[The author is definitely pro-Israel and on the political Left in Israel]
By Ami Isseroff
May 18, 2011
Here is what the Westchester Reform Temple has to say about their ties with Israel:
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WRT rejoices in its strong connections to Israel. Regular family and adult trips to Israel, lively celebrations of Yom Ha’atzmaut – Israel Independence Day – and special programs sponsored by an active Israel Committee remind us daily of our connections beyond our walls.
They also offer a downloadable PDF brochure of their Israel-related activities. The only remarkable things about these materials is that they are not really remarkable, except that the Westchester Reform Temple is the temple of the controversial Rabbi Richard Jacobs, who is slated to head American Reform Judaism.
Jacobs has been labeled as an anti-Zionist and bitterly attacked because of his membership in the J Street advisory board, and because he took part in anti-Israel demonstrations in Sheikh Jarrah. The controversy epitomizes the larger problem of how to voice dissent about Israel, how to deal with dissent and how to allow responsible democratic dissent; the reactions illustrate the problem rather than enhancing our understanding of it.
JJ Goldberg’s comment is frustratingly typical:
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The problem is that while Jacobs’s views on Israel are quite mainstream among American Jews, the notion that such views endanger Israel and have no place in Jewish communal discourse is becoming mainstream in Israel. In other words, we have a very serious family feud brewing.
The comment is either ignorant or malicious or perhaps both. Jacobs’ critics are American Jews, not Israeli for the most part. The issue raised by J Street is that they are a political action group lobbying a foreign country against Israeli policy. That cannot possibly be described as “pro-Israel,” since their actions are declaredly anti-Israel. It is one thing to be against the Gaza war, but another to urge adoption of the Goldstone report and condemnation of the Israeli government for “war crimes.”
It is one thing to be opposed to the occupation, but quite another to advocate U.N. condemnation of Israel, as J Street did. This caused liberal representative Gary Ackerman to abandon J Street. He wrote:
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“…The decision to endorse the Palestinian and Arab effort to condemn Israel in the UN Security Council, is not the choice of a concerned friend trying to help. It is rather the befuddled choice of an organization so open-minded about what constitutes support for Israel that its brains have fallen out.
America really does need a smart, credible, politically active organization that is as aggressively pro-peace as it is pro-Israel. Unfortunately, J-Street ain’t it.”
By now J Street has crossed so many red lines that it should be apparent they cannot be called “pro-Jewish” let alone pro-Israel, beginning with their enthusiastic endorsement of the anti-Semitic play, “Seven Jewish Children.” If Rabbi Jacobs remains on their board of advisors, we have to ask why.
On the other hand, one has the impression that Rabbi Jacobs and his congregation, and many other protestors and supporters of J Street, are really pro-Israel and do not understand why their activities are criticized. We do not want to lose these people or exclude them from the circle of support for and identification with Israel. As Gidi Grinstein, head of the Re’ut Institute, pointed out, if we exclude too many people we will narrow our support base and then we will lose.
Any criticism of J Street and its followers raises a chorus of protests about “democracy” and “McCarthyism.” The protests are misplaced. Of course, any American citizen can voice an opinion about Israel or any other subject, but nobody should be masquerading as “pro-Israel” in order to gain legitimacy for anti-Israel opinions an actions.
David Grossman, Shimon Peres and other Israelis who oppose the occupation are cited by Goldberg and others as examples that legitimize the stance of J Street. But Grossman or Peres would not dream of asking the UN to condemn Israel.
Goldberg is wrong of course about Israeli opinion and why J Street is seen as alarming, even by Israelis who are opposed to the occupation. The two sides of the controversy are both American and not Israeli, and the differences epitomize American Jewish concerns and not Israeli ones. For Israelis, America is a valuable foreign ally in an ongoing struggle against the Arab world.
The American government is not “our” government and ultimately we are powerless to affect its decisions. Israel is our first concern because we live here. If there is a meltdown of American support for Israel it will make life very difficult, but not impossible. Israel will be in the same place, approximately, as it was in May 1967 or May 1948. We did not acquit ourselves badly on those occasions, but we are very conscious of the unappetizing possibilities. Every Israeli is conscious of the very real possibility of national annihilation. This condition was with us from the outset. It sounds melodramatic but it has become commonplace. It makes life interesting and challenging.
