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The Inconspicuous Messiah
Tuesday, March 24th, 2009As Napoleon marched triumphantly through Europe, the Jews of the ghetto felt joyous by his arrival. Was Napoleon really the Messiah? Many of our ancestors thought so; but again, that was before Napoleon got defeated at the Battle of Waterloo. And then there was Franklin Delano Roosevelt better known to my [...]
A poet’s endorsement of the new Genesis commentary
Sunday, August 17th, 2008Reading Michael’s book, Birth and Rebirth in Genesis, A Timeless Theological Conversation, I am delighted to find that the heart-thoughts of our past conversations have made it to the Rabbi’s tongue. In these pages, he has uncovered the pulse in the book of Genesis; to feel it is to renew the longing which is the precondition for psychological growth; to hear it is to revive the memory of an origin and destination buried in each of us.
The book is a profound exploration of metaphors, symbols and structures in Genesis that embody the design of divine mind projected as source and destination, that through the unfolding of this ever increasing complexity we move toward the recovery of wholeness. Rabbi Samuel does this through an inter-disciplinary approach that calls upon the Biblical scholar’s command of history, tradition and philology, the humanist’s grasp of literary narrative, the application of anthropological/sociological resources of the social scientist, and the analytical psychologist’s understanding of developmental and archetypal patterns. His ability to synthesize the intelligence from these disciplines allows him to distinguish the Jungian archetype of The Shadow, that part of the dark material in the individual and collective psyches that must be integrated rather than projected, from the objective existence of Evil, “which has an ontology all of its own” derived from primordial chaos. He discusses The Fall not as the grand betrayal of God by man, but the true awakening of consciousness that can only proceed from the painful separation from the unconsciousness of Eden.
Pop Kabbalah and other forms of McMysticism
Saturday, May 24th, 2008Q. I recently started reading about other religions to find one that suits me and came upon Kabbalah. I started reading about it (through the most accessible books to find by Yehuda Berg) and started digging the whole thing he was selling. I liked the theories presented in his books and I agreed with the [...]
Questions with regard to the afterlife.
Saturday, May 24th, 2008Q My cousin said to me that when we pass away, we automatically go to heaven. I have searched the Talmud and cannot seem to find anything like that at all. Would you please tell me where I can find this or any reference to us going to heaven?
A It seems to me your [...]
Conversation with Spinoza II
Saturday, May 24th, 2008Con-versing with Spinoza
Spinoza operates on the assumption that there is essentially one interpretation of the Torah and Tanakh, which in essence denies the polyvalence of the text’s meaning. Modern hermeneutics expands the nature of interpretation far more comprehensively than Spinoza could have ever imagined possible. In addition, language is not as monocular as Spinoza [...]