Ok, so it really kind've annoys me how I write letters to certain people who live in Portland and they don't respond. They should be drooling and slobbering all over their computers whenever I write to them. Long pauses and silence make me nervous. They don't love me anymore, that's the only conclusion I could possibly think of. So the solution? Suffocate them with an endless barrage of whining complaints and a long string of letters with big puppy-dog eyes (in writing of course). And then fill up their voice-mail boxes. Then they'll love me. How could you resist?

This is the third poem from Nerval's collection of poetry, Les Chimeres, placed within the scope of the Western Canon by the ever-amiable Bloom of his own (not Joyce's) creation. I hesitate to set it in translation because, more than Myrtho, it is heavily dependent upon obscure Greek and Egyptian mythology (and probably involves other traditions as well) rather than imagery, and it is rather more difficult for me to translate mythology into satisfactory English verse. I try to avoid overt attempts at rhyme/meter in these translations, but the original is an Alexandrian sonnet set in an ABBA schema, the french "rime embrassee".

The gods, in order, are Horus (the sun god); Isis, fertility goddess and wife of Osiris; Cybele, or Gaia, the earth mother, goddess of prophecy and rebirth; Osiris, god of underworld and creation, husband of Isis; and Iris, the messenger god of Greek mythology, associated with the rainbow. In looking (very briefly) at some of the mythologies surrounding Osiris I came across a legend in which he is assaulted by his evil brother Set and cut into 12 pieces. In one tradition, the goddess Isis buries each piece in a sacred place; in another she reunites them together and restores her dead husband to life. The legend continues that Horus, their son, exacts vengeance on the wicked Tel and subsequently displaces Osiris as king of Egypt, whereupon Osiris takes up rulership of the underworld.

Horus

The god Kneph in spasms shook the spheres
Thus Isis, the mother, stirred from sleep,
Made a hateful sign to her rageful spouse,
And the ardor of other times burned in verdant eyes.

-- Look at him! -- she said -- He’s dead, the old sinner,
All the hoary frosts of the world have passed upon his lips;
Let us bind his contorted feet, extinguish his sinister eye,
For he is the god of volcanoes, and the king of winters!

-- His genius is already past, and a new spirit calls me,
So I’ve taken it up again, for Him, the Cybele’s robe…
For He is the well beloved son of Hermes and Osiris!

And the goddess having fled to the gilded shell
The sea again sends us her image well
Beloved and the skies shine under Iris’ sash.

A few notes on the translation (given according to line numbers): [4] especially awkward translation, compare with "Et l'ardeur d'autrefois brilla dans ses yeux verts." [5] French uses the 2nd person plural form, so I have translated Isis' speech as if it were a dramatic aside. [6] The word for hoary frosts is "frimas" -- I take it to be a euphemism for death, but a dictionary also reveals the word to mean "rime"...I leave it to the reader to speculate on any possible double meaning. [9] The word for genius, "aigle", can be taken more overtly to mean "eagle." [10] The title character of the poem is absent, a splendid effect (much the way God is absent from Dante's Commedia) that lends him a sort of majesty. The first "Him" refers to the ailing god Osiris, but the pronouns following have been capitalized to refer to the absent Horus. I admit this is also a bit awkward. [13] "Mer" (ocean/sea) could possibly be heard as "mere", a pun referring to Isis (which would be an interesting signification, since Isis is the goddess of the earth).

Continuing with my translations, this is a poem by Emile Nelligan, 19c Quebecois poet:

"Clair de Lune Intellectuel"

My fancy is colored remote lights,
At basin some crypt in the vague deep.
She has perfect shine of rippling greens
At bay in the sunlight’s scattered rays.

At echoing garden, tinkled by fountains
Silence she lives in the whisper of twilight,
Perfumes; my reflection is colored as far nights,
At basin some crypt in the shimmering deep.

To trickle forever the quick of a grace
Climbing the ardor of seraphic space;
So, far from cares of vile skin
She dreams the pure heaven of Athens

Color of distant gold moons.

Ok. So I have just realized I have no social life. Again. :-(

Continuing in the spirit of translation, here is a poem by Nerval, "Myrtho."

"Myrtho"

I think on you, Myrtho, divine enchantress,
On Pausillipe's arrogance -- those thousand fires blazing --
On your face drowned in the Orient's shining,
On black grapes mixed with the gold of your braid.

It is from your cup that I've imbibed intoxication
And from the hidden lightning in your eyes,
When, at the feet of Bacchus you have watched me praying,
And thus the Muse has made me (yes) your Grecian son.

