“Rav Pappa said to Abaye: But how can you explain the halakha that is taught in the mishna: For cases in which he did not have awareness at the beginning but had awareness at the end? … Abaye said to him: Yes, you find it in the case of a child who was taken captive among gentiles, who never received even the most elementary level of knowledge.” – Shevuot 5a
In other words, Jewishness is transmitted by biological inheritance, hence:
“It is not possible for a Jew to become a non-Jew. The Mumrim and their children are complete Jews and one cannot join the opposing opinions even as a Safek.” – Igros Moshe E.H. 4:83
Pirkei Avot says: “Be patient in justice, raise many observers, and make a fence around the Torah.”
This idea of making a fence around the mitzvot of Torah is the heart of the Talmud, the reason for it. The Talmud is written, as well, to humanize the laws within the Torah – which is a masterfully composed inherited collection of literature, wherein much of the texts was written a thousand years prior to the Talmud. The Talmud is a 1,500 year old document itself, and shows its age in many outdated perspectives. Thus, it is not the basis for our non-theistic Jewish community’s halacha, the Torah itself is this. But, the Talmud is a guide on how to interpret and expand laws in order to – both – not violate Torah and to keep Torah lifestyle livable in our modern times.
Thus, the Talmud is still relevant, along with Torah, in teaching Jews how to be Jews. As Adam Kirsch, a secular Jew who undertook the seven and a half years of Daf Yomi study, put it:
“At the heart of the Talmud, I have come to understand, is the rabbis’ belief that the Torah — the Written Law, the Five Books of Moses — is at the same time absolutely sacred and completely inadequate. The only way to live by the Torah is to expand on it, often in ways that Moses himself would not have understood. That is the moral of the famous story in Menachot 29b, where God grants Moses a vision of the academy of Rabbi Akiba, centuries after his own death. Moses is utterly baffled by the legal discussion — until he hears Akiba say that a certain law was received by Moses at Sinai, whereupon he “felt relieved.” Somehow, the Talmud is continuous with Sinai even when it departs farthest from Sinai.”
We, in our traditional ethical Jewishness, may appear in some ways to be the farthest from Sinai in what we profess with our mouths. But, in our thinking, behavior, and dress, we are as traditionally Jewish as any other Jewish community – recognizably Jewish, just without belief in our ancestors’ imagined “G-d”(s). For us, Jewish survival into the future depends on raising well-educated Jewish children, both secular and religious education, rooted in tradition and positively obligated to it – not by force, but by our teaching and example, and by their self-determined choice, not ours.
The Talmud has two parts – the Mishnah and the Gemara. The Mishnah is the original written version of the oral law. The Gemara is the record of the rabbinic discussions following this writing down. The Talmud is also known as the Shishah Sedarim – the six books of the Mishnah. It was written between the 2nd and 5th centuries CE in Jerusalem and, later, in Babylon (now Al Hillah in Iraq). It is written in Aramaic, and it is not an easy read. Hence, why it is important for study, like the TaNaKh. These literatures provide us with information about past generations and how they expressed Judaism and being Jewish under the social conditions of their age. To know our past is vital to growing our future as an ethno-religious people!
Who We Are and What We Are Doing
Ancient societies needed religious myths to justify their right to exist as a culture and as a nation. Vassal treaties between the people and the ruling/land-owning god(s) were the norm back then. It was just the way things were in the BCE period and most of our CE period.
Jewish people are a surviving very ancient nation of people. We are an ethno-religious community of people, like our ancestors before us. Just because we are modern, living in rational scientific times, this does not mean that we need to give up cultural artifacts that were ethno-religious in ancient times and often deemed as strictly religious now.
These cultural artifacts that display our ethnicity belong to all Jews, not just religious prayer Jews! In ancient times, civil and religious were intimately one and the same. In our modern times, they are separate things. But, they do not ever need to be separate!
Ancient cultural artifacts belong to both religious and secular Jews. We strongly believe that both should use these cultural artifacts! Wear that tallit v’tzitzit! If desired, cover the head with a modern yarmulke or a hat, if you like. But, wigs – please, never! That is *so* Western, so European! We represent the whole of Judaism, in an egalitarian way.
Judaism or Judeo culture is Eastern in origin. This is why, in the West, religious denominations exist (a Jewish capitulation to Christianity’s dominance upon the continent). But, in the East, Jews are just Jews – secular or religious! What defines all Jews is not just our ancestry, but whether we observe Jewish rituals, teach Torah, and proudly display and wear our Jewish cultural artifacts!
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