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Secret Codes Protect Ancient Torahs
An anonymous reader writes "A story on Wired News reports the problems Jewish synagogues have protecting their Torahs from theft. The Torah scrolls, containing the five books of Moses, are hand lettered over the course of a year, are often hundreds of years old, and can sell for $50,000 or more. But Judaic law "dictates that not one character can be added to the 304,805 letters of the Torah's text", which makes them untraceable and easily sold on the black market. Rabbinic authorities have recently approved two computer-based systems to make the scrolls traceable: one takes a digital fingerprint of a Torah, a second makes microperforations in the parchment that yield a unique identifier."
The Masoretes would be proud of the preservation. I've seen the Dead Sea Scrolls digitally enhanced, so this should be very doable.
Oy!
I wonder if Open Source Software is going to be used for the security measures. I'm sure the thieves will want to know if they have the real thing instead of a cheap copy left lying about to be stolen. I'm sure the price for an authentic copy will just go up in value now.
So much for looking for a signed copy...
I bet you think you're the first person to question God.
Grouping all religions into one blanket statement is useless, as well. The evolve, just like organisms. And as we know, not all of anything "suck".
Even vacuums break at some point.
** "It's not my job to stand between the people talking to me, and the ones listening to me." -- Pego the Jerk
It doesn't solve the problem of theft. If one is stolen, it might take years to recover it, if at all. Once it is recoevered, it isn't in pristine condition anymore. More attention should be focused on solving the problem itself than making it easier to apprehend the criminals.
Oy, these Rebbes today, so unimaginitive. Whatever happened to REAL anti-theft devices for holy artifacts, like the one on the Ark of the Covenant that melted your face off?
Anyone have an idea how the Torahprints will look like?
Braille MD5 sums. No doubt this idea was the Holy Grail of cryptography.
But, a character is a character, whether it is holes punched in paper or pen and ink. I think this is cheating.
Or perhaps this is just religious dogma getting in the way of the greatest idea in secruity codes since Leonidas scrapped off the wax.
At least they didn't flush it down the toilet!
This is the first example that was found by Googling for microcalligraphy. I wonder if this technique could also be used on those works of art, which are extremely rare and expensive but also quite beautiful.
I'm surprised that's all their worth.
I mean, aren't these old manuscripts we're talking about here? Or are these modern rewritings?
Seems they could solve the problem by simply keeping them in a safe and using the buddy system, etc.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
If you consider the text of the Torah to be the body of a message being transmitted, then would not an included digital fingerprint or series of microperforations be additional data included in a header (in this case, for authentication purposes)? I know that a digital fingerprint or a series of microperforations are not precisely the same thing as adding more Hebrew characters to the body text of the Torah; but is it not conceptually possible to represent the pattern of data included in the fingerprint or the perforations within the same Unicode scheme as Hebrew characters are represented? Thus in effect would these unique authentication identifiers actually transgress the rule against adding more characters?
Max Cohen would be ashamed.
Jews have laws this tough on protecting their culture, yet they bomb the palestinans without mercy, often killing innocent bystanders and not giving a crap. Sure, they say "it is just payback", but who exactly are they paying back? Screw it... they all look alike.
Is is like the "special" law Jews have. No matter how bad the crime, they can never give the death penalty to another Jew. But they can slaughter non-jews at will.
Look at the guy who killed Rabin, he got a jail sentance because he was Jewish. BTW, the reason Rabin was assasinated was because he was close to peace, he was ready to make peace.
What makes Jews so special?
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
But can't the identification be before the holy part so while on the same physical object are different things. The law is against the alteration of the law and not a name. The Christian Bible has the same warning, as does the Koran, and they both have ID in the beginnings that does not detract from the laws.
not one character can be added to the 304,805 letters of the Torah's text", which makes them untraceable and easily sold on the black market
Just a few quick questions:
Is putting some kind of ownership label on the inside cover really 'adding to the text'? I don't think anyone would mistake "From the Library of Hiram Goldstein" as part of the actual text. Can you buy a Torah at the bookstore? If so, does it have publisher's information? Further, 'character' is pretty specific to alphabetic writing. I wonder if a Chinese idiograph or Egyptian hieroglyph count as a 'character'?
Yeah well, it's known as the first compression method...
Get your Unix fortune now!
I suppose that you could add a chemical signature to the ink.
When I bought a diamond for an engagement ring, it came with a gemprint; a card showing the stones unique identifer when light is passed through it. No two diamonds are exactly the same, so light will not pass through two diamonds the same way. Very similar to what they're doing with the torah scrolls.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
Contemplating stealing a holy text should lower the prospective thief's Karma enough that all you'd have to do would be to filter the entrance to the synagogue, yes? Easy enough to do on the forums!
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
Doesn't this sound like a good case for RFID?
Stick on a few transponders
First of all Svadt isn't so tiny and second of all I highly doubt microcalligraphy is done only there - I have several prints that are made up of microcalligraphy and this has been done for quite a few years now - somehow I doubt the idea and skill only stayed there.
15000 years from now, after the current civilization has been forgotten, some archeologist is going to dig up one of these, and discover the 'secret codes,' and see them as evidence of God or even aliens.
Now I've seen Everything
See!
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
"Hey... at least now they'll have a Safer Torah!"
/>
/>
<bah-dum-ching!
"... and if they got away with it, they'd be getting Loot of the Frum!"
<boo hissss
$ touch
Wouldn't the theif simply use an RFID sensor and check for one on the scroll before re-selling ?
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Wouldn't it be easier to, I don't know, use a modern book version that would be too cheap for anyone to bother stealing? Sheesh, dogmatists . . . . .
I had the same thought. Micro-perforations are still a form of characters.
Why not make some of the required Torah characters look slightly different in their appearance as a form of encoding? Seems like this would be easy to do and not violate the mandate of adding any characters.
Unless that sounds like characters encoded into characters. Hmm. Somehow this is reminding me of The Nine Billion Names of God.
What a sad little delusion.
Get a grip, deal with reality. Stop running away to your make believe.
The very act of putting holes (however small) that are not used for binding pieces of parchment to the other ones, might render a Torah unfit for use! As an observant Jew, I'd be a little bit skeptical about reading from one...
