Does Talmudic Judaism teach morals/values which are contradictory to the Torah?

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timothyt

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Cher,
I find your answer curious since I made no reference to antisemitism in my question. Besides that, you seem a bit confused:
Talmudic Judaism is an ideology while antisemitism is racism.
Barrel,
federal law contradicts the Constitution all the time. So that might be a bad example.
Cher,

I meant no insult with the word "ideology". Aren't all religions "ideologies"? When you read the word "ideology" in the question, read: "religious ideology." That's all I meant.

I still have problems, though, with your (and others') explanation of the talmud.
To Cher, Ambivalent LAUghter, and Shaya:

My intent in asking this question was only to learn if there were Jews had their own way of following Torah, and rejected the teachings of the talmud. The nature of the talmud raises a lot of questions to me.

BTW, Cher, the bible and the koran get criticized a lot too. Please no more pity party.
 
The Talmud is there to explain what is written in the Torah. For example the Torah tells us to keep the Sabbath. Yet it doesn't tell us how! So how do we know what to do? That's where the Oral Torah ( Torah shel ba'al peh- of which the Talmud is a part of) comes to tell us. So the whole point of the Talmud is to help clarify what the Torah is saying. So no the Talmud doesn't contradict what is taught in the Torah.
 
Only the part that denies 'Yeshuah' 'Savior' the 'Messiah'. The Torah speaks of Yeshuah, the Redeemer.
 
There is no such thing as "Talmudic Judaism" except in the minds of hostile irreligious with an agenda. This question is like "do you still beat your wife". It isn't a question, it's an accusation.

Talmud is a record of varying opinions of interpretation of Torah, (which I insert for your information even though you didn't ask to know what Talmud is).

This non-question simply parrots insults without knowledge of what Talmud even looks like. You mention no specifics to illustrate where you might have any sincere question.
 
"One of the most influential tracts behind the rise of antiSemitism, "The Talmud Jew" by the Catholic priest August Rohling published in Germany in the 1880's quickly became a best seller."

This is paraphrased from "The Popes Against the Jews" by Kertzer page 136. He goes on to describe the themes & how they created antisemitism that lead to the Holocaust.

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Many lies have been written about Talmud going back to when the Church discovered it in the 1200's.


Talmud is a wonderfully complex book that is a study of Torah. It also has Oral Torah which is additional parts to Torah stories. The rest are investigations of Torah topics studying them very every angle. Every religion has it's interpretive works, but only Judaism's gets this kind of reviling.

It teaches the morals of Judaism which are based in Torah.

http://www.talmud.faithweb.com

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Lotta
Sorry Talmud doesn't reference Jesus in any direct way. There's definitely no concept of a Jesus the redeemer in there - plus it would violate Judaism. (Hopefully I've said that respectfully. I love how supportive you are all the time!!)


Jews & money lending
The Church forbid Jews jobs. So they only allowed money lending, tax collecting, & lowly jobs. That's how all those lies about Jews & money got developed.


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To asker

Jews know Talmud is the study of Torah, not a contradiction to it. The idea doesn't even make sense as a question when one knows what Talmud is. That idea of contradicting comes straight from antiJewishism of Christian teachings on Judaism. Hence my going there. During 1200's & later, it was taught that Judaism violated God's wishes by creating a manmade Talmud with it's own laws. It was a demonizing putdown at the time intended to make sure "good" Chrisitans didn't get "sucked" into Judaism by mistake & commit heresy. Going even further back, the animosity at Jewish concepts later written down in Talmud such as how to honor Shabbat, can be found in early Church father writings (literally).

Antisemitism is often used only for the racism part of antiJewishish & I didn't distinguish by using the 2nd term. They are much less intertwinable than often stated, once you study a bit. However, read my answer using antiJewishism if it works better for you. I meant it to refer to hate statements about Judaism & Jews (antiJewish statements were often polemitc against Jewish character itself.)

Furthermore, I used "antisemitism" because I was using the words of the author himself, who is describing this book as a critical polemic that started concepts of racism antisemitism itsself at the point that antijewishism switched over fully.