I know why, below, the Vulcan's ruptured himself (again)...
Because yesterday you had touched him with an agile foot,
And in sudden cinders so he covered sky!

And ever since a Norman duke broke your gods of clay
Always, under the boughs of Virgil's laurels
The pale hydrangea locks -- with my green myrtle!

Anyone out there know Latin?

Okay, I'm trying to translate bits of The Aeneid in order that I might keep up with my Latin this summer. So if you find a problem with my translation (which is, more than likely, inevitable) please email me at firezdog@yahoo.com. Please please please! All right. Here goes.

Liber I (vv. 1-7)

ARMA virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris
Italiam, fato profugus, Laviniaque venit
litora, multum ille et terris iactatus et alto
vi superum saevae memorem Iunonis ob iram;
multa quoque et bello passus, dum conderet urbem,
inferretque deos Latio, genus unde Latinum,
Albanique patres, atque altae moenia Romae.

"I sing of arms and of a man, who first came, from the lands of Troy, to Italy and the Lavinian shores-- running before fate -- whipped both through lands and by the high power of of Juno's muchness of savage memory and anger; therefore enduring much strife and war -- but in order to found a city, bearing the latin gods, whose beginning is in Latium (and the Albanian fathers), so to raise the walls of Rome."

So as you can see, this needs work. Please help. Mail me (firezdog@yahoo.com) with suggestions.

Sugar vodka. Brought to you by Kedem.

So I'm at an impasse with this religion thing. On the one hand, I feel like a lot of the beliefs and practices stemming thereof are wrong, philosophically. On the other hand, I think that religion has a component of emotional and psychological value that the so-called "secular" world cannot replace. Nor is the sense of spiritual release that a good session of prayer provides to be found in the study or the academic armchair. I have had such intense feelings of unity and awe before something divine...I am sure G-d exists as an emotional if not a physical reality. I am tapping into something which I could not otherwise reach. Schul provides a means of stimulation that is, I think, very valuable. What I dislike, however, is having to parse out the negative aspects -- the dogmatic urgings, the egocentrism, the ethnocentrism. All of these elements deaden worship. I wonder, because today I was perusing and I came across a book on Martin Buber and his "I / You" relationship between G-d and mankind. I think there's something to his philosophy. Mankind's relationship to G-d can only be as powerful and inspiring as is his relationship to his fellow man, and his relationship with his fellow man can only be as good as his union with G-d. Now this may seem like a logical contradiction, because, after all, where do you start? But I think perhaps what Buber is alluding to, here, (or at least what casual observation suggests to me) is the unity of religious process and secular process. In becoming a better human-being, I not only become closer to my brothers and sisters, all 6,000,000 in destitution and luxury, but I come to a real understanding, I see the face of G-d.

The Pilgrim's Progress:

I'm really fed up with Judaism. About a month ago I began looking in an orthodox synagogue to become more involved with "my heritage" but the more I discover the more it seems to be all lies and circumlocutions.

To me, Judaism approaches a book (Torah) with principles that are seemingly derived from that book. Torah cannot then disagree with the principles, so in the instances where it does (sorry, seems to), elaborate explanations are devised to show that the contradiction is, in fact, *not* a contradiction at all, but a hidden teaching. And we, the poor laymen (to say nothing of the women), are to sag under the weight of this convoluted burden until it crushes us, taking it on faith; for to disbelief is to sin against G-d (to be polite, I will use the ridiculous hyphenation).

And yet despite all this, Judaism offers no good argument (that is, an argument that doesn't sound like fundamentalist raving) to the documentary hypothesis posited by very able scholars that the Torah is a redaction of a number of sources. Oh sure, there's the cute little "everybody received it on the mountain, you can't contradict a tradition like that," and then there's the even more adorable, "but the Torah says they received it on the mountain..." (all the Greeks believed that Homer wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey, but no one takes a claim like that seriously in the classical world; traditions can and have been wrong, look at popular philology, for instance) and I'm sure there are any other number of other circumlocutions and bizarre explanations that completely disregard and turn against historical and logical arguments which are not simply posited out of antagonism to the Jewish faith (because the whole world is filled with people who concern themselves solely with inflicting as much damage on our poor little faith as possible because they have nothing better to do), but actually operate on the basis of firm and sound reasoning.

