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Vladimir Minkov

The Jews and their role in our world

Vladimir E. Minkov, PhD

The Jews and their role in our world:


Personal intellectual journey to discovering Jewish identity (for Jews and Gentiles)

USA INVLAD 2010

Vladimir Minkov

The Jews and their role in our world

That is the beginning of the Jewish people: Mount Sinai, God, Moses, Ten Commandments

Vladimir Minkov

The Jews and their role in our world

The Jews and their role in our world Copyright 2010 by Vladimir Minkov All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the author. ISBN ????????????

Vladimir Minkov

The Jews and their role in our world

The Jews and their role in our world: Personal intellectual journey to discovering Jewish identity

Table of Contents
In lieu of an introduction 1. About the book, about the author and about potential readers 1.1. Preface, necessary for a better understanding of this book 1.2. A synopsis of the book for those who need it to go further 1.3. Who the author is and why he wrote the book 1.4. Who are the intellectuals and why their understanding of Jewish identification is important 1.5. Who may like this book and who may not 2. 20-th century novelty in Jewish identification that put the author on the road of personal intellectual journey 2.1. Identification with the goal of physical extermination how it was in the Nazi Germany 2.2. Identification with the goal of spiritual extermination how it was in the Former Soviet Union 2.3. Neglecting the identification with the goal of assimilation how it was in the Czech Lands 2.4. Multiple identifications with the goal of adjusting to the new social environment how it was and is in the USA and Israel 3. Intellectual examination of Religion and God as the foundation of identity of peoples and communities
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3.1. Intellectual examination of Faith in Religion as the core of identity of peoples and communities 3.2. Intellectual examination of the Higher Governing System above us as God 3.3. God for believers and unbelievers 4. Intellectual examination of the Torah and Judaism as the foundation of identity of Jewish people 4.1. The unique concept of the Gods Better World as the foundation of Judaism 4.2. The Jewish Choseness by God as the spiritual mission of building the Gods Better World 4.3. Spirituality and intellectual spiritual concepts of the Better World 4.4. Individual responsibility in building the Better World not a collective irresponsibility 4.5. Spiritual competition in building the Better World among orthodox, reform and secular movements 5. Jewish identification in Christianity 5.1. The same man as revered Rabbi Yehoshua for the Jews and Holly Son of God for the Christians 5.2. The Torah (the Old Testament) for the Jews and the Christians as unified Judeo-Christian guiding principles of the Better World 5.3. The Talmud for the Jews and the New Testament for the Christians as different interpretations of the unified Judeo-Christian guiding principles of the Better World 5.4. The Ten Commandments and its contemporary JudeoChristian interpretation 6. Jewish identification in social-economic institutions of the Judeo-Christian countries 6.1. Science in harmony with the Torah and Judaism 6.2. Democracy in harmony with the Torah and Judaism

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6.3. Free entrepreneurship in harmony with the Torah and Judaism 6.4. Jewish achievements in advancing science, democracy and free entrepreneurship 7. Jewish identification in the judgment of non-Jews 7.1. From almost deification to almost demonization 7.2. Who are treating the Jews as almost saints and why 7.3. Who are treating the Jews as almost devils and why 7.4. Spiritual cooperation and confrontation with the nonJewish world 8. Jewish identification in the countries of greater Jewish influence 8.1. The USA 8.2. The State of Israel 8.3. European Union 8.4. Russia 9. Finally, what does it really mean -- the Jewish intellectual identification

Vladimir Minkov

The Jews and their role in our world

In Lieu of an Introduction

Vladimir Minkov

The Jews and their role in our world

IDENTIFICATION AND THE TORAH

For many centuries theologians, archaeologists, historians and scientists have been trying to prove or disprove the truthfulness of the events described in the Torah/Bible. But from the point of view of the identification of the Jewish people, the truthfulness of the events described in the Torah is irrelevant. Even if all the events described are a figment of the people's collective imagination, this imagination shaped the Jewish people, made them unique, and defined their spirituality, which also is the identification of these people. All the descriptions and the interpretation of the events of the Torah/Bible must be examined from these positions in this book.

Vladimir Minkov

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IDENTIFICATION AND GOD In recent decades debates on the subject "there is a God, there is no God" have come to such a head that sometimes a discussion of the scientific essence of the concept of God as some kind of a power ruling over us, in a system in which people exist, is replaced by an unscientific discussion of this power's interpretation in people's minds. But all the peoples of the world, including the Jewish people, have identified themselves from the very beginning in the way they have interpreted the ideas of this supreme ruling power in the organization of their life on our Earth. Therefore, even if one were to accept that the interpretation of the idea of this supreme ruling power, called God, for organizing people's life on Earth is simply a figment of the Jewish people's imagination, one must recognize this collective imagination has shaped the identification of these people. It is from these positions the intellectual identification of the Jewish people must be investigated in this book.

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COLLECTIVE AND INDIVIDUAL IDENTIFICATION In the course of Jewish history individuals have been identified as Jews by external forces rabbis or anti-Semites. "A Jew" was a kind of invisible label affixed to an individual regardless of the desire and spirituality of the individual himself. This book explores the Jewish identification not as the verdict of these external forces, but as the conscious decision of the individual himself based on his intellectual understanding of the history of the Jewish people and their unique role in the advancement of the ideas of "A Better World" for every human being. And in it the meaning of Jewish intellectual self-identification.

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IDENTIFICATION FOR CREATION According to the Torah/Bible, the "Better World" is not the realization of social systems contrived by earthly enlightened leaders, such as the founders of capitalism, socialism, communism, halakhic Judaism or sharia Islam. The "Better World" according to the Torah/Bible is the realization of the combined efforts of individuals of Judeo-Christian spirituality continuing the spiritual and material creation of our world in accordance with their understanding of their own role in the continuation of what was created at the very beginning by someone or something subsequently called God (regardless of how this someone or something is imagined in the minds of people).

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IDENTIFICATION FOR THE COMPETITION OF IDEAS According to the Torah/Bible, the "Better World" on our Earth IS NOT the totality of the worlds of independent isolated and quarreling countries when all individuals within each of them follows the same creative plan developed "from top to bottom" by a country's authoritarian leadership. According to the Torah/Bible, the "Better World" on our Earth IS when the creative work of individuals within each country shapes a country's creative aspect "from bottom to top" and the totality of creative forces of independent countries cooperating spiritually and competing peacefully is a continuation of the creative work begun at the very beginning by someone or something subsequently called God.

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INDIVIDUAL INTELLECTUAL IDENTIFICATION Most of the Jewish readers have reconciled themselves to an interpretation of Judaism's fundamental principles, in particular, the interpretation of the concepts of the Torah/Old Testament given by rabbis who obtained the training required at yeshivot, seminaries, colleges and the like. In other words, one can obtain the knowledge to understand the religion and abide by it correctly only from a rabbi. Everyone knows the rabbis of the different streams of Judaism Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and Humanistic interpret Torah concepts differently. Therefore, it is thought a Jew selects a stream closer to his world-view and follows the instructions of its corresponding leader. It is supposed to be somewhat that way. But not completely!

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The rabbi plays the role of a teacher in Judaism, while in Christianity a priest plays the role of a minister passing God's word to the parishioner. The Jew speaks with God directly, bypassing intermediaries in the form of rabbis. Because inasmuch as all Jews, as all other people, were created in the image of God the Creator, that is they themselves are creators, they should work in partnership with God the Creator and be in constant contact with Him for it. This means each Jew has the right, and perhaps is obligated, to find for himself the most effective means of such contacts with the Almighty with the purpose of visualizing the best individual way of creating a Better World in family, workplace, community and nation. (The author is talking only about Jews here, though he believes everyone - Jews and Gentiles have such a right and perhaps also are obligated). And the author, just a scientist, not wise in the lessons in a rabbinical Yeshiva, but wise in intellectual, scientific examination of various technical and human systems availed himself of that right and how it turned out for him has been set forth in this book.

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IDENTIFICATION AND TALMUD While the Torah is the foundation of understanding the role and duty of Jewish people in our world among all other peoples, the Talmud is the foundation of determining the practical means of fulfilling the duty of Jewish people imposed on them from the Above by something what we call God. One of the most prominent Jewish scholars of our time Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz describes Talmud as an inspired by God guidance for finding the best possible way in pursuing the duties of Jewish people imposed on them by God. The Talmud identifies the Jewish people as intellectual researchers pursuing the goal of finding the ultimate truth of what is the purpose of human existence in our world, and what the Jewish people are supposed to do here and how. Since this book is devoted to understanding the role and duty of the Jewish people in our world among all other peoples, this book analyses mostly the Torah.

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That is the beginning of modern revival of JudeoChristian spiritual friendship that is at the foundation of Judeo-Christian civilization In 1986, the highest Christian authority Pope John Paul II went to a Rome synagogue to pray with the city's Jewish community and Chief Rabbi of Rome. Noting Christianity's unique bond with Judaism, he said, "You are our beloved brothers ... you are our elder brothers" in the faith of Abraham. In 2000, the Pope after meditating at Jerusalem's Western Wall placed in the wall a written prayer to God expressing deep sadness for all wrongs done to Jews by Christians. It ended, "Asking your forgiveness, we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the people of the Covenant."

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Chapter 1

About the book, about the author and about potential readers

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1.1. Preface, necessary for a better understanding of this book


The three spiritual strongholds of the Western World are: for the Jews Jerusalem, for the Christians the Vatican, for Moslems Mecca. Religious authorities say that such strongholds are a fundamental identification of all peoples living in our world, including too the Jewish people. To what degree is it possible and necessary to trust identification authorities?

To what degree is it possible and necessary to trust in one's own intellectual analysis?
Is it enough for a Jew to proclaim he is Jewish and then live like Christians, or Muslims, or Buddhists or the life and deeds of a Jew have to be different from the life and deeds of non-Jews to consider himself a true Jew? And if indeed the life and deeds of Jews should be different, should this difference be a natural outcome of the Jewish religion, history and traditions to be proud of it and not to be scared of anti-Semitism? Those thoughts have been the true spiritual concerns of the author from the very beginning.

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The Jewish people identify themselves with the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

The most prominent Christian identification symbol is Vatican.

All Muslims identify themselves with Mecca.

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This book is a result of more than 30 years of observations and trying to understand how intellectual Jews understand the essence of being a Jew. They are the intellectual Jews living in the countries of the former Soviet Union, in the United States and in Israel. Among them are those for whom their native language is Russian and those who understand only English. Some of them think the Almighty demands steadfast compliance with life's unchanging halakhic rules; many hold to the opposite opinion, believing that the Almighty created the whole world, including too the Jews, which is constantly changing; and there also are those who generally do not believe in the existence of the Almighty, but nonetheless consider themselves full-fledged Jews. Attempts to find the answer to the question of Jewish intellectual identification began precisely when the author began to collaborate with different Jewish and Gentile social and professional organizations immediately after his emigration to the United States from the former Soviet Union. He tried to get the answer to a question tormenting him during this collaboration: what are Jews and why do they garner such great attention from everyone both friends and enemies? He received many answers, but not one of them satisfied him. And he was not satisfied because the majority of responses were not very intellectual and boiled down to the following: we all have been divided into groups and each group has its own point of view; all points of view are based on eternal traditions and if my group survives in spiritual competition with others, then our traditions are true; the discussion of other group points of view comes to naught it only brings disorder to our members;

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it is unnecessary to add intellectuality to identification they are completely different notions; and so forth.

And the author remained spiritually dissatisfied. And he began his own personal search for the answer to his question. He thinks he has found the answer and that answer is presented in this book. This book is an attempt not to divide Jews as "correct" and "incorrect," but to find what unites them intellectually as Jews. Moreover, it is an attempt to show that there is a fundamental spiritual commonality between Jews and Christians, despite all the historic difficulties of living together. And furthermore, it is an attempt to find what unites Jews and Christians with all the others into a single mankind. Since a single mankind exists, there must be something spiritually the same thanks to which mankind spiritually exists, and there must be a power that created this unity There must be a single connecting meaning in the existence of Jerusalem - and of the Vatican and of Mecca. And when Jews exclaim, "Next year in Jerusalem," this exclamation should not sound like a call for a trip and a change of one's residence. Thousands of studies have been devoted to such philosophical ideas. But this book is not an overview of the ideas described in these studies. This book is an attempt to find in these ideas the Jewish identification and most of all, the role of Jews in our world, while being based on the thoughts and personal experience of the author himself. And the main thing here was an intellectual reading of the Torah and the numerous commentaries to it. Moreover, the opinions of numerous Orthodox and Liberal rabbis, as well as interviews and discussions with many intellectual Jews and Gentiles, both close to religion and far away from it, were a fundamental source.
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But the reader will see no moral admonitions in this book in the form of interviews with rabbis or references to authoritative statements, because the thoughts cited here are not a compilation of authoritative assertions, but the personal understanding of the author himself. And because the author wanted to present everything in as compressed a form as possible so contemporary Jews trying to learn everything (and Gentiles trying to learn everything) would be able to understand what is being discussed at once without tiresome searches for the essence in traditional quotations and facts known to everyone. The word "Torah" is mentioned frequently in this book and the usage of this word requires an explanation. Two determinants are attached to this word in Judaism the Torah is written and oral in Judaism. The written Torah is the Pentateuch consisting of the books Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. The oral Torah includes what is called the Talmud and in essence is comments on and interpretations of the Pentateuch. The Pentateuch is included in the Tanach including besides the Pentateuch the writings of Jewish prophets. The age of the written Torah is counted from when God appeared to Moses and the Jewish people on Mt. Sinai more than 3,300 years ago, though the Torah we see now was written significantly later. The Tanach/Torah is called the Old Testament in Christianity, distinguishing it from the New Testament which is in essence the writings of the first followers of Jesus Christ himself (the Apostles). The Talmud in Judaism probably is the counterpart to the New Testament in Christianity. The Old and New Testaments in Christianity are united by the word Bible. Thus, the Pentateuch (or Old Testament, as it is called in Christianity) is understood in this book to be the Torah.
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This book is not an appeal to believe the authorities, though most often they are right. Mostly this book is an appeal to intellectual thought using one's own intellect obtained by each person individually from God, and not the intellect given by God to other people who honestly earned the title of authority.

Compliance with authorities leads to joining a crowd, collective or group. Compliance with one's own individual intellectual analysis leads to the affirmation of oneself equal "to the image of God the Creator."

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1.2. A synopsis of the book for those who need it to go further.


The Torah as we conceive it now appeared, as many think, nearly two and a half thousand years ago.

Afterwards appeared authoritative comments on the Torah such as the Talmud (including the Mishnah and Gemara), Midrash and Rashi where the essence of Judaism (of being the Jew) is laid out in detail. A multitude of comments to each chapter of the Torah appeared in the last century written by contemporary rabbis in which Torah concepts are imparted a modern interpretation. Just why is the discussion about what a Jew is continuing; why isn't it all sufficient for Jewish identification?

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It is no secret that all Jews understand in different ways why they call themselves Jews. Orthodox Jews think that only complete fulfillment of the halakhic rules in the Talmud make a Jew a true Jew. Reform Jews think that a Jew is one who just thinks of himself as a Jew, and the Talmud only is a reminder of what happened in Jewish history, but its rules are not mandatory. Traditional Zionists think only life in Israel makes a Jew a true Jew and that is enough. The majority of former Soviet Jews think they are Jews only because they were born into a Jewish family and it is best not to talk about it. Many American Jews sincerely believe that to be Jew, it is enough simply to be a liberal who struggles for the redistribution of tangible wealth in society so everyone is approximately equal wealth-wise.

And this list of Jewish divisions can be continued ad infinitum. Therefore, to the question of what divides Jews, the answer is easy practically everything! It is said not without reason that two Jews always have three opinions on the very same question. It is more difficult to answer the question of what unites Jews, what makes them a single people. A common language? There wasn't one. Three languages existed the Yiddish language of the Eastern European Jews, the Ladino language of the African and Spanish Jews and the Hebrew language of the Palestinian Jews, plus the Jews spoke the languages of those countries where they lived. There was no common language, but there were Jews.
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A common territory? But there wasn't one for two thousand years after the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, and there were Jews. A common culture? The Sephardic culture is completely different from the Ashkenazic, but nonetheless, both groups consider themselves Jews. A common history? Jewish history has become part of the history of those Gentile countries where Jews have lived in the last two thousand years, but they consider themselves part of the general Jewish population as before. General anti-Semitism, the Ghetto, oppression? Yes, they have united all Jews. But they had a way out of them they could do away with the anti-Semitism, the Ghetto and the oppression, converting from Judaism to Christianity or Islam, but the majority of them preferred to remain Jews.

If that is so, then there remains only one explanation: belief in the special designation of Jews that makes them the chosen people (not in the interpretation of anti-Semites, but in the interpretation of the Jews themselves) and is their identification. This belief includes: recognizing the one God the Creator, revealed by Abraham and interpreted in different ways to different peoples; understanding the concept of our original creation "in the image of God the Creator" that identifies our chief responsibility as God the Creator's partners in the creation of the Better World on our Earth;

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following the covenants of the Torah, where God's principles for building the Better World on our Earth have been identified, that boils down to the growth of spiritual and material GOOD and a decrease of EVIL on our Earth; knowing how to distinguish GOOD from EVIL according to the principles identified in the Torah.

And that is what made some ancient pagan tribe the Jews. Not only do those who uphold the position of Divine Chosenness agree with it, but also those who think Jews made themselves the chosen ones in the sense of their uniqueness in the process of their historical development. Even those Jews can agree who consider themselves nonreligious, inasmuch as their faith tested by time transitions from generation to generation, as they say, from "the mother's breast" (or genetically as one can say now) even for those who know neither God nor religion. If after all the One God and the Torah are the main thing making Jews Jews, then why don't Jews agree on how such unity should appear in a single behavior of Jews, in the very same way of life, the uniformity of which would allow one to distinguish Jews from Gentiles immediately? There are long and short answers to this question. The long answer is based on the analysis of the 3,000 year spiritual history of the Jewish people, including the explanation of the essence of God and the Torah by fundamental competing Jewish sects of the pre-Christian period such as the Sadducees, Essenes, Pharisees, and later also the Zealots, Hellenistic Jews, etc.; the Talmud and the Talmudic interpretations of the Torah which give opposite opinions on the very same questions which reflected the points of view of the different sects;
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the halakhic rules of Jewish behavior (some of them led to the Shulhan Aruk Orthodox code of behavior), which is impossible to follow fully, inasmuch as they reflect the completely other living conditions that existed many centuries ago; the numerous often contradictory explanations of authoritative rabbis who interpret the very same Torah positions for different life situations; the presence of many spiritual streams in modern Judaism, including too in Orthodox Judaism; new spiritual streams in the modern state of Israel that appeared from the very moment of its formation.

There are thousands of publications about the long answer in which authors try to prove the correspondence of the point of view being defended to the spirit of the Torah and the disparity in all other points of view to the spirit of the Torah. It is simply impossible to analyze all these publications in one work, but the following short answer may help clarify the situation. Inasmuch as we, human individuals, were created in the image of God the Creator, we ourselves are the spiritual and material creators of the Better Life on our earth in accordance with God's design laid out in the Torah. And inasmuch as the main element of any true creation is a competition of diversified ideas, the diversification of ideas in Judaism is not only allowed, but is obligatory. Actually, inasmuch as we were created in the likeness of the one unique God (in any of His representations), each of us is a single, unique individual. Each of us appeared on our earth to find our own unique path for the continuation of the work of his predecessors in the creation of the Better World on our Earth, and each of us will pass on everything created to those who will continue this work after him.

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In order not to err from the chosen path, each one must strengthen his faith by participating in the spiritual life of his community, be it the observance of the Sabbath and other notable days of the Jewish calendar, the spiritual discussion of political and social problems, etc. The Better World is created by the individual in any place he may be at home with the family, at work among colleagues, in any Gentile organizations and places where fate may bring him. And it all is fulfilled individually, inasmuch as that is the way it is supposed to be - we all compete spiritually with each other for a better understanding and fulfillment of the concept of a Better World "according to God." While each Jew is an individual in his own creativeness, analysts of Jewish life can symbolically combine all Jews into three groups: (1) Those who decided to be assimilated and leave the Jewish faith because of the unreasonable burden, as it seems to them, of being a Jew. They continue creation under other, non-Jewish banners, and, it is possible, the ten lost tribes of Israel are in this group. Many of them became good Christians. Others became anti-Semites, most likely to justify taking such a step for themselves. The most apparent representative of anti-Semites in this group is the founder of Communism, Karl Marx. (2) Those who concentrated on the creation and strengthening of the Torah's spiritual and ritualistic traditions for the purpose of isolating the Jewish people from others, thus preserving a unique connection with their God and creating their own unique Better World on our Earth just for themselves, in the hope it all will be adopted somehow and sometime by others. The life and activity of such people as Rabbi Kook in Palestine before the founding of the State of
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Israel, Rabbi Nakhman of Breslov in Tsarist Russia in Uman, Ukraine, and the Lubavitcher Rebbe Schneerson in the United States, are typical of this group. This group may be called symbolically the Jewish custodians of the Torah. (3) Those who, while remaining Jews and spiritual followers of Torah concepts in the creation of the Better World on our Earth for all Jews and Gentiles, have concentrated on mutual creative work with others. The life and activity of such people as the founder of Zionsim and humanist Theodor Herzl, the supreme scientist, physicist and humanitarian Albert Einstein and the great actor and public figure Solomon Mikhoels are typical for this group. This group can be called symbolically the Jewish builders of the Torah. If under the assumption that everything being done corresponds to some plan of the Almighty (in any of His representations), then one may express the Almighty's logic in the following way. The Jews included in the first group are so removed from understanding the Almighty's plan, that the Almighty has simply decided to exclude them from the Chosen People to lighten the load of the two remaining groups. Jews joined the second group with an acute perception of the One God and His instructions. Jews joined the third group with an acute understanding that the ideas of the One God (once more in any of His representations) should be transformed into a program of creative activities for the creation of the Better World "according to God" for everyone. It is very important to agree, while discussing the predestination and identification of Jews referring to the Almighty/God and the Torah, on the form and representation of the Almighty/God himself. Without agreement on the assumption of the multitude of God's images, the discussion of Jewish identifications often stops when someone declares, "I don't believe in God," but as a
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rule there is no answer to the counter-question, "what God don't you believe in?" So for a discussion of the identification of Jews, it is enough to recognize that we, the people on Earth, ARE NOT the superior ruling power, that there is something over us that determines the laws under which our world and we operate and exist, and that the something over us is the Almighty. Further detailed elaboration of God's representation and its influence on our world, including nature and people, leads to the division of people and that lays at the heart of the unfriendly relations of the Jewish custodians of the Torah and the Jewish builders of the Torah. But if such dislike also is included in the Almighty's design, then it may mean that the spiritual competition of these two groups is useful for the advancement of His plan for the creation of the Better World on our Earth. Very likely, the majority of Jews in all three groups will not object to declarations that the state should be separate from religion and that science and democracy have nothing in common with religion. However, an intellectual reading of the Torah leads to the opposite conclusion the separation of religion from the state, and science and democracy from religion makes fulfillment of the Torah's covenants (the Almighty's covenants in any of His representations) impossible. The majority of Jews treat Judeo-Christian unity warily, though such unity is one of the fundamental covenants of the Torah, however paradoxical it is. Almost all Jews and many Christians see nothing positive in anti-Semitism, though, much as it is not considered paradoxical, anti-Semitism is to a significant degree a recognition of the Jews' success in their fulfillment of some mission in society, though there is no agreement regarding the essence of this mission.

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Many Jews treat the concept of their chosenness warily the reason for all this, in order to contrast themselves with all the others, not understanding that a true understanding of chosenness lies at the heart of their identification. So, this book also investigates all these questions to determine Jewish identification and the role of Jews in our world.

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Everyone knows and can explain why they consider themselves someone. A musician says that he is a musician because he plays some instrument not because his parents were musicians. A builder says he is a builder because he builds or designs something not because his parents were builders. A Russian says he is a Russian Because he was born in Russia, and his country's traditions direct all his life activities not because his parents were Russians. But ask a Jew why he considers himself a Jew and the answer most often will be because his parents were Jews. Just what must a Jew do to consider himself a Jew, whether he is from a purely Jewish family, from a mixed family, or if he is a Christian by birth who made the decision to live a Jewish life?

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1.3. Who the author is and why he wrote the book


On this and the next two pages there are one picture and seven photographs: Moses on Mt. Sinai brings the Jewish people the Torah from God, the author's grandfathers and grandmothers on his father and mother's side, his father and mother, he himself, his wife and their two daughters.

Is there a spiritual unbroken connection between Moses on Mt. Sinai and this large family?

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In the center of the photograph above are the author's great grandmother on the father's side and on the right his grandmother on his mother's side. The family on the father's side considered themselves not religious, but on his mother's side as religious. But they all were indisputably Jewish. How is it so?

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The Jews and their role in our world This is the father who trusted the government more. And this is the mother who trusted the traditions of her people more.

And this book's author, who is trying to sort out all this in his spiritual and creative life, with his wife Inna and daughters Natasha and Anya.

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And on this and the two following pages are presented photographs from the author's spiritual and creative life, during which he attempted spiritually to locate all this on Mt. Sinai where Moses received the Torah/Old Testament from God.

Parade of cadets of the Soviet Naval Academy, from which the author graduated.

One of the power systems that marked the beginning of his scientific work for the optimization of power installations.

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One of the first Soviet nuclear bombs and its Soviet developers and American colleagues (the author, one of the American colleagues, is third from the right), who helped Russian nuclear weapon developers in the creation of peaceful atomic technologies in "turning swords into ploughshares!" This photo was taken approximately 1990 at one of the main Soviet nuclear weapon development organizations.

Is the unseen spirit of Mt. Sinai, Moses, the Torah, God and Judeo-Christian civilization present here? Is it "good" or "evil" from the point of view of the Torah/Bible?

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The gift of a Torah scroll to the Jewish community of the Ukrainian city of Konotop (author on the left), in whose revival the author took an active part. This photo was taken in 2007 in the city of Konotop in Ukraine.

Inasmuch as this is a gift of a Torah, a spiritual connection between this event and Moses on Mt. Sinai undoubtedly must exist. But how can one place on that very same Mt Sinai both a Torah, and Moses and a Naval Academy and science and an atomic bomb?

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And the author has attempted to answer these questions, analyzing his whole life. The author came into the world in the former Soviet Union as early as before the Second World War in a Jewish and a bona fide Soviet family. He lived and worked the Soviet way sincerely, but his mind regardless of his desire, most likely genetic worked the Jewish way, as he subsequently determined it. The mind operating the Jewish way was looking for something better all the time. It doesn't obediently carry out instructions coming "from above," but automatically subjects these instructions to analysis hoping to find better solutions to make everyone "happy" - from the nearest and dearest to those furthest removed and not related at all (and that's it!) Then he still would not have known that everything comes from some incomprehensible God and some unknown Torah, and he was acting, most likely, impulsively. He graduated from the Naval Engineering Academy in the Leningrad suburb Pushkin in the Soviet Union, where he obtained true friends (Jews and Gentiles); served for a while in the Soviet Navy and later was demobilized; went through postgraduate school and became successful in science in the area of finding optimal solutions for new power systems. Everything was good - his family, which brought joy; and the creative results of his scientific work in a research laboratory he managed; and his intellectual friends who helped him understand everything happening around him. No, all the flaws of the Soviet system were visible; there was the sense that some traditional, perhaps even "Jewish" notions of Good and Evil were hideously distorted; and there was the sense that this system exceeded the bounds of "normalcy" that was very difficult to express in normal words. But there was hope someone "above" saw it all and was working on a correction.

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But enlightenment ensued at the end of the 1970s: the system itself presented irrefutable evidence it was hopelessly ill and could not heal itself. The system was deaf to all the ideas of honest people and patriots, not the false party patriots, but the spiritual patriots who sincerely wished good both for their people and for all others. And it was especially deaf to the ideas of people of the "Jewish ethnic group" who always needed, as the saying goes, more than the others. And such enlightenment led to his immigration to America where democracy and the Judeo-Christian spirituality of this country made it possible to begin to figure out what Good and Evil meant, and actively to defend the rightness of his ideas both in the scientific field and in the spiritual area. Everything was normal in the field of science in America: the work brought him satisfaction and the ability to defend his point of view on scientific problems being resolved was guaranteed and always used. The most interesting part of the work was joint American-Russian projects with Russian developers of nuclear weapons on the use of nuclear military technologies for peaceful purposes. The apex of this work was a two-volume work in English, "Nuclear Shadow Boxing," written with three colleagues and devoted to the scientific history of the AmericanSoviet nuclear confrontation in the "Cold War" years. But in the spiritual area, his "soul" continued to seek the answer to questions of identification on the whole for everyone, and in particular for the Jewish people. What is this learning and science for, what we must do in this life, what is the purpose of our life on the earth, what has come to us from the past and what will pass into the future? And the author thinks that he has found his own personal answer which comes down to the following:

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The One God in His intellectual interpretation, the Torah in its intellectual interpretation, Judaism and Christianity which came out of Judaism in their intellectual interpretation are the basis of the determination of the purpose of our stay in our world, the basis of the definition of Good and Evil and the basis of our, as many say, Western Judeo-Christian civilization. And if we begin to forget all this, our civilization will begin to surrender its positions to other civilizations and our world may become completely different. And we may realize all this when it is already too late And further, having sorted out what's what and having discussed it all with a multitude of interested friends, colleagues and correspondents, the author understood others might also be interested in his spiritual discoveries. Why did the author want to share his thoughts with others? He considers himself a typical representative of the intellectual Jewry and the desire to "make mankind happy" with their discoveries is inherent in such people. And he thinks his spiritual interpretations may be interesting to others. But why him, not a rabbi or philosopher by training? Everybody knows rabbis and priests are engaged in such interpretations and their interpretations are accessible to everyone. Why those interpretations are not enough? However, after conversations with many typical clergy members and the study of their spiritual interpretations, the author discovered that they are in no condition to illuminate spiritual questions so they satisfy intelligent people intellectually. And it all is because the purposes of the clergy's spiritual activity differs in principle from the purposes of the spiritual activity of intellectually intelligent people. .
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Life in two worlds in the Jewish world and in the Judeo-Christian world is not an attempt to move from one world to another. The intellectual reading of Judaism's holy books and writings of Christianity's founders suggest these two worlds exist "according to God." The Torah (the Old Testament) was given to the Israelites, but it was not given to them for their exclusive use; It was given to them by some almighty power subsequently called God for propagation to all peoples living in our world. Therefore, life in two worlds for a Jew should be a natural condition independent of whether he does it consciously or intuitively. And that is what the author felt during his reflections on his life and what he thinks may help others to sort out their own spiritual life.

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1.4. Who are the intellectuals and why their understanding of Jewish identification is important
Presented here are God the thinker who created man in his own image and likeness (as portrayed in Leonardo da Vinci's self-portrait) and man the thinker created in the image and likeness of God (as portrayed by August Rodin).

Can one assume this identifier "thinker" also is most essential in the intellectual unity of God with Man?

