Renaming the Paradigm
Bookworm has written a brilliant post which recounts a conversation between herself and her mother. She comes to the conclusion that the labels "left" and "right" ought to be renamed. Highly recommended reading.
Bookworm has written a brilliant post which recounts a conversation between herself and her mother. She comes to the conclusion that the labels "left" and "right" ought to be renamed. Highly recommended reading.
"The Nine Questions People Ask About Judaism" is a short but valuable book written by Dennis Prager and Rabbi Joseph Telushkin. In it, I have found some very persuasive arguments on behalf of Jewish religious belief - - perhaps some of the most compelling I have seen anywhere.
An excerpt:
God may have His own reasons for denying us certainty with regard to His existence and nature. One reason apparent to us is that man's certainty with regard to anything is poison to his soul. Who knows this better than moderns who have had to cope with dogmatic Fascists, Communists, and even scientists?
Emanuel Rackman, in The Condition of Jewish Belief
If the believer has his troubles with evil, the atheist has more and graver difficulties to contend with. Reality stumps him altogether, leaving him baffled not by one consideration but by many, from the existence of natural law through the instinctual cunning of the insect to the brain of the genius and heart of the prophet. This then is the intellectual reason for believing in God: That, though this belief is not flee from difficulties, it stands out, head and shoulders, as the best answer to the fiddle of the universe.
Milton steinberg, Anatomy of Faith
DOUBT
Does God exist? This is life's most crucial question. The implications of the conclusion have the most significant consequences for the meaning of human existence.
Yet, despite its overwhelming importance, serious discussion of Cod is usually confined to theologians and philosophers. The rest of us form simple opinions of belief, agnosticism, or atheism at a relatively early age and are content to retain them without questioning for the rest of our lives.
We must therefore begin our presentation of Judaism with a discussion about God. First, let us briefly note Judaism's attitude toward a most common contemporary sentiment about God: doubt.
Can you doubt God's existence and still be a good Jew? Yes.
Belief in God is often difficult. Crises of faith are to be expected, and acknowledging such crises is not an irreligious act for a Jew. There are four significant reasons why doubts about God's existence should not be an obstacle to your being a good Jew.
1. Judaism emphasizes deed over creed
Judaism stresses action far more than faith. The Talmud attributes to God a declaration which is probably unique among religious writings: "Better that they [the Jews] abandon Me, but follow My laws" (for, the Talmud adds, by practicing Judaism's laws, the Jews will return to God, Jerusalem Talmud Haggigah 1:7). According to Judaism, one can be a good Jew while doubting God's existence, so long as one acts in accordance with Jewish law. But the converse does not hold true, for a Jew who believes in God but acts contrary to Jewish law cannot be considered a good Jew.
It is not, of course, our intention to deny the centrality of God in Judaism, but merely to emphasize that Judaism can be appreciated and practiced independently of one's present level of belief in God. You can incorporate Judaism into your daily life through study and practice even while doubting God's existence, because Jewish study and practice in and of themselves are extraordinarily valuable to the individual and society.
Moreover, our experience has confirmed that once you begin to study and live Judaism, you will find belief in God much more feasible. As the Talmud notes, whereas a man or woman may begin to practice Judaism for reasons unrelated to God (such as rational and ethical conviction), he or she will eventually do so because of God (Pesahim 50b).
2. Absolute certainty in faith leads to fanaticism
In the words of Emanuel Rackman, one of the foremost Orthodox rabbis of our time: "Judaism encourages doubt even as it enjoins faith and commitment. A Jew dare not live with absolute certainty, because certainty is the hallmark of the fanatic and Judaism abhors fanaticism, [and] because doubt is good for the human soul, its humility....God may have had His own reasons for denying us certainty. with regard to His existence and nature. One apparent reason is that man's certainty with regard to anything is poison to his soul. Who knows this better than moderns who have had to cope with dogmatic Fascists, Communists, and even scientists?"
3. If God were known, moral choice would end
If we knew God existed and would punish us for evil acts, then good acts would be much less freely chosen. An element of unknowability about God is necessary so as to allow us to choose good. In order to choose good, we must feel free to do bad, and we would not feel this way if we had definite knowledge that God was present and recording our every action. (How much choice do we have to speed when we know a police car is present?)
4. Since God's existence is unprovable, doubt is natural
God cannot be known to exist in the sense that we know a table or a cat exists. Their existences can be physically demonstrated and verified through our senses. But God's existence cannot, since God possesses no physical qualities. One can prove the existence of the natural, the physical, the finite; God, however, is supernatural, metaphysical, infinite. The inability to prove God's existence reflects, then, only on the fact that God has no physical qualities, a position that Judaism has always maintained.
To have doubts about God is, then, normal, permissible, and consistent with being a good Jew. But a good Jew may not deny God's existence. Indeed, the primary task of the Jewish people since its inception has been to bring the idea of a universal God and morality, or ethical monotheism, to mankind. As we shall see below, the most important values of life are dependent upon positing the existence of God: morality, or good and evil as objective realities that transcend personal and national opinions, and ultimate purpose and meaning to human existence. To put it another way, if there is no God, then there can be no objective good and evil, and no ultimate purpose to our existence. For these reasons, among many others, a committed Jew (a) may not deny God's existence, (b) must struggle with his doubts about God (the name of the Jewish people, Israel, means "struggle with God"), and (c) must advocate ethical monotheism, the ideal of a universal God as the basis of a universal standard of ethical behavior. As Elie Wiesel stated it: "The Jew may love God, or he may fight with God, but he may not ignore God."
THE NEED TO POSIT GOD'S EXISTENCE
MORALITY
The first value whose existence is dependent upon positing God's existence is morality. If there is no God, there are no rights and wrongs that transcend personal preference. Gases and molecules, the laws of nature, are not "good" or "evil," "right" or "wrong." If the natural world is the one objective reality, and there is no moral source beyond nature, good and evil possess no objective reality. Moral judgments then become purely subjective. They are popular or personal opinions which are objectively meaningless and represent no reality. It is self-evident and acknowledged by the foremost atheist philosophers that if a moral God does not exist, neither does a universal morality. Without God, all we can have are opinions about morality, but our opinions about "good" and "evil" behavior are no more valid or binding than our opinions about "good" and "bad" ice cream.
This is why in secular societies morality is generally considered to be a matter of opinion. Moral relativism is the only possible consequence of the denial of God's existence; morality becomes a euphemism for personal opinion. As this century's most eloquent atheist philosopher, Bertrand Russell, wrote: "I cannot see how to refute the arguments for the subjectivity of ethical values but," Russell conceded, "I find myself incapable of believing that all that is wrong with wanton cruelty is that I don't like it."
Russell's second point is our whole point. All that can possibly be wrong with wanton cruelty according to atheism and its moral relativism, is that we may personally not like it. Amorality is inherent to atheism.
