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