Hear an interview on NPR's Tell Me More with IISHJ Dean for North America Rabbi Adam Chalom Listen by clicking on the link here.
IISHJ is the International Institute For Secular Humanistic Judaism
Secular Humanistic Judaism is a human-centered philosophy of life combining rational thinking and Jewish culture with the best ethical insights of the Jewish and human tradition. It is a non-theistic celebration of Jewish identity that affirms the power and responsibility of individuals to shape their own lives.
Recommended Books
Here are books I recommend:
By Sam Harris: "Letter to a Christian Nation"
Also by Sam Harris: "End of Faith"
Richard Dawkins: "The god delusion"
Strongly recommended books!
Naked Lies
The McCain campaign has finally admitted that this election is about change.
Their new ad uses what news organizations are calling "naked lies" to reinvent two politicians whose records embody the same culture of corruption and far-right policies we've seen from the Bush administration.
The biggest whopper in the ad (that's still being repeated day after day by McCain and Palin on the campaign trail) is that Governor Palin stopped the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" -- in fact, she supported it, and even hired a lobbyist in Washington to get more pork-barrel projects like it.
Enough of the lies, enough of the Bush years, time for a change.
Please volunteer for real change!
Their new ad uses what news organizations are calling "naked lies" to reinvent two politicians whose records embody the same culture of corruption and far-right policies we've seen from the Bush administration.
The biggest whopper in the ad (that's still being repeated day after day by McCain and Palin on the campaign trail) is that Governor Palin stopped the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere" -- in fact, she supported it, and even hired a lobbyist in Washington to get more pork-barrel projects like it.
Enough of the lies, enough of the Bush years, time for a change.
Please volunteer for real change!
Once and for all!
I have previously discussed Elliott Richard Friedman’s “Who Wrote the Bible“. It has come up in the debate again because of Professor’s Friedman’s “sequel” called “The Bible With Sources Revealed” (HarperSanFrancisco) (2003).
Why is this book important? And why is it timely?
Many were aghast when one of the political parties’ Presidential debates discussed Creationism versus Evolution. The moderator asked the participants to raise their hand if they did NOT believe in evolution. Surprisingly, several of the participants raised their hands. This was in 2008! Several of those who raised their hand have since dropped but at least one who did so is still, as of this writing, in the race.
Whatever else you may believe; evolution has been proven and re-proven for 149 years. Next year it will be 150 years since Darwin wrote “On the Origin of Species”.
Now is this a problem for a deeply Jewish person? Is dismissing “creationism” a threat to a Jewish person’s faith? The answer is a resounding “No!”
Reading the Bible as a literal account of the creation of the world is not what Judaism is all about. But there are still people uncomfortable trying to reconcile what they know is scientifically true (that the world actually was created in 14 billion years, not in seven days, although, please note 14 is divisible by 7!) with what they grew up learning and the tremendous respect they have for the words of the Torah.
So, for these people - and there are many – the books by Prof Friedman can be enormously comforting!
Here is the premise: God or Moses didn’t write the Five Books of Moses. The Bible was written by men. Once you take the leap to that position, humans wrote the Bible, a lot of problems go away! A few examples:
Over the centuries, people have listed numerous “inconsistencies” in the Bible, “errors” that would never occur if God or Moses had written it. Look for instance in Genesis 1:1, the earth is created, and then in Chapter 2, Verse 4 it is created again! Why?
Then in chapter six and seven the story of Noah is told twice. There are two stories of the covenant between Abraham and God, two stories of the naming of Isaac. And so on.
These are but a few of many what is called “doublets” – events or stories told twice. The conventional explanation has been that the doublets were complementary not repetitive and that they were “lessons” to teach us by their “apparent” contradiction. A closer examination of the sources undermined this theory as early as in 1800’s when many scholars – independently – formulated what is now called the Document Hypothesis and which will be discussed below.
Other “errors” included the statement in Deuteronomy which claims that Moses was the most humble person that ever lived. The most humble person does not say about himself that he is the most humble person that ever lived. If it would have stated that Moses was the strongest, smartest, the most handsome or the funniest person, that would have been believable. But not when it says that he was the most humble person.
This and many, many other “flaws” led scholars in the 1800’s to formulate what we now know as the Document Hypothesis. It states that the Five Books of Moses were written by at least four different authors who lived between 900 BC and 400 BC or roughly 500 to 900 years AFTER the events that take place in The Torah happened.
Many centuries ago scholars noted that in the doublets, the name of God shifted in the text and it turned out that one of the doublets consistently called God Yahweh (the four letters in Hebrew that we do not pronounce), and that the other doublet (telling the same story) consistently called God by the Hebrew name Elohim.
