Illustration: Washington Crossing the Delaware(Public Domain)For whatever reason, the Jerusalem Post has stopped accepting comments on their articles, but, in: “the good old days”, I used to receive quite a lot of comments instructing me to: “speak with a rabbi” and he would straighten me out about “the truth” concerning Judaism.
Yes indeed, I offered a 100,000 American dollar prize to “anyone” who could prove that Judaism is based on matrilineal descent using only the written Torah as a source, but before doing this I never ever spoke to a rabbi. I just took a chance that no one could provide the correct answer....
By the way: the challenge is STILL up and running if you would like to submit your opinion (send it to the editor of the Jerusalem Post Blog and she will forward it to me)
Regardless, I have been in constant communication with numerous rabbis over the years and I am still in contact with several of them now.
Basically, my biggest objection with the rabbinout is the philosophy, voiced repeatedly by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, that: “the rabbis are God’s partners and co-creators”. The second idea which I find to be most troublesome is the concept of: “Judaism being a religion based on ‘the traditions of men’ as well as the written Torah”.
In other words: “man has a great deal of influence on the spiritual heath of the world” and this is usually expressed in Hebrew as: “Tikum HaOlam” which, roughly translated, means: “heal the world”.
If you would like to hear an amusing perspective about these types of beliefs, George Carlin has a recording on YOU TUBE about people who want to: “save the planet”:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c
Recently, I watched a video about global warming which I believe, directly, relates to the issue of the rabbinout and “the important role” they think they play in the spiritual health of both the Jewish people and the world population in general. The name of this video is: “The Cloud Mystery”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANMTPF1blpQ
The reason I personally am so attracted to this video is that in many articles I have written on metaphors, I have pointed out that Moses said: “my words are like a heavy rain” which then implies that Moses himself is: “a cloud”. The famous reference, quoted repeatedly from the New Testament, claims that the followers of Jesus will: “meet him in the sky together with the clouds”. In my opinion, this is NOT a reference to flying, but instead means: “in the future, some people will obtain a higher understanding of the teachings of the prophets”.
So, just to sum up, the video: "The Cloud Mystery" focuses on the work of a Danish researcher: Henrik Svensmark , who believes that global warming and cooling is dependent upon: “Galactic Cosmic Rays” which create aerosol in the earth’s atmosphere. The quantity of these rays which reach our planet is directly related to solar radiation and sun spots.
At the moment we are going thru what is known as: “a solar minimum” with very little sun spot activity and, if Svensmark’s theory is correct, for the next 20 years the entire earth will be going thru a mini ice age with temperatures similar to the time of the American Revolution (see above picture of Washington crossing the Delaware).
In conclusion, no matter what Al Gore and his friends preach about: “factory carbon emissions”; the fact of the matter is the world’s overall temperature is related to conditions “off planet” because this is not the first time the earth's temperature heated up and there were no large factories then (dirty air and pollution is another issue, here we are talking only about weather conditions).
Likewise, no matter what the rabbis and Shlomo Riskin tell you, the spiritual health of the planet is also related to “off planet” spiritual sources (so to speak) and that all this talk of the survival of Israel and the world being directly related to the total number of Yeshiva students studying the writings of dead rabbis that are found in the Talmud is, quite simply, total nonsense…