Intro to Ivri: What does God mean?
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A. Leonard Cohen
From “Loneliness and History" a speech given in 1964
"I believe that the God worshipped in our synagogues is a hideous distortion of a supreme idea—and deserves to be attacked and destroyed. I consider it one of my duties to expose [the] platitude which we have created.”
From “Loneliness and History" a speech given in 1964
"I believe that the God worshipped in our synagogues is a hideous distortion of a supreme idea—and deserves to be attacked and destroyed. I consider it one of my duties to expose [the] platitude which we have created.”
B. The Izbitzer/R' Mordechai Yosef Lainer of Izbica
The God of yesterday becomes the idolatry of today.
The God of yesterday becomes the idolatry of today.
C. Emmanuel Levinas
"Loving the Torah More than God”, in Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism
The path that leads to the one God must be walked in part without God.
"Loving the Torah More than God”, in Difficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism
The path that leads to the one God must be walked in part without God.
***
Achat
Goddexx is love
Tapping into the power of a personal relationship with loving non-dual Divinity
Goddexx is love
Tapping into the power of a personal relationship with loving non-dual Divinity
(ג)שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יהוה אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ יהוה אֶחָד:
Listen Israel (lit. "God-wrestlers") Yah, our God, Yah is One.
(ט) וְהָיָ֧ה יהוה לְמֶ֖לֶךְ עַל־כׇּל־הָאָ֑רֶץ בַּיּ֣וֹם הַה֗וּא יִהְיֶ֧ה יהוה אֶחָ֖ד וּשְׁמ֥וֹ אֶחָֽד׃ ...(יא) וְיָ֣שְׁבוּ בָ֔הּ וְחֵ֖רֶם לֹ֣א יִֽהְיֶה־ע֑וֹד וְיָשְׁבָ֥ה יְרוּשָׁלַ֖͏ִם לָבֶֽטַח׃ {ס}
(9) And Yah shall be sovereign over all the earth; in that day there shall be one Ya, and their name will be One.... (11) Never again shall destruction be decreed, and Jerusalem/Cities of Peace shall dwell secure.
D. R' Arthur Green
Ehyeh: A Kabbalah for Tomorrow
Kabbalah teaches that there is a secret unity of all Being, hidden within the multiplicity and diversity of life as we experience it. God and universe are related not primarily as Creator and creature, which sounds as though they are separate from one another, but as deep structure and surface. God lies within or behind the facade of all that is. In order to discover God - or the real meaning or the essential Oneness of Being - we need to turn inward, to look more deeply at ourselves and the world around us. Scratch the surface of reality and you will discover God. The path to God is thus more like peeling off the layers of an onion than climbing a ladder to the sky. The "journey" of the seeker to God is only a metaphoric one. We, in fact, discover Oneness of Being by staying right here, paying as close attention as we can to the present in which we live. But if we are to speak of journeys, the mystic offers us a journey inward, an inner opening rather than a vertical ascent.
Ehyeh: A Kabbalah for Tomorrow
Kabbalah teaches that there is a secret unity of all Being, hidden within the multiplicity and diversity of life as we experience it. God and universe are related not primarily as Creator and creature, which sounds as though they are separate from one another, but as deep structure and surface. God lies within or behind the facade of all that is. In order to discover God - or the real meaning or the essential Oneness of Being - we need to turn inward, to look more deeply at ourselves and the world around us. Scratch the surface of reality and you will discover God. The path to God is thus more like peeling off the layers of an onion than climbing a ladder to the sky. The "journey" of the seeker to God is only a metaphoric one. We, in fact, discover Oneness of Being by staying right here, paying as close attention as we can to the present in which we live. But if we are to speak of journeys, the mystic offers us a journey inward, an inner opening rather than a vertical ascent.
E. R' Abraham Joshua Heschel
As quoted by Rabbi Art Green in "Abraham Joshua Heschel: Recasting Hasidism for Moderns"
I have come to sow the seed of sight in the world,
To unmask the God who disguises Himself as world.
As quoted by Rabbi Art Green in "Abraham Joshua Heschel: Recasting Hasidism for Moderns"
I have come to sow the seed of sight in the world,
To unmask the God who disguises Himself as world.
F. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
1963 Religion and Race conference in Chicago
Any god who is mine but not yours, any god concerned with me but not with you, is an idol.
1963 Religion and Race conference in Chicago
Any god who is mine but not yours, any god concerned with me but not with you, is an idol.
G. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
The Dignity of Difference
We encounter God in the face of a stranger. That, I believe, is the Hebrew Bible’s single greatest and most counterintuitive contribution to ethics.
God as Hack
H. Carl Jung
The person who thinks they can live without myth, or outside it, like one uprooted, has no true link either with the past, or with the ancestral life which continues within them, or yet with contemporary human society.
The Dignity of Difference
We encounter God in the face of a stranger. That, I believe, is the Hebrew Bible’s single greatest and most counterintuitive contribution to ethics.
God as Hack
H. Carl Jung
The person who thinks they can live without myth, or outside it, like one uprooted, has no true link either with the past, or with the ancestral life which continues within them, or yet with contemporary human society.
I. Anonymous
However a parent treats a child, that child will grow up and call it love.
However a parent treats a child, that child will grow up and call it love.
J. Christopher Bergland
Oxytocin, Spirituality, and the Biology of Feeling ConnectedPsychology Today 2016
...A wide-range of recent studies have highlighted oxytocin’s potential ability to promote empathy, trust, social bonding, and altruism. That said, oxytocin also has a potential dark side. Under certain circumstances, oxytocin can hardwire fear-based memories associated with post-traumaticstress disorder (PTSD).
To test how oxytocin might influence spirituality, the Duke researchers administered the hormone to one group of men and a placebo to another. Those who received oxytocin were more likely to say afterward that spirituality was important in their lives and that life has "meaning and purpose." This was true regardless of whether or not the participant reported having faith in a particular organized religion.
Participants who received oxytocin were also more inclined to view themselves as interconnected with other people and living things. They gave higher ratings to statements such as “All life is interconnected” and “There is a higher plane of consciousness or spirituality that binds all people.”...
Oxytocin, Spirituality, and the Biology of Feeling ConnectedPsychology Today 2016
...A wide-range of recent studies have highlighted oxytocin’s potential ability to promote empathy, trust, social bonding, and altruism. That said, oxytocin also has a potential dark side. Under certain circumstances, oxytocin can hardwire fear-based memories associated with post-traumaticstress disorder (PTSD).
To test how oxytocin might influence spirituality, the Duke researchers administered the hormone to one group of men and a placebo to another. Those who received oxytocin were more likely to say afterward that spirituality was important in their lives and that life has "meaning and purpose." This was true regardless of whether or not the participant reported having faith in a particular organized religion.
Participants who received oxytocin were also more inclined to view themselves as interconnected with other people and living things. They gave higher ratings to statements such as “All life is interconnected” and “There is a higher plane of consciousness or spirituality that binds all people.”...
K.Carl Jung
Letter to Bill W (a founder of AA)
[The addict's] craving for alcohol was the equivalent on a low level of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness, expressed in medieval language: the union with God....
You see, Alcohol in Latin is “spiritus” and you use the same word for the highest religious experience as well as for the most depraving poison. The helpful formula therefore is: spiritus contra spiritum.
L. Attributed to Carl Jung
All addictions are a low level search for God.
Letter to Bill W (a founder of AA)
[The addict's] craving for alcohol was the equivalent on a low level of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness, expressed in medieval language: the union with God....
You see, Alcohol in Latin is “spiritus” and you use the same word for the highest religious experience as well as for the most depraving poison. The helpful formula therefore is: spiritus contra spiritum.
L. Attributed to Carl Jung
All addictions are a low level search for God.
****
Max Ehrmann
Desiderata
[B]e gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the
stars; you have a right to be here.
Max Ehrmann
Desiderata
[B]e gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the
stars; you have a right to be here.
Octavia Butler
Parable of the Sower Earthseed: The Books of the Living
All that you touch
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you.
The only lasting truth
Is Change
God is Change.
Parable of the Sower Earthseed: The Books of the Living
All that you touch
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you.
The only lasting truth
Is Change
God is Change.