Keep the faith, share the code
Any alteration of the writing on the document would, in theory constitute a "new" message.
I was thinking more along the lines of them contacting the US Treasury department. They are pretty much experts at making paper "unique and identifiable". Something as simple as black fibers embedded in the paper making a barcode. In this case, "not one character" is added as it is already there.
yes we all wish life was like the movies.
your either team A or team B.
If your from team A, team B is wrong and vice versa.
Pretty easy to say everything that is good must be god and everything bad must be the devil.
If you were a god, would you really want people to worship you.
If it were me, i wouldnt want any credit for something i do thats good, helping its self is its own reward. There for we can say that the bible is written by man as its self important and egotistical.
At the end of the day, your going to defend what you feel is right and what makes you feel safe, unfortunatly for you, it doesnt mean your right.
Duh huh, duh huh... uh huhuh... eee aaaa
Who would pay $50,000 for a stolen Torah? Surely somebody that would place that much value on a book would actually have read the book and be attempting to follow the laws therein, especially the one about "Thou shalt not steal" -- or encourage others to steal! I can't beleive people could buy this without the provence of them documented, and then claim they just didn't know it was stolen.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Why didn't they put 'thou shalt not steal' on it originally - like they did - helpfully - on some other texts?
Parent comment is a slap in the face of human culture, Jewish or no, religious or no, and it has no place on Slashdot.
--An 'If I Were a Rich Man'-singing " non-Jew.
Don't feed this troll, just mod them down, please.
Who else read Torah scrolls as Trolls.
That's fine. I'll take my hedge fund money to Canada and let you pay my social security checks you uneducated little worm.
And tell your little pathetic god to solve that problem.
he can kiss my rich royal ass and so can you.
Ta ta. Dipshit.
And if I can help only one ignorant slashdotter spell "flamebait" then it's worth it.
We'll work on spelling "troll" next article...
The discussion on this board only proves in spades that the Palestinian Israeli conflict isn't the result of politics....
Its the result of stupidity.
And apparently there's plenty to go around.
Right wing Christians, anti-semites, devout Jews, propagandists, and finger pointers spouting agendas, inflammatory flamebait and half-truths.
Realize, please, all of you, that none of you represents a solution.
That at least would be a good first step.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
its not paper, its the skin from a kosher animal.
WHich really, though, opens up a better alternative - take a microscopic sample from the parchement, and then do a DNA-fingerprint of it. Put fingerprint in a database. Viola.
You are a troll. You know nothing about which you are talking about, and sound like an idiot.
Who said anything about Torah desecration in this article? It has to do with tracing stolen Torah scrolls. This is not a Bible, or a Quran, or whatever. The Torah scroll must be kosher in order for it to be used in all Jewish rituals. Again, nobody is claiming it was desecrated or flushed or anything... Is it, or isn't it according to the word of G-d? Simple as that...
Who is expecting you to fall over, not me, not the Jewish community, who is? And you must think alot of yourself to call other peoples beliefs 'fairy tales'. You must be one SMART DUDE!!!
Check your facts before you open your dumb mouth...
Michael A. Uman
Sr Software Engineer
softwaremagic.net
It's not very PC to call religious folk "loony" -- after all, if the Jews had fallen in with every popular idea, where would they be today, and where would the Bible be -- but you make a good point. We can transcribe every document onto multiple formats today. Still, some last better than others. My family has black and white photos from the 1940s and 1950s that still look good today; we have color photos from the 1960s that are fading and VCR home movies from the 1980s that none of us can look at because our VCR is busted, and we've moved to DVD.I've seen TV programs about all the trouble it takes to keep the original Declaration of Independence from crumbling. What remains? It's hard to beat the Rosetta Stone for one of the most useful and enduring documents ever written/carved.
Handmade documents deserve a certain aura of respect. Have you ever seen the Book of Kells in Dublin? Think of what it took to make an illuminated manuscript. I have worked on
Web sites and several newspapers, and they are ephemeral. What remains?
The only written communication Jesus is recorded as making was something he wrote with a stick in sand. Wouldn't you like to know what he wrote?
Well, the code may be the same, but only because they destroyed all the copies but one.
:)
And it STILL hasn't stolved the problem of a rift among the developers. Several of them got into fights over who really owned the source code and they've been having bitter IP disputes over it ever since as to who the true heir to it should be.
Besides, they still haven't worked out some of those jihad problems. So it's always best to stay one release or so behind and keep with something more stable. Granted, that doesn't mean problem free, but most (but not all) of the really violently horrible errors are gone from it by now and it's considerably more peaceful. Whereas this new version completely takes over your system and violently refuses to uninstall, no matter whether you've changed your mind or not. And changing your mind afterwards can be *really* painful with all those fatal exception errors and such.
Just a friendly warning
But barcodes are a new message as well.
I guess they'd have to go with the digital fingerprints. No alteration, period. It sounds like a very promising method...
Except that the skin is from multiple animals. (not multiple KINDS, but more than one animal). Have you ever seen a torah scroll? They're HUGE (and I don't think I'll volunteer to be the holder - it's always the brawny guy who has to do that at my shul).
Although, your idea has merit - just collect samples from pages X, Y, and Z, and make that into a database..
. Define sqrt(x) as something really evil like (x / rand()), and bury it deep. Watch your coworkers go nuts.
Torah! Torah! Torah!
Err, humm, yeh!
Well *I* Thought it was funny!
You *do* realize that the Torah is the same as the first five books of the Christian Bible right?
Calling the Torah "toiletpaper" is the same as calling the Bible "toiletpaper".
Someone should call RMS. The Ancient Torahs aren't compatible with the FDL
C-x C-s C-x k
>Religion sucks.
Religion begins as a set of prescribed and proscribed behaviors which, overall, would have been observed as increasing the size of the tribe.
What better way to get people not to shit where they eat, or to understand that fucking leads to babies, or to instill a basic system of law and order, than to make the people believe it dogmatically. It does not necessarily even require a God -- an oral system with medicine people and storytellers can work just as well.
But once you have your peasant class believing in a divine mandate from a supreme deity, then your behaviors that are codified into law will start to enforce themselves, over many generations, without a need for a managed political heirarchy.
Unfortunately, a system that begins innocently enough (wash your hands before delivering babies, don't eat raw pork), can be amended to enforce a corrupt political ideal.