To be fair, I am not offering here a defense of the documentary hypothesis against whatever claims orthodox rabbis have brought against it, but that is because one can only rail against flawed logic in the synagogue for so many weeks before one wearies of thinking about it even outside of the synagogue.

So if, as I believe, the Torah is a redacted source (occam's razor, the simplest explanation is usually the correct one...which is to say that this theory much more readily explains contradictions in the document than the "hidden teachings" explanation...instead of pages of Talmud to explain why there are two creation accounts, that give different orders of creation, why not..."Hey, they're different documents") then the entirety of Judaism is...a culture. No divine reasons to follow it, no neccessity of studying it.

Well this is what absolutely enrages me! Because without the hand of God behind its principles and "ethics" and "philosophies", Judaism has NOTHING to offer to the non-believer. It is not as advanced or sophisticated or as deep as Western philosophy, which offers LOGICAL PROOFS AND CONSIDERATIONS for the ideas it presents. In fact, it is a tradition that, to me, seems to openly oppose logic in the event that adherents might begin to think for themselves and challenge the Jewish tradition. And then there's always excommunication to those who actually are somewhat intelligent and can devise there own opinions -- Baruch Spinoza, now wasn't making him an apostate a bit of a mistake?

And yet, the entire orthodox world affirms that the Torah is from God, and oh...our Oral Law is too (how convenient) like Kabbalah (how convenient); so study it all and learn it *by rote*, because it is more important to memorize a page of the Talmud than it is to ever possibly question why sages are arguing about issues which, though they might once have been charged with life, are now today useless and irrelevant to the reader; they are, indeed, "sages", as the tradition would have it, and far wiser than you and me.

In short, in an age when religion has an ever more and more tenuous claim to authority, here is Judaism, sitting with its little fence around the Torah, persisting in error, refusing to accept that a detractor's opinion could ever be valid, and so we wonder why half of the world despises us and would have us out of the way as soon as anything else. I sometimes wonder if those of us who try to believe are not like a mass of people who have fallen into a pit and are writhing and struggling with each other to get out.

Found among the writings of Zander Levi:

Once a student -- a great scholar, whose wisdom was thought without bounds in the institutions and the universities of the West -- being disturbed by a dream -- for he had seen God's angel descend to him from among the clouds -- resolved that his knowledge was firm but his faith was weak. He undertook to journey to the Baal Shem Tov, that great sage, in order that he might supplement his physical weakness with a greater spiritual strength.

Now when he arrived at the dwelling of the Baal Shem Tov, he was not greeted by that eminent man, but rather by his wife. She informed him that the Master
of the Good Name had gone on a remarkable journey, and this is what she said of him:

He has gone to the eastern horizons to fetch stars, that he might fashion a crown for Hashem so that he might glorify Him and decorate His Name with all the garments of earthly beauty.

Now the scholar scoffed, for he said, "Why is that the thing which he has gone to do? For is it not written in the writings of the sages that these are the garments of the Creator, his creations? For a man cannot, surely, fashion something for Him from the things that He already has!" and with these words, the scholar went away.

Now again the eminent scholar of sagacious study and refined wisdom was visited by an angel in his dreams; the angel descended to meet him from the heavens, but he could not see it, for the heavens were glowing in brilliance. So when he awoke, the desire in him was fresh to heal his weakened flesh and impart upon
himself the blessings of that sweetened nectar of prayer which imparts the Holy Spirit.

Now he set out again and when he reached the outskirts of the Baal Shem Tov's dwelling-place he found once more that the great and admirable man had gone on a splendid and most illustrious journey. His wife said these words:

"For has he not gone to the west to pluck from the rich fields of fruit all of the first gatherings of grain and the blessings of the sweetened pears and peaches for a first fruit offering to the Lord?"

And the most eminent and high scholar replied, "Why surely the mouth of the Lord cannot be sweetened by these! For these are the things which He has himself produced; they are the dregs of His grace!" and with these words he departed to his studies, for he was studying comparitive theology, the wisdom of all the religions
of the world.

Now again the angel descended to him in a dream, and offered him a cup of such glowing light that its sweetness blinded him. And when he awoke he set out. Now in the fields he saw a man dressed in rags and dross, and he was picking potatos out from among the crops of the field. The Baal Shem Tov's wife came to the great and eminent scholar, and she said:

"Now there is the luminary, picking potatos from the field for a stew."

