The wisdom of Judaism for gentiles

 

Judaism brought to the world, as historian Paul Johnson writes “often the obvious takes a special genius and once revealed, seems so obvious” – all that is moral and kind; for example, everyone has a right to a fair trial, no man deserves to be oppressed, kindness, etc. etc. are all the Biblical influence.

These things really do seem so obvious, but why then, as Freud points out, we admire selfless people, but we fail to be selfless.

And it is precisely this dichotomy between our ideals and our emotions, between our soul and our body, that Judaism in a very simple but ultimately perfect mechanism, bridges.

To begin with: Who are we?

For this, we need to go a bit deeper into the soul of Judaism, called Jewish mysticism – simultaneously delivered to Mosses with the body (the well know Old-Testament, the Torah) and taught only to the greatest Jewish scholars in secret for over three thousand years and only recently (app. 300 years ago) from the era of the Baal Shem Tov – a precursor to the messianic era – this light was revealed for the masses.

So our soul obviously is God.

The soul of everything, in fact is God.

We live in a world of bodies; we see with the physical eyes, hence we see physical things, as we know, the wavelength that enters the eyes is nano-meters in length, the different colors, different nano-meters, all in all, this world comes from the Hebrew word oilam/helem, is a mask, concealing the soul, the energy (e=m) God.

So we too, are comprised of a body and a soul.

Step number one, is to realize, the soul is housed in the body, not the other way around!

Our existence being part of God, is eternal.

Our bodies come and go, but our soul, the energy in the container, the light in the bulb, the God in man, is eternal.

The reason this is so important is, the most important commandment of the Bible is “Love your friend, as much as you love yourself.”

Philosophers have debated – is this actually a possibility?!

And the answer is, obviously if you identify, if you see yourself in another, then the self-love contained within, is extended to another – for this reason, families, in which people realize their common bond, have greater love; than two stranger on the street.

The equation simple, self-love extends.

The flip side of Love your friend as yourself, for as the Baal Shem Tov teaches, every “Do” commandment has a corollary “Don’t,” is “Do not hold hatred in your heart.”

We consist as Kabbalah teaches (Jewish mysticism) of a mind; a heart (the seat of our emotional dispositions, feelings, desires;) and an ego (the desire for grandeur and the corollary anger over being demeaned) as such, if the poison of anger has entered, we cannot love whom we hate.

The trouble is, the heart is like a soup – even one vial of poison will completely alter not only the taste, but the very nature of the soup – far from being a broth to heal, to love, to unify – it becomes a contagious toxin, both internally destroying man’s soul, spirit, happiness and externally seeking to destroy others (this is very much compounded by the fact, that hate feels lousy; so not only are we angry at the person who hurt us, we likewise become jealous of those who don’t hate – this explains why there is bullying, antisemitism, in fact all radical anti movements – For the heart which is angry, becomes jealous of the heart which is not, and therefore, the actions, words, demeaning of a bully are specifically designed (even though the bully etc. rationalizes – justifies to themselves their behavior, as we never see our own evil, rather, think that what we are doing is righteous indignation AKA Nazis, terrorists etc.) to break the other person’s heart – a good movie depicting this phenomena which unfortunately is all too common, is Spiderman-three, in it, Spiderman’s enemy tries not to destroy his body, as most nemesis do, rather, his heart, through making him feel angry; and the results are truly accurate, as to how people who are sweet will shift to being cruel, if they have entered the angry state – BTW it pays to mention, that the mechanism to get out of this angry state, is through seeing the good in the bad – we can only be angry if we were hurt – but imagine if I come and slap you – your initial response would be, indignation – but if I say “There was a poisonous spider, and I being an expert on spiders, saw, he was about to bite you and you would have died!” you will think I am the best friend a man can have – so always use the Baal Shem Tov’s teaching, “when you can find the good in the bad, the bad will miraculously turn to good.”)
The bottom line message of Judaism is: Moshiach (the long awaited messiah who will bring light, love, unity and harmony to the world) is on his way! From our part, we need to add in the realm of goodness and kindness!