Hating Ezra

Many people walk away from my blog with the mistaken belief that I hate Ezra for corrupting the Torah. Nothing could be further from the truth. Ezra was a good man, and a prophet, who was faced with a bad situation (the Torah had been destroyed). He did the best he could with a very bad situation; he rewrote the Torah from the scraps he had, filling in the blanks as best as he could, and charging the people to wait for Elijah to come to reveal the truth. He also, as I understand it, gave the charge to the Sanhedrin to protect the Torah. Before Ezra, the Sanhedrin was a weak group that didn't actually do very much that got recorded. After Ezra they gained significant power over interpreting the Torah. They essentially became a Torah preservation committee; as it was put by later writers, their function was to "build a fence around the Torah." Unfortunately, this acted as a pill wrapped in poison; although they did preserve Ezra's Torah and the knowledge that a Tishbite, a stranger, would come and restore it, they took tremendous liberties with the Torah, eventually making the permissible forbidden and the forbidden permissible. I will come back and edit this with details of some of those rulings later.

Muslims For Progressive Values

I came across a group called Muslims for Progressive Values and learned that they are contemplating creating their own madhab. While I may agree with them on some issues, and respect them as Muslims, I have some serious points to bring up about the idea of creating your own madhab, apparently just to be more liberal and accepting of homosexuality. Forming a new madhab, I believe, will just serve to create further division in the Ummah. The pressing need of the hour is solidarity among Muslims, not further division. Muslims are threatened on all sides; we do not need to be enemies of each other as well. Instead of setting sail from the mainland in a newly constructed canoe, I would suggest pouring more effort into repairing the existing cruise liners. There were times in the past that the Muslim community was much more liberal; even today, most Muslims are far more liberal than they would care to admit. There were times when the Muslim Caliphate did not punish homosexuality, and the other human rights you seem to believe have never existed before in the Muslim world were commonplace.
Nevertheless, if you are going to persist in this, there are some serious issues you must consider: How will you derive law? What method do you propose for creating a judicial structure? It is necessary for a madhab to have a method of deriving law; what will yours be?
And once you have your method, please consider the following issues:
Evolution: What is your stand on the origin of the universe and its age? How did humans come to be?
Mental Illness: What, in your opinion, are the causes of mental illness? Which illnesses exempt you from criminal accountability? How should mental illness be treated/cured? When is an individual considered cured? What is the status of an individual who commits suicide while suffering from a severe mental illness (such as depression or bipolar disorder)?
Prayer Method: You believe women can lead men in prayer; yet what about when a woman is menstruating? Is she required to pray or not? What is the correct way to pray (position of hands, etc)? How do you even decide this?
Rights of Men/Women towards each other: What are the standards of modesty required? What are the responsibilities of family members towards each other? What constitutes a family?
Divorce: Who can initiate a divorce? What is the necessary method? When is the couple considered divorced?
Marriage without a Wali: If you accept gay marriage, many parents will refuse to give their children in marriage even if it is acceptable in your madhab. Do you permit individuals to marry without a wali? Who is even required to have a wali?
Adoption/Surrogacy/IVF/Sperm Donation: When are you considered the parent of a child? What are your responsibilities towards your children? What are your children's responsibilities towards you?

These are just some of the issues I can think of off the top of my head. I may add more.

Comparative theocracy: The problem with Christian Theocracy

I've received a bajillion and two comments, emails, and IM's with questions/misunderstandings/general ignorance about comparative theocracy. So I'm going to do a series on what Jewish, Christian, and Muslim (Sunni) theocracies really look like, and the modern issues involved in each. Because I enjoy picking on Christians, and because this section is the easiest, I'm going to start here.
Judaism has the frameworks of how to build a viable theocracy (although it currently doesn't have one). The Jewish theocracy runs under a king and a religious court (the Sanhedrin or Beit Din Ha'Gadol). [There are actually two sanhedrins, the greater and lesser, but let's keep this simple, this one is an explanation to Christians, I'll go into more detail later when I discuss Jewish theocracy]. The Beit Din Ha'Gadol fills the legislative and judicial roles. All laws and judgments are derived based on the Torah (the oral Torah and the 613 of the written) and the rulings of earlier sages (although sometimes later judges will disagree with the earlier judges), and in all cases, the majority decides. The Oral Torah will get its own article eventually, when I get around to it. Donating using the paypal button on the side greatly increases the probability of me writing it sooner than later. Commenting also helps because I see people are reading what I'm writing. Anyway, back to the topic at hand: comparative theocracy.
Muslim courts also have a way to derive law. Muslim governments are under a caliph chosen for his knowledge and goodness. The courts rule and issue fatwas based on the precedents set in the Qur'an, hadith (sayings and actions of the Prophet Muhammad [saws]), and the consensus of other scholars, current and past. The madhab (school of thought) you subscribe to dictates the relative importance given to each of these categories and the credence you give to the narrators of various hadiths.
Christianity, especially Protestantism, lacks a way to derive jurisprudence. The problem stems back to the very earliest days of Christianity. The Christians tried, it seems, to have the apostles serve as a sort of Sanhedrin, deriving their rulings from existing Jewish law in combination with the teachings of Jesus and the prophecies of the Jewish prophets. An issue that faced the early church was whether or not gentile converts had to first convert to Judaism to be saved. Acts 15 reports the debate that went on among the apostles. In the end, they decided to write a simple letter to the gentile converts explaining their obligations as Christians:

²³And they wrote letters by them after this manner; The apostles and elders and brethren send greeting unto the brethren which are of the Gentiles in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia.
 ²⁴Forasmuch as we have heard, that certain which went out from us have troubled you with words, subverting your souls, saying, Ye must be circumcised, and keep the law: to whom we gave no such commandment:
 ²⁵It seemed good unto us, being assembled with one accord, to send chosen men unto you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul,
 ²⁶Men that have hazarded their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
 ²⁷We have sent therefore Judas and Silas, who shall also tell you the same things by mouth.
 ²⁸For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things;
 ²⁹That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well. Fare ye well.

In summary, the gentile converts to Christianity were give three rules: Don't eat meat sacrificed to idols, make sure the meat is slaughtered by having its throat cut, not by strangulation; don't eat blood; and don't fornicate. Pretty simple. This is a good basis for a Christian theocracy to work from; a court considers options, includes the teachings of Jesus, the law of Moses, and when all else fails, direct divine revelation in the form of visions. This could have been the beginning of a Christian theocracy.
Insert Paul.
Paul writes to the Corinthians in 1 Cor. 8 that actually, it's ok to eat food sacrificed to idols; it's just that some people have a weak conscience. So as not to offend people with a weak conscience, don't eat the meat in front of them, but otherwise it's ok, no big deal. You can go to the grocery store and buy meat that was sacrificed to an idol, as long as you don't tell anyone. But in the same letter he upholds another of the four simple rules: in 1 Cor. 5, he lamblasts a couple who are husband and wife, but used to be son and step-mother. So apparently, the meat part isn't that important, but the fornication part is. Or is it? How can one be sure? According to 1 Cor. 8, basically anything goes as long as your conscience is ok with it. The rules given by the legitimate apostles can apparently be ignored; if they can be, what else can be? The problem is obvious today. Some of the laws of Moses are considered valid; others aren't because Christians claim to be under the "new covenant". Which ones are and are not valid? Apparently, the individual should be guided only by his conscience. This freedom of the individual to make and break laws as he sees convenient means that there can be no true Christian theocracy. In Judaism and Islam, if crazy judge X rules that X is permissible, but the majority of the scholars disagree with him, crazy judge X is discredited and his ruling can be ignored. In Christianity, crazy judge A has as much right to make a law as any other judge And that is the problem with Christian theocracy.

Upgrade Your Browser

Hello dear readers, I just wanted to take a moment to say that I do read my stats from time to time and I see that many of you are using Internet Explorer. I just wanted to encourage you all to take ten seconds to download a faster, safer browser: Chrome

It's totally free and walks you through the install process. If you don't like the overhead amounts of space used by Chrome or the Google tracking part (though it is beyond me why you would choose IE as an alternative for those reasons as it is infinitely worse), here's another free browser that works basically identically to Chrome but without those issues: Chromium

If you don't like either of them because they work hit-or-miss with Adobe products such as Flash-based games and pdf viewers on computers with small hard drives such as netbooks, you have my sympathy. I too know that html games are few and far between and that flash games are vastly superior, yet for some reason Chrom* products tend to be temperamental about them. You might like to try Lunescape. Now what's interesting about this browser is that it has three modes: Chrom*, Firefox, and IE. That's right, you can have the fun of experiencing all three from one browser! I find it too bulky and with too many built-in toolbars for my primary use, but it is handy when it comes to running programs that just don't work well with Chrom*. I'm personally not a huge fan of firefox: it doesn't instant update like Chrom*, it is bulky and I never really fell in love with the extensions on it like I did Chrom*. However, I understand that it does have a large and loyal fanbase, and it is a good stepdown browser for people who have only used IE before. That's about it, readers, don't forget to drop me a line. I'm going to eventually update this old blog a bit to make it look more "hip."

Irrefutable Argument Against Christianity

This is original to me, so if you hear anyone else use it and say they created it, they're frauds and much worse debaters. I came across it while reading the Bible cover to cover the ninth time. Good luck wrapping your head around it, Christians.
First, Christians, I have to verify that you hold standard Christian dogma. You probably believe:
1. The Bible we have today exists in its original form and has not been altered.
2. Every prophecy of the Bible will be fulfilled:
Isa. 55:11 So shall My word be that goeth forth out of My mouth: it shall not return unto Me void, except it accomplish that which I please, and make the thing whereto I sent it prosper.
3. Jesus is the Messiah.
4. Jesus died and was resurrected.
5. Jesus had no literal, physical children.
6. The resurrected do not get married, and therefore do not procreate. For this, pick up your favorite Bible and read Matthew 22:30.