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The standard definition of intellectuals: they are people with a highly developed analytical mind permanently turned on to the process of abstracting about truth and morality; who produce and develop ideas that determine standards and cultural values for the rest of society. The main thing in intellectuality is not education, but a natural ability to think and generate new ideas. Our forefathers, such as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses, did not have any formal education, but they generated those ideas that created the foundation of the Judeo-Christian world's modern standards and values (how to distinguish Good from Evil). As is seen from the definition of intellectuals, the purpose of the spiritual activity of intellectuals is to search for new approaches to traditional situations and is the mindset of a new creator. And it brings together such people with an intellectual version of God's image and the goals of our existence in our world. Indeed, as the Torah affirms (Genesis 1:26), God created people in his own image and likeness. But God's main characteristic according to the Torah consists of the fact that He is the Creator and he created our world and all of us, and he created everything that is constantly being further developed. And constant development requires a constant generation of new creative ideas with which intellectuals also concern themselves. The goal of the spiritual activity of rabbis and priests is something completely opposite: to bring people to their senses the unchanged and stable connected with God's image and the existence of our world created by this God (Darwin's evolutionary concepts in no way contradict the creation of the world by some Almighty Power over us that has received the name God). For example, in Judaism Orthodox rabbis teach the constancy of what was done during the world's original creation while Reformed rabbis teach the constancy of that understanding of a world emerging in a contemporary liberal social
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environment. In the Christian world, counterpart treatments in the study of the constancy of our world exist both in Catholicism and the Orthodox Church. Therefore, intellectuals in particular do not find a spiritual home in official religious organizations, though they do not refute their principle importance. One more thing important for understanding the intellectual approach to the subject: the importance of scientific assessments where they are possible. In particular, for this book the assessment of the probabilistic nature of events occurring in the human community is important, and a clear, almost scientific definition of the ideas being discussed. Mentioning the probabilistic nature of events is important because disclaimers may be found to all the assertions in this book. For example, the assertion that Judeo-Christian moral criteria created our civilization will be contrasted with the slogan, "Religion is the opiate of the people." Both assertions are true actually, there were many examples in history when religion was used not as a compass for building the Better World, but for keeping the masses of people obedient. And only the appreciably great likelihood of a positive influence on our civilization that will build the Better World "according to God," and of the Judeo-Christian morality that was proven by the events of the last two millennia confirm its grandeur. One more example. The assertion that one of the Ten Commandments in the Torah calls out "thou shall not kill" always contradicts the examples from that very same Torah which describes "killing" committed by God in different Torah episodes. In order to sort this out, one needs to read the Torah carefully and understand that "thou shall not kill" means "thou shall not kill Good," but "kill Evil." The point is that God is destroying
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Evil in the Torah, and the destruction of Evil leads to an increase of the probability of preventing mass murders of people following the Good path. Further in the books this assertion will be supported by an analysis of the statements of the biblical prophets. A clear definition of the ideas being debated is needed because the most contrary of definitions may be covered by one and the very same word, and very often disagreements arise in the discussions because of that in particular. Let's take, for example, the word "God." When someone says to this book's author (who believes in the existence of an omnipotent power over us) that he (this somebody) doesnt believes in the existence of God, the author always puts forth the question, in which God is there no belief? And most often the author agrees with the opponent's assertion that, really, there is no such God as the one the opponent described to him. Therefore, the ideas being debated must be clearly defined before any discussion. Here are some of them. Religion. Religion consists of three components, and these components are faith, rituals and religious organizations. The main thing in religion is faith. Rituals and organizations play an auxiliary role, enabling the strengthening of faith and helping in actions for fulfilling faith's covenants. Thus, usually, while speaking about a person's piety, people have in mind the fulfillment of rituals and the visitation of religious organizations (synagogues, churches) by a person in discussion. But in reality, a person's piety is determined by faith which one can follow while not even fulfilling the rituals and not visiting religious organizations. Faith is the key determinant of religion and piety in this book, and not rituals and religious organizations.
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God. When someone says that he does not believe in God, most often he has in mind an image of God as some kind of man-like gigantic dictator controlling all the spheres of our life as he wishes and who is looking after his subjects. One must maintain good personal mutual relations with such a God. One must pray for a good relationship to oneself, to one's family, to one's people and to one's country from such a God. It is not worth intellectually-thinking people, really, to believe in such a God. But another image of God also exists. He is a kind of omnipotent power over us who created our world and his laws that determine everything that changes around us. And if we follow these laws, we prosper; if we try to live contrary to these laws, we suffer. And this power can carry out the same experiments on us as we carry out on those who enter our sphere of influence. God's key determinant in this book is the presence of laws created by the omnipotent power over us and which must be followed and not the personal relationships of this power with man. The Better World. They sometimes say that a person who has died goes "to another world, a better world." Maybe there is some kind of better world in heaven, but that is not the world whose creation is urged by the Torah, recounting for people God's ideas for the continuation of the creation of our world created by this God. The Better World according to the Torah is not a better world in heaven, but here on our earth, during our life. If the Better World is a result of the collective efforts of all who sincerely believe, there are not and cannot be "working drawings" of the Better World created beforehand. Such a world according to the Torah is the combined result of the creative activity of all individuals doing everything everywhere as it is seen to be correct by them in accordance with their individual understanding of Torah (and for Christians Bible) concepts. That is how the Better World we are building according to God and the Torah is defined in

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this book. The notion of a Better World "according to God" is detailed in many places of this book. The authentic (ideal) Jew As soon as the question is put, just who is an authentic Jew, the majority propose the following answer: he is one who was born into a Jewish family and for whom the synagogue is a "home away from home" and who fulfills all the rituals our Jewish forefathers followed in the townships and shtetls of long-ago. While not refuting the importance of the fulfillment of rituals and visits to synagogues, the most important thing according to the Torah is the creative activity in the creation of the Better World in accordance with God's spiritual concepts laid out in the Torah. If that is so, then an authentic (ideal) Jew should be one who ideally follows all the Torah's creative covenants. And that means an "authentic Jew" kind of status can even be granted to one not born into a Jewish family, but one born into a Jewish family can be essentially not a Jew at all if he does not follow the Torah's creative covenants. Thus, not only Jews by the fact of their Jewish birth, but also all others in our world can (and must) achieve spiritual ideality according to the God of the Torah. This book adheres to such a position of the Jews in actual fact. Judeo-Christian commonality and morality. It is commonality and morality, based on the Ten Commandments and their derivatives described in the Torah, or the Old Testament, which were developed further in the Talmud for Jews and the New Testament for Christians. And so this book defines a Judeo-Christian commonality formed from the very beginning two thousand years ago and preserved despite all the well-known facts of Christian oppression of Jews. The Chosenness of the Jewish People. As soon as this subject is touched upon, the assertion at once arises that the concept itself of chosenness means Jews consider themselves smarter
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than others, they elevate themselves above others and they know how to do everything better than others. Not in the least! The essence of the Jewish people's chosenness concept developed in this book consists of the fact the Jewish people are the people of the Torah. And the Torah determines the main goal of the existence of the Jewish people as assistance to the Almighty/God in the building of the Better World for everyone, Jews and gentiles, on our earth according to the covenants of the Almighty/God himself. The Jewish people were chosen to carry out this task, but not to elevate themselves over others, but to shoulder a great responsibility. The majority of Jews think that chosenness is God's dictate, though some think evolution made them that way. It is not essential from the point of view of a practical history that's the way they are. As a people they consciously or unconsciously do everything originating from God and the Torah, but, as in any nation, they have their own sinners among them. All of the definitions just cited are only examples of the definitions needed during the discussions in this book.

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If one is to believe that God the Creator created all people as creators "in his image and likeness," and people of the Judeo-Christian civilization believe it, then each living person in our world must consider himself an intellectual and creator realizing his own individual creative capabilities given him by God. And it must apply to an equal extent to all people disregarding their profession both to scientists and to cobblers; both to poets and to printers; both to those elected to the government and to those who elected them.

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1.5.

Who may like this book and who may not

Portrayed here is a sculpture of a bureaucrat carrying a briefcase made by an artist in Russia, and a version of Rodin's sculpture the Thinker found in Israel. All the instructions that need to be followed strictly are in the bureaucrat's briefcase. His main job is to prevent any attempts to place the instructions in doubt and to suppress any intellectual activity directed at looking for something better. He is the ardent enemy of any intellectual activity and of any intellectuals. This book's author thinks that Man the Creator recognizes mankind to a great degree than man the bureaucrat. If that is so, then one may assume Man the Creator may like this book and man the bureaucrat will take a dislike to it. But would he read it?

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It is submitted that those who attempt to understand what they are doing here on our earth may like this book. They are the ones who seek answers to the question of what unites them with every living person in their country and around the world, and not what separates them. They are those trying to understand what then came to them, what was before them and what will come from them to those who will be after them. They are those for whom the spiritual foundations of existence are no less important than the material. They are the ones for whom creation everywhere and always is life's goal both in the family and at work, both among friends and in society. And those for whom the peaceful competition of spiritual ideas is more important than military conflicts, but they are ready to defend their own spiritual ideas with weapons in their hands against those who are unable to stand up for their own ideas in a peaceful competition and, therefore, have decided to "prove themselves right" with war. Among those who may like this book might be scientists, for whom it is important not only to prove the existence of some kind of law, but also to foresee how the practical usage of this law will help make our world a better place for all who live in it; businessmen, for whom not only is it important to be victorious over competitors in a free market economy, but also to convince themselves the number of people whose lives will be better as a result of it will be somewhat larger than the number of the unlucky ones who were at a disadvantage; engineers, for whom it not only is important to execute a project within the limits of the money and time allotted, but
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also to feel this project is something creatively new that did not exist before it; politicians, for whom their political career is not only a well paying job, but also the chance to realize their ideas in the creation of a better life for those who are electing them now and for the children and grandchildren of their present constituencies; and just common people for whom the spiritual component of life is no less important than the material.

And who may not like the book? Those seeking ones guilty of what they themselves are guilty. They are the ones unable to achieve with physical and spiritual labor what others achieve, but are unable to take it in stride either. They are the ones who determine their prosperity not by the realization of their spiritual and physical potential, but by the comparison of their achievements with others: if others achieved more, that is "they achieved it by dishonest means." They are the ones for whom creative labor's equal material results are more important than equal conditions in the discovery of their capabilities. In other words, they are the ones for whom an authoritarian society, such as a communist one for example, with orders coming from the top, is more valuable than a society of free enterprise with clearly observed rules of fair competition and with individual responsibility for the results of their labor. Many of them are included in the ranks of anti-Semites for whom Jews are, as it were, the "scapegoats" very necessary for taking their minds off the fact that you yourself are to blame for your life's misfortunes.

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Among those who will understand this books' basic ideas but not grasp them may be scientists for whom the understanding of the physical nature of things is their sole purpose; businessmen, for whom only "making money," and not its use for socially significant projects of their own choice is the goal; engineers, who work only "for salaries;" politicians, whose life goal is personal material well-being and the sensation of power; and just common people worried only about the material side of life.

One would like to believe this book can help one who is looking for it to experience joy from the realization of their God-given individual capabilities, not to grieve that someone has greater capabilities, and someone has achieved more in the material sphere.

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Chapter 2

20th century novelty in Jewish identification that put the author on the road of personal intellectual journey

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2.1. Identification with the goal of physical extermination how it was in Nazi Germany
Something new emerged in the 20th century in Jewish identification in Nazi Germany that had not happened before in all the many centuries of the history of the Jewish people. It was state identification for the purpose of finding and exterminating Jews. Such identification was founded on Nazi ideology begun by the savage theoretical anti-Semitism of the German composer Wagner and brought to brutish practical realization by Hitler and his Nazi regime. The Holocaust with its six million dead Jews was the result of such identification. One such extermination action is shown in the photograph on the next page in the city of Kovno in Lithuania, which was occupied by the Germans in 1941. What was it a logical development of anti-Semitism or a return of part of mankind to a savage pre-human condition? Is it possible to make sense of it in the light of the Torah, of Ten Commandments, of the concept of God, of the JudeChristian civilization?

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Let's begin with the savage philosophy of the German composer Wagner that is described precisely by the Soviet conductor Yuri Aranovich and submitted here. The story of militant Wagnerian anti-Semitism again proves how dangerous are the ideas of racial hatred and unhealthy xenophobia, especially when they issue not from the mouths of a tipsy sausage maker, but belong to representatives of the national creative elite. "Jews are worms, rats, flesh worms, tapeworms that must be exterminated, like a plague, to the last microbe, because there is nothing that works against them, just poisonous gases," Wagner wrote in a letter to his wife. In his book, one of the chapters of which Wagner called "Jewishly Evil Art," he writes, "It would be a most profound error to separate Wagner the thinker and philosopher from Wagner the composer. Perhaps it is possible in other cases, but not in mine." Wagner left no doubts about what he wanted to say with his music as the thinker and philosopher. In a letter to Liszt in 1848, he invited him "to commit musical terrorism." And actually, one may by rights call Wagner the first musical terrorist of our time, long before Hitler and Arafat who directed terrorism against the Jewish people. Wagner was an ideologue of a defined movement, with a defined goal both in music and in politics and in public life. Wagner expressed his ideology perfectly clearly in the last chapter of his sensational book and which hasn't ceased causing heated controversy to the present day, one of the chapters of which is called "The Final Solution of the Jewish Question" (by the way, he first introduced this expression long before the
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Nazis). And the final solution is of course the complete extermination of the Jews. Wagner wrote a letter to the Bavarian parliament in which he proposed such plan for extermination of the Jews. Not one musician, and not only musicians, but also philosophers overall ever had advanced a program for the extermination of a whole race. Even Nietzsche, whom it is difficult to suspect of sympathies toward the Jews, wrote him a letter where he said that Wagner was worthy of "dying in prison, and not in his own bed" for this proposal. Nietzsche declared openly in his letter to Wagner, "You are not a man, you are simply a disease." Wagner saw to it his ideas were clearly understood by subsequent generations. For example, at the celebration of his 68th birthday, a year before his death, Wagner said in reply to a toast, "My baton will show future generations many more times what stand they should take." And this stance was freeing mankind of the Jews. First, because "Jews are like flies and rats: the more you exterminate them, the more they procreate. There exists no means except total extermination. The Jewish race was born as the enemy of mankind and everything human. And especially the enemy of everything German. And German art cannot sleep soundly until the last Jew is exterminated." This idea was, as Wagner himself said, "the leitmotif of my life." The opera "Parsifal" occupied a special place in Wagner's work. He called this opera "a testament for future generations." In the forward to the first edition of "Parsifal," Wagner wrote, "I am presenting in my opera 'Parsifal' the idea of the figure of a Christ that has been cleansed of Jewish blood." For Wagner, "Parsifal," as he called it himself, was an "escape from the Redeemer." Why does one have to escape from Christ? Wagner explained it, "Jewish blood flowed in Christ's veins you know." Wagner asked that before a performance of "Parsifal" a miracle play be
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performed on the stage in which "the body of Christ is burnt together with other Jews as a symbol of escaping from the Jew altogether." But no one ventured similar things even in Wagner's time. These ideas of Wagner were adopted by the Nazi regime and there was no need to change either the melody or the words everything fit even without it. "The final solution of the Jewish question" was the culmination of many years of Nazi antiJewish policy beginning from Hitler's early works about the need to solve the Jewish question in Europe. After coming to power in the 1930s, the Nazis attempted to invoke a mass emigration of Jews; afterwards, efforts were undertaken for expulsion of the Jews to areas specially set-aside for it. And in 1941, the Nazis decided to exterminate the Jews physically. In September 1919, Hitler wrote his first political paper where he declared that the Jewish problem could be decided only by the complete removal of the Jews from Europe. According to this paper, the removal of the Jews was supposed to take place without excess emotionalism, not being accompanied by pogroms and the like, but should be effected with typically German thoroughness, effectiveness and coordination. Hitler thought that the Jewish problem should be fundamental for every Nazi. He himself was possessed by it and adamant in the search for a "final solution" - a way to get rid of the Jews forever. During all of the 1930s Hitler believed mass emigration could solve the "Jewish problem." Anti-Jewish law, introduced in Germany beginning with Hitler's rise to power in January 1933 and until the beginning of the Second World War in September 1939, had as its goal to urge, and later also to force the Jews to leave the country. In January 1939, Hitler appeared before the German parliament. He criticized the countries of the free world
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for their refusal to accept Jewish immigrants and cautioned that one of the consequences of a war might be the "disappearance" of European Jews. In 1939, after the German invasion of Poland, 1.8 million more Jews fell under the control of Nazi Germany. Hitler did not immediately issue an order for their extermination. Instead, a plan was developed, in accordance with which all Jews living within the boundaries of the Reich should be moved to a reservation in the region of Lublin, in the Polish General Governorship. The Nazis attempted to implement this plan ("Nisko-Lublin"), but it was not realized. By spring 1940, it became clear that the Lublin program could not serve as a solution to the Jewish problem, inasmuch as there was no free territory in Poland for relocation of the Jews. The "Madagascar" plan was the next stage of the anti-Jewish policy a project for the deportation of all Europe's Jews to the island of Madagascar, a French colony in Africa. However, Germany was beaten in the Battle of Britain after only several months, which made the Madagascar project impracticable. In June 1941, Germany, violating the terms of the treaty of nonaggression between the Soviet Union and Germany (the socalled Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) invaded the USSR. Mobile death squads called Einsatzgruppen, in cooperation with units of the regular military, police elements and local collaborators, began the systematic extermination of the Soviet Union's Jews. Massive, systematic extermination of people was undertaken for the first time for "the solution of the Jewish problem." In July of that year, Hermann Goering approved preparations for "the final solution." At the end of 1941 and the beginning of 1942, the Nazis created several extermination camps, began the deportation to them of Jews and developed extermination methods. The first experiment in the use of poisonous gas was
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made at Auschwitz in September 1941, and camps were created in the late fall at Belzec and Chelmno. Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and Auschwitz supplemented the number of extermination centers in the spring of 1942. In the meantime, in December 1941, Hitler reported to his closest associates that Germany's Jews also were subject to extermination; thereby, the policy of the "final solution" was being expanded over all the territory of Europe.

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Representatives of Nazi Germany's government and the Nazi armed forces of the SS met at the Wansee Conference in January 1942 for coordination of activities for the extermination of all Europe's Jews to the last man. From that moment and until the war's end in 1945, the "final solution" was official Nazi policy and meant only one thing the complete extermination of European Jews. For the first time in the history of mankind, a god-man named Hitler who decided to replace the One True God with himself for everyone, proclaimed his goal to identify one racial group of mankind for the purpose of its complete physical extermination. Just how could such a thing have happened? Just what underlay the identification of people?

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2.2. Identification with the goal of spiritual extermination - how it was in the Former Soviet Union
Identification with the goal of the search for and spiritual extermination of Jews was assumed as the basis of communist ideology in the Former Soviet Union, the beginning of the savage anti-Semitism of communism's founder Marx and brought to its savage practical realization by Stalin and his dictatorial regime. Section number 5 for indication of ethnic group, and the Jews were one of the ethnic groups, was on the government official employment-application forms and the passport in the USSR. Indication of ethnic group in the passport and other identification documents was mandatory. The passport and official employment-application forms identified Jews in the Soviet Union as people with an objectionable and even destructive spirituality. And it was impossible to live normally with such an identification. The result was the mass desire of Jews to leave the country. A picture of Mark Chagall's "Exodus" is presented on the next page illustrating the exodus of Jews from Russia and the Soviet Union when Russia existed in such form for some time. Was the main stimulus of the mass Jewish immigration from Russia and the Soviet Union the hidden desire to change their "destructive spiritual" identification attached to each Jew in Russia and the Soviet Union to a positive?

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Jews lived in the Soviet Union as did everyone, but tried to be somewhat better than everyone to study better, carry out work tasks more diligently, and so on. On the one hand, it was caused by a vital need Jews knew that they had to be better than others to achieve on the job what others achieved with somewhat less effort. On the other hand, there was something inside them that many considered "natural" unconsciously pushing them to propose and do something better than other and, to be more compassionate toward people. It could only cause the dissatisfaction of others to say, Jews always stick their necks out! They always do things the other way round! And so forth. But they continued to do so. Why was that? Was it always that way? History has helped illuminate these questions. The Russian people, including too its short existence in the form of the Soviet Union, relate to people who need a strong leader for the organization not only of all of society but even the personal life of each individual person, in contrast to the some other peoples who prefer to organize their individual life themselves. Russia is an authoritarian country (as has been noted, and that amounted to a frank, cruel dictatorship during Soviet rule). There were attempts in Russia's history to transition to a more democratic system of governance, but they all ended in failure. At the end of the 1980s and beginning of the 1990s, Russia once more tried to democratize itself, but again slid back toward an authoritative regime at the start of the 2000s. An authoritarian regime is based on like-mindedness and the Russian people have been justifying and complying with likemindedness in an overwhelming majority.

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Dissidents always have existed, but they have not found any support among the people. Russians prefer to stay on the beaten path, and new social ideas make them nervous; the probability life will become worse as a result of the realization of new ideas is great, and the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution is shining confirmation of it. Such a tradition and history of the Russians, and possibly, even a probabilistic genetic combination which science is now stealing up to. But even if science confirms a connection of a people's traditions with its average genetic structure, different genetic structures and the traditions depending on them should not be looked at in terms of "good" or "bad." It is necessary to pay for all the social changes from the relatively "bad" to the relatively "good" with transitional suffering, and for some peoples this payment is intolerably high. The history and the traditions of the Jewish people are something else, and it all manifested itself contrastingly when fate brought the Jews to Russia. The Jews ended up in Russia as a result of the partition of Poland several centuries ago. Russia wanted really very much to obtain Polish lands in order to expand westward, and she obtained them. But she obtained along with the large quantity of Jews living on these lands a people with a completely different historic and spiritual tradition. The Jewish people are a democratic people who do not like strong dictatorial leaders and prefer to search for new social paths of development in their own communities (and if possible, in the countries where they live) instead of staying on the beaten path. One must note for the record that the search for new social paths of development does not mean the new paths are always better
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than the old. The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution can serve as a example when a disproportionately large quantity of Jews took part in the Bolshevik revolution that brought one of the bloodiest dictators of the world to power. Though the majority of Jews participating in the formation of the new regime was unable to foresee this regime's bloody future, their good motives cannot "whitewash" them their history and thoughts of the Torah irrefutably say excessive consolidation of state power does not bring nations good fortune. Thus, after Poland's annexation to Russia, Russia found within its borders a people with a completely different historical tradition. And this essential difference in traditions also led to the appearance of the "Jewish Problem" which Russia since then has been solving with various methods including limitations for Jews on residences, on specific jobs and on education, while trying at the same time to use the creative potential of individuals of the "Jewish ethnic group." Pogroms were included in the solutions and used when social tension in the country increased. On the one hand, it was necessary to make it possible for the Jews to work and live somehow; but on the other hand, it was necessary to minimize their "harmful spiritual influence" on the native population, and that was the real purpose of pogroms Pogroms were physical and spiritual. The Kishinev Pogrom of 1903 was a classical example of a physical pogrom (more than 40 were killed, more than 550 injured and nearly 1,500 homes and shops were destroyed). The Kishinev Pogrom was not the first there were hundreds of pogroms in the 1880s in Russia before it. A classical example of a spiritual pogrom was the so-called "struggle with cosmopolitanism" - an ideological campaign
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starting in 1949 and directed against the separate layer of Soviet intelligentsia who were looked upon as bearers of cynical and pro-Western trends. The people included in this layer were deprived of their work and the ability to influence the country's spiritual life. Inasmuch as the majority in this layer were people of the "Jewish ethnic group," this "struggle" was in and of itself an anti-Semitic spiritual pogrom: a physical pogrom killed Jews physically, a spiritual pogrom killed them spiritually. At the present time, the "Jewish problem" in Russia has been somewhat removed from the agenda, but judging by Russian history, a favorable attitude toward Jews can be a temporary phenomenon. Thus, a people who in their own spiritual tradition were alien to this country ended up in Russia. Despite the resistance, many Jews sincerely wanted to be a worthy part of this country while maintaining their Jewish traditions. And sometimes it worked out well - the Jewish contribution to the development of Russia's spiritual and material life was universally recognized. But they always distinguished them from the others. And they themselves sensed their spiritual distinction, feeling better in their own Jewish environment. In Russia both tsarist and communist the Jews were doomed to spiritual extermination.

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Just what did it mean to be a Jew in a Gentile environment and how should one judge it? What distinguishes Jews from Gentiles? Should one defend himself from it or should he cultivate it? The Soviet Union was a place where it was dangerous and difficult to find an answer to these questions, and the author decided to leave it in order to understand himself, acquiring spiritual freedom, as many also did it in the 1970s.

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2.3. Neglecting the identification with the goal of assimilation how it was in the Czech Lands
These are graves in the old Jewish cemetery in Prague, converted, as too all of Prague's Jewish quarter, into the Museum of Jewish History. In one sense it is a cemetery not only of Prague's dead Jews, but also of this site's vanished contemporary Jewish identification and it is not only as a result of the Holocaust. A lot of Jewish history, and no Jewish life mostly because of assimilation!

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A sculpture of a probably grieving Moses is located in the Jewish quarter not far from the cemetery. Is he thinking that it was not such a history of the Prague Jews he had in mind when he led the Jews, with God's help, out of Egypt?

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So, in the 1970s, the author left the Soviet Union and moved to the United States. Life in the West afforded the chance for travels and new knowledge. Prague was one such place for travel and knowledge with its interesting Jewish quarter museum and unusual history of the Jew. The Jewish quarter in Prague was preserved fully in the Nazi period because Hitler decided to organize a museum there of the "vanished race" after the "final solution" of the Jewish problem. Moreover, ceremonial Jewish objects were brought together for this purpose in this quarter from many other Eastern European synagogues that had been destroyed and from historic Jewish settlements and shtetls of Ukraine, Byelorussia, Lithuania and Poland. There are five magnificent synagogues in the Jewish quarter in Prague. But they all were converted to museums after liberation from Nazism they are no longer places of religious Jewish life. There are practically no Jews in Prague who are aware of themselves as Jews and who act in a corresponding manner, though many recognize in themselves the presence of Jewish blood (some Czechs even maintain with some pride that almost everyone in the Czech Republic had Jewish ancestors in the past). The answer to the question, "why are there no Jews in the synagogues" is obvious almost all were killed by the Nazis. Actually, nearly ten thousand Prague Jews were exterminated by the Nazis. Something like all of them. But not even quite like that. It turns out these synagogues were virtually empty before the seizure of power by the Nazis. By the start of the 20th century, the Jews in Prague had ceased to exist as a community living according to the canons of Judaism (it is immaterial according to what kind Orthodox, Reform or
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secular). The Nazis exterminated people born into Jewish families, who partly had Jewish blood, but were no longer living according to the Jewish canons and who had been fully assimilated. And then the question arose of just what led almost to the complete assimilation prior to Nazism. And searches for an answer began that led to the following. At the end of the 18th century, in the Czech Lands of that time (Bohemia/Moravia), the abolition of many laws restrictive for Jews began. By the middle of the 19th century, this legislative process which had been started by the enlightened monarch, Joseph II (not a dictator, but an enlightened democratic monarch) led to the abolishment of all laws disqualifying Jews, acknowledging the important contribution of Jews to the Czech Lands' spiritual and material prosperity. The dangers of life that lay in wait for Jews as Jews disappeared. And it turned out that the incentive for Jewish unity and preservation also disappeared. It turned out that Jews had been uniting only to better defend themselves from external danger. And as soon as the external danger disappeared, the need for unification also disappeared. It turned out that Jewish education and upbringing were directed at the organization of Jewish life within a closed Jewish society for preserving themselves as Jews behind a spiritual fence they had erected. It turned out that Jewish education did not teach Jews to live and act Jewish under complete freedom in Gentile societies when the spiritual fence was demolished. In other words, the chosenness of the Jews as the foundation of their identification and as a mission for their life was forgotten
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both under oppression and under freedom. Identification based on the religion of Judaism and on the Torah was forgotten; the identification and chosenness it is necessary to follow in any circumstances and conditions of life.

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The history of the Prague Jews is a characteristic example of what happened in many European countries in the pre-Nazi and pre-Soviet periods of European life since the time of the French Revolution. The Jews were permitted to assimilate fully, to become "like everyone," to cease being different from others and to cease suffering from anti-Semitism. Many did so accordingly and it seemed to them that their Jewishness and the agonies connected with it "sank into oblivion." But it wasn't like that: some kind of hidden powers in them forced them to do everything somehow differently, to be subjected to something, and that made them a primary target for spiritual or physical extermination by those who aspired to establish a dictatorship.

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2.4. Multiple identifications with the goal of adjusting to the new social environment how it was and is in the USA and Israel
From Israeli press reports in February 2006, describing the events connected with the ejection by Israeli police of Israeli settlers of the settlement of Amona in Israel and the demolition of their homes: "Let us recall, yesterday during the dismantling of the illegal Amona outpost 220 people were wounded, of them 86 employees of the police. "The vacating and demolition of the nine homes continued nearly six months. "The settlers threw stones, iron bars, cobble-stones and concrete blocks at the police during the evacuation. The police beat the settlers with cudgels, trampled them with horses and threw them from the housetops and out of windows." The opinions of organizations in the United States and Israel regarding this event were mixed. As a rule, organizations with pronounced liberal and religious identification supported the actions of the Israeli government because they do not believe in the ability of the individuals to act correctly without the governments organized and direct role. These liberal religious organizations think that only the government expresses the opinion of the majority and is able to determine the collective Good and support it; the individual is egotistical and unable to do it, they think.

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Those organizations with an expressed conservative and religious identification condemned the actions of the Israeli government because they believe only individuals, and not the government, are able to determine Good "according to God" and to support it. And the question arises: just what identifies the participants of this carnage more with historical Jewish tradition the actions of the police expelling the Jewish settlers from the places they prefer to live on orders of the government, or the actions of the Jewish settlers resisting the police? Who to a greater extent is able to separate Good from Evil "according to God," and not according to earthly deities the government or the individual?

That is the Israeli police physically evicting the settlers!

That is one of the wounded settlers!

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So, just who is better able to identify himself with Good the government or the individual? The United States and Israel are countries where Jewish communities are trying to find a solution to this question. Some communities search for a spiritual solution founded on Judeo-Christian tradition, others on the fulfillment of governmental secular laws. Let's consider how this search is going on in the Jewish communities. Three fundamental spiritual trends of Jewish identification are noted both in the United States and in Israel they are Orthodox, Reform (this trend is only beginning in Israel) and secular trends. The classical Orthodox trend says that Jewish identification is based on strict observance of traditional rituals and the organization of personal life as it is prescribed by the Torah and Talmud, that is on the traditions of the "chosenness" of the Jewish people. The Orthodox world thinks the Gentile world, having evaluated such examples of the Jews' moral behavior, finally will begin to comply with them. It is okay if it were that way, but, unfortunately, it does not happen. The Orthodox trend leads to the erection of a spiritual religious wall between Jews and Gentiles, and what is located behind that impenetrable wall cannot, as a rule, be a good example for those living on the other side of the wall. As a result of their isolation (the extent of isolation depends on the extent of orthodoxy the greater the orthodoxy, the greater the isolation), Orthodox communities rely less upon the government's judgment and more on their own spiritual judgment. The classical Reform tendency says that chosenness as an identification is present only in history and biblical myths, and if one is to talk about it in our enlightened times, then it can mean only one thing one is to try not to be distinguished by their identification and chosenness and to live as everyone, helping
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everyone. Such a trend destroys the spiritual wall between Jews and Gentiles that can lead to full assimilation. A weakening of the spiritual Jewish identification leads to greater identification with some kind of average people that, for its part, leads to a greater identification with the secular state and government. The classical secular trend says any conversation about chosenness is unreal under contemporary conditions because God and religion are something of the past and a Jew is not supposed to do anything like a Jew he has to live like everyone and only respect his own Jewish past and the merits of Jews. There are sufficiently many adherents of this trend both in the United States and in Israel (and of course, in Russia). This trend leads to complete identification with the secular state and its ideas of good and evil. Thus, the three spiritual trends of the Jewish people both in the United States and in Israel shape the main spiritual groups among Jews in these two countries. But what is the connection between the beating of Jews by Jews in Amona shown in the photographs at the beginning of this section with these three groups of Jewish people? Here is what it is. The governmental troops in Israel act according to their own governmental logic that at first glance has nothing in common with the logic of the actions which were supposed to result from the Ten Commandments given on Mount Sinai through Moses and the Jewish people to all of mankind. It turns out the state, which is represented by the government, has its own interests far from the interests of the people living in this state. In other words, the identification of the state and the government representing it and the identification of the people living in the
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state are, as they love to joke in Russia, "two great differences." But it should not be like that. The spiritual identification of a people was supposed to be clearly visible in the political identification of a government elected by the people, but it is not neither in Israel nor in the United States. The government has its own interests in strengthening its own power and preserving the material benefits of the government bureaucrats.

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As it turned out, the necessary intellectual answer to what is the identification of the Jewish people that directs this people in definite creative actions was found neither in the United States nor in Israel, though a myriad of books and articles have been written regarding this question. There is no answer to the question what are Jews supposed to doin Gentile societies as Jews or what the Jewish state of Israel is supposed to do among the remaining Gentile states of the world in order to follow its own life mission, pre-ordained by God, through Judaism and the Torah.

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Chapter 3

Intellectual Examination of Religion and God as the Foundation of Identity of Peoples and Communities

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3.1. An intellectual look at faith in religion as the foundation of identity of peoples and communities
A picture by the great Michelangelo and the most important part of the picture are presented on the following page representing his intellectual vision of our worlds' creation a creation by someone or something that came to be called God. It is imagined God is telling Man why He created man, and how man is supposed to live on our earth under which laws to live and what to do. The conversation is taking place not with the aid of some kind of human language, but by the touch of the fingers, via which an invisible energy (an energy field, beams) is being transferred that scientists have yet to discover. Could it be such an identification with God and the purposes for creating our world, offered by Michelangelo as such a religious and allegorical image, also is the foundation for man's identification?

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The most diverse content can be concealed by the word "religion." Therefore, it is necessary to define this concept first. Religion is belief in the existence of some kind of superior power controlling man and the whole world. The presence of this power cannot be proven experimentally. The presence of this power cannot be determined theoretically. It is faith! If you believe you believe, and you don't need any evidence. And this faith does not contradict the intellectual view of science. Actually, if science has proven the existence of a multitude of living and non-living systems which man controls at his discretion (for example, experiments on white mice), science cannot refute the possibility of the existence of controlling systems over man where someone or something controls man himself or influences him. Such influence may be found, for example, to be some kind of energy fields pushing man toward the defined actions desired for this supreme system of control. Science may prove the existence of such fields, but be in no condition to show who or what is behind them. This supreme power becomes creative when a sufficiently large number of people begin to believe in it and to act in accordance with its instructions, even if those instructions are a figment of people's imaginations. The real or imaginary instructions of this power form a moral code under which people live. According to this morality, people distinguish Good from Evil and sanctity from desecration. Different nations and different communities within one nation have their own moral code and these rules also identify different communities and nations. It often occurs that people forget the source itself of this morality and begin to ascribe its creation to them themselves or to the process of historical development, and that divides people into the religious and those who consider themselves non-believers.

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So, the different morality codes, that is the different understanding of what one must do "not to fall beneath the wheel" of an almighty power, both identify different nations and the communities within one nation. Such identification is equitable even for people who consider themselves nonbelievers, because originally all beliefs were from the ancient pagan gods, of whom there was a multitude until the appearance of The One God. The One God led to some kind of unity of all peoples, but the multitude of differences, which had transitioned into traditions separate from religion, remained. Thus, belief in a religion essentially is belief in the moral codes of human behavior coming to us from some kind of almighty power over us and which are mandatory for fulfillment. Faith directs nations and communities into defined actions that also identify them. Belief in a religion is directly linked with intellect. There were no faith and religion until the appearance of intellect, though, of course, the power from above existed it is eternal. Humanoids living before the start of man's historical era were, in essence, a variety of the animal kingdom they had no intellect. Possibly they appeared as a result of the animal kingdom's evolution according to Darwin's theory. This part of Darwin's theory, which assumes evolution within every type of fauna (and flora), can be corroborated by the experimental data on hand and cannot evoke any objections even in people who consider themselves religious. But afterwards something happened that could not occur by evolutionary means, because it did not exist before. What happened was the sudden appearance of man with intellect.

