christianity: the lord is my shepherd and i am a lamb whom He will guide to safety
judaism: we call ourselves “the god-punchers”, bc we like to remind Him of that time He lost a fight against our great-great-great-granddad
i see a lot of confusion in the tags so here’s an explanation of the joke!
the joke of this post is referencing the story of Jacob in Genesis. Jacob is one of the legendary Patriarchs of Judaism whom all non-convert Jews claim descent from, so he technically is my great-great-….-granddad.
At one point, Jacob meets a stranger on the road, who he ends up fighting for a reason the text is unclear about. Jacob wins the fight, and the angel reveals that he was actually a holy spirit in disguise.
The precise identity of the man is a point of contention in all traditions- there’s an even split between if it’s God himself or an angel sent as an emissary.
Regardless, the man blesses Jacob and names him Israel- ישראל, yisra’el. The name is complicated to translate, but one popular one is “he who wrestles with God”. His descendants adopted this as one of their ethnonyms- בני ישראל, b’nei yisra’el, the children of Israel, the Jewish people.
So saying we Jews call ourselves “the god-punchers” is a loose translation, definitely, but I’d give an honest argument that it accurately portrays the spirit of the phrase, especially by giving it a glib and boastful modern phrasing.
for the nitpickers: yes, “The Lord is my shepherd” is a part of Jewish belief too! It’s from a passage in Psalms, which is a book that Jews and Christians do share.
But the relationship that we Jews have with HaShem is complicated and occasionally even adversarial. The Christian relationship, on the other hand, is much more, well, patriarchal. Jesus is a father figure who is always good and never needs a stern talking-to from His creations.
In contrast, the Torah and Talmud are full of stories of Jews arguing with HaShem- and winning, and HaShem being ecstatic that He lost the argument. Bickering with our deity is a sacred Jewish tradition that continues to the present day.
a less tongue-in-cheek translation would be ‘those who wrestle with god’– especially in the modern sense we use, of wrestling with a conundrum. it isn’t just punching, it’s boxing, it’s a match. to be jewish isn’t just to follow god’s words, it’s to genuinely engage with the issue of god and everything he’s told us and whether or not he even exists and if so what that’s supposed to mean.
i think that’s why you don’t stop being jewish by not believing in god. even if you drift away for awhile, who you are is shaped by the thousands of years of spiritual engagement with this monotheistic, monolithic creator and arbitrator, and all the weird-ass problems that crop us as a consequence. you only stop being jewish by specifically, formally converting to another religion, and relinquishing the fight entirely.
Wait so the chosen people messed god up and he didnt kill them like he did almost all eygpt thats odd funny cool but odd
