The cure for IQ shredders

without competent logistics, discipline and high organizational trust, numbers do not matter.

Progressive competence is deteriorating, their discipline is terrible, and, as we saw in the financial crisis, their organizational trust has completely collapsed. Rightly fearing military takeover, they are busily remaking the army in their own image, with male submission to women and transexuals taking priority over discipline in the face of the enemy.

Which implies that Orthodox Jews in Israel could, and probably will, eventually take over in a Monck style military coup (Monck had his praetorians “guard” the British parliament, and they continue to guard it to this day.) Pity you no longer have a religion capable of being a nation state religion.

After Monck installed Charles the Second, they cynically fabbed up a pretty good state religion, and claimed, half truthfully, that it was the pre-puritan state religion.

In the Christopher Dorner incident, we saw that police were hopeless. But if Orthodox take over in Israel without fixing up their religion to make it suitable to rule an Israel that includes the temple mount, you will get the holier than thou contest similar to that which Jesus ridiculed and that Cromwell had to end. Could get very nasty, and is likely to converge to something much resembling progressivism once the holiest start getting holier than Moses. Notice that Caliphate wants to destroy the Kaaba because they are holier than Mohammed.

Come to think of it. You are already holier than Moses. Do you think he worried about cheese crumbs coming into contact with meat grease?

Nonetheless, the worst US army infantry battalion has much more organizational trust and discipline than ISIS

Do we know this? We seem to be losing in Afghanistan.

War is the test. Israel is killing lots of human shields, but that is what human shields are for. Sandbags. How many Hamas is Israel killing? Last I heard, Israel lost eighteen killed, one captured. Given higher Muslim tolerance for casualties, got to kill two hundred to two thousand Hamas. I don’t think Israel has done so.

When the written Torah was translated to Greek, the translators showed no indication of any awareness that it did not mean what it said nor say what it means, which is the sort of thing one normally has to deal with in translation.

The translation of the Written Torah to Greek was considered a tragedy by the Jewish people precisely due to the loss of context

There is no contemporary evidence (Philo, Josephus) that Jews considered it a tragedy. Further, everyone knows that context affects translation. If, for example, “magnificent trees” meant certain specific species of trees, they would have translated accordingly. No one shows any awareness of an “oral torah” until four hundred AD or so. Further your Oral Torah continues to this day to get ever holier, a process that will inexorably converge to something resembling every other religion that goes all the way to maximum holiness.

Logically, one would expect any attractive trees and fruit will serve, since the purpose is to decorate the feast, and that is what the old testament says. If the Old testament does not say “four species”, the logical implication is that it does not mean “four species”

The purpose is to do what G-d is telling us to do, in the exact fashion that he tells us. In Josephus, we see that the Jewish people were, except for a breakaway set of “do-what-thou-wilt” rebels, all in agreement that the commandment deals with a specific set of plants,

Does he now? Give me a link. I recall that when I looked up the Sanhedrin in Josephus, I found that they were a Roman creation. Perhaps the Romans got tired of trying to negotiate with warlords who lacked the power to make war or peace, and prophets who lacked the sanity, so proceeded to manufacture something in the image of their own senate.

In which case, you no longer have Judaism but some horseshit which inevitably devolves to self-worship and thus idolatry.

Israel does not seem immune to a progressive induced tendency to suicide. Armenians can kill troublesome Muslims with considerably fewer difficulties that Jews have.

Progressives aim to assimilate Christians, Jews, and Muslims. It is hard to say who is being swallowed up easier, but Jews, as a whole, are not resisting well. You yourself have been industriously rationalizing away and interpreting away the subordination of women.

Hey, how’s Christmas doing these days? Sales up? What’s with Easter

Christmas was from the beginning a celebration to which all men, not just Christians, were invited and encouraged to participate. It is doing very well, because, just as planned from the beginning, it is being celebrated by Chinese, Japanese, and Muslims. Muslims spread Islam by blowing themselves up, while Christians spread Christianity by wishing people Merry Christmas. The Puritans never liked Christmas, tried to suppress it, and to this day their ideological descendents continue to suppress it, because, like Muslims, they prefer to spread their religion by state power. That they continue to this day to suppress Christmas indicates it continues to this day to be a bigger threat to them than Muslims blowing themselves up.

please don’t tell us how to interpret the Torah

It surely evident that your interpretation of the Torah has drifted substantially in living memory to greater holiness, and that this drift has been going on for at least sixteen hundred years.

Fail to avoid the idolatrous practices of New Age and progressivism.

Any culture taking the Torah’s outer observances seriously enough to avoid eating meat and cheese off the same plate will end up taking its inner meaning seriously enough to avoid Gaya-worship.

Says the man who rationalizes away the subordination of women.

In practice, this is what we see happening-the Orthodox Jews of New York City, who are fastidious about things like the prohibition of mixing wool and linen, are immune to New Age and Progressivist idolatry, leading to high birth rates, etc. I’ve already told you that I think that the outer observances of Judaism and its inner essence, the letter and spirit of the law, are symbiotic and mutually reinforcing, and that any attempt to have the one without the other is doomed in the long run. This may not be logically provable, but it’s empirically verifiable.

Survivorship bias. Most Jews have been assimilated or are well on the way to being so. Orthodox Jews are, for the most part, frightened to get the temple back. Some orthodox Jews oppose the state of Israel, because they want a miraculous Messiah to do the heavy lifting.

If you did what you conceive yourselves as doing, stuck to ancient traditions, yes, obviously that would immunize you against progressivism, but you still have interpretation drift under way to ever greater holiness. Your traditions are not in fact all that ancient.

Judaism was stable for a long time because priesthood was a hereditary possession in the male line, hence no holiness competition. Once you got open entry into the role of opinion leader, you had the problems that Jesus ridiculed.

These problems are acceptable in a non state religion, because an irritatingly holy rabbi loses members of his congregation to a less holy rabbi, but they are going to be fatal in a state religion, and if Israel is going to survive, needs Judaism to once again become a state religion. Jewish Orthodoxy is already excessively holy for a state religion, and once it becomes a state religion, its natural tendency to ever greater holiness will become much worse.

To become a state religion, have to enforce the least common denominator of Judaism, and shut down open entry into the role of opinion leader.

The people who take the Commandments seriously are not joining the SPLC or donating to it, nor are the members of the SPLC spending their free time learning the Halakhot of mixing species.

The state religion of Israel is not Judaism. It is progressivism.

religions driven by the force of holier than thou all wind up looking alike – looking much like leftism.

If you look close enough, I guess, especially if leftism is your benchmark. But to me, devolution of society always looks like idolatry and loss of asabiyya. Loss of asabiyya is what happens when a society makes comfort and wealth their god, and then achieves it.

Looks to me that the chief cause of loss of asabiyya is diversity. The Caliphs were white. The Mamalukes were white. Same problem for middle easterners as Jews in our elite is a problem for Americans.

>There is no contemporary evidence (Philo, Josephus) that Jews considered it a tragedy.

But our Talmud says they did, and I believe the sages who wrote it.

How would they know? They wrote five hundred years after the event.

Supposing that those who wrote the talmud were correct, rather than making stuff up as politically convenient, the fact remains that the translators of the Torah, five hundred years earlier, were obviously unaware of an oral torah that tells us that the written torah does not say what is says nor mean what it means.

No one shows any awareness of an “oral torah” until four hundred AD or so.

Not so. You haven’t actually read Josephus, have you? He makes mention of many practices only mentioned in the Oral Torah, and specifically explains that these are the practices of the Pharisees, who represent the majority of the people and are most skilled in the Law, as opposed to the Saducees, who represent a minor rich faction and deny the Oral Torah.

What happened to that link where Josephus explains that according to the pharisees, Leviticus 22:39-40 does not mean what it says

Perhaps the Romans got tired of trying to negotiate with warlords who lacked the power to make war or peace, and prophets who lacked the sanity, so proceeded to manufacture something in the image of their own senate.

Perhaps you can just go ahead and write us a history which would best support the Dork Enlightenment theories, as our actual history doesn’t fit them well enough.

