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Ari Kutner: The Importance of G-d and Religion

September 12, 2011 By punktorah

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hJQt5egVPU

Filmed at Moishe House, Costa Mesa, CA. The G-d Project is the world’s first social media platform dedicated to Jewish spirituality. We bring God back to the conversation. www.theg-dproject.org.

Filed Under: Podcasts & Videos, The G-d Project Videos Tagged With: "Ari Kutner", Covenant, Judaism, mitzvot, Moishe House, Religion, the g-d project jewish, the god project, the god project jewish

Patrick Aleph: Judaism as an Ideal

August 16, 2011 By punktorah

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKnH1st0Ovk

PunkTorah director Patrick Aleph talks about Judaism and its reality in daily life.

Filmed in Athens, Georgia.

Filed Under: Podcasts & Videos, The G-d Project Videos Tagged With: G-d, God, god project, ideal, jewish new media fund, jnmf, Judaism, patrick aleph, punktorah, Religion, the g-d project, the g-d project jewish, the god project, the god project jewish, Torah

Parshah Tzav

March 18, 2011 By punktorah

By Michael Sabani

In this week’s Torah portion, Tzav, we learn all about the duties and right of the Kohanim, the priests, who offer the sacrifices in the Sanctuary. We hear about how the fire must be kept burning all the time, the clothes that the priests must wear, and details on the portions of the offerings that that are given to the Kohanim to eat.

 

Interesting…

We are told that certain potions of only particular offerings are given to the Kohanim, such as portions of the Sin and Guilt offerings, but in the case of the Peace offering, the bringer also eats a portion, as well as the Kohanim. I am struck by this situation.

 

Think about this. Hashem has those who do some of the highest work, the most difficult and messy jobs, eat of the offerings that others bring. Can you imagine waiting for someone to bring a sacrifice for you to be able to eat?

 

But here’s the flip side to that, even in our mistakes, or more clearly especially in our mistakes, G-d gives us the opportunity to do good. In the Peace offering, we can eat of it ourselves, but when we make mistakes part of the repairing that happens is us providing for others. So even when we miss the mark, Hashem is able to transform that into a blessing, into something that helps the community.

 

Let us take a moment and consider where where we may have missed the mark. What have we done, not in the past year, not in the past month, not even in the past week, but today! Where have we missed the mark today? Were we angry with a loved one? Did we curse at another driver on the road? Did we ignore the needs of those suffering around us? Did we act in frustration or deceit?

 

Think about these things and realize that in our mistakes is the power to repair. Through these mistakes lie the power to not only repair what we have broken, but to help repair others as well.

 

Hashem has given us a gift, not of being able to miss the mark, but of being able to realize where we have missed, step back up to the line, and aim again. And in this time, I pray we all hit the bullseye.

 

 

Filed Under: Jewish Text (Torah/Haftarah/Talmud), Your Questions Answered Tagged With: bible, convert to judaism, convert to judaism online, d'var, darshan yeshiva, kohanim, mistake, patrick "aleph" beaulier, patrick aleph, Priest, punktorah, rabbi beaulier, rabbi patrick aleph beaulier, Religion, sacrifice, sin, Torah, Tzav

Holiness in Everything, part 1

March 7, 2011 By punktorah

“Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?”
– George Carlin

If your house is messier than mine is you are, ipso facto, a slob. Conversely, if my house is messier than yours then you are, by definition, a neat freak.

Whose definition? Mine of course!

I dare you (yes you, sitting in front of your computer there!) to tell me I’m wrong. I dare you to tell me that if it’s not cleaning, it’s music (Nothing but newfangled noise! A dirge from the dark ages!) or social skills (loudmouth chatterbox or wallflower), or (as George points out) driving.

Or religion. Oh how we (and I’m including myself here) love to silently evaluate the observance level of others against our internal standard for normalcy. And sometimes not so silently.

I would run across someone whose behavior or outward appearance betrayed what I saw as a deeper sense of religious devotion than mine, and it struck a nerve.

We visited a friend of a friend for a holiday meal, and out he came to greet us in a silk topcoat. “What’s he playing at?!?” I exclaimed in the car later. “Whose he trying to kid? I went to high school with the guy.”

