The Mind and Beyond
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Today's Western society is built on the foundations of two cultures: the Jewish and the Greek. Both treasured the human mind. The Greeks reached the pinnacle of intellect at their time. But the experience of Mount Sinai had taught the Jew that there is something greater than the human mind. There is a G-d, indescribable and inexplicable. And, therefore, a world could not be built on human reason alone.
The idea annoyed the Greeks to no end. While they appreciated the wisdom of the Torah, they demanded that the Jews abandon the notion that it was something Divine.
Ethics, to an ancient Greek, meant that which is right in the eyes of society. To a Jew, it means that which is right in the eyes of G-d. The difference is crucial: Ethics built solely on the convenience of the time can produce a society where human beings are treated as numbers in a computer or where the central value is the accumulation of wealth. At its extreme, it can produce a Stalinist Russia or a Nazi Germany.
A healthy mind is one that recognizes that there will always be wonder, because G-d is beyond the human mind. And a healthy society is a balanced one, whose soil nurtures human accomplishment but whose bedrock is the ethical standard of an Eternal Being.
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Latest Comments:
You know, it is fascinating to me, as I just finished teaching a course, Fire From The Gods, about the Greek legacy to us all, that suddenly wherever we go, it's truly coming up the Iliad, the Odyssey, the truth of Troy, and also Joyce's Ulysses.
My students are seeing this. Yesterday I walked into a brand new book about Troy with Achilles in the title, right after showing a video called The Truth of Troy that is on You Tube and worth watching.
I am saying something IS happening. And yes, let's look at the Greeks today. I got some beautiful spanakopita, made fresh for my class, made by the pastor's wife of the Greek Church at the corner of my street in Newton. So gracious. So lovely. And so appreciated! These are very loving people who do practice what they preach.
Stop dumping on the Greeks, just because the Chanukah story is deeply about history that happened a long time ago, but not about their ongoing deep and wonderful contributions to us all. Maybe Elisha Abuyah saw this.
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we are all racists (at least to some extent).
Is there anyone who can honestly say that they are 100% not a racist?!
There were Jews who marched with Dr. King. To this day there are still Jews who work for civil rights.
The Chabadniks themselves were one of the very few groups who did not commit 'white flight' when they found themselves with Black neighbors in Brooklyn, NY (where they are headquartered); and-
they and their Hasidic fellows are capable of heroic acts of chesed (kindness) on behalf of people from all backgrounds.
Yet, the Jewish identity is bound up with undeniable racist implications; and observant Jews especially ('orthodox') like Chabad can be inexcusably racist.
Jews have always been under seige from someone, and they have had to take a defensive posture around yiddishheit; The Hebrew culture, and from there they have sought to protect themselves.
They've long since confused this with G-d and Torah itself; that it is the gist of the Torah. No!
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Dear Mr Karp, you carve & weave a wide web and I find it difficult to follow your muse. To reply I need more space, time armed with arcane facts, eg. my boring Prof. of ancient Gk History comes to mind, to compete with your erudite comments. But I must contest, we are all racists. My Catholic Priest and other clergy from a hybrid of many Churches and Reformed shuls all of which are insular & exclusive too. None of them walk the streets and prisons trying to convert or teach the needy & the rich, unless there is a dedicated specific ministry. About the Jewish mother, whom is generally less sexually (less promiscuous) active than the male, befits & protects her heritage appointment from uninvited unkosher sojourners . Many men from all walks still roam around today carelessly spreading HIV uncontrollably. In summary, not much has changed since the Gks & Turks were chased out of Israel around the time of Hanukah. Sin, racism & hypocrates are still ripe & rife! Happy Chanukah Sir.
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Jews is based on the concept of the oneness of G-d.
The Greeks, like the Egyptians before them, and the Romans, after them (and many other people along the way), worshipped multiple g-ds, not a One True G-d.
For some reason, The Shema, though being fairly simple and direct, still manages to confound even good minds amongst many.
What is it about that that people can't seem to grasp (or don't want to grasp): 'The L-rd, Our G-d; The L-rd is One'?
