Kindness Brings Spiritual Benefits
As you expand your consciousness of kindness, you create a more spiritual life. Your kindness and compassion for the Creator's children is an expression of your love for our Father, our King, Creator and Sustainer of the universe.
With your kindness and compassion you emulate God. As you help others, you create an inner light that illuminates your entire being.
Love Yehuda Lave
Based on this weeks Reading of the Bible in the Synagogue by Rabbi Sacks
Daringly, Hosea suggests that the making of woman from man mirrors the creation of humanity from God. First they are separated, then they are joined again, but now as two distinct persons each of whom respects the integrity of the other. What joins them is a new kind of relationship built on fidelity and trust.
How we understand the giving of the Torah depends on how we see the relationship between God and the people He chose to be His special witnesses on earth (the Jews). Inevitably, the language of Judaism when it speaks of God is metaphorical. The Infinite cannot be compassed in finite categories. The metaphors the prophets use are many. God is, among other things, artist, creator, king, master, warrior, shepherd, judge, teacher, redeemer and father. From the point of view of God-as-king, the Torah is the code of laws He ordains for the people He rules. From the perspective of God-as-father-and-teacher, it represents the instructions He gives His children as to how they should best live. Adopting the image of artist-creator, Jewish mystics throughout the ages saw the Torah as the architecture of the universe, the deep structure of existence.
Of all the metaphors, however, the most lovely and most intimate was of God as husband, with Israel as His bride. Isaiah says: For your Maker is your husband, The Lord Almighty is his name . . . (54:5)
Likewise Jeremiah: 'Return, faithless people,' declares the Lord, 'for I am your husband.' (3:14)
This is how Ezekiel describes the marriage between God and Israel in the days of Moses:
Later I passed by, and when I looked at you and saw that you were old enough for love, I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness. I gave you my solemn oath and entered into a covenant with you -- declares the Lord God – and you became mine. (16:8)
From this perspective, the Torah is more than a constitution and code of laws, more than a set of instructions or even the metaphysical DNA of the universe. It is a marriage contract – a token and gesture of love.
When attraction, that most fleeting of emotions, seeks to perpetuate itself as love, it takes the form of marriage: marriage as covenant, in which both parties pledge themselves to one another, to be loyal, steadfast, to stay together through difficult times as well as good and to achieve together what neither could do alone. A marriage is created not by force or coercion but by words – the word given, the word received, the word honored in faithfulness and trust. There are such things as the laws of marriage (the respective responsibilities of husband and wife), but marriage of its essence is more than a dispassionate set of obligations and rights. It is law suffused with love, and love translated into law. That, according to this metaphor, is what the Sinai event was.
The supreme poet of marriage was Hosea. By reading this haftarah on the Shabbat before Shavuot, we make a momentous affirmation: that in giving the Torah to Israel, God was not asserting His power, dominance or lordship over Israel (what Hosea means when he uses the word ba'al). He was declaring His love. That is why it is no accident that the words with which the haftarah ends – among the most beautiful in the entire religious literature of mankind – are the words Jewish men recite every weekday morning as they wind the strap of the hand-tefillin like a wedding ring around their finger, renewing daily the marriage covenant of Sinai:
I will betroth you to me for ever;
I will betroth you to me in righteousness and justice, love and compassion;
I will betroth you to me in faithfulness,
And you will know God.
As you expand your consciousness of kindness, you create a more spiritual life. Your kindness and compassion for the Creator's children is an expression of your love for our Father, our King, Creator and Sustainer of the universe.
With your kindness and compassion you emulate God. As you help others, you create an inner light that illuminates your entire being.
Love Yehuda Lave
It is one of those TED talks, on the history of the universe. Seriously cool stuff, and new perspectives.
If the second law of thermodynamics, dealing with entropy, dictates that disorder in the universe is constantly increasing, then how does one explain evolution, where things are constantly improving, and increasing in complexity and intelligence?
Like I said, seriously cool stuff.
Based on this weeks Reading of the Bible in the Synagogue by Rabbi Sacks
Daringly, Hosea suggests that the making of woman from man mirrors the creation of humanity from God. First they are separated, then they are joined again, but now as two distinct persons each of whom respects the integrity of the other. What joins them is a new kind of relationship built on fidelity and trust.
How we understand the giving of the Torah depends on how we see the relationship between God and the people He chose to be His special witnesses on earth (the Jews). Inevitably, the language of Judaism when it speaks of God is metaphorical. The Infinite cannot be compassed in finite categories. The metaphors the prophets use are many. God is, among other things, artist, creator, king, master, warrior, shepherd, judge, teacher, redeemer and father. From the point of view of God-as-king, the Torah is the code of laws He ordains for the people He rules. From the perspective of God-as-father-and-teacher, it represents the instructions He gives His children as to how they should best live. Adopting the image of artist-creator, Jewish mystics throughout the ages saw the Torah as the architecture of the universe, the deep structure of existence.
Of all the metaphors, however, the most lovely and most intimate was of God as husband, with Israel as His bride. Isaiah says: For your Maker is your husband, The Lord Almighty is his name . . . (54:5)
Likewise Jeremiah: 'Return, faithless people,' declares the Lord, 'for I am your husband.' (3:14)
This is how Ezekiel describes the marriage between God and Israel in the days of Moses:
Later I passed by, and when I looked at you and saw that you were old enough for love, I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness. I gave you my solemn oath and entered into a covenant with you -- declares the Lord God – and you became mine. (16:8)
From this perspective, the Torah is more than a constitution and code of laws, more than a set of instructions or even the metaphysical DNA of the universe. It is a marriage contract – a token and gesture of love.
When attraction, that most fleeting of emotions, seeks to perpetuate itself as love, it takes the form of marriage: marriage as covenant, in which both parties pledge themselves to one another, to be loyal, steadfast, to stay together through difficult times as well as good and to achieve together what neither could do alone. A marriage is created not by force or coercion but by words – the word given, the word received, the word honored in faithfulness and trust. There are such things as the laws of marriage (the respective responsibilities of husband and wife), but marriage of its essence is more than a dispassionate set of obligations and rights. It is law suffused with love, and love translated into law. That, according to this metaphor, is what the Sinai event was.
The supreme poet of marriage was Hosea. By reading this haftarah on the Shabbat before Shavuot, we make a momentous affirmation: that in giving the Torah to Israel, God was not asserting His power, dominance or lordship over Israel (what Hosea means when he uses the word ba'al). He was declaring His love. That is why it is no accident that the words with which the haftarah ends – among the most beautiful in the entire religious literature of mankind – are the words Jewish men recite every weekday morning as they wind the strap of the hand-tefillin like a wedding ring around their finger, renewing daily the marriage covenant of Sinai:
I will betroth you to me for ever;
I will betroth you to me in righteousness and justice, love and compassion;
I will betroth you to me in faithfulness,
And you will know God.
It is one of those TED talks, on the history of the universe. Seriously cool stuff, and new perspectives.
If the second law of thermodynamics, dealing with entropy, dictates that disorder in the universe is constantly increasing, then how does one explain evolution, where things are constantly improving, and increasing in complexity and intelligence?
Like I said, seriously cool stuff.
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