I'm not saying that happened in any particular religion, but I'm satisfied with the basic premise that it could have happened.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
All the commandments are inter-woven;
"Thou shalt not steal" is equally applicable as "Thou shalt not kill." I always thought killing is same as stealing life.
The trend I see today is people blaming the tool or weapon used to kill someone; or saying a martyr isn't the tresspasser violating the no-killing commandment. We all should be thankful the CIA or whoever it is has not yet decided to telefrag all of us with mooshy Oranges by that secret technology they're concealing. So they install non-trustworthy dictators in a weak state on a hurt country, let them kill eachother ye ol' fassioned way, and with a telepathic suggestion to a bigger asshole they send brute-force attacks to all the ports of that country. I'm not impressed, but the cadence I've uncovered with country and politics is beautiful.
without prejudice
"And the educated have always had more sex, money, power and influence."
I'm quite certain the uneducated have more sex. Those in the ruling classes always have more societal structures in place, that are aimed at *preventing* sex.
The money, power and influence parts, I won't argue with. But peasants definitely have more sex.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Where was Da Vinci when they really needed him?!
Did anyone else read this as "Secret Codes Protect Ancient Torrents"?
"The Bible Code" ... "The Torah Code"...
I wonder what the Big Guy would think of that...
Could you just take a really high resolution photograph of it? Doesn't everyone have different handwriting? Or are all of them meant to look the same?
FEAR IS YOUR ONLY GOD!!
Discuss.
I've read my Holy Bible through and through. All the commandments, testimony, and truth that can be absorbed is written on my heart.
If I was in a forest with my backpack of different Bibles, and with a horrible case of God the Father knows what coming out of my ass every hour, I would joyfully use that Zondervan Press NIV Holy Bible to whipe on my ass. That musta been why God sent it to me, amidst more concistent Bibles. The reason is I compared their bastardization of Isaiah 14 and Revelation 22 to the King James 1611 Authorized Version transcription of those. Also, KJV 1611 AV is true public domain, whereas Zondervan Press NIV is corporate copyright on scriptures that amounts no less than theivery. I'll whipe my ass on that Zondervan Press corporate Bible any day, and I'll be singing my favorite Psalm 127 as I do it.
without prejudice
The first thing a religious person does, is to throw away reason with everything involving their religion. Religion is based on faith, and can't accept any reasoning that goes against it.
You couldn't add an RFID to the scroll itself, although it might be possible to add it to the Atzei Hayyim (wood staves) on which the scroll is wound.
-David Barak
Need Geek Rock? Try The Franchise!
Did the Germans bomb Pearl Harbor?
+1 insightful/underrated. Why is it such a taboo to criticize bullshit cultural relics?
Transcend Humanity. Please.
Just to make sure we're not going to be insensitive about this: flushing down a Torah would be like really really bad?
I think this is an example of just going too far in the slavish devotion to tradition. Much like the automated elevators they have in Israel, which - on certain days - travel to every floor so the occupants don't have to push the floor button, which means they don't have to use a machine, which means they don't have to do work. If that's not going to extremes, I don't know what is!
It says "Be sure to drink more Ovaltine."
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
... I think the decline of Judaism occured when the really cool curses stopped happening. What happened to threats like "if you touch this, you will surely die." or "if you go into the holiest of holies and you're not a priest, you're dead shit."
I for one miss religions that had hardcore swift divine justice. Nowadays, all they have are threats of the after life, or bad karma, or whatever equivalent. Big deal. I wanna see fire come from the sky, locust plagues, etc... otherwise your religion is boring.
$50,000 or more is for a Torah that is used every day. A truly ancient e.g. more than 5 or 6 hundred years old scroll or a Torah from eastern Europe before 1800 would literally be priceless. Pick a large number, double it, add 4 zeros, double it again.
Theft is not a huge problem but it is a problem because scrolls are so expensive and some shuls simply can't afford them. So they look for one of questionable provenance. Also scrolls do wear out and have to be buried and replaced eventually.
what about those chemical barcode flakes? years ago i saw something about them being used to mark explosives for tracking, microscopic flakes which contain different patterns of colors when inspected under a microscope, just spray them on with an adhesive? I'm not Jewish so would that be acceptable for a Torah scroll?
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
What could be more extensible than the original five books of Moses? They've been extended to dozens or hundreds of fully realized religious texts, and their internal objects are in reuse through metaphore in nearly every spoken language and nearly all literature.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
That confused me too. If you want to see the parent article, click the child's article number so you're just viewing that, and hit the "parent" link.
Except that DNA analysis requires a sample of the parchment to be destroyed. When you have a several-hundred-year-old document you cannot afford to remove a little bit off it each time you want to test its authenticity. And given that the sample could easily be contaminated by anyone who might have handled it you may need quite a large sample.
when Christ went to eat with the publicans and sinners
If you feel a need to make a distinction between sinners and publicans, you obviously don't know many publlicans.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
The $50K value is for a new one. People pay less for older or damaged ones, and for the same reason that people will try to pay $300 for a "brand new iMac G5" you'll get people who will pay $20K for a Sefer of unknown provenance... :(
-David Barak
Need Geek Rock? Try The Franchise!
hell was having to spend all eternity with his nagging mother. Of course, I think everybody thinks their ethnic peoples have the most nagging busy-body mothers!
I bet they believe the words are from God too.
Can you prove otherwise?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
*I put "temple" in quotes because according to some interpretations there have only been two temples, and both have been destroyed, except for one remaining wall in Jerusalem.
A Black Market for Torahs? That has to be one of the strangest things I've ever heard of...
Of course it would play nicely into my Cops parody skit Rabbis
Yitzak 511, we have a non-kosher bagel in progress on the corner of Sherbrooke & St. Denis, please send backup for a minyan.
XML is a known as a key material required to create SMD: Software of Mass Destruction
304,805 letters? That's only 1.15e-15 libraries of congress!
Ok, so I made that number up. What's the real number?
The Torah, and other religious works, should be saved in some form.
