Presence

A huge peeve of mine is the tendency amongst contemporary Orthodoxy to view Judaism in universal terms, as opposed to particular terms. An example of this is to take what we perceive to be the "Torah" approach to something (for example, the rites of mourning) and presume that these have some kind of universal significance or truth, and that if non-Jewish cultures happen to deviate from our method of practice, they are in some way missing the point, not recognizing a univerasl truth.

There's many layers of the onion to peel back, and I won't be successful in doing that here, so suffice it to say I believe that, at least from the perspective of the narrative of the Chumash, viewing Judaism as some sort of essentially universal religion is an untenable proposition. That's not to say that parts of Judaism are not universalizable, but significant parts are clearly meant to apply only to Jews and do not in and of themselves represent any sort of universal idea that has meaning outside of a Jewish context (some of these commandments actually exist solely to distinguish - or particularize - us from other nations/religions). A good yardstick to use: if it originates in Leviticus, either the entire mitzvah itself, or it's reapplication, have particular meaning only to Jews.

There's a whole lot more that could be said on this topic; for a good overview of the differing opinions of various Tannaim, see Bejamin Helfgott's Study of the Doctrine of Election in Tannaitic Literature (BHU has a copy if you're in town).