DNA Clears the Fog Over Latino Links to Judaism in New Mexico
 

According to this story, DNA Clears the Fog Over Latino Links to Judaism (use www.bugmenot.com), a significant number of Latinos in parts of New Mexico and Texas may be descended from 'secret Jews' forced to hide their religion or covert by the Inquisition.

I heard a similar story about a cab driver in Spain who became a cab driver in Israel after he found out.

I am always amazed at the entire concept of forced conversion. IMO, a person can't have much real faith in their religion if they believe that the only way to get some people to accept it is by torture and intimidation.

It sounds like he has developed a really healthy attitude about it. Of course, it will be interesting to see what the Vatican thinks of his accomodation with his heritage when they read the article.

Torture and intimidation is the legacy of the Church. It was never about religion. It was about money, land and power. Period.

And in many cases...it still is.

I'm not quite ready to believe that. Like many organizations, including our own government, you can find corrupt people at the top of many organized religions. However, IMO, there are a lot of good people trying to do their jobs throughout the hierarchy.

At least by the time it was called "the Church" with a capital C...

One of my heroin users, with Hispanic first and last names, surprised me during an interview.

I was asking him the usual interview questions, and when I got to "highest level of education completed" instead of the usual, "I dropped out in 10th Grade and thought about getting a GED but never got around to it," he told me that he had a Masters. When I asked him "in what?" I learned that he was a rabbincal student ... couldn't speak a word of Spanish, but his Hebrew was perfect, at least according to our Israeli psychologist who spent a lot of time working with him. He's from an Orthodox Sephardic Jewish Family. Apparently Heroin is kosher. ;)

He's still using heroin, but he has family bring him books on Kabbalah when he's inpatient.

The people who didn't have power, money or land were most likely the ones with more actual religious faith than the ones with, like kings, emperors and popes and things. However, it's also those emperors and popes who tell the lower classes what to do and under the pretense of religious right. So, these lower classes would do X, Y and Z because Emperor PuffnStuff said so and since Emperor PuffNStuff is publicly of The True Religion™ then he must be moving with (insert Diety here)'s plan because he wouldn't have gotten to his supreme powerful position without being a chosen one of (aforementioned Diety), would he? And if they (publicly) didn't do it or (publicly) didn't follow the same religion Emperor PuffNStuff did, then they were forced to renounce, hunted, imprisoned, tortured, killed or worse... excommunicated.

All of the above can be applied to most of the major religions, not just Catholisicm or Christianity. It's kinda built in with the territory with religions that have heavy focus of having power, owning land and attaining material wealth in the name of a Diety.

Isn't that some wierd quasi-cultish sect, kind of like those jehova's witness types?

ask madonna or just about any other trendy entertainer at this point. they're all wearing their strings.

Christianity has an advantage that other religions lack - namely, the Evangelical Imperative. Christians must attempt to spread the word of Jesus so that people know they can be saved. This is what is known as "free will". Unfortunately, that free will is strictly an either/or proposition. There are only two choices, and only one is right.

That niftly little characteristic has been used as a front for imperialism, murder, rape, and wholesale theft of culture and entire continents. "Hi, we're from Europe. You should forget these Pagan gods of yours and worship our guy, Jesus. No? We'll have to kill you, then. Oh, look! Gold!" And so forth.

I suppose it doesn't really happen that way much anymore, but boy, back in the old days...

Nowadays, it just makes it really difficult to have a logical argument about religion, science, etc.

'yes' would have sufficed ;)

Q1.1 : What is Kabbalah?
Kabbalah is an aspect of Jewish mysticism. It consists of a large body of speculation on the nature of divinity, the creation, the origin and fate of the soul, and the role of human beings. It consists also of meditative, devotional, mystical and magical practices which were taught only to a select few and for this reason Kabbalah is regarded as an esoteric offshoot of Judaism. Some aspects of Kabbalah have been studied and used by non-Jews for several hundred years

According to Jewish tradition, the Torah (Torah - "Law" - the first five books of the Old Testament) was created prior to the world and she advised God on such weighty matters as the creation of human kind. When Moses received the written law from God, tradition has it that he also received the oral law, which was not written down, but passed from generation to generation. At times the oral law has been referred to as "Kabbalah" - the oral tradition.

