Re: Comment # 47 by BenS

What I can't do, and what YOU (and any other Jew) CAN'T do is insist that laws you (or your rabbis) invented apply to me.

This isn't the first time you've made this issue reflexive, Ben. I don't know what it's got to do with you; I said it applied to me. Why are you being so defensive? Is there something you're not telling us? -- not that it's any of my business. Even if it does theoretically apply to you, is anyone physically persecuting you with these laws? If you don't like them, go ahead and ignore them. I did so for years.

They can call themselves what they wish and then argue their case for it if required. YOU don't get to decide what they are and then say that's not open for discussion.

I'm not the moderator, and we are having a discussion. If anyone can label themselves anything for any reason, at any time, without reference to any standard criteria, then wouldn't that render the labels pretty much meaningless? Can I call myself Chinese just 'cause I feel like it, just cause I like Chinese food?

What people do when they voluntarily subscribe to a set of rules is largely up to them. If, say, I had a Jewish mother but did not follow any of those archaic customs and rules and someone said to me "Ben, you're a Jew, you shouldn't be using the 'phone on Sabbath!" I would tell them to fuck off and mind their own business.

Amen, Brother! You tell 'em, sovereign individual.

You value the individual, you understand an individual's need to define him/herself but you still don't let them do it?

That's terrible of me, not letting people do what they want to with their lives. You're right. I should stop persecuting people this way. Ben, free people in free societies can do pretty much whatever the heck they want. I was just referencing a legal system. I could tell you just as well that smoking marijuana is for the most part illegal in my country. That doesn't mean that I'm out there jailing people. There are some American laws which I'd like to see changed. For the moment, however, they are what they are.

you're not giving the full story and you wonder why I don't understand or accept it

There isn't enough space here to tell my life story, and I'm trying not to bore everyone to death. I am probably already too wordy as it is.

If you're going to claim that he's a Jew because he's defined as such by Torah and Mitzvoth and therefore Torah and Mitzvoth unite him with other Jews then it's circular reasoning, a tautology and a load of bollocks.

Again, it's just a legal definition, even if only an accademic and theoretical one. The point is that if the word "Jew" has any meaning, then there has to be something common to all the people with that label.