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In a somewhat short historical time period man appeared who externally was similar to the anthropoids who lived before him, but in principle was different from them. He had obtained what didn't exist before him INTELLECT, which included the ability to think, analyze, foresee and create It is impossible to explain intellect's appearance by evolutionary processes (according to Darwin), inasmuch as there was nothing like it in anthropoids. This new quality, "intellect," principally differs from the defense reflexes of animals directed at the preservation of the species. The defensive reflexes of animals, including the reflexes of anthropoids, is a reaction to what happened with the animal itself and threatens its very existence, while man's intellect has nothing in common with a reaction to what happened to him. Most often, intellect leads to a desire to change the world surrounding man according to some kind of idea of a perfect world man is trying to understand. The main thing one needs to remember is the key difference of old defensive reflexes, externally even perhaps similar to the rudiments of intellect, from true intellect: the product of true intellect is not a reaction to what happened, but an action for the creation of what has not yet been. So, intellect appeared which gave birth to man. It appeared suddenly, and it appeared by mysterious means. If it appeared, it was for some purpose, not just because. And all mankind's subsequent development revealed this purpose. From the very beginning intellect has been used, and is being used now, for trying to understand what is happening in our world and how to make it better. It is not for simple survival and continuation of the species as it was in "pre-human times." But it is for the creation of a more perfect world not on the basis of the evolution of what already was, but on the basis of what still needs to be thought up and fulfilled. These ideas must be
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converted into a specified plan of creation and, what is most interesting and unusual, into a specific plan of not only material, but also moral creation. There had to be a plan of moral creation and it continues to be necessary for the creation of such rules for people living together on our earth that would give everyone the ability to manifest fully his own individual creative abilities, while not bringing it to a destructive conflict between individuals and collectives (groups of people). There had to be a plan itself of material creation, and it continues to be needed for the creation and strengthening of the base of moral improvement. It is not according to Karl Marx when material forces lead the development of mankind, but according to God, when moral forces take the lead. So, man and intellect appeared suddenly. The word "suddenly" at once evokes the question why suddenly, if we already believe everything in the creation of the world was conceived and planned by God? And why does the word "suddenly" relate only to man's creation and not to the creation of everything created before man. A fair question, and the answer to it may be represented by the following example. According to the Torah, God created the world in six days, which essentially were six creative periods. In each of the periods something was created that appeared as a basis for creation in the subsequent period. For example, the earth (the firmament) and waters were created, and for some outside observer they appeared suddenly, though for God it was not suddenly He had planned it like that. In the next period the plants appeared. For an outside observer this world also appeared suddenly, because it could not appear by evolving from the earth and the waters. The earth and the
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waters were needed as a foundation for the vital functions of the plants, but the plants themselves were created by God "suddenly" and began to evolve by this time according to their own laws embodied in them by God at the very beginning of their creation. Then in the subsequent period the animal kingdom was created and began to evolve in accordance with its laws, also suddenly, the foundation of the vital activity of which is the earth-water and the plants created before it. And finally, in the last period of creation appeared man with his intellect, and he began to evolve according to his laws. And it all was done "according to God" in six day-periods! Thus, the meaning of a "sudden" appearance of intellect consists of the fact intellect did not appear out of something previously based on evolutionary development it appeared suddenly out of "nothing," as everything connected with creation "according to God." In essence, the modern conflict between religion and atheism consists of a different notion of the nature of intellect's source which enables man to change the world of that property which suddenly separated man from the animal kingdom. Religion assumes the source of intellect is some kind of power higher than man and not dependent on him. We have named this power God. Atheism itself considers man himself as such a power that appeared in the process of some kind of evolution. Such a distinction is very essential in a practical plan. Really, if intellect and the principles of the world's further creation based on this intellect came to us from a power not dependent on us, mankind's task would boil down to the best adaptation as possible of these principles, to the creation of a
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plan based on these principles and to the fulfillment of this plan. The principles cannot be changed by man because he did not create them. That is what religion thinks. Atheism for its part assumes that inasmuch as man himself creates the plan and creates according to this plan, the plan can be changed to something that appears better to someone all the world's dictatorships are based on this. Thus, religion calls the source of intellect God. But the name is not essential. What is essential is the recognition of a supreme authority of this source, the recognition that it is better for man himself to obey the instructions of this authority. Intellect is an instrument for the examination of the principles of moral and material creation and of the creative work itself. Intellect was given to man not only for speaking intelligently about something. Intellect was given to man most of all for creating. And man is distinguished from the whole rest of the world only in this. Religion clearly defines man's creative role: man was created in the image and likeness of God the Creator/The Maker and therefore, he must create. Creative work includes development of the plan and its fulfillment. If that is so, then a developer of the general plan and its executors must exist. It is all clear for the executors we all are executors and we fulfill and create everywhere, wherever we might be: in our family circle we create a family, at our job we build something collectively, while resting we improve our spiritual world, among friends we create our own understanding of what is happening, etc. Well, just who develops the general plan for us? Religion assumes that such a plan is developed for us by the Almighty Power over us and all of us, religious and non-believers, obey our own understanding of this plan. Our creative work is realized

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in accordance with this plan, directed at the perfection of life on our earth and includes all types of man's activity. As already has been said, the recognition of the religious source of the rules of behavior decreases the probability of the change of these rules by man the dictator who would like to replace the power from above with himself and compel all mankind to obey his new rules. In essence, there are no disagreements between science and religion regarding the nature of the source of intellect. True science cannot refute the possibility of the existence of supreme authority from above. As is described in many places of this book, if we, the people of an earthly science, can manipulate the animate and inanimate world on our earth and beyond for the realization of our scientific ideas, then the denial of the possibility of manipulation of us at a higher level sounds unscientific. If we can create new types of dogs and teach them to obey defined rules of behavior, we cannot rule out the possibility that someone higher than us creates new types of "us" and teaches us to obey some rules of behavior, the essence of which is known only to Him who is above us and improves us or manipulates us. And everything else rests on the intellectual representation of Him who is above us and does all of it. It is not so essential how to portray him, with what qualities to endow Him, and how to call Him. What is essential is the recognition of His existence. Incidentally, Darwin in his theory of evolution never thought to dispute God and religion, as militant atheists try to imagine it at the present time. As is emphasized in this book, Darwin's religious desire was to show and prove that God created our permanently developing world and steadily developing directly from that very moment when it was created.
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Thus, belief in religion defines intellect as the main element identifying man.

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Darwin was a believer, and his main goal in the creation of the theory of evolution consisted of refuting the point of view of the fundamentalist clerics that God created our World as unchanging that is to say, as it was created, so it also is supposed to stay forever. Darwin tried to show God created a developing world; God created a process according to which the World began to develop and will be developing for all time. And such a scientific concept is found to coincide fully with the image of God the Creator in Judaism.

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3.2. Intellectual examination of the Higher Governing System above us as God


Here God (in a galactic sense) experiments on man the scientist who, for his part, experiments on the rabbit. Can intellectual thinking agree that exactly as man influences everything within his authority, someone or something galactic over us called God also renders an influence on us?

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Religion boils down only to rituals in the minds of many people, and God's image is associated only with the image of a strict and exacting, but loving father who protects his children from all their misfortunes. A typical question often put by normal people: why did God allow the Holocaust? Why does He allow wars, diseases, deaths and the like? If God the Father allows it, then he, they say, is not the God we need. Or there simply is no God, and they mix us up with God in general, these people think. It would be possible to agree with this if only a single image of God existed the image of the loving and concerned father. But in reality, His images can be so diverse that the concept of The One God can be accepted by an overwhelming majority of thinking people, including scientists. The Torah allows creating other images of God that are in accord with modern science. (By the way, there is no image of God in the Torah as a loving father this image was created in prayer books much later, probably under Christianity's influence). The next two images not only do not contradict the spirit of the Torah, but predominate in the Torah. They are the image of the Almighty Power - the Creator of the laws of the universe according to which everything is created and operates, and the image of the Almighty Power the exacting director who realizes the planned project. God in the Torah is mostly a brilliant Maker- Creator.

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He created our world in six days, and he created our world as one that develops. And developing not chaotically, but according to definite laws of physics created by He Himself. He created our world not as a sum total of separate independent systems, but as a sum total of interdependent systems created in the Biblical days of the world's creation. In the six Biblical days of the world's creation were created: 1. The planets and among them our globe which became the place where man and his intellect appeared on the last day of creation: the position and condition of the "globe" system depends on the position and condition of the "planet" system. 2. Earth and water, created on the globe as a result of the division of the solid and liquid parts of the globe: the "earth (firmament)" and "water" render a decisive influence on each other. 3. The plant world: its vital functions fully depend on the "earth" and "water" systems. 4. Light (day, which appeared after the night), which is dependent on the position of the planets: the "light" system supports the vital functions of the "plant world" system. 5. The animal kingdom: its vital functions are supported by all the systems created in the first four days.

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6. Man: the "man" system is the most perfect system of all those created on the globe, but its vital functions fully depend on all the systems created in the first five days. The one who created all these mutually dependent systems also received the name God the Creator. So, the image of such a God the Creator in the Torah is close in spirit to the intellectual Jews and Gentiles. Intellectuals, as is God Himself, are creators. One can say that in any sense intellectuals are God's partners in the creative work according to God's genius plan. And creation includes too the destruction of what did not turn out how it was foreseen by the plan. There are a multitude of examples in the Torah of God's work as the Creator that also include destruction. It is both the history of the world's rebuilding with the help of Noah's ark and the worldwide flood; and the history of the creation of many competitive tribes for which the Tower of Babel had to be destroyed; and the history of the creation of a moral code for people for which the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah had to be destroyed with their sinners; and many other ones. The image of God the Father of the laws of the universe combines well with the essence of science studying the laws that were created somehow and by someone. Inasmuch as scientists understand they, in principle, are in no condition to answer the questions how the laws of the universe they study were created, it automatically leads to the conclusion there is some kind of power beyond the mind's grasp that stands behind the creation of these laws.
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And it is not essential what to call this power. Let the name be God! The overwhelming majority of people understand that if laws exist (physical laws, legal laws), then the only possibility of avoiding suffering is not to violate the laws. And if one has violated the laws and suffered, he cannot blame the creator of the laws. It is better to study the laws in order to learn how to live without violating them. God's image as an exacting leader is well matched with man's day-to-day creative activity. Actually, we all have managers at our jobs who direct us and say what we should be doing. We may not agree with them, but we know what can be the result of our disagreement - punishment or firing, in other words, suffering. However, if we are sure of our rightness, we can (and should) take a stand, trying to bend management to our side. Sometimes it is successful and we are satisfied. And our interrelation with God the leader is close to that. The image of God as an exacting manager is close rather not to intellectuals, but to those who love to carry out planned actions where accuracy of the fulfillment and rapidity are valued. And there are many such people, and they want God's creative work. There are very many examples in the Torah of God's image as an exacting manager. One of the characteristic examples is the story of the exodus of the Jews from Egypt when God gave clear directions to Moses how to influence the pharaoh to force him to let the Jews go.

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Though the image of God, the strict and caring Father, prevailed in the Jewish people from the very beginning, there is practically no such image in the Torah. But such an image dominates in all contemporary prayer books of all streams of Judaism. How is it there is no such image in the Torah, but such an image dominates in the prayer books, which are supposed to be based on Torah situations? Most likely it is Christianity's influence, as mentioned earlier, in which the image of God the Father was practically the same, and God the Creator is associated only with the original creation of the world, and not with the continuation of creation in which man is God's partner in creative work according to "God's design."

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The image of God as a strict and considerate Father, though traditional and customary, is far from the understanding by intellectuals of this almighty power's role over us in the formation of our lives. But many like such an image: it is acceptable to think someone is concerned about you and someone is protecting you, even if you violate the rules and laws. But the image of God the Creator for Jewish intellectual identification and the content of this image are key. The image of God - the Creator of the laws of the universe and the image of God - the manager of our world's building can be considered examples, as it were, of a "rational" or "scientific" God, with whom all logically thinking people can easily agree.

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3.3.

God for believers and non-believers

On this page, God (here in a galactic representation) influences and, possibly, directs the actions both of religious people represented here by Chagall's The Praying Jew, and non-religious people, represented here by Karl Marx. Can intellectual thought agree someone or something galactic over us called God renders an influence on everything regardless of the fact they consider themselves believers or non-believers?

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One may often hear the following question: How does one combine the assertion that Jews create everything in accordance with the ideals of the Torah with the fact that many Jews consider themselves non-religious, know the Torah only though hearsay and have never studied it? And one may offer an answer to this question with the following example. The more than three-thousand year history of the Jewish people based on the constant study of the Torah and its interpretations in constantly changing living conditions created a capability to classify everything happening as GOOD, that must be supported and developed in every way possible on the way to the Better World, and as EVIL what must be avoided and prevented along the way. The ability to ascribe all events to the categories of GOOD and EVIL led to a fine-tuned set of life actions in response to the constantly changing conditions of life that were the implementation of the Torah's ideas, or the Almighty's ideas, for the creation the Better World on our earth. This set of life actions began to move from generation to generation, as they say, "with mother's milk," and in those Jewish families where it was dangerous even to talk about the Torah, as it was, for example, in the former Soviet Union; the children learned by the example of their parents, their Jewish relatives and friends' life actions to determine what Jewish GOOD meant and what Jewish EVIL meant, while not recognizing it all comes from the Torah. Both Jews do so who consider themselves religious, and those who consider themselves non-religious.

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Perhaps the concept of The One God in the Torah is the main thing for everyone in the formation of the Jewish people, and it is true both for those who consider themselves religious and for those who refute religion. And the most essential thing in this concept is the one source of the rules of moral behavior and the laws controlling our world. Before the appearance of The One God for everyone, that is in pagan times, there were many gods and each god was a source of its own rules and laws. Each man, each group of people chose their own gods, that is, their own rules and laws, and that divided all mankind into separate quarreling groups. It was necessary to find a single source for all rules and laws as the Jews had done for the unification of all people into a single humanity. And that is not so simple when one stronger group of people becomes such a source and imposes its own rules of behavior and laws on all the others in this case a struggle for power between different groups of people would be endless. This new source of rules and laws in the form of The One God turned out to be greater than people and he was giving everyone different conditions and possibilities to participate in some kind of creative activity going beyond the limits of habitual survival at the animal level. The acknowledgement of this source of rules and laws both is the basis for religion and makes all people terminologically religious. But how about being with people who consider themselves non-religious?

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Well. Having heard their logical constructs that there is no God, it is obvious they recognize the existence of some kind of mighty power over all of us who determines the rules and laws of our life, but they prefer to call this power something else: nature, energy, the laws of the universe and so on. They are not protesting the recognition of the existence of some kind of almighty power over us that determines the rules and laws of our life they don't like the name and image of this power accepted by others. But that is immaterial and one shouldn't argue with it. So, it seems the concept of religion and God lay at the foundation of the identification of different peoples and communities and even for those who consider themselves non-religious!

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Intellectual people who consider themselves non-religious understand that if one is to escape the almighty power over us, earthly and human forces will immediately take its place and that is a direct route to a dictatorship, it is a direct route from GOOD to EVIL. Hitler and Nazism, Stalin and Communism, Khomeni and Islamism and their destructive consequences for mankind must always remind us about such a possibility, if we refute the authority of an almighty power over us.

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Chapter 4

Intellectual Examination of the Torah and Judaism as the Foundation of Identity of Jewish People

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4.1. An intellectual look at Judaism as a world-view of building the Better World


The main thing in the unique vision of the Better World according to the Torah is a partnership with the Almighty in the continuation of the creative work in our world created at the very beginning by the Almighty Himself (in any of His representations), inasmuch as we were created in His image and likeness (if even we have convinced ourselves it is so. If it is, then can we agree with the following key characteristics of this Better World: (a) the "construction site" for it is our real earth, and not heaven, as it is assumed by religions not based on the Torah;

(b) we create everything not only for our limited life time, but also for some kind of eternit y difficul t to perceiv e;
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(c) the builders and creators are individuals with their individual understanding of a "design according to God," and not a faceless collective headed by a man fulfilling a god's role?

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Just how anyhow does Judaism determine the purpose of human existence "according to God"? An intellectual reading of the Torah allows finding the answer to this question, and the answer comes down to the following: God created the whole world, but He created only man in his own image and likeness. But not in a physical image and likeness, inasmuch as God does not have any physical characteristics (hands, feet, head and the like), but in an intellectual likeness, inasmuch as God's main characteristic according to the Torah is God's creativity. God created the earthly and water spaces; God created the plant and animal world; God created man himself as a physical body; God created intellect and imbued man's physical body with it, thereby changing the simple physical body into a divine being ("in the image and likeness of God"). If that is so, then the main purpose of human existence "according to God" is creation, that is, the continuation of God's creative work along the lines of building some kind of Better World, where all individuals attain the ability to create in accordance with their own God-given individual capabilities and ideas, that is, in accordance with their intellect. Thus, intellect "from God" becomes primary in the determination of man's actions in contrast to the animal kingdom, where instincts of individual preservation "from Darwin" are predominate.

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In accordance with the Torah, people of Judeo-Christian spirituality also believe (intuitively or consciously) in it inasmuch as we, people, were created in the image and likeness of God the Maker/Creator without any exceptions and since we all without any exception are equal both before God and before each other. As created in the image and likeness of the Maker-Creator, we all are makerscreators, called to continue the work creating our world begun by God the Maker/Creator in the beginning of the creation of our world (or some kind of almighty power over us for those whom the word God frightens. Ideas and instructions that could be translated into specific, detailed projects are necessary for any creation. So, the Torah and Judaism are such spiritual instructions a project from above as it were, the details of which are open for different interpretation. The constantly developing and changing world is in full agreement with the unchanging fundamental foundations of the Torah and Judaism. The Torah describes how from the moment of the appearance of the first people, Adam and Eve, Man was a direct participant in the process of changing the World created in the very beginning by something or someone, that became to be called the Almighty/God. Man continued God's creative work in accordance with this God's ideas, the essence of which consists not in the preservation of what was created in the beginning, but in the continuation of the creative work begun by God in the beginning. And any creative work leads to constant changes during preservation of, and this is of principle importance, the

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fundamental bases laying at the foundation of the beginning. The history of Judaism itself is constant searches for better, constantly changing rules of social (moral, spiritual) behavior of people, of such behavior that would allow the best method for creating while preserving the fundamental bases of our constantly changing world laid on by God in the beginning. The best evidence for it is the Talmud. The Talmud is the result of many years of discussions and codification of such rules for those life conditions that existed approximately 2,000 years ago. The Talmud is a work of a multitude of prominent rabbis of that time. And after completion of work on the Talmud, the rabbis continued the process of tying the fundamental bases of Judaism to life's changing conditions. There are a multitude of examples for it, and not only in the reformist Jews, but also in the Orthodox. The constantly updated Sabbath ritual rules, the rules for Kosher food and cooking, the rules for treatment during diseases and so on can be attributed to it. Objections often are heard that such a connection in and of itself is not a connection, but a compilation of new plans for the development of human society which has nothing in common with the Torah. They say the Torah is a historical document needed in the conditions of an old world that no longer exists. And therefore, right now efforts for improving our world are directed not at realization of the instructions of the Torah, but at the fulfillment of the vision of modern world leaders directing the world toward some kind of new "bright" goal. One can agree with this when such leaders possess Judeo-Christian morals and do
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everything even unconsciously in accordance with these morals. But it is impossible to agree with this assertion when leaders replace Judeo-Christian morals with their own. And there are many examples in contemporary history (Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and others). Judaism never was an immobile/stiff religion. And it could not be in principle, inasmuch as Judaism is moral principles for life given to mankind by God the Maker/Creator. These moral principles always have been interpreted in such a way it was possible to change them in the constantly changing conditions of life as a result of the activity of man the creator/maker (who was created as such in the image and likeness of God the Creator/ Maker). Such a "reformist" approach was always characteristic for all Judaism's holy books, including the Torah and Talmud. One may distinguish in Judaism's holy books (a) moral rules of behavior and (b) examples illustrating fulfillment of these rules. The rules, inasmuch as they were obligatory as rules, are strict for fulfillment by all Jews. The examples themselves may change and be different for different groups of Jews and for different stages of mankind's development. The following episodes in the Torah which shaped Judaism, illustrate such a difference. The punishment of Jews found guilty of serious crimes is described in the Torah as execution by stoning. Here (a) the moral rule of behavior consists of the fact punishment by execution is allowed for serious transgressions, and (b) an example of the fulfillment of
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this rule is fulfillment of the sentence by stoning. The rule is supposed to remain in force during all the changes in our world. The example itself can, and must, change in accordance with the change of technologies and traditions: it is now possible to carry out a death sentence via the electric chair, hanging and execution by firing squad. How a priest is supposed to dress is described in the Torah. Here (a) the instructions a priest must be distinguished from the rest by his appearance is a rule, and (b) a specific type of dress, and even in principle how one must be distinguished, is an example. The dress can change in accordance with the change of technologies and traditions. The prohibition of work, including lighting of a fire, on the Sabbath is directed in the Torah. Here (a) the prohibition of work on the Sabbath is a rule, and the definition of what is called work is an example. For example, if in the times of the Torah fire was a main element of a job, then now lighting a fire is no longer work. It was directed in the Torah to name priests only from the lineage of the Kohanim. Here (a) the designation of priests from among specially trained people in accordance with a special program, and not people chosen by chance according to their character, is a rule, and (b) the determination of what "specially trained people" means is an example. After dispersion of the Jews in the Diaspora it was impossible to designate

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priests only from the Kohanim, and the institution of rabbis was contrived for preservation of the faith. Belonging to a Judaic tribe in the Torah was determined by means of the father, because Jewish men often took as brides for themselves women from non-Judaic tribes. Here (a) the determination of belonging to a Judaic tribe "according to blood" is a rule, and (b) the determination of whose blood is considered defining the father or the mother, is an example. During the Roman domination because of the prohibition of mixed Roman-Judaic marriages it became impossible to determine belonging to a Judaic tribe by means of the father, and the decision was adopted to make it by means of the mother. Honest and considerate mutual relations of employers and workers who at that time were called slaves were directed in the Torah. (In contrast to slave-owning societies of that time, for example, in ancient Rome or Greece, where slaves were treated like animals and slaves in Judea were those now called wage earners). Here (a) the need for honest and considerate relations toward the wage earners is a rule, and (b) how a worker is called and what economic relations he has with his employer is a example. By replacing one economic system with another, more perfect, interrelationships between employers and workers change, but the rule remains in force it is necessary to relate to wage earners with respect and honestly pay for their labor.

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During pre-Roman domination all fundamental theological streams in Judaism Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes and others were considered identically essential for finding ways of a better understanding of God's plans, and these streams exceeded the whole gamut of contemporary Judaism, from the ultraorthodox to the ultra-reformist. Here (a) the assumption and encouragement of all possible ways of finding God's plans are a rule, and (b) there must be no exceptions here, though different streams of Judaism have tried and are trying to do it. Undoubtedly, not everyone will agree with the treatment of the use of the rules and examples in the Torah, as it is presented in this section. But the main thing is, and with what it must be agreed here, is the recognition of the presence in the Torah both of eternal rules and changing examples. It follows from this that some of the 613 Orthodox rules taken from the Torah and considered by an ultra-orthodox Jew as obligatory, in reality may be examples. But for what purpose are the same rules for building the Better World for everyone given to us by the Almighty/God or contrived by us ourselves necessary anyway? Wouldn't it be better to make it possible for each man, each community, each people to live according to their own unique rules? No, it is not better and here is why. Each man, each community, each people and each state competes with each other in the area of ideas for building the better world on our earth. And that is okay, because that is how it was contrived by the Almighty: He foresaw at the
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very beginning of the world's creation the freedom of individual actions and the creative competition for all people so that the best ideas in building the Better World would win during such a competition. (Those who say "there is no God" most likely will agree with the statement that such a competition is necessary for better survival "according to Darwin").

For such a competition to be successful, common rules are necessary for carrying it out peacefully. Without such common rules a competition of ideas becomes a competition of physical strength, that is of wars, during which those incapable of proving the supremacy of their ideas try to destroy physically the competitors with the better ideas. It has been that way from the very moment of our world's creation, when everything was decided by the physical destruction of competitors, and it all continued like that until some part of man recognized The One God and obtained from Him common rules of such behavior set forth in the Torah. This part of mankind subsequently began to be called the chosen people, or the people of the Torah, and these people began to consider it their obligation to spread the common rules for holding a competition of ideas for building the better world among all the rest of mankind. And one can note that mankind is beginning to comprehend these rules, although very slowly, and it most likely is only the Judeo-Christian part of mankind which, after a two millennia disregard for these rules, finally is accepting them. It is accepting them not because someone is forcing it to do so, but because it is coming to confirmation of the
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rightness of common rules for peaceful competitive struggle for better ideas in building the Better World based on the ideas of the Torah. The process for examination of the rightness of the Torah by doing is continuing and its end is not in sight. If common rules for peaceful competition of ideas for building the Better World really and truly are necessary, why can't there be ritual halakhic Jew traditions, including such as the rules for dress, kosher food, daily prayers and the like that, as they say, are obligatory according to the Torah and are chief in Jewish identification in orthodox communities. The halakhic traditions of Jews cannot be the common rules of the peaceful competition of mankind's ideas for building the Better World, and here is why. The fact of the matter is, halakhic traditions were developed for a completely different purpose for encouragement of uniform behavior among Jews, and not for encouragement of freethinking which is a basic element in creative work. Let us recall how the halakhic traditions were created and where they were codified. The so-called Written and Oral Torahs are different. The Written Torah is the Pentateuch of Moses, and in it are written down the thoughts of the Almighty/God himself in the interpretation of Moses. The Oral Torah itself (the Talmud and the like) is the interpretation of the different situations of the Written Torah made by rabbis through many centuries after the appearance of the Written Torah itself. There are no ritual halakhic traditions in the Written Torah. These traditions were formulated much later in the Oral Torah for one
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purpose to create a set of ritual actions which would clearly separate Jews from Gentiles for the purpose of preserving Jews as a single people in the conditions of dispersion, in which Jews found themselves nearly two thousand years ago during the writing of the Talmud. How they came to be dispersed after the destruction of the First and Second Temple in Jerusalem these events are well described in historical chronicles. Okay, let us assume that the halakhic rules cannot be the common rules of a peaceful competition of mankind's ideas for building the Better World. But why then can the rituals prescribed by the halakhic rules which appeal to God in all life's events be optional for everyone in the Better World "according to God"? Because God, as we imagine him, does not need our rituals, including all kinds of prayers. God, such as we imagine Him, is omnipotent and does not need our prayers in order to affirm His power. We, mortals, need these prayers in order to strengthen our belief in the correctness of what we are doing. (Even people considering themselves nonreligious can agree with such an assertion). But a significant part of the Jews is spiritually strong, and they can manage without any rituals. In accordance with the Torah, God needs our creative activities based on the competition of creative ideas, and that requires freethinking. God does not need our prayers and rituals we, Jews, need them to strengthen our determination to act creatively and to find the correct ways for such actions.
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Thus, common rules of peaceful competition of ideas for building of the Better World must originate from the Written Torah given to people by the Almighty, and not from the Oral Torah created by prominent rabbis for a completely different purpose. Can one be some kind of an image of the ideal ("a true") Jew according to the Torah who does everything recommended by the Torah for the creation of the Better World? One can, and here is how. This image is based on a key Torah concept God the Creator created Man in his own image and likeness, that is Man the Creator; therefore, the ideal Jew must do everything God did in the Torah. From the moment of the Torah's appearance, Jews began to organize their life and actions according to the Torah's covenants within the limit of those capabilities that had been granted them by life's conditions and the environment in which they found themselves, trying to approach the image of the ideal Jew. It all formed in the last three millennia that set of actions and traditions by which Jews try to make our world a better place for everyone, doing all this in accordance with the ideas of the Torah, but not always remembering this source. The ideal Jew creates the Better World everywhere he lives (in Israel, in America, in Russia), where he works (scientist, cobbler, engineer, financier, tradesman), and with whom he associates (wife, children, friends, work colleagues). The image of the ideal Jew is a spiritual
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image not connected with ethnicity and country of residence (Jews can live closer to the image of the ideal Jew in America or in Ukraine than in Israel). Even a man not born into a Jewish family can consider himself an ideal Jews if he lives according to the Torah's canons. According to the Torah, any creation is based on the competition of different ideas created by different peoplecreators, by Jews and not by Jews, and one of the tasks of the ideal Jew is proof that his competitive creative proposals are better than all the others and the concepts of the Torah helped make them better. And if a Jew feels he must constantly strengthen ties with the Almighty through observation of halakhic traditions for a better understanding of the ideas, Godspeed to him. If observance of halakhic traditions is unnecessary, then what is the sense of the 613 rules of behavior continuing to influence the Jews' traditions appreciably? These rules are important and the following "gastronomic" example illustrates why. One can find in any grocery store not fewer than 613 different products offered for consumption, but each of us uses no more than several dozen in everyday life. Why then are so many products being offered? Everyone without exception knows the answer to this question: so there is a choice; so that everyone can chose from the overall abundance what corresponds better to everyone's notion of what a "better life" means. The more goods offered, the greater the probability of man's "physical" satisfaction, and the greater the probability of approaching what every individual considers the "better life." The very same logic
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governs the 613 orthodox rules of behavior. Not one Jew is able to "consume" them all. But everyone can chose several dozen such rules from them that seem to him the most important for approaching the "better life" in its spiritual understanding. It is in this way all Jews together move the world in the direction of a better spiritual life on our earth, choosing for themselves individually some kind of limited set of life actions that come closer to everyone's individual nature. The creative work in the Jewish world is being realized not by an ideal, but by a real Jew who is very far from the ideal; real Jews are all those who consider themselves Jews regardless whether others consider them Jews. Real Jews were shaped historically in completely different conditions of real life; therefore, they are all different from those who have achieved great eminence in halakhic orthodox spirituality to those who achieved great eminence in science and the social development of the world. But they all are real Jews, because they consider themselves to be and they do much in their areas to make our world a better place for everyone. So there you have it everything cited in this section as the author sets forth, the intellectual influence of Judaism in shaping attitudes on the development of the human community on our earth, of attitudes for creation of a Better World "according to God," and of those attitudes that comprise the basis of the intellectual identification of Jews.

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While every individual, created in the image and likeness of God, is a unique creation with his own interpretation of how this world should be developed "according to God's plan," the purpose of his life is not the creation of his own isolated better world for himself and his family, but cooperation with all the other like unique individuals for the purpose of building a Better World for everyone living in this world not in some other world!

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4.2. The chosenness of the Jews "from God" as a spiritual mission for building the Better World
God made the Jewish people the chosen ones, having delivered the Torah to them via Moses as it is represented in this Rembrandt. Even if one assumes that the Jews themselves decided to consider themselves chosen during their historic maturation, would it be possible to agree with the Jewish definition of their "chosenness" not as the elevation of themselves over all others, but as taking on for themselves the heavy responsibility for helping God in transferring His concepts of the Better World on our earth to everyone living here?

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The majority of intellectually thinking people will agree with the famous philosophical expression that movement toward a goal, and not its achievement, is the content of a man's life. And it all is because man's goal in life is creation (in the general sense of this word), and creation has no end in the philosophical understanding of this word. Creation is a process of moving in intermediate stages. At the end of each stage tasks are defined or specified for the next stage. But movement is supposed to occur for any kind of plan, and not senselessly. It is not supposed to be "Brownian Motion" which in essence is accidental and senseless, but is supposed to be kind of "electromagnetic," where all particles are oriented and moving in one and the same direction defined as "the vector of an electromagnetic field," created by someone or something controlling this field. All mankind moves along some kind of vector of their own. Each nation within mankind moves along his "nation's" vector which is distinguished from a universal vector. The total effect of individual vectors of all nations forms the universal vector. Within each nation separate groups and individuals have their own vectors which form the vector of that nation. It can happen that the vectors of different individuals in some kind of nation are so different from their own directions that the total defining the national vector approaches zero. The nation ceases understanding where it is headed. It implies the a run-up to a revolution in the social plan. And if leaders are not found able to change the
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individual vectors by peaceful means, revolutions do occur. The bloody revolutions of Russia and France are good examples of it. Individual vectors of some part of the population are changed by force during bloody revolutions and a common "forced" national vector is created. Numerous examples of the recent past with Communist and Fascist regimes (the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, Mao Zedong's China) are good examples of it. Thus, each nation has its own vector, that is, its own plan of creation, its own life plan. Each generation of a given nation picks up the baton from the previous generation and hands it to the following for movement along this vector. Let us try to fill this general philosophical idea with specific content for the Jewish people. It is especially important for the Jewish people because in this idea is contained the understanding of the Jewish people's chosenness and the sum and substance of its difference from all the rest not in the sense of superiority, as anti-Semites try to present it, but in the sense of accepting voluntarily the responsibility for the condition and further development of the world created by God (or Nature the creator's name in this case is not so essential). Perhaps already the majority now will agree that for Jews it is necessary to seek the "Jewish" vector-plan in the Torah, in Judaism, in religion regardless whether individual Jews refer to themselves as religious or non-religious. It all is because the Jewish people had nothing else uniting them in the Diaspora for two millennia. Life in the Diaspora under the influence of other nations' traditions was supposed to assimilate the Jews and merge them with the peoples of
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those countries where they lived. But that didn't happen, and the only thing that prevented assimilation was the Torah and Judaism, that is religion, because the Torah and Judaism are indeed religion. Therefore, on must search for this vector-plan of the Jewish people here. Jewish identification was formed around the concept of the chosenness of the Jewish people in its religious understanding, and the Torah describes, step by step, how one tribe stood out of the crowd of people created by God that subsequently became the Jewish people and the chosen people. As already has been emphasized repeatedly, man became man only thanks to intellect, which he received suddenly from some kind of power above. It is immaterial where the intellect was applied into something man-like that was a consequence of evolution "according to Darwin," or into something completely new "according to the Torah." The Torah and Judaism do not reject the possibility of the existence of something before the "six days of the world's creation." The Torah maintains that our world, as we see it now, was created in the "six days of the world's creation." The Torah and Judaism do not determine with what "technologies" our world and intellect in man were created. Thus, any scientific theories about such "technologies," for example the creation of intellect via radiation of special beams, will not contradict the Torah. It is not the "technologies" that are important, but who (or what) did it and for what. The one who did it became known as God, and this word is supposed to be perceived without the

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primitive behaviors discussions.

that

sometimes

dominate

in

And God, who did it all, did it with a defined purpose. This purpose, as the further development of mankind has shown, consists of the creation on our earth of something unusual that now is called civilization. And upon obtaining intellect man became the executor in such a creative process an active and creative executor, not passive. From the very beginning God had decided that all people would be equal active executors of His plan of creation (Adam, Eve and their heirs). But to direct all people with their different characteristics proved to be beyond the power even of God (the fact that all people are supposed to possess individual qualities also was included in the intention of God who created each man in his own image and likeness). Therefore, God decided to single out the one group of people most adapted for the execution of His tasks of creation. Such a group was found after much searching (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their heirs), and these people became Jews after the bondage in Egypt, Mount Sinai and the receipt of the Torah by Moses. Thus, the Jews were handed the role of the "catalyst" in the fulfillment of God's intention for the creation of civilization on our earth. And in this sense in particular did the Jews become "chosen" chosen by God for the fulfillment of defined tasks.

