"Our Pagan Yom Kippur" from FailedMessiah
October 13, 2008
Holidays | Jewish Living
(6 comments)
By David A.M. Wilensky
(First published on The Reform Shuckle)
Over at the excellent blog FailedMessiah.com, a whistle-blowing blog out to expose far right wing orthodox Judaism as a harmful force in the world (by covering stuff like child molestation and Agriprocessors), there's a really interesting post about the ancient Mesopotamian holiday of Kapuru, held in the Babylonian month of Tashritu. Sound familiar? It's a cool post. Here's an excerpt:
Our ancestors borrowed a great deal from a towering, imperial Mesopotamian culture that for centuries dominated the Fertile Crescent. That we used Babylonian calendar names is widely known. Semitic peoples had used the lunar calendar from time immemorial, but named their months differently. What the (Hebrew-speaking) Canaanites called Aviv, Ziv, Eytanim and Bul, the practical-minded Hebrews first renamed months One, Two, Seven and Eight. The Babylonians called them Nisanu, Ayaru, Tashritu and Archasamnu. In time, our ancestors replaced their numerals with the Babylonian names, many of which are named in honor of Mesopotamian gods.
One of the comments on the post, from Rachel Batya, captures my feelings exactly:
Whether
we borrowed from the pagans or they borrowed from us (and probably some
of both happened), this kind of information is fascinating to me and
enriches my understanding of Judaism. It doesn't detract from it. It
reminds me that Judaism has not always been the hermetically sealed
culture that some of our more fanatical members seek to make it, but a
living, breathing entity capable of co-existing with other cultures
while retaining its deepest insights and values.
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Jews have always borrowed from others and others have borrowed from us. Now that the world is flat, that is even more so.
Orthodox groups struggle to prevent any outside influence (including from Reform and Conservative Jews), by excommunicating dissenters, by segregating schools, neighborhoods, workplaces, social life, sports and restaurants and by strictly cutting off contact with the outside world through television, newspapers, movies, radio, and the internet. One of their worst fears is books, which contain uncensored ideas and the greatest is higher education which teaches students to think for themselves.