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Torah Portion of the Week – Pinchas – Love and Hate in Orthodox Judaism – The Reforms are Wrong – A Powerful Parable about Debt Collectors – A Great Story about Brisker Rav and Peace in Your Home – Creating Dialogue
Show Notes
You are talking about understanding. But what if someone can’t believe that the Torah was given by G-d? What is someone can’t believe the Talmud has anything to do with G-d either?
Belief will come when you learn the Torah. The learning itself cleans a person. Like it says “Torah leads to watchfulness”. The more you learn the more you will “experience” the divinity of the Torah.
The more you learn and repeat any idea again and again, the more you may start to believe and trust it so this makes sense. Don’t mean it’s right. Doesn’t mean it’s wrong either. Just means it ends up being your beleof and then of course your faith. I’m sorry but one like me cannot have faith in what I believe to be a man written historical book that is full of fairy tales, so what you are saying is unless one reads it and spends his time learning it so many times with all its commentaries (all simply trying to defend the idea that this book was written directly by god, by adapting its stories to an understanding to be able to prove the good parts are divine, and the bad parts mean something else). To me that also reforming it in order for it to sound better to modern day life. If the bible was taken literally as it is, While we may all feel nice and godly, for keeping such mitzvahs like looking after our animals, and not stealing, the overall fact but we would in fact be cruel evil men with our own slaves (yes we would feed them before us – that makes it better huh) men who can rape women in war, people who cannot save the life of a goy on shabbos. In fact it’s cruel to be controlled or control anyone. Come on, move on with the times. The Torah can and should be adapted now to modern day loge. However, you are all scared of being whipped down and go to hell for breaking this or breaking that. No wonder us Jews live in a constant state of anxiety. I agree we need some rules and regulations for a better world which is what I believe we were put on this earth for, the rules governing our lives by fear, are evil. No wonder people rebel. It’s time for the middle ground. We do not live in the dark ages anymore. The world was not made in 7 days either. Scientific proof, so move on, keep Jewish, but accept it was written by man for man and for that time when all in there was good (or better then the alternative at that times anyway).
The Reform Movement essentially rebelled against Torah to establish a whole new system of thought. So they are not a wrong as much as they are different. They departed from Judaism and, as such, their system is not Judaism anymore. I know that the minister was heavily criticized for stating that Reform Jews are not Jews. In hashkafa he is correct. In reality it depends on the individuals. There are many non-Jews in the Reform community who are accepted as Jews by that community. So it is possible by their nomenclature, to have a community of people who are not Jews calling itself Jews. The problem with the Reform community is that it does not want to be Jewish but it wants to continue identifying itself as Jewish. The Jewish community had not problem with identity for 3,300 years until 180 years ago when Reform movement was establish. Then all the divisions became institutionalized.
Actually your wrong on a very important point “the Jews had no problem with identity for 3,300 years” completely incorrect, firstly we were twelve tribes with different beliefs and different ways of living, only shared thing we had is the beleof of one god. Later on, we split into Israel and Judea. Then the Samaritans and many other streams, in fact Orthodox Judaism practiced today is NOT Judaism of the bible. Not even close in fact… you could eat your chicken burger with milk, you had to have blue tzizit strings, you kept only certain days of you tov. You could sleep with your multiple wives, you could keep slaves, there was no heaven or hell, there was no messiah to come, lots lots more. I’m sure you know anyway if you are so learned and if not, then challenge yourself to learn the difficult parts they don’t like teaching you…