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Reading Room ViewPoint The Idolatry Within
Our Own Land The following ViewPoint was intended to provoke thought and discussion. I spent over half of the month of January away from home on business travel. My company-provided laptop computer has not yet been configured to enable me to dial-in and check my email, and therefore I have had a lot of email stack up in my provider's server (that's what I pay 'em for!). Among the posts sent to me was an interesting response to last month's ViewPoint, "The Sad Reality We Are Dealing With." Although I have not had time to respond to it privately, I am sharing it with you. I will save my personal comments for later (next month, G-d willing). Please read the response (below) and send me an email letting me know what you think or feel about the gentleman's response. After reading your ViewPoint article, I felt compelled to write. Although I understand that your berating the Orthodox Jews for their failure to teach the B'nei Noach the halacha of the Seven Laws comes from a sincere desire to learn, you do not seem to understand the nature of the Seven Laws or to grasp the overall picture. First of all; the rabbi's comments were correct. The orthodox rabbis have their hands full with the hundreds of thousands of non-observant Jews in their communities, trying to bring them closer to the Torah. It is unfair to ask of your neighbor's assistance with the harvest when his own fields need tending. It may be a mitzvah to bring a Gentile to the Torah, but it is a greater mitzvah to bring a Jew back along the path of teshuvah. Besides, there is great debate in the Jewish community itself on how the Jews are to observe the Torah, and this after centuries of study. The study of the Seven Laws has not been a major area of study until recently, and you seem to want instant answers. You also seemed to miss the meaning of your own allegory of the lamp. It is the job of the lamp to give us the light to show us the way, not to do the work for us. As far as teaching goes, there are many fine books out there which we can study from, and learn. There is one thing that we must do, however. Instead of sitting around whining that the Orthodox Jews don't spend all of their time teaching us, why don't we instead concentrate on performing the Seven Laws that we are commanded to keep? There is one law in particular that I feel is greatly neglected; the law of dinim, or social justice. Doesn't the Law plainly state that we are obligated to set up courts of justice to make sure that the other six laws are observed? We seem to do all right with the laws of murder, theft, and sexual misconduct, but we are neglecting the two most important Laws of the Torah: idolatry and blasphemy. Although the Jews are prohibited from speaking out against idolatry in lands outside the land of Israel, we must keep in mind that this is our land, that these are our people. The Bible is full of stories about what happens to Gentile lands that do not enforce the prohibition of idolatry. Why don't we direct our energies on doing something about the idolatry within our own land? Christianity clearly violates the two primary Laws of the Torah, that of idolatry and blasphemy. We need to take action. We need to go on the offensive. We need to strive to establish courts that uphold all of the Laws of Noah, not just a few of them. And maybe then, when the Church is too busy trying to save its own idolatrous skin to worry about converting the Jews, will they have the time to do other things, such as teach us the Sheva Mitzvot. Back to the Reading Room
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