The perspective of US Jews is obviously very different. There appears to be a group that pictures Israel somewhat like the fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto revolt. There is a second, opposition, group that mistakes Israel for America, a huge and indestructible country, in which protest can be a form of youthful exuberance and style. The young people of the ’60s who had giant posters of Mao Tse Tung or Che Guevara did not really hope the Chinese dictator would take over the United States. In fact, they had the posters only because they could be certain that they would never have to encounter Mao or Maoism first hand. The J Street people seem to think that Israel is an indestructible colossus, and that the best way to make an “effective” protest, one that will make the “establishment” sit up and take note, is to make a protest that is as loud and outrageous as possible.
The issues are framed by anti-Israel and anti-Zionist protest movements to attract the sympathies of stylishly liberal folks because they “sound right” – “democracy,” “compassion,” “dialogue” and “justice” all have an unfailing appeal to the target audience, buut they mask an entirely different agenda, in the best traditions of Leninist propaganda.
Rabbi Jacobs, for example, took part in demonstrations that he thought were about the eviction of Arabs from Sheik Jarrah. J.J. Goldberg wrote about this:
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…Jacobs participated in an anti-settlement protest in the Sheikh Jarrah section of East Jerusalem. The critics insinuate that he will not stand up for Israel, and some suggest his associations reflect hostility to the Jewish state.
Let’s clear up one thing at the outset: Jacobs is no more hostile to Israel than Shimon Peres, or David Ben-Gurion for that matter.
Let’s clear up one thing at the outset: Shimon Peres did not participate in demonstrations at Sheikh Jarrah, and it is very doubtful that Ben Gurion would have done so. The demonstrations were not at all in support of a two-state solution or peace.
In Sheikh Jarrah, a number of Arabs live in houses that were Jewish-owned before the creation of the state, and were ethnically cleansed of Jews in 1948. After 1967, they agreed to pay a nominal rent to the original Jewish owners. Some of these Arabs were induced by rights advocacy groups to stop paying rent, in order to build a case that lands confiscated as abandoned property after 1948 should be returned to their Arab owners. This of course, would bring about the collapse of Israel, and has nothing to do with the post-1967 occupation. This is what Goldberg claims that Shimon Peres favors and this is the cause the cause for which Rabbi Jacobs demonstrated. The organizers of the Sheikh Jarrah protest never really hid their agenda, which had nothing to do with any of the issues raised by Goldberg or Jacobs. This was not about displaced Arabs, since the evicted people had only to pay rent and it was not about two state solutions.
But the overwhelming majority of American Jews are not on the side of J Street or AIPAC. They do not care that much about Israel at all. For Israelis, it is a central issue. For American Jews, Israel is peripheral. Rabbi Jacobs’ stands on Israel were at best peripheral considerations in his nomination as President. His innovative organizational leadership in the United States was probably much more important.
For Israelis, survival is the primary issue. For American Jewish leaders, identification with Israel is a more salient issue. Israel is a drawing card around which they can organize Jewish life in the United States. The evidence of progressive alienation of American Jews from Israel is a central concern of American Jewish leadership Not surprisingly, Jewish leaders were alarmed by Peter Beinart’s pronouncement that hard-line pro-Israel politics would alienate young American Jews.Last year, Jacobs said:
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When the then Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz told the rally that ‘innocent Palestinians are dying and suffering as well’ he was booed. America’s Jewish leaders should think long and hard about the rally, Beinart says. ‘Unless they change course, it portends the future: an American Zionist Movement that doesn’t even feign concern for Palestinian dignity and a broader American Jewish population that does not even feign concern for Israel.
More recently, Jacobs said:
CONTINUE
What I did was to observe that you both explicitly reject the reality of intuition.
To your loss, both.
You’ll have to show me, because I don’t see it.
What is irrelevant is statements like this one, and not “mostly” irrelevant, but entirely irrelevant. Also, once again, off-point.
Because “false prophet” or not, jesus isn’t somebody I ‘worship.’
He wouldn’t have allowed it.
Fredericksen may or may not be correct in her assessment of the allegorizing of Greek mythology. Even if she is correct, however, it does not follow from that that the COMMON PEOPLE, or substantial numbers within the society in general, took the myths for allegory. Whatever they were intended for, they certainly seem not to have maintained enough of a moral core in the culture to have kept it from ultimately rotting from the inside out. It also occurs to me that her assertion that “the stories’ surface meanings were too clearly an affront to common decency to take them literally,” MAY be less a reflection of the objective reality of Grecian society than of the author’s self-referential (and perhaps naive) perspective on it. One man’s opinion, of course.
