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From: fsks@unc.UUCP (Frank Silbermann)
Newsgroups: net.religion.jewish
Subject: Re: The Tragedy of Assimilation
Message-ID: <933@unc.unc.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 4-Feb-86 11:26:33 EST
Article-I.D.: unc.933
Posted: Tue Feb  4 11:26:33 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 6-Feb-86 21:52:13 EST
References: <3780118@csd2.UUCP> <3780131@csd2.UUCP>
Reply-To: fsks@unc.UUCP (Frank Silbermann)
Organization: CS Dept, U. of N. Carolina, Chapel Hill
Lines: 27
Summary: 

In article <3780131@csd2.UUCP> meth@csd2.UUCP (Asher Meth) writes:
>
> Oh, that's right, to be Jewish means to be "required to attend synagogue,
>Hebrew school, and to go to the barmitzvah ... no dissent on my part [being]
>allowed, and [being] forced to do these things no matter if I liked it or not".
>Sorry, that is *not* what it means to be Jewish, not where I came from,
>not where my father and mother came from, not where their parents came from,
>... , and that is not the way that it was introduced to our patriarchs and
>matriarchs, and not how it was given to our ancestors at Sinai. The heritage
>we received at Sinai was very different from that which you describe. What you
>describe is the result of a distortion, concocted by those who wished to change
> the law to accomodate their own lifestyles.

Yes, but the kind of Judaism you disparage has become tradition,
and in Judaism, tradition soon acquires the force of Law.	:-)

>May I unequivocally state that *all* those people born Jewish, of mothers who
>really are Jewish, are considered Jews, regardless of their level of practice
>or of observance. Thus, a Jew who considers himself under the banner of
>Conservative or Reform, is no less a Jew than the Jew who considers himself
>under the banner of Orthodox.  This is *not* the "beef" we Orthodox have.

Agreed.  The real controversey is whether a Reform or Conservative rabbi
is really a rabbi.  Is a Conservative synogogue really a synogogue, or
merely a meeting place for Jewish heretics?

	Frank Silbermann