Religion & Beliefs

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• 
  By David N. Friedman 4/19/09 at 12:27 a.m. UTC

  Ismail, sure it is easy to disagree with you and your reliance on a single quote gives you nothing.  I ask you how a man of such alleged contempt for his fellow man could come to be so highly regarded by them?

  Franklin had quite a reputation and sold more than 10,000 copies of his Poor Richard’s Almanac–a kind of popular wisdom literature geared towards the common man.  Ooops–how can this be, Ismail–you want to make him into an elitist?  

  Again and again, if you look at Franklin, the least "Godly" of our FF’s–he is pure Americana.  He was very proud of his 13 virtues–perhaps a take off on those created by the Rambam.

  From the Wiki entry on Franklin:
  

  Franklin sought to cultivate his character by a plan of thirteen
  virtues, which he developed at age 20 (in 1726) and continued to
  practice in some form for the rest of his life. His autobiography lists his thirteen virtues as:

  1. "TEMPERANCE. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation."
  2. "SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation."
  3. "ORDER. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time."
  4. "RESOLUTION. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve."
  5. "FRUGALITY. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing."
  6. "INDUSTRY. Lose no time; be always employ’d in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions."
  7. "SINCERITY. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly."
  8. "JUSTICE. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty."
  9. "MODERATION. Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve."
  10. "CLEANLINESS. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation."
  11. "TRANQUILLITY. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable."
  12. "CHASTITY. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to
      dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or
      reputation."
  13. "HUMILITY. Imitate Jesus

   
• 
  By David N. Friedman 4/19/09 at 12:11 a.m. UTC

  Jer, your challenge continues to deflect the evidence and you won’t put down your blinders.

  Franklin admitted easily:  "History will afford frequent
  opportunities of showing the necessity of public religion and the
  excellency of the Christian religion above all others, ancient or
  modern."

  Jer: Public religion is not government-sponsored religion, and that something is necessary doesn’t mean that one practices it.

  Resp.  Please stop flubbing the basic point.  America was obsessed with the problem of a state-sponsored religion and it is the very essence of America liberty to remove itself from a NATIONAL religion.  Religious freedom–for a PROFOUNDLY religious people–means that no President, no act of Congress can say anything about anyone’s religion and its free expression.  This is America as it was created–sadly, it is not how it exists today.  It is the intent and purpose of Liberals to convince people that religion was ALWAYS meant to be kept out of the public square and I am here to say that America stands for freedom FOR religion and not FROM religion and that the refusal to allow for a national religion is very, very different from a state or a community either establishing a religion or freely expressing it.  I have said repeatedly, without any correction that religion and politics were mixed easily and in the Franklin quote above I provided, this is one good indication.  The American Revolution of 1776 was fundamentally germinated in the religious houses of America and the poltical evolution of America was fermented by the Great Awakening and the 2nd Great Awakening. When Franklin spoke of public religion, he was speaking to the truth that he saw around him everywhere–our nation has a public religion and the Bible was its blueprint.  Burke, Locke and British common law relied heavily on values and precepts drawn directly from our Torah and Early America knew the Bible as their prime source, their prime influence.  All of this is said dogmatically because it is dogmatically true.

  I heard yet another liberal Jew today give support for Obama’s disgusting words said in a Muslim crowd about a week ago by reference Tripoli yet again–all liberal talking points must be on the same page.  America is not a "Christian nation" since we will not fly ships off the Barbary Coast in the 1790′s or in the present day with a Christian emblem.  America is a Republic of free people and not a Christian country.  Got it?  It was in the 1790′s 96% Christian in its citizenry and thoroughly Christian in its moral understanding.  Today–it is about 76% and dropping. Muslims have been at war with Christianity and Judaism for about 800 years.  It also makes no sense to communicate to them that our NATION embodies Christianity–THEY already believe it themselves and there is no need to add fuel to the fire.

  Jer has a big problem with my use of the term "fundamentalist."  OK, Jer, drop it.  I am trying to define and explain their understanding of the world and I do not like the phrase at all.  The left loves to refer to my crowd of Jew as "the Taliban" because we honor Shabbos and daven.  You harbor great misunderstanding about the religious sentiment of Early and Federal America and seem confused over words such as "Providence" and to "Fear God" is the expression of the serious religious believer and no Unitarian.  You are simply not versed in the nature of American history and this is understandable since leftists in our schools have done such a thorough job lying about our FF’s.

  Let’s go back to Priestly’s bottom line that religion is a personal matter.  This is the exact opposite of the point of view of religion where religion and politics mix completely and there can be no separation of religion and state–ONLY the necessity of no established relgion at the national level.  As free men, this means that we have freedom of conscience and freedom to follow the tenets of our own faith.  This is why it is fine, in AMERICA–Baruch Hashem!!–Jews can come and have their own place under the sun, Congregationmalists may rule but Episcopals can also have their own.  And sure, it is fine for Deists to have their own Temple–let all the various religious minorities come to this great land.  However, as a practical proposition, a Deist will not become a very popular guy in a political context since as a public figure–he had better believe in God the way everyone else does–this is how they thought in that period.  Jefferson was called a "Deist" by his political opponents as a curse word.

  You misunderstand my stand against Deists. It is reactive and I am merely demonstrating that it is impossible for Early America to be flooded intellectually with a philosophy of Deism since only doctrinaire Christianity was accepted.  I am reacting to the grotesque lie that all our FF were Deists–Jefferson, Madison, Adams and of course all those persons who signed the Constitution and risked their lives signing that Declaration were members of their local Bible society or ministers themselves.

  As for Quotes–gee this is way too easy:

  President Lincoln, a devoted Bible reader, claimed the Bible moved him to
  issue his Emancipation Proclamation, freeing America’s slaves, in 1863. He
  noted especially the words of Exodus 6:5: "I [God] have also heard the
  groaning of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep in bondage" (KJV). 
  

  "America was born a Christian nation. America was born to exemplify that
  devotion to the elements of righteousness which are derived from the revelations
  of Holy Scriptures. Ladies and gentlemen, I have a very simple thing to ask of
  you. I as of every man and woman in this audience that from this night on they
  will realize that part of the destiny of America lies in their daily perusal of
  this great book of revelations. That if they would see America free and pure
  they will make their own spirits free and pure by this baptism of the Holy
  Scripture." Woodrow Wilson, 1911, pre-Presidential campaign speech.

  “I have a very simple thing to ask of you. I ask every man and woman in
  this audience that from this day on they will realize that part of the destiny
  of America lies in their daily perusal of this great Book (the Bible)." President
  Woodrow Wilson

  "The fundamental basis of this nation’s law was given to Moses on the
  Mount. The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teaching we
  get from Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul. I don’t think we
  emphasize that enough these days. If we don’t have the proper fundamental moral
  background, we will finally end up with a totalitarian government which does not
  believe in the right for anybody except the state. President Harry S. Truman

  "Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed
  their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these
  liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His
  wrath? I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His
  justice cannot sleep forever." President Thomas Jefferson

  "The reason that Christianity is the best friend of Government is
  because Christianity is the only religion that changes the heart." President
  Thomas Jefferson

  "Of all systems of morality, ancient of modern, which have come under my
  observation, none appear to be so pure as that of Jesus." Thomas
  Jefferson To William Canby, 1813
  

  "I hold the precepts of Jesus as delivered by Himself, to be the most
  pure, benevolent and sublime which have ever been preached to man…" President
  Thomas Jefferson

  “I have always said and always will say that the studious perusal of the
  Sacred Volume will make better citizens, better fathers, better husbands… the
  Bible makes the best people in the world." President Thomas Jefferson

  "My views- – - are the result of
  a lifetime of inquiry and reflection, and very different from the
  anti-Christian imputed to me by those who know nothing of my opinions.
  To the corruptions of Christianity I am, indeed, opposed; but not to
  the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian in the only
  sense in which He wished anyone to be; sincerely attached to his
  doctrines in preference of all others—"
    Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Benjamin Rush On
  April 21, 1803

  "I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus.
  I have little doubt that our whole country will soon be rallied to the unity of
  our Creator." Thomas Jefferson wrote on the front of his Bible.

   

   

   

   
• 
  By David N. Friedman 4/18/09 at 11:11 p.m. UTC

  Jer:  Would a fundamentalist society have supported, much less been "truly favourable" to, a man who denied Christ’s divinity?
  

  Resp. I seems you won’t listen to the whole story.  Priestly loved the French and his religious views were more congruent with France than America.  In England–as a religious leader–he was hated and his house was burned with the Birmingham riots of 1791 when his house and his scientific and ‘religious’ works were burned by a mob. 

  "Gunpowder Joe" was drummed out of England, he was burned in effigy along with Paine and this is said on Wikipedia that brings us understanding:  Paradoxically, a secular statesman, Burke, argued against science and
  maintained that religion should be the basis of civil society, whereas
  a Dissenting minister, Priestley, argued that religion could not
  provide the basis for civil society and should be restricted to one’s
  private life.

  Therefore, when Priestly came to America sometime around 1794–he is from a religious standpoint way out of step with England–so he is really way out of step with America. (Burke, of course was very influential in America). But he is in America since America is the place that allows for religious minorities and no established Church.  As a religious figure–he was never invited to preach and I do not think he wanted to earn the distinction of having his house burned down in both England and America.So he went to a University in PA  and did scientific work.

  Jer:  What is the point here??  Priestly wasn’t even in America for our formative years–is no FF–is no central figure, is no accepted Minister with a congregation and religious following.  It is just another lame attempt to make something out of nothing and when you look into it–it clearly supports the truth and not your side of the argument.
• 
  By jer 4/18/09 at 6:05 a.m. UTC

  More evidence against America as a fundamentalist nation:

  Joseph Priestley, who founded Unitarianism and wrote Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion, a book in which the divinity of Christ is denied, was hounded out of England. Methodists asked God to "The Unitarian fiend expel/And chase his doctrine back to Hell". Eventually, he left England due to persecution for his political views, and settled in the Unitd States, where he founded the Unitarian Church. He and Jefferson became close, and he dedicated a book to Jefferson, claiming that "it is now only that I can say I see nothing to fear from the hand of power, the government under which I live being for the first time truly favourable to me." Would a fundamentalist society have supported, much less been "truly favourable" to, a man who denied Christ’s divinity?
• 
  By jer 4/18/09 at 12:58 a.m. UTC

  Also, a correction: I have Palmer founding his institute in both 1796 and 1801. 1796 is the correct year. 1801 is for another institution that he was head of.
• 
  By jer 4/18/09 at 12:50 a.m. UTC

  Sorry bout the delay. A lot has happened while I’ve been away, so I might not say everything I want to say tonight, but I want to at least get started.

  Don’t worry about the name thing, I have a typo to apologize for meself: "Maybe his views on government and religion are just too 17th century[...]" should of course have "18th century" rather than "17th".

  This is not logical or sane, Jer.  It is a huge error.

  I’m afraid I don’t see why it isn’t logical or sane. I think my Catholicism in medieval Europe example applies: Catholicism surely was at least as entrenched in medieval Europe as a more general Christianity was in early America, but there still arose movements opposed to the Church, or, at least, different enough from it to be considered heretical. Either the England of the Lollards was not as religious as all that, or the Lollards were not anti-clerical heretics. Or you admit that it is possible for a social milieu in which one belief dominates to produce movements that oppose that dominant belief.

  The point about Madison’s intitiatives in Va (along with dozens of related initiatives all over the country) was that no politician can propose and pass these things without overwhelming public support.  The FF were all Bible thumpers in a way people today simply cannot imagine it is so foreign to us.

  Okay, but then the Virginia Statute must have had overwhelming support too. So, Virginians, like Madison, seem to have approved of religion intruding into the state to punish Sabbath-breakers, but still wanted a statute of religious freedom that disclaimed state compulsion over religious behaviour. In other words, they don’t seem to have had a coherent view of what they wanted. But they certainly had some desire for some form of separation of Church and state.

  I don’t want to respond to the claim that the founders were Bible thumpers quite yet, so let’s let that sit for a moment.

  understand the 18th C definition of a Deist is totally different than today

  Elihu Palmer was an 18th American Deist, who founded a Deist institute in 1796, and wrote a treatise on Deism. Here’s his view:

  "Deism declares to intelligent man the existence of one perfect God, Creator and Preserver of the Universe; that the laws by which he governs the world are like himself immutable, and, of course, that violations of these laws, or miraculous interference in the movements of nature, must be necessarily excluded from the grand system of universal existence; that the Creator is justly entitled to the adoration of every intellectual agent throughout the regions of infinite space; and that he alone is entitled to it, having no co-partners who have a right to share with him the homage of the intelligent world. Deism also declares, that the practice of a pure, natural, and uncorrupted virtue, is the essential duty, and constitutes the highest dignity of man; that the powers of man are competent to all the great purposes of human existence; that science, virtue, and happiness, are the great objects which ought to awake the mental energies, and draw forth the moral affections of the human race."

  So, maybe not the Deism of today, but if Franklin wasn’t lying when he claimed to have become a Deist, then he probably did not pray every day — at least, not expecting anything to come of it.

  Franklin could NEVER mingle easily in a nation of fundamentalist Christians if he was wholy different–he is one guy who was different–but not at all what some imply or allege. If he was an infidel–he could not have said this 

   The fact that Palmer was able to set up a Deist institute shows that Deism was a view that could be heard in early America. The institute was founded in, I believe, 1801, so a bit after the founding, but even if we assume that Deism hadn’t quite achieved the prominence it would under Elihu Palmer, it can’t have been invisible from American intellectual life. So, either we take Palmer and his merry band of Deists as evidence that Franklin wasn’t alone, and that thus there might have been an undercurrent of free-thought in early America, or, by modus tollens, we can say

  If America was a fundamentalist society, Elihu Palmer would not have been able to be an out-of-the-closet Deist. But, Elihu Palmer was an out-of-the-closet Deist, so America could not have been a fundamentalist society. Or, premise A is incorrect, and heretics can live and speak in a fundamentalist society.

  …"serious religion, under its various denominations, is not only tolerated, but respected and practiced. Atheism is unknown there, infidelity (a disbelief in Sripcture ) rare and secret, so that persons may live to a great age in that country, without having their piety shocked by meeting with either an atheists of an infidel."

  Two things to note: one, that quote is from a pamphlet wrote to convince Europeans to move to America, and so it was in his interests to put a certain spin on it. Two, that even so, this doesn’t imply any certain of personal belief for Franklin; all it shows is that Franklin saw America as a place with many different religious people, all tolerating each other, and with only a few infidels. Which is probably true. But that doesn’t mean that he wasn’t one of those infidels. Also, one wonders why the Europeans would have needed reassurance on this point. Might America have acquired a reputation as a hotbed of freethinkers and atheists? I’m not raising this as a definitive point in my favour, but it’s worth considering.  

  Franklin admitted easily:  "History will afford frequent opportunities of showing the necessity of public religion and the excellency of the Christian religion above all others, ancient or modern."

  Public religion is not government-sponsored religion, and that something is necessary doesn’t mean that one practices it; I believe that garbage-collecting is necessary, but I’m not a garbage-man.

  Almost every single FF and Early American was in his life, his conscience, to the core of his being a totally immersed Bible believer.

  Which Bible? OT, NT, or both?

  This is in your face Islam

  According to you, early America was founded on in-your-face Christianity. As you said, they were fundamentalists.

  Iran is now "The Islamic Republic of Iran" [...]

  I think you misunderstood my point. I was saying that, just as the current government of Iran (founded on fundamentalist Islam) would never deny that they were an Islamic government, so too a state founded on fundamentalist Christianity (as you allege America to be) would never deny their foundation as a Christian country. The comparison is only relevant to the Islamic Republic.

  Then, we have your founders’ quotes. Some of them certainly do indicate a strongly-held Christianity, although I’d note that none of them specifies that they believe that this Christianity is or should be anything other than a personal matter. But also, a closer look reveals that even so, these quotes aren’t as strongly in your favour as you imply.

