Crazy Yids

As much as I bag on the christians, let me just say that the jews are even screwier. You might say we wrote the book. I have been reading about the goings on in Beit Shemesh in Israel where the orthodox jews have been acting like a bunch of total assholes and harassing a poor little girl.

Na'ama Margolese, an eight year old american immigrant, has been forced to walk a gauntlet of abuse from the haredim on her way to school every morning. The ultra orthodox haredi want total segregation of the sexes on the public sidewalks and are trying to impose a public dress code. They throw rocks and hurl invectives. The little girl has been spat on and called a whore because she has not adopted the 19th century dress favored by these dirty parasites.

"When I walk to school in the morning I used to get a tummy ache because I was so scared … that they were going to stand and start yelling and spitting," the pale, blue-eyed girl said softly in an interview with The Associated Press Monday. "They were scary. They don't want us to go to the school."

Na'ama attends a school that borders the ultra orthodox neighborhood. The little girls at the school are forced to endure a daily screaming session and even physical accosts by the black hats. Which is crazy because she already wears orthodox dresses, just not the garb favored by the wackos.

Beit Shemesh's growing orthodox population of wackjobs has posted signage calling for the separation of sexes on the sidewalks, dispatched "modesty patrols" to enforce a chaste female appearance and hurled stones at offenders and outsiders. Walls of the neighborhood are plastered with signs exhorting women to dress modestly in closed-necked, long-sleeved blouses and long skirts. Sounds a bit like Iran, doesn't it? Another older Israeli women caused quite a stir in recent weeks when she refused to move to the back of a public bus.

The haredi are prone to calling their jewish detractors nazis and anti semites, which shows both how ridiculous they are semantically and the depth of their own intolerance. It also denigrates the scope of the actual holocaust. My personally feeling is that you can worship the Trix Rabbit for all I care, but when it means assaulting and abusing other people, your rights stop at your fingertips.

The ultra orthodox make up about 10% of the Israeli population. They don't serve in the army and won't work, their attitude is that they serve the country adequately by their constant prayer. They are basically leaches and parasites, philosophical refugees from the eastern european shtetl, who refuse to wake up and find that they are living in the wrong century. But they have curried favor with the current government, that in this day and age needs their political help in forming its coalition. Netanyahu has rode the tiger and may not ever be able to dismount.

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Of course, we have seen this kind of behavior before, in the islamic nation or amongst some of the wackier christian sects. Makes people sick of religion, in any form. You want to worship the deity of your choice, fine, just don't expect the world to supplicate to your own twisted god and doctrine.

Christianity and Islam are what is known in the theology business as "completion" religions. They grabbed judaic doctrine and both religions aimed to perfect it in their own inimitable way. Unfortunately, the mother creed is one of the most repressive belief systems one could ever imagine. Is it a wonder so many jews are neurotic? It has to be in our DNA by now. You johnny come lately's got nothing on us.We invented the whole punishment by god deal and brought it to its stunning apex.

There are 618 mitzvot or commandments. You think you can screw somebody's head up with a mere 10? Tell you what to eat or when to shit, put tzitzit on the corners of clothing (Num. 15:38), who you can marry, who you can screw, how to treat the gentiles, not to take in pledge utensils used in preparing food (Deut. 24:6), don't surrender a slave, who has fled to the land of Israel, to his owner who lives outside Palestine (Deut. 23:16), not to make any figures for ornament, even if they are not worshipped (Ex. 20:20), don't cross breed cattle. (Lev. 19:19) (according to the Talmud, this also applies to birds) (CCN142). All broaches of biblical etiquette are of course, punishable by death.

The list goes on and on, you basically can't fart without offending god.  I have to ask myself, if you believe in an omnipotent creator, don't you think that creator bestowed on you a brain and a sense of judgement for a particular reason? Does it take the possibility of infinite hellfire and punishment for you to want to simply do the right thing for its own sake and because it is the right thing to do?

I am not a perfect human being and I admit to having occasional moral lapses. But I will continue to try to do good for its own sake and not to curry favor with and save me from, the punitive smiting of a pissed off, angry god.

© Kliban