Now turn to Ezekiel 46. Are you familiar with this ten chapter arc? Probably not; anyway it's about the end of the world as we know it and the beginning of the Messianic era. There's a war to end all wars, the ultimate battle between good and evil; Armageddon as it's entered the popular jargon, but Gog and Magog in this passage. That's chapters 38 and 39. The next eight chapters all deal with various facets of the messianic age; all that peace and love and lions lying down with lambs and beating swords into plow-shears stuff. Chances are you don't believe this has happened yet, but on the off-chance you do, don't worry, I'll prove it hasn't in a second.
Now, after the battle of Gog and Magog, there's a giant temple. An angel and Ezekiel measure it. The specific measurements aren't important to this argument; what IS important is that it: a) is a literal, physical temple on earth and b) has not been built yet. If you deny that it is physical and believes it refers to a temple in heaven, I refer you to Ezekiel 42:20--"He measured it by the four sides; it had a wall round about, the length five hundred, and the breadth five hundred, to make a separation between that which was holy and that which was common. " How did something that wasn't holy get into heaven? If you deny that this has not happened yet, just do some basic research into the history of the temples: no temple has been built matching the description provided here; the only temple standing after Ezekiel was Herod's, and it was a rectangle, not a square like this one. Now that you agree to a) and b), refer to point 2, above. If this temple has not been built yet, it must be built in the future; and the time specified is the Messianic era.
To briefly recap, we have now established that this passage refers to the Messianic era, a literal time on earth that has not come yet. Now, who will rule during the messianic era. Obviously, the messiah, right? He's called the prince in this passage.
The prince gets a peice of land from God, so that he doesn't need to take it from the people:
Ezekiel 45:7 And for the prince, on the one side and on the other side of the holy offering [the temple and adjacent housing for the priests] and of the possession of the city, in front of the holy offering and in front of the possession of the city, on the west side westward, and on the east side eastward; and in length answerable unto one of the portions, from the west border unto the east border 8 of the land; it shall be to him for a possession in Israel, and My princes shall no more wrong My people; but they shall give the land to the house of Israel according to their tribes.
What's important here is that this is a physical plot of land, one of several plots specifically defined and bequeathed. Refer back to point a) as necessary if this is not readily accepted.

SUCKER PUNCH: Now here's where it gets really interesting. Read Ezekiel 46:16-18. Should read something like this:
16 Thus saith the Lord GOD: If the prince give a gift unto any of his sons, it is his inheritance, it shall belong to his sons; it is their possession by inheritance. 17 But if he give of his inheritance a gift to one of his servants, it shall be his to the year of liberty; then it shall return to the prince; but as for his inheritance, it shall be for his sons. 18 Moreover the prince shall not take of the people's inheritance, to thrust them wrongfully out of their possession; he shall give inheritance to his sons out of his own possession; that My people be not scattered every man from his possession.'

Hang on now. Given point 3 (above), insert Jesus into where it says prince. So, according to this, he's supposed to give some land to his....sons. Refer to point 5. Now you will probably suggest that he'll have sons sometime in the future. Remember that verse in Matthew from point 6? Go back to it. Now refer back to point 4.
By now you should see the problem. The next thing a Christian generally says is something about all of us being sons of God. Clarify the difference between Jesus' "sons" and his "servants." Additionally, refer back to the area of the land in question. It's actually not all that big; it's the same size as the temple, if I remember correctly. Not every Christian who ever lived could stand shoulder to shoulder on it, much less live off it. How does Jesus decide who is his son and who is just a servant? You should now be pretty exasperated, as it should be pretty clear that just like everything else in this passage, this verse was meant to refer to literal physical descendants.

Good luck trying to work out an alternate way to understand this. Should you somehow succeed, do tell me.

Sinat Chinam and Exile

Baseless hatred. Every Jew with even the smallest Talmud learning knows that this is the reason given in Yoma 9B for the destruction of the temple. Baseless hatred is the reason that we were thrown out of the Holy Land, baseless hatred is the reason that we incurred Divine wrath. To bring blessings upon ourselves and end this curse, we are told that we must rectify this: We must cease from baseless hatred.

Yet have we?

All I ask is that you watch these clips, and think. Really think.

Death of Sarah/Restoration of Qetura

Jews believe that the lives of the Prophets are a foreshadowing of our own (ma'aseh avot siman l'vanim, as discussed by Ramban and others). What do the lives of the patriarchs tell us about the birth of Islam? In fact they tell us a great deal; and we can learn from them that we, as Jews, should not shun or fear the growth of Islam, but should welcome and embrace it as the natural extension of history.

