Of course…I also don’t get why eating a chicken/cheese quesadilla is forbidden…chickens don’t give milk.
Shy, the official answer to the chicken cheese question is what is called a “fence” in jewish law. That means it may sometimes not be necessary, but it’s there to create a boundary to keep us in line. In the case of chicken, the argument goes that someone might see you mixing chicken with dairy, mistake the chicken for cow meat, or somehow come away from the experience thinking it’s okay to mix all meat with milk. However, even if you’re all alone, you can’t do it, because the fence is as good as law. This law was not in the torah which only stated “must not boil a kid in its mother’s milk.” But according to traditional orthodoxy, decries by certain rabbis from certain time periods are to be viewed no differently than law from the original torah.
The big disconnect comes when you consider soy hamburgers and fake bacon are okay to mix with dairy. Surely could be mistaken more than chicken.
Marge, I am coming up with an answer for you so hold on!
Gamer, while reading the Talmud I frequently come across the word “Mitzvah†and that seems to mean something like a “life task†or really good duty. I’m only guessing this by context. Would you by chance know what it means? Either way, I appreciate the effort.
As I understand it, customs like circumcision have to be considered from two directions. The first is in the domain of the essence of religion which strives to develop man’s perspective so as to allow him to become open to receive the help of higher consciousness available for that purpose. Those that strive to keep this perspective alive are called wise men in one form or another.
The second is the level of culture or society with no interest in human perspective mistakenly believing it has already been acquired. Those that perpetuate this belief concentrating instead on knowledge and tradition are called " teachers" in one form or another.
Naturally distinguishing between teachers and wise men in the context of human perspective is not easy and leads to self deception creating all sorts of “experts” assuring that everything will continue turning in circles.
From the essence of religion perspective circumcision was an attempted compensation for the necessity of wearing clothes.
Sex energy is extremely important in terms of consciously developing perspective since it is the creative force and the conscious growth of perspective is essentially creating the self that can experience it.
Naturally then if it is drained in a growing boy from the normal tendency towards excessive masturbation feeding negative emotions, it deprives him of his chance to gradually develop “understanding”
Clothes because of concealment and friction furthered the tendency towards masturbation. To keep this at a minimum circumcision was invented to decrease the sensitivity of the penis thereby compensating for the necessity of clothes.
Naturally, after a while, the reasoning was lost and survived as only a ritual serving no purpose because the idea of “Perspective”, like knowledge, as something to be acquired became largely lost so appreciating the nature of sex energy as part of our own inner growth became irrelevant and gradually the expulsion from the body of this nutrient became a desired goal furthered by entertainment. A great variety of experts came into being as specialists in the most effective ways of enjoying this expulsion of sex energy through expressions of negative emotion.
Christianity asserted that the presence of the Holy Spirit in the heart could offset the need for the physical circumcision for the purpose of “understanding” and stressed the circumcision of the heart allowing it to become open in order to receive the Spirit. But again, the desire and the ability to become vulnerable are not the same. This of course was no good for self esteem so more experts were developed to assert how they were the same through imagination.
Wow!
"Naturally then if it is drained in a growing boy from the normal tendency towards excessive masturbation feeding negative emotions, it deprives him of his chance to gradually develop “understanding”
Clothes because of concealment and friction furthered the tendency towards masturbation. To keep this at a minimum circumcision was invented to decrease the sensitivity of the penis thereby compensating for the necessity of clothes."
I can believe that!
Also, I understood about 99% of your post. I feel like throwing a party!
Nick, another good theory which reminds me of the theory that pig eating was outlawed because of trichanosis, and that since we now have refrigeration, the law is stupid. The problem in trying to decipher the origins is that they will never be acknowledged by the religious adherents. They will argue the wise men of the time KNEW FULL WELL the difference between tainted meat and a law from God. That is, they were smart enough to stay away from sick meat, they didn’t need a law for that. The pig is unlean just because.
Circumcision, likewise, is just because. To speculate that it evolved to dull the sex drive is just mere speculation, and surprising coming from someone who’s been known to beat off three times daily since the age of eleven – you know better than anyone that circumcision does nothing to quell the urge. But it doesn’t matter where the law came from. You either believe it came from God and you follow it. Or you believe it didn’t come from God and decide based on norms and folkways, that, as arbitrary as they seem, still play a small but significant part in social acceptance and as Marge points out, survival of a lineage, which in turn pumps out more people who are by nature not bothered by the process.
it takes a real iconoclast to say STOP THE MADNESS. But of all the madness going on out there, why focus on the penis tip in an already overly-horny, under-sexed male population? Don’t we have bigger fish to fry?
