Nira Amit on the Parasha: Yitro, Part I

After her well-received first post on Parshat Yitro part II, I decided to translate part I as well. Nira Amit is an upcoming star in the Kofer world! ;)

OTD Depression and The Blame Game

It’s a common phenomenon that needs no further introduction: People who turn their back on Orthodox Judaism are often faced with depression. This is easily understandable, as they are often lonely and are left to their own devices.

However, they are often told that they brought their depression on themselves by distancing themselves from God and Klal Yisrael. It’s they who are messing up their lives and God who knows where they’ll end up (drugs, suicide, etc.). In short: It’s all their fault!

Alice Miller (in her book The Drama of the Gifted Child), defines depression as follows:

Depression consists of a denial of one’s own emotional reactions. This denial begins in the service of an absolutely essential adaptation during childhood and indicates a very early injury. There are many children who have not been free, right from the beginning, to experience the very simplest of feelings, such as discontent, anger, rage, pain, even hunger – and, of course, enjoyment of their own bodies.

Religion is all about denying true feelings, redirecting emotions and controlling the natural child within. Laws are ruling the orthodox person’s every step, even in the bathroom (how much you are allowed to uncover yourself, with which finger not to wipe yourself off, etc.).

Orthodox Jews are told what to read, what to believe, what to think and what to feel, what to wear and what to eat. Everything else is kfirah.

No wonder that many people have the inner need to rebel! To put it a little more blunt: if an Orthodox person did not rebel against OJ during their youth, I doubt it that they were really given the opportunity to experience their youth. After all, who wants to voluntarily let his inner self die?

The critical voices that so conveniently blame the victims also conveniently forget that people like them may have been the root cause for the heretics’ depression.

And that by ostracizing them from their communities, they are standing idly by the blood of their (former) brothers.

Tisha Be’av Headbanger: Burn Baby Burn

It surely beats the hell out of Eicha…

Oh yes, and these are my favorite Tisha Be’av posts for this year:

• Rabbi Pinky’s Tisha Be’av droshah
• Tisha be’av pickup lines (Frum Satire)
• 9 Av (Daat Emet)
• When was the Temple destroyed (Dov Bear)
• Do you really want Moshiach? (Dov Bear)
• Tisha Beav (Shilton Hasechel)

May we merit next year to have the fast of the ninth of Av be turned into an unorthodox hell of a party!

An Eye-Opening Moment

I read some Kugel last night and then it hit me: The Torah does not for one pasuk claim that God was its author or that it was inspired by anybody. For someone who was indoctrinated into the belief that God directly wrote / dictated every single verse of the Torah, this is totally new information.

Actually, the evidence seems to be on the contrary: the very first pasuk suggests already that it was written by someone not God as the creation story is written in the third person:

"In the beginning, God created heaven and earth."

Or, in the 'original':

בְּרֵאשִׁית, בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים, אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם, וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ

Notice that it says "God created" and not "I created"!

To which I can only say: "Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things from your Torah"!