To illustrate this point, assume there is no God and attempt to explain why Hitler was morally wrong. For the atheist and moral relativist, the only thing wrong with Nazi atrocities, as Russell said, "is that I don't like it."
One may answer that we know "deep down" that Hitler's mass murder and torture were wrong. But from where does this "deep down" feeling of right and wrong come? If there is no God, such feelings are just feelings, and objective morality must transcend subjective feelings. And if in fact we do possess "deep down" knowledge of good and evil, what source of morality put it within us?
Or, one may answer that Nazi-type murder is wrong for pragmatic reasons -- citing the argument that "if we kill them, they'll start to kill us and society will fall apart." This is not a moral argument, but merely a pragmatic one, and it is in any event invalid, since committing evil can be regarded as highly practical. In fact, pragmatic arguments usually favor committing the crime. The Nazis, for example, would have correctly dismissed the argument that "if we kill them, then they will kill us" by noting that "they" will not be able to kill "us." As in the rest of nature, only the weak will be destroyed. The pragmatic argument against committing evil is naive. If you can get away with a crime, there is no pragmatic argument against committing it -- only a moral argument, which is often quite impractical.
Take, for example, the relatively minor crime of tax evasion. The pragmatic argument again argues for, not against, committing the crime. The argument that "if everyone cheated on their tax returns, we would all suffer," understandably dissuades almost no one from cheating. On the contrary, tax evaders are quite certain that nearly everyone else is cheating, and it is precisely this fact that serves as their justification for doing the same. Precisely because one believes nearly everyone else is cheating, he, too, should cheat. Otherwise he loses. Pragmatism dictates immoral behavior at least as often as it dictates moral behavior.
You can purchase a used copy from Amazon for as little as 27 cents and read the whole thing.
Prager recently gave a talk on this subject which I can't recommend highly enough. It is summarized here.
Shira Bat Sarah writes:
Every aspect of Jewish life is rooted in respect for life. A discussion during Shabbat services three weeks ago brought this to the forefront. In the d'var Torah, we were asked the question: Which is the easiest commandment to follow and which is the hardest?
The easiest commandment is not to take eggs or chicks from a nest while the mother bird is present. This is to prevent the mother bird pain from seeing her eggs or chicks taken. Kashrut is followed for similar reasons. These rules are meant to make us conscience of all our actions. It governs our speech as well.
"Guilt and Pleasure" is a terrific magazine, each issue of which is devoted to a different subject - all of Jewish orientation, though many would be of interest to anyone and everyone. The publishers intend it to be used to engender salon-like discussion. I don't know how they stay in business because they post each and every article in its entirety on the internet. I suspect that if and when they gather enough regular readers, they will stop doing so. In the meantime, there are a few excellent and interesting pieces from their latest issue (the "sound" issue, which includes many articles about the music industry) that I'd like to bring to your attention. They are well-written and as my kids like to put it, "edumacational":
1. The Jewish roots of scat?
Scat — vocal solo composed of nonsense syllables — first appeared in Louis Armstrong’s 1926 song “The Heebie Jeebies Dance.” Armstrong initially claimed that back in the days of one-take recording, with no technology to add in an overdub, he had dropped the sheet music and just began singing sounds on the spot as a substitute for the missing lyrics. However, Armstrong reportedly later told fellow bandleader Cab Calloway and others that scat derived from the sound he described as “the Jews’ rockin,” which he had heard growing up in a mixed black-Jewish neighborhood in New Orleans.
Fans have come up with two interpretations of this: either Armstrong was walking past a synagogue and heard rapid-fire davening, which struck his ear as nonsense, or he heard nigunim, Hasidic melodies intended to induce a meditative state before prayer (nigunim can also serve as lullabies).
In his writings, Armstrong also recalled lullabies sung by a Mrs. Karnofsky — a woman whose family befriended and employed him as a kid, and to whom he largely attributes his admiration of Jews and Jewish life.
Could Hebrew have inspired the “heebie jeebies”?
Scat was soon ubiquitous, with Armstrong’s friend Calloway becoming a second master of the form. In his greatest hit, “Minnie the Moocher,” Calloway calls out scat phrases and his band responds in black gospel style, yet the minor key and sweeping sound of his scat also recalls cantorial song. More
2. Tin Pan Alley - A Jewish industry killed by a Jew. Guess who and how?
During the sweltering summer of 1962, Neil Sedaka’s “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do” piped over and over — and over — through transistor radios and up the charts. Its catchy hook and painfully simple lyrics (Remember when you held me tight / And you kissed me all through the night / Think of all that we’ve been through / And breaking up is har d to do) were the sort of formulaic ingredients that fed the Tin Pan Alley hit factory where Sedaka worked and that dominated popular music at the time.
“Every time I ran out of lyrics, I’d throw in a ‘doo-be-doo,’ and it became a trademark,” Sedaka told Mix magazine a few years ago. “In fact, the night before we tracked ‘Breaking Up Is Hard to Do,’ I called up our arranger, Alan Lorber, and told him I wanted to incorporate ‘down dooby doo down down’ as a prominent part of the vocal arrangement. The record came to be known as the sandwich song. There’s a piece of bread to begin with — the syllabization — then the meat and finally another piece of bread. All of my hits in the ’50s and ’60s used this same technique.”
It was, for a time, an unbeatable system. But the following year brought an attack on Tin Pan Alley, the Midtown Manhattan hit-making industry that produced so many songs like Sedaka’s and whose hooks still resonate more than forty years later. While Sedaka, along with Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller, Carole (Klein) King, Gerry Goffin, Cynthia Weill, Howie Greenberg, Barry Mann, Jeff Barry, Burt Bacharach, Ellie Greenwich, and dozens of others churned out hits from cramped offices in the Brill Building at 1619 Broadway and its sister (and rival) center at 1650 Broadway — the heart of Tin Pan Alley — Greenwich Village was nurturing an assault on popular music that in the end resulted in the demise of the hit-making business uptown. More
3. Jonathan Richman, suburban Jew, outsider, and with his band the Modern Lovers, a forerunner of punk rock:
For the purpose of making sense of Jonathan Richman, the ideas of Polish-Jewish Marxist Isaac Deutscher are helpful. In his famous 1958 essay “The Non-Jewish Jew,” Deutscher attempted to explain why Jews ranked highly among modern Europe’s most innovative thinkers: people such as Spinoza, Marx, and Freud. He did not attribute this to superior genes or religious values; instead, Deutscher came up with a sociological explanation. Many of Europe’s great iconoclasts, he said, were Jews who had “looked for ideals and fulfillment” beyond Jewry but could not gain full entry into the larger, gentile society. As outsiders twice over, these “non-Jewish Jews” adhered to no entrenched beliefs. They could perceive what members of the majority could not, leading them to develop all sorts of subversive theories in the arts and sciences. Those theories were born out of a certain Jewish condition without expressing any directly Jewish beliefs.