However, with that said, if we are ever to advance beyond our current barbarisms, we must realize these works of religion for what they are...myths. Religion has inspired many people to do good. Within most of the worlds "great" religions, and most of the lesser ones, lie messages of peace, hope, and goodwill for our fellow man. However, some of the darkest periods in history were results of, or were instituted by, so-called "religious" people, acting upon supposedly "higher" orders, or so they thought.
Mod me down as "flamebait" if you wish, it doesn't change the facts of the matter...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
The difference being most people feel the need to force their view of religion on others to prove they're not wrong and there for continue to feel safe in their shell of protection.
Those of us who are still able to be nice people and make a positive influence on the world without religion are open to unlimited possibilities with minds that are not narrowed by the beliefs of those centuries ago.
Turns out they were written by a few people, which explains the redundancy. Check out "Who Wrote the Bible?" by Richard E. Friedman to see what scholars have learned.
God just told me those are not his words. Can you prove otherwise?
You're so sure of your insane lies portraying Jews as atheists that you post as Anonymous Coward. It's obvious that it is you who does not believe in god, or at least not in a righteous one. You speak in god's name, but don't even have the courage to use a flimsy Slashdot user ID. Anyone else reading your racist lies should immediately be able to tell what you are. And that the "future purpose" to which you allude, the popular racist fantasy of the gory sacrifice of Jews in an apocalypse, is the hallmark of the rest of you deranged Christian Taliban buying up such godporn as the sick "Left Behind" series. Which goes right along with your giveaway line slandering Catholics. Every generation has its excuse for people hating Jews, rather than themselves, for "betraying god". Yours are not new, but they're still disgusting. When you admit the truth, that you're covering up your fear of burning in hell by finding a surrogate in the Jews, you'll have at least a chance at salvation. Without that, you're just a sick fool lying about things you can't understand.
--
make install -not war
Sure, its on a single page alright.... its a scroll!
Patent: from Latin patere, to be open
If I understand the tradition correctly, an individual can buy and use an inexpensive printed, mass-produced copy of the Torah, even a bi-lingual one that puts a page of Hebrew next to an English translation. No problem.
But a synagogue or temple has to own a hand-written exact copy of the Torah on parchment rolls, for use in worship services. The rabbi is to read to the congregation from a perfect hand-made copy of the Torah. If he wants to elaborate on it, or translate it into English or whatever is the local language, fine, but he always needs to quote the real thing in the original language from an authoritative copy.
In contrast, in Christian churches, the pastor or priest can read to the congregation from whatever translation or paraphrase of the original Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic that the congregation wants to use. The congregation will never hear the original Hebrew and Greek, and it's not considered important that they learn those languages. The exception is the Greek Orthodox Church, in which the Old and New Testaments are read aloud in a Greek translation (old testament) and in the original Greek (new testament).
In the Catholic Church, worldwide, for hundreds of years they only used a translation of the old and new testaments into Latin. Only forty years ago they decided to use translations in whatever the local language of the congregation is.
In the Hebrew tradition, there are a small number of scribes whose careers consist of making new perfect hand-written copies of the Torah for new synagogues and to replace worn-out ones, which are solemnly destroyed once it is confirmed that they are replaced by a proper hand-written replacement.
In this fashion the Jews have made sure that the original text of the Torah has not changed at all for several millenia. The very oldest fragments of written Torahs only differ from the ones made in this generation by a few alternate spellings of place names.
It doesn't make much sense to us in the information age, but it's worked for thousands of years, and there is no similar body of literature or group of documents from antiquity which has survived intact, without editorial changes or typos, like the Torah has.
All of the works of philosophy and theater written from 3,000 to 2,00 years ago in ancient Greece or the Roman Empire which we have today are known only from copies that date to the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance. And these copies have obviously suffered some alteration and editing by the scribes that copied them thousands of years after they were composed. We have no way of knowing or proving if the words of Socrates that we find printed today bear any actual resemblance to what Socrates wrote 2,500 years ago (or however long it was). Not so the Torah!
This is quite an achievement. That's why the tradition of hand-copying the Torah and only accepting perfect copies for corporate worship and study will continue.
You gotta respect those Jews. They got it right and they kept it right, across millenia and unbelievable historical, political and cultural changes, and a diaspora that took them out of Palestine and all over the globe.
You really should come out here to NYC to explain that bit to me. Let me know when you'll be dropping by with your "real god", and we'll see how well it works for you. Because I can see all kinds of bugs in your install of "christianity" - especially that "tolerance" vaporware.
--
make install -not war
a slap in the face of human culture? That would be daytime television. Fight the real enemy--Dr. Phil.
It's the 28 anti-semites!!
From the article:
/. article there will be a huge underground movement to break The Code -- (the "Da Vinci" part semi-assumed ;-) )
The 3.5- by 8-inch template resembles an IBM punch card, with eight holes arranged so their position relative to one another describes a unique identification number in a proprietary code.
Though maybe after this
Paul B.
On the Somethingawful photoshops. That was a great photoshop. The Cask of Amontillado photoshop was also good.
Attention Fortunado! Amontillado!
um it's like 5am here... I did'nt read the post I replied to very well... ... the fact I dont agrea with many things to do with Israel has nothing to do with the general plight of the jewish people, and also nothing to do with the thread in general.
Personaly I dont know what got the jews through their terrable ordeals, maybe it was religion, maybe it was the fact that they are a people with strong famaly ties
I'm going to bed now.
Its morons who live in Kansas who believe in devolution, or these idiots who believe in 3,000 year old fiction that's about as real as anything L'Ron Hubbard wrote.
You want to ignore the giant elephant in the room? Fine. But stop spreading fairy tales unless you're prepared to include the tooth fairy as well.
This discussion is as logical as talking about Santa Claus, the bogeyman or some 900 year old dude who got his wee-wee sliced at 100 and who split the water in two.
Why is it ok to laugh at idiots like Travolta and Cruise but we humour the simpletons who take these fairy tales seriously?
Fsck! We have a whole state dedicated to just one sect (Utah), so I guess I shouldnt be surprised, we have a high tolerance for imbecility in this country.
dom
Some of the comments here prove the American race is biggoted and narrow-minded. Just like the desecration of the Qou'ran by American war mongers we see the imperialist views of this race imposed on others.
kinda off subject, but why is moses always affiliated with the jewish? I mean, christians believe in the old testament too.
http://illhostit.com/ - Webhosting
Minor issue: it wasn't the land of Palestine. That's a British name. It was the land of Israel in the Torah, and since nobody has been able to prove something that is older, that is the name that should be accepted. The Romans scattered the Jewish people (IIRC), thus starting the diaspora. Around 5,000 years later the British came up with the name Palestine and it has stuck in our modern minds...
