The Hebrew in Every Jew

If you're in Hebrew class, it's because there's Hebrew in you
G-d looked into the Torah and made the world, it was His blueprint
And your DNA is not A, C, G, and T
But Aleph, Bet, Gimmel, and Dalet, which I can't type on this Roman keyboard
Generations past, a backwards revelation
We are in understanding of our belonging to one nation
Under G-d
With obligations and justice for all
Past the countries and societies we were born in
We realize our equality before the Law
As we stood there together when He gave it
And even the angels of G-d are not white
Yes, we realize the essential Hebrew in all of us
Sons and daughters of he who broke the chain and the yoke
Spoke, said, "Only One."
Today we speak myriad languages, but it's time to realize the content of our words
And may the revelation explode like the thunder that we saw and the lightning that we heard
May all Jews be shaken off their foundation
Fly to the air, and take their seats with their nation

It's the Bomb

As many might have heard, the Danish cartoon depicting *the Prophet* Muhammad with a bomb in his turban has caused for reverberations throughout the Muslim world. Largely, many Muslims deem this a racist, anti-Arab, anti-Muslim sentiment, nothing short of a clash between civilizations. According to an English reporter I heard speak on NPR just a few moments ago (as well as other sources and articles), the world's Muslim population is feeling increasingly alienated and stereotyped, even 4 years after 9/11 when things had truly gotten quite bad for them regarding the public sphere. The United State's actions in Iraq, aid to Israel, and the events occuring in Guantanamo Bay, according to the reporter, don't help the situation at all.

The reporter, either expressing his own views or views of the world's Muslim community, compared the cartoon to the "upside-down-cross-in-urine" incident, when a few years ago, in an art show, amongst other items, a piece was presented showing an upside-down cross dipped in urine. The intent of such a piece was pointless, other than to insult Christianity in the most vile, digusting, and tasteless way, and I truly wonder about the sanity of the individual that produced it.

However, as it disgusting as it was, it truly was pointless, and I am shocked that the reporter chose to categorically connect that to the Danish cartoon of Muhammad with the bomb in his turban. First of all, a cross in piss is in no way a political or social comment of any type, and if anything, it's just a (stupid and immature) opinion, almost a sick prank. The cartoon of Muhammad, on the other hand, can be categorized as a political and social comment on Islam's apparent association with the tendency for terrorism -- i.e., there is absolutely no logical connection between the cross in urine and the bomb in the turban; one says something about the world, and the other says something about the individual's unhealty mental state.

The reporter went on to say that the world's Muslim community felt as if they were being collectively punished for the actions of what "experts" have deemed an extremist minority within that community. However, when the barrage of Palestinian terror attacks were occuring on Israeli soil, killing innocent civilians, and also worthy of mention are the slaughter by Jordanian forces of Palestinians in the 70's, the Syrian occupation of Lebanon, and the infighting that we see in almost every Muslim and Arab country, the world Muslim community was silent. There is an old saying that "silence is agreement," and although much of the time there are many reasons for silence other than agreement (such as fear), one can never be quite sure as to the reason for the silence, because agreement is difficult to measure.

The reporter also emphasized that Timothy McVeigh's bombing of Oklohama City's Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building can in no way be related to the desire of the world's European ancestry Catholics, and therefore, the 9/11 terrorists cannot be held as representatives of world Islam. This is true, but when it comes the sociological composition of both the Protestant and Catholic society, at least in America, there is a clear distinction between Catholic and Protestant maniacs who are ready to kill for their beliefs and Catholic and Protestant maniacs that are willing to go to Church for their beliefs; America is one such country where this distinction is possible. Therefore, it is needless to say that McVeigh is not representative of all white American Christians, because the lines have already been drawn and people have already spoken out (long ago). In the Muslim and Arab countries, this development has yet to occur. That is the difference.

Nevertheless, this does not retract from the fact that Muslims were collectively silent about such disasters, and now their plaint is that they are being collectively pointed out as being guilty. If the world's Muslim community is perpetually silent about Muslim-related terrorism, and rather than courageously and simply stating that it's wrong, tries to find a way to contrast it with their notions of "real Islam," then we can deem them guilty of at least some degree of cooperation, be it direct or indirect. That's the real problem here.

But it doesn't end here; many Muslim communities all over the world are getting up in arms about this ordeal and and virtually all are demanding apologies for this insult to their Prophet Muhammad, yet it is in these very same countries' newspapers that nearly daily cartoons depicting Jews as demonic, venomous, greedy, murderous creatures are found. It looks like we have a case of selective sensitivity here; a picture depicting the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban sends Muslim communities flying off the handle, protesting, shouting, destroying property, which ended up with five people dead, but scores and scores of pictures depicting Jews as blood-thirsy vermin warrant no reaction whatsoever. It makes you wonder if Muslims really care about Jews as they say they do, oh wait, they don't say that. I spoke with a member of the Muslim Student Association the other day on campus, and near the end of our talk, he told me that their purpose was to ensure rights for all religious groups; not just Muslims, but Christians and Jews. However, you are not really calling for the rights of Jews (and Christians) when Muslim papers portray them as demons and the Muslim world doesn't condemn it.

True, it was a minority that reacted as harshly as they did, and true, it was a minority that creates the types of cartoons about Jews that I am referring to, but that's my point exactly, the majority has nothing to do with this. In fact, their lack of involvement in this is crystal clear; they, the majority, is silent when these cartoons are printed about Jews, but they violently and immaturely demand apologies for themselves. "Do unto others," as the saying goes (coming out of Jesus' mouth and found originally as one of the Torah's commandments.) Muslim do do unto others, they do unto others as they please. What we have is a loud and violent extremist minority and a silent and passive moderate majority.

The basic perception in the journalistic world is that "the two civilizations," the Muslim and the Western civilizations, need to work together to promote understanding, but they don't and shouldn't, for that's just another to way to exempt Muslim communities from taking responsibility for their own actions and problems; the only understanding that needs to occur is for the Muslim world to understand that it needs to speak about, and loudly, against its extremist elements. Something needs to be done, by Muslims and Muslims first and foremost, about the social and political decay occuring within Islam due to extremist elements that are left unchecked by the majority. It's enough of Muslims trying to smooth the violent groups over by saying that "they aren't practicing the real Islam, and we are." Well, if you want to say that the real Islam is silence in the face of violence, then go ahead, that also doesn't make you look too good. So far, nobody has defined Islam in positive terms, but only negative terms; "Islam is not____, Islam is not _____," it's never "Islam is ____," except for "Islam is a religion of peace," and if it is, then that aspect of Islam is being manifested relatively nowhere.

G-d or Me? The Clash of Civilizations...

When I write, or when I do anything that that be considered to be an ability, I always wonder if that ability comes from a source other than myself, a place higher than where I am currently situated, like a rain that comes down from the sky.

As I was going through the personal transition of being secular to being observant (religious), I began to attribute everything that I personally was able to do, or was good at, to G-d. He was a body of water and a human being was a fountain that was able to turn itself on or off, but the water came from the ocean.

I believed that my writing, let's say, which I do a lot of, and the ideas that ensued when I began to write something, came to me from G-d, that I was able to attach to Him in this process and the material that I produced, even though it came from my mind and my hand, rained down through me from Him.

Today I still believe that. This has not stopped me wondering, however, if this process, and in the same way, still occurs to people that do not believe that G-d directly influences them or is the source of their creativity, or do not believe that G-d exists at all.

I pondered the question if their abilities came to them from a certain process of detachment that they were able to connect themselves to, that they were able to withdraw, to a degree, from reality, and enter a state where they were able to connect to their inner most feelings, and in doing that, reveal levels of truth that they were not able to in their normal state of consciousness. In other words, were these moments of clarity related to G-d at all, or to a wonder of the human mind, somehow built in to it, although not by any Creator?

All I know is that, I too have moments when I produce things, be they writing or whatever, when I attribute them to myself, or, for example, to my ability to perceive things (thank G-d for it).

However, when I have done that, I have always felt something lacking, that even though I produced something that I felt was of a certain quality, that it reflected my specific ability to understand whatever thing I was exploring and trying to convey or create. In other words, it lacked a certain luster in contrast to the things I tried to produce when I was aware that the source of human creativity (and in this case, mine in particular), is not really from the self, but from G-d. When I made it in my image, it was OK, when I made it in G-d's image, it was awesome, to a fraction of the degree that He is.

Comparing times when I have either done A or B, whenever I connected to G-d in the writing, verses trying to strong-arm the flow and take credit for it, afterwards I always felt that I had touched a truer and deeper nerve after doing the former, (like reaching into the depths of a tooth's cavity) which in turn also created feeling of fulfillment that the latter simply did not provide me with. I felt that I touched on something that was true, and that my personal ability to touch on such a thing was virtually non-existent.

