God is very close to each and every Jew
Does God Exist
Does God Not Exist
Judaism is all about getting close to God
Living righteously or wickedly
Jewish Judgement Day
Torah and Shabbatt is what makes a Jew a Jew
Episode #10: It’s A Jewish Thing
Hello, everyone! This podcast is for those people who are thinking of returning to Judaism as currently they have no Jewish rituals to keep them engaged. I was you a few years back so I know what you are going through and how to easily bring you back into the Tribe.
First thing is you aren’t sure if God even exists. You think so but aren’t quite certain. That’s OK. Struggle with it a little bit. Let me help you with it a little bit. In the Jewish tradition God is very very close to each individual Jew, much more so than in any other religion.
In Buddhism and in Hinduism you are dealing with and trying to connect with complex universal philosophies, at times very arcane, that always seem beyond reach. In Stoicism you relish being unconcerned about anything that happens. In Christianity you have the trilogy of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost so you are split three ways in addition to having to go through the Minister to achieve piety. In Islam you are trying to obey Allah so you are caught up in listening to requests that may or may not be coming forth.
But a Jew is someone who comes from a long line of people who many years ago made a covenant with God to follow His commandments, the Torah, in order to 1) refine your own personal character and 2) to make the world a better place. What’s wrong with any of that?
Go into a bookstore and find the self-help section. Books upon books rest there promising to make your life better. That’s been the Jew’s goal for over 3,000 years. Reading the Torah is the first and only book you need in the self-help section to make your life better.
Praying to God and offering repentance for mistakes makes you a better Jew and a better person existing in your community. The more you do these two things the more you will feel God right next to you. Most religious Jews will tell you that God is right there next to them. It’s the natural course of things where as you follow more and more commandments you realize your own very real relationship with Him. Of course, to do this you have to be certain that God does, in fact, exist.
Now, you could be wrong. It’s a possibility that God doesn’t exist at all. So, all this work you do to better yourself will be for naught. But as you become a better person, advancing God’s home onto the Earth, even if He doesn’t exist haven’t you lived a very productive, happy, and appreciated life?
And what if you choose to ignore God, taking the side that he doesn’t exist, and do nothing to enhance the world around you. What if you are wrong about THAT and He DOES exist. Boy are you screwed! Better to believe that God exists, work to refine your character in a Jewish/Torah way, and take whatever consequences come down the pike.
It doesn’t make sense to me that from the very beginning of life we learn, everyone learns. We learn and learn and learn. Do we do all this learning just for it all to be buried in the Earth at the end? It makes sense to me, maybe not to you, that there is an afterlife of some sort with a God, otherwise what’s all this learning about?
Now actually, you really know Hashem does exists otherwise you wouldn’t be listening to this podcast seeking a way back into the Tribe. It’s the itch inside you. You might be 22 years old, 32, 42, whatever. Knowing that He really does exist and learning ways to get closer to Him becomes the new goal in your life. Accepting that He can exist right beside you and also right beside your neighbor really is quite the Jewish thing. How can that be? Well of course it can, it’s Hashem!
Another Jewish thing: Hashem is not bounded by either space or time. That’s how He can be everywhere all at once. Only the power of the Jewish mind can fathom this concept. And lucky for you it’s something you were born with.
One day you’ll realize that you will transgress a commandment with Hashem being right there next to you. Of course, you’ll have to atone for the transgression but you are, after all, human. You will make mistakes. God is very forgiving. He appreciates your struggle with the yetzer hara, the negative influence. He’s there to help you through it, not to constantly test your faith.
So, understanding that gaining closeness with Hashem is what Judaism is all about will help in your journey back. It’s different than any other religion on Earth. It should inspire you and you should be proud to be making this Jewish effort. When you are reading or studying the Torah or practicing a Jewish ritual, this is what you are doing…gaining a connection and a closeness to God.
Now I’m going to hit you with things you probably won’t like. But better to know them going in so you can choose to follow through with your journey back or see your effort as just a temporary “fad.”
Often people say that the Torah is an ancient book and doesn’t relate to today’s way of living. They think that the Creator of everything couldn’t anticipate what our world of fast travel, tall buildings, and invisible communications would look like. They couldn’t be further from the truth.
In this week’s Torah portion it says, “Men should not wear articles of women’s clothing and women should not wear men’s clothing.” 3,000 years ago the Torah was warning about the Trans movement and everything associated with it like men playing in women’s Sports? The Torah says, “Men should not sleep with men in the same way they sleep with women.” You can do that if you choose to but to do so is “an Abomination to God.” Do you really wake up in the morning and say, “I think I’ll be an abomination to God today.” I hope not!
Remember, the Torah gets you to refine your own character so that the things you do brings God’s home down into the physical world. Apparently, homosexuality does not bring God’s home down into the world. Engaging in that type of behavior gives in to the yetzer hara, the negative influence. The Torah also says, “Jewish men are not promiscuous and Jewish women are not promiscuous.”
It happens that the Torah is all for sexual relations and pleasure is noted as a good thing. But the Torah is there to impart actions in the purest form, not just any or all forms. The Torah follows through with all the people who Jews should not be intimate with such as family members, etc. The Torah restricts piercings and forbids tattoos. Tattoos are not a Jewish thing. They are an anti-Torah non-Jewish thing. Refining your character is a Jewish thing that improves life on Earth, one individual at a time.
There’s nothing in modern day life that the Torah does not address. And these prohibitions are geared towards keeping man away from potential physical and/or mental dislocations. The prohibitions enhance your character and keep you healthy. Those who maintain that the Torah is an old book that doesn’t relate to life today simply haven’t read the Torah or have a limited understanding of it.