"In honor of God's grace, surely," the scholar replied tartly. And so when the Baal Shem Tov had finished picking potatos, he began to sing a song, and now all the field-workers who were working with him out in the field dropped their burdens and danced. And the music was good in the scholar's eyes. Now the Baal Shem Tov made a most delicious stew and dined with the scholar, and they argued much about philosophy, and these digressions were good in his eyes. Now the Baal Shem Tov made the servants take out a good wine after thedinner, and poured two glasses, and lo the golden cups were filled to their brimming, and the wine was a sweet nectar, and it was good in the scholar's eyes. And then the scholar looked up to the heavens, that most eminent scholar, and observed they were shining with stars, above the field, glimmering down their blessings. And his spirit was made whole.

So now the scholar, the high and most eminent, the wise scholar, he lowered himself, drunk half with wine, sobbing with virtue, to the knee of the Baal Shem Tov. And the Baal Shem Tov stood over him and uttered the blessings over the wine, and benched the bread, and when the prayers were done...for now they were ready to enter into quiet discussion.

"Great master," said the reputable scholar
"Yes?"
"Lo, I have come to you two times already," he said.
"Yes?"
"And none of them were you there," he said.
"Yes?"
"And I have had a dream, that an angel descended from the depths of the heavens, and gave to me the offerings of sweet nectar and a crown of the stars, but I awoke in a fervor and a hunger for faith."

"Now let me tell you a story," replied the Baal Shem Tov. "There was once a man, a most eminent and reputable scholar, and he came seeking wisdom from a poor farmhand who tended the field. And now the farmhand who tended the field was accustomed to go about dancing in ecstasies so that whenever they would talk, the excellent man of wisdom, he could not learn, for lo, when they discussed axioms the farmhand would sing, and when they discussed wisdom, he would dance! Now this
was a most ridiculous man," he observed wisely, for the scholar had bellowed, "And he was to crown God with the stars and sing the King with good fruits," and sharply the scholar inhaled, "So you see! You have eaten of the fruits of my table, and I have collected the stars, and behold the majesty of His works! You have seen through my labors that the Lord God is sweet, and thus the Lord God is decorated with the jewel of your faith. And may it be a blessing to Him and for you, amen."

And the most humble man departed, a worker most grateful and wise.

Argument

These records were discovered amidst a pile of old documents in a small hut in northern Poland. The pages are covered in the dust of centuries and frequently the text is corrupted. They are believed to be the work of a scribe by the name of Zander Levi; the excerpts relate how, when copying a scroll of Torah, he suddenly was overcome by a divine radiance of light and lost all control of his faculties. As he ascended higher and higher into the realms of God, the earth below him became nothing but a pinprick of light, until he is supposed to have ascended to the heavenly kingdom, where the Great Glory of the Name stood with one-hundred and thirty-seven angels on his right and left, all reciting the "Kedusha" and bowing in fervent ecstasy. There the Holy One (blessed be His Name) revealed to him the errancy of the scribes in the school of Korah, their great sin, and their subsequent fall.

The Words of Zander Levi, Sribe of the Lord

So I began to copy the words of the scroll, and lo my candle had blown out and I was covered in darkness, and my well accustomed hand scratched the Sacred Letter incorrectly, and then I was as one lost, who wanders through the endless hills calling out the name of Lord, but the Lord does not reply, for lo his sheep have wandered through the earth, and they have strayed, and there they are, and one cannot hear the bleating of the sheep.

When! I felt a dull glow overtake me and the unsatisfactory document seemed to pulse with a hidden and inner light, and the words rearranged, and they said, "These are your gods, Israel, that brought you out of Egypt" and, so bright was the light coming from the words, and none more than the light emanating from the Holy Name, blessed be the name, that I was blinded and could not see, and I was as a man walking in the way of the land, and I could see the towers and the verdure of the hills, mounds of green grass and cracked towers, ah so beautiful I can hardly think fo the words to write!

And then! I was climbing through the skies. Now I could see before me a mound of pure gold, and there was smoke coming from the hills, as if they were burning, but it was like the sweetest incense. And I was become an eagle, for it is written "you shall fly on the wings of eagles back to the holy land" and so swift was my flight I was overtaken by the beauty of flying.

And so I ascended into the clouds, and the sun set in the green on the golden dome, and the golden dome flashed to blinding, an eternal pinprick of the little light trapped in the voluminous landscape and illuminating it as even the slightest trickle of the sun breaks a mirror into pieces and foundations of shining. And I weeped tears of the night, tears of darkness that covered the shining splendour only slightly, so that I revealed the heavens and the stars; and the pearl of my heart was growing, and it was the moon.

