“And so everything in this world depends on the mitzvos we do,” he was saying, using the Yiddish pronunciation of “mitzvot,” the Hebrew word for “religious commandments.” “There are no exceptions. You do the mitzvos, and your life will be well and the world will have peace, and we will bring on — God willing — the messiah. But if the Jewish people aren’t doing their mitzvos, this brings on calamity upon our people.”
.. “Wait a minute,” another kid chimed in. “What about the Holocaust? Are you saying the Holocaust . . .”
“I am absolutely saying the Holocaust!” the bearded man interrupted. “Everything you learned about the Holocaust is wrong. The Nazis were nothing but an instrument of Hashem [God]! Hashem brought the Holocaust on the Jewish people, and do you know why? It’s because the Jews of Europe fell away from a life of piety. They were abandoning their kashrus, they were desecrating the Sabbath!”
.. The blacklist really encompasses all rabbis who don’t subscribe to the narrow worldview of the Rabbanut, which holds that the only valid form of Judaism is one that adheres solely to the strictest interpretations of Jewish law and the most traditionalist social values.
.. grieve for the way those authorities undermine Jewish unity in the interest of their political power.
.. Israel has no separation of synagogue and state, and since 1948, ultra-Orthodox Jews have had the sole authority over personal-status issues in Israeli law. Moreover, ultra-Orthodox groups wield considerable power in the Israeli parliament and exert great influence over legislation. This lethal mixture of politics and religion is tearing apart the Jewish world through this list and similar exclusionary tactics
The One Word That Could Change Your View of the Atonement
When a child is kidnapped and a ransom is demanded, who is the one who demands a ransom?
In the Penal Substitution view of the atonement, the death of Jesus is a payment to God— but Jesus called it a ransom, and ransoms aren’t paid to the parents of the kidnapped!
Ransoms are paid by the parents of the kidnapped.
Ransoms are not demanded by those who are good, but by those who are evil.
.. The cross was a payment, a ransom– but not one demanded by God, it was a ransom paid by God.
.. In fact, in 1 John 3:8 he actually says that the ultimate reason Jesus came was to “defeat the works of the Devil.”
.. The cross, I believe, is the place where Jesus faced Satan’s wrath head-on. It is a moment of the ancient battle where Satan clings to those he has enslaved by sin
.. reconsider that the cross may have been more about Satan’s wrath against God, than God’s wrath against us.
What Do Expiation and Propitiation Mean?
You try to assuage his wrath by giving him something that will satisfy him so that he won’t come into your country and mow you down. That’s an ungodly manifestation of appeasement. But if you are angry or you are violated, and I satisfy your anger, or appease you, then I am restored to your favor and the problem is removed.
.. Expiation is the act that results in the change of God’s disposition toward us.
.. Christ did His work on the cross to placate the wrath of God. This idea of placating the wrath of God has done little to placate the wrath of modern theologians. In fact, they become very wrathful about the whole idea of placating God’s wrath. They think it is beneath the dignity of God to have to be placated, that we should have to do something to soothe Him or appease Him.
We need to be very careful in how we understand the wrath of God, but let me remind you that the concept of placating the wrath of God has to do here not with a peripheral, tangential point of theology, but with the essence of salvation.
.. But there is no wrath for those whose sins have been paid. That is what salvation is all about.
The Seven Deadly Social Networks
Almost five years ago, in a soliloquy transcribed by The Wall Street Journal, Reid Hoffman suggested a comprehensive theory of social-network success.
“Social networks do best when they tap into one of the seven deadly sins,” the LinkedIn co-founder and venture capitalist said. “Zynga is sloth. LinkedIn is greed. With Facebook, it’s vanity, and how people choose to present themselves to their friends.”
Lust, of course, is Tinder.
Gluttony is Instagram
Sloth was Zynga once, per Hoffman, but Zynga is no more. Now sloth is Netflix.
Wrath, according to Dante, was a twin sin to sullenness. Rarely has there been a better description of Twitter.
Envy makes people so desirous of what they don’t have that they become blind to what they have. That’s Pinterest.
Pride is Medium.
Vanity or Vainglory—an unrestrained belief in one’s own attractiveness, and a love of boasting. That’s Facebook.
Acedia, a word we have now largely lost but whose meaning survives somewhat in melancholy. It is the feeling of Tumblr, it is the feeling of Deep YouTube