Today’s question isn’t one submitted on this website but instead one posted on Reddit many moons ago. This is the question.

One of the predominating thoughts in fundamentalist Christianity is that pagan gods of the Old Testament were demons in disguise. Its gotten to the point that any time discussion about religion gets involved with cultures that Moses and his descendant Prophets heck the Jews never got into contact with during the Biblical period such as say the Chinese, there is immediate accusation that these cultures’ deities are demons posing as humanoid divine beings.

I cannot tell you how many blogs there are out there by Christian fundamentalists accusing Shiva and the Hindu gods as demonic entities or videos on Youtube proclaiming Buddha is a servant of Satan (under the wrong assumption that Siddartha Guatma is worshipped as the God of Buddhism), etc with frequent citation of Deuteronomy 32:17 and Psalm 106:37 as proof.

With that said I am curious on the Jewish pov? Is Shedim correctly translated as demons like most English translations of the bible state the verses?

Or is there so much misunderstanding on shedim and “demonology” of Judaism by Christians? If shedim is correctly translated as demons, do they apply to all other Gods including Amaterasu, Mithras, Ganesh, Zeus, the Trinity of Christianity, and Allah (even if Muslims and Christian believe they are the same as Yahweh)? Or are they only region-specific around Israel and the border countries around her today?

https://reddit.com/r/rabbi/comments/kf4grh/are_all_pagan_gods_particularly_religions_judaism/

Today’s question is from a person called John.

Sorry if it’s an ignorant question. But no worries I’m am grateful for your blessing and time to answer my curiosity. CAN YOU BE GERMAN AND JEWISH?

First of all, I would like to apologise to the poster for this question. I am not sure how I missed it but I imagine it is long and pointless for you to read it. With that said I think it is still helpful for others.

Can gentiles observe Yahrzeit and recite Kaddish in English for a very close Jewish friend even though his family will be observing with their community?

Question by Sheri

Today’s question is about Witchcraft!

Shalom, Im a Christian Trying to understand and converse the old scripts to understanding today, my question is how Should i understand exodus 22.18
”“You shall not allow a woman who practices sorcery to live.”
‭‭Exodus‬ ‭22:18‬ ‭AMP‬‬
Today many Sorcerers live in my country and in exodus 20 it says do not kill.
How do you

Question from Gabriel

Today’s question is a quick and simple one!

I heard the Hebrew word or character for “Wait” is one stroke away from “Worship”

Question from John

For today’s question, I am going to explain how the Hebrew numbering system works even tho the core of the question is about converting something into Hebrew – something I don’t do on this website or it will be the only type of question that gets published.

How do you spell 5782 in Hebrew… I have found three different spellings: תשפ״ב היתשפב היןפב – Also how do you spell 5783? Thank you

Question from Sherry

So to answer it real quickly: 5782 = ה׳תשפ”ב and 5783 = ה׳תשפ”ג. With the Hebrew translation aside let’s go into how we got to this number and why it is written as it is. As of when I published this answer the Hebrew layout was correct but WordPress being WordPress may flip the text later on so leave a comment if it has and I will fix it.

For today’s question, we have the following.

What is the difference between a Sabbath day and a ‘High’ Sabbath day?

Question from Sherry

Thank you for the question and it is one you will find if you search for it you will find answers mostly from a Christian point of view. Within the typical Jewish faith and culture there isn’t a “High Sabbath” but you will find the closest term is Yamim Noraim or High Holy Days.

Yamim Noraim are important days within Jewish faith and culture which has their own rules and customs when it comes to those high holidays. Most High Holy Days most Jews will get involved with even if they are not that religious and are generally treated the same as if those days are the Sabbath

So what is a High Sabbath then? In short, it is a term found in Messianic Jewish and not one you will typically find within Judaism but they are days Messianic Jews and Christians treat the same as if it was the Sabbath.

So to answer the question – the difference is a “High Sabbath” is a day treated like the Sabbath within the Messianic Judaism faith but Judaism does have something much alike known as High Holy Days.

While I research another interesting question, today we have the following question from Kvajat.

Did Jews create Bahais?

Kvajat

Today I got a couple of questions from the same person but due to how my system works for how I get questions they will be answered out of order!

So today’s question is as follows.

My second question is, why are Jacov, David, Abraham, Moses, Gideon, Elkanah, Ashur, Caleb, Esau, Rehoboam, Lamech, Jehoiada, Abijah, and probably many I've not read about have multiple wives and G'd didn't tell them it was bad? Like, with Soloman G'd is angry because his wives have foreign gods he starts worshiping. 

But he's not angry that he has more than one wife. Abraham, Jacov and David and Moses appear to be very favoured in Yhwh's eyes. He said David is righteous, yet he has loads of wives. Moses was like one of the most holy, he wrote the tablets and went upon the hill directly with G'd... The ten commandments say don't commit adultery but that seems definitely not to apply here, because shortly after G'd gives rules to Moses about multiple wives. 

Basically, why do Jewish people now not seem to practice this now, compared to Muslims and other religions? I know Genesis 2 has the "one flesh" but it doesn't seem to be applying to just 2 people as G'd says in 2 Samuel 12:7-8 that he gave wives (as a gift) and would have given twice that many. Am I just missing some information about Jewish culture/a historical context.

First of all I would like to say sorry about the lack of replies for the month – I have been very unwell but I am going to start getting to them now I am starting to feel better.

So today’s question is the following.

To a Jew, is there a difference between Jesus and Yeshua (or Yehoshua) or do you consider them the same?