Josephus’s account of the History of the Jews seems consistent with the Dark Enlightenment account of how religions and religious states function, and is incompatible with Talmudic history – one striking example being that in his account, the Sanhedrin were created not long before his own day, rather than going all the way back to Moses or the immediate successors of Moses. Josephus’s account also illustrates how theocratic power combined with open entry into the role of opinion leader results in escalating holiness and fanaticism, ultimately resulting in suicidal behavior, consistent with the Jesus’s complaint that the pharisees were holier than thou.

>You yourself have been industriously rationalizing away and interpreting away the subordination of women.

We have a functional framework governing gender relations.

It will not function for very much longer if you are unwilling to admit to what it is and defend it.

Israel does not seem immune to a progressive induced tendency to suicide. Armenians can kill troublesome Muslims with considerably fewer difficulties that Jews have.

This is like reverse of the old joke where they bring Hitler back to life and he announces that he will destroy all the Jews and unicyclists. “Why the unicyclists, Hitler?” “Ah, I knew you guys didn’t really give a shit about the Jews!” Nobody cares about the Armenians.

The biggest problem for Jews is not that the Cathedral cares about Jews killing Muslims. The biggest problem is that Jews care about Jews killing Muslims. Much like you being in denial about Orthodox Jewish sex relations.

>Most Jews have been assimilated or are well on the way to being so.

Not seeing it.

Most Jews are progressives. In America, progressive Jews are assimilating. In America, Orthodox Jews are having children and not assimilating, but they are turning progressive. Progressivism really is not compatible with having children or refusal to assimilate. If going to stay Jewish, cannot become progressive, and they are becoming progressive.

>Your traditions are not in fact all that ancient.

Should I believe you or our sages and Josephus?

Jews did not adopt monogamy until about four hundred years ago, and when I read Josephus, he sounds dark enlightenment, not Talmud.

You were going to give me Josephus on the harvest festival.

>Judaism was stable for a long time because priesthood was a hereditary possession in the male line, hence no holiness competition.

The priests were almost never leaders in any sense but the ceremonial. The Torah itself gives them no special power in resolving religious questions. There was exactly one period where they had any non-ceremonial power,

The system described in the Torah, and by Josephus as I understand him, was that the top Judge was chosen by consensus, or possibly God, and it was the priests that told the people what the consensus was or what God had decided.

>The state religion of Israel is not Judaism. It is progressivism.

For now. But things are changing.

The Orthodox in Israel are frightened to become the state religion, as they are frightened to take back the temple, because they know that modern Judaism is ill suited to being a state religion.

the fact is that they were forced, under duress, to make a translation of a document without conferring. They translated it in the same way

The writers of the Talmud report this astonishing miracle five hundred years after the event. Interesting that those much closer to the event, such as Josephus and the Christian fathers, were entirely unaware of this astonishing miracle.

The writers of the Talmud also report lots of things that you interpret as fairy tales intended to illustrate a religious point, rather than literal truth. Why not interpret this as another fairy tale?

>It will not function for very much longer if you are unwilling to admit to what it is and defend it.

Any day now, our system which has worked for thousands of years will fail

You are not operating on a thousand year old system. A whole bunch of spells to ameliorate the inconvenient effects of certain observances are relatively new, which implies that those inconvenient observances are almost as new. Sephardic Jews are still not entirely on board with monogamy. You are rationalizing a system under which women are profoundly unequal to make it conflict less with progressivism, instead of defending it.

Progressives believe that religions have no essence, that any religion can be gradually mutated into any other. This is true and false. It is true if you don’t take measures to prevent it. Bans directed against bronze age entryists are not going to protect you from twenty first century assimilationists.

Much like you being in denial about Orthodox Jewish sex relations.

Untrue. I see this from up close and from the inside. Your perspective comes from Western press reports.

My perspective comes from knowledge of human nature, and comparisons between fertile and infertile groups. Orthodox Jews are doing what other fertile groups are doing, and you brush this off as irrelevant, and not really part of Judaism. What orthodox Jews have in common with other fertile groups is not an obsession with cheese crumbs.

>The system described in the Torah, and by Josephus as I understand him, was that the top Judge was chosen by consensus, or possibly God, and it was the priests that told the people what the consensus was or what God had decided.

No. The system described in the Torah is that the council sits in their appointed place and decides by majority.

This is what happens when I use your loaded language. I meant, of course, to say that the system described in the books of the old testament and in Josphus’s account of that time is that the top judge – which is to say the people referred to as Judges in the book of Judges – was chosen by consensus, or possibly God, and it was the priests that told the people what the consensus was or what God had decided.

The Orthodox in Israel are frightened to become the state religion, as they are frightened to take back the temple, because they know that modern Judaism is ill suited to being a state religion.

They are frightened because it’s an ambitious project. However, the entire history of Israel is the people being afraid to do their duty, and G-d forcing them, as I think is happening with Gaza (where our religious duty is to kick the Arabs out or secure their explicit submission, we just want to live in peace and make high-tech, but they are intent on forcing us to do our duty.)

Well, it could be, like the supposed unanimous translation of the Old Testament, another miracle, but I think the Dark Enlightenment analysis adequately explains it. Since progressivism is Israel’s state religion, they, like Obama, imposed democracy upon the Arabs, with disastrous consequences. Had you gone eighteenth century colonialist, and given them an emir, you would not have these internal problems.

Before you can impose Jewish rule upon the Arabs, you will need to impose it upon yourselves.

The writers of the Talmud report this astonishing miracle five hundred years after the event.

Interesting that those much closer to the event, such as Josephus and the Christian fathers, were entirely unaware of this astonishing miracle.

The Christian fathers would not have used the Septuagint as an authoritative translation if it was not one translation. It would not have been called the Septuagint if 70 translators hadn’t translated it.

Contrary to what I claimed, Josephus does report this miracle.

The King James Bible, perhaps in imitation of what Christians believe was done with the Septuagint, had a large number of translators each translate, separately and in private, a book of the bible, then after translation, the translators and others got together in public and in private to iron out the differences between their numerous translations.

King James commanded the translators as follows:

Every particular Man of each Company, to take the same Chapter or Chapters, and having translated or amended them severally by himself, where he thinketh good, all to meet together, confer what they have done, and agree for their Parts what shall stand.

Thus, though Josephus reports the miracle, this seems an adequate non miraculous explanation.

You are not operating on a thousand year old system. A whole bunch of spells to ameliorate the inconvenient effects of certain observances are relatively new, which implies that those inconvenient observances are almost as new.

You are confused as to the difference between a “spell” and a piece of jurisprudence.

When a ritual makes a requirement go away, sounds like a spell. And, supposing it to be jurisprudence, the necessity for such jurisprudence shows the holier than thou disease remarked on by Jesus. You are getting holier and holier, and have long been more holy than is practical for a state religion.

You are right that a lot of today’s Judaism is confirmed by Josephus as long predating the written Talmud, and I was wrong.

However, reflect that in Josephus’s account, the Sanhedrin is a recent creation, which, as the Dark Enlightenment would have predicted, moved rapidly to ever crazier holiness, much as those in the Gaza strip are now doing.

The number of Sepharadi Jews (not Yemeni or Ethiopian ones) in Israel under age 80 with multiple wives is under 10, I’d estimate.

The qualifier implies that not long ago it was a lot higher. And though you have produced evidence for some Jewish practices being two thousand years old you still have not produced evidence that the prohibition on women taking babies for a walk in strollers is ancient, or even a couple of centuries years old.

You are rationalizing a system under which women are profoundly unequal to make it conflict less with progressivism, instead of defending it.

Eh? In Judaism, women have different roles, rights and responsibilities than men. The way in which our roles, rights and responsibilities differ is not the way which the Dork Enlightenment would require. The Dork Enlightenment is about 7 years old. Judaism is about 500 times older. Enough said.

I have been questioning you on the role of women in Judaism, asking you how you kept your women in line, and you never admitted that women were not supposed to testify, a position more extreme than that of the Muslims who rank their testimony as half that of a man. If that quietly disappeared from Judaism, and I suspect it has for the most part quietly disappeared from Judaism, you would think you were still adhering just great to a tradition that goes back all the way to Moses, because every decade or two you get even stricter on a rule originally intended to exclude bronze age entryist worshipers of the Golden Goat.

