re: #592 zombie

Well, I’m no expert on Orthodox Judaism, but the key difference I think is that Judaism is not evangelical — i.e. it makes no (or none that I know of) attempt to spread itself through conversion of non-Jews. Both Christianity and Islam are evangelical — i.e. it is permitted/encouraged to try to convert non-believers.

True. But Christianity, as generally practiced, has come around. Why is the door of that possibility closed to Islam?

Another key difference is that Judaism has never promoted itself as the one true faith which has a destiny to become dominant over all other faiths. Historically, both Christianity and Islam have done so. And some current practitioners of those religions continue to believe that the entire world one day will/should accept the faith of Christianity or Islam.

Actually, theologically, Jews consider themselves as “a light unto the nations,” with debate still raging on whether they should see themselves ahead of everyone else, or above everyone else, with the most Orthodox adherents of Judaism leaning toward the latter position. See this article for more context.

As a result, Judaism, no matter how orthodox or all-encompassing for its own adherents, is not now and has never been aggressive in its attempt to influence or gain control of secular society. Outside of the singular exception of Israel, where it is to be expected that very-observant and less-observant Jews compete for social influence, in no country on earth are there Jews trying to convert everyone to Judaism, nor alter the nation’s laws to be in accordance with orthodox Jewish laws.

Actually, I think the reason behind the Jews’ historic harmlessness is not so much grounded in the exclusivity of their religion, as much as in history curbing their theological ambitions early on. There are many chauvinistic passages in the Torah which could be taken as forward-looking prescriptions to the Jews in handling their pagan neighbors. A command to convert them may be out of the question, but a command to ethnically/religiously cleanse them, could conceivably be implied in certain passages. Would/could it be a regional tendency; how would it scale globally? We will never know, because Jews were subjugated by the Romans long ago, and have had to radically scale down any theological ambitions, to the point that their identity has been dovish ever since. The lesson is that historical circumstances can dramatically contextualize Holy Scriptures.

Orthodox Jewish laws and customs are for orthodox Jews to observe — and no one else. Groups like Chabad may try to encourage less-observant Jews to become more observant, but to my knowledge neither they nor any other Jewish group is running around trying to impose Jewish laws on non-Jews.

Putting aside Orthodox Jews’ influence on the outside world for a minute, it’s worth noting that Orthodox Jews have grown less and less Orthodox with time. Reform movements have sprung up within Judaism, converting the faithful out of the ranks of the Orthodox and into their increasingly more moderate and secular movements. Modernity serves as an acid, to dissolve, in time, the fundamentalism of any religion.