12:00 Rebbetzin Rebecca Abrahamson:
There's an exclusive historical relationship with the Jewish people and the God of history regarding being brought out of Egypt because we have a positive commandment to remember our exodus from Egypt every single day.
Exclusive to Jewish people is "Honour your father and mother so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God has given you".
Doesn't honouring your parents apply to everybody?
Honour in this sense means according to Jewish tradition doing the traditions of your father.
The concept of universal basic law given by God was used by the Ottoman Muslims in the 16th century when they set up the millet system. Christians in Europe saw the Ottomans flourishing and they saw that was because of their millet system and because of their successful form of government, that form of government was based on the din of Islam.
What could the Christians turn to that was more organic to them than they felt Islam was?
Well, the Old Testament which naturally carried into learning the Talmud and Maimonides. John Seldon, Hugo Grotius, Erastus, John Lightfoot and the founders of the English Parliament studied the Bible. They studied the Ancient Hebrew Commonwealth, the Talmud and Maimonides. They actually used the terms Noahide law. Some of them even learned Hebrew in order to develop the modern political system that we have today.
John Seldon:
"I cannot fancy to myself what the law of nature means but the law of God that is Noahide. How should I know I ought not to steal, ought not to commit adultery unless somebody had told me so? Without a higher power nothing else can bind. I cannot bind myself for I may untie myself again. Nor can an equal bind me for we may just untie one another. Law and ethics must come from outside ourselves, not just common sense but from God Almighty."
Therefore the freedoms that you have, the fact that anybody is even thinking in terms of rights, in terms of democracy, is because of the ancient Hebrew Commonwealth which was resurrected by Christian Hebraists in response to the success of the Ottoman millet system that was based on Islam.
Therefore religion is not meant to be trumped by public opinion, referendum or judicial activism. Freedom of religion is meaningless if government fiat can trump values that Abrahamic religions hold dear. We are meant to live in concentric circles of marriage, family, tribe community with the nation that is the state pulling it all together, but not bypassing community and family and our sheikhs and rabbis and priests and ministers. The government is not supposed to bypass all that. The government is supposed to just rule on the basis of the Seven Laws, not say "This year, schools are going to teach relationship concepts to your kindergarten children."
No, we're not supposed to be individuals confronted by the state.
We're supposed to be in concentric circles of family, community, religious community and only at the end the state that serves in a backseat manner.
Abrahamic religions do not believe in individuals directly being confronted by the state. It should be unthinkable to police school children's views of alternative relationships or the like.
Peaceful families and communities need not have thought police monitoring them and imposing on them.
The United Kingdom is the land of Magna Carta - the 13th century declaration of human rights, described as the greatest constitutional document of all times, the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot. The despot cannot be monarch nor it can be the secular state. We ignore this heritage at our peril. Learn about the millet system, learn about the seven laws of Noah. It's not just a nice feeling so that we're nice to our neighbours and accept people. It's a legal basis for a just society."
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