fbpx

Rabbi Sacks is emphasizing the intellectual essence of Judaism

This blog and other author’s blogs before it have been exploring the intellectual interpretation of Judaism for a long time.

I began exploring the intellectual interpretation of Judaism after I realized that the traditional interpretation of Judaism was not helping me understand many things in the real life surrounding me such as for example the true meaning and roots of anti-Semitism or how to be proudly and openly Jewish in my professional and public activities.

The difference between intellectual and traditional interpretations of Judaism may be defined in the following way.

The intellectual interpretation is based on (almost scientific) exploration of the image of All-Mighty One God along the lines of His image in the Torah – God as the Creator, God as the Unique Individual, and God as the Eternity – the God whose designs (intentions, goals, objectives, laws, …) for the entire world, for us the humans and for us the Jewish humans we have to discover and obey in order to create a better world for everybody. The Torah was given by God to all humans through the Jewish humans as “The Chosen” with their mission as The Chosen to help the others understand God’s guidance in the Torah. The Jewish people were freed from the Egypt’s slavery by God, and the Jewish people have an obligation to help the others to free themselves from their own “egypts” to live in freedom – the “egypts” may be oppressive governments, dictatorial regimes, oppressive community leaders … Since we the humans are created in the image of God, we are unique individuals who are doing creative work by competing with each other for better creative designs hopefully to live in eternity. Continue reading “Rabbi Sacks is emphasizing the intellectual essence of Judaism”

Halakhic discussion on the paper “Three pillars of Judaism – Intellect, Halakha and Integration. A scientific analysis”.

The paper “Three pillars of Judaism – Intellect, Halakha and Integration. A scientific analysis” was posted at the orthodox Halakhic Jewish forum Hashkafah with the request for comments. Below are a Halakha man (H)’s comments with my (V) responses. Continue reading “Halakhic discussion on the paper “Three pillars of Judaism – Intellect, Halakha and Integration. A scientific analysis”.”

Three pillars of Judaism – Intellect, Halakha and Integration. A scientific analysis

The purpose of these notes is to demonstrate that the image of God in the Torah we the humans were created in allows to have many competing religious streams in Judaism (and in Christianity) in addition to those streams which follow Halakha. Continue reading “Three pillars of Judaism – Intellect, Halakha and Integration. A scientific analysis”

Proving the unity of Science and Judeo-Christian beliefs

The purpose of these notes is to substantiate the scientific unity of contemporary human religious beliefs and human non-religious sciences – the unity which is based on healthy competition of various religious and non-religious thought schools aimed at discovering the very reason for our human existence – the unity which had begun with the Jewish people finding One God and Torah and delivering this find to the rest of humans.

The Torah is the first known human document describing the creation of our world and us the humans in this world as well as the Creator Himself. As the Torah asserts, we the humans found God the Creator and had begun a conversation with Him. By initiating this conversation we had begun the process of discovering (a) how the world we live in was created and (b) what we the humans are supposed to do in this world. And any process of discovery is Science.

Indeed, the definition of Science is “the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment” (the Oxford dictionary). And that is what Religion is doing from the very beginning of human existence. Religion is systematically studying – through observation and experiment – the world of human existence that is a part of the physical and natural world. Continue reading “Proving the unity of Science and Judeo-Christian beliefs”

Science God Religion

I have created and run a few discussions on Science, God and Religion in Amazon’s Forums. The main theme of the discussions was that Science may not be in harmony with Religion but it is certainly in harmony with God the Creator. It is so because Science discovers the laws of Nature created by something or somebody above us, the humans, called God while Religion was created by us, the humans, with the purpose of studying and discovering the essence of God the Creator and its spiritual and material laws. Because Religion is a human development it is subjected to well-known human sins – among them the sin of subjugating the others to the “MY” will that is to “MY” interpretation of God’s laws.

Below is the essence of these discussions in the form of questions-answers.

(1)  Are we the humans an advanced animal breed, or something completely different?

Answer:

We the humans are not an advanced animal breed since we differ from the animals in the following fundamental way: animals are fighting for survival within the timeframe of their physical lives – we are looking for the reason for our existence. Continue reading “Science God Religion”