By Pavel Kollar
My remarks are in relation to the expression of Jonathan Rosenblum, cited in the last part of the article. I think that with baseball model one cannot explain the problem. I will try to describe how had it functioned.
The story of God was invented by human. This could be Moses or somebody else or more persons before Moses, but they all were humans and were Jews(or possible not?). With God was named the other system, the environment of the world in which they lived, and which was known to humans from their experience. For them, this other system was unknown, so they created imagines about it. And this is described in the Old Bible, Book I, Moses, parts 1-50.
The inventors of the story were common people, but people with something more imaginative abilities and possible with pretensions to be leaders in their group, to be authority.
When the inventors of the story were Jews, then the conclusion could be that Jews, as national group, existed before Judaism as religion.
The process of indoctrination of followers by leaders was neither smooth nor democratic(in the present meaning of this word) but full of conflicts. Not all were ready to accept the story and the interpretations were different. The conflicts were resolved also by violence. This has been described in Book II, Moses, parts 1-33.
The rules(The Commandments) which were proclaimed by Moses are nothing more than general description of individuals' life in every group, equally to which nation or religion they belong. They are description of individual in his or her daily environment. They are so general that for ex. Freud(with great probability) used them as base for his theory of personality.
The present dispute between religious and secular Jews is much more about the rituals than about the content of religion or factual life. The rituals are only advertising of one religion, not the religion itself.
During the life in different places the strong religious leaders lost the complete control over their followers so that there arose a secular interpretation of the doctrine, with fewer rituals but with more substance in the foreground. This could be interpreted as some kind of expression of disobedience to the authority, characteristic in almost all democratic societies.
Now, to return to the game model. Every game is some kind of ritual, passion. Today, there are two games: one is baseball game, played according the baseball rules, another is for ex. soccer, played according the soccer rules. Possible the present soccer players(or their ancestors) were once baseball-player but were also an open personalities and started to experiment with something else, and the reason could be that they found greater satisfaction in new play, possibly they were the ones who were slower runners or weaker hitters in the baseball, or ... But they were and they are still Jews.
So, 'Jew' is something more than a game. The Jew can invent game, but I am not sure wether the vice versa is valid. If it is valid, then the 'game' is not a human being, but it is either God or Liberty, but in either case unknown to human. Human can made only imagines about it. Distance in the space can change even the language(Babylon) but not the common roots.
The problem today is the religious totalitarianism of one part of Jews. Those who learned to be monopolists will hardly give up their standpoint. They cannot imagine a nation with more religions. Nation is based on common roots, religion on individuals' opinion. Even close family members can have different opinions. A monopolist needs another to dominate the one. A democrat needs another to have a trade partner.
The present democracy is not perfect. It has two different steps: the advertising of the program which is democratic, and the application of an elected program(by majority) to all(also to those who disagree with it) which can be felt as dictatorship. To remove this 'undemocracy' from democracy requires recognition of right to separation. But this is something new and not easily imaginable.
The alternative to divorce is a quarrel. Quarrel is sometimes good because it can produce new ideas but the participants must be equal in something, they must be organized. Quarrel between one organized group and not-organized individuals can be dangerous for the latter.