And one of my good friends is Jewish, also by ethnicity, but slightly more observant than my husband. She actually goes to Temple and participates in the holidays.

I find it all very interesting!

Well, that’s just ridiculous. First of all, I think you’re dramatically under-counting the deaths associated with the Crusades, on both sides, which one could chalk up primarily to the religions involved. Millions also died in part due to the centuries-long, globe-spanning conflicts between Protestantism and Catholicism, and today the Catholic church actively opposes many common-sense measures to curb the spread of AIDS in Africa, including condom education, directly leading to many needless deaths.

Furthermore, while the toll of the Holocaust and the various communist dictatorships is deplorable, the way these regimes have used their “aetheism” has more in common with organized religion than anything even the most strident atheists actually believe when it comes to policy matters. The elevation of Mao, Stalin, and Hitler is textbook quasi-organized-religious brainwashing, a mere substitute Opiate for the Masses, to steal a phrase. Political scientists call such regimes “Political religions” for a reason.

To put it another way, I think you’ll find that fanatics tend to be fanatical and violent and oppressive, whether it is in the name of God or in the name of Dear Leader.

Lastly, and more controversially, I don’t think you can justifiably call Hitler, or the Nazi party in general, atheist. Atheism was associated with communism, which the Nazis sought to stamp out, and Hitler talked a great deal in Mein Kampf of the Aryans being God’s gift to the world. There’s a rather comprehensive introduction to the discussion on the matter here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler%27s_religious_views

More people have died at the hands of the atheists (is communists, Nazis) in the past 120 years than have died by the hands of the religious in the past 4000 years.

I appreciate the zeal many have where religion is concerned. Each religion has fanatics who distort the ‘true’ meaning of their faith and this is where most troubles begin.

Whether or not one choose to ‘believe’ is irrelevant; everyone should be allowed to believe as they wish without persecution.

I mean, mental-floss magazine used to have a column written by the winningest Jeopardy champion ever? Trivia is pretty much what they do here.

“These are things that might be of interest to an observant Jew, but not necessarily to anyone else — unless they are trivia junkies.”

What else would you expect to find on this site?

But you don’t have to read it if the thought of how one of the world’s major religions deals with its most sacred text is of no personal interest. You’re a grown-up (presumably), you can choose what information you want to take in or not. There is no test, no grade. Nobody is making you read this article, or come back to keep commenting on it.

I’d wager a fair amount that most Talmud-educated Jews will thoroughly school you in any logic debate you’d care to have with them.

As if to demonstrate this, the question you ask doesn’t even make sense. Jews who consider the four letter name of God sacred also extend the same recognition to God’s (many( other names, including Elohim. You’ll note that they’ll write and say “Elokim” when not praying, for instance, just as they will write “G-d” or say the acronym “Adonai” instead of trying to pronounce Yahweh (the exact pronunciation having been lost with the destruction of the Second Temple).

The reason that there is a special distinction for the four-letter form is that when Moses asks God what he should call Him, God replies with that name, which means “I am / I will be”. So it’s extra special.