Fat, Drunk, and Stupid

is no way to go through life, son!

Dear Rabbi,

You think you are a marketing genius, and in many ways you are, but even you are not hitting a huge part of your target audience: "unconvinced scientifically minded rich atheist-leaning agnostic Soviet Jews" — a fat and juicy untapped Jewish client base that is currently giving money elsewhere, but not to Chabad (including even some who support Palestinian causes). These Jews are your natural clients, and their donations must be recaptured, and any such donated cash flow must go back where it belongs: to Chabad. In order to attract this new target audience, you need a new marketing strategy. Below is a question that you cannot adequately answer, but I can.

Let us set aside the fact that some of us may have legally binding covenants with God. Consider an independent third-party observer, someone who grew up an atheist in the Soviet Union when religious belief in God was frowned upon and strongly discouraged, akin to the character “Soviet Tourist Petrovich.” This independent observer wants to believe in God and is examining three competing belief systems: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, all of which are different interpretations of the same source code, namely the Torah. The question, dear Rabbi, is: exactly what evidence can you provide to “Soviet Tourist Petrovich” that would convince him that your Jewish interpretation of the Torah is more accurate than the alternative competing interpretations? By “more accurate,” I simply mean more likely to ultimately turn out to be the real truth – as defined by the most accurate description of how this objective reality in which we live actually works and operates.

For example, if the Talmud were to claim that the shortest distance between two points was always a straight line, then the Talmud would be wrong and false, as it would directly contradict reality. The GPS on your iPhone only works because the shortest distance between two points is not always a straight line in this objective reality we all share. In this case, Petrovich would be clinically insane to believe in the Talmud and would pick a more accurate competing alternative explanation about God and reality, such as Koran.

The purpose of this discussion is to make one thing perfectly clear, not only to the Rabbi, but to you, dear reader, as well. There is but one Torah, but there are three interpretations of it: the Talmud, the New Testament, and the Koran. The question I am asking is: should we select the Talmud, the New Testament, or the Koran as the most accurate interpretation of the Torah?

In other words, suppose, for example, God comes down and says Jews are bad because we gave up Christ (who was our Lord Yahweh’s true Son) to the Romans, a big mistake we never repented for. Jews are screwed, and the smart move is for Petrovich to become a Presbyterian, not a Jew. Convince me otherwise, please, for that is your job, is it not? I hope I am not being rude.