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Whenever I see something about the Talmud in gentile-dominated spaces I tense up a bit. I'm not orthodox anymore, but I was orthodox for the first 20-odd years

• SkipperCat 4y ago
  I like how the Talmud asks people to think about a problem and create their own solution. They give other examples of Rabbis doing the same. It's an exercise in thinking, not dogma. So don't tense up about it. The Talmud is appreciated for its thought provoking questions by many people, both Jews and Gentiles.
• akyu 4y ago
  Why does it make you tense up?
  • rfrey 4y ago
    Probably due to a pattern of Very Confident Statements from people who know a little bit about the subject. There may be things you are expert in that are similar.
    • dylan604 4y ago
      >from people who know a little bit about the subject I think you just summed up a large portion of the internet.
  • mynameishere 4y ago
    It's pretty racist. I mean, yeah, no doubt if you read and understand the whole thing like a regular scholar, every word, all that racism disappears. But a casual reader will tend to get the wrong idea.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • supernt 4y ago
  • recuter 4y ago
    On occasion through out history people misquote, misunderstand or misrepresent stuff about Jews and their writings for a variety of reasons, sometimes with rather negative consequences. Innocuous discussions can turn into Happy Tree Friends real quick.
  • boole1854 4y ago
    Gentile here, but even I tense up when I see discussions about the Talmud show up in "Gentile spaces". Some reasons: 1) Conspiracies. There's a millennia-long history of conspiracy theories involving the Talmud, and talk about the Talmud often see conspiracy theorists surface which sidetracks any rational discussion. 2) Religion. To this day, there is a significant group of religion Jews who take the Talmud extremely seriously as Scripture or at least as Scripture-adjacent. This annoys some people and tends to cause aggressive conversations. 3) Politics. Anything that can be connected to politics turns into a political argument. The Talmud seems to serve as easy fodder. 4) Misunderstandings. The Talmud is a complicated set of documents written for a very specific in-group and isn't easy to understand without a lot of help. There are various misunderstandings of it which often someone decides they need to share as though they were facts. Trying to correct or nuance these misunderstandings often then quickly devolves into a discussion of conspiracies, religion, or politics.
    • mjfl 4y ago
      [flagged]
      • phonon 4y ago
        > God killing children for calling Elijah bald, Elisha
        • mjfl 4y ago
          Sorry, it's been 14 years.
      • SnowHill9902 4y ago
        That’s the problem: when people read it literally. Your comment is a perfect example of why the ancestor commenter tenses up.
      • dang 4y ago
        No religious flamewar, please. Not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  • TchoBeer 4y ago
    There's a lot of prejudgements based off of very little knowledge that goes on. I remember a comment section in a YouTube video about the eruv in New York where all the comments were either like "interesting do you know [innocent question]" and all the replies would be like "not a Jew but [patently wrong information]" or else were just pointing at the othered minority and their silly ways. I'm not Orthodox anymore, but my otherness from the Orthodox community is different from someone who didn't grow up in it and judges it or its teachings or trappings nonetheless. In this case, the comments are pretty neutral to positive, but I was rather worried there would be a lot of "Jews study this silly ancient text full of nonsense" going about.
    • akyu 4y ago
      I see. Thanks. The context matters quite a bit I suppose.
  • hash07e 4y ago
    • bradrn 4y ago
      Upon searching for a few words here, this list appears to have been copy-pasted between a bunch of antisemitic sites. It looks like ‘Hadarine’ isn’t even a real book — the only results are for very similar lists on the aforementioned antisemitic sites. There are also problems in translation: e.g. ‘filth’ is a highly misleading translation of niddah. Besides, this cherry-picked list leaves out any relevant context, which is supremely important in understanding or translating the Talmud. I wouldn’t give this post any credence as to what Judaism is actually about.
      • hash07e 4y ago
        • bradrn 4y ago
          > So several sages together came to these cherry picked conclusions. To clarify my post: I meant that out of the thousands of thousands of opinions recorded in the Talmud, that list selectively quoted five or six phrases which make it sound especially bad when taken out of context, while ignoring absolutely everything else. That’s what I meant by ‘cherry picked’. (Your other responses, especially the last few lines, are fairly common misunderstandings of Judaism and Jewish history, and I have neither the time nor the inclination to try and debate them online just right now.)
• skrbjc 4y ago
  Many Christians do something similar where they read a bible verse a day, so it's not as weird concept for many.
  • mbg721 4y ago
    Another common Christian error is to think of the Talmud as representative of the Judaism that they think they understand from the Old Testament, when it's actually a phenomenon from a couple hundred years later.
  • mhh__ 4y ago
    Readers of Knuth or Weinberg will know the same regardless of faith.
    • npsomaratna 4y ago
      Amen!
• malkia 4y ago
  Gentile here, an atheist at that - so is the Talmud like the xkcd's what-if :) (okay, this maybe completely inappropriate but it sounds like).
  • pinewurst 4y ago
    Yes - that’s actually a good way to think about it. It tries to define the practice of often obscure laws by exploring boundaries and corner cases.
• User23 4y ago
  If you don’t mind answering, why did you stop following the law? Also, I can relate because I feel that same tensing when I hear gentiles talking about Kabbalah.