  "The religion I have is to love and Fear God, do all the good to my neighbor and myself as I can, do as little harm as I can help and trust in God’s mercy for the rest.." Does that sound like the creed of a fundamentalist to you? There is nothing about Christ, transubstantiation, redemption, or anything like that. A general "fear God and do good" is the sort of doctrine you’d associate with a Unitarian, not a Bible-thumper.

  Similarly, even the most milquetoast of believers could "[Render] thanks to [their] creator for [their] existence and station among his works…"…nothing too fundamentalist in there.

  It also pains me to note that none of these quotes is from Thomas Jefferson, even though you’ve claimed that you have numerous quotes of his that reveal him as a fundamentalist Bible thumper. But, since Jefferson published a Bible with all miracles redacted out of it (including Christ’s ressurection), I guess even if you could prove he was a Bible thumper, I’d have to ask which Bible; the accepted one, or his own rationalist one?

  Note that Christians have no requirement by the tenets of their faith to honor the Sabbath–much less punish those who violate it.

  Quite true, but fundamentalist Christians go further. They believe the NT supplanted the old. Look at medieval and early modern Europe for an example of how a truly fundamentalist society treats its Jews. Insofar as America went soft on the NT, it shows that they were not fundamentalists.

  Lastly, if you believe that I don’t take trouble to offer substantive responses–that takes the cake.

  What I mean by that is, I’ve asked for Jefferson quotes — still waiting. I’ve asked for quotes from Presidents about Judeo-Christian values — still waiting. And, until this post, I’d had no quotes from you at all. So, while certainly you’ve responded substantively this time, you still haven’t produced evidence that you claimed to have.

  Lastly, you dont want to speak the name Obama when the topic speaks of today’s economic trouble created by Obama–which is difficult. 

  Not at all! I want to know why you single out Obama for failing to implement a Biblical economic initiative, even though, as far as I can tell, no president as yet has implemented it. It seems he’s being held to a different standard. But please, rail against him all you want.

  Please note that the income tax began in this country ONLY at the first opportunity of the decline of religious faith in America

  Not quite true: an income tax was instituted by Lincoln to help fund the Civil War. Of course, it didn’t outlast the war.

  As to the last bit of your post, I have neither the qualifications nor the interest to debate the details of Obama’s economic policy. My only concern here is to explain why I believe that, whatever the answer is, it won’t be found in the Bible.

  Your next post has been responded to by Ismail, so I’ll let him handle the discussion on that one. I will say though, that I have no interest in getting people to believe that "Jefferson, Franklin or Madison among others were enemies of Christianity" — I think it’s quite possible to be non-Christian, or to support the formation of a government based on a principle of separation of Church and state while still being a friend of Christianity.

  Whew…that’s all for now.

   

   

   

   
• 
  By H3 4/17/09 at 4:30 p.m. UTC

  Moving backwards was always the Jewish way forwards.  In Judaism it is believed that the generations closer to the day of the giving of the Torah were higher spiritually than the later generations.  In the case of the latest major financial crisis both Christians and Jews await a Messiah.  There is no question of looking back, all are looking in the direction of hope.  In this case it is forwards for Jews. 
• 
  By Ismail 4/17/09 at 3:06 p.m. UTC

  Franklin: "But think how great a portion of mankind consists of weak and ignorant men and women…"

  Friedman: "…but I do not believe it is fair at all to believe that he was quick to disparage his fellow Americans as "ignorant and in need of fairy tales."  "

  Guess it depends on how big one imagines a "great portion" is. 
• 
  By David N. Friedman 4/17/09 at 11:53 a.m. UTC

   Ismail: I read the Franklin passage more as a warning to a like-minded but
  less politic Paine to avoid the wrath of the groundlings than as an
  endorsement of the religious point of view on its own merits.

  Again, you seem to say both that Franklin’s actual beliefs about
  religion are beside the point, and also that attempts to portray him as
  irreligious are wicked. I suppose both could be true…

  Resp.  I disagree with both of your options.  I see Franklin as sympathetic to Paine but not "like minded" and he was speaking less to endorse the ‘fundamentalist’ religious sentimentsof the majority than to warn him of the folly of "spitting in the wind."  Paine would be rightly considered linked to Spinoza while Franklin was not that kind of Deist.

  I am pleased to offer you clarification, Ismail and I am grateful you have asked.  I accept the fact that Franklin was "less religious" than his contemporaries.  In my book, great men are entitled to their arrogance and Franklin is a man people knew could not be prostelitized–the  bottom line, he was accepted and respected nonetheless.  Why?  Because he sincerely believed in the reality of God as Creator and active in the affairs of men and therefore the efficacy of prayer.  This central fact makes Franklin’s beliefs–if we can lift him from the 18th C to the present and use some imagination–very different from the  Spinoza-style "spritual" religions of today. 

  Franklin may have been very quick to disparage ministers of his day and he found them easily inferior to his own intellect since he was so proud of his worldliness–but I do not believe it is fair at all to believe that he was quick to disparage his fellow Americans as "ignorant and in need of fairy tales."  This simply does not fit the reality.  And this is a typical mistake people make–even in our own time there are people who are very poor representatives for Judaism (or something else) and some are prone to speak out against them. It is proper to see these comments as critical of those person’s malpractice and not general insults against religion.  And if you re-read what Franklin said to Paine–that is PRECISELY what he indicated and that is why we know Franklin’s bottom line and that there is a point beyond which he will not go.

   
• 
  By Ismail 4/17/09 at 8:22 a.m. UTC

  Regarding your Franklin quote, David, you seem to be of two minds. First, you claim that divining Franklin’s actual beliefs is beside the point; the quote is useful primarily for indicating the generally religious tenor of the people of Franklin’s time. Then you say that the efforts of some to paint Franklin as irreligious are "just plain lies". Establishing Franklin’s actual beliefs is either useful or it is not. Which is it?

  Also, the part of the quote your ellipsis redacts is very interesting; here’s a taste:

   You yourself may find it easy to live a virtuous life, without the assistance afforded by religion; you having a clear perception of the advantage of virtue, and the disadvantages of vice, and possessing a strength of resolution sufficient to enable you to resist common temptations. But think how great a portion of mankind consists of weak and ignorant men and women, and of inexperienced, inconsiderate youth of both sexes, who have need of the motives of religion to restrain them from vice, to support their virtue, and retain them in the practice of it till it becomes habitual, which is the great point for its security. 

  Here Franklin offers an unflattering opinion about his fellow citizens, ignorant and in need of fairy tales to keep them in line (compare to Freud’s notions about religion; a fantasy designed to alleviate the guilt associated with unconscious patricidal wishes. Or Marx’s; a tale to distract from the agonies of class exploitation.)

  I read the Franklin passage more as a warning to a like-minded but less politic Paine to avoid the wrath of the groundlings than as an endorsement of the religious point of view on its own merits.

  Again, you seem to say both that Franklin’s actual beliefs about religion are beside the point, and also that attempts to portray him as irreligious are wicked. I suppose both could be true (he really was religious and efforts to deny this are mendacious, but his  beliefs are immaterial to the point about the sentiments of his contemporaries.)

  Still, a clarification would be useful. 
• 
  By David N. Friedman 4/16/09 at 11:47 p.m. UTC

  Isaac, please.  Good grief–the quote is from an original document by Franklin, published by John Stockdale , 1784 page 24, "Two Tracts: Information to Those Who would remove to America and Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America."

  Note that Jer’s stand here (probably innocently relayed) is boilerplate propangada from the hate America crowd that highlights Paine, Franklin and the Treaty at Tripoli in order to create a wildly inacurrate understanding of our history.  It is so far removed from the truth, it is the product of very small minds and true malice. At minimum, these activists are best to admit that sure, Early America and 19th C America was drenched in Biblical morality and Torah law–fine.  But, the few of them with some semblance of integrtity contend–we have evolved into a different nation and we no longer live in the 18th or 19th C.  This is a far better way to approach the issue.  But ceding national heroes, our Constitution and our history to the Right is too painful for many so they cling to lies.

  Again–I am appealing to logic and asking people to think for themselves.  The allegation against the Deism of Franklin who WAS about the least religious famous FF needs to be understood.  He had many problems with many theologians and probably considered himself smarter than any of the them. Franklin is the kid of guy who had a hard tiime putting himself under any Church and yet had abiding respect for Christianity and believed in the God of the Hebrew Bible–as I referenced previously.  How do we know this to be true?  Use logic.  In a mammouthly religious environment–Franklin was a respected man.  He could not have that respect if he was an anti-Christian activist that the leftist liars allege.  He would have been blocked from all public functions.  Indeed, regarding Paine–it was Franklin himself who tried to disuade him from making such views public–who cares if one man, Paine, said some nasty things against Christinianity–what matters is how he was treated.  Paine was summarily rejected by America.

  Here is part of Franklin’s statement:

  I have read your manuscript with some attention.  By the argument it contains against a particular Providence. though you allow a general Providence, you strike at the foundations of all religion.  For without belief of a Providence that takes cognizance of, guards and guides, and may favor particular persons, there is no motive to worship a Deity, to fear his displeasure, or to pray for his protection….the consequence of printing this piece will be a great deal of odium drawn upon yourself, mischief to you and no benefit to others.  He that spits in the wind spits in his own face….. I would advise you therefore, not to attempt unchaining the tiger, but to burn this piece before it is seen by any other person. from "The Works of Benjamin Franklin, Sparks, 1840, page 281-282  to Thomas Paine in 1790. 

  These kinds of quotes are meaningful not because it PROVES this or that about Franklin–it proves adequately the general reality of the day and that is the important matter.  Therefore, all this interest in parsing particular statements falsely tricking people into believing that Jefferson, Franklin or Madison among others were enemies of Christianity are just plain lies.  The people, the overhelming reality stands in TOTAL testimony against such lying.

  So what do we really have here?  We have a nightmare for the modern liberal Jew so filled with animosity against religious faith.  I saw such a young woman this evening at an event.  Her T-shirt said: "Hallowed Be My Game"–an apparent reference to her soccer team and a slap against  the Christian version of the standard Jewish saying: "Baruch Hashem."  Hallowed be thy Name, from the "Lord’s prayer" is in context of Early America a standard greeting, a kind of Christian version of our present day Jewish Orthodox.  Hating the Haredim means hating and mocking the Founding Fathers.

  My suggestion:  stop hating.

  I welcome Jer’s response and any one else’s.  Where is DJ?  
• 
  By Isaac 4/16/09 at 8:32 a.m. UTC

  I’m not going to assume a lack of veracity with these quotes, Mr Friedman. But all sorts of quotes have been falsely attributed to Franklin. Best to provide references in this day and age.
• 
  By David N. Friedman 4/15/09 at 11:48 p.m. UTC

  OK, thanks Jer.  I simply do not type very well so my apologies for mis-spelling your name.  I have encouraged you to think, be logical and look past the lies of people seeking to re-write history.  To seek understanding and not to simply rubber stamp the perceptions of others.  You have also demonstrated a bit of good faith and I appreciate it.

  I’ll try to set you straight one more time.

  Fine. But, to be "profoundly under the influence" of something does not
  mean that you agree to it wholesale; indeed, it is possible that the
  way such influence manifests itself is in opposition.

  Resp.  This is not logical or sane, Jer.  It is a huge error.The point about Madison’s intitiatives in Va (along with dozens of related initiatives all over the country) was that no politician can propose and pass these things without overwhelming public support.  The FF were all Bible thumpers in a way people today simply cannot imagine it is so foreign to us.  Let’s go with Franklin since you trust the words of a Deist (understand the 18th C definition of a Deist is totally different than today.  Franklin would be classified as a mainstream hard-core Christian today and in no sense an atheist.  Fundamentally, Franklin the self-described Deist regularly prayed to God to intervene in the daily affairs of man.  He prayed and implored others to pray.  Today’s Deists are convinced that a Creator may have set the heavens in motion but is not capable of intervening in the affairs of man.  Ergo–where does your one example go–nowhere!! Franklin could NEVER mingle easily in a nation of fundamentalist Christians if he was wholy different–he is one guy who was different–but not at all what some imply or allege. If he was an infidel–he could not have said this….):

  Benjamin Franklin explained to the French: …"serious religion, under its various denominations, is not only tolerated, but respected and practiced. Atheism is unknown there, infidelity (a disbelief in Sripcture ) rare and secret, so that persons may live to a great age in that country, without having their piety shocked by meeting with either an atheists of an infidel."

  Franklin admitted easily:  "History will afford frequent opportunities of showing the necessity of public religion and the excellency of the Christian religion above all others, ancient or modern."

  I am emphatic because the case is beyond overwhelming and obvious with no possible debate.  Almost every single FF and Early American was in his life, his conscience, to the core of his being a totally immersed Bible believer.   Many were by profession chaplains, or head of their churches, Member of the Missionary Society, Presidents of their local Bible Society (so much so that if you want to be elected to anything in America in the late 18th and throughout the 19th C–you had better be a good member of the local Bible Society!!)–just go through the names of all the signers of the Declaration, the members of the Continental Congress, signers of the Constitution, Governor–just say ANY elected representative–pick 20 at random and find any that were something less than having sterling records as religious believers.

  I mean, can you imagine Iran claiming not to be "in any sense a Muslim nation", just to be diplomatic? 
  

  Resp.  This is in your face Islam.  And even with Islam think about what you just said about Iran.  Iran is now "The Islamic Republic of Iran" but befall the fall of the Shah–Iran was Persia and had noticebale ethnic minorities including Jews.  Yes, that Iran failed to say, every chance it had, to indicate it was an Islamic Republic even if it had about the same number of Muslims as it has under today’s dictatorship. 

  It will take more to convince me that the founders were universally Bible-thumpers. 

  Resp.  As stated, this is only because of your ignorance about the FF. I wish I could type better.James Iredell, US Supreme Court Justice:  " I am free and ready enough to declare that I think the Christian religion is a Divine institution; and I pray to God that I may never forget the precepts of his religion (the laws) or suffer the appearance of an inconsistency  in my principles and practice."

  Daniel Boone, Revolutionary officer, legislator:  " The religion I have is to love and Fear God, do all the good to my neighbor and myself as I can, do as little harm as I can help and trust in God’s mercy for the rest.."

  Roger Sherman, signer of the Dec and Const–everyone knows Sherman was a not capable of saying anything, even "pass the salt" at the dinner table, without reference God.  "I believe that there is only the one only living and true God..that the Scriptures of the old and new testaments are a revelation from God and a complete rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy HIM.."

  Benjamin Rush:  "Nothing but his blood will wash away my sins.  I rely exclusively upon it.  Come, Lord Jes… Come Quickly."  

  John Dickinson, signer of the Constitution:  "Rendering thanks to my creator for my existence and station among his works…"

  Patrick Henry: "this is all the inheritance I can give to my family.  The religion of Christ can give them one which will make them rich indeed."

  John Jay, original chief Justice of the US  "Unto Him who is the author and giver of all good, I render sincere and humble thanks for his manifold and unmerited blessings…blessed he his holy name."   This rings like a standard Jewish prayer.  Note the hatred of modern courts for this kind of religious speech, spoken by our original chielf Justice!!

   If you’re right, then the founders were Christians.
  Full stop. Not Judeo-Christians. Not "profoundly influenced by the
  Bible". Christians, who believed that when Jesus came down, he made the
  Old Testament well…the Old Testament. Note that Madison’s law was against Sabbath violators, not Kashruth violators. 
  

