Question and Comments from Jeremy ben-Daniel: Who was the man who wrestled with Ya`qov? Was it indeed a man (ish)?`Esav? Melkhitzedeq (Shem)? Was it an angel?Was it, as the Talmud indicates, `Esav’s ‘angel’? Why did `Esav have an angel assigned to begin with? Or …
There was once a world populated by monkeys who had been taught to revere ants. These monkeys were not stupid at all, though to human beings they might seem to be. These monkeys were in many ways the same as what we think of as …
Sometimes people ask me why i don’t like the Donmeh or the Shatz (Shabbatai Tz’vi)… Read the following from his and NoG’s manifesto and tell me if you would be stoked on a dude saying this shit and then crapping out when push came to shove:
“Hear ye, brethren in Israel that our Messiah is come to life in the city of Ismir and his name is Shabbetai Zevi. Soon, he will show forth his kingdom to all and will take the royal crown from the head of the Sultan and place it on his own. When nine months have passed, our Messiah shall vanish from before the eyes of Israel, and no one should be able to say if he is alive or dead. He will cross the river Sambatyon, which as all men know no mortal has ever crossed. There, our Messiah shall ride forth through Jerusalem, with Moses and all the Jews of old mounted on horses. He himself shall ride on a dragon, and his bridle rein shall be a snake with seven heads. On his way, he will be attacked by Gog and Magog, the enemies of Israel, with a mighty arm. But the Messiah with the breath of his nostril shall he rout them, and by his word alone, shall he utterly destroy them. And when he is entered in Jerusalem, God will send down a temple of gold and precious stones from heaven, and it will fill the city with its brilliance. And on that day shall the dead throughout the world rise from their graves. I hasten to tell you these tidings.”
The Shatz was not Judeo-Sufi AT ALL at any time. He pledged to be exclusively “Muslim” as the Caliphate understood it, when he was threatened with death. He didn’t return to fight another day, asserting that his comments were taqiyyah nor that he had an enlightened view of “Islaam” different from the Caliphate regimes. Instead, he just basically agreed to back off and to tell everyone to be good little Muslim boys and girls.
The real disappearance of Judeo-Sufism, and records of the `Issuniyim trace to his betrayal of the hopes of Israel (the historical name for the Jewish people, for those Muslim brothers and sisters who are unaware). After his betrayal, you couldn’t talk about ideas that were common in Judeo-Sufism, or the `Issuniyyah. That’s when these ideas, that were never the majority, became impossible to talk openly about without being wrongly associated with the Donmeh.
The Shatz is almost single-handedly responsible for the splintering of Jewry into the notion that Jewish means cut off any connection with Islaam, with things Muslims do, Judeo-Arabic, etc. The vacuum that he left in the hopes and dreams of redemption in the Jewish communities who had invested in him, would not be filled until the emergence of the Besht (Ba`al Shem Tov) and the “Chasidut” Movement he brought; aptly taking the name of the Judeo-Sufi pietism (the first Judeo-Sufis were called Chassidim).
More at some future date. Just thoughts right now.
The entire history of the development of Anti-Jewish propaganda in Ithnā’ `Ashariyyah Shī`īsm is too long a history to recount here. It will suffice, however, to jump forward a few centuries to the Allāhdad massacre of 1839 in Iran. The dismal picture of the severe …
Indicated by the title of William Schulz’s article “Is the ‘Ticking Bomb’ Case Plausible?” the author is presenting a compelling counter-thesis to the hypothetical “ticking bomb” scenario, so often posited by proponents of “necessary” instances of torture. Specifically, Schulz is arguing against Alan Dershowitz’s thesis, …
There once was a King. The King had a beautiful daughter whose beauty filled the entirety of the Kingdom. It came to pass that a pauper desired to marry the daughter because – being a young woman wishing to go about through the Kingdom – she had posed as a common woman and the two had fallen in love.
This posed no problem for the daughter, who did not cling to notions of status or wealth, but understood that no matter how great a man was, he was nothing in comparison to the King. For this reason she paid no mind to the poverty of the man who loved her.
While this was no problem for her, it was a problem for the pauper. To marry her the man must ask permission of the King and this was naturally very intimidating for anyone, let alone for a man of his status. This pauper was a simple man; so simple that he had never before even tasted meat. While this was initially because of his poverty, he had thus not grown callous to the killing of animals in the butchershops and markets. As such he came to be glad that he had never eaten meat, consciously deciding to be a vegetarian.
