B"H

Living in Tzfat, the world capital of pseudo-Kabbalah for the last five hundred years, I can attest to the fact that there are Jews who are descended from the Berberim, and/or are culturally related to them, who would put the heathen to shame for lack manners of basic civilization. Those are the very same Jews who have influenced Jewish mysticism with their "shchur" (black magic) and have made fortunes from the pseudomysticism business. The Ramba"m himself warned against these same Jews in a missive to his son Avraham, yet they themselves would 'kidnap' the Ramba"m and claim them as their own. In uncharacteristically derogatory terms the Ramba"m writes to his son Avraham ben Moshe:
"Seek company only with our beloved brethren the Sephardim, who are
called Andaluzios, for they have sense and prception and a clear
brain...You should always be extremely cautious of the people who
live between Tunis and Alexandria and also who live in the mountains
of Barbary, for they are more stupid in my opinion than other men,
although they are very strong in faith." These are the forbears of
the Jews who fashioned what is known today as the "Kabbalah" after
the Ar"i died.

We did not revolt against the Romans for 'political' reasons. The
unbearable taxes that they levied against us tempted consider
compromising moral purity. Whether their tax structure was designed
to force non-Roman populations to their knees in front of the gods in
addition to incurring dread terror is a matter of debate. What
cannot be debated is, de facto, in order to survive we had to make a
decision between the demands of Torah and the demands of the Romans.
The Judaism of the Tzdokim (Sadducees) was accepted by the Romans
because it was a Judaism of capitulation - much like Reform Judaism
and some of the branches of Conservaive Judaism today is favored by
Western Gentiles. We see then that religious hegemony utilizing
economics and vice versa is no new phenomenon.

The Romans were in no wise tolerant of true Judaism. They threw a
few scraps at the sycophants in order to tempt our People. The Romans
were not tolerant of a religion that valued Justice as the higest
virtue - not beauty, not power, not lineage, not even knowledge -
Justice is the utmost virtue in Judaism and every good trait in a
person flows from this source.

An interlocutor wrote: It is only when Constantine becomes emperor that Jews
truly come
under fire, not from the pagans, but from the Christians.

I answer incredulously: Where did you get this from???!!! Even the
Christians wouldn't say something like this.

He wrote: The Romans were not
interested in making Jews into any other religion. They just didn't
accept the Jewish "political" revolt.

I answer: The Jews were singled out for a brutal tax structure
because it was the Roman program to break our spirit of social
justice.

The Romans were very admiring of the Jewish
religion, and they were particularly entranced by it when the Jews
into the diaspora and brought their religious practices into various parts
of the empire. Philo, whom Doreen mentioned, lived in Roman Alexandria,
and was very infuential among people of learning and that he was Jewish was
a plus, not a negative. Jews were very well accepted and liked, except for
the sedition.

I answer: Jews like Philo were "well recieved" even as the
Rothchilds and the Sassons are "well recieved". They tout Judaism -
but they worship gold and silver.

He wrote:
There is only one metaphysics,
although it is expressed in what seems in an infinite number of ways
throughout the world. Hence, the principal understandings of the
divine of the ancient Indo-Aryans, for example, are in accord with the
ancient Jews.

I answer: Here you begin to contradict your condemnation of
religious hegemony and the fungibility of that which is sacred to the
religions. No, its's not all the same. I can relate to Buddhism
because its first and foremost purpose is to eradicate suffering from
the phenomenal world. I can most certainly relate to the Souls who
having attained enlightenment choose not to enter Nirvana and
reincarnate until the last Soul will become enlightened. I can relate
to the Hinduism/Sufism of Kabir. When I hear about the the tra-la-la
super-sensual worship of Krishna and think about the children in
India who have been mutilated by the people they were sold to in
order to make them more pitiful beggars in the streets, I become
sick to my stomach.

He wrote: That is truly incompatible with any religious belief whose view is that
prayer, action, ritual, and obedience to law is virtue, i.e., practically
all religions.

Doreen answers: It is written by Mikhah HaNavi (Mica The Prophet) of
blessed memory, "It said to you Human, what is good and what HaShem
demands of you to do righteously and to love loving-kindness and to
walk humbly with your God."

(By the way, for those of you who don't understand why I refer to
HaShem as "It", in the Hebrew there is no pronoun before the verb
"said".)

Rabbi Akiva teaches: "Love your fellow as yourself, this is the all-
encompassing principle of the Torah."

Those whose hearts are completely saturated in this knowledge and
whose wills are utterly nullified except to do these commandments
know how to understand all of the other commandments which are
contained in these.

With blessings,
Doreen Dotan