Show me, because I’ve looked, and I don’t see it.
Pleaded, yes. However, it’s more than absurd to go from that to implying that he, in effect, subverted God’s justice.
Am I supposed to take that as some sort of command?
“Metaphysical commentary” is pretty much what your excerpt from Paula Fredericksen consisted of.
Your choice.
Blanket generalities like this go nowhere. Anybody can find anything in ANYTHING if they’re set, consciously or otherwise, on doing so.
What’s that supposed to mean? What are you talking about?
The latter disagrees with you.
And if you weren’t such an insufferable egotist, you’d see this for yourself.
Well said; I’m impressed.
Now if I could just get you to think about it.
After all, what you’ve written here is the essence of the very point I was making above, in reply to the first blockquote.
Suggest you check your link. It’s evidently not going to wherever it was you intended it to go.
As I explained on another thread (Comment #25)you may communicate with your god of choice in any manner, TM, standing on your head or through LSD for all I care but know this your god or gods and the G-d of Israel are two completely different beings. One real the other not and I think you know which we Jews consider the real and sole supreme being and creator of all that exists. Christianity seeks to know God, not only through the Hebrew Bible, but also through the “New Testament”; and, in cases of conflict between the two Scriptures, the “New Testament” prevails in the eyes of Christians simply because that Scripture is deemed by Christianity to be the corrective and final Word of G-d. Consequently, to the extent that the Christian Bible distorts the Nature, Message and Expectations of the G-d of Israel it does not describe our G-d at all but another deity entirely — and it is this deity that Christianity recognizes and to which Christians pray.
Consequently, we cannot possibly accept the postulate that the deity depicted in the “New Testament” and the G-d of Israel are one and the same — or that, after so thorough a baptism in the falsehoods of the “New Testament”, Christians (even those who do not worship Jesus as a god) nevertheless pray to the G-d of Israel.
Dweller: A frog down a deep well does not know there is the sea.
Your comparison of me with Eagle is hurtful and insulting but while on the subject, you an eagle use the same methodology of circular arguments. Not that they have the same merit but the same technique.
Not subjective — but “feminine,” as in: receptive
and vertical, as in: between man and what is Above man.
As opposed to the intellect, which is
“masculine,” as in: active
and horizontal, as in: between man and man.
God “speaks” to man via intuition.
Man “speaks” to man via intellect.
You need both to function.
Denying the one or other is like denying
your right leg in favor of your left
when you need both
for locomotion
for balance.
“Measurable?”
Well, you can’t collect the intuition, can’t store it, bottle it, sell it, chalk-up advanced degrees after your name with it.
The ego can’t take credit for it.
It’s very humiliating to have to be constantly brought back to Square One by it.
But that’s the nature of the discipline it imposes.
All the same, it is the faculty I referred to in saying,
Can’t say I’m surprised.
Your loss.
Eagle’s loss, too, it seems.
He agrees with you: “total BS.”
You have something in common after all; fancy that.
If not the intellect that Leaves by deduction: Emotions, intuition or wiji boards. Intuition is total BS which is subjective and not really measurable, so I discount it, which leaves the trusty old standby wiji boards or some facsimile.
What else you got boychick?
Maybe for yourself, you did.
But not for me.
And I was the party asking it.
I repeat the question:
When and where did I (ever) say anything about relying on, or substituting, the emotions?
I did! Elementary deduction Watson.
Answer the question I asked in the post.
No it wasn’t. Unless you meant The wiji boards?
“The entire purpose of our existence is to overcome our negative attributes.”
– Vilna Goan, Commentary to Mishlei 4:13
As always, you don’t read for meaning.
You read only for what advantage you think you will garner from what you read.
When and where did I (ever) say anything about
relying on
or substituting
the emotions?
Your comment is a total non-sequitur to what I said above.
May they grow as large as basketballs and never deplete their essence or usefulness to you. It’s better than contemplating your navel 24/7.
As always you are wrong re: G-d communicating through the intellect. Only Pagans use emotions in place of the intellect.
Rabbi Elazar ben Azarya, stressed:
Without Torah there is no civic order, and without civic order there is no Torah. Without wisdom there is no fear of G-d, and without fear of G-d there is no wisdom. Without knowledge there is no intelligence, and without intelligence there is no knowledge. Without food there is no Torah, and without Torah there is no food. [Mishna Avot 3:20]
The idea here is that each component of these pairs helps create and completes its counterpart.