Now the heavens rippled like a very delicate cloth, like a very fine material, like a mesh, and then then through the mesh I could see the great light, for the great light was hidden, and I could not approach it. So I spoke and I said, "For if I myself have been given the wings of great eagles and the piercing sight of the hawk..." and the heavens opened, and the firmament began to glitter like a gem, and then it was as if a woman were derobing herself and so I was filled with ecstasy when the folds of the garment slid off.

Now I was blinded in vision, and I could not think of flying, or writing, nor did philosophy touch the soft, new-pressed vellum of my vision, and nor could I move or writhe, for I was held like a squirming thing that is suddenly pinched and made still. I was, for all, completely powerless and helpless, and so I began to fall.

At first it was a vague fear, dim palpitations that I felt spread from my inner gut to my heart; and then it was a terror that infected a corpusculent mind. But as the darkness rushed to embrace me the soft and tender caresses of a mother, I felt a warmth and a joy. I realized that darkness was the way through which one can reach the light.

And so I blinded myself, and lo -- I had a new vision. So I shut my eyes, and lo -- I could see. By becoming wicked myself I made mighty, in fallibility I become infallible. I ascended to the reaches of God, a consciousness without an object, a glimmer in darkness, and his vast immensity I could not approach, for it was pinched, but I heard "Lend me the faculties of your sight" and I gave them over to him, and then I had a vague vision. And then I knew, "lend me the faculties of your hearing" and so I lent him the faculties of my hearing, and behold I could hear! And then behold, "Lend me the faculties of your taste, your smell, your touch" so I lent him the faculties of my taste, my smell, my touch, and Lo! I was there. And I could feel, and I was in the garments of my splendour.

Now the prophets have cried, "These are the words..." but I have verily felt them, and on this subject I know that a being revealed is a being hidden, and the eternal love that burns in the celestial garment is the cloth in which we clothe our hearts. Now the sages have uttered, "Be deliberate in judgement..." but I have verily learned that all judgements which are not deliberate are not judgements, and all deliberations that are not judgements are not deliberate, and I have cast aside the utter fallacy of logic.

So I saw by the number of one hundred and thirty seven by the side of his wisdom, by the number of one hundred and thirty seven by the side of his understanding, and in the unifcation of axiom and creation the pure being of his soul, each crying in turn "Alleluyah, Elohai Avraham Elohai Yitzhawk Elohai Yaakov, Ha-el hakadosh..." and I wanted to join my lips in great praise but I heard the saying that said, "For lo I have granted you will see these things, but of them you shall not speak, for you must pass them over in the silence of your heart," and I was bursting with light.

"Might I not speak?" I cried in the inner decadence of my sin! "May I not sparkle and scarlet and gild the whole world in speech of the instant, eternity of words?" And cry was a burst of flame, and I heard the following utterance:

For those who have spoken have not spoken truly
And those who know could not convey
For the sages have uttered utter falsehood
And even the blind have seen wisdom;
Behold, I shall confound their wise men
And they shall speak the wisdom of the fools,
And the fools I shall make blind, and the blind can see
All is glory and the radiance of God. Study my Torah
But not from the hands that delivered it, for here lies the true revelation.

And these are the things that were spoken, by Holy of Holies, blessed be he, and blessed be his name, by the Prophet of Levi in the year of the pogroms, blessed be the Lord:

For they came to Moses and they cried, "Shall we not know...?" And Moses was astounded, and he fell upon his face. Now they cried, "Come, let us make for ourselves a document. Out of the skin of goats shall we make it, and we will press hard the black ink on it, and we will bake it in the ages of time, so that it will not be forgotten, and we will make a Name for ourselves." And Moses was confounded, and he could not speak, and they withheld the glory of the Name of the Lord from Israel. And the Lord saw them, and he said, "Come, let me go down among them" but the Lord came not down, for his heart was distraught. And these are the generations of the elders of Israel, their scholars and their the sages, and the great men and wise.

So I have heard from the mouth of the Lord our God. And if it is not true, it is just; and if it is not just, it is true. For in truth justice lies, and in lies we find justice in truth. Spring exultancies make a flower fling her decadent facade up to the sun, and she drinks strong of the light like a sweet nectar. Like a sweet nectar flowing from the tongue, flowing to the eyes from the mouth of God, like these are his words.

