Ask Rabbi Question 3

Shalom.

This is Ask the rabbi for Jew tube, I am on week three. First question I got was do Jews believe in the Devil? So I recommend that you watch my video Devil and Satan amidst. The answer is of course, the Devil as the as the word Satan occurs in the book of Job is also in the bible and rabbinic literature, somebody will interpret the snake and the Garden of Eden story as the devil. But by large, the devil plays very little role in Judaism. I am a fringes and Mysticism and a little bit in some of the more esoteric rams, but we are in strictly monotheistic religion, there is only one God. Yes, there are angels described in the bible and rabbinic literature, but we believe that god is alone, the source of the ultimate reality in the universe. The human beings have free will, and even though we have an evil inclination as well as the good inclination, we have a nagging drive that closes us to sin, and we have repent to come back to God. We do not believe this is force out there called the enemy by Jole Olstin or the Devil by others that is driving us to do bad things. We are responsible for our own transgression and have to fix it, and conquer our evil inclination and come back to God.

With that was the question of the do we believe in hell? Of course hell is an English word but there are terms we thinks like hell, gahinum which was out in the wilderness, the shayol the underneath. And my mimonities clearly in principle 11 of his 13 Principle said that we have reward and punishment. So there are some descriptions of the punishment and that is equivalent to any kind of hell that Dante come up with, but many others believed ass runbum did that the hell that we have is basically being cutoff from eternal life. So there is reward and punishment. We do not worry about the details because Judaism is so this worldly oriented, but should not believe that God does not make us account for our transgressions.

Then, the question was one of the rabbi’s in Israel, conservative rabbi wrote and said that they are very enchanted by my long distance learning conversion program, but we are concern that it would not be acceptable but the Israel, and the reason was, that one of the requirements of conversion is the need for community. And you know just this I open up the Sunday paper, the tribune, and this New York Times, they both have big stories. The prayed magazine was all about virtual communities. Both papers had stories about people stopping to watch TV because they are watching more videos about how more and more people are making their friends in the internet, but men are more willing to open up on the internet and that they are to a buddy in the locker room. This is happening more and more, virtual communities. I get request all the time from people who are too far away from their organized community, or there is small group of Jews there. As we move forward in the explosion of the web, there will be real communities on the internet, chat room and groups. There is a several groups in my friends, my space and face book where they are trying to collect the names of all Jews. They have a Jews as part of one group. There are already 42,000 people in one of those groups. And they are not all going to be shawls, there are more Jews moving out to scattered areas and as we move forward in this technological age, it is hard to foresee exactly where it is going, but clearly it is going to be more, more communities. And there should not be a reason like somebody who lives in the Hawaii on the big Island and the closest minion will occurs once a month, it is three hours away, they cannot have the Jewish life. There is got a way to do that, and so we are helping make it possible.

Then somebody w rote about what was the Hebrew letters of the Torah. Well, that is hard to say because the Orthodox is wrong when they say God gave the Torah to Moses at Sinai. The Torah was oral for many hundreds of years. But we do not know exactly what the Hebrews letters look like at that time because the oldest document we have is really the seventh century BCE, and it took the Hebrew scholars at Hebrew University years to be able decipher that Hebrew. Because the letters have changed overtime. So we do have a progression of what the Hebrew looks like and I have little things that show that the Hebrew was originally and how it transformed and I have got to be the Hebrew today. But somebody translate my hand writing, they would not be able to tell what language it was anyway. But the Hebrew of the Torah is hard to say because when it finally got written down, it was not like the Hebrew that was around 1300BCE, but we do know what the Hebrew look like at about 700 BCE.

Then kind of standard question why is Israel occupying the west Bank. Well, a lot of that has to, with the fault clearly lies in my opinion with the air borough. In 1947, the UN partition pales under the two pieces, Jewish and Arab. And the Jewish said yes and the Arab said no. They started a war in 1948; Israel won the war, thank God and existed. Between 1940 and 1967 the Jordanians controlled the West Bank and Egypt controlled Gaza. They had 19 years to create Palestinians State, they did nothing. They left in refugee camps to rat, shame on them. And then since that time, Israel is basically been trying to figure out a way to have a sovereign entities and certainly explicitly now. Prime Minister Barack and Prime Minister, the last several prime ministers have wanted to have a Palestinian State. And Barack and Clnton worked out a deal, so before they were there, they tried to give him over 90% of the West Bank. In fact, storm down started the intifada, killed lots of Jews. And then the last Prime Minister before Olmert, Shalon who is now in a comma, may be well and get better, pulled out unilaterally from Gaza and said here go run it and then Odem, who took over Hamaz and the showering missiles everyday at Israel. All they have to do is say we want peace. In Israel will turn over to them that they can live in peace with their neighbors that are the problem. That is why Israel “is occupying the West Bank”. Besides, most of the area now is under Palestinian authority, so it is no longer a military occupation. Just say we want to live in peace with Israel and things will be fine, that is all they have to do.

Then somebody wrote me, ask if there surnames was Jewish. They are not Jewish but they have certainly had Jewish roots. And they mentioned there is a rabbi with that last name. Well, that probably gives you hint that it could be a Jewish surname but the being answer is that a lot of names today especially American Jewish names, we change where the Jewish immigration to America. That is truly hard to tell, that is why you have the Jews with all kinds of last names. Well, you should see my video on Jewish last names.

So those were the most questions that I got this week. Hope this is of interest to you. Please send me your questions at rabbi@ehnt.org. I will happy to try and answer them in subsequent videos.


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