[Avodah] Mindfulness and does Judaism value it

[T613K at aol.com]

From: Yonatan Kaganoff _ykaganoff at yahoo.com_ (mailto:ykaganoff at yahoo.com) 

>>  I find it disturbing when when young idealistic Jewish activists who have 
been  active in liberal, left-wing political causes, are told by Kiruv 
professional  that these ideas could be find in Judaism, when the Kiruv worker 
knows, quite  well how politically and culturally right-wing most Orthodox Jewish 
communities  are.<<

>>>>>
But most of the values that move young and idealistic Jewish activists  
really DO have their source in the Torah!  Of course, as these young  people learn 
more Torah, in most cases they will come to see how leftists have  misapplied 
and misinterpreted these values of righteousness and justice.   But the values 
are still Torah values.

 


An interesting thing about America is that both its major parties derive  
their fundamental principles from the Bible and therefore ultimately from us  
Jews. (The two parties are not nearly as far apart from each other as  people 
imagine -- the American political spectrum B'H doesn't go in for  extremism.)
 
I don't want to write a long megillah about this but to give a few  examples 
briefly:
 
.
1. tzadaka -- Dems say the govt should redistribute and equalize income,  
Reps say people should give tzadaka from their own pockets--but the very idea of  
taking from X and giving to Y, either way, ultimately came from us.  Torah  
prescriptions to give ma'aser, to share one's wealth and so on are quoted by  
both sides.   Other cultures -- e.g., Sodom, Sparta, Ayn Rand --  had no such 
notion.  
 
 
.
2.  equality -- Torah has a dialectic -- sorry for using buzzword --  many 
passages extolling equality and also many passages prescribing INequality  -- so 
you have on the one hand the notion that the king can do things a commoner  
cannot do, but OTOH a king cannot be exempt from mitzvos -- a talmid chacham  
gets precedence in certain things but OTOH a judge is not allowed to favor one  
side over the other in court proceedings -- etc.  The Dems grab on to idea  
of radical egalitarianism, equality of outcome regardless of merit, affirmative 
 action, income redistribution, women in the army, social  equality etc -- 
while Reps favor equality of opportunity, equality under  the law and so on -- 
but the ultimate if hazy origin of the American idea  of equality is the idea 
that all human beings are children of G-d, all are  tzelem Elokim and all have 
value in Hashem's eyes.
 
.
3.  Punishment in general and death penalty in particular -- the idea  that a 
just society will punish wrong-doers comes from the Torah, as does the  idea 
that the true, just punishment for murder is to forfeit your life.   OTOH the 
idea that judges must bend over backwards to prevent miscarriage of  justice, 
even if some malefactors go free, also comes from the Torah -- but let  me add 
that the Torah assumes that justice will ultimately be done, i.e., that  G-d 
will punish anyone who "gets away with" his crime in a human court.   Most 
libs today don't believe there is a G-d and don't believe that all  criminals 
will eventually be punished, but they do believe that society is  better off if 
some guilty people go free than if some innocent people are  unjustly punished. 
 (They aren't taking into their cheshbon the  loss of innocent people who get 
robbed or killed by criminals on parole but  that's another story.)   But in 
any case, the idea that  judicial proceedings must follow rules, that judges 
should not be allowed  to judge arbitrarily -- comes from Torah.    
 
.
So bottom line, both sides in the American culture wars are  
Biblically-derived, even if one side no longer sees or remembers its  own historic origins and 
even strenuously denies that this country was  built on the Bible. (Actually 
they're not consistent, because the side that  denies the Bible does sometimes 
quote the Bible to its own purposes, but  anyway....)
 
 And to tell a young idealist that his ideals can be found in the  Torah is 
not false.  However, over time he does need to be weaned from  manifestations 
of such idealism that represent a distortion or misinterpretation  of Torah.




--Toby  Katz
=============




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