About my father

My father married my mother in the late 1960s; she was 17 and he was 34. She was a Unitarian Universalist and he was a Jew. My mother doesn't say so, largely because of her love for her children, but it was probably one of the biggest mistakes of her life.

My sister was born nine months to the day after the wedding, one day after my mother's 18th birthday. I was born about two and a half years later. Sometime between, my mother converted to Judaism, and in the process became probably more knowledgeable about the religion than my father was. I'm pretty sure my father had a very secular Jewish upbringing; he hardly spoke any Hebrew, and didn't seem to understand kosher rules. (My mother told me one time my father asked for a ham sandwich for lunch, but he wanted it on matzoh because it was Passover.)

My parents divorced when I was two. I actually have two faint memories of them being together; in both of them, they are fighting. My mother didn't tell me until years later that the reason she left was because he was physically abusive. She took us kids and went back to her parents. On the first day of my sister's first grade, my father showed up and took her from school. He hid her away somewhere and came to take me; I also dimly remember this happening, and my grandfather blocking him from coming in the house. Eventually, the court gave my father custody of my sister and my mother custody of me. There was a joint custody arrangement that focused on Jewish holidays; if Passover fell on school's spring break, we would spend that week with my dad, and if Hannukah fell on the winter break, the same. I took a lot of flights as a child, as my father lived in Silicon Valley, and my mother lived in the greater Los Angeles area.

My father was abusive, mainly emotionally and not physically to us. (He actually spanked me just one time, but I honestly feel it was appropriate and I respected him for it.) My sister told me one time she forgot to take out the trash the day before her birthday, and that next morning, dad dumped the trash on her bed and told her that her party was canceled. Most of my fights with my dad were over food, as I was a picky eater, and he wouldn't accept it. If I didn't clear off my plate, he would often save my leftovers to serve to me at the next meal, refusing to give me any other food. This was a battle we both lost, as he wouldn't get me to eat it, and I would starve until my visit was over. One time, I remember completely finishing everything on my plate and he loaded me up with seconds I didn't ask for; when I didn't finish, he refused to give me dessert. This happened to be at my aunt's house, and everyone in the family told him he was being unreasonable, but I got no dessert anyway.

While my father worked as a disk jockey in the early years of his marriage to my mother, eventually, he got a nursing license. He seemed to really love the job, and took a lot of pride in his work. He worked in the emergency room most of the time, I think, as he often had stories of people coming into the hospital in very bad shape. Something that my father managed to drill into me effectively was a fear of motorcycles. He somehow found out that my stepfather had a motorcycle, and he always told me that he wanted to take me on a tour of the ICU to see all the mangled bodies of people who had been in motorcycle accidents. I would always turn him down and assure him I didn't need to be convinced, and I really didn't. I've only been on a motorcycle once in my life, and I was terrified.

While I tend to say a lot of bad stuff about my father, because I think it's the traumatic stuff that sticks in your head, I think the majority of the time I spent with him was positive. He had a great sense of humor and was always trying to find fun things to do with us. I really loved my dad and looked forward to visiting him, despite knowing there were bound to be unpleasant parts to every trip. He knew I liked visiting (and I think my sister did too after my mother regained custody years later) but wouldn't want to live with him year-round.

Most of the family was convinced he had undiagnosed mental illness of some sort. Part of that problem was his apparent inability to understand that love wasn't like pie where he had to compete with my mother for his share of our love. I truly loved him as much as I loved my mother, but could never convince him of that. He spent far too much time trying to convince me that my mother was a terrible person, something my mother never did in return. The fact that I preferred to live with her convinced him that I didn't love him enough, and his insecurity showed. One time, he actually offered to buy me an Apple II computer if I agreed to live with him. I was dismayed that he would stoop to bribing me for choosing him; although I knew what bribery was, I couldn't put into words what I felt, as I didn't want to put it that bluntly.

We went to synagogue with my father, and as a child, I was just as curious about religion as I am today. I would often ask him questions about Judaism, to which he would usually tell me not to question. I thought you weren't supposed to ask questions as a Jew, which was very unsatisfying for me. I really believe that if my questions had been answered, I'd very likely still be an observant Jew today. I realized as an adult that it was just my dad's ignorance that stopped my questions, and Jews are actually generally encouraged to question. My father should have directed me to ask the Rabbi instead of shutting me up, or maybe supplied me with books about Judaism. I actually believe I learned far more about the Jewish religion after I became a Christian than before. Knowing so little was a big part of why I left Judaism.

