This Blog and Its Author

About Me:

I started all my dreams when I was 16, and was doing a short internship with the local News Paper – my first assignment: Writing a two page piece about children of Divorce for the mid-section of the Sunday Issue…That’s kind of heavy-duty if you are 16…ever since I knew that I had two options in life – I either become a Journalist or a Man of the Cloth.

I became neither – and yet I some times function as both – my two main avenues of thought are G-d and exposing bigotry, educating about balanced source use, debunking news that is not news and going head to head with Anti-Semitism and Anti-Semites. I some times write about G-d – and some times I write about Human Rights, and am not sure those two are not synonymous.

“if we start haggling with human rights we end up in a society where the only one having any human rights is the one who has deprived everybody else of theirs.”

This is also a Torah Blog. Hopefully I will be blogging my thoughts and comments on the Weekly Torah Portion (Parasha) here. I will also be commenting on other people’s Blogs on matter related to Torah, Tanakh, Faith, Judaism, Prayer, G-d etc.

My basic world view is Jewish – Non-Traditional Observant. To me Torah is both G-d’s Spoken Word and the Word of those who cared to listen. It’s not a History Book, nor a Law Book, it is not to be read literally – it is to be read in context of culture, socio-economic and religious ideas present when it was Created, by whom ever Created it.

This does not mean that we cannot derive guidance, comfort, inspiration and ethical direction from it – of course we can – after all that is what it was meant as at its inception. Rather than dismiss the parts we do not understand as rubbish, which many do – and I respect that – I believe we should approach the text from an angle of “Why do I not understand this? What are the pieces I am missing from the puzzle?”

Baruch Sienna of Kolel.org once said: “Perhaps the hard parts in Torah were put there to teach us how NOT to act, rather than as something condoning f.i mindless slaughter.” and “There are no right or wrong interpretations of Torah, there are only more or less probable.”

“Is not My word like a hammer that breaks a rock? (Jer 23:29)

As the hammer causes numerous sparks to flash forth, so is a scripture verse capable of many interpretations. (including mine!) B. Sanhedrin 34a” (nicked it from “no mechitza in my world“)

The Sages teach us that Torah and expositions on Torah have to make sense – they have to be logical, and if we do not find that Logic right away, we need to keep looking until we find an understanding of the text that makes sense without violating the fundamentals of Torah.

The fundamentals of Torah was expressed by Rabbi Hillel thus: “That which you abhor, do not do to others, that is the Law and the Prophets, the rest is Commentary – now, go and learn!”

I hope you like this Blog

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