Shit!

I'm a southern Jewish convert and man do i love studying.

For now this page is being used to host annotations/quotes. {A indicates an annotation, often in quotes}

..."I'm hesitant about an approach to spirituality where, instead of picking one religion and putting in the time and effort to engage deeply with it, we learn just a little bit about many traditions and then decide to do this thing from one, that thing from another, because each of those things speaks to us in some way- because each feels "so me"- and we don't have to deal with the other parts of those systems that are "so not me." {A "neoliberal identities"}
When we do this, we're embracing the aspects of these traditions that reinforce our current preferences and beliefs and ignoring those that don't. In other words- we're reifying, maybe even deifying, ourselves, focusing on the self-discovery, self-affirmation, and self-expression parts of religion (the "comfort the afflicted" parts) and neglecting the self-discipline, self-sacrifice, and self-transcendence parts ("afflict the comfortable").
As Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg points out, in beginning and ending with ourselves this way, we're never forced to wrestle with ideas that challenge our core beliefs, hold us to more rigorous moral standards than we're accustomed to, or otherwise push us to grow as human beings. The Eastern Orthodox Christian writer Frederica Mathewes-Green describes this approach as "constructing a safe, tidy, unsurprising God who could never transform me, but would only confirm my residence in that familiar bog I called home."
...religions do not exist solely to provide comfort and affirmation."

Book Three: Leviticus
"... including a strong prohibition on child sacrifice and decrees for periodic redistribution of wealth;"

"While in the Odyssey, Homer shares his characters' every thought and emotion in copious detail- with "never a lacuna, never a gap, never a glimpse of unplumbed depths"- in the Torah, by contract, "thoughts and feelings remain unexpressed, are only suggested by silence and fragmentary speeches.""..."it is not meant to be read for plot, it's meant to be interpreted for meaning. Doing so requires serious effort on the part of the reader...the Torah leaves it to us to figure all of this out. It demands not just obedience, but responsibility."

"God tells us just once to love our neighbor, but insists no fewer than thirty-six times that we care for the stranger."..."You shall not opress a stranger, for you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt."..."Loving the stranger, observes Held, has now been elevated to 'imitatio Dei,' imitating God; the Torah is telling us you can't love a God who loves the vulnerable and not love the vulnerable yourself."..."You were strangers, so you know- intimately, viscerally- what it means to be mistreated. And that experience should strengthen your commitment to treating others well, particularly those who are vulnerable."..."You wouldn't think it necessary to exhort strangers to care for other strangers. But the Torah seems to understand how quickly former victims can become indifferent to current ones, or even become oppressors themselves. Again and again it tells us: No matter how powerful or secure you may one day become, your fundamental moral orientation must always be in the direction of the outsider. Their struggles must always be your concern. For in some essential and eternal way, the plight of the stranger was, and always will be, your own." {A "liberation for one is impossible without liberation for all}.

"Rabbi Avid Weiss points out, 'It was not Abraham, the first jew, who was created in the image of God, but Adam, the first human being, from whom all peoples are descended.' The opening chpaters of the Torah are about all human beings, and God's covenant with all humankind after the flood came first, before God's specific covenants with Abraham and the Israelites."

"From the very beginning, we've been interpreting Judaism: challenging it, wrestling with it, {A "Jacob"} and reimagining and retranslating it for the times in which we live. This process has been the key to Jewish survival for thousands of years,"

"This was not an argument for the sake of an argument, or to 'win,' but rather what is known as 'argument for the sake of heaven', where the goal is to arrive at a richer, deeper understanding of the text (Jewish study is still commonly done this way today)."

"Midrashim can be quite fanciful...they reached the Sea of Reeds and were seized with fear, refusing to move forward. Moses unhelpfully stands at the shoe, praying for help. Finally, a man named Nahshon ben Amminadab decides to take the plunge, followed by other members of his tribe, and only when he's nearly in over his head does God intervene, bellowing at Moses, 'My beloved ones are drowning in the sea and you prolong your prayer to me?'...another is about how, after the Israelities cross the Sea of Reeds and it crashes onto the Egyptians, a group of angels want to break into celebratory song. But God rebukes them, declaring 'My creations are drowning in the sea, and you are singing?'"