Jewish culture

He was therefore publicly called upon to do so by Boaz, and he publicly refused.

The Bible adds, as is the custom in Israel concerning changing, then a man plucked off his shoe and delivered it to his neighbor.

The kinsman plucked off his shoe and delivered it to Boaz as a renunciation of Ruth and of his right of marriage to her.

These ceremonies were evidently not unknown to the early Christians, for when the Emperor Waldemir made proposals of marriage to the daughter of Ragnall, she refused him, saying she would not take off her shoes to the son of a slave.

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Thank you so much for listening.

Here's the episode.

On this show, I have made a lot of the distinction between Jewish culture and Jewish religion.

In part, that's a reflection of my own biography, my own experience of moving from religious Jewish practice towards the world that I find myself in.

Now, which is not really about religiosity in any way and is more about embracing expressions of Jewish identity through art and ideas.

Here we go.

"Beikerman and Pazhmanik paint a very gloomy picture of the state of the Jewish culture in the USSR in 1923.

'All is torn up and trampled underfoot in the field of Jewish culture.

All foundations of a nationalist Jewish culture are shaken, and all that is scared is stomped into the mud.' S. Dubnow saw something similar in 1922 and wrote about 'rueful wreckage' and a picture of 'ruin and the progress of dark savages destroying the last remnants of a bygone culture.'"

I mean, it's not like they were directly targeted, but I don't know what Jewish culture means.

You know, I don't know who he's talking about.

There's all these different groups.

Everything's, uh, revolves around them.

Everybody kind of took care of everybody.

So it was a bit more natural, I think, for this to occur in the Israeli or the, the Jewish culture.

Um, so much so that Jesus actually had to address this with the Pharisees in the same capacity.

Mark 7:10-11 says, "For Moses said, 'Honor your father and your mother, and whoever speaks evil of father or mother must be put to death.' But you say, 'If anyone tells his father or mother, "Whatever benefit you might have received from me is Corban,"' that is, an offering devoted to God." So these Pharisees were promoting taking what the children had saved up to give to their parents and take care of their parents in old age, and saying, "You know, it's okay if you want to just say that's Corban.

Well, here to discuss this topic with us today, we welcome Steve Herzig.

He is a retired vice president of North American Ministries for the Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry, the author of Jewish Culture and Customs, and writes for Israel My Glory magazine.

He is a sought-after conference speaker as well.

Steve, thank you so much for joining us here on Crosstalk.

And I wanna tell you that that's m- this misunderstanding of who God is, is by no means a new thing.

King David, a king found in the Old Testament, the left-hand side of your Bibles, where, uh, is one of the most tradition- uh, Jewish traditions, most revered kings.

And here's someone that could have had this kind of understanding.

Yes, he had profound experiences as a kid, as he was separated, anointed, called to be the future king of Israel.

You know, Canada's probably three to 5% Jewish, right? But that doesn't mean you're gonna move into like Ontario and say, okay, everyone, we're gonna ethnically cleanse you.

You know, there was a way to immigrate to Palestine, And build up a Jewish culture there.

And nobody, certainly the Palestinians and the Ottomans who ruled over it and the Arab monarchs, they didn't object to that.

What they objected to was what we've seen.

I mean, no matter how fancy you were and went to Yale or whatever the equivalent was in the Russian Empire, of course, it was very hard for people to get admission to universities in the Russian Empire.

But, you know, there was nonetheless this rising class of urban Jews who had been educated and who knew, you know, who were Polish speakers or Russian speakers or Hungarian speakers.

But Tomaras understands that they're speaking Russian in order to make a point about they're setting themselves off from what he sees as the sources of Jewish culture and from the actual Jewish people, who are, of course, Yiddish-speaking people.

And then this goes all the way into the Israeli state.