Hacker News Reader

Comment by js2 | Hacker News Reader

The ultra-Orthodox Jews in Rockland are wrong. They just are. I'm Jewish. Judaism places the value of life above all else (Pikuach Nefesh). There's 613 commandments that guide an Orthodox Jew's life and you are commanded to break virtually all of them to preserve life. Vaccines are life preserving. By what interpretation of Judaism they can refuse vaccination, I cannot imagine.

At least that's my understanding of Judaism and how it was taught to me.

View on HN

That's how it was taught to me as well.

For people unfamiliar with the different Jewish movements: Rockland county is overwhelmingly Orthodox, specifically Hasidic. The Hasidim are a modern conservative interpretation of Judaism: it didn't coalesce until the 18th century.

If I was going to be disparaging, I'd say that their closest Christian analogue is the nakedly revisionist evangelical Christianity of the the American 1970s and forwards.

> If I was going to be disparaging, I'd say that their closest Christian analogue is the nakedly revisionist evangelical Christianity of the the American 1970s and forwards.

I think the current strain, as far as Biblical interpretation is concerned, goes back to Darby's crappy-but-popular 1909 Bible, incorporating extensive same-page notes from Darby:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scofield_Reference_Bible

The 70s are just when the GOP's plan to sell itself to evangelicals, on social issues, as a deliberate ploy to capture them as a constituency to support the rest of the GOP agenda, really started to take off.

Ooooh... I am a non-US christian and been trying to understand certain things, tracked down a lot of origins for some of the more heterodox (in my view) beliefs. But never had heard of this bible, despite SEEING that bible multiple times.

After opening your link and reading more about it a lot of more things make sense and "clicked" into place.

> If I was going to be disparaging, I'd say that their closest Christian analogue is the nakedly revisionist evangelical Christianity of the the American 1970s and forwards.

That would be disparaging to the evangelical community. Even if you find modern evangelicals to hold distasteful beliefs, and I personally do, I don't think that's an apt comparison.

A much closer analog would be the radical Mormon cults of southern Utah.

A radical version of a controversial branch of the religion.

Here's the case I'll make:

The radical Mormon sects, to my understanding (which is limited to Under the Banner of Heaven[1]) have somewhat strong textual justifications for their practices: it's a matter of historical fact that the early Mormons were polygamists, were vitriolic racists, &c.

This is in contrast to both reactionary evangelicals (who do not make up all evangelicals) and Hasidic Jews (who are do not make up the entire Orthodox community), where both groups have largely substituted contemporary doctrine (as a conservative religious expression) for historical (and even canonical) interpretations. Compare evangelical interpretations of capitalism (and the "doctrine of wealth") to descriptions of wealth and charity thoughout both the Old and New Testaments. Similarly, Hasidic interpretation to pillars of Jewish doctrine (Pikuach Nefesh, Tikkun Olam).

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_the_Banner_of_Heaven

That's fair, I think you're looking at it from the perspective of similar belief structure and religious doctrine. I was thinking about community size and distance from the "mainstream" beliefs of those religion, not necessarily the way in which they diverge.

Ultra orthodox is just another term for extremism. Extremists are not rational. Even within something that's irrational like religion they have even more absurdly irrational views.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com