The 13 principles of Judaism: #5. Praying to God, the right way (2 of 2)

Previously, we’ve explained that we should pray exclusively and directly to God (see here ) and communicate with Him only by means of prayer. Sometimes, in their desperation to have their prayers answered, people would use tricks, amulets or formulas which, they think, will help to fulfill their needs and desires. The Tora, however, is not a book of magic written to teach us how to make God do what we want. The ultimate objective of prayer is not forcing God to accept our will, but training us to accept His.

What is the proper way to pray to haShem?

I’m quoting the invaluable words of rabbi Hayim Pereira-Mendes on prayer:

“Prayer means speaking to God. It may be Praise, Supplication or Thanksgiving. We should speak to God about what is most in our hearts, as a child speaks to its father. That is true prayer. We should place before God all our private wants, our sorrows and our perplexities. Nothing that troubles us in our daily lives is so unimportant that we need hesitate to speak to God about it in prayer.”

“Prayer is of little use unless we are conscious of what we say and feel that we are actually speaking to God. After true prayer we feel that we have been near to God. The object of prayer is to bring us near to God.”

“Prayer without proper conduct is worse than useless. It is an insult to God. Our prophets condemn prayer, sacrifices, the observance of Sabbath and other Holy Days, and all religious ceremonies, unless our conduct is acceptable to God. Right conduct is everything. Religious forms without right conduct are useless. Unless prayer, Sabbath, Holy Days and all religious ceremonies or forms build up right character, they fail in their purpose. We cannot expect that God will answer our prayers, unless we “do justly, love kindness and walk modestly before Him.”

Not everything is lost in Great Britain WATCH Douglas Murray discussing Israel and Iran

The 13 Principles of Jewish Faith: # 5: Praying directly and exclusively to God (part 1 0f 2)

The Fifth Principle says that it is proper to pray only to God, and one may no pray to any one else besides Him.

We should not pray to an angel, to a star, a constellation or to a dead person (see here ), even if he was a great Tzadiq. We should not pray to any other element, entity or idea. We should pray exclusively and directly to God. Praying otherwise will be considered a form of idolatry.

It is also forbidden to pray to intermediaries, imagine that they will carry our prayers to God. We believe that God always listens to our prayers. Quoting Rabbi Hayim Pereira- Mendes: “God never fails to answer true prayer, unless in His wisdom He thinks it better for us that He should refuse, or if He finds us unworthy through sin”.

According to Maimonides, the mistake of the generation of Enosh (=the civilization that existed after Adam, which mistakenly departed from God) was that they reasoned that since God created the celestial bodies to serve the world (like the sun and the moon) these creations are like the servants before the King. It is therefore fitting to praise, and honor them, because by honoring them, we are honoring the King. These people began to build temples for the sun and the moon, thinking that they were honoring God by that. That too, is idolatry. In other words, if one serves or prays to any entity or imaginary intermediary, even though one knows and declares that only God is the true God, it is considered idolatry.

Many times, people mistakenly believe that if their intentions are right, that is good enough. Given the seriousness of the prohibition of ‘aboda zara (idolatry), a real God-fearing Jew should be extremely careful to pray only and directly to haShem, our God.

Read here the book: “Jewish religion ethically presented” by rabbi Hayim Pereira- Mendes.

See Israel Snapshot Beautiful photos from the Land of Israel. By Israel 365.

The principles of Jewish Faith: # 4 “(Only) God is eternal” (Part 2/2).

Jews never believed in the eternity of the universe. The Fourth principle of our faith asserts that only God is eternal. The 13 Principles were formulated by Maimonides (1165-1204) early in his life in the commentary to the Mishna Sanhedrin, Tenth Chapter. At first, the Fourth principle, which asserts that God is first and last, did not include anything related to the belief in the beginning of the world. Rabbi Yosef Kappach explained that later in his life, after writing his Guide for the Perplexed, Maimonides clarified within that principle, that only God is eternal, which excluded the belief in an eternal universe: “A fundamental principle of the Law of Moses is that the World was created anew and that God formed it and created it from absolute non-existence. That which you observe, that I repeatedly argue against the eternity of the world according to the view of the philosophers, is to demonstrate the absoluteness of the miracle of His existence as I have explained and clarified in the Guide for the Perplexed.”