When I was twelve, my father called me on the phone and told me he had just returned from a trip to Israel. He had decided that in order to be a good, observant Jew, he had to go and live there. He asked me if I was coming with him. My mind reeled at this question. Leave everything I had ever known behind? I'd never been outside California, much less the country. Do they even speak English in Israel? My Hebrew was very meager. Except for apparently my dad now, all of my family was here in America. I told him no. "You don't love me then," he said, and hung up. Nobody in my life has ever approached saying anything that hurt me as much as those five words. It was like being stabbed in the heart.

I canceled my bar mitzvah, and walked away from Judaism. I realized that everything Jewish I was doing in my life was to please my dad, and not to please God, so why bother? For years, I called myself an atheist, although it wasn't that I didn't beilieve in God, I just didn't believe in religion.

Somewhere around 25 years later, my sister informed me that she had discovered that my father had moved back to the US, and had lost his nursing license. There was a legal document describing an incident when he was working at a nursing home, and after an elderly patient soiled himself, my father beat him with his fists. We didn't attempt to reconnect.

At about 30 years, he wrote my sister and me letters expressing a desire to catch up with us. It didn't seem particularly sincere (he said he had been searching for us for years, but my mother had the same mailing address she had when I was twelve), and both of us forgave him for the hurt he had inflicted on us 30 years previously (which he claimed to not recall, perhaps sincerely, perhaps not) and told him we were only interested in reconnecting if he truly wanted it. He didn't write back.

Now at about 40 years on, this week my sister received a letter informing her that a reading of my father's will is taking place in mid-January, so it seems he is dead. I didn't know how I would feel about this until now. It seems I feel nothing. I loved my father very much, but perhaps he died to me when I was twelve years old, and he hung up that phone on me. I wish I could have told him that he was being unreasonable, and we didn't have to end our relationship because he was leaving the country. I wish I could have told him that if my mother had gone crazy and decided she needed to join her ancestors in England, I would have moved in with him. I wish he had known that I loved him as much as I loved my mother, and in the time he was in my life, one of the driving emotional needs in my life was to have him approve of me and be proud of me, and it was sad that that never seemed to happen.

.נוח על משכבך בשלום, אבא

So, how about that antisemitism?

No, seriously, there were a couple of very significant posts from Caitlin Johnstone recently that talked about antisemitism, and I think both of them were misunderstood. A more recent one said that antisemitism was simply not a problem in the world anymore, and a lot of people were outraged by it, because that's not true. However, I think they were missing the point she was making, which was that there's hardly anyone who hates Jews the way the Nazis did. Yes, there are people who dislike Jews, but it's either a mild dislike, or it's for a reason other than simply that they are Jewish.

Which leads to the other point she made, which was just an aside in a longer post from earlier. I think people skimmed over this point, largely discounting it, but I think it's highly troubling. She talked about how Zionists worldwide are pushing this idea that anyone who criticizes Israel is by definition antisemitic. We see it here in America where there was actually a non-binding resolution in Congress that declared criticism of Israel to be antisemitism. The problem with this (other than the fact of its ludicrousness given that many Jews actually consider Israel to be illegitimate) is that if you keep saying this, eventually people who (rightly) hate Israel are going to decide that since they're beinge labeled antisemites, they must actually hate all Jews.

Johnstone talked about it like a possibility, but it's my personal view that this has already come to pass. It was over a month before Johnstone wrote that when I saw something on Quora where an anti-Israel group had posted something that was...well it was essentially pro-Nazi. I commented on it that they should take it down because it was legitimately antisemitic, and the response I received was, "So? They're going yo call us antisemitic anyway, so who cares?"

It seems like since then I've seen a barrage of antisemitic posts and comments that express hatred towards Jews on the whole due to the unsavory nature of Israeli Jews. Now all Jews get painted with the same brush, and it's an ugly one. Just today on Substack, someone responded to one of my comments with, "Time to renounce your Judaism entirely?" I've been seeing this sentiment a lot lately. I am Jewish by the fact that both of my parents are Jews, but people keep urging me to stop being Jewish.

