Apparently they do things in conservative Judaism basically the same way they do them in some of the mainline denominations. About the latest decision to accept "gays and lesbians in seminaries for training as rabbis:
... discussion of the issue had been going on for a quite a while at the [Jewish Theological Seminary], according to Arnold M. Eisen, the chancellor-elect. "It was a very long, deliberate, and thoughtful process of consultation," he said. Mr. Eisen said he had heard from hundreds of Conservative Jews during the discussion process.
I bet he did. A few more years of discussion and process, and perhaps he and the leaders of certain mainline denominations who have excelled in processing and dialoguing unto death might simply open a joint seminary for "clergy" of the religion of your choice or a blend thereof. Jesus was a Jew, and the "Jesus" of some mainline seminary would hardly be offensive to certain Jews, after all.
I can guarantee that even if "conservative" Jews end up accepting gays, lesbians, necrophiliacs, polyamorists, bestialists, witches, pederasts, sadists, and masochists into their seminaries they will never ever accept Jesus, no matter how watered down.
As Dennis Prager has pointed out, the real religion of most American Jews is liberalism, not Judaism. And I add that their main religious belief is that anyone who believes in Jesus is either wicked or stupid. Liberal Jews define themselves as the not-Christians and that will never change.
Posted by: Judy Warner | March 27, 2007 at 06:50 PM
Judy,
Watch those "nevers"... Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. Stuff happens.
Posted by: Wonders for Oyarsa | March 27, 2007 at 08:44 PM
Of course, the conclusion is that one who accepts Jesus cannot remain a liberal Jew.
The next question is, can one accept Jesus and remain a liberal Christian? That may depend on how you define "liberal," and I wouldn't offer a categorial "no." However, as Passenger 1 in Seat 1 on Infinity Bus 1, I can see the possibilities.
Posted by: Dcn. Michael D. Harmon | March 28, 2007 at 10:07 AM
Judy, you sound just as anti-semitic as the renowned fascist Dennis Prager. BTW, I think the catholic church has already provided the job of choice for many gays, necrophiliacs, polyamorists, bestialists, witch-hunters (in days gone by), pederasts, sadists, and masochists. And, of course, don't forget all the pedophiles !
Posted by: billy shears | March 28, 2007 at 12:45 PM
"Anti-Semitic" and "Fascist"! I'm appalled to find such men still walk among us. Why...why...why...why, he ought to be given a fair trial and then shot like the mangy dog that he is!
Posted by: Gntas | March 28, 2007 at 01:26 PM
Sorry I forgot the pedophiles. I'm just giving a report based on acquaintances and family members.
Posted by: Judy Warner | March 28, 2007 at 01:54 PM
Well, Judy, at least you didn't base it on MC's participants! :-)
Posted by: James A. Altena | March 28, 2007 at 04:19 PM
Why, are y'all Jewish?
Posted by: Judy Warner | March 28, 2007 at 06:59 PM
Since the web is forever, and the context of my remarks might not always be among friends, let me clarify to say
1) Obviously I exaggerate.
2) My comments do not apply to Orthodox Jews.
3) Signed, Judy Kaplan Warner
Posted by: Judy Warner | March 29, 2007 at 04:21 AM
Dear Judy,
Spiritually, I trust, yes -- Rom. 2:28-29
Posted by: James A. Altena | March 29, 2007 at 06:56 AM
"As Dennis Prager has pointed out, the real religion of most American Jews is liberalism, not Judaism. And I add that their main religious belief is that anyone who believes in Jesus is either wicked or stupid. Liberal Jews define themselves as the not-Christians and that will never change."
Think about these words very carefully. This is the typical kind of hateful stereotyping of the extreme right. The motivating factor in their politics is to generate hatred. This tactic has always (historically) ended in failure (but often at a high cost to those concerned).
Would Jesus himself be associated these remarks and this kind of politics ?
The other end of extreme politics generates totalitarianism, so the answer is obvious. Humans flourish only in an environment of middle-of-the-road, compassionate government.
My post about the catholic church was just to show how easily maliciousness can be applied to almost any group.
