Use your Experience to Empathize
Every difficulty in your life builds up your mental library of what it's like to go through hard times. And every mistake enables you to empathize with others who also make mistakes. And every time you become frustrated or angry, you gain a better understanding of others who feel this way.
Make note of all your worries and your fears. Make note of your uncomfortable or embarrassing moments. These -- together with every injury, illness, and wound -- help you to become more sensitive to the suffering of others. One never knows how another is suffering. It is usually a good idea not to wear your suffering on your sleave, so a person might look strong on the outside but suffering on the inside.
Love Yehuda Lave
Who wrote the bible? Most people you ask -- depending on your circle of friends -- will answer, "A group of very wise men got together and wrote it." For the past 3,300 years the Jewish people have lived with the consciousness that the Almighty dictated the Torah to Moses who wrote it down word for word, letter by letter. Every Torah-educated Orthodox Jew believes that. Are they fools, fantasizers, misguided religious fanatics?
It will surprise some people to know that for the past 3,300 the Jewish people have taught their children the evidence for the belief that there is a God and that He dictated the Torah to Moses. Actually, I am sure that for the first hundred or two hundred years after the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai the authorship of the Torah was not even a question. For generations all a Jewish child had to do was to ask his father if he was at Mt. Sinai or if his father or grandfather was there. Even Moses himself tells all generations to "Go and ask ... has a people ever heard the voice of God speaking ... as you have heard and survived?" (Deuteronomy 4:32-35).
". One of my favorite categories is the Psychological Category of evidence that God gave the Torah. Put succinctly, either God or a meshugenah (a crazy person) authored the Torah.
If human authors were writing the Torah with intentions to pass it off as a Divine document, there are certain laws and passages that never would have been included. They would undermine their own credibility.
Perhaps the most powerful example is Shmitah (the Sabbatical year for the land). Modern agriculture science has taught us the value of letting the land rest and replenish itself. A sensible law would be to divide the Land of Israel into 7 regions and each year let one region lie fallow while people eat from the crops of the other 6 regions. However, that's not the law of the Torah! The Torah writes, "For six years you may plant your fields ... but the seventh year is the Sabbath of the land in which you may not plant your fields nor prune your vineyards (Leviticus 25:36).
The WHOLE land is to rest all at the same time! What happens to an agrarian society that stops farming for one year? Starvation! And how long does a religion last that advocates letting the whole land rest in the 7th year? My guess ... about 6 years!
Perhaps they could avoid starvation by buying food from surrounding countries? A good idea and a reasonable idea ... but the Torah has other plans. The Almighty says, "I have commanded My blessing to you in the sixth year and you will have produce for three years" (Leviticus 25:20-22).
Either one has to be God to have the "audacity" to make a law for the whole land to rest and then to promise a bounty crop 3 times as large as usual in the sixth year -- or a stark raving mad lunatic!
Yet, the Jewish people neither starved nor abandoned the Torah! 3,300 years later a sizable portion of our people still adhere to the laws of Torah and still trust in the promises of the Almighty!
How could any human being promise in writing something that requires powers totally beyond his control? And furthermore, why would anyone be willing to risk his own credibility and the legitimacy of his religion, when it would be easier to present a more rational solution and avoid the credibility issues.
The Jewish people are known as a stiff-necked people. There is an old adage, "2 Jews, 3 opinions." (I once mentioned this to a man I was teaching and he replied, "NO! 4 opinions!"). We do not "buy a pig in the poke" (hopefully, we don't buy pigs at all...). We are a nation of philosophers, intellectually rigorous and stubborn -- yet for over 3,000 years we have clung to the Almighty's Torah. Does it make you wonder?
Love Yehuda Lave
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