  • TchoBeer 4y ago
    I never found many of them particularly meaningful, and my community doesn't accept homosexuality at all. I still keep the parts I like, and I live in a orthodox-left community (if you know the school Ramaz or Frisch in New York, my friend tells me it's about that Hashkafa) I'm just not as Orthodox as my parents.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• wheels 4y ago
  I wonder if I'm the only one reading that finds the term "gentile" as moderately offensive. It seems to map the world into Jewish ontology of "God's chosen people", and other. "Non-Jew" feels less abrasive since it only assumes the (obvious) existence of Judaism. I find Judaism super interesting historically (and have some Jewish ancestory and have spent a couple months in Israel), but still the term "gentile" in a modern, non-religious context feels abrasive.
  • mensetmanusman 4y ago
    What you get offended by is an excellent source of introspection. I have worked with teens of the wealthy elite who are offended if one asks them to do chores (some call it abuse). Our current culture glorifies victimhood, so people are more attuned to being offended.
    • unmole 4y ago
      How would you like to be referred to as a barbarian, a kaffir or a mleccha?
      • mensetmanusman 4y ago
        I would not care, especially if it is over the Internet. Not everyone has adjusted their priors on what it means for global dialogue, especially in the framework where there will always be someone in the world that will take offense to almost everything one says. I more just feel sorry for these people, as most of them are dealing with other pain and stress in life, and they lash out irrationally like this.
  • mgiampapa 4y ago
    You are not alone, having lived in Brooklyn in Orthodox areas, I have encountered some ridiculous racism from the orthodox community. Frankly even a trip to Costco in Brooklyn will give you a huge amount of perspective on how many view non-orthodox jews as "Others" and "Non-People". That said, I also worked with the Safardic Jewish community doing tech in the garment industry and as the token gentile I was loved on and respected for my work. Like every culture there is a broad spectrum, but if the Orthodox jews of NYC are anything to go on, I am seriously questioning why they are choosing to live here.
• daniel-cussen 4y ago
  daf yomi! That's a great idea! I still think I will require a lifetime to read the Bible, both Testaments, I'm Christian...and it hurts so much to read the Book. I get so many psychiatric symptoms, especially when the Bible talks about conspiracies I can't deal with that I feel like conspiracies are real, I can read only very little very slowly. And it's the only literature that does that to me...apart from reading Frankenstein in the fourth grade. And 1984. I love it though! You know what GOD said I should do, I can't actually read all of it, instead I can read Matthew (KJV) over and over! I've read Molokai five times, that's a start. That's the last book of Talmud, right? What do you make of it? It's dark. I actually know a gentile who learned Hebrew out of religious devotion, I can ask his opinion too, but not without asking yours as well. You can write me, I have an email in profile. Or post, either one. Mods, please forgive talking about religion in this forum.
  • TchoBeer 4y ago
    >Molokai I hope I'm not misunderstanding, but this is the last book in the books of the prophets, Malachi? >That's the last book of Talmud, right? The Talmud is not the old testament, and isn't even written in Hebrew, but instead is written in a very hebraicized version of Aramaic. It's almost all about Jewish law. Also, this confused me because in the Jewish ordering books like Psalms and Esther come after Malachi, but apparently Christians order it the other way around. You learn something new every day.
    • daniel-cussen 4y ago
      > Malachi? Yes that. I should have remembered. I suppose I'm remembering the sound of it...and wrongfully trusting whatever autocorrect I'm running. Hence Molokai. Oh, Talmud...second mistake. Old Testament is Torah, right? Psalms and Esther? Wait yes those come much before Malachi. Esther comes before Job, so Esther, then Job, then Psalms, then Proverbs, then Ecclesiastes, and many others in sequence. Then the last three of the Old Testament are Haggai, Zechariah, and then Malachi. And in fact the way it's set up, in that way, Matthew acts as the fulfillment of Malachi. Last book of The Hebrew Scriptures THE OLD TESTAMENT King James Version acts as preimage of the first book of THE NEW TESTAMENT of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ King James Version which is interesting, and perhaps contrary to Judaism due to ending the Old Testament on that note. In my reading of the Bible I tried reading Genesis, and realized it was very difficult to read, even scanning it was very difficult. Because I couldn't just treat it like a normal book and disrespect it! Leave it for later better. And further I could not get what I wanted out of Genesis, which a lot of people get out of it, which is a foundation in which to believe. With a very high or even total degree of literarity. Believe, literally, that is. Instead I said, well perhaps instead I can believe literally in the first book of the New Testament!? And for that I also had to read Malachi, as a bookend so to speak. A question for its answer to make sense. Then I read Matthew and it was beautiful, it was the best, it made sense of so many things and in fact if asked by a convict, which I intend to visit when I figure out how, and not only convicts in prisons but inmates in psych wards too (who don't even get Bibles, I didn't at least, in addition to lobotomistic censorship of the Bible)...when I visit these dark places, I can tell them, "Don't have to read it all at once. It's not one book, it is dozens of books, just with their covers stuck together so you can take them all together wherever you go. Like here. And in fact, the cover is a rectangle just like the door to your cell, and you can open it almost whenever you want. It is the door to your cell. Just start slowly, first read a letter, a really big single letter that's called "illuminated", we'll read it together. Then if you feel brave, a word above it, to know what we're reading. Now a verse. The Bible is not like a normal book, it doesn't truly have lines, it's not like that. This book is not a real Bible actually, a real Bible is what you remember of it in your head. It is what is in your brain, no use if you don't actually read it, not the most efficient way to decorate a bookshelf." I don't know what else I'll say to that convict or lunatic. I'll find out when I say it, in the moment.
• skissane 4y ago
  > This article is pretty ok, but its format is probably confusing for a gentile audience. As a gentile who knew about daf yomi already, I immediately got the reference. But no doubt I am far from your average gentile in that respect