 to 1983, and a founder and long-time spiritual leader of Israel's ultra-Orthodox Shas party.[4][5] Yosef's responsa were highly regarded within Haredi circles, particularly among Mizrahi communities, among whom he was regarded as "the most important living halakhic authority".

So, what was his attitude towards non-Jewish people?

In a sermon he delivered in October 2010, Yosef was strongly condemned (including, among others, by the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee)[81][82][61] after stating that "the sole purpose of non-Jews is to serve Jews".[61][62][83] In his sermon, he said:

"Goyim were born only to serve us. Without that, they have no place in the world – only to serve the People of Israel.[84]

In Israel, death has no dominion over them... With gentiles, it will be like any person – they need to die, but [God] will give them longevity. Why? Imagine that one’s donkey would die, they'd lose their money. This is his servant... That’s why he gets a long life, to work well for this Jew," Yosef said.

"Why are gentiles needed? They will work, they will plow, they will reap. We will sit like an effendi and eat.

That is why gentiles were created"[84]

Do you understand the difference between "the Jews" and "one Jew"?

I'm not claiming that most Jews would disagree -- only that the ones who do have undergone much more cross-pollination with Christian thought than those who don't.

Something like: The less Christianized the Jew, the more likely the Jew is to believe that Jews matter more than non-Jews. But now I'm saying something that is true of all people. Such Jews are unique in some of the particulars but the overall picture is common to man.

Do you understand the difference between "the Jews" and "one Jew"?

Do you understand the difference between "one Jew" and "one Jew, seen as the highest authority by half of the world's Jews?"

by half of the world's Jews?"

Where are you getting this from? Haredi Jews are about 14% of the Jewish population of the world (and 12.9% of Israel's), and even then, "seen as an authority by" is not the same thing as "every word is obeyed by". It's deceptive to imply that 50% or even 12.9% of the world's Jews agree with him on this.

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