I then consider, in what ways is this different from the Buddhist practice of removing yourself from the realm of consciousness (or the world, in some cases) in order to reach another level of consciousness. But this doesn't seem to make much sense, for the human being is a being with flawed perception, and the flaws inherent in his or her perception permeate all levels of consciousness, from the most topical level (waking life) to the deepest, which Judaism says is death. In other words, there is no level of human consciousness that is perfect, that is free from all inconsistencies. It would be wrong to say; that the closer we get to our sub-conscious mind the closer we get to a purer perception, for what is it that makes one level of our psyche more pure than another? If the "pollutant" is present at one level, does it not just become distributed throughout the human psyche, like a chemical being poured into a river that soon dirties the entire body of water?

For example, if we are troubled in our waking life, how do we know that this trouble doesn't simply seep into our deeper levels of consciousness and pollute that too? When a troubled person sleeps and has a dream, sometimes the dream can be disturbing, reflecting the troubled state that he has in his waking hours. The deeper levels of consciousness are not free from disturbed emotions created by disturbing events, but are affected by them too, usually in a much more raw way. What is inherently intelligent, special, wise, or all-knowing about the inner-most level of our psyche if it is just another level of ourselves and not attached to something that is truly special?

If we say that getting in touch with our deepest self can answer our questions, then we must conclude that it is because there is something inside of us that knows everything, and since we don't know everything, that something must be connected to something that does. In other words, if by meditation we can find answers to the most perplexing questions, it is because we are contacting something knows the answers, otherwise we are inventing the "answers." Judaism says that that thing is the soul, and that's the thing that it's connected to is G-d. We don't have souls; we are souls, so by getting "close to our souls" we can find understanding, but only because our souls are connected to G-d. But if we don't believe that G-d exists, such as in Buddhism, then how can getting in touch with our "inner-selves" enlighten us? We are not connecting to ourselves, we are connecting to G-d, otherwise it is we that answer our own questions, and what stops us from answering them in any way that we want? Nothing.

Buddhists are connecting to G-d too, they just don't know it.

Furthermore, a soul is a "piece" of G-d, so in the ultimate sense of exposing the truth of our souls to ourselves, we are not just connecting to G-d, but we understand that we are actually made of the same "material." We are not G-d (of course), but we are made in His image, as the Torah states (Let Us make Man in Our image). Since we are made in His image, but not equal to Him, we need laws, the mitzvot, which will allow us to put the internal nature of our soul (sometimes called "faith") in concordance with the external nature of performing mitzvot (called "works") and therefore direct both towards the direction of G-d. There are many ways of thought that claim that since the connection of the human being to G-d is internal and essentially without obstacle (once they have been removed), that no external path is needed to reach G-d.

But the glaringly clear truth is that a human's journey to the depths of the soul is obstructed by many "unnatural" elements, things that are foreign to the soul and that come from the world outside, and since the human is in a state of spirituality, he or she makes the (honest) mistake that whatever element being experienced is from G-d, and therefore there are boundless and uncharted paths of spirituality. Anything "found inside," then, must be from G-d, and a person can then become devoted to it in the same exact manner in which one becomes devoted to worshipping G-d.

The Torah explains that this is what idolatry is (and was), and the way that I understand it, that the religious practices that were a part of the services of pagan religions stemmed from a nearing towards G-d, and capitalized on either this element or that element found in this process, and believed that they had found the "ceiling." For example, one of the polytheistic practices in what is called "the ancient world" was the "passing of children through the fire," which is what the priests of the worshippers of the deity "Molech" did in their worship of it; they burned their children alive to the god, a living human sacrifice. We can barely fathom such a thing today, categorizing it as one of the most inhuman crimes, but the "ancients" saw it differently, and it was quite understandable from their perspective.

Connecting to G-d means aligning yourself with G-d's commandments and reaching a type of harmony with Him through doing His will; it's a process that yields deep spiritual and emotional results. The psychology behind the "passing of children through the fire" was probably viewed as such by the worshippers of Molech; the emotional intensity experienced by viewing a living human (not to mention, a child) being set ablaze in the name of a god, until all the life has left the body, is so potent and so immediate that it was used as a spiritual practice, that those doing it believed that the ecstasy (and dread) that they were feeling (from the smell and sounds) was, in a way, communion with Molech. In a book written on polytheistic practices that I used as a source for a paper a while back, the author explains that the "magic" of the experience was inherent due to the very violation of life, that the life was viewed as being given to the god, and the violence and brutality of the passing served to intensify the sacrifice and therefore the religious experience.

* On a side note, I can't help but to see the similarities in this spiritual act of brutally killing one for a god and the (religiously-affiliated) act of blowing yourself up in order to kill your enemies. The former occured to Molech and the latter occurs to All-h in Jihad, and both are associated with a spiritual, emotional, and religious "high," connected to the belief that killing others (and oneself) is an act of communion with gods or G-d. During the pilgrimage to Mecca, muhajirun, Muslims making the pilgrimage, aquire stones that they throw at a structure that symbolizes Satan. At the height of this spiritual and holy experience and in the holiest place of Islam, does the act of throwing stones at an enemy gain significance that turns into an holy act in another context, let's say, when throwing stones at Israeli soldiers (Jews)? In this context, it makes sense to call Israel "Little Satan," and America "Big Satan," although it was planes, and not rocks, thrown at America.*

Surely, if G-d really exists as the Maker of the world, then He would not demand such a sacrifice from His Creations and Subjects, and therefore, in line with was previously discussed, the human desire to take part in a series of these different religious practices comes from "a little voice inside," and not from the Voice; it is finding spirituality in the brutal violation of life. This is not a difficult thing for the imagination to grasp; the ecstatic screeches and shouts of groups of baboons and coyotes when they have made a kill is apparent in explaining the emotional thrill of ending a living being's life - and it is the G-dless view of reality that puts humans in the same category with animals, and therefore there is no violation of ethics when we act like them.

Indeed, it is difficult for the "modern mind" to grasp the notion of spirituality in religious killing, for if there are no gods and no G-d to kill for (listen to John Lennon), then there is no killing, something which the killing fields of godless and G-dless philosophies detract from. We can actually pass an historical point where many perceive neither gods nor G-d, and we can assume that this is a progressive development in humanity, but the absence of G-d leaves us free to kill as we please, turning commands not to kill into convenient suggestions not to kill.

But the commandment is not "do not kill" but "do not murder;" the sacrifices to Molech were not murder, they represented no violation of life, but rather a potent innate human high produced by the taking of a life for a god. In the Torah, G-d tells Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, and the last moment, after seeing his willingness to do so, stops him and banishes this practice forever. Thousands of years later, Christians believed that G-d brutally sacrificed His own son as a redemptive act for the human race and thus they demonstrated a disturbing return to the theology of human sacrifice, except this time intimately tied into the G-d that abolished them. This is one of the things that put Jews and Christians at odds to this day. It is intimately related to the Torah's prescription to sacrifice animals to atone for sin, and Jewish law details that, in contrast to the brutal and painful killing of people to gods, the sacrifice of the animal must be painless and quick, that no spirituality is present in the suffering of the animal. This is a practice that is inherently tied into monotheism, and in an age where there are no sacrifices, there is no G-d and no sin. The eras both before and after reflect a deep misunderstanding of truth, in other words, that both polytheism and atheism, although essentially different, share in the characteristic of G-dlessness. During polytheism, humanity was ascending to the time when G-d would be revealed, He revealed Himself, and gradually humanity descended away from this revelation into secularism and its more extreme component; atheism. This means that the revelation was a metaphorical mountain of sorts, and it is fitting that He revealed Himself on a mountain.

Perhaps this is the reason that today, in the "Western world," any such type of killing is considered murder, even the death penalty, which says that those who murdered a person must, in the name of social order and principle (morality), die. There is a difference between an individual killing another and the state in which he lives deciding to end his life according to a structure of rules or norms that the Western world doesn't understand. It's an example of the potential antonymity of development and progression.

The relation between polytheism and Buddhism is that, on the surface, both involve the religious and spiritual use of idols, but deeper than this, both are manifestations that come from a connection of the human being to him or herself and not to G-d.

The point is that, shedding away your levels of waking consciousness in order to put yourself in touch with a consciousness more deeply embedded, within you will only put you in touch with those feelings that you already feel. Basically, this is to say that you are the source of those feelings, and if those feelings are the product of a figuratively speaking, "flawed" human perspective, then to put yourself into closer contact with those feelings will be to no avail, for the very way in which you perceive them is proportionally as flawed as is the human ability to perceive.

