There is No "New Testament;" Don't Use the Term, Please

I try to be very careful about my terminology. One of the things we learn in Judaism is that words have power. A couple of popular rhymes of my childhood from my childhood are in direct opposition to Jewish theology and values:

sticks and stones can break my bones,
but words can never harm me

losers weepers
finders keepers

We Jews are "the People of The Book," and that has two lessons for us. One is that every word and word choice has power. It is possible to destroy a person with the wrong word, even if only intended as a "joke" or to "tease." Also, "The Book" is our Tanach, Bible, the Jewish one, and it has never been revised, added to, by Gd.

There is No "New sic Testament." The meaning behind that term, especially as it's used in conjunction with the "Old sic Testament," sic, is that Christianity is the Gd sanctioned revision of Judaism, which no good Jew accepts.

Judaism is the only religion of the True Gd. The basis of Judaism in in the Tanach, Bible. And the basis of Judaism is that we have only One Gd and are forbidden to worship a human.

There is a Christian bible, and there is the Tanach, Bible. I'm not shy about pointing it out, even when the speaker is a renown Jewish lecturer/expert. We must be very careful in the terminology we use, because words have multiple meanings. Just because a term is the "accepted" one by the general public, does not make it Kosher.

Chanukah is the Jewish Holiday during which we celebrate our victory over the Ancient Greeks and Hellenists, the assimilated Jews of the time. It's the perfect time to inspect our language and rid it of foreign anti-Jewish terms.

Chag Urim Sameach

May You have an Enlightened Holiday

Chanukah, day #3