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What Is Judaism?

From Rabbi Elmer Berger’s A Partisan History of Judaism: The Jewish Case against Zionism (1951):

Judaism evolved from a primitive tribalism to as noble a spiritual and universal vision as man has ever attained. This fact attests, even without detailed proof, to the truth that “unity” and segregation may have had their partisans but that there must also have been undiscourageable partisans of another kind through the long history of Jews and Judaism.

For change and evolution rarely, if ever, are born from uniformity. Uniformity is imposed, as our modern world knows, in order to suffocate rather than encourage growth. That the history of Judaism reveals such growth is proof of disunity, of individualism, of liberalism, and of respect for these things in whatever degree necessary; to have accepted their achievements and grafted them into the organism of Judaism itself.

Both traditions and both viewpoints existed side by side. There has been a constant strugge between them. Sometimes the viewpoint of universalism and assimilation of all but religious identity prevailed. Sometimes the segregaton was initiated by separtist Jews. Sometimes it was enforced by segregation-minded people who were not Jews. Sometimes both groups or a combintion of circumstances created by segregationalists of both kinds established the pattern.

But the important fact remains that always, among both Jews and those of other faiths, there were those who respected the individual integrity of people of Jewish faith and the transcending, universal values of Judaism….

For people other than Jews to resist the apparent prevalence of “Jewish” nationalism and affirm that Judaism is a highly personalized conviction about God, the universe, and mankind is not, therefore, to violate either the feelings of Jews or the traditions of Judaism….

In plain English, to oppose Jewish separatism and segregation in our national life, except in the field of religion, is not the equivalent of anti-Semitism.

Who Needs the Devil When You’ve Got the US Government?

Meet Gary Rhines. He’s done 18 years of a life sentence for possession of a small amount of cocaine. While in prison, he’s rehabilitated himself and stuff, from the kind of person who would be a drug businessman to another kind.

When a federal judge decided to invoke a new law in order to set Rhines free, the federal prosecutor objected, saying that at least he ought to have to “serve” the full 30 years currently recommended for his “offense” against government-imposed contraband restrictions. In this case, the federal judge refused and finally let this peaceful human out of his cage — ah, only to have the state kidnap him for another year.

The fun irony of the whole thing of course is that these prosecutors not only don’t know they’re evil pieces of shit, they know they’re the heroes in the whole narrative; the thin blue line saving us all from the chaos of a free and open market.

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