In other words, it is as if humanity looks at the world through a very advanced telescope that is able to zoom in and out and to views things from the microscopic level up to the universal level, but its lens is a bit dirty. If one were to turn this telescope internally, to make it a microscope, and to look inside him or herself, one could see the insides, but the smudges on the lens would still be present, and therefore blur the vision and creating a false image of what is actually there.

Therefore, one would have to find a way to clean the lens before being able to see him or herself in the true sense. Once one finds a way to clean the lens, then he or she begins to view things in the way that G-d views things, which is with absolutely no smudges. The cleaner the lens, which is a lifelong process, the more one sees things in the way that G-d sees things, i.e., through G-d's eyes, and attains a truer level of understanding a thing or things. In Judaism, the only way to clean our lenses, so to speak, is to live by the Torah, to put the commandments into application, and by doing this we actually can wipe all the guck of our lenses and see clearly, the way G-d sees.

One must also surround herself only with things that will maintain her spiritual cleanliness. Her cleanliness relies on her actions, which will determine the degree to which her lens is free of smudges. A clean lens is like perfectly transparent water. Coming from a human angle, this usually involves deciding what factors to eliminate, or at least to remove as highly influential elements, in her life. It is a process of spiritual filtering, but at the same time, it is a decision to expose herself to clean things. No to bad and yes to good, at the same time - for "no to bad" is only half the battle without "yes to good," and "yes to good" is watered down without "no to bad."

One cannot assume that his reliance on his own abilities of perception will yield answers that lie outside of himself, for the very fact that he relies on his own vision to perceive them prevents him from seeing them for what they really are. And assuming that the self does not exist is also not fruitful, for it seeks to nullify the pain inherent to existence by finding a way to escape the world of existence, like a spiritual self-induced coma, which is impossible. In other words, one can escape the pain by realizing that neither the world nor the self exist, and then, by taking the Eight Manifold Path, begin the process of detaching themselves from the notion of existence. By annulling the self, suffering is also annulled.

Perhaps this is why Buddhism teaches that the end of perception (Para nirvana) is the goal of the human existence, to become completely neutralized, which occurs when all of one's both negative and positive karma have been "burned up." At this stage, one ceases to be reborn as other beings, and ceases to exist. In other words, we don't really exist, and we exist in order to understand that.

How can a person yield answers that lie outside of himself by defining himself as a non-existent entity; who is to say that there any answers in the first place, for if there is no self, then there also are no questions, and then there is no reason to answer them. And of course, there is no G-d either. This is exactly what Buddhism teaches and wishes people to understand.

Christianity shares this ethos as the basis of "faith over works," the belief that believing is more essential than doing, and shares a common string with Buddhism in that both emphasize being rooted in somewhere away from earth -- in Christianity, freedom from the Law (Torah), and in Buddhism, freedom from the dictates of perception -- and Judaism says that the Torah must be the focus of our perception, the harmony of both.

The Torah teaches that calmness (peace) and existence are potentially harmonious elements, not polar contradictions, and are attainable through existence, that is, without deviating from existence in any way. By using things for their proper purposes, to be mindful of their designations by G-d and to use them accordingly, a "normal" thing becomes holy. To use a musical analogy, it would be like two voices hitting the same note and thus becoming harmonized - both voices begin to operate on the same wavelength, which produces a pleasing sound. Until a thing is used for its proper purpose, the user and the "usee" exist out of whack or coordination from each other, and the world experiences a lack of holiness and is affected negatively.

One of the most potent examples of this is sex, which can be used in the right way and in the wrong way. The wrong way to use sex would be to rape someone, to have too much sex, to sleep with a person that you should not sleep with, i.e., a member of your family, someone else's spouse, a member of the same sex, or an animal. The right way to use sex would be to sleep with your wife or husband at the right time, assuming that they do not possess one of the aforementioned statuses.

But since one can never truly not exist, then he or she ends up taking the value of life away and becoming a neglectful landlord in his own house.

One desires escape and freedom through inexistence, while the other desires truth and fulfillment as the purpose of existence. One says that the purpose is to escape misnotions of purpose, and the other says that the purpose of humanity can be lived by applying holiness to existence. One finds joy in escape from the world, and the other finds joy from the good things in the world. One deems that all is evil that has to be abandoned, and the other deems that there is evil, which should be separated from the good and that the good should be chosen. Can they be any farther apart?

Perhaps this is the difference between Eastern and Middle Eastern thought ("Middle Eastern" usually being referred to as "Western").

A couple of excerpts from the 1978 book written by Rabbi Meir Kahane Z"H , "They Must Go." Think and judge for yourselves, do some research. The spaces indicate where I skipped to another section of the chapter.


There is an ultimate insoluable contradiction between the State of Israel that is the fulfillment of the 2,000-year-old Jewish-Zionist dream and the modern nation-state that sees all its citizens as possessing equal rights and privileges. There is an ultimately immutable clash between that part of Israel’s Declaration that created the Jewish state and the part that promised “complete equality of social and political rights to all its citizens,” even though they be Arabs and not Jews. There is – let it be said once and for all – a potential confrontation between the Jewish-Zionist state that was the millennial dream of the Jewish people and modern concepts of democracy and citizenship.

We are pained, embarrassed, thrown into intellectual agony. We hasten to avoid such talk. It is unnecessary, dangerous, irresponsible, better left unspoken. Nonsense! Far better to meet the issue, deal with it boldly and courageously, explain it to our children and ourselves, than to have it explode in our faces tomorrow.

There is nothing for which the Jew needs to apologize. A people that has suffered ecumenical agony and that has been deprived of the rights that other nations demand for themselves own no one an explanation. The Middle East sees Islamic republics in which the Arabic quality and the Muslim character of state are inscribed in the constitution; who shouts about Arabic “racism”? Africans insist upon the blackness of their state, and exclusiveness of culture and identity are the foundations of scores of nations. Who apologizes? The Zionist state is Judaism, the need for a land of the Jews where the people can escape Holocaust and build a distinctive Jewishness that will flourish.

The very kernel of longing for a homeland through nearly 2,000 years of exile was the belief that the Jews were a separate and distinct people. In a world in which we recognize the right of self-determination for Papua, who will challenge Jewish rights?

Moreover, the Jews constituted a unique people in that they were at one and the same time a religion and a nation, a religio-nation, which had lived as a unique society and culture in its own land – Eretz Israel. On the one hand they suffered unparalleled horrors and massacres in their wanderings in foreign lands. They knew no peace in any country in which their numbers grew large and their quality shone through. There was no society, religion, or economic or social system that gave them permanent haven and rest. Jews were burned to death, drowned, cut to pieces, converted to death, Inquisitioned to death, Crusaded to death, Islamized to death, pogromed to death, and Auschwitzed to death. The Jews learned a bitter lesson in their twenty centuries of being strangers, of existing as a minority. The lesson? It is not good to be a stranger. Never be a minority. Never again!



….The Jew has no moral right to an Israel that is a non-Jewish state. But in a Jewish state let no one insult the Arab by insisting that he is equal and that it is “his” state, too. It is this ultimate contradiction between the Jewish character of Israel and the democratic right of the Arab to aspire to all the rights t hat Jews have – including to have an Arab majority in the land – that will never give the Arab rest or allow him to accept the status quo.

From the very beginning non-Jews understood this far more easily. Most Jews instinctively sensed the contradiction but could not give up the idea of a Jewish state, and so they repressed the reality. But Gentiles conversant with the problem had no such difficulties. Alvin Johnson, president emeritus of the New School for Social Research, discussed the “Palestine” problem in January 1947, one and a half years before the establishment of Israel. Writing in Commentary magazine, he stated: “It would be no simple matter to establish and maintain a Jewish majority in Palestine…. It is entirely realistic to say that the Arabs of Palestine do not want to live as a minority under the Jews, no matter what formal guarantees are given of minority rights… A national minority must expect to be oppressed. Even if it is no more oppressed that the Sudeten Germans and Slovaks in Czechoslovakia, the minority will consider itself oppressed…. I submit, the Arab-Jewish problem in Palestine cannot be solved under the scheme of majority-minority nationalism.”

Thirty-two years after Johnson made his precise observations, the majority-minority situation he warned about was in existence – more than three decades of Jewish majority rule with formal guarantees to an Arab minority.



…. Araba, the Galilee Arab village. Na’ama Saud is a young Arab Sabra. He teaches school, teaches the young Arab generation of Israel. A reporter for Maariv, Yisrael Harel, asks him (May 28, 1976) whether he accepts the fact of Israel as a Jewish state with himself as a minority with equal rights but no national ones. Saud replies: “Today I am in the minority. The state is democratic. Who says that in the year 2000 we Arabs will still be the minority? We are today about half a million Arabs in Israel. Today, I accept the fact that this is a Jewish state with an Arab minority. But when we are the majority I will not accept the fact of a Jewish state with an Arab majority.”

