[Avodah] Why is it customary for women and not men to light the Shabbos candles?

Zev Sero via Avodah avodah at lists.aishdas.org
Fri Sep 1 07:27:08 PDT 2017


On 31/08/17 22:43, Akiva Miller via Avodah wrote:
> I agree that this does sound like "original sin", but only
> superficially, in the sense that this was the first sin, prior to any
> other sin. But when Christians refer to "original sin", they don't
> mean merely that it was first on the timeline. They mean that it
> became rooted in human nature so deeply that we are all hopelessly
> damned, unless... well... we don't really need to go there.

But we don't think of it merely as "the first sin, prior to any other 
sin [...]  first on the timeline" either.  We agree with them, or rather 
they agree with us, that it was fundamentally different from any future 
sin, that it's what made the concept of sin possible, and that it 
transformed the world and human nature for the worse until the End of 
Days.  It brought death and disease and physical hardship into the 
world, so that even the few who are truly without any sin of their own 
must still die.  We disagree on some very important details, of course; 
unlike us, they decided that it affected even the neshama (that which 
goes Up after death), and that there is nothing humans can do about it, 
even in the very long term.  But overall these are merely details.

-- 
Zev Sero                May 2017, with its *nine* days of Chanukah,
zev at sero.name           be a brilliant year for us all



More information about the Avodah mailing list