[Rambam’s Commentary on the Mishna]The right path is a knowledge of the whole of intelligence that makes up Torah so that it may be applied through intelligence as knowledge and not as intelligence through knowledge or knowing of it. Torah is a closed system of practical application while at the same time an open ended gateway of knowledge. To choose the right path is to understand this duality as a human misconception of a single divine idea.
Botted.
Nope. Didn’t miss your point. You missed mine: the details of the exact form of false prophet jesus worship you subscribe to is mostly irrelevant.
Ugh! Now I have to find a passage on the subject and type it out for you, to show you what point you are missing in Greek Mythology (found it online – Greek influence on christianity):
I can no longer be bothered wasting time retorting your replies. Jesus didn’t only claim to “intervene”, as Moses did on occasions, where Israel failed to correct their own errors. Jesus was an access freak. Don’t give “mataphysical commentary” nonsense. John 5 and 6 are nothing but classic Greek and Roman paganism. Enjoy your flesh and blood.
Thanks for the mammaries.
You’re also missing my point. (why am I not surprised?)
By saying that you’d been wrong before, I was alerting you to not assume you were ‘right’ THIS time (i.e., that time) either; that if your perception & judgment had already been shown to be mistaken, that you’d be wise to avoid further assumptions.
Oh, good grief, that’s not AT ALL what I was referring to in saying the Greeks brought their gods down to human level. I wasn’t talking about some literary device. What I meant was that the ‘deities’ THEMSELVES were viewed as typically flawed humans, only with superpowers. Zeus was constantly chasing the local twinkies, in hopes of “tearing-off a piece” with one or another of them, or striking some shepherd with a thunderbolt for poaching on his favorite herd of deer. This goddess or that one was feeling slighted by some mortal, so she turned him into a jackass. Or the gods would be squabbling with eachother over one silly-assed thing or another.
They were horny. They were gluttonous. They were jealous. They were envious. They had unbridled tempers. They were petty. They were vain. They were unfaithful. And, yeah, humans could, sometimes bargain with them to get them to change their plans.They were never models of character.
I was saying to you that the idea that God could be induced to ‘change His mind’ about destroying B’nai Yisrael just because Moshe “went to bat for them” [Sh’moht 32:14] struck me as anthropomorphic, like the Greek ‘deities’ — who were, in effect, “created in man’s image” (instead of vice versa) — viz., that this likewise amounts to bringing Him down to man’s level.
If HE-WHO-IS chose to ‘not destroy the children of Israel’ at that point, even though there’d been no significant improvement in their character & deeds to WARRANT a different outcome, it was because He never intended to destroy them at the time — and was simply bringing out the best in Moses, who had to be shown what he was yet capable of on behalf of the People.
Frankly, in fact, it’s just this side of offensive — insulting to God — to imply that if Moshe had not been handy right then & there, and prepared to step up to the mound to make his “pitch,” that the Father of Mercies would’ve simply said, “Ok, screw it; you’re toast; I’m startin’ over; burn, Baby.”
To imply that is to view Him as just another flawed human, only with superpowers, and I don’t buy it. As I said earlier, I give more credit than you do. In that sense, it is YOU who are the ‘hellenist,’ not I.
For the Ancient Greeks, religion was the realm of the numinous, but not the moral. For them, morality was part of philosophy, but not of religion. In fact, strictly speaking, of all the peoples of the ancient world, the Jews alone saw fit to “wed” the two principles of the numinous & and the moral, to marry them to each other. Only the Jews believed that the very God who shook the mountain-tops and roiled the waters of the sea was the SAME God who loved justice & mercy. They were absolutely unique in that regard.
There you go again, putting words in my mouth. I’ve never said or suggested that anybody needed a “middle-man” for access to God. If you’d been paying even minimal attention to my posts — instead of trying to read things into them that will give you a pretext to put me into some prearranged box — you would know that I’m the last person in the world to be looking to intermediaries of any sort.
Just as I challenge the notion that Moses was a ‘mediator’ with God (as to His intentions) on behalf of B’nai Yisrael.
