Bereshit
- not in THE beginning
- in A beginning
- or as NJPS says "When God began to create heaven and earth"
- as such, Gd could have created many iterations of Earth--see Anathem by Neal Stephenson for an interesting book on such a subject (http://www.amazon.com/Anathem-Neal-Stephenson/dp/0061474096 or http://www.nealstephenson.com/anathem/)
- seems appropriate that we begin orientation for a new program the day after we read about beginnings
- Question regarding Original Sin--which is not a remotely mainstream Jewish concept--if Gd created Adam and Eve without the capacity to know right or wrong, how could Gd punish them for making the "wrong" choice, for eating from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It would only be after eating the tree that they would have the capacity to make a rational choice. Seems like Gd set them up to eat from the tree. It would be pretty boring for Gd if they didn't eat. It would be like little Adam/Eve robots doing whatever they were programmed to do, interesting for 10 minutes, then kind of boring.
- tree of knowledge of good and evil--predestination before, free will afterwards?
- ok service at Shira Hadasha (http://shirahadasha.org.il/)
- it's currently meeting at hartman, in the beit midrash
- as i was soaked from the rain on the way over (suppose geshem worked), i stood through services, standing right next to a shelf with various sefarim, including talmud yerushalmi
- using british authorised siddur to daven, saw reference to talmud yerushalmi regarding the 29th psalm about the 7 kols (voices) of Gd in the psalm (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hebrew-Daily-Prayer-Jonathan-Sacks/dp/0007200919)
- attempted to look up reference, stymied since the yerushalmi was a different edition and paginated totally differently
- was told by gabbi that it was time for prayer, not gemara--looked blankly at him for a moment before understanding what he was reprimanding me for in hebrew
- amused, since i was trying to create a meaningful prayer experience for myself, thinking about a psalm which if i remember correctly from bible at Brandeis, is the oldest psalm and most likely originally a paen to Ba'al, so trying to discover how the rabbis imbued it with meaning would be a pretty good thing to be doing in a time of prayer :-P
- davened on my own in playground/park at end of 29th of Nov. street.
- also did a bit of yoga
- was excited to hear a gentleman calling his children up for "aliyot" while he leyned (read) the parsha (weekly Torah portion) from a tikkun (bible written in torah's columns with vowels and without to assist with preparing the Torah portion)
- what a great way to teach children!
- enjoyed my time alone, peace, quiet, Shabbat
- many guests and great conversation
No comments:
Post a Comment