You need to exclude entryist feminists more than you need to exclude entryist worshipers of the Golden Goat.

>Bans directed against bronze age entryists are not going to protect you from twenty first century assimilationists.

I see absolutely no fundamental difference between 21st century progs and 4th century BCE Greek Epicurean sybarites. The latter were much more formidable in practice. Yet, Hanukkah.

Antiochus outlawed Judaism. Progressives know well that does not work. Instead progressives tell you that Judaism, rightly understood, is progressivism, pretty much as in the last days of the collapse of the bronze age civilizations, some people insisted that worship of the Golden Calf was Judaism. Decadent civilizations are good at that sort of trickiness. Rising civilizations use simpler means.

>I meant, of course, to say that the system described in the books of the old testament and in Josphus’s account of that time is that the top judge – which is to say the people referred to as Judges in the book of Judges – was chosen by consensus, or possibly God, and it was the priests that told the people what the consensus was or what God had decided.

Really? Jim, you have a Book of Judges easily available in your choice of English translations (we don’t need to go to the Talmud here.) Please explain to me this process as it applied to Judges like Huldah, Devorah and Yiftah.

Judges 1:2 God appoints Judah. How would people know that God appointed Judah except the priests tell them.
Judges 3:9-10 God appoints Othniel,
shortly afterwards Ethnud, and so on and so forth.

So how is a Hebrew supposed to find out who is judge?
Deuteronomy 17:8-9

If there arise a matter too hard for thee in judgment, between blood and blood, between plea and plea, and between stroke and stroke, being matters of controversy within thy gates: then shalt thou arise, and get thee up into the place which the LORD thy God shall choose;

And thou shalt come unto the priests the Levites, and unto the judge that shall be in those days, and enquire; and they shall shew thee the sentence of judgment:

So if a bunch of Hebrews show up seeking judgement in a quarrel, either the priests are the first level of judges, or the priests send you to the top judge. Either way the priests inform you who the top judge is.

Please show me where the priests told the people about their divine appointment by G-d.

Someone told them about their divine appointment by God, and who else would it be other than the priests? Plus Deuteronomy 17:8-9 appears to say “Ask the priests”

When you’re done explaining that, please explain to me how your Neoreactionary Gender Theory explains female judges in the Torah and their behavior.

Social decay. The Hebrews went through more bad patches than you can shake a stick at. Happens to everyone, some sooner than others. Feminism in our society is in part product of progressivism, the rising tide of fanaticism, but it is, as argued by “The Garbage Generation”, the natural state of chimps, to which all civilizations tend to decay unless actively resisted. You don’t need a left singularity to catch feminism, though if you catch feminism, you are apt to suffer a left singularity. Feminism is just one of the manifestations of entropy. Just as stuff tends to get dirty unless cleaned, civilizations tend to go feminist. No explanation is needed for catching feminism, explanation is needed for resisting it.

>Had you gone eighteenth century colonialist, and given them an emir, you would not have these internal problems.

Qatar has an emir or whatever his title is, who loves and supports Hamas very much.

Easy for him to be holy. He is a long way from Israel.

If we’d made Yassir Arafat the Chief Sheikh of the Palestinians, would we be better off?

Probably, because that would have substantially changed his incentives, but you would have been even better off had you made someone of an illustruous bloodline Chief Sheikh, someone who worries about his son inheriting the position.

Was his predecessor, Sheikh Haj Amin Al Husseini, less of an asshole for not having the trappings of democracy?

Sheikh Haj Amin Al Husseini never had power to lose, so his incentives not very different from those of an elected leader or a mobile bandit.

You misunderstand the basic principle of Judaism. When Moshe finishes giving the Torah before his death, he makes a speech telling us that all this is accomplishable, it’s not in the heavens or across the sea, it’s been given to us. From this, we learn that it is not magical or subject to revision/interpretation based on miracles or prophecy. It is to be interpreted by scholars acting in good faith in the best way they can at the place and time

And the fact that in this place and time they keep finding loopholes indicates that the thing they have to loophole through did not exist very long ago.

>And, supposing it to be jurisprudence, the necessity for such jurisprudence shows the holier than thou disease remarked on by Jesus.

Jesus said: “the teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must obey them and do everything they tell you.” Probably he should have had you around to advise him.

What Jesus actually said to the multitude, and to his disciples, was:

2 The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat:
3 All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not.
4 For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.
5 But all their works they do for to be seen of men: they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments,
6 And love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues,
7 And greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi.

What he said sounds pretty much what I have been telling you in this thread. “You are getting holier and holier, and have long been more holy than is practical for a state religion.” (In context, of course, by “holy” I meant holier than thou, which is what Jesus means when he says “For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.”)

You will notice that Jesus, like myself, accuses the pharisees of making shit up, making rules harsher, in order to be holier than thou.

And, Dark Enlightenment theory: If you have a theocracy with open entry into the role of opinion leader, your theocracy is going to get crazier and crazier as each theocrat out holies the next, and if it survives long enough, will eventually converge to something rather like progressivism. Of course Pharisaic Judaism never got that far, because the Romans terminated its theocratic power, hence now cannot get too much holier than the congregation will put up with. Hence, when out of power, rule tightening has to be matched by loophole boring. However Pharisaic Judaism did get crazy enough to be a pain for the Romans.

>And though you have produced evidence for some Jewish practices being two thousand years old you still have not produced evidence that the prohibition on women taking babies for a walk in strollers is ancient, or even a couple of centuries years old.

There were no strollers a couple of centuries ago. Carrying babies between domains has always been prohibited.

If a woman takes a baby for a stroll, is she carrying it between domains? Surely not.

>you never admitted that women were not supposed to testify, a position more extreme than that of the Muslims who rank their testimony as half that of a man.

Admitted? It’s a basic fact of Jewish jurisprudence.

I asked how you keep women in line. You assure me that you don’t do anything oppressive to keep women in line, that Orthodox Jewish practices are, or should be, progressive approved. Which we both know is not at all true. But if you start rationalizing that it is true, pretty soon it will become true. This is the direct opposite of your position on cheese crumbs. Absolutely no tolerance for bronze age worshippers of the Golden Goat attempting entryism, but you are furtive about excluding feminists attempting entryism, and promptly bring up Deborah when you feel, incorrectly, that you are being accused of vigilance against feminist entryists.

Now in fact I have a fair idea of how you do keep women in line, but you are spinning the truth to make it more feminist friendly, which is half a step from adjusting Judaism to make it more friendly to feminist entryists, of which you have a large supply, considerably larger than the supply of worshippers of the Golden Goat. I ask you how you keep women in line, and instead of saying “Not allowed to testify”, you say “Deborah”.

Well, “Deborah” is true, and “not allowed to testify” is also true”, but “not allowed to testify” is the more relevant truth.

>You need to exclude entryist feminists more than you need to exclude entryist worshipers of the Golden Goat.

They are the same thing.

Googling up feminist entryists to Judaism, does not look as if bans on cheese crumbs are likely to have much effect.

>So if a bunch of Hebrews show up seeking judgement in a quarrel, either the priests are the first level of judges, or the priests send you to the top judge. Either way the priests inform you who the top judge is.

No. This is not what it’s saying. At every level, in every village, there is a “sanhedrin,” a religious council, of 3 or 21 members. A dispute progressively goes up the structure as it grows in difficulty. The Sanhedrin (the highest one, with 71 members, in Jerusalem in the Chamber of Hewn Stone) has, preferably, some Kohanim and Levites in it. There is a head of the Sanhedrin, but his voice does not count for any more than that of the junior-most member in the decision.

This specifically and directly contradicts Deuteronomy 17:8-9 which tells us priests and/or the top judge.

Or, if one is so cynical as to be inclined to doubt direct divine appointment, a group of priests small enough to sit around a table and feel each others’ breath, reach consensus on who the judge will be, and the priests, having resolved differences between themselves, unanimously announce the judge as the will of God, all politics having taken place in groups small enough and informal enough that all dissension is quietly forgotten, because if politics took place in plain sight, the priests would lose credibility. Safer to announce the will of God, than the will of (some) priests

Further, this would involve lots of politics and factions. In the stories about the Judges, with the early judges there is little or no politics and factions. God, supposedly, directly appoints the Judge and that is that. How would he do so except speaking through priests?

