[Religious Dietary Laws]

Okay, but seriously, how do you explain the success of Islam? It has dietary laws that are roughly as restrictive as those of Judaism. Yet it seems to be roughly as successful as Christianity at expansion and conversion.

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.

[Religious Dietary Laws]

Did the Christians figure something out that the rest didn't?

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.

[Religious Dietary Laws]

Found the below from a Google search on the topic:

Dietary Laws

Highlights of the world's major religions:

• BUDDHISM: Eating of fish and meat is allowed, but vegetarianism is encouraged.

• CHRISTIANITY: A few denominations may not eat meat with visible blood. Some denominations restrict diet during Lent.

• HINDUISM: Most Hindus are vegetarians. Cows are sacred and eating of beef is forbidden, although milk consumption is allowed.

• ISLAM: Similar to kosher; no pork, blood, animals found dead, or food sacrificed or offered to idols.

• JUDAISM: Kosher laws forbid eating of pork, reptiles and shellfish, and mixing of meat and dairy; require ritual slaughter.

[Religious Dietary Laws]

(Nickn @ Jan 1 2003, 06:03 PM)

Another observation from the country boy.

NYC/NJ Jews *rule* this site. Quite clear from this thread. OTC was trashed, and along with it the "America" thread which devolved into this same sort of thing. We now have a substitute.

Admin - how many cooks of Arab background (or from any other) that feel that people of the Jewish persuasion *rule* here will be willing to share their recipes or stories at this website. You want to build this into the #1 worldwide food site? You're gonna have to do better. Getting rid of OTC was a good step. Getting rid of stuff like this should be the next.

Nick

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?

[Religious Dietary Laws]

Goebbels, Nazi Minister of Propaganda, noted:

"The Fuhrer is deeply religous, though completely anti-Christian. He views Christianity as a symptom of decay. Rightly so. It is a branch of the Jewish race... Both [Judaism and Christianity] have no point of contact to the animal element, and thus, in the end, they will be destroyed. The Fuhrer is a convinced vegetarian, on principle. His arguments cannot be refuted on any serious basis. They are totally unanswerable."

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.

[Religious Dietary Laws]

There are various diets that are pitched in such extreme terms that they come across to me as quasi-religious, such as the Atkins diet, the Carbohydrate Addict's Diet, etc. There are also those dietary schemes where meetings, classes, and other sorts of gatherings are involved, such as Weight Watcher's -- this seems to fit quite neatly into the continuum of religion if you accept that things like AA are essentially religious organizations minus the specific Judeo-Christian deity. Then there are the various strains of activism, like PETA and also those wildlife protection people who hand out the wallet cards saying what species you should and shouldn't eat. It is no coincidence, I think, that such campaigns achieve particular traction among lapsed Jews, Catholics, etc., who no longer obey the religious restrictions they were raised with. Sublimation, baby.

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.

[Religious Dietary Laws]

Do you see any meaningful distinction between religious and secular dietary restrictions?

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.

[Religious Dietary Laws]

To clarify: I hope what you are confirming is that some people feel and act this way. As long as you are willing to accept that plenty of other similarly situated people don't feel or act that way at all, I'm okay with your comment.

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.

[Religious Dietary Laws]

But many orthodox would consider you an inferior Jew, and some of them wouldn't even consider you a Jew.

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.

[Religious Dietary Laws]

The late 18th-early 19th century movement for Jewish enlightenment and emancipation had as its goal the integration of Jews into western European society. Their slogan was be a Jew at home and a man on the street.

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

[Religious Dietary Laws]

That god would impose nonsensical rules on them only makes their belief that more unbelievable to me when looking at it from the perspective of sheer logic.

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.

But the so called God quoted above comes across as a demented lunatic whose sole purpose is to be worshipped and revered. Why people still believe in THAT God, I do not know as he is clearly an anthropomorphic invention.

Bingo.

[Religious Dietary Laws]

"If in spite of this you do not listen to me and still defy me, I will defy you in anger, and I myself will punish you seven times over for your sins. Instead of meat you shall eat your sons and your daughters. . . . I will pile your rotting carcasses on the rotting logs that were your idols, and I will spurn you. . . . I will scatter you among the heathen, and I will pursue you with the naked sword; your land shall be desolate and your cities heaps of rubble. . . . And I shall make those of you who are left in the land of your enemies so ridden with fear that, when a leaf flutters behind them in the wind, they shall run as if it were the sword behind them; they shall fall with no one in pursuit."

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

[Religious Dietary Laws]

I'd like to say that the big question here is why people still adhere to dietary rules that do not make sense anymore?

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.

But the real question is why do people believe in god?

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.

[Religious Dietary Laws]

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.