Well-poisoning Christ-killers
I went back in time and wrote the goddamn Torah myself... can YOU prove otherwise?
I can't believe "can you prove otherwise" was modded up... for fuck's sake.
not one character can be added to the 304,805 letters of the Torah's text
So just add two or more characters. One character wouldn't be that helpful in uniquely identifying the scroll anyway.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
Funny, I thought people with blind faith sounded like idiots. Especially those who claim to be such wonderful, generous, helpful-to-all folks like I was expected to be when I was raised. That person may "sound like an idiot" and not be "one SMART DUDE" and have a "dumb mouth" but at least maybe he'll make it into the Kingdom of Heaven.
Forget it. He's rolling.
From what I've read, the scrolls are made from animal skins. Couldn't you just start a DNA bank of the skins? That would eliminate the adding character issue.
"...dictates that not one character can be added to the 304,805 letters of the Torah's text..."
:)
how about two?
Since we're on the topic of races, I thought I'd point out a few things (these are very offtopic, but when I learned them I found them interesting):
1) the original concept of races was what we would presently consider cultures -- the Irish race, the French race, etc.
2) the evolutionists were the primary ones who taught race as a biological concept. The Origin of the Species was subtitled something likeThe Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for life.
3) eventually Darwin and others classified a few major "races" of man: australoid, mongoloid, negroid, and caucasoid, each being a varied amount of evolved from our simian ancestors, with the australoids most like animals and caucasoid being the highest evolved creature.
4) The law which was in contest during the scopes monkey trial DID NOT outlaw teaching evolution. The only thing it outlawed was teaching the evolution OF MAN (which was, as you can see, very racist). The specific book that was in contention taught those races, AND taught that white people (caucasoids) were the highest evolved of them.
5) If you ever wonder why our parents and especially our grandparent's generations were so entrenched in racism, it was it was taught as part of evolution in their biology textbooks. In fact, the Bronx zoo even had a Pygmy from Africa on display in a cage with a monkey to demonstrate "primitive" ancestry. Likewise, Australian aborigines were often hunted for their skulls to be sold to museums.
6) It turns out that the Bible is right, and that human ancestry can be traced back to a biological bottleneck about 6,000 years ago, known as mitochondrial Eve.
It's too bad that many people, including many in the Church, decided to believe man over the Bible in this area (which teaches we are all relatives), and to see how much destruction this has caused to lives worldwide.
On the subject of Torah's, I always thought that the way that they were made was cool -- you often had three different people writing it: one writes the consonants, one writes the vowels, and a third writes the margin notes (called the masura). Sometimes this is done by one individual, but I just think it's interesting how the different layers are laid down.
Engineering and the Ultimate
Actually the Talmud dictates exactly how the characters are written, to the extent that even in a few places a letter is written larger or smaller.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
There are strict rules about how the torah is written for good reason. Otherwise, someone would be able to alter it, and then politicize it as many have done with various bible "translations".
Even adding details can cause problems. Since once something is considered holy, every detail starts to matter. Someone could easily add a "stenographric" addition, and then reinterpret that as a bible code serving some political end. Preserving the original in its original form makes it more difficult to manipulate the text. People can always go back to the source text, and find out what it really says.
since these aren't the originals anyway, why not just put them in pdf or make some kind of high-quality prints? is the text not the most imporant part? it's like paying thousands for picaso painted by someone else. perhaps it's a system to make sure the haves are always truly "holier than thou". many religions have a lot of built-in things to ensure power for the religious elite. i guess these guys never heard of guttenburg.
Actually,Xmas is wiccan.Look up yule.The catholics stole it when they were converting pagans and added a christ element.I had to write this as my sister is a wiccan and hates when people think it's a christian holiday. I think all religion is for scaring peasants,Personally. And thanks for getting rid of the craptcha.As someone who has trouble seeing those things,I thank You.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
This is one of the most tired and twisted criticisms I've heard of Judiasm. You're not the first to put it forward.
Do you understand the difference between law and case law? It exists even in the modern American legal system. When you have a law, different judges will end up interpreting that law slightly differently.
Because one of the purposes of law is to establish uniformity of judgements, each ruling sets up a precedent, which can be cited for future cases. In American law, if there are enough divergent precedents the Supreme Court will agree to hear a case in order to set a ruling which will prevent further diverse rulings by the lower courts. Jewish law worked similarly.
The talmud ( or so called 'oral law') which was being written down at the time of Jesus is case law. Jesus was not protesting the Talmud, per se. He was protesting those rulings in the talmud which 'annulled the written law.'
In other words, Jesus was a 'strict constitutionalist' who railed against judges that 'legislated from the bench' and wrote legal interpretations which violated the mosaic laws.
For example, lending at interest was prohibited under mosaic law, but Hillel effectivly allowed it. Mitigation of severe punishments was also common in the Talmud. For example, "an eye for an eye" was interpreted as demanding commesurate monetary compensation. You couldn't actually poke someone's eye out, it was ruled, because that could kill them and their blood would be on the hands of the court. There are also some very out there metaphoric interpretations of the old testament in the Talmud (like arguments that the ancient Egyptians suffered 50 or more plagues pursuing the hebrew peoples towards the red sea.)
But the Talmud is ultimatly the work of learned men and it shouldn't be taken for more than that.
Destroying case law doesn't solve anything. You'll still have a diverse range of legal judgements, or else you'll have no law at all.
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It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Is it digitally signed ?
This should make for some great arguing. :)
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It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
You're an uneducated turd-head little kid. Wicca was invented in the 1950s by Gerald Gardner, fantasy author, and is a watered-down version of the Golden Dawn system.
Take a lesson from the chinese, who still use the (multiple) thousand year old tradition of using chops. Chops are stone stamps engraved with a calligraphic rendition of person's name used to sign important documents. They are easy to make and impossible to copy, because high magnification images of the chop's imprint easily capture the engraver's movements and tiny chips and imperfections in the engraving. Perfect reproductions cannot be reproduced at this level of magnification, since each has a specific (literally set in stone) geometric relationship with the other errors. Simple image comparison software can identify the differences as well, since engravings do not produce gradients which trouble edge detection software.