Later, there is politics: Josephus tells us that Othneil was chosen “By the multitude”, and specifically tells us that some judges were elected, apparently for life, like Roman Kings. Maybe they were elected by the Sanhedrin, but obviously “the multitude” is not the Sanhedrin. Then, with Abimelech son of Gideon, we see the judgeship turn somewhat hereditary. No Sanhedrin for Abimelech and no multitude either.

Initially in the Judges period, no politics, therefore no Sanhedrin.

Later in the Judges period, lots of politics, and in all the politics that is reported, no Sanhedrin politics. What was the Sanhedrin doing when the sons of Gideon ruled and quarreled amongst themselves?

The Book of Judges never mentions any organization resembling the Sanhedrin. Judges are appointed by God, by the multitude, or, like the sons of Gideon, appoint themselves.
And similarly, Josephus

He had an illustrious bloodline and position as Qadi of Jerusalem. Had we put him in charge of a hereditary position as Chief of Israeli Arabs, would we have been better off? Obviously not-he would have stabbed us in the back as soon as possible.

The Jews did not give him any choice other than to fight the Jews to the end. If Jews, no power for him. If, after winning a military victory over him, the Jews had attempted to cut a deal with him instead of utterly rooting out any traces of his power, probably would have made life a lot easier. Reflect on what happened in Iraq. In retrospect, obvious the Americans should have cut a deal with Saddam.

Second, this is something much more resistant to entryism, as we will see in a minute.

You have a large supply of feminist entryists, and you are reluctant to offend them. It is much easier to double down on cheese crumbs lest you be infiltrated by bronze age golden goat worshipers.

What Jesus actually said to the multitude, and to his disciples, was:

2 The scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat:
3 All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not.
4 For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.
5 But all their works they do for to be seen of men: they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments,
6 And love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues,
7 And greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi.

So, in other words, what they are saying is correct! But they are not doing what they are saying to do. So do as they say, not as they do.

As is typical Jesus style, his subsequent words force a change in interpretation of his earlier words. In the context of his subsequent words, what he is saying is that the Pharisees have seated themselves in the seat of Moses, have illegitimately usurped the seat of Moses, and from this stolen seat improperly demand that you do what they say, not what they do. Jesus claims to legitimately have divine authority, and rejects the claim of the Pharisees to legitimately have divine authority.

“Phylacteries,” incidentally, are tefillin, which are completely from the Oral Torah. Jesus is not objecting to the tefillin themselves, or to kashrut, and would have been aghast at Paul, whom he’d never even met, inviting people to have some idol burgers in his name.

You are talmudizing Jesus as you talmudize Moses. His meaning is perfectly clear. He is no more endorsing the authority of the Pharisees than Marc Antony came to bury Ceasar, no more endorsing the authority of the Pharisees than Marc Antony is endorsing the honor of Brutus.

>if it survives long enough, will eventually converge to something rather like progressivism.

We see from above who the progressives were.

We have seen something remarkably similar to progressivism arise from Chinese worship of heaven, and Zoroastrian worship of fire. The Zoroastrians had a longer pedigree than your own.

Since Judaism has extremely precise definitions determined by a transparent process, and the protocol is not “what does Jim Donald think”, I can safely say that a woman taking an infant incapable of walking between her house and a public thoroughfare is, in fact, carrying it between domains in the Torah sense of the concept.

If this is what the ancient sages thought, if this is what rabbis thought a couple of hundred years ago, they would have caught grief about it from women, and would have had to explicitly address the issue long ago. A woman carrying her baby out of doors for the sunshine is a more common event than a fishmonger going through the gates of Jerusalem with a load of dried fish.

>Well, “Deborah” is true, and “not allowed to testify” is also true”, but “not allowed to testify” is the more relevant truth.

Actually, neither is relevant. The sort of courts before which women’s testimony is invalid are the ones that rule on capital cases and things like this.

Yes, “not allowed to testify” is not relevant to the here and now, but it does indicate the spirit and intent of the religion – which you are talmudizing away.

If Israel is going to survive, needs to have to have Jewish theocracy rather than progressive theocracy. And while you are psychologically ready to double down on cheesecrumbs in ever heightened vigilance against worshipers of the Golden Goat, you are not psychologically ready to have courts in which women cannot testify.

Nor should you be – what you will need to do is use measures with similar spirit, intent and effect, but different in detail, after the fashion of Saint Paul. But you are not going to do what you need to do, neither will you do what your two thousand year old precedents require you to do. You are going to talmudize away those courts in which women’s testimony is invalid, and have only courts with rules acceptable to progressives, only courts different not only in formal rules, but in spirit, intent, and effect.

In religious civil courts, divorce courts, etc., which do operate today, a woman’s testimony is equally valid to that of a man.

You are not treating the rule on women’s testimony the way you treat the rule on goats milk.

Under progressivism, female sexual autonomy is sacred, and carries infinite weight in the utilitarian calculus. If you go all the way with progressivism on this, you will stop reproducing. You have gone part of the way, are denying to progressives how much further you have to go to meet their requirements, and denying to yourselves how far you have gone.

>This specifically and directly contradicts Deuteronomy 17:8-9 which tells us priests and/or the top judge.

As we have discussed, we have an Oral Torah which explains to us how to read and interpret the Written Torah.

What Jesus was saying about the Pharisees is a matter of interpretation, and your interpretation is unreasonable. What Deuteronomy says about judges is a matter of fact, and you reject the plain words of Moses, or his immediate successors. Moses, or his immediate successors, tell you to go to the priests, and you do not go to the priests, instead saying “Rabbi, Rabbi”.

>The Book of Judges never mentions any organization resembling the Sanhedrin.

The Book of Ruth does. Boaz brings together the council of elders, the local Sanhedrin, in order to settle legal questions-the obligation of the nearest of kin to marry his relative’s widow, and the legality of conversion of a Moabitess (implied in the Book of Ruth, explicit in the Talmud.) Later, the Sanhedrin (according to the Talmud, which for me is an authority) in Jerusalem had to determine whether David could be admitted to the congregation, being descended from a Moabitess, and upheld the decision of Boaz’ court (i.e., that the Torah prohibition of accepting a Moabite’s conversion only applied to the men.)

Again, you are talmudizing the plain words of the old Testament:

1 Then went Boaz up to the gate, and sat him down there: and, behold, the kinsman of whom Boaz spake came by; unto whom he said, Ho, such a one! turn aside, sit down here. And he turned aside, and sat down.
2 And he took ten men of the elders of the city, and said, Sit ye down here. And they sat down.
3 And he said unto the kinsman, Naomi, that is come again out of the country of Moab, selleth a parcel of land, which was our brother Elimelech’s:
4 And I thought to advertise thee, saying, Buy it before the inhabitants, and before the elders of my people. If thou wilt redeem it, redeem it: but if thou wilt not redeem it, then tell me, that I may know: for there is none to redeem it beside thee; and I am after thee. And he said, I will redeem it.
5 Then said Boaz, What day thou buyest the field of the hand of Naomi, thou must buy it also of Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of the dead, to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance.
6 And the kinsman said, I cannot redeem it for myself, lest I mar mine own inheritance: redeem thou my right to thyself; for I cannot redeem it.
7 Now this was the manner in former time in Israel concerning redeeming and concerning changing, for to confirm all things; a man plucked off his shoe, and gave it to his neighbour: and this was a testimony in Israel.
8 Therefore the kinsman said unto Boaz, Buy it for thee. So he drew off his shoe.
9 And Boaz said unto the elders, and unto all the people, Ye are witnesses this day, that I have bought all that was Elimelech’s, and all that was Chilion’s and Mahlon’s, of the hand of Naomi.
10 Moreover Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of Mahlon, have I purchased to be my wife, to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance, that the name of the dead be not cut off from among his brethren, and from the gate of his place: ye are witnesses this day.
11 And all the people that were in the gate, and the elders, said, We are witnesses.

