OT -- Re: random cover of a range

[Yigal Chripun]

Christopher Wright wrote:
>
> Divergence of belief in the historical content of the text, yes. (I know
> that Christianity has some divergence on whether the text is completely
> and literally accurate in all aspects. I don't know whether there are
> any young-earth creationists among non-Christian Jews, or anything like
> that.)

Judaism doesn't have that big clash of science vs. religion that the 
Christian world create. the entire handling of the bible is completely 
different. Jews are required to study the bible themselves and in 
Synagogue *everyone* read from the bible together. the concept of having 
a priest to give a sermon to the public is completely foreign to 
Judaism. There's a saying in Hebrew that says the Torah has 70 faces, 
meaning that it can be interpreted in many ways and each individual 
needs to read it himself and understand it himself. That means there's 
no one world-view that is being dictated on the people like the Vatican 
does.
The Talmud that Don mentioned deals with many subjects where for each 
subject there are two opposing interpretations that are presented by two 
groups of Rabbis and their students. each side presents its case and The 
Talmud basically encourages to have a debate of the subject in order to 
understand it.
>
> However, there are a lot of commandments given down regarding what is
> clean and unclean, and how to distinguish, and treatment for being
> unclean in various ways. That is universally ignored. Doctors do better
> at healing people than priests who follow the Torah exactly. In case of
> an infestation of mold in your house, you are going to call someone who
> specializes in that issue, and they're not going to follow the Torah,
> even if they are the strictest of orthodox Jews. And I haven't seen any
> Christian who felt compelled to avoid eating shellfish due to biblical
> restrictions.

Not exactly. Jews where less likely to die in Europe during the 
dark-ages because of the plague. The reason is because of those rules 
which require for instance to wash hands before you eat.
Those rules are not arbitrary and have reasons behind them. I agree that 
for example the rules regarding woman's period are today ridiculous and 
redundant. The issue here that 5 millenia ago the human knowledge was 
smaller compared to today and those rules are built on that knowledge. 
you can always add new rules to Judaism (if the Rabbis have a consensus) 
in order to adapt to modern times - that happens all the time, but you 
cannot remove or cancel existing laws so that's why we got stuck with 
few laws that are today ridiculous by scientific standards.

>
> I don't know many ultra-Orthodox Jews; do any of you know a Jew who
> would go to his priest regarding a rash before he would go to a doctor?

as I said there isn't an either-or question about such questions in 
Judaism and there is no conflict between the two. you can go to the 
Doctor to get some pills and also to a rabbi to get a blessing and both 
are complementary rather the contradicting.