Fact-Checking the Torah -- Clearing up a lot of ignorance part 8

I should have known there'd be a part 8 in here somewhere. This week's event, in the current environment of Jew hatred, is Twitter posts about Judaism as a religion. They come from poorly educated Jews who are selling Judaism short.

Judaism is a complete culture. It always has been. It had to be the whole way back before Abraham left Haran for the Holy Land. Why?

It's codified in Exodus. Courts run by oaths. Oaths are taken in the name of something so awesome, nobody would take that oath falsely. But what is awesome in one culture is shekets in another. You can't take an oath by a shekets. 

And you can't run a culture without a court. People get sideways to each other all the time. You have to settle disagreements with the help of impartial people. Not relatives. Not the people who already have the disagreement. And for thousands of years, the people who testify to help resolve these disagreements have taken oaths. 

But it's not just that. Every culture has its own way of doing things. The American ignoramuses shocked by a French woman proposing to her fellow after winning Olympic gold were proof of that. So there's a million and one things that are OK in one culture when you run a trial, that are a shekets in another culture.

So when a number of places in Torah warn about how to deal with judges and other officials (or not) we find that Jewish law has always prohibited a lot of things that are going on right now in America.

If you have not studied Jewish law as the basis for a complete culture, you don't know anything about it.

If you have studied Judaism as a religion, not a culture, you don't know anything about it.

There are a million and one places on the net where you can start to get your head set on straight. My blog is one of them, especially the first part on law, which will show you how many urban legends you believe about Judaism and how many fallacies have gone into that belief.

If you're not willing or don't have the guts to admit that maybe you are ignorant, you will never improve, and what you say about Judaism or Jewish law is a waste of everybody's time.