[Vision2020] An admonishment to Ralph

[Phil Nisbet]

I have seldom read a response on V2020 in which the author is more in need 
of sensitivity education and a dose of multicultural training than Ralph’s.

Hey Ralph, we do not have a Hebrew Bible.  I know that may come as news to 
you, but the “Old Testement” is not Jewish, it’s a much translated group of 
Jewish writings, but its not Torah.

And Ralph, yes, we Jews believe in Heaven and in Hell.

http://judaism.about.com/library/3_askrabbi_o/bl_simmons_heavenhell.htm

Your body may die, but the soul and spirit return to G-d from whence it 
comes.  We, that is to say our bodies on this earth, will all go to the same 
place, to whit we shall return to the dust that He fashioned us from, but 
the essence of who we really are does not die.

That concept is fundamental to Jewish belief Ralph.

Then your understanding of ‘slavery’ in early Jewish society is 
fundamentally flawed.  There is no idea put forward that women be treated 
differently than men in regards to indentured servitude.  And further, it is 
indentured servitude and not slavery.  A slave who can be treated as a human 
chattel is not allowable under the Law.  Not only must he be freed and set 
upon his way with payment for his services at the end of 7 years, but he 
must also be freed from the contract for his services under numerous 
circumstances of abuse of that contract by his employer.  The term is bound 
servant, not slave in the Roman definition.

Slavery in the Roman or Greek sense of a human chattel was anathema.  If a 
Jewish owner of a servant’s contract beat his servant, that servant 
recovered damages.  In the Roman model, the owner of a slave had free 
ability to simply kill a slave just for the personal heck of it.

European slavery, as later practiced in the South was not based upon any 
Torah concepts for ‘slavery’, it was a Roman institution.

If you want to comment on Christian institutions, feel free, but before you 
comment on Jewish ones, you need to educate yourself beyond your fairly 
anti-Semitic concepts of our history and beliefs.

Phil Nisbet

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