re: #1 LudwigVanQuixote

“Skeptic of religion” hat on:

Practice of modern Judaism is one thing - as you point out, there is the oral law which interprets the written law, often in surprising ways.

What is plainly written in the Torah (in good English translations) is another issue. Like all ancient traditional religions written in patriarchal societies, Torah is harsh, even misogynistic - because ancient societies were such. E.g. Deut. 22:

20 If, however, the charge is true and no proof of the young woman’s virginity can be found, 21 she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death. She has done an outrageous thing in Israel by being promiscuous while still in her father’s house. You must purge the evil from among you.

Which is basically a “honor killing”. Or Lev. 21:9:

If a priest’s daughter defiles herself by becoming a prostitute, she disgraces her father; she must be burned in the fire.

Or take the horrendous ritual of Num. 5:11ff, which applies only to wives, somehow not to husbands. Or Num. 30, in which a woman’s (wife’s, daughter’s) vow only means something if a male (father, husband) approves.

So the meme of “Old Testament harshness” is fully justified.