Sadly, instead of learning a little of the history of what prompted your question... you dismissed that history as my error. Sadly, because I've noticed it is very hard for some of Christianity to accept this past & instead they shove it right back at Jews as Jews being either overreactive or intolerant. I don't mean that as a light statement. I have found very non-antiJewish, non-hateful people, still have a hard time with this piece of history. This history is not my own judgement -- I'm taking it from scholarly writings. Check out this book "The Anguish of the Jews" by Father Flahrety (can't get the spelling right today.) He was instrumental in Vatican II coming into place. The past can't stop & completely go away if good people are still unable to look it in the face... only then can it lose it's power.

Talmudic Judaism is not an ideology. It's the interpretative writings of a religion. No one else's religion's similiar writings get questions & reviled the same way. ...or called an ideology unto themselves. Judaism in a very democractic way, has all it's stuff written down & available to any Jew to read themselves. Try reading a bit of the link I gave to learn what Talmud actually is.

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You still aren't getting it.

A little bible criticism & Koran bashing are NOTHING compared to 2000 years of murdering based on first lying. Please, it's not a pity party. It's you being so uninformed of the past that you can't image how much hate Jews deal with to this day constantly. Check out one of the books I mentioned & you'll never say that to a Jew again. The pity is how much people refuse to look at the past -- you keep proving how little of it you know.

One example, Jews were threated that they could be murdered if the kept it, have their book taken away from them altogether, did have it burned publically many times in front of them (& not uncommonly with them wrapped in it), or in one instance could keep it if a bunch of passages were removed. To this day Jews do not have their original texts of those back from the Church vaults.

Okay - ideology is not insult. Your question is still based in past hate statements about Talmud, & not on an actual understanding of it. Please do check the links. Here's another one: http://www.jewfaq.org

I'm Reform Jewish - I don't consider Talmudic detail binding -- yet I value the text greatly. Once you see pieces of it in action, you'll see the immense wisdoms in it -- also that Judaism uses it differently than people image. It's own discussions don't even always come to conclusions. It's a way of thinking. That's very different than Christian style. It's about analyzing, not just stuff to do or to absorb. Also, again it's our interpretations, but it's troubling to "you". I don't analyze whether Catheisms (spelling?) or Protestant works are ineffective. I don't judge other religions so intensely. You have to be very studied to really get to that level of criticism.

Truthfully, unless you are willing to acknowledge a bit of antisemitism in it's the past, I'll say you aren't interested in Judaism...only your own view of Jews which has some false negative teachings in it. I've done my outreach to build a bridge & better world. Now it's your turn to step up.


Talmud is in ancient Aramaic, in two different books. It's 72 thick volumes in English. It has everything from how to be moral with weights (in sales), to history, to how practice Shabbat, to how to evaluation the nature of God, to how to do outreach of peace to non-Jews, to how Moses came to be a stuttered & other story pieces, to how to plow the fields to keep it fertile over many years, & that's just the tip of the iceberg. On each topic sages from as much as 500 years are played against each other in discussion with disagreements & often not resolved. Further each page is printed with commentary evaluation on each corner that varies greatly from each other. What image of this book did you have in mind? How does it bother you?
 
In a sense that would be like asking if federal law can contradict the U.S Constitution.

The Talmud explains and expands on the Torah. It is not a book of laws unto itself.
 
The Talmud goes along with the Torah... It's the oral law/ explanation of the Torah!
 
Not possible. The whole purpose of Talmud is to explain, interpret and fill in the gaps in Torah. If Torah says "do this" but doesn't explain what 'this' really is, we need Talmud to make it clear.

You may not have made any reference to antisemitism in your question. The fact is, people who emphasise Talmud as if it were something suspect, as your question seems to imply, tend to be pushing an anti-semitic agenda. You may not be, but talking about "Talmudic Judaism", referring to it as 'an ideology', not to mention your suggestion that it could contradict Torah, suggests that you question the validity of Talmud as an integral part of what Judaism IS. There is a great deal of attack on Judaism from anti-semitic sources that is founded on exactly that notion, and I can only hope that is not your intention. It remains to be seen.

EDIT: You say you have "problems" with the Talmud, that its "nature" raises a lot of questions for you. Would you care to explain what you mean? Jews here have explained to you what the Talmud actually is. You seem to have some entirely different notion, but we're not privy to what that is. The only other notion of Talmud of which I'm aware is the false garbage that's peddled on the internet and a few books, producing a whole lot of nonsense which is NOT in the real Talmud. If that's what you're referring to, then there is a real difficulty here. Please explain what you are talking about with these remarks.
 
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