The thing is, as I keep pointing out to these people, Jews are both a religion and an ethnicity. In fact, (while the weren't called "Jews" back then) Jews were an ethnic group *before* they were a religious group. That goes for whether you believe the Biblical record, which has them as a group with common ancestry coming out of Egypt and then being presented with the law on Mt. Sinai, or whether you believe anthropologists, who suggest they lived in ancient Israel before developing the religion.

Anyway, I can denounce the religion, but I don't feel I can denounce my ancestry, as much as many people seem to want me to. Anyway, I'm seeing a lot of hatred directed at Jews online, but whenever I ask for clarification, I get told about terrible things that Jews do. These terrible things are not within my personal experience of Judaism, but rather indicative of what I hear about Israelis and Zionists: a Jewish supremacist attitude. I continue to insist that this is not how all Jews are, but honestly, it's a large enough portion of the world Jewish population (maybe even a majority?) that it's hard for people to separate it out. "Why would you want to associate with this?" people ask me, and I don't want to associate with it, but I nonetheless am a Jew.

And this is the terrible part of it: I don't believe for a moment that this was the way Judaism was ever meant to be. In Genesis chapter twelve, we read

The Lord had said to Abram, "Go from your country, your people and your father's household to the land I will show you. "I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."

Israeli Jews seem to focus on the "whoever curses you I will curse" part, while I think we miss out on the "all peoples on earth will be blessed through you" which is far more important. Are people being blessed by Israeli Jews? No, I don't think they are at all. In fact, I believe that Israeli Jews are becoming a curse to Jews elsewhere in the world who are being hated by our association to them. As one antisemite said to me recently online, "But the truth is that the ‘good’ jews have never waged war on the ‘bad’ jews to stop them from making ‘the jews’ look bad." The problem with this is that unlike the "bad" Jews, the "good" Jews don't have an army.

Israel is dragging Judaism into a cesspool of evil that fewer and fewer of us seem to be able to escape, and furthermore, it even seems like they are possibly dragging the rest of the world into World War III. I wonder where God is in all of this.

The book of joshua

Sometimes, no make that all the time, I think we're bound to be surprised by what God has in store for us. Just when you think God is finished with His work, it may turn out that God was only just beginning.

My friend and associate in crimes against orthodoxy, Marauder, has recently been posting links to me, and I was considering it might be kind to post links back, but I was in the middle of this series, you know? Still, I suppose he's theoretically boosting my traffic, and I sort of owed him one or two links, especially after a butt-kissing post such as this, so I gotta send a shout-out back and return the favor. (We'll see how he likes being linked to me when I do an upcoming post I've been working on in the back of my mind on the subject of pedophilia.)

How does this all relate to God and new beginnings? Bear with me, it comes together eventually. Marauder talks about the nature of Satan as modern Christendom sees him/it, and muses as to whether it's really an accurate reflection of the spiritual reality. The view has definitely spilled over into mainstream society, where we live with an understanding of Satan as this powerful being who opposes God and all forms of goodness. You know the guy: wears a red suit, carries a pitchfork, has a fondness for heavy metal music? Of course, that image is all crap, but various parts of it are widely accepted as true in various degrees, and that's not even the parts cribbed from Milton's Paradise Lost.

Actually, there are Biblical bases for a lot of these ideas, although they're few and far between. The fact is that orthodox Jews, modern Christians, and mainstream society each have their own understandings as to the nature of Satan, and it may very well be that all of them are off the mark. The Bible says so little about Satan and his nature that it's really an educated guess on our part, whatever we may think of this being. What is true however is that Satan was still created by God, and therefore, one may assume He has a purpose in mind for him. The Bible actually teaches that Satan is to be treated with respect, and that's in the New Testament!

Jude 8-9 says, "In the very same way, these dreamers pollute their own bodies, reject authority and slander celestial beings. But even the archangel Michael, when he was disputing with the devil about the body of Moses, did not dare to bring a slanderous accusation against him, but said, 'The Lord rebuke you!' " This is a weird verse for various reasons, most of which I won't go into now, but one of which I was specifically wanting to address, as it directly relates to my previous essay on spiritual/Biblical authority.

