Genuine Judaism

To break a commonly believed myth, I must say that there were maybe a couple of minutes in time, besides when the only Jew was Avraham Avinu, Our Forefather Abraham, when every single Jew followed G-d's Commandments.  Those few minutes, or seconds were at that magic spiritual moment when G-d spoke to the Jews who had exodused from Egypt, and the Jewish People, including the souls of all Jews to be born for eternity, answered נעשה ונשמע "na'aseh vinishma," "we will do and we will listen."  That was the pledge that cemented our relationship with G-d.

But before then and since then, there have always been Jews who, for whatever reasons, ignored, disobeyed or were totally ignorant of the mitzvot commandments G-d has given to us.

Not only have there been individual, personal refusals to follow the mitzvot, but over the millennium various alternative "versions" of Judaism have emerged.  Christianity is actually one of them, and even Islam in a sense is one, too.  Christianity claims to keep our Jewish Bible, but they added another volume and customs which directly contradict Judaism.  Islam adopted some of our history and forefathers but distorted them.

And there are the more modern versions of Judaism, like Reform, Conservative, Liberal, Reconstructionist and various Chassidic  and even Chareidi sects which contradict the basic mitzvot.  Yes, I may surprise you by saying that there's a distortion of Judaism in the Judaism practiced by some Chassidic and Chareidi Jews.  Chassidim consider their Rebbe to be at best an intermediary between themselves and G-d, which is very problematic.  Some of the Chabad/Lebovitch have gone even further and worship their dead Rebbe as Moshiach, Messiah.  This is extremely problematic according to Jewish Law.

IMHO, Chareidi Jews have adopted certain non-Jewish customs, like the one saying that "men of the cloth*," yeshiva students, those dedicated to religion shouldn't defile themselves by serving in the army.  And their insistence that it's preferable to learn full-time and never to work, learn a profession goes against basic Jewish Law. 

Jewish Life, like the Jewish Calendar, which combines the Lunar and Solar Calendars, is supposed to combine  kodesh and chol, the holy and the material/profane.  We must know how to separate it, keep Shabbat versus doing the ordinary, real life stuff of building, creating etc during the weekdays.

Now, how did I get onto this topic?  I saw an article on Arutz 7 that the leading candidates to be the next Chief Rabbi of Israel are from the National Religious community.  They are those who teach a Judaism more like what I believe in, including seeing the mitzvah in serving in the IDF and the importance of the State of Israel.