Deutscher did not write “The Non-Jewish Jew” with young, postwar, suburban Jews in mind; he likely would have seen them as too affluent, assimilated, and contented compared to the people he discussed. What Deutscher wouldn’t have been able to perceive, however, was the dissonance many Jews felt in suburban America. Jewish kids typically weren’t captains of the football team or homecoming queens. They weren’t likely to be voted Cutest or Most Desired Desert Island Companion, although they stood a good chance of winning Funniest or Class Treasurer. They worried about their noses and hard-to-manage hair and the humiliation of having to shave a nascent moustache in the seventh grade. They faced occasional taunts and the odd punch. And they suffered through Hebrew school several days a week while their gentile peers ran free. Those suburban Jews were not ostracized, but they didn’t quite fit into the mainstream, either.
They had two basic choices, the Jews of suburbia. They could try to adapt (which entailed its own psychological and practical challenges) or go their own way. Jonathan Richman chose the second route. More
In his latest anti-religionist rant, Christopher Hitchens has turned his sights on Chanukah, calling it a celebration of "the imposition of theocratic darkness." Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, Chanukah is a celebration of freedom from tyranny - when the Jews fought for and won the freedom to worship and believe as they chose.
Hitchens mistakenly claims that Jews wished to destroy Hellenism. I don't know where he comes up with this cock and bull story. The Jews were not seeking to destroy Hellenism or philisophy, art, science or progress in their quest for freedom. Ample evidence of this can be seen in Jewish world contributions in those areas which Hitchens, in his mouth-foaming lather to disparage religious practice, chooses to ignore.
The truth is, without the type of freedom that the Maccabees sought, human invention would eventually stop. It has been proven many times throughout history that it is difficult to be creative when one is enslaved by others. Instead of invention, one becomes preoccupied with extricating oneself from beneath the master's thumb.
In his thesis, Hitchens canceled out the entire basis of Judaism, which is to say that art, philosophy, technology, invention, and human progress are nothing without ethics and morality. Chanukah is not about erasing the Greek culture or creating a theocracy (in fact, Judaism is the antithesis of theocracy - Jews believe that only Jews should practice Judaism and they do not proselytize) or tribal backwardness. Chanukah celebrates the freedom to choose to have morality and values underlie and support one's endeavors.
Hitchens for some reason seems to feel enslaved by religious morality and finds it necessary to fight its invisible bonds. But who is holding his hand to the fire? Be religious, or not. Be moral, or not. It's between you and your conscience. Jews will never force their morality down your throat. Insinuating that they would is a defamation. It is an untruthful claim, lacking...morality.
No surprise, I guess.
Therefore, Jews, while of course condemning hypocrisy, still understand the concept in a totally different way. Most people are inconsistent rather than hypocrites. They preach one thing and practice another not because they don't believe in goodness, but because they cannot always master their natures to do the right thing. No matter. Imperfect people can still vastly contribute to the perfection of the world.
All it takes is one good deed.
- Shmuely BoteachWhat does Judaism say about war, violence and peace?
Sometimes war is necessary. Judaism teaches the supreme value of life, yet we're not pacifists. Wiping out evil is also part of justice. As Rashi explains (Deut. 20:12), dangerous disputes must be resolved. Because if you choose to leave evil alone – it will eventually attack you.
People today don't relate to the concept that if you don't destroy evil, it will destroy you. Today, most Westerners grow up in nice neighborhoods, they never experience war, real suffering, or in the case of Jews, anti-Semitism. Therefore it's very easy to pontificate brotherhood, peace and other liberal notions at the expense of defense. There's a well-known funny expression defining a liberal as “a conservative who has never been mugged.” Questioning the ancient Hebrews' sense of justice and morality is not really fair if you haven't dealt with harsh reality of their experience.
It is ironic that the Jewish people created the basis of Western morality – such as an absolute morality and the concept of the sanctity of life, and today civilizations that rest on our foundation turn around and throw into our faces the accusation that Torah espouses cruelty to Canaanites! People today can only criticize ancient Hebrews because those very Hebrews taught them that murder, conquest, and abuse are wrong and immoral. The values such as respect of life, freedom, and brotherhood, all stem from Judaism. Today we have the mindset that wiping out a city down to the children and animals is immoral because Jews have taught that to the world!
* * *
People mistakenly think that the Torah's directive was to wipe out the Canaanites indiscriminately, in a cruel fashion. In truth, the Jews would have preferred that the nations never deserved punishment. That’s why the Canaanites were given many chances to accept peace terms. Even though abominable inhuman practice had been indoctrinated into the Canaanite psyche, the hope was that they’d change and accept the Seven Universal laws of humanity. These “Noachide Laws” are basic to any functioning society:
1) Do not murder.
2) Do not steal.
3) Do not worship false gods.
4) Do not be sexually immoral.
5) Do not eat the limb of an animal before it is killed.
6) Do not curse God.
7) Set up courts and bring offenders to justice.At the root of these laws lies the vital concept that there is a God Who created each and every person in His image, and that each person is dear to the Almighty and must be respected accordingly. These seven laws are the pillars of human civilization. They are the factors which distinguish a city of humans from a jungle of wild animals.
* * *
Even as the Jews drew close to battle, they were commanded to act with mercy. Before attacking, the Jews offered terms of peace, as the Torah states, "When approaching a town to attack it, first offer them peace." (Deut. 20:10)
For example, before entering the Land of Israel, Joshua wrote three letters to the Canaanite nations. The first letter said, "Anyone who wants to leave Israel, has permission to leave." The second letter said, "Whoever wants to make peace, can make peace." The final letter warned, "Whoever wants to fight, get ready to Upon receiving these letters, only one of the Canaanite nations (the Girgashites) heeded the call; they emigrated to Africa.
In the event that the Canaanite nations chose not to make a treaty, the Jews were still commanded to fight mercifully! For example, when besieging a city to conquer it, the Jews never surrounded it on all four sides. This way, one side was always left open to allow for anyone who wanted to escape. (see Maimonides, Laws of Kings ch. 6)
* * *
It is interesting that throughout Jewish history, waging war has always been a tremendous personal and national ordeal which ran contrary to the Jews’ peace-loving nature. King Saul lost his kingdom when he showed misplaced mercy by allowing the Amalekite king to live. And in modern times, when Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir was asked if she could forgive Egypt for killing Israeli soldiers, she replied, “It is more difficult for me to forgive Egypt for making us kill their soldiers.”
The reality is that war makes one callous and cruel. Therefore, since God Himself is commanded the Jews to rid the Land of evil, God likewise promises the soldiers that they will retain their compassionate nature. In the words of our parsha: “God will have compassion on you, and reverse any display of anger that might have existed" (Deut. 13:18).
With blessings from Jerusalem,
Rabbi Shraga Simmons
Aish.com
"They're firing at us, firing RPGs, firing mortars. We're not Jews," the brother of Jamal Abu Jediyan, a Fatah commander, pleaded during a live telephone conversation with a Palestinian radio station.
