So Who is your God Anyway?

Oh it’s a basic question I know. But who is God anyway?

The odds are that your answer to the question is based on a religious answer. Who is God? He’s the being that my religion tells me about.

So to answer the question of who God is, we first have to answer the question of what religion is. What is religion? There are two kinds of religion, one which imposes laws on the community from outside, and one which serves as an expression of the identity of the community.

The Aseret HaDibrot, the culmination of the Exodus from Egypt, was the first case. Hashem imposed that identity by shepherding the creation of Israel, beginning with the one man who recognized God on his own initiative, Avraham Avinu, culminating in forcefully taking Israel out of Egypt and dedicating the Jews to serve God alone.

Parshat Misphatim and all that leads up to it is really God telling the Jewish people, “I’m going to tell you who you are and how you’re going to live in the hopes that you’ll finally get this humanity thing right.”

And what do most of those laws consist of? Category one are ritual things that recognize God’s role in our lives. Category two consists of Google Laws, basically laws that tell you not to be evil, not to oppress others, and to live just lives.

These laws are not ideal, they are functional. They’re laws that a people a few thousand years ago could live with. It’s why we’re told “Lo Bashamayim Hi”. We were not given angelic laws. We were given human laws.

And who was God? He was the one who gave us those laws. Those laws were not about telling us who He was. But about us understanding who we were meant to be. He was the Lawgiver.

Now how does religion become corrupted? It becomes an expression of the identity of the community. Customs grow around rituals. Some are customs of dubious origin from idol worshippers. Rituals are added to, though the Torah specifically forbids that. Religion becomes a product of the culture of the community that keeps it, rather than the other way around. God stops being an object, and becomes a subject.

Now if religion is an expression of the community, who does the community worship? It worships itself, or rather its own power structure. A corrupted religion is centered on worshipping the power sources of a particular community or culture or nations. 

And so you have totems, ancestor worship and God-kings. All examples of a culture worshiping itself. You have popes. You have seers and gurus who serve as the intermediaries to God. Or Gedolim.

When a culture becomes the object of its own worship, when customs trump commandments, and when laws are constantly rearranged for the convenience of every time and era… the culture becomes its own religion. 

Ever heard minchagim referred to as holy or Gedolim as all knowing? You’re seeing a culture that believes it is God. 

And such religion always violates both categories of commandments that Hashem gave on Har Sinai. 1. Remember me and 2. Don’t be evil.

A religion that is a reflection of the community worships the communal power structure. Which means those in charge can do no wrong. So evil and oppression become the norm. Because the intermediaries have become God.

When the Nevim went to Israel with the message, stop being evil. They were naturally locked up or persecuted. Their message came from God, but the people they were talking to worshipped their own system.

We still do that today. Every fast day we may read from Yeshaya telling us that what God wants is not fasting, but for us to stop oppressing others. We nod along. And we keep on living in communities filled with corruption and oppression that always begin at the top. 

Gedolim worship is a culture worshipping its own power structure. For everyone who says we don’t have a pope, you’re right. We don’t have one pope. We have a lot of them. And that’s only because we’re too fragmented and argumentative to unite behind one pope. But it’s a difference that makes very little difference.

So who is God anyway? As far as a large part of us are concerned, it’s whoever the Gedolim say he is. Or more accurately it is the Gedolim. The Christians and Chabad simply took that to the next level. Start worshipping the intermediaries as gods themselves.

The more we cultivate minchagim, the more we impose a communal identity on Judaism, instead of listening to what the Torah says, the more we worship a community, instead of G-d. And when we do that, we actually can’t see the forest for the trees. We get tied down in details and we forget what God wants. 

The Aseret Hadibrot were a culminating event. They were the creation of a nation that would serve God. We mock Fiddler on the Roof Jews, but is your average Chassid any better? Does his religion come from God or from Slavic culture mediated by some scraps of Judaism, all the while speaking a German-Russian-Hebrew dialect, while worshipping a man as their intermediary to God?

Harsh, but true. 

We’re expected to believe that Moshe Rabbeinu, the Avot, the Shevatim, the Nevim, were fallible, but that the leaders of our current power structure are not? We’re expected to believe that Moshe could mangle Hashem’s message, as he did when he was told to speak to the rock, but that no one since then has?

What a load of crap. 

The “Heilige Yid” in the payos and tzizit, who robs the orphan and oppresses the widow, who won’t say Good Shabbos to you, and if he sees you struggling with a load walks on by… is everything that the Aseret HaDibrot were meant to stamp out.

The payos have nothing to do with Judaism. We’re forbidden to cut our hair in particular places. We’re never told to make a decoration of it. The Tzizit were never commanded by Hashem as a separate garment. And we’ve left of the Techeilet part entirely.

What we were commanded to do in no uncertain terms was not be evil. And that Unheilige Yid, who donates money to worthy causes, drives a Lexus and talks loudly in Shul on his cell phone, is evil.

Yet he rules us, for as long as the community is the object of our worship. For as long as turn to a system ruled by Gedolim and the whole court they have built around them, the Askanim and the Machers, the “Rabbis” who issue press releases and write columns and popularized seforim.

A religion that reflects a culture and community, rather than guides it will always turn to evil, because evil comes from power, and those in power will rule a community. It will always anger Hashem because those in power will always oppress those who do not have power. The kings did it then, the machers are doing it today.

So who is your God anyway?

I Propose a Ban on Bans

If the Jew living in the Dor of Moshe Rabbeinu had a few hundred Issurim to deal with, by the end of Bayit Sheni the number of things forbidden had ballooned to the high thousands and by 1000 CE was several times that and today it’s virtually ad infinitum.

Part of that is the expanded capability created by technology and social organization to control and create new permissible and impermissible zones. The entire Hasgacha industry was created when it became possible to regulate every single thing we eat, right down to the plates and the condiments. When a century ago we went and bought some cheese from a farmer or killed a chicken out back, today we have deal with vortexes of kosher accreditations.

But if there’s anything we should have learned with our bout with the golden calf in the recent parsha is that we suck at keeping even basic things. If the great Dor of the Midbar couldn’t even manage to not sorta worship idols a month after Har Sinai, what are the odds that we can successfully keep a 1000 times the Issurim they ever had to deal with.

And the question of the day is whether we’re actually any better at the big stuff, such as not doing adultery, theft or worshiping idols or oppressing our brother? How about Sinas Chinam? And forget about that Tikkun Olam misnomer.

Let’s put a hold on the strawberries and the tap water and the hemlines and let’s look at the basic stuff. The average Jew today has far more responsibilities than the Dor of the Midbar did with way less to prop up our emunah. The answer is not more bans, the answer is less.

We’ve wrapped everything up in chumras and gederim ad le shamayim but it hasn’t brought us any closer to shamayim. Not when there’s so many things wrong in our communities.

Ovada Yosef’s Chief Rabbi: Bring Millions of Ethiopians to Israel

Centuries or maybe even decades from now when Israel has been destroyed by the gang of greedy idiots running the country into the ground, it’s a tossup whether the most popular Jewish curse word will be Olmert or Shas.

Right now I’d bet on Shas which is the last leg under Olmert’s toilet coalition and whose Chief Rabbi just proclaimed he wants millions of Ethiopians to come to Israel.

“Their words imply that the immigration of millions of Ethiopians to this country is a curse. I wish millions would indeed come,” continued Rabbi Shlomo Amar, who also said he has sent a letter on the matter to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Why not billions, as long as they vote Shas. Who said Israel is a Jewish state anyway? Yeah the actual Ethiopian Jews are saying these people are not Jews and they worship in Churches, but that’s okay as long as they put up Ovadya Yosef right next to Jesus.

IT’S TZNIUS MADNESS SEASON

Welcome to Israel. The bombs are falling. The rockets are falling and the Rabbis who are happy to keep this government in power have found a crucial issue to tackle– all those frum women walking around in bikinis!

Oh wait, they’re not actually walking around in bikinis. Maybe their blouses are only 3 inches longer than their waist or maybe they’ve had to let out their waist. Or maybe they’re actually wearing denim. Either way it’s the gravest threat to Kedushat Klal Yisroel since the Chet HaEigel.

Have we not all forgotten how we lost a Beis Hamikdash because of Sinas Chinam Tznius. Listen well.

Under the guidance and encouragement of maranan verabonon gedolei Yisroel including Maran HaRav Eliashiv shlita, the Mishmar HaTorah Beis Din was set up to deliberate and to issue clear instructions regarding modest appearance for women. “Benos Yisroel kesheiros vetzenuos yearn to hear dvar Hashem — zu halochoh in order to know how to conduct themselves, what attire the Torah permits and proper conduct in other matters of Torah and modesty.

Funny how Tznius was a Da’at Yehudit in the first place. Now we require an entire Beit Din to tell women how they can and can’t dress.

Hear the Dvar Hashem! Wow. Last time I checked you can open up a Tanach and hear the Dvar Hashem. You don’t need the Beit Din for a Dvar Hashem. You need a Beit Din to threaten people with Chumras that have nothing to do with Dvar Hashem.

Is this Beit Din going to stop the practice of the bleach squads? Is this Beit Din going to fight the torching of stores whose clothing doesn’t match their chumras or is going to encourage it. What does Dvar Hashem have to say about people who destroy the property of others, outright Gezeilah in the name of a Chumra?

“Although many of them are uninformed or inattentive [regarding these matters], they are dressed in a manner not in keeping with the ways of modesty according to halochoh.

Those stupid flighty women. They just can’t be trusted to pay attention when Rabbonim are speaking to them about the importance of not dressing in denim and making sure their skirts have no slits in them.

But we can’t blame them after all– they’re only stupid women. Since we can’t trust them with something important like the clothing they wear, just with minor stuff like taking care of children and earning a living for their families doing jobs Indians won’t do… while their husbands surf for porn on their not so Kosher cell phones– we’ll lecture them some more on how the evil power of their hair is driving frum men mad with crazed lust.

This issue is of the utmost importance to [Am Yisroel] and the future of kedushas Yisroel depends on upholding the modesty guidelines.

You’d think the war in Israel might be important to the future of Am Yisroel, yet some of these same rabbis will be backing Olmert’s government but who really cares if three millions Jews die in the flash of an atom so long as we can put out another tape on the importance of making sure hemlines aren’t too long and aren’t too short but are just darn right!

The beis din has already issued a letter noting the importance of not following the ways of the non-Jews in terms of clothing and hairstyles, which is brought down in halochoh, in order to remain distinct from them in terms of clothing and conduct

Bwaaaahaaaaaa. I knew Moshe Rabbeinu used to wear a black hat! And I bet he wore loafers too. Chukah HaGoyim? You people are talking about following non-Jews in clothing and hairstyles? All your bloody clothing and hairstyles came from Goyim in the first place. You think the black hat was a Jewish invention.

You want clothing that’s not Bechukas Hagoyim, ask an archeologist or an anthropologist for what Jews used to wear. And then watch as you aren’t allowed in a single Beis Medrash because you’re not dressed like a Polish Sheygetz of the 17th century.

The letter also says that girls’ schools and seminaries have an even stronger obligation to stand firm against breaches by the staff, the students and the students’ mothers, both at school and away from school, including at family celebrations.

Nothing will escape our grasp for we have X-Ray vision (which makes modest clothing pointless but who cares) if you wear denim at a family celebration, we know and then we’ll spray you with bleach! In your eyes!

“We are certain,” write gedolei Yisroel, “that acheinu bnei Yisroel hayerei’im ledevar Hashem will pledge to safeguard kedushas Yisroel and be cautious and exacting in all of the halochos and guidelines

I’d point out the irony of ACHEINU BNEI YISRAEL (yes I know it’s generic and includes women but it’s still ironic as hell that even when they’ve gotten through setting up a system for controlling women, they still can’t address or acknowledge the women themselves– maybe it would be too prust) but we’re dealing with people to whom that kind of irony is a closed book.