Shiri Bailem

2023-07-29 05:31:30

99% of the time "Judeo-Christian" is antisemitic. And yes, I will absolutely elaborate on this if asked.

Credit: @Rabbit Cohen

Edit because this blew up far more than I expected and multiple people have asked for me to elaborate, here's a copy of my elaboration with follow up questions encouraged:

It's a messy topic and it's late here (I'm a bit sleepy), so feel free to ask follow up questions.

The short version of it is that Judeo-Christian is almost always used in one of two harmful ways:

1) To try and give more credibility and weight to something that is purely Christian by claiming that it's part of Judaism as well when it's not (like the above example, because Judaism explicitly permits abortions)
2) To try and talk about broader groupings of related faiths while ignoring the many other Abrahamic faiths (the proper term, though that one more often hurts the lesser known groups, don't use it unless you also know it applies to groups like the Baháʼí, which I'll admit even I know next to nothing about, but it's valid here because all I'm doing is naming their religious family)

Because many (cough most cough) teach a bastardized form of Judaism through the lens of Christianity, and because that's the only exposure many get to our faith... they get skewed harmful and hurtful ideas about us.

Some highlight examples:
* We don't have an established afterlife (we don't say there isn't one, we just have zero information on it if there is)
* We don't seek "eternal reward", the reward for our faith is being a better person than we were the day before
* We have forgiveness baked into our faith, and no it doesn't require animal sacrifice (it requires you to actually ask the person you wronged...)
* We thoroughly encourage arguing any topic with anyone (right time and place of course), and that includes picking a fight with God if you think they're wrong about something (you have a 99.9% chance of being wrong... but we commend the effort and every once in a while someone wins the argument)
* We have a rule, Pikuach Nefesh, roughly meaning that life is the highest commandment. Your well being takes precedence over your faith, if it would hurt you or others to be observant than you are exempt from that requirement. It's unacceptable to hurt others for your faith, and for yourself it's frowned upon
* We actively discourage conversion, it's allowed but it's not a trivial process. We don't want people to become Jews, we just want people to be better.