SteveSilver.net

She could turn her poison pen on George Bush, I'm pretty sure that would kill her Fox News bookings.

Are you kidding me? What in the world is anti-Semitic about what she said? Christians believe that if everyone converted the world would be a better place. What's wrong with believing that if all people believed like you do, everyone would be better off?

Judaism believes that if all people believed in monotheism the world would be a better place. That means we believe that Hinduism or any form of idol worship should cease to exist.

This has nothing to do with Ann Coulter. This is about tolerance for peoples religions and all people who are castigating her are the ones who are being intolerant.

Isn't tolerance a two-way street? Is it not intolerant of my Judaism for a Christian to believe that I'm less than ideal, that I have to be fixed, and then to harass me about not being a Christian?

Coulter can have her beliefs, and I respect her right to have them. But it crosses a line when she tries to impose her beliefs forcefully on others.

Judaism "believes" that Judaism is not a religion for the masses. You do not have to be Jewish to have a share in the world-to-come. In fact, non-Jews exist in our world-to-come. Yes, universal recognition of the sovereignty of one God is the basic prerequisite of our messianic era, but anyone, of any persuasion, can choose to observe God's commandments and receive the spiritual benefits inherent in them. You don't have to be converted, and we don't actively convert.

That's tolerance.

@jabbett: in your opinion, would I be better off practicing Judaism?

If not, why not? Am I not worthy? Or is Judaism not good enough and/or right for everyone?

As a Christian, I happen to believe that Christianity is good enough for everyone; it is "a religion for the masses."

That's all Ann was saying.

And as soon as I saw, "transcript provided by Media Matters" the rest was suspect & most likely out-of-context given their track record.

In that the Torah which God bestowed upon Moses at Mt. Sinai is essentially a blueprint for how the universe works, and thus how to extract the most benefit from the world God created, I'd say that Judaism offers the most direct formula for developing a relationship with God. (Bottom line, that's the goal of religion.)

But God commanded Jews to be a nation of priests, and a light among the nations. That's not meant to be chauvinistic, simply that we have a role, as a decidedly small nation, to convey God's fundamental morality to the world. In this way, Christianity and Islam, born from Judaism, play a critical part in communicating that message to the farthest parts of the earth. (Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote very eloquently on this subject, drawing on material from 15th-century philosopher/physician Moses Maimonides.)

God doesn't speak exclusively to Jews, he speaks through them. And as a result, in the last few millenia, we've witnessed the utter elimination of Rome and Greece's moral excesses (e.g. infanticide, human sacrifice, killing for sport) in favor of justice, equality, universal education, and social responsibility. (Those weren't invented by Thomas Jefferson.)

Coulter's spirituality is laudable, and while her TV spat is far from antisemitic, it's just not respectful. There is a world of a difference between saying "my religion is good enough for everyone" and "my religion is the only one good enough for anyone."

I'm not even a little offended.

"There is a world of a difference between saying "my religion is good enough for everyone" and "my religion is the only one good enough for anyone.""

But therein lies the key difference between the universalistic missionary faiths--Christianity and Islam yes, but also Buddhism at least as originally conceived, and Zoroastrianism--and everyone else. Those faiths have "my religion is the only one good enough for everyone" at their core. For their adherents to actively seek to convert the entire world isn't bigotry: it's being true to the tenets of their religion, which basically says (more or less, and in very simplified terms) everyone who doesn't is screwed, so the missionary impulse can be ascribed to altruism.