The same software could be used on hand lettered torahs, where subtle soakings of the ink and paper anomalies could be imaged at extremely high resolution and saved. Making sure you got the same scroll back would be trivial, because even though someone might be able to fake paper that is the same age, and use the same ink, they cant get fibers of the paper to be in exactly the same position, and they cant ensure that the microscopic blotting of the ink is the same, much like you could never produce two inkblots on a piece of paper that couldnt be discriminated with high magnification light microscopes.
Actually, I remember from my Bar-Mitzvah that I had to sing my parshah. Although I know how to read Hebrew I didn't know how to read the musical notes which most Torahs carry.
For those unfamiliar with semitic languages such as Hebrew, the vowels are somewhat optional and are not part of the normal string of consonants. Instead, they are little marks made in various locations around the consonants. For example, a dot to the left of a character in the middle is an "ewwww" sound. Move the dot to the top of the letter and its an "oh" sound.
In addition to these vowels are various musical notes which tell you how to sing that particular passage (as a canter would). If I understand the history correctly the vowels and musical notes are not part of the "characters" (consontnats) of the Torah.
Perhaps minor variations in the musical notes could be used to signify the Torah -- or would that invalidate it. I guess one other important thing to mention is that there is some built-in redundancy in the vowels and (if I remember correctly, it was almost 20 years ago) in the musical notes. For example, a bar under a letter is an "ah" sound but so is a T-shape under a letter (althoug there may be a subtle difference in pronounciation that I'm not aware of).
A bit like a stream of data can be encoded in the less-significant bits of an image.
And for anybody interested in the non-Roman alphabets, http://www.ancientscripts.com/ is a good place to start.
If God wanted these things protected, surely He would cast a thunderbolt or whatever at the thief?
As He is God, He would ensure the thunderbolt would only get the thief and leave the Torah intact.
What about the right to make derived works?
That's almost right, but not quite.
St. Jerome translated the Old and New Testaments into the Latin Vulgate. This is the official version of Scripture for the Catholic Church. It is held to be "without doctrinal error". That means that St. Jerome might have screwed up a verb or noun, but the teachings in there are 100% correct and unaltered. Remember that the Catholic Church is not Fundamentalist, and by definition upholds Scripture and Tradition (just as the Jews do) whereas Protestantism upholds Scripture Alone; therefore an exact translation of Scripture is more important to Protestant denominations than Catholicism or Orthodox Christians.
The Catholic Church has almost always had translations into other languages - for example the Douhay-Rhiems which is contemporaneous with the King James Version. Even during the heydey of the Tridentine Mass (i.e., the Latin Mass), the Priest read the Gospel and reading in Latin during the prayer portion of the Mass, then before the Homily (i.e., Sermon) he would read it in the local language for the people to understand.
What changed 40 years ago was the language of the Mass was no longer restricted to Latin - a bad decision IMNSHO, but that's a topic for another day.
The thing to remember is that the Hebrew Alphabet is holy unto itself - a gift from G_d and used as part of Creation, as are the words of the Torah itself. They are inherently holy - something direct from G_d. The words of the Christian Bible, on the other hand, are not of the same class. They are stories, teachings, etc. that are inspired by God. There is no reason for the Christian Bible to have exact duplication of the characters unless you are of a Fundamentalist system of belief.
Though it is interesting that Apocalypse (Revelation) follows the Jewish tradition when it warns not to alter a letter of the text.
"19And if anyone takes words away from this book of prophecy, God will take away from him his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book. - Rev 22:19
I don't mean this as a shot, but there is one version of the Torah and one version of St. Jerome's Vulgate. When you look especially at Protestant Bibles, there are thousands of translations. In that sense, the Jews and the Catholic Church (as well as most Orthodox Christian Churches) have accomplished the task of protecting the meaning of their religious documents for centuries.
Berashith will always mean what it has, and In principio will always mean what it has (both mean "in the beginning"). It will never mean "5000 years ago" as some modern pseudo-Darwinist translation may say. It can have no other meaning in those languages. Partially because original Hebrew and Latin are dead languages and no new meanings can organically come from those words.
So, I agree and salute to the Jews for being true to their faith with regard to the holy words of God.
Actually, Gardner worked with Aleister Crowley on it, and Crowley stole his system from The Golden Dawn and Masonic rituals.
But Yule was certainly a pagan holiday (not Wiccan).
In actuality, neo-Pagans and Wiccans have stolen more from the true Pagans (which no longer exist in reality - look at the Cult of Mithra for example) and claimed it as their own than the Christian religions ever did.
although you're part right, Yule (and Modresnacht, Thorrablot, Widvinterblot, and the other's around that time) are Pagan, but they aren't wiccan.
Paganism and Wicca aren't interchangible terms, Hel, Wicca doesn't even fall under the Pagan umbrella. (neopaganism != paganism).
Though Xmas IS a christian holliday, it just assimilated some of the old traditions (like decorating a pine tree on Modresnacht, for example, or the relative timing over the other festivals at that time of year, and yeah, that's where the bunnies and eggs come in on easter, etc). That's how the old ways survived, and that's not rally something to get pissed off about, imo.
Yeah, how about taking a digital copy of the Mona Lisa and storing it on your computer? There are tons of digital copies. But the original is still precious to us all. Here too we're dealing with objects that represent value beyond the intellectual content alone, where the intellectual content has been digitized and backed up a million ways. Each physical vehicle is unique, kind of - not kind of, exactly - like antiques. And where tradition means a lot, jumping on the latest and greatest storage medium such as a dual layer blue laser DVD that emits a hologram may not be regarded so highly, especially if you find out that the ink in the DVD degrades after 10 years, but too late when you threw away your parchment 10 years ago thinking you got something better.
These secret codes are preventing me from making a backup copy of these Ancient Torahs! The torahs are no doubt very fragile and may be unreadable in any second. Yeah, I'm sure the original manufacturer promised they would last for a few thousand years but after that? I demand these ancients reveal their data encryption schemes to the general public! There's probably DRM evilness of some sort lurking there also. This is Slashdot after all and my rights as a athei^D^D^D^D^D religious believer of whatever are being violated.
