Why don't American Jews support Obama, the president of the USA?

Who told you they don't? Some people are not yet convinced that Obama is making progressive decisions, and some of those people are trusting that he is doing so. There are many Jews supporting Obama. When an American man defamed the president on the radio over the proprosed health care bill, he was asked if he had read the bill. He said he had not, but he was sure he was right because he heard the bad news that he was spreading from someone else. This is what goes on all the time. And it spreads distrust.

Why does the Orthodox conversion process have to take nine months? That is so long! I want to get married to my Jewish boyfriend soon.

How long does it take to learn a language well enough to read it and understand it? How long does it take to acclimate to a new culture or get a college degree? For most people, a year is hardly enough.

You want to convert to Judaism. That is a big commitment. In fact, it is so big that rabbis are supposed to turn prospective converts away at least twice before agreeing to teach them anything. You really have to want it.

I know of a rabbi who does quicky conversions in nine months. His converts do not know how to read a Hebrew text or study a page of Talmud or critique a page of Torah from the Hebrew. They are certified to be Jews, but they know so little compared to what a Jew growing up in Torah knows.

A person who grows up with Torah knows about kashrus, knows her prayers and the liturgy and has a Jewish value system based on the Torah. She knows so much by the age of six, by the age of twelve and by the age of twenty when she is expected to start thinking of marriage and building a family. She will have spent countless hours every day of her school years from the first grade studying the Torah and the midrashim, the laws of shabbos and the yom-tovim. Before her marriage, she will learn how to be a wife and prepare for motherhood.

How do you fit all that into nine months? No matter how smart you are and how much you study, you cannot learn it all in nine months or eighteen. So do all you can, as much as you can in the time ahead, and when you have learned it all and understand the obligations and responsibilities of Judaism, then you will be in a position to convert, should you still decide to do that. And if your boyfriend is really your soulmate, he will wait for you to get married.

Does Judaism consider Islam a violent and vile religion?

No, far from it. The problem with the violence and hatred that we see is not coming from Islam but rather from the radical people who also happen to be Muslim. In cultures where women and children are chattel and people can capture and enslave other people, Islam is not studied, the Quran is misunderstood and its people misrepresent it.

Many of these people come to America or live in Europe. They come from Palestine, from Iran, from Iraq and from other places. They continue their cultural practices and show no respect for other religions or the people who follow them. They are on our college campuses and they live in our cities.

Of the two major religions besides Judaism, Judaism considers Islam closest. Islam sees Allah as the spiritual promised land, a place to reach in one's spiritual growth. The way to get to him is shown in the other religions by their prophets. Of these prophets, Islam reveres both Jesus and Muhammet, but even these men are seen as guides, not deities. Islam is not a religion of idolatry as is Christianity which arose first from a group of Jews who revered their teacher and leader as the Messiah and decided that he rose alive to heaven and never died. Actually, other people in the Torah are thought to have risen alive to heaven. One was Enoch. Another was Elijah, the prophet.

For Christians, Jesus/Yeshua is still alive. The new Christological movement within Lubavitch Judaism is doing the same thing. For now, these people are still Jews, but one day, they may have a new name, just as those who followed the gospels of Jesus were and are still called Christians.

I have come to believe that the Messiah came already and will return. What kind of Jew am I now?

I would say you are what is today being called a "Messianic Jew." You didn't say whom you believe to be your messiah. Is it Jesus (also called Yeshua) or Rabbi Shneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe or Rabbi Mordechai Tendler? There are a few self-proclaimed Messiahs in the Jewish world today although they do not have much of a following.

Jews have often believed that someone in some generation was a messiah. For a while it was Bar Kochba. He died. There was Shabbetai Tzvi. He converted to Islam taking along with him many of his following. There were four or five named Yeshu (Jesus), and no one is sure which one of them the Christians portray in their gospels.

Messianism of this kind is nothing new to Judaism. You are still a Jew although I will venture a guess that you were never an Orthodox Jew. After some generations (I think it is four or five of a line of women), your children will no longer be able to claim to be Jewish.

Is the violence of the Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem on the Sabbath sanctioned by the Torah?

No it is not. And those Jews who do so are a small group of radical Jews. Please do not identify other Orthodox Jews with them.

To pick up a rock on the Sabbath is a violation of the Sabbath. It is an act of carrying. To throw that rock is an act of violence, and violence is forbidden by the Torah. That’s why Israel has shown such restraint in the face of the violence dealt them by Hamas when they were shooting shells and using suicide bombers against the Israelis.

The Torah teaches us that we must restrain our anger. The first example is that of Cain who murders his brother Abel. Like any child who lashes out, he did not use his words to negotiate what he wanted or thought he needed.

This is the sin of those who throw stones at other people on the holy day. Jerusalem does not belong to them alone, and while one can sympathize with them over seeing others desecrate the Sabbath, they have no right to do it themselves and to commit acts of violence in order to make their point. If they were to kill someone in a spree of rock throwing, that would be murder.

Why do bad things happen to good people?

Nature is not always benign, and people can be cruel and nasty. If we caused no suffering during our lives, people would still suffer from droughts, floods, spoiled food and any number of things that can happen. Bad things happen, and they can happen to anyone.

Consider that when some bad things happen to people, others step in to help. We may be very good at relieving suffering, but we can all be very careless about causing it. The man or woman who hits a pedestrian isn't thinking if the person is good or bad.

Viruses do not know or care if a person is good or bad. The hurricane, the earthquake and the tornado don't think at all, either. So bad things do happen. As Jews, we hope that there is a plan of which all these things are parts. We trust that Hashem knows what is happening to us, and we just keep on living and fighting to live, no matter what happens to us.

Is sexuality part of our humanity? (from Chris Vaughan)

Just because we are human does not mean that sexuality is somehow separate from us. Adam and Eve were given sexuality as part of their physical being. “Male and female He created them.”

We humans were never meant to refrain from experiencing and enjoying our sexuality. The first commandment given to Adam is to be fruitful and multiply.

In Judaism, it is not a sin to stay single, but one is considered to have been “punished” if he has no children. No children are the consequence of not having a mate with whom to be sexual.

Priests in Christianity have traditionally been celibate, a state that has disturbed Jews, because it is considered a defiance of God’s charge to Adam and Eve to have children. Being sexual is part of our nature. To be celibate might appear to some to be an objection to nature.