I couldn't wait to post this. It's an article about a Muslim Sheikh that speaks about the Q'uran's declaration that the land of Israel is to belong to the Jews. I heard him speak about this in length on the Tovia Singer Show, which can be heard online at www.toviasingershow.com," or maybe http://www.thetoviasingershow.com/ It was very interesting. Have a good one, Yaniv...
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1138622518546&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

The power comes not from the ability to say "yes" when it is screaming in your face
But to say "no" at this juncture

I saw him eating superstition
He was enjoying his meal
Although realizing that it tasted bitter
He would soon realize that it was his last supper
And he would start keeping kosher

And then G-d laughed and the world rejoiced!

The way the flesh was arranged on her skull caught my eye
And the way the flesh was strewn on her bones made me look
But I could not see her soul, for such beauties as the shade of her skin
And what cloth she covered it in
Fenced out the true desire of any living thing
A true connection
So perhaps I will attempt a union with her body
And eventually, if such a thing exists by then, I will marry it
And leave my soul hopelessly empty, connecting time after time after time
With the nerve endings that she possesses
They have the nerve to end
Lead me to a dead end, where I can create no life
I don't feel alive, but this is how I shall live my life?
Unless, of course, I deny my soul
Then I can become free for pleasure
Then my body's joy becomes my center
And our bodies can conjoin, multiplying our flesh
But our fleshes never become one
And when a new fleshling is born
It will have been in vain
And it can grow up with the vanity of its parents
Basking in the truth that it was conceived as a product of their desires
So much pleasure
Endless, boundless pleasure
The feeling justifies it
And the prices are higher than the rewards
Leaving you in debt
It was great while it lasted, but it didn't last
Leaving you wanting to pull the slot one more time
Ample room to gamble with your soul
Your body becomes your sky
So even if you shoot for the stars, and succeed
Where is your seed?
Your upper limit will be shattered by your head when you finish and stand up

Keep it Clean...

Behind the external sounds flying into my head
Is a screen
Which separates the sounds from the silence
And in my head I hear only silence
No voices except mine own
I am exempt
My voice comes out of my mouth, but it is distant and external and removed
And when I silence my own voice
I hear G-d's voice
I want that my mind be white like the cloth of a Shabbat table
And the types of dirt that I have placed on it
May they be like crumbs
And may G-d lean down and gently blow them right off the surface
And the wine that has spilled on it now and then
May G-d wipe it with His bleach and remove the stains
Then may my head be clean, and then my eyes too
And may they turn away from unclean images
It is what you put in that is what you get out
Get the most out of life
Pure in, pure out
And then the whole world will be pure
May my colored eyes turn to the Transparent Source
Whom has no color and whose teachings have no color
And then the color of the skin is of no matter
He Who is like water
Sees clear water come out of our colored skin
Pure and clear and transparent and translucent
Watering the whole world, like His flowers
May we soak it up
Water and light and air
The photosynthesis of the soul
Solely makes one with no holes, but whole
Holy

Like chocolate with syrup hair
Jumping, walking
She is fine
And finite
That's just fine
She takes up space
So I won't give her my time
Until the time, has arrived
When the orange falls from the tree
Do not date her
For she will become dated, in her mind and in yours
Once, twice, three times a body
There is nothing new -- all is old
But her soul is eternal gold
She will not want to give to one who does not want to give
So give her your life - and you will stay alive
The only way to make a woman yours is to marry her
Marrying her will keep her fresh, and keep you fresh
The preservative of life
Always grapes and never raisins
You will be raising in the sun
A Kiddush with your cup overflowing on a set, white-clothed table
If you do not marry her, her wind will lead her away
Supervised by G-d
You will see her strong side, and you will become weak
Do not date her forever, marry her forever

Concerning Hamas and Fatah - the two political Palestinian terrorist groups competing for control in Israel... IDF faces two-headed Hamas monster
By YAAKOV KATZ

While final results from the Palestinian Authority Legislative elections are not expected until the weekend, the army has already reached the conclusion that Hamas has turned into what some officers are calling a two-headed monster.

One head rejects Israel's existence and continues to assemble an army in the Gaza Strip while directing attacks against Israel. The second head is a politician, which has caused senior IDF officers to ask whether the military's longstanding policy of no contact with the group will change.

Until now the army has had a clear attitude toward Hamas - no contact at all. The office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories has for years bypassed the radical group even when dealing with routine issues such as water and electricity supply that affected cities run by Hamas mayors. The only official contact the army had with the terror group, one officer said Wednesday, was when soldiers arrested Hamas operatives or killed them.

But now, with Hamas as a political party, the "no contact" approach might need to change, senior officials admitted Wednesday, and the army might need to begin speaking directly with Hamas politicians.

Maj.-Gen. (res.) Itzik Eitan backed up that notion Wednesday, claiming that Israel, which he said failed to curb Hamas's rise, would most probably find itself talking to the group in the near future.

"Our failure to see through the different [peace] processes with the PA has led to the Hamas's drastic political rise," said Eitan, who retired from the IDF in 2002 after serving as OC Central Command. "If the Palestinian Authority had been responsible and taken action, the Hamas's climb would have been stymied."

Another example of a "process" Israel missed out on, Eitan said, was the evacuation of the Jewish community in Hebron. Following the 1994 massacre by Baruch Goldstein, then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin had the opportunity to evacuate the settlers.

"Just look at what is happening there now," Eitan said. "Look at the violence over the evacuation of a couple of storefronts."

From the army's and Eitan's point of view it is too late to stop Hamas. Representatives already run large PA-controlled cities such as Kalkilya and Nablus, and if the radical group forms or joins the next PA government they will almost certainly be high-ranking cabinet ministers. "It'll be pretty difficult to ignore them if they are running the health and social ministries," one Israeli official said.

But even if Hamas enters into a PA government, senior defense officials stressed, Israel's security will outweigh any other consideration and the army will not be restricted from taking military action against the radical group.

The relationship, one officer said, would be twofold: "During the day we can talk to them and at night we can arrest them."

As to the question of how to deal with Hamas, the answer, one official said, may have come from Hamas itself. Earlier in the week, Mahmoud al-Zahar, a leading Hamas candidate, said the group would talk to Israel but only through a third party, similar to Israel's relationship with Hizbullah.

For now, the army said it was willing to continue the "no contact" approach, but officials said Hamas would begin to realize that it had an interest in talking with Israel.

"We will continue supplying them electricity and water since that is not the question," one senior Civil Administration official said. "The real question is whether they will recognize Israel's existence and we can sit down with them to negotiate a final agreement."

How Do We Know That G-d Really Exists?

The ethos of evolution is "survival of the fittest," the theory that a species will survive only when and if it evolves a particular trait that will give it an advantage over another species. For example, we can look at a bird with a sharp beak and compare it to a bird with a round-ended beak. The sharp-beaked bird is able to crack open shells and eat their insides, consuming the majority of food with shells, leaving the round-beaked bird to eventually die out. In line with the evolutionary mode of thought, a species does not survive if it inherits a trait that will prevent it from surviving, and if it has that particular trait, then it survives.

The same people that state that the theoretical model of evolution is the replacement of belief in G-d basically do not realize that, if humans' existence can be attributed to evolution, then the formation of the human ability to perceive the existence of G-d (and deities in general) is just as well an evolutionary development. In other words, our ability to perceive the existence of deities is very much so an evolutionary development.

We are forced to examine this; do useless evolutionary developments, or mutations, occur in nature, and furthermore, does a species survive even with such a mutation?

The answer that most will say is "Yes," a species can survive, and many do, with mutations (or in other words, some sort of change in the species).We must look at the human ability to perceive the existence of G-d through the lens of evolution and wonder if the (complicated) human mind has somehow "found" a way to create the illusion of G-d within the mind in a world which is actually void of it. Again, if a development occurs in a species that does not benefit it, the species will die out, so do we conclude that the human ability to perceive G-d is a trait that causes it to survive? If we are to define the human being as a complicated animal, then we must view "faith," "spirituality," or "religion" as evolutionary traits, just as the bird with the sharp beak.

Furthermore, we cannot pretend that something such as evolution, a process but in no way a living, conscious thing, could have ever created anything. Rather, atheists illuminate an interesting paradox, they speak of evolution as having "created" life and somehow developing it from simple to complex forms. Again, the assumption here is one of intelligence and control, that a force of understanding exists beyond the evolutionary process, one that is physically invisible yet can be empirically identified through the effects of development. What we see here is staggering; atheists speaking about evolution in very similar terms that theists use to speak about G-d's Creation (hence the need for atheists to attempt to distance evolution and G-d from each other as much as possible). What is going on here; what mental, emotional, and spiritual needs are being fulfilled by evolution to the atheist and by G-d to the theist? Indeed, our beliefs and theories expose similar needs; human needs, and these needs strongly imply a human connection to something larger.

