This morning's writing was rejected by most of my recipients, because of the Bach attachment. Since I hope you will read what I wrote this morning --I am sending it with a new attachment.
it will be hard to get the depth of the characters in the story.
Western culture was formed by the Judea-Christian traditions from the bible, so most people in our culture have a passing knowledge
of most of the characters I turn to, to try to give you inspiration.
As I have stated before, in Judaism we have many traditions and customs. Since most Jews are non-religious (as opposed to non-spiritual--nearly all Jews are involved in some spiritual cause--from feeding the hungry to Socialism), most have not had the
opportunity that I have had to study the holy books.
One of our most important religious traditions is to read the entire five books of Moses (the old testament), one chapter a week, each
week. This is done so the entire bible is finished once a year. As a result at the beginning of the bible, the great inspirational stories
of the forefathers and Mothers and Adam and Eve are repeated and learned each year.
This allows one, over a period of many years, to make these characters, part of our lives and part of our inspiration. In today's world,
there are very few heroes. Leaning about ordinary people that actually talked to the one and only G-d and became heroes is the
height of inspiration. They may have been ordinary people, when they started, but they certainly were not ordinary after their challenges.
Unfortunately many of the characters are purposely made difficult to understand. There are many paths to understand spirituality and
to understand the bible. The tradition says there are at least 70 ways to understand the tradition. Fanatics however, think that they
can take the words of the bible literally and understand what G-d wants from us. This could not be further from the truth, which
necessities years of struggle and learning.
What is true however, that taking the bible on the surface is however, better than listening to your own desires, because our desires
are animalistic. Our brain however, can control our desires, and allow us avoid instant gratification.
Hence the Jewish concept is that if a person follows the ten commandants you are a spiritual person that gets a wonderful place in heaven. We don't ask you to be a hero, or be Jewish. Just follow the 10 and go to heaven. In fact a non-Jew only has to follow 7 of the ten.
That is a pretty good deal.
In the next week, I will talk about three biblical stories that are very much misunderstood.
If time allows me to in my life, I will turn these short pieces into three books, so I am copyrighting them here, now.
1) In defense of Cain ( the story you didn't hear)
2) In defense of Yishmael (Ishmael) (today's Arabs are not Ishmael)
3) In defense of Yitzhok (Issac) --The untold story of the quiet Patriarch
Subject: Fw: THIS DOG IS NOT GOING TO HEAVEN (You are going to love this video)
