Answers from an Orthodox Jew

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Too bad…you’d like to think that someone has this figured out. It seems like a smaller community might have special insights.
 
Oh, for the days when I could go to a Jewish bakery or a grocery store and buy challah. :cry:
I tried to make it once 🤣 It never rose.

Maybe I should try again.
 
Where I live in New York (Queens), the challah is baked in Brooklyn. Now you can’t get more authentic than that. But please try again and send me a slice from your neck of the woods!
 
The 2nd largest city in Ireland, where I live now, had to close its only synagogue 2 years ago because it could no longer form a minyan. I think there might be one Jewish bakery in Dublin, but it is several hours away from me. I’ll have to try again to make my own Challah, and if it turns out, I’ll be sending you a slice @meltzerboy2! As for @Moses613, I’m definitely envious of your 2 loafs every Shabbat!
 
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Hi, I don’t live in Cork, but it’s sad that the synagogue closed there back in 2016. From what I can see, there had been 4 active synagogues there, but not any more. Now, as far as I know, there’s only a few Synagogues in Dublin and that’s it. I’m not from Ireland, but I live here now.

(sorry for the edit…I’m having so much trouble with my internet connection)
 
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Yes, that’s right. The 2016 census showed there were about 2500 in Ireland, an actual rise of 28% since 2011. Many of the population had immigrated to Israel and America.
 
Now, as far as I know, there’s only a few Synagogues in Dublin and that’s it. I’m not from Ireland, but I live here now.
Cool fact: The first (Ashkenazi) Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Isaac HaLevi Herzog, had previously been Chief Rabbi of Ireland for 14 years (1922-36), Rabbi of Dublin before that and spoke the Irish language fluently.
 
Thanks for info! Love the ‘borrowing’ !!! – I’ll have to read that book.
 
It’s unfortunate that it seems there is so much anti-Israel sentiment in Ireland these days.
 
Yes, you are so right. It breaks my heart and makes me angry at the same time. Coming from America, and growing up with a pro-Israel government, it is very hard for me to live here at times because of that.

As I’m typing, I am reading your reply @(name removed by moderator) – that’s a good explanation. Thanks. When all of the news is only Pro Palestinian, the negativity towards Israel increases.
 
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I too would like to read that book. There…it’s at the top of my list now!
 
The only dispute in the Talmud is whether a child born of a non-Jewish father and a Jewish mother is perhaps not Jewish either, or perhaps considered to be of impaired pedigree. But the final decision of the Talmud and of Jewish Law - unanimously - since the time of the Talmud almost 2,000 years ago, is that those children are considered to be fully Jewish in all respects.
I knew it. I tell my children all the time, that being Southern is like being Jewish. 😉
It doesn’t matter that one of them was born in a Yankee state, or that their father is a Yankee. If ya’ mama is Southern, then all y’all are Southern, too. Bless it.
 
but the short answer is yes, there are such problems involving losing one’s faith, and I believe these issues exist in all Jewish denominations.
From what I have read, most Jews are atheists. In fact, Zionism, the movement behind the creation of the State of Israel, was and is atheistic. Zionism as a national movement rebelled against historical religious Judaism and is mainly atheistic, but uses religion as a facade. As a recent article in Haaretz explained about Zionism, most of its leaders and activists ceased believing in the coming of the Messiah and took their fate into their own hands, with the power Man replacing the power of the omnipotent God. Thus the reason why many if not most Orthodox Jews protest the State of Israel…
 
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No, Zionism is NOT an atheist movement, if by the latter you mean its purpose is to spread atheism. Some Zionists are atheists, perhaps its founder as well. But many Zionists are NOT atheists; some are Reform Jews and others are Orthodox Jews. Zionism is mainly a secular political movement, but, in my view, it is intertwined with the Jewish people as a people, a culture, and a religious entity. And all Orthodox Jews are NOT opposed to the State of Israel. While some are, others are ambivalent, and still others support the State of Israel although they may not support the Zionist movement or its tactics. The situation is quite complicated among the Orthodox Jewish community, which is not monolithic, as well as among Jews of other streams. Finally, I would not say that MOST Jews are atheist. There has been an increase among Orthodox Jews as well as those of other denominations. No doubt some identify as atheist Jews, others as cultural Jews, still others as nondenominational Jews, but there are many who consider themselves Reform, Reconstructionist, Conservative, Haredi Orthodox, non-Haredi Orthodox, Sephardic, Nazarene, Messianic, or whatnot.
 
