Fun fact: I am allergic to bullies and I detest religious bullies. I also have limited patience for those who evade accountability, especially in the name of winning the American culture war, and so an abusive, religious bully who evades accountability in the name of pwning the libs is basically gonna get the stick and not the carrot from me, to put it mildly.
May we all return to the proper path and abandon the false idol of ego!
But a particular divine reminder that the views I profess have enough merit to trigger religious bullies suggests to me that I should redouble my effort and be more transparent regarding them, as the proper response to spiritual impediments along my way.
So here goes. I hope the following is crystal clear:
1) I am fundamentally forward thinking. I draw my ideas from my dream of the Israelite future as it arises organically from the Israelite past: and from there I meet this moment in the Israelite present. That historical consciousness is fundamental to my understanding of myself, my people, and my creator.
2) I am not: Sepharadi, Ashkenazi, Teimani, or the product of any other exilic collective noted in the annals of Jewish history: I am a free born, free thinking Jew, charged with dual responsibility as a member of an eternal divine pact by birth and a renewed national project by choice. I am not Orthodox or Conservative or Reform or Reconstructionist or Renewal, or a member of any other ideological party or camp within our nation.
3) I am loyal to the national court of our ancestors and I follow their laws beyond the reach of any community’s custom. My customs are my own, personal adornments to my small practice of implementing the Creator’s instructions, in the context of my life, my family, my social network, my country, my region, my planet………….
4) I learn from all the sages of Israel, as I learn from the sages of all the nations, but I particularly follow the Rambam’s way. Especially in disagreeing with the Rambam – because that was the way of Rambam himself, as I was first taught it in youth and later came to know it in (relative) maturity: to follow one’s mind to the end of knowing the God of truth.
5) I have a deeply held belief in the rights to security, justice, freedom, and peace shared by all human beings. All of them. That is what I was taught as a child and that is what I learned, from some of the past century’s greatest exponents of Judaism, that the Torah promotes, and I have never been persuaded to relinquish that belief. “Maybe one day.”
And last but most important:
6) I am nobody. Nothing. No one to take seriously, to learn from, or to emulate. I am not a source of wisdom or guidance. I am not an expert in anything and I’m wrong about at least one thing every day. I share what I share with you, or with the world, not to teach you but to awaken thoughts within you, so that you may join me on this journey.
Sometimes I’ll say or write something that may seem to conflict with the above – but that is because I choose a way of expressing things obliquely, as juxtapositions and phrases meant to awaken your own thoughts in response to mine, not to disclose to you the fullness of my own thought.
There are volumes more to write on this but I think this was a good opportunity to set the record straight on some matters.
After all, I have a reputation as a dilettante to uphold. 😂
Stay Frosty, Friends