Max

You have to look at the conditions that the "converts" are living in to understand the success of conversion. The US was deathly afraid of communism in the 50s and 60s because it appealed to the people living in countries where they were oppressed, poor, disease ridden and sucked dry by their rulers. The same conditions apply to the countries where Islam is taking hold. Add the US as "satan" and you have a potent formula for converts. You can't separate religious mass movements from geopolitics and socio-economics. Christianty, when it took hold in Europe in the midddle ages, was the instrument of the kings and nobility to gain control of the peasant masses. The relationship between the crown and the head of the church was ineluctable.

Yup. Hell and eternal damnation is much more powerful than any of this no pork shit. I mean, think about it. Satan? He's a much scarier dude than anything that exists in other religions.

Found the below from a Google search on the topic:

Yo country boy. What else would you like to get rid of while you're at it? And what country is it you are a boy of?

The above speaks to my question of whether any dietary restrictions, constraints or predilictions were encouraged by the nazis. It seems it was politically correct to be a vegetarian in the Third reich.

People who have trouble controlling themselves need to hand over that control to some authority. You often find people who are trying to recover from severe drug abuse or alcoholism turn to very controlling religious orders. They take away choice and make their lives easier. The Atkins diet is not quasi-religious, but the kind of "born again" atmosphere that prevails at meetings for some groups uses the same tecniques that revival meetings use. But that is just the trappings. PETA is an example of an "extremist" group that wants to impose its values and behaiours on the general population. They would be as fascists if they had the power. If it works for the bible thumpers, it will work for any "movement" with some segment of the population. I often wonder if there were any dietary restrictions or laws promulgated by the nazis when they ruled Germany. It would be odd if there weren't, and I've never read anythng about that.

My impression has always been that the issue of religious dietary restrictions is control over people's lives by some central authority. Vivremanger makes it clear that the rigidity of dietary laws was imposed by a rabinnate that sought to consolidate their "people" and by extension, their authority over them. Secular dietary restrictions that are not part of a cult I am unclear about. What examples can you cite? Refusal to eat animal protein is the first to come to mind. People who do so for other than health reasons have some self-imposed moral constraint. Doesn't PITA try to have its values imposed on the population through legislation and social pressure.

Yes yes. I should have qualified my statement. Thank you. Some people, Not all. Surely. I suppose what is shocking to me is to hear "pious" people, people who make so much of their reverence for God speak with such ill will and venom about another person merely because they are not as "observant" as they.

Having worked with many orthodox Jews, I can confirm what Steve says. They might not say so to your face, but they hold in contempt someone who is not as "righteous" as they. On the other side, we have had a number of sporadic social contacts with highly religious (orthodox) Jews and never felt completely comfortable. We always felt like they were uncomfortable having us in their homes, so we never pursued a social relationship with them, nor they with us. There was clearly a large gulf that separated us. This is not unique to Jews, but that's what we are talking about here. Dietary restrictions are a pretty fundamental barrier to easy social realtionships, since so much of social contact revolves around food. Vivre-I agree with Steve. Thank you for that wonderfully lucid post.

The most recent manifestation of this among religious Jews is "modern orthodoxy," espoused by Norman Lamm and the leadership of Yeshiva University, among others.

But that's the point. There is no logic to it. It is a totally irrational set of behaviours. Did you ever know an obsessive compulsive who has to repeat an act over and over until they feel able to move on? Like locking the front door thirty times befoe they can leave home. That is just an extreme extension of the same mind set you are describing. The borderline between "extreme" religious observance and elements of mental illness is rather thin. Bingo.

Man oh man, I would keep really really kosher if I believed someone could do that to me.

To answer that you have to know what need or needs are being met by the behaviour. I suspect there are different needs being met among different people. Orthodox do it because they buy into the whole way of life. It defines them. Some secular Jews I know do it because of a desire to retain contact with a part of their lives that has gone; their parents or dead relatives. Others I know do it because of guilt inculcated in them from childhood. I have Jewish friends who will eat shrimp and lobster in a restaurant but not in someone's home. Go figure. Is that a rhetorical question? Most people have a need to believe something controls their lives and the world that is bigger and more powerful than they. The idea that there is no such power scares the shit out of a lot of people. They think chaos, war, mass starvation, cruelty, man's inhumanity to man would result. Or that they would be unable to stop drinking copious amounts of strawberry diet Yoohoo.

Control and eating are closely linked. Food is life or death. To the degree that a person or organization can impose restrictions or mandates over diet, they literally control one's life. It is widely believed that anorexia is brought on by desire to exert control or wrest it away from excessively controlling parents. It's very difficult to defeat someone who refuses to eat or eats so sparingly or, in fact, so grossly, that their life is threatened.