Minutes later both men were dragged into the streets and riddled with bullets.
As I read this story (discussed in greater detail here, here and here) and was tempted to gloat at the death of such a blatant example of antisemitism (note that he did not say, "We are not Israelis," he said "We aren't Jews"), I couldn't help remembering the midrash in which it is described that after the drowning of the Egyptians in the Red Sea, the angels were scolded by God for singing songs of praise. "The creations of My hands are drowning in the sea and you sing before Me?"
At times it can be very difficult to remember that we are all God's children, we are all miracles of creation.
When a human in possession of the gifts of life and free will goes wrong, it is a thing of great sorrow. Instead of rejoicing right now, I am thinking about what might have been.
What if the Muslim world had embraced Israel? What if they were great friends and neighbors?
So much destruction and death and grief could have been avoided.
It could have all been so different.
How condoning cultural "differences" can prove very unhealthy for women, explained in detail.
An alternative opinion: Whatever you do, don't insult those who chop heads and beat women. Pointing out barbarity only leads to more barbarity. One must politely turn one's head and invite them for tea and cookies instead. Never fear, they will learn that tea and cookies are much more civilized than head choppings and wife beatings through our example.
Oh, but hold on there now - if only the Jews had not rejected Hellenism and philosophy, we'd never have had to deal with any of these problems to begin with.
During yesterday's Sunday School class, I taught my little mensch 4th graders the meaning of the concept of free will. I absolutely couldn't have done it without the major help of Gila Gevirtz's "Count Me In, Jewish Wisdom in Action," which provided a step-by-step methodical way to take the kids from one idea to the next, along with supporting questions, stories and references.
The first concept we discussed was, "How are humans different from animals?" A dog can be trained to sit quietly while the family is at dinner, but it can't be taught to understand that it's rude to interrupt people when they are eating. The students answered the following two questions:
1. How would you train a dog to sit quietly while the family eats dinner?
2. How would you teach a young child that it is impolite to interrupt someone who is speaking?
This led to a discussion of how "training" is different from "teaching," and the concept of understanding the reason behind what we do as compared with just acting.
Next, we discussed the idea that of all of God's creations, humans were the only one given free will. Free will combines two different attributes, understanding and power:
1. The ability to understand the difference between right and wrong.
2. The power to choose.
The students then learned that according to the ancient rabbis, each of us has within us two competing impulses - one is the desire to do good, the yetzer hatov, and the other is the impulse each of us has toward selfishness, the yetzer hara. I compared it to the way cartoon characters are often shown making a decision by having an angel on one shoulder, and the devil on the other. They got it, and were very excited about it, believe it or not.
We continued by discussing a quote from Maimonides (who they knew of from a previous lesson when we learned about his degrees of tzedakah, which these amazingly brilliant 10 year olds also "got"):
"Free will is given to every human being. If a person wants to turn toward the way of goodness and be righteous, that person has the power to do so. If a person wants to turn toward the way of evil, that person has the freedom to do so."
And they then answered to following question:
In your opinion, why do some people sometimes choose evil over good?
Their answers reflected two reasons: Basic selfishness and/or the desire to escape responsibility.
Next we discussed the challenge of overcoming our selfish impulses. We went over the Talmudic description of the yetzer hara, that it is described in three ways:
1. At first, it is light as a spider's web, but in the end can become as heavy as thick ropes.
2. At first, it's like a passerby, then like a guest and finally it turns into the home owner.
3. At first, the yetzer hara is sweet, but in the end it turns bitter.
In the beginning we think we'll give into it just this once, but then find we give into it again and again until it becomes acceptable or a habit. At first it feels good, but then there are the consequences of losing privileges and respect. And they then answered this question:
What helps you make good choices when you feel very tempted to make a bad choice?
And we talked about the fact that their responses were all future oriented - for example, they did their homework right away after getting home from school because they wanted to get good grades, didn't want to get into trouble with their parents, etc. And their poor choices were always for instant gratification and came when they didn't think about the future.
So, we had delineated man's difference from animals by noting that man possessed understanding of the difference between right and wrong and that man had the power to choose.
Next, we determined the difference between man and angel - or perfect vs imperfect being. We discussed what it might be like if humans didn't have free will and only had the capacity to do good. They said they wouldn't like this, that life would be boring, that it would mean the end of thought, that they would turn into robots and automatons. When asked if they'd be willing to give up the gift of free will, they all said they would not be willing to do so.
And I told them the following short story (from "Count Me In"):
Rabbi Moshe of Kobryn once looked up toward the sky and cried: "Dear angel! It is no trick to be an angel in heaven. You don't have to eat and drink, and earn money. Come down to earth and worry about these things, and we shall see if you remain an angel." (Martin Buber, Tales of the Chasidim)
And then they each wrote a short story about an angel who visited earth for a day and finds out how challenging it is to switch places with a boy or girl like him or her. And each of their stories was filled with having to wake up each day, eat, go to school, make friends, participate in class , do homework,do chores, listen to mother and father, put up with siblings, music lessons, soccer, etc etc.
And they realized that even at their young age being a human was difficult and that even at their young age, they handled things pretty well, despite not being perfect.
And then they were asked what would happen to the concept of "good" if we could only do good? How much better is "good" when we as humans, with all of our flaws, willingly choose it over evil? This, they got as well.
There's nothing better than watching the light bulb go on when kids learn something new.
And so now, the hope is that when they choose the right thing, not only will they do it to avoid punishment or negative consequences, but because they know that if they were only able to follow their selfish inclinations like the animals or could only choose to do good like the angels - they would forfeit thought, understanding, and the power of choice. In short, choosing to be good despite temptation is pretty darned cool.
Human struggle: It all boils down to one great battle, and everything, every effort, counts.
An excellent and worthwhile article to read when you have peace and quiet and time to think.
No one wants to hate. No one wants to harbor anger. Certainly, no one wants war. But it is sometimes necessary for survival. The people in the pictures below should have gotten angry much sooner. They should have fought viciously for their lives, instead of walking into death like lambs to the slaughter or committing suicide in protest, as ridiculously suggested by Mahatma Ghandi. Only a person from a country with a population in the hundreds of millions could have suggested anything so ignorant.
But who would have thought that post-enlightenment civilized people could have been capable of such evil? The Germans knew about the brotherhood of man, equality, liberty, freedom of religion, and the US Civil War in which the slaves were freed. They knew of philosophy and religion. They were educated people.
The lesson taught to Jews by the world, over and over again: The only time it's safe to turn the other cheek is if you have a gun in your hand and a friend watching your back.
Go ahead and tell me any different.
Hatred of one's enemies is a necessary evil. Rabbi Shraga Simmons writes:
Sometimes war is necessary. Judaism teaches the supreme value of life, yet we're not pacifists. Wiping out evil is also part of justice. As Rashi explains (Deut. 20:12), dangerous disputes must be resolved. Because if you choose to leave evil alone – it will eventually attack you.