So what is the real religion (agenda ?) of Prager and his "town hall" ilk ? What is the real (agenda ?) religion of Judy Warner and her "friends" ?
Posted by: billy shears | March 29, 2007 at 08:57 AM
My real religion is Christianity. Dennis Prager's real religion is Judaism. As for my real agenda, I would say it's trying to discern and express the truth, though I don't always succeed. And Dennis Prager's agenda is probably the same, though he does it better than I do.
I didn't understand your previous post because calling Dennis Prager a fascist is so ludicrous that I thought you were making some obscure ironic point that I didn't grasp.
But apparently I was making an obscure ironic point that *you* didn't grasp. So I will ask you what you
think my agenda is? Do you think I hate Jews? Do you think Dennis Prager hates Jews? I think Jesus had some harsh words to say about the Jews of his time, and I don't think he was a fascist for it.
Posted by: Judy Warner | March 29, 2007 at 09:11 AM
Definition of fascist (from Dictionary.com):(3) a person who is dictatorial or has extreme right-wing views.
You don't think maybe just a few orthodox right-wing zionists have extreme right-wing views ? The many orthodox Jews I've come into contact with over the years, like Prager, reserve special condemnation and deep hatred for ALL non-orthodox Jews.
And you personally think that "most American Jews'(who are all non-orthodox) main religious belief is that anyone who believes in Jesus is either wicked or stupid. Liberal Jews define themselves as the not-Christians and that will never change." That's a lot of individuals to stereotype. So, yes, I think you really hate Jews. But wait a minute...you said, "My comments do not apply to Orthodox Jews"
So, what do orthodox Jews think about Christians ?
Well, I'm afraid it's the "seven laws of noah" for us:
http://www.simpletoremember.com/vitals/jewsandjesus.htm
Posted by: billy shears | March 29, 2007 at 09:52 AM
Prager, like Michael Medved and Rabbi Daniel Lapin, is constantly talking about what good friends American Christians are to the Jews and Israel, and bemoaning the fact that so many Jews are wary of Christians or even demonize them.
For example, in this column, Why Are Jews Liberal? he writes:
"Just as liberal Jews fear a resurgent Christianity despite the fact that contemporary Christians are the Jews' best friends, leftist Jews fear American nationalism despite the fact that Americans who believe in American exceptionalism are far more pro-Jewish and pro-Israel than leftist Americans."
And in this column, Jews Who Support the Christian Right, he defends himself from an attacker:
"Jews who support the Christian right are "Uncle Jakes."
So says a pro-Israeli Jewish official in his recent column for the Israel Policy Forum, a pro-Israel organization. "Uncle Jake" is M. J. Rosenberg's term for Jewish equivalent of "Uncle Tom." Just as the left sees conservative blacks as traitors to African-Americans, so it sees conservative Jews as traitors to the Jewish people.
I am the "Uncle Jake" most criticized in the Rosenberg column.
That a Jew on the left would use this term to describe Jews who support conservative Christians gives one an idea of how irrational, how hysterical are the arguments of the Jewish (and non-Jewish) left. And lacking a rational basis, they frequently rely on name-calling."
Doesn't sound like condemnation and hatred to me.
Posted by: Judy Warner | March 29, 2007 at 10:32 AM
Not being expert enough to comment generally, I instead offer an anecdote:
An Evangelical church I attended as a child in Louisiana met for a while in a Synagogue. I can't say what the theological persuasion of the congregation was, but they apparently didn't put much stock in the Council of Jamnia!
As one might expect, however, the arrangement didn't last long, and soon we were back in the American Legion hall. We were the only church in town with cannons on our lawn. I'm sure some of the neo-Confederate Southern Baptist churches were filled with envy, aggravated by the fact that the majority of our members were Northern expatriates.
Posted by: Ethan Cordray | March 29, 2007 at 11:41 AM
"Definition of fascist (from Dictionary.com):(3) a person who is dictatorial or has extreme right-wing views."
Such a ludicrously inadequate definition of fascism demonstrates what I term Gresham's Law of Linguistics:
Increasingly vague and useless definitions of words progressively drive more precise and useful ones out of circulation.