  Resp.  Now you admit the truth!! But you insist on quibbling.  It is the CHRISTIANS–not the Jews who insist on the moniker : "Judeo-Christian"–this honors the fact that in law and in principle, the "old" testament, better known as the Hebrew Scriptures were pre-eminent regarding political and legal matters, Christianity more in terms of personal salvation. Note that Christians have no requirement by the tenets of their faith to honor the Sabbath–much less punish those who violate it.  They wanted this law upon themselves as honor to the Jewish model–if it is clumsily applied, the honor comes shining through nonetheless.  This is why these great people spoke in such flowery terms about Judaism and created the greatest homeland for Jews anywhere in the history of the world.  That they are Jew-lovers seems a PROBLEM for liberal Jews. 

  Lastly, if you believe that I don’t take trouble to offer substantive responses–that takes the cake.  Try to disagree with what I have said but please don’t say that I fail to offer logic, good argument, facts and support for my thinking.

  I thank you for your good faith, Jer, and I will not disparage it.

  Lastly, you dont want to speak the name Obama when the topic speaks of today’s economic trouble created by Obama–which is difficult.  There has been such a popular uprising and not coincidence, in the same way that Revolution was formented in the churches in Early America–it is led today by religious conservatives and including Orthodox Jews willing to speak their minds.  It distresses me that my Orthodox colleagues are digusted with what Obama is doing to us but will not speak out.  I am speaking out.

  Please note that the income tax began in this country ONLY at the first opportunity of the decline of religious faith in America–some 140 years after our beginnings of the nation.  "Thou Shalt Not Steal" is so fundamental to Judaism–it was the reason the Almighty destroyed Soddom and Gommorha, it is a very severe sin.  We have elected a man who knows nothing about how to create wealth and has never really even held a job.  One might imagine he would ask someone what to do–given the fact he has no clue how to build wealth.  Instead, he immediately resorts to legalized theft to take from some to give a massive transfer to the government to the tune of trillions of dollars. The point of the half-shekl is to demonstrate the futility of soaking the rich and letting half of the people off the hook–it is immoral by our standards. Assuring that everyone pays at least a little bit is important to a modern democracy–I am happy to be one person making this suggestion.The Jewish people are far too familiar with the Jew tax which takes all the money from the Jews so others don’t pay.
• 
  By jer 4/15/09 at 7:41 p.m. UTC

  I’m trying to see things from your perspective, I truly am. But I’m having problems. Perhaps if I outline what’s so vexing to me, it’ll help you explain yourself in a way that is more likely to make an impact.

  On blogs and websites that litter the internet, they try to paint a
  picture that the FF were anti-religious and most of the leaders were
  Deists.  This is a lie.  As stated emphatically and it is beyond
  dispute, Early America was profoundly under the influence of the Hebrew
  Scriptures and no other influence (there WERE other influences) can
  come close to comparing to what they took from the Bible. 

  I’ll ignore the bizarre contradiction between "no other influence" and "(there WERE other influences)", and assume that insofar as you’re going to admit of other influences, you would say they were restricted in such a way as to be negligible. Fine. But, to be "profoundly under the influence" of something does not mean that you agree to it wholesale; indeed, it is possible that the way such influence manifests itself is in opposition. As an example, let’s consider the middle ages. Who would deny that medieval Europe was profoundly (even entirely) under the influence of the Catholic church. And yet, the history of the middle ages is riddled with reactions AGAINST the Church: the Albigensians, the Lollards, the Hussites, etc., etc., etc. Even if it is true that the founders were raised in a world dominated by the Bible, that doesn’t mean they agreed with the Bible in everything. It just means that their worldview was shaped by it. 

  Further, and a point that I must say continues to irritate me, it does not matter how "emphatically" you state a point, assertion does not make something true. I can assert that aliens wrote the constitution as a prelude to their enslavement of humanity pretty danged emphatically — maybe more emphatically than you’ve asserted your points so far — but that doesn’t make it true. If all the American history I’ve learned is a lie, you’re going to need to present me with more than just assertions to convince me.   

  Jew, you want me to imitate the liars and bring you quotes?   I  need
  you to use your head and think with me.  People say all kinds of
  things–quotes by themselves need to be understood.  Actions and
  political behavior speak much more clearly by themselves. 
  

  First of all, it’s "Jer", not "Jew", but whatever. This is where I start to worry that we’re both wasting our time here. If the founders lived their whole lives as fundamentalist Bible-thumpers, surely they would have let slip a few sentiments that indicate that. I’m happy for you to provide your interpretation of quotes, I won’t read them prejudicially — but there has to be something. Or else, how do you know that all of modern scholarship on the founders is a lie? What evidence convinced you of that fact, that you can now offer me? Or, if for some bizarre reason, the founders never recorded their deeply held sentiments, then point me to some actions, some political behaviours. Something! All you’ve given me so far is that Madison had a law that punished Sabbath breakers. Unless you think that he didn’t write the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, or that he didn’t write that dialogue I posted earlier, then all this means is that his political actions speak only to a sort of ambivalence about religion; sometimes he was willing to prosecute Sabbath violators, sometimes he was willing to forbid chaplains in the army. Call Madison a wash then. He’s an example for neither of us. It will take more to convince me that the founders were universally Bible-thumpers.

  Jefferson is a special case and I know a lot about Jefferson–you want
  primary documents–go and read.  These three are well worn out
  examples.  That is all the Left has.  But what of the larger
  reality–what of the dominant majority?  What about the 96% and not the
  4%? 
  

  I do want primary documents. Please give me some! Even though you just told me that quotes mean nothing…hmmm….especially if 96% of the documents and quotes contradict me. Surely you can point me to one? 

  Anyway, I wasn’t trying to prove with these examples that the framers of the Constitution were deists, I was trying to show that "non-Christian ideas were in the air", in contrast to your claim that "this [Christian] viewpoint was the ONLY one available". If it was the only one available, how did Franklin and Paine, unimportant as they may have been, learn about deism? Why was Franklin loaned books on the subject if it wasn’t an available viewpoint?

  Further, please consider how I demolished the accusations against
  Madison so easily.  "Never seems to have been an ardent believer
  himself"–who just when the ink was still wet on the
  Constiutution–rushed out to make sure his voters not violate the
  Sabbath and if they did-he wanted them punished.  What does this one
  action say to you, Jer?  Be honest, be fair.  As I indicated–can you
  imagine if one Republican was as moderate as McCain but had that one
  act on his resume?  He would be branded forever. 
  

  The first thing that occurs to me is that if the ink was still wet on the Constitution when he did this, then it can’t have been passed in 1785 as you claimed. Either that or maybe your American history major didn’t serve you as well as it might have (especially since you probably learned from all those untrustworthy PhDs)…but that’s neither here nor there. It’s true, this action seems to suggest that Madison was willing to use the state to enforce some religious practice. On the other hand, imagine if a Democrat, no matter how moderate, opposed chaplains in the army. Madison did that too. Maybe one, or both of those were done for political, not personal reasons. Maybe he changed his mind. Maybe his views on government and religion are just too 17th century for his actions not to look contradictory to us — I don’t know. I’m not inside his head. Neither are you. His legislative legacy on the issue is ambiguous. That’s all there is to it. 

  Please use your head, Jer.  Diplomacy always seeks common ground–what
  might a Christian nation say to its Islamic foes?  Of course–they seek
  to downplay it

  Um…this was a war that America won. Also, "not in any sense a Christian nation" is more than diplomatic; it surely would have been enough to say that America would not remain prejudiced against non-Christian nations.I mean, can you imagine Iran claiming not to be "in any sense a Muslim nation", just to be diplomatic?

  America is dominated by our Judeo-Christian values and every President
  up to our day has freely admitted it–all WITHOUT saying we are a
  Christian nation which is a different spin and needless to say

  If every President has freely admitted, you must have quotes, right? Let’s have quotes from, say, Jefferson (while he was President), Grant, T. Roosevelt, and….Coolidge. 

  Also, you can’t have it both ways.You said that the Christian viewpoint  "was the ONLY one available". Not the "Judeo-Christian" viewpoint. If Madison, Jefferson, and the rest could cite the OT chapter and verse, you know full well that they could do the same for the NT. It’s amazing that these men were fundamentalists, raised in a fundamentalist land, with no outside influences, and yet they were soft on the idea of the Gospels having supplanted the Mosaic law. How very strange. If you’re right, then the founders were Christians. Full stop. Not Judeo-Christians. Not "profoundly influenced by the Bible". Christians, who believed that when Jesus came down, he made the Old Testament well…the Old Testament. Note that Madison’s law was against Sabbath violators, not Kashruth violators. 

  Lastly, our FF said strongly that the power to tax is the power to
  destroy.  Obama’s tax increases break Torah guidelines on several
  fronts.  One model that is missing is the half-shekel tax–a wonderful
  concept that empowers everyone so everyone pays a little bit instead of
  more than half paying nothing and a few paying most of the taxes

  I don’t know why you keep bringing up Obama. I’ve never said I agree with what he’s doing; I just said I don’t think the Torah is going to help. Not that Obama will. Anyway, has the half-shekel tax been ever been implemented in American history? If not, why is Obama singled out? 

  Sorry, Jer, Madoff and Meyer Lansky are not among us. Madoff is a
  strong, proud liberal Democrat and Obama has already bailed out his
  class. The models are the good guys–not the bad ones. 
  

  Are not among who? The Jews? Lansky, maybe. But Madoff was pretty big in the Jewish world…

  And, again, you’ve misread me. My point was that "there are plenty of people who know a lot about how to make money, but who don’t know a lot about economic policy", in contrast to your point that "Now is the time to hear from our Jewish entrepreneurs and fortune builders since their ideas, the principles, their strategies are precisely what is needed".   i.e., not every Jewish fortune building should be heard from, and there are people who are good at making money but who we still probably don’t want in charge of putting together a new economy.

  We don’t want a bailout, we want smaller government.  We demand government fix the failures GOVERNMENT created

  You may demand this, but frankly, I detect to much of "an abiding faith in the fact that today’s economy requires ONLY governmental action". Sorry, cheap shot (but do try and be more consistent in the future). Anyway, best of luck with that. Truly. I’m not enough of an economist to know what is needed. I just don’t think you’ve yet made a convincing argument that Torah is needed. 

  p.s. I don’t really want to say this, but I feel that we’re talking at cross-purposes here. So, unless your next response has some quotes, or other documentary evidence to support your claims, and/or responds substantively to my points (rather than just asserting that I’ve been taken in by lies), I doubt I’ll be continuing our discussion, at least with comments as involved as I’ve been posting so far. Fair warning, and all that.

   
• 
  By Isaac 4/15/09 at 7:40 p.m. UTC

  It’s "Jer", btw, not "Jew". At least, that’s what I think you meant to say.

  Without having gone over the details of this exchange, I’m pretty sure that Jer’s side of what I take to be the current incarnation of the "whether or not the founders wanted a secular government" argument is correct. The founders were generally not religious, at least not in any formal sense (going by contemporary standards), and that’s that. Friedman’s paragraph below is probably a good example of why people seem to keep getting confused with this.

  "On blogs and websites that litter the internet, they try to paint a
  picture that the FF were anti-religious and most of the leaders were
  Deists.  This is a lie.  As stated emphatically and it is beyond
  dispute, Early America was profoundly under the influence of the Hebrew
  Scriptures and no other influence (there WERE other influences) can
  come close to comparing to what they took from the Bible."

  Yeah. Early America was profoundly under the influence of the Hebrew scriptures. The founders were not. There is a difference. Your paragraph seems to shift between these two subjects without changing the intended meaning of the sentences.

  That being said, it is also pretty clear that those founders who excelled as politicians were adept at making use of "Judeo-Christian" religious motifs when addressing their constituents. This is what we mean by having, for better or worse, a society in which religion usually plays a dominant role in the "public sphere". But while the definition of the public sphere generally encompasses the government, the government is only a part of it and was decisively established in a secular form. The founders were pretty intent on avoiding the religious-sectarian warfare of continental Europe. And to the extent that they found it unavoidable to incorporate religious imagery into speeches to people for whom the appeal of such mythology was important, they did so in the most general (or generic) sense possible. End of story.   

  Good book on the intersection of the religious and cultural foundations of early America. The three most dominant groups on the East were the tolerant and ecumenical Quakers, the uptight and theocratic Puritans and the groups founding the Southern colonies. Of course, the Old South was once thought to be the most socially advanced region of the country by European standards. By a modern American theoconservative’s perspective they would have been thought heathens. All I’ve got to say is that, having resided in Philly, thank the diety that the witch-burning nuts of Massachusetts could never outdo the influence exerted by the rest of us. Their delegation actually opposed the First Amendment on the grounds that a religious test for office was a great and necessary thing. How little things change. This anecdote probably also helps explain why such a hard-core ideologue as Ismail is so at home up there. 

  But the rest of New England (and their town hall style of governance) is beautiful. And remarkable. Especially the hippified state of Vermont. Go Green Mountains. 
• 
  By David N. Friedman 4/15/09 at 5:06 p.m. UTC

  I am trying, Jer and I hope you can put away your blinders but understand I cannot put them away for you..  Being fair and making effective and accurate generalizations is important.  There is historical truth and then there are historical lies.  The broad truth happily includes facts that represent the minority–oftentimes the anectodal reality.  As I stated previously, there is great mischief in the willingness of people to paint a picture which fails to portray the historical record in its broad understanding and its general implications.  There is an "incovenient truth" (to quote a famous monster) in having our Founding figures stand for antithesis of oneself and this is the painful reality for several academic-type individuals so they spin the truth, hide the truth and ignore the facts.

  On blogs and websites that litter the internet, they try to paint a picture that the FF were anti-religious and most of the leaders were Deists.  This is a lie.  As stated emphatically and it is beyond dispute, Early America was profoundly under the influence of the Hebrew Scriptures and no other influence (there WERE other influences) can come close to comparing to what they took from the Bible.

  Jew, you want me to imitate the liars and bring you quotes?   I  need you to use your head and think with me.  People say all kinds of things–quotes by themselves need to be understood.  Actions and political behavior speak much more clearly by themselves.

  Franklin was,  in fact, a Deist although he acted as a Christian for much of his life. So?–he never held public office and he was in France while the Constitutional Convention was in session.  The mavens love to talk about Franklin.  Who else?-there is the famous pamphleteer–Paine–but what happened to him when he turned against religion?  He was not in America and died an American outcast.  Jefferson is a special case and I know a lot about Jefferson–you want primary documents–go and read.  These three are well worn out examples.  That is all the Left has.  But what of the larger reality–what of the dominant majority?  What about the 96% and not the 4%?

  Further, please consider how I demolished the accusations against Madison so easily.  "Never seems to have been an ardent believer himself"–who just when the ink was still wet on the Constiutution–rushed out to make sure his voters not violate the Sabbath and if they did-he wanted them punished.  What does this one action say to you, Jer?  Be honest, be fair.  As I indicated–can you imagine if one Republican was as moderate as McCain but had that one act on his resume?  He would be branded forever.

  4 times you cite the diplomatic language of some treaty with the Islamic Pirates–what a joke.  Please use your head, Jer.  Diplomacy always seeks common ground–what might a Christian nation say to its Islamic foes?  Of course–they seek to downplay it.  What did Japan say to America just days before launching a surprize attack on Pearl Harbor? Think, Jer.  My friend runs a glatt kosher deli in Manhattan–do you want him to say that he is there to provide food for only the Jewish public?  He would NEVER say such a thing–he is there to serve all the people of NY–I am sure he would say if he is asked.  America is dominated by our Judeo-Christian values and every President up to our day has freely admitted it–all WITHOUT saying we are a Christian nation which is a different spin and needless to say.  Obama has gone in front of a Muslim audience to say that we are not a Judeo-Christian nation–only a nation of citizens united by unnamed values. We convulse again over this man.

  Lastly, our FF said strongly that the power to tax is the power to destroy.  Obama’s tax increases break Torah guidelines on several fronts.  One model that is missing is the half-shekel tax–a wonderful concept that empowers everyone so everyone pays a little bit instead of more than half paying nothing and a few paying most of the taxes.   But as I said very clearly, America is still a nation of small business and until this adminsitration begins to listen to the concerns of small business–our recovery will be retarded and the Jews of small business could have a voice if we chose to use it.  Sorry, Jer, Madoff and Meyer Lansky are not among us. Madoff is a strong, proud liberal Democrat and Obama has already bailed out his class. The models are the good guys–not the bad ones.