People today don't relate to the concept that if you don't destroy evil, it will destroy you. Today, most Westerners grow up in nice neighborhoods, they never experience war, real suffering, or in the case of Jews, anti-Semitism. Therefore it's very easy to pontificate brotherhood, peace and other liberal notions at the expense of defense. There's a well-known funny expression defining a liberal as “a conservative who has never been mugged.” Questioning the ancient Hebrews' sense of justice and morality is not really fair if you haven't dealt with harsh reality of their experience.
And that goes for questioning of the attitude of today's Jews as well.
It is interesting that throughout Jewish history, waging war has always been a tremendous personal and national ordeal which ran contrary to the Jews’ peace-loving nature. King Saul lost his kingdom when he showed misplaced mercy by allowing the Amalekite king to live.
...The reality is that war makes one callous and cruel. Therefore, since God Himself is commanded the Jews to rid the Land of evil, God likewise promises the soldiers that they will retain their compassionate nature. In the words of our parsha: “God will have compassion on you, and reverse any display of anger that might have existed" (Deut. 13:18).
That we are diminished by our hate and anger is one more reason to abhor our enemies. It is hard for people who want peace to hate and to admit hate - it is an embarassment in this day and age, and is considered small minded and stupid.
My opinion: Better to be considered small minded and stupid, than to ignore antisemitism.
In the Jewish tradition, self defense is a moral obligation. The Torah allows people to defend their property from a thief even if this will cause the conflict to escalate into a physical battle. If there is reason to assume that the thief will use lethal force to seize the property, the owner may use physical force, and even kill the thief if necessary to protect himself (Exodus 22:1, Sanhedrin 72a). There are two rationales for allowing self defense. The first is practical; without the ability to use lethal force to stop the actions of aggressors, anarchy would reign (Chinnuch 600). The second rationale challenges the moral assumptions of nonviolence. It asserts that it is impossible to equate the lives of the aggressor and the victim; we have as a rule "that God's quest is the interests of the hunted" (Ecclesiastes 3:15). The life of the aggressor and the victim are not of equal value; if only one will survive, it is our obligation to make certain that it is the innocent person, the victim, who will survive (Cf. Rashi to Exodus 22:1).
For this reason, the Jewish tradition considers pacifism in the face of aggression to be immoral. Refusing to fight evil is to be party to evil. As Michael Kelly (Washington Post September 26, 2001) has pointed out:"No honest person can pretend that the groups that attacked America will, if let alone, not attack again. Nor can any honest person say that this attack is not at least reasonably likely to kill thousands upon thousands of innocent people. To not fight in this instance is to let the attackers live to attack and murder again; to be a pacifist in this instance is to accept and, in practice, support this outcome."
This is essentially the Jewish point of view; if you don't help the victim, you are an ally of the aggressor. If a person refuses to defend himself, he allows evil to triumph.
Peace is Judaism's paramount value, yet at times we have to make war. While this may seem to be a paradox, somehow we have to love peace and make war at the same time. It means that we should never lose sight of the humanity of our enemies, and we should recognize that every death on the battlefield is tragic. The Talmud teaches us that on the night that the Egyptian army drowned in the Red Sea, the first true moment of freedom for the Jews fleeing Egypt, God refused to hear the angels sing their prayers, and said "my creations are drowning in the sea, and you will sing songs?" (Megillah 10b). Every human is created in God's image, and every death is a tragedy. The former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir was often quoted as saying she could forgive the Arab countries for killing Jewish children, but she could not forgive the Arab countries for making it necessary for Jews to kill Arab children. The warrior must mourn the deaths of his enemies, and never forget the value of life.A soldier's love for peace will affect his wartime behavior. While the old adage goes "all's fair in love and war", the Jewish view is that war must be conducted in an appropriate fashion. During wartime soldiers must make every effort to avoid killing noncombatants. This concern with collateral damage is first found in Abraham's pleading with God to avoid killing any righteous citizens of Sodom. Abraham argued that even though God was destroying Sodom because it was a profoundly wicked city, justice demanded that God avoid killing any righteous individual while destroying the city. The Torah even prohibits the destruction of trees in the vicinity of military attack (Deuteronomy 20:19). This is because even in wartime, we must be careful never to destroy, and despite the violence inherent in battle, we must endeavor to preserve every living being from humans to animals to trees (Chinnuch 630). A soldier must love peace, even when he goes out to battle.
A recent report in the New York Times (August 31, 2001 "Palestinians Reclaim Their Town After Israelis Withdraw") illustrates this point. After Israeli troops entered Beit Jala to stop snipers from shooting into Gilo. The reporter, Clyde Haberman, visited Beit Jala after the Israeli troops withdrew. He found that in one apartment: "soldiers apologized in a note that they left in the paws of a teddy bear. In slightly misspelled English, it said, 'we are truely [sic] sorry for the mess we made.'"
These soldiers understood that peace is Judaism's paramount value. They understood that we are always sorry about the mess and tragedy of war, and that all Jews wait desperately for the days when "They will beat their swords into plowshares... and no nation will lift up its sword against another nation" (Isaiah 2:4).
Jews are all soldiers in the war on antisemitism. It's a shame that it makes us appear unforgiving and/or ridiculous at times. We can try to explain as best we can, but we may have to face the fact that others will never understand us completely.
If allowed, ultimately liberalism would murder Judaism. Benjamin Kerstein writes:
Zionism proposes the concrete as an answer to the failure of words. Enough with your good will, says the Zionist, give me ground underneath my feet. This is no small thing, nor insignificant. The Weimar constitution was a model of liberalism at its most sublime and beautiful, the League of Nations a fine ideal, and the French revolution the epitome of liberal utopianism. We may go further back to Christianity’s creed of love for all, the Enlightenment’s ideology of tolerance and debate, the Marxist ideals of solidarity and equality… There is, in fact, no end to this graveyard of modernism, all of it leading, for the Jewish people, to precisely the same place: the Terror. Zionism’s success rests in the fact that it recognized earlier than any other Jewish movement an essential truth about liberalism’s professed ideals: they are completely meaningless. And that, for the Jewish people, this meaninglessness would mean destruction.
...liberalism seeks to destroy Judaism because it must. Because it cannot stop and will not stop. Jewish particularism, the very existence of the Jewish people as a particular nation, a particular civilization, a particular people, is an affront to liberalism’s universalist imperialism. Judaism and liberalism are opposed not because of Judaism but because of liberalism. Judaism desires to exist and to continue to exist. Liberalism desires to subsume and become everything that exists. The result of this contradiction, and if liberalism is incapable of anything, it is accepting contradiction (Judaism, on the other hand, exists in its contradictions) are fairly plain to see. The primary concern of certain of our intellectuals appears to be, not that liberalism has turned itself against the Jews, but that the Jews are insufficient collaborators in the project of their own sublimation.