Fascism is a specific political philosophy with several distinctive tenets. To cite just three:
a) Belief in the biologically determined cultural characteristics and personality traits of distinctive "races", ethnic groups, and societies;
b) Belief in a non-rationalistic and organic constitution of races and societies, in contrast to e.g. the Marxist belief in rationalistic and mechanistic social structures of economic classes;
c) Belief that points a) and b) are the driving forces in history that generate social and global conflict, in contrast to e.g. Marxist principles of economic determinism and class conflict (capitalist exploitation of surplus value, the alienation of the proletariat from the the means and ends of production, etc.)
There are any number of political views, both left- and right-wing, that are dictatorial but do not subscribe to the specific principles of fascism.
There are also few things more predictable and tiresome than the mindless hurling of "fascist" as an epithet against anyone who dissents from e.g. the editorial page of the NY Times.
While I personally think that Judy originally expressed herself less felicitously than could have been desired, it must be pointed out that she specified "Liberal Jews" and not Jews in general. In other words, "liberal" is a necessary determinant factor in her generalization -- and "liberal" is not a biological determinant, but an ideological one.
Anyone who has read Judy's many postings on MC over the years knows that she is the soul of decency, integrity, and charity. (One of the editors of Touchstone recently commented to me off-line that Judy is "a real trooper" whose postings are always welcome on MC.) So when Billy Shears says here to Judy, "So, yes, I think you really hate Jews," he is not actually telling us anything about Judy, but rather something about himself -- and what it says is not attractive.
Posted by: James A. Altena | March 29, 2007 at 02:06 PM
Dear Ethan,
Just so long as your "Northern expatriates" weren't "Northern ex-patriots"! :-)
Posted by: James A. Altena | March 29, 2007 at 02:07 PM
>>Just so long as your "Northern expatriates" weren't "Northern ex-patriots"!<<
Certainly not in my family, at least when it came to the Civil War.
Part of father's family was from Lawrence, Kansas (though he also has some Carolina rebels on the tree), and my mother's was old north Missouri unionist stock, including a US Cavalry officer. I grew up never afraid of a little rhetorical refight, though my views have moderated more recently.
Posted by: Ethan Cordray | March 29, 2007 at 02:58 PM
"Liberal Jews define themselves as the not-Christians and that will never change."
Based on extensive first hand experience that is simply not true. The paint brush is far too broad. Liberal Jews generally do not define themselves with respect to Christianity at all.
As a rule, they are more open to interfaith discussion than many Orthodox Jews, some of whom object entirly to the practice, because it will serve merely as yet another opportunity for Chirstian evangelization efforts.
Here is a typical orthodox, (and politically very conservative) postion:
"Except in relations with Christians, the Christ of Christianity is not a Jewish issue. There simply can be no dialogue worthy of the name unless Christians accept — nay, treasure — the fact that Jews through the two millennia of Christianity have had an agenda of their own. There can be no Jewish-Christian dialogue worthy of the name unless one Christian activity is abandoned, missions to the Jews. It must be abandoned, moreover, not as a temporary strategy but in principle, as a bimillennial theological mistake. The cost of that mistake in Christian love and Jewish blood one hesitates to contemplate. ... A post-Holocaust Jew can still view Christian attempts to convert Jews as sincere and well intended. But even as such they are no longer acceptable: They have become attempts to do in one way what Hitler did in another." -- Emil Fackenheim
All Jews, liberal and conservative (in the non Jewish sense) have their own religion that predates Christianity by quite a few centuries. It is more accurate to say that Christianity is simply not releveant to them. Which, except for 2000 years of intermittent progroms, is true for most Jews. Yes, some Jews, across the Jewish political spectrum, do believe "that anyone who believes in Jesus is either wicked or stupid." Your point? Transports East for these people?
I also reject broad brush statements like "I think Jesus had some harsh words to say about the Jews of his time" when I think the truth is he had harsh words for "some people who happened to be Jewish who failed to live up to the expectations of their Jewish religion."
I think the comments are surely quite a bit "less felicitous than could have been desired" and, in fact, much more, but I'll excuse them them not because they were made by the soul of decency but because the commenter admits "Obviously I exaggerate."
