3 ms·

You're actually talking to israeli not living in Israel. Yes, most people in Israel are secular or very secular. And a part of reason for it been so, it's the

• LegitShady 6y ago
  >And living in Israel exposes you to enough aspects of religion to know "why I can't just press a button in order to get to floor that I want right now". Or why a bunch of guys in black hats stone McDonald windows or a bunch of girls who got by accident into religious neighberhood. It's very surface level and not sufficient for a discussion on the technicalities of a religion. It's exactly taking the word of non-experts because they live beside experts - it doesn't give them more than passing surface level knowledge of the things they experience directly. >Maybe not deep aspects enough, as your brother who studying gamarah, but sufficient enough. Again, the whole criticism was that the discussion occurred exactly when the experts were somewhere else, and that the level of discussion was not 'sufficient enough' - so what you have isn't a point of fact, but a point of an opinion that you think it's 'enough' that the person who raise the point disagrees with. And I agree with them - a discussion on the technicalities of shabbat missing all the people who care enough about shabbat to not be on here is exactly the way to make sure you only have surface level and often entirely wrong discussion. You think it's 'sufficient enough' doesn't make that true - it just means you're not interested in details from the actual experts on the topic. Thats a personal choice you make, but it's only your value judgement as to how much detail you want in the conversation, not a reflection of reality. I'd say his criticism still stands and your reply to it exactly highlights the criticism as correct.
  • tguvot 6y ago
    So, just as I wrote, in your opinion not jewish enough to know technicalities. I had very secular friends friends who read gemara for fun and in order to argue about fine points of religion with religious people. Which is most of the time pointless, because unless person learns it they just follow whatever "rabbi of the year/synagogue/etc" says them to do without actually understanding "technicalities" of it. What you are doing here, it's just a classic orthodox gatekeeping of Judaism which causes many people completely turn off away from it.
    • LegitShady 6y ago
      >o, just as I wrote, in your opinion not jewish enough to know technicalities. No, now you're strawmanning. I didn't say 'not jewish enough' - I said there's a difference between people who study the laws 'religiously' and spend huge amounts of time on it, and people who are largely culturally jewish and haven't invested the same time. It's not a question of 'jewish enough' its a question of time spent acquiring knowledge. >I had very secular friends friends who read gemara for fun and in order to argue about fine points of religion with religious people. My bet is even then, they put in less time then someone for whom it guides their entire life and who is interested in studying it. >Which is most of the time pointless, because unless person learns it they just follow whatever "rabbi of the year/synagogue/etc" says them to do without actually understanding "technicalities" of it. That's not really how it works. >What you are doing here, it's just a classic orthodox gatekeeping of Judaism which causes many people completely turn off away from it. No, what I'm doing is differentiating between different levels of knowledge. People who are jewish are jewish. This has nothing to do with that. There are jewish law experts at the vatican who can probably do a lot better job many orthodox jews. It's a question of knowledge and time spent acquiring knowledge. Knowing the limits of your knowledge and not claiming expertise when you have none is a pretty fundamental character trait to me.
      • tguvot 6y ago
        You started with "only observant jews understand intricacies of jewish law" and graduated with "only people that dedicate their life to it understand technicalities". pick one. in case it's former, it's not much different from me saying that me eating a hamburger makes me expert in cattle ranching and meat processing. in case it's the later, there is so many different interpretation of everything in Judaism, that it really doesn't matter. kudos to your brother learning it in depth, but in yeshiva next door students may have very different beliefs about "maalit shabat" based on very same technicalities. >>Which is most of the time pointless, because unless person learns it they just follow whatever "rabbi of the year/synagogue/etc" says them to do without actually understanding "technicalities" of it. >That's not really how it works. This is literally how it works for majority of observant people of any given religion. >>What you are doing here, it's just a classic orthodox gatekeeping of Judaism which causes many people completely turn off away from it. >No, what I'm doing is differentiating between different levels of knowledge. People who are jewish are jewish. This has nothing to do with that. There are jewish law experts at the vatican who can probably do a lot better job many orthodox jews. It's a question of knowledge and time spent acquiring knowledge. Knowing the limits of your knowledge and not claiming expertise when you have none is a pretty fundamental character trait to me. Those Jewish laws that have experts in vatican and that is studied day and night in yeshivas been hundreds of years of years old and written in different realities. It's frequently proclaimed that Judaism is adaptive to realities of the world. But when it tries to adapt to modern life ( Reform Judaism for example), orthodox jews claim that reforms are not jews enough (or not jews at all) and that what they practice is wrong. Gatekeeping 101. At same time, they are unable to figure out common kashrut "standard"