The declaration that “No man cometh to the Father but by me” is an important metaphysical commentary that has NOTHING to do with that lame “go-between notion,” but it was used with considerable success in the pagan world — where the concept of intermediaries had long been standard fare. It was easy for proselytizers to just plug that in to an already-existing socket. Unfortunately, however, the metaphysical import of the declaration [“No man… but by me”] was lost to them as well, and instead it was used in precisely the way you have referenced it. But that’s 180 degrees from the way haNitzri used the assertion.
Freudian slip, Marxist theory
You, on the other hand, always DO think of the world turning whenever you watch a ‘sunset’?
“Sometimes, Madame, a cigar is just a cigar.”
— S. Freud, M.D.
Best regards,
From the Fool on the Hill
I have no problem admitting to even being wrong 3 or 4 times about what kind of jesus fringe freak you are. Make it five. I’m feeling generous.
Greek Hellenism used metaphor and allegory to bring their cosmic beings and stories down to earth.
That has nothing to do with G-d’s hand and decision making throughout history, as recorded by Tanach.
It was heretical Jewish Hellenism which adopted what you believe in, namely in an intermediate “Logos”. Hence the paganist christian concept of “No man cometh to the Father but by me”, eventually melded into a slapped-together character known as jesus. The fallacies of the need for such an intermediary were a mutation among Hellenistic Jews and pagans alike prior to the supposed advent of jesus. It is the same trap and failure as the sin of the golden calf and the initial failure of mankind after Adam, leading up to the flood.
You’re in great company!
Seems you live in a special reality called Dwellerville!
You remind me of the student only seeing the sunset.
Forgot to take your medicine again, I see.
At least Dr Eldad had the good grace to give proper attribution to Yehudah HaLevy. What a pity that you could not learn from his example, Yamit, and acknowledge that YOU were quoting him.
It is quite true that the finite mind of man indeed cannot — of itself — “be relied upon.” It clearly needs something beyond itself to function as it was intended to. That further Something, however, is clearly NOT to be found in books. [“Much learning is a weariness of the flesh…” you know the rest of it.]
That further Something is not to be accessed via books, because it is not a function of the intellect — as I’ve told you many, many times, Yamit. God communicates with His finite creation, man, through an entirely different faculty altogether, the intuition, by which the mind that He gives to man is illuminated.
If I have a pressing appointment somewhere, and in my haste to be on time I momentarily forget where I left the house- and car- keys, I may spend several minutes (or more) frantically searching, and racking my brain, to find them in the cluttered room I’ve been working in.
Or I can flip on the light switch, and make things a lot easier for myself. I may still not know where exactly to LOOK, but the looking will be a lot simpler & more efficient for my purposes…
Maybe you’ve got ears to hear.
Then again, maybe you don’t.
My thanks for your opinion. The next time I’m feeling ‘deficient,’ I’ll take that as a warning not to let my ego ‘inflate.’
May I suggest that you avail yourself, as well, of your own, most excellent counsel?
1. Quoting without attribution, or even quotation marks, to alert your readers that you are presenting somebody else’s work — someone who therefore cannot be referenced further by an inquirer seeking clarification (or verification) — is called plagiarism; it’s at best sloppy, undisciplined and discourteous (and in some venues, it’s illegal). You’ve been warned about this on a multitude of occasions (and by others in addition to YoursVeryTruly).
2. The drosh you presented, the work of the late Binyamin Ze’ev Kahane (l’shalom) has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the blockquote of my remarks which it presumably was a response to. My own comment [finite mind — infinite mind, etc] was directly responsive to Yonatan’s earlier comment [May 20, 7:38 am] which included the words, “Hashem is speeding things up.”
3. If you want to poke your nose into an ongoing exchange, Yamit, would it be so much to ask that you at least have the courtesy to first check out enough of the surrounding posts to give yourself a reasonable grasp of the point[s] you’re targeting — so that what you offer to the discussion will enhance the flow rather than hinder it?
Principles for a Hebrew Liberation Movement
Your inflated ego never ceases to demonstrate just how deficient you are.
War of Obligation…Concept of Kiddush and Chilul Hashem….Peace and Land….Diaspora and the State of Israel
“And Judah too, shall fight against Jerusalem…” (Zechariah 14)
Ki Tavo: “Tochacha”. A most basic tenet of Judaism: The world is not “hefker”. Judaism actually believes in such concepts as reward and punishment. The refusal to come to grips with this concept has caused many Jews to even doubt the existence of G-d throughout the years. There is no greater proof of the existence of G-d than the fact that every one of His curses, warnings and chastisements in relation to the Jewish People which are conveyed in the Torah have been fully realized. It serves as proof to G-d’s awesome and precise supervision. It is evidence of His ability to fulfill His promises and threats.
