Rabbi, Matis, what is a fundamentalist Jew?

[Stand_watie]

... So yes we accept that there were miracles (Moses splitting the Red Sea) just as described.  But to call that a literal interpretation is just not right...

Rabbi (and I'd like to stress that I ask this question not as an invitation or an interest in debate over rightness or wrongness, but as an attempt to understand specifically what you believe), would you give me illustrations of portions of the Tanach that you consider valid but do not take to be literal? For example (and I'm not suggesting that you do or don't believe this, I'm simply using an example of a story that is very commonly believed not to be literal) many people, even of the Christian religion do not consider the Genesis rendition of the flood to be literal and accurate.

[The Rabbi]

No, the Flood we take to be literal.
Where you get into non-literal is more in the actual strictures.  A famous example is in Leviticus with "an eye for an eye."  Anyone who takes that literally is an "apikorus" which I am not sure how to translate but heretic comes close.  We understand that to mean monetary compensation.  And it was always understood that way.
I guess a better way of expressing it is that there is other information the actual text leaves out but we have a tradition to supplement it.  For example, a simple reading of the text would suggest that Laban is a decent enough person.  But our tradition is that he is a miserable cheating lying old man.  You wouldnt see that right away but there are hints to it.
Proper Yiddish btw would be "effen die fenster" and "er furt in sein auto."  But vindo for fenster seems to be a common Anglicising--it isnt the first time I heard it.  I had an old man from Romania tell me when he first came someone told him "ich redt ein plein Yiddish" and he didnt understand him.  He should have said "ich redt ein poshut yiddish" to mean I speak a plain Yiddish.
Then there is an archaizing tendency.  Someone else told me that diaper was diaper in Yiddish but his brother in law started using the word vimpl (which is a towel).  It was trying to make Yiddish sound less American.

[Perd Hapley]

Laban, the father of Rachel and Leah (or however their names go in Hebrew) is a lying, cheating old man?  Seems like more than a hint to me.  Of course, in the episode with Rebekah, it's not obvious at all, but I think it's fairly obvious in the later story.

[Stand_watie]

Interesting Rabbi. I read the passage a couple of times,  and if the contextual factors were right (I haven't researched it, but now I think I will) I think I could agree with your take even though I call myself a literalist. Do you know of any Jewish concordances/commentaries that do a verse by verse of the Tanach in English that you'd recommend?

I will admit that particular turn of phrase has been a thorn in my flesh before, as I frequently hear Jesus mis-quoted as demanding "an eye for an eye" when he was quoting the passage you cite, and there is reason to think even in that passage that the terminology is euphemistic.

[The Rabbi]

Interesting Rabbi. I read the passage a couple of times,  and if the contextual factors were right (I haven't researched it, but now I think I will) I think I could agree with your take even though I call myself a literalist. Do you know of any Jewish concordances/commentaries that do a verse by verse of the Tanach in English that you'd recommend?

You want the Chumash with Rashi's commentary.

[matis]

.. So in Canada, we would say, "effen de VINDEH", for "open the window" and "err furt in zine CAR"...

Didn't you say "effen de VINDEH, eh?" and "err furt in zine CAR, eh?" ?

Little Canadian joke, sorry (and I think you said you'd lived in Quebec rather than Ontario, so not even regionally appropriate)


P.S., where did you say you had lived in Canada and for how long? Just curious. My dad went to college in Hartland, New Brunswick, and some of my extended kin are originally (well originally Scotland, but "originally within the last 350 years" from Nova Scotia.

I was born and raised in Montreal, Quebec.  Left for California at age 23, and lived there for 20 years.


Actually, English speakers in Montreal (when I was there, about 35% of population), did say, "eh", pretty much like the rest of Canadians.




matis