The first of these two given the abbreviation J (after the scholars’ German word for Yahweh, Jehovah) and the other strand that called God Elohim (Hebrew for God) was called E. The third document, the largest, was called P because it dealt with matters pertaining to Priests. Lastly, the source only found in Deuteronomy was called D. Once this was established – approx. 150 years ago, many questions arose, for instance, how was it all put together and by whom? Why were certain sections included while others undoubtedly were discarded? Who decided?
A German scholar verified that the differences between the strands were not limited to the use of God’s name, but found that J and E were written in an agricultural era in Israel’s history – very early – probably 900 BC, while the Priestly segment P was written during the First Temple, and D in yet a different era. This was based on linguistic, archaeological and other findings that were more readily available at the end of the 19th Century.
In the beginning of this development the Church was vehemently opposed to these theories, but later, in the 1940’s, the then Pope, Pius XII encouraged scholars to pursue the “age in which he lived, the sources – written and oral – to which he had recourse and the form of expression he employed” (“He” here is the “sacred writer” the author of the Bible).
Critical Bible study has become a discipline in many universities, such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Union Theological Seminary, and a great many others.
A word about Richard Elliott Friedman. He is a Professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of California, San Diego. He earned his doctorate at Harvard and was a visiting scholar at Oxford and Cambridge.
He has done translations of the Bible and the best selling “Who Wrote the Bible” was first published in 1987. The second book I mentioned was written in 2003 and is an illustrative new visual presentation of the Five Books of Moses. Different colors and type styles make it easy to see which source is which. It turns out that if you were to read “only” one source, straight through, it still makes sense as a complete story.
An example, in the Parshah Ki Tissa (which we read on Feb 23) the source called P can be read as an entirely separate story and make sense. The Parshah - and the P account -starts at Exodus, 30:11. In it, Moses goes up on the mountain and stays there for a long time and the P account concludes at the end of chapter 31, verse 18: “and when He finished speaking to him in Mount Sinai, He gave the two tablets of the Testimony to Moses, tablets of stone, written by the finger of God” (translation: Friedman)
Then the account known as P “takes a break” and the other accounts retell the story of the Golden Calf and the holidays, Kosher rules and more. But then P picks up again, as if uninterrupted, in Chapter 34, Verse 29, and states: “And it was when Moses was coming down from Mount Sinai….” As if nothing really happened in between. So, per the P account the incident with the Golden Calf never happened. Why?
Because, scholars believe, the author of P, were the Priests in the First Temple in Jerusalem and they were descendants of Aaron and his role on the Golden Calf episode may not have been all that flattering so they simply left it out! But note that story still makes sense if one JUST reads the P author: Moses goes up on the Mountain, time passes by, he comes back and he has the Ten Commandments with him. It all makes sense.
In order to read the Bible this way, just get the “The Bible with Sources Revealed”, pick a color, and read just that color and then pick another color.
Friedman’s research has also established the author of D as the prophet Jeremiah and the redactor, (the “editor” who put it all together) as the Prophet Ezra who lived around 400 BC. Ezra is also credited with leading approx. 5000 Jews back home from Babylonia after the exile there. A busy guy indeed.
Why is this book important? And why is it timely?
Many were aghast when one of the political parties’ Presidential debates discussed Creationism versus Evolution. The moderator asked the participants to raise their hand if they did NOT believe in evolution. Surprisingly, several of the participants raised their hands. This was in 2008! Several of those who raised their hand have since dropped but at least one who did so is still, as of this writing, in the race.
Whatever else you may believe; evolution has been proven and re-proven for 149 years. Next year it will be 150 years since Darwin wrote “On the Origin of Species”.
Now is this a problem for a deeply Jewish person? Is dismissing “creationism” a threat to a Jewish person’s faith? The answer is a resounding “No!”
Reading the Bible as a literal account of the creation of the world is not what Judaism is all about. But there are still people uncomfortable trying to reconcile what they know is scientifically true (that the world actually was created in 14 billion years, not in seven days, although, please note 14 is divisible by 7!) with what they grew up learning and the tremendous respect they have for the words of the Torah.
So, for these people - and there are many – the books by Prof Friedman can be enormously comforting!
Here is the premise: God or Moses didn’t write the Five Books of Moses. The Bible was written by men. Once you take the leap to that position, humans wrote the Bible, a lot of problems go away! A few examples:
Over the centuries, people have listed numerous “inconsistencies” in the Bible, “errors” that would never occur if God or Moses had written it. Look for instance in Genesis 1:1, the earth is created, and then in Chapter 2, Verse 4 it is created again! Why?
