Archive for the ‘Deep Ecumenism’ Category

Accidental Oops-es of God?

Wednesday, November 28th, 2007

The following is from “For Arnold Jacob Wolf’s Festschrift” Gabbai Seth Fishman (BLOG Editor)

Reb Zalman says:

“In the early 1960’s, before I had fully realized I was a post-Triumphalist, I wrote a sliding scale concerning participation in other religions and Kashrut / degrees of permittedness from a Jewish perspective.

“For example, it had Sufism on the same level as eating a salad in a non Kosher restaurant served on a glass or paper plate and Satanism on the same level as eating pork on Yom Kippur. Non-iconic forms of Vedanta, Quakerism and Buddhism came out closer to the Kosher side, like a vegetable soup in regular china with non kosher flatware, while high iconic Christianity and Hinduism were more like eating non-kosher beef.  It was a pretty good attempt that still may have some mileage in it for triumphalist restorationists.

“Then and now, I believed in the workings of Divine Providence, in the way Hassidism teach it, Hashgachah pratit / a specific Divine Providence, one that ordains even how a leaf falls.

“So I had to also entertain the idea that this same Divine Providence had produced a Buddha, a Lao Tzu.

“Could I say that just as we consider our own Rebbes to be N’shamot Klaliyot / exalted souls encompassing the souls of many, that these were not the same?  Were they just accidental oops-es of God?

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Envisioning Success in Annapolis

Sunday, November 25th, 2007

From Reb Zalman: 

“It seems to me that all of us need to exert our hope and faith for the success of the negotiations in Annapolis this week.  We should hold the image of a Middle East that has healed from its deep wounds.  On both sides the narrative has to be changed radically. 

“The atavistic reinforcement of reptilian brain reactivity cannot be changed by the mere ‘rational’ cortex language, the type of language that will be used during that conference.  

“It is not likely that the shift will happen without a spiritual transparency to the will of God and the healing of the planet. 

“There’s a missing ingredient, not to be found in any discussions of the peace issue from either side.  That ingredient is the recognition of a benefit of having the other as neighbor.

“At the moment, the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank (also, Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Lebanon), do not seem to see any benefit in having the democratic state of Israel as a neighbor in their midst.  And Israel also does not seem to see a benefit of having an Arab/Muslim/Palestinian state as an intrinsic entity either.

“Until this vision is added added, the discussions will lack something crucial, negatively influencing the likelihood of a peaceful outcome. 

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Jerusalem And The Complete Redemption

Sunday, November 4th, 2007

Referring to the recent move for dividing Jerusalem into two capitals, Reb Zalman writes:  “Today there seems to be a gathering momentum for various schemes to divide/share Jerusalem between the State of Israel and the State of Palestine. The current political vision is somehow awkward in comparison to what I wrote in 1967 and published in my Paradigm Shift. Had we acted then, so much bloodshed could have been prevented. It would pay to keep this vision in mind and to massage it to the current situation.”

When the 1967 article was published in 1993, Reb Zalman wrote the following introduction:  “This article, not accepted by several Jewish journals in May 1967, was written in response to the gathering clouds of the 1967 war. It was written about the same time as my response to Richard Rubenstein‘s “Homeland and Holocaust” that appeared in The Religious Situation, 1968. There I wrote, among other things, a proposal that we set aside one penny per gallon of gas to contribute to the United Jewish Appeal to be earmarked for the resettlement of Palestinian refugees.

“The United Nations is today not the instrument it could have become then. Perhaps in the current conflicts about the territories, we are approaching another nexus for rethinking these issues.”

What follows is a reprint of Reb Zalman’s 1967 article:

JERUSALEM AND THE COMPLETE REDEMPTION

Jerusalem must be internationalized. This is the burden of these lines. The purpose of an internationalized Jerusalem is to make it possible for the Jews to keep Jerusalem, while at the same time opening the way for the complete redemption.

There are many intoxicants in humanity’s blood. Some of them are the result of the inhalation or ingestion of foreign substances; others are the result of experiences lived through. Pride, victory, and success create such intoxicants, and the voice that tries to speak a sobering word is shouted down.

This is an attempt to say a sobering word in the service of the same objectives that most Jews hold. Perhaps all we wish to do is to extend the aims and to make more feasible a long-range view of peace in the Middle East, along with the redemption of Israel and all nations.

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Tanksgiv All The Boona

Thursday, November 1st, 2007

Thanks to Reb Zalman for composing this insert to birkat hamazon / Grace After Meals and thanks to blogger Tania Josefa for translating.  After your Thanksgiving day dinner, please insert it at the same point where you would add for Chanukah or Purim.  Gabbai Seth Fishman (BLOG Editor)

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