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  1. John D. Brey

    Who Or What Is Israel?

    Brit milah ritualizes a reality. Removing a slice, and some blood, is a "sign" אות of the "actual," absolute, utter, elimination of that organ in a singular conception/birth that's the transcendental signifier concerning all genuine religious thought. John
  2. John D. Brey

    Who Or What Is Israel?

    I completely reject your premise. I don't believe genuine faith is established by its adherents so much as they're moved, by faith and revelation, to accept absolute categories that non-believers tend to trivialize and relativize by believing there are no absolutes. There was, absolutely, one...
  3. John D. Brey

    Who Or What Is Israel?

    . . . No one has ever accused me of not being willing to generalize. :) John
  4. John D. Brey

    Who Or What Is Israel?

    Wikipedia sounds ok to me in a vague general sort of way. What do you mean by the last sentence in the message? John
  5. John D. Brey

    Who Or What Is Israel?

    The laws, rituals, writings, and the practices, common to Jewish members of the traditional orthodox religion. John
  6. John D. Brey

    Who Or What Is Israel?

    Symbolically they are. It's just that the transmitting fluid is blood not semen (John 6:53). John
  7. John D. Brey

    Who Or What Is Israel?

    . . . It's very interesting how hidden these things are in plain sight. It's the nature of the way the principalities and powers are running the show. Bless their well-meaning hearts. :) For instance, when you ask if there's anything written in the word (or law) of Moses that implies only the...
  8. John D. Brey

    Who Or What Is Israel?

    In Judaism there are two kinds of inheritance. Which is to say there are two distinctive firstborn distinguished by whether you're your father's firstborn or you mother's first born and in most cases both. Generally speaking, in Jewish law, the father's firstborn בכור לנחלה inherits, through...
  9. John D. Brey

    Who Or What Is Israel?

    I used to ask Jewish persons, if Jewish identity comes exclusively from the mother (and it does), then how did the first Jewish mother obtain her Jewishness? It's a trick question since the answer is obvious to any theologically astute person who isn't Jewish. An adjunct to the answer relates...
  10. John D. Brey

    Who Or What Is Israel?

    Jewish law implies that males can't produce Jews. Voila! The first Jewish ritual (which Rabbi Hirsch, et al., says is the conception and birth of Judaism), seems to concur, since that ritual (ritual-circumcision) is taking a knife and bleeding the male flesh otherwise used to produce offspring...
  11. John D. Brey

    Who Or What Is Israel?

    None of a Jewish man's offspring (male or female) will be Jewish if their mother isn't Jewish ---unless they convert. And here's where it gets really strange. All of a Jewish woman's offspring (male or female) are Jewish no matter whether the father is or isn't Jewish. But, get this, a Jewish...
  12. John D. Brey

    Who Or What Is Israel?

    Not sure what you mean? Simply stated, the point of being Jewish is to be a Jew. ----That's a tautology of course. But that's a whole other ball of yarn to unwind. :) John
  13. John D. Brey

    Who Or What Is Israel?

    . . . Again, so far as I know a bar mitzvah can be a secularized celebration of Jewishness that needn't abide by any formal legal precedent. I suppose if its at a synagogue it would depend on how strict the synagogue is concerning such things. Many males who have a Jewish father and a non-Jewish...
  14. John D. Brey

    Who Or What Is Israel?

    . . . Interesting question. Technically, legally, if the boy's mother is non-Jewish I would think he'd have to convert to be legally Jewish. Nevertheless, I don't know that bar mitzvah rules are that strict. Some of the bar mitzvahs depicted in movies are hillariously non-religious. In one movie...
  15. John D. Brey

    Who Or What Is Israel?

    If he converts that would be fine. And even if he does convert, and is thus a Jew through and through, he must marry a Jewish woman, convert or otherwise, for his offspring to be Jewish. No Jewish man can make Jewish offspring. And no Jewish woman can make non-Jewish offspring no matter what the...
  16. John D. Brey

    Who Or What Is Israel?

    As I've pointed out in the past, what appears absurd about Jewish identity can be fixed in the right context. And much concerning Jewish identity appears absolutely absurd until the proper context is understood. For instance, if a Gentile woman is married to a Gentile man who's Christian, and...
  17. John D. Brey

    Who Or What Is Israel?

    When you say it's Jewish law that determines who is a Jew, I would counter that Jewish law doesn't determine who is a Jew so much as Jewish law is a lawful description "describing" who is a Jew. The law doesn't make a person a Jew. It's just a legal elucidation concerning the precise dynamics of...
  18. John D. Brey

    Who Or What Is Israel?

    It might be easier to parse that statement by saying the Abrahamic covenant isn't defined completely by Abraham's physical descendant. In which case we bring up Abrahamic spiritual descendants (versus merely physical descendants) who (Abraham's spiritual descendants) may or may not be related to...
  19. John D. Brey

    Popper's Third Eye.

    All of this leads to the premise that Popper both acknowledged, and used, something like the third eye of enlightement required to produce the myths that modern science requires: The picture of science of which I have so far only hinted may be sketched as follows. There is a reality behind the...
  20. John D. Brey

    Popper's Third Eye.

    Popper is keenly aware that to a large extent modern science is an outgrowth of the religious mythology of the past. Religious mythology claimed to possess insight come not from empirical or logical observations, but from some divine perch accessible to all men to one degree or another. In...
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