Blog/June 2021/Jun 25th

June 25th

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You probably know that June has been declared “Pride Month”. It is, in fact, rather difficult to escape noticing that. But I’m curious about the rest of the seven. I mean, when are “Greed”, “Wrath”, “Envy”, “Lust”, “Gluttony”, and “Sloth” months going to make their rightful appearances? Why does “Pride” get all the attention? It’s simply not fair!

I suppose one might say our cousins already celebrate “Wrath Month”, but they’ve expanded it to cover the entire year…

Since I started with a religious theme (albeit not from our tradition), I’m emboldened to cover a topic I said I would a couple weeks back, e.g. what serious Jews actually believe (as opposed to what the ignorant think they do).

There’s a prevalent notion, particularly amongst the more intolerant radical Left, that “religion… is the opium of the people”. In the popular materialist-nihilistic view, religion is nothing more than self-delusion and a “desire for an all-powerful ‘Father Figure’”.

In fact, philosophers in ancient times came to the conclusion that a “Supreme Being” must exist. Most famously, Aristotle formulated a philosophical proof of the existence of a “first principle” (what we would call “God”). Expanding on his work, Maimonides (known as “Rambam” to Jews) gives a proof in his major work of Jewish Law (halakha), the “Mishne Torah”. He gives further proofs in his major philosophical work, the “Guide for the Perplexed”. A truly excellent and accessible modern work (by a Catholic philosopher) is “Five Proofs of the Existence of God”. Highly recommended!

Ron’s guide for the perplexed: I use the capitalized singular masculine pronoun when referring to God in English; not because He is male, but because it is traditional usage. Hebrew has no “neuter gender”, so it’s not an issue. Using “It” in English would seem crude and disrespectful. Make of that what you will.

In the event you’ve got neither time nor inclination to read all the sources, the digest version of the Jewish view is this: 1) God exists, and we are obligated to know that; 2) He is absolutely One (and not separable); 3) He is non-corporeal and eternal; 4) His existence is the proximate and continual cause of all Creation; 5) He communicates to us via prophecy. There’s more, but those are the big ones. Feel free to send me your questions; answers to be provided in upcoming blog entries.

Sarah and Yarin have been looking for an apartment to move to, since their lease is up. It’s not easy finding something well kept-up, in the area they want to be in, for a price they’re able to pay. They almost succeeded this week; but not so far, as of this writing.

We let our gardener go, so I’ve been working on keeping the garden from getting out of hand. If you do a bit each week, it’s not so overwhelming — but stuff really grows quickly here! We took a trip to a nursery and got some ground-cover plants. Given that we only have a couple months left in which we can plant (e.g. until the “sabbatical year”), our choices are limited.

The weather has warmed up, though not overwhelmingly so. My “weather station” project is now running so you can actually check the temperature in my office, if you’re so inclined. It will be a bit warmer for shabbat; the coolish weather patterns are pretty much over until November, I’m afraid.

We’re back to the normal shabbat fare:
homemade seeded-sourdough ḥalla, baked chicken with za`atar, roasted vegetables, meatballs, rice, various salatim, watermelon, and brownies.

Until next time,
shabbat shalom!

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