Let me explain what Maimonides meant. Beginning probably with Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC), philosophers and scientists denied a beginning of the Universe. They thought that the universe was never born or created. In their opinion, the universe was eternal (‘olam kadmon). This solid idea started to change only in 1930, when Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe was expanding. If the cosmos was expanding, and not going in circles as they thought until that time, then it must have a had a point of beginning. A few years later many scientists came with a simple inductive formula which affirmed that tracking back the movie of the universe’s expansion one will inevitably find a moment of beginning. The most famous hypothesis is called the Big Bang theory, which apart from the time it attributes to the beginning of the universe, reaffirms the Biblical idea of beginning. It is the first scientific theory that postulates a beginning of the universe, after 25 centuries of denying it!

Spectacular! WATCH: I am Jewish One Jew’s answer to what it means to be Jewish.

by Andrew Lustig, from Aish.com

The 13 principles of Jewish faith: # 4 God is eternal (Part 1/2)

As we discussed last week (see here) since God is not a body, nothing associated with the physical realm can apply to Him. Sleep, wakefulness, anger and laughter, joy and sadness, do not apply to Him. Whenever the Tora or the Prophets speak about God in this way, they do so in a metaphorical way and allegorical manner, or as a prophetic visualization. Similarly, we cannot apply to God concepts as birth or death. God does not exist in time. Such concepts as beginning, end, age do not apply to Him.

Asking ourselves, “If God created the world, who created God?” Is like asking ourselves: “If the baker baked the bread, who baked the baker?” In the same way the concept of ‘baking’ cannot be applied to the existence of the baker, only to his actions, the concept of creation or birth cannot be applied to the existence of God. God is eternal. And other than God Himself, everything was created by God out of nothingness. In the beginning, God alone existed. Even time itself is among the things created by God.

According to Rabbi Hayim Pereira-Mendes, God’s eternity has also implications in our expectations for justice. Since God is eternal, punishment for the wicked or reward for the good man might take place beyond the time-limits of our lives. “The knowledge that God is eternal, especially when coupled with the knowledge that He is omnipotent reconciles us with our trials and sorrows, and solves the puzzles of earthly life and its many seeming difficulties and contradictions. Thus, we observe that the good often suffer misfortune or trial, and the wicked are successful and apparently happy. But God is Eternal, and will, in His own time and in His own way, in this life or in the Future or Eternal Life, show us the meaning and benefits of the sorrows and trials, the difficulties and contradictions.”

Watch this video Apartheid in the Middle East

You will realize the bias of the media and the incredible cynicism of the international community. For whom the Palestinian people are worthy of compassion, huge financial relief and flotillas of humanitarian help, only if they are in (=fighting against) Israel, where ironically, they have full rights. But if they suffer in Lebanon or elsewhere except Israel, they are completely forgotten, discriminated and deliberately kept in the worse conditions with no-one to care for them. They are cynically used by their own brothers as human bargain-chips with the sole purpose of hurting Israel. Please, get informed and share this information with others. This methodical mass-disinformation and demonization targeted against Medinat Israel must be, at least, denounced.

The 13 Principles: # 3 God does not have a body (Part 2/2)

Previously, we explained that God does not have a body or any resemblance to humans (see here).

So different is God from us that we cannot even express with words anything about God himself on our own. We cannot say, for example “God is big” . Why? Because in our limited human language, the idea of ‘big’ might be used to refer to a ‘big’ cake, or a ‘big’ building, etc. How would we were to use that same word or idea referring to HaShem Almighty! HaShem’s greatness is absolutely beyond our knowledge, our imagination and our ability to express it with words. According to Maimonides, then, we must use words “via negativa”. We should not say, for example, ‘God is a spirit’, but we can say, ‘God is not a body”. There is one exception. In the Tefila (prayers) we do use words referring to God, but just to address God. When they composed the Amida (main prayer), the Rabbis also dealt with this question and they were hesitant to utilize any adjectives which will, so to speak, ‘define’, HaShem Almighty. “How could we dare to say about God, like Great, Powerfull, and Awesome (haGadol haGibbor vehaNora) ? Their answer was that we might say these words to address God, because Moshe Rabbenu used them in Perashat Debarim. So, we are just quoting the words of the Tora, without any pretension of understanding HaShem’s greatness.

