Strong representation for the Toddler-American community though.

Turns out electing a president without object permanence might have been a bad idea. Who knew?

Ugh.

Yeah, it's tricky in this case because there isn't really an equivalent concept in Christianity except for "Pentateuch," which is a bit academic and detached from the general Christian conception of the Bible.

Pew Bible, I guess? It's the one congregants use to follow along with the chanting from the Torah scroll.

Glad it was helpful! There was some interesting discussion in response to the original post but it was a very intra-Jewish conversation so I figured a thread might be helpful for a broader audience.

The Pentateuch and Haftorahs : Hebrew text, English translation and commentary : Hertz, Joseph H. (Joseph Herman), 1872-1946 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive Added t.p. in Hebrew

So for example this is the standard pulpit Bible in most Liberal (= Conservative and Reform) congregations:

archive.org/details/pent...

"Pentateuch" is fine and is actually used in print as a literal translation for "Chumash," but not so much in speech.

As a printed codex, at least, which I know is what you were dealing with. The scroll would be called a Torah.

Yes, "Chumash" (from the word for "five") is the standard term in Hebrew for the Torah in its narrow sense.

But of course when (cultural) Protestant Anti-Zionists are trying to figure out which are the Good Jews they are inclined to conflate their theological assumptions with their political ones. Traditional antisemitic lies about the contents of the Talmud play a role as well. There's a deep well there.

As for the Zionist piece of this, there's nothing particularly Zionist about the Talmud, the more prominent version of which was produced in the Diaspora (specifically Babylonia/Iraq) and reflects its concerns. Modern Religious Zionism draws much more from the Torah, especially Deuteronomy.

Basically, the kind of scriptural purism that is characteristic of Protestantism never became mainstream within Judaism, so the categories just don't apply. Talmud is Torah, and the vast majority of modern Jews adhere to both to the extent that we adhere to any of it.

There *is* (or was) a group that *does* reject the Talmud and other Rabbinic writings and focuses its practice entirely on the Biblical text: the Karaites. They are more or less non-existent these days, though, and were always very marginal relative to mainstream Rabbinic Judaism.

In other contexts "Torah" does refer specifically to the Five Books of Moses, e.g., as contrasted with the other parts of the Hebrew Bible, but in this theological sense it's much broader.

But that's not what "Torah" means at all in this context. All these groups, very much including NK, include "Talmud" within their definition of "Torah" (which literally means "teaching"). They are saying that their practice is purer than other groups, but *not* because it's more limited textually.

So Neturei Karta brands themselves as "Torah Judaism," which to a Protestant mind sounds something like "Gospel Christianity" or whatever. Old time religion, just the Bible, no popery. Great! These are the Good Jews!

But this isn't how Jews think of this at all! And this is where we get into the second issue, which is that some Ultra-Orthodox groups, including but not limited to the famously Anti-Zionist Neturei Karta, use "Torah" to try to distinguish themselves as more pious than other Jews.

So there's a natural tendency for Protestants (again, speaking here of cultural background rather than personal faith per se) to look at Judaism and see a distinction between "Torah" (Scripture! Good! Pure!) and "Talmud" (Interpretation! Bad! Jesuitical!), and assess them accordingly.

But this is not actually a thing in most other religions! Everyone reveres their sacred texts, but that doesn't necessarily mean venerating them *to the exclusion* of later commentary and interpretation. Ancient texts are hard to interpret, and many religions value attempts to do so.

Which, fine, whatever. Christians can do what they want; I don't care about their squabbles. But when people with a (culturally) Protestant background, like most Americans, encounter *other* religions, they tend to try to slot them into this same schema.

In the actual Protestant context this is about Catholicism, of course, and the idea is that the Catholics have erected this whole superstructure of unnecessary ritual and scholastic obfuscation when true Christianity is based on the Bible alone, which anyone should be able to read.

First, Protestantism is *deeply* influenced by the concept of Sola Scriptura: that the truth of religion comes from going back to the original holy texts, and everything else that has accreted since then is a perversion of religion that needs to be stripped away.

After thinking about this some more, I think there are really two things going on here that interact in weird ways. One is the background radiation of Protestantism that influences everything in this country, and the other is the misinterpretation of Jewish terminology when non-Jews see it.

For sure, and I can't imagine any of them would do it explicitly. I just wonder how aware they are of Christians perceiving it that way and how much they're willing to tolerate that.

Yeah, I wonder how deliberate it is as an external-facing thing, versus outsiders misinterpreting the way the terminology is used inside Judaism.

I feel like Neturei Karta branding themselves as "Torah Judaism" has something to do with this but I'm not sure how exactly.

Verse? So, like, just one?

Deranged in so many ways!

Snowing again.