The New Judaism

From Reuter:

Extinction Rebellion, which uses civil disobedience to highlight the risks posed by climate change and the accelerating loss of plant and animal species, is midway through a new two-week wave of actions in cities around the world.

Activists thronged the financial heart of London on Monday, unfurling banners, addressing passersby by megaphone or blocking streets around locations including BlackRock, the Bank of England, Bank of China and Barclays.

At BlackRock, volunteers glued themselves to the doors while others staged a mock dinner party with rolled-up banknotes on their plates. Police said they arrested more than 90 people.

The arrestees included Rabbi Jeffrey Newman of the Finchley Reform Synagogue, who was arrested near the Bank of England praying, singing and wearing a prayer shawl for the first day of the Jewish festival Sukkot.

It is amazing how Reform Judaism has transformed itself into an anti-capitalist anti-modern messianic movement. For some reason, it has decided that fire, that is, burning wood, coal and similar fuels, is sinful; that Nature's animals are sacred and hunting, breeding and eating them is against God's will.  It has developed a new set of ritual purity - kashrut - laws, that include taboo against wearing furs (in the original it was mixed textiles), intensively fed animals (in the original, pigs other unclean species), etc.

Yet, this new religion does not seem more arbitrary or crazy than the original one.

Quote:  Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western world is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists.  Why do I say it’s a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs. There’s an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there’s a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for all of us. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.

Increasingly it seems facts aren’t necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief.”

Pic.: Ecocide by Kantor. What I see? The Devil trying to seduce that innocent Swedish virgin girl. The pic could be hanged in any Church.