At 12:15 AM -0500 6/4/02, David Griffin wrote:

>Now Bill Bartlett, in the paragraphs below, comes out the reactionary he
>truly is, sounding more like "good old boy" Republicans in the United States
>like Trent Lott, Bob Dole, Bush, et al.

Don't tell me, they think that Christians are people who believe in God, right?

>Observe, below, how he tells me (and my mother, and my grandmother who is a
>holocaust survivor) that I am "not entitle[d]..... to claim to be of that
>religion.", i.e. Judaism. (Read the quotation in its original context,
>fucker. It's right below.) How he vests himself with this supreme authority,
>I will never know.

Speaking of the holocaust, wasn't it the Nazis that based their definition of Jewish on an ethnic or racial concept? Now I'm not saying you're a Nazi, I'm sure you aren't. But I'm not a Republican either. I'm a wob, remember?

It isn't the case that occasionally coming to the same conclusion as your ideological enemy makes you a reactionary, quite the contrary.

A reactionary would be someone who hears Trent Lott, Bob Dole and Bush say that to be Christian, one must necessarily believe in God. So he immediately declares that it isn't necessary to believe in God to be a Christian. Merely because his ideological enemy has said the opposite.

> I am obviously not authentic enough a specimen for him
>(because I only "hold to *some* of the philosophies) so I therefore have
>foiled his curiosities. I will obviously never make it into his Museum of
>Judaism, should he erect one.

Apparently I'm not alone though. I've discovered that the state approved authorities of the Jewish religion in Israel take the same view.

Jews who don't hold to the approved religious tenets cannot marry in Israel. Or can't marry those who do, or those who do can't marry non-Jews. Something like that, its all very primitive. And it seems the Israeli 'right of return' law we were discussing earlier doesn't apply to former Jews who have converted to another religion. Although God alone knows why they'd want to migrate to the place anyhow.

Yes, Israel has a state approved Jewish religion. The situation is worse than I expected, in fact it appears that Israel is only a secular state in name. They certainly don't take the same view that you do, that someone whose parents were Jewish can automatically claim to be Jewish, even if they have converted to Islam for example. Not for the Jewish state this odd notion of 'ethnic Judaism'.

Anyhow, since Israel is a democracy, where the overwhelming majority of the voters are officially Jewish, we must assume this rejection of your notion of being Jewish, as just something you can inherit (regardless of your actual religious opinion) is also the opinion of most Jews.

Therefor, it isn't just me. Most Jews apparently agree. Not only are you (as an atheist) NOT Jewish, but you don't SPEAK for Jews either. (Christ, that should stir him up methinks.)

> Even thinking of myself as Jewish in any way is
>to Bill a product of "sloppy thinking." Not only that, but two thirds of all
>Jewish people, according to him, who do NOT "hold to" *all* "of the
>philosophies" are also "flaws." Then he accuses me (via a hypothetical third
>person) of "being anti-Jewish," the same as the extreme Zionists do. All this
>after giving me a lengthy lecture on how I should write e-mails!

You'd probably regard the pope as an 'extreme Catholic' too, but the simple fact is that Catholicism is a set of religious beliefs. If you don't hold to the core beliefs, you aren't a catholic. Unless you're the pope himself of course, whatever he says goes, that's part of the package. Hence the rhetorical question, "Is the pope Catholic?"

Its all very well to label the people who actually hold to the tenets of Judaism as "extreme", but it isn't very logical. I think believers are entitled to define their own religious, rather than have it defined by non-believers. That would be like allowing a Protestant pope.

>Fuck this shit. I'm not going to continue hold a conversation with a
>liberal-cum-knee-jerk right-wing reactionary.

It was just starting to get interesting.

Bill Bartlett
Bracknell Tas