Primitive Religions
I wince when I hear the term “primitive religion” because while worshipping the sun god happened early in history, it’s not more logical than the foundation myths of the so-called modern religions. For example:
Christian belief centers around the story of someone who died and was resurrected.
Islamic belief involves, among other things, the night journey from the rock under the present day dome in Jerusalem to heaven.
Jewish belief centers around a probably fictitious individual who received the Ten Commandments from God and wrote the subsequent five books of the Bible.
What intrigues me is how some of these myths have been twisted and interpreted into present day customs.
Judaism has some practices that stem from actual wording in Leviticus. For example, from the prohibition of cooking a "kid" in its mother's milk, we have the separation of meat and milk; from the prohibition against eating the meat of cloven-foot animals, we have the no-pork rule; and from the prohibition against eating leaven bread during Passover, we have the matzo tradition.
These traditions are logical outcomes of the foundation myths of the Old Testament.
On the other hand, some religious "laws" in Judaism make little sense:
1. The Ultra-Orthodox or "Haredim" not only won’t eat chametz or leaven products during Passover, but they rid their houses of all traces. Selected companies produce "Kosher for Passover" dog food and yes, even toilet paper.
2. When the Haredi celebrate the circumcision of a boy on the 8th day, the mohel or rabbi sucks the blood off the penis tip in a procedure called "Metizh b'peh." New York City bans the practice, but like many laws, the Haredim ignore the bans. Several babies have been infected with herpes.
3. On Yom Kippur the Haredim swing live chickens around their head to transfer their sins to the chicken (Kappaoros). When I was in Israel last, I brought a rubber chicken to do the same in front of the Wailing Wall. When a bearded rabbi asked what I was doing, I replied "Kapparos" – he told me that I needed a bigger chicken.
And where did they get the command to wear black suits and hats? (You didn’t see Charlton Heston and the Israelites wearing them in The Ten Commandments.) It's probably because this is how Polish noblemen dressed, even though they wouldn’t appear for another two millennia!
Why do I care about these insane practices? Because as a proud secular Jew, the Haredim are changing the nature of Israel itself, which was built by secular Jews. Their latest effort is to criminalize mixed-gender prayer and prevent women from reading the Torah at the Wailing Wall.
They are a growing cancer in Israel and the diaspora. They keep producing more children who receive little or no secular education and increasingly rely on the secular population to support them.
In America, their bloc voting has allowed them to control large areas of New York in Rockland County and in Lakewood, New Jersey, where they rip off taxpayers to support their Yeshivas by having public school buildings sold to Yeshivas at low cost, among other things. These actions have been detailed recently by The New York Times and other publications.
In St. Louis, we have a small but growing group of schools that do the same, even though they are supported by the largesse of the general Jewish population through the Jewish Federation. I recently met with the leaders of the Federation to ask what was being done to make sure that these schools taught secular subjects. I was told that it wasn’t the Federation’s job.
I have asked the Missouri Department of Education to investigate. My guess is that they will do nothing because they don’t want to be accused of antisemitism, as oversight has been in the Northeast.