Interfaith Parsha Chain (Going out with a bang)

[arthra]

Thanks Dauer for the response... I appreciated your effort and I learned a few things!

- Art

[pohaikawahine]

I thought I would jump in and go right to the end because it reconnects with the start of the cycle and completes the circle of knowledge .... VE-ZOS HABRACHAH: "And this is the blessing with which Moses, man of G-, blessed the Children of Israel before his death" (Deut 33:1). According to Rabbi Avraham Greenbaum (AZAMRA) "The last of the Torah's fifty-three parshahs thus completes the circle to make the perfect garden: 53 is the gematria of the Hebrew word GAN = "garden". Having recounted man's sins and the resulting tribulations - imperfection and disunity - and having set forth the code of law through which man repairs himself and the world, the Torah ends with rectification and unity. "And this is the blessing. And there was a King in Yeshurun when the heads of the people were gathered and the tribes of Israel together" (Deut 33 vs 1 & v. 5) ....

with the cycles of study we grow stronger in our knowledge of the messages of the Torah ....

as we move on to the next stage and close the interfaith parsha may we all grown wiser and stronger in our knowledge of ways to build bridges and cross over to the promised land together .... we start with the "garden" and we continue to seek it after our ancestors left it .... thank you Dauer for starting this project .... aloha nui, poh

[inhumility]

There was a mistake.Please see my next post

[inhumility]

Genesis
12:7-17
And he built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him. 8 From there he moved on to the hill country east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; and he built there an altar to the Lord and invoked the Lord by name. 9 Then Abram journeyed by stages toward the Negeb.
10 There was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was severe in the land. 11 As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, "I know what a beautiful woman you are." 12 If the Egyptians see you, and think, 'She is his wife,' they will kill me and let you live. 13 Please say that you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you, and that I may remain alive thanks to you."
15 Pharaoh's courtiers saw her and praised her to Pharaoh, and the woman was taken into Pharaoh's palace. 16 And because of her, it went well with Abram; he acquired sheep, oxen, asses, male and female slaves, she-asses, and camels.
17 But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his household with mighty plagues on account of Sarai, the wife of Abram. Unquote

This is unbecoming of a Favored-By-God i.e. Abram. God created man on his image i.e. on his attributes; and his Messengers/Prophets/Guided-Ones by God are a role model for the mankind hence they have to be in the highest form of His image, unique in love of God and truthful conduct. Abram would have died in the famine rather to use these dirty tricks ; why Abram should be as a low as a common man, to save his skin he introduces the Holy Sarai as his sister to Egyptians, to the extent that Pharaoh unknowingly takes Sarai as his wife. If that is correct (my conscience does not admit it to be right) then God should have (I take refuge from God) punished Abram rather than Pharaoh. If these days somebody travels and asks his wife to pose as his sister; is it considered morally good to conceal the true identity?
I don’t blame Abram and Holy Sarai doing that, as to me they never did it. It is the scribe character assassinating the Chosen Ones of God, and narrating made-up vulgar stories that make it interesting for the commoners and to attract the people around them. They don’t spare even the mother of all Israelis (and before that of Jacob and Isaac/Ishaq).
Thanks

[arthra]

I'm not sure this would be just a "dirty trick"...

We don't know all the parameters of ancient morality and survival that might have been involved in this...so this maybe a form of what some Muslims call "al-Taqiyya" or dissimulation which is only used in circumstances where one's life is in danger and it sounds like that was the case with regard to Abram in this case...

Also and this may be another important point since the text uses the name "Abram" we know from this that this was before He became Abraham after the Covenant with God and "Sarai" became Sarah.

By the way, in my view the use of "al-taquiyya" was abrogated by Baha'u'llah.

- Art

[pohaikawahine]

dauer - are you going to start the interfaith text study and outline the parameters of the dialogue .... just curious, there are no posting there yet ...
don't know if I will post much, but I would sure like to follow it .... aloha nui, poh

p.s. I'm starting another round of parsha studies put out by Rabbi Avraham Greenbaum (the man who translated the 138 Openings of Wisdom by Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto) .... he is doing a one year study of the Bible including the parshas as well 2 chapters a day of the other books .... it will be interesting to go back to the interfaith parsha project to see what I wrote before and how it compares to where I am now .... the tabernacle dialogue (limited as it was to so few persons) was one of great learning about the Torah for me .... if all goes as planned I will start lessons at a nearby synagogue .... mahalo nui to both you and bb for the many things I have learned when I read your posts .... this isn't goodbye, I'll still be around ....

[dauer]

poh,

I am going to be starting the ITS, probably very soon. It's going to require some special setup that Brian put aside until he had the time to do it properly, but I have all of the initial posts (rules, form to submit if you wish to lead a text study, etc.) all made up and ready to go.

I found another resource that may be your cup of tea. There's a website I found where the author, a rabbi, is going word by word through the Torah, via a free mailing list. He dedicated about 10 pages to the word bereisheet alone. He also has some of his material archived on the site:

www.milayomit.com

Dauer

[pohaikawahine]

mahalo nui dauer for the reference .... I have subscribed and love this form of learning .... in today's MILA YOMIT Rabbi Itzchak Marmorstein quotes from Moshe Chaim Luzzatto's 138 Openings of Wisdom which I also received a few weeks ago .... so much to learn and reflect on .... aloha nui, poh