'Fat People Aren't Unstable' -- For This We Needed a Study?

NO CONVERSION FOR YOU!

Remember the Soup Nazi on Seinfeld? Always someone like that wherever you go deciding who can and can't have... Where I used to live in the early 90s there was a newstand on the corner of my block. It had been there for years and was run by what I realized was an older lady. One Sunday morning I walked over to get a newspaper, she said she was all out. As I was leaving I saw one of my neighbors who had lived in that neighborhood for many, many years. He asked her for the same paper... she slid one out from under the counter and gave it to him.

My blog friend, Keli Ata - had a post I found very compelling today about a man who was denied conversion. She talks about her understanding of Judiasm and debates the reasons the man was denied.

Here are some excerpts:

In my case these questions on my concept of G-d were readily addressed. From earliest childhood I never could accept that a merciful G-d would require a human sacrifice from anyone. Washed in the blood, gruesome images of a man on a cross, an agonizing death at G-d's command, a portrayal that made G-d a blood-thirsty monster.

As I read and read the Tanach it became more and more clear that He abhored human sacrifice and I could not find a single, solitary case in which He required one.

The Akediah...Hashem challenged Avraham to slay Yitzchok but stopped him from doing so. In the end, He required the blood of the ram, not Yitzchok. And that from what I have continued to see through my reading has always been the case. Pesach? Animal sacrifice again. In fact, it has only been idol worshipers that made human sacrifices of children, never Hashem and never the Jewish people, except for some kings that were deemed evil.

After the destruction of the second temple He only required the prayers of our lips rather than animal sacrifices. Honestly, you'd have to be pretty dense not to see a pattern here. Animal sacrifices, prayer offerings, not human sacrifices.

So this was just more proof that the whole Christian lie about the ram in the Akediah and Pesach lamb sacrifices being a forshadowing of Jesus as the paschal lamb is ridiculous.

My concept of G-d obviously changed and I saw Hashem as loving and merciful; I grew to love Him incresingly. And the more I loved Him the more mitzvot I wanted to observe. Thus it became a cycle, a circle, of Torah study -- dveykus -- ahavat Hashem -- davening/ more mitzvot -- Torah study.

and further:

So what beliefs and practices are essential to convert to Judaism? Is one's belief about the messiah a critical factor? Personally, I think it is because it goes to the core of Judaism--the oneness of G-d and praying to Him and and Him alone. Not putting anyone--living or dead--before Him. "I am the lord thy G-d." A strange commandment, isn't it? More of a declaration really. What does it mean and how do you observe something like that? A commandment to know G-d and who He is?

That's what I have been taught and am trying to do.

Being a convert myself, I couldn't have said it better.

GO READ THIS INTERESTING POST!