When we dare to think of Hashem as if He is one of us, or as if we would know in our own what He thinks, or what He likes, we are just projecting our own small mind into an imaginary god. All that can be known about the God of Am Israel, is whatever He Himself wished to reveal in the Torah. It is through His Tora (Torah shebikhtab with Torah Shebe’al pe) that He communicated to us what His will is and how to address Him.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

READ “Steve Job’s last words”

The most important quote of the year.

by Rabbi Benjamin Blech

The 13 principles of Judaism: 3. God does not have a body

“The Creator, blessed be His name, has no bodily form, and bodily conditions cannot affect Him; He cannot be compared to nothing whatsoever.”

Attributing to God a human image, figure or condition is called: “anthropomorphism” and it is one of the most characteristic features of pagan religions. The pagan gods are born and die, have desires, fight with other gods, and have bodies. They are in a sense a reflection of those humans who conceive them.

The Tora, numerous times uses references to what seems to be God’s body, like “haShem’s eyes watch over the land of Israel” but our tradition explains unequivocally that those are just figures of speech, metaphors, and should not be taken literally.

While other religions conceived their gods in the image of humans, our Tora says that humans were created in the image of God (Bereshit 1:27). Let me explain this concept. God is the epitome of power, which means that He can do whatever He decides to do, without being pushed or constrained by any exterior impulses or even motives. This is why we call Him “Almighty”. Of all creatures of earth, only humans have the power of “freedom of choice”, choosing between right and wrong. Humans resemble God in that they are not driven by blind uncontrollable impulses, like animals. Like God, humans have the power of making moral choices. The more we exercise this power the more we resemble God, and the less we exercise this power and let ourselves be driven by our impulses, the less we resemble God.

In the beautiful words of Rabbi Hayim Pereira-Mendes: “When the Torah says we are created in the image of God, it means not in a bodily but in a spiritual likeness. To be like God we must lead lives that are Godlike or Godly. We are like Him when we exercise loving-kindness, justice and righteousness and take delight in these things.”

Practical Monotheism

The following lines are quotes from the book ” The Jewish religion ethically presented” written by Rabbi Hayim (Henry) Pereira Mendes in New York, 1904.

“You shalt not have any other gods before Me.

“This commandment teaches us that there is only one God. He is our God and we do not believe that there are any other gods. Therefore to worship any being except the one and only God, is a sin. It is called idolatry”.

“Self-Conceit, to give way to violent outbursts of passion, etc., are declared by our sages to be tantamount to idolatry. For the former shows that self, and the latter that passion, is a greater power with us than God is”.

“If we believe in the one true God, we can prove it by not neglecting or disobeying Him for the sake of anything. Many neglect Him for the sake of business, or pleasure, which is as much as saying that business or pleasure is a greater power than God”.

The descendants of Abraham Abinu are called to be “a blessing to the nations of the earth, preserving for mankind the knowledge of God… Our ten Commandments are recognized as fundamental among all civilized nations. The wisdom of our Torah is recognized universally. The ideals of our Bible are the ideals of humanity. And our Psalms are read and sung in worship in countless cathedrals and churches- while they comfort and inspire countless hearts and homes.”

“We will continue to be a source of “blessing to all the families of the earth”… by showing through the lives we lead, the wisdom and beauty of our Torah, and the ethical value of our religion and its ceremonies; by our loyalty to the ideals of our Bible- and by our standing at all times for God and Justice. When Jewish life means honor, when Jewish homes mean love, and when Jewish citizenship means righteousness- then Jewish example becomes a source of blessing to “all the families of earth.”

God is one. Understanding monotheism.

The second principle of our faith is that God is One. Last week we explained that monotheism, is not just an arithmetic reduction of the numbers of gods. It is, above all, a moral declaration. If only one God exist, then there is only one clear and exclusive set of moral values. The existence of numerous gods, on the other hand, justifies, or requires, moral relativism (see here).

Monotheism also protected the Jewish people against extinction.

In ancient times, assimilation did not mean social intermarriage. Civilizations clashed with each other, conquered and submitted to each other. When civilization A conquered civilization B, A would force B to accept A’s gods. Still, it was not necessary for B to get rid completely of their own gods. From now on B, would adopt and worship the gods of A alongside its own gods.

