Point de vue sur Israel !

You and others can respond, but I refuse to debate. That is not my calling; I'm simply explaining my point of view.

1. After returning from the Babylonian Exile, there grew a bit of rift between the Returnees and those who stayed. A part of the rift included the arrogance of those who stayed, insisting the soil of Babylon was more holy, because the Great Synagogue was there. Naturally, the Returnees reacted. A part of that reaction was embracing Zechariah's Messianic prophecies, but they applied a rather materialistic meaning. There were plenty of false prophets who kept this going. It bred a spirit of competition, a desire to reject the teachings of the Great Synagogue in some way.

2. These same Returnees made a strong bond with the Jewish community in Egypt. After Alexander's Conquest, his successor insisted on building the library and university at Alexandria, including many Jewish rabbincal scholars. These scholars embraced Greek philosophical assumptions, Plato and Aristotle, mostly. This pulled them away from their original Eastern Hebrew cultural heritage. Instead of the ancient Semitic logical forms (a branch of Eastern mysticism), they adopted more Western rationalist forms.
At the same time, this community became far wealthier than the old blue bloods in Babylon.

3. By the time Jesus comes along, He is fighting to recover the old Hebraic frame of reference. Most of his arguments with the Pharisees are based on this. They had become quite materialistic, teaching such things
as: the primary sign of Jehovah's favor was wealth; poverty was His curse.
Jesus turned that upside down in Sermon the Mount. He taught poverty and wealth had no significance in the Kingdom of Heaven. While some of the Talmud does praise such a morality, most Pharisees paid mere lip service to such a spiritual viewpoint.

4. While there are a few schools of modern Judaism which are aware of this disparity between the ancient other-worldly viewpoint, it's pretty rare.
Having encountered quite a large number of religious Jews, especially in the military, I find the majority are rather Pharisaical.

Ed Hurst
Oklahoma - USA