Gamer, the thread of course has a secular element to it because it’s mine. So, I welcome that people are looking at it from both angles. However, I do understand that Jews that practice the religion aren’t trying to figure out god’s (maybe g_d’s) motives. Many of us aren’t bound by these concerns though.
Also, the subject is very important to me as I would enjoy seeing the practice end amongst non-religious people.
Hey, could you answer my question from before? I’m curious.
Gamer, you forget that in the times circumcision was devised, all the artificial sensory sex stimulants had not been invented so people were more open to common sense. Of course in these times of a highly sexually charged environment, it no longer can serve the intended purpose so I agree, it is irrelevant.
Also the idea wasn’t to dull the sex drive but keeping its energy from feeding and strengthening the tendency to acquire negative emotions that feeds illusory egotism and denies human perspective
Again!
In historical psychology masturbation was seen as a bad thing for several reasons. The main reason was that a person can masturbate there interest in the opposite sex away. That can happen because no one does it quite like yourself. Secondly, a man might be unable to perform with a female due to an exhausted organ.
Always surprised at the wisdom of psychologists from 100 years ago I have had several clients with the second problem.
Anyway, masturbation was seen as a great way to get on an antisocial path in life. The family interest does not get reinforced by sexual activity with a woman.
My understanding of mitvot is commandments, but also any good deeds, using wisdom of the torah and talmud as a moral compass. Not to be confused with tzedakah, or charity, the mitvah can include anything from keeping kosher to driving someone in need to the airport. A mitzvah is actually a law, but it’s become more common to call any act of kindness a mitzvah. You can infer that kindness itself is a law, but this is not the case. Case in point, if a “goyim” gives you (a jew) improper change, you are under no obligation to tell him, but if you did, it is not technically a mitvah because it was not a commandment to do so; whereas if a jew gives you improper change, it would be a mitvah (commandment) to tell him. Perhaps this is another reason why people hated jews.
I’m waiting for them to take out the stuff about the laws not applying to goyim and then I’m going to convert.
Thanks for the information. I got the impression that that’s what it meant, but was not sure.
Actually, trichinosis comes from eating pork infected with a certain larva. Refridgeration doesn’t affect it, but normally the pig contracts this from eating garbage. The real reason it’s almost unheard of nowadays (in America at least- you still see it a lot in Asia) is that the diet of livestock is better controlled now. There are only about a dozen cases per year in all of North America.
I’ve always thought the prohibition against eating pork was probably based on Trichinellosis, and of course that’s why pork is generally served so damned overcooked. 137.5 degrees F is adequate to kill the worms. No need to cook the holy living shit out of it anymore.
How many Jews have gotten trichinosis in the last 5000 years I ask you! God’s lookin’ out for those son-of-a-guns!
No, it’s not because of trichonosis. Any animal which does not both chew its cud and have a split hoof, such as rabbit or hare, pig, horse, dog or cat is forbidden. Also, any predator, like a wolf or lion, and any scavenger or crustacean, such as lobster, shrimp, catfish, squid, jellyfish, etc. Pig gets singled out only because it is the most common of the forbidden animals to be eaten in secular society. If rabbit was a widespread staple, the jokes would be about rabbit instead of pork.
Phaedrus, I don’t know much about trichonosis except that it probably was not the reason…although it may as well have been. Since I don’t think it came from God on high, I should be obliged to submit an alternate theory for the true origin. I chalk it up to everything else…
smart, poetic people with too much time on their hands rushing to judgement and panicking about aesthetics, superstitions and all manner of quackery that led to a set of arbitrary rules that can’t be traced back to any one fallacy, hence there is still the persistent belief that it comes from God.
I read in the Talmud that certain animals are seen as noble or almost moral in nature, while others are not. It said that animals aren’t considered the same as people, but that it’s a Mitzvah to treat the noble animals well.
Perhaps it comes from something like that. I wish that Jews would publicaly discuss this stuff more frequently, it’s interesting.