When two civilizations would somehow, live in peace with each other, one would graciously add the gods of the other to its own sanctuary. It was actually considered an act of politeness accepting and worshiping other gods. It showed that you were open minded and sophisticated. Needless to say, the constant wars and even alliances between civilizations were fatal for the original identity of those civilizations. Once A and B became AB, it was just a matter of time until they will also adopt C or D’s gods. Thus, the original identity, culture and values of A or B completely disappeared. That is how all ancient civilizations: A, B, C, D, etc. diluted from the face of the earth….

This phenomenon is known as ‘syncretism’, and it prevailed among ALL peoples of antiquity except for the Jews. Only the God of Israel demanded ‘exclusivity’: YOU SHALL NOT HAVE OTHER GODS, OTHER THAN ME…says the second of the Ten commandments.

(to be continued….)

The 13 principles of the Jewish Faith. # 2. God is One

Last week we explained the First Principle: God’s existence.

The second principle of Jewish faith asserts that “God is One”.

Maimonides explains: “He is not “one”, like a species (=category) which comprises many individual”, as when we say “one” book.

“He is not like a physical thing, which can be divided into parts and dimensions”, like a book, which is comprised of pages, cover, ink, etc. “He is one with a kind of Unity which is unique, exclusive of God”.

ALL other nations and civilizations in antiquity, conceived the existence and coexistence of several gods, because they saw in nature forces that evidently oppose each other. Life and death, good and evil, light and darkness, etc. Their reasoning was that multiple gods must be responsible for the diversity and opposite powers of ‘natural ‘ forces.

We Jews believe that there are no other powers independent from, or beyond God’s control. Rabi Yehuda haLevi explains in the Kuzari that this is why the word “Elokim” (Almighty) is written in the Plural: to express that all powers in the universe, all forces, depend on One source: God Almighty.

Abraham Abinu’s idea of ONE (and “invisible”) God, revolutionized humanity in many ways. Not just as an arithmetic reduction of gods, but mainly because of the moral implications of it.

Let me explain: Conceiving the existence of more than one God, represents an open invitation for moral relativism. One God is worshiped by waging war, the other, by peace. One by love, the other by murder. One by drunkenness, the other by sobriety, etc. Nothing is morally right or wrong in itself. The morality of one’s actions depends on the god one would worship today.

“One” God, means, among other things, moral clarity. There is ONE and ABSOLUTE set of moral behavior, coming from ONE God.

Monotheism, leaves no room for moral blurriness.

(to be continued…)

“Fundamentals and Faith: Insights into the Rambam’s 13 Principles” by Rabbi Mordechai Blumenfeld. From Aish

The 13 principles of the Jewish Faith. # 1. God exists

In his Perush haMishanyot, Maimonides (1135-1204) formulated the principles of the Jewish faith.

“The first principle involves the belief in the existence of God”.

God is our Creator, the Creator of the universe and the Creator of life.

“The ultimate foundation and the pillar of wisdom is the realization that there is a Being, a first cause, who brought everything into existence.”

In Mishne Tora Maimonides describes this belief as knowledge of God.

What is knowledge of God? We, the Jewish people, experienced collectively God’s revelation at Mount Sinai. In a sense, our knowledge of God is based on historical facts. At this very basic level, our knowledge of God is intimately related and depending on our trust in our forefathers –beginning with Abraham, Ytzchaq and Yaaqob– as credible witnesses of God’s revelation and as credible testifiers of all historical facts related in our Tora.

But this historical knowledge (=legacy) is just the basic ground of our faith. On an individual level, every Jew should set for himself as the ultimate goal of his and her life to acquire knowledge of God. “Knowledge” should not be confused with “understanding”. We do not expect to understand God! This “knowledge” is a function of closeness, of us being aware of God’s Presence, and our awe and love for Him. Praying to God, following His commandments and especially, studying His Tora, increases our closeness and knowledge of God.

The pursuit of this knowledge represents the fulfillment of the first of the Ten Commandments “I’m the lord, your God”.

Don’t miss this BRILLIANT presentation!!!

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks response to atheism