  We don’t want a bailout, we want smaller government.  We demand government fix the failures GOVERNMENT created.  That is the message from this very day at tea parties all over America.  It is a Jewish thing and an American thing.  Obama understands neither.

   
• 
  By jer 4/15/09 at 1:29 a.m. UTC

  So…anyone with a PhD is a liar, so nothing anyone with a PhD says is to be trusted? Is that the message?

  Fine, you can have that one.

  You may have noticed that the historian’s quote wasn’t all I marshalled. I also had a quote from Madison him-fucking-self that seemed to suggest he viewed government and religion as separate. Plus the treaty of Tripoli, signed by the same President Adams who you assert thought that it was necessary for Americans to be religious, which says explicitly and in writing "the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion"…what, did he misread that line when he signed it? How about when it was ratified in Congress in 1796 by, you know, the founders. Did they miss that line?

  The fact that Madison undertook his studies year after year "from a
  Christian viewpoint" is a good indication that this viewpoint was the
  ONLY one available.  It is almost impossible to overstate the level at
  which Colonial and Early America was imbued in Biblical influence. 

  It indicates no such thing. All it indicates is that the school that Madison went to had a Christian bent. Three years before Madison was born, Hume had published his On Miracles, hardly a religious book, and Deism had peaked in England by the 1740s already. Here’s Benjamin Franklin on Deism, with some relevant sections bolded:

  ""Some books against Deism fell into my hands; they were said to be the
  substance of sermons preached at Boyle’s lectures. It happened that
  they wrought an effect on me quite contrary to what was intended by
  them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted,
  appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon
  became a thorough Deist. My arguments perverted some others,
  particularly Collins and Ralph; but each of them having afterwards
  wrong’d me greatly without the least compunction, and recollecting
  Keith’s conduct towards me (who was another freethinker) and my own
  towards Vernon and Miss Read, which at times gave me great trouble, I
  began to suspect that this doctrine, tho’ it might be true, was not
  very useful."

  Here’s Thomas Paine, in The Age of Reason, again with my boldings:

  "I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by
  the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the
  Protestant Church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my
  own church. All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or
  Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify
  and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe
  otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine.
  But it is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally
  faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in
  disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not
  believe.^"

  Thomas Jefferson, in the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom:

  "Where as Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to
  influence it by temporal punishments or burthens, or by civil
  incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness,
  and are a departure from the plan of the Holy author of our religion,
  who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by
  coercions on either, as it was in his Almighty power to do; that the
  impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as
  ecclesiastical, who being themselves but fallible and uninspired men,
  have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own
  opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as
  such endeavouring to impose them on others, hath established and
  maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world, and
  through all time; that to compel a man to furnish contributions of
  money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful
  and tyrannical; that even the forcing him to support this or that
  teacher of his own religious persuasion, is depriving him of the
  comfortable liberty of giving his contributions to the particular
  pastor, whose morals he would make his pattern, and whose powers he
  feels most persuasive to righteousness, and is withdrawing from the
  ministry those temporary rewards, which proceeding from an approbation
  of their personal conduct, are an additional incitement to earnest and
  unremitting labours for the instruction of mankind; that our civil
  rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our
  opinions in physics or geometry; that therefore the proscribing any
  citizen as unworthy the public confidence by laying upon him an
  incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he
  profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him
  injuriously of those privileges and advantages to which in common with
  his fellow-citizens he has a natural right;[...]"

  Jefferson was so proud of this, he wanted it to be put in his epitaph. 

  So obviously, non-Christian ideas were in the air. 

  Madison had some hand in the Bill of Rights, not a dominant one.

  It’s true that he originally opposed the idea, but he was the one who authored the first draft. 

   

  The Magna Carta was Torah in action, with the Catholic Church sponsoring the freedoms.  

  I guess I don’t know exactly what you mean by "Torah in action" but, it’s difficult to see what 

  "No one shall be distrained to render greater
  service from a knight’s fee, or from any other free tenement, than is thence
  owed."

  or "Earls and barons shall be amerced only by their
  peers,^[22] and only according to the degree of the misdeed."

  or "All forests that have been afforested in our
  time shall at once be disafforested; and the same shall be done with regard to
  riverbanks which in our time we have placed under ban." have to do with Torah. Obviously, some of the principles of the Bible are going to find their way in there; as you say, it was a religious age (except that’s actually true of the 13th century, to a much greater degree than it was of the late 18th) — but much of it is a medieval document, with medieval concerns. The original 1215 Magna Carta was replaced later by a more permanent once since the original one was thought to contain too many articles that were too specific to 1215.

  "Providence and Patriotism" is ONE coin with two sides.  Anyone who
  considers this point controversial or not accurate simply is ignorant. 
  

  Fine. But it’s important to understand what was meant by "Providence".

  He seems to admit that maybe there is something to Jews being good with
  money but SOMEHOW that fact has nothing to do with today. 

  I don’t see how anyone being good with money has anything to do with today. The skills required to make a pile of dough for yourself are not necessarily the skills required to reform an economy. Being a good driver doesn’t mean you’re a good mechanic. 

  Now is the time to hear from our Jewish entrepreneurs and fortune
  builders since their ideas, the principles, their strategies are
  precisely what is needed.

  Again, this is not necessarily true (although I’m sure such people do have valuable input — I’d just caution that their expertise is in a related, but still different field), but even if it is, that’s true of all entrepeneurs and fortune builders. Jewish or not. Influenced by the Torah or not. 

  I sense in Jer’s comment an abiding faith in the fact that today’s
  economy requires ONLY governmental action and not the wisdom from
  successful business models.

  I don’t know what gave you this idea, because it’s wrong. What I’m saying is that there are plenty of people who know a lot about how to make money, but who don’t know a lot about economic policy. Again, think Meyer Lansky. Think Bernie Madoff. Dude knows how to pull in the cash, but is his input necessary? Sure, successful business people/models have something to offer, but their input isn’t the only necessary input. 

  Also, you’ve asserted that your claims are "easy to document", but you have  one quote. Care to back up some of your other claims? I have the founding fathers in their own words. That doesn’t mean I’m right, but you’d be a lot more convincing if you could find some other primary documents that advance your cause. 

   
• 
  By David N. Friedman 4/14/09 at 10:25 p.m. UTC

  "Though much of the Christian aspect of Madison’s schooling was relatively perfunctory and he seems never to have been an ardent believer himself, he nonetheless year after year undertook his studies from a Christian viewpoint". (pg 46)
  

  
  So again, more evidence that your characterization of the founding fathers is incorrect.

  Huh? There is a big problem in understanding this question.  Modern writers in full mode of re-writing history, intent on proving the unprovable because of their animus to all things religious–have created quite an elaborate bit of revisionist history concerning our Founding.  Understanding history involves an honest look at it and not lame attempts to concoct a historical narrative that is pure nonsense–such as the lies that the FF were all Deists, not Christians and they held religion in great suspicion.  Sure people with PHD’s express such sentiments and they are clear fools.  Some even openly say with a straight face that the 2nd amendment is not an individual right but a right for the government or a militia.  What utter stupidity! 

  Now, Jer–you hardly prove any argument against mine with your quote illustrated above.  The fact that Madison undertook his studies year after year "from a Christian viewpoint" is a good indication that this viewpoint was the ONLY one available.  It is almost impossible to overstate the level at which Colonial and Early America was imbued in Biblical influence.  People today simply cannnot associate with it and the media and schools, via harsh propaganda, hide the truth.  To say that almost everyone knew "chapter and verse" of the "Hebrew Scriptures" is true–literally.And this is easy to document.

  Madison had some hand in the Bill of Rights, not a dominant one.  The man you indicate was "never an ardent believer" in 1785 introduced a bill to punish those who broke the Sabbath,  he also introduced bills for days of Thanksgiving which required ministers to cooperate and levided fines on those who didn’t (Evans, "The Theme is Freedom"). 

  As an aside, to cement the point, might we try to imagine the fate of a current day politician acting in a similar fashion–for example Sarah Palin?  What would the Left have done to poor Gov. Palin if she stood with Madison’s model and banned work on the Sabbath and fined people who disobeyed? If she acted like Madison–she would have been strung up by the Left as the wildest possible fundamentalist freak show Bible thumper ever (alas, she was so considered even WITHOUT following the Madison model!!)–perhaps she could use Jer’s Wiki quote to defend herself as "never an ardent believer."

  Madison did have a strong hand in the first amendment and his motivation was to preserve the religious rights and diversity in the states by blocking any national church.  This is precisely the opposite reading we have of the first amendment today which requires an atheist ‘church’ which dominates both nationally and at the state level, prohibiting not only any establishment of a state church (reversing the explicit intent of the amendment in the first place) but also even prohibiting most public religious speech (the explicit initent of the Amendment in the second place.) Simply astonishing.

  The Magna Carta was Torah in action, with the Catholic Church sponsoring the freedoms.  Asstated previously, the book of Kings and the Hebrew Bible served as the source material for this important innovation which meant the king was bound by the law and governed with the consent of the people as dictated by the ancient Israelites.

  The most important point concerning the Biblical influence is that such influence is never apart from the political process but tied to it.  Propaganda has people reflexively convinced that religion and politics don’t mix but in context of America and our freedom and our real history–the two are tied together completely.  The Revolution not understood in context of the religion of the day CANNOT be understood.   "Providence and Patriotism" is ONE coin with two sides.  Anyone who considers this point controversial or not accurate simply is ignorant.

  Lastly, Jer wants to keep us back on topic and that is fine.  He seems to admit that maybe there is something to Jews being good with money but SOMEHOW that fact has nothing to do with today.  Why not?   Now is the time to hear from our Jewish entrepreneurs and fortune builders since their ideas, the principles, their strategies are precisely what is needed.  I sense in Jer’s comment an abiding faith in the fact that today’s economy requires ONLY governmental action and not the wisdom from successful business models.  This is wrong.  Our President, with no background or knowledge about making money, is attempting to direct an entire economy and he is a miserable failure punishing all of us for his ideological agenda.  Such a plan relies on no bit of Jewish wisdom and therefore, it will fail and impoverish us even further.
• 
  By Isaac 4/14/09 at 8:55 a.m. UTC

  "the bit that pushed me over the edge for him was his assertion that a study of natural phenomena is necessary for a person to be truly happy. That’s a hedonism I can get behind."

  Interesting.

  Since my knowledge of the various schools of Greek philosophy doesn’t extend very far beyond what was taught in 10th-grade history, you’ll have to forgive my ignorance on that one.   

  Perhaps that was especially true during antiquity - when social "infrastructure" (so to speak) wasn’t so intricate and large and complex as it is today. I suppose it was much easier until recently to stake out a number of persons or networks of people with palms to grease in order to be satisfied in one’s materialism than it was then. But we naturalists know that there’s something more fundamental to focus on than whatever causes the talking heads to yammer on in the CNBC octobox – a natural world without which none of the frivolities of the human world would exist.

  I remember when Bill Maher was on ABC and used to have even nuttier conservatives (and others) in his line-up than now. They were discussing problems with the environment, when some retrograde lady piped up about how doing something about that would hurt the economy. To this Bill replied, "Which is soooo much more important than living and breathing!" 

  Some day these idiots will get it. Or perhaps they’ve become irrelevant sooner than it would have taken to have profited from seeing the light.    
• 
  By Isaac 4/14/09 at 8:20 a.m. UTC

  Jer,

  As always, it’s a pleasure to read your take on things and to discover new and complex ways of understanding an issue. So I will do your comments justice by taking the time to read them in further detail when I get the time. In the meantime, I found these remarks a bit more evocative of a quick response:

  "Okay, fair enough, but I also think that it’s not progressiveness per se that makes the Magna Carta relevant."

  Wow. It’s possible that we must really see things differently. Perhaps in a technical and legal sense, you’re right. But I do mean to emphasize culture just as much. Our body of law cannot be detached from that.  

  "It’s the place it holds in English legal history; plenty of more progressiveness documents (and they surely must exist) have less relevance today because they were less important."

  I would like to know which documents you find more progressive.

  My view is that while that there may be some documents of greater importance to "progressives", Magna Carta, along with the founding documents, represents one that Americans of all political stripes can claim inspiration from regarding what makes this nation progressive in a broader sense. 

  "It’s also true that an argument that rests on the Magna Carta will have more weight the more "fundamental" the argument is, i.e., the more it goes into habeas and the like. A highly technical point of modern copyright law, for instance, is unlikely to cite the Magna Carta."

  Yes, yes. Of course. We agree. 

  "Similarly, what happens next economically will require highly specialized and technical laws dealing with arcane matters of high finance rather far removed from any advice the Bible might have. Just because the Torah can be relevant to some dilemmas in the modern world, doesn’t mean it is relevant to all of them."

  I know. And I realize that this is the crux of D.J.’s argument. I think it just irks me and perhaps Friedman and others when a broader argument than is necessary is made out of this, or when a bias or misunderstanding is introduced that weakens some of the supporting arguments he’d like to use in defense of it.  

  Wait! I think I’ve got something to say about the latter portions…

  "But I also wouldn’t go so far as to claim that Shakespeare or the myths or even my beloved Epicurus have much to offer me when I think about the economic crisis."

  But wasn’t epicureanism a hedonistic philosophy? I would think that unless your capacity for pleasure is yoked to materialism, then we could take a lesson from the crisis that is relevant to epicureanism. Indeed, it was immediately obvious to me that not having as much money to throw around might make us more appreciative of other things in life. And then I accepted the fact that for most Americans, that’s not the case. They never contemplated a fix to any economic problem that required anything more abstract than some ticker tape and a loud bell. So they’d rather just be stoic about this disaster. And it’s still a disaster – and a shame that we brought it on and one I’d really like to see us get out of. But the lack of imagination in how we cope with the loss makes me infinitely less sympathetic to these utterly unresourceful and selfish materialists. That’s what they get for having a spiritual compass that could fit inside a fortune cookie, but with less depth to it.   

  "That is the non-trivial problem (as opposed to "should our economy be based on patronage, thievery, and deception or not?"), and it is one which Shakespeare and the Bible aren’t particularly well equipped to answer."

  Maybe not completely. But see above. 
• 
  By jer 4/14/09 at 12:20 a.m. UTC

  Oh, and before I turn in for the night, one more remark I meant to make to David Friedman:

  Even if we accept the premise that Jews are good at making money, and further accept that the reason for this is that the Torah is a good guide to making money, that still isn’t enough to prove the ultimate point here, as getting individuals rich is not the same as fixing a broken economy. The Torah could be the best get-rich-quick guide in the whole wide world, but that would not speak to its relevance for the current economic matzav.
• 
  By jer 4/14/09 at 12:15 a.m. UTC

  What I meant was that the Magna Carta is still cited today because it was a landmark ruling, not necessarily because it was a progressive landmark ruling. A minor ruling by a small court in some backwater in northern England is alway going to be overshadowed by the Magna Carta, even if that ruling may have gone further than the Magna Carta. I know of no such examples, but I’m sure they must exist; I can’t imagine that no local magistrate anywhere ever issued a ruling more in line with modern ideas of justice than the Magna Carta. We just don’t care as much. Now, the landmark-ness of the Magna Carta is definitely related to its progressiveness, but the two aren’t the same. It’s a minor point though.

  Anyway, I think we really do agree here; I also don’t subscribe to the strong view of the argument, that the Bible ain’t no good for nothing. I  just think that posts like Rabbi Brackman’s overstate the case in the other direction, and if memory serves, it’s not the first post in that vein to show up here recently. I took this post as a corrective to those, a sort of, "hold your horses, there, fellas!" to people who think that an application of VaYikrah is going to have the Dow at 36 000 by Pesach next year. I also couldn’t abide some of the sloppy arguments being made by the commenters.