Interestingly enough, it's not the first time in human history that people have believed in one thing as an attempt to believe in something larger. The Talmud, in the section describing the nature of idol worship, explains that the people who worshipped various idols did so in hopes of connecting to the highest form of transcendence possible. In other words, they exhalted physical images around them, and the human form, and worshipped them as deities in order to break out of the limited and limiting human psyche and to enter the realm of the transcendent. The Talmud explains that they perceived the Oneness inherent to all existence, but it was so massive, great, and awe-inspiring, that they assumed that they could honor It by honoring its Creations. Once they did that, they moved from honoring the Creations to worshipping them, hence introducing a mental, spiritual, and theological disruption between them and It. Only by developing a direct connection to it could they achieve purity of spirituality - there is no intermediary between man and G-d; no force, no lesser diety, no object, and no man.

The Torah also describes G-d as a white light, and the breakdowns in understanding G-d's nature as various colors of light, in the same way that a rainbow is actually the breakdown of pure light into different wavelengths. Using the light analogy, each of the various deities is not a deity in and of itself, but rather it is an element of G-d, an aspect of Him seperated and distinguished from the whole, but imagined and manifested as an individual god or goddess. The allure of such practices is clear, for it doesn't necessarily seem evil due to its association with G-d. However, when the whole of G-d is broken into many disparate pieces, separated, and each one is viewed as a whole in and of itself, causing it to be imagined according to the abilities and tendencies of the human mind and manifested as such, and existing as an opposite from other deities, it led to the birth of some gruesome religious practices.

For example, the Torah recounts the Midians whom worshipped a deity named "Ba'al of Pe'or." Worship of this god was carried out when its worshippers defecated for it, or the priests of Molech (another deity) when they "walked their children through the fires," or in other words, sacrificed their children to Molech by burning them. When the unified source of everything is broken into pieces and each piece is viewed individually and imagined as such, when people insist that the transcendent source of existence can be anything, then any divine manifestation is possible. At this juncture, no rules of logic determine the manifestation of this god or goddess; the most primitive human urges, tendencies, and wants surface to the forefront as expressive forms of these deities and in the form of the deity's desires.As science has progressed, the gods and goddesses have died, filtered by time and knowledge, if you will; but G-d is pervasive. In the terms of evolution, they have become extinct, did not develop the necessary traits for survival, passed away and have been replaced by something better; this is because they do not really exist and therefore are not able to perpetuate their own survival.

The belief in evolution is a product of the noble human effort to strive for something bigger, to not be fooled by the matrix which we call our perception, and to stubbornly scratch at reality until we have removed the veils of illusion and revealed the truth. However, it shoots high, but only as high as the lower stars; it assumes that nothing floats above them and therefore ends it search there. This is humans' 20th century scientific mind's version of the Talmud's description of idolatry; we perceive the absolute height of transcendence, but are content with believing (and running our lives by) the notion that our efforts should end short of its pinnacle, or in this case, that evolution is more believable and less lofty than the belief in G-d, and even though it is not truth, it's easier to come by and less demanding. It's chic spirituality, it's cool religion, it's fun faith; it's a vivid painting stretching to all corners, not a blank canvas, it's lauging gas, not oxygen, it's Pepsi, not water. Science and the vastness of the universe to which it connects us is awe-inspiring and humbling, and "awe" and "humility" are religious/spiritual emotions.

In other words, we have our pie and eat it too; we gain access to some spirituality, just enough to hold us over, but do not have to change our lives or patterns too drastically. But "jack of all trades, master of none," applies here; we have some form of spirituality, but have not mastered it, and we are somewhat detached from a spiritual existence, but not completely.

But what if we need that connection so desperately that our minds have created that larger thing, whatever it is? Assuming that G-d does not exist, how can we account for the human's ability to perceive that He does? Is it a genetic function of evolution that causes the human brain to give the person the illusion that G-d actually exists, even though He is not real, for his or her own sake?We can say that a mind that perceives things that are not really there is in a state of illness and needs to be healed, for there are such mental conditions as schizophrenia, which cause incredible suffering in the individual's mind that has it.Yet billions of mentally healthy people world-wide believe in the existence of G-d (and even gods), and furthermore, that this belief manifests itself positively in their lives and gives them purpose, joy, and direction, essentially making them mentally healthier. Is belief in G-d then, a "happy schizophrenia," a fluke of nature that causes people to believe that there is a living Source outside of them with Its own will that intervenes in their lives and tells them what to do?

Furthermore, humans are extremely social "animals," and therefore, this belief can be transmitted and taught from one intelligent ape to the other, from parent ape to child ape, from teacher ape to student ape, from religious leader ape to religious student ape, and therefore forms what we call "civilization."Then perhaps the human belief in G-d is a form of social conditioning. However, this does not account for the fact that humanity still believes in G-d, so even though it is taught, we must wonder how we went from apes that could not fathom G-d to human beings that could. How can we have ideas?

But again, our ability to perceive "invisible" things is uniquely human; we can perceive many things that do not really exist, such as Snoopy and Barbie. Snoopy exists only on paper and Barbie as a disfigure of what women should look like, but they don't really exist. If this is true, how can we say that to believe in G-d is not exactly the same thing, except on a magnificently huge scale?

The answer is fairly simple; most people, even though they read Snoopy to their children and buy them Barbie's, therefore accepting them as mental models, are keenly aware that they do not really exist, that they are just figments of the human imagination. They do not, for one instance, believe that Snoopy or Barbie could have created the world, knowing that it was humans that created them, and they do not believe that Snoopy or Barbie communicate with them, connecting them to a higher plane of existence.Therefore, we are left with the distinct realization that spirituality is real, but cannot attribute it to any of these man-made things, and therefore are left to ponder the whereabouts of its source. How is it that an unconscious force of nature has designed a mental structure to help us survive, is taught to us through our society, felt in the core of the human experience (psyche, mind, our soul), is understood as a literal (but not physical) living Being, and yet does not really exist? How can the human mind create an "alter ego" within it, which can be shared by every single individual, and yet see to it that the human being continues to function in mentally healthy manner, healthier actually? Even those that, through their rational and conscious ability to, decide to reject that such a Being exists, it is left indivertibly on their soul. After considering these things, we are forced to grapple with the notion that G-d most definitely does exist, a rather perplexing, awe-inspiring, and ultimately moving recognition.

Many, many gods...

The cornerstone of monotheism is the existence of the One G-d, Whom is referred to by different (yet related) names in different monotheistic religions.

The defining essence of monotheism is that G-d is one, which means a few different things. First, it means the simple thing that only He exists, and second, the slightly deeper meaning is that He is One, meaning that everything is in Him; everything is a part of Him and nothing is without. This is what sets monotheism apart from polytheism/paganism, which declare their belief in the existence of several deities, all with their own powers and controlling a separate element of existence. Indeed, the polytheistic view sees the world as a splintered place, broken and in its very essence divided, with no potential of unity unless the gods and goddesses were to unite.

Christianty also believes in the "G-d of the Hebrews," as He is referred to in the scholarly tradition. Aside from the fact that Jews and Christians both believe in the existence of this One G-d and believe that He runs all existence, one of the explicit differences between G-d, in both traditions, is His nature.

Judaism ascribes the nature of His complete Oneness, which is the only logical assumption when considering what G-d really is. Furthermore, such a thing is stated in the Torah and all over the Tanakh, so it's not just a matter of assumption or human perception.
While Christianity agrees on the United nature of G-d's existence, some of its traditional views pose problems to it.

For example, G-d has an "arch rival" in the Christian tradition, and that arch rival is Satan. Suffice it to say that Satan also exists in the "Jewish tradition," but everything is a part of G-d's Creation, and therefore has a defining role, which does not end. Satan's role in the Jewish tradition is to tempt humanity to go off the proper path of living, and G-d Himself decided that this is the way that it should be in order for human beings to have the ability to be faced with making wrong decisions; only then can free will have any meaning.

In the Christian tradition, Satan is the enemy of G-d, i.e., he exists outside of G-d. If we wanted to speak of these concepts in other terms, we could say that there are two deities in the Christian tradition, a good god and an evil god, G-d being the good god and Satan being the evil god. If one is in charge of all that is good and the other is in charge of all that is bad, which is the nature that Christianity ascribes to each deity, then we can logically say that one is the god of good and the other is the god of bad, and that the two are locked in eternal struggle. Suffice it to say that this is the view that Christianity holds and not my own conjecture.

The belief of Jesus as the son of G-d introduces another "character" into the equation, that the good god had a son, a semi-divine being, whom was half human, and that god (god jr.) manifested himself in the form of a member of the people that that god chose to fulfill a certain task in the world.