Just wanted to point out a well-written and interesting article on Jewish law and morality at Azure magazine:
In the wake of World War I, the Holocaust, and the Gulag, it is hard to avoid the feeling that while Western civilization may excel at making people prosperous and physically healthy, it is still far from knowing how to make people good. A parallel advancement in morality is, it seems, beyond our reach.
I will suggest in what follows that Jewish tradition offers its own approach to the problem, a conception of morality that is different from the normative Western view. It rests on the institution of a system of moral law, or what has traditionally been called halacha-a way, or a path. I will try to make the case that in Judaism, the law is not simply a set of arbitrary or authoritative rules, but a discipline geared to orienting both the community and the individual toward a vision of the good society. Of course, trying to live according to such a system of law requires discipline and sacrifice. But we should at least consider the possibility that such hard work may be necessary, even vital, if we hope to overcome mankind’s seemingly infinite capacity for barbarism.
...To understand the meaning of law in Judaism, we must begin with the fact that Jewish morality differs from the mainstream Western approaches, in both their Christian and secular iterations. We begin with the following observation: Whereas the focus of the main streams of Western moral thought is on the thoughts or beliefs or inner qualities that a person brings to bear in his moral decision-making, in Judaism the most important thing is the impact of our actions on our world. That is to say: Does a given action in fact make the world a better place than it would have been had the action not been taken?
Emphasis on accountability and the here and now:
...if there is any one striking fact about biblical Judaism, it is that good intentions are rarely if ever weighed over good outcomes. Kings are accountable for the kingdoms they lead; prophets rail against them for their failures to protect the needy, to root out idolatry, or to act morally. Foreign nations are upbraided for their reprehensible behavior. The idea that we are in truth not of this world, and that we should cut ourselves off from what Martin Buber called the “lowlands of causality,” where things really happen, and instead attach ourselves to a pure existence that is beyond human, historical, social reality-this is almost completely absent from a thousand years of Jewish writing.
...In other words, as opposed to the mainstream Western view, the traditional Jewish view of the good person is one in which who you are is in large measure a function not of what you think or believe, but of what you do-that is, where you succeed in helping society move toward a higher, better order. Not purity of faith but perfection of our world is the ideal toward which we must strive. Not piety, but performance.
It's the dawning of a brand new day. The Democrats are in power, the paradigm has shifted, and I want to be on the cutting edge, in with the in-crowd, and in touch with the mother earth chakra.
Stoicism is out.
Entitlement is in.
Earnestness is out.
Snark is in.
National Review is out.
Daily Kos is in.
As with any skill, learning to be progressive (Yeahrightsure. Hello! We are going beck to the 60s. Don't they mean regressive? OK - I agree. I have a long way to go with the snark thing) takes practice. Let's see what I can do.
First, I will learn entitlement. Then I will learn snark/sarcasm. Then, I will get into the really advanced areas where entitlement and sarcasm are accomplished simultaneously.
You know, this computer is too damned slow. I'll bet Bush has a faster one. I'll bet even Rumsfeld has a faster one. A chicken in every pot, a car in every garage, and a goshdarned (I have work to do on my cussin'. Y'all will have to bear with me) sparkly fast internet connection, with HDTV in every house. What are you saying? Listen man, I DESERVE it. It is coming to me. Why? Because I am human. Not only that, I am a minority human. And a woman! What, men get all the fast internet connections? Oh, is that so? Nancy! Hillary! We need to have a talk!
So, what's my man Kos up to this morning? ("My man?" Ug. Where's the compazine. I am making myself ill.)
One of the most moronic media lines last night, and continuing through today, is how "conservative" these newly elected Democrats are.
Except, that they're not. In the Senate:
Bernie Sanders, VT: So conservative that he's a "socialist". His National Journal "liberal" rating is 89.7 (out of 100).
Sherrod Brown, OH: NJ liberal rating is 84.2. For comparison's sake, Harold Ford -- a real conservative Democrat -- had a 58.3 rating.
Sheldon Whitehouse, RI: An unabashed liberal in every definition of the word. I mean, he defeated a liberal Republican.
Let me take some notes here.
1. Make extensive use of the word, "moronic." When you are a progressive liberal, everyone who doesn't toe the party line is a moron. We ignore the fact that morons are a minority and deserve protection of their feelings because the governing principle is that everyone other than us is stupid. As a conservative, I gave everyone a chance to prove themselves and their ideas. And if I felt they were wrong, I never thought they were stupid, just wrong. Incorporating the stupidity aspect will take some time and work.
2. Learn to brag about how liberal/progressive my peeps are.
More Kos:
Claire McCaskill, MO: She's a progressive on every major issue. In fact, it was one of the GOP's lines of attacks against her. As the conservative Real Clear Politics wrote in its race summary:
State Auditor Claire McCaskill lost a close governor's race two years ago to Gov. Matt Blunt 51% - 48% and thus starts out of the gate with a high level of name recognition and a solid base of support. However, McCaskill lost 90 out of 97 counties statewide and has a problem of being perceived as too liberal outside of metro St. Louis and Kansas City. Missouri is a relatively, culturally conservative state that President Bush won by 3% in 2000 and 7% in 2004 and running the standard Republican playbook hitting McCaskill as too liberal on judges, the war, and taxes should be enough for Talent to carry the day.
Amy Klobuchar, MN: There's nothing "conservative" about our newest senator from one of the bluest states in the union.
Jon Tester, MT: One of the people accused of being a "conservative" Dem, yet he's against flag burning amendment, against an amendment banning gay marriage, against the Patriot Act, and against the war. He's an economic populist, social libertarian, pro-choice Democrat. He may be one of the very few senators who actually lives paycheck to paycheck. He's an organic farmer.
He's not Bernie Sanders or Sherrod Brown, but a "conservative" Dem? Ridiculous.
Jim Webb, VA: Politically very similar to Tester. He's libertarian on social issues, an economic populist. He wants out of Iraq and he has a personal stake in the war -- his son is actually deployed to Iraq. Sure, he served in the Reagan Administration, and sure, he can be classified as a "moderate" (whatever that means), but he's no "conservative".
3. "Attacks." Everyone is attacking the liberals. It's like war. It's really really bad. Attacks are wrong. And bad. Unless we are attacking conservatives.
4. Blue is good and red is bad? Or vice versa? I couldn't get that straight before election day and I'm having trouble with it now too. I have to go wash the remaining conservative moron granules off of me...
5. Everyone in this country is entitled to pollute the air by burning nylon flags. The more, the better. (Corollary: America sucks, man. Remember to look into donating home and property to Indian reservation)
6. "Ridiculous." If it's not moronic, it has to be ridiculous. How anyone anywhere could think differently than me is unfathomable. Moronic! Ridiculous!
7. The only way one can have a valid opinion on the war is to have a personal stake in it like Jim Webb, whose son is fighting in Iraq. Therefore, we should only allow soldiers to have a vote because their opinions are the most valid of the valid. Only, we all know soldiers are morons...Red flag. Inconsistency alert. Contact local party representative for instruction.