"The body of Moses"? What is this about? Assuming this story is an actual event, one might assume it took place right after the end of the book of Deuteronomy. Just as you thought Moses' story was over, it turns out there's another chapter to be told. Moses drops dead in Moab, and instead of simply returning to dust as the way of all men, apparently conflict ensues, and spiritual powers are fighting for control of whatever it is he's left behind. This may be symbolic and literal on many levels.

Have you ever thought about the transition from Moses to Joshua? I have considered the fact many times that Moses (if he indeed wrote the Torah, but we'll not go back to that question) was the first person to write a book that was meant to be the Holy Word of the God of Israel. Pretty much from day one--and we can go back to Deuteronomy 6 for this--this was writing that was considered deeply important from the moment it was written. Here's the Law of God; keep it and revere it!

Then comes Joshua, who is also writing Scripture (supposedly the author of the book bearing his name, although doubted for many of the same reasons people doubt the authorship of Deuteronomy), but does he think of it that way? He's got to fill the sandals of Moses. Do you think he thought his writings were deserving of being put in the same volume as the great prophet Moses? There were probably moments, especially during the early days of his leadership, that he might have thought that Moses was the be-all and end-all of God's involvement with Israel.

So on a certain level, and as a certain person once suggested to me concerning the passage in Jude, there was a possibility, even in the very day its writing was completed, of a "disputing... about the body of Moses", that is, not just his physical body, but his life's work. With Moses gone, what happens to the nation he created, and the books that he had written? Every time God wraps up a chapter in history, surely there must be a temptation to think that it's all done. God's finished giving the Law, the Israelites must have thought, so we've got all we need. Indeed, there have been those, including the "Saducees" in the New Testament, that have felt that the Torah is God's Word, complete and final. And they disputed with Jesus about it.

Now as Christians, we have the blessing of hindsight to even a greater degree than they did, knowing that not only was there more to come after the Law, but more to come after the Writings and the Prophets. Scripture was about to be opened again in their very day, and was to be written about events that unfolded in their presence. Why? Because God had sent another Joshua, whose name in Greek is of course rendered "Jesus".

Who was Jesus? It's a fascinating thing to me that the very person who opened up the idea to me that the "body of Moses" might refer to the Torah made another implication far more startling, and one that many mainstream Christians would consider blasphemous: that the "archangel Michael" was Jesus Himself. You may or may not be aware that this is a belief held dearly by Jehovah's Witnesses, among other out-of-the-mainstream Christian groups: that Jesus was not an incarnation of God, but rather an incarnation of the Archangel Michael.

It fascinates me because I wonder if indeed this is technically heresy. After all, what is an "archangel"? It's not a term that the Bible uses too often. (In fact, it's only used in one other verse, at which time it is more closely and clearly associated with Jesus than in Jude.) An "angel" is, once again contrary to popular culture, simply a "messenger". That's what the word in both the original Hebrew and Greek means. It follows that an "archangel" (literally "ruling messenger") would be a high-level messenger, and indeed, who is a more important messenger in history than Jesus Himself, at least as far as the Christian mindset is concerned? And the name Michael? It's understood to be Hebrew for "Who is like unto God?" I think any Christian would have a ready and obvious answer to that question. (Or is it possibly wrong that it's rendered as a question in the first place?)

At the death of Moses, there's a danger. The danger is that with the end of the giving of the Law, we close the book of God's truth, and consequently close our minds. "Here are the rules, now you're on your own. -God." Don't question, don't grow, don't seek deeper understanding and maturity. But God sent Joshua to take them forward into the Promised Land, where Moses could not take them. Likewise, our New Testament Joshua takes us to a place that Moses could not. The old book is closed, but a new book opens. The Law has guided you all the way to the border of the Promised Land, and now Jesus takes your hand and carries you across the Jordan in into the full blessing of God.

I think Christians know this, but they may miss a deeper implication of the history that the Bible presents to us. Once the children of Israel became slaves in Egypt, it wasn't yet over. Once Moses finished his farewell address and died in Moab, it wasn't over. Once they crossed into Canaan, and subsequently crossed into idolatry and paganism, it wasn't over. Once a dynasty was established for King David, it wasn't over. Once they were taken away into exile and lost their land, it wasn't over. Every event in the Old Testament that seemed like a moment when things could have either settled into stability or degraded into utter destruction, it wasn't the end, but just another chapter of God's plan. Do we have the audacity to think that's no longer the way things work?