The Torah was (and is) believed to be divine, and in the same way as the Torah was accompanied by an oral tradition, so there grew up a secret oral tradition which claimed to possess an initiated understanding of the Torah, its hidden meanings, and the divine power concealed within it. This is a principle root of the Kabbalistic tradition, a belief in the divinity of the Torah, and a belief that by studying this text one can unlock the secrets of the creation.

Another aspect of Jewish religion which influenced Kabbalah was the Biblical phenomenon of prophecy. The prophet was an individual chosen by God as a mouthpiece, and there was the implication that God, far from being a transcendental abstraction, was a being whom one could approach (albeit with enormous difficulty, risk, fear and trembling). Some Kabbalists believed that they were the inheritors of practical techniques handed down from the time of the Biblical prophets, and it is not impossible or improbable that this was in fact the case.

These two threads, one derived from the study of the Torah, the other derived from practical attempts to approach God, form the roots from which the Kabbalistic tradition developed.


Q1.5 Do I need to be Jewish to study Kabbalah?
Some aspects of traditional Kabbalah are so deeply intertwined with Jewish religious beliefs and practice that they are meaningless outside of this content. Other aspects of Kabbalah (what I refer to below as Hermetic Kabbalah) have been studied and practiced outside of Judaism for so long that they have a distinct identity in their own right, and no, you do not have to be Jewish to study them, any more than you need to be English to study the Law of Gravitation.

However, if you choose to study Kabbalah by name you should recognise that Kabbalah was and is a part of Judaism, and an important part of the history of Jewish people, and respect the beliefs which not only gave rise to Kabbalah, but which are still an essential part of Jewish faith..

Q1.6 : Is there an Obstacle to a Woman studying Kabbalah?
Within Judaism the answer is a resounding "Yes!": there are many obstacles. Perle Epstein relates some of her feelings on the subject in her book on Kabbalah (see the Reading List below).

The obstacles are largely grounded in traditional attitudes: it is less easy for a woman to find a Rabbi prepared to teach Kabbalah than it would be for a man. Persistence may reward (see below).

Outside of Judaism the answer is a resounding "No!": there are no obstacles. For the past one hundred years women have been active both in studying and in teaching Kabbalah.

~~taken from http://www.digital-brilliance.com/ka...WhatisKabbalah

I found this bit to be particularly interesting:

The term "the Great Work" has many definitions, and is not a term from traditional Kabbalah, but it has a modern usage among some Kabbalists. The quotation above, from a disciple of the Kabbalist R. Israel Baal Shem Tov, is a traditional Kabbalistic view: that the creation is in a damaged and imperfect state, and the Kabbalist, by virtue of his or her state of consciousness, can bring about a real healing. A name for this is "tikkun" (restoration). There are many traditional forms of tikkun, most of them prescriptions for essentially magical acts designed to bring about a healing in the creation.

I'm fascinated by other religions and had been wondering what Kabbalah was all about. Thanks for the explanation and link, OC!

I found this on the same site, and I'm struck by it's resemblance to some pagan rituals.

Welcome for the link, Garnet. There is a WEALTH of information out there for the curious.

Some interesting stuff here

Looks like it's been hijacked.

The similarities between Qaballah and modern Wicca are probably due to Gerald Gardner having been heavily influenced by Aleister Crowley, who in turn had numerous elements of Qaballistic mysticism incorporated into the Ritual Magick that was practiced by The Golden Dawn.

Religion was the first strong political structure. A tribal chief could just cave your skull in, but the shaman could make your life a living hell and keep you out of the afterlife.

