Is it offensive to Judaism if non-Jews observe the high holidays?

I've seen questions just like this on this forum before, and they generally are revealed to be asked with an agenda to promote a hope for the demise of the Jewish people. It's my hope this is not another one like that and just a strange fixation or conjecture. Technically, all things will "die off" someday.

The universe and earth existed long before humans and will exist long after us If you choose to believe what God said in the Holy Scriptures more than a dozen times, the covenant with Yisrael is eternal, or as is repeated several other times, until heaven and earth pass away. Judaism will exist on earth as long as humans exist on earth. There is a lesson in the Torah that showed how the Pharaoh's evil designs and treatment of the "firstborn" of HaShem sealed the fate of the firstborn of Egypt.

This could be a metaphor for the rest of Jewish history, when the ultimate outcome of each evil attempt to eliminate the Jewish people brought destruction and complete downfall for those who hated the very purpose of the existence of the covenant nation, Israel, to live as a light unto the nations to strive for justice, mercy and peace. The Ancient Egyptian Empire, the Babylonian Empire, the Philistines, the Persian Empire, the Assyrian Empire, the Roman Empire, the Greek Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the Spainish Empire, the Crusaders , Nazi Germany, and Russia were each at one time the dominating force in the world. Each of those have all gone down to ruin from their former status as the dominating force in the world...and what is their common tie?

Each of those empires or forces tried to wipe out the tiny Jewish people with many different methods and justified by many different deceptive agendas. A note to GC with about the myth of the Temple veil: No historical writing of either Roman or Jew *contemporary to the events from within an entire generation* attests to the Gospel claims that there was a catastrophic earthquake, nor did Jews or Romans write anywhere contemporary with the supposed event of any astonishing sights of seeing dead saints rise from their graves that were all supposedly torn open by that quake and walk among them as the next verses in that narrative tell regarding the story of the torn veil.. I have read the book of Matthew as well as the rest of the New Testament, so that I could better understand what it is Christians believe based on their New Testament. It is not a holy text to my religion and the events it depicts are insignificant to the Jewish religion.

It is also apparent that any events that took place during the time of Jesus death did not affect normal activities and prayer at the Temple nor was there interruption of sacrifice mentioned in the writings of the scribes of the day. Also it is interesting to note that the Synoptic Gospels do not mention an earthquake, but that the sky darkened for 3 days, also events not recorded any *contemporary* Romans or the Jewish people. I have read Christian apologetic that tries to say the Talmud refers to it and points to Rabbi Yohanan B.

Zakkai in the Talmud telling of the large **doors** *behind the veil* opening by themselves until he closed them with words telling the them , "Hekel, Hekel, why alarmist thou us? We know that thou art destined to be destroyed...” Nevertheless, there is no mention of earthquake or veil being *torn,* OR of the graves opening with the astonishing event of the dead walking the earth. If those events had transpired, why would doors opening be more significant to record than the dead walking the earth would?

Every time Jews had come to adopt foreign gods or practice that was forbidden by Torah precept, calamity befell the Jewish people, and Tanakh illustrates this often happened at the very hands of the people whose beliefs they had abandoned Torah to follow.. It is a chilling indictment that just as a dead Jewish man was being turned into an object of worship that the very people who were promoting Jews to ignore the Torah’s declaration that an incarnate deity is forbidden and adopting man/god worship ..were the people soon to destroy the Temple and exile the Jews once again. This lesson was not lost on the Jewish people, and thus, in the Diaspora the men of the Great Assembly set about means to preserve intact the covenant of faith of Israel without the Temple as it had been in the days of the destruction of the First Temple. Judaism was here before First and Second Temples and it is still thriving today.

As Torah teaches, sincere repentance, doing one's best to make amends and seek pardon from the one offended, not repeating the offence and asking God *directly* to forgive us *after* we have done our part , are still the ways to achieve forgiveness of sins as they were long before the Temple. Lastly, the New Testament is the Holy Scriptures for the Christian religion and insignificant to Jewish beliefs. The myth of the veil tearing in the Temple had no significance to the practices at the Temple or to the followers of the Torah worshipping God directly in it, or to the Jews who lived too far from the Temple to be concerned about the sacrifices there.

An event as important as a massive earthquake that opened up many graves with dead people walking the streets and the Temple sacrifices being disrupted and the veil being torn certainly would have not escaped being written about by some contemporary eyewitness in such a literate part of the world. But since we KNOW that history records that the Temple sacrifces continued until it’s destruction, and no record of such an event is known to the Jews who worshipped there. I don’t believe it happened at all.

I believe the New Testament story of the veil being torn right after Jesus died was written to try to create a belief that "signs" existed to support their claims. They wanted to say there was physical evidence of legitimacy of their new religion. The story supports efforts of the Romanized and Hellenized populace to eliminate the eternal covenant of Israel that forbids an incarnate deity, the religion practiced at at the Temple there in Jerusalem, and then replace it with their new covenant (testament) theology.

Christian doctrine began IMHO as attempt to syncretize Judaism with their Roman beliefs and assimilate the Jews out of existence as a covenant people For those misguided people who falsely attribute Jesus death to the Temple's destruction, He was supposedly killed in around 33 CE..the sacrificial system continued unabated until 70CE..just about the time that worship of a man as a false god started in Jerusalem. And the texts that claim Jesus "prophecied" the destruction of the Second Temple were not written until 90 -120 CE according to Christian theologians, it wasn't until more than a generation after it happened that texts first appeared telling proselytes that Jesus had predicted it, and since most of the Jews had been exiled from Jerusalem by then there weren't any around to tell them at the first appearance of that story that it was anachronistic.

All religions, because they are all based on ancient superstitions, will die out.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.