Dare To Ask Talk And News About Our Differences 
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Rather than concentrating on particular numbers, which as you pointed out mean different things in different places (and times), I think class definitions are fruitfully based on standard of living. That doesn’t make it easy, of course: what is the classification of a family which has a bedroom for each child, vs. a family where the kids have to share a room, especially if the number of children varies? But that’s probably the better way to go.
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Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,I think it’s a matter of taste. I usually don’t even notice unless the lips are unusual in some way. I do find lipstick beyond the natural lip borders unattractive. The star of the new show ‘Dark Angel’ has unusually full lips, and I find her face intriguing. You were probably teased about your lips because that was what the others noticed; they’d have just as readily teased you about something else.
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Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,The assertion is meaningless, in the context of a monotheism such as Christianity, Judaism, or Islam. Either you do not believe in God, and that which does not exist cannot be either dead or alive in any meaningful way; or you believe in God, in which case ‘dead’ doesn’t apply as a concept.
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Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,It’s a linguistic thing: Wales, Scotland and Ireland preserved a Gaelic language to some degree, whereas England proper is where English was formed out of various Germanic languages (spoken by the Angles, Saxons and Danes) and French (brought over by the Normans), with a trace of the original Gaelic language of the Britons. Other Gaelic languages are or were spoken in Cornwall and Brittany.
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Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,As a descendant of European Jewish immigrants, I can’t trace my family back much before 1900, let alone to a ship 200 years ago. Your situation is not unique in that regard. If you feel that is the source of your (justified) rage, then I suppose I’m entitled to even more. Fortunately, I don’t share your opinion. I have no hatred for the Germans (the Holocaust), the Russians (pogroms), the Germans before that (who probably drove my people into Russia), the French (who drove them into Germany), the Romans who destroyed our Temple, the Babylonians who exterminated many of our people, nor the Egyptians who our common Bible says enslaved us. I reserve my anger for things that can and need to be changed, and history is not one of them.
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Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,I’m not a literalist; in fact, I barely count as a believer. However, I have had many discussions with both Christian and Jewish literalists. They fall into two general categories, those for whom faith is fact and those for whom faith is faith and fact is fact. The former don’t make for good discussions, everything becomes circular very quickly. Discussions with the latter, however, can be a lot of fun for both sides. That being said, here are some partial answers to your questions. They won’t satisfy you, because I think you are trying to justify your own beliefs under the guise of asking questions. First, there is an interesting Jewish tradition that although the Bible is the literal word of God, it has to be interpreted by men in their own times. In other words, different people at different times will understand it differently and this is legitimate. (Much of Jewish law is the result of endless argument and eventual compromise between scholars.) It is part of the wondrous nature of divine inspiration, rather like a poem that means different things to different readers. Why would there be different facial characteristics (and skin colors)? The ancient Hebrews were quite familiar with livestock breeding, and this probably didn’t mean more to them than that they bred black, white, and spotted sheep. How long did it take Noah to gather up the animals? If you start with a divinely-created flood, you might as well throw in a divinely-created gathering of the species as well. Likewise, God could have provided cans of Fancy Feast to feed the lions. Once you have an all-powerful deity throwing miracles around, it doesn’t make sense to ask ‘how?’ The only question that makes sense at all is ‘why?’ And the Book of Job makes it pretty clear that even ‘why?’ isn’t ours to ask.
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Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,I can’t speak for Israeli Jews, being an American Jew; but I certainly don’t think any of us here hate Egyptians. During the ’67 war, I was working with an Egyptian (one of the few I’ve really known). We just kind of looked at each other, and agreed that this wasn’t something we needed to deal with between us. Getting back to the story of Ham and the Hamitic peoples, I don’t think modern Jews think of Egyptians in that context; for better or worse, we probably lump you in with the Arabs. Curiously, the only references I’ve heard about ‘Hamitic’ peoples have come from white supremacists or, in past centuries, Christian slavers trying to assuage their consciences. As for that little matter of the Jewish sojourn in Egypt, I doubt that anyone associates living Egyptians with that. Your points about the ancient Hebrew wars against the Canaanites and Philistines are more problematic. In 20th century terms, they might be considered genocide; but remember, what’s in the Bible are the victory songs. It’s very hard to tell what really happened. The Philistines, according to modern theory, were invaders themselves, and possibly related to their contemporaries who were rather thoroughly drubbed by the Egyptians (Ramses II?). And it’s hard to imagine that the Canaanites were all wiped out; they didn’t have a unified government, and were clients by turns of various major powers (the Egyptians, Hurrians, Assyrians, Hittites, and others). It’s quite possible that their culture simply merged with those of the other tribes that at various times fought and lived side by side in that relatively small area. Genocide, as an official policy, was not unknown: the Assyrians, in particular, practiced it as a matter of course; and it was standard practice to relocate entire populations to keep them subjected (as in the Babylonian captivity of the Jews). About all we really know is that in the later books of the Bible, there are no people called Canaanites. It may be that once the Israelites settled in Canaan, the term fell into disuse because it was too generic to be useful. This was all ancient history, anyways.