It doesn't end there because the evil god also had a son (whom is known in the Christian tradition as the "anti-Christ), and the son of the good god is then eternally engaged in battle with the son of the evil god, just like their fathers. Two gods locked in struggle, and their sons, somehow divine beings, also locked in struggle in the names of the father gods.

In other words, a clear distinction between good and evil is drawn, which is necessary and healthy, but the two are splintered and distinguished from each other completely, to the point where G-d is not seen as being the Maker of all, for evil now is considered to exist outside of G-d, something that which G-d does not have control over. This results in a view encompassing almost everything in the category of evil (if pushed to the extreme) such as physicality, and sex, for example. According to fringe Christian groups, and perhaps mainstream groups as well, sex is seen as a product of sin, and since humanity relies on sex for procreation, we are mired in sin that is otherwise inescapable (unless one accepts Jesus). Sexual desire and sin is deeply associated with the Original Sin of Adam and Eve, which who else but Satan tempted (and taught) the first couple how to carry out. It is also why Jesus is necessarily seen as a being without sexual desire, it puts him in line with goodness, perfection, and holiness. Nevertheless, G-d Himself apparentally "procreates" in that He created His son Jesus by impregnating a human woman, Mary, who is the Jewish human mother of a semi-divine being.

In other words, it is similar to polytheism for the simple reason of divine duality, of two opposite and opposing forces that are locked in struggle. The only thing that can be said to be monotheistic about it is that good wins out, that G-d eventually wins, but even this is difficult to fit into the puzzle because G-d is all-powerful, and He does not have to struggle against evil; He does not have to struggle against anything. Rather, it is humanity that has to struggle against evil, and that is Judaism.

Judaism too recognizes that G-d has different attributes, such as Kingship, Mercy, Justice, Father, and Creator, amongst many others. In Jewish thought, you will never hear people referring to G-d as "G-d the King, G-d the Merciful, G-d the Just, G-d the Father, and G-d the Creator" in the same way that He is referred to in Christianity as "G-d the Father, G-d the Son, and G-d the Holy Spirit." Since G-d is One, we do not refer to His different attributes in separate notations; G-d the Father is no different than G-d the Just is no different than G-d the Creator. He is simply G-d and Father, Just, and Creator are different attributes that He posseses. He is not broken into a separate essence based on one of the Divine attributes.

For example, when one prays to G-d, does he decide to which attribute of G-d he prays? Does he say, "Today I will pray to the Father attribute and tomorrow I will pray to the Mercy attribute,"? No, he simply prays to G-d and G-d decides what do to with the prayer, with which attribute He will listen to it. If a person prays to either the Father or the "Son attribute," then he is acknowledging that the attributes are separate enough from each other to be considered entities that have the ability to stand on their own, and this constitutes polytheism; each attribute becomes a "god."

The attributes of G-d can be more or less described as "characteristics," but "Son," a relationship, cannot be sensibly categorized as a characteristic. A person can be patient, vengeful, and artistic, but "son" is not one of his characteristics, but it is another person altogether.

If there can be three expressions of G-d that together constitute One, why can't there be more than three? 1+1+1=3, but if it can be said that 1+1+1=1, then the formula can be repeated as many times as one wishes, you do not have to stop at three. This is a polytheistic understanding of Divinity.

No New Revelation Category: Religion and Philosophy
How can a revelation replace another if the revelation (is claimed) to be reiterating, not replacing, another (not previous) revelation? This would be like replacing something with another version of the same thing. With respect to Islam, this is the true backbone of the religion, its replacement of the Judaism and Christianity that came before it; this claim deserves some attention.First of all, we must contend with the notion that a revelation replaces another in the first place. For example, Islam's central belief is the replacement of Judaism and its tenets; why? The answer that Islam gives is that the Jews, the supposed followers of Judaism, went off the path and strayed from the message of the Torah and the reiterations of the prophets. Not to mention, they also deliberately altered the text for their own purposes, i.e., to advocate a lie that they were the only chosen people.However, why must one group's revelation be intended for another? For example, G-d gave the Torah to the Jews when there were no other people in the world that were ready to accept and embrace a notion of pure monotheism, and it is necessary to mention that there were no Muslims alive at this point in human history. If the Muslims had been alive then, then they could have accepted the monotheistic point of view. Thousands of years later, when the Arabs, through their figure Muhammad, had their own monotheistic revelation, it did not suffice them to live with it on their own, they felt that they had to spread their particular monotheistic viewpoint to the Jews. The question is "why" and the answer is that they viewed (and had to) Divine Revelation as a continuing process. In this they are right save for one minor mistake; the Jews also believe in continual Divine Revelation, but in the sense that G-d reveals Himself from one group to another until the whole world is united under Him. To contrast, Islam believes in continual Divine Revelation in the sense that one Revelation has to replace another; it is not sufficient that different groups of people exist in the same world with different understandings of pure monotheism. This attitude is what gave the Jews the ability to accept the theology and existence of Islam, while the opposite of this attitude is what made Judaism intolerable Muslims. We must also wonder what more there is to be learned by a new revelation; if G-d gave the eternal Torah to the Jews, there is nothing new for Islam to teach to Jews, which would also mean that Jews can remain Jews and be honest to G-d's will. This makes Islam irrelevant for Jews, which is one reason why Muhammad had such a violent reaction to Jews when they rejected him.But it doesn't make Islam irrelevant for Muslims; they were not around when the Torah was given to the Jews, and it's quite possible (and wise) to consider Islam "Torah for Muslims," the problems begin when Muslims want Jews to become like Muslims. For instance, Muslim tradition explains that the prophets of the Torah, which describes them as "Muslims," castigated the Jews for straying from G-d's message, which would have returned them to G-d, to submission, or Islam. When we consider that the prophets were Jews telling Jews to return to the Torah, it makes sense, but when Muslim tradition defines those who followed G-d as Muslims and those who didn't as non-believers (who just happened to be Jews), then we get a formula for confusion. Indeed, we can say that Jews are still supposed to live with the Torah, while Muslims are supposed to live with Islam. It is inaccurate to say that Islam replaces Judaism, but rather that Islam replaces polytheism for Arabs in the same way that Judaism did for the Hebrews. Having said that, there is nothing for the Jews in Islam; all that they need and indeed, all that G-d asks of them is required in the Torah. Islam is not a "final revelation" in the sense that they replace one another, it is "the only revelation," for Arabs. Islam should be careful not to turn the final revelation into the final solution.Furthermore, let's be honest, the Jews have been around longer than the Muslims, which has given them the opportunity to shift with the times and adapt their own monotheistic tradition in concordance with the Torah's Law on their own; there is nothing that Islam, the Q'uran, or Muslim jurisprudence can contribute to this process. In fact, all it can do is the opposite, it can fight the Jews and try to force change on them in ways that they do not approve, which, unfortunately, it has done repeatedly and continuously through history; this can largely be attributed to its necessity of viewing itself as the final and only revelation that everyone must conform, confirm, and convert to. Jews have had their own struggles with the surrounding world when it came to the exposure of monotheistic ideals to the pagan and polytheistic world and have caused struggles and even rifts in the Jewish religious sphere, not to mention, another religion (Christianity). Islam should worry about its own internal realities and less about Judaism's life, which, not to mention, would be an adviseable political strategy for Arabs when it comes to Israel; there is a clear connection between these two Muslim attitudes towards things external. Islam's aggression is also attributed to the power (that it once had), which meant that it reached harmony with its neighbors in ways other than letting them practice their own religions, but through power.But the struggle to bring the knowledge of monotheism to the world cannot end, although it will have to change in form without taking away from its core truths, and violent force is not the proper, nor the effective means. Islam cannot be blamed for attempting to unify people under a monotheistic vision, for this too is the Messianic vision of Judaism and the Torah; the only thing that can be called into question is the method, and even more than this, Islam's urge to replace Judaism as part of this process of bringing knowledge of monotheism to the world. If monotheism is truly what Islam wants (which is what the Jews want), then it will have to relinquish its belief that it has the monopoly over G-d and see Judaism and Jews for what they are, the original and perpetual bringers of this type of knowledge to the world, not as corrupted sinners. Notice that Judaism does not call for, or try, to replace Islam with Judaism, for considering Islam's numbers and purported belief, it is clear that it has a high potential for goodness; we are all waiting for it to be unlocked and released. Afterall, Jewish tradition says that Ishmael did t'shuva (a loose translation of 'repented') and was a "tzaddik," a righteous person.

Sanhedrin - 1: Paul - 0

There was a conflict of interest at the dawn of the destruction of the Second Temple; should people practice Judaism, which is exclusionary, or should they defer to Christianity, which is all-encompassing, allowing all those who have faith to join together?