Boaz makes the precedent. The ten elders are just there to witness it and put it into the record. Where it remains to this day. Boaz, not the elders, is making the decision.

Also, in the Torah we constantly see that when we defeat our enemies and leave them alive and amongst us, it causes us no end of suffering. For instance, Purim, with Haman, who was descended from Agag of the Amalekites, whom Saul didn’t slay as commanded.

You are not only unwilling to slay your enemies, you give them democracy, which is disastrous for them and for you. Giving them benign dictatorship is a middle course between these extremes.

>It is much easier to double down on cheese crumbs lest you be infiltrated by bronze age golden goat worshipers.

As I’ve said repeatedly, the restrictions, Shabbat, dietary, sexual, etc., are part and parcel of the immune system. The feminists, socialists etc. generally chuck these restrictions out right away-they can’t stand them.

Assimilationists cannot stand them. Entryists, of which I can google up a large supply, claim to be just fine with obsessing about cheese crumbs, but claim that Judaism, rightly understood, makes women equal – or possibly superior.

>As is typical Jesus style, his subsequent words force a change in interpretation of his earlier words. In the context of his subsequent words, what he is saying is that the Pharisees have seated themselves in the seat of Moses, have illegitimately usurped the seat of Moses, and from this stolen seat improperly demand that you do what they say, not what they do.

You’re just making shit up and putting it into his mouth. He’s saying that their authority is legitimate, but their actions are not, that they are abusing their authority.

Oh come on. This is almost as silly as the Talmud’s reinterpretation of Moses.

Notice that Jesus says that Pharisees “sit in the seat of Moses”. This is a stronger claim than the Pharisees themselves admit to making. Obviously he is parodying their claim to authority, not endorsing it. Pharisees present themselves as bowing respectfully before Moses and reporting what Moses really said, even if it happens to directly contradict what the Old Testament reports him as saying. If they “sit in the seat of Moses”, then, as Jesus then proceeds to tell us they are making shit up and attributing it Moses. The Pharisees “lay heavy burdens”, not Moses.

>You are talmudizing Jesus as you talmudize Moses.

At this point, Jesus is not yet in open rebellion against the Torah

He is in open rebellion against the Pharisees, and against Pharisaical interpretation of the Torah.

>A woman carrying her baby out of doors for the sunshine is a more common event than a fishmonger going through the gates of Jerusalem with a load of dried fish.

But not among the Jews, and not on Shabbat.

If fishmongers, then women. Two thousand years ago, people had enough physical work that there was not much enthusiasm for backpacking. It is a modern phenomenon. Babies and women carrying their babies are an ancient phenomenon.

> while you are psychologically ready to double down on cheesecrumbs in ever heightened vigilance against worshipers of the Golden Goat, you are not psychologically ready to have courts in which women cannot testify.

Please don’t tell me what I am and am not psychologically ready for.

OK. Asking you now: Suppose, as is quite possible, tomorrow morning the Israeli government agrees to a “truce” that is a decisive victory for Hamas, and the army is so disgusted by this that there is a coup or a creeping coup like that of Monck or the Japanese fascists. The coupists are as Jewish Orthodox as Monck was royalist. Their first priority is a permanent solution to the Gaza problem. Gaza is re-occuppied, bloodily subdued, and resettlement begins. Everyone, even the surviving Gazans, is much relieved. The Egyptians say “tut tut”, scarcely concealing their smiles. The UN passes yet another resolution against Israel, and then returns to its normal focus on embezzling foreign aid. Suddenly you are in a position to implement your program. Assume you are one of the leading coupists, and you are among orthodox Jews who believe in taking back the Temple Mount. You take the temple mount back, you eject the Muslims from the Dome of the Rock, depriving every religious Jew everywhere of the fig leaf that you are still in comfortable exile. You place some soldiers who just happen to be Levites in charge of Temple Mount security. Now you are like the dog that caught the car. What is the dog going to do with it? It is still 2014, maybe early 2015. Gaza is history. The Temple Mount is Jewish. What is next? What would you then do about female testimony for 2015?

>Nor should you be – what you will need to do is use measures with similar spirit, intent and effect, but different in detail, after the fashion of Saint Paul.

Christianity has been working out well for you guys. We should copy it. Yes?

When we actually followed the program devised by Saint Paul, for example Restoration England, did work out well.

>Moses, or his immediate successors, tell you to go to the priests, and you do not go to the priests, instead saying “Rabbi, Rabbi”.

He tells us to go to the priests, Levites and judges who will be in that day.

Priests and judge, not judges. That is not the Sanhedrin. No rabbis, no elders, and priests either exercising judicial and political authority, or having the primary influence over who does exercise judicial and political authority. Either they are lower rank of judges, or they tell you who the judge is.

Our Oral Torah informs us that this is referring to a court in which all of these are represented, which is the Sanhedrin

Your Oral Torah informs you that up is down and black is white.

When you had a Jewish state religion, you generally did not permit open entry by opinion leaders. When you did permit open entry by opinion leaders into the state religion, holier than thou disease led to suicidal war. When you resume having a Jewish state religion, which you will do or else die of progressivism, you will need to once again stop open entry by opinion leaders.

>Boaz makes the precedent. The ten elders are just there to witness it and put it into the record. Where it remains to this day. Boaz, not the elders, is making the decision.

Here again you are in the position of a man who has read a car manual and never seen a car explaining to a driver what it means. The precedent is not Boaz’ to make.

Here again you are reading black for white and up for down.

The commandment to marry your deceased brother’s widow (“yibbum”) is from the Torah. Boaz is gathering a court to ratify his applying this precedent to marrying Ruth after her brother’s closer kinsman, Ploni Almoni (a generic term meaning Anonymous) takes an out (“halitzah”.) The court is needed to ratify all this stuff, otherwise Boaz wouldn’t have gathered them. Incidentally, you can notice this all happens at the city gate, where courts traditionally sat.

9 And Boaz said unto the elders, and unto all the people, Ye are witnesses this day, that I have bought all that was Elimelech’s, and all that was Chilion’s and Mahlon’s, of the hand of Naomi.
10 Moreover Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of Mahlon, have I purchased to be my wife, to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance, that the name of the dead be not cut off from among his brethren, and from the gate of his place: ye are witnesses this day.
11 And all the people that were in the gate, and the elders, said, We are witnesses.

Are they supposed to think about it and decide whether they are witnesses or not? They are not sitting in judgement over Boaz’s decision that his children by Ruth shall be part of the brethren of Mahlon and the inheritors of Mahlon. They are not ratifying it, they are witnessing it, lest there be subsequent litigation over the inheritance of Elimelech.

Naomi, an old Hebrew women, is the sole heir of Elimelech, owns everything that was his, including his daughter in law. She sells herself, or gives herself, and everything that was Elimelech’s, including his daughter in law, to Boaz. Boaz, being concerned with legality, has the anonymous kinsman who arguably had a better claim publicly renounce the claim before witnesses, and Naomi sell herself to Boaz before witnesses, rather than Boaz merely making a private arrangement with Ruth, as Naomi originally proposed. The elders and the people that were in the gate are witnesses to what happened. They don’t get any say in it.

Further, Old Testament does not say “The elders said …”. It says “The elders and the people that were in the gate said …”. The elders might be your Sanhedrin, but “The elders and the people that were in the gate” are not your Sanhedrin.

> Entryists, of which I can google up a large supply, claim to be just fine with obsessing about cheese crumbs, but claim that Judaism, rightly understood, makes women equal – or possibly superior.

Please google up these mythical Orthodox entryists.

http://www.jewfaq.org/women.htm

>Notice that Jesus says that Pharisees “sit in the seat of Moses”. This is a stronger claim than the Pharisees themselves admit to making. Obviously he is parodying their claim to authority, not endorsing it.

Obvious to you, but not obvious to the commentators here: http://biblehub.com/commentaries/pulpit/matthew/23.htm

The first paragraph of the document you link to tells us that Jesus told us that the pharisees “were proved to have misunderstood Scripture, and were incapable of interpreting it aright” and that “it was necessary to draw a line beyond which they were not to be obeyed.”

