GeddyBass2112

I don't see how following ANY religion, whether it be Judaism, Islam, Christianity or any other religion for that matter equates to 'thinking less'. Indeed, there ARE people who choose to treat their religion as a get-out-of-thinking clause, but there are also people within different religion who are highly intelligent and who do think for themselves. Even the likes of Richard Dawkins will admit that there exists a highly-complex, highly nuanced and intelligent religious group who don't settle for easy answers.

Also, study is a major part of the Jewish culture. Even from the earliest times, Jewish people would study in the yeshivot (kinda like a Sunday school for younger Jews) and the beit midrash (a Torah college of sorts for adult scholars and sometimes teenagers), and see the study of Torah (and more recently, of science) as a duty of being Jewish. There's no such thing as an easy answer in Judaism and anyone who thinks that Judaism provides some easy cut-and-paste answers to all life's problems is wrong.

Also, I wasn't born Jewish, and indeed until I went to uni some 4 years ago I'd never read a siddur, been to a synagogue or even heard of Seder. It's not like I was born into this system and had some system of thought imposed upon me from day 1. I was brought up in a vaguely Christian home, and attended church schools. I wasn't forced to attend any church services or to believe in anything, and so it happens that I formed my own ideas about morality under my own steam, and my own ideology about the world and about any god that might exist. It just so happens that my ideas about these things match to what is taught in Judaism.

Also, it's not like there's no room for personal freedom in a religion. I can still have my own ideas, my own dreams, my own ideas on what my purpose is, but within the framework of Judaism, which I believe will help, not hinder, me in achieving those things. OK, I've had to change things, such as what I wear and eat, but otherwise I'm still very much the person I was before. Hell, I'm probably a BETTER and happier person than before, because I believe that the Jewish systems of kashrut, tnizut and halakha are the right things to do.

I cannot understand why you seem so hostile.