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"!