It portrays Jewish men as sexually deviant It portrays Jewish men as inclined to prey on gentile women It portrays Jewish women as nagging and sexually uninterested All of these None of these. What is the name of the Judeo-Spanish language? Ashkenazic Esperanto Ladino Yiddish. What is a kohen? A descendant of Aaron, the High Priest Someone whose ancestor was Levi, the third son of Jacob Someone who is permitted to recite the Priestly Benediction on festivals in synagogue All of these None of these.
I thought technology, the right politics, and time would eventually bring about a humanistic utopia. However, by the time I was out of college, I had adopted an angry, nihilistic view of the Universe and a dim view of humanity. Technology particularly the Internet often seemed to allow humanity to commit the same errors of judgement on a larger scale.
Her parents were Catholic. Her parents also saw no conflict between science and religion. I realized that all the best people I had ever known throughout my life were Christians and that I agreed with the basic tenants of Christianity and its model of humility and kindness towards others. After reading C. After a few weeks of agonizing, I eventually worked up the courage to ask my wife if she would go to church with me. When we went, I was too nervous to focus much on believing in God.
My wife and I are currently attending an Episcopal Church together. I am hoping to be baptized within the next year and praying each day for hope. Embedded above is the most popular installment on YouTube of C. The book actually followed the broadcasts, which aired between and She presumes that the commitment to baptism is a free one, and that the consequences of breaking the commitment are thus chosen.
Or what if your experience of the world is completely filtered through Watchtower-shaped lenses? I am an on-the-books Witness, having taken the plunge at I really had no idea. My best friend and I used to fervently discuss whether we would be kept out of the Paradise for swearing, listening to Nirvana, or checking out skater boys.
This is not an uncommon belief, and it is utterly reasonable for a religion of myriad behavioral restrictions. And when she did get baptized, she seemed so righteous. So I did it, too. I was terrified of being shunned or otherwise left ungirded in a world that had been described since childhood as a place where Satan walked around invisibly, just waiting to eat you up. I wanted to fit in, please my parents, and do what I thought would save me.
I was bright, highly adept at acting as though I believed everything I ought to—so adept that I fooled not only the elders and my parents, but myself. If I were to become disfellowshipped, I know that my parents and brother would probably stop talking to me, and my mother has said as much. She went through all that process rather than questioning the rule. Anna and Bill did marry, but that was not the primary purpose for the adultery.
Mark's second wife Nancy, who was an anointed Witness one of those few chosen to serve in heaven , left him too for a woman.
Anna and Nancy probably did not realize that they were marrying a gay man. Not only were they forbidden from having any sexual intimacy before marriage, Mark was forbidden from admitting his sexuality. Everyone lost. No one chose this imprisonment. The strictures of the religion are so numerous and invasive that the way they end up playing out in the real world are absurd and incredibly sad.
My own parents told me that they had considered divorcing and were at the point of deciding who would do the cheating-disfellowshipping combo to free them. Mustachioed gay men who love musical theater and porkpie hats? That was Mark, to a T. Update from one more anonymous reader, who complicates our JW discussion even further:. I was mostly raised as a Jehovah's Witness. I was baptized at I attended and graduated from an Ivy League university while still an active member.
I stopped attending meetings when I was in my mids. I had done nothing that would warrant my disfellowshipping, though I am sure at this point I have. Though I am no longer an active member, my mother is. We maintain a close relationship. She is, objectively, a lovely human being. These facts would seem to make me an anomaly among the voices that have so far been published.
I know that I am not. I know many people in similar situations who made the choice to leave the religion, or simply drifted away, and were not shunned by their families.
Some occasionally participate, some never do. Of course, as in any group, there is great social pressure to conform. Then again, social pressure or not, I chose it at the time. Many in my peer group were baptized years after I was, or not at all. Some churches baptize infants.
That baptism may become essentially meaningless to that individual, as mine eventually became to me. It just happened at different times. I was excused from Mass, as were the Muslim students in the school.
I had Jehovah;s Witness friends who attended the same college as me. I suppose my point is that while it is a much smaller, and therefore much less well understood religious group, it is no more or less constricting than other religious experiences. Some people believe fervently, some barely at all but just go with it to keep the peace at home. I am against organized religion entirely. By the time I was 16, my social life was severely impacted by my hesitation to get baptized.
My sister was baptized at the same time, although she was only I tried my best to fit into the religion, but gradually fell away from the homophobia, gossip, and informal shunning. I still believed, but I had no desire for an eternal life with my fellow congregants under any circumstances. A few years later, my sister got married.
After this experience, something felt so wrong that I had to resolve it. I kept quiet about all of this, never discussing it with my still-in family. A few years later, my then-fiance became embroiled in a drama within his family that led to his father being disfellowshipped. I was not involved, but since he was on their radar, so was I. I received a series of certified letters, which I never picked up.
Then, one Saturday, as I came in from my run, I saw two elders on my porch. There was no where to hide. They told me I had been disfellowshipped in absentia. My sister only speaks to me at funerals. My mother is more lenient. My father and brothers have left the religion. But it is as if a bomb went off in my family. We are never in the same room together. We are distant, and rarely have contact. Years have been lost between us.
Sometimes I pass by a Kingdom Hall, and I feel so badly for them. I am overwhelmed and angered by the misinformation being supplied by your readers. Many of them are leaving out vital information. Only if you are baptized can you be disfellowshipped. Baptism is not a requirement in the church nor is it a choice one can frivolously make. I am not baptized, but both my parents were; my mother is baptized but inactive, and my father was disfellowshipped.