What, I ask any of you, is so subversive, so utterly detestable in paganism? Whether man assigns creation to one god or several, does it make a difference? If we worship the wind that whispers in the leaves, the woods that bear forth ships, the curling smoke of the fire of sacrifice, are we turning inward and expelling from our eyes the light of the world? Is a god of justice and a god of anger any less preferable to a God of justice and of anger? Is a single moral exultancy concomitant with our findings that there is one way of living and loving on the earth? And if we raise our hands and altars to the love of all things, do we inevitably exalt our own selves only as if looking in a mirror?

To Rabbi Palatnik, concerning the movie 28 days later:

The movie in the subject is very astonishing. It is not easy to watch, but I think it is interesting to see. The movie underlined an appointment point about existentialism that I didn't think of, and that is this:

If the world is inherently meaningless, then there are certain ideas which are of such value and importance to the human mind and to human existence than not believing them makes life pointless. In such a case, it is better to "make them up", or to pretend that they exist, rather than exist entirely without them.

I wonder if perhaps (this is a statement that would need much refinement, and I think it is difficult to discuss existentialism without doing a thorough reading of its authors, because we are making judgements without a thorough understanding of the evidence) the core of existentialism is not the idea that you can "make up" your own meaning, but that meaning is neccessary to life and that life is a better choice than death, meaning or no.

If this is the case, than existentialism is an answer to the post-war world (something drilled into our brains in school, a suspect interpretation) rather than a criticism of religion. The existentialist tries to answer the question, "If there is no God, if existence comes before essence, then why should I continue to live my life?" It would focus, then, not so much on the axioms (there is no meaning) as on the response to those axioms or what logical conclusion we might draw from them.

I think a work with some deep observations on this experience and possibly some movement towards this idea is "No Exit" (Huis Clos) by Sartre. Camus' "The Stranger" is also very good.

However, I am bringing tomorrow a collection of Plato's dialogues, among them which is contained the one I want to read, the Euthyphro, which is only 15 pp. long (most likely it would be good to make a copy of it so you can read it at your leisure.

Sincerely yours,
Alex

The following is a letter I wrote to a Rabbi at Ahavas Yisroel and summarizes pretty accurately my current religious quandaries and doubts:

If the Torah isn't from G-d, then how can I follow a
religion based entirely upon it? And if it is from
G-d, then where are His kindness, His love, and His
justice? A G-d of pure goodness remote from an evil
world is somehow tolerable, but a G-d who intervenes
in its history and actively causes good men to suffer
because they do not accept the Jewish worldview seems
somehow absurd and merciless.

I have believed that the Divine is some element to
which the spirit of mankind is naturally attracted and
that each nation, through its own religious genius,
prescribes a method of ritual and myth by which it
might approach that divine, or what we would call G-d,
something ineffable and incomprehensible.

But I find I have little tolerance for intolerance:
what kind of a god would judge humanity's attempts to
reach him invalid and consequently deal with them more
harshly and stringently than even the most cynical of
men? Why would one remote people stranded in a desert
in the corner of the earth be chosen from among all
the other nations men have inhabited in every part of
the globe? Why should I leave off studying everybody
for the sake of a single nation and her convoluted
egotism, an egotism she would find entirely misplaced
after even a casual reading perusal of her own Bible,
which proclaims her wholly unfit for the task which
she was (supposedly) assigned?

And I was thinking a good deal about Kings II and King
Josiah, the discovery of the Book of Law; the argument
for God's authorship (Moses et al, if you will) is
that all the people were present when God delivered
the Torah -- but it just seems so much of Israel
strayed from the Torah, how would they ever pass down
the tradition that they were there? They gave it no
importance. They willingly followed other gods. The
supposed Book of Moses isn't "discovered" until after
King Josiah's renovations of the temple; it seems a
period of many generations before Israel even has the
Torah at all.

And if the Torah is from God, how can we deny that
Jesus is the messiah? Look what happened to the Jews
and look what happened to the Christians! The history
of it would seem proof enough...

Forgive me if this is very harsh, but very harsh are
my doubts; and I have questions and I am uncertain if
or how I can find answers. And the argument, "All of
Israel was there..." it seems so cheap, so
unsatisfying, so far from the grounds of scholarly
debate and historical study, and I am sure if I only
had the qualifications and the training I could
provide a very good and not only plausible but
extremely likely reason for the tradition.

But again, forgive me if this is harsh in tone. Even
having spoken of it I feel some relief. I think I
shall go to schul again tomorrow. But these thoughts
are a heavy burden on top of everything else, at
times.

Alex Leibowitz