Trutharchivist

I'll be honest here, it's all nice and well to say that, but just today my thoughts drifted to two occasions where Christians attempted to force Jews to abandon their faith. As a matter of fact, both were public arguments regarding matters of faith, and in at least one of them it's widely believed that the Jew won - and then had to flee the country for fear of prosecution.

Un-christlike, perhaps. But Christians did show a tendency of working this way.

And now I may have antagonised you along with 80% of the Shard. So, well, maybe I should accept that this isn't supposed to be inherent in Christianity any more than it is in Judaism. No one here tried to force me to convert, after all.

So, sorry for the harsh reply, but I'm not sure I was overly surprised to learn of the Lavater incident. I guess Christians at the time were simply convinced that if someone is smart they have to agree with them.

Well, you see, the idea that the Messiah will one day come predates Christianity. It's true that Messianic Jews is the term used for Jews who practice Christianity as well, but believing in the Messiah does not necessarily include believing that it's Jesus. 

The Messianic Ideal, in this case, is the idea that one day a savior will come, bring us to the Holy Land, save us from our foes and build the 3rd Temple. Said savior is supposed to be descended from David's line of kings, and is called the Messiah.

I have no idea how many you missed, you didn't reply since the first one... So it's two at max. Somewhat similarly to our PM (if slightly worse in this case), I'm slow to write those and procrastinate a lot. There should be only one more in this specific series, then it's moving on to Eastern Europe.

One day I might attempt to talk more about Mizrahi Jews, too.

Hey, upvoting blog entries is possible! I did not notice that.

Also, I would like to not be turned into a Sith lord in the near future, thank you. Though Brandon apparently thinks they're moral, upright and good (that's a name of an Intentionally Blank episode).

Hopefully going to dive into Reform, Conservative and Ultra Orthodox Judaism soon.

That's the thing: the issue was not that the ideas of enlightenment contradicted Judaism, it was that in order to access those ideas you had to jump over a cultural gap. Emancipation, in and of itself, doesn't have to damage religion... But when religion is what sets you apart from your neighbor, it's going to. Then there were well-intentioned extremists, though the well intentioned part depends on your point of view.