Folks,
I'm a Southern Baptist. I was raised a Northern Baptist, then fell in with pagan communists, crawled back up to Presbyterianism and finally settled on Southern Baptists. Part of that was the Southern Baptists have better church suppers. Oh, yeah they do. Along the way I took some time to study the world's other religions, especially Judaism. Even so, I learned more from this essay below.
Go here.
3 comments:
There's other episodes that might
be of interest to readers here:
In the book of Samuel we read:
"Now, not a smith was to be found in all the land of Israel, for the
Philistines said, "Lest the Hebrews make sword or spear." And all Israel went down to the (land of) the Philistines to sharpen each man his plowshare..... And it was on the day of war, that neither sword nor spear was found in the possession of all the people who were withSaul and with Jonathan, but Saul and Jonathan his son had them."
Thus did the Philistines oppress the Jews then.
And another:
One might also recall the example of Mar Zutra II, leader of the
Jewish community in what is now Iran, c. 500 CE: The ruler of
Persia (Iran), Kavadh, cladestinely supported one proto-Communist Mazdak, whose hordes of agitators destroyed in large part the Persian cities, including the Jewish sections. Mar Zutra II
finally armed and organized the Jews who won many battles, and
enlisted many non-Jews in his forces. He was finally captured
and put to death.
This is a paraphrase of part of Chapter XI (Six, 6) in
Rabbi Marvin Antelman's book To Eliminate the Opiate (1971 IIRC)
And finally the maxim:
Ain somchin al ha-nes: Do not rely on miracles My apologies for
not locating the source for this.
Rabbi Yaffe mentions this also I
think.
FWIW, I've had more discussions
about the RKBA and with people
finally saying "I should be armed"
and about learning how to use one
this past month than ever before.
Post a Comment