Thursday, November 20, 2008

Does this represent Judaism?

If so, the Jewish tradition lines up on the pro-choice side.

5 comments:

Ilíon said...

Much as "liberals" claiming to be Christians will assert that Christianity has no implicit opposition to abortion, so too with what I call bagel-Jews -- "liberals" who are Jews only in the sense that their ancestors were Jews.

The Orthodox Jews -- you know, the Jews who actually live Judaism -- you know, the sort of Jews who actually have enough children to have a cultural future -- are not so sanguine about abortion.

Victor Reppert said...

But these guys quoted people like Maimonides, for crying out loud. Was Maimonides a bagel Jew?

I do suspect, however, that Medved or Prager would have something on the other side.

normajean said...

"bagel-Jews" that's actually funny, Il Dogg!

Ilíon said...

Yes, I'm aware that "liberal" Rabbis will selectively reference Maimonides when he reasons on bad/incomplete information and comes to a conclusion which can be spun to support abortion.

Maimonides adamantly did not support abortion-on-demand, but that is what these immoral people are trying use him to support.

Moreover, Maimonides *also* said that barrier contraception is forbidden, did he not? Where is the reference to *that* by this sort?

Ilíon said...

Did not Maimonides *also* say that it is forbidden to teach Moslems, but that it is permissible to teach Christians?

As I understand it, he partly meant what we might now call "inter-religious dialogue" -- that is, teaching Gentiles-as-gentiles the content of Torah and the Talmud -- but that mostly he meant the teaching of Torah and Talmud to prospective converts to Judaism.

And, as I understand it, his reason for this prohibition of teaching Moslems but allowance for teaching Christians was that the Moslems will kill you and perhaps conduct a pogrom of your fellow Jews, whereas the Christians would not.

Which is to say, it seems to me that Maimonides himself gives the lie to the 19th century mythology (invented by, it seems, by certain French socialists/secularists of Jewish extraction) of "tolerant" Araby in contradistinction to "intolerant" Christendom.