Theres a reson the us used pens instead of pencils. Its because when you write with pencils, small shards of (conductive) grafite fall off. These then go around and around and around the space craft, until they find some rather nice control to short out..... (Pencils in space == Bad karma)
- This posting only serves to reinforce the common belief that jews are all about the money, money and money. Emphasize 50k USD Torah, while the Bible says: you got it free, you shall give it free (the Holy Spirit that is). File swappers and torrentors are the true sons of Jesus, who give free what they got for free, while RIAA is a cabal hungry for money.
- If the Torah must be hand written, its contents will neccessarily mutate by every rewrite because human hand and eye is fallible. So after some 8000 years they claim it should be full of garbage. Gutenberg was wiser than them.
kinda off subject, but why is moses always affiliated with the jewish? I mean, christians believe in the old testament too.
Yes. But the jews don't believe in the Old Testament. They believe in the Hebrew Bible (as well as the oral law, of course). Now, there is a not so subtle difference between the Old Testament and the Hebrew Bible. The name "Old Testament" implies it has been replaced by the new shiny "New Testament" and is no longer valid. Jews don't believe that. God's convenant with Abraham has no exit clause!
Having said that it is quite confusing to see a large cathedral in Amsterdam named after the lawgiver of Israel and his brother the high priest (Moses en Aaron kerk (sp?)).
Some hardware just does not run well using either of the three code distributions. Experts suspect it has to do with malfunctioning empathy circuits and quite possibly an erroneous preemtion logic.
Though a lot of good hardware is produced and can run all three version of the code well, every once in a while a few will get past the DNA QA and end up being installed in central server rooms, thus causing major downtime and risking the whole human enterprise.
Some have suggested a more decentralized configuration to avoid the effect of bad hardware and stricter empathy and preemption testing especially for any existing legacy server rooms.
Currently the Facist, Crusader and Osama Bin Laden platforms are the biggest threat.
I don't understand why there are 1 million comments to this article. Most of the comments don't have anything to do with the article.
Also, from what I understand (I'm a protestant) the letters have different numerical values, and the sums have special meanings. Isn't this why no characters can be added?
But still, every Torah can't look exactly the same? Even if the characters are the same?
I can't believe religious nonsense like this is still going on. What is so broken about mankind's self confidence that we can't take credit for our own actions? Why do we neeed to seek justification in the arms of a cult - one that everyone can see is simply invented to control the masses?
And why is the stigma of pointing out the obvious (Namely that God doesn't exist any more than the tooth fairy and Santa) so strong? (Strong enough to make me post anon, anyway.)
Yule was a pagan (not wiccan) holiday.
But, can you honestly tell me that 'christmas' as its celebrated throughout the world today (not today... dont be pedantic) bears ANY resembalence to the 'wicken' festival.
I dont remember reading about them spending £thousands on gifts, commercialism and watching lots of crappy TV whilst getting drunk.
Defining older copies as more holy seems a lot like idol worship to me, and that is (IIRC) kinda forbidden
If you don't ID your scrolls you will have to either sell them to a shop, or just read them at random to find out what they are. In either case you risk wasting a valuable scroll!
I only hope the Jewish community bears this in mind before it's too late.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Precisely. Science is based on the presumption that every observable phenomenon can be understood and explained. This runs very deeply and so tends to be disregarded, as we tend to disregard the very foundations of mathematics: because if the most basic presumptions did not hold, too many other things would also fail. Organised religions -- especially the dogmatic, monotheist ones -- tend to be based on the presumption that some observable phenomena cannot be understood {"it's all part of God's Great Inexorable Plan"}.
Of course a scientist is exhibiting faith; but the difference is that faith in science is corroborated over and over again by reproducible experiments {and scientists are only too ready to modify their theories when they are contradicted by new observations}, whereas faith in religion is largely uncorroborated except by "holy texts" specific to the religion in question.
This is why science and religion in their purest forms can never be truly reconciled: all hinges on the question "Can everything be understood?".
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
So, you have to belive in non existant deities and follow the rest of the sheep to be educated?
Moron.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Seems like the sensible solution to me.
Deleted
Why is this needed? How hard can it be to find a stolen Torah? It isn't like 17 year olds are going to be carrying them around like iPods. The only people who would want them would be Rabbis who have the intelligence to detect and the morality to not take advantage of a theft.
Except you're missing the whole bit about that people don't generally do well in not being evil, at least in some small ways, and hence need something further (Jesus Christ) to be OK with God rather than just trying to be good.
And it's reasonably generalising to treat the Bible as one thing. It's a collection of books with a very varying style and purpose. There's everything from Jewish law (important for historical reference, nevermind other issues) to a Music book (most Christian hymns are derived from Psalms, nevermind that some of the closest scriptural links with the New Testament are with the Psalms) to prophecy, history (the whole careful detailing of Israel's relationship with God is/should be very instructive to Christians) and theology.
I think "don't be evil" is fairly indistinct even as a "gist" of the Bible. Perhaps you could have a subtitle of "Man and God" to guess some of the subject matter, that'd be at least someways more accurate.
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
I wonder whether they could do a DNA analysis of the animal skin... I would imagine that for any given scroll, it's probably composed of a number of different individual animals and the mix is probably not the same for any given scroll. The catches would be a) DNA testing is not horribly cheap still, and b) DNA testing AFAIK, is still a mildly destructive process with dead materials.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
The earliest form of the Torah was the Mosaic oral traditions from 1200 B.C.E. It was not final form until the sixth century B.C. during the prophets and captivity. Hamarabi has the oldest written law from 2200 B.C.E. including punishments for theft.
The words are from a sacred gigant tomato.
Can you prove otherwise?
In addition, you gotta remember that Moses was not just affiliated with the Jews, he was one... this question is funny, because the Christians agree to this, he was Jewish, as were all the people who would become Christians later
Those 'publican meals are like $1000 a plate. Jesus must have been fucking loaded! Maybe he just saved up so he could meet the majority whip and Laura Bush.