The answer is interesting and simple; when Jews live as a minority and are being threatened, they seek to bring Judaism into the mainstream consciousness as to gain favor in the eyes of the powerful and numerous population of which hosts them. This is what a group that survives must do to continue surviving; those who favor biological explanations can see it as a biological function that allows for perpetuation.

When everybody feels threatened, the response level is macro, that is, everybody responds in one way or another to the imminent threat, and to the Jews living under the Roman occupation, the occupation itself and the destruction of the Beit Hamikdash were that threat to Jewish survival. There is no saying just how individuals will react in such a situation, which, like war, brings out from a human being previously unknown facets of behavior. The path taken by groups can be foretold with a certain degree of accuracy.

And it was in this context that Paul tried to bring Judaism to the Gentiles, not because he saw the Covenant that G-d made with the Jews as being exclusive and tribalistic, which is how Christian belief explains it, but because he was preparing, in his own way, for what he knew was coming up, the Jewish nation being faced with utter destruction, dispersal, oppression, and spiritual malaise. If he could make the Gentiles, the soon-to-be overlords of the Jews, find favor in Judaism, then by blending the communities and removing barriers he would have reduced the future threat that the Jews would have faced, for why would people want to harm themselves? In other words, by making Jews similar to Gentiles and Gentiles similar to Jews, he would save Jews, and in the meanwhile, a Gentile’s becoming more like a Jew is a clear step up from the paganism that Gentiles practiced. The key here is the word “similar,” which shares a root with “assimilate,” by making Jews and Gentiles similar to each other, by assimilating them to each other, he was trying, in his own wacky way, to ensure the physical survival of the Jews.

How did he do this? He tried to blend the theological and spiritual elements of Judaism with the various forms of polytheism in the Roman Empire, which is what, more or less, gave birth to the Trinity, a theological construct that recognizes the existence of the One G-d “of the Hebrews,” yet attributes to Him three separate, yet fully united characteristics, sometimes referred to as “persons,” one of them being a physical being. It is necessary to say that many of the polytheistic belief systems believed in this type of duality, or tertiarity, or the union of several separate beings enjoined as one and worshipped as thus; the Trinity cannot be both Judaism, both monotheistic and satisfactory to the Gentiles as the same time.

However, that wasn’t the only option; salvation to Jewish people came from the assembly of the Sanhedrin, who transferred the entire millennia-aged Jewish oral law into written form, the oral Torah, or the Mishnah, and therefore ensured the survival of the Jewish people. During the time when the Sanhedrin was standing and the Temple was in existence, Jews, common and high, would go to the Sanhedrin to deal with issues of Jewish law. When the Temple was destroyed, the Sanhedrin was dissolved and dispersed, so the men of the Sanhedrin wrote down the entire law so that every Jew could then refer to it on his and her own, making it a part of their lives without a leadership that would bring it to them. Not by morphing Judaism into a sacrosanct alliance with polytheism was the Jewish nation to survive, but by a privatization of Jewish law, by putting it into the hands of the very Jewish people that were supposed to live by it, but introducing the concept of self rule when there was no central rulership and when the Roman occupation saw to it that there was no centralized Jewish authority. In other words, every individual Jew was subject to the Torah’s law on his or her own accord and by their own will and desire to put themselves in contact with Jewish law. It was a test that we, thanks to G-d and the Sanhedrin, passed and therefore survived.

Concerning the Gentiles, the Oral Law prescribed the Seven Laws of Noach, or the Noachide laws, which were a set of monotheistic instructions for the nations. Everything that exists in the Oral Law goes back to the beginning of the Jewish nation at Mt. Sinai, including the way in which Gentiles are to live their lives out in a G-dly manner. The truth about the Noachide laws, however, is that they pre-date the 613 commandments given to the Jews, as the Talmud ascribes them to be given to Noah and his family after the occurrence of the flood.

Now there was a conflict of interest; did Gentiles have to follow the Noachide laws, the seven basic monotheistic ethical laws, or could they accept Paul’s vision of a utopian amalgamation of Judaism and various forms of polytheism that would “bring them into the fold” of the Covenant, to “graft them” into it, as the Christian Bible reads? The Gentile followers of Paul now began seeing the Judaism from whence their new religion came as an exclusionary, tribalistic way of life, having never practiced it or being introduced to its internal workings, which made Paul’s urgings easy to believe. Paul, of course, had inside knowledge about Judaism and the way it functioned, and even though he tried to channel the Gentiles in a specific manner, the nature of all movements is to morph and change, and the Gentiles that became known as “Christians” were not fully united under Paul’s vision in the way that he hoped they would be, and created their own leadership and institutions, especially after he died. The Noachide laws were not to replace Judaism as such, but to exist alongside Judaism, a proposed harmony between Jew and Gentile under G-d. The movement started by Paul, due to the fact that it existed in contrast to Judaism’s “exclusionism,” had no other direction to take than to move towards a theology of replacement of Judaism (this is the same as Islam’s view of Judaism, but not the same as Islam’s view of Christianity, which understands that it was inclusive, but corrupted, unlike Judaism, which was both exclusive and corrupted).

The real question that has to be asked is of utmost importance; what is more important for Jewish survival, quantity (ensuring continuity) or quality (Judaism in a true form), or is the point so essential that survival itself outranks all other matters? In other words, is survival in any form more important than the number of Jews who continue to associate, or more important than the way in which the Jews believe and practice, i.e., in line with the essential standpoints of the Torah? When survival and continuity are threatened, is it justifiable to say that Jews should continue to exist in any way possible just so that they continue to exist?

The answer, of course, is "yes," but only if we presuppose that the threat is so powerful that we will have to stray from our roots in order to survive. In other words, this view insists that there is no way to both maintain the true form of Judaism and the continuation of Judaism - that either one gives or the other. In other words, we can deduce that his intentions were good, but largely motivated by the fear and anxiety that the body of the Jews would be attacked (that is, physically) if we didn't begin to assimilate more with other people. However, he had to convince the Gentiles to join, and telling them that Jews and Gentiles have to form one contiguous community in order to ensure Jewish continuity would be rediculous and unacceptable to them. Instead, he had to genuinely convince them of the theological motives of such a communal and social alliance, hence the watering down of Judaism and its subsequent "mainstreaming." Paul tried to Judaize the Gentiles, whom were polytheists before they accepted the religion of Christianity.

But is survival not more important than form? Of course it is, but again, even if such a movement suceeds in ensuring survival, the mixing of Judaism and various forms of polytheism would also cause Judaism to disappear, only over a longer period of time. The strangest irony of this matter is that the movement might protect Judaism, but only temporarily, and eventually it and polytheistic religions would bleed into each other, and all those Jews that were a part of this movement would have disappeared as well.

The answer remains then, in no different way then than now, the only real way to ensure the continuity of Judaism is to be true to the way the Torah explains that it should be carried out. As we see today, the only Jews that are identifiable as Jews today are those that didn't become a part of the Jesus movement (the movement that Paul advanced) - be they Reform, Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist, atheist, or agnostic; even though they are different, they all identify as Jews. Eventually, his movement became Christianity; the Jews that joined it didn't remain Jews, which would have been to Paul's dismay were he alive when they began being called "Christians," and Christians eventually began persecuting Jews, and we all know where that led to.

The answer is that Paul's movement had nothing on the Sanhedrin, whom, along with arranging the Oral Law into Written form (Talmud), composed the Amidah prayer, also known as the Shmonah Esrei, recited daily in Jewish services. Their efforts directly and successfully led to the continuation of the Jewish people, and it is fair to say that they are heroes when it comes to acting selflessly for their fellow Jews.

Demons, Vampires, and Other Monsters Created by the Christian Theolgical Imagination in an Attempt to Literarily and Literally Manifest the Worst Spiritual Evils in Physical Form -

I wrote this paper back in the day, about two years ago...

