Chaim Amalek emails:
Luke, do you believe that:
1. God made the world in six days as per the sequence set forth in Genesis?
2. The story of Noah is correct?
3. God dictated the Talmud to Moses on Mt. Sinai?
4. The Jews were held as slaves in Egypt, and then fled in the hundreds of thousands as set forth in Exodus?
5. There exists a God who gets angry at you when you wear garments that contain both linen and wool?
No to all of them. I believe in a God who gave the Torah (exactly how that happened, I am agnostic). I believe that God demands that Jews not wear garments made of linen and wool but I don’t think he gets as angry over these ritual transgressions as when we hurt innocent people.
Chaim Amalek responds: "Then how can you possibly be part of orthodox Judaism? Why do you even try/pretend to be one of them or someone whom they should embrace as one of their own? You might make a plausible reform Jew, but by your own words, you are not and cannot be an orthodox Jew. Your life would have gone better if you had taken a more adult approach to your religious beliefs."
Because I believe that in the final analysis God is the author of the Torah and of Judaism and Orthodox Judaism is the most effective way that I know to that divine presence and to the good life. If you want to practice Judaism, you need to do it within a community, and with few exceptions, the only observant communities in Judaism are Orthodoxy.