Which is of course, obviously what Jesus is indeed saying.

Does the Talmud not only tell you that Moses did not say what he said nor mean what he meant, but also that Jesus did not say what he said nor mean what he meant, and not only that but the Christian commentators on Jesus do not say what they say nor mean what they mean?

When Jesus says they sit in Moshe’s seat, this is what he means.

What Jesus means is entirely clear. In Mathew 23, Jesus is, as usual, pissing on the Pharisees, and every Christian everywhere takes him at his word on this topic, and always has, while the Jews conspicuously fail to take Moses at the word of Moses.

> He is in open rebellion against the Pharisees, and against Pharisaical interpretation of the Torah.

He is not. Where does he say, e.g., wave a pine tree around on Sukkot,

Mathew 12

Mark 2

> Suppose, as is quite possible, tomorrow morning the Israeli government agrees to a “truce” that is a decisive victory for Hamas, and the army is so disgusted by this that there is a coup or a creeping coup like that of Monck or the Japanese fascists…What is next? What would you then do about female testimony for 2015?

I would let the Sanhedrin and the King whom they appoint make that decision.

You are weaseling. You are going to wait for a miraculous Messiah to do the heavy lifting. In the hypothetical, you don’t yet have a Sanhedrin or a King. You have a coup. Perhaps in time the general will become a King, but Kings take time. You are not going to have a King, even less are you going to have a Sanhedrin, unless you get started on a state religion. The state religion is going to remain progressivism, unless you get started on changing it.

And you are not willing to get started, which means your general is not willing to get started.

Let us suppose you are one of the junior officers who actually made the coup and conscripted the general to “lead” it, and the general tells you he lacks confidence in all these crazy rabbis, but he has confidence that your faith makes you strong and united, so he is making you (the more religious elements among the junior officers who made the coup) the Sanhedrin. Now, he tells you “Get started on whipping up a theocracy to replace progressivism, because if I step down after this the progressives will hang me for war crimes. And watch out for those crazy rabbis or we will all hang.”

OK, your general has given you the task of planning a theocracy, subject only to the requirement that the theocracy shall say that it is the will of God that the general does not step down and hand power back to the progressives, and that the theocracy be sane, the definition of sanity being pretty much left in your hands. All other details are up to you and some like minded people. You are even allowed to get up the noses of secular Jews, because your general buys your theory that the more arbitrary, ridiculous, and unreasonable the rules, the better.

Now, in that hypothetical, what are you going to do for female testimony in 2015?

That you really do not want to answer the question tells me that you know in your heart that Orthodox Judaism is still a religion of exile, that it furtively changed in the past, and that to return from exile, to once again become a state religion, it is going to need to change again. That is why the Rabbis don’t really want the temple back. They need the fig leaf that they are still in exile. If a bunch of Jewish soldiers were to occupy the temple mount, a pile of embarrassments would come live.

As long Judaism still in exile, progressivism rules, is the state religion of Israel. As long as progressivism is the theocracy, Israel survives only by unprincipled exception, and is weak before those with higher principles. The left scold you because of the unprincipled exception, the right scold you because you get the exception and we do not.

>Priests and judge, not judges.

And once you take things out of context, you make invalid inferences. If you are speaking of a “judge” in the sense of a war leader like Ehud or Devora, EVERYBODY knows who the judge is-do you need a special reference agency to let you know who the President is today?

Actually yes. It is called the US Electoral College, and as every election approaches and proceeds, you hear a a great deal about the electoral college.

When Judges are chosen in the book of Judges, don’t hear anything about the Sanhedrin.

>Are they supposed to think about it and decide whether they are witnesses or not?

Of course they are.

You are going against the plain words of the book of Ruth.

>Boaz, being concerned with legality, has the anonymous kinsman who arguably had a better claim publicly renounce the claim before witnesses, and Naomi sell herself to Boaz before witnesses

Naomi doesn’t sell herself to Boaz. Where are you getting this crap from?

Book of Ruth: Ruth offers herself to Boaz, but Boaz cannot accept, because arguably someone else owns her.

12 And now it is true that I am thy near kinsman: howbeit there is a kinsman nearer than I.
13 Tarry this night, and it shall be in the morning, that if he will perform unto thee the part of a kinsman, well; let him do the kinsman’s part: but if he will not do the part of a kinsman to thee, then will I do the part of a kinsman to thee, as the LORD liveth: lie down until the morning.

So in the morning rounds up the kinsman, and has the kinsman drop the claim before witnesses. But still does not own Ruth, so to own Ruth …
9 And Boaz said unto the elders, and unto all the people, Ye are witnesses this day, that I have bought all that was Elimelech’s, and all that was Chilion’s and Mahlon’s, of the hand of Naomi.
10 Moreover Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of Mahlon, have I purchased to be my wife, to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance, that the name of the dead be not cut off from among his brethren, and from the gate of his place: ye are witnesses this day.

“all that was Elimelech’s, and all that was Chilion’s and Mahlon’s” is Naomi and Ruth. So he purchased them both in a job lot. Notice that Ruth is not present. In the previous chapter she was told to tarry while Boaz takes care of business. He does not legally need her consent, she is property, though his reference to “the hand of Naomi” would hint that he needs Naomi’s consent. There seem to be contradictory precedents about who inherits when all the males in a family die.

>The elders might be your Sanhedrin, but “The elders and the people that were in the gate” are not your Sanhedrin.

The elders were judges.

If they were, they did not get to do any judging in the book of Ruth.

>http://www.jewfaq.org/women.htm

And? This woman is providing a female-friendly FAQ. None of this stuff (“oh, women are not obliged to pray 3 times a day because they are closer to G-d”) has any practical ramifications, and none of it is taken seriously by considerable swathes of Orthodox Jews. In practice, women defer to men,

I am pretty sure that this woman does not defer to men, and does not feel all that much like marrying and having sex and children with the kind of man who is likely to marry her and have sex and children with her. She is changing the meaning of Jewish practices so that instead of implying that women should submit and obey, they imply that women should not submit nor obey, and you are incapable of resisting her in the vigorous way you so industriously continue to resist bronze age goat worshipers.

You defend Jewish Orthodoxy against feminists the way that Israel defends itself against Hamas – as little as possible, guiltily, and furtively. If the Orthodox are still fertile, it is because some of the Orthodox are doing a better job.

>The first paragraph of the document you link to tells us that Jesus told us that the pharisees “were proved to have misunderstood Scripture, and were incapable of interpreting it aright” and that “it was necessary to draw a line beyond which they were not to be obeyed.”

Well, that is the way modern Christianity must interpret these words for its very existence.

No that is the way Christians have interpreted these words because that is, in fact, what these words, Mathew 23, say.

I repeat my rhetorical question, and I really would like an answer. Do you think that Marc Antony really came to bury to Caesar, and that he meant that Brutus was an honorable man?

If you don’t think that Marc Antony meant that Brutus is an honorable man, how can you conclude that Jesus meant his listeners should obey the pharisees?

>Mathew 12
>Mark 2

Here, he is making an argument within the Pharisaical framework, that medicine and hunger supercede the Shabbat,

As Stalin said, “Who, whom”.

In an ironic counterpoint to Mathew 23:3, here he tells his disciples to not do what the Pharisees tell them to do and then justifies it by the arguments that Pharisees use when they evade the heavy burdens that they place on others.

And then he departs from the Parisaical framework: “What man shall there be among you, that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out?”, making each man interpreter of the law.

>You are weaseling. You are going to wait for a miraculous Messiah to do the heavy lifting.

Where did I say anything about miracles?

You assume a Jewish theocracy somehow already in place. How does it get to be in place? Mortals, such as yourself, are going to have to place it.

A King is not a King because he is a King, nor a general a general because he is a general. A king is a king because other people act like he is a king, which is why coups are in reality made by junior officers, rather than generals.

>In the hypothetical, you don’t yet have a Sanhedrin or a King. You have a coup. Perhaps in time the general will become a King, but Kings take time. You are not going to have a King, even less are you going to have a Sanhedrin, unless you get started on a state religion.