We must expunge from Jewish thinking all Gentile beliefs, concepts and practices. Some Jewish precepts
G-d “made everything beautiful – in its time.”
To apply a trait in an inappropriate time or place is a foul deed. It is just so with war and peace. Each has a time, and that time is learned from the laws of war and peace scattered throughout the Torah. Since peace is limited to its own time, it follows that in wartime all traits associated with love, kindness and mercy are redefined. It is then kind and merciful to go to war against the wicked. Our sages teach (Kohelet Rabbah 3:[8]1):
“There is ‘a time to kill’ – during war; ‘and a time to heal’ – during peace. There is ‘a time to break down’ – during war; ‘and a time to build up’ – during peace… There is ‘a time to seek’ – during peace; ‘and a time to lose’ – during war. There is ‘a time to rend’ – during war; ‘and a time to sew’ – during peace… There is ‘a time to love’ – during peace; ‘and a time to hate’ – during war. There is ‘a time for war’ – during war; ‘and a time for peace’ – during peace.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oguHBnL5UYc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-HjYbbIpDM&NR=1
As I told you before, when you become emotional, Shy, you make stupid mistakes.
Such as going off-point, as you have done here; and hardly for the first time.
The issue at hand in my above remark was not what I am or am not.
Rather, the issue was about YOU — your perception of me, and the fact that you’ve been wrong about that before. And I said that if you were wrong once, you could be wrong twice…
Oh, for heaven’s sake, I’ve probably read that whole chapter a hundred times, and I’m perfectly clear on context. If you really believe it was God’s true intention to destroy B’nai Yisrael (God as the boss who’s had it up to here & wants to fire the whole crew, start all over), then you probably also believe that God truly INTENDED for Avraham to slit Yitzkhaq’s throat on Har Moriyah. (After all, He told him to.)
I don’t — in either case.
In both instances, it was, in a manner of speaking, a ‘testing,’ a revealing.
A revealing, in each case, of the depth of a man’s devotion & commitment — in Avraham’s case, his willingness to put his submission to the Divine behest above every other demand. In the case of Moshe, his willingness to advocate on behalf of the people that God had given explicitly into his care. In both instances, something is revealed — not to God, who knows precisely how each man will respond (and Who knew it before He ever called either man into His service) — but to the man himself, ABOUT himself, something that he might have never learned otherwise. In each case the man discovers something about what he is capable of, and why God chose him to be His servant.
“Again”? I didn’t “goof up on context” the first time in this exchange either. I showed you that the “the Heavens are MY throne…” passage was NOT presented in contradiction to its context as you claimed, but instead, that “[t]he whole thrust of ‘where is the house that you can build for Me?’ is in the absurdity of a man — God’s creation — presuming to ‘house’ his Creator, Who is (among other things) omnipresent.”
I give Him more credit than you do. I realize it’s not uncommon to take your view, but I’m not convinced that it’s right. I think that amounts to bringing Him down to man’s level, as the Greeks did with the ‘deities’ in their myths. (That’s ok, we have a divergence of opinion; no problem.) But I don’t shut myself off to renewed consideration in such matters. If I end up changing my mind, I’ll let you know.
Sometimes they did, but I suspect that in this instance, they rationalized the answer, to protect the people from themselves.
From the times of the prophets? — Really? What remarks of mine counter specifically something from the prophets? (and cite your authority for its authenticity please, if it isn’t somebody’s interpretation) I have no problem with checking out somebody’s commentary, and I sometimes do. I simply refuse to believe that God intended that we should cease all inquiry at the point where some Gaon chose to call quits, just because he chose to call quits.
Now you’re off-point again, boychik. My question in that blockquote was not about their real or perceived responsibilities.
Rather, my question [“What does the sage have, etc”] was in direct relation to a previous one in that same post, and which read
(A question which remains unanswered by you, it seems, even now.)
I leave that judgment to the One Who called the Nation of Israel into being in the first place.
And Who gave me the mind that I think with; and that I ask questions with.
You call upon His mercy.
Good.
Because I trust His more than I do yours.
Pardon me for not identifying you as a theological circus sideshow freak. Welcome to the world of forum comments.
