Picture My World

I hate stories like this: ‘Kosher’ Phone Merges Technology, Faith. For a religion that supposedly believes and teaches in free will, why do we need a phone that blocks sex line numbers and the like?  The story is about the ultra-orthodox, though, who always take things a little too far in my opinion.  Unfortunately, the craziness reflects on all Jews.
On the other hand, I know many people that would love it if their cell phone simply made phone calls! There’s got to be an untapped market there.

My wife and I were just discussing what we didn’t like about certain synagogues in town and, specifically, their religious services.

The farther left you travel in the Jewish religious spectrum, the more English you find in the service.  You also find a lot of responsive reading where the congregation reads aloud in unison.

Whenever I find myself in the middle of a responsive reading, I immediately think about the Borg and it loses all religious significance for me.  I told this to my wife a while ago and now such services are ruined for her, too. :)  So, there you go.  Like a bad song, you too will have trouble getting this association out of your head if you’ve ever seen ST:TNG.

In fact, I believe we can thank Star Trek for the recent resurgence of traditional Judaism.

I went to morning minyan for the first time in a long time today. I was thinking about Shula as I read the last lines of psalm 30:

You have changed for me my lament into dancing; You undid my sackcloth and girded me with gladness. So that my soul might make music to You and not be stilled, Hashem my God, forever will I thank You.

How utterly appropriate. As much as I wrestle with (or ignore) God, those verses struck right to the heart. This daughter of mine has transformed me into a singing and dancing fool. Thank You.

On the way home from Manning Park.

We took a trip up to Manning Park for the weekend. It was a fairly dreary couple of days, weather wise. We stayed at The Last Resort with a small crowd from our synagogue. There were a lot of young children which kept the noise and energy levels up, but the 3 of us survived even though Shula came close to not sleeping the second night. We’re blaming that on over stimulation from her many admirers.

Tonight, it seems we’re back to the normal routine (as dictated by the two month old) which means everyone is asleep except for me.

I had a short discussion with the rabbi about faith and the many biblical inconsistencies that seem apparent when you consider an omnipotent and omniscient God. There were two parts to the discussion: 1) Faith in a god and 2) the leap from that to belief that the Torah is true and God as Judaism understand Him exists. I hope to write about that in the future but I’m out of energy now.

On that note, I shall retire to bed.