Then in chapter six and seven the story of Noah is told twice. There are two stories of the covenant between Abraham and God, two stories of the naming of Isaac. And so on.
These are but a few of many what is called “doublets” – events or stories told twice. The conventional explanation has been that the doublets were complementary not repetitive and that they were “lessons” to teach us by their “apparent” contradiction. A closer examination of the sources undermined this theory as early as in 1800’s when many scholars – independently – formulated what is now called the Document Hypothesis and which will be discussed below.
Other “errors” included the statement in Deuteronomy which claims that Moses was the most humble person that ever lived. The most humble person does not say about himself that he is the most humble person that ever lived. If it would have stated that Moses was the strongest, smartest, the most handsome or the funniest person, that would have been believable. But not when it says that he was the most humble person.
This and many, many other “flaws” led scholars in the 1800’s to formulate what we now know as the Document Hypothesis. It states that the Five Books of Moses were written by at least four different authors who lived between 900 BC and 400 BC or roughly 500 to 900 years AFTER the events that take place in The Torah happened.
Many centuries ago scholars noted that in the doublets, the name of God shifted in the text and it turned out that one of the doublets consistently called God Yahweh (the four letters in Hebrew that we do not pronounce), and that the other doublet (telling the same story) consistently called God by the Hebrew name Elohim.
The first of these two given the abbreviation J (after the scholars’ German word for Yahweh, Jehovah) and the other strand that called God Elohim (Hebrew for God) was called E. The third document, the largest, was called P because it dealt with matters pertaining to Priests. Lastly, the source only found in Deuteronomy was called D. Once this was established – approx. 150 years ago, many questions arose, for instance, how was it all put together and by whom? Why were certain sections included while others undoubtedly were discarded? Who decided?
A German scholar verified that the differences between the strands were not limited to the use of God’s name, but found that J and E were written in an agricultural era in Israel’s history – very early – probably 900 BC, while the Priestly segment P was written during the First Temple, and D in yet a different era. This was based on linguistic, archaeological and other findings that were more readily available at the end of the 19th Century.
In the beginning of this development the Church was vehemently opposed to these theories, but later, in the 1940’s, the then Pope, Pius XII encouraged scholars to pursue the “age in which he lived, the sources – written and oral – to which he had recourse and the form of expression he employed” (“He” here is the “sacred writer” the author of the Bible).
Critical Bible study has become a discipline in many universities, such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Union Theological Seminary, and a great many others.
A word about Richard Elliott Friedman. He is a Professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of California, San Diego. He earned his doctorate at Harvard and was a visiting scholar at Oxford and Cambridge.
He has done translations of the Bible and the best selling “Who Wrote the Bible” was first published in 1987. The second book I mentioned was written in 2003 and is an illustrative new visual presentation of the Five Books of Moses. Different colors and type styles make it easy to see which source is which. It turns out that if you were to read “only” one source, straight through, it still makes sense as a complete story.
An example, in the Parshah Ki Tissa (which we read on Feb 23) the source called P can be read as an entirely separate story and make sense. The Parshah - and the P account -starts at Exodus, 30:11. In it, Moses goes up on the mountain and stays there for a long time and the P account concludes at the end of chapter 31, verse 18: “and when He finished speaking to him in Mount Sinai, He gave the two tablets of the Testimony to Moses, tablets of stone, written by the finger of God” (translation: Friedman)
Then the account known as P “takes a break” and the other accounts retell the story of the Golden Calf and the holidays, Kosher rules and more. But then P picks up again, as if uninterrupted, in Chapter 34, Verse 29, and states: “And it was when Moses was coming down from Mount Sinai….” As if nothing really happened in between. So, per the P account the incident with the Golden Calf never happened. Why?
Because, scholars believe, the author of P, were the Priests in the First Temple in Jerusalem and they were descendants of Aaron and his role on the Golden Calf episode may not have been all that flattering so they simply left it out! But note that story still makes sense if one JUST reads the P author: Moses goes up on the Mountain, time passes by, he comes back and he has the Ten Commandments with him. It all makes sense.
In order to read the Bible this way, just get the “The Bible with Sources Revealed”, pick a color, and read just that color and then pick another color.
Friedman’s research has also established the author of D as the prophet Jeremiah and the redactor, (the “editor” who put it all together) as the Prophet Ezra who lived around 400 BC. Ezra is also credited with leading approx. 5000 Jews back home from Babylonia after the exile there. A busy guy indeed.
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Picture taken at the end of September. This is the environmentally correct way to transport, it is the Segway.
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I am reading (for the third time….) this very interesting book. Here is a quote from it, which that made me think of you: The human brain r...
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"Proud, Happy, and Thankful to be Jewish.” “I am a Jew because my faith deman...