Fair enough. And let's let that lie right there.
Posted by: JRM | March 29, 2007 at 03:33 PM
"I think the comments are surely quite a bit 'less felicitous than could have been desired' and, in fact, much more, but I'll excuse them them not because they were made by the soul of decency but because the commenter admits 'Obviously I exaggerate.'"
"Fair enough. And let's let that lie right there."
No. While the criticisms preceding this remark are fair enough, this concluding sneer against a gracious Christian lady is not.
Have any of Judy's critics bothered to note her middle name (Kaplan) and corresponding ancestry?
Posted by: James A. Altena | March 29, 2007 at 04:06 PM
"Liberal Jews define themselves as the not-Christians and that will never change."
You understand, I hope, that this was in response to Jim Kushiner's comment, A few more years of discussion and process, and perhaps he and the leaders of certain mainline denominations who have excelled in processing and dialoguing unto death might simply open a joint seminary for "clergy" of the religion of your choice or a blend thereof. Jesus was a Jew, and the "Jesus" of some mainline seminary would hardly be offensive to certain Jews, after all.
I was saying that although liberal Jews are squishy about their religion and their morality, and liberal Christians are squishy about theirs, the two will never merge because there is no way Jews will accept a religion with Jesus in it. Is this notion offensive, or is it my naming all those perversions for emphasis that is offensive?
James A. is right, of course; I put my whole name down so you would understand that my father was Jewish. I was raised among left-wing Jews. I attended Akiba Hebrew Academy for six years. The Jewish side of my family is my extended family; I have no family on my mother's side. My family is extremely left-wing and secular. I love them dearly. I also know what they are like. Since everyone has a family, I am sure that you can understand the passions that families can arouse, especially when you are the black sheep.
It should be obvious that I am not casting aspersions on the Jewish religion. I am talking about Jews who do not practice the Jewish religion in any meaningful sense, but practice what Dennis Prager calls the religion of liberalism. The reason I quote Prager is that his writing exactly describes what I have observed.
Posted by: Judy Warner | March 29, 2007 at 04:47 PM
To return to the original point of Mr. Kushiner's post, does anyone here really think that it is congruent with the historic teachings of Judaism that people of perverse sexual habits be accepted into the rabbinate? Question for discussion: What view of Judaism would one have to have accepted to make that practice desirable? Follow-on question: Does accepting that view in any sense represent a continuation of the tradition, or such an absolute break with it so as to make any represented continuation mere rhetoric without substance?
Posted by: Dcn. Michael D. Harmon | March 30, 2007 at 09:44 AM
I don't know of any interpretation of traditional Judaism that would approve such a thing. I can see the path by which it happened, though. Judaism has always put much more emphasis on improving this world than on the afterlife. Tikkun Olam is a commandment for Jews -- the perfection of the world. Thus social justice has in at least the last couple of hundred years been as important as personal morality. Social justice has historically been identified, for Jews, with the left, specifically socialists in the European countries from which American Jews migrated. Add to that the fact that conservatives in the European sense of the word tended to be anti-Semitic and you see why Jews have felt more at home on the left.
In addition, Jews tend to identify with modernity. Synagogues, art, etc. are "modern" in style. The past is a time of sorrows and horrors, expulsions and genocides, and thus Jews are more susceptible than others to the utopian view of a world made new.
Unfortunately, part of modernity has been to let go of one's religion, and a huge number of Jews have done that. First they stopped being observant -- keeping kosher, keeping the Sabbath, etc. Then they started marrying out of the faith. Liberal Jews are now a very diluted lot, with at least 50 percent marrying non-Jews.
But instilled in most Jews is still the commandment to perfect the world, as sense of responsibility to make things better. I was told as a very small child, by my Communist parents, that I was to make the world better; that was my task in life. If you have let go your religion, you still have a need for something. And many Jews, most actually, have found it in leftism.