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They were chosen not to be better or to be stronger than everyone, but to help all the rest understand God's plan for the creation of our civilization. The principle of chosenness (of the Jews) proclaimed in the Torah is a principle distinction of the religion of the Jews. This principle consists of the fact that moral principles of personal and public life in Judaism require actions for the improvement of life on earth not only for Jews themselves, but also for all other peoples of the earth and only in this is contained the principle of chosenness proclaimed in the Torah. The concept of chosenness did not appear immediately. Many iterations in mankind's initial steps, made by God, preceded the appearance of the concept of chosenness. Well known episodes from the Torah and subsequent commentaries in the Talmud describe these iterations in the following way. The first iteration. God created the first people Adam and Eve as distinguished in principle from the animals created before them, and this distinction consisted of the fact that the capacity of choosing between Good and Evil was given to them, Adam and Eve, in accordance with His clear instructions on how to distinguish one from the other. Momentary personal satisfactions pertained to Evil in contrast to, as it seems, actions for obtaining knowledge and the creation on this basis of some kind of development on earth for some kind of remote future which pertained to the category of Good. And so that this future did not seem so very remote, God
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decided to give Adam and Eve eternal life. God's original assumption consisted of the fact that the first eternal people would choose Good. However, that did not happen. The first people chose Evil, taking a bite from the apple of the tree of knowledge. Instead of beginning an intellectual life, receiving knowledge from the tree of knowledge and using this knowledge for the continuation of God's creative work (Good), Adam and Eve preferred to use it for momentary satisfaction of their animal instincts (here Evil in the sense of the elimination of the source of that knowledge, which the tree was in God's concept). The second iteration. God decided that new people capable of distinguishing Good from Evil and choosing Good were needed. For that, He deprived Adam and Eve of eternal life and gave them the ability to propagate as it earlier had been done for animals. And people began to propagate and many of them appeared on the earth. But they too chose Evil instead of Good most often. And God did not like it. The third iteration. Then God again decided to get rid of all the "sinners" on earth and to begin everything over again. And the Flood was arranged where everyone perished except Noah and his family. In God's concept this family was supposed to begin the propagation of people for Good after the end of the deluge. This time everything turned out somewhat. Noah's heirs thrived, and among them were many who had a preference for Good instead of Evil. One such person was Abraham who was aware of God's presence, found Him and began to follow His instructions.
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The fourth iteration. God decided to test how strong was the will of the Tribe of Abraham to do Good, and here is what happened. A famine arrived. The formidable Tribe of Abraham was forced to abandon its lands, resettle in Egypt and become slaves there in order to be spared from famine. They lived in Egypt several hundred years, but they were not unfaithful to their God, continuing to do Good. But the spiritual pressure of the Egyptian pagan traditions was strong, and the time arrived when it was necessary to decide whether to remain in Egypt forever and replace their God with the Egyptian gods. And the formidable tribe of Abraham decided to abandon Egypt and the relatively secure, but slavish life there for the sake of preserving their God. From God's point of view, the Tribe of Abraham acted well. The fifth iteration. And then God decided that Abraham's tribe, having proved its readiness to follow the road of Good according to His directions, could be "chosen" by Him, God, for the role of assistant in rendering help for all remaining tribes to turn to the path of Good. But before making a final decision, God decided to hold a kind of competition for the position of "the chosen" among the majority of tribes living at that time. After such a competition, which is described in detail in the Talmud and attributed to the category of mythologies by many now living, the final choice was made: the Jewish tribe was "commissioned the chosen," and God's covenant with the Jewish people was finalized. Thus, the Jewish people became the chosen ones and accepted the colossally difficult task for
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assisting God in the perfection of our world with all the subsequent adversities that fell to their lot in connection with the chosenness, but with a feeling of satisfaction for their being able to do it. There were also other steps-iterations along the path of the Jews and God, undertaken by God for the realization of His vision of the Jewish people's mission of chosenness, but it is outside the scope of the Torah and Talmud and pertains to the area of suppositions. the following such steps-iterations might apply. (Number 6) The assembly of the Tribe of Abraham after the exodus from Egyptian slavery to the socalled Promised Land. This step was important for converting the Tribe of Abraham into the Jewish people and the formation in them of those qualities necessary for fulfillment of the mission of chosenness. And this signifies the formation of such spirituality in the chosen people that should have become an example for the rest of mankind in God's concept. (Number 7) The Formation of the necessary spirituality in the chosen people. Nearly 700-800 years passed after reaching the Promised Land for it. It lasted so long because the Jewish people resisted the new spirituality, which was very well stated by all the prophets in the Tanach. But God overcame this resistance, and the Jewish people began to live according to the rules of the new spirituality, sufficiently close to what had been conceived by God.

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(Number 8) The new spirituality's endurance test. The Babylonian Exile, the destruction of the First and Second Temples and Greco-Roman domination during the subsequent 500-600 years may have been an endurance test for the new spirituality. Did it become the foundation for the Jewish people's life? Wouldn't it disappear under the pressure of new circumstances, in exile without a High Priest and the Temple? Would the Jewish people really believe in their chosenness while continuing to be the bearer of the new spirituality in new difficult conditions of life? In all likelihood the answer was positive, inasmuch as God moved on to the next step-iteration. (Number 9) The scattering of the Jewish people, who had become the really spiritually chosen, among other peoples. This step was necessary so that the Jewish people could begin fulfilling their mission of chosenness, that is, render aid to God in spreading spirituality "according to God" among the other peoples of the world. It seems spreading of the Jews around the whole world is not a punishment for some kind of transgression, but the next step in the creative work for the perfection of our world according to God's plan as planned beforehand. There is a very important remark that runs through all the discussions in this book and which is again worth repeating. People considering themselves in the nonreligious category, most likely will say that all this has not been proven, all this could have been and could not have been. But that is not the point. The main thing is that all this made our world like it is better than it was. And it is
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important to move along this path and further, because nothing better has been proposed. The concept of chosenness, despite the fact it is essentially religious, must not be repudiated by people who consider themselves non-religious, inasmuch as this concept includes the following cornerstones of our civilization: Monotheism. Our forefather Abraham, speaking in modern phraseology, is a pioneer of The One God he established contact with Him and intuitively sensed His power and the grandeur of His instructions. And this led to the concept of the chosenness of the Jewish people. People who consider themselves non-religious can think that Abraham "contrived" The One God for the sake of the good of all mankind let them think so, because it is one and the same in the practical plan. A common morality. The prophet Moses, in actual fact, is the creator of the first universal common rules of morality, inasmuch as he was able to understand correctly God's corresponding instructions. And this led to the concept of the chosenness of the Jewish people. People who consider themselves nonreligious can think that Moses "contrived" these rules for the sake of the good of all mankind let them think so, because it is one and the same in the practical plan. An aspiration for self-perfection. The Jewish prophets Isaiah and others created as it were a school of selfcriticism for improvement of the spirituality of the Jewish people themselves, which meant that chosenness most of all demands the eradication of Evil in the Jewish people themselves. And this led to the concept of the
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chosenness of the Jewish people. People who consider themselves non-religious can think that Isaiah and other prophets did not exist let them think so, because it is inessential in the practical plan: Jews are the strongest critics of themselves. An aspiration for the world's spiritual unity. The Jews Jehoshua (Jesus), Peter and Paul were pioneers in the advancement of the universal common rules of morality to Gentiles via the new religion, Christianity. And this led to the concept of the chosenness of the Jewish people. People who consider themselves nonreligious can think that Jehoshua (Jesus), Peter and Paul and other Christian prophets did not exist let them think so, because it is inessential in the practical plan: Christians continue to live according to the concepts of the Old Testament/the Torah.

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One needs to accept the concept of God as a good investigator would formulate it: If we, people, can influence everything dependent on us in our system of knowledge animate and inanimate, including our own bodies, - we are obligated to allow the possibility of the existence of some kind of more grandiose system, where we ourselves are dependent on some kind of power over us which in the broadest meaning of this word is also called God. And if this power over us has chosen someone (in this case, the Jews) for the resolution of some kind of defined tasks, this chosenness must not be looked at in terms of superiority - different groups of people on our earth will resolve different tasks, and, most likely, according to the invisible directions of that power itself.

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4.3. Spirituality and intellectual spiritual concepts of the Better World


This is an allegorical portrayal of good and evil, holiness and sinfulness. Good and holiness are personified by the Jewish prophets who have been building the road to the Better World "according to God." But this road is narrow, and it is easy to stray from it and fall into the abyss of evil and sinfulness. Can one judge the Jewish prophets who burdened themselves with the heavy responsibility for building this road, the construction of the guard rails on it and drawing in all the people for moving along this path?

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The One God did not come to us of his own accord "empty handed." Those spiritual universal values came with him for Jews and Gentiles who made up our Judeo-Christian civilization. Different Jewish communities advance different spiritual values first. For intellectually thinking people the following are the most important values: God made spirituality a fundamental distinguishing characteristic of Man. Spirituality is the ability to distinguish Good from Evil when Good primarily is what is good for others and not obligatory for oneself, and the struggle with Evil cannot bring you any personal material benefits. God gave such an ability to man and directed man to the choice of Good. In accordance with the Torah, God created man on the 6th day of the Creation of the World and distinguished him from everything living that was created on the preceding days, with this in particular the ability to distinguish Good from Evil. The brilliant substance of one of the first episodes of the Torah with Adam, Eve and the tree of knowledge with the forbidden fruit is in it. God created a spiritual mankind as a single whole. We (we that is a collective generic Jew) believe that Judaism proclaimed the need for mankind's organization according to the same spiritual/moral rules for all individuals and peoples. Before Judaism's appearance people considered themselves part of a living world, where each group treats all the rest as enemies and
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battles with them for the capture of the existing limited material benefits. Wars were considered a noble undertaking not only from the point of view of the nations themselves, but also from the point of view of the local gods protecting their own nations, their own tribes and their own individuals. We believe Judaism changed all this in principle, having created the foundations of a so called "universal morality" and the Jewish people adopted voluntarily the mission for assisting the Almighty in the spread of these rules among all nations. And this is the foundation of spirituality according to the Torah. God created Judaism as a catalyst for the idea of mankind's spiritual unity. Judaism and the Jew as the bearer of this religion appeared approximately 3,300 years ago on Mount Sinai where the future Jewish people, escaping from Egyptian slavery, received the Torah via Moses from the "hands" of some kind of all-powerful controlling power that came to be called God. ("The One God" had revealed himself somewhat earlier through contact with Abraham who became the forefather of the future Jewish people). And immediately after his appearance Judaism recognized this action of God and began to intensify and refine the notion of a common spirituality. God created Common Rules of moral behavior for all mankind based on man's spirituality. Judaism and the Jew are distinguished in principle from other religions and peoples who existed before them by the special understanding of the concept of God
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according to the social organization of human society. Judaism became the first monotheistic religion, which described in the Torah a common code of rules of moral behavior received from God for all mankind and not only for a separate people. God created common rules of behavior with instructions for updating these rules in the constantly changing conditions of life. Here, as a rule, many ask the following question. Why update the rules? If these are rules, then they must be carried out and not updated. But it is the grandeur of the Torah that the Torah is not a code of rules of "good behavior" already created, but which indicates the way for refining such rules by the Almighty Power (God). And this way includes destructive actions also when such actions are necessary for removal of what had gone along the incorrect (in God's point of view) path. And there are many examples for it in the Torah. Such a long path with suffering and destruction is necessary because people accept only such rules of behavior to which they come through their own suffering, and not according to some order from above. And in this is the grandeur of the Torah, that it has designated the path to finding such rules (of spirituality, of morality) instead of intruding on them. God undertook continuing the creative work begun by Him on our earth based on Common Rules. In contrast to the rest of the living world, God created man with a defined purpose, and this purpose is the continuation of the creative work begun by God
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Himself. If the main idea in the creation of the "prehuman" world was "live and multiply," then the main idea of the "human" world was "live, multiply and create" -- and create according to common rules of moral behavior so the result will be God and not Evil. God prefers a kind of partnership of man with Him in the creative work. God is not a dictator, and He does not demand absolute submission to Him. It all is because God's main idea for man consists of creation and in the continuation of God's creative work. And any creative work is base on a nonbellicose competition of different ideas and a partnership among all creative participants. God gave freedom of choosing solutions from many possible creative variants. A partnership with God signifies that God encourages creation by man of many competitive variants of spiritual and material creation and choosing the best from them for subsequent practical realization such that it may create as much more Good as possible and as much less Evil as possible. God proposes the concept "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." It is one of the most fundamental ideas in Judaism. Although the cohabitation of individuals, groups and peoples does not always allow following this rule one hundred percent, but this key concept of the Torah points everyone to the discovery of such agreed
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decisions that may satisfy the wishes of individuals, groups and nations to the maximum possible extent. God obligated the Jewish people to be His chosen for rendering Him assistance in bringing His plan of creation to all the remaining peoples, for which it was necessary to follow special rules of moral behavior, which includes among a great many other things freedom of choice and personal responsibility for the choice made. A multitude of theories exist trying to explain the phenomenon of the Jew why do Jews have different moral values, why Jews are not the same as everyone, why for some things are they a single and holy people and for others a disconnected and sinful people. Here are some of those theories: The survival theory life among strange peoples in a hostile environment forced them to be smarter and some of them direct their keen mind at things holy and good for everyone, and some at things sinful and bad; The Genetic theory the Darwinian theory of survival of the fittest has created such a genotype, and they use the principle of survival of the fittest at the expense of the weak; The religious theory they (Jews) have made a pact with the devil who is helping them. But what is written in the Torah, and three millennia of following the Torah's instructions, gives all basis to think that it is not these theories, but belief in The One God and life in accordance with the spiritual rules and laws cited in the Torah, shaped the Jewish people in the way they are.
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These rules and laws define the criteria of Good and Evil, encourage movement along the path of Good, but give freedom of choice. And this freedom has made it possible for the Jewish people to be shaped the same and holy as it were, while at the same time preserving features of fragmentation and sinfulness. One feels additional explanations are required here. Freedom of choice, given by the Almighty and illustrated in the Torah in many examples, comes down to a degree of risk in the practical plan, which is allowed in actions for the creation and strengthening of Good. The greater the degree of risk, the greater the probability of doing more Good, but an even greater probability of failure when efforts for advancing Good can lead to Evil. The following example from the Torah illustrates this situation. After the departure of the Jews from Egypt and 40 years of wandering in the Sinai Desert, Moses finally led the Jews to the Promised Land bestowed upon the Jews by God. But some kind of tribes already were living there. Moses sent twenty spies (one each from each of the Jewish ancestral tribes) to determine how strong these tribes were, whether they would oppose the Jews, and if there was opposition, what were the chances for victory. Having returned from their reconnaissance, ten spies said that the risk of advancing into the Promised Land was great, it should not be done, strong tribes lived there, and the Jews would be killed. But the recommendations of two of the other spies were different the Jews could be victorious and they should enter the Land bestowed by God. In order words, it was worth the risk. Moses had to make a decision risk it
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or to risk it? If everything turned out well, the Jews would create a great nation in the Promised Land, develop the principles of life according to God's covenants and transfer these principles to other peoples. And it was a great Good. But if the Jews were to be killed completely, God's covenants would not be fulfilled and that was a great Evil. Moses decided to enter the Promised Land, the risk turned out to be justified and Good triumphed. But in another example from the Torah, Evil triumphed. That was when Eve decided to take a risk and take a bite from the forbidden apple, violating God's guidelines. Eve and Adam had to leave the Garden of Eden and begin another, more difficult life, a life in which Evil already was beginning to manifest itself. Speaking about spirituality, sinfulness and the degree of risk considered allowable during the acceptance of decisions important for living and often separating spirituality from sinfulness, it is possible to cite one more example from the recent history of the Jews in the Soviet Union. In the 1970s, Jews of the Soviet Union achieved the opportunity of emigration to Israel (and via Israel to other countries of the democratic world). But this opportunity was linked to huge risk: a real threat existed of not obtaining permission from Soviet authorities for emigration, of losing work and of putting one's family on the threshold of a starvation existence and even being convicted for "treason to the motherland." The risk was huge, but too was the extraordinary opportunity of ceasing to live a sinful life, as it was in the Soviet Union (a sinful life from the point of view of the
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Torah) and beginning to live a spiritual life (once more, from the point of view of the Torah). Many (including even those who had not heard of the Torah) took the risk, emigrated, and an essential component of spirituality appeared in their lives. Of course, not everyone in Israel and the other countries took advantage of the opportunity to be included there in the spiritual life, but the majority did it. So, the disconnection and sinfulness of the Jews is, as a rule (and to every rule there is an exception), the result of the assumption of great risk in hopes of obtaining the greater Good when great risk has led to failure and the appearance of Evil. But from the point of view of creative work according to God, so it must also be, because without risk there cannot be creative work. That is how the freedom of choice works that was given by God to people. Perhaps such discussions in this section are uncovering more profoundly an intellectual approach to Jewish spirituality and identification.

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Leaders of enlightened and unenlightened mankind have created a multitude of systems for the organization of the political, economic and social life of their fellow citizens and nations both in the ancient Roman and Greek Republics, and in the even more ancient Assyrian and Babylonian empires, and in the recent Nazi and Soviet dictatorships. However, all of them "faded into the sunset." The history of Judeo-Christian civilization urges us to recognize the following: only what corresponds spiritually to the creation of the Better World "according to God," and not according to "world leaders" survives and evolves.

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4.4. Individual responsibility in building the Better World and not a collective irresponsibility

Soldiers marching thoughtlessly and thinking individuals-intellectuals are the extreme opposites of human identification. Can one agree with the assertion that Jewish identification is an identification with thinking
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individuals-intellectuals, such as those, for example, depicted on the previous page the prophet Moses, the Jewish rabbi Jehoshua and Son of God Jesus in one and the same person, the philosopher Spinoza, the great scientist Albert Einstein, and not with a group of thoughtlessly marching soldiers? And if so, how can one reconcile individual identification with collective identification when such a collective identification is necessary for collective actions in defending a country from enemy aggression, in confronting natural disasters, in realization of nation-wide projects, etc? Can one agree that an individual must join the ranks of a group not only under compulsion or for the sake of material benefit, but when he sees individuals of this group sharing its moral values (including in the business area, if one is speaking of participation in a joint business), or has the occasion to influence the group with one's own spiritual convictions?

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Individual responsibility for one's actions is one of the most essential distinctions of Jewish intellectual identification. This Jewish tradition based on the Torah has prevented the appearance among this people of dictators of the Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong and Ahmadinejad type that many nations have not been able to avoid in past centuries. And that very same belief, that man was created as an individual-creator in the image and likeness of God-the Creator who made him, so lies at the heart of this tradition. And it is not essential whether it is true or a myth. It is essential that Jews as a people believed in it and transferred this belief to others. If we all were created in the image and likeness of God-the Creator, we all individually are creators competing with each other in the good sense of this word for a better notion of the Better World and better fulfillment of the work moving the world in this direction. Our intellectual understanding of the image of the Almighty/God is an understanding that our Almighty/God trusts us in our efforts to create a Better World as partners in the creation, in contrast to the understanding of others where the Almighty/God appears in the role of an authoritative manager of the type "the boss's order is law for the subordinates." The values of individual freedom inherent in modern Western civilization were declared three thousand years ago from Mount Sinai. The application of the Ten Commandments in the evaluation of each individual person's behavior and not of the group, is typical for any
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liberal civilized society. Concepts of Judaism include freedom of will for each individual and responsibility for their own actions. "You shall not tempt God" in the ten commandments means man should count on himself and bear responsibility for his actions, and not place his faith in prayers or the carrying out of rituals. When Moses descended from Mount Sinai with the tablets on which were inscribed the ten commandments given by God to the people, Moses did not say according to the legend that God had commanded him, Moses, to obligate the Jewish people to fulfill the commandments. He seems to have said something no one expected. He said God had granted the ten commandments to everyone and now everyone was supposed to fulfill them, and it was possible to do that only according to an individual's interpretation of each one That meant that people from the herd, from the crowd began to turn into individuals, into personalities, that is into the likeness of God Himself. And that meant man was supposed to define for himself "what good means and what bad means," to make decisions for himself and if something turned out not quite as one wanted, to blame oneself and not search for a culprit on whom it would be possible to give vent to one's own indignation. It was the start of what now is called JudeoChristian Western civilization. It is from here came the beginnings of democracy, science and free enterprise everything that withstands a dictatorship of the spirit and is extremely important for the intellectual mind. It is from here came what made the Jewish people unique among all the rest the compelling
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desire to live according to their own moral rules and not according to the rules of a collective dictatorship. Accretion of the group's power in modern democratic states always means accretion of the government's power, and accretion of the government's power unavoidably leads to an increase of anti-Semitism. This process develops in six stages in the following way: 1. Elected or designated state bureaucrats want to increase their power and circumstances and preserve their income, which, as a rule, is somewhat larger than the income of the people who elected them, and for that it is necessary to be reelected. 2. In order to be elected time and again, the state bureaucrats promise all sorts of benefits to their electors with a clear understanding that there are no funds in the state budget for it all. 3. Taxes are increased for receipt of additional funds which leads to a decrease in the private sector's incentive, where the majority of the benefits are produced, and in the production of such benefits there are fewer benefits and life becomes worse. 4. Then the state bureaucrats begin to nationalize the means of production, that is to replace the free-market economy with a system of state regulation, that is they speed up the process of redistribution of wealth in society.

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5. The result is, everyone grows poorer, but they are equally poorer. 6. Dissatisfaction grows and searches begin for the guilty. And everyone well knows who it is: but of course, it is the Jews who have been robbing everything, they have created the unjust system of redistribution of wealth in society, and they are always doing something wrong. Facts from America's recent life confirming this process. 1. In 2010, the average income in the United States for a government employee was nearly 120 thousand dollars a year, while the average income for hired help in the free enterprise arena was half that 60 thousand dollars a year. The number of government employees at all levels (federal, state and local) comprise nearly 50% of the work force in the United States. This means that two thirds of the material benefits produced by each hired worker in the realm of free enterprise is taken away from him by all kinds of tax contrivances by employees of the government sector for support of their own material well-being. 2. In 2010, the extent of free benefits promised to the people (medical care, pension funds, food stamps, subsidized housing, education, unemployment compensation, etc.) is reaching an unprecedented level. Inasmuch as there is no money in the budget for it, the government borrows the funds, issuing different types of bonds. That leads to an unprecedented government debt which is nearing half the gross national product. Some economists think it is practically impossible to pay back such a debt and that a real economic crisis is brewing in
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the

country.

3. The government is trying to increase taxes in order to postpone a crisis. The threat of an appreciable increase in taxes is leading to a sharp decrease of investments in the free enterprise arena that, for its part, is leading to a slowing (or cessation) of the growth of material benefits that is becoming noticeable in 2010. 4. The government is trying a process of obscured nationalization: in 2010, part of the automobile, financial and health sectors of the economy are coming under the "government's wing" in the United States. 5. Voters, the majority of whom had been supporting the present government and who were promised many material benefits free for the people, are beginning to see the light, recognizing that an economy deprived of material incentives, ceases to produce material benefits. 6. It still is not clear how events will develop in the future, but the presence of a large number of consultants on the present president's team with Jewish names may be the spark from which the flame of the next cycle of antiSemitism is ignited. And it all may come down to the following: which group of Jews has greater appreciable influence on the spiritual and material life of America those who have been creating and strengthening the system of free enterprise, or those who have destroyed it both in the present government and before it; in other words, those who have followed the ideas of the Torah, or those who have forgotten about it.

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Understanding that everything can be like that, America's founding fathers limited the power of the federal government in this country. Inasmuch as the government's power is determined by the quantity of financial resources in its possession, it means in the practical plan a constitutional limitation on assessments (for example, not more than 25-30% of the gross national product). Unfortunately, in the last decade all American governments have successfully bypassed this constitutional limitation. The future of the United States and the future of this country's Jewish population depend on whether the country will be able to decrease the government's share appreciably in "eating" the material benefits and restore the might of the free enterprise system as it should be in accordance with the ideas of the Torah/Old Testament.

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Individual responsibility for decisions being made and their fulfillment is one of the fundamental features of Jewish intellectual identification. When Jews ask the government to help both them themselves, and all the remaining suffering people, that is, they ask the government to accept greater power, they must stop, think and remember what Judaism and the whole history of the Jewish people says the greater power the state has, the worse the life of all the people, including its Jewish component, and the greater the anti-Semitism.

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4.5. Spiritual competition in building the Better World among orthodoxy, reformism and secularism
Here the prominent leaders of modern Jewish spiritual intellectualism are represented the orthodox rabbi Schneerson, the conservative rabbi Schechter, the reform rabbi Weiss, and the prominent representative of non-religious Judaism, Theodor Herzl.

Can one agree with the assertion that they did not struggle with each other for the title of the "most pious Jewish spiritual leader," but most likely spiritually competed among themselves, endeavoring to find the correct application of the Torah's concepts in different areas of diversified earthly life?

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Judaism expressed the concept of the organization of mankind in our world for the first time as the fulfillment of God's covenants (the design) and the ideas given in the Torah. In fact, one can boil all the history of Judaism and the Jew down to a constant search for the specific content of these covenants in a constantly evolving world. But a true search always has multiple plans it is supposed to move in different directions and is supposed to include competing ideas directed at finding the answer sought. And the bearers of these competing ideas are the different streams of Judaism from the extremely liberal to the extremely conservative. Still, how many different streams are allowed in Judaism and will such a disunity contradict the single spirit of the Torah? The different streams in Judaism do not contradict the spirit of the Torah. Unity according to the Torah can be strengthened if the following principles are based on discussions of questions of the different streams, different thoughts and different people in Jewish communities: The Almighty-Creator created man in his own image and likeness, that is man-the Creator for the purpose of continuing the creation of the Better World on our earth in partnership with the Almighty Himself. And that means mankind is not a faceless army of subordinates compliantly fulfilling clearly issued orders ("a commander's order is law for his subordinates," as it is written in the military regulations of the majority of the world's countries). The Almighty created mankind to
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build the Better World on our earth according to His concepts. Even those who assume that not the Almighty, but evolution caused mankind to try to build some kind of a better society on our earth, agree we are trying to build some kind of a better world on our earth. The Almighty endowed mankind with the capability to compete with each other, because without the competition of ideas for building the Better World, dictatorships will be built instead of such a world according to the concepts of the dictators and not of the Almighty. Together with the people He created, the Almighty Himself is searching for the best design of such a world that is magnificently described in the Torah in the examples of the destruction of the world already created, but which did not turn out as the Almighty would have wanted. The Almighty chose the Jews among all others to work out first His ideas for building the Better World, and the sense of the expression "the chosen people" consists only of this. The chosenness of the Jews is a great responsibility, but not a great power. Inasmuch as the Almighty is fully beyond the mind's grasp, there is no unambiguous definition of His ideas for building the Better World. Therefore, the competition of ideas of different people in attempts to understand the ideas of the Almighty himself is completely unnecessary in fulfillment of the Almighty's ideas appearing in the Torah.

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And therefore, different streams in Judaism are not only allowed, but also absolutely necessary according to the Torah itself. If different streams exist in Judaism, and they have existed from the very beginning in the form of different spiritually competitive sects, then such streams do not contradict the Almighty's intention, but are included in His plan. And it is impossible for any one kind of stream to determine the rightness of other streams if the other streams recognize the supremacy of the Almighty and of the Torah. All streams in Judaism, if they recognize the supremacy of the Almighty and of the Torah, must have the right to demonstrate the rightness of their understanding of the Torah's ideas in the process of free spiritual competition and the practical realization of their understanding.

Thus, the multitude of streams in Judaism is a desired phenomenon that reflects the impossibility of unambiguous knowledge of God's plan and the need for healthy spiritual competition in this area. The complication consists of the organization of a spiritual exchange among the different streams: many streams attempt to protect themselves with a "spiritual fence" from all the others, which of course complicates the search. But the search is on-going! And 3,300 years have passed since the Jew developed according to the covenants of the Torah and Judaism in the Diaspora, despite the other conditions of life beyond the land of Israel. Orthodox Judaism as watchman of the plan of moral and material creation.

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Although many Israelis who call themselves religious recognize that their way of life is close to the way of life of American reformed Jews, they prefer to consider themselves Orthodox Jews, or rather "Orthodox Jews who do not observe the rules." Why? Because they prefer to see a bright flame of distinctly defined rules of behavior and to see some kind of ideal, even if they don't make any efforts to live in accordance with this ideal. This orthodox ideal is almost fully oriented at an internal link with God through rituals (rites), with a practically complete absence of efforts for improving our world. Though there are many branches in Orthodox Judaism, all of their adherents want to preserve for themselves the role of keepers of the "holy fire," assuming that everyone who is interested in illuminating their own life with the "holy fire" is supposed to approach this independently. Let God bless them for it both those who keep the fire of Judaism in the synagogues, and those who keep this fire at their homes, even while not visiting a synagogue! Reform Judaism as executor of the plan of moral and material creation. One has to attribute to Reform Judaism, most of all, Jews with a Judeo-reform mentality, and not the bureaucracyridden formal organizations of this movement. Reform Judaism devotes almost all attention to the improvement of our world while devoting little attention to the rituals and strengthening its personal contact with God. The Torah is often perceived not as a holy document, but as some kind of historical narrative, the lessons of which may be essential, but also may not be, for contemporary life. The absence of strong communications with God often leads to
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the support of political "party" actions far removed from the spirit of the Torah. Nonetheless, the work of the adherents of Reform Judaism in the improvement of our world deserves all kinds of support. The results of their efforts are seen in those gigantic changes to our world we see around us. Let God bless them for it - both those who do it in the synagogues and those who do it outside the synagogues! Secular Judaism as an entry into the Gentile world. Part of the Jews consider themselves atheists, though it is not understood how this can be. Jews-atheists think some kind of common culture unites all Jews. But there is no such unifying culture. Jews from Russia live in a Russian culture, Jews from Ethiopia in an Ethiopian culture, etc. What unites everyone is the very same religion all Jews practiced in the Diaspora. But atheist Jews do not want to have anything in common with the religion, while continuing to call themselves Jews. One can arbitrarily call such Jews adherents of secular Judaism. As a rule, these people are on the threshold of Judaism with their back to it. They are at the beginning of leaving for the Gentile world. The former adherents of secular Judaism leaving for the Gentile world are divided into two groups. One group is affiliated with the camp of the undisguised anti-Semites they need it in order to justify inwardly, for themselves, leaving Judaism. Jews do not have to be too saddened by it: inasmuch as there are ample anti-Semites, the addition of a small number of Jews to them will not change overall antiSemite propaganda much. The second group of Jews who have left Judaism is affiliated with the camp of Christian friends of Jews (in contrast to other countries, nearly half of
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all Christians in the United States belong to this camp). Such former Jews, while found in the camp of the Christians, continue their Jewish mission for the improvement of our world. Extremism and fanaticism as uncharacteristic streams in Judaism. Yes, there are extremists and fanatics among Jews (for example, the Neturei Karta and Samaritan sects), as there are among all the rest of the nations and religions. But such people are not typical for the Jew, because these qualities are not included in the collection of characteristics that identify Jews.

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Intellectual Jewish identification includes approval and furtherance of the development of the competition of different ideas according for the spiritual and material improvement of our world "according to God" - both within the Jewish people and among other peoples. From Paul Johnson's book "The History of the Jews" (In the 1988 edition - pages 340-341) For 1,500 years Jewish society has been designed to produce intellectuals... Jewish society was geared to support them. Rich merchants married sages' daughters Quite suddenly, around the year 1800, this ancient and highly efficient social machine for the production of intellectuals (for exclusive usage within Jewish communities) began to shift its output (of intellectuals) outside, into Gentile societies. Instead of pouring all its products into the closed circuit of rabbinical studies, . . . it unleashed a significant and ever-growing proportion of them into secular life.. This was an event of shattering importance in world history.

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Chapter 5 Jewish Identification in Christianity

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5.1. The revered Rabbi Jehoshua for the Jews and Holy Son of God, Jesus Christ, for the Christians is the very same person
On the next page are presented two drawings from the life of the very same person. In the first drawing he is represented as the revered rabbi Jehoshua who is speaking to the Jews of Galilee about the spiritual foundations of our life prescribed for us by God and set forth in the Torah. It is he again in the second drawing, but now in the image of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, surrounded by people awaiting divine inspiration or healing. Could it be that the people in the second drawing are not Jews, but some other people for whom the word of God and His covenants must be presented only by someone personally straight from God, such as the Son of God, so that they would realize all the importance of it? Might it be that his interpretation of Judaism, which marked the beginning of the new religion Christianity, was not a betrayal of and departure from Judaism, as many Jews believe, but a successful attempt to spread the Torah's ideas among Gentile nations, inasmuch as God's fundamental ideas in the Torah are intended for all peoples?