When Jesus hung on the cross, he famously said, "It is finished." What exactly was finished? Theologically, we understand that it was His payment for our sins that was finished, but the story was not finished. It wasn't the end of the chapter, the chapter was not the end of the book, and after each of the four Gospels come to a close, there are still over 20 books left in the Bible to tell us the story of God and how He is working it out for our benefit. For those of us who believe that the book of Revelation is a description mainly of events that come in the future, we're not even out of the Bible yet in our own lives!

This is the lesson of both the first and last Joshua: that the book is never closed. So many people would be offended by the questions raised in Marauder's short piece on the nature of Satan, but really, is there anything that contradicts what God has told us? Throughout history, times have passed in which people were ostracized or even killed for simply asking questions. But whatever you may think of the nature of Jesus/Joshua and the devil/Satan, the two share something in common that conservative voices don't often like to hear: the purpose of suggesting that there is something more to life and to God than that which we already know. One leads to truth, and the other to deception, but indeed, both of them lead.

The book of deuteronomy

This was a hard series of essays to figure out, at least for me. I sort of like these odd little series that take off on a theme and go wherever they go. Initially, when I wrote the "Book of genesis" one, my thought had been merely how interesting it was that Darwin was actually so little-known in a very personal way; what with his works being considered far more important to the modern secularist than the Bible, why is it that he is still not widely read? Actually, the practical answer for that is that while secularists do often claim the Bible to be a very boring book, the book of Genesis with its tales of incest and intrigue are bound to be more stimulating reading than a treatise on biology could ever hope to be.

Yet once I started in on the thought, I realized there was more that could be said. These are the words of the Bible (and supposedly God) on one hand, and on the other hand, the secular world has its own words to live by. A guest speaker at my church a few weeks ago actually said something that stirred up a bit of controversy, although I hope I was far from the only one in attendance that got his point. He said that when we look for a basis for our morality in life, if we decide (among other options he discussed) that basis should be the Bible, we're actually making a bad judgment. The only basis we should have for our morality is truth. (Now as Christians, we probably have come to the conclusion that the Bible is true, so there's no conflict there, but it sounds subversive.) How that plays out may be problematic, of course, as most of us feel that "truth" is subjective.

In the end, whatever the truth may be, it's inescapable. If Darwin is speaking truth, if Marx is speaking truth, if people of religions and cultures differing from your own are speaking truth, then it doesn't matter whether you like what they say or not. It's still truth.

The Bible is claimed by Christians (and others) to be truth, but truth of what nature? The first five books of the Bible are supposedly truth given to us from God by way of Moses. But is this truth about the Bible itself true? The book of Deuteronomy is probably the one book in particular that is Moses' own. Genesis? Moses' book of ancient history of his people. Exodus? Moses' book of recent history of his people. Leviticus? Moses' book of the laws of his people. Numbers? Moses' book about where his people are now, and what they're going through. Deuteronomy? This is Moses giving a speech summing it all up in his own words, telling his people what it's all about.

It's Moses' farewell speech, and he takes a lot of time to say a number of things we've already heard, just for review. But there are a number of new things as well, and significant things. While Christians tend to view John 3:16 as a verse that sums it all up, Jews go for Deuteronomy 6:4: "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our G-d, the LORD is one." It's a prayer that virtually every Jew knows by heart, and holds dearest to their heart. Jesus, when asked what the "greatest commandment" is, didn't quote from the Ten Commandments back in Exodus, he quoted the very next verse, 6:5: "Love the LORD you G-d with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength." One of my personal favorite verses from the Bible comes from this book as well, 29:5, which paraphrased says, "Hey, did you notice that after walking in the desert for 40 years, nobody ever needed a new pair of shoes?" For some reason, I find that wild!

