A Musing

    I don't think t he opposite of theism can be atheism; the opposite must be a form of agnosticism much like how the polar opposite of Buddhism is not Judaism (per se) even though the two differ on many fundamental points and rely on different fundamental beliefs, or like how two passers-by are not opposites of each other since ultimately they are both human. A belief in the absence of divinity [atheism] is different to an absence of belief divinity [agnosticism], since the former starts from the point of belief.           Everything is reliant on a deeper more fundamental philosophical grounding; this is pretty obvious with a traditional religion, or at least the sort of binary view of them. In these cases, the belief in the divine is instrumental for the understanding of phenomena, both metaphysically and physically. The same is true, however, of any belief in science, no matter what the reason is. Indeed, one must first believe in t...

     Many times, as I would walk down the road from my university's Jewish Society, usually late, on a Friday night after a dinner and the inevitable hours of conversation, I would see passers-by gussied up in too-few clothes (and too much makeup) to catch the bus for a night out. That's not my speed anyway, but on the Sabbath it's something different; I am in my own world—a temple of the mind—where no work is done, because the world is already complete. There's no rushing, and there's certainly no bussing nor raving. I'm not saying it was always serene (no one could say religious Jews are too solemn after a Shabbos-farbrengen) but there is a rest from activity. I have long found that a strange feeling to be totally separate from someone stood just next to me, who really could not understand. To that, I'll return in a moment.      As I write this, I am living in York, England, finishing a degree that I've been working at over the last 3 years. It seems u...

How to order this:  (Only sections written  in blue  were written after this was first drafted, with a new focus to the coronavirus) Why is this night different (to me) Part 1 | a personal story Why is this night different (to holidays) Part 2  ( skip to part 2 ) Why is this night different (to the Jews) Part 3  (skip to part 3) Why is this night different (in theologico-history) ( skip to part 4) Why is the explanation different? Part 5   ( skip to part 5 ) Part 1 I love Pesach, or  Passover , how I grew up saying it. I grew up very differently to how I am now, and something that isn’t addressed much is how even my words have changed. In addition to knowing and using more Hebrew than I ever did—or more accurately, could—in a general basis, something that I don’t think is discussed often enough for Baalei Teshuva like me, who had only cursory religious involvement for what’s still at least 2/3 rds  of his life or more, is tha...

Part 5:  Why is the explanation different? In a past Seder, I spoke about my thoughts on the importance of the 4 questions generally, and this year I thought that I might give my commentary on the idea of “on all other nights”. Unlike other holidays, all of which do have their own rules and could use the same phraseology, no other holiday makes you spell it out. Even Yom Kippur, the most stringent holiday in some respects doesn’t have this blunt language. However, The result of the answers reflects the origin of the holiday itself, and not its customs. This holiday was taken straight out of Exodus, but even that fails to explain everything. For instance, who knows what is meant by “on all other nights we eat sitting or reclining, but on this night we only eat reclining”? And moreover, we are sitting, so this would seem to be a break of halachah or at least tradition. What this means is that we are supposed to lean to the side as we eat. That sounds weird, and do we really do t...

Part 4:  Why is this night different (in theologico-history) Think for a moment about the Bill of Rights. ‘Rights’, in this case, is synonymous to ‘freedoms’, insofar as both mean things that we’re allowed to do. Let’s just take the first one for now to illustrate a point. If I have the  right  to free-speech, that doesn’t come from nowhere. If I were living on my own in the middle of Siberia or the Saharan desert, I would not need a Bill of Rights; I could say whatever I want. What’s going to happen? Forget about guns, I could buy a bazooka and fire it into a hill. What’s going to happen? The rest of the rights don’t really work considering a person in isolation though, because rights always come with something else, specifically a duty. I have the right to speak freely but a duty to tell the truth and not to harass others. I can own a gun but have a duty to use it only when my other liberties are threatened. I have a right not to be enslaved and a duty not to use m...

(Written in the Summer, only sections colored in blue were written after this was first drafted, with a new focus to the coronavirus. This is part 3 of a 5-part text) Part 3:  Why is this night different (to the Jews) Picking up where we left off, is that Passover is, as I would argue, the most egalitarian Jewish holiday, but perhaps the most fundamental part of Passover, in my opinion, is that it marks the start of a journey of thousands of years and countless generations who followed the Torah, and everything that came after. Really, I will say that it is a story of liberation. But the Torah, the Nevi’i'm, the Mishah, the Gemara, all of it really is a series of guides for how to live our lives. If someone came to me now and said, “excuse me, I know you’re enjoying life, but how would you enjoy hundreds (sort of) of extra rules, including a whole new schedule, diet etc.?” I would not be interested in that terrible sales-pitch. But the difference here is...