Monday, December 19, 2022

Religion - Jewish versus non Jewish

 Meshech Chochma (Shemos 12:21): It is said about the Jews that they are believers the descendants of believers However non Jews have stronger religious beliefs than Jews - even when their religion is utter nonsense To explain the distinction between Jewish and non Jewish faith, one must note that the appreciation of things such as love, beauty and power are all inherent in a person. The ancient peoples sanctified all these natural powers and placed high value on them and described them as resulting from specific G-ds. Thus they had a G-d of beauty, a G-d of power and a G-d of love as is well known. Even today, the peoples of the world make images and sanctify these tangible - directly experienced characteristics. Thus, non Jewish religious faith is essentially just an extension of natural emotion. That is not how G d conceives religious faith…. In fact, all tangible existence is totally separate from the one Creator. All this is such pure abstract intellectual awareness that Chovas HaLevavos asserts that true service of G d is for either the philosopher or prophet. Nevertheless, all Jews - even without reaching the levels of prophets or even philosophers - truly believe in these pure abstract thoughts of His existence and His unity and they scoff at all that which is entirely based upon natural emotional experience. They understand that faith based entirely on innate human feelings and thoughts is worthless and transient representing only conjecture  -  G d in the image of man. Because of this knowledge gained from their forefathers - Jews understand this profound abstract philosophical issue and scorn emotion based faith... 

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