But detractors of the Bible find a favorite verse in Deuteronomy as well, one to highlight what they see as "truth" trumping over what those of "blind faith" see in the Bible. Deuteronomy 34:5, "And Moses the servant of the LORD died there in Moab, as the LORD had said." Hmm, how many people in history, when writing their autobiography, include a chapter on their own death? (Actually, I'd really like to know, as I suspect that Moses isn't unique in this respect, just rare. I believe Graham Chapman's autobiography includes info on his death, as well as a few interesting stories that happened years after he died that have to do with his life. Of course, these stories were "ghost written", a very appropriate term in these particular circumstances, and a possibility concerning Deut. 34 that few people seem to accept despite it being the most likely case.) Yes, it seems unlikely that the (whole) book was written by Moses after all; but then, who did write the thing?

I was in the library, looking for a book on this particular subject that I knew was out there. I didn't find it (Dewey Decimal section 222.1066 was unfortunately empty, which is apparently where it should have been; it was probably checked out.) but I did find another interesting book that referred back to it. The book I did come across was Kenneth C. Davis' Don't Know Much About the Bible, perhaps a very appropriate title for one of the subjects of the first essay in this series. Davis is the author of several books in this vein, such as Don't Know Much About the Civil War, which are largely books of interesting factoids about whatever subject. Good reads, but from the bit I perused, the author sometimes falls prey to the same sort of problems he accuses the Bible of having: he takes some bit out of the Bible and says "Hey, the Bible claims to know the truth on this subject, but it's way off, because actually I'm the one that knows the truth!" Cute. Not as bad as I make it sound, though; it's a good read overall, I think, but I base this on reading probably less than a tenth of the book.

As I said, the book does refer to the other book I was looking for, Richard Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible?, a book that I think may be the definitive source for what is known as the "Documentary Hypothesis". For those not highly familiar with the concept, many modern scholars have come up with a theory as to how the Books of Moses came to be, and it involves the postulation of essentially five people given letters as code names, since their true identities are not known.

J is an author that writes a lot of the parts of the Bible that deal with people having more personal interaction with God, known in these sections of scripture as "YHWH" or "Jehovah", which is where the J comes from. In contrast, portions where God is referred to as "Elohim" are considered to have been written by author E, whose style is more prosaic. Author D is who is usually credited with writing the bulk of the Book of Deuteronomy (thus the D designation) and other sections that review and revise parts given elsewhere. Author P is mainly concerned with the establishment of the Jewish priesthood and codification of laws concerning it. Lastly, but far from least in importance, is R, the Redactor (a fancy word for "editor"), the one who took all the works of the other writers and wove it together into a single storyline, and rather poorly, if many textual critics are to be believed.

It's an interesting theory for a number of reasons. One thing that's interesting about it is that even being a strong Bible-believer, the first time I heard of this I was far from surprised. I don't know if it was something I was taught as a boy in synagogue, but I'd always believed that in particular the Book of Genesis was a collection of oral history put down on paper by Moses. Yes, those old stories came from multiple sources and were "redacted" by a later author, this person being Moses. As for the rest of the books of Moses, I do suppose that certainly that final chapter was likely to have been added after the fact, although given the supposed supernatural aspect of the books of Moses, it might be the case that Moses knew the circumstances that would surround his death and wrote about them before the fact. (It's also a possibility, although one purists would like much less, that Moses wrote about his death and then simply wandered off by himself, thereafter dying in a manner not actually recorded in Deuteronomy that remains a mystery to this day.) Be it a plus or minus to his authenticity, Moses is the fellow who called himself "more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth", as pointed out by Davis, who asks the obvious question as to whether a truly humble man would make such a statement. It seems like a rhetorical question, but if it were true, then couldn't he? No matter.

The fact is, in the end, whatever the source of the Bible, it's a very unique book. (Is "very unique" redundant?) Even assuming Moses is the one and only writer of these five books, the story would suggest to us that he wrote them over the course of forty years in a number of different situations, in a number of different locations, during a turbulent and difficult time for the country he was trying to lead. He traveled back and forth between continents, lived in different cultures, and played numerous roles in his life, including prince, outlaw, shepherd, prophet, and priest. Proponents of the veracity of the Bible often point out how remarkable it is that the Bible holds together so well given the fact that it was written across a vast span of time by a broad spectrum of authors in a variety of cultures and moments in history; much the same could be said of Moses' writtings alone.