Not at all. The way to have a Sanhedrin is to make a Sanhedrin, and invite the luminaries in the field to join. The way to make a Temple is to announce the construction project and build it. A king will be appointed by the Sanhedrin.

It is intentionally circular: The state supports the church because the church supports the state. But the church is not strong enough to substantially support the state, unless the state makes it so.

This is not a Sanhedrin, any more than Nero’s horse-wife was his wife.

Then you are doomed.

Recall how King David came to power. There is no record of any of your kings being appointed by the Sanhedrin, and when the Sanhedrin actually had power, in the time of Rome, there is plenty of record of parties, factions, and all the usual crap and drama. That lot could not agree on what pizza to order. Realistically, you are not going to get a Sanhedrin powerful enough to appoint a King, barring overt divine intervention with overt miracles. You never have had a Sanhedrin powerful enough to appoint a King, even in the time of its greatest power, under Rome. You are going to get a general who is, like King David, quietly dependent on junior officers acting like he is a King, King David’s mighty men.

What you have is incapable of exercising power and does not want to exercise power. They just want to enlarge their phylacteries and have men call them “Rabbi, Rabbi”, which as progressives know very well is not power, merely its semblance. They don’t really want to touch the temple mount, because they are happy to be in exile forever. They are comfortable with what they have, and have no intention of changing it.

>Now, in that hypothetical, what are you going to do for female testimony in 2015?

The same exact thing that I will do for water planning, agricultural policy, theoretical physics research, etc. I will put together a board of the most qualified people to figure it out and enable them to make the best decisions they see fit.

This, circularly, assumes you already have a Jewish, rather than progressive, theocracy. The question is getting there from here. I am trying to get you to admit that it takes some changes, and you have sort of admitted that it will take some changes, but piously say, the rabbis shall decide on those changes.

Hmm, but which rabbis. As I said, a general is not a general because he is a general. A general is a general because his junior officers act like he is a general.

The way power works is that a bunch of alpha males quietly sort things out between themselves, and then present a solidly united face to the rest of the world. You are skipping over the quietly-sort-things-out-among-themselves phase. And the Sanhedrin that actually existed, when they briefly exercised real power, never quite managed to quietly sort things out among themselves. If they ever existed before those disastrous events, they were able to act cohesively because they had a King or a supreme Judge elected for life to whip them into shape – which is to say, if they existed at all before those disastrous events, they had marked resemblance to Nero’s horse wife. As I said, recollect how King David came to power. The mighty men were the equivalent of junior officers, not the equivalent of rabbis.

You want a new David, you will need some mighty men. The Sanhedrin, supposing that they existed apart from the brief period when Josephus records them existing, and records them screwing up, never managed a David. When they mattered enough that Josephus records them acting, could not manage to order pizza.

>Actually yes. It is called the US Electoral College, and as every election approaches and proceeds, you hear a a great deal about the electoral college.

But in reality, once there’s been a presidential election, everyone knows who the President is.

As the election approaches and proceeds, we hear how many supporters the candidate is getting on the electoral college. In the old testament, we never hear how many supporters the candidate got on the sanhedrin, nor how he got them. The earliest judges are chosen by God. (Or at least that was the priest’s story and they stuck to it.) Later they are elected by the multitude. Then it looks more like hereditary authority limited partly by anarchy, partly by military coups. The sons of Samuel lack the mojo to succeed him, so the people call for a King. If the Sanhedrin existed and had the power to make a judge a supreme judge, no one would have worried about the sons of Samuel not measuring up.

>You are going against the plain words of the book of Ruth.

I have context,

All your supposed context dates from long, long after the book of Ruth.

>Book of Ruth: Ruth offers herself to Boaz, but Boaz cannot accept, because arguably someone else owns her.

No. The nearer kinsman doesn’t OWN her. He has the right of first refusal on performing the mitzvah of yibbum.

This procedure only makes sense in a society where woman are as much property as a dog is. You today retain the form without the substance, but back in their day, Boaz, Naomi and the witnesses act as if the substance is entirely real.

if you guys had the courage of your convictions, you would tell women they were property, albeit very specially protected property, which imposes great obligations on its owner, and when you raised the status of women by requiring their consent, would have discarded a procedure that only makes sense in a society where women cannot consent.

Everyone acts as if Ruth is property. She is not present when Boaz goes off to dicker with his kinsman. They settle her fate and Naomi’s fate in her absence without input from her. Then he summons the elders and the crowd, and tells us Ruth is his property. Then he marries Ruth to himself in her absence. Everyone needs to witness the kinsman’s consent. They need to witness Boaz’s decision. They don’t need to witness Ruth’s consent. Therefore, property.

You don’t admit to abandoning the old rules, and neither do you admit to endorsing the old rules.

The old rules I think, took subordination of women too far. The point is to contain our biological urges inside the rules of contract and property, not to replace our biological urges with the rules of contract and property.

The sensible way to do this is that fertile age women start off as property of their parents and become property of their husbands, but they get to choose the husband that shall own them, having the right to refuse their parent’s choice or elope with their own choice, so that everyone has to arrange for contractual property rights to be as closely aligned as possible to biological impulses. The right way to do this would have been for Ruth to become the property of Boaz by the witnesses observing the consent of herself and Naomi. But that is not what they did. What they did then fails to recognize that women, uncontrollably, have agency and we little choice but to accommodate it. What everyone does now errs in the opposite extreme, by granting women too much power and authority – they should be required to decide once and forever, not decide from moment to moment.

A Jewish wedding involves a ketubah, which is a marriage contract of acquisition of the woman by the man. Of course, the woman’s consent is required for the marriage to be legal.

Now it is. But in the book of Ruth, everyone acts as if consent is irrelevant. And some of your present day rituals make no sense in a society where a woman’s consent is required, are reminders of a time when the woman’s consent was not required, are an effort by Rabbis to accommodate change while denying change.

Today, those rituals are a formality. In the book of Ruth, those old rituals are the real substance, and they don’t bother with today’s new rituals. Boaz simply announces to the witnesses how he proposes to dispose of the estate

>If they were, they did not get to do any judging in the book of Ruth.

Your own commentators whom I quoted and gave links for said they were judges.

They believe that because the Jews claim it to be true. Supposing it to be true, supposing the elders were judges, the christian commentators do not believe that they got to do any judging in the Book of Ruth. Thus, the book of Ruth is not evidence that elders were judges in that time.

It doesn’t have to present the minutes of the deliberations, the arguments made by opposing sides, etc.

But it does have to present their decision. We hear of no decision. They are just witnesses and recorders.

> I am pretty sure that this woman does not defer to men, and does not feel all that much like marrying and having sex and children with the kind of man who is likely to marry her and have sex and children with her.

There is no obligation on women to marry and have children in Judaism.

The reason that Jews have high fertility and that in particular orthodox Jews have high fertility is not the obsession with cheesecrumbs. It is that the old testament position is that women are simply property, and orthodox Jews have various rituals and practices that remind women of this. The problem is that you are running away from this position, from the clear meaning of your rituals and practices.

She has no authority whatsoever and is expressing her opinion online. She grew up Reform and became Orthodox as a grownup, accepting upon herself all the restrictions involved. By doing so, she is implicitly supporting Torah Judaism.

Old Testament Judaism was pretty bloodthirsty and unambiguously treated women as property. Talmudic Judaism is even guiltier than actually existent Christianity about slaying its enemies, and equivocates on women as property

Talmudic Judaism gets reinterpreted by each successive set of rabbis. If you are not prepared to treat her Judaism like a cheeseburger, it will go the way it is in fact going. Since each successive set of rabbis has full authority (“sits in the seat of Moses” as Jesus parodied them) there is nothing to stop her kind of Talmudic Judaism from having authority.

>You defend Jewish Orthodoxy against feminists the way that Israel defends itself against Hamas – as little as possible, guiltily, and furtively.

I do not see the need to defend Judaism against 49 year old ladies with a website.

The fact that you cannot read the book of Ruth as meaning what it means about the status of women tells me she is winning, and you are losing.

>Recall how King David came to power.

The same way that Saul came to power-he was anointed by Shmuel.