  As to Epicurus, yes, he was a hedonist, but not in the way people imagine him. One of his principles is that, by overindulging in pleasure, we dilute it, and make it harder to experience in the future. In practice, Epicurus was more of an ascetic, not because he thought pleasure was wrong, but because he thought that when he did partake, it would be that much more pleasurable. He also focuses on intellectual pleasures; the bit that pushed me over the edge for him was his assertion that a study of natural phenomena is necessary for a person to be truly happy. That’s a hedonism I can get behind.

  Also, I like the fortune cookie line. 
• 
  By jer 4/13/09 at 10:49 p.m. UTC

  I would be pleased to explain further why you have it wrong and America was very clearly entrenched in Biblical truths and this case is simply overwhelming.

  I too would be pleased if you could do this, as so far you haven’t provided much evidence. And, just to give you some more to argue against, here’s from a biography of Madison on Google Books:

  "Though much of the Christian aspect of Madison’s schooling was relatively perfunctory and he seems never to have been an ardent believer himself, he nonetheless year after year undertook his studies from a Christian viewpoint". (pg 46)

  So again, more evidence that your characterization of the founding fathers is incorrect. I won’t deny for a second that I have the disadvantage here; I’m not even American, but the guy who wrote this biography has a PhD in the subject, which I think trumps your major, so I feel confident saying that, at the very least, you’ve overstated your case. And, some more quick research turns up this: "But mysteries belong to religion, not to government; to the ways of the Almighty, not to the works of man." i.e., government is not related in any special way to religion.

   

  And, as to the rest of your post: I was responding specifically to Rabbi Brackman’s explanation why Jews are wealthy. His explanation is that "The real reason for Jewish success in all areas (not just finance) in my opinion has to do with the Torah. There are wisdom teachings found in the Torah that Jews have imbibed for thousands of years. These wisdom teachings feed directly into successful practices not just in finance, but in the sciences as well as in many other fields." Further, "However, I have found that Jews who have never even opened a Jewish book still believe in intrinsically Jewish ideas that stem from the Torah."

  I was pointing out that this argument is flawed. If the real reason for Jewish success is that we have imbibed the wisdom of the Torah, then surely there should be some correlation between success and exposure to Jewish ideas. Yeah, you can imbibe Torah ideals from your grandmother, but surely that’s a weaker dose than what you’re exposed to in Jewish day schools. But as far as I can tell, the religious, or even the observant, are no more likely to show up on the Forbes list than other Jews. Mayer Lansky is a further example of this: if you want to claim that Meyer Lansky became rich by imbibing the teachings of the Torah, then you are going to have to have a pretty broad understanding of what those teachings are. So, either you can claim that greed, extortion, murder, etc. are  principles of the Torah, or you can admit that some rich Jews, like Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky, Semion Mogilevich, etc. became rich for other reasons than that they internalized all the wisdom of the Torah. And if  you’re going to admit that this is true of an obvious class of Jews, it opens up the possibility that even some rich Jews whose actions don’t obviously violate the precepts of the Torah might still not have become rich due to their having internalized those precepts.

  So, no, I’m not trying to deny any fact, I’m pointing out that Brackman’s explanation of the fact does not hold up. And, frankly, neither does yours. Your examples are the Exodus, and America -  you offer no examples of Jewish wealth in between. If Jews are naturally born to become wealthy, why did we remain so dirt poor in the Russian empire?

  And, since I just remembered, I’ll backtrack a bit and link to what has to be the clearest possible statement about the relationship between religion and the U.S. government, the 1796 Treaty of Tripoli, whose Article 11 starts "As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion".

   

   

   
• 
  By David N. Friedman 4/13/09 at 3:11 p.m. UTC

  Jer– I would be pleased to explain further why you have it wrong and America was very clearly entrenched in Biblical truths and this case is simply overwhelming.  Perhaps I have an advantage as an American history major but honoring the secular propanganda that downplays and even elimintaes all of America’s Biblical roots is shameful.  And when Jews come forward to deny the fact that this great nation sought to model itself as the New Israel–honoring our Bible as the prime instrument of education, teaching Biblical values diligently to their children, naming their towns after names found in the Bible–as a matter of Jewish pride–to ignore all of that is clearly a bad thing.  Stop it, Jer.  You can’t sit there and say that what I have observed is "wrong" when it is clearly not.

  I would be pleased to address your question concerning why if Jews are so good with money–why are YOU not rich?  Indeed, no basic trait, no essential circumstance can be so overwleming that every member of a tribe as big as the Jewish people are can be all-inclusive in every circumstance–for every Jew in every country over a long period of time.  What we can observe is that a trait as unusual as an above average ability to make money documented across many generations and regardless of nationality is worth highlighting.  The roots of this lay in Jewish tradition very clearly.  Regarding Meyer Lansky–he operated in a very Jewish environment and although his path was based in crime, it stemmed from the same source of Jewish drive.

  We all know Jews who are masters in the jewelry trade and in other avenues of small business.  Jews are famous on Wall Street, noteworthy as tax accountants and tax lawyers–years of oppressive Jew taxes in Christian and Europe have made Jews sensitive about the unfairness of taxes but the root is in more ancient times.  After all we left Egypt with a pile of gold, we organized money among ourselves, we clad the mishkahn with silver, copper and precious stones and fabrics–is there any coincidence that Jews dominate the world of silver and gold, fashion and fabric today?  And to answer your question–yes "osmosis" is a legitimate explanation for who have the knack and who does not.  From peddlers in the 19th C became a largely Jewish dominated profession: RETAIL.  An objective viewer must look at the Jewish experience in America and try to come to an understanding of how this tiny group of individuals exploded into a wealthy minority so quickly–as self-made men–?  Instead of ignoring the question observe the phenomenom and honor it.  DJ wants to deny reality and you want to help him.—I ask you to stop.

  One might say it cannot be explained–it is all just dumb luck–but no one can deny the general fact.

  Much can be said concerning how a drive for wealth is a secular substitute for a drive to become close to God.  And yet, it is a Jewish belief that God wants us to have material capacity and Jews frequently eschew retirement.  We are commanded to work six days a week and most of us do that very well and very hard.  

  Back to your question, I hope you will see the error of the question and honor the basic reality of Jews as incredibly over-represented in the higher income brackets.  Dogs are bred to be the way they are and yet my dog has very little of the breeding that was passed into her ancestors–only perhaps 200 years ago.

  The "Jewish mystique" has been with us for thousands of years.  Deal with it.
• 
  By DoubleOSeven 4/13/09 at 2:52 p.m. UTC

  Since D.J. Waletzky did not reply I will assume that he is satisfied with my answer.  After all, he is the one that opened this blog. 
• 
  By jer 4/13/09 at 12:04 p.m. UTC

  I don’t have the heart for more point-by-point responses right now (maybe later – you guys aren’t out of the woods yet), but some general points in no particular order:

  If my survey course on European history in the late renaissance/early modern period is to be believed, Spanish slavery was regarded as the worst, with English slavery much milder. 

  Further, regarding distinctions based on "race", my understanding is that originally slavery was allowed so long as the slaves were non-Christian, but when slaves starting converting to escape slavery, a racial distinction was introduced to help ensure that slave-owners would not lose their slaves. Also, Isaac, a definition of what counts as a "biological" notion of superiority would be helpful; nowadays such a thing would probably hinge somewhere on the notion of one group being more "evolved", but of course, that argument was only available at the very end of American slavery. Particularly, do you see any difference between "biologically" based ideas of superiority and mere "naturalistic" ideas, and if so, what are these distinctions? 

  I’m not going to address much of David N. Friedman’s comment, since it’s not directed at me, but the idea that the post he links to is authoritative is laughable. The author claims that Jews are good at making money because of the Torah. Even Jews who don’t read the Torah; somehow they have imbibed the Torah’s lessons through some sort of osmotic process, without being aware of it. Also, not all Jews make their money in the same way; Meyer Lansky was a pretty good at pulling in cash too. Had he also internalized Torah concepts? And if Jews who’ve never read the book can learn its lessons well enough to become millionaires, then how come twelve years of Jewish day school haven’t transformed me into a freaking billionaire? The argument is full of gaping holes and logical confusions.

   

  DoubleOSeven’s argument doesn’t answer my objection. The quote you provide shows the distinction between Biblical law and Hammurabic(?) law to be that there is one person above the law of Hammurabi, but no one above the law of the Bible. The question though, was, "is there anyone beneath the law"? Anyone too mean for the law to apply? And I think in both cases the answer is still yes. Find me quotes from the Bible that are addressed to women, or to slaves, or to the landless – then we’ll have something to talk about.

  Finally, regarding Friedman’s claims about the Bill of Rights:

  "The Bill of Rights is a list of concerns lifted almost totally from the
  Bible and through the pen of very conservative, fundamentalist Bible
  thumper"

  This is…pretty wrong. James Madison, who was the driving force behind the introduction of a Bill of Rights, "draft[ed] the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. It disestablished the Church of England, and disclaimed any power of state compulsion in religious matters." Towards his death, he wrote "an essay against the appointment of chaplains for Congress and the armed forces, on the grounds that this produced religious exclusion, but not political harmony"; hardly what we’d expect of a conservative fundamentalist Bible thumper. 

  Also, in Madison’s original plan there were 12 amendments, not 10, so the 10th amendment was originally planned as the 12th (the ones omitted were I and II). 

   
• 
  By jer 4/13/09 at 11:32 a.m. UTC

  The previous argument was about the differences between racism and
  other forms of intolerance, not about the differences between American
  slavery and slavery as it existed from antiquity and before. It’s fine
  if you don’t want to get "drawn into" that, but that’s not a point that
  D.J. Waletzky seemed interested in continuing to contest after this was
  pointed out to him – which was the point here.
  

  I know what our previous argument was about. I took your "Jer might have fun looking up how racism played into this, as the
  earlier forms weren’t accepted as the natural state of just one ethnic
  group of people" to mean that the current discussion was relevant to our previous one. If you didn’t mean that, sorry. Still though, I do have something to say to you on the subject, but I’m going to try and do this in order.

  Ummm…. Read the Magna Carta much? Litigants reference it in arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court all the time

  Okay, fair enough, but I also think that it’s not progressiveness per se that makes the Magna Carta relevant. It’s the place it holds in English legal history; plenty of more progressiveness documents (and they surely must exist) have less relevance today because they were less important. It’s also true that an argument that rests on the Magna Carta will have more weight the more "fundamental" the argument is, i.e., the more it goes into habeas and the like. A highly technical point of modern copyright law, for instance, is unlikely to cite the Magna Carta. Similarly, what happens next economically will require highly specialized and technical laws dealing with arcane matters of high finance rather far removed from any advice the Bible might have. Just because the Torah can be relevant to some dilemmas in the modern world, doesn’t mean it is relevant to all of them.  

  Here’s hoping you don’t feel there is no inherent value in studying
  Greek mythology or Shakespearean literature – given the differences
  between the eras in which those bodies of work were developed and our
  own!  
  

  Of course I don’t; I’m reading the works of Epicurus right now and loving them so much it’s hard to describe. But I also wouldn’t go so far as to claim that Shakespeare or the myths or even my beloved Epicurus have much to offer me when I think about the economic crisis. Yes, they all might provide some general guidelines, but I already know that I want an economy that doesn’t run on bribes, or lies, or exploitation – the question is, what laws and practices will lead me there. That is the non-trivial problem (as opposed to "should our economy be based on patronage, thievery, and deception or not?"), and it is one which Shakespeare and the Bible aren’t particularly well equipped to answer.
• 
  By Isaac 4/13/09 at 9:22 a.m. UTC

  Two different things, Mr. Waletzky. Usually the latter requires the capacity for the former – at least if one wants to do things properly. From your Wikipedia article I quote the following:

  "The Torah assigns no racial characteristics or rankings to Ham. Moses married a Cushite, one of the reputed descendants of Ham, according to the Book of Numbers, Chapter 12."

  Avraham Ibn Ezra: ""And the meaning of ‘[Cursed be Canaan, he will be a slave] unto his brothers’ is to Cush, Egypt, and Put [only], for they are his father’s [other] sons. And there are those who say that the Cushim [black skinned people] are slaves because Noah cursed Ham [the father of Cush], but they forget that the first king after the flood was a descendant of Cush, and so it is written, ‘And the beginning of his kingdom was Babylonia.’"

  "It is clear that he understands the Biblical curse as confined to one generation alone, and thus, mitigates the idea that the curse of slavery would continue through Ham’s descendants. He also points out the logical flaw that if Cushites were cursed with slavery, then how is it that the first descendent of Cush, Nimrod, is listed as a king of Babylonia (Genesis 10:8-10)."

  Of course, there were others who disagreed, but so what? That there would have been such disagreement of interpretation repudiates your wish to claim a hypothetical biological superiority complex as condoned by Hebrew culture. Besides, your claim is one of purported inferiority on the part of one other group – which is not the same as the purported superiority of the Hebrews to all others. Unlike the Nazis, they accepted converts.

  Now if you want to discuss the conquest of Canaan, and how the decimation of its inhabitants was less enlightened than that of the Dacians at the hands of the liberal Romans (from whom America’s political culture is equally descended), or the Germans (both of whom seemed to undergo their genocide "phase" much later than the Hebrews did), or countless others, I suppose we could discuss that. But until then, barring any evidence from you of unusually barbaric ill-treatment that Jews went out of their way to inflict on other groups as a matter of consistent imperative, QED.

  "Either problems are real and specific, or humanity’s troubles are uniformly abstract and eternal."

  Nice false dichotomy there. And remind me where someone here was advocating putting anyone under house arrest for disagreeing with the Bible?

  "Good advice doesn’t need to be canonized, it can stand on its own merits."

  As the Bible does – the quality of any "advice" you feel it serves to disseminate notwithstanding. It is one of the foundations of the Western literary canon. As a writer and film-maker, you should know this. Part of contextualizing its relevance in modern times means recognizing its continuing significance as literature. If you can’t, or never learned to, do this, then I certainly feel sorry for you – all the moreso given your vocation.  
• 
  By DoubleOSeven 4/13/09 at 8:00 a.m. UTC

  Waletsky, does Friedman have to do everything for you?  Get up off your lazy butt and look it up your self. What gall!  BTW, do you read books?
• 
  By D.J. Waletzky 4/13/09 at 3:35 a.m. UTC

  Sorry, from which part were those amendments taken? Chapter, verse? Freedom of speech, of assembly? Trial by jury, not ordeal?
• 
  By David N. Friedman 4/12/09 at 11:56 p.m. UTC

  But DJ, you are imploding you need to work harder than this. 

  The Bill of Rights is a list of concerns lifted almost totally from the Bible and through the pen of very conservative, fundamentalist Bible thumpers.  The founders were very skeptical of political power and they learned this from reading Kings and the rest of the Bible.  (Obama believes that citizens belong to the State–this is an affront to our Biblical roots and the punch line in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution enumerates the powers of the government so the people can be free, as we earned our freedom from the Egyptians.) This is why Colonial America adopted as its political model the ancient Israelites.  America, under the Biblical blueprint, was to contain and control the power of the state

  Concerning the first Amendment, the free exercise clause. the language in the lower chamber was written by Fisher Ames of Massachusetts who wanted to make sure no national authority, no act of Congress could touch the established church of Massacusetts which he supported. As soon as the Constitution was ratified, various states went about doing explicitly Biblical things like banning business on the Sabbath, disallowing atheists from assuming public office, public readings of the Bible in all schools as the official textbook, etc.  It is some wild contortion that courts today so wrongly believe that it is against the First Amendment to freely express one’s religion.

