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Thursday, January 24, 2008

Judaism

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Alfred Lilienthal said fifty years ago that most Jews have no idea what Judaism is about. Is it ethnicity? Is it religion? Not surprisingly then, most Christians have no idea what Judaism is about. Most Christians don't know what Christianity is about. That isn't surprising either. The abbot (Uchiyama Roshi) of the Zen Temple where I lived in 1970 said most Japanese people don't know what Buddhism or Shinto are about. Despite that, Japan is considered to be a Buddhist country and Shinto has been part of daily life there for many thousands of years.

Jews have not only been enthralled with various messiahs down through the ages, in the twentieth century large numbers turned to Communism, Zionism and Freudian psychoanalysis as "religious" alternatives to Judaism — apart from various branches of Judaism itself, such as "Conservative", "Reform", "Orthodox" and their many subsets. Despite the supposed downtrodden situation of Jews everywhere throughout history, some Jews, everywhere, seem to have done fairly well throughout history and Christians often have been led around by the nose. And at various times and places Christians have oppressed Jews. Muslims have treated both with equitability. The record is there for all to read.

Wikipedia lists Jewish messiah claimants.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_Messiah_claimants

There seems to have always been a struggle for the hearts and minds of Jews. You can see it in Exodus. Remember the golden calf? So a civil war between Zionists and everyone else, starting in the 19th century — or earlier — is not hard to imagine. What everyone sees in the mass media (which Zionists own today) is the Zionist version of the world and the Jews.

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