8. Living paycheck to paycheck on organic farming is the ultimate in _____________ (blank to be filled in later)
To be continued...maybe. If I get around to it. Holding to a schedule is so boring. Making promises, keeping them, being responsible...I just don't know if I can do that anymore.
Hold on - I will check the progressive handbook.
Hmmmm. There's nothing in the table of contents or index about "personal repsonsibility."
We're all screwed, man.
Iran called on Iraq on Tuesday to carry out its death sentence on Saddam Hussein, saying the former dictator who waged an eight-year war against Iran in the 1980s was a criminal who deserved to die.
"We hope the fair, correct and legal verdict against this criminal ... is enforced," government spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham told a news conference.
The fact that they want him to be hung is not a surprise. The fact that they'd say it publicly and in so doing, albeit in an oblique way, confer praise on those responsible for his ousting and capture, is...strange. We know they want sharia in Iraq, which means that the US/coalition forces have to be beaten. Yet they support the hanging of Saddam, who himself has been supported by the insurgents who are fighting the westerners who do not want to see sharia rule in Iraq.
An Iraqi appeal court is expected to rule on the guilty verdict and death sentence by the middle of January.
"He is a criminal dictator. No doubt about it," Elham said of Saddam. "We hope no pressure will be applied not to carry out this verdict."
In Vienna on Tuesday, the United Nations' special investigator on torture, Manfred Nowak, said he disagreed with the death sentence and that Saddam's trial had not been well conducted.
"Even a person like Saddam Hussein should not be sentenced to death," said Nowak, who acknowledged that Saddam's regime had killed and tortured many political opponents and members of minorities.
The EU has welcomed the verdict but also said Saddam should not be put to death.
The Iranian spokesman said his government hoped Saddam would continue to be tried for other alleged crimes against humanity, including his invading Iran in 1980, starting a war that killed more than a million Iranians and Iraqis.
The suffering and losses in the war, which ended in 1988, are well remembered in Iran.
Elham rejected the suggestion that the execution of Saddam, a Sunni Muslim, would escalate the violence between Iraq's Shiite and Sunni communities.
"It is very clear that such a suggestion is mischief-making. Saddam has both Shiite and Sunni blood on his hands. His very existence is anti-human," he said.
His existence is anti-human?
Oh, would we not like to be able to interview Gholam Elham!
Gholam, can we tawk?
What does it mean to be human?
Also, pls discuss the following:
Mercy, justice, do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you, love thy neighbor, logic, internal consistency, goodness, evil, faith, love, hope, charity, and your favorite books of the 20th and 21st centuries.
Addendum:
Palestinians Protest Saddam Death Sentence, Threaten Reprisals Against Foreigners
Carrying pictures of Saddam Hussein, about 250 schoolgirls in the West Bank town of Jenin paraded Monday in protest at the death sentence handed down by a Baghdad court which found him guilty of crimes against humanity. The children chanted, "Beloved Saddam, strike Tel Aviv," the same slogan shouted by jubilant Palestinians when Iraqi rockets slammed into Israel during the 1991 Gulf War.
In the Gaza Strip city of Khan Yunis, masked gunmen from a group calling itself Arafat's Army threatened reprisals against foreign citizens in the Palestinian territories if the sentence against Saddam is carried out: "We warn all foreigners in the Gaza Strip, especially the Americans, that they will be kidnapped and killed in front of witnesses." (AP/International Herald Tribune)
In recent years leading rabbinical authorities in the United States have been consulted by the government regarding the Orthodox Jewish approach to capital punishment. Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, one of the foremost modern authorities on Jewish Law, explained: “the death penalty is administered . . . not out of hate for the wrongdoers or [even] out of concern for the stability of society . . . but rather so that people should be aware of the seriousness of these prohibitions and therefore would not transgress them . . . And so, throughout the generations there were virtually no murderers among the Jews, because of the gravity of the prohibition and because they were educated by the Torah and by the punishments of the Torah to understand the gravity of the prohibition, and not because they were simply afraid of the punishment.”2
We can learn from his reply that the educational dimension of a system of justice is at least as important as the deterrent factor. Severe punishments are meant to impress upon citizens the gravity of the crime.
Rabbi Moshe adds that although Jewish Law does not advocate capital punishment in all cases, it nevertheless permits the death penalty to be applied where the law of the land permits it. However this should be restricted to cases of particularly cruel murders, or in a situation where bloodshed becomes widespread and out of control and the threat of capital punishment will restore respect for the law.
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One of the most popular causes among Jewish liberals is opposition to capital punishment. The Religious Action Center, the political SWAT Team of the Reform movement, has long considered opposing capital punishment to be one of its highest priorities. Many other groups of Jewish liberals, and some non-liberals, oppose all forms of capital punishment, supposedly in the name of Jewish ethics and the invariably misrepresented tikkun olam.
Whenever one comes out in favor of capital punishment, one inevitably hears shrieks from such folks about how execution is inhumane, how it violates human dignity, how every human soul, even that of murderers, has been created in God`s image and so should be preserved at all costs.
This is all very interesting. There’s just one little problem, though. The Bible makes it crystal clear that the way one acknowledges that human souls are created in God`s image and deserving of respect and dignity is through capital punishment. Just read Genesis 9:6: "A man who spills human blood, his own blood shall be spilled by man because God made man in His own Image." Not just among Jews, by the way, but among all sons of Noah.
In other words, the preservation of human dignity requires capital punishment of convicted murderers. The position of Judaism is the opposite of the position espoused by liberals. It is precisely because of man`s creation in God`s image that capital punishment is declared justified and necessary. Human dignity requires execution of murderers, not compassion for their souls.
Moreover, capital punishment is regarded by Judaism as a favor for the capital sinner, a form of atonement and redemption. Ordinary murderers are allowed to achieve atonement for their souls in their execution. Only especially vile murderers — such as a false witness whose lies are discovered after the person who was framed has been executed, or a man who sacrifices both his son and his daughter to the pagan god Molokh — are denied execution because they are regarded as beyond redemption through capital punishment. Again, execution preserves human dignity, it does not defile it.
Israelis have for years debated the pros and cons of capital punishment for convicted terrorist murderers. Up to this point, Israel has never had a death penalty, the lone exception being the execution of the Nazi beast Eichmann. Naturally, the Beautiful Left is vehemently opposed to the very idea of capital punishment.
So maybe the time is right to take a deep breath and step back and re-examine the issue. Should Israel have a death penalty?
Opponents of the death penalty say it does not deter terrorism or violence. But how do they know? How do they know the level of violent crime the United States would experience if it did not have a death penalty — or if it had a more widely applied one? How do they know whether the level of terrorism would decrease in an Israel with a death penalty compared to an Israel without one?