First, what was the story of the Patriarchs? (Please note that I will be citing exclusively Jewish sources, to appeal to a Jewish audience). Abraham took two wives, as we know: Hagar (later called Qetura: Bereshit Rabbah 61:4, Rashi, etc) and Sarah. As we know, both women were princesses. We know that Abraham sent Hagar away at the demand of Sarah, but continued to visit her in the desert. A midrash (Arabic equivalent: hadith) about these visits is as follows:

Ishmael married and had four children and he prospered and had flocks and herds and tents according to the merits of Abraham his father. Some time after his father sent him away - perhaps three years – Abraham said to Sarah, “I will go and see my son Ishmael; I yearn to see him, for I have not seen him in a long time.” Sarah agreed, on one condition: that Abraham not dismount from his camel [so that he would not resume relations with Hagar, to whom he was still married]. Abraham went and he reached the place where Ishmael lived. There, he met Ishmael's wife. He greeted her and asked her, “Where is Ishmael?”

She answered, “Off, hunting game.”

Still mounted on the camel Abraham said, “My daughter, give me a little water, that I may drink, for I am weary from the journey; and a little bread.” Ishmael’s wife answered, “No water, no bread.” The Midrash says that all this time while she was talking with Abraham, she also was beating her children in the tent, cursing them and cursing Ishmael. So Abraham said, “When your husband returns tell him, ‘A very old man from the land of Canaan came here to seek you. I did not ask him who he was, and seeing you were not here he spoke to me and said, ‘When Ishmael your husband returns tell him, Put away this tent pin, which you have placed here, and put another tent pin in its place.’" And thereupon Abraham returned home. Ishmael finally returned to his tent. Hearing this message from his wife, he knew the visitor was his father and that the "tent pin" referred to his wife. He immediately divorced her and married another.

Another three years passed and Abraham said, “I will go see Ishmael, my son, because I have not seen him for a long time.” He made the same agreement with Sarah and he went off on his camel again. He met the new wife; and some say her name was Fatima. This one invited him in and offered him food and drink. He could not dismount, because of his promise to Sarah; so the woman brought him water and bread. Abraham told her, “Tell your husband, ‘A very old man from the land of Canaan came here and asked for you and I brought him food and water, and he ate and drank and his heart was glad.’ And tell him, ‘Your tent-pin is very good. Do not put it away from the tent.’” And Abraham went on his way and returned to Sarah.

Ishmael returned again and Fatima repeats all this to him. And here the Midrash says, “Ishmael realized that his father still loved him.” Even though Ishmael had not seen Abraham, he knew his father was periodically checking in on him; that he was concerned with his welfare; that he had not forsaken him.

The immense love of Abraham for Ishmael is evident in this narative; as is Ishmael's obedience to Abraham, even while they were separated. But during this time, the Rabbis tell us that Hagar's heart was not faithful to God while in the desert, and that she complained against Him: "Yesterday thou saidest: 'I will multiply thy seed exceedingly' [Gen. xvi. 10]; and now my son is dying of thirst" (although it is well worth noting that Hagar remained faithful throughout this period to Abraham). This time of Ishmael in the desert is the time of b'nei Yishma'el before Mohammad. Most had relapsed back into idolatry; idols filled the Kabah and Mecca.

Returning to the narative of Abraham, when did the restoration of Ishmael and Qetura occur? In Parshat Chayei Sarah, we read וַיֹּסֶף אַבְרָהָם וַיִּקַּח אִשָּׁה, וּשְׁמָהּ קְטוּרָה. And Abraham took another wife, and her name was Qetura, because her deeds had become like Qeturot, incense (Midrash Rabbah). Ishmael and Qetura then lived with Abraham until his death (as per Bereshit 25:9). And when was the death of Sarah, but after the akidah? Now, therefore, the akidah was the destruction of the Temple, for there has been no greater loss to our people; and the death of Sarah was the loss of the semchiha in the fourth or fifth centuries C.E. And it was only after this that Mohammad, peace and blessings be upon him, was sent to the world. The proper response of b'nei Israel is to accept the return of their brother and to receive him again into the family, as it was in the beginning: וַיִּקְבְּרוּ אֹתוֹ יִצְחָק וְיִשְׁמָעֵאל, בָּנָיו, אֶל-מְעָרַת, הַמַּכְפֵּלָה And when these two live in peace, a new era will dawn.

וְהָיָה יְהוָה לְמֶלֶךְ, עַל-כָּל-הָאָרֶץ; בַּיּוֹם הַהוּא, יִהְיֶה יְהוָה אֶחָד--וּשְׁמוֹ אֶחָד.

The Lord will be king over all the earth; in that day will God be One, and His Name One.