You’re still an apikores, with the same idiotic worship of a Jewish nobody of a character who may have lived 2000 years ago or many not have existed at all.
Verse 14 but read the whole chapter so you don’t goof up on context – again.
There are numerous examples throughout Tanach of humans being the determining factor in G-d’s decision. Another classic example: Yonah and the Kingdom of Ninveh.
They did just the opposite. They explained the rationale of the contradiction.
But you’re proving to be so clever. You are obviously above the clouds verses the Jewish commentary handed down from the times of the prophets until today. But of course.
The responsibility of maintaining the integrity of the Torah for all the future generations of the nation of Israel, a nation you have cut yourself off from for eternity. Hashem Yerachem.
As always, you have no clue as to how my mind works. You think my beliefs begin & end with what I glean from books (scriptural or otherwise)?
For the longest damned time, you were dead sure that I was a “stolen soul” that goyish proselytizers had “gotten to,” or that I was a goyish proselytizer myself. Well, I’m not so sure just HOW sure you are about that any longer. But if you DID guess wrong about that, isn’t it possible that you guessed wrong about MORE than that?
I quite assure you: the scripture may well, from time-to-time, CONFIRM something I already know, but the scripture will NOT have been how I came to KNOW it.
Absolutely, and does so all the time. Precisely what I was referring to in my reply to your previous blockquoted remark in this post. Certainly God communicates with individuals. But not thru the person’s intellect. The contact is made via a different faculty altogether. So how could that awareness come from book-reading, which is indeed an intellectual process?
When did I say that? I’m not aware of having said anything at all like that. If you think I did, cite the post please, so I can look it up. With your usual bigotry, perhaps you’re confusing me with some other ‘christian.’ (“All Amelican rook arike.”)
The tense and mode in each instance are clearly Future Declarative — not Imperative. That chapter is chock full of such usages of the verb. It’s foretelling, prognostication or prediction — NOT a ‘command.’ The whole thrust of “where is the house that you can build for Me?” is in the absurdity of a man — God’s creation — presuming to ‘house’ his Creator, Who is (among other things) omnipresent.
When have I ever said or suggested anything about that imagery? Again, this is somebody else’s take, not mine.
A literary device, perhaps, like various anthropomorphisms; cf, “the face of God,” “the hand of God,” etc.
(Nu, He’s got an opposable thumb, too, bli ayin hara? Could I get Him to whistle me up a cab? I’m late for a hot date.)
Look, an Infinite Being doesn’t change His mind; doesn’t need to. His will in perfect; and He knows the future, in every particular — all the choices that each-&-every soul will ever make about anything & everything — and he certainly knows His own mind.
The real relevance of the expression (“in its time I will hasten it”) MAY be in our perception of time, which is a lot more fluid than we assume when we’re young. The older we get, the faster a given amount of time seems to pass. And according to Einsteinian physics, it’s not just the perception of time, but time ITSELF which can actually speed up (or slow down).
They just didn’t want the people’s trusting in the timing of Providence to become an excuse for fatalism — given Jewish history, a perfectly understandable concern. So — just a bissel, maybe — they fudged the answer.
But when did the sages ever become “the final word” on anything anyway?
Has it never occurred to you that the “sages” were occasionally humoring their public, or posterity?
That they were, from-time-to-time, simply being gentle with people who might not be able to wrap their mind around what the sages were musing over in their own heads?
Where do you think the “sages” got their “sagacity”?
Purely from poring over the Chumash till their eyes were bloodshot?
If so, why would they need to pass along what’s already IN there, where anybody could get it anyway?
Got to be more than that to them.
What does the sage have that you — or I, or your Aunt Batya, or Chaim Yankel — don’t (or can’t) have?
According to the Torah, this is simply not true. I discussed this week’s Torah portion here.
As always, your christian mind cannot bother to read the next verse to understand this verse in its context:
“And all these My hand made, and all these have become,” says the Lord. “But to this one will I look, to one poor and of crushed spirit, who hastens to do My bidding.”
The attribute of G-d’s infinite greatness cannot be fathomed by the finite mind. Nevertheless G-d can and does interact with humanity even on a single person basis.
At the end of the day, G-d commands Israel to build his house, in Jerusalem, with the sacrifices restored, as mentioned for example in Isaiah 60:7. And you thought sacrifices were passe ’cause jesus used his magic and atoned for everybody so we wouldn’t have to. Gibberish.
