tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14618504.post1754573376110832029..comments2023-09-30T07:26:39.147-04:00Comments on Modo Vernant Omnia: There are no weapons of 'mas destruction...RaeShttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01841066344380185598noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14618504.post-8758267907945564022006-12-11T00:31:00.000-05:002006-12-11T00:31:00.000-05:00How very awful that the rabbi was rude to your mot...How very awful that the rabbi was rude to your mother! He should have known better than that... I think there's a great portion of the Jewish community which is insulated and overly suspicious of outsiders. I can't understand it. I've taken friends with me to synagogue before and several have said afterward that they felt people were not happy they were there. One said she thought maybe she had "Catholic" stamped on her forehead the way some people kept looking at her. Our rabbi was always friendly though. It probably depends on the synagogue. Those with older, more established congregations, I would expect would be less welcoming than those that are newly formed and full of younger people. I've heard that there's also a certain amount of persistence required sometimes to break through the icy, less-than welcome... But if the rabbi was nasty, sounds like that congregation is just not wanting the blessing of her company and I say "their loss."RaeShttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01841066344380185598noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14618504.post-49873502318338884522006-12-10T22:32:00.000-05:002006-12-10T22:32:00.000-05:00Double yikes. It's really insidious, isn't it. Bec...Double yikes. It's really insidious, isn't it. Because we don't live near enough to a Jewish community of any large size, we're sort of insulated from that. Mom was interested in going to the synagogue in a town about half an hour away, but she decided against it in the end because she didn't feel welcome there... especially after the rabbi was really nasty to her at a party last year. The congregation is really insular, too, apparently, and that didn't make her feel very welcome, either.<br /><br />Anyway.. *sigh* Double ick and double yikes. I can see why people would have been upset by that! Have you seen anything about this new video game that's causing quite a stir? I read something about it in a newspaper mom's been getting from New York (I always chuckle over the food ads on the back page for some reason); it's based on some ultra-religious series of books. The "Left Behind" stuff? I'll be tactful and refrain from making nasty comments, but I think it's pretty clear that I have no sympathy for the people who write or read that sort of book.<br />Speaking of insidious.. They try to get you coming and going, it seems. *sigh*Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14618504.post-51793083668394596012006-12-10T21:47:00.000-05:002006-12-10T21:47:00.000-05:00I look forward to reading your e-mail.
There's no...I look forward to reading your e-mail.<br /><br />There's not much one can do except avoid them, but they will sometimes try to insinuate themselves into Jewish Community Center activities in an effort to proselytize. Once they even took out an ad in the Jewish Press (which is a major bi-monthly newspaper that goes out to members of all the local synagogues), announcing the opening of an independent film about Passover, inviting people to the opening night at a local theater without telling them what it was really about. It was about some guy who became a "Jew for Jesus" and then went home for Passover to his Jewish family's home and then proceeded to try to get them to become messianic Jews too. People were pissed. The paper printed a public apology and explanation and everything...RaeShttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01841066344380185598noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14618504.post-91735766197560347962006-12-10T20:00:00.000-05:002006-12-10T20:00:00.000-05:00It was okay for me. I did about as well as I usual...It was okay for me. I did about as well as I usually do, thanks in part to the sale of one of the felted bags I took. I'll send you an e-mail I wrote to someone last night; it'll be a bit more detailed as to what happened. We met a few nice people; the folks at the neighboring tables are usually nice, which always makes it a little easier to put up with the crappy parts.<br /><br />Okay. I didn't know they were the same thing. That's rotten of them, I think, but what can you do besides avoid them?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14618504.post-65639614698611424812006-12-10T12:48:00.000-05:002006-12-10T12:48:00.000-05:00Don't worry about it being long...
Never met the...Don't worry about it being long... <br /><br />Never met the "children of the corn" people, thank goodness. That's scary... The Messianics, unfortunately, yes... They've tried to convince me on numerous occasions that I can "be saved" and Jewish at the same time. ::shudders:: The Messianics and the "Jews for Jesus" are the same entity, as far as I know , and they usually say that they're Jewish if you ask or they volunteer the information. At least, that's what they do when they're proselytizing because it usually gets their foot in the door to Jewish organizations, etc. when normally the door would be slammed in their face. <br /><br />Other than the conservative Christians who couldn't face reality at the craft show, was it a good day?RaeShttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01841066344380185598noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14618504.post-79369717254341989832006-12-10T11:30:00.000-05:002006-12-10T11:30:00.000-05:00This is kind of long for a comment, but...
There a...This is kind of long for a comment, but...<br />There are those weird Jews for Jesus people... and the messianic Jews... and some even stranger children of the corn-type people who call themselves something like "The Lost Tribe of Israel".. if you ask THEM if they're Jewish, they say not, and yet the first two might be likely to wear the magen. The latter, it seems, is just a bizzarre cult of what mom terms "The Boys From Brazil" -- all the children look nearly identical, with the same blonde hair, same facial structure, perfect skin, and body type, which leads me to suspect some ancient patriarch lurks in their "compound" and impregnates young women during strange ceremonies. <br />We just got back from a craft show, and in rural VA, there are LOTS of conservative Christians. They all seemed to be at this craft show, the key illustration being a guy who stopped at our booth and looked around; when we hinted that the holidays were a good time to hunt for gifts for wife/girlfriend/mother/daughter, mom added that if he wasn't a Christmas person, then Hannuka was also a good time for shopping. His response was that he "was a Christmas guy all the way" and told us about a church he'd once visited where the pastor left out the baby, Mary, and Joseph as a way of making the nativity scene more palatable to non-Christians. This apparently enraged the man (and he was quite worked up retelling the story), and mom tweaked him (inintentionally) still further by suggesting that if that was the case, the pastor should have put trees to make it more palatable to pagans, especially since Christmas draws from so many ideologies. This was where I should have kept my mouth shut... but being stupid (and a history major) I chimed in to say that I'd done research for a school paper and that gift-giving was institutionalized by Caligula's proclamation issued during the celebration of Saturnalia. He all but ran away from us because he was so unable to accept that HIS religious holiday might be older than he thought... because, as far as he was concerned, Jesus was probably born in the year 0 and the rest of the world didn't function before then, and Saint Nicholas never, ever punched anyone in the ear at the First Council of Nicaea -- which did happen, according to one of the books I cited when I was working on my paper about the pagan roots of Christmas.<br />So, no I don't think you're being over-sensitive. You can't look at someone and tell what holiday they celebrate, either, which was one of the things I pointed out to the man before he fled. And yes, Hellmart makes me feel quite unclean every time I go there; it wasn't even Thanksgiving and they were rolling out the Christmas clothes, decorations, wrapping paper, and who knows what else. Bleh! I remember when Christmas was reserved JUST for December, and didn't start six months in advance just to warm people up to the final rush of shopping and commercialization.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com