I used to think that secular Jews simply had a bias against all religion. Whenever there would be some Muslim blowing himself up to kill Jews the secular Jews I knew would always blame it on religion and/or the State of Israel.
Of course to any average Joe like myself this seems ridiculous. No all religions are alike. Islam is extremely evil. Others and in fact most are mixtures of good and bad elements. Blaming all religion seemed simplistic to an unreasonable degree.
But on further consideration perhaps there is something about religion that grabs a hold of people and make them see things that aren't there. I remember this distinctly during the time I was in Jerusalem.
I don't need to go into my own experience because I am sure that anyone who has been to Jerusalem has seen this.
My learning has been slow recently. We were doing the laws of the seventh year in the Rambam. So I thought to breach this subject to my learning partner since things were going slow anyway.
His example of this was a follows: he used to go to the Western Wall every day. He had been thrown out of the diaspora yeshiva and went to live with Peretz. Peretz once on the way home took another intransigent person. So David and this other fellow got into a conversation. After some time taking that fellow told David that he is Moses the prophet. No surprise there. Then he revealed the name of the Messiah and identity and address. I asked him "Why did you not get his phone number and email?" And he said in two weeks the messiah will be revealed and there will be no more need for army bases in Israel and he will then give to David 200 acres in Mitzpe Rimon. And in case he needs a sign he gave to him 4 digits of the lotto number for the next day.
This goes on but you get the idea.
I think the Reform are right about a lot of things but they simply go off in the social justice direction way too far until they end up doing and saying things not like the Torah. The the insane religious world do the exact same thing in the direction of rituals. In order to keep Torah you simply can't accept either package deal but you have to do the work yourself to see how the Torah applies to your own life.
As far as religion goes there does seem to be a problem with getting too fanatical. The reform are right about that. But fanatical nuns don't blow up Jews. The reason people blame religion is because they don't want to blame Islam
Most of the debate over the Islam has less to do with advancing an explanation of terrorism than finding reasons not to accept some proposed explanation. People who otherwise aren't concerned with terrorism become very concerned when terrorism is credited to Islam. The motives for rejecting this hypotheses: people either don't want to believe the hypothesis.
Of course to any average Joe like myself this seems ridiculous. No all religions are alike. Islam is extremely evil. Others and in fact most are mixtures of good and bad elements. Blaming all religion seemed simplistic to an unreasonable degree.
But on further consideration perhaps there is something about religion that grabs a hold of people and make them see things that aren't there. I remember this distinctly during the time I was in Jerusalem.
I don't need to go into my own experience because I am sure that anyone who has been to Jerusalem has seen this.
My learning has been slow recently. We were doing the laws of the seventh year in the Rambam. So I thought to breach this subject to my learning partner since things were going slow anyway.
His example of this was a follows: he used to go to the Western Wall every day. He had been thrown out of the diaspora yeshiva and went to live with Peretz. Peretz once on the way home took another intransigent person. So David and this other fellow got into a conversation. After some time taking that fellow told David that he is Moses the prophet. No surprise there. Then he revealed the name of the Messiah and identity and address. I asked him "Why did you not get his phone number and email?" And he said in two weeks the messiah will be revealed and there will be no more need for army bases in Israel and he will then give to David 200 acres in Mitzpe Rimon. And in case he needs a sign he gave to him 4 digits of the lotto number for the next day.
This goes on but you get the idea.
I think the Reform are right about a lot of things but they simply go off in the social justice direction way too far until they end up doing and saying things not like the Torah. The the insane religious world do the exact same thing in the direction of rituals. In order to keep Torah you simply can't accept either package deal but you have to do the work yourself to see how the Torah applies to your own life.
As far as religion goes there does seem to be a problem with getting too fanatical. The reform are right about that. But fanatical nuns don't blow up Jews. The reason people blame religion is because they don't want to blame Islam
Most of the debate over the Islam has less to do with advancing an explanation of terrorism than finding reasons not to accept some proposed explanation. People who otherwise aren't concerned with terrorism become very concerned when terrorism is credited to Islam. The motives for rejecting this hypotheses: people either don't want to believe the hypothesis.
