Barbaric Beliefs

[Explanation: Not all Jews embrace these convictions, of course, but some do. The point of this post is not to mock them, but to stamp out errors.]

Experience tells me that in any group of Orthodox Jews, you'll find a few who accept the truth of at least one of the following statements.

God only listens when you pray in hebrew

Waving a terrified and tortured chicken over your head pleases the creator of heaven and earth

A hat is essential to prayer

There are men (balei mofsim) with the power to change and control nature, yet they use this power primarily for parlor tricks.

Judaism was down with a wasting disease before the Ball shem Tov healed it - and not through the application of new ideas, God forbid, but via the rehabilitation of original ideas.

The Talmud we have today is the same Talmud Moshe studied during his 40-day seclusion on Mount Sinai.

People who anxiously await the coming of the rapture, and the holocaust they believe the rapture will accompany, make good political bedfellows.

The man who beatified the Pope who called us dogs and kidnapped our children was a friend of the Jewish people.

What say you?