His crown, however …

>You never have had a Sanhedrin powerful enough to appoint a King, even in the time of its greatest power, under Rome.

During the Bar Kochba revolt, they were seriously debating anointing him. Rabbi Akiva was for, the rest of the sages against. No miracles were involved.

As I said, could not agree on what pizza to order.

>You are going to get a general who is, like King David, quietly dependent on junior officers acting like he is a King, King David’s mighty men.

His mighty men were commandos, not internal enforcers. Had the relevant spiritual authorities not supported him, he would have lost power, like Saul.

His mighty men slew his rebellious son, and when he got upset about it, reprimanded him for undermining his and their authority.

> They just want to enlarge their phylacteries and have men call them “Rabbi, Rabbi”, which as progressives know very well is not power, merely its semblance. They don’t really want to touch the temple mount, because they are happy to be in exile forever.

You are painting with a broad brush and taking something widespread and calling it universal.

True. But it is widespread. Orthodox are a minority, and orthodox that genuinely want to come out of exile, to replace progressive theocracy with Jewish theocracy, are minority of a minority. And of that minority of a minority, there is reluctance to confront the choices that would need to be made in coming out of exile.

A cohesive minority with a clear plan can easily take charge of an incohesive majority with no clear plan. But the sanhedrin does not have an impressive record of coming up with clear plans.

>The way power works is that a bunch of alpha males quietly sort things out between themselves, and then present a solidly united face to the rest of the world.

Not the way it works with us. The deliberations of a Sanhedrin are open.

This may partially explain its inability to order pizza.

>If the Sanhedrin existed and had the power to make a judge a supreme judge, no one would have worried about the sons of Samuel not measuring up.

There was no institution of “supreme judge.” You are confusing the judicial/legislative (the same thing in a religious state) with the executive.

Whatever you want to call Samuel and the rest. I keep trying to use your terminology, and you keep chiding me for it. Old Testament terminology is “Judge in the day”, which implies that there were no other judges. I therefore believe that there were no other judges, but I am trying to accommodate your belief system.

>This procedure only makes sense in a society where woman are as much property as a dog is.

No. We have a record of female consent being required going back to Avraham’s son.

The servant makes a deal for Rebecca with her father as if she was a puppy. The servant pays up.

Then the following day, after the servant has paid up, her brother and her mother (but not her father) insist on consent. Her consent was not required by her father, nor by the servant (who seems rather pissed by this last minute issue)

So consent was not a legal or social requirement, not expected, preferred, but not required.

32 And the man came into the house: and he ungirded his camels, and gave straw and provender for the camels, and water to wash his feet, and the men’s feet that were with him.
33 And there was set meat before him to eat: but he said, I will not eat, until I have told mine errand. And he said, Speak on.
34 And he said, I am Abraham’s servant.
35 And the LORD hath blessed my master greatly; and he is become great: and he hath given him flocks, and herds, and silver, and gold, and menservants, and maidservants, and camels, and asses.
36 And Sarah my master’s wife bare a son to my master when she was old: and unto him hath he given all that he hath.
37 And my master made me swear, saying, Thou shalt not take a wife to my son of the daughters of the Canaanites, in whose land I dwell:
38 But thou shalt go unto my father’s house, and to my kindred, and take a wife unto my son.
39 And I said unto my master, Peradventure the woman will not follow me.
40 And he said unto me, The LORD, before whom I walk, will send his angel with thee, and prosper thy way; and thou shalt take a wife for my son of my kindred, and of my father’s house:
41 Then shalt thou be clear from this my oath, when thou comest to my kindred; and if they give not thee one, thou shalt be clear from my oath.
42 And I came this day unto the well, and said, O LORD God of my master Abraham, if now thou do prosper my way which I go:
43 Behold, I stand by the well of water; and it shall come to pass, that when the virgin cometh forth to draw water, and I say to her, Give me, I pray thee, a little water of thy pitcher to drink;
44 And she say to me, Both drink thou, and I will also draw for thy camels: let the same be the woman whom the LORD hath appointed out for my master’s son.
45 And before I had done speaking in mine heart, behold, Rebekah came forth with her pitcher on her shoulder; and she went down unto the well, and drew water: and I said unto her, Let me drink, I pray thee.
46 And she made haste, and let down her pitcher from her shoulder, and said, Drink, and I will give thy camels drink also: so I drank, and she made the camels drink also.
47 And I asked her, and said, Whose daughter art thou? And she said, The daughter of Bethuel, Nahor’s son, whom Milcah bare unto him: and I put the earring upon her face, and the bracelets upon her hands.
48 And I bowed down my head, and worshipped the LORD, and blessed the LORD God of my master Abraham, which had led me in the right way to take my master’s brother’s daughter unto his son.
49 And now if ye will deal kindly and truly with my master, tell me: and if not, tell me; that I may turn to the right hand, or to the left.
50 Then Laban and Bethuel answered and said, The thing proceedeth from the LORD: we cannot speak unto thee bad or good.
51 Behold, Rebekah is before thee, take her, and go, and let her be thy master’s son’s wife, as the LORD hath spoken.
52 And it came to pass, that, when Abraham’s servant heard their words, he worshipped the LORD, bowing himself to the earth.
53 And the servant brought forth jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment, and gave them to Rebekah: he gave also to her brother and to her mother precious things.
54 And they did eat and drink, he and the men that were with him, and tarried all night; and they rose up in the morning, and he said, Send me away unto my master.

No one even tells Rebecca about the deal, let alone asks her consent. The servant gets a wife for his master in the same manner as he would get a puppy. In the morning, when he is about to leave the issue of consent arises, obviously unexpectedly.

The old testament, and many present day Jewish rituals, make no sense in a society where female consent was expected or required.

>if you guys had the courage of your convictions, you would tell women they were property, albeit very specially protected property, which imposes great obligations on its owner, and when you raised the status of women by requiring their consent

You are upset at Avraham’s slave, Eliezer, claiming that he was overstepping his authority at asking Rivka’s consent?

Abraham’s servant does not ask for Rebekah’s consent. He is about to leave with her, when her brother starts stalling. Up till then no one has asked her consent, and there is no mention of her even being told the deal, though she must have figured it out when she received her dowry.

Notice the order of events. First the deal, then the payment and dowry, then they go to sleep. In the morning the servant is about to leave with Rebekah, and Rebekah’s brother starts being difficult. Then they ask Rebekah. Who “consents” after being married (since the payment makes the marriage) and without ever having met the man she has just been married to.

>Everyone acts as if Ruth is property. She is not present when Boaz goes off to dicker with his kinsman. They settle her fate and Naomi’s fate in her absence without input from her.

She gave her consent the previous night.

That influenced Boaz, but it was his choice to be so influenced. He still settled her fate with his kinsman in her absence. Her consent had no legal effect. He could have made the same deal with his and her kinsman without ever speaking to her. If her consent mattered, Boaz would not have needed to cut a deal with his and her kinsman.

Again, you have no textual proof of her absence at the marriage, nor can you point at any other points in the Torah where there is a marriage with the wife not there. This is retarded on the face of it-if the woman who is supposedly being married dies in the meantime, then what?

In the case of the marriage of Abraham’s son, I suppose that Abraham might have asked for a refund.

>You don’t admit to abandoning the old rules, and neither do you admit to endorsing the old rules.

We know what the old rules actually are from our tradition

Your quite recent and deliberately evasive and ambiguous tradition. Female consent being a requirement for marriage does not go back very far at all, and you still practice rituals that make no sense in the context of a society where female consent is a requirement – you still do that business with the shoe.

Eh? The events in the Book of Ruth take place long after the events of Yitzhak’s marriage to Rivka, which required consent.

That it required consent evidently came as a surprise to her, her father, and Abraham’s servant. She had already been given her dowry the day before the issue of consent arose.

>Supposing it to be true, supposing the elders were judges, the christian commentators do not believe that they got to do any judging in the Book of Ruth. Thus, the book of Ruth is not evidence that elders were judges in that time.

The elders are identified as judges in Deuteronomy and in Josephus.

I am pretty sure they are not identified as judges in Deuteronomy.