Comment

Comment by Mordekhai ben-Yosef on September 9, 2012 at 7:54pm

Oh, I've read you before! I'll check it out; got you bookmarked now. I probably lost you before I got these backup services.

My sisters and their kids, and some of my PR cousins and most of the Jewish ones know how I feel and, well, it's a love-fest. No, really.

Anyway, onwards!

Comment by Mordekhai ben-Yosef on September 9, 2012 at 7:48pm

Comment by Alan Perlman on September 9, 2012 at 7:43pm

Mordekhai,

Go to my other blog -- www.thejewishatheist.com -- and read my personal story.

My family will absolutely not discuss religion with me.

Shalom,

Alan

Comment by Mordekhai ben-Yosef on September 9, 2012 at 10:18am

OK! What's your story? Are you Jewish? In the USA?

Comment by Selina Mannion on September 9, 2012 at 10:17am

i will join you

Comment by Mordekhai ben-Yosef on September 9, 2012 at 9:16am

Knock, knock! Is anybody here? I came for company and discussion. Who will join me?

Comment by Mordekhai ben-Yosef on September 6, 2012 at 5:09pm

Stop the world. I wanna get off.

Strongly opinionated, sorely under-educated people make pronouncements: Thus and so! That is all!

I use the Jewish definition of matriarchal descent. It's practical. And god didn't tell us to do it this way.

Comment by Alan Perlman on September 6, 2012 at 5:01pm

Mordekhai...I just meant that I did Jewish, not Christian or Muslim or Hindu things.  Extends to food, too. 

The "who is Jewish?" question is traditionally answered by determining whose womb the child came from. But by that definition, none of my brother's progeny, kids, grandkids, are Jewish (the thought would greatly unsettle my mother), because his wife isn't. 

There are various ways to be Jewish, including conversion and simple declaration (the humanist definition), not all accepted by all who call themselves Jews.  It's complex, but I was trying to keep it simple - genes, culture, and corned beef on rye. 

I had a bar mitzvah party at the Adelphia Hotel in Phila., with a punch fountain!

I too make a point of understanding what I don't believe. It's true - most people don't know the difference between the Torah and ther Bible!  I read the whole thing and wrote a book, "An Atheist Reads the Torah."  Available on amazon. 

There's not much there, but Jews revere it.  Obviously not the work of God or Moses, but, as investigation shows, of four different writers and four source texts.

Comment by Mordekhai ben-Yosef on September 6, 2012 at 2:29pm

Alan, you threw me off with the "more seders than masses" remark. And I know people with "Jewish" surnames who are not Jews by birth according to Jewish law and custom.

I never met my dad's parents. Grandpa was also good at making babies. His other talent was sopping up liquor in a saloon on Allen Street in Manhattan.

I got a good Jewish education. I'm one of those who understands what I don't believe. Jewishness is almost a social club for the secularized. They don't know (as most people don't) a simple fact like the Torah is simply the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. Oy!

My mother was raised mostly by her maternal grandfather. He never took her to any church (her divorced parents never baptized her) and told her he didn't believe that Jesus was anyone's "savior". Mom later came to theorize that the old boy was a descendant of Spanish conversos and therefore a crypto-Jew. Well, it's certainly possible.

Anyway, a good Jewish education teaches one to ask questions. I asked many and eventually, the answers all came down to, "Why god?"

And on I go.

Comment by Alan Perlman on September 6, 2012 at 2:13pm

Mordekhai,

Right, they don't even believe in the legitimacy of the state of Israel, fucking idiots.

My Jewish cred is thorough: two Eastern European families of immigrants (maternal grandfather Hymie Schwartz, a pattern-maker, and Jake Perlman, a tailor, something of a character, packed heat, maybe in case the Cossacks came back).  Yiddish and Yiddish accent on both sides. Parents spoke English, thoroughly acculturated into watered-down, drive-by Judaism.  Orthodox wouldn't consider them Jewish, but they don't care.

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