>>>Using the nuanced, complex and detailed system of Halachah, we have the opportunity to clarify how Hashem intended for us to think, feel and act. In all areas of life, from religious to interpersonal, from business to pleasure, mitzvos, properly understood, can act as our guides not just for what we must do, but how we should think.
I wonder if you've fully considered the position you are taking. The Torah promotes misogyny, child abuse and genocide. Females are treated differently than males as it relates to property ownership, contract rights, marriage and divorce and court proceedings. It is permitted to sell one's female child into bondage, and the idea behind this was to find a spouse for the daughter so that even poor girls could get married. And the women and children...ostensibly the non-combatants...of Amalek were to be slaughtered, but for what reason? Surely the children had not erred.
So sure, Judaism 2.0 of 2024 is much better than it used to be 1000 or 2000 or 3000 years ago. But that's because of how it has rubbed up against modernity and been forced to adapt, rather than any inherent morality. According to Judaism, the words of god are, by definition, moral, and so the argument that the Torah is immoral, from a Jewish perspective, generally fails to gain momentum.
But you're asking here how we think we ought to build a society or a community, and to cherry pick the nice things from the Torah perspective and leave the bad ideas aside is admitting that the Torah didn't get it right. We would not condone many of the things the Torah suggests as good behavior and we still condone many of the things that the Torah requires, such as a lack of egalitarianism when it comes to women's rights and the racist and tribalism that follows from the illusion of being an עם סגולה.
What you're essentially doing is taking individual parts of a system out of context and saying because these are bad, the whole system must be bad. For a simplistic analogy, that would be like saying, look at this cake recipe - it has salt and baking soda, both are bitter, so obviously this recipe is never going to work.
In the same way, look at the context each of those laws are operating within. The Torah presents all humanity as sharing a tzelem elokim deserving of basic respect. Every human has the ability to develop a relationship with the creator, live a meaningful life, and enjoy just reward for said meaningful life. No one is consigned to oblivion just by dint of birth; everyone can choose to either live moral lives as they were created, or join the Jewish people and take on added responsibility and benefits that entails. Women are respected and appreciated as active partners in furthering Hashem's plan for the world. The Torah promotes sanctity of life and human brotherhood.
Within this broader frame, each example that you gave then becomes a question to understand how it fits with the overarching values, rather than an obvious indication that the system is broken. I'm open to admitting that some may be harder to understand than others, but that's a much smaller issue given the broader framework rather than looking at each detail on its own without that broader frame. take genocide - assuming even amalek and the seven nations received an offer of peace, and they also have the option of conversion or leaving Israel - that's wildly different than "Genocide," which is racially or religiously motivated and doesn't allow for any exceptions or outs.
And what you're doing is presupposing that the Torah is true and then justifying all the bad parts with comments like "baking soda is bitter, but without it, a cake tastes bad."
We don't need slavery and we don't need sexual slavery. We don't need levitate marriage and we don't need to capture women and coerce them into having sex or forced conversion. We don't need to kill people because they curse an imaginary God. We don't need to kill people because they are gay or because they cook with fire on שבת. None of that is actually important. But 2,000 years ago, people thought it was.
Two thousand years ago, people thought it was important to give the first born male a double portion of inheritance over the rest of the male offspring and to cut out the females entirely, because females weren't seen as equal.
The Torah could be immensely improved if we'd only get rid of all of these bad parts (and more) and keep the good parts, like not bribing judges and not tripping up the blind people, both literally and figuratively. To defend the religion as a whole is to be morally blind. It is to reject reason and goodness and to embrace fairy tales well into adulthood.
Your talmudic parsing of genocide is also abhorrent. Genocide may have a more technical definition than the one I used or it may be open to interpretation, but either way, and whether we use the term or not, to kill out an entire nation, including 5 year olds, including 3 month olds, is immoral. Forcing their conversion is less immoral, but so is rape vs murder, and only someone with indoctrination blinders on would have the gall to posit such ridiculous defenses of the Torah.
Yes, I am presupposing that the Torah is true. Like I said to you on 18, I'm writing for an audience that has that assumption, and there are many places where you can find a discussion about that fundamental point if you'd like. Not every article on religion or theology needs to begin by proving god.