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Very likely what happened on our earth nearly two thousand years ago in fulfillment of God's covenants is most important, but it all was distorted by history and the religious streams quarreling with each other until it was fully unrecognizable. The man, who subsequently became Jesus Christ, was a Jewish rabbi and founder of one of the many sects of Judaism, which were distinguished from each other by the spiritual methods for perceiving the directions for behavior and actions received from God. After the death of Jesus, his successors Paul and Peter tried to spread Judaism's spirituality as interpreted by Jesus to other nations in the Roman Empire. But Paul and Peter came up against the fact that the Gentile nations were not in condition to comprehend the Torah's spirituality by this very method as the Jews had been doing. There may have been many reasons for it: the whole different historical experience of other peoples, a lack of education from early childhood, etc. Therefore, Paul and Peter began to update Judaism in order to facilitate bringing it to the minds of those who were not Jews. And at some moment (already after the death of Paul and Peter), the update so changed their version of Judaism that it ceased being perceived by the Jews and first Christians as Judaism, and it had to be separated into an individual religion. But the fundamental spiritual canons remained exactly the same: the ten commandments and their detailed elaboration in the Torah. According to the Gospel of Luke, the infant Jehoshua-Jesus was brought by his parents to the Temple in Jerusalem for circumcision as it is supposed to be for each Jewish boy on the eighth day after birth. And the circumcision was
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performed. Later Jehoshua-Jesus was brought up as a Jew, he observed the Torah, visited the synagogue on Shabbat (the Sabbath), and observed Jewish holidays. (By the way, all the apostles and other first followers of Jesus were Jews). According to the Gospel tale, at approximately 30 years of age, Jehoshua-Jesus left for public ministry and he began it by immersing in a mikvah which subsequently was called baptism after John the Baptist at the Jordan River. A mikvah is a special ablution by water in Judaism's rituals undertaken before performing serious and important daily tasks and new missions. Jehoshua-Jesus began to teach an expanded law of Moses based on his own interpretation of the Torah, calling for a return to fulfillment of the Torah's covenants where Jews had stopped the practice. All rabbis were involved in it at that time, in particular those who subsequently were called prophets, inasmuch as a large number of Jews had begun to abandon living according to the Torah's covenants in those difficult times. Jehoshua-Jesus demanded everyone love God with their whole being (First Commandment) and then love their neighbors (all people) as themselves (Ninth Commandment) and, finally, love themselves as God's creation and His image (man was created in the image and likeness of God). But a new motif began to appear in Jehoshua-Jesus' teachings that went beyond the boundaries of the Torah - not to tie oneself unduly to the values of the material world and to prepare oneself for a happy life in heaven beyond an earthly life. Despite the fact the holy
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city Jerusalem was the center of Jehoshua-Jesus' sermons, he traveled round Galilee longest of all with this sermon, where they accepted him more joyfully. The events of Jesus Christ's last days of earthly existence that brought him physical and spiritual anguish are connected with his reformative activity which was taking Jews away from the traditional interpretation, now they would call it orthodox, of the Torah and encroaching on the power of the Judaic high priests. After unsuccessful attempts by the high priests to accuse Jehoshua-Jesus of formal violation of Judaic law, he was handed over to the Roman procurator of the Jews, Pontius Pilate. The procurator asked at the trial: "Are you the King of the Jews?" This question was conditioned by the fact that claiming power as the King of the Jews, according to Roman laws, qualified as a dangerous crime against the Roman Empire. The following words of Jehoshua-Jesus were the answer to that question: "You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth." Pilate, not finding any guilt in Jesus, was inclined to let him free, and he said to the high priests, "I find no crime in him." The elders and high priests were unsatisfied with such a decision: they feared Jehoshua, whose teaching had called for disobedience to the existing order based on the separation of power between Rome and Judea. It was necessary to get rid of the "troublemaker" Jehoshua for preservation of the existing order that was possible to do in those Biblical times by only one method killing. But Rome had not given Judea the right to sentence people to
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death only Pontius Pilate could to it as Rome's chief representative. Then the elders and high priests of Judea demanded Pontius Pilate sentence Jehoshua to death, having organized a demonstration of the Jewish crowd in support of their demand. Doing his best not to allow any unrest, Pilate proposed the crowd let Jehoshua-Jesus go following the long-standing custom to free a criminal at Passover. But the crowd cried, "Crucify Him!" Seeing this, Pilate imposed the death penalty he sentenced Jehoshua-Jesus to be crucified. Thus ended the life of Jehoshua-Jesus as a reform rabbi of those times, and, over the next century, his life as the founder of Christianity began. Originally Christianity spread in the first century of our era among the Jews of Palestine and the Mediterranean Diaspora, but, beginning as early as the first decades, thanks to the sermons of the apostle Paul, it attained a multitude of followers among other pagan peoples. The spread of Christianity before the fifth century occurred mainly in the geographic confines of the Roman Empire, and also its sphere of cultural influence (Armenia, Syria, Ethiopia), later (mainly in the second half of the first millennium) -- among the Germanic and Slavic peoples, and still later (by the 13th14th centuries) -- also among the Baltic and Finnish peoples. Thus, Judaism's spiritual concepts, based on The One God for everyone and the covenants of this God described in the Torah, began to transition to other peoples, as it had been foreseen by the Torah.

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It is important to recall here that many rabbis of our time treat the idea of Judeo-Christian friendship with misgiving, being concerned that such friendship may diminish the devotion of their congregations to Judaism and the synagogues in some way. The author considers such fear is unjustified. In reality, the correct explanation of the spiritual side of such friendship should increase the attractiveness of Judaism and the synagogues for the Jews themselves.

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The main duty of the Jewish people is assistance to all Gentiles in the creation of a better world "according to God." Therefore, friendship with Christians and combined spiritual work with them should be looked at as the fulfillment of this duty. One ought to rejoice at such friendship and develop it. One of the most important elements of intellectual Jewish identification - is the acknowledgement of the connection with Christianity as the embodiment of the fulfillment of the chosen people's obligations entrusted to this people by God, through the transmission of God's covenants, set forth in the Torah, to all other peoples.

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5.2. The Torah (the Old Testament) for the Jews and the Christians as a single JudeoChristian Code of Laws for a Better World
A Jewish rabbi with a Torah and a Christian priest with the Old Testament are joined spiritually by the Pentateuch of Moses, that is, the Torah. Can one agree such a spiritual unity is direct evidence of the fulfillment by Jews of their "chosen" role, the essence of which is simple to transmit to other peoples the word and covenants of God set forth in the Torah?

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What unites Jews and Christians and creates a single Judeo-Christian civilization are the rules and laws of the Torah, or the Old Testament in the Christian title. And what separates them is the interpretation of these rules and Laws given in the Talmud for Jews and in the New Testament for Christians, and in many of the subsequent versions of the Talmud and New Testament. But what divides Jews and Christians is no more essential than what now divides Jews into many conflicting groups. Judaism includes two contradictory elements at first glance. On the one hand, all peoples of the world cannot be chosen and followers of the Jewish faith (individual cases of conversion to Judaism from other religions do not change this situation), and on the other hand, all peoples of the world must accept the basic rules of behavior "from God" according to which Jews live. This contradiction can be resolved only by creation of other religious branches which follow the rules of behavior "from God," such as Christianity, which really has happened. Jews cannot be missionaries attracting others to their faith, because they did not make themselves chose, but "someone else.". And only this someone can change the circle of the chosen. In this connection, a multitude of monotheistic religions, really, are a desirable factor from the Torah's point of view, only if the other monotheistic religions continue work on the creation of our world in accordance with God's plan. Judaism in and of itself cannot be an enemy of other religions. Actually, Judaism believes God made the chosen people not because God forgot about all the others, but for
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Jews to help God convince all other peoples of His existence and in the existence of His rules of moral behavior. These rules were supposed to create on earth that social system of the joint existence of peoples envisioned by God. Judaism, as too all monotheistic religions, says that One God exists and He is absolute absolute in such an understanding that there cannot be anything better on the scale of human understanding of values. Hence, people of the Judeo-Christian world believe in the existence of one absolute obligatory set of rules of moral behavior that came from the same God, and there cannot be anything better than that (the rules). And these people try to define this set, follow it and convince all the rest to do the same. The majority agree one source exists for the definition of this absolute set of rules of moral behavior it is the Ten Commandments and the explanations developed for them in the Torah. Spirituality according to the Torah is spirituality for everyone for all mankind, and not only for the Jewish people. Therefore, the creation of Christianity based on the Torah's spirituality, must be considered as one of the greatest of mankind's creations (as the realization of God's ideas). The opposition of Judaism and Christianity contradicts the very spirit of the Torah and Judaism as a whole. Historically there was a lot of animosity between Jews and Christians, but it all was connected not with the different spiritual principles of life given to us by The One God, but the earthly struggle for power and human minds which has
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nothing in common with the power of a supernatural Almighty Power called God. It already has been noted repeatedly that mankind used the intellect given him for perception of God's ideas for building our world, for the creation of a spiritual plan and of material creation based on these ideas and for the realization of this plan. Creative activity in man's world demands the coordinated work of all people on earth, and this, in turn, demands common rules of behavior, common understanding of what is "good" and permitted, and what is "bad" and better not to do, and such common rules of behavior based on the Ten Commandments also form the Judeo-Christian community. Life's basic moral rules transitioned to Christianity from Judaism. Christianity has changed and added a little. Very likely, the main principle distinction of Christianity's rules from Judaism's rules at the present time is the fact that Judaism considers God's basic idea for man is the creation of some kind of special life here on our earth, while at the same time Christianity thinks the essence of life on earth is preparation for a "better life" beyond the earthly life. And it also can be explained with this, including on the one hand the somewhat more substantial scientific, social and economic achievements of Jews on our earth in comparison with other peoples and, on the other hand, the dislike of Jews which causes a lack of understanding of the reasons for such achievements. Despite this, Judaism and Christianity have so much in common that many now recognize the presence of JudeoChristian morality (civilization). Therefore, one may to
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some degree also agree with the purely philosophical assertion that Christianity is Judaism for Gentiles with all its variety necessary for finding optimal ways of creation. Judaism's influence on Christianity is traced to the fact that Christian traditional forms of public worship in essence are based on Jewish synagogical liturgy, including: reading of passages from the Old and New Testaments during worship (the Christian version of reading the Torah and books of the prophets in the synagogue) and the inclusion of the Psalms in many prayers: usage in prayers of converted Jewish religious originals: for example, the Christian "Lord's Prayer" is a variant of the Jewish prayer "Kaddish;" transformation of many Jewish prayerful expressions into Christian counterparts: for example, Amen from Amen, Hallelujah from Halllyh, Hosanna from Hosha'na; basing the most important Christian sacrament of the "Eucharist" on the legend of Jesus' last meal with his disciples where the Last Supper is identified with the Passover meal and uses the fundamental traditional Jewish elements of celebrating the Passover, such as broken bread (breaking a matzo into two parts) and a cup of wine (several goblets of wine are mandatory in celebrating the Exodus from Egypt). The concept of Judeo-Christian civilization has become widely accepted, especially in the United States. However, there also are other civilizations in the world, and among the different civilizations is a struggle is for spreading their own ideas for the social organization of the whole world. It seems such a struggle is included in God's creative plan,
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inasmuch as it makes possible selecting the best version of creation. Thus, the struggle of civilizations, and within civilizations of separate groups, seems a part of God's creative plan. God-the Creator created us, people, as creators in His image and likeness. And an integral part of creation is finding the best decisions, which requires a competition of different creative ideas. And would many Christians agree that Jews have a special connection to God in the creation of the Better World that separates them from all the rest? Yes, there are many such Christians, especially in the United States. There are a multitude of statements by famous Christians about the great contribution of Jews to the creation of the Better World on our earth, and this contribution is well described in literature and grasped by the whole world as a Jewish contribution to the creation of the Better World on our earth. Let us quote one typical example. Marlon Brando, the prominent American actor of stage and screen wrote in his memoirs, "Songs My Mother Taught Me" the following: "I attended the New School for Social Research for only a year, but what a year it was. The school and New York itself had become a sanctuary for hundreds of extraordinary European Jews who had fled Germany and other countries before and during World War II, and they were enriching the city's intellectual life with an intensity that has probably
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never been equaled anywhere during a comparable period of time. I was raised largely by these Jews. I lived in a world of Jews. They were my teachers; they were my employers. They were my friends. They introduced me to a world of books and ideas that I didn't know existed. I stayed up all night with them--asking questions, arguing, probing, discovering how little I knew, learning how inarticulate I was and how abysmal my education was. I hadn't even finished high school, and many of them had advanced degrees from the finest institutions in Europe. I felt dumb and ashamed, but they gave me an appetite to learn everything. They made me hungry for information. I believed that if I had more knowledge I'd be smarter, which I now realize isn't true. I read Kant, Rousseau, Nietzsche, Locke, Melville, Tolstoy, Faulkner, Dostoyevsky and books by dozens of other authors, many of which I never understood. "The New School was a way station for some of the finest Jewish intellectuals from Europe, a temporary haven before they left to join the faculties at universities like Princeton, Yale and Harvard. They were the cream of Europe's academicians, and as teachers they were extraordinary. "One of the great mysteries that has always puzzled me is how Jews, who account for such a tiny fraction of the world's population, have been able to achieve so much and excel in so many different fields--science, music, medicine, literature, arts, business and more. If you listed the most influential people of the last three hundred years, three at the top of the list would be Einstein, Freud and Marx; all were Jews. Many more belong on the list, yet Jews

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comprise at most less than 3 percent of the United States population."

"They are an amazing people. Imagine the persecution they endured over the centuries: pogroms, temple burnings, Cossack raids, uprootings of families, their dispersal to the winds and the Holocaust. After the Diaspora, they could not own land or worship in much of the world; they were prohibited from voting and were told where to live. Yet their culture survived and Jews became by far the most accomplished people per capita that the world has ever produced. For a while I thought that the brilliance and success of Jews was the cumulative yield of an extraordinary rich pool of genes in the Middle East produced over eons by evolution. "But then I realized that my theory didn't hold up because following the Diaspora, Ashkenazic Jews evolved into a group physically much different from Sephardic Jews. "Spanish Jews had nothing in common with Russian Jews; in fact they could not even speak to them. Russian Jews were isolated from German Jews, who thought of themselves as separate and superior, an Eastern European Jews had nothing to do with the Sephardic Jews. Besides, there had been so much intermarriage over the centuries that genetics alone couldn't explain the phenomenon. "After talking to many Jews and reading about Jewish history and culture, I finally came to the conclusion that in the end being Jewish was a cultural phenomenon rather than a genetic one. It is a state of mind. There is a Yiddish word, seychel, that provides a key to explaining the most
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profound aspects of Jewish culture. It means to pursue knowledge and to leave the world a better place than when you entered it. "Jews revere education and hard work, and they pass these values on from one generation to the next. As far as I am aware, this dynamic and emphasis on excellence is paralleled only in certain Asian cultures. It must be this cultural tradition that accounts for their amazing success, along with Judaism, the one constant that survived while the Jews were dispersed around the world. "Traditions passed on via the Torah and Talmud have somehow helped Jews to fulfill the destiny they have claimed, a kind of 'chosen people,' if spectacular success in so many, many fields is proof of that. Whatever the reasons for their brilliance and success, I was never educated until I was exposed to them. They introduced me to a sense of culture that has lasted me a lifetime." Perhaps these words of Marlon Brando describe best of all the influence of Judaism and the Torah on the Christian world and the essence of the common spirituality of JudeoChristian civilization.

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There lives and operates in the United States Pastor John Hagee, one of the leaders of the American Christian evangelical movement. There are 12,000 active Christians in his church, which is located in San Antonio, Texas, and many tens of millions of Christians in 235 countries and spiritual centers of the world listen to and see his television and radio sermons. He is the founder and president of the "Christians United for the Defense of Israel" organization, and here is what one can read in his English-language Internet publication: "Everything Christians do is supposed to be based on the Bible. And this is what the Bible says about the Christian duty to support Israel: "Genesis 12:3: I (God) will bless those, who bless you (Israel), and whoever curses you I will curse." God has promised to bless the man or nation that blesses the Chosen People (the Jews). History has proven beyond reasonable doubt that the nations that have blessed the Jewish people have had the blessing of God; the nations that have cursed the Jewish people have experienced the curse of God."

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5.3. The Talmud for the Jews and the New Testament for the Christians as different interpretations of the unified Judeo-Christian guiding principles of the Better World
Here is shown a multi-volume Babylonian Talmud and a two-volume New Testament with explanations that are the Jewish and Christian interpretations of the Torah (Old Testament).

Can one agree that the main distinction of the Talmud from the New Testament consists of the fact the Talmud tries to develop the logic of thinking and to arm the individual with the ability to find the correct moral decision out of the multitude of those possible for himself, while the New Testament pursues a completely other goal to strengthen the individual's will to follow one moral decision, which is thoroughly justified here?

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As noted earlier, despite many centuries of historical animosity, Judaism and Christianity have so much in common that the presence now of a Judeo-Christian morality is no longer disputed, and they take in stride the philosophical assertion that Christianity is Judaism for Gentiles. Essentially, Jews and Christians do not have any principle disagreements on the fundamental questions about the interpretation of the goal of the existence of people created in the image and likeness of God, and therefore, who are building the "Kingdom of God," that is the Better World, on our earth. Different explanations and interpretations are treated most of all as a ritual part of religion, which from the author's point of view is not fundamental in religion in contrast to faith, which is. These different explanations also distinguish the Christian New Testament from the Jewish Talmud. In particular, the New Testament considers the following concepts of Jesus fundamental for Christianity: Jesus maintained that people could come to God only through Him as the Son of God: "All things have been delivered to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and any one to whom the Son chooses to reveal him" (Matthew 11:27), which is fundamentally different from Judaism where each man has direct access to God, for "The Lord is near to all who call upon Him" (Psalms 145:18). Only by believing in Jesus can one come to God in Christianity.

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Jesus forgives all sins. "The Son of man has the authority to forgive sins" (Matthew 9:6). In Judaism, even God himself does not forgive all sins. God limits his authority and forgives only those sins which were committed against Him, God. As it declares in the Mishnah: "For transgressions that are between man and God the Day of Atonement effects atonement, but for transgressions that are between a man and his fellow the Day of Atonement effects atonement only if he has appeased his fellow" (Mishnah, Yoma 8:9).

It seems these fundamental concepts of Christianity are directed at consolidating and strengthening the earthly authority of church leaders while not changing the fundamental understanding of the concepts of the Torah (Old Testament) regarding man's role in God's creative plan. Thus, the historic contradictions between Jews and Christians which often have transitioned into pogroms of Jewish communities, are not supposed to result in the disregard of the main thing: Jews and Christians comprise a single Judeo-Christian civilization in God's plan. Judaism cannot be an enemy of other religions in God's plan. Actually, as has been noted repeatedly, Judaism believes God made Jews the chosen people not because God forgot about all the others, but for Jews to help God convince all other peoples of His existence and of the existence of His rules of moral behavior. These rules were supposed to create on earth that social system for the coexistence of peoples envisioned by God. And Christianity looks for the specific content of God's
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Covenants in the constantly developing world. Therefore, Christianity also needs competitive ideas for the search of such content which is done by Christianity's numerous streams. Here, perhaps, it is appropriate to mention again how the Talmud and New Testament differ in principle from the Torah (Old Testament). Whereas the Torah's goal was to explain the concept of God in the creation of our permanently developing and changing world and man's role in this world "according to God," the Talmud's goal was to compile a code of ritual daily actions which would be able to maintain the Jewish people in dispersion. The task for continuing creative work "according to God" in the Talmud was put aside for a distant second plan, but, most likely, God had to at that time. The New Testament also differs approximately the same way from the Torah (Old Testament). The goal of the New Testament was to create a code of identical ritual daily actions which would be able to make Christian peoples of the pagan, Gentile peoples who were dispersed throughout the whole earth beyond the Promised Land. The New Testament does not change the interpretation of God's concept in the creation of our constantly developing and changing world and man's role in this world "according to God," as it was identified in the Torah. Both the Talmud and the New Testament do not refute the need for a constant re-interpretation of the practical usage of God's concept in the creation of our constantly
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developing and changing world and man's role in this world "according to God," as it was identified in the Torah, and the following several examples illustrate it. One of the Ten Commandments states, "You shall not steal." It is clear to everyone what this means in everyday understanding. But it should be used not only at the everyday level. When the Bolsheviks in Russia seized all the material goods from those who had them, they called it a redistribution of wealth, and not theft. But many considered and continue to consider it theft. When the government seizes money from one group of the population through tax laws and gives it to another group, the government calls it a triumph of fairness. But many relate it to the theft category. The Christian interpretation may differ here from the Jewish by the fact that Christians can go further in support of governmental taxes for rendering greater help to the poor Jews will prefer to render such help through mitzvah/charity. Constant discussions of this problem in society signify a readiness for re-interpretation of this commandment. Another commandment says, "You shall not kill." And yet again everyone comprehends in everyday understanding what it is all about. But what should happen with killers in a war when it is required to kill in order to be victorious? And what about death sentences for the most horrible crimes? The majority understands that in these cases the killings are unavoidable and justified. Of course, if the war is just and the crime really horrible. But there are people who think there are no just wars at all and death sentences should not be handed down for any crimes. The Christian interpretation may differ even here from the Jewish, and
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this difference may be that Christians can demand abolition of death sentences altogether Jews will prefer to preserve such punishment as a possibility in order to constrain potential Evil with the threat of such a possibility. Constant discussions of this problem in society also signify a readiness for re-interpretation of this commandment, too. Thus, despite many historic clashes between Jews and Christians, what unites them "according to God" is far and away stronger than what separates them ritually. Both Jews and Christians who together form the JudeoChristian civilization, naturally, want the victory of their own civilization; they want their civilization to predominate in the world. When a struggle of civilizations occurs within the framework a worldwide competition of ideas, this struggle can last forever. And it is okay, because all competitive civilizations gain from it. Each civilization is improved in the process of such a struggle, adopting something good from the rivals.

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And so God conceived a peaceful competition of civilizations for the creation and fulfillment of the best concept of a Better World "according to God!" But sometimes some civilization transitions to military methods of control, as it is occurring now with the Islamic civilization (most likely, not with all of Islamic civilization, but with some part of it, often called Islamism). Naturally, the Judeo-Christian civilization wants to be victorious, and it is supposed to demonstrate, that it can do it.

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5.4. The Ten Commandments and their contemporary Judeo-Christian interpretation


Ten Commandments! Here are depicted the Ten Commandments themselves and a brotherly meeting of Pope John Paul II and Chief Rabbi of Rome. Is it possible both of them interpret the Ten Commandments the same way for daily contemporary usage?

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I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work [on them]; but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord, your God; in it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your manservant or your maidservant, or [your ox, or your ass, or any of] your cattle, or the sojourner who is within your gates; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.

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Honor your father and your mother, [that it be good for you and] that your days be long in the land which the lord your God gives you. You shall not kill. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, [or his field] or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or his ass, [or his cattle] or anything that is your neighbor's.

********** At the present time, many perceive the Ten Commandments strictly as a sort of placard, affirming religion's importance, but not having any specific application for the resolution of today's pressing problems. But that is not the case. Actually, one can represent the connection of the Ten Commandments with the fundamental pressing problems of human existence in the modern world in the following way.

The First Commandment, as it is presented in the Torah:

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I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. The First Commandment provided the answer to the following question about the essence of man's existence: who or what rules the world and is the guiding source for man's creative vital activity? And this answer can be represented in this way in the language of modern man: A Single Almighty Power exists over all mankind that has received the name God and which brought the Jewish people out of bondage to freedom for the purpose of involving this people in the organization of the creative process on earth in accordance with common rules of moral behavior created by this power. God is a kind of Almighty Power defined by the laws of the existence of a natural system, one of the elements of which is mankind itself. Such a definition of God allows focusing discussions on the intention of the Almighty Power that controls all the world, including us, people, and which in some way became to be called God, instead of fruitless discussions on the subject, "is there a God." The main thing is to find and study the laws created by this power in order to follow them and avoid suffering because of their non-fulfillment.

The Second Commandment, as it is presented in the Torah: You shall not make yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under
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the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. The Second Commandment provided the answer to one more, no less important question of the essence of human existence: how should man and the power ruling the world who made man interact? And this answer can be represented in the following way in the language of modern man: Among people, no one has the right to speak in the name of the Almighty Power - God, who created our world, because God "introduces" the rules of moral behavior in each man, influencing him without any intermediaries, and He determines those rights given to people. The existence of dictator-gods on earth and their rules of moral behavior and laws, while they endow their subjects with some rights not from God, granted to people as a personal gift, contradicts the idea itself of The One God. And therefore, neither the Jewish people themselves, nor any other peoples can be such a graven image and cannot put forth any of the people for such a responsibility And therefore, the understanding of the chosenness of the Jewish people by no means is supposed to approach the idea of a graven image. The main thing affiliated with the chosen people is actions in accordance with the Ten Commandments for the benefit both of their people and of all mankind. These actions are more important than the fact of birth into a Jewish family. Such a determination allows channeling
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discussions of graven image chosenness into practical actions regarding the improvement of our world instead of disconnected and fruitless discussions on the subject "who is a graven image and who is not." The Third Commandment, as it is presented in the Torah: You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. The Third Commandment provided the answer to the following question about the essence of man's existence: what the framework of personal responsibility is in which man implements the creative tasks of the power controlling the world. And this answer can be represented in this way in the language of modern man: People are not supposed to call upon God to do what they themselves are supposed to do according to his design-plan to continue the creation begun by God and to defend what is being created while following the moral rules of behavior "from God." (For people who do not perceive God's concept, one can present this design as "one should not hope for happy circumstances, one needs to create them"). Individual responsibility and not collective irresponsibility is fundamental in the interrelationships of man and the Almighty. A social organization, oriented at the implementation of "equal capabilities," and not "equal results," is preferable "according to God" for everyone.

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The Fourth Commandment, as it is presented in the Torah: Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work [on them]; but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord, your God; in it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your manservant or your maidservant, or your cattle, or the sojourner who is within your gates; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. The Fourth Commandment provided the answer to the following question about the essence of man's existence: how to maintain constant contact with the power controlling the world and to intensify the understanding the plan of creation that man is supposed to implement eternally. And this answer can be represented in the following way in the language of modern man: It is impossible to forget about the existence of the Almighty Power that controls us and begin to think that, possibly, we ourselves are such a power. One day a week - the Sabbath serves as a reminder of the existence of such a power for Jews. It is best of all to use this day for approaching this Power spiritually and finding answers on this basis to the questions, what is one to do, how does one deal with the constantly changing conditions of life and in one's own family, both at work and at rest, and among friends and even while voting from someone at decisive times for one's people. Without such Sabbath spiritual reflections, contact
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of the Jewish people with the Almighty Power and its rules of moral behavior gradually would be lost. (Sunday is such a day for Christians). The Fifth Commandment, as it is presented in the Torah: Honor your father and your mother, [that it be good for you and] that your days be long in the land which the lord your God gives you. The fifth commandment provided the answer to the question, how does one maintain contact with the power controlling the world during the perpetual change of generations. And this answer can be represented in the following way in the language of modern man: Each generation picks up the baton of creation both of life's rule and creation "according to God" from their own parents and gives them to their own children, which provides spiritual eternity for each earthly "mortal." Therefore, the preservation of historic family traditions handed down by parents to children is extremely important for preservation of the spiritual eternity of each mortal person. The Sixth Commandment, as it is presented in the Torah: You shall not kill. The Sixth Commandment provided the answer to the following question about the essence of man's existence:
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how man's spiritual eternity, determined by the eternity of the power controlling the world, correlates with his mortal body. And this answer can be represented in the following way in the language of modern man: Human life is the most valuable of the Almighty Power's creations. Its preservation is most important in the moral rules of behavior. Naturally, this does not mean pacifism, for sometimes the preservation of human life requires the physical destruction of those diabolically disposed humans who crave the destruction of other human lives. But those who crave the destruction of human life for the sake of their own diabolical purposes fall into the category of devils not people. And real Judeo-Christian moral people are obligated to distinguish the "devils" from people, grounding their understanding on the ideas of the Almighty Power. The Almighty Power will not make such decisions for them, which is what the Third Commandment is saying. The Seventh Commandment, as it is presented in the Torah: You shall not commit adultery. The Seventh Commandment provided the answer to the question of the essence of man's existence, which sounds like, "is it possible for one to preserve man's individual spiritual essence in subsequent generations?" And this answer can be represented in the following way in the language of modern man: The creation of subsequent generations and the transfer to them of the parents' moral rules of behavior "according to
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God" is the main thing distinguishing man from the animals created by this very same Almighty Power. The Eighth Commandment, as it is presented in the Torah: You shall not steal. The Eighth Commandment provided the answer to the question, how is man's individual spiritual eternity realized in his material creativity, which is not eternal. And this answer can be represented in the following way in the language of modern man: The preservation of what has been created by each individual creator as his own possession is one of the main conditions for participation in creative work "according to God." It is easy to understand this commandment in the individual plan do not rob, period. But the government also has to be approached with these same requirements. Therefore, all questions of governmental taxation must be resolved with the very same thought in mind to collect ("expropriate," "redistribute") only the very minimum necessary for the upkeep and protection of the community, the people and the like. And the people themselves should decide how much must be collected through their elected representatives, and not an inanimate "state." The Ninth Commandment, as it is presented in the Torah: You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
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The Ninth Commandment provided the answer to the question, how the spiritual interests of individual and communities relate to each other. And this answer can be represented in the following way in the language of modern man: Justice and honesty in the interrelationships between people are one of the main conditions for participation in creative work "according to God." The definitions of justice and honesty are not supposed to be abstract for JudeoChristian communities; they must be based on the moral principles of the Ten Commandments "from God." The Tenth Commandment, as it is presented in the Torah: You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, [or his field] or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or his ass, [or his cattle] or anything that is your neighbor's." The Tenth Commandment provided the answer to one more question of the essence of human existence: how the material interests of individuals and communities relate to each other. And this answer can be represented in the following way in the language of modern man: Each man must bring his own contribution that he can into the creative process "according to God." Conferring what has been created by others (in modern terminology the redistribution of wealth) contradicts the moral rules
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"according to God." The criteria of "equal possibilities" for everyone should be more important than the criteria of "material equality." Help for those who temporarily have found themselves in a difficult situation or are in no condition to earn a living for themselves because of a health condition should be rendered through mitzvah/charity. The government should collect money through taxes only for those needs that cannot be satisfied by individual charity, such as, for example, the defense of a country from external enemies.

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An intellectual analysis of all events described in the Tanach (Torah and prophets) and casting light on the Sixth Commandment, "You shall not kill" - do not kill Good, but kill Evil - may be represented in the following way: All Judeo-Christian moral people strive to live according to the principles of the Ten Commandments and their derivatives, including too according to the principles of the Sixth Commandment, "You shall not kill." At the same time, Judeo-Christian moral people know life creates situations when killing is morally justified: kill the Fascist who has been invading your homeland and killing your people; kill the terrorist who is beginning to shoot the ordinary people on the street of your city; kill the thief who has invaded your home with a weapon and is threatening to kill your children; and so on. And the question will arise: doesn't man violate the Sixth Commandment of Judeo-Christian morality when life puts him in circumstance where he considers killing justified and he commits it? Does only God have the right to kill, or can God delegate this right also to the people created "in His image and likeness"? It is easy to examine this question in the Tanach. Nearly 80% of all sermons of the majority of the prophets (and this is 500-700 years before our era) are explanations for sinful Jews that all the misfortunes to which they are subjected, such as the attacks of
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neighboring tribes, the Babylonian Exile, crop failure, are punishments God inflicted on them for nonfulfillment of the Torah's covenants. But God does it not "by his own hands," but by the hands of other people whom He sort of employs for executing the punishment. If one believes the prophets, and JudeoChristian moral people believe them, God performs much not "by his own hands," but with the hands of earthly people. And then another question arises - why does God need to involve earthly people for execution of His punishments? The answer to this question consists of the concept of creation by God-the Creator of Man-the Creator according to his own image and likeness, which is examined in detail in many places of this book. God is not a dictator, God is a creator. But creation requires freedom of choice, a competition of ideas and individual responsibility for one's decision. And God gave all this to man. And in that given by God is included the obligation of man himself to distinguish Good from Evil according to God's criteria and to destroy Evil, having defined it, while not turning it over to God. In this way in particular an intellectual analysis of the Torah itself and the sermons of the prophets in the Tanach leads to the interpretation of the Sixth Commandment cited do not kill Good, but kill Evil.

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Chapter 6 Jewish Identification in a SocialEconomic Organization of Judeo-Christian Countries

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6.1. Science in harmony with the Torah and Judaism


Our world was created by someone or something not as a static and unchanging something, but as a dynamic condition, changing constantly in space and time according to some kind of laws (physical and chemical, electromagnetic, social and spiritual, etc.). The work of scientists consists of the study of these processes and the usage of laws discovered by them in building the Better World a Better World "according to God," though the majority of scientists, most likely, don't even think about it. The scientists also study the processes in the macro-gigantic spaces above us, as is indicated by the figures of space and the spacecraft on the left, and in the micro-gigantic spaces inside us, as it is indicated in the figures of a gene and microscope on the right. It seems there are no differences between religion with God and science with scientists: religion and God deal with the creation of the universe's processes, and science with Scientists deals with the study of these processes. How so?

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Many maintain that science is incompatible with religion, that is, with the Torah. But in reality, this is entirely untrue. In reality, evolution occurs both "according to Darwin" and "according to God." As has been mentioned already, the most diverse content can be concealed by the word "religion." All adherents of the theory of religion and science's incompatibility suggest such a definition of religion that really is incompatible with science. But their definition does not affect the fundamental, one may say scientific, essence of religion, which makes religion compatible with science. Therefore, it is necessary to recall the definition of religion in order that it be understood immediately what we are talking about. As already was said at the beginning of this book, the main thing in religion is belief in the existence of some kind of higher power controlling man and all the world and giving everything that surrounds us, and what we study, a beginning. Thus, in religion there are two fundamental elements faith and the beginning. Faith is the only thing that the adherents of the incompatibility of religion and science notice. But faith does not unite religion with science, but the beginning. Science starts from a beginning. The beginning is a religious concept; it is from where science begins its research. No matter how far Science has penetrated, it always hinges on some kind of basic initial element, from which all development begins. As science has progressed, a smaller particle can be found in an element, which had been considered the base, and it
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becomes the initial base. It is impossible to determine how the initial base element appeared, without referring to any kind of power regulating the processes in the larger system where we together with our science are simple components. And this power also is called God. We can only study the laws according to which the initial base element developed, but we cannot change both the initial base element itself and the laws under which it operates. And it all is because it all was created not by us, but by some kind of power, in the system of which we all are included and which once more is called God. The more practical characteristics of science come down to the following. Science is the result of theoretical or experimental work which can be repeated independently by different scientific teams or individual scientists. In principle, all scientific theories can and must be supported by an experiment, though in real down-to-earth conditions, the performance of some kind of experiments may prove to be impossible. Science becomes a creative material force when its results are used for the creation of specific control systems (social, economic, technical) for human activity. Nothing is taken on faith in science if you assume something, prove it is so. The definition of science is completely clear; therefore, no serious disagreements arise about what rates as science and what does not. The definition of religion is rather complicated; therefore, discussions about what pertains to the area of religion and what does not are constantly underway. Let us cite several examples.