The real problem with the Documentary Hypothesis is that it's just like the views that those of us of "blind faith" hold: it doesn't hold up to logical scrutiny. There are plenty of books in the Bible that have never been questioned as to being authored by a single person that have changes in style and/or preferred usage of certain names for God. The changing of style of writing within a single work can just as easily be a matter of change of mood or subject as change of author. So many of the bases for this theory have the same sort of self-contradicting tone as criticisms of the Gospels have: If a story is told twice in the Bible, and the two tellings match, critics will say that one was simply a copying of the other, and therefore meaningless. If, on the other hand, the two tellings do not match in any particular point whether major or minor, then there is a grievous contradiction that the editor has sloppily failed to fix. If a bit of the story indicates a prohibition of unusual practices, then it's labeled "intolerant", but if it allows unusual practices, it's labeled "inconsistent". If the story matches with a well-known event in history or in the folklore of other cultures' traditions, it's plagiarism, but if it tells a unique story, it's unsubstantiated. In short, just as there are certain people you will never be able to convince that the Bible has anything wrong with it, there are certain other people you will never be able to please when it comes to the Bible. To them, it's just plain wrong, and any and all evidence that supports this view will be accepted with joy.

But there's a middle ground here, and one that's not often explored for some reason. Yes, there are certain issues that the Bible has that need explaining, but I'm not sure this is one of them. How great of a blow falls upon the faith of those who believe in the Bible to suggest the possibility that the first five books of the Bible were not written by Moses? Does it really matter when all is said and done? When we're trying to determine what basis we have for religious belief and for our morality, if saying the Bible is our basis is inherently less sound of a choice than calling for a basis of truth, then how much less solid is a foundation that bases our core beliefs on oral tradition about a translation of a book that is an edited revision of an earlier oral tradition? Bible purists, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to minimize the significance of the Bible here. What I am trying to do is point out that the real point of the Bible, the real meat of its message, is not in who may or may not have written any given portion of Scripture, but in what the source of that Scripture ultimately is. Does it matter whether God dictated the Torah letter by letter to Moses as he chiseled it into stone on Mount Sinai, directed Moses to write it down over the course of his forty-year wanderings, or inspired one of the followers of Moses to piece together the traditions of the people years after Moses died, so long as it is the case that God was the one behind the work in the end?

On the skeptics' side there is even something to be said. Robert Alter, in his translation of the books of 1&2 Samuel (The David Story), points out some interesting things about the nature of redaction. I've often quoted him on scriptural matters because although as far as I can tell from his writings he is an atheist, he also is a lover of the beauty of the Hebrew Scriptures, and doesn't let his theological bias detract from seeing a good story. Although he makes the claim that the book(s) of Samuel are likely the result of editing long after the death of David, there are parts of the story that are viewed by skeptics as contradictory, but in fact should be seen as a beautiful bit of artistry on the part of whoever put these stories together. Both 1Sam.10 and 1Sam.19 include a reason why "...they say, 'Is Saul, too, among the prophets?' " which is considered by many to be a problem.

"The doublet, far from being a stammer of transmission or inept or automatically inclusive redaction, is vividly purposeful...To the ancient audience, however, the recurrence would not have seemed a contradiction, and the conflicting valences given to the explanation of the proverbial saying add to the richness of the portrait of Saul, formally framing it at beginning and end." (The David Story, p. 122)

In other words, this is just an ancient style of writing that is out of the norm for today, but totally acceptable in ancient Israel. Sometimes we insist on interpreting ancient writings through our modern filters, and they simply don't fit. The problem may not be with the writings, but with the filters, which are being used in the wrong context. I understand and accept that people will refuse to believe the truths put forth in the Bible, but I have a hard time standing idly by when people reject supposed faulty logic on the basis of their own faulty logic.

Of course, I'm sure many skeptics feel the same way about me. Maybe I've just had too much coffee today?

The book of leviticus

I'm sure I've mentioned it to everyone who knows me, and yet, I never feel like anyone knows, because in a sense, I don't even know it about myself: I am Jewish. Or am I?

See, my father was (and still is) Jewish, but my mother is not; at least not in the technical sense. For most people, this implies that I also am not in the technical sense. Yet I was raised by my father to believe that I was a Jew, and he called me one, and so I genuinely thought I was one. Anyway, a large portion of society feels that having any Jewish ancestry at all makes one a Jew.