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Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,I think it’s a matter of population density. If you stroll down the main street of a small town, you might run into a dozen or so people, and you probably know most of them. If you stroll down New York’s 5th Avenue, you might pass a hundred people on any given block, none of whom you know. People don’t have the energy required to interact with dozens of strangers a minute. Also, the only way to preserve privacy in dense populations is to establish a societal convention of not noticing other people.
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Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,Here’s a bit of a twist: Some research shows that women find more masculine and more effeminate men attractive by turns, depending on where they are in their menstrual cycle. The implication is that aggressiveness and a nurturing demeanor have different values depending on whether a woman is (presumably on a subconscious level) looking for a sperm donor or a life partner.
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Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,I think there is more than one thing going on here, some more pernicious than others. For example, the comment about being “useless to any black man” speaks volumes of nasty stuff, both racist and sexist, because it implies at the very least that you are only “useful” as an object of a black man’s attentions. Somewhat less vile is the general and apparently inherent tendency for groups of people to sort themselves out by drawing boundaries, and at various times and places to enforce those boundaries to different degrees. Although many minority groups view this as defending themselves from being swallowed up by the majority, being a minority group doesn’t cause this behavior: Often a majority group resists what it sees as “contamination” by minorities. The root seems to be a drive to preserve “us” at the expense, if necessary, of “them.” We can all think of examples far less striking than skin color, wars of extermination being fought between two groups that are indistinguishable to outsiders. I suspect that this is least in evidence when the majority feels secure; I think that security leads to tolerance. This tolerance can easily evaporate if the majority suddenly feels threatened, as happened in Germany between the wars and in the Arab countries after World War II.
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Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,I don’t consider “Colonialism” to be an answer. However politically correct, it doesn’t explain why (for example) the Africans didn’t colonize Europe instead of the other way around. It certainly doesn’t explain why Europe was at about the same level, technologically, as China before the Renaissance but then pulled ahead. If it hadn’t, Europe certainly could not have colonized China (assuming that one believes it did). Personally, I’m inclined to believe that it was in some measure dumb luck. The ferment (and conflict) of European politics and trade led to strong competition, and innovations gave nations a sought-after edge. At times, this constant competition led to collapse, as during the decline of the Roman Empire; that’s why I think it was just luck that got us where we are today. Arguably, we’re in for another collapse.
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Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,The prohibition of mutilation ties back to non-Jewish religious practices, which are forbidden to emulate. Circumcision is supposed to be a uniquely Jewish ritual, sanctioned by G-d. (I have no idea if it was indeed unique within the historical context; I think I read that the Egyptians did it.)
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Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,From the way you phrased your question, I’m guessing you differentiate between Christians in general and being born again or something similar. To me, as someone who is not Christian in any sense of the word, all I expect of Christians is that they behave like decent human beings and keep their religious beliefs to themselves unless asked. That’s all I expect of anyone of any religion.
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Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,I would guess it is because many people who beat their kids, hate their wives, and want everyone who disagrees with them put to death use the Bible (or the Koran, or any other suitably weighty authority) as justification for their own behavior. I see that you’re from Canada, so evidently this stereotype isn’t unique to the USA. Putting it more generally, religion of any kind is often used to justify the most hideous acts because it helps dehumanize the victims; that, in turn, tars all believers with the same brush even though many true believers are reasonably tolerant of others and are generally nice people.
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Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,The previous response touched on the central issue: fermentation of grains. Judaism relies on a principle of ‘building a fence around the law.’ In other words, if something is forbidden then everything that could lead to it is also forbidden, controlled, or discouraged. For that reason, the requirement to eat only unleavened bread was extended to all grain (not just wheat) products (not just bread) which could possibly ferment. Wine, being made from fruit, is allowed; whiskey, being made from grain, is forbidden. Different Rabbinical traditions introduced variations (some Jews eat rice, some don’t), but the principle is the same.
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Name : JerryS, Gender : M, Sexual Orientation : Straight, Race : White/Caucasian, Religion : Jewish, Age : 52, City : New Britain, State : CT, Country : United States, Education level : 4 Years of College, Social class : Upper middle class,
