I just realized today is the first day of Passover

I almost passed over this thread.

I think you made it clear that you weren't really "practicing." Was that not quite accurate?

Hmmm...I seem to remember you saying something like you keep Sabbath when you feel like it, or something.

So...a Jew that is practicing...but not everything. Like...a part-time vegetarian? How much practicing do you have to do to qualify?

Well, obviously I know something about Judaism or I would never have heard about Sabbath.

If Sabbath is kind of “voluntary” (or whatever), are you suggesting that every Jew makes up his/her own mind as to what to practice or not practice?

But my question was serious. I do want to know what you think. There is a wide spectrum—Ultra-Orthodox, Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, “nominal”—where do you see yourself and for what reasons?

Shabat, Sabbath...same word just like Lundi and Monday are the same thing in two different languages. Heck, so many Jews speak Yiddish as a "Jewish language," but it's not Hebrew.


Oh, yeah, I forgot about Kabbalah...really trendy in the mid first decade of the 2000s in Hollywood. Gematria and all that.


Kind of a circular statement. Pretty well anything we do is voluntary. But to claim that "I am a piano player" when I never play piano doesn't make me a piano player. Playing piano is voluntary as is claiming I am a piano player. But the first does not make the second true. I know there is a strong interweaving here between "cultural identity" and "religion" that (as you have explained in the past) that is probably impossible to unravel.


The question wasn't about "good" or "bad" but about "observant" or "practicing."


Yeah, that's a clearer answer...I was asking to what extent you are observant. And...Torah doesn't mention a mezuzah by name, but they are certainly mentioned...if you interpret the text fairly literally.


Yeah, that's what I was asking about. It seemed to me you were pretty complacent in a past post about what/how you expressed your Jewishness. That's why I was curious. I have had to update my mental perception of you, which is helpful, I think.


Why is it personal? I'm not challenging you here...I really want to know. Like, there's a guy in my church who is Jewish (in his words, Jewish, because his family was mostly nominal, although they ate the Seder annually), and I never got the sense from him that asking about Sabbath observance was offensive.


Thanks, appreciate it.


That's a great question. Since Christianity is transcultural, the practice of Christianity can differ from culture to culture. I think there are a few core "habits" that Christians do (and it's not that "the habits make you a Christian," but that "Christians practice these habits"): prayer, engaging scripture (reading it, unless someone is illiterate), worshiping with other Christians. Those are the big individual "habits." How that "looks" can vary from culture to culture and tradition to tradition. It's pretty wide.

A lot of our western traditions are "creedal." They would define a "Christian" as someone who assents to "certain truths" or "truth statements." The more narrowly defined the tradition, the more of these statements they might have. It has become so ingrained in our western Christianity that many Christians define themselves more by creed than by practice, which is really problematic, but that's a whole other conversation. My particular tradition is not "creedal," but become absorbed into evangelicalism (for a lot of reasons), a lot of our grassroots Christians in my tradition have unquestioningly absorbed the "creedal" mentality, which is unfortunate.

There are other expectations that are more about "character behaviour" than habit—care for the poor and marginalized, hospitality (although in the west, this is not particularly highlighted), generosity, etc.

K, nice turn on that on. Well done.


But...I don't read translations of translations. I read translations. More and more, I have tried to look at the original Hebrew. Not having been brought up with it, it doesn't come naturally, but it's usually worth it. I am familiar with the Hebrew on yam suph and Bavel. I generally try to swap out translations, and I'm currently reading one that's more directly based on Hebrew without the western influence/interference, which is informative. I'm actually more than a little frustrated with that. I've had a smattering of Greek, and most New Testament translations use "James" as the translation of the Greek Ἰάκωβος, transliterated jacobus. Like, there's an intention effort made to erase the Jewish roots of the New Testament, which I find deplorable.



I was basing my perception on what you said...which sounded very casual at the time. It sounded like you were saying you kind of pick and choose what you want to do and when. You know, like your accusation of "my Christianity." I see now that that wasn't what you were really saying.


Seems to me that culture is public and personal practice is private. Arguably, it could be a "closed culture." And I was asking about practice, not belief.


Ah, well, creeds do function to preserve unity. But they also function to exclude. The more creeds, the more division. Like I said, it could be a whole new thread, but here's a summary:

1) Creeds were introduced to settle disputes at the fringes of the common beliefs. But over time, they became the definers of the common belief. Fringe issues became the core. This is how, in the first creed, Jesus went from "born of a virgin" directly to "crucified under Pontius Pilate"—his entire life and ministry were eliminated! This resulted in a theological perspective that his life and ministry only mattered as a precursor or introduction to his death. I have no problem with settling disputes (to create unity), but replacing the core with the fringe is problematic. In Judaism, from what I understand, the Sh'ma is the fundamental definer. If the creeds are to serve that function in Christianity, they are a fail.

2) Relying on creeds emphasizes a cognitive default—what you believe (what your "opinions are") are more important than what you do, your way of being and living. That's the abandonment of orthopathy and orthopraxy for the sake of orthodoxy alone. Not only is that problematic, but it's one of the reasons people like you claim that "Christians can believe (or say the believe) the right things which automatically exonerates them from all the shit they do." That's wrong. That's a problem.

3) The creeds are used to draw lines of exclusion. At some point, there is a central essential tenet. "Jesus is Lord"—that worked for the early Church. The accretion of multiple creeds emphasizing all kinds of non-essentials is unnecessarily divisive and restrictive. A large chunk of Christians in the east (dyophisites) were unnecessarily (in my mind) denounced as "not real Christians" because they didn't hold all the right opinions in all the right ways—opinions that were more characteristic of Greek culture than Christianity's Jewish roots.

In my tradition (one that is currently being eroded by some by re-appealing to creeds), our roots are more narrative than creedal. We "see ourselves" in the Biblical story...that's what defines us more than a simple set of propositions to which we are expected to acquiesce. Our original doctrinal statement specifically said that we reject the creeds (and we don't...not all of them) and then laid out a set of essential truths that define us (effectively...pretty well creeds). At some level, I see the necessity for those kinds of statements, but to appeal to them instead of that narrative perspective is, in my mind, not helpful. I hope that's not too technical or esoteric.

Sorry, that was a lot.


No. I explicitly said the opposite. Doing this things does not make you a Christian. But Christians do these things. Eating food does not make me human. But because I'm human, I eat food. What "makes you a Christian" is allegiance to Jesus as Lord.


Yeah, except see my clarification. Actually re-clarification.

To "recognize Jesus as Lord" is pretty well the same as saying "recognize Biden as President" (in contrast, say, to some who would question election results. So... "recognize as Lord" and "recognize is Lord" is pretty well the same thing.



I've already said that "far righties" would not put Jesus higher than things like nation, ethnicity, race, etc. If they did, they would recognize the equality of all of his children.