  The second amendment is the right to self defense, explicitly mentioned in Torah verses but also hinges on personal responsibility–the right of a man to guard his own life, his own property and personal responsibility is another Torah concept.  

  Regarding the 4th amendment, the Biblical model of oaths and affirmations impinge on "unreasonable" searches and seizures.

  The punch line is the 10th amendment which headlines the enumerated powers of the government and swears that all not mentioned is reserved to the people–as a statement against theft and a statement against coveting.  No coincidence the 10th Amendment and the 10th commandment touch on the same issue.

  Adams said it fine when he boasted that our Constitution, our form of government is meant ONLY for a moral and religious people.  By contrast, Communism is premised on atheism.  The Bible and America go together with freedom and capitalism.  Statism is inherently against morality and the Bible and leads directly to socialism which is the road we are now embarking.

  But this is too easy and I would happily disclose far more about the Bill of Rights if I am promised some concession for doing it.  I wanted you to find some supposedly excellent modern law you support and you find wholesome that you feel is unrelated to the Bible that could challenge me to demonstrate how its underlying premise is in fact Biblical.
• 
  By DoubleOSeven 4/12/09 at 11:46 p.m. UTC

  It is truly astonishing that Waletzky and Jer are not aware that Hammurabi code was for free men and Torah was for everyone.  I discovered this years ago when I read Paul Johnson’s "A History of the Jews." Just about everyone in the universe read this book!!! The following passage is from Part 1 Israelites P.p. 32-33 in my edition.

  "…though the mosaic code was…part of a Near East tradition, its divergences were entirely new.  first, the other law codes, though said to be inspired by  God, are given and worded by individual kings, such as Hammurabi or Ishtar; they are thus revocable, changeable and essentially secular.  By contrast God alone writes the Bible.  God alone writes the law – legislation throughout the Pentatuch is all his – and no Israelite king was ever permitted …to formulate a law code…the other codes include a royal right to pardon even in capital cases, the Bible provides no such remedy.  Indeed in capital cases it repudiates the notion of ‘rich man’s law: a murderer, however rich, cannot escape execution by paying money even if his victim is a servant or slave…"

  Does Paul Johnson qualify as enough of a scholar in your opinion?

  I found more Jewish sources of American laws; privilege against self incrimination, the requirement of two witnesses, and the idea that punishment should be proportionate to the crime.  This I found in the book "Chutzpah" by Alan Dershowitz.  Does Prof. Dershowitz qualify as enough of a scholar for you?

  Waletsky, I do not understand what your hangup is about the Torah.  Clearly there is much to be applied from it.

   
• 
  By D.J. Waletzky 4/12/09 at 10:32 p.m. UTC

  With regards to Levi Brackman’s article: I wish I had a book to flog like that; the article contains six links to his Amazon page and no specific "wisdom" other than noting that Jews are disproportionally represented on the Forbes 400 and in Nobel Prize-winning science.  I guess there must be a posek somewhere about not giving away details for free.

  "The influence of the Bible is extraordinary and although you have made
  your self blind to see it–simply pick any substantial piece of law you
  approve of–ask "why?" at least once and sometimes twice (rarely three
  times) and you will see that it exists because of the Torah. Go ahead,
  give it a try"

  OK–how about the Bill of Rights? I’m going to need pshat and/or Talmudic justification for each amendment, please.

   

   
• 
  By D.J. Waletzky 4/12/09 at 9:39 p.m. UTC

  I don’t hold theological beliefs, certainly not in progress. But then again, any analysis of history necessarily applies modern standards because we don’t have full information about ancient ones. "Progress" is alwys subjectively defined–I’m more interested in "change," which we can at least agree to exist objectively.And by the way, I don’t believe in ‘salvation’ either. 

  Now, about Spanish slavery (particularly in the New World): Read the account of Bartolome de Las Casas. And as for other contemporary slavery systems, check out accounts of ancient Greek slavery, in which slaves (whether Greek or barbaroi) seemed to be treated better than foreign slaves of the Biblical Hebrews. All of the restrictions on slavery you hold to be progressive only apply to Hebrew slaves.Was this "progress?" For Hebrew males who had sold themselves into debt-slavery, possibly, but not for women, children or other captives.

  Back to the Jewish tradition: "In no way did Hebrews hold themselves to be biologically superior to others. I know that much." Looks like you don’t know about ‘the Curse of Ham.’

  "What are you trying to say here? As long as you are trying to insult
  me, be specific on what you mean with this whole "hope" (for me? for
  humanity?) bit."

  All I mean to say is that if you think people have the same problems they’ve always had and that they deal with their problems the same way they always have, you can’t understand anything I’m saying and arguing with you is a complete waste of time (not that the contrapositive is necessarily true). Abraham, for example, never had car trouble. Your line of reasoning reminds me of the way Jehovah’s Witnesses will ask people "do you think there’s anyone who can solve all the problems in the world today?" Either problems are real and specific, or humanity’s troubles are uniformly abstract and eternal. Not only that, but today we have more ways of dealing with things than those prescribed by the Bible. If you’ve ever had a rash, but for some reason did not go to a priest and have him examine you for leprosy, you’ll know what I’m talking about.

  The point about people changing is more than just a paleobiological one. Not only has the average lifespan lengthened, so have our limbs, our physical appearances, our social organizations, our means fo subsistence, our methods of communication, even our very DNA contains markers of specific changes over time, from the first human to today’s homo spaiens.

  For some reason people here seem to think I’m saying we should abandon all study of past texts. What I would like is for those texts to be studying in context–declaring ‘the primacy of Torah’ etc. is an act of decontextualization. Galileo, for example, was persecuted by the Catholic Church for opposing the works of Aristotle, not the Bible. Now, I love Aristotle’s writings, but there’s no way I would support putting someone under house arrest for disagreeing with him. Good advice doesn’t need to be canonized, it can stand on its own merits.
• 
  By David N. Friedman 4/12/09 at 5:43 p.m. UTC

  Well,, DJ, you have certainly soiled your name with this entry. 

  I have applauded Jewcy for being fair-minded enough to include an author that contradicts your thesis on this blog: 

  http://www.jewcy.com/post/stop_denying_jews_are_good_making_money?page=0#comment-32248

  Any comment?

  It might be charming to say in my opinion you are ignorant but opinion has nothing to do with it.  You have demonstrated ignorance at every turn.  Of course Early America was founded on Biblical law and precepts (Locke was a theologian and British common law was premised largely on the Bible)  The other easy point you miss so thoroughly is that law and its evolution does not not simply take a certain verse from a text which makes a law (although such law was very common in Early America) and still exists today.  The evidence comes most clearly concerning the underlying values that Torah brought to the world which are reflected in US law.  These values are distinct and easy to differentiate between, for example, shaira law or law that comes from totalitarian nations.  The influence of the Bible is extraordinary and although you have made your self blind to see it–simply pick any substantial piece of law you approve of–ask "why?" at least once and sometimes twice (rarely three times) and you will see that it exists because of the Torah. Go ahead, give it a try.

  Your other problem concerms your challenge of what Torah is.  In your mind it is a useless artifact.  OK–I am pleased I live in the country that disagrees.  Torah has always served as a blueprint for living–not living in an ancient "agrarian" land some 2500 years ago–a blueprint for living in any land at any point in history.  Torah will never cease to apply its wisdom over any circumstance and any studied of Talmud quickly sees that although the law was not meant to be written, its principles are timeless and there is truly nothing new under the sun.  It hardly matters if we are speaking of a lost coat or a lost computer.

  Your smear campaign is neither funny nor harmless.

  Concerning your question about theft and why it has suddenly re-appeared in America–this is because we are now turning away from our Biblical moorings as a nation.  How might any American of any stature consider the recent Kelo decision made by our Supremne Court?  Even a couple of decades ago–how could any American stand by and watch a US President tax us with such ferocity in such a wasteful manner?  Sure, thou shalt not steal was universally acclaimed in America–it is not so universal today and that is a problem. 

  Lastly, the law sides with the majority in Jewish law.  The minority is preserved because the reasoning is important.  This misses your larger point of ignorance concerning so-called Talmudic disputes.  These are rarely disputes which posit fundamental questions and serve them up for debate.  The fundamentals of the law in the days in of the Babylonian Talmud were almost universally agreed upon.  The disputations concerned superficialities in the implementation of the law or in its specifics and here we are often times discussing matters where both sides have an element of the truth.  Sometimes the point is so esoteric that it does not matter which Rabbi is "correct" –they are both correct.

  Concerning the matter of the influence of the Bible and slavery–this cannot be debated seriously.  Of course the theologians in the North were universally anti-slavery and this was from their reading of the Bible which is an anti-slavery document.  Which is why the Bible was so popular among the Negro slaves–as it is today–in much of the black community.  Which is why the Rev. King quoted the Bible so often (and supported the state of Israel–unlike Rev. Wright who does not like the Bible or Jews). As for southern plantation owners using the Bible to justify slavery –on this thread alone we have a man who might even be Jewish denying any special ability of Jews to make money or show honesty so it is easy to see people can say just about anything.
• 
  By Isaac 4/12/09 at 5:00 p.m. UTC

  "Why do you say that the Biblical slavery was likely more "progressive" than other contemporary slave systems?"

  This is a well-placed hunch, D.J., based on nothing more than the aforementioned fact that proscriptions were placed on it. If you can show me that proscriptions were placed on other contemporary systems, pertaining to the conditions of the slave or his length of servitude, then I’ll accede that there might have been other, possibly progressive cultural approaches to slavery at that time. As it stands, until we find some true authorities on the matter to cite, we are just arguing based on conjecture – yours based on antipathy to Scripture and mine based on my sneaking suspicion that the Old Testament probably represented something more than an attempt to impose retrograde conditions on a tribe of people and to confine peoples subsequently inspired by them to an intellectually frozen state of retrograde thinking generally.

  "I don’t think that American slavery as a phenomenon was "more brutal"
  than, say, Spanish slavery or English slavery–"

  Really? Maybe not. But again, can you at least cite some evidence for me to entertain on this?

  "it was problematic
  because slavery lasted longer in this country than in most Western
  ones."

  Ok. At least we agree that it was, for whatever reason, especially problematic in the context of recent slavery. 

  "Americans didn’t invent racism and they weren’t the only people
  to declare other races fit only for servitude. The Bible certainly gave
  Hebrew slaves more consideration than foreigners, and it instructed us
  to take slaves as prisoners of war from our tribal enemies."

  I don’t contend that Americans "invented" racism, but you must concede not only that neither did Hebrews invent it – but that your application of it here is nonsensical. In no way did Hebrews hold themselves to be biologically superior to others. I know that much. Maybe you did too.

  "The truth
  of the matter is that slavery was an established norm and societies
  that didn’t condone slavery were at an economic disadvantage to those
  who did."

  For most of recorded history this is true. 

  "It is a testament to the moral ambiguity of the Bible that during
  the Civil War, synagogues in the north delivered sermons against
  slavery as synagogues in the south delivered sermons justifying
  slavery."

  Certainly.

  "Also: when people quote Magna Carta in court, they’re not doing it
  because they want to secure rights for the aristocracy from King
  John–rather, they do so to show that the historical effect of the
  proclamation was to institute right x or freedom y as part of the Common Law tradition of stare decisis."

  We agree. You provide more detail than is necessary for my point, but we agree. 

  "’Times change. People do not. And neither do their problems or the ways
  in which they seek to resolve them.’" Not so."

  And attempts at proof by assertion never make something so.

  "’The ways in which people
  seek to resolve their problems’" and how they have changed are the
  explicit topic of discussion here, and if you don’t get that there’s
  really not much hope for you."

  What are you trying to say here? As long as you are trying to insult me, be specific on what you mean with this whole "hope" (for me? for humanity?) bit. I mean, I get the impression that you’re putting yourself in the position of being the underappreciated source of salvation for any Jew with an appreciation for traditionalist sentiments who mistakenly attempts to apply specific, traditional approaches to solve specific, modern problems. But do yourself a favor and make your ad hominems as narrow as you do your argument and the actual audience for your essay. 

  "Also, people change, but this isn’t an
  anthropology lecture, so I don’t think I need to elaborate."

  Again. This is an overly broad belief with the authoritative tone thrown in to prevent the sheeple whom you hold in such contempt from actually understanding what the hell are even trying to say, to say nothing of demonstrating a workable definition of what you profess to believe. There are many subfields of anthropology. Do you mean to refer to biological anthropology? Do you think that people aren’t largely equivalent on a biological basis to those from antiquity, with emotions, drives, and ways of relating to each other, themselves and the world that are so similar as to make any study of what we’ve learned from the humanities prior to RIGHT NOW something other than obsolete? I specifically referenced Shakespeare and Greek mythology. What the hell are your referents for whatever you are trying to say about your (apparently theological) belief in progress? Or perhaps, as with a theist’s evidence for God, or a traditionalist’s evidence for the utility of a certain approach to a social code, you don’t need any. 

  "I think I do need to link to the noted scholar Rev. Brendan Powell Smith’s work on Biblical law and how it is viewed through modern eyes."

  Oh, ok. This is really funny. And I like the Lego characters. But you must know that ridicule does not make an argument substantive. 
• 
  By D.J. Waletzky 4/12/09 at 2:27 p.m. UTC

  First of all–Arm Candy, why did you have to ruin the little game I was playing with 002? I guess I shouldn’t have gotten so upset with all the misspellings, because the only person he really seems to have a problem with is this "Waletsky" character. Clearly 001 doesn’t really value scholarship, because as far as I know, he’s only seen my name in print.

  Now, I never said you shouldn’t study ancient texts; I only said you shouldn’t live by them, or presume that they are a salve for your modern afflictions. The study of how the prohibitions against interest change within the Bible is how I got to write about the issue. I’m a big fan of Aristotle’s Poetics even though I firmy believe the Earth orbits the sun. But the Bibl’s absolutism doesn’t lend itself to the knids of modern reinterpretations we’ve been engaging in for the last few millennia: Deuteronomy 4:2 says " Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you,
  neither shall ye diminish from it, that ye may keep the commandments of
  the LORD your God which I command you." (How very meta.)

  Now, about slavery. Isaac said, " In a world in which slavery was commonplace, it’s quite likely that the
  proscriptions placed on it in scripture were indeed progressive ones.
  (And yes, American slavery was much more brutal and problematic than
  the other forms that had existed throughout recorded history up until
  that point."

  Why do you say that the Biblical slavery was likely more "progressive" than other contemporary slave systems? 

  I don’t think that American slavery as a phenomenon was "more brutal" than, say, Spanish slavery or English slavery– it was problematic because slavery lasted longer in this country than in most Western ones. Americans didn’t invent racism and they weren’t the only people to declare other races fit only for servitude. The Bible certainly gave Hebrew slaves more consideration than foreigners, and it instructed us to take slaves as prisoners of war from our tribal enemies. The truth of the matter is that slavery was an established norm and societies that didn’t condone slavery were at an economic disadvantage to those who did.

  It is a testament to the moral ambiguity of the Bible that during the Civil War, synagogues in the north delivered sermons against slavery as synagogues in the south delivered sermons justifying slavery.

  Sidebar: Jer, you are unequivocably correct in rebutting 000′s assertion that the Torah was the first code to apply to everyone equally. It doesn’t. I don’t know where he got this.

  Also: when people quote Magna Carta in court, they’re not doing it because they want to secure rights for the aristocracy from King John–rather, they do so to show that the historical effect of the proclamation was to institute right x or freedom y as part of the Common Law tradition of stare decisis. People also quote the Zenger decision all the time.

  "Times change. People do not. And neither do their problems or the ways in which they seek to resolve them." Not so. "The ways in which people seek to resolve their problems" and how they have changed are the explicit topic of discussion here, and if you don’t get that there’s really not much hope for you. Also, people change, but this isn’t an anthropology lecture, so I don’t think I need to elaborate.