Throughout the ages, Christianity’s psyche has been plagued with darkness. Just a look at modern-day movies will show you that these dark ideas, who have their root in Christian imagination, are still being produced to this very day. But it would not be accurate to say that Christianity is dark, indeed its first adherents thought it was the brightest thing in existence, but in the years to come, Christianity’s imagination and paranoia would prove to produce one of the darkest realities in human history. Dracula, werewolf, and the Devil himself are the manifestations of such darkness and are all rooted in the “dark days” of Christianity. But going even further back, we ask, how did Christianity produce such darkness? The answer is Jesus. So instead of moving back through time from now to Jesus, we move from Jesus forward, and meet somewhere in the middle.
Jesus died for the sins of all mankind. I cannot attack this idea, although I fundamental do not agree with or believe in its theological application. Sacrifice was an already apparent idea in Judaism, which is how it found its way into Christianity. But Judaism moved the reality away from sacrificing humans to sacrificing only animals, which involuntarily was ended when the Second Temple was destroyed. Jesus dying for the sin of humanity was, in the Christian mind, the ultimate sacrifice of all time, “for God loved the world so much that He gave it His only son,” Jesus. Abraham too was ready to sacrifice his son in the duty of God, but as it turns out, this was just a test to see if Abraham would really go through with it, and he would have, but was stopped. With Christianity, we see a return to the idea of human sacrifice, although Christianity can’t quite sort out the nature of Jesus since the concept of the Trinity found its way into the religion. What I mean is, was Jesus a man, God in the form of a man, the son of God, the Messiah, one of these, some of these, or all of these? How could Jesus be God in the form of a man AND God’s son at the same time? This would require that God was His own son, or that Jesus was his own father! The only logical explanation that a Christian can give about the nature of Jesus is that it is totally enigmatic and that we cannot understand it, an answer that also found its way into Christianity since Jews accepted an absolute nature of God that they humanity could never understand, but could speculate about. It’s another spin-off.

So how is all of this darkness rooted in Christianity? Simple. It has to do with his death on the cross. The “light” that his death gave to the world was short lived and fizzed out soon enough after he died, with painful repercussions. Since early Christianity, a sect of Judaism, couldn’t get any more Jewish converts, it next turned its eyes to the Gentile world, which means the inclusion of pagans and polytheists into the fold. Christianity soon caught like wildfire, but among vast groups of people who were not “true Christians,” that is, were not originally Jews. What this means is, that the concept of pure monotheism was foreign to them, and the only way that they could understand it was by adapting it and mixing it with their polytheism, which is why the concept of the Trinity was so easy for them to understand. Indeed, that concept was not around when Christianity was still a sect of Judaism. The result? A huge population of Christians who couldn’t agree on the nature of their Lord. The solution? The Nicaean Creed, which sought to unity Christendom under one fixed notion of God (Jesus) and His nature. Once this was completed, resurrection (a peaceful creed) was no longer the norm, but seeking revenge on those who killed the Lord was, that is, the Jews. All following Crusades that took place were rooted in the effects of this creed. That is why God told the Jews not to believe in the gods of their neighbors lest they be attracted to them. Some Jews in the Second Temple period (the to-be starters of Christianity – the writers of the Gospels) obviously did not heed that command and inadvertently started the precursor to Christianity, which would soon become a force to be reckoned with, and a damaging one as well.

So the Jews were the fundamental enemies of Christianity and it had eventually gotten used to seeing the Jews as just that. In times when economic despair or disease fell onto areas of Christendom, Jews would soon be blamed. Indeed, everything that was bad was related to the Jews, because they were the murderers of God and were His enemies, and He continuously punished them for their iniquities, in a sense, making them like Jesus, God’s sacrifice for the world, except that they weren’t innocent, as Jesus was. Most fittingly, Jesus was a Jew. The Christian concept that God is punishing the Jews is fundamentally different than the Jewish one. The Jews believed that God punished them for breaking the Law, Christians believed that God punished them for adhering to the Law and not to “the new law,” Jesus. Jews were the “other” in those ages, and they were eternally viewed with skepticism and distrust, which caused an eventual process of a cycle of distrust amongst Jews and Christians, which is why Jews, when they had rare liberty to do so, chose to close themselves off from Christian society. That too would later become associated as a negative stereotype of Jews by Christians, that they were tribal and exclusionary, and these beliefs about Jews have reverberated through Muslim doctrine as well.

It’s possible that the Jews would have suffered less if it wasn’t for Christianity’s over-active imagination. But why did Christianity have such a strong imagination? The answer is, the mixing of pagan and polytheistic beliefs into Christianity, which indeed seem almost inseparable from it without dismantling Christianity. Christianity expounded on the concept of Satan, which I talk about in other posts (Satan is in Heaven).

But what’s with the whole preoccupation with forces being actual physical beings? Ahh, it’s all coming together now. If God is a formless being but understood by Christians as having a physical form (an absolute prohibition in Judaism) in Jesus, and Satan is God’s eternal adversary, then Christianity necessarily needed a an adversary who also had a physical form, and that was the Christian concept of Satan. What do we have here now? God vs. Satan, but not a formless God, which could obviously smite the physical being Satan, but a God with a form and a body who had to literally fight against the Satan, who also had a body and a form. So now we have humanity stuck between a tug-of-war between Jesus and Satan, but the two of them exist in physical form, so they can really push us around. That is another spin-off of Judaism because Judaism already had the concept of good vs. evil, but that battle raged inside of us every single day. The
personification of two spiritual realities serves to comfort and satisfy the fragile psyche of the human mind, but it was specifically prohibited in the Torah by God, and perhaps because it is too much of a comfort. When we accept these realities and forces in physical form, we cease to focus on and understand their spiritual significance and allow ourselves to “slack.” Another negative outcome that this transgression produces is that we, as humans, can easily associate a people that we consider to be an enemy with the physical manifestation of this force and therefore consider them to be a physical manifestation of that force as well. Indeed, in these dark times, Jews were depicted with horns and gross physical characteristics, and “good” Christians were depicted as glowing, angelic, Godly figures.

But the Christian imagination didn’t stop there; it became ever-perverted, even more than it had been. Perhaps it was the continuing eventual downward spiral of Christianity, but it is more likely that it got even darker because of the economic and social decay of the areas in which Christianity was the established religion and was therefore influenced by that decay. A good thought to entertain is “chicken and egg” in style, did Christianity cause the darkness, or did the already present darkness darken the Christianity, or did Christianity cause the darkness which eventually darkened it even further? Either way, the darkness caused a traumatic paranoia in the Christians, and they vented it in several ways. The first way that it was vented was through all of the things that religion necessarily tries to regulate, the strongest one being sex. In these dark times, sex became a testament to the evil inside of us, an instrument of the Devil himself. Just to make it clear, in Judaism too, sex is seen as an instrument of the evil impediment, but only when it causes harm. When enacted with husband or wife (lover), it is an act of God. Of course, people will not stop having sex because it is an innate urge, so the people who continue to have sex (almost everyone), will by proxy believe that they are doing something evil and innately serving Satan. That is why sex is seen as Satanic, and it is also why sex takes on a ritualistic connotation in Satanism and other forms of Devil-worship. It is important to note, that no such marginal beliefs have sprung from Judaism (thank G-d).

This darkness, by no means, affected only Christians. As said earlier, it was also poured out onto the Jews in any society that they were in. It is damaging enough to believe that the Devil has gripped you in your God-given natural urges, but it is even more damaging to believe that someone else is a product of that same being. As long as that idea was around, the Crusades were right around the corner. Note the movie “Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” Count Dracula was a Christian apostate from God (Jesus) because his wife had committed suicide when she was mistakenly informed that her husband was killed in battle. He then devoted his life to resisting and rebelling God. It’s important to note that he was not an atheist, he just had a fierce hatred for God, whom had brought this calamity upon him. There is a scene in that movie in which Count Dracula says something about “sinners,” it quickly struck me that Count Dracula, although he actively showed his hatred towards God, probably had a deep resentment for the Jews of his society as well.

On a different note, it is very possible that the vampires in that movie were actually representative of the Christian view of Jews at its worst. Near the end of the movie, the townspeople go on a hunt for all the sleeping vampires in the town, this has an ironic twist of humor in that it is reminiscent of scenes of the Crusades, which had been happening all throughout European Christian history. In the 1950’s, Americans had a deep-seated fear of Communists, and the fear of the “unknowns” in society was physically manifested by countless tales of alien-invasion, which existed all the way up to the 1970’s and possibly later, with similar fervor. It is very likely that vampires (and other creatures of darkness) were not just the symbol of Christian apostates, but of Jews, who in and of themselves could also have been seen as essentially Christian apostates.

The darkness of Christian Europe affected everyone, both the Christians whom suffered from the planting of its dogmatic seeds, and the Jews that were attacked after those seeds had germinated. Yet, these dark demonic movies are still produced every year, although seemingly in smaller quantities. Furthermore, Christians have liberalized to the degree that they have tried to “undo” the horrors associated with the dark Christian mentality. They have done this by accepting the Jews (as the Torah speaks of them) as God’s eternally chosen people and thus, they can respect the Jews. But Christianity cannot liberalize past a certain point without falling off of its foundations, and in essence, topple itself. And furthermore, it cannot change past a certain point without returning to the womb from which it came, which is Judaism. This means that although Christianity can outwardly express respect for Jews, inwardly it (necessarily) needs to remain honest to itself and to its creeds, and therefore, there will always be a level of resentment towards Jews, even if minimal, and always silenced in this politically correct society in which we live. The paranoia lives on…