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Why Do Jews Have Friends? The Religious Anthropology of Friendship & Family
This episode explores the contrasting approaches to friendship and family within Jewish and American Protestant Christian cultures. Through a detailed comparison, the speaker discusses how Jewish holidays and observances often include non-family members, contrasting this with the more insular family-focused events in certain Christian traditions. The discussion extends to examples from other cultures, including Catholic, Muslim, and Mormon communities, highlighting the social dynamics and the impact on community cohesion and individual behavior.
Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] Hello, Simone.
Today. We asked the question. Why did Jews have friends? This question may seem odd at first to someone, but when I go through it, you're going to be like, Oh, wow, that is actually kind of weird. Specifically, what I will be laying out is that if you look at most Jewish holidays or religious festivals Or religious observances, they are encouraged to invite non family members, sometimes even non Jews. However, if you look at, and I'm talking about my own cultural background you know, coming from a Christian culture, from one category of Christian culture in America, and we'll do some diversification of the various Christian cultures, but the Christian culture that I come from, American Protestant Christian culture There are very few religious events or [00:01:00] celebrations in which you would invite people who are not extended family.
If I am inviting somebody to Christmas or to Thanksgiving That is basically an indication that I plan on marrying them. Like it's not even, it's seen
Simone Collins: culturally as one of those big leveling ups in a relationship. If you go to your girlfriend or boyfriend's house for Thanksgiving or Christmas, cause that is a sign of serious commitment.
Malcolm Collins: Yeah, and it made me realize how distant the culture I grew up in was from Jewish culture when we had a very Chabad guy very, you know extreme what's the word? I'm looking here very orthodox jew come to our house. He's a fan of the show really like the guy. He's actually inspired a number of episodes and he was talking with our son and he said something that sparked this whole chain of logic for me
Simone Collins: Okay.
Malcolm Collins: He was interacting with our son and he said, Do you [00:02:00] have any friends? And my son said, Yeah, I have two friends. And he goes, What are their names? And he goes, Torsten and Titan. And those are our two other older kids names. And then he goes, Well, those are really your friends. Those are more like, Your siblings, do you have any friends?
And in my head, I'm immediately thinking, wait, what are you talking about? Your siblings are always your best friends. Why would you ever like all other friends come after family?
Burdened with new friends and tormented by the bounty hunter chains,,
Malcolm Collins: And a lot is bigger than water. Yeah. Yeah. That was said all the time to me growing up. Interesting, and that is a very bad metaphor to use because in the context of the Bible where it's being written, it is the blood is not thicker than the water of heaven.
It is, it is used to argue against this idea,
The original wording is the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb, where it water. It's supposed to be familiar where relationships and blood is supposed to represent chosen [00:03:00] relationships. Whereas today it's often used where blood represents familiar relationships and water represents chosen relationships.
It reminds me a lot of another commonly misused phrase where people say.
I am not my brother's keeper. And I'm like D. Dan do you know the context of that line? Do you know the context of that line? That's a guy. Saying to somebody accusing him of killing his brother when he did kill h
Published on 1 year ago