My wife gently pointed out that this must be due to the fact that, having interacted with me in the past, that guy was obligated to remain the way I knew him?

Irrational competitive insecurity was – for me at least – at the heart of it. Why wasn’t MY observance good enough for the other guy? Why did they feel they had do more, to push the limit (compared to me)? Was it some weird game of holier-than-thou one-upmanship? How long do your curls have to get before the peyot police issue a side-burn citation?

If what I was doing wasn’t enough, who decided what was? Is there ever a limit? And if there isn’t, what’s the point?

What if started keeping kosher, only to find out there was MORE kosher to keep? If I decided to start being shomer Shabbat, and then found out there something else after that, what would help me decide where to stop.

Because some of us want to, you know, do it RIGHT.

And don’t tell me “there is no *right* there’s only *right for me* because those other guys seem to walk around with the confidence that says they darn well think _they’re_ doing it right.

So whose playbook are they working out of?

Filed Under: Community Member Blogs Tagged With: convert to judaism, convert to judaism online, dare, darshan yeshiva, kosher, online conversion, patrick "aleph" beaulier, patrick aleph, punktorah, rabbi beaulier, rabbi patrick aleph beaulier, Religion, shomer Shabbat, think, Whose definition

The D’var Torah For Valentines Day

February 13, 2011 By punktorah

If you’re a person who believes that there is nothing outside the material world: no G-d, no spiritual forces, no power beyond what the senses can experience, then you might be inclined to say that love, for lack of a better word, is non-sense.

Love may, in fact, be an evolutionary development. Knowing that human beings survive better in groups than alone, evolution may have driven our attachment to others. We know that hormones in our brain create the passionate emotions which give us amorous feelings, and our specific desires in our romantic partners come from a process of trial-and-error; our brains learning to attach value to those who have the qualities that make us happy, creating “love maps” which guide us to the right partners.

If love is simply a result of thousands of years of natural selection, then it’s trivial to have a holiday like Valentines Day. After all, we do not have a holiday that celebrates other biological phenomena. This urge to make love the central theme of celebration points me in the direction toward believing that love is in some way “real” beyond physiology.

Ask anyone who does not believe in spirituality if love is real, and you’ll generally get a “yes” reply. That’s because there is something within people that takes the emotion called love, and removes it from this material, biological, personal experience. We can objectively see love as a pleasure button in the brain, but we don’t. We treat love as though it is a condition outside of human experience, like an ideal to strive for, to celebrate, and to insist on from the whole of the human race. Love is both personified, and transcendental. Love is so close that we feel our skin tingle, but so far away that we yearn for it.

Does this remind you of anything?

In the same way that we feel about love, we can feel about G-d. G-d is a condition outside of human experience, an ideal state to achieve, to celebrate. If you believe in the idea of human redemption, then G-d, like love, is something that the whole world should be drawn toward. We feel G-d close to us, and yet, so far away. G-d, like love, seems to hurt us sometimes, and heal us sometimes. And we know from science that our brains may be wired to experience religious ecstasy in the same way that our bodies create the chemicals of love and attachment to those around us.

Science proves what religious has said for thousands of years, that G-d and G-d’s love, are inside us.

It makes perfect sense to celebrate Valentines Day and to feel its Jewishness, because our covenant to cling to G-d, to create a just world, act in compassion for our neighbor, are all rooted in a sense of love that is beyond the material world. So remember this Valentine’s Day, whether it’s romantic love, the love of a friend, familial love, or the love of a child, remember that love, and G-d, are within us, always

And as a side note, there is a Jewish Valentines Day called Tu B’Av. 

Filed Under: Jewish Text (Torah/Haftarah/Talmud), Random (Feelin' Lucky?), Shabbat & Holidays Tagged With: convert to judaism, convert to judaism online, Counterculture, darshan yeshiva, holiday, Jewish, Judaism, love, online conversion, patrick "aleph" beaulier, patrick aleph, Punk, punktorah, rabbi beaulier, rabbi patrick aleph beaulier, Religion, Torah, Valentine's Day

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