States of Exile

Joseph Leatch asks several questions in Butterflies and Wheels : All scriptures describe a God or several lesser gods who speak, act, and wield an impact on the material world. All have a will, all interfere with our lives, and all may change things as they see fit. It is possible that Karen Armstrong is correct, and all of this is intended allegorically. But why, we may ask, would religious people write allegories in order to express the opposite of what they say? If they were trying to convince people that God does not exist in an explicit sense, why would they write allegories in which He does? Finally, why would prayer, sacrifice, and the belief that God can fulfill one’s wishes be such a deeply ingrained aspect of all religious traditions if those traditions did not believe that God could wield an impact on the real world? In order: 1. Because human beings best grasp complex, even paradoxical concepts through allegory. Do most people learn about love through the scientist ("l...

Aryan influence has corrupted all the world - A lot is said today about the Semitic spirit of the New Testament: but what is called Semitic is merely priestly - and in the racially purest Aryan law-book, in Manu, this kind of "Semitism," i.e., the spirit of the priest , is worse than anywhere else. - Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power Methinks Nietzsche is too harsh on the Aryans. But that might just be my Occidental Brahmanism speaking.

Galut had numerous meanings for Jacob Joseph of Polonnoe, who at one time (around 1750) thought of settling in Palestine, and he differentiates several sorts of galut: physical galut, in which one is subject to non-Jewish peoples; and spiritual galut, in which the soul is the captive of the evil instinct ( yetzer hara ). Furthermore, physical galut is not exclusively a state of being held in captivity by the non-Jews. This is only one form of exile, and the easier one. A second, much harder kind is the "exile of the scholar" ( talmid hakham ) among the ignorant who despise him. A third sort of exile, the hardest of all, is that inflicted upon the pious scholar by the wicked scholars (the "Jewish devil" scholars). - Bernard Dov Weinryb, The Jews of Poland Sages saw themselves as special within the context of a general society to be transformed in the image and after the likeness of sages. They were to "Israel" as "Israel" was to the nations. - Ja...