And being intelligent, articulate, and driven, Jews have been leaders on the left. For the last few decades, the dynamic on the left has been that you have to keep moving in that direction. Once blacks have been liberated you have to move on to women. What's next? Homosexuals. What's next? I dread to think. But each step is seen as a logical extension of the one before -- to perfect the world by making all human beings equal, not before God, but before the law, and before the opinion of every man, woman and child. Like all utopianism, there is a large element of coercion in this.
Posted by: Judy Warner | March 30, 2007 at 10:27 AM
"What's next? I dread to think."
You could ask Dostoevsky: "Without God, all things are permitted." It is the liberation of the perverted from all sense of guilt, to the extent society can do so. We see its beginnings already. As you noted, Judy, "each step is seen as a logical extension of the one before." Once homosexual "marriage" is permitted, one must bless the act that is at its core. And in order to do that, one must invert all perversions. Don't laugh. Would you have thought twenty years ago that American society would seriously be considering extending "marriage" to homosexuals twenty years hence? You probably couldn't even imagine the social acceptance that homosexuality has today.
Posted by: Bill R | March 30, 2007 at 11:37 AM
I want to add to what I said that there is also a movement among Jews in the other direction. More Jews are becoming orthodox, some even from secular homes. Orthodox Jews tend to have large families and will eventually outnumber all other Jews if current trends continue.
Even within liberal Judaism there is some renewed interest in traditional practices if not beliefs. When Reform Judaism was first started in the early 1800s its founders wanted to assimilate with the surrounding society (Germany, ironically) as much as possible and threw out things like the laws of kashrut (keeping kosher), the Hebrew liturgy, observance of the Sabbath, and even circumcision. American Reform Judaism -- growing large in the late 1800s -- wasn't quite as radical; they never rejected circumcision and opposed intermarriage. Nevertheless they placed a great emphasis on being modern and fitting in.
But many Reform Jews nowadays have returned to more ritual, and even partially keeping kosher, as in not eating pork or cheeseburgers. This might be just a Jewish subset of the general increased "spirituality" in America, or perhaps some of these Jews will actually reclaim their religious heritage.
Posted by: Judy Warner | March 30, 2007 at 01:08 PM
Looks like this thread is dead, but I just came across a good piece by Rabbi Daniel Lapin, "Why So Many Jews Are Liberal." Excerpt:
As a Jew, I must reject liberalism because the values of the two belief systems, Judaism and liberalism, are quite incompatible. For instance, three of the main tenets of liberalism are roundly refuted by the Passover holy day beginning tonight.
Liberalism tends to follow the heart rather than the head, finding visceral sentiment utterly compelling. It also suggests that each of us carries within ourselves absolute knowledge of what is right for us. “Just do what you think is right” is central to the liberal liturgy. Finally, liberalism encourages dependency on the state.
By contrast, Passover emphasizes rules rather than feelings. The carefully ordered agenda of the Passover Seder specifies exactly what we must read and say, what must be eaten, how it should be eaten and when. I seldom feel like eating matzoh—that particularly indigestible culinary treat. However, what we may feel like is of no importance at a seder. What matters is the rules.
Second, Passover insists that we distrust our own instincts of rightness, replacing them with God’s vision of morality. After all, many of the Israelites preferred to remain in Egypt while others who left desperately desired to return. The exodus from Egypt was tightly linked to the giving of the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai fifty days later. Moses informed Pharaoh that the entire purpose for leaving Egypt was to receive God’s instructions, the Torah, in seven weeks time. To this day, Jews meticulously and formally count off each of those days in eager anticipation of the fulfillment of the exodus, namely replacing our own sense of what is right with God’s.
Finally, Passover reminds us that dependency on the state is just a polite way of describing slavery. Sure, the state will supply you with all your needs but the basic laws of economic reality insist that it can only do so by subjecting you completely. The Exodus was a call to reject the domination of the state.
There can hardly be a soul left in America unaware of the tragic and misguided Jewish embrace of liberalism. With such a clear conflict between Jewish values and the doctrines of liberalism why are so many Jews liberals?
Posted by: Judy Warner | April 02, 2007 at 03:34 PM
Thanks for sharing this, Judy!
Posted by: James A. Altena | April 03, 2007 at 05:52 AM