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Shalom Talmudim:
I find it interesting that, and agree with Dr. Shafer, on his assessment of AA's and other 12 step programs of being Judaic and in my opinion frankly Talmudic.
While the archives of AA say that Ebby Thatcher (who passed the message of G!D and sobriety to AA's cofounder Bill Wilson), was from the Oxford group, a 6 step program claiming their basis from Yeshuah's sermon of the mount, each of the 12 steps, can be linked to Talmudic Judaism, especially step 9, where the alcoholic who is in the process of becoming spiritually awakened, is to do direct amends. He is not to just say, I am sorry, but to make the person whole again, even it is to take him 40 years and 10 dollars per week, in the case of money owed or stolen.
(Ironically, a few years after Bill W got sober via the Oxford group and founded AA, the head of the Oxford group, Frank Buchman, embraced Hitler, visited Himler, and caused that groups demise. This lead to one of AA's traditions of non alignment with politics or religion, making it open to anyone who wanted to become sober via G!d as they understood G!d.)
The 4th step is the best explanation of the Talmudic chesbon ha nefesh, a complete inventory of ones soul, I have ever seen, and the 5th step of confession before G!d and man, is our Talmudic vidui in straight forward English. Both those steps are continued daily for life in steps 10 and 11.
On the subject of magic in the Torah, or even in the Talmud e.g. Honi the circle maker and rainmaker (Ta'anit 3:8), Haninah ben Dosa the Healer (Breach 34b), a bat kol Ruled out of order in court (Bava Metzia 59ab), and a resurrected Moses visiting Rabbi Akiva's class and not understanding a word of what was being taught (Menahot 29B0), while all of these things seem magical, they are described as miracles and the works of the Divine.
Even Rabbi Leob's of Prague Golem, our first Frankensteinian monster, was Divinely controlled. All of Torah's magic, from Jacob's sheep becoming the color he wished, from Moses' staff turning into a snake and back into a staff, to the plagues, to the parting of the Sea of Reeds and the Jordan, to the walls falling at Jericho, are attributed to the Divine, and precisely not to magic.
The rabbis of the Talmud state quite clearly that there is no one in the Tanach that they would want their sons to grow up to be like, and they settle on Ephriam and Mennesah as not much is said bad about them. As Dr. Shafer states, Moses, David, etc., were flawed men. But that is the Tanach's point, they were men. And all men, as Proverbs says, screw up. Moses and David however repented. And were Divinely and publicly punished. Moses died on Mt. Nebo never to cross the Jordan, and David lost Bathsheba's first son, but did have her second son Solomon rise to get fame, yet he also was flawed.
We live in a secular world, long out of the Ghetto, and long out from under the thumb of a bet din. We are way beyond the haskalah and no chief rebbe is checking out what books you are taking out of the library although Homeland security is. (I'd rather trust a rebbi.)
I do take exception to the comment that there is magic in the Torah. The derivation of the word is from the Greek and Persian magus or magi meaning sorcerer. And I discussed the many Torah prohibitions against this is my last posting. Further it is defined as: 1 a : the use of means (as charms or spells) believed to have supernatural power over natural forces b : magic rites or incantations 2 a : an extraordinary power or influence seemingly from a supernatural source b : something that seems to cast a spell.
While the Torah is full of the spiritual, and the unknown and the unanswered and the En Sof the infinite, it is not, by the definition of magic, filled with magic. Even Houdini, a G!D loving Jew, never called his stage performances 'magic.' He spent his adult life trying to shine light on those charlatans pretending to do magic and be sorcerers and communicate with the dead, stealing people's money, and faith.
I am not one to censor as being on my local library board and a member of the ACLU I deal with this idiocy every day. I am also not one to say that one cannot use a secular example to jump start a Talmudic discourse. I used Philip Roth's (my English teacher at Penn) last line from Portnoy's Complaint as the opening line for a Simchat Torah sermon. But we must be careful assigning pagan rites like magic to Torah when although many of the rituals are synchonicity derived from pagan rituals of the Egyptians and Babylonians and northern tribes, the Hebrews and then the Talmudic Jews, placed a One-God Divine spin on them.
Thanks for listening.
Rabbi Dr. Arthur Segal
> by tshafer3661
>As a psychiatrist in the Deep South I hear a lot about the evils of
>Harry Potter, in my case from very rigidly fundamentalist
>Christians. Yes there is magic and wizardry in the book. There are
>all sorts of things in all sorts of books, so what is the problem?
>
>I saw an extreme example of this in a PTA meeting with my son's
>sixth grade English teacher. One of the moms had gone on a tangent
>with support of her pastor and was giving the teacher a lot of
>dressing down for assigning a short story by Edgar Allen Poe. After
>all, what kind of example was he? He was a gambler and a drunk.
>Why could not the parents who objected to subjecting their kids to
>this kind of evil influence substitute a Christian story for the
>assignment?
>
>I asked her if she read the Bible and she said of course she did. I
>pointed out the first five books were written by a man who killed a
>person in authority, the overseer, and spent 40 years on the lam for
>a murder share. And how about David the Psalmist? Having your best
>general killed because you got his wife pregnant is not nice, to say
>the least.
>
>She, of course, missed the point.
>
>Kids love the fantasize, and they should do this. A child with a
>lively imagination can grow up to be a creative adults. The heroes
>have always had all sorts of super type powers. Harry has his
>invisibility cloak, Superman can fly and Wonder woman has that magic
>lasso. And characters in children's book hang out with all sort of
>magical animals from baby dragons to pet dinosaurs.
>
>J. K. Rowling deserves a medal in my opinion. She has a whole
>generation of kids reading 700+ page books!
Judy:
Amen! Not to mention all the magic that goes on in Torah!
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