I landed at your site in my quest to learn more about the Torah. My earlier misconceptions about the Judaic beliefs sprung up from its similarities with that of the Koran, whose ideas I simply don’t consort with.

Peoples’ eyes are closed until God purposes them to see. Numbers 22:31

God keeps eyes closed and hearts hardened until He purposes them opened. Exodus 10:27

Our God reigns! And Israel is the apple of His eye! Zechariah 14:1-9

So when you say, “The Lord is near the broken-hearted; he is the savior of those whose spirits are crushed down.” I just said that please show me when and where Buddha said something like this, since it’s amusing to me that he would say that the Lord is near the broken-hearted or preach him being a savior. There is NO Lord! It is “you” who is responsible for your broken-heartedness. You are just a victim of the four essential truths of Buddism. You have suffering, because you have desire! You are broken hearted because you desire something and not get it!

I just pointed out a clear mistake, regardless of what the title of this topic is.

I guess I had taken the article politically instead of trying to understand the message conveyed. I am not a very religious guy and just know bits and peices of the major religions, and hence my lack of knowledge. However what I know and feel for sure is, there are contradictions between the Vedas and Upanishads and between Upanishads as well. I would have loved to quote some examples but it’s a bit difficult to search through the shlokas of the Vedas on the internet. I know them from my Grandma who was very religious. These Upanishads were written at a time when man had developed a much superior thought process. The oldest 4 Vedas focus more on diety praise, worship and sacrifice. Even those Vedas, you will see that the later Vedas have more spiritual insightment. The Upanishads go in depth on the subjects of spirituality and universe and out of context quote a shloka which in theory would contradict something from the original 4 Vedas. I don’t think the shift in thought of Bhagavad Gita needs explanation. It has many verses criticizing worship of the very same Gods which are central in the top 4 Vedas. And instead of using these contradictions to say that Vedantism is flawed, I would say, it just shows how the Indian religious philosophies and principles have evolved. We followed the very basic law of biological nature, “evolution”.

Just a note on those contradictions, my personal belief is that the original Vedic writings came from the Indo-European society (whichever that was) since you have many similar Gods in the Greeks and Roman religions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_religion
It continued its evolution in India where we saw the writing of Upanishads and the Puranas by the sages and seers.

Anyway, thanks for replying Ben. Judaism is very interesting to me and hence my presence on your website.

The point of the article is as it says “Criticism of Blindly Following the tradition”.
Our comparison cannot be flawed, because … there is no comparison :=) There are different pointers from different cultures to point the reader to the same phenomenon in both cultures: following the tradition without applying your own mind. That’s all about the topic of the given article.

Your language indicates that you did not learn much of the Vedantic literature (Buddhism also born in Vedic culture of India).
Although there is no space in this response to talk much about Vedas but I’ll try to give you some responses from Vedic culture to your comments.
Let’s start from your vision of Judaic theology as a religion of “about warning people and threatening them”.
In India the ideas of the reward and punishment come in Puranas. I will use a quote from the lion of India – Swami Vivekananda:
“The ideas of punishment and reward are very material, and they are consonant only with idea of Personal God who loves one and hates another just as we do.” (Quoted from Swami Vivekananda. “Practical Vedanta” Part 2, London, 1896). He goes on explaining how the idea of Personal God works and then shows the evolution into Impersonal in the time of Upanishads. Go to any Hindu Temple today and see how the idea of Personal God works for Hindus today. This is the same “Bhakti” path to the Divine as in Judeo-Christian theology.
Even in the theology not involving any deity, there is a different language yet pointing to the same – in Buddhism the words of “suffering” and “freedom of suffering” (Moksha) play exactly the same role in the mind of individual as “reward” and “punishment”. If that sounds of too different then let’s translate these terms as “badness” versus “goodness”. When do those apply? When individual follows dharma he frees himself from suffering (rewarded) or does not follow dharma (whence – punishment). What is that Dharma which Hindu should follow to get Moksha? Not going too deep into the relationships between Brahman-Atman and created maya, it is enough to say that Dharma is the same what Dao in China and Derech Hashem in Judaism – a Divine Path in Creation.
On the topic of Upanishads versus Vedas – in short, they are never in contradiction to each other but a new, deeper, meaning and new path for realization was given in Upanishads as compared to Vedas, yet the theology of Vedas was never rejected. More on this read Swami Vivekananda’s lectures on Vedanta.
If you want to focus on Moksha, then, according to Swami Vivekananda, you have to first focus on … becoming free from misconceptions inherited in all old traditions. Vivekananda provides a funny example to mock his own tradition, he says: ” You know why a cow exist according to Hindus? Because Vedas say so.” This blindness also present in Judaism and those who understand this, will see similarities in all the cultures and this is a topic of given article.