Religion strengthened the viability of groups by bonding them together. It's hard to give up the inertia of believing in something that isn't necessary anymore.

To quote Ghandi, "Someone who doesn't believe that religion and politics aren't related doesn't understand either."

I like this point. The mere thought of someone 'powerful' enough to able to exert control over you even after you've died can make for a good nightmare.

I could be wrong but wasn't he some kind of satanist with tenuous links to scientology? I seem to remember that name coming up in scientology research I did a while back.

Imagine trying to motivate people to not eat their cow because they'll need the dung and the milk down the road, as opposed to saying that you can't kill the cow god because you'll miss out on heaven...

It's the Jewish version. Sort of. It's actually not intended for the masses. You're only supposed to study Kaballah after you've attained a particular level of maturity and have deeply studied both the Torah and the Talmud.

It's the end-all and be-all of Jewish Philosophical thought.

Apparently, if you don't have the appropriate background, the intricacies of studying Kaballah are lost to you ... without the context, it's similar to attempting to read War and Peace in Swahili, a language which you know not one word of, and which doesn't have the necessarily expressive vocabulary to tell the story anyway.

No...

http://www.cix.co.uk/~mandrake/crowley.htm

He was a spectacular oddball, though, and delighted in shocking polite Victorian society at every opportunity. Crowley was no Satanist, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't have called upon Satan if it suited his needs. I would call him sort of a "religious anarchist", but his basic tenets had far more in common with ancient, earth-based practices than anything else.

http://www.factnet.org/discus/messag...tml?1095841346
http://www.mt.net/~watcher/crowleyhubbard.html

It appears there was a link - hubbard ripped him off.

Organized religion makes me crazy. I was cleaning the bathroom over the Thanksgiving weekend and this fascinating interview came on the radio. Its a show called "Speaking of Faith" that a friend of mine works on, so I'd been meaning to catch it and gave it a listen. Interviewed was Karen Armstrong who calls herself a "freelance monotheist" . She was a nun, hit a crisis and turned against religion then found a way to make some sense of things. She found her spirituality in the study of poetry and literature- which is really what religious books are. She was particularly moved to spiritual understanding by TS Elliot.
She became very interested in comparative studies while in Jerusalem- here's the link if anyone is interested. Made me want to read some of her books.
speakingoffaith.publicradio.org

I have no doubt that the charlatan Hubbard ripped off the charlatan Crowley.

Crowley was a populizer of the occult, and is mainly notable because of that. However, he certainly does get considerable credit for beginning the trend of opening the public's eyes to alternative forms of ritual, energy, religion and ritual.

Calling Crowley a Satanist simply does not take in all that the man did and was. Like I said, I've no doubt he would invoke Satan if he felt like it, but that scarcely made him a Satanist. As for all that "incarnation of the Beast", etc, again, pure shock value.

I never said he wasn't an enormous flake. He was. But, he did shake loose some pretty deep foundations, and the ever-growing Pagan movements in the world probably wouldn't have gotten started without him.

Interesting, i've never really known much about pagan stuff in general so it's interesting to get your perspective, thankyou. I've only come acros crowley because I keep an eye on scientology stuff in general, I didn't have any background.

Yeah, but does this Crowley guy know Zuul?

I'm sure he probably thought himself to be both the Gatekeeper *and* the Keymaster!

That DNA Heritage testing is getting popular amongst two groups ... one is people trying to prove Native American Ancestry to get in on some of the casino money ...

The other is White Supremacists, who want proof of pedigree.

Why would someone want proof that they were a pure-bred moron?

I'm waiting for the first guy to get his results, get crazed, and go to the DNA lab with a shotgun to take care of the bastard who screwed up the results to show him to be one of the mudpeople.

Reminds me of that Dave Chappelle sketch, where he's a blind KKK leader who turns out to be black under his hood...and he immediately divorces his wife for being a "nigger lover." :lol:

In which case he could go fuck himself. ;)