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There is full agreement that prayers, services in the synagogue, observance of kosher food rules and the like are the province of religion. Well, what about with the rules of moral behavior (ethical rules, in other words) governed by religion? The author's point of view is that it also is pertains to the area of religion, and a person who follows these rules is a religious person. An atheist who does not recognize religion, will object and say ethical rules have no bearing on religion they say they appeared in the process of mankind's "material" development. The atheist may think so, but he cannot prove to the person "of religion" that these rules did not come to us from a power above. The very same dissonance exists too with the religions understanding of God. There is agreement among religious people that God is something that can help people at a difficult moment, to advise, defend provided that the rules established by God are carried out. But what about the concept of the "merciless" God who created the rules it is necessary to know, not in order to beg for mercy from Him, but so as not to be thrown "under the bus" of his system? Though this is a "merciless" concept too, but the author thinks this concept also belongs to the area of religion. And this concept is sufficiently close to the area of scientific logic. Possible images of a "merciless," but a rather "scientific" and "rational" God are described on other pages of this book. As already has been mentioned in this book, true Science cannot refute the possibility of the existence of a supreme authority "from above." Really, if we, the people of an earthly science, can manipulate the living and lifeless world
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on our earth and beyond for the realization of our scientific ideas, then the denial of the possibility of manipulation by us at a higher level sounds unscientific. If we can create new types of dogs or monkeys and teach them to obey defined rules of behavior, we cannot rule out the possibility that someone higher than us creates new types of "us" and teaches us to obey some rules of behavior, the essence of which is known only to Him who is above us. If we can influence our earthling colleagues with different scientific devices (radioactive beams, a magnetic field, chemical substances, etc.) and change their physical and spiritual condition in such a way, we are obligated to concede our existence and the existence of other people in some kind of a broader system, where someone or something influences us (all of us!). And it is immaterial what this something or someone is called. And such a name can be GOD. Thus, scientific logic not only does not contradict the understanding of God, but even supports it. Therefore, true scientists cannot consider recognition of an almighty power controlling mankind as an unscientific phenomenon. And everything else rests on the intellectual representation of Him who is above us and manipulates us. It is not so important how to portray Him, with what qualities to endow Him, and what to call Him. What is essential is the recognition of His existence. Therefore, the name "God" and His manifold characteristics attributed to Him by different people do not cause any negative emotions in the author. More likely, it causes even very positive emotions.

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Incidentally, Darwin, as already has been mentioned, in his theory of evolution never thought to dispute God and religion, as militant atheists try to imagine it at the present time. Darwin was a religious man, and his main purpose in the creation of the theory of evolution consisted of the refutation of the points of view of fundamentalist clerics that God created our world as permanent that is to say, how it was created, thus it should remain forever. Darwin was attempting to demonstrate that God created a world that was developing; that God created a process according to which the world was beginning to develop and would be developing for all time. And such a scientific concept is in complete accord with the image of God-the Creator in Judaism. Many ask the question, are there principle contradictions between religion and its Biblical concept of the creation of our world, in particular the religion of Judaism, and science, in particular the theory of evolution. The author supports the point of view that there are no principle contradictions: religion was called upon to explain the beginning of those processes that led to the creation of man and mankind, and science studies these processes. This point of view is one of the main ones in this book. Thoughts about contradictions arise when Biblical descriptions are perceived literally. But they should not be perceived literally, because these descriptions were made by people who translated God's language into their own language, and the translation into another language almost always is based on the translator's life experience which differs from the life experience of the translated original.

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In order to compare the concept of the Biblical creation of the world with the theory of evolution, it is necessary, most of all, to make the contemporary understanding of this theory precise. Darwin boiled down all the development of all types of the animal kingdom to a struggle for survival in each type the strong survive, and the weak perish. The new types themselves will appear as adaptations of the old types to the new conditions of life.

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INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY IN MAKING OUR WORLD A BETTER PLACE


In the 1960s, the author of this book, in his professional capacity as a scientist, introduced a scientific concept of advanced power system Combined Steam-Gas-Turbine Installation for the Republic of Belarus (that time a part of the Former Soviet Union) where he lived. Today most of the new power systems of Belarus are Combined Steam-GasTurbine installations that reduce the fuel consumption per a unit of electricity generated by 30% thus making electricity more affordable for everybody and therefore making our world a Better Place. In 2000s, the author was among those who fought in the Cook county of Illinois in the USA for reducing the real estate tax for long-time home owners who are retired and therefore live on a limited income. Today this reduction is in place making our world a Better Place for many people of age. Today, the author is trying to convince Jews of his own synagogue and in many other places that the Jews have to judge all political movements and politicians (and support them) on how close their ideas of improving the life of citizenry are to the Torah-based concept of a Better World not on how many free goodies from the government are promised, and they should do it in spiritual collaboration with Christians in spiritual Judeo-Christian civilization. And that is one more authors personal endeavor aimed at making our world a Better Place.

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Some kinds of fish became reptiles when many of them were cast onto the shore by the ocean a majority of those cast out perished, but the strongest learned to breathe and crawl on dry land. Later, some of them crawled to lofty cliffs from where they were thrown down by the wind. The majority perished, but the strongest found themselves in a condition to glide and gently land the birds evolved from them. One day a storm began and all the plants providing the food for the birds were covered by earth. Only those birds survived that had the longest beak and as a result were able to extract food from beneath the earth. And so forth. It was a very slow process of selection and survival of the strongest. It really was a great discovery for the level of science in Darwin's time. But genes and the capability of genes for probabilistic recombinations were unknown for the state of science in Darwin's time. And that can explain why Darwin's theory is unable to explain it. Probabilistic recombinations in some fish may have made it easier for fish with recombined genes to crawl along dry land and breathe earth's air than to live beneath the water not because they were the strongest in their school of fish. Probabilistic recombinations in some kinds of reptiles may have made it easier for reptiles with recombined genes to fly through the air than to crawl along the ground not because they were the strongest in their reptilian family. And so forth. It is not the slow survival of the strongest, but a very rapid, possibly instantaneous on the time scale of history, appearance of new specimens. An external action temperature, pressure and different force fields, such as magnetic, electrical and gravitational
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influences probabilistic recombination. And it can apply to such a genetic recombination caused by some kind of as yet unknown force field which led to the creation of man, who is entirely different from the rest of the animal world. Evolution according to Darwin or "pre-human" genetic recombinations were able to lead to the appearance of some kind of physical body (such a body can even be manshaped apes), the additional effect on which by some kind of unknown force fields also led to the appearance of intellect in this physical body, and such a combination began to be called man. If the source of this unknown force field was some kind of all-powerful force (subsequently called God), then the principle disagreements between the Biblical theory of the world's creation and science disappear. Thus, genetic recombinations as a result of a process created by God were able to create a physical body in which intellect appeared as a result of the effect of some kind of energy force field, again generated by this very same God. That is one of the possible versions of man's appearance. Again, about religion's connection to intellect. The approach described above links religion directly to intellect. There was no religion before the appearance of intellect, though, of course, the power from above existed It is eternal. Humanoids living before the start of man's historical era were, in essence, a variety of the animal kingdom they had no intellect. Possibly they appeared as a result of the animal kingdom's evolution according to Darwin's theory. This part of Darwin's theory, which
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assumes evolution within every type of the animal (and plant) world, should not draw any objections even from people who consider themselves religious. I can reiterate that it already has been touched upon in other parts of the book. Evolution according to God has been added to Evolution according to Darwin. Something happened that could not occur by Darwin's evolutionary means, because it did not exist before. In a somewhat short historical time period man appeared who externally was similar to the anthropoids who lived before him, but in principle was different from them. He had acquired what did not exist before him INTELLECT, which includes the ability to think, analyze, foresee, create and This new quality, "intellect," differs in principle from the defense reflexes of animals intended for preservation of the species. The defensive reflexes of animals, including the reflexes of anthropoids, is a reaction to what has happened with the animal itself, while man's intellect has nothing in common with the reaction to what happened to him. Most often, intellect leads to a desire to change the world surrounding man according to some kind of idea of a perfect world man is trying to understand. The main thing one needs to remember is the key difference of animals' old defensive reflexes, externally even perhaps similar to the rudiments of intellect, from true intellect: the product of true intellect is not a reaction to what has happened, but a creative action for what has not yet been.
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The outward similarity of apes and man still does not mean they amount to the same thing, exactly the same way man's similarity to his likeness in a drawing does not mean it amounts to the same thing. The possibility has not been ruled out that a definite specimen of ape really was changed into man by the effect on this specimen's brain by some kind of powerful heretofore unknown emanation, that also was an instrument of God/The Almighty in man's creation. Of course, as already mentioned, it is only one of many hypotheses that do not contradict Darwin's theory of evolution. One may illustrate the absence of disagreements between religion and science with the example of the theory of relativity by the most distinguished scientist of modern times, Albert Einstein. Albert Einstein ascertained a law in the process of the transformation of mass and energy into each other (E=MC2) and in this way granted mankind the ability to "tame" atomic energy, and also to understand the nature of cosmic processes. But the process itself of transforming mass and energy into each other was created not by Albert Einstein, it was created by some kind of power over us - by God. Several more examples. People of the Jewish and Christian religions assert that our world was created comparatively recently, nearly six thousand years ago, while science has found the remains of animals that existed many millions of years ago. But there are no contradictions here: certainly something existed many millions of years ago, and nearly six thousand years ago what existed underwent
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principle changes (possibly, in six something like intervals -- "days," which became the six days of the religious creation of the world caused by some kind of power from above. This power created a process that science is studying now in various disciplines: biological, physical, chemical, technical, social and others. People of the Jewish and Christian religions maintain that the first man (Adam) was created very recently, nearly six thousand years ago, while science has found the remains of creatures externally similar to man who lived many tens of thousands of years ago. But there are no contradictions here. There may have been creatures externally similar to man at that time. And nearly six thousand years ago, some kind of power from above created modern man from something, and this something may have been a creature externally similar to man. But the newly created man is qualitatively completely new and not the next evolutionary stage in the development of a creature externally similar to man. This new creation, called man, has been developing according to his own process created by this very same power from above, and this process is being studied by science. The fact that Jews possess more literacy and education strengthens their respect for science. It really is true. As already mentioned, the main thing for Jews is creation, because Jews perceive seriously that they were created in the image and likeness of God-The Creator (Torah, or Old Testament). Creation requires knowledge,
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and therefore, Jews have developed in themselves the capability to study constantly to study the Torah and creativity in any area. It is not without reason Jews are called the "People of the Book." As a result, Jews have overachieved and do overachieve in the creation of the new (new financial, economic and technical systems and methods, new social relationships in society and the like) with the clear understanding that not everything new can turn out for the better. The new is always risky, but not everyone wants to take the risk. When those not wishing to take a risk are forced to take a risk, it causes their resentment. When among those urging the risk turn out to be many Jews, it creates a breeding ground for anti-Semitism. And this has happened often in history. The most striking example is the tragic October Revolution of 1917 in Russia committed with the great involvement of Jewish intellectuals. The Jewish intellectuals were unable to foresee how it would end, their intentions where pure: they had been dreaming about happiness for everyone. But the social experiment linked to this revolution miscarried, and millions of innocent people were its victims. For the Jews it ended in a new cycle of anti-Semitism. In the Russian empire, and later in the Soviet Union, they were looked upon with great suspicion for introducing a new social order. The rulers tried to secure and maintain what had been, to the detriment of all the new social order, to what the Jews had called for. Whence the conflict. When Christians in the countries where Jews live want to create and take risks at the same time (creation is always linked with risk), the Jews and Christians work together in the area of strengthening the might and prosperity of their country. The United States of America is such an example.
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Jewish literacy and scholarship may have been highly valued and used by some peoples and may have proven to be a strong irritant for other peoples. But Jews do not change their fundamental principles they are always hoping, the time will come when those "uncomprehending" finally understand the rightness of the Jewish principles coming from the One God. The spiritual and religious understanding of the importance of science and involvement in its development is an important element of Jewish intellectual identification.

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6.2. Democracy in harmony with the Torah and Judaism


This is a picture by contemporary Italian artists portraying the biblical stories connected with the receipt by Moses of the Torah tablets on Mount Sinai from God.

Here are traced three characteristic episodes of the making of the Jewish people: Moses is receiving the tablets from God in the upper part of the picture.

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In the left part of the picture, this very same Moses is trying to explain to the Jewish people with the two tablets in his hands that it is necessary to live from this moment according to the laws described on the tablets and binding on all without exception, and not according to the instructions of kings and idols.

in the central part of the picture at the bottom, Moses is breaking the tablets in despair and a frenzy, inasmuch as the people are opposed to the idea of submission to a law preferring customary traditions of submission to kings and idols.

Does this episode not say that God and Moses are the first to begin the process of moving mankind from a dictatorship embodied by kings and idols to a democracy embodied by a law binding on all?

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But if one admits the Torah's rules, that is, religious rules, should control our behavior, how can it overlap with democracy, the basic social organization for all of Western civilization, including Israel and the United States? There is no inconsistency here. At the heart of democracy are free elections, during which citizens find leaders to trust in the governance of their state or community. Governance is realized through the publication of laws, and the laws encourage the fulfillment of what is included in the category of GOOD and punish actions included in the category of EVIL. Religion also defines what is included in the GOOD category and what is included in the EVIL category. Without religion, defined in our case by the Torah, the categories of GOOD and EVIL would be defined by people as it was done by Hitler in Nazi Germany (the Holocaust which was introduced into law by the Nazis as the epitome of EVIL) and Stalin in Communist Russia (the Gulag, which was introduced into law by the Communists, as no less of an EVIL). When we speak about the separation of church and state, we are talking about prohibiting the empowerment of official religious organizations, such as churches, synagogues and mosques, with certain state governance functions. For example, the leaders of the American Catholic Church and leaders of Orthodox synagogues in Israel should not issue directives (laws) that are mandatory for all citizens. Such directives (laws) should be issued by a democratically elected parliament. But inasmuch as more than 80% of the American and Israeli population consider themselves religious, a majority of the members of the lawmaking members in these countries are religious people.
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And for religious law-making members, GOOD, which they are supposed to support in the laws, and EVIL, which it is necessary to combat in the laws, are defined by JudeoChristian morality. Thus, in the separation of religion from the state, Judeo-Christian morality is not separated from the state, but becomes a fundamental moral compass for governance. True religion, and Judaism in particular, is not at variance to democracy. Moreover, religion should be the spiritual basis for democracy. In order to demonstrate Judaism really is democracy's spiritual basis, it is necessary to compare the fundamental characteristics of the religion Judaism with the fundamental characteristics of a democracy. The characteristics of Judaism were detailed earlier; now democracy's characteristics need to be specified. Many think there is nothing to specify here, that, they say, everything is obvious here free elections and the free will of the people. In reality, it just isn't so. Free will is only one of the characteristics. If this one characteristic were enough, then we would be able to recognize true democracies from our past and present and ancient Greece with her slavery and Fascist Germany headed by Hitler (he was elected in a free election), and the Communistic Soviet Union headed by Stalin (an overwhelming majority of the people wholeheartedly voted for him), and present-day Russia headed by the quasi tsar Putin (the majority desires a "firm hand" at the head of the state), and the like. But many understand
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intuitively that all these are not true democracies or not democracies at all. So just what is included in the understanding of a true democracy? According to the ideas of the Western free world, a true democracy must be characterized in addition to free elections by the following (some prefer to call a democracy with these additions a republic): The presence of three independent systems in governing the state the executive, the legislative and the judicial provides an internal check over each system that prevents a slide into a political dictatorship. The fixing of private property rights in a country's economy prevents nationalization and a possible slide toward an economic dictatorship, while providing access to the state of necessary taxes only for the organization of operations in the spheres where the private sector is in no condition to provide it. The support of minority interests prevents a dictatorship of the majority over the minority. The independence of advocacy groups and the mass media from the state creates an environment of openness that immediately connects people to actions necessary for the defense of the democracy.

And now let us recall the fundamental characteristics of the centuries-old control of Jewish life in the isolated
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villages of Eastern Europe that were traditionally organized according to the Torah's covenants: Three independent governing systems existed in communities where the community's chosen president carried out the executive functions (the parnas), the legislative was an elected council for governing the community (the kahal), and the judicial was the rabbinical court (the bet din). Practically all heads of families had their own private businesses that paid community taxes for the support of all areas of community life, such as spirituality (synagogues), educational (schools), public health, end of mortal life (funeral procedures), etc. Minority interests were maintained through a multitude of independent synagogues (from the very poor to the very wealthy), where they established their own rules of behavior depending on the welfare of the congregations, and through charity, which was a principle element of the community's social structure. And if one considers openness, the synagogues (and the cheder schools attached to them) were those religious and public organizations and centers of community life where that openness, which is necessary for involving a people in an activity, was being implemented and where the justifications for the necessary actions were found in the Torah or Talmud.

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From the comparison of the principle characteristics of Western democracies and the historic organization of the life of Jewish communities founded on the ideas of the Torah/Judaism, it is immediately apparent that there are no principle differences between them. Thus, religion can be compatible with a democracy. Hence, one can see that discussions that the State of Israel cannot be Jewish and democratic at the same time are so much hot air. Though at first glance it may appear strange, the chief thing both in religion and in democracy is spirituality, it is the belief in the existence of some kind of spiritual mission in our life, which one must follow despite any obstacles. Religion says it has to be done, and democracy says how it must be done. Thus, understanding "Jewish" and "democratic" should not be looked upon as something incompatible. They are very close in their spiritual content, unless the spiritual content identifies with ultra orthodox rituals. It can be regarded that the Torah and Judaism lay the groundwork for the democratization of different human communities, including modern states. The most completely democratic ideas of the Torah may have been implemented in the United States. The democratic states of Western Europe are behind the United States. There exists a specific category of Jews who prefer to call themselves secular in order to emphasize the absence of religious rituality in their spiritual world. Most often these are Jews who think piety separates them from that "normal" democratic life in which they work, live, rear children and spend time. And there's nothing wrong with that from the
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point of view of the Torah, if these Jews only obey the rules of their people's spiritual behavior and they distinguish "good" from "bad" on the basis of their people's criteria imparted to them at their mother's knee. In essence, it adds piety to their democratic ideals.

Politics are inseparable from religion and spirituality. Elected government officials of all levels from a small settlement to a whole country accomplish some kinds of actions (legislative, executive, judicial) that affect the spiritual (and material) well-being of people. Therefore, people would like all actions of the officials elected by them to conform to their, the voters, spiritual principles of life. And these principles of life for the overwhelming majority in the Judeo-Christian spiritual countries are Judeo-Christian. And therefore, the majority of people in Judeo-Christian moral countries warily relate to the appearance of politicians in their countries who support Islamic morality and traditions. These politicians can be very worthy individuals. But if they are honest and spiritual people, they are obligated to support laws based on their Islamic morality and traditions which are rooted in the Moslem holy book, the Koran. But the Ten Commandments, on which all countries with Judeo-Christian morality are based, do not lay at the heart of the Koran. While the Ten Commandments are mentioned in the Koran, too, they are not the basis of Islamic morality and traditions. At the heart of the Koran lays something completely different, which is implemented in classical Moslem countries, such as, for
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example, Saudi Arabia or Iran. A quick glance at these countries enables understanding their morality and traditions are not compatible with Judeo-Christian morality and traditions.

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Separating politics from spirituality, based on religion, is both harmful and dangerous. It is dangerous, because if Judeo-Christian spirituality is eviscerated from politics, some other kind of spirituality will enter them, and be possibly destructive. There cannot be politics without spirituality! Jewish intellectual identification must include the support and fortification of a true spiritual democracy both in Israel and in other countries with a Jewish presence.

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6.3. Free enterprise in harmony with the Torah and Judaism


Here is cited the key instruction of the Torah about how one must treat individual property, in comparison with the communist concept of Marx and the capitalist concept of Adam Smith regarding the very same question. Doesn't this comparison say the Torah and Judaism are located on the side of a free market capitalist economy of "equal opportunities," and not on the side of a state regulated socialist/communist economy of "equal results"?

From the Commandments of the Torah: You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, [or his field] or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or his ass, [or his cattle] or anything that is your neighbor's.

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From the "communist commandments" of communism's chief theoretician, Karl Marx: Expropriation of property in land and application of all rents of land to cover state expenditures. A heavy progressive tax. Abolition of the right of inheritance. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly. Centralization of all transport in the hands of the state. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned b the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil in accordance with a common plan. Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries: gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.

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From the "capitalist commandments" of capitalism's chief theoretician, Adam Smith Support the free-market system with its internal economic mechanisms instead of external political control. Support the "natural order," representing market relationships in which each man bases his own behavior on personal and lucrative interests, the total of which also creates the community's interests; such an order provides wealth, well-being and development both of the individual and of the community as a whole. Support the "natural freedom" systems, at the heart of which is private property. Do not fear the "invisible hand of the market," which is based on egotism that acts as an effective handle during the distribution of resources.

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An explanation for those who do not quite comprehend clearly the difference between the communist and capitalist systems of social and economic governing organizations. The essence of the communist organization of society comes down to the redistribution of wealth in society in order to assure everyone an equal, although also poor, standard of living. Such redistribution is realized by a government via a system of taxation or direct confiscation. The capitalist organization of society is a system of free enterprise where each individual has the right to keep for himself the majority of what is earned by his own labor and the labor of his hired workers. Everyone has that standard of living he can provide himself for himself and for his family. In a capitalist society, aid for those who have found themselves in no condition to earn a minimum standard of living, for circumstances over which they have no control, is realized substantially through individual charity and not through governmental redistribution of wealth. When it comes to free enterprise and Judaism and the Torah, the question immediately arises: what is the connection between them? And why should free enterprise be part of the Jewish identification? And the connection here is direct. We are partners of the Almighty/God in creative work for building the Better World "according to God" on our earth in accordance with our individual understanding of this plan. And the free enterprise system assures and supports individual efforts of each man in the realization of his capabilities.
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The free enterprise system is oriented at the social organization of a society of equal capabilities, where each individual strives to be prosperous, to maximize his spiritual and material benefits and to help at his discretion all the poor achievers. This system is not compatible with the socialism/communism system in which the state expropriates everything from the prosperous and divides everything equally among everyone, as a result of which everyone becomes poor achievers. Here, perhaps, one should single out two distinctive features of the Jewish people "responsible" for their achievements in the system of free enterprise. It is a presumption of a comparatively greater degree of reasonable risk and greater creative social orientation in all spheres of human activity, that also enables maximizing their spiritual and material benefits and helping at their will all the "poor achievers." The dependence of any work's end result on the riskiness of the decisions being made is well known. Riskier decisions are capable of leading to a better end result, but are fraught with more serious failures. The material welfare and prosperity of private business owners in a capitalist, free-market economy depends on the profit their businesses receive. Therefore, the owners of capitalist businesses make, as a rule, riskier decisions, making it possible to obtain greater profits. Statistics say that only one out of five new businesses survives in a capitalist economy. But the "surviving" businesses are so
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efficient they make a capitalist economy much more effective than a socialist economy where everything is determined by the "non-risky" strategy of government enterprises, where practically all "survive." Actually, if the goal of private business managers is the receipt of a greater profit that requires greater risk, then the goal of managers of government enterprises is the preservation of one's job. It all is because the material benefit for managers of government enterprises depends only on the positions they hold in the government hierarchy. Therefore, the goal of government managers also consists only in the preservation of their positions and in promotions that lead to the need to make only the safest decisions which guarantee the least probability of their failure and, as a result, their least effectiveness. Businessmen with the "Jewish" approach (now it is both Jews and Gentiles) choose the riskier economic and technical decisions (of course, within reason) and exact greater successes in competitive activity. A typical example of taking greater risk was the gigantic size of the Jewish emigration from the former Soviet Union to the countries of the Western world. Everyone who made the decision to emigrate understood what the risk would be. It was a risk of the loss of a job and the risk of arrest in the absolutely distinct dictatorial socialist world, and the risk to lose in the absolutely indistinct capitalist world. But the Soviet Jews went along

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with it. And it not only is their personal victory, but also a victory in mankind's creative advancement. As regards aid to the "poor achievers," the following statistics about American philanthropic organizations illustrate it. These statistics are revealing, because philanthropic organizations support creative work in areas which influence to the greatest extent the spiritual and material welfare of all society, and not its separate groups, and most of all, the spiritual and material prosperity of the "poor achievers." There are nearly 39 thousand philanthropic organizations in the United States, and among them nearly 7 thousand are Jewish. All these American philanthropic organizations have nearly 85 billion dollars in assets, including 10-15 billion dollars of the Jewish philanthropic organizations. If one were to do a conventional overall and Jewish per capita conversion, the figures would show that the Jewish population invests approximately ten times more than average throughout the country in socially directed philanthropic funds. And it all is the Jewish people's investment in fulfilling its mission of chosenness and part of their identification.

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Free enterprise fully conforms to the fundamental principles of the Torah and Judaism, inasmuch as both the Torah and capitalism are oriented at the receipt of the maximum possible results in the creative work of each individual. Both in the Torah and in the free enterprise system, rendering aid to those who really need it is promoted through philanthropy/mitzvah, which is one of the more important elements of Jewish intellectual identification. The Jews supporting a strong, all-powerful state and government, socialism and communism, - are those who do not live according the principles of the Torah and Judaism.

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6.4. Jewish achievements in the advancement of science, democracy and free enterprise
On the following page is presented a table of those awarded Nobel prizes from the very beginning of their award indicating the share that went to Jewish laureates. With a Jewish population of 0.2% in the world, their proportion among the laureates is 20%, which means that their investment in the development of our world per capita is 100 times greater than all others. It is considered that the Nobel prizes for distinguished achievements in the development of our world are an objective reflection of real achievements without the influence of political, racial and religious prejudices. If that is so, then isn't this table convincing evidence that, despite all the "complexities" of the three millennia fulfillment of their obligations as the "chosen," they are fulfilling their obligations, and are fulfilling them not as the "privileged" of mankind, but as God's "partners" in the creative work for the creation of a Better World for everyone?

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The Jews and their role in our world Total number of laureat es 89 Number of Jews among them 11 Percent of Jews

Literature

12.4

Peacemaking Physiology and medicine Chemistry Physics Economics Total number

75 155

6 42

8.0 27.1

116 140 32 607

19 35 11 124

16.4 25.4 34.4 20.3

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One rabbi in Hartford (USA) calculated that the share of the world's Jews in all the time of mankind's existence amounts to a third of all the works published with new ideas and improvements in all areas of mankind's creative activity. With two tenths of a percent of the Jewish population in the world, it means "labor productivity" of the Jewish people in creative work for the improvement of life on earth is approximately 100 times greater than from all the rest. Once more, it does not mean some kind of supremacy in all likelihood, it is a more efficient awareness of the paths to creation according to God's plan. A multitude of theories has been proposed to explain this phenomenon. For example, Aron Cherniak in the magazine Lechaim cites two such hypotheses. The first is scientific avant-gardism, in other words, the aspiration of Jewish intellectuals to break new ground in creativity, to take the lead, to outdistance one's colleagues. Of course, it is not an exclusive quality of the Jews, but it is impossible to refute it often attendant to the Jew while taking at times passionate, fanatical forms. The second hypothesis is similar to the scientific theories of the phenomenon of a "supernova's" appearance. It's essence is thus. The representatives of the Jews accumulated a latent creative potential for many hundreds of years. Now it has burst out in the form of an explosion, which has led, in particular, to a scathing display of scientific energy.
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Such hypotheses are good for people removed from the Torah and Judaism. If one returns to what is being analyzed in this book, the roots of Jewish achievements are obvious, and they do not fit in with the two hypotheses just cited. The roots of Jewish achievements are the perfection of the Jewish people over more than a three millennia period of time based on study of the Torah, interpretation of its recommendations in permanently changing living conditions and the implementation of these recommendations for building the Better World. And that is the chief thing in the identification of the Jewish people. The American scientist and writer, the Christian Charles Murray, supports this point of view in his scientific research and publications both on the basis of the latest research of the standard structure of the Jewish people's genes and on the basis of the analysis of this people's history. In particular, in his article, "Jewish Genius," he describes possible historical reasons for the intellectual superiority of the Jews. Murray proposes that the stature of intellect in Jews occurred because Judaism became a religion in which study and learning did not become a lesser, but even a more important factor than the observation of religious rituals. He emphasizes the importance of a ordinance published in the year 64 of the Common Era by the Palestinian sage 243

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Rabbi Joshua ben Gamla, that acutely increased the Jews' intellectual stature. This ordinance obligated all male children, starting from 6 years of age, to undergo universal schooling, and was rigorously implemented in practice. Therefore, Jews were the first among all the other peoples of the world to receive the unique ability to master reading, writing and arithmetic, developing thereby the capabilities of logical thought. Charles Murray further recalls that with the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, Judaism became a religion concentrating on the study of the Torah in decentralized synagogues and study houses. Rabbis and teachers of the Torah became the leaders of the communities. All Jewish males, for the sake of maintaining their faith, were supposed to read and understand what they were reading, not only to themselves, but also aloud, in the presence of others. They were supposed to be literate and they were obligated to teach their sons. In short, a good Jew was supposed to be an intellectual. Murray assumes that those who were not able to cope with the requirements put forth by Judaism for their intellect, left Judaism, while those who remained continued to develop their intellect.
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Later, Charles Murray analyzes the Babylonian exile of the Jews in the 6th century before the common era, which was an additional factor in the growth of the Jews' intellect. It is known from the Torah that the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar, "carried away all Jerusalem, and all of the princes, and all of the mighty men of valor, ten thousand captives, and all the craftsmen and the smiths; none remained except the poorest people of the land" (2 Kings 24:14) to his kingdom. A century later, when the captives returned to Jerusalem, they discovered that the majority of those who were left behind had converted to other religions. The descendents of the elite who themselves returned proved to be much stronger in the intellectual regard than the descendents of those left behind. The Babylonian exile had boosted the Jews' intellect, and the positive influence of life in exile on the development of the intellect was confirmed by all the subsequent life of the Jewish people in two millennia of exile. Here one wants once more to offer a reminder about the very important position of this book's author. All facts cited regarding the achievements of the Jewish people are not evidence of their privileged chosenness and that they are better than all the others. All facts cited here are evidence that the Jewish people, thanks to their intellect, were first to realized the connection of all mankind with The One God and the first to understand what this God wants to be created on this earth. And the first to begin to realize what are called God's Covenants.

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Chapter 7

Jewish Identification in the Eyes of Gentiles

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7.1. From almost deification to almost demonization


The two images of the Jews are the diabolical Jews with horns and a horrible nose and the Jew with angelic wings. Who imagines Jews with such images? What is it the mythical devices of the possessed and illiterate masses? Or the well thought out actions of those who understand very well where Jewish spirituality is leading mankind?

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No, these images of Jews - the diabolical Jew with horns and the horrible nose and the Jew with angelic wings - are not the devices of possessed and illiterate masses. These images are the result of the intellectual reasoning of the Jews' role in the history of mankind both by intellectuals who highly value the role of the Jews in the creation of our civilization, and intellectuals who ascribe all mankind's misfortunes to the "diabolical intrigues" of Jews. The "pro-Jewish" intellectuals think the inclusion of Jews in the spiritual life of their country will increase the spiritual and material well-being of their country, while the "anti-Jewish" intellectuals believe in something opposite Jewish spirituality is destroying their country. Two pairs of statements about the role of Jews in the creation of our civilization illustrate this point. The first pair of statements is almost deification. American President John Adams: For I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation. the Hebrews have done more to civilize man than any other nation. They are the most glorious nation that ever inhabited this Earth. The Romans and their Empire were but a Bauble in comparison of the Jews. They have given religion to three quarters of the Globe and have influenced the affairs of Mankind more, and more happily, than any other Nation ancient or modern. The American writer Mark Twain in his short commentary, "Concerning the Jews":
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He has made a marvelous fight in this world, in all the ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself, and be excused for it. The Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples have sprung up and held their torch high for a time, but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was. These facts are all on the credit side of the proposition that the Jew is a good and orderly citizen. Summed up, they certify that he is quiet, peaceable, industrious, unaddicted to high crimes and brutal dispositions; that his family life is commendable; that he is not a burden upon public charities; that he is not a beggar; that in benevolence he is above the reach of competition. These are the very quintessentials of good citizenship. If you can add that he is as honest as the average of his neighbors--But I think that question is affirmatively answered by the fact that he is a successful business man. The basis of successful business is honesty; a business cannot thrive where the parties to it cannot trust each other. In the matter of numbers the Jew counts for little in the overwhelming population of New York; but that his honest counts for much is guaranteed by the fact that the immense wholesale business of Broadway, from the Battery to Union Square, is substantially in his hands.

The second pair of statements are almost demonization.


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Russian tsars who determined the status of Jews in Russia (as described by Yosif Kremenetsky): In 1727, Catherine I signed a decree for total banishment of Jews from Russia. Isolated cases of the conversion of members of the Russian Orthodox Church to the Jewish faith contributed to it. That same policy also was advanced during the time of the Empress Anna Ivanovna and the time of Elizabeth Petrovna. She published a decree in 1742: Immediately exile all Jews from our empire settlements and villages abroad and henceforward by no means let them in. After the celebrated case of the conversion to the Jewish faith of naval Captain Alexander Voznitsyn and his execution (together with Borokh Leybov in 1738). In addition, the senate published a new decree confirming the total banishment of the Jews from the Russian Empire. Jews who had adopted Christianity, on the other hand, were not allowed to leave the country out of fear they might return to Judaism. Banishment usually was accompanied by confiscation or plunder of property. The legal status of Jews under Catherine the Great did not change. Only individual exceptions were made for major merchants. According to its 1762 manifesto, settlement in Russia was permitted to all foreigners, except Jews. The Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky in his work, "The Jewish Question":

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Ask the native population in our border regions: What is propelling the Jew and has been propelling him for centuries? You will receive a unanimous answer: mercilessness. He has been prompted so many centuries only by pitilessness to us, only by the thirst for our sweat and blood. And, in truth, the whole activity of the Jews in these border regions of ours consisted of rendering the native population as much as possible inescapably dependent on them, taking advantage of the local laws. Oh, they have found always opportunity to use our rights and laws. They have always managed to be on friendly terms with those upon whom the people were dependent. And they now grumble minor rights when compared to the native population. It is enough they have obtained them, these rights, from us, before the native population. That is what has become of the Russian people in the decades and centuries where the Jews have settled - the history of our Russian border area is testimony to it. What does it mean? Point to any other tribe from among Russian aliens which could rival the Jew by his dreadful influence in this connection! Could it compete in this respect with the Jew? You will find no such tribe. In this respect the Jew preserves all his originality as compared with other Russian aliens, and of course, the reason is his status in statu, that spirit of which specifically breathes mercilessness for everything that is not Jew, with disrespect for any people and tribe, for every human creature who is not a Jew. And what is the excuse that in the West of Europe the nations have not managed to cope themselves, and therefore, it is the fault of the Russian people? Is it because
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the Russian people in the border regions of Russia were weaker than the Europeans (owing solely to the cruel centuries of their political circumstances), they are to be oppressed once and for all through exploitation and not helped?

