Great, I'm a Missionary, and the history of Christianity

OK Tuesday, that means more fun with my lab partners. This week I was talking with my remaining lab parter (one was absent and the other was, well, lets just say indisposed as I wrote a few weeks ago), and the topic got to politics, religion, and other fun stuff.

One of the things we were discussing was our former lab partner who took his anger out by going downtown to hang out with the crack heads. I mentioned to him what I'd written, that without a good relationship with your parents or teachers, you really don't have anywhere to turn to for support.

Here we go with some history, when the Romans entered Israel 2000 years ago, one of the things they were shocked to find in the Jewish community was that everyone was literate, there was a welfare system set up for the poor, and the entire community provided for the orphans.
The Rambam says that it is an absolute requirement to educate your children, period. The Gemara in Kiddusin (I think 29b, but I might be wrong, it's around there though) says that educating your son (teaching Torah and a trade) are one of the things that a father is required to do (I don't remember off the top of my head what it says about the girls, but the Gemara in Ketubot 52b says that a father has to adorn his daughter with pearls so the men would be attracted to her).
And as all good Jews know and do (right?) that you have to give 10% of your pre-tax earnings to charity.

So my lab partner found all of this stuff fascinating, and said to me, "That's awesome, man, I want to become Jewish!"

Of course I probably could have mentioned Brit Milah to him, and I think he would have changed his mind. (What I could have done was tell him baout the 7 Noahide laws. Oh well, next time)

So this leads to the next thing I want to talk about.

Christians.

I had said that there were three things I had to defend from three different sets of people.
I had to defend the Land of Israel from the Arabs and Leftists (why they go together I still don't know)
I had to defend the Torah from the Christians.
And I had to defend G-d tom the non-religious Jews and Aliyah from the religious.

So regarding point #2, some more history, regarding our favorite people. . .the Romans.

I'm listening right now to a phenomenal audio series from Rabbi Ken Spiro, I highly recommend it. (you can download it here)

Anyways, one of the things he talks about is how the Roman conquering worked.

I guess the Romans liked to collect things, and whenever they'd conquer a new city, province or country, they'd all of the local gods to their own collection.

Then they found the Jews.

The idea of one G-d was entirely new and very cool to them, a single, invisible, all powerful G-d, what a concept.

They also liked all of the cool things that those crazy Jews did, like Shabbos, and eating kosher, but we'll get back to that, now for some history of the J-man.

At the time the Romans entered Israel the Jewish people were a wreck. The Kehuna (High Priests) was corrupt, the people were divided on every issue, no one followed the Oral Torah, which led to false messiahs popping up all over the place.

Mr. J was not unique in any way, there were hundreds if not thousands of these false prophets coming out of the woodworks, each preaching his own, corrupt version of the Torah. Anyways JC never said anything about atoning for sin, or the perfection of man, that can a few decades later when Paul came on the scene.

Now remember how the Romans were really fascinated with Judaism? Well there were a few things hindering them from becoming Jewish, namely, laws.

A big turn off for them was the fact that they would have to get circumcised, a big no-no to them because they saw the human body as something sacred, and not to be "desecrated."

So what did Paul do?

He saw a market.

Take away the "bad stuff" about Judaism, and bing bang boom, you're in business.

So think about this, Christianity, one of the worlds major religions, has its entire basis, created solely on a really good marketing strategy.

So let me ask you this. This man, was supposed to atone for all of our sins, was perfect right? Not to much mention in the Christian text on JC's mess ups right? Why does the Torah mention Moshe's and Avrahams and Aharon's mistakes?

To show that they're human, and humans by definition are fallible. They way we can learn from them. How do the Christians learn?

Lets say that a man kills 100 people. He gets to go to Heaven for being "saved" while the little Jew in Israel, is sent to Hell?

Logic, man.

Anyways, not to knock Christians out there, there are some great Christians who are friends to the Jewish people and to Israel, but the point is don't try to missionize us. We're happy to accept your support, but with no strings attached. My mom's family is Christians, some of them are in this group of friends, while the other is in the group of, "We need to be saved." (I have noticed that these conversations start after I leave the room, but...

Anyways, next I want to write about how frum Jews don't use the name of G-d in their daily speech like the Christians do. But that's for a different post.