Posts by CalebInFloroda

43

How a Gay Jewish Boy from New England Came to Be and Leave the JWs (and what he did next)

by CalebInFloroda in

born in cambridge, ma to a liberal couple that escaped the conservative south, my parents raised me better than to become a jehovahs witness.

funny thing was they got mixed up in it first.. while that is a story for another time, i myself had to go along as the third of five children in my family.

dads job transferred him to texas and my mom worked fulltime herself, but eventually we found ourselves drinking the kool-aid of ambiguity intolerance and full-fledge belief that the bible was literal fact and that salvation was found only by those who were smart enough to enter the confines of the watchtower.. its weird how many people claim they fear children raised by two gay parents will grow up to be gay.

CalebInFloroda

Oh, yes, "Floroda" is an inside joke kinda. I live in the Atlantic Beach area near Jacksonville right off the Atlantic Ocean. Someone I know pronounces "Florida" that way.

43

How a Gay Jewish Boy from New England Came to Be and Leave the JWs (and what he did next)

by CalebInFloroda in

born in cambridge, ma to a liberal couple that escaped the conservative south, my parents raised me better than to become a jehovahs witness.

funny thing was they got mixed up in it first.. while that is a story for another time, i myself had to go along as the third of five children in my family.

dads job transferred him to texas and my mom worked fulltime herself, but eventually we found ourselves drinking the kool-aid of ambiguity intolerance and full-fledge belief that the bible was literal fact and that salvation was found only by those who were smart enough to enter the confines of the watchtower.. its weird how many people claim they fear children raised by two gay parents will grow up to be gay.

CalebInFloroda

Shalom, oppostate. My ethnic connection to the Nazarenes was recently uncovered when a member of my family was helped by researchers connected with Ancestry.com learned that there was a unanimous tradition that an ancestor or several of them were likely Christians before the Second Temple fell.

Also in my lineage is, according to the same, Maimonides, and possibly (according to constant legends) King David (but those are hard to substantiate until some DNA can be found from David's line).

As to customs, It's funny how we kept them going even while JWs, mostly I think because we never talked about them or felt it was significant. We too just did things because, well, everyone else in the family did.

And hey, Zoos...Yes, just another gay Jewish genius who secretly wanted to be a comedian like Steve Martin when he was a kid.

43

How a Gay Jewish Boy from New England Came to Be and Leave the JWs (and what he did next)

by CalebInFloroda in

born in cambridge, ma to a liberal couple that escaped the conservative south, my parents raised me better than to become a jehovahs witness.

funny thing was they got mixed up in it first.. while that is a story for another time, i myself had to go along as the third of five children in my family.

dads job transferred him to texas and my mom worked fulltime herself, but eventually we found ourselves drinking the kool-aid of ambiguity intolerance and full-fledge belief that the bible was literal fact and that salvation was found only by those who were smart enough to enter the confines of the watchtower.. its weird how many people claim they fear children raised by two gay parents will grow up to be gay.

CalebInFloroda

SafeAtHome,

Thanks.

Except for those controversial parts like John 1.1 it is quite on the spot. But its English is terrible, wordy, and sometimes so bad (even in the 2013 revision) that it ruins the good they did accomplish. But those controversial renderings, most are just possible on a technicality, outweighed by critical methodologies.

It is the opinion of a colleague of mine (well he's not really a professional, but he's one of those genius types who studies etymology for fun--I know, weird) that many of the NWT revisions are lifted or based on the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). While I don't have a complete list here, there are several phrases that are unique to the NRSV that suddenly appeared in the NWT 2013 version. These phrases and word choices don't appear anywhere else and some of them are a little controversial for conservatives like the Watchtower and seem an unlikely choice by "translators" who have no formal training. In other words it is unlikely that anyone would use such terms outside the liberal editorial choices of the NRSV translation committee, but some appear in the NWT of 2013.

I think it is plausible to conclude that they merely compared the NWT to new translations like the NIV, NRSV, ESV and even the Catholic NABre and lifted what they liked, pasting it and working it into their "revision." As a philologist I have to admit that I can see what circumstantially looks like this is what they did.

43

How a Gay Jewish Boy from New England Came to Be and Leave the JWs (and what he did next)

by CalebInFloroda in

born in cambridge, ma to a liberal couple that escaped the conservative south, my parents raised me better than to become a jehovahs witness.

funny thing was they got mixed up in it first.. while that is a story for another time, i myself had to go along as the third of five children in my family.

dads job transferred him to texas and my mom worked fulltime herself, but eventually we found ourselves drinking the kool-aid of ambiguity intolerance and full-fledge belief that the bible was literal fact and that salvation was found only by those who were smart enough to enter the confines of the watchtower.. its weird how many people claim they fear children raised by two gay parents will grow up to be gay.

CalebInFloroda

Giordano,

Hi, thanks for the welcome.

Yeah, it's the boring stuff you see in Bible footnotes and footnotes in things like study editions of Shakespeare. It can be useful to non-theists in a lot of their arguments because it shows how ridiculous a lot of Watchtower teachings (and those held by many religions) really are.

One thing the Jews rarely did was speak directly and clearly. Remember Jesus of Nazareth who when asked point blank if he was the Messiah by the High Priest answered: "You yourself said so." In Jew speak, that means, "Duh!"

So for a bunch of people to run around and think this stuff is meant to be literal is ridiculous. Jews were never direct, not even in their holy writings. It's like the joke where the kid goes to the rabbi and asks the rabbi:

Kid: Rabbi, do you know the meaning of life?

Rabbi: Sure.

Kid: What is it?

The rabbi then proceeds to mutter something in Hebrew.

Kid: (not knowing Hebrew) What does that mean?

Rabbi: I'll tell you for $200.

Kid: Why $200?

Rabbi: Because that's how much I charge for Hebrew lessons.

43

How a Gay Jewish Boy from New England Came to Be and Leave the JWs (and what he did next)

by CalebInFloroda in

born in cambridge, ma to a liberal couple that escaped the conservative south, my parents raised me better than to become a jehovahs witness.

funny thing was they got mixed up in it first.. while that is a story for another time, i myself had to go along as the third of five children in my family.

dads job transferred him to texas and my mom worked fulltime herself, but eventually we found ourselves drinking the kool-aid of ambiguity intolerance and full-fledge belief that the bible was literal fact and that salvation was found only by those who were smart enough to enter the confines of the watchtower.. its weird how many people claim they fear children raised by two gay parents will grow up to be gay.

CalebInFloroda

Hi LisaRose,

Yes, I am of that same group. My folks were Catholic before the JWs came a knocking at our door. When I lived in Texas I thought I was Mexican-American because I have dark skin and the name "Caleb" is also used among Latinos. But as I aged and grew tall, thin, and my Jewish nose grew in it became apparent that something was very different.

Most of my relatives are Catholics, all Sephardic Jews from Spain. We were recently invited by the governments of Spain and Portugal in their recent "law of return" call to Jews they expelled in 1492 (we didn't take them up on their offer, but I do understand many Hispanics in the U.S. and Mexico are coming to terms to realize they are Mizrahi and not Latin).

43

How a Gay Jewish Boy from New England Came to Be and Leave the JWs (and what he did next)

by CalebInFloroda in

born in cambridge, ma to a liberal couple that escaped the conservative south, my parents raised me better than to become a jehovahs witness.

funny thing was they got mixed up in it first.. while that is a story for another time, i myself had to go along as the third of five children in my family.

dads job transferred him to texas and my mom worked fulltime herself, but eventually we found ourselves drinking the kool-aid of ambiguity intolerance and full-fledge belief that the bible was literal fact and that salvation was found only by those who were smart enough to enter the confines of the watchtower.. its weird how many people claim they fear children raised by two gay parents will grow up to be gay.

CalebInFloroda

All the siblings are out, parents have passed while not changing.

It's hard to say where I am exactly spiritually speaking. We never gave up Jewish culture completely and I am greatly lactose intolerant. So this means I eat kosher because it helps me from getting unwanted dairy in my system, and I do a lot of Jewish things because, well I don't have another culture to get things from. I didn't know I was being Jewish by the way I swept my floor to the middle of the room first or lighting candles on Friday night and things like that. My folks obviously didn't know what these things were connected to either as I did them all through my time in the Watchtower.

I'll put it to you this way: I would rather read the Old Testament in Hebrew and take the New Testament in English, but only via the Jewish Anotated NRSV version.

And philology is the methodology that explains how writings, ancient and modern, come to be, and how analyzing them can tell you of their origins.

43

How a Gay Jewish Boy from New England Came to Be and Leave the JWs (and what he did next)

by CalebInFloroda in

born in cambridge, ma to a liberal couple that escaped the conservative south, my parents raised me better than to become a jehovahs witness.

funny thing was they got mixed up in it first.. while that is a story for another time, i myself had to go along as the third of five children in my family.

dads job transferred him to texas and my mom worked fulltime herself, but eventually we found ourselves drinking the kool-aid of ambiguity intolerance and full-fledge belief that the bible was literal fact and that salvation was found only by those who were smart enough to enter the confines of the watchtower.. its weird how many people claim they fear children raised by two gay parents will grow up to be gay.

CalebInFloroda

No problem. I have a friend who thinks everyone is gay. I keep telling him not everyone appreciates him doing so.

Thanks for the welcome and apology, DJS. Water under the Watchtower bridge...but don't ever call me str8 again! LOL

84

1975 failed prediction?

by Garrett in

jw
friends

heyo,.

your favorite garrett here.

so, i'm about to have an elder tell me allll about the failed 1975 doctrine.

CalebInFloroda

In the town I grew up in, in South Texas, a few Witnesses got together and created a bumper sticker that read: JEHOVAH is coming! They posted these things all over town, on bus benches, phone booths, newspaper stands (and a few cars).

They showed up beginning late 1974. I remember noting how the black lettering had faded and the white background had oddly turned a yellowish pink by 1977 when my brothers and I passed one by on the way to see the first Star Wars film that summer so long ago.

Yep, they did indeed preach and believe this. They deny it because most of them today weren't there.

43

How a Gay Jewish Boy from New England Came to Be and Leave the JWs (and what he did next)

by CalebInFloroda in

born in cambridge, ma to a liberal couple that escaped the conservative south, my parents raised me better than to become a jehovahs witness.

funny thing was they got mixed up in it first.. while that is a story for another time, i myself had to go along as the third of five children in my family.

dads job transferred him to texas and my mom worked fulltime herself, but eventually we found ourselves drinking the kool-aid of ambiguity intolerance and full-fledge belief that the bible was literal fact and that salvation was found only by those who were smart enough to enter the confines of the watchtower.. its weird how many people claim they fear children raised by two gay parents will grow up to be gay.

CalebInFloroda

As someone who still rubs shoulders with Bible scholars, I can tell you these two things they will all pretty much agree on. It may require some undoing the thinking you learned about the Bible, at least from the Watchtower.

1. Of course the Bible changed, numerous times with additions and expansions over the centuries...but until the canonization process. It is the state in which each of the books was finally found in upon declaring the text sacred that the additions stopped. The individual parts or earliest portions are not separately considered canon because the editorial process was considered part of how inspiration occurred by these ancient cultures. Isaiah, for instance, is written by at least four authors if not more. Only once together as one book or scroll is it officially recognized as a revelation to the Jews. But after this acceptance the books almost never changed, as the Dead Sea Scrolls illustrate.

2. Except for few exceptions like the NWT, so much of the text is now accessible that unless you forbid someone from looking it up and showing where something is badly rendered, all the major modern translations are about the same in standards of accuracy. Especially with the Internet you can't get away with much.

43

How a Gay Jewish Boy from New England Came to Be and Leave the JWs (and what he did next)

by CalebInFloroda in

born in cambridge, ma to a liberal couple that escaped the conservative south, my parents raised me better than to become a jehovahs witness.

funny thing was they got mixed up in it first.. while that is a story for another time, i myself had to go along as the third of five children in my family.

dads job transferred him to texas and my mom worked fulltime herself, but eventually we found ourselves drinking the kool-aid of ambiguity intolerance and full-fledge belief that the bible was literal fact and that salvation was found only by those who were smart enough to enter the confines of the watchtower.. its weird how many people claim they fear children raised by two gay parents will grow up to be gay.

CalebInFloroda

Born in Cambridge, MA to a liberal couple that escaped the Conservative South, my parents raised me better than to become a Jehovah’s Witness. Funny thing was they got mixed up in it first.

While that is a story for another time, I myself had to go along as the third of five children in my family. Dad’s job transferred him to Texas and my mom worked fulltime herself, but eventually we found ourselves drinking the Kool-Aid of ambiguity intolerance and full-fledge belief that the Bible was literal fact and that salvation was found only by those who were “smart” enough to enter the confines of the Watchtower.

It’s weird how many people claim they fear children raised by two gay parents will grow up to be gay. They often never mention how two straight parents, a man and woman, manage to raise a gay son in the middle of other kids who turn out straight themselves. Despite the “validity” of that argument in the minds of some, my faithful Witness parents had a gay son, me. They never took me to a Gay Pride parade or played Cher on the stereo nor did they take me to even one musical play or let me pick out the drapes—and not that I ever wanted to do any of that stuff. Still I was definitely homosexual. Always knew I had these feelings since I can remember and have never been able to stir up the others.

But guess what? I was a good Witness boy. Despite a few crushes on some friends I had growing up at my local Kingdom Hall, I was a by-the-book Witness. I took it all very seriously. That Kool-Aid we all drank? I was the one stirring the pot and serving the line we all stood in to get our allotted dose.

MENSA, not Mensies

The problems between me and “Jehovah” of the Watchtower began in my teenage years when my grades suddenly slipped. I went from straight-A student to F. When my worried parents tried to find the problem, my school started testing me. Eventually they suggested I be given a WAIS testing by a (forbidden) psychologist. My school teachers and counselor wouldn’t explain why, but when they explained that only a doctor of psychology can give the test (and assured my Witness parents that a psychologist was not the same as psychiatrist), my folks consented.

No one told me what was happening, and only later would I learn that the WAIS was an IQ test for adults and older adolescents. I myself was at the point where my dad had recently given me the “birds and the bees” talk, and I told him I liked boys (well, I more asked him what would happen to me if I did like boys). While it was interesting that they were willing to take me to psychologist or even a psychiatrist for that, it was odd that here I was in a strange but very neat office facing a series of puzzle-like tests for what took an entire day.

So when the doctor discussed the results of the test and what it meant and mentioned MENSA, my mother later told me that she at first thought he said “mensies” and was about to faint from embarrassment that this unheard of test had revealed that her son “had gay.”

“Nope,” the doctor assured them. “But he is a genius, especially with languages.”

While MENSA was possible it was, of course, out of the question. And my parents, being faithful JWs to the core, followed the direction of the Faithful and Discreet Slave Class (it was a “class of people” them, not just the Governing Body) and ignored the pleas of teachers, educators, and the doctors to let me start college right away. Instead I was allowed to take a GED and aced it, of course.

But when you just turned 16 and don’t have anymore school to look forward to and too young to be hired for anything, what’s a secretly gay, ethnically Jewish, Jehovah’s Witness, what are you to do?

I Almost Drowned

They were over 40,000 people present when I was baptized at the Houston, Texas “Integrity Keepers Convention” of Jehovah’s Witnesses on July 27, 1985 in the Astrodome. My mouth opened when they dunked me and as they pulled me up I got a gulp of pool water that almost drowned me. The brother who ignored my gasps as I tried to stand and cry for help at the same time just smiled as he pat me on the back and said: “You just got a little water in you. You probably needed your evil insides cleaned out for Jehovah as well.”

But that was not the only time I almost drowned as a Jehovah’s Witnesses. The real drowning came next as the Reasoning from the Scriptures book was released, and a genius teenage mind got the stupid idea of looking up everything that was been cited and quoted.

I obtained the Society’s Kingdom Interlinear translation, taught myself Greek (with the help of cassette tapes I got on loan from my library but shamefully never returned—oops!). When I used my new-found knowledge of the language on a Bible study/return visit with an elder I was out in service with, the elder laughed at me and told me to stop fooling around. He would only later end up apologizing once he learned through another source that I could actually read and pronounce the language very well.

And because I could do that, I almost immediately learned that John 1.1 was not rendered correctly in the New World Translation. The silly argument about “anarthrous nouns” that littered the Watchtower publication in the 1980s was only half true. The last “theos” in John 1.1 is anarthrous, but so is practically every other occurrence of “theos” in that chapter and most of John, occurrences which are always rendered as “God” and never “god.”

When I asked elders to explain this I got the silliest replies, one of which was: “The last ‘theos’ is spelled differently than the one before it, ‘theon,’ meaning they both can’t be the same word.” When I explained that this is due to Greek being an inflectional language (the prefix and suffix of nouns will constantly change depending on the syntax but the root meaning isn’t changed), he just looked at me with disdain.

Unbeknownst to me Hebrew came natural to me. I didn’t know I was Jewish (not a real Jew—another long story) for a long time because growing up in Texas made me think I was just another Latin American. My family spoke something I took for granted was Spanish but my folks never, ever would go to a Spanish-speaking congregation or meeting. I once attempted to take a Spanish class and was laughed at by my Spanish teacher who said: “You speak the Spanish of the lower, ill-bred class.” As a result I dropped that class for wood shop.

It turned out that we spoke something called “Ladino.” This language is to Sephardic Jews what Yiddish is to Ashkenazi Jews (you will have to look up these terms if you can’t tell your Jews apart). Ladino is Spanish mixed with Arabic and, guess what, Hebrew! So when I started speaking Hebrew and asking more questions is when the real drowning started.

Burn the Witch! (It Knows Too Much)

It became apparent to me that other Bible translations that the Watchtower would criticize were not incorrect at all. It also was too clear that the New World Translation, while accurate in most places, was dishonest in all the controversial renderings—and atrocious in its renderings even when it was not wrong (this is not well-versed English, I remember telling others).

My learning of the languages caused suspicious by others in the congregation who began telling the elders that I was a liar and just looking for attention by making up stories that I could read these languages. At the time I was learning Ecclesiastical Latin and was being poked fun at too when I tried to prove it (it doesn’t always sound like what is written like other forms of Latin do).

So I got in trouble with the elders who felt they had to hold special meetings with me to see if I was fading away from “The Truth.” They would share a prepared little presentation with a few Scriptures with me and then ask me if I was having doubts that I was in the one and only true religion. I didn’t have doubts then, just questions about the NWT. But I assured them they were not the same. These meetings happened repeatedly and made my parents sad as we were marked as bad association—because I had a high IQ of all things.

And that’s when the horrible loneliness sunk in. My parents separated due to the pressure, my father becoming a drunk and blaming me during drunken rants that I was the cause of all the family’s problems because I was gay and ‘thought I was so smart!’ With my family against me and the congregation, and the fact that I was denying my sexuality by not even dating another male (I wouldn’t even let myself get too close to another male friend out of fear it would become something I couldn’t control), I felt I could no longer breathe.

So I left. I would not formally disassociate myself until 1999, but I left about 10 years before that. I would only later learn that the elders were close to having me disfellowshipped for apostasy because I was studying non-Witness materials and teaching what I learned from them to others as fact (the books I was using were called language guides and the JPS Hebrew text of the Old Testament—evil right?).

From Atheist to Philologist (What the Hell is a Philologist?)

Supporting myself as an IT professional, I decided to hate religion, the Bible, and especially the Jehovah’s Witnesses. I decided to try the “gay life,” moved to Atlanta, Georgia where a large gay population already existed, and started trying everything I could. I was a bit naïve, no very naïve, and so could never tell when someone was flirting with me or what and had no idea how to really have gay sex, so it was a very clumsy time in my life. I was very cute, however, so many guys overlooked a lot on the basis that I was a bit of what some called “eye-candy.” (I would learn the meaning of that term only after age was starting to steal my youthful looks away.)

I also joined a group of rational thinkers, but it didn’t last long. I took to them like I did the JWs when I was the one passing out the Kool-Aid for others to drink, and this was pointed out to me by the person who would later become my best friend (and still is to this day), Ted (not his real name).

Ted pointed out to me that my rationale against religion seemed more a projection of hatred than it did reason. I found that insulted and argued with him for an hour, almost punching him. He would approach me at a later meeting and we eventually got to speaking peacefully with one another. He introduced me to the term “ambiguity intolerance,” and I suddenly learned something new that applied to me and explained much of the Jehovah’s Witness experience.

While I won’t argue that the Witnesses are a cult, I have a theory that they are more of an impromptu ideology. They are like ISIS and the Imperial Japanese of World War II all wrapped up in a mixture of Adventist goo. They are the only ones who are right, all others must be converted or destroyed, and in the meantime all non-JWs are subject to ridicule and hatred. In the meantime we are taught to compartmentalize all things into two compartments: the Jehovah-Box or the Box of Satan’s Things. There is no in-between. Ambiguity is not tolerated, I must be right, all others wrong, and all others must be exposed to what I know.

Ted also made me realize that my gift for languages was being wasted and introduced me to the world of teaching (he is a professor himself) and learning how to be a real atheist.

While I did not remain atheist in the end, I did get the education my parents wouldn’t allow me to have. I learned theology, etymology, studied meteorology and finally chose to go into teaching philology.

Ted is still my best friend (and so are many from the now-defunct rational thinkers group that used to meet on Wednesdays and bank holidays), and I have even been consulted during the production of a popular interconfessional Bible translation that is now on the market.

And I’m openly gay and Jewish (I’m considered by some to be messianic because of my ancestral connection to the Nazarenes).

And there you go. I don’t oppose atheist views and even fight for their rights when I can.

For example, it’s not fair that I can say anything religious I want and put large menorahs around town each December without the slightest whimper from anyone but as soon as one of my atheist friends puts a billboard up that merely asks theists to at least consider using a little reason, why does that cause a ruckus? I’m worshiping burning bushes and chanukiahs they stay miraculously lit, and they are the crazy ones?

So there you have it. I thought I would share a little bit about myself to say HI. I’ve been insulted by both a theist and a non-theist on this board and almost left but then thought, hey they don’t know me. Maybe walls would come down if they learn a little more about me.

Oh, I have since come to appreciate Cher and musical theatre too.