Living life any way you want, doing anything you want, is not freedom or liberty. It’s stupidity and narcissism.
The Torah shines through as the seminal manual for creating safe and satisfying family life. And what’s wrong with that? The very first commandment mentioned in the Torah was said by Noah: “Go forth and multiply.”
Having babies is probably the number one thing a Jew can do. It matures you instantly. It’s what every creature on the face of the Earth is born to do. You want to hike beautiful forest lands or walk stunning beaches, go for it. The product of that is, what? You want to have a “career” first instead of children, knock yourself out. But don’t blame God if you can’t have or have trouble having children at 40. Don’t blame God if at 60 you are totally alone: no mate, no offspring, no heirs.
The Torah warns about keeping proper weights, setting up judicial courts that are absent of bribery, uncorrupt, and many, many other laws that are far superior to man’s laws and courts. Jewish/Torah law creates a superior human being. Man’s law only protects us from each other, meanwhile people who give in to their yetzer hara exist all around us. Evil is bound to interact with us sooner or later.
When you become a Tribe member you become a better person because you are constantly striving to refine your character. If you read Torah every day you are encouraged to live righteously, shown how to live righteously, and make you conscious of how your actions affect the world around you. As you move through life you either act righteously or wickedly.
The most wicked of people who ever existed were the Sodomites. They were destroyed by Hashem because their every action was wicked. Everything they did was an abomination to Hashem. Thankfully modern man has not thought of all the wicked ways man could act in the world as much as the Sodomites did, even though many today feel that we are more “advanced” than ancient man. Hashem has great tolerance when man shows himself to be an abomination, but he does have his limits.
If you’ve been engaging in some of the activities the Torah states as objectionable, do not be turned off and think your goose is already cooked. These restrictions are God hinting at a better way of life for you. You can ask Hashem for forgiveness, and be penitent.
Actually, in many ways you, as a non-practicing Jew, have an advantage over those who have spent their entire life living righteously. Won’t Hashem smile more at the man who behaved poorly and changed his ways than at the man who came from a pure, clean background and stayed pious his entire life? But that’s neither here nor there. You live righteously because it’s the righteous thing to do.
If you don’t want to change your ways, fine. God has also given you the gift of a free will. But if your life doesn’t go right for you, as you had hoped, that’s all on you for thinking you can make a fantastic life all on your own. Those who think they are doing just that don’t realize the piper has to be paid, sooner or later.
Don’t you want to improve yourself? Won’t you attract a nicer mate by being a better person? Won’t you succeed in business more if you refine your character even more? Really, what’s more fulfilling: a new Mercedes Benz or a smart, honest, beautiful child. And, believe it or not, you can have both.
There was a “spiritual vitamin” I read in my Torah today that speaks to this. It said: “The ultimate purpose of Torah is not to increase our knowledge per se, but to instruct us to conduct our lives to the fullest advantage of both ourselves and the community at large. As a matter of course, it provides all the knowledge necessary for the attainment of this ultimate purpose.”
There is a third possibility however. You might be the type who says, “I just don’t want to ponder or consider if there is a God or not. I just want to live free and naïve like a baby. If I don’t consider God at all then I can’t be held accountable for all the things I neglected in life. Oh yes you can!
These people consider themselves atheists but they are not. They are agnostic because they actually have considered God but haven’t come to any conclusion yet. Atheism is about as stupid as you can get. Everything created, everything that is, has a creator. To state unequivocally that there are some things that have no creator is dishonest. Name one!
“The Universe” you say. How do you know that for sure? You stick to the answer because it backs your stance that you don’t have to do anything in life to advance yourself or your community. You can just eat steak, drink vodka, and indulge in sex. OK then. Same thing again tomorrow until you die. Then you meet the Creator and depending on the total amount of things that were an abomination to him you go off into the sunset.
Actually, according to the Jewish tradition your sins do not trump your good deeds. Judgement Day in Judaism is an accounting of all the good things you did in life. All the things you did to refine your own life and the lives of the community around you are added up. Your sins stand up next to your good deeds but not to the same extent. Consider this Judgement Day accounting of good deeds next to all the other Judgement Days of religions in the world.
I’d like to close now with one other “Jewish thing” as expressed in a classic Jewish adage: “More than the Jews have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews.” It’s the fourth Commandment so it’s way up there. Through all the efforts to eliminate the Jews, all the expulsions, pogroms, and holocausts, Jews have kept the Sabbath. And so should you.
Jews are not a Race of people. We come in all colors, shapes, and sizes and from many places around the globe. So, an antisemite is not a racist. An antisemite is someone who wants to eliminate from existence people who read the Torah and keep the Sabbath.
If you aren’t doing either you aren’t really being Jewish even if your mother is Jewish! An antisemite isn’t interested in making the world a better place by refining their own character and lifting people their community. They think that by removing those who spend every waking moment doing good, THAT will make the world a better place! I’ll never understand that kind of upside-down thinking. If you aren’t doing what Jews do, antisemites will still kill you because of your Jewish mother but they really don’t care about your insubstantial, non-Torah, non-Sabbath existence.
So, if you want to scratch that Jewish itch that’s been gnawing at you, you must start reading Torah and keeping the Sabbath. The good news is that what you read in the Torah is up to you. How you keep the Sabbath is up to you. But as you do both you will gain knowledge as to the best ways of doing both. And as you do both you will be refining your character and increasing the goodness of the community around you. It’s a Jewish thing.
Shalom!
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