rosends

I am a Modern Orthodox Jew living in New Jersey. I have rabbinic ordination but do not serve in a pulpit capacity. I have a family, a house, cars and a fairly well established online footprint.
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I am not going to respect what you say if

You try to tell me what my religion teaches or what the teachings mean and you aren’t a scholar within my religion and your material isn’t based in a comprehensive understanding of my religion, but in a soundbite or an isolated point

You try to criticize my religion based on your limited knowledge of it

You take the behavior of a small group and work backwards, assuming that any singular example is the overall religion’s teaching and the behavior or content speaks for the entirety of the religion

You take the behavior of an individual or group and say that that behavior is necessarily an expression of the person/group’s religious identity

You mischaracterize my religion and, when told of your error, continue to do so
You draw erroneous conclusions by projecting your own theological position on my religion and assuming that it is the only way someone thinks or that that is what people in my religion think

You use your religious text to try and explicate mine to tell me what I should believe

You work with a translation and can’t understand that translations are interpretations and interpretations are driven by agendas, often implanting what they need to have been written

You work with a translation and can’t understand WHY your translation made the choices it did, but assume that the translation is nevertheless authoritative

You deny the value of working with the original as compared to working with a translation

You take a piece of text and try to create meaning and application of it, ignoring the grammar, precision of words chose and their form, context of the word and/or phrase and the linguistic links which connect it to other selections

You mine quotes from my religion’s authorities but don’t learn about the person, the context, the history or the religion’s own understanding of the quote

You cite a statement by my religion’s authorities but reject the authority or explanation of that same person

You rely on a single (or small group of) voice(s) of people who are on the fringes of the religion or who do not represent the mainstream understanding of the religion/religious idea and deny any other voice which disagrees

You take the opinion of someone born into the religion but whose education in the religion and personal beliefs about it place him outside the mainstream and you invest in that person complete authority despite any criticism