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7.2. Those who almost deify, and the ideas underlying it


Among many others, the American presidents John Adams and George Bush, the writer Mark Twain, and the actor Marlon Brando nearly deified the Jews. Why?

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Perhaps the "almost deification" of the Jews is based on those characteristics of Jews which amazed unprejudiced observers of Jewish life and who are described splendidly in Albert Einstein's article, "Just What Is a Jew?", written as early as 1938. Below is quoted a translation of part of that article. "The bond that has united the Jews for thousands of years and that unites them today is, above all, the democratic ideal of social justice, coupled with the ideal of mutual aid and tolerance among all men. Even the most ancient religious scriptures of the Jews are steeped in these social ideas, which have powerfully affected Christianity and Mohammedanism and have had a benign influence upon the social structure of a great part of mankind. "The introduction of a weekly day of rest should be remembered here -- a profound blessing to all mankind. The unique accomplishments of the Jews in the field of philanthropy spring from the same source. "The second characteristic trait of Jewish tradition is the high regard in which it holds every form of intellectual aspiration and spiritual effort. "I am convinced that this great respect for intellectual striving is solely responsible for the contributions that the Jews have made toward the progress of knowledge in the broadest sense of the term. In view of their relatively small number and the considerable external obstacles constantly placed in their way on all sides, the extent of those contributions deserves the admiration of all sincere men. I an convinced that this is not due to any special wealth of
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endowment, but to the fact that the esteem in which intellectual accomplishment is held among the Jews creates an atmosphere particularly favorable to the development of any talents that may exist. At the same time a strong critical spirit prevents blind obeisance to any mortal authority. "I have confined myself here to these two traditional traits, which seem to me the most basic. "These standards and ideals find expression in small things as in large. They were transmitted from parents to children; they color conversation and judgment among friends; they fill the religious scriptures; and they give to the community life of the group its characteristic stamp. "It is in these distinctive ideals that I see the essence of Jewish nature. That these ideals are but imperfectly realized in the group - in its actual everyday life - is only natural. However, if one seeks to give brief expression to the essential character of a group, the approach must always be by the way of the ideal."

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7.3. Those who almost demonize, and the myths underlying it


Among many, the Russian tsar Nicholas II, the Russian writers Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn and the Russian scientist Mendeleyev did not like Jews and even demonized them. Why?

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The reasons for almost demonization are the opposite of the reasons for almost deification. It is the deathly fear that the new criteria for Good and Evil, which came from the same source for everyone called The One God, may change the local criteria for good and evil which came from a multitude of local gods in the old heathen world. In other words, it is a fear their tribal criteria for good and evil may be damaged by the more powerful criteria of the other tribes. The logic of almost demonization develops in the following way in the heathen's mind. "My god tells me the source of my well-being is the military seizure of the material good of a neighboring tribe, and The One God is admonishing us, "don't do it, they are your brothers!" Only a devil can want me to deprive myself of the means of my well-being. Consequently, people spreading such ideas are allies of the devil and they must be treated as such. And people who subsequently stopped considering themselves heathen, but who continue to consider Jews almost devils essentially remain heathens. True heathens and pseudo-heathens created different antiSemitic myths for justification of their demonization of Jews. An analysis of the basic anti-Semitic myths compared with the concepts of the Torah indicates that the positive work of the Jews for the improvement of our world is at the heart of the majority of anti-Semitic myths, but it is represented negatively and prejudicially by anti-Semites. And the following examples bolster this statement.
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Myth: The Jews killed the Son of God, Jesus Christ Actually, it wasn't the son of God sentenced to death, but the Jewish rabbi Jehoshua who rose up against the established Judeo-Roman order recognized and supported by Palestine's Jewish population during Roman domination. This Jewish rabbi's teachings served as the basis of the new Christian religion, and he himself became known as Jesus Christ many years later when his followers began to convert to Judaism heathens at a significantly lower level of intellectual development. In order to make Judaism understandable to the heathens, Judaism's ideas had to be simplified and canonized, as a result of which the Jews ceased perceiving the altered Judaism as an offshoot of Judaism. And then something happened Rabbi Jehoshua could not foresee: he was converted from a Jewish rabbi and the spiritual leader of one of Judaism's sects to the founder of Christianity and the Son of God for Christians. Myth: The Jews murder Christian children and mix their blood into matzo. Such actions in the Torah are categorized as punishable spiritual transgressions; therefore, this myth must be rank savage fabrications. Of course, it is impossible to exclude such an event completely, but if such a thing had happened, it would have been an absolute violation of Jewish tradition for the "sanctity of human life," and that pertains to any life - Jewish and non-Jewish, because all people are made in the image and likeness of God.

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Myth: Jews have been robbing and corrupting other peoples with usury. Usury created a contemporary system of financing operations for society's material and spiritual development, a system that made it possible for Man-the Creator, who was created in the image and likeness of God-the Creator, to create the Judeo-Christian civilization as one of the most important elements of the better world "according to God." Usury means borrowing money at interest. If such a financial system had not been created, people with ideas for the betterment of our world, but without funds for the implementation of these ideas (the implementation of almost all ideas required material support), would not have been able to implement them, and our world would not have achieved that stage of spiritual and material development it has achieved now. The world has advanced and thanks to the worldwide financial system created on the basis of "Jewish usury," the world must be thankful to the Jews for it. Jewish usury began in the following way in history. The Jews were constantly ousted from their home by different pre-Christian (before our era) and Christian (during our era) governments. The Jews had no time for selling property, even if the Jews had owned any such property (and the Jews were forbidden to own land and businesses). Therefore, the only thing the Jews were able to take with them while escaping the pogroms, was money or its equivalent (precious stones). Having arrived at a new home, the Jews often had only one chance to make a living to support their families and community loaning money at interest.
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If the money loaned was used by Christians for the creation or improvement of production, the region or country's economy would be been improved, and everyone should be thankful to the Jews, whose money improved the economy. But noblemen very often borrowed the money to support their standard of living not for production. The money loaned did not yield new profits. Therefore, there was nothing paid back, and it did not befit them to acknowledge their inability or unwillingness to be productive. Hence the desire to accuse someone, in this case the Jews, of "robbing" the common people. Some examine this question from the religious/moral point of view - they say it was of no benefit to charge interest. That is true if it was a question of one's own community, where money is loaned or simply given gratis as aid to people in trouble. The relationships themselves of the Jewish and Christian communities during the Russian empire were purely business (political and economic), so the money was loaned for business necessities not as aid. And hence the interest, as a kind of profit share that was supposed to be obtained with the correct usage of credit. Myth: The Jews did not want to perform manual labor and agriculture The Jewish community of the times of the First and Second temples, the modern state of Israel and the Torah itself refute this myth; Jews were not involved in it only when conditions were being created for them hindering such occupations (it was forbidden for Jews to work in many manual labor professions in today's enlightened Europe and Russia for many centuries.) Being able to do
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everything in Israel, including manual labor, the Jews have refuted this myth. And both farming and the pharmaceutical industry, and high technology factories that have attained technological achievements unprecedented in the world are evidence of it in Israel. Myth: The Jews have bamboozled common Christian people with their anti-Christian spirituality Not bamboozled, but drawn others into spiritual discussions in order to demonstrate that other ways exist for organizing society that can lead to better spiritual and material well-being for people. During such discussions, Jewish activists have wanted to demonstrate that social organization based on the Torah is closest of all to God's ideas, and are one and the same for Jews and Christians. They often did not understand the Jews, and that created animosity, but Jewish activists continued such work, because they considered it a mission from God. Myth: Jews always isolated themselves from the other peoples where they lived They did not isolate themselves, but the others isolated them; but if resistance to assimilation is understood as isolation, then that's the way it should be according to the Torah, and that is good for everyone. As is well known, in many countries of the world they really isolate the Jews, placing different anti-Semitic limitations on them such as limitations for university admissions, for specified types of economic activity, for homes, for inclusion in governmental and political activity and so on. These limitations were intended for deterring the Jews' influence on the social and public life
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of those countries where they lived. But to the great disappointment of the anti-Semites, these limitations were counterproductive: In order to achieve anything in countries with anti-Semitic limitations, the Jews had to be more ingenious, more enterprising, better educated and all that allowed them to find ways out of hopeless situations where the anti-Semitic limitations had driven them. Paradoxically, anti-Semitic limitations strengthened the capability of the Jews to be victorious in the competitive struggle, and their numerous victories are well known both in science and in technology and in economy and in art, and in philosophy, etc. Myth: The Jews made drunkards of the Christian people The Jews didn't drive Christian people to the taverns, the people made drunkards of themselves; the Russian government rented taverns to the Jews only because it knew only the Jews would not become drunkards and would hand over all the income to the government. Indeed, Jews do own taverns for selling vodka in Russia. It really is so. But why, and was it so bad for Russia? The sale of vodka in the Russian empire always was a state monopoly and one of the main sources of income for the empire. The greater the sales the greater the income. And there were more sales when the taverns were in the hands of the Jews. It's for that the Russian empire farmed out to Jews the sale of vodka through the taverns. At the same time, the empire solved two main problems for itself. The first was a sharp increase of income for the treasury. The Jews knew how to organize trade and increase sales, and it was much easier to take the profit from them. If a tavern owner was a Russian, there was a real probability
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he himself would become a drunkard along with his guests. In that case the income for the treasury would be curtailed sharply. And the second problem the empire solved for itself was whom to blame for making the people drunks not the empire who in this way was enriching the treasury and keeping the people in obedience, but the Jews. It was not Jews making drunkards of the people, but the people themselves and their rulers wanted it. The Jews owned and own now many alcohol enterprises in the United States and Europe ("taverns"), but no one becomes a drunkard there. Myth: The Jews organize different associations for selfgovernment and self-help within their people in order to be separate from others Jews, actually, organize different associations, but not to be apart and begin to scheme something against others. Jewish associations for self-government and self-aid have pursued two goals. One of them is to strengthen and pass on to the next generation their religion, that is, the set of moral rules that allow distinguishing good from evil The second goal is to help their own fellow believers who are in trouble. The Jewish religion proceeds on the assumption that God wants His people to create God's kingdom in this world, and not in the other. The Russian Orthodox themselves believed that the real kingdom of God exists only in that world and life in this world is only preparation for moving THERE. There are two diametrically opposed concepts in understanding what The One God wants. From the point of view of the Jews, these two concepts can coexist peacefully and gradually draw closer to each other.
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But imperial Russia was afraid of it because the Jewish concept was instilling discord in the minds of the Russians and might have led to disobedience. Hence springs the defensive reaction of anti-Semitism. Myth: The Jews consider themselves chosen for controlling others Both yes and no here it all comes down to an understanding of the word chosenness. If one follows the Jewish notion of this word, then yes. Jews consider themselves chosen not for controlling others, but for helping others in the social organization of our world "according to God," and it is their predestination "according to God." But the Jews have never considered themselves chosen for controlling others in the sense of governmental compulsory control. Myth: Jews have created a secret government for controlling the whole world. It is not a secret government, but an open one, and it is not a legal government of control, but more of a spiritual government of ideas "according to God," of ideas that must belong to all people in accordance with the Torah. And that is good for everyone. Myth: Jews were colonizers and occupiers If it is a question of colonization and occupation with the spiritual ideas and results of the Jewish people's creative labor, then that is really so, and it is good. Regarding territorial colonization, Jews are affected by it and today's endeavors by the State of Israel to resolve the Palestinian problem are a good example of it.

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Myth: Jews were nationalists and chauvinists If by this is understood resistance to assimilation and absolute faith in the Torah as a rendering of God's ideas for the organization of our world, then it is true and that is good. Myth: Jews created both capitalism and communism That is true, because genuine creation "according to God" cannot occur without the competition of different spiritual and economic concepts which are allowed to prove their own supremacy in the competitive process. Capitalism was created and tested and proved its suitability as an economic instrument in the creation of the Better World "according to God." Communism was tested and proved its unsuitability. Myth: Jews undoubtedly are guilty if everyone has been persecuting them -- both heathens and Christians and Moslems and atheists. Yes, that's the truth everyone has been persecuting them. But this may also be proof of the spiritual righteousness of Jews who see in the Torah what is hidden for others. Myth: And generally, there are many bad people among the Jews they are venal, unsympathetic, stupid and the like. That is true, but it is not what lies at the heart of Jewish spirituality at the heart of their spirituality lie their obligations "according to God" to make our world a better place for everyone living in our world. And the Jews do it even unconsciously on the basis of a tradition developed over the millennia that has been handed down
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from generation to generation even in Jewish families who do not consider themselves religious. ***** Speaking of the myths underlying anti-Semitism, one must not forget too about the simpler reasons for the hatred of one group of people by other groups. Many simply do not like strangers, Jews included, who are within eyeshot. Conditions are not only negative where people have no contact with each other. Sometimes envy too does the dirty deed. Jews frequently, thanks to a better education and a greater desire for learning, have a better job, construct their lives more efficiently and spare no money for the education of their children and the improvement of living conditions and the like, and this too causes envy. Constant attempts to conceal or deprecate the influence of Jewish intellectuals and politicians on the achievement of their countries in the social and economic areas are part of anti-Semitic strategy. Some intellectuals who do not like the influence of the Jews on their countries' society (it may be anti-Semites and not be anti-Semites) declare that the so-called Jewish lobby forces the American government (and the governments of other countries) to do what is of benefit to Jews and not beneficial for the "native" residents of these countries. This Jewish lobby, these same intellectuals maintain, is responsible for the many hardships of these countries. But in reality there is no single Jewish organization playing the role of the so-called Jewish lobby. Many Jewish organizations exist who work together with Gentile organizations and government agencies for advancing those
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ideas included in the realm of their common interests. In essence, all these organizations, which one can notionally call the Jewish lobby, help the "native" population of the United States and other countries understand that compliance with Judeo-Christian morality is "advantageous" to the same degree for Jews and gentiles. Constant attempts to evoke suspicion for the actions of Jewish intellectuals and politicians, accusing them of disloyalty to the countries where they reside is included in the arsenal of anti-Semitic actions. The so-called dual loyalty of citizens of Jewish ethnicity is discussed often that is to say, they are loyal not only to the country where they live, but also to another country. Either the state of Israel or the Jewish people is understood as the other country. It is true, but such dual loyalty is not supposed to be looked upon from a negative point of view. All people have many "loyalties" besides the country in which they live to their family, to their friends, to their religion, to the place where they were born, and so on. And when these loyalties conflict with loyalty to the country of residence, people attempt to have an influence on both sides in order to bring their positions together. And that has been a normal aspect of life since mankind's very beginning. One of the reasons for anti-Semitism about which they are afraid to speak openly was fear of economic competition. There were real grounds for it. Actually, the Jews always have been distinguished by a much greater level of social and religious education which imparted to them definite
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advantages in understanding man's nature, and that is one of the essential elements in the creation of goods possessing more attractive qualities that assure victory in a level playing field. And Gentile competitors, the goods of whom were less attractive for the consumer, tried to increase their chances at winning on that field, foisting negative characteristics on the Jewish goods not linked to the goods themselves, but linked to the nature of the manufacturer of the goods, who is the Jew. Thus, frequently the exaggeration of anti-Semitism was advantageous for winning on this economic playing field. There are many different interpretations for the nature of anti-Semitism racial, religious, economic, class and so forth. While not refuting the influence of all these elements in the creation of anti-Semitism, the author believes that the main one is the reaction to the actions of Jews in the fulfillment of the plan for the spiritual and material creation, as it was prescribed by God in the collective understanding of the Jews and set forth in the concept of chosenness. Stopping anti-Semitism may signify stopping the work of Jews on the fulfillment of God's plan. Actually, the Jewish people are the subject most often of negative, though sometimes positive, attention from the rest of the world's nations because of their unique role in the continuation of the creative process begun by God which has made the Jews the chosen people. Jewish people, even those who consider themselves non-believers, fulfill their debt for assisting God in the transmission of His "instructions" to all the other peoples it is not a personal desire, it is an obligation.
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The main thing is the majority of the intellectual elite and elected governments of the Western world's democratic states understand correctly the nature of anti-Semitism and constantly oppose it. An example of it can be the international Conference on the United Nation's Demonization of Israel held in New York in November 2007. Israel's demonization is understood as a tradition begun by the U.N. for the constant censure of not so much concrete political actions of Israel's government as for the censure of Zionism which is equated to the whole spirituality of the Jewish people, simply for its existence. The existence of the Jewish people themselves is thereby demonized. Anti-Semites accuse the Jews of a great deal, but the chief accusation consists of the Jews ruling the world through some kind of universal supreme secret government which controls (by means of financial and other machinations) national governments of the states of the Judeo-Christian civilization. And when it comes down to it, they are right. Actually, a universal supreme Jewish government exists, but it is not secret all literate people are acquainted with it. It is a government of ideas for the creation and improvement of our world, the principles of which are specified in Judaism, and the practical steps for fulfillment are in millions of published (and unpublished) works on the creation of modern systems controlling all areas of human activity. And one can only rejoice in it.

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Thus, it is necessary to rid oneself of the syndrome of blame for the fact that they do not love us, the Jews. Although we don't always do well, and although there are bad people among us, as it is with all peoples, the roots of antiSemitism are not in us, but in them, the anti-Semites. And understanding this is an important element of Jewish intellectual identification.

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7.4. Spiritual cooperation and confrontation with the Gentile world


A multitude of religions, beliefs and traditions exist. If they all exist in our world of The One God, that means they are needed by this One God. If that is so, then how does one identify them intellectually whom does one consider a friend, and whom an enemy; with whom does one find a common approach to solving the Better World's problems, and with whom must one battle "to the bitter end"?

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Actually, many religions or simply spiritual streams exist beyond Judeo-Christian civilization, and the question always arises - how to treat them? As an enemy in building the Better World? And as to partners? Inasmuch as many people have their own ideas for the creation of a better life on our earth for everyone, why must the Jews consider the ideas based on the Torah better, and if we do believe it, how does one convince all the rest of it? Two reasons define Jews' confidence in the supremacy of the Torah's ideas for the construction of a Better World on our earth. The first reason is obvious to everyone it is the fact that these ideas belong to the Jewish people, and it is natural for everyone to consider their ideas the best. The Jewish people are no different from other peoples in this regard. The second reason is more essential and distinguishes Jews among all other peoples: Jews believe that these are the ideas of God himself presented in the Torah. And inasmuch as God is one for all the peoples of the world and is the supreme "controlling link" in our world, His ideas must predominate over all earthly ideas proposed by earthly god authorities. Only one thing is important in this last assertion: the recognition that there is a supreme spiritual authority controlling us in some unknown ways, and this authority traditionally is called God (in Jewish tradition there are many other words for designating this supreme authority, and those who say "there is no God" can find other word substitutes, too. Many among the Jews think all concepts should be considered equal. Otherwise, they say, all others will be

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offended and dislike for the Jews will grow even greater. The author holds to a second opinion. For Jews, the Jewish concept must be considered closest to God's ideas, because chosenness also consists of being closest to God not in the sense of privileges, but in the sense of a better position for a more accurate interpretation of God's ideas. The main thing is - it is the ability to convince others of it instead of avoiding honest discussions with others on the cardinal questions of building the Better World. Jewish spirituality is distinguished from all the other spiritualities of the world by a unique partnership with The Almighty/God in building the Better World on this earth of ours. In Jewish spirituality, the relationships among people and of people with God are not an end in itself, but a means for finding the best ways for building the Better World "according to God." But in other spiritualities, building of the Better World "according to God" is limited only by the alignment of relationships between people and people and God, and the interrelationships themselves become a Better World. The following examples distinguish it: Developing the best relationships possible among people in accordance with established rules is the foundation of spirituality in nations with the Confucian religion.
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Self-perfection and ending suffering by suspending participation in real life in our world is the foundation of spirituality in nations with the Buddhist religion. Ritual observance of all the Koran's dictates and struggling to make the whole world the same ("there is no God but Allah") is the foundation of spirituality in nations with the Moslem religion.

Thus, for Jews the Torah's ideas about creation of the Better World on our earth are best. One can convince other nations that these really are the best ideas in only one way: by their own experience, having made it possible for them to be included in a peaceful competitive battle of different ideas and to experience the results "first hand," as it were. It happens like that in real life. The majority of Christian countries have undergone such experience and now are positioning themselves with the Jews as one "construction gang" for the creation of the Better World as it is set forth by the Torah. Christians are not a homogenous spiritual mass. Among them are groups that are the Jews' and Israel's true friends, such as Evangelists, and anti-Israeli groups trying to keep their distance from the Jews. But the antiIsraeli Christians spiritually remote from the Jews are no more so than ultra orthodox Jews are separated from the main Jewish mass of people. So, adherents of Judeo-Christian civilization, naturally, want the victory of their own civilization; they want their civilization to predominate in the world.

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When a struggle of civilizations occurs within the framework a worldwide competition of ideas, this struggle can last forever. And it is okay, because all competitive civilizations gain from it. Each civilization is improved in the process of such a struggle, adopting something good from the rivals. And that is what God had conceived! But sometimes some civilization transitions to military methods of the struggle as is happening now with the militaristic part of the Islamic civilization (Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Hezbollah, Hamas and the like). Naturally, the Judeo-Christian civilization wants to win and it must demonstrate that it can do it. And recognition of the need to advocate Judeo-Christian spirituality throughout the world also is an element of intellectual Jewish identification. The Jewish people will help this victory by the generation of ideas showing the advantages of the concept of the Better World "according to God."

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Chapter 8 Jewish Identification in Countries of the Greatest Jewish Influence

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8.1.

The United States of America

Here is a picture by an unknown artist portraying a meeting of the First Continental Congress of the United States in 1774. The American Declaration of Independence was adopted during such meetings which from the very beginning connected the spiritual and moral principles of the new state with the Bible's fundamental concepts (the Old Testament, the Torah). Didn't the spiritual solidarity of the new American state's inhabitants with the ancient Biblical people of the Israelites and Jews start from there?

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In order to understand the situation of Jews in America, it is necessary to recall the fundamental document from which the formation of this state began. ON JULY 4, 1776, REPRESENTATIVES OF THE THIRTEEN E NGLISH COLONIES LOCATED IN AMERICA SIGNED THE DOCUMENT THAT HISTORICALLY BECAME KNOWS AS "THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE ." THE STATE OF THE "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" BEGAN WITH THIS DOCUMENT . THE DECLARATION BEGAN WITH THE FOLLOWING : 1. "When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation." 2. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles
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and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." 3. "Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security." This Declaration related the American people spiritually to the Jewish people from the very beginning and here is why. These three statements from the Declaration are a repetition of what was proclaimed during the Exodus of the Jewish people from Egypt approximately three thousand years before this and are further canonized in the Torah and many other religious documents. Actually: 1. The course of events nearly three thousand years before this led to the Jewish people being forced to repudiate slaveholding (political) ties connected to the Egyptian people and to take a special place among the peoples of the world, at the command of the Creator of the world, and Moses, who carried out the will of The AlmightyCreator in the organization of the Exodus, attempted to explain to Pharaoh, Egypt's king, the reasons compelling
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him to such a separation, and all these events are described in the Torah. 2. The Torah's most fundamental concept consists of the fact that all people were created equal in the image and likeness of The Almighty-Creator and endowed to them by the Creator with definite inalienable rights, among which pertain, in translation to "human language," life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And as it is described in the Torah and Talmud, the Jewish people expressed complete agreement with the governing system based on the commandments of The AlmightyCreator laid out in the Torah. (Many assume that the mention in the Torah of the word "slave" rejects the concept of freedom and equality for everyone. In reality, this very word in the Torah means hired labor, protected by the Torah's laws, which are extended to all people). 3. Rather than wisdom, the Torah demands the system of people's social development established from the very beginning "according to God" not be changed under the influence of the fleeting ideas of earthly reformerdespots. And when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to return to the system of governance "according to God." Only the United States among the countries of the Western democracies was founded on the recognition of JudeoChristian monotheism' religious principles as the state's spiritual and legislative basis. America's founding fathers,
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such as Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Franklin and others, proclaimed it both in the Declaration of Independence and in other of their letters serving as the basis for the Declaration of Independence. In contrast to the United States, modern countries of Western Europe were created as the result of revolutions against monarchs and the Christian, primarily Catholic, religious organizations who supported them. Unfortunately, in her aspiration to rid herself of the dictatorship of Europe's official church, she did not notice that in addition to moving away from the authority of the official church, she had distanced herself from Judeo-Christian spirituality as the foundation of society's moral life. And other moralities begin to enter this spiritual void. It was Nazism and Communism in the last century. Now it is militant Islam, who at the present time is becoming the primary danger for Europe's spiritual health. American presidents always have emphasized the spiritual kinship of the Jews, Israelis and America's Christian majority. Here are examples of such statements. John Adams, 2nd President of the United States (this statement already has been mentioned): I really wish the Jews again in Judea, an independent nation. the Hebrews have done more to civilize man than any other nation. They are the most glorious nation that ever inhabited this Earth. The Romans and their Empire were but a Bauble in comparison of the Jews. They have given religion to three quarters of the Globe and have

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influenced the affairs of Mankind more, and more happily, than any other Nation ancient or modern. Abraham Lincoln, 16th president of the United States: [R]estoring the Jews to their homeland is a noble dream shared by many Americans. Calvin Coolidge, 30th president of the United States: The Jewish faith is predominantly a belief in freedom. From the beginnings of the conflict between the colonies (America before achieving its independence) and the mother country (England), they were overwhelmingly on the side of the rising revolution. Ronald Reagan, 40th president of the United States: The state of Israel has a right to exist in peace behind secure and defensible borders, and it has a right to demand of its neighbors that they recognize those facts the United States will not support the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. One more example demonstrating the high value placed by the American people on the Jewish people's contribution to America's development. George Bush, the 43rd president of the United States, in November 2007, awarded nine Americans one of the highest American honors for humanitarian achievements in the improvement of our community. There were five Jews among them. And since such an honor is supposed to be approved by a group of independent advisors, one can consider it a reflection of American society's value of the Jewish-Americans contributions to America's development.
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More than 50% of the honors for a 2% Jewish population! Indeed, the Jews fulfill their tasks in accordance with Judaism's canons and the understanding of their chosenness. The spiritual proximity of the Jewish and American peoples, leading toward approximately identical economic attainments of people of a traditional Judeo-Christian orientation, is traced in the interesting findings of the modern Russian journalist, Leonid Radzikhovsky, who was interested in the contribution of various racial groups to the achievements of the American civilization. Radzikhovsky found (November 2007) that there is one Jewish billionaire for every 55,000 of the Jewish population. The next most wealthy population group is classical Christian Anglo-Saxons where there is one billionaire for every 120,000 of the population. It is rather close. All the rest not the Jews and not the classical Christian Anglo-Saxons have one billionaire for almost 7 million people. A huge difference! It is very easy to characterize this difference by stereotyping Jews (and the Christians who are spiritually close to them) as capitalists who rob the poor. But in actual fact it is not true. It is one of the arguments that the people of Judaism and of Christianity, who are based on them, are fulfilling the mission for the development of our world in accordance with God's plan. After all, behind every billionaire are millions of people for
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whom this billionaire's activity has provided a job and better material and spiritual life conditions in comparison with what they had previously. Additionally, Leonid Radzikhovsky calculated that 160 Nobel Prize winners live in the United States. Of them, 61 are Jews and 51 are "pure" Christian Anglo-Saxons. This means that one Jewish laureate is equal to 100,000 of the Jewish population and one Anglo-Saxon laureate to 500,000 Anglo-Saxons. The figures are rather comparable. One laureate is equal to 5-6 million of the population for all the rest of the population. Again, these figures confirm the successes of the Jews as the "chosen ones" and the successes of the "classical" Christians in the fulfillment of their mission. The fundamental identification of America's people is individual liberties for everyone in order to allow everyone to prove himself a creator in accordance with the individual's capabilities and the individual's interpretation of the image of a Better World "according to God." Thus, Jews in the United States have every avenue for the practical realization of their intellectual identification, because their identification approximates the identification of the bulk of the American people.

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8.2.

The State of Israel

Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, announced the formation of the State of Israel, based from the start on the Biblical principles of the Torah and their contemporary interpretation. Can one agree with the huge spiritual significance of the formation of this state inasmuch as it made it possible for the Jewish people to work more effectively on the creation of the Better World on our earth "according to God," despite all the complexities of this state's existence?

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The State of Israel is a proving ground for testing the correctness (or effectiveness) of different interpretations of God's concept for building the Better World and demonstrating the most fundamental characteristics of Jewish identification. The creation of the State of Israel with its capital in Jerusalem is the implementation of the Torah's ideas, that is, the implementation of God's covenants. But whether these ideas have been implemented correctly in this state depends now on the Israeli Jews themselves and the influence on them of all the rest of the Jewish people in the Diaspora. It is rather complicated, and the complexity consists of the following. Israel and Jerusalem are both symbols and political entities. One must discern this dual essence of Israel and Jerusalem distinctly in order to avoid confrontations, often militant, between spirituality and policy, among the different streams in Judaism, between Judaism as a whole and Christianity and between Israel and the Moslem world. Israel and Jerusalem as political entities must have distinctly delineated borders, tangible objects at their borders described in detail, strictly defined conditions for citizenship and a corresponding record of the people, and also a code of civil laws according to which these two entities exist. Therefore, if the State of Israel wants to have internationally recognized borders of the state itself and of its capital Jerusalem, these borders must be fixed in international treaties. Israel and Jerusalem as spiritual symbols are not supposed to have anything to do with it. Defined borders,
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legal tangible objects and rules of citizenship are unnecessary. In the Torah, of course, the lands where these two symbols are located are mentioned, but it was done only for determination of the place itself and not for the demarcation of any kind of political borders, and not even for conforming to some kind of international laws. When Jews say at Passover, "Next year in Jerusalem," it doesn't imply the geographic Jerusalem, but the spiritual, in which people assemble after the coming of the Messiah of the scriptures. Jews and non-Jews can live in the Israel and Jerusalem as symbols, but everyone who lives there must live according to the spiritual covenants given to us by that power who created these spiritual symbols, that is, according to the Commandments of the Torah. The point here is respect for all the religious symbols there are both Christian and Moslem and Jewish, and free access to them for anyone who desires. Of course, it would be wonderful if the spiritual symbols and political entities of Israel and Jerusalem converged; but, unfortunately, it will not happen. And the fundamental spiritual and ideological conflicts in Israel and America regarding problems of Israel's internal development, governmental relationships between Israel and America and relationships between American and Israeli Jews occur right at the juncture of the spiritual symbols and political entities. There are powers in Israel and the United States who want to see Israel as an "ordinary" Western type of democratic state, where religion is the private affair of its citizens, and the state is governed in accordance with atheistic principles. It is, mainly, liberal left groups in the United
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States and Israel who are trying to exclude Judeo-Christian spiritual values from society's life, replacing it with their own that they consider more fair. Their favorite values and slogans are those such as "human rights," "protection of nature," "peace now," "no to war," "racial equality," "no to discrimination," and the like, as if Judeo-Christian morality is against all of this. Quite the opposite all these values and slogans are based on this morality. But the point of the enemies of Judeo-Christian morality is to undermine belief in the source of such morality and to become the source of a new morality themselves. Unfortunately, conservative religious circles, which also includes ultra-Orthodox Jews, while not desiring it themselves, help them in it with their unwillingness (or inability) to create and strengthen the overall Judeo and Judeo-Christian coalition on the basis of those fundamental positions of the Old and New Testaments according to which it is possible to achieve agreement. And for that, to achieve their aims, the enemies of JudeoChristian morality try to destroy the religious symbology of Israel and Jerusalem and leave Israel and Jerusalem for debates and political decisions only as political entities. If such a bias is victorious, both Israel and Jerusalem will cease being religious/spiritual symbols and then attachment to Israel and Jerusalem by people of Judeo-Christian morality will decline sharply. It will be accompanied by a corresponding decrease of Israel's political support by many countries of the world, mainly the United States. And it will be because Israel will not be treated as something spiritually special and important for everyone, but as an ordinary democratic state, as many are.

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The question often is put, but would it be necessary for the Jews to live in the Diaspora at all after the Jewish state of Israel was created in the "promised" land bequeathed to the Jews by God? Yes, it would, but not for everyone. If we agree the principle destiny of Jews on our earth is to be God-The Creator's partners in the creation of the Better World on our earth, we must be everywhere, assuring everyone that the vision of the Better World based on the Torah really is the best, since it creates better spiritual and material conditions of life for everyone. Jews living in Israel are supposed to create an exemplary society out of that state for the realization of the Torah's ideas for the building of the Better World for everyone on earth. And Israel's Jews are doing it successfully despite al the serious internal social problems that they have to solve, and despite the serious national security problems created by the Moslem countries. And all the Jews of the Diaspora are supposed to consider rendering aid to the State of Israel as their paramount spiritual obligation in the establishment of such an exemplary society. And one more question constantly discussed concerning Israel: If the Jews are supposed to build the Better World "according to God" in Israel, is the residence of Jews in Gaza, Judea and Samaria among hostile Palestinians included in the notion of the Better World in Israel? This question is being examined at the present time from a purely political point of view. However, solutions the
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Torah and spiritual Jewish tradition may suggest need to be examined before discussion of the political variations of a solution to the contentious Arab-Israeli problems. The following may relate to such solutions: Jews have the right to live anywhere they want under the condition they do not disrupt the generally accepted laws of normal residence. Israel cannot support any diplomatic proposals after the Holocaust, at the heart of which lies the concept of "Judenfrei" territories (that is, territories where it is forbidden for Jews to live). They can call Jews living in Gaza, Judea and Samaria settlers (or Judeans, Samaritans, Gazans or something else), but such linguistic exercises are not supposed to influence their right to live in Gaza, Judea and Samaria. The residence of Jews in Gaza, Judea and Samaria is not supposed to be linked with the political future of these places. The theoretical possibility that some residences for Jews may end up within another state, for example something like the Palestinian, is not ruled out. But the place of residence for Jews may go to another state only in the event this other state guarantees the absence of discrimination against the Jews living there and the complete security of their spiritual and economic life. If there is no such guarantee, there can
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be no talk about placing the Jews under the sovereignty of another state no matter what they call them. And Jews in some future Palestinian state must help build the better world "according to God" as it is specified in the Torah.