But the Greeks weren't any better or worse about it than were most others; and to their credit, they did leave a positive intellectual heritage to the Jewish covenant.
Come on, observant Jews: Give credit where it is due, and stop discriminating against everyone who doesn't have the same mothers as yourselves.
Where is the wisdom in going on the web and offending everyone of Greeks heritage for their once great civilization which benefited Jews, too.
Does the nation of Israel have trouble with Greece now, so why bother?
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The Greeks and the Jews weren't always competing and comparing themselves, though they do share with each other: The dialogues of Plato and Socrates, where one made a point and the other a counterpoint, in form helped form the Talmud when it was eventually written down. The Jews thus, in part, inherited an intellectual tradition from the Greeks.
Many Jews, particularly observant ('orthodox') Jews, don't like to acknowledge that because the fact is they are racists.
Judaism is based primarily on what race is your mother.
There is very little attempt to convert others to Judaism, and many Rabbis won't deal with converts at all.
Judaism, especially observant Judaism, can be very insular, and unwilling to admit that it got anything of merit from anyone whose mother is not of the same race as them.
Btw, Mr. Alcock, that includes you:
No real Jew acknowledges the 'NT' as part of The Hebrew Bible, and no authorized Jew translated it into Greek, and NO ONE is linked to Israel by it.
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Dear Mr Karp,
With humility, as a student Theologian & Torah student, in incumbent defense of our dearly beloved Rabbi Freeman. Should you perhaps opt to study any Theological degree dip or cert. you will learn that throughout the ages Greeks & Israelites shared & disagreed much too. They were always competing & comparing themselves. The Hebrew Bible (OT & NT ) was initially translated to Greek (with the aid of Jewish sages & scribes), then Latin, then Germanic and lastly King James English. Biblically speaking, the 2 nations are inseparably linked and imbued in History and religion, albeit dissimilar by nature & ethos. Therefore, rhetorically spkg., can we agree, (with hindsight ) that your personal vistas are not in context with Biblical history, which would suggest too, that our Rabbi is guiltless and set free from your singular racist critique? (ie not her-story either.)
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In Depth thinking. Excellent!
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Once again, I'm not trying to be a nudnik here, Rabbi Freeman, but what you attribute to the Greeks is certainly not exclusive to them; and to say so is, in effect, racist against them.
What's more, you know yourself (as do all Jews) that Judaism is not predicated on a belief in the divine. It is based on a birthright, even-
if the Jew in question does not subscribe in a belief in the divine.
Rabbi Freeman, have you not yourself, in response to an atheist/secular Jew, said-
"The same G-d you don't believe in I don't believe in, either"?
It was either Rabbi Akiva or Rambam who once said-"it is more important to study Torah than it is to believe in G-d".
Anyone can believe in the divine and something beyond the mere human mind.
Anyone can believe to the contrary; that it all ends with the human mind, and that there is nothing beyond.
That you ascribe one exclusively to Jews and one to Greeks is wrong, Rabbi.
What really separates Jews from everyone else?
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Ancient Greeks believed also in an "unknown G_d".
As to the gods and goddesses they worshipped, they were surely about story, and most, were not about ethics at all. The stories are not meant to cover morality. They don't. The early Jews worshipped many gods.
The later Greek philosophers and writers, took those myths and wrote in a way that posed deep ethical questions, as in the story of Antigone. Socrates certainly took hemlock because he refused to back down on his principles.
From the Greeks we have great philosophers and they did leave us a legacy. Such as "the unexamined life is not worth living", such as Heraclitus who wrote, "we never step into the same River twice".
When Christianity took hold it was easy for the Greeks to assimilate a new way of thinking, because they were already en route.
The mythic journey of Odysseus is universal. It could be said we are, every one of us, the hero and heroines of our own journeys, and the journey home, magnificently, Homeric.
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Thank you Rabbi Freeman - Your observation is stated clearly and I can see it was subject to ruthless editing. Winston Churchill once apologized to a correspondent that he had wanted to send a shorter letter but didn't have the time.
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