Cults And Jews :: essays research papers

Cults And JewsCults be becoming more and more of an issue for Jews every day. Many cults ar beginning to target Jews. They say you can believe in saviour yet remain a Jew, or many other things ilk that. It is important for people to educate themselves of these cults and their recruiting techniques so that they will not be taken advantage of by these cults. Cults now are very contrasting than they were in ancient times though. The Jews, rather than being targeted by cults, were themselves a cult. In fact they were one of the first attested cults.Now, Judaism is not considered a cult, it is a religion. Back in the ancient days many aspects of the Israelites laws make them a cult. The Israelites had sacrifices for many occasions. Sin-offerings, guilt offering, fellowship, votive, freewill, dedicatory, and ordination are all documented reasons for sacrifices to God. These sacrifices are what make the ancient Israelites different from the modern day Jewish people. Those sacrifices a re also what made the ancient Israelites a cult rather of being a religion like now. After the destruction of the guerilla temple sacrifice was replaced with prayer and prayer still stands now. Mishna discusses the different sacrifices the Israelites made and the reasons they were made. The rabbis say that sacrifices were not a bad thing. Because the sacrifices were made to God and represented different things between God and the people, the sacrifices were allowed. Sacrifices were made for apologies to God, for holidays and many other purposes, only when they were always animal sacrifices and they were always to God. These two aspects permitted the offerings. Because they were animal offerings, not human, the offerings were not too gore-filled. And since the offerings were made to God, it is not a person, but an all-powerful being. It makes star to make offerings to God because God created the people and guided them.Merriam Websters collegiate dictionary defines cult as 1 fo rmal religious veneration Worship. 2 a system of religious beliefs and ritual also its eubstance of adherents. 3 a religion regarded as unorthodox or meretricious also its body of adherents. 4 a system for the cure of distemper based on dogma set forth by its promulgator . 5 a great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work (as a film or book) especially such devotion regarded as a literary or intellectual fad b a ordinarily small group of people characterized by such devotion.