The next question would be whether the jury would buy this. One of the consequences of a jury-based legal system is that it doesn't matter how right you are if you can't convince the jury to accept what you're proposing. Now admittedly, probably all that needs to happen to get that to occur is to get one of these CSI or Law/Order shows to introduce the technique.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
I've heard the next major release will provide all the features of the older versions plus greatly improved interoperability. Everybody should upgrade as soon as there is a stable release.
(Except those running Atheism 1.x of course)
The Jihad problem still won't be solved though, but at least as a human I don't have to care about this anymore.
Wish we had that law for christianity!
The bible is re-wrtitten every time one ass of a leader (pope) decides it doesnt fit his thinking!
Torah, first edition. Some wear and tear to tablets. Shipping not included. Call 555-1234, ask for Indy.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
You are mistaken. When the Romans dispersed the Jews from what was then known in Latin as Syria Judea, they renamed their newly-annexed province Syria Palestina.
The term, IIRC, is a reference to the ancient Philistine people, and the region had been described by the name in a few Greek sources. The Romans deliberately chose a name with no direct connection to the Jews to reflect their conquest of the same.
When the British acquired the territory from the Ottomans after WWI, they called it by the long-standing Latin name.
And whilst you're at it don't forget Easter which, in Europe, was originally the time for worship of the goddess Oestre.
Which also explains why there's an "easter bunny" as Oestres sacred symbols were the moon and the hare. The moon was revered for its influence on females (also explaining why Oestrogen is so named) and the hare was revered as a symbol of fertility (because it's one of the few animals that can get pregnant again before giving birth to the currently gestating foetus(es))
And thence also comes the idea of Easter being the time of the Earths rebirth which is why, when the Christians subsumed the Easter festival, it became the time of the year when Jesus died and was resurrected.
So the moral of the story ? Reocurring symbols one and all Kids. Same ideas different deitys. Dig a little deeper under almost every "Christian" feast day/celebration and you'll find some earlier foundations of an entirely different nature.
But having said all this Oestre was undoubtedly overlaid on an ever earlier God/Goddess etc. etc.
But next easter whilst you enjoy your "easter eggs" and "bunnies" do spare a thought for an old European goddess.
Praise "Bob" (and leave Chthulu out of it) !
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
Jewish though on Angels is very different from Christian. The most important thing to understand is that as far as Jews are concerend Angels don't have any free will. They exist only to do what G-d tells them to do. So the idea that one of them could "Fall" or defy G-d makes no sense. The Satan (its a title not a name in Hebrew) is an angel who tests people but he does it at G-d's command.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
Not really, Chrisitanity has the devil for example, Judasim doesn't belive he exits. After all how is it possible for there to be an evil force that is independent of God? Nothing can be independant of God.
Just curious, what about the entity called "Satan" in the book of Job?
No sig for the moment.
Actually,Xmas is wiccan.
Since Wicca didn't exist until the 1950s, it would be quite an impressive accomplishment for the Wiccans to have used their leet time-travelling powers to go back and invent Christmas before the Christians had the idea.
Wicca isn't ancient paganism, and Yule isn't Christmas.
{shakes his head} Please don't think I'm attacking you in all of this. I agree that photographic evidence is something which should solve a lot of problems. Problem is, it doesn't. Truth of the matter is, law pretty much comes down to how good your lawyer is at presenting the case and how good he is at dismantling the other side's case. Evidence and testimony play a part, but in the end, it comes down to the lawyers and the whims of the jury.
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
And I'm saying out loud that I agree with every God-damn thing you said!
Transcend Humanity. Please.
Clearly most of the DNA will be destroyed over time and in the process of processing the skin to make the parchment. However, I can't imagine that there wouldn't be enough genetic matter left over to uniquely identify the document.
*Condense fact from the vapor of nuance*
These are printed on parchment, which is made from animal skins which have DNA, it seems to me that G-D already did the work for them, they just aren't looking in the right place.
Someone else mentioned this briefly, but I'll expand on it, Satan is very very different then the devil.
He's just an angel with no free will, who was ordered by God to test people and act as a prosecutor. However he has no ability to act on his own, and he isn't even "evil" in the christian sense of the word.
He has even been described as working under protest of sorts: i.e. he actually does not want the person to fail the test, it's just that he was ordered to test the person, and therefore he will do his best at it. Even if it's not what he really wants.
Poor guy in a way, he an angel like all the others, but because of his job everyone hates him and tries to avoid him. (I'm majorly personifying here.)
The fallen angels that someone else described are not satan, they were angels who told god during the time of Noah that they could do a better job of living in the world. So God dropped them down to earth to see how they do - and they did really really badly. They had no ability to control their impulses. The giants mentioned there are all descended from them.
-Ariel
God just told me those are not his words.
Can you prove that he did?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Spoken like a true Christian...
...Is anyone sensing the effect of US government brainwashing here... or is it just me?
Isn't the moral of Christianity to 'love thy neighbour', 'do unto others...' and all that?
When did "deny, hate and gain control of those who don't look or think the same way as you do" slip into the bible?
I think the 'Anonymous Coward' (apt don't you think?) has been watching a little too many TV "evangelists" or GW Bush propaganda for his own good.
CN=poolmeister.OU=lurkers.CN=slashdot
Seriouly though this is ridiculous... the Text of the book is different than a label on the text identifying it's owner... this is where the whole jewish thing jumped the shark a very, very long time ago with all sorts of work arounds to very simple rules. [and that started happening BC!]
They could always add picture too! I mean the thing says nothing about pictures... how stupid are they?
...it's not even about what G-d you pray to.
Religion today is simply a roadmap of how to behave towards one another, and a set of tennants on how to live one's life.
The Jewish faith is rich with history and tradition, and it gives a lot of people purpose. Just like programming, inventing, or music gives others purpose.
Protect the Torah is obviously something that is important to the Jewish community, just as anti-virus software is important to the computer community. You would think that as enlightened as the computer community claims to be, we coud forego the anti-semitic comments.
Who cares about the ozone layer?...thanks to CFC's I can write my name......IN CHEESE!!!
Disclaimer: I am an atheist.
"The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me." --Ayn Rand
You can stick it up your ass, fuckface.
--
make install -not war
There is on thing in life that is very certain. Death.
Religion explains 3 things to people. Where we came from. Why we're here. Where we're going after.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano