Down-to-Earth Spirituality

Unlike the Torah narrative that begins “In the Beginning,” a blog begins at the end. This "Torah Tweets" blog displays its narrative in reverse chronological order with the most recent post appearing first. The blog http://bibleblogyourlife.blogspot.com was created to reverse the order of the blog posts in this blog to begin in the beginning.

See the blogs for the books Through a Bible Lens: Biblical Insights for Smartphone Photography and Social Media http://throughabiblelens.blogspot.co.il/ and Photograph God: Creating a Spiritual Blog of Your Life http://photographgod.com/. Both books invite you to explore creative ways to photograph all that happens in your everyday life while crafting a vibrant dialogue between your life story and the biblical narrative.

Postdigital Narrative on Spiritual Dimensons of Everyday Life ///// "For the Lord thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp." (Deuteronomy 23:15) ///// "Judaism does not direct its gaze upward but downward ... does not aspire to a heavenly transcendence, nor does it seek to soar upon the wings of some abstract, mysterious spirituality. It fixes its gaze upon concrete, empirical reality permeating every nook and cranny of life. The marketplace, the factory, the street, the house, the mall, the banquet hall, all constitute the backdrop of religious life." (R. Joseph B. Soloveitchik) ///// "It is not enough for the Jew to rest content with his own spiritual ascent, the elevation of his soul in closeness to G-d, he must strive to draw spirituality down into the world and into every part of it - the world of his work and his social life - until not only do they not distract him from his pursuit of G-d, but they become a full part of it." (R. Menachem M. Schneerson) ///// "If there is a religious agency in our lives, it has to appear in the manner of our times. Not from on high, but a revelation that hides itself in our culture, it will be ground-level, on the street, it'll be coming down the avenue in the traffic, hard to tell apart from anything else." (E. L. Doctorow) ///// "The first message that Moses chose to teach the Jewish people as they were about to enter the Land of Israel was to fuse heaven to earth, to enable the mundane to rise up and touch the Divine, the spiritual to vitalize the physical, not only as individuals but as an entire nation." (R. Abraham Y. Kook)




Sunday, March 20, 2011

Tzav/Zakhor/Purim (Command/Remember/Lots) צו/זכור/פורים

Power-Ranger/Spiderman/Batman Defeat Haman/Hitler/Hamas
 
He shall remove his garments  and don other garments.(Leviticus 6: 4)
ופשט את בגדיו ולבש בגדים אחרים
Remember what Amalek did to you on your way out of Egypt.  How, undeterred by fear of God, he surprised you on the way, when you were famished and weary, and cut down all the stragglers in your rear.  Therefore, when the Lord your God grants you safety from all your enemies around you, in the Land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.  Do not forget! (Deuteronomy 25:17-19)
 
 

On the Shabbat before the holiday of Purim, we are charged not to forget Amalek's merciless murder of Jews solely because they are Jews.

We photographed Jewish children celebrating life in Purim costumes in our Power-Ranger great-grandson Eliad's kindergarten in Israel.
In the Scroll of Esther read on Purim, the incarnation of Amalek is Haman who plots to murder all Jews in the Persian kingdom.
This week, we could not forget!  We were witness to modern day Amaleks' aims to annihilate the Jewish people that will also fail.
We went to the cemetery in Petah Tikva to remember Miriam's mother Anna Benjamin on the 2nd anniversary of her passing at 102.
There are no tombstones to mark her parents' graves.  They were torn from their home in Holland to be viciously murdered in Auschwitz

IDF officer Moshe Peretz, father of Anna’s great-great-grandson Eliad, said kaddish for her parents on a IDF mission to Auschwitz.

This week, our son Moshe Yehuda went the funeral of the Fogel family butchered in their beds by bloodthirsty Arabs.
The Arab street celebrates these murders as Hamas fires deadly missiles into Israel and Ahmadinejad calls “to wipe Israel off the map.”

The Purim story ends in Iran with Haman hanging from the gallows he constructed to hang the Jew Mordecai.
Power-ranger Eliad aided by Spiderman and Batman will thwart the evil plots of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Persian ayatollahs.

For the Jews there was light, gladness, joy, and honor. (Esther 8:16
 

 

1 comment:

  1. Heard an NPR story this morning about the comfort Japanese get from their super hero characters during their devastation and trevail.

    Thanks for pointing out Leviticus sentence in relationship to Purim.

    ReplyDelete