  I think I do need to link to the noted scholar Rev. Brendan Powell Smith’s work on Biblical law and how it is viewed through modern eyes..
• 
  By Isaac 4/12/09 at 12:38 p.m. UTC

  Jer, 

  The previous argument was about the differences between racism and other forms of intolerance, not about the differences between American slavery and slavery as it existed from antiquity and before. It’s fine if you don’t want to get "drawn into" that, but that’s not a point that D.J. Waletzky seemed interested in continuing to contest after this was pointed out to him – which was the point here.

  "All I’ll say is that it’s hard to see how a document that was
  progressive for its time (but not for ours) is going to be relevant to
  our time."

  Ummm…. Read the Magna Carta much? Litigants reference it in arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court all the time. You seem awfully quick to disregard the importance of historical inquiry and the documents that guide our understanding of it. Perhaps I am mistaken, but it seems that you may be going further than Waletzky here, who makes the respectable effort of discretely pointing out the declining relevance of social codes specific to one era compared to another (and the reasons for efforts behind their implementation in those times, naturally, differing from our own), but not necessarily of our broader understanding of their importance in the context within which they applied – and therefore of the symbolic relevance which they may continue to retain given time as a continuum, that can allow for the assignment of separate historical eras, but that cannot prevent those eras from having anything in common with one another. Again, you have my apologies if I misread you. 

  Historians come in every ideological stripe, from Marxist to paleoconservative, but none of them seem to think that trends, currents, and yes – even documents important for one time don’t have symbolic and didactic relevance to others. Times change. People do not. And neither do their problems or the ways in which they seek to resolve them. At least, that’s always the safe assumption. Fukuyama disagreed, but then he had to modify his stance. So did Communism.

  Here’s hoping you don’t feel there is no inherent value in studying Greek mythology or Shakespearean literature – given the differences between the eras in which those bodies of work were developed and our own! 
• 
  By jer 4/12/09 at 12:02 a.m. UTC

  Isaac:

  Actually, I don’t have much to say here. I’m not getting drawn into this race stuff again, sorry. I’ve said my piece, you disagree. Ca c’est tout. 

  All I’ll say is that it’s hard to see how a document that was progressive for its time (but not for ours) is going to be relevant to our time. Maybe the Bible would have been a good guide to economic crises back when the alternatives were worse. But your argument as it stands is pretty understated.
• 
  By jer 4/11/09 at 11:59 p.m. UTC

  So, obviously I’ve been away for a few days, but in the unlikely even anyone still cares about this discussion, I’ll respond to DoubleOSeven and Isaac:

   007 first:

   I think the difference between the Hammurabi code and the Torah is that
  the Hammurabi code only applied to free men in ancient Mesopotamian
  society, basically landowners, where-as the law of the Torah applied to
  all Israelites.  The Torah was to the first to innovate the concept
  that the law applies to everyone – another stone which must comprise
  the foundation of the ideal society we all yearn for. 

  I’m not so sure about this. I’ll admit that I haven’t read either H’s code or the Torah in full, but the Torah is a pretty male-centric document. I at least, would need to see some real solid argumentation to be convinced that the Torah is written for women, as opposed to simply having laws which apply to women (which Hammurabi’s code has too;  i.e., article 141 at the link I cited above). Further, the perspective of the Bible seems to always be that of a landowner. For instance, the Shmita law referenced above: the Torah discusses your duty to those without land, thus implicitly assuming that the reader is the one who, well, owns land. Similarly with slavery; all the laws regarding slavery are written as if to the slave-owner. "If you buy a Hebrew slave, he is to serve for only
  six years.  Set him free in the seventh year, and he will owe you nothing for
  his freedom"; if you buy a slave, he is to serve."You" are assumed to be the kind of guy who owns slaves. I am not aware of any quotes where the "you" is referring to the slave, or a woman, or a landless Israelite. If you can find one, please point me there, but I would still suspect that the majority of the Torah is written to the same class of landowning men that (almost?) all ancient law codes were addressed to.

   

  What the bible teaches about slavery in 19th Century America is that
  because of its scope and magnitude it was immoral, which now thankfully
  we know.  I think where we are misunderstanding each other is that I do
  not believe that the Torah is an economic treatise.  It is a book of
  moral and ethical precepts some of which have an economic angle. 

  First of all, the Bible teaches no such thing; yes it violates some of the laws regarding slavery, but there is nothing in the Torah about how you have to keep only a few slaves in your society. Scope is not mentioned at all. Second, many justifications of American slavery used the Bible.I had a whole bunch of sources lined up for this, but they’re on another computer, so you’ll have to wait for my citations here, but I’m fairly certain if you look up American slavery on Wikipedia, or Google, or whatever, and follow the links for a bit, you should be able to find something. You think the Bible explains why American slavery was wrong, but the people running the show thought that the Bible explained why it was right! This shows, if nothing else, that the Bible can be a bit…ambiguous when we try and apply it to modern situations. What we may think is a lesson learned from the Holy Book, may actually just be what we are reading into it. Since we can read equally well into any book of sufficient scope, the Bible has no unique relevance. I would make a similar point in response to the next part of your comment: if the Bible is fundamentally a moral book, without any particular economic perspective, then how is it relevant? Yes, it tells us not to cheat or lie in business, but we hardly required the Bible to tell us this. Everyone knows you shouldn’t, and everyone knows that people do it all the same. To "save the economy", we need to discuss regulation, policy, and a whole host of detailed economic things, on which, as you admit, the Bible has no opinion.

   

  believe we can benefit from preserving the Torah and studying it to
  learn these essential truths.  You folks apply this existentialist
  approach of discarding norms and then experiencing life and developing
  new ones.  I think this can be perilous for some people who may not be
  wise enough to make the right decisions. I also believe that even if
  something is essential it still may not be obvious. 
  

  Look, I too believe in studying the Torah for its essential truths. But I believe the same for, to pick from my current reading list, the works of Seneca, Rousseau, and any number of other thinkers. The Torah is relevant the same way the Beatitudes are: in such a broad way as to be meaningless.

  I also think that the "approach of discarding norms then experiencing life and developing new ones" is something people do regardless. Even if you think you’re taking your lessons from the Torah, which lessons you take, how you interpret them, how you try to implement them in your life – all this will depend on your experiences up to that point. I’m just being honest about how selective I’m being.  
• 
  By DoubleOSeven 4/8/09 at 7:00 p.m. UTC

  My quotation was self-serving and my comments hyperbolic.  If the shoe fits wear it! Thank you for the criticism. 
• 
  By DoubleOSeven 4/8/09 at 6:51 p.m. UTC

  I can picture these poor souls huddled around the fireplace as they toss another piece on the fire from Merkin’s collection of Rothko paintings.
• 
  By Lilit.s Arm Candy 4/8/09 at 2:36 p.m. UTC

  …wrote this:

  D.J. Waletsky: Its one thing to quote me out of context but it is quite
  another thing to attribute words to me I did not write.  No where in my
  above two posts do I mention The Bible Code.  So what makes you assume
  I embrace this methodology of biblical inquiry?

  after your own butchered and self-serving "quotation", coupled with your inability to spell Waletzky:

  Exodus 23:8 NEVER stopped ANY Jewish organization from entangling itself with Madoff… 

  Oh lord, shield me from hyperbolic statements for such inherent exagerrant strength is strong.

   ————-

  DJ, my one hangup is that an agrarian based society doesn’t necessarily preformulate capitalism. 

  All else, the Torah’s wisdom can be applicable, valuable and worthy of study, but it’s laws are most certainly out of their element.
• 
  By v9designbuild 4/8/09 at 8:56 a.m. UTC

  According to jta.org, "Financier J. Ezra Merkin was charged in a civil fraud complaint alleging that he misled hundreds of investors into placing $2.4 billion of their money with Bernard Madoff." However, it is unlikely that at his trial New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo would have asked the question: "If one of your brethren becomes poor, and falls into poverty among you, then you shall help him, like a stranger or a sojourner, that he may live with you." Imagine all those poor souls that were trapped by Madoff’s Ponzi scheme living in his apartment at the moment.
• 
  By D.J. Waletzky 4/8/09 at 3:01 a.m. UTC

  004, you don’t know when to stop digging.

  "I believe that the essence of man hasn’t not changed so what was
  prescribed in the Torah still has relevance today.  Why entirely
  discard something because it does not completely conform to your modern
  notions of fairness when there is some much that is still relevant."

  How are you to judge which parts of the Torah are still relevant? If you use the Torah itself as your guide, you won’t have any basis for discerning what’s worthwhile and what ought to remain in the past.  Kabbalism is the one of the more extreme manifestations of this dilemma, and it’s frankly some of the most ridiculous shit I’ve ever heard. In order to divine some sort of mystical meaning from ancient texts, it has to pretend that each letter has a holy significance, because the totality of the words they compose has lost its meaning. For Kabbalists, there are no typographical mistakes in the Torah, only clues to a divine mystery invented for the sake of obscuring the problems with the text.As The Big Book of Jewish Humor says, "Neurotics build castles in the air, psychotics live in them, and psychiatrists collect the rent."

  The point I was trying to make is that we all judge the fitness of ancient proverbs pragmatically; the appeal to authority is a smokescreen and a facade that we don’t need to put up. Good advice is good advice and it needn’t matter where it comes from. But to presume that the Torah has validity because some of the stuff in there is still relevant doesn’t tell you anything about which parts retain relevance–or why. You can kill the Amalekite inside just as easily as you can sell yourself into mental slavery. Why go through the mental gymnastics of spiritual middle-men? To keep them in business?

  Jenghis Khan, a leading progressive of his time, was the most religiously tolerant ruler Europe had seen in generations. The Mongols let you believe in any god you wanted, but the penalty for atheism was death (as was the penalty for most things). Yesterday’s arch-progressive is today’s paleo-conservative. I’m less concerned with the pitfalls of judging the past in the terms of the present as I am with those who would judge the present in the terms of the past. My apologies, Isaac. Everyone in the Bible has been dead for a long time.

  What I was trying to say in the article is that laws are mutable, they change for pragmatic reasons, and they do not always stand the test of time. And that applies to secular laws as much as it does for religious ones.You can’t let legal codes get ossified; without proper maintenance, any machine breaks down. That’s what Jewish religious authorities have been doing since before the Bible was codified into the familiar five book format.

  Some other points: Leviticus 19:13 doesn’t say "when though goest down to the Home Depot in thine minivan shouting "trabajo" and pick up an immigrant worker to do thine landscaping, only then shalt thou payest him in full before the sun goes down." It says "Thou shalt not oppress thy neighbour, nor rob him; the
  wages of a hired worker shall not abide with thee all night until the
  morning." I get that it’s inconvenient, but it’s certainly doable. The distinction is made only between slave and worker, not "day laborer" and everyone else. 

  Lastly, 003, I apologize for misunderstanding you, and by ‘you’ I mean the entire Jewcy audience? If you really believe homosexuality is something anyone should have had to "atone" for by being murdered, I don’t know what to say. Call that being defensive if you like, but there’s nothing wrong with being gay.
• 
  By Isaac 4/7/09 at 8:48 p.m. UTC

  The bible (Torah, TaNaKh, whatever) was progressive for its time.

  Note the italics. 

  If people want to take a text or code that was progressive for its time as inspiration for… well, for whatever, that’s up to them. But to do so requires a knowledge of what was different about those times. In a world in which slavery was commonplace, it’s quite likely that the proscriptions placed on it in scripture were indeed progressive ones. (And yes, American slavery was much more brutal and problematic than the other forms that had existed throughout recorded history up until that point. Jer might have fun looking up how racism played into this, as the earlier forms weren’t accepted as the natural state of just one ethnic group of people, who could therefore be looked down upon as somehow less biologically "human" than the rest of the population and therefore generally, perpetually condemned to lesser modes of existence – noteworthy exceptions to this notwithstanding.) 

  All that being said, it shouldn’t be too hard to understand how Locke became an indispensable foundation to a society that could deny any Christian basis for its government to the Barbary states – despite the fact that his reasoning for dismissing the divine right of kings rests on using scripture to rebut Filmer’s interpretation of it, and not by rebutting the act of using scripture to make an argument. 

  You’re making some interesting points, Waletzky. But be careful not to stretch things too far with an overly presentist perspective. 
• 
  By DoubleOSeven 4/7/09 at 8:04 p.m. UTC

  I think the mistake you make is judging the ancient world by modern standards.  Maybe they didn’t need prisons.  So you believe that the ‘The Torah itself "an institution that served its purpose in a society" That doesn’t exist anymore.’ So none of it is applicable today, not even Exodus 28:8? You sound too influenced by existentialist thought.  I believe that the essence of man hasn’t not changed so what was prescribed in the Torah still has relevance today.  Why entirely discard something because it does not completely conform to your modern notions of fairness when there is some much that is still relevant.  Anyway, your problem with relevance is an age-old problem and one which the Kabbalism attempts to deal with.  You are correct that some prescriptions seem irrelevant.  Take the commandment to eradicate Amalek.  How do we fulfill this commandment if we don’t know who amalek is?  Hassdim would interpret this figuratively:  Man has an inner Amalek that he must work to eradicate.  It is a more psychological approach than rational.  There are many examples of laws that were intended to eradicate practices of idol worshop that do not exist today.  I know of no extant religious practice were the adherents seeth a calf in its mother’s milk in order to worship their gods.  my point is that Hasidism attempts to deal with this problem.

  You are obviously very passionate about the injustice of slavery.  There are many opportunities today for idealistic people like you to work to abolish slavery in our times as it is endemic in the Near East and sub-Saharan Africa.  Leviticus19:13 is as scrupulously observed today by people I know as it was in ancient times.  We generally don’t encounter day laborers but they do occur.  Did you ever hire someone to cut the grass?  This would be an example in modern times where the law would apply.  It makes sense too as these people are subsistence laborers and it would be oppressive not to pay them promptly. 

  What we commonly call "capital punishment" in the Torah is a misnomer and is really is a form of atonement.  Out of habit I sometimes misuse the term.

  One final remark, I never said D.J. Waletsky is gay.  I merely made a rhetorical statement directed at the entire Jewcy audience.  For someone who purports to "stand up for gay rights" you seem to be very defensive about being called gay.  You must think there is something wrong with the gay lifestyle or you wouldn’t be so defensive about it.  Anyway, you were the one that broached the subject.

   
• 
  By DoubleOSeven 4/7/09 at 7:41 p.m. UTC

  I think the difference between the Hammurabi code and the Torah is that the Hammurabi code only applied to free men in ancient Mesopotamian society, basically landowners, where-as the law of the Torah applied to all Israelites.  The Torah was to the first to innovate the concept that the law applies to everyone – another stone which must comprise the foundation of the ideal society we all yearn for. 

  What the bible teaches about slavery in 19th Century America is that because of its scope and magnitude it was immoral, which now thankfully we know.  I think where we are misunderstanding each other is that I do not believe that the Torah is an economic treatise.  It is a book of moral and ethical precepts some of which have an economic angle. 

   I believe we can benefit from preserving the Torah and studying it to learn these essential truths.  You folks apply this existentialist approach of discarding norms and then experiencing life and developing new ones.  I think this can be perilous for some people who may not be wise enough to make the right decisions. I also believe that even if something is essential it still may not be obvious.
• 
  By jer 4/7/09 at 5:49 p.m. UTC

  Grrr…"seems all too different", not "all to different".
• 
  By jer 4/7/09 at 5:48 p.m. UTC

  I strongly disagree that the Torah wisdom is not relevant to modern
  economics.  The Torah has given us guidance in how to properly organize
  economic activity and society in general.  In Exodus 23: 8 “Do not
  accept a bribe, for the bribe will blind those who see corrupt words
  that are just.” This is in fact an integral part of the plinth upon
  which all of Western though rests as it is the concept underlying
  Francis Bacon’s New Organon. 

  Hammurabi’s code, article IV: 

  "If a man (in a case) bear witness for grain or money (as a bribe), he shall himself bear the penalty imposed in that case."

