Re: Jewish vs. Xtian music

[Chazzzan <Chazzzan...>]

Emily, I called my neighbor yesterday, who is a Catholic priest.

He said that in order to become a Christian, one must only say "I accept JC as
my personal savior, and that he is the son of G-d, etc."  The affirmation of
faith is all that is required to become Christian.  Some believe you must also
be baptized with holy water.

You bring up an entirely different topic when you mention what it takes to be
a "good" Christian.  I believe that seems to be up to each individual to
interpret what that means.

When the Jews were being persecuted in Germany, most of the official church
organizations considered it to be a "good Christian" at that time to go along
with official Nazi government policy.  Of course, many Christians acted on
their own and followed their own consciences towards helping or even rescuing
Jews, but the vast majority did not.  

For Jews, however, we have specific laws (halachot) about how to behave in
specific situations.  The Torah is the primary source for these laws, not just
the Ten Commandments, but the hundreds of laws that we have read about in the
last couple of Torah portions.   Then, of course, there is the Talmud and
Shulchan Aruch, with further recommended behaviors.

I was not meaning to disparage any specific religious group.  Someone -- very
early on in this e-mail discussion -- was trying to distinguish recent Jewish
music from other musical streams, and that person commented that some of the
recent music sounds very folky and similar to Christian folk music.  I agreed
with that person, trying to emphasize that the content should be Jewish, but
it would also be nice if the melodies were also Jewish.

NEVER MIND!