WARNER ROBINS, Ga. — A Warner Robins teacher is accused of threatening to behead a student after she made a comment about his Israeli flag, according to the Houston County Sheriff’s Office.

  • Pipoca@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Nations aren’t considered gods, and flags aren’t idols of those non-gods. You don’t sacrifice goats to the flag, or burn incense for it.

    Judaism has historically looked at Christian beliefs and practices with way, way more suspicion of polytheism and idolatry than it’s ever looked at national flags.

    The teacher here is unhinged, but you clearly don’t really know very much about the ten commandments, especially from a Jewish context.

    • masquenox@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Nations aren’t considered gods

      Oh really? Children aren’t brainwashed into worshipping the classical liberal nation-states they are born into with religious-like reverance?

      Really?

      You don’t sacrifice goats to the flag,

      No, we sacrifice people to them. Do tell, Clyde - how many USians have sacrificed themselves to “defend America” in the past couple of decades?

      Judaism has historically looked at Christian beliefs

      Oh, I see Jewish people everywhere being very suspicious of your precious nationalist religion… and it’s not a new thing, either.

      • Pipoca@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Yes. Children do not literally worship their nation-state with literal religious reverence. No rabbi would tell you that the ten commandments are about prohibiting metaphorical sacrifices to metaphorical religions.

        No rabbi would say that saying that someone “worships money” turns their wallet into an alter and their job into idol worship. Religiously, it’s just a metaphorical turn of phrase.

        Maimonides, probably the most influential rabbi of the middle ages, explicitly called Christians idolaters. The trinity isn’t precisely considered polytheistic; the Hebrew term is shituf.

        Can you find a single rabbi who would call volunteering to join a military and dying at war halachically prohibited human sacrifice to the nation-as-god or flag-as-idol?

        And where exactly did I call myself a religious nationalist? I’m just saying that your argument that the term is an oxymoron is idiotic and betrays a deep ignorance of the religion. I mean, you couldn’t even quote the right commandment - in Judaism, the first item on the ten commandants is “I am the lord your God”, which makes your argument a complete non sequitur.