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@meltzerboy and @(name removed by moderator) you guys more or less said what I’d want to say.

Gab has a big axe to grind as he’s demonstrated in previous posts. He’s entitled to his opinion about Zionism/Israel but I’m familiar with the kinds of sources he has been reading regarding Orthodox anti-Zionism; I used to buy into them but I’ve been enlightened by experience, reality and a more careful study of the religious texts they use tendentiously to make their arguments.

Whether you agree with them or not, it is profoundly ignorant to call the religious faith of the orthodox “Religious Zionist” community a “façade.” Many are fervent believers and their detractors even brand them fundamentalists.
 
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No, Zionism is NOT an atheist movement, if by the latter you mean its purpose is to spread atheism
Right, I didn’t mean to say their objective was to spread atheism; rather, that it was a movement founded by atheists. Much like Karl Marx’s was Jewish, but was an atheist and his philosophy was built on atheism. From what I gather, most non-Jews see Judaism as a religion, identified by what is written in the Torah and the New Testament, identifying Jews as a group of people holding fast to the same beliefs described in the Old Testament, all awaiting the Messiah. In reality Judaism is completely fractured, and the only thing that unites Jews is a kind of ethnic identity and heritage. Thus even Jewish people that attend synagogue are often atheists themselves. It would be interesting to know what percent of Jews around the world actually believe in God; from what I understand, atheism is entrenched in American Judaism, while the majority of Jews in the State of Israel are secular, non believers. As for Zionism using religion as a facade in order to justify the takeover of lands by claiming Biblical authority over the region, there’s an interesting book by Israeli author Mike Peled titled The General’s Son that gives an interesting insight about Zionism it’s leaders and the establishment of the State of Israel, which was strictly a Zionist endeavor; there are some interesting talks by him on YouTube worth watching.
 
According to Wikipedia, “a year before Marx was born, his father had converted to the Prussian state religion of Lutheranism in order to continue working as a lawyer.”

“Marx was ethnically Jewish. His maternal grandfather was a Dutch rabbi, while his paternal line had supplied Trier’s rabbis since 1723, a role taken by his grandfather Meier Halevi Marx.[19] His father, as a child known as Herschel, was the first in the line to receive a secular education and he became a lawyer and lived a relatively wealthy and middle-class existence, with his family owning a number of Moselle vineyards. Prior to his son’s birth, and after the abrogation of Jewish emancipation in the Rhineland,[20] Herschel converted from Judaism to join the state Evangelical Church of Prussia, taking on the German forename of Heinrich over the Yiddish Herschel.[21] Marx was a third cousin once removed of German Romantic poet Heinrich Heine, also born to a German Jewish family in the Rhineland, with whom he became a frequent correspondent in later life.[22][page needed]

Marx’s birthplace, now Bruckenstrasse 10, in Trier. The family occupied two rooms on the ground floor and three on the first floor.[23] Purchased by the Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1928, it now houses a museum devoted to him[24]
Largely non-religious, Heinrich was a man of the Enlightenment, interested in the ideas of the philosophers Immanuel Kant and Voltaire. A classical liberal, he took part in agitation for a constitution and reforms in Prussia, then governed by an absolute monarchy.[25] In 1815, Heinrich Marx began work as an attorney and in 1819 moved his family to a ten-room property near the Porta Nigra.[26] His wife, Henriette Pressburg, was a Dutch Jewish woman from a prosperous business family that later founded the company Philips Electronics. Her sister Sophie Pressburg (1797–1854) married Lion Philips (1794–1866) and was the grandmother of both Gerard and Anton Philips and great-grandmother to Frits Philips. Lion Philips was a wealthy Dutch tobacco manufacturer and industrialist, upon whom Karl and Jenny Marx would later often come to rely for loans while they were exiled in London.
 
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