Is the Torah Outdated and Irrelevant?

I am a woman who has had the good fortune to meet educated intellectual Jews. One of whom taught me to read, or rather chant, torah. When  I am dissapointed with an english  translation I go directly to the beautifully scribed letters, I match them up to the trope and I struggle to receive anew the words of Torah. The rhythms the rhymes ,the play on words the letters themselves, the alternate meanings, aid  in transforming what I need the torah  to mean. I understand  the torah was speaking to a rag tag wandering animal slaughtering band of ex-slaves. But I also believe  that because the torah has no punctuation, no easily discernable sentance structure, we are free and required to reinterpit the torah every time its read. Some things can not be reinterpitted away, treyf is treyf. Cheating on your measurments and scales in business is a crime. incest is a sin. offering your child to the god Molech is blasphamy and punishable. But so many other parts of the Torah are unclear and cryptic so you have to force yourself to struggle with the text. Irrelevant? G-d I hope not.  Difficult? yes for this vegan to ever lust for animal sacrifices. And what about my  gay friends? what of their struggles and Mitzvahs? I like to imagine a benign Sannhedrin teaching us what the Torah really meant  to say so that my gay fiends are not called  abominations.

Marking the entirety of Torah as irrelevant simply because parts of it don't make sense or are not palatable feels much like throwing the baby out with the bath water.  It's like saying the entire US judiciary is irrelevant because you don't agree with capital punishment.

There is much to Torah to be appreciated and learned from and there are many parts that on the barest surface give us something to which to strive, an ideal to live up to.  And granted there is MUCH that gives consternation.  Yes the treatment of gays, which is very frequently cited and sometimes seems to be a rally-flag for the anti-Torah crowd as if Torah were simply a treatise on sexuality, is deplorable however we cannot condem all of Torah for just that.  And indeed, even things like the treatment of gays in Torah can give us food for thought, it can lead us down the rabbit-hole of thought, interpretation, and understanding of intent.  Was the ban on gay sex a homophobic act?  Was it because gays were hated? Or was it because as a struggling nation of slaves wandering in the dessert they feared for their line and banned gay sex because it was non-procreative and gave no chance for the extension of the Jewish people?  I am no Torah scholar, I don't have the answers but Torah is about asking the questions and thinking about the Jewish experience - good and bad.  And it will always be relevant.

The Torah is outdated if we read it as if it were a monolithic text, little more than a cultural artifact. But you mentioned something about reading it as if it is a "living Torah," and for me that means reading it midrashically, as it was meant to be read. If it is not a continually evolving and dynamic text, then it is worthless; it might as well be stuffed into a corner of the Smithsonian.

 It also depends how you define what Torah is. Is it simply the Hebrew bible? Or does it also consist of the commentary (Midrash, Talmud, etc) that surrounds it? And what about oral commentary? I like to think of Torah as a process rather than a product. Like the ancient rabbis and sages have said, "Turn it and turn it" for all is contained within it. It's the way we choose to read it that will reveal and illuminate all that is within it.

...when it comes to the essence of the Torah. Some can't see the forest for the trees.

Studying Torah for centuries, though, primed Jews for scientific, cultural and other intellectual endeavors that would require memorization, analysis and other cerebral processes, so I agree with Monica above that it's more of a process than a product.

That said, even for the literalists, I've read interpretations of the anti-gay elements of the Torah that can be interpreted to mean it was against same-sex prostitution and temple rituals, not against gay relationships. What matters to me the most, though, as a gay man, is that the vast majority of Jews are not inclined to treat me badly due to my sexual orientation. The same can not be said for other religions with far vaguer treatments of homosexuality in their holy books. 

The Five Books of Moses represent the beliefs, practices, and conceptualization of God as developed by the Hebraic cult. Judaism, as opposed to Hebraism, is based on the commentaries of the Rabbis in the Talmud. Judaism is not based on the condensed & abbreviated versions of the Talmud that appear in either the Mishneh Torah of Maimonides or the Shulchan Aruch of Joseph Caro. So, ethics as presented in the Chumash are not Jewish ethics, and God as depicted in the Chumash is not the Jewish God.

I don't think it's irrational to believe in God, depending of course on how you define God. The universe exists. We didn't create ourselves. We don't get to run much of anything aside from our own choices. Whether God is the universe itself, or God is a Creator who pre-dates the universe, does it matter? Either way, I figure it is all One big thing. We are limited by human brains and human senses. We only know what we can perceive, thus everything we know is inescapably self-referential - in other words, our knowledge is human knowledge, and that is all it can ever be.

My current working definition of God is that "He" is the part of ourselves that is loving, compassionate, truthful, forgiving, merciful, kind, altruistic, etc. So in that sense, being "godly" or "holy" means living our highest ethical & social ideals. My highest ideals include equal rights for every person.

As Rabbi Hillel said, what is hateful to you, do not do to others. That is the whole of Torah, the rest is commentary.

much of the torah is outdated.  it is still relevant to many people including me.  people who can think about god without thinking of the torah first might be at an advantage, but if better words than breishit bara elohim et hashamayim v'et ha'aretz have been written vis a vis the act of creation i am not aware.  and if slavery is relevant the exodus is relevant.  and if monotheism is relevant then abraham is relevant.  and if the jewish people's survival is relevant, then the totality of torah is relevant, even if much of it is outdated.

Is a three thousand year old set of bronze age myths outdated and irrelevant in this age of such scientific enlightenment?........I would say yes.

Sandori seems to feel that treating myths with some degree of seriousness is the biggest danger we, Jews, and we, human beings, are facing.  I feel that humans cut off from their myths are cut off from their past and their roots and cannot be trusted to lead us to the future.

“We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter. Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.”

     ~Denis Diderot~

It's a good thing that Jews don't do the "God Hates Fags" crap that Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church do. It's one thing to think something biblically wrong, even offensive, but to treat people as these idiots do, with their unbelievably offensive signage is just stupid. God made ALL people equal, yes, even the ones who do things that some folks wouldn't dream of !

Another reason Judaism, even it's most conservative practices, is so darn cool.

Haytoon:

Unsurprisingly, the Phelps klan has begun to ramp up its attacks against Jews, too.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1249418582622&pagename=JPArti...

Such an attention whore.