So as I fight daily, hourly, yearly and
constantly with the 2,000+ year old tomes that are our holy books and
perhaps the inspiration of others' holy books, I continue to be
convinced that religion does not shape us we shape it. And moreover
that the point is that we shape it and how we do so.
I complain about, Christians
specifically, cherry-picking from the Bible (whatever bible means to
you). I complain about translations and wholistic* portions and
stories and context and I will continue. I will kvetch until G-d
proper eliminates Torah et al. from existence to stop me.
That being said, it's a big chunk of
varied writings we've got here and we can do whatever we want with
them. So some people pull out slavery, racism, misogyny, and close
mindedness. Some of us pull out some Girl Power (for example, when
G-d and Moses give land to women), doing good, engaging G-d and
community.
Every time I either read about how
anyone who violates the Sabbath shall be 'cut off from the community'
and/or ''die/be put to death'' I think that it is not for us to kick
them out or kill them. When I don't get to Shabbat, I feel cut off
and distant. I feel dead. That sin is it's own punishment. If you
don't engage Judaism OF COURSE you get cut off! If you don't feed
your soul OF COURSE you die!
This rabbi extrapolated how we can use
religion to be bad.
One of the things I respect most about
Islam is that (they wake up at 5am to pray, seriously) under the
premise of everything coming from Allah, the things that we think are
bad come from Allah as well.
For a long while I was well on my way
to being a destructive jerk-face. Destructive to myself, to society
and just unpleasant in general. I know that Judaism met me in the
middle somewhere and that we worked together to be better. Something
in me ended up pulling out and connecting with good things in this
culture, in this book, in these highly strange rules. And the more I
pulled out the more Judaism gave me. It's a never-ending expanse of
whatever we want it to be. So please reach for the good. Or at least
the better.
* I'm trying to fix language so I spell holistic 'wholistic' since it has to do with the whole and not the hole.