  I still think it’s a stretch to claim that Hammurabi’s wisdom is relevant to modern economics. 

  As for Bacon, yeah, he was an important thinker, but the idea that upon his ideas rests all of Western thought is, again, rather a stretch. Especially when it comes to economics.Adam Smith, to pick one, is a bigger name in that field.

   

  Historian Thomas Cahill, the Author of "Sailing the Wine Dark Sea",
  says in that book that the slavery of the Hebrew Bible was unlike the
  slavery of Hellenism and unlike the slavery of the 19th Century
  American South in its scope and magnitude.

  This just proves Waltzky’s point though: if 19th century American slavery (which was a huge part of America’s economy) was so very different from Biblical slavery, then of what relevance can the Bible’s teachings be? The Torah is only relevant if the two systems are alike, not unlike.

  There was an opinion that it did not apply to gentiles.  Also keep in
  mind that the sanctions imposed by the Torah are not punishments per
  ser but rather way for the perpetrator to achieve atonement for his
  sin.  Thus, if one sinned in ancient times by desecrating the Sabbath
  he could attone for it through capital punishment.  

  Well, hurray! Only certain people had to die for the kind of sex they like to have! I feel so much better now. Also, I don’t imagine atonement through capital punishment seems all to different from punishment through capital punishment if you’re the one being capitally punished. 

  What I am arguing is that Torah concepts have come down to us through the ages because of their essential truth.

  Fair enough, but what I would argue, and I think what Waletzky is saying too, is that if these concepts are essentially true, we don’t need the Torah to tell us them. Laws against bribery, or a focus on justice appear in pretty much all legal codes; if there is something that sets the Torah apart from the others, please tell us. But saying that the Torah has some good ideas is trivial; any book that long is bound to have some good ideas.

   
• 
  By D.J. Waletzky 4/7/09 at 5:34 p.m. UTC

  005, you’d have a much easier time convincing me that only the Torah concepts which have essential truth are the ones which have "come down to us through the ages."

  Your point about Biblical slavery only underscores mine. If you think your parents ought to have the right to sell you into slavery because they can’t repay their debts, that’s one thing, but don’t try to hang this on "a society that did not have the resources to incarcerate people." Ancient Israelites supposedly built whole cities of refuge, but they couldn’t build a single prison? I don’t care if every slave in Israel whistled Dixie through smiling teeth while they picked cotton, slavery is bad news no matter how you slice it.There are hundreds of random laws in the Torah that could easily apply even in the present that nobody follows out of expediency. For example, have you ever waited more than a day to pay someone for services rendered? Leviticus 19:13 says you shall not keep a laborer’s wages until morning. And when was the last time you ripped a pigeon apart and sprinkled the blood on an altar of earth or uncut stones? Surely these things are physically and fiscally possible.

  What I’m saying is that the Torah itself is "an institution that served its purpose in a society" that doesn’t exist any more. To say that any part of the legal and social system prescribed by the Bible shouldn’t be applicable today for whatever reason is to admit that it has lost some kind of relevance. And by the way, you don’t have to be gay to stand up for gay rights (I’m straight, thanks). 

  Now, if you read what I wrote, I never said that you mention the Bible Code. I did say that selective quotation uses a similar mechanism. I also said it in the article–"seek and ye shall find" (although that certainly isn’t what the Christian Bible was trying to say).The difficulty I had with the Torah wasn’t understanding it, but understanding how the subsequent apologias reconcile themselves with the original text while maintaining that the letters themselves are holy. 

  Now, I just can’t let this go–if capital punishment isn’t punishment per se, what is?
• 
  By DoubleOSeven 4/7/09 at 5:13 p.m. UTC

  D.J. Waletsky: Its one thing to quote me out of context but it is quite another thing to attribute words to me I did not write.  No where in my above two posts do I mention The Bible Code.  So what makes you assume I embrace this methodology of biblical inquiry?

  Historian Thomas Cahill, the Author of "Sailing the Wine Dark Sea", says in that book that the slavery of the Hebrew Bible was unlike the slavery of Hellenism and unlike the slavery of the 19th Century American South in its scope and magnitude.  Its was an institution that served its purpose in a society that did not have the resources to incarcerate people who stole private property or did not repay their debts. 

  If you are gay I can understand a feeling of alienation but bear in mind the sages argued if the proscription against homosexuality was only applicable to Israelites or if it applied to all humanity.  There was an opinion that it did not apply to gentiles.  Also keep in mind that the sanctions imposed by the Torah are not punishments per ser but rather way for the perpetrator to achieve atonement for his sin.  Thus, if one sinned in ancient times by desecrating the Sabbath he could attone for it through capital punishment. 

  What I am arguing is that Torah concepts have come down to us through the ages because of their essential truth.  Read Francis Bacon’s New Organon, a work which marks the beginning of the enlightenment, and tell me it was not influenced by the Hebrew Bible.  I believe it was in that it essentially directs the reader to eschew subjectivity or at least to know that it exists and influences thinking. 

  I’m sorry you had a frustrating experience studying the Torah.  Many do as she does not give up her secrets easily.  

   
• 
  By D.J. Waletzky 4/7/09 at 4:02 p.m. UTC

  …to explain to you the difference between Common Law and other legal systems like Civil or Religious Law. The American (as well as British) legal system owes more to the Vikings than to the Jews. If the American system owed more to the bible than to Norman law, we’d be setting up cities of refuge for revenge-killers and exacting payment for assaults rather than jail time.Islamist countries’ legal systems actually owe more to Judaism than the U.S. Code does.

  Talk about Talmudic logic… your reasoning is circular, and you need to get off this ride:

  "without Torah there would be a whole lost less honesty and it you
  believe that theft is a common sense prohibition, please explain why
  theft is so rampant in our times as it was in ancient times as well." If theft is as rampant as it was in ancient times, what is the impact of the Torah?

  Also, where are you getting these stereotypes about Jews from? I know you need to believe we’re better than everyone else, but I need to see some hard facts if you’re going to base that assumption on anything but hearsay. And, no, I will not accept "I have a non-Jewish friend who thinks Jews are great" as an answer. For example– the "rare standing of Jews as honest in weights and measurements" wouldn’t sound so ridiculous if you could name the other groups who are known for their honest weights and measures as well as those who are known for their dishonest weights and measures. Jewish stereotypes by Jews carry about as much validity as non-Jewish stereotypes about Jews. Are you saying that Jews have a reputation for being honest in business–including our reputation among anti-Semites? If that was the case, ‘jew’ wouldn’t be a verb (look it up). And before you get your panties in a knot, I think racism is bad and I hate anti-Semitism.

  BTW, in Talmudic logic both parties are assumed to be correct, in legal reasoning there is no obligation to reconcile opposing arguments with each other. QED.
• 
  By D.J. Waletzky 4/7/09 at 3:20 p.m. UTC

  006, I am explicitly arguing against the idea that there is a priori knowledge… it’s only through the application of modern, secular mores that we can judge the validity and applicability of the Torah’s precepts. Otherwise we’d all have slaves and be stoning homosexuals to death. Using the Torah as a basis for a moral code is one thing, but you can’t stop there; if all you’re doing is picking random quotes to back up your position, you might as well use the works of Shakespeare or the Illiad–anything that’s sufficiently long. It’s the same mechanism that underlies The Bible Code and similar nonsense. Bartlett’s Quotations is probably a more applicable moral guide than Leviticus.

  I’m not disillusioned by our religious leaders and institutions. They behave exactly as I’d expect, up to and including the Biblical authors who foreshadowed the path of the deregulators in our government. If any Jewish organization had returned a gift from Madoff, it’d be news (or at least in his clippings, which I did research); I can’t vouch for whether or not a particular fund was unwilling to use his investment services or a feeder fund because of "payment for order flow", but I’m willing to bet that nobody did. 

  It was studying the Torah that got me so disillusioned with it in the first place, just so you know. The unadulterated pshat is somescary shit, and twenty-five hundred-odd years of excuses and evasions don’t alter the meaning of the original text, only its application.
• 
  By David N. Friedman 4/7/09 at 3:04 p.m. UTC

  OK, DJ–let me try again to straighten you out of your rampant misconceptions, prejudices and lies.  The oppression of the Jewish commuity by Christians is well understood and you failed to make a point concerning the obvious fact that Jews were reduced to being moneylenders in their oppression, their wealth confiscated.  What does this have to do with the topic?

  You fail to appreciate how Torah is relevant in our lives today since you do not accept the premise of the primacy of Torah law in the first place.  The fact that our economy today is different than it was thousands of years ago is far less important than the principles Torah dictates to its adherents which once established, easily apply across the span of history and throughout differing living conditions.

  Your point that if you need Rabbis and Torah to be honest, "you have a big problem" ignores the entire rare standing of Jews as honest in weights and measurements in the first place.  Yes, without Torah there would be a whole lost less honesty and it you believe that theft is a common sense prohibition, please explain why theft is so rampant in our times as it was in ancient times as well.

  The fact that Locke was a theologian is lost on you and the Bible is far and away the most signifcant influence on American law and society.  It is good if you take your own advice and try to do a little reading.  Early America was so thoroughly inbued with the Bible, everything else was subservient to the main influence–deny that and you are simply not dealing with the reality.

  Note that Madoff was not an Orthodox Jew and almost none of his clients were either–they were almost all liberals.  Truly, some Biblical wisdom would have helped that mess.

  BTW, shmita laws do apply in Israel and alas, I live in America.  Therefore, I have a friend who grows grapes and is in the wine business–so yes, those laws are very relevant to him.  A careful reading of the Talmud gives the rationale for understanding why a whole host of laws stem from matters some might guess are irrelevant– when they are really precisely the basis of the law.  Examples abound  and this is the nature of  secular law as well–Talmudic reasoning and legal reasoning are in the same general sphere.
• 
  By DoubleOSeven 4/7/09 at 2:44 p.m. UTC

  D.J. Waletsky, your generalization "Exodus 23:8 NEVER stopped ANY Jewish organization from entangling itself with Madoff…" is probably an un-provable claim.  Did you investigate all Jewish organizations that considered investing with Madoff?  Obviously there are some Jewish institutions that need to re-evaluate their decision making processes to ensure that they conform to their self-professed ethical beliefs. 

  It’s funny how people like you seem to think that if something is
  prescribed (or proscribed) in the Torah then Torah Jews are expected to behave instinctually or as if they have a-priori knowledge of the correct way to fulfill the law.  Sometimes people do indeed turn a blind eye but sometimes the situation is ambiguous and it is not always clear what the Torah requires.  Human failing is part of being less than perfect.  Thus, we must not be disillusioned when our religious institutions, leaders, or ourselves, fall short of the mark but we must examine our beliefs and behaviors to see that they are congruent and demand that our leadership do like-wise.  Above all, we must study the Torah’s precepts regularly so we keep its principles foremost in our minds. 

   

   
• 
  By D.J. Waletzky 4/7/09 at 1:07 p.m. UTC

  Funny how Exodus 23:8 never stopped any Jewish organization from entangling itself with Madoff, who was famous for pioneering legal kickbacks (known as "payment for order flow"). Did Yeshiva University, for example, turn a blind eye for religious or financial reasons? 

   Also, I’m glad 007 identified the single (or perhaps double) cause of the economic collapse. A more sophisticated understanding of the economy would seriously hamper the ability to identify a smaller number of scapegoats. 
• 
  By D.J. Waletzky 4/7/09 at 12:46 p.m. UTC

  It’s funny that someone who writes "Jews have a tradition, a solid reputation for making, holding, saving
  and protecting wealth is simply inescapable and admitted by
  all–including every antisemite" can, in the very next paragraph, castigate me for "ridiculous sterotypes about what Judaism says." Also, if the Torah has nothing to say about money, I wouldn’t have so much to say about it. All I’m saying is that the Torah describes an agrarian economic system. Do you leave a corner of your field (or herb garden) unreaped for the homeless to wander in and pick? If not, why?

  The stereotype of Jews being rich is actually more bound up with this issue than you know–because of the way the Catholic Church interpreted the Bible during the Dark Ages, they used the same dodge as Deuteronomy does by using Jews to provide the loans at interest to Christians. Since Christians were enjoined from usury (since St.Augustine equated it with theft), there was a collusion between clerical authorities on both sides to allow Jews to be those interest-charging "strangers" to gentiles (check your Shulkhan Orukh). In many places, moneylending and tax farming/collecting weren’t just career options for the Jews, but a legally mandated monopoly, and consequently the rulers would extract that interest by charging high tax rates on Jews (who also had an advantage over much of the population because they weren’t tied to the land as serfs, allowing them to move freely as merchants). Wikipedia has a good primer on this stuff.

  Look, there’s plenty of common-sense wisdom in the Bible. I particularly like the part about keeping your weights and measures honest, and the Talmud has some interesting stuff to say about that, too. But if you need rabbinical justification to be honest in business, you have bigger problems than I can address. And if you think that "Our great country was founded by people whose entire world view was rooted in Biblical law and Biblical tradition," you have a lot of reading to do, starting with the Treaty of Tripoli (maybe some Locke and Montesquieu, too).
• 
  By DoubleOSeven 4/7/09 at 11:37 a.m. UTC

  I strongly disagree that the Torah wisdom is not relevant to modern economics.  The Torah has given us guidance in how to properly organize economic activity and society in general.  In Exodus 23: 8 “Do not accept a bribe, for the bribe will blind those who see corrupt words that are just.” This is in fact an integral part of the plinth upon which all of Western though rests as it is the concept underlying Francis Bacon’s New Organon.  

  The financial turmoil we now find ourselves in was largely caused by rating agencies Moodys, Standard and Poor, and Fitch who rated mortgage backed securities as investment grade when in fact they were junk bonds.  They did this because they wanted more business from the underwriters of the securities.  There are instances were these companies gave a fair appraisal of the security only to violate their own policy and re-rate it because the client pressured them and they did not want to lose the client’s business.  Fairness and impartiality was non-existent in the management of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  Congressman Barney Frank intervened and influenced Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives to cave in to strong-arming by Countrywide Financial CEO Angelo Mozilo and buy Countrywide’s sub-prime mortgages.  In fact Barney Frank, who is a member of House Financial Services Committee, which over sees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, was involved romantically with Fannie Mae executive Herb Moses who was a key policy maker at Fannie Mae.  This relationship was a clear conflict of interest.  The Madoff scandal was made possible because the SEC did not investigate credible claims against him.  There is no evidence at this time that anyone on the SEC took bribes but at the very least they succumbed to the halo effect as did the executives of so-called feeder funds to Madoff Investment Securities who did not do proper due diligence.

  The concept the Torah teaches us is that only when the decisions of the authorities are fair and impartial do we achieve Justice.  This simple concept must be integrated into the decision making processes of our institutions so that the agents we entrust with key decisions do so in a manner that is fair and impartial and with regard to the public’s interests and not their own.  Only then can modern capitalism flourish.
• 
  By David N. Friedman 4/7/09 at 1:32 a.m. UTC

  How can one respond to a train wreck like this.  Every single word is wrong.

  The mere fact that Jews have a tradition, a solid reputation for making, holding, saving and protecting wealth is simply inescapable and admitted by all–including every antisemite. To come forward and state, in a public folder that Torah has nothing to say about money would be bizarre if it wasn’t so stupid.  

  Capitalism and freedom and founded on far more than loaning money with interest.  Our great country was founded by people whose entire world view was rooted in Biblical law and Biblical tradition.  Without our Torah, there could be no capitalism as we know it.  

  If only every Jew would actually look into what our entire Tanach has to say on the subject, plus our prayer book and our Talmud–there is a wealth of information that describes perfectly the ills of our current day and remedies for today’s problems. Indulging in ridiculous sterotypes about what Judaism says wrongly keeps otherwise curious Jews away from looking into why we have such an ancient tradition of making wealth.

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