Judaism become stagnate in promoting monotheism

Those two responses are contradictory. First you agree with my analysis that the Covenant with Moses obliged God to lead the Jews out of Egypt, and obliged the Jews to spread God's word throughout the world. But then you say that they were not chosen by God to be messengers.

You're disagreeing with your own statement. Which one is correct?

Jewish people tell me that the Jews were indeed expected to be messengers, and when they failed to live up to that promise God got really angry at them, and he has never stopped punishing them for it.

I do not argue with your statement that Judaism has never been an evangelical religion and the Jews have never proselytized it. In fact AFAIK that makes it unique among the Abrahamic faiths: all of the others are evangelical. My point is that, according to Jewish mythology, they were supposed to establish an evangelical religion and they failed to do so.

 

Then what has he been punishing the Jews for, for the last two and a half millennia???

 

I understand. This is the Comparative Religion subforum and we're talking about the mythology. In Judaic mythology, what is the reason that God has been punishing them so consistently for so long?

It's been about 2500 years since the Covenant, and for more than 2000 of those years, things have been relentlessly "crappy" for the Jews. Their land was occupied, their temple destroyed, their nation obliterated, their people scattered, their language limited to liturgy, their people restricted to shtetls, their shtetls burned, ultimately an organized attempt was made to exterminate them, and when that only succeeded in reducing their numbers by 50% they were relocated onto somebody else's homeland in the middle of the desert surrounded by hostile Muslims. Yet throughout all of this they maintained a large core of faithful who did not "fall by the wayside" but continued to maintain their faith, laws and traditions, and ultimately reestablished a Jewish theocratic state and even revived the language.

Very few other ethnic groups have succeeded so remarkably in retaining their identity and traditions amid aggressive hostility from the surrounding peoples; the Roma (Gypsies) are the only others I can think of. The Aramaeans survive only in a language; the number of American Indian tribes dwindles with every passing decade; the Cornish and the Manx are fighting a losing battle to retain their identity; does anyone remember the Prussians, the Ostrogoths, the Dacians or the Manchus?

All in all, by the standards of our species, the Jews have done amazingly well despite all of the hardships God has sent them. So I repeat: what exactly did they do wrong to earn these hardships?

"Jewish" has several overlapping meanings. It can simply mean someone descended from the ancient Hebrews. (Hitler's one-fourth rule would have applied to me, but Jewish law excludes me because it was my father's father.) Or it can mean someone who claims to be and is accepted as a member of the Jewish community, regardless of DNA or religious practice. (In more Westernized communities this embraces children of mixed parentage and secular outlook if they just eat matzo ball soup and show up for Passover.) Or it can mean someone who adheres to the Jewish religion... which brings us to Alex.

Judaism is primarily a religion of laws rather than doctrine, so one who does not believe in God is still considered Jewish so long as he doesn't proselytize atheism and observes a few key rituals and restrictions. Obviously the Chassidim and other Orthodox Jews would not accept him as a member of the tribe, but in America's largely Reform and heavily secular congregation he would be unremarkably welcomed. I have many friends who eat pork, marry Gentiles, don't believe in supernatural beings and are not supportive of Israel, but they show up at the temple for a few major holidays and make sure their children get the training to pass their bar or bat mitzvah, and the Jewish community counts them as members.

 

I suppose among the most liberal congregations there isn't much difference. The most liberal Protestants don't believe that it's necessary to attend religious services, baptize or confirm their children; merely that they are obligated to be collegial to other members of their community and to be good to all humans. The most liberal Reform Jews have the same attitude: It's not necessary to attend services or observe most of the rituals like not eating pork, not using a razor because it might cut the skin, or not lighting a fire on the Sabbath; merely that they are obligated to be collegial to other members of their community and to be good to all humans. They do generally have their male children circumcised (but so do most American Christians) and they often send them to Jewish classes where they learn about their community and what exactly they must do in order to be good to others (but American Christians learn those things from our overwhelmingly Christian national culture and don't need special classes).

The difference, I think, is that ultimately the most liberal Christian still believes that the reason he must be good to all humans is that he will be judged by God and sent to Hell if he does not. Whereas the most liberal Jew believes that God will not judge him until many eons in the future when he comes down to reanimate the corpses, which is way beyond the attention horizon of most people, and instead he believes that the reason he must be good to all humans is that he will be judged by his family, friends and community, not just after he dies, but while he lives.

So the Christian may start treating people poorly if he loses his faith in God, or if he becomes so short-sighted that judgment by God is too far in the future to be important today. Whereas the Jew may start treating people poorly if he loses his respect for his family, friends and community and stops caring about how they judge him.