Just what must be sought in Israel from the Jewish identification point of view? How can one distinguish Jewish identification there that should be characteristic for all Jews, and Israeli identification, which is characteristic for residents of any normal country of the Western democratic world? One can attempt to answer these questions with the following questions (the classical Jewish approach is to answer a question with a question). Should the State of Israel be organized in such a way as to approach the realization of the notion of the Holy Land (called the Promised Land in the Torah), which is governed democratically according to the Torah's fundamental principles? Three main principles at the heart of this state's formation are discussed among everyone interested in the State of Israel's fate. The first of the them is, the State of Israel is the realization of the Torah's covenants where the Jewish people, finally, have achieved a possibility to defend their spiritual and physical existence. Very likely, the majority will agree with this.

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The second reason is the fact that after many centuries of persecution and pogroms, the State of Israel provided Jews a safe place for a peaceful life. This assertion seems disputable for many. Actually, taking into account the Islamic vicinity and the modern Islamic concept for banishment of Jews from the Islamic world, which includes the Middle East, the Diaspora in the United States and some European countries seems safer. The third reason is the preservation of secular Jewish culture. However, in the cultural, not the religious, plan, Israelis do not have a single secular culture: Moroccan Jews are committed primarily to Moroccan culture, Russian Jews to Russian culture, and French Jews to French, etc. So, there is nothing to preserve, but there is a wide margin for creation and development. Let's return to the first reason. In the religious plan, the Jewish people were united by the Torah in all countries of the Diaspora, despite different Torah interpretations, including secular. The Holy Land Promised Land is not enclosed by political boundaries, part of it can be subject politically to another country. However, Jews are supposed to have the right to live in all the parts of the Holy Land. If the State of Israel is the Holy Land, then it must be governed by the laws of Judaism that do not contradict the rules of a democratic society, while not becoming a theocratic state. It can be that way in reality and here is why.

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The rules of a democratic society that exist in the United States include the following fundamental elements which already have been analyzed in other sections of the book: 1. Free elections of the governing bodies of all levels based on the competition of different ideas for society's social improvement. 2. Compliance with law, and not to the will of a leader.

3. Freedom of expression of all opinions and ideas if they do not limit the freedom of others. 4. Protection of minorities and individuals from the despotism of the majority. 5. Protection and support of those unable to protect themselves. A careful analysis of Judaism indicates that Judaism includes all these elements. Actually: 1. Though there were no official procedures in the past for voting then, Moses didn't appoint his protgs leaders of the Tribes of Israel, but people who enjoyed the support of the majority; rabbis of synagogues were confirmed by the majority; social community service leaders were chosen by the majority. 2. Since the first days of the Torah's appearance, Jews, most likely rabbis, began to convert the Torah's instructions into clearly laid out requirements of social

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behavior equally obligatory both for "the powers that be" and for "those who have no power." 3. Freedom of expression of all opinions and ideas in Judaism is commonly known; everyone knows the saying that two Jews always have three opinions on the same question. 4. Sanctuary settlements were constructed as early Moses' time for the protection of different individuals from the violence of the majority. 5. The protection and support in Judaism of those unable to protect themselves is an object of envy in Gentile communities historic concern for orphans, widows, the homeless, the hungry and the dying are unparalleled in the world. Thus, Judaism was a sort of "democratic" religion and a democratic way of life from the very beginning, and conflicts between true Judaism and the modern understanding of democracy in the countries of Europe and the United State are no greater than between the different types of democracies in these countries. Only the adherents of secular Judaism who want to eliminate Judaism's predominate role in Jewish life and frighten people with the bugaboo of a theocratic society, and a small part of ultraOrthodox Jews who generally do not want to have anything in common with non-religious problems, try to create the conflicts. Here it is appropriate to connect the question of the democratic and Jewish essence of the State of Israel
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with the question of the resolution of the IsraeliPalestinian conflict, which has been discussed for many years both inside Israel both by many countries, and by numerous international groups and organizations. Just why can't a resolution be found to this conflict despite the infinite proposals for this conflict's resolution introduced from the moment of the declaration of the State of Israel in 1948 and the refusal of Arab states in that same year to declare an independent Palestinian state and to recognize the right of existence for the new Jewish state? The point is that there is nothing that could resolve the fundamental reason for this conflict in the infinite proposals that have been introduced. And the fundamental reason for this conflict is not what is proclaimed officially, but what is consciously concealed. And it is concealed because everyone understands there are no solutions at the present time for what is concealed. It is officially proclaimed that this conflict will end when: 1) the occupation of the Arab lands by Israel ceases (that is, when Israel fully transfers Samaria, Judea, Gaza and the Golan Heights to the Arabs); 2) when construction of Jewish settlements ceases in these territories and the existing settlements are eliminated; 3) when Arab refugees are able to return to the territory of Israel itself from where their families fled in 1948; 4) and when secure borders are established between Israel and the new Palestinian state. What is consciously concealed is that the Arab countries proclaimed in 1948, voting that year at the United Nations
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against the creation of an independent Jewish State of Israel, there cannot be any place within the Moslem world for an independent Jewish state where Moslems would have to live under the laws of Judaism. It, they say, would contradict the very spirit of the Koran. And this Arab position has remained unchanged to this day. And the main reason for the insolubility of the conflict in it is Israel cannot but be a Jewish state, and the Arabs do not want to allow it. As long as the Arab position on this problem is unchanged, there is no peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the best that one can hope for is a "cold" Arab-Israeli war for many, many years, exactly the same way the conflict between the Soviet Union and the Western world played out from 1945 until the Soviet Union's disintegration at the beginning of the 1990s. Very often discussed is the question that the State of Israel cannot exist without a constitution, while almost all states of the world have their own constitution. How is that so? The answer to this question is simple, though many, especially those who lack a clear understanding of Judaism's fundamental principles, cannot agree with such an answer. In contrast to all other religions, Judaism is oriented at the creation of a worthy life on our earth instead of preparation for a better life "in the other world," and, therefore, Judaism's fundamental principles include the fundamental principles of the organization of a just and developing society on our earth, which is not in the
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fundamental principles of other religions. These principles for the organization of a just and developing society on Israeli land also are supposed to be realized in the State of Israel's laws. If that is so, then perhaps a constitution is not necessary, inasmuch as it would duplicate the Torah's fundamental positions. Constitutions were necessary in other states with a predominately Christian tradition because in contrast to the Old Testament (the Torah), the New Testament (the Christian tradition) is oriented at preparation for a life outside the bounds of the earthly life and it does not describe the fundamental questions of the organization of a worthy life on this earth. Naturally, for people who do not take Judaism seriously, the State of Israel needs a constitutions in order to isolate itself from Judaism's fundamental ideas. Should the State of Israel be oriented at a free market economy as the embodiment of an economy "according to God," or at an economy with a "socialist character"? This book already has said that a free market economy is far and away closer to the Torah's idea than a socialist economy. Historically, Jews devised the free market economy first, and it became one of the requisites for their many economic successes in the constrained world economy of the past, though it also became one of the reasons for anti-Semitism. The Jewish people developed a system of social institutions simultaneously with the free market for its operation, such as education and training of children, public assistance for the ill and jobless, etc. These institutions have been functioning successfully in all the places of Jewish residence in the Diaspora.

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Jews were first to create a free market economy as a realization of their creative capabilities the creative capabilities of man who was created in the image and likeness of God-the Creator. God created everyone, not only the Jews, in his image and likeness, but Jews began to realize their capabilities first, and, therefore, became creators in the majority of the areas of human activity. The main thing in the image of the Creator is freedom of will and choice in finding the best path among the many alternative paths to the achievement of a goal. And it also formed the basis of an effective market economy. In ancient times the economies in the countries of the Diaspora were not free because there was no competition. A lord would give control of the land and serfs to his vassals, protect the vassals from competition and for that received part of the profit from them. Jews, as a rule, didn't have such privileges, and they had to find competitive paths in the noncompetitive economy. While supporting a free market economy, the State of Israel must apply maximum efforts for eradication, or decreasing to a tolerant level, of the two evils created by life in the Diaspora. These two evils are the attainment of what is wished with bribes and the granting of well paying service jobs to relatives and friends, now called corruption, and by actions to avoid laws, which now are called criminal offences. The Jews of the Eastern European Diaspora who also founded the State of Israel, did not have these two evils in the Diaspora because they were discriminated against and deprived of the normal conditions of life life in the
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conditions of the absence of any economic and civil rights created what now is called corruption and a criminal offence, a necessary condition for survival. In Israel itself, as in any modern democratic states, one can live "correctly" without corruption and crimes. However, it is difficult to eradicate in the historically short time in Israel what was gained over the centuries in the Diaspora . These two evils practically have been eradicated among Israelis who arrived in Israel from the Western democratic world, because the Jews in the Western world lived for several hundred years in conditions of practically equal economic and political rights. Thus, the State of Israel can and must be oriented at a free market economy as the embodiment of an economy "according to God," and not an economy with a "socialist character." Must the State of Israel recognize the special role of unelected rabbis in rendering "advice and consent" to the elected governing bodies in accordance with the main statutes from the point of view of their conformity with the Torah's foundations? One must make certain in the discussion of any law that it conforms to the spirit, if not the letter, of the Torah. Of course, it can be achieved only after the rabbis of all streams of Judaism agree about the Torah's fundamental unifying concepts, and do not isolate themselves from other Jews who think otherwise.

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The role of the rabbis must consist of how it was during the whole time of their existence in order to direct the new trends in society. There always have been, are and will be such trends, in the mainstream of Judaism, in order to avoid social discord between society and Judaism. This is not something new as rabbis always have acted in accordance with their role as teachers. And one would like that it be so, but the attainment of the unity of rabbis on Judaism's principle problems is, perhaps, a most difficult task, since the tendencies for disunity are too great. Must the State of Israel recognize the special relationship between Judaism and Christianity as the basis for the creation of the Better World based on Judeo-Christian morality in Israel itself? It seems it might have been able to celebrate Judaism's triumph, since one can examine Christianity as the embodiment of the Torah's covenants in a Gentile environment. Thus, the State of Israel may be the ideal place for the realization of the concept of the Better World "according to God," if only Israeli identification doesn't get too far away from Jewish intellectual identification. And Israel's achievements confirm that it is so. Actually, Israel: has the largest number of science jobs in the world 109 for every 10 thousand people, and also the largest number of registered patents per head;
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occupies second place in the world (after the United States) in the number of technological companies; occupies third place in the world (after the United States and Canada) in the number of NASDAQ companies; has the largest aircraft arsenal outside the United States; has the largest number of biotechnical companies in the world calculated per head; possesses the largest share (34%) of the work force with a higher education; is the third ranking industrial power in the world - after the United States and Holland; is second in the world in the printing and sale of new literature; has the largest number of museums per head; has the largest number in the world of computers per head; has the largest number in the world of scientists per 10 thousand of the population -- 145, while the United States has 85, Japan has 70 and Germany has 60.

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8.3.

The European Union

The European Union at the crossroads: spiritual Judeo-Christian values are fading, but new values are not emerging; the increasing immigration of Moslems to the European Union is bringing a powerful, but alien spirituality to the fading native spirituality; the very large role of state regulation of the economy and ever increasing taxation for resolving "social justice" problems (which means redistribution of wealth) decreases individual interest in creative work; dissatisfaction of the people is growing as a result of all this.

And it hampers the creative work "according to God" appreciably. The stars of the European Union flag at the crossroads: which stars are to be taken as an example: the stars of China, the Islamic countries, America, Israel?

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The European Union also is a proving ground, but of a test of the ideas of the questionable interpretation of the concept of God in building the Better World. The history of European Jews is completely different than the history of Jews in the United States. Whereas Jews appeared in the United States of their own free will as residents enjoying equal rights in order to use the full spiritual and economic freedoms, in Europe they appeared as serfs or outcasts. The history of European Jews begins with the Roman Empire, when Jews exiled from their land appeared in Europe as serfs and exiles from Judea. After the destruction of the Roman Empire, they gradually settled throughout all of Central and Western Europe as independent entrepreneurs. Thus, Jewish settlements arose that extended in Europe from the west to the east and also from the south to the north. The Jews settled by the trade routes along the Danube, Elba and Rhine Rivers. The first documentary evidence testifies to their location in a German-speaking region of the Rhine as early as 321 in Roman times. Nothing in their occupational pursuits distinguished the Jews from their new environment at that time, there were differences only in the religious aspect. The Jews within the Roman Empire had available a guaranteed legal status, were able to follow their religion and their communities were autonomous. Rome's acceptance of Christianity as the state religion led to a limitation of Jews' rights that had been building over the years and a worsening of their position in society.
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Obstacles were put in the way of building a synagogue, Jews' economic possibilities were limited and prohibitions began against their holding of positions in civil and military service. The prohibition to have Christian workers led the Jews to refuse agricultural jobs since at that time it was impossible to manage without hired labor. The job sphere for Jews tapered off rapidly: basically trade and financial operations were left for them. Such a situation was emerging as early as the 4th-5th centuries of our era. Thanks to trade, both local and international, and also thanks to the fact they introduced new cultural and economic knowledge to the places they inhabited, the Jews had a good reputation among broad groups of the local population. It was possible to find Jews in almost all the cities' professions. Along with the functions of money lenders and moneychangers, the Jewish urban population served as craftsmen, retailers and wholesalers. Many doctors also were persons of Jewish origin. The local population was able to benefit from their diverse experience. City rulers were interested in the Jews' presence in the cities. The benefited from the trade and monetary transactions, and also hoped for the revival of urban markets. Jewish tradesmen established that urban life was favorable for their economic activity and they settled in the cities, obtained rights guaranteeing free trade and also exemption from paying customs duties. The Jews were an integral part of every large town in the Middle Ages. Inside city walls or a bishop's residence, the Jewish merchants were protected by the authorities. A
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ruler's protective duty regarding the Jewish minority was linked with his interests. In time, the urban environment took on a typical form of existence for Jews. The Jews in the Middle Ages were subject to certain legal standards by which their legal status was regulated in the Christian world around them. Their own court was recognized for the Jewish community and the Jews were given the ability to live according to their religious instructions and traditions. Compulsory baptism of Jewish children was prohibited. Inasmuch as the Jewish community's existence promoted the city's economic prosperity, significant limitations on the status of the Jewish population, their economic life and their isolation from society was still unprofitable for the authorities at that time. Therefore, their status as merchants, landowners and land users, doctors, judges, customs officers and craftsmen in those days was preserved. But as the Christian church grew stronger, it began to expand its power both in the spiritual sphere and in the economic sphere. That led to the banishment of the Jews in the 6th and 7th centuries of our era from Burgas, Clermont and Marseilles. A number of ecclesiastical meetings were held where anti-Semitic decisions were adopted which then passed into secular legislation, as for example, the prohibition of marriages between Jews and Christians and the prohibition of shared taking of meals. The expulsion of Jews continued from public positions where they had been able to influence Christianity's administrative or judicial system on the strength of their scholarship and circumstance. Additional discriminatory conditions where
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introduced at the synod that took place in the year 581: Jews were forbidden to enter monasteries, sit in the presence of a priest, settle disputes of Christians and they were forbidden the imposition of duties. Though the church tried to exclude Jews completely from the life of Christian communities, the economy required the development of trade and thusly promoted the preservation of some Jewish freedoms. Such a situation was preserved up to the 11th century, and it was not by accident that the concepts "trade agent" (merchant) and "Jew" were considered at that time as equivalent, which is evidence of the position Jewish tradesmen occupied in those times. The death of Europe's Jewish communities during the Crusades, which continued intermittently from 1098 through 1291, was linked to the constant propaganda the Christian church leadership spread among the masses against the Jews. When Pope Urban II urged at the Clermont synod in 1095 doing battle against Christian enemies, there were terrible persecutions of Jews at first in France, and later also in Germany. The Rhine communities of the Jews were destroyed everywhere. There was compulsory baptism and banishment of the Jewish population. The Catholic church made use of numerous crises in the feudal economy in order to inflame hatred toward the Jews and to shore up its influence. Conflicts and competition between Christians and Jews on the business and economic front also had an impact. Over the centuries a level of local city craftsmen who had
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perceived economic rivals in the Jews was formed. The death of Jewish communities exposed to Crusaders, city and rural mobs led to extensive changes in the situation of the Jewish population in the 12th century. All trade functions during the Crusades were transferred completely to Christian merchants in place of the Jews. It led to an exodus of Jews in the 14th century from Western Europe to Eastern Europe, and it all began from Poland. And everything began in Poland as it had in Western Europe nearly a thousand years before: at first the usage of the Jews' intellectual potential for the cultural and economic formation of the Polish and other small neighboring nations, who gave the Jews relative freedom, but after that the gradual displacement of the Jewish competitors from many spheres of cultural and economic activity. And then, relatively recently, about two hundred years ago, the partitioning of Poland and the transfer of a greater part of the Jewish population in Poland to Russia's authority. Thus, while examining the situation of the Jewish communities in the countries of the modern European Union, one must always remember that the history of the Jews in Europe is cardinally distinguished from the history of Jews in the United States: It was hostile and repressive in Europe from the very beginning, while in America it was amicable and supportive. In that way there were completely different trends in Jewish-Gentile relations in Europe and the United States, though there also were pro-Jewish movements in Europe, and evidence of anti-Semitism in the United States.
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But one need not forget that, despite the bad history of Jewish existence in Europe, European democracy, cultivated there in the last two centuries, makes it possible for Jews to influence the development of the social and economic life in the direction designated in the Torah for the building of the Better World "according to God," and that in and of itself is good. European identification historically has come down to the concept "I feel relatively good I don't want any changes," which is contrary to the Jewish intellectual concept of creation "according to God." And Jews had to conform to this concept. The extermination of six million Jews in Europe by German Nazis and their numerous abettors in different European countries during the Second World War (the Holocaust) led to the fact that the identification of the European Jew in Europe is connected now mainly with the Holocaust, which in and of itself is bad the Jewish people are supposed to be identified not on the basis of their suffering, but on the basis of their spirituality having as roots The One God and the Torah. All of this does not assure better possibilities for the realization of Jewish identification in the European Union countries, but there are such possibilities.

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8.4.

Russia

The poet Boris Slutsky wrote the following poem in the 1950s: We Jews are lucky. Without hiding under a false flag, without a mask, evil set upon us. It did not pretend to be a blessing. The arguments had not yet begun in the deaf triumphant country. And we, pressed up against the wall, Found the wall gave us our balance. And again Boris Slutsky said, "I love anti-Semites, who give me for nothing free lessons pointing out my defects and readily designating the time I will go mad" Is it not both the complexities and qualities of the life of the Jews in Russia to learn to build the Better World "according to God" under artificially created difficulties?

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And Russia has been doing and does something all its own that has little to do with Judeo-Christian Western civilization, but always in accordance with its own interpretation of Christianity. There always have been people in Russia with their own individual interpretation of Christianity, distinct from the official Orthodox Christian interpretation, in which the authority of the Almighty/God merges with the power of earthly gods, such as the Tsar of All Russia, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the President of the Russian Federation. As a rule, people with their own individual interpretation of Christianity begin to evaluate positively the historical and spiritual role of Jews in the creation of human civilization and Christianity, in contrast to the official orthodoxy, which always has been a source of the negative relationships toward Jews. One of the greatest Russians with his own individual interpretation of Christianity is Leo Tolstoy, the famous Russian writer, who in his article, "What Is a Jew?" (the authorship of this article is disputed) said the following about the Jews: "What is a Jew? This question is not as strange as it may seem at first glance. Let's examine this free creature that was insulated and oppressed, trampled and pursued, burned and drowned by all the rulers and the nations, but is nevertheless living and thriving in spite of the whole world. What is a Jew that did not succumb to any worldly temptations offered by his oppressors and persecutors so
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that he would renounce his religion and abandon the faith of his fathers? A Jew is a sacred being who procured an eternal life from the heavens and with it illuminated the earth and those who live on it. He is the spring and the source from which the rest of the nations drew their religions and beliefs. A Jew is a pioneer of culture. From time immemorial, ignorance was impossible in the Holy Land, even more so nowadays in civilized Europe. Moreover, at the time when the life and death of a human being was worth nothing, Rabbi Akiva spoke against the death penalty which is now considered to be an acceptable punishment in most civilized countries. A Jew is a pioneer of freedom. Back in primitive times, when the nation was divided into two classes, masters and slaves, Moses' teaching forbid holding a person as a slave for more than six years. A Jew is a symbol of civil and religious tolerance. 'So show your love for the alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.' These words were uttered during distant, barbarian times when it was commonly acceptable among nations to enslave each other. In terms of tolerance, the Jewish religion is far from recruiting adherents. Quite the opposite, the Talmud prescribes that if a non-Jew wants to convert to the Jewish faith, then it has to be explained to him how difficult it is to be a Jew and that the righteous of other religions also inherit the heavenly kingdom. A Jew is a symbol of eternity. The nation which neither slaughter nor torture could exterminate, which neither fire nor sword of civilizations were able to erase from the face
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of the earth, the nation which first proclaimed the word of the Lord, the nation which preserved the prophecy for so long and passed it on to the rest of humanity, such a nation cannot vanish. A Jew is eternal; he is an embodiment of eternity." It would seem such a description of the role of Jews in the creation of human civilization fully matches that Jewish intellectual identification being studied in this book. But, unfortunately, it is "a voice crying in the wilderness." And the whole history of the dashed hopes of Russian Jews for their own "normal" identification after Russia's transformation in the last century into the Soviet Union, and then into the Russian Federation confirms it. Let us recall this history. The Soviet Union was a conglomerate of countries, the territory of which stretched from Eastern Europe to Eastern Asia. Nearly 3 million Jews lived in the Soviet Union before the start of the Second World War in 1939. Nearly a million of them were killed in the years of the catastrophe. With Hitler's rise to power, Germany and the Soviet Union became deadly enemies. Nonetheless, a month before the beginning of the Second World War, these two states astonished the world, signing a "non-aggression pact" (the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact), in which they undertook to refrain from attacking each other. This pact afforded Germany the capability freely, without interference on the part of the Soviet Union, to conquer Poland. In exchange for that, the Soviets received the eastern part of Poland. During the following year, the Baltic countries - Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, and also Bessarabia and Bukovina,
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which had gone to Rumania, were annexed by the Soviet Union. The total Jewish population in the annexed territories was 2 million people. Moreover, with the start of the Second World War, nearly 250-350 thousand Jews fled to the Soviet Union from western Poland, which was occupied by Germany. The living conditions of the Jews in the Soviet territories were not the best, but for some time their lives were not subject to the dangers that hung over the Jews remaining in occupied Poland. The relatively safe existence of the Jews in the Soviet Union did not continue for long. In the middle of 1941, the Germans decided to violate the agreement with the Soviets. The so-called operation "Barbarossa" was secretly developed. On June 22, 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union, as a result of which more than 2.6 million Jews fell under the authority of the Nazis (nearly 2.5 million of them perished). The German Nazis, with the aid of local collaborators, police units and the regular army (the Wehrmacht) systematically destroyed the majority of the Jewish population of the Baltic countries, Byelorussia and Ukraine during massive executions by firing squad. The Jews who remained alive were confined for some time in ghettos, but the majority of them, in the final accounting, awaited the very same fate. The German army quickly crushed the resistance of the Red Army, which was not prepared for a sudden attack. Soviet citizens fled to the east, escaping the approaching army. The Jews were able to avoid total annihilation only by evacuation. Nonetheless, the majority of Jews did not succeed in fleeing because of limited capabilities. The Nazis considered the destruction of the
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Jewish population in the Soviet territories one of their primary military objectives. The annihilation of the Jews began slowly during the occupation of an ordinary population center and was concluded in the majority of cases in 2-3 months. The annihilation of the Soviet Union's Jewish communities was carried out by various methods. Usually the Germans designated 3-4 of the most respected members of the Jewish community to a Judenrat, a Jewish self-governing council. They undertook to register Jews in several days at this council, after which, at the end of several days or weeks, they were supposed to assemble at a pre-determined place, from where they supposedly were sent to a labor camp or to Palestine. Along the way, the Germans and local abettors beat and shot those who resisted or were not able to walk fast enough. Then they got rid of the Jews in the nearest ditches or pits. They forced them to divide into groups right in front of the pits and to undress, after which they executed them with machine guns. When one group had been done away with, the next replaced it. Sometimes they simply surrounded the Jews and shot them without the procedure described above. In other cases, they confined them in a ghetto with a small guard and forced them to wear distinguishing marks (armbands or patches) while the young and able were sent for hard forced labor. Such ghettos existed not more than several weeks or months, for shortly afterwards they removed the Jews from them and executed them by shooting them. Sometimes the Jewish population of a given area was confined to a temporary concentration camp. Then they annihilated them not far away, in places of mass murders. After that, as the Jewish population in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union
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was practically annihilated, the hunting continued for those few who had managed to flee and hide. Jews that were found were quickly shot. Very few of the local Gentile population managed trying to help the Jews, since everyone knew that such acts were punished by death. Many residents of the occupied territories cooperated with the Nazis and took part in the mass murders of the Jews. Organized activity of the Jewish resistance was concentrated mainly in the former Polish territory that had been annexed by the Soviet Union in 1939. After the 1917 revolution in Russia, and later also in all the Soviet Union, activity of the Jewish organizations was forbidden; therefore, an infrastructure necessary for self-organization was lacking. Further, annihilation of the Jews occurred so swiftly that they did not succeed in joining in the battle against the Nazis. Moreover, many Jews were serving in the Red Army (many Jewish military personnel distinguished themselves in battle, and more than 160,000 of them were awarded combat decorations), and the lack of men of fighting age also made the organization of resistance to the Germans difficult. The only serious chance to resist consisted of escaping the ghettos and camps and joining Soviet partisan units. Nearly 10 thousand Jews fought the Nazis in this way. From the end of 1942, after the victory of Stalingrad, the alignment of forces in the war changed in favor of the Soviet Union. Over the next two years, the Red Army won back the lands occupied by Germany. Pursuing his own political goals, Stalin organized the Jewish anti-Fascist
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committee, which became the first representative body of Soviet Jews since the revolution. Nonetheless, after the war, upon return to their homes, the Soviet Jews encountered devastation, anti-Semitism and news that many of their neighbors had cooperated with the Nazis. They quickly began to understand that the declarations of the Soviet leadership that anti-Semitism was done with was demagogy. It served as a reason for the growth of Jewish self-consciousness and interest in Judaism as power, which, finally, led to the massive emigration of Soviet Jews to different countries of the world. Jewish emigration of the 1970-1980s from the Soviet Union was evidence that the basic intellectual masses of Soviet Jews understood that there remained no hope of being able to live in accordance with historical spiritual Jewish identification. It applied both to those who considered themselves religious and to the "Sovietized" Jewish majority that considered itself non-believing. But this Jewish emigration was an indication not only of the recognition of the final victory of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union, it was an indication of the total decay of the Soviet social and economic system itself that had been based on the concepts of communism or "developmental socialism." And it happened at the start of the 1990s the Soviet Union ceased to exist, and in its ruins appeared the new state entity of the Russian Federation and some number of independent states based on the national minorities included in the Soviet Union.

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There is no official state anti-Semitism in the new Russian Federation, but national anti-Semitism, nurtured and strengthened by orthodox religious traditions, is alive. As usual, in honor of the "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" and all the myths "demonizing" Jews as a people and as individuals. It is necessary to be on friendly terms with Jews in business, inasmuch as their financial, economic and technological grasp can bring success. But it is necessary in every way possible to repress their spiritual identification, since granting them the opportunity to transform Russia socially will fail to sustain Russia within the framework of her traditional historic spirituality Jews will lead us to social changes, and changes in Russia always bring misfortune. The historical tendency to rally Russians into one people remains unchanged this rally is not for creation, but for the confrontation of any enemy, within or without, real or imaginary, for maintaining in the people loyalty to their country and the existing authoritarian rule, and one of those imaginary enemies is the Jews who now have been renamed Zionists. Thus, even modern Russia is a place where Jewish intellectual identification is, as before, in no condition to exert itself.

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From the Alexander Markovich article, BELOVED ENEMIES THE PARADOX OF RUSSIAN "ENEMYSHIPISM" Some people love their enemies because it would not be interesting to live without them. Common enemies against whom the whole might take up arms is especially welcome to them. Nothing quite unites people as the presence among them of a good quality common enemy an insidious and invincible one is desirable. It is fit here to recall the words of the Biblical Psalms (59:11, 12): "my God will let me look in triumph on my enemies. Slay them not" A predilection toward "national enemies," a peculiar love-hate toward them is a special psychological state of society, a type of mass psychosis, which one can call "enemyshipism." (The commonly used term "xenophobia" is insufficient here: for it means, most of all, a personal hatred, personal intolerance toward the alien, unknown, unusual, that is it, as any phobia, it pertains to individual deviations from the norm; "enemyshipism" itself, in our understanding, is a category relating to public life). Enemyshipism was born in the distant past as envy and a maniacal, often unconscious hatred toward "the others;" it is, of course, a universal disease. However, a totally special place belongs to Russia in its anamnesis. The abrupt, unexpected, tragic turns in Russian history, the eternal pressure of governments on the national subconsciousness and the constant humiliation of a people who never knew genuine freedom these are the reasons permanent hatred toward one or the other "adversary" became one of the national traditions. And for many it is tantamount to love for the motherland. Russia's common enemies have been divided into the internal and external from time immemorial . Just what is next? Really will the philosophy of enemyshipism actually become a national idea in Russia, a basis for the consolidation of society? Really will the ideological resources of the 320

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ruling party, state government and predominate church promote it? No one, except the great Russian people, will be able to answer these questions. There is, for all that, hope that this answer will not run counter to the progressive trends of mankind's development; in the opposite case Russia herself will suffer in the first place, as it has happened more than once before. Cleveland, Ohio

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Chapter 9 Finally, what does it really mean -Jewish intellectual identification?

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Jewish intellectual identification is a sincere desire to consider oneself a part of the Jewish people chosen more than three thousand years ago by some kind of Almighty Power, subsequently called God, for participation in the creative work on the development of our world according to the laws created by this power at the very Beginning. Jewish intellectual identification includes intellectual awareness of the fact that: We, mankind, are part of a greater system of creation designated by God, subordinate to it, and the purpose of our life is participation in the operation of this system. We, individuals of mankind, are individual creators created in the image and likeness of the controlling creative system over us, defined as God-The Creator, and we have been summoned to create both the spiritual and the material. Inasmuch as we, individuals of mankind, were created in the image and likeness of the eternal God-The Creator, we are eternal in the sense of the eternity of the results of our labors - of all that remains after us. We, Jews and individuals of mankind, recognize that the controlling creative system of God-The Creator chose us, the Jewish people, for rendering assistance in the involvement of all mankind for the continuation of the creative work begun by
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this system in the Beginning, according to the concept of creation set out in the Torah. We, the Jewish people, recognize the Torah (the Old Testament) as the spiritual foundation and basis of the social development of all our world. We, the Jewish people, remaining true to our faith in Judaism, acknowledge Judeo-Christian civilization as the realization of the ideas of GodThe Creator set out in the Torah. We acknowledge as the main component of our life's spirituality the generation of our individual understanding of the concept of the Better World "according to God" and the honest struggle for the inclusion of our understanding in the common efforts of our community, of our country and of our nation in the creation of the Better World. We acknowledge the need for the creation of the Better World in all spheres of individual activity in the family, at work among friends, in social organizations, etc. based on the permanent linkage of the Torah's covenants to the constantly changing conditions of life. We are conscious of our obligation to advance our vision of the Better World everywhere both among friends, and among foes, and the need to defend Good and battle with Evil everywhere we find it.

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We perceive the inextricable link of the Torah and Judaism with science, democracy and the free market economy, and for us the equality of capabilities in the creative work of the far and away more important equality of the material results of the creative work. We do not support those politicians who promise greater free material benefits given by the state, but we support those who promise to defend our individual freedoms so we can achieve these benefits by our own labor. We do not exchange freedom for material benefits we left Biblical Egypt where we were slaves for the sake of freedom. We do not support those for whom the socialist organization of society is close in spirit, but we support those for whom the capitalist freemarket system is in their heart. And we do it because a free-market system makes people free, while a socialist system subjugates people to the dictates of the state. We believe in the need to help everyone in need spiritually and materially, but help through voluntary philanthropy (mitzvah), and not through redistribution of wealth enforced by the state. And we prefer it because such an approach has worked throughout all the history of the Jewish people living according to the Torah's covenants the less state power, the greater the freedom (naturally, within reason).

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We support those public officials who think state laws must be based on Judeo-Christian morality. And we do it because at the heart of JudeoChristian morality lies the Torah's covenants which we have followed from the moment of receiving the Torah on Mt. Sinai, despite all the suffering as a result of it. We support the centuries-old Jewish traditions connected with the synagogue, the rites and the life cycle, not as an obligation, but as a means for strengthening our spirituality when it is necessary. We identify ourselves with the State of Israel without reservation regardless of where we live, inasmuch as we think this state affords the opportunity for the complete realization of the Torah's ideas in the creation of the Better World "according to God." We consider discussions with the spiritual Gentile world on questions of the intellectual vision of the Better World as our obligation, but we do not attempt to carry on such discussions with spiritual anti-Semites who consider our vision of the Better World and its embodiment in Israel diabolical. And this is because we consider spiritual antiSemites the true evil in our world with whom it is necessary to do battle. We prefer to resolve all differences of spiritual and material cooperation between nations by peaceful discussions, but we do permit the
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military solution, too, if it is a question of a conflict with evil as it also was in some episodes of the Torah. And that is because evil, if it is not destroyed, can destroy the people of the world of good. And we experience joy from belonging to the Jewish people, despite all the hardships connected with this belonging.

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*****
Those who prefer poetry may find the essence of the Jew in the following lines: Two triangles, a star, The shield of King David, our forefather. This is election, not offense. The great path and not an evil. Once more in a term fulfilled, Once more roars the trumpet of the end; And the fate of a great people Once more is by the prophet proclaimed. Thou art persecuted again, O Israel, But what can human malice mean to thee, who have heard the thunder from Sinai?

This poem was written by the Russian poetess Kuzmina-Karavaeva in 1939 in exile in France. After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, she was forced to leave Russia in order to preserve her Judeo-Christian world by taking monastic vows, and in 1943 the Nazis executed her for the concealment of French Jews from Nazi executions.
(For those who do not know it: Sinai is the Biblical mountain on which God presented the Torah/Old Testament to Moses.)

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Vladimir Minkov The Jews and Their Role in Our World:


Jewish Intellectual Identification

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