Monday, October 31, 2005

How To Get More Out Of Being Jewish

The book "How To Get More Out Of Being Jewish Even If: A. You are not sure you believe in God, B. You think going to synogogue is a waste of time, C. You think keeping kosher is stupid, D. You hated Hebrew school, or E. All of the above!" by Gil Mann is now available for free download here.

Don't worry, it's legit. Gil Mann himself sent me an email to tell me about it. I'm now in the middle of it myself via this venue and I think there are likely others here who would appreciate the opportunity as well. I think it'll be a good read.

4 comments:

Orthoprax said...

Prince,

I'm not sure how this is relevant to this specific post, but for Orthodoxy, believing in God who gave the Jews the Torah is pretty fundamental stuff.

Tell me I'm wrong.

Anonymous said...

no, there is a mitzva to believe in G-d.

plus, there has to be something out there. Sure you can say that the world started off very simple and later became complex but how did it start. Okay, lets say there was a big bang, but how did it happen? Did it all of sudden start to formulate on it's own and keep growing? Okay lets say there was a program in it that caused it to formulate. How did the program get there? There must be a programmer.

Orthoprax said...

Prince,

Actually, I'm pretty sure that Maimonides lists "Belief in God" among his 248 positive commandments.

Orthoprax said...

Anon,

"There must be a programmer."

That's a huge jump to make. We certainly have a mystery but to suddenly suppose that an intelligence (basically like ours but much greater) somehow "magically" made all of existence is kind of absurd.

I suspect something much more subtle and sophisticated is at hand.