Actually, the death penalty should be implemented against terrorists even if it doesn’t deter terrorism. It should be implemented because it represents a great moral statement. It is the moral and ethical thing to do. Executing terrorists makes a statement that they are scum with no claim a right to life. Capital punishment represents a moral and just vengeance. It represents a declaration of good and evil. We do not build statues of heroes and otherwise honor them because we necessarily believe these are utilitarian and will lead to the emergence of new heroes, but rather because we are making a statement as a society regarding our values and what we honor. Executing terrorists is precisely the same sort of societal statement, in the opposite direction.
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Tractate Sanhedrin (4:5) teaches:
Man was created single [in the person of Adam] to teach you that anyone who eliminates one person in Israel, the Torah considers it as though an entire world has been eliminated; and anyone that sustains one person in Israel, the Torah considers it as though an entire world has been sustained…. And [man was created single], to tell you the greatness of the Holy One, a person can mint many coins with one mold, and they will all be identical in appearance; and the King of Kings…made all of mankind from the mold of Adam the first, and no one person is identical to the other. Thus, each individual person must say "for me was the world created."
Among Judaism's seminal and timeless gifts to the world - a world that has seen societies that have endorsed everything from ancient child sacrifices to false gods to modern campaigns of ethnic cleansing - is this teaching of the infinite value of each human life.
What is most striking, however, about this critical Mishna is the context in which this lesson is presented. These noble words are in answer to the Mishna's question of how the court will instill awe and fear into witnesses in capital cases so that they testify truthfully. The very passage that proclaims our recognition of the value of each life is presented and utilized in the capital case!
Moreover, instilling fear into witnesses is but one of the many procedural safeguards required in capital cases. Other safeguards include requirements for two simultaneous witnesses to the crime who not only viewed the perpetrator but also saw each other and had time to properly warn the perpetrator of the nature of his crime and his punishment prior to him committing the act.
Judaism, it seems, is of two minds about capital punishment. But we can discover where the "heart," that is to say the spirit, of our tradition lies in one more halakha.
Although the Torah prescribes a strict regime of procedural safeguards before one of the four biblically authorized methods of capital punishment may be imposed, the rabbis recognized that there would be cases in which it was known beyond doubt that a particular person had committed a murder, but one of the biblically required procedural elements was absent. What then? Would a murderer roam free? No. As stated in Mishna Sanhedrin (9:5), the perpetrator would be placed in jail and, essentially, be put to death by malnutrition.
The key to our understanding can be found in Maimonides' codification of this ruling (Laws of Murder, 4:9):
This procedure [of confinement and death by malnutrition] is not done to perpetrators of other capital crimes [where procedural requirements are lacking, only murder]...because even though there are sins more severe than murder, they do not cause the destruction of the world's stability and order in the manner of murder; even [the cardinal sins of] idolotry, incest and violating shabbat are not equal to murder. For these sins are between a person and God, but murder is a sin against fellow man, and anyone who commits this transgression is completely evil and all the good deeds of his entire lifetime cannot outweigh this sin nor rescue him from judgment.
Murder is not only a sin against the victim and the Creator. Murder, in the Jewish view, is also a sin against society for it tears at the foundation stone upon which an orderly, productive, and moral society must be built - the dignity and equal worth of each of its members.
A justice system - which Judaism demands via the Noahide Code of all societies - must contain procedural safeguards to ensure fairness and accuracy in the determination of guilt and imposition of punishment, especially capital punishment. And, as has recently been the case in the United States, if there are serious questions about the accuracy and fairness with which capital punishment is being administered, it ought to, at least, be suspended pending procedural reforms.
Did you ever notice that the further people are from truth, the more they consider someone who turns away from evil to be a fool?
When there is no truth in the world, anyone who wants to turn away from evil has no choice but to play the fool.
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Most people think of forgetfulness as a defect. I consider it a great benefit.
Being able to forget frees you from the burden of the past.
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If you believe that you can damage, then believe that you can fix.
If you believe that you can harm, then believe that you can heal.
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Everything in the world - - whatever is and whatever happens - - is a test, designed to give you freedom of choice. Choose wisely.
There's nothing mysterious about free will. You do what you want to do, and you don't do what you don't want to do.
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Writer Alice Hoffman in an interview with Mamm magazine verbalizes how she feels as a survivor of the big C:
I'm in good health, and it's been eight years now, and they say after five years you're safe. But I'm not sure anyone ever feels safe. I think I do have more ability to block things out, but deep inside it's still the same. Deep inside you know: Once you get that kind of bombshell, you know there can always be a bombshell.
...when I was sick I read a book called Man's Search For Meaning, and it made me understand that these horrendous things that you go through are the things that really define you, they make you who you are.
The author's [Viktor Frankl] family had perished in the concentration camps, and he struggled to make sense of a world in which there's so much pain and sorrow. His theory is that it's the sorrow that defines you. Not the happiness, but the sorrow. It's sorrow - and the way you deal with it - that makes you the person that you are.
And I believe that. I don't believe that's a good thing; I just believe it's the state of the world. That's what life is: Good things happen and bad things happen. But the sorrow shows who you are deep inside, I think it shows it to yourself, and sometimes it's a shocker.
If you haven't read Man's Search for Meaning, I highly recommend it:
Viktor Frankl’s theory and therapy grew out of his experiences in Nazi death camps. Watching who did and did not survive (given an opportunity to survive!), he concluded that the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche had it right: “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how. " (Friedrich Nietzsche, quoted in 1963, p. 121) He saw that people who had hopes of being reunited with loved ones, or who had projects they felt a need to complete, or who had great faith, tended to have better chances than those who had lost all hope.
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Like Freud a citizen of Vienna and a practicing psychotherapist, Dr. Viktor Frankl also became a university professor and prolific author. His most widely read work is Man's Search For Meaning, a keenly observed account of his experiences in the Nazi death camps during Word War II. Originally intended for limited private circulation, the slim book has since been translated into 24 languages....Frankl first ponders the mystery of transcendent experience amid extreme suffering, then explores the true nature of human moral freedom. Frankl's concentration camp experiences profoundly influenced his life's work after the war, leading to his development of logotherapy, a new clinical approach to helping patients rediscover meaning in their lives.
A Viktor Frankl quote:
I recommend that the Statue of Liberty be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the west coast.
I'm a O80-C52-E15-A87-N37 Big Five!!
What are you?
Interestingly, I did not place the exclamation points at the end of the link above - they were placed there by the source. Strange, that I thought it necessary to inform you of this. Also strange, that I thought it necessary to tell you that I found it interesting.
And I am still thinking and writing about it, minutes later.
Am I thinking too deeply? Or just trying to amuse? Will readers think it's amusing or tedious? Should I care? What am I doing this for? Why am I here? What is the meaning of existence? Does it matter? Doesn't everything matter? If everything doesn't matter, than why should anything? What is the smallest piece of information you can think of? What's smaller than that? Where did it come from? Are matter and energy one and the same? Can we create matter? Can we create energy? If we can't, who can? Who did?
Not sure if the test covered this aspect of.