Ohr Somayach is Wagnerian
Some friends aren’t getting it. Everything needs to be spelled out explicitly for them when we are attacking a haredi kiruv organization. Very well. Let’s replace Jew for goy, and see if we can a handle on why this idea is not valid, not acceptable, and (yet another) proof that Ohr Somayach is a hateful, fundie place.
What if, say, a white Christian group wrote this,
There are those who say that even the influence of western or classical music written by Jews can contain the negative spiritual genes of its composers. However, it is well known that many of the great European army songs bear more than a passing resemblance to Jewish sabbath songs.
Would that be okay with you?
3 comments
Yeah, that would be great! White Christians conceding that some great music of their armies came from Shabbos tables? That would be so progressive, so conciliatory! If they said that something pagan was ultimately acceptable in their normative tradition…
But I guess I expect alot less from tribal, unenlightened devotion-and-community religions than you do. I’m happy when they even acknowledge the accomplishments or virtues of anyone outside of their cannons. It means that they have a theology that doesn’t view outsiders as pure evil/distraction/damned, and in hope of some kind of interaction and acceptibility.
I would love for normative judaism to have a clearer, truer, more resonative theology of how to relate to gentiles helpfully, in a language that was useful across denominations and on both sides of the God is real/God is bullshit divide.
I don’t think that a trust of western norms stam is quite acceptable in this regard quite yet, maybe when moshiach comes, riding his electic car on biosphere 3 on the moon.
Christians, at least non-fundamentalist ones, do not neglect Pagan and Jewish influences on Christianity just as more educated Jewish historians do not deny the Christian influence on Jewish customs and views, some to counteract Christian customs, many more merely just to go in line with the respective fashion of their times (e.g. wives cutting off their hair first was a fashion among Ancient Romans, then was re-discovered by Central European Christians in the 16th century CE, and became fashionable among Jewish wives in the 18th century CE). Often enough rabbis reinterpreted lines in the torah or talmud to fit trends they found themselves unable to stop. A good summary on such mixing of customs can be found here: http://www.amazon.com/Christia.....amp;sr=1-1 . Rabbi Dr.Michael Hilton’s a Jewish historian, Oxford grad. Grab the book while you can from the ‘used’-offers; not too long ago, some sellers offered it used for a few hundred bucks.
And despite having lots of Chasisdishe friends, the education they (have) received gives me the creeps.
See my comment on the Jewish influence on Soviet Army ceremonial music.
George W. heard to be impressed with it, observing V-E 5/9 parade in Moscow
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