1. thescian
  2. How a Rabbi Speaks

How a Rabbi Speaks

By thescian on December 30, 2008.

Here's how. Interview with the Yona Metzger, the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: What is Abraham's function in the Bible?

Metzger: The great Jewish philosopher Maimonides explained this very impressively. God created various objects in heaven. The sun, for example, or the moon and the stars -- they are all high above us. This was understood to mean that God wanted us to respect them more than the things which were created on Earth. Gradually things went wrong. Instead of praying directly to God, the people turned the objects into targets of their prayers.

This is impressive?! I stand blinded by the darkness of Faith.

There's more:

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Do you believe that religious people are better equipped to bring peace to the world?

Metzger: Definitely. My dream is to create a United Religious Nations -- just as there is the United Nations in New York. The diplomats did not succeed in bringing peace to the world. They need help. And this can come through religious language. Because a Muslim does not respect a person who is secular; he will only have respect if you are religious. This Religious United Nations would also include Hindus and Buddists. We religious people speak the same language.

I would laugh if this was a joke. The Rabbi's level of incomprehension is as great as his religious certitude. If peace comes to middle east, it will not be because of men like these, but despite of them.

Tags
Creative commons

More like this

The problem with the "ladies"
Do you remember the famous saying by which began Martin Niemöller "First they came for the Jews...." The moral is that evil targets the weak and the vulnerable and works its way up the food chain. By safeguarding the rights of the weakest of us we safeguard all our rights. By humanizing the…
Religion & race - the nominal and the real
In my post below I mooted the issue of conflating race & religion. There were many interesting comments, and Ruchira Paul has offered her own response. I would like to elucidate a few points here and frame the issues in their proper context (or at least the context in which I meant to explore…
Judeo-Christian, an abuse of language?
I've always been ill at ease with the term "Judeo-Christian." As someone from a Muslim cultural background I was minimally familiar with the tenets and principles of the Islamic religion. As someone who was socialized with both Jews and Christians I was reasonably familiar with the outlines of…
The Lunatic Rev. Moon
Note: My friend DarkSyde posted an entry on his diary at DailyKos pointing people here for information about Rev. Moon. It's been a few weeks since I last wrote about Moon, so I thought I'd repost the one that started it all, my fisking of the insanely ridiculous full page ad that Moon took out…