Like i said above, your questions have merit and should be considered. My response would depend on the details added by the Oral Law, which I have a hunch you don't see as an original part of the Torah. If so, that would have to come before any discussion of individual laws (many of which are misrepresented, like your claim of genocide above)
>>>Using the nuanced, complex and detailed system of Halachah, we have the opportunity to clarify how Hashem intended for us to think, feel and act. In all areas of life, from religious to interpersonal, from business to pleasure, mitzvos, properly understood, can act as our guides not just for what we must do, but how we should think.
I wonder if you've fully considered the position you are taking. The Torah promotes misogyny, child abuse and genocide. Females are treated differently than males as it relates to property ownership, contract rights, marriage and divorce and court proceedings. It is permitted to sell one's female child into bondage, and the idea behind this was to find a spouse for the daughter so that even poor girls could get married. And the women and children...ostensibly the non-combatants...of Amalek were to be slaughtered, but for what reason? Surely the children had not erred.
So sure, Judaism 2.0 of 2024 is much better than it used to be 1000 or 2000 or 3000 years ago. But that's because of how it has rubbed up against modernity and been forced to adapt, rather than any inherent morality. According to Judaism, the words of god are, by definition, moral, and so the argument that the Torah is immoral, from a Jewish perspective, generally fails to gain momentum.
But you're asking here how we think we ought to build a society or a community, and to cherry pick the nice things from the Torah perspective and leave the bad ideas aside is admitting that the Torah didn't get it right. We would not condone many of the things the Torah suggests as good behavior and we still condone many of the things that the Torah requires, such as a lack of egalitarianism when it comes to women's rights and the racist and tribalism that follows from the illusion of being an עם סגולה.
What you're essentially doing is taking individual parts of a system out of context and saying because these are bad, the whole system must be bad. For a simplistic analogy, that would be like saying, look at this cake recipe - it has salt and baking soda, both are bitter, so obviously this recipe is never going to work.
In the same way, look at the context each of those laws are operating within. The Torah presents all humanity as sharing a tzelem elokim deserving of basic respect. Every human has the ability to develop a relationship with the creator, live a meaningful life, and enjoy just reward for said meaningful life. No one is consigned to oblivion just by dint of birth; everyone can choose to either live moral lives as they were created, or join the Jewish people and take on added responsibility and benefits that entails. Women are respected and appreciated as active partners in furthering Hashem's plan for the world. The Torah promotes sanctity of life and human brotherhood.
Within this broader frame, each example that you gave then becomes a question to understand how it fits with the overarching values, rather than an obvious indication that the system is broken. I'm open to admitting that some may be harder to understand than others, but that's a much smaller issue given the broader framework rather than looking at each detail on its own without that broader frame. take genocide - assuming even amalek and the seven nations received an offer of peace, and they also have the option of conversion or leaving Israel - that's wildly different than "Genocide," which is racially or religiously motivated and doesn't allow for any exceptions or outs.
And what you're doing is presupposing that the Torah is true and then justifying all the bad parts with comments like "baking soda is bitter, but without it, a cake tastes bad."
We don't need slavery and we don't need sexual slavery. We don't need levitate marriage and we don't need to capture women and coerce them into having sex or forced conversion. We don't need to kill people because they curse an imaginary God. We don't need to kill people because they are gay or because they cook with fire on שבת. None of that is actually important. But 2,000 years ago, people thought it was.
Two thousand years ago, people thought it was important to give the first born male a double portion of inheritance over the rest of the male offspring and to cut out the females entirely, because females weren't seen as equal.
The Torah could be immensely improved if we'd only get rid of all of these bad parts (and more) and keep the good parts, like not bribing judges and not tripping up the blind people, both literally and figuratively. To defend the religion as a whole is to be morally blind. It is to reject reason and goodness and to embrace fairy tales well into adulthood.
Your talmudic parsing of genocide is also abhorrent. Genocide may have a more technical definition than the one I used or it may be open to interpretation, but either way, and whether we use the term or not, to kill out an entire nation, including 5 year olds, including 3 month olds, is immoral. Forcing their conversion is less immoral, but so is rape vs murder, and only someone with indoctrination blinders on would have the gall to posit such ridiculous defenses of the Torah.
Yes, I am presupposing that the Torah is true. Like I said to you on 18, I'm writing for an audience that has that assumption, and there are many places where you can find a discussion about that fundamental point if you'd like. Not every article on religion or theology needs to begin by proving god.
Like i said above, your questions have merit and should be considered. My response would depend on the details added by the Oral Law, which I have a hunch you don't see as an original part of the Torah. If so, that would have to come before any discussion of individual laws (many of which are misrepresented, like your claim of genocide above)