I especially referenced Isaiah 60 because of the last verse, referring to the final redemption (no Revelation mythology to be found about selected people being whisked up to the sky while the rest of us losers get stuck on planet earth):
“The smallest shall become a thousand and the least a mighty nation; I am the Lord, in its time I will hasten it.”
The sages asked the well known question: if its “in its time”, there is no relevance to hastening, and if something is hastened, then it is no longer “in its time”. And the famous answer is that …. it is up to us.
Of course it’s all cause & effect. [Du-uh.]
And it’s cause & effect altogether independent of Judaism OR “your jesus ‘in-some-generation-or-other’ world” or anywhere else.
Reality is what it IS.
(Regardless of whether anybody acknowledges it.
Regardless of whether everybody acknowledges it.
Regardless of whether NOBODY acknowledges it.
Reality has no “need” to be believed; it IS what it is.)
A finite mind can’t possibly have the comprehensiveness of understanding, wisdom & judgment to know what will “hasten” or what will “postpone” a matter (including how to expand or contract the element of Time) — let alone the power to coordinate the myriad elements making up the total configuration of events, or (dare I say it?) the authority to ordain what should (or shouldn’t) happen & how. All of that requires an infinite mind.
“The heavens are My throne, the earth is My footstool;
so where is the house
that you
can build
for Me?”
Perhaps in your jesus “in-some-generation-or-other” world.
In Judaism, everything is cause and effect, which can hasten or postpone historic events, good or bad.
It is up to us.
Ameyn.
And the ways that you offerred are examples of how He is opening the rosebud.
The ones who (for now anyway) don’t come because they “just won’t,”
in a real sense can’t.
And their “just won’t” attitude is evidence of precisely that.
Think about it:
If they came despite their “just won’t” outlook, what could you do with them?
Is it more likely that they would pitch in & pull their weight?
— or more likely that they’d wind up getting in your way,
or becoming a burden on the state,
or possibly, even (khas v’khalila), becoming seduced by the opposition
or (worse yet) victimized by the enemy?
Identify the “things” which “would be sped up.”
Surely you do not refer to ‘altering’ God’s timetable, an absurd proposition on its face.
The finite, human ego, created b’tselem elohim, quite naturally, is forever tempted to play the role He intended for Himself — though only He is constitutionally equipped to play it.
The irony is that it is precisely our discovery that we’ve been trying to “force his hand” that represents the most telling evidence that He knows what He’s doing. After all, where else could that discovery have come from than from HIM tapping us on the shoulder & saying, “wake up, you’ve been dreaming (about being awake; again)”?
Dweller, Hashem has provided us with the opportunity to live in the land that he promised us. There is additional work to be done until the rosebud is open, to use your metaphor. To just sit in the diaspora waiting for the ingathering of exiles is like saying you’re not willing to do your share of the heavy lifting. Can you imagine how things would be sped up if most of the Jews made their way to the holy land? There are some that truly can’t right now, but there are many, many more that just won’t. Hashem is changing things though. There’s an influx of college grads from America right now going into the IDF. They’re deciding that the future in America with their degree doesn’t look so rosy and are taking the plunge here. Obama is doing his best to help move Jews over here also.
No, it doesn’t make you an antisemite to say that.
However:
Have you ever tried to open a rosebud before its time?
Worked out real well, did it?
As I recall, Herzl foresaw that many Galut Jews would not embrace the idea of Israel as the Land of the Jews, but would embrace the idea of a Jewish presence in the Holy Land as some sort of “anchor” to their communities. Call me an AntiSemite all you want, but I believe overseas Jews should make up their minds: Do they want to be Jews, and live in Israel, their homeland? Or do they want to live in Brooklyn and become GENUINE, WHOLEHEARTED Americans? Jews belong in Israel. GOD said so. He didn’t give them America as the Promised Land. If a Jew is so stupid, he can’t see that, he doesn’t deserve to be a called a Jew. My grandparents came to this country as “Slovenians” or “Austrians”, however they wished to fashion themselves; and they continued to speak Slovenian and German while struggling to learn English. They were Slovenian-Americans; but my mother was not. She was an American, and married an American who was not Slovenian. America is not part of Slovenia, and it’s not part of Israel. Here, let me say it for you:
Antisemite!
Antisemite!
Antisemite!
Got it out of your system? Now grow up, read your Bible and do what it says. Go live in the land God called you to live in.