Jewish Student Weekly

The issue of abortion is another much debated and controversial issue among communities today. Even among the same community, views are divided on the topic. The Roman Catholic Church has taken the view that abortion is a sin and has condemned it strongly.

Many people however have different views on the topic. Most people do not take a stand and maintain that the circumstances have to be looked into and understood before a opinion can be formed, because the various circumstances in which abortion is resorted to can be very different. In some cases it is a necessity while in others a way to escape responsibility. 

In my opinion, whether abortion is ethical or not depends on the situation. There can never be a straitjacket answer to social issues such as this. Now take the example of a young girl who has been raped and finds that she has conceived. Take another situation where there is a girl who is less choosy about whom she is seen with and thinks nothing of having different sexual partners. She also finds that she is pregnant by one of them. Are these two situations the same? There is not even a slight similarity between the two where one is a victim of rape and finds that she pregnant out of no fault of hers and another where a girl is careless and gets pregnant. There cannot be a uniform answer to both the situations and the many hundreds of such situations.

The rape victim must be allowed to abort the fetus as it could put an end to her future when she had not done anything to warrant such a thing. But as far as the second girl is concerned, to let her abort the fetus would be to let her get away with her carelessness and instead make an innocent life pay for it. You probably have a different view of the second situation. Thus there can be no one answer to such social issues. They have to be examined with an unbiased view and some compassion.

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The world is still divided on opinion regarding homosexuality. Orthodox Jews still view it as perverse while the Roman Catholic Church has condemned it. More and more people however are beginning to recognize the rights of homosexuals and accept it.

The whole debate begs the question, what is wrong with homosexuality? Many argue that homosexual relations cannot result in procreation and thus it is immoral and against the laws of nature. But if the only purpose of sexual contact is to procreate, the world would be sagging under the combined weight of us all. This is an issue which needs to be addressed with logical thought and compassion.

People do not choose to be homosexual, for no one would wish to face the kind of discrimination homosexuals face. Recent scientific studies have shown that sexual orientation is genetically determined and some experts say sexual tendencies are also heavily influenced by the environment of a child in the first few years of his life. So really, what choice does a person have? Is it up to you and me to choose whether we are to be attracted to men or women? Or both, for that matter?

Every country gives its citizens the right to life including the right to live with dignity. If such a right applies to black, whites and Asians, men and women, they why not to homosexuals uniformly? Taking away the right of a person to govern his sexual orientation and the relations he enters is equivalent to seizing a person’s right to worship. What good can possible come out of forcing a homosexual to be straight. Or “normal”. Who governs what is right and what is wrong? As long as a person does not harm anyone else and two adults consent to be intimate with each other, it is their prerogative and no one else’s and society should learn to accept an individual’s rights.

We are an intolerant society. Being in the majority makes us confident of our convictions and we think we can force people who are different from us into submission. This attitude needs to change and although in some parts of the world homosexuals are accepted into mainstreams society, there are many where they are shunned and homosexuality is taboo, even illegal and punishable with death or imprisonment.

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When you talk about Jews the first thing that probably comes to your mind is Hanukah over Christmas. But Jewish Culture is much more than that. The Jews have suffered a long history of persecution in many different lands, and their population and distribution per region has fluctuated throughout the centuries. Today, most authorities place the number of Jews between 12 and 14 million.

Judaism guides its adherents in both practice and belief, and has been called not only a religion, but also a “way of life,” which has made drawing a clear distinction between Judaism, Jewish culture, and Jewish nationality rather difficult. In many times and places, such as in the ancient Hellenic world, in Europe before and after the Enlightenment, and in contemporary United States and Israel, cultural phenomena have developed that are in some sense characteristically Jewish without being at all specifically religious.

Some factors in this come from within Judaism, others from the interaction of Jews with their surroundings, others from the inner social and cultural dynamics of the community, as opposed to from the religion itself. Hebrew is the liturgical language of Judaism (termed lashon ha-kodesh, “the holy tongue”), the language in which the Hebrew scriptures (Tanakh) were composed, and the daily speech of the Jewish people for centuries. By the fifth century BCE, Aramaic, a closely related tongue, joined Hebrew as the spoken language in Judea. By the third century BCE, Jews of the diaspora were speaking Greek. Modern Hebrew is now one of the two official languages of the State of Israel along with Arabic. Educationally the childhood of a regular Jew is very similar to any other teenager of his age – Summer Camps, Cheerleading and playing basketball.

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