To my Jewish viewers: I hope that by reading my responses you do not take my table-turning seriously. I intend to educate, not to inflame.
1. Are you aware that you aren't Noahide because of your religion?
Picture this question from your own angle. I write to you: Are you aware the Jewish faith perpetuates kegare and tsumi for you and you are hopelessly doomed to suffer in Yomi due to that accumulation?" You'd probably go "why do we care about what a Japanese religion thinks?" Well theres the knee-jerk answer.
Your question rests on an assumption that monotheism or henotheism trumps polytheism; this is a weak argument. The notion that we should put YHWH/IHVH before our kami implies we're concerned about the same things. We simply aren't.
2. All polytheistic religions that have come up against Judaism died out. What do you think about tha
That’s not really accurate. Judaism itself never destroyed any polytheistic religion — it was Christianity and later Islam that carried imperial power. It was their armies and missionaries that brought down the pagan systems of Europe and the Near East, not Israelite prophets. And even then, polytheism was never extinguished. Hinduism remains in India. Shinto remains in Japan. Indigenous religions across Africa and the Americas live on, often blended with Abrahamic traditions. The claim that “Judaism defeated polytheism” simply doesn’t stand up to history.
But even if I accepted your argument, what does it really prove? If Judaism survived only by the sword of Christianity, that sword cut both ways. It was Christian dominance that preserved you, but it was also Christian dominance that unleashed pogroms, forced conversions, and centuries of antisemitism. To say you live because Christians killed off pagans is also to admit you live under the shadow of their persecution.
For us in Shinto, we are concered about the lakes, the rivers, the mountains, the forests. Shinto persisted despite centuries of persecution by Buddhism itself. We hold little concern.
3. Isn’t worshiping many gods just idolatry?
Idolatry assumes a single God exists, or one above them all if you take the henotheist angle. Kami are not some cheap substitute or a statue of a golden calf. Rather, they are the features of our nature. Streams, hills, woods, or even islands.
The Ten Commandments was a covenant for the Hebrews. It's not as if you can run a nation on 10 simple rules. Shinja, believers of Shinto, don't expect Jews to follow our rules of purity and cleansing. Why should we be expected to follow your rules?
4. Why follow a religion without a covenant from God?
From our view, the Kingdom of Israel and Judaea is a small, insignificant piece of land located in West Asia on the Levant. Are we supposed to believe that God chose one people from there, forsaking great societies like China, Egypt, Sumer, the Olmecs, Mayans and Aztecs, and the Zimbabweans from being part of that covenant? That is truly absurd to think about when you zoom out and realize that cannot be right.
The kami gave humanity the Earth and we are instructed to maintain it and cultivate it. Yet the Levant turned to wastelands, even moreso with wars and crimes of said wars across it. We have our own right to be disgusted with what we see.
6. How can Shinto be true without scripture or prophets?
Rather than revelation, we rely on traditions and the proof that traditions have persisted thousands of years, and shrines have been built and rebuilt in the same places for thousands of years, evolving with the times and ability of the people, is a show that our faith is true. Persistence is a show of truth.
The fact of the matter is, Japan hasn't had writing for very long. But oral traditions have worked fine for thousands of years as well. Why would we invalidate the traditions of indigenous people who only recently learned to read or write as well, when they have similar accounts of their history, without writing?
7. If you really respect nature, how do you justify things like war, pollution, or death rituals?
Kegare (ritual pollution) and tsumi (defilement, desecration, sin or crimes) are a relative term. By human nature, war and air/water/earth pollution are capable of creating much harm. But Japanese culture respects its spaces. Japanese cities are way more green and planned in a more natural way compare to the industrial concrete jungles of the West. We have rules in war, and the idea that glory in war can be had. But wars must be fought for the right reasons.
Similar to Jewish ideas of ritual impurity, our pollution and defilement can be absolved through proper rituals. It's a case where we understand our place in the world. My question is: Do you?
8. Aren’t you just practicing Japanese folk culture, not a universal religion?
Whoa! That's a pot calling a kettle black. Yes, Shinto is not a universal religion. Neither is Judaism. Traditionally, if your mother isn't Jewish, neither are you. We don't seek to convert everyone, but we also are equally sure we are "right".
9. The Tanakh says the nations will one day abandon idols and worship the one God.
I mean we can go back and forth about what our holy texts say and suggest. That said, Israelites had no knowledge of nations like China, Japan, or the natives of the Americas. The world was much smaller and as a result they were able to think that. We cannot say this with certainty in the modern times. Shinto was never a monotheist faith.
10. If Shinto is true, why did it allow Buddhist influence to dominate Japan for centuries?
"If Judaism is true, why did the Assyrians and Chaldeans easily pillage Israel/Samaria and Judaea?" I see zero difference. Buddhism was brought in by a colonial power (China) looking to civilize the savages. Our faith survived more than a thousand years of suppression and emerged to once again dominate Japan. Both of our faiths have survived various challenges, this isn't the oppression olympics.
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