Merry Christmas

Shalom Friends,

I’ve placed an article on a blog, but really I want as many people as possible to see it. It’s about how free will came into the created world, which I think is a very important subject.

 http://leonsbiblecomment.blogspot.co.il/

The presence of free will needs explanation because, as you understand, I’m sure; a created world is a contradiction to free will. Creation implies control over the thing created. So God, after He created the world needed to explain that, although He created the universe man has free will.

The thing that makes it impossible to create free will is freedom. Free will means that a person is free to choose. Of course he doesn’t have a choice whether to be created or not, although he does have the choice to bring into creation or not, to procreate or not, even though God orders him to “go forth and multiply”.

I love free will so much that  I’m not sending you this article, instead I’m putting it on a blog, giving you the choice to log into it or not. If you’d like me to send you the article, instead of going to the blog, I’ll do so with pleasure.

I don’t think that sitting at home for 4 days counts as doing something, even reading The Homeless Mind, a biography of Arthur Koestler (Cesarani, 1998) doesn’t count neither does surfing the web. Doing something, in my opinion means doing something physical like climbing a mountain, digging a hole, baking a cake etc. The most physical thing that I did was to go out into the 20 cm snow and take a picture of myself, which I thought was horrible but it got a good reception from my Facebook followers.

On Tuesday the National Library advertised that it would be open from 11-16 and Ettie felt brave enough to pull the car out of the snow, which had turned into ice, and to drive at a snail’s pace to her office, where I took the even slower travelling 14 bus to the university campus, where the NLI is located. All I had to do was follow the narrow path to the covered passageway, alongside the beautiful carpet of thick, untarnished snow, in the middle of which was a gigantic snowman.

At 2 I gave up shivering in the cold Judaica Reading Room, where I was reading “Out of Paradise” (Becking, 2011), a book about how sages and scholars interpret the creation story in the book of Genesis, to walk through a field of deep snow, risking a serious fall, to get to the snowman, just for a picture of myself hugging him. The photographer was a lady, who had come all the way from Modiin with her kids to play in the beautiful snow. You can see the video on the blog above.

For me going to the library was like going to the candy shop and then returning to my lair to savor my dainties, namely two books; a great, brilliantly funny and deeply perceptive book called Lucky Jim (Amis, 1976) about social interactions between a group of intellectuals lumped together in a university campus, seen through the eyes of one them. And a book entitled Beauty and Revelation in the thought of Saint Augustine (Harrison, 1992), recommended to me by Haim, because I had mentioned to him that I was interested in reading opinions of ancient philosophers about Creation and Paradise.

So far, of the little that I had read of these sages, I confessed to Haim, I was so disgusted with their ideas, not only because they had interpreted Adam’s action as sin and blamed it on Eve, which I believe is a serious misinterpretation of Genesis, as in this quote below:

“Do you not know that you are each an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too. You are the devil’s gateway; you are the unsealer of that tree; you are the first deserter of the divine law. You are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily god’s image, man. On account of your desert – that is death- even the Son of God had to die” Tertullian (Becking, 2011).

but mainly because Monotheