Before leaping head-first into what seems like the most exciting of love affairs, consider deeply the implications of your actions. Perhaps...
- The world can seem like a cruel place, devoid of morality or divine order.
- You were born Jewish, and it seems like Hashem is calling out to you to come "back home".
- As a woman, you might feel like you would be more protected within such a tightly-bound community.
- You might think that going back to your traditional roots makes your "chosen-ness" more special.
Right now it may seem as if:
All you need to do to get "spirituality", is to give up your friendship and respect for non-Jewish people, convince yourself that the Torah is of divine origins, scold your mind for having questions, ignore scientific knowledge you might have previously gained that may contradict the Torah, and completely put your trust in the hands of Rabbis who interpret the Torah to you in a way that makes its obnoxious portions seem perfectly acceptable.
Are the friendships with people who are non-Jewish of no value at all? Are you arrogant enough to firmly believe that you are somehow born more special than every non-Jew because you're "Jewish"? Do you think referring to non-Jews as "Goyim" makes the Orthodox community look more respectable somehow?
If you have not realized, the default position of any religious text is that it is written by humans. Constantly asserting that it was divinely inspired does not suddenly make it unlikely that humans wrote it. There have been religions far before Judaism, and there have been many after it, and almost every "holy book" claims the same message: it is of divine origin. Why then, should yours be the right one? Why should your way be the best one? Why can you simply not take responsibility for carving out your own path and revel in the freedom and brilliance of having done so?
Problem is, you can try to live a lie for however long you want, but you'll only ever find a "truth" when you stop believing what isn't true.
- The world can seem like a cruel place, devoid of morality or divine order.
- You were born Jewish, and it seems like Hashem is calling out to you to come "back home".
- As a woman, you might feel like you would be more protected within such a tightly-bound community.
- You might think that going back to your traditional roots makes your "chosen-ness" more special.
Right now it may seem as if:
All you need to do to get "spirituality", is to give up your friendship and respect for non-Jewish people, convince yourself that the Torah is of divine origins, scold your mind for having questions, ignore scientific knowledge you might have previously gained that may contradict the Torah, and completely put your trust in the hands of Rabbis who interpret the Torah to you in a way that makes its obnoxious portions seem perfectly acceptable.
Are the friendships with people who are non-Jewish of no value at all? Are you arrogant enough to firmly believe that you are somehow born more special than every non-Jew because you're "Jewish"? Do you think referring to non-Jews as "Goyim" makes the Orthodox community look more respectable somehow?
If you have not realized, the default position of any religious text is that it is written by humans. Constantly asserting that it was divinely inspired does not suddenly make it unlikely that humans wrote it. There have been religions far before Judaism, and there have been many after it, and almost every "holy book" claims the same message: it is of divine origin. Why then, should yours be the right one? Why should your way be the best one? Why can you simply not take responsibility for carving out your own path and revel in the freedom and brilliance of having done so?
Problem is, you can try to live a lie for however long you want, but you'll only ever find a "truth" when you stop believing what isn't true.
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