SPIRITUAL TOPICS – AND OTHERS (1)
SPIRITUAL TOPICS – AND OTHERS (1)
For Sheldon and Donna Cotler, 26 May 2005
Thank you very much for saying that you enjoyed my visit. I, too, enjoyed myself thoroughly. God willing, I’ll get back to New York City sometime – a vibrant and exciting city.
BOOKS
Books don’t cost very much – and even less in the US – so the books you mention didn’t cost me a lot. Please think nothing of the cost. But I’ll gladly give you a book list instead.
AGNOSTICS AND JEWS
I think we should make a distinction here. Time was when the Bible (and Shakespeare) was part of the education of every schoolboy & schoolgirl in this country. No more. Many children today grow up with no knowledge of the Bible and many live out their lives without a thought of spiritual matters.
Of course, Jews have always needed to know the ruling philosophy of the country in which they live as a minority, whether Roman, Greek, Christian, Muslim, Hindu or whatever. Christianity and Islam are both missionary faiths, so I expect that Jews over the centuries need to teach their youth how to combat the dominant faiths.
With the Enlightenment, restrictions against Jews in Europe were steadily relaxed from before 1800, and the result was the appearance of ‘assimilated’ Jews, who have made a contribution to European civilisation out of all proportion to their numbers.
The girl that I met up with at Carnegie Hall (who is the room-mate of Phoebe of Redeemer Presbyterian) turned to be highly educated and we had a wonderful evening together. Her name is Jill.
Jill has worked in Vienna and speaks beautiful, pure German without a Viennese accent (at least, that was my impression). Jill works in the Arts somehow, but she has volunteered as well to help with a German-speaking Museum, which is located on Museum Mile. They are having a major exhibition of 20th century artists. I asked her how many Jews were included, and she replied, none.
That shocked me, in view of the enormous contribution made my Jews to chess and all other areas of intellectual life. Finally I have cracked it – the third Commandment!
You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them……
Exodus 20:4, New International Version.
In the Authorised King James version, this is translated as an injunction not to make any ‘graven image’.
This must be enough to explain a Jewish deficit in the plastic arts, in which you, Sheldon, are a luminous exception!
THE TENETS OF CHRISTIANITY
The Christian New Testament was written by men who experienced persecution, as Christians, as a living reality by the various authorities of the day. They had no conception that one day Christians would form a majority in many states, where the self-styled ‘Christian’ authorities would be in a position to do some persecuting on their own account.
In my opinion, it is very difficult to derive what a ‘Christian’ state would be like, since any state that applied Jesus’s commands strictly – turning the other cheek, forgiving 70 times 7, and so on – would not long survive. And most modern Christians would accept that many of the practices of many self-styled ‘Christian’ states have been distinctly unchristian, and practices towards the Jews often very much so.
I would not include the Nazi state among these ‘Christian’ states. Nazism was an atheist and pagan doctrine. Many Christians protested heroically against the Nazis, among them DIETRICH BONHOFFER, whose PRISON LETTERS, for example, are very much worth reading. Hitler and all the other top Nazis were atheists, the German Nation and the Aryan race was their ‘idol’ – where they were not merely political opportunists.
The Nazi grudge against the Jews was not as ‘God-killers’, but rather as blood-sucking usurers and capitalists, and (however paradoxically) also as promoters of Bolshevism. Of course, they drew as well on the centuries-old ‘Christian’ zenophobia.
It is clear that after victory in the Second World War, Hitler would have abolished Christianity and all other faiths that competed with Nazism, in favour of worship of the Volk.
James O’Fee
26 May 2005
For Sheldon and Donna Cotler, 26 May 2005
Thank you very much for saying that you enjoyed my visit. I, too, enjoyed myself thoroughly. God willing, I’ll get back to New York City sometime – a vibrant and exciting city.
BOOKS
Books don’t cost very much – and even less in the US – so the books you mention didn’t cost me a lot. Please think nothing of the cost. But I’ll gladly give you a book list instead.
AGNOSTICS AND JEWS
I think we should make a distinction here. Time was when the Bible (and Shakespeare) was part of the education of every schoolboy & schoolgirl in this country. No more. Many children today grow up with no knowledge of the Bible and many live out their lives without a thought of spiritual matters.
Of course, Jews have always needed to know the ruling philosophy of the country in which they live as a minority, whether Roman, Greek, Christian, Muslim, Hindu or whatever. Christianity and Islam are both missionary faiths, so I expect that Jews over the centuries need to teach their youth how to combat the dominant faiths.
With the Enlightenment, restrictions against Jews in Europe were steadily relaxed from before 1800, and the result was the appearance of ‘assimilated’ Jews, who have made a contribution to European civilisation out of all proportion to their numbers.
The girl that I met up with at Carnegie Hall (who is the room-mate of Phoebe of Redeemer Presbyterian) turned to be highly educated and we had a wonderful evening together. Her name is Jill.
Jill has worked in Vienna and speaks beautiful, pure German without a Viennese accent (at least, that was my impression). Jill works in the Arts somehow, but she has volunteered as well to help with a German-speaking Museum, which is located on Museum Mile. They are having a major exhibition of 20th century artists. I asked her how many Jews were included, and she replied, none.
That shocked me, in view of the enormous contribution made my Jews to chess and all other areas of intellectual life. Finally I have cracked it – the third Commandment!
You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them……
Exodus 20:4, New International Version.
In the Authorised King James version, this is translated as an injunction not to make any ‘graven image’.
This must be enough to explain a Jewish deficit in the plastic arts, in which you, Sheldon, are a luminous exception!
THE TENETS OF CHRISTIANITY
The Christian New Testament was written by men who experienced persecution, as Christians, as a living reality by the various authorities of the day. They had no conception that one day Christians would form a majority in many states, where the self-styled ‘Christian’ authorities would be in a position to do some persecuting on their own account.
In my opinion, it is very difficult to derive what a ‘Christian’ state would be like, since any state that applied Jesus’s commands strictly – turning the other cheek, forgiving 70 times 7, and so on – would not long survive. And most modern Christians would accept that many of the practices of many self-styled ‘Christian’ states have been distinctly unchristian, and practices towards the Jews often very much so.
I would not include the Nazi state among these ‘Christian’ states. Nazism was an atheist and pagan doctrine. Many Christians protested heroically against the Nazis, among them DIETRICH BONHOFFER, whose PRISON LETTERS, for example, are very much worth reading. Hitler and all the other top Nazis were atheists, the German Nation and the Aryan race was their ‘idol’ – where they were not merely political opportunists.
The Nazi grudge against the Jews was not as ‘God-killers’, but rather as blood-sucking usurers and capitalists, and (however paradoxically) also as promoters of Bolshevism. Of course, they drew as well on the centuries-old ‘Christian’ zenophobia.
It is clear that after victory in the Second World War, Hitler would have abolished Christianity and all other faiths that competed with Nazism, in favour of worship of the Volk.
James O’Fee
26 May 2005
posted by JamesOFee at 9:55 AM
1 Comments:
I always think the Viennese accent sounds like Dutch...
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