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From: robison@eosp1.UUCP (Tobias D. Robison)
Newsgroups: net.religion.jewish
Subject: Re: Non-Jews at the seder
Message-ID: <895@eosp1.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 22-May-84 13:06:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: eosp1.895
Posted: Tue May 22 13:06:23 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 23-May-84 19:29:50 EDT
Organization: Exxon Office Systems, Princeton, NJ
Lines: 54

Reference:

Mr. Martillo's discussion of non-jews at the seder contains serious
errors of logic, a few of which I shall note here.  I have been greatly
informed by the wealth of knowledge, most of it foreign to my own background,
that he has sent to the net.  But Divisive arguments
such as his should be accurate, if they seek a legitimate reason to
exist.

Martillo starts by describing the Torah's discussion of Jews who prefer
to remain slaves because they love their master.  He draws a parallel:

>> The situation is similar to Westernized Jews who are now free and who
>> know the history of the Holocaust and who know how the Nazis and the
>> allies treated the Jews and who yet persist in self-induced (like S:mot 1,
>> 10) mental enslavement to Western civilization.

The above logical error is the equivalence of "nazis" and "allies"
with Western Civilization.  Martillo immediately continues:

>> Bringing this type of mental enslavement to the celebration of Jewish
>> freedom at the reading of the Hagadah (Sefardim do not use the word seder
>> in this context) is particulary inappropriate.  Those who actually make
>> the metaphor incarnate and bring their non-Jewish wives or lovers achieve
>> an even greater level of inappropriateness ('ulay midat hat:um'ah
>> ha'axaronah).

Although one can claim that many Jews do enslave themselves to modern
civilization, it is probably true that they escape their bonds while
celebrating Jewish holidays.  The logical error is the assertion that Jews
are still in any way enslaved at the seder, or that one can make any
inference about their state of enslavement from the their choice of guests.
The error in making that inference is to equate individuals with the
concept of Western Civilization.

After a fascinating digression, Martillo concludes:
		
>> There is nothing wrong in satisfying primate curiosity if a non-Jew shows
>> up at the reading of the Hagadah;  however, inviting non-Jews in order to
>> demonstrate that there is no real difference between non-Jews and Jews is
>> wrong and somewhat self-abasing.  (Actually, traditional
>> Jews are much more similar to religious Muslims than to Westerners.  Even
>> here the similarity is not very great.)

Nowhere in the discussion of inviting nonjews to a seder have I seen any
suggestion that we wish to demonstrate that there is no difference between
jews and nonjews.  I recognize this as an ongoing problem in some specific
situations in Judaism; however it is simply external to the current argument.
The logical error is that the conclusion is simply irrelevant to Martillo's
discussion.
					- Toby Robison (not Robinson!)
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