I was raised in the Kingdom Hall [the JW term for church building ] until I was a young teen, and then allowed to choose my own path. I have been told that the path to baptism takes around two years.
They chose to make a lifelong vow and broke it, fully aware of the potential consequences. No one forced them to be baptized; it was their own free will and choice.
Again, without that choice, they would not have been in a position to be disfellowshipped in the first place. I asked the reader a few followup questions, such as the rough percentage of JW church-goers who are baptized and some key distinctions between members of different commitment levels:.
I am no longer an active member of a congregation admittedly, I now only darken the door for the Memorial. I would guess if you walked into a Kingdom Hall on a Sunday morning the majority of attendees minus children will be baptized or preparing for baptism. I think generally people who make the effort and commitment to go to church regularly are more likely to commit in other ways, such as baptism, whereas those who are not serious about baptism probably drop off and rarely attend because it is not required of them.
There are three ways for baptized members to leave the church but they will forever be considered baptized : disfellowshipment, disassociation, and becoming inactive.
Let me interrupt real quick to illustrate the difference between disfellowshipment and disassociation, explained here by a different reader the first of two readers excerpted in our previous note in a followup email:. We disassociated ourselves, which is a technicality of sorts, but also very different. People are disfellowshipped for moral failings. We disassociated because of their failings.
Our leaving was voluntary. An inactive member is someone who does not maintain steady attendance at the Hall nor keeps up with going out in service. However, the only grounds for divorce in the church is adultery. If a divorce is obtained for any other reason, remarrying another Witness is not possible. Only Orthodox rabbis can marry Jews and many secular Israelis travel to Cyprus and other foreign countries to have a civil ceremony, which they cannot receive in Israel.
Israel does recognize marriages performed abroad by the Conservative and Reform movements; however, divorces issued abroad by rabbis from these movements are not recognized by the Rabbinate in Israel. One of the reasons why issues of conversion, marriage and divorce are so important to religious Jews is because of the possibility of mamzerim illegitimates.
In a Jewish divorce, a get must be signed by the husband. If he does not sign, then the divorce is not official, and the couple is still legally married according to Jewish law. If the get is not issued, the woman is not free to remarry and, if she does remarry and have children, her children are considered bastards according to Jewish law. There is no biblical injunction against multiple wives, however, it has been ruled illegal according to the Rabbis.
The bastard child cannot be issued a Jewish identity card and will not be permitted to marry another Jew in Israel. The illegitimate child is only permitted to marry other illegitimate children.
Hence, many Orthodox Rabbis claim the reason they want to retain control over conversions, marriage and divorce is to avoid the problem of mamzerim. The government of Israel sets aside part of their annual budget for religious purposes, much of these funds are then distributed by the Ministry of Religious Affairs.
In , the High Court of Justice ordered the allocation of funds to non-Orthodox institutions in Israel. The Ministry of Religious Affairs agreed to abide by the ruling of the court, however, officials decided that they would not earmark funds for non-Orthodox supplementary religious education or for non-Orthodox Torah culture funds.
Angered by the poor funding, petitions were sent to High Court to request increased funding for HUC and other Reform institutions. Funding is also determined by local religious councils. Until recently, non-Orthodox rabbis were unable to sit in religious councils, which control funds to local institutions. Alternative sources of funding have been found by the Conservative and Reform movements for their schools and programs.
Funding for non-Orthodox schools, such as the Tali schools run by the Masorti movement in Israel has received funds from foundations, non-governmental organizations, and the Jewish Agency. In a landmark decision the Israeli Supreme Court ruled on March 1, , that people who convert in Israel to Reform or Masorti Conservative Judaism have a right to citizenship.
The court had delayed ruling for 15 years while it waited for the Knesset to resolve the question. The decision addresses the anomaly whereby a person who converts to non-Orthodox Judaism outside Israel was accepted as a Jew under the Law of Return, but those converting in Israel were not. The decision enraged the Orthodox establishment, which controls most areas of religious life in Israel, and reject other movements. The decision is likely to have little practical effect as only foreigners convert to Reform or Masorti Judaism in Israel each year; nevertheless, Orthodox politicians, and the Likud Party , which needs their support, called for legislation to overturn the decision.
David Singer, Ed. David Landau and Hugh Orgel. Who is a Jew? Judaism Download our mobile app for on-the-go access to the Jewish Virtual Library. Category » Judaism. Holy Scriptures. Table of Contents. Torah - The Written Law. Reading the Torah. Jews in , by comparison, the estimate was 2. In absolute numbers, the Jewish population estimate is approximately 7. The estimate was 6. Like the overall U. Jews are less religious than American adults overall.
Jews are also less likely than the overall U. Jewish Americans are staunchly liberal and favor the Democratic Party, but Orthodox Jews are a notable exception. But among Orthodox Jews, three-quarters say they are Republican or lean that way. Three-quarters of American Jews think there is more anti-Semitism in the U. However, the effect on participation in Jewish activities appears to be relatively small.
The vast majority of those who feel less safe say they have not hesitated to participate in Jewish observances or events because of security concerns — or that, if they did hesitate, they ultimately went ahead and participated anyway. Jews say they have chosen not to take part in a Jewish observance or event out of concern for their safety.
A large majority of U.
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