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Not sure how you interpreted that to mean going OTD means your no longer a Jew. All I was saying is most OTD simply become "nothing," as in they stop affiliating with anything religious. That does not make them a non Jew.
Every OTD Jew I've met has or had a drug or alcohol problem, or was a victim of some sort of abuse. Jews don't typically go OTD because they have some kind of theological epiphany that tells them they're performing too many mitzvos.
You say something and mean something else? Please stop insulting our intelligence. I don't do drugs nor do I drink alcohol nor was I a victim of abuse by a Rav. This is why many of us don't trust BTs, due to y'all starting in the middle and we were frei from the start. no matter how hard you try, you will never gain the experience of growing up Orthodox. Yes in your view I'm OTD, but I still follow the principles of the 613 mitzvot. I'll say something in a way you will understand easily. There is no way to un-taste pork, once you've tasted it. Yet, I remember everything you've typed and said since you've joined CD. Soon YK will come and I will forgive you for your transgressions and I'll then quietly sit back and watch again just like last year until it gets to a point for me to re-enter the scene and give you a nudge. I pray you pay heed and hold your tongue in the coming year. Please stop acting like a Rav when you are not. Stop just reading the words and just sit there and think of the meaning of each word, sentence, paragraph, etc.... Savor them.
By the way, off the topic of You, I thank the followers of CD who look for my posting and thus have sent me over the 10,000 mark on daily hits a few days ago.
Funny. So reading what you wrote above, you claim its better to be born into into a religious family and later stop observing the mitzvos than to be born into a home that eats pork and then later discover mitzvos and become fully Torah observant? Well, I suppose we all like to build a belief system that comforts us when we do wrong, so I can't blame you for thinking being OTD is better than being BT. Got it.
Doesn't the Talmud go hand in hand with the Torah?
I am not Jewish and have only known 2 people in my lifetime who are Jewish and any knowledge or lack of I may have about the Jewish is from things I have read.
Please correct me if I am wrong and I by no means intend to offend anyone I would like to know if I understand what I read about this.
Doesn't the Talmud go hand in hand with the Torah?
Our belief is that when G-d gave Moses and the Jewish people the written Torah at Mount Sinai 3300 years ago, He also taught Moses a set of Oral Laws to explain the written Torah. Think of the written Torah as cliff notes and the oral Torah as the lesson.
Moses then taught the oral law to his prized student Yehoshua, who taught it to Aaron who taught it to his 4 sons who taught it to the nation's elders who taught it to their sons who then taught it to their sons and so on. I learn it from my teacher, and I'm teaching it to my sons.
Around the time of the destruction of the second holy temple in Jerusalem, about 2,000 years ago, the Jewish leaders were concerned the oral transmission of G-d's oral Torah were in danger of being forgotten, so a group of rabbis began to write down short terse notes as reminders. This is called the Mishna. A couple hundred years later, another group of rabbis were concerned this wasn't even enough, so they wrote more detailed notes called the Gemara. The combo of Mishna and Gamara is what we now call the Talmud.
Jewish movents who follow only the written Torah to the exclusion of the Talmud end up perishing from the earth in a few generations. If you've ever heard of the Sadduccees and Karaites, these are two examples. Neither exists today. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the Reform Movement denies the devine origen of the Talmud.
Funny. So reading what you wrote above, you claim its better to be born into into a religious family and later stop observing the mitzvos than to be born into a home that eats pork and then later discover mitzvos and become fully Torah observant? Well, I suppose we all like to build a belief system that comforts us when we do wrong, so I can't blame you for thinking being OTD is better than being BT. Got it.
So here you go again. Instead of treating OTD as a gray area, you treat it as black and white. By your words all OTD stop the 613 mitzvot. Again you may have meant something else, but this is what you stated and its simply not true. I live in the 21st century world and you try to live in the 19th century Shtetls of Poland. I'm sorry to tell you Judaism is meant to grow with time. As long as keep our foundations we will continue to be longest living religion on the planet. We have never been large in number, thus the variations between Orthodox and Reform are not as wide as you make it out to be. People tend to belong to the level they seem more comfortable with but that does not mean they are a 100% version of the label. I consider myself to be Conservadox that follows Mizrahi/Sephardic traditions. Which way I lean is my choice. We are not sheeple.
So here you go again. Instead of treating OTD as a gray area, you treat it as black and white. By your words all OTD stop the 613 mitzvot. Again you may have meant something else, but this is what you stated and its simply not true. I live in the 21st century world and you try to live in the 19th century Shtetls of Poland. I'm sorry to tell you Judaism is meant to grow with time. As long as keep our foundations we will continue to be longest living religion on the planet. We have never been large in number, thus the variations between Orthodox and Reform are not as wide as you make it out to be. People tend to belong to the level they seem more comfortable with but that does not mean they are a 100% version of the label. I consider myself to be Conservadox that follows Mizrahi/Sephardic traditions. Which way I lean is my choice. We are not sheeple.
Shabbat Shalom
I just want to say that I love this whole perspective.
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