Certainly I will always remember a moment in my freshman year of high school when I was waiting patiently behind a fellow student who was trying to negotiate another few points on his physics exam, and the instructor told him he would have to take his grade as it stood. This classmate of mine actually slapped his test on the teacher's desk and exclaimed, "I can't believe this. That's so Jewish!" This was probably the first time in my life that I lost my temper at an insult not leveled directly at me. This guy was bigger, stronger, taller, and older than me, and I saw red and gave him a shove and said, "Oh hell no! I don't know what problems you have with your grade, dude, but *I* am Jewish, and you owe my people an apology!" I don't know if I had steam coming out of my ears or what, but I've never seen someone back down from me so quickly.

But am I Jewish? I won't take anyone using a racial (or similar: sexist? homophobic?) slur around me without getting a bit ticked off anyway, but of course, this was a bit more personal. I can't help but identifying with the Jewish people to some degree, no matter what I might be told about the fact that my status as a half-Jewish, non bar mitzvah Christian puts my Jewish identity at question. Oddly, to some extent while one would expect the Torah--a document chronicling the creation of the Jewish nation and defining its laws--to give a definition of what a Jew is, really any sort of official definition has come later in extrabiblical writings.

If I stay on the originally unintentional thread of these last few musings, I suppose I would do well to mention A Jew Today by Elie Wiesel, a book of writings in which the writer explores what it means to be a Jew in 20th century America that I happened to pick up from the same used-book bin where I picked up my copy of Marx/Engels. A much larger book than the Manifesto, I haven't had time to read more than small portion of the first chapter, in which he talks about how often being a Jew means being a stranger in the gentile world, where people will always look at you as something strange and foreign. It's an uncomfortable feeling, and yet it's a feeling that the average Jew holds within themself with a great deal of pride.

A book that I did read recently that's in a very important way about being a Jew is Responsa from the Holocaust, by Rabbi Ephraim Oshry. The author details what it was like to be a Jew in Lithuania during the horror that was World War II, and how it effected the Jews of Europe. Throughout this horrible time, when the lives of European Jews were daily on the brink of total destruction, individual Jews continued to consult with their rabbis concerning how to practice their religion in the midst of persecution. If Nazis seem to be more likely to attack Jewish men with beards, should we shave them off? We only get the food that the Nazis let us have, and it's clearly not kosher meat, what can we do about that? Is it a crime to commit suicide when all indications are that you are not long for the world anyway, and the powers that be are seeing to it that every day you live is intense suffering?

It's tragic, but at the same time inspiring. These people did their best not to let their oppressors keep them from doing what they believed to be right, even seemingly little things (to a non-Jew) such as whether they should say Sabbath prayers on a Saturday when they were suffering through forced labor seven days a week. These Jews held strongly to their beliefs and identity in the face of torture and death. How many people today avoid stating their beliefs openly simply for fear of ridicule?

The thing that really struck me about these stories however, was where Oshry and his fellow rabbis allowed exceptions to general rules and where they did not. Can't find kosher food? Well, you can't starve yourself, so eat what you can. A 12-year-old boy wants to have his bar mitzvah ceremony early because he suspects he will not live to see 13? The boy seems mature and earnest in his desire, so luckily he is granted his request, and indeed he died a short time later.

But where were exceptions *not* granted? Perhaps oddly enough, in the one place that might have been the one sure-fire way to save their own lives: the rabbis never once wavered from their conviction that pretending not to be a Jew was an unacceptable compromise, although it would seem that it was for this one fact that they were being killed. Steal if it takes care of your family, kill if it's in self-defense, defy the law if you believe it unjust, and lie: lie about where you live, what you do for a living, how old you are, who's in your family, but never, NEVER lie about being a Jew.

It's a strange thing to an outsider perhaps, and it may even be strange to Jews themselves, but when all else has been stripped away, either by an evil, tyrannical government or by an individual's apathy towards the strictness of the Mosaic Law, there still remains an essential fact of identity that is central and indelible to Judaism. The Jews of Europe essentially said to the world that you could take away their beards and special clothing, take away their kosher foods and festivals, take away their temples and holy books, but you can never take away their Jewishness.