A banquet was thrown for the visit of this man to the King. However, he was ashamed to speak up to this fact that he had decided to be vegetarian when he was offered meat. Instead he accepted it and ate it. This enraged the King who had been briefed on the young man by his daughter. He knew the man was a vegetarian and had here compromised his beliefs for the sake of what he believed would be a way of obtaining his desire
But the King was sympathetic to vegetarianism, surprising enough to both the man and to the people of the Kingdom (many who imagined the King as a mighty hunter!).
“Truth be told, i am primarily vegetarian. I do eat meat but only the flesh of the animal or man who makes the mistake of trying to attack me. If you compromise your belief out of fear then how can you expect to be worthy of my daughter? If killing is wrong when you are on the outskirts of the kingdom, then why does it become right in your mind if it is to bring you nearer to the kingdom?
“If you had only known that it was because you were a vegetarian that i respected you, in spite of your lowly status; respected you enough to grant you audience with me and to consider your request to marry my daughter. If you had only known that i love animals myself and that i had desired for my daughter to marry only the most compassionate man in the Kingdom… If you had only known this then you would not have taken this meat – which is in fact artificial meat, mock meat, an illusion – but you had to believe the illusion so that i could judge your character.
“As for me, i only kill those who aggress but you have killed for vainglory and imagined gain and thus all that you have desired will be deprived of you. I will save my daughter for a suitable man.”
There once were colonialists who travelled to a far away land. When they arrived they asked, in their own language, to be taken to the king of the land where they had arrived. They spoke a strange language and the people did not understand so …
There once was a King. In his kingdom there were many villages, many people, many animals, hills, valleys, rivers, lakes and streams… Within this kingdom the King built an enormous house for his servants to live in. The house was beautiful and abundant, so far …
There once was a carpenter who wanted to build a great house…
This house, however, was not like any other house. This house existed in a land where there were a myriad of apartments; high-priced, high-rise apartments that packed people in where they barely had room to live. Still, the people had little options but to live in such an environment.
It was this situation that caused the carpenter to seek to build a mansion with many apartments; a mansion that his father was actually the architect of. It wasn’t long before the man had met a number of individuals who wanted to help…
“First,” he said, “we will need to obtain more specialized skills and workers. What we do not know we must learn, and in the meantime, while we are learning, we must save and buy materials for this complex.”
The carpenter estimated, in accordance with what his father had told him, that it would take 300 workers and a dozen overseers of another supervisor, who would himself manage a dozen workers, as the overseer would manage both this supervisor and a dozen of his own workers. The first task, therefore, was to acquire and train these dozen overseers, and then these secondary managers. They would then each find and train a dozen suitable workers of their own…
In the mean time they would have to work very hard, both in training for the project and in investing their time towards obtaining the necessary materials for the building.
After a few years it seemed that there were approximately one dozen of such individuals and even some secondary managers. “At this rate,” the carpenter said, “it should only be a short while before we have the necessary workers, training and funding for this project!”
But even this short while seemed like an eternity for many of the workers who had been training on job sites where much smaller buildings were thrown up much more quickly, by financers who had virtually unlimited funds due to their hands being dipped in the coffers of the high-rise apartment industry. But the carpenter would not get involved in this dirty business, and reasserted to his helpers that such was the direct antithesis of their project. “We must be patient,” he said, “and follow my father’s plans exactly. If we do,” he continued, “then it will only be a short while longer…”
…but those who said they came to help stopped showing up for work. They stopped their training to obtain the necessary skills for the project, “What does this guy know about anything anyway?” They said. “Where the hell is this grand architect of a father anyway? We should follow what he says we need to train in when he is not even telling us!?! Instead his son, who himself is still training, is telling us what we need to know? Between all of us we’ve worked a lot of jobs and had a lot of training. i think we know enough to go off on our own and work on our own projects, or on more fruitful projects around; projects that are actually doing something now.”
So many of them, most even, went their separate ways and did their own things. Years later they remarked to him “Where is your project now? Where is that house you were supposed to build? Didn’t you say it would only be a short while now?”
“My friends, don’t you see that this was with your help, and with all of us sticking to my father’s plan. I had many brothers before me who tried this same project and each of them faced the same problem. This project will only come about when the necessary people step up and help exactly as my father’s plan specifies. If this does not happen now then I will pass these blueprints on to a younger brother or even to my children. Eventually the project will be completed. My father is a great architect and he has assured me of this, and that is enough for me to be patient. The tasks are many that need to be done for such a project, but the workers are few. Pray then for more workers if you wish to see this all come to pass.”
There was once a great Kung Fu fighter… as years went by he learned much not only about his own system but about the systems of other fights. He realized that many techniques, qi kung, ideas about fighting, energy and the like were held in …