Son to JW school-mate: "Go ahead. Tell the Jewish girl how the Jewish holiday REALLY happened."

by Open mind 23 Replies latest jw friends

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  Open mind

  My family (wife and teenage kids) and I awakened to the true nature of the WT Society a couple years ago and are fairly well faded now.
  
  My son attends high school with a couple of JWs, one of whom is an elder's son and an ardent true believer. Let's call him "Con". (Short for Condescending.)
  
  So my son and Con have one class together and during some downtime while the teacher was out of the room and the class had time to kill, the topic of Spring/ Easter / Passover came up. So somebody says, "Hey, Yelysaveta (not her real name), you're Jewish right? What's the back story on the Passover?"
  
  So Yelysaveta starts relating a pretty standard version of the Israelites in Egypt and the splashing of the blood on the lentil, yadda yadda. When she's all done Con pipes in with this:
  
  "That's not how it happened!"
  
  My son is biting his tongue, rolling his eyes and screaming to himself: "Right. Go ahead Con. In front of all these people, you, the Jehovah's Witness, tell the Jewish girl all about how the Jewish holiday works."
  
  What struck my son and myself was the total lack of awareness of how arrogant he must have looked. Even if Yelysaveta was wrong, wouldn't it be better to let the person FROM the culture explain it, and then if you've got a problem with it, ask her about it later?
  
  Turns out, Con, the know-it-all JW was confusing the story of Jesus and the apostles celebrating Passover v. 1500 with the first one.
  
  Face palm!
  
  om
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  Blind_Of_Lies

  NICE! It really is amusing how little JW's know about their faith once they get off the "talking points"
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  Doubting Bro

  Con appears to be on the fast track to be an elder!!!

  Of course, JWs seem to think they know everything when in fact, they really only know about 6 scriptures.
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  Ding

  Since Con considers himself an expert on the scriptures, she should have asked him to explain Purim.
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  jwfacts

  Classic. I hope he was called out on his error. When JW's talk doctrine two almost contradictory terms always comet to mind: arrogant / ignorant
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  mP

  You might want to highlight how all jewish holidays all fall on astrologically significant dates. The themes of the holidays matches the astrological significance of the passing sign.

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_holiday

  PASSOVER

  The word passover really means when the sun passes over the equator which is what happens on both equinoxes as the sun travels between the tropic of capricon(winter) and tropic of cancer(summer). Passover is actually the celebration of spring which is of course when the baby lambs are born and are available to be slaughtered for the festival.

  Part of the problem is that the Jewish calender is lunar and floats but it is evident that the dates of events are clustered about major astrological dates, of the solstices and equinoxes.

  YOM KIPPUR

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yom_Kippur

  Yom Kippur (Hebrew: ???? ???????? or ??? ???????? ‎, IPA: ['jom ki'pur] ), also known as Day of Atonement, is the holiest and most solemn day of the year for the Jews. Its central themes are atonement and repentance. Jews traditionally observe this holy day with a 25-hour period of fasting and intensive prayer, often spending most of the day in synagogue services. Yom Kippur completes the annual period known in Judaism as the High Holy Days or Yamim Nora'im ("Days of Awe").

  Yom Kippur is the tenth day of the month of Tishrei. According to Jewish tradition, God inscribes each person's fate for the coming year into a book, the Book of Life, on Rosh Hashanah, and waits until Yom Kippur to "seal" the verdict. During the Days of Awe, a Jew tries to amend his or her behavior and seek forgiveness for wrongs done against God (bein adam leMakom) and against other human beings (bein adam lechavero). The evening and day of Yom Kippur are set aside for public and private petitions and confessions of guilt (Vidui). At the end of Yom Kippur, one considers oneself absolved by God.

  This day of course happens on the autumn equinox where the Sun enters the sign of Libra or judgment. In astrology and even christianity we have a similar belief where people believe they are judged as they die. The Sun begins to die when it enters Libra and is considered dead in winter.

  ROSH HASANAH

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosh_Hashanah

  Rosh Hashanah ( Hebrew : ??? ???? ‎), (literally "head of the year"), is the Jewish New Year . It is the first of the High Holy Days or Yamim Nora'im ("Days of Awe") which occur in the autumn. [1] Rosh Hashanah is celebrated on the first two days of Tishrei . The beginning of the year for the Jewish is in March

  Mid March is of course the start of Spring, Even our own calender used to start on March 25 or the Spring equinox. The zodiac also starts in mid march etc.

  PURIM

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purim

  2011 date

  Sunset, 19 March – nightfall, 20 March

  2012 date

  Sunset, 7 March – nightfall, 8 March Purim is celebrated annually according to the Hebrew calendar on the 14th day of the Hebrew month of Adar (Adar II in leap years), the day following the victory of the Jews over their enemies. In cities that were protected by a surrounding wall at the time of Joshua , Purim is instead celebrated on the 15th of the month on what is known as Shushan Purim . [7] Today, only Jerusalem celebrates Purim on the 15th.

  Purim actually celebrates when the SUN conquers the cold days of winter, the days are now longer than the nights.

  HANUKKAH

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanukkah

  Hanukkah ( Hebrew : ???????? ‎, Tiberian: ?anukkah, usually spelled ????? pronounced [χanu'ka] in Modern Hebrew , also romanized as Chanukah , Chanukkah , or Chanuka ), also known as the Festival of Lights , is an eight-day Jewish holiday

  Hanukkah is of course the Hebrew equivalent of the Winter solistic which celebrates the birth of the Sun, which as we know is about the birth of the Sun or XMAS. Jesus is the SUN not the SON of God. No wonder its called the festival of lights.
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  TOTH

  That is hsyterical. TOO bad most high schoolers give about two shits about ANYTHING biblical. I can see my son in that situation calling CON a stupidass and slapping his face downwardly from forhead to chin...LOL
• 

  djeggnog

  @Open mind:

  My family (wife and teenage kids) and I awakened to the true nature of the WT Society a couple years ago and are fairly well faded now.

  Pray tell, what is our "true nature"?

  So Yelysaveta starts relating a pretty standard version of the Israelites in Egypt and the splashing of the blood on the lentil, yadda yadda. When she's all done Con pipes in with this: [¶] "That's not how it happened!" ...

  What struck my son and myself was the total lack of awareness of how arrogant [Con] must have looked. Even if Yelysaveta was wrong, wouldn't it be better to let the person FROM the culture explain it, and then if you've got a problem with it, ask her about it later?

  Not Con, but your son could have asked "Yelysaveta" if she knew why the Jews today don't also view the day the Israelites left Egypt after midnight to be passover when passover didn't end until the next evening?

  @Blind_Of_Lies:

  NICE! It really is amusing how little JW's know about their faith once they get off the "talking points"

  Actually, I didn't get baptized until I was out of high school, so I wasn't really one of Jehovah's Witnesses and in my day we didn't need "talking points." We used sermons and we used them over and over again.

  @Doubting Bro:

  Of course, JWs seem to think they know everything when in fact, they really only know about 6 scriptures.

  Actually, they know more than six scriptures. Perhaps you have in mind the Christians that attend the Baptist Church down the street and they only know them if you should recite them. They couldn't necessarily tell you where in the Bible they are, let alone show you where.

  @Ding:

  Since Con considers himself an expert on the scriptures, she should have asked him to explain Purim.

  What does Purim have to do with the Abrahamic Covenant or Moses?

  @jwfacts:

  Classic. I hope he was called out on his error. When JW's talk doctrine....

  I believe these were the children of Jehovah's Witnesses, not Jehovah's Witnesses.

  @TOTH:

  TOO bad most high schoolers give about two shits about ANYTHING biblical.

  Many high schoolers might give at least 'one shit' if someone. like your son (or @Open mind's) were to have asked "Yelysaveta" why it is that the folks in her faith celebrate the passover on the day after "the splashing of the blood" occurred and not on the day itself since that is what the Torah says. All eyes would then be looking directly at "Yelysaveta" waiting to hear how she answered your son's (or @Open mind's son's) question.

  I was Open mind's son as a child, but I was into stumping people on things I had learned from the Bible as well as on things having to do with US history and world history. I didn't know a whole lot, but I knew enough to sufficiently put people on the spot with questions that I asked with the intention of not providing the answers to them.

  You see, I learned very young in life that if people are going to continue to think you are smart, you cannot give them the answers to the questions you ask them; else they will also know the answers and thus make them appear as smart or smarter. For example, I would ask the elders in my congregation, "Did 'Jehovah God' -- as a kid, I thought "Jehovah was God's first name and "God" his last name -- not tell Adam and Eve about the tree of life until after they sinned because he knew that they were going to sin?" I was the kid that never wanted to answer any of the questions in the book study or at the Watchtower study unless I was specifically asked by the conductor to do so, and my answer would pretty much all start with the words, "Well, obviously...."

  It wasn't that I was smarter than everyone else, but I liked pretending to be smarter.

  I can see my son in that situation calling CON a stupidass and slapping his face downwardly from [forehead] to chin...LOL

  And today you'd probably get a phone call from the school indicating how your son was charged with assault.

  @djeggnog
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  designs

  Blame the Book of Romans for Christian's screwed up view of Judaism.
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  Open mind

  OK, I'm on break right now and will try to address most of djeggnogg's points. Everyone else, thanks for your replies so far.
  
  "Pray tell, what is our "true nature"?"
  
  That expression was intended to give a quick background snap shot that most readers here would understand. I won't pursue that any further in this thread and I'm pretty sure you've hashed that out with many here before me.
  
  "Not Con, but your son could have asked "Yelysaveta" if she knew why the Jews today don't also view the day the Israelites left Egypt after midnight to be passover when passover didn't end until the next evening?"
  
  I think you're missing or ignoring the central point of my thread which was:
  
  "What struck my son and myself was the total lack of awareness of how arrogant he must have looked. Even if Yelysaveta was wrong, wouldn't it be better to let the person FROM the culture explain it, and then if you've got a problem with it, ask her about it later?"
  
  If a Native American student from the Pacific Northwest was relating a story of how "potlatches" worked and I happen to have a PhD in Native American studies (I don't, BTW) calling him out in front of everyone else on how he may be wrong on a couple of points is rude and arrogant, IMO. Even if I use a question to accomplish it, I'm still being an off-putting know-it-all.
  
  Blind of Lies and Doubting Bro took a couple of sweeping generalizations swipes at JWs which can be cathartic but usually not totally fair. But then you picked up the sweeping generalization baton and slammed Baptists with the same technique.
  
  "I believe these were the children of Jehovah's Witnesses, not Jehovah's Witnesses."
  
  Actually I didn't specify their baptismal status, but if we're talking about a Elder's son in High School, more often than not, he's gonna already be baptized. In this case, "Con" took the plunge at the wise old age of 13. That's a pretty typical age around here.
  
  "You see, I learned very young in life that if people are going to continue to think you are smart, you cannot give them the answers to the questions you ask them; "
  
  Thanks for opening up a bit about your childhood background. Seriously.
  
  "And today you'd probably get a phone call from the school indicating how your son was charged with assault."
  Agreed.

  om