I know. For the benfit of those who might be ignorant of the subject, perhaps I should have explained that the Talmud — like the Bible — more often than not uses the Hebrew word “eved”, usually translated as “slave”, more in the sense of “indentured servant” or “dependent” than in the sense of actual slavery.

However, saying there is “no connection” between the meaning of “eved” and the modern meaning of “slave” is going too far. Sometimes, at least, “eved” DOES mean an actual slave. There is no doubt that slavery — buying and selling human beings in servitude — did exist, and was legal, in Talmudic and Biblical times.

But my point wasn’t to apologize for Jewish law allowing slavery. There’s no need to: one can hardly blame the Rabbis of the Talmud for being men of their time and not men of our time. It is enough to their credit that even the (real) slave in the Talmud often had more rights than most nominally free peasants or workers had until recent time.

My point is simply to point out an obvious fact: namely, the mere fact that slavery is part of Jewish law hardly means that anybody who obeys Jewish law is ipso facto a supporter of slavery, let alone that, say, American coroporations producing Kosher food are “surrendering to Halacha [Jewish law]” and are making slavery come closer.

Similarly, the mere fact that Sharia says awful things about the infidel hardly means those who wish to invest in companies that obey its business laws are also looking for infidels to kill, or that the Wall Street Journal is about to surrender to having people’s heads chopped off.

P.S.

As for the person who doesn’t think I’m an Israeli Jew… Ma ani yachol le’hagid le’cha? Ani nishba be’elohim she’zoo ha’emet. Im ata lo ma’amin li, al ta’amin li; ma ani yachol la’asot? Biv’racha, rav-samal be’miluim…

Skeptic;
A brief comment. If you had the advantage of having studied the nature of the “slavery” allowed by the Talmud you would not have found it a worthwhile example. It bears almost no connection with the meaning of slavery as it is understood by modern society.

The people who put op the “Sharia-comliant” stock index, or those who consult it to see what stock to buy, do not necessarily, or even likely, have anything to do with Hizbullah. This is easier to see, I suppose, from the other end: Do you think Hizbullah’s fighters read the Wall Street Journal or care about their investment portfolio?

It’s just a list of companies that do not practice certain things Islamic religious law forbids — e.g., charging interest above a certain amount, etc. It is not at all surprising that such a service has been offered for years — ever since Muslims in large number started to invest money in stocks traded in Wall Street. It would be surprising if such a service were NOT offered, in fact.

Again, let me continue the analogy. Suppose that tomorrow the Wall Street Journal offers a list of companies that produce kosher food, or who obey the other business practices in the Talmud – the “Halacha” (Jewish religious law) stock index.

Would that mean a Jewish conspiracy to take over the world had “got up and started walking”? No, it would simply mean that enough people were interested in such a service for the stock market to offer it.

Brian Richard Allen
Los Angeles CalifiSKEPTICated” 90028 and the Far Abroad

“Backwards?”

Whoever proposed that gross (double) misrepresentation understands neither our Muslim brothers’ defining habits nor knows his own front from his back!

Brian Richard Allen
Los Angeles CalifISLAMicated” 90028 and the Far Abroad

I doubt it. If a package of, say, cookies has a “OU” symbol on it — meaning, “this food is Kosher according to Jewish religious law” — does that insinuate, “we would like to reinstitute slavery”, merely because slavery is (technically) legal in Jewish religious law? Is every bar Mitzvah or Bris — following other parts of Jewish religious law — an “insinuation” that slavery is on the way?