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What's the Most Important Day of Your Life?: Deed vs. creed. Action is what matters.
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Chaya Chitrik is a Chabad shlucha in Istanbul, Turkey.
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Are Jews then radical empiricists, behaviorists, positivists? Is external action & appearance the essence?
Kate Chopin wrote a classic short story laser-focused on this view’s implications: “Story of an Hour.”
A woman, deeply aggrieved to learn from a messenger her husband died in a shipwreck, nearly collapses from the anguish. As the messenger exits, she reconsiders the implications of her widowhood, realizing she hated her husband & was glad, even overjoyed, that he died & could no longer oppress her. No sooner than she than she starts inwardly celebrating her emancipation does the door open revealing her husband standing right before her, it turning out to have been a mistake. Overcome with grief, she dies on the spot.
A doctor assesses the empirical facts of her case: Nearly mortally aggrieved by news of her husband’s death, is overcome with joy, “a joy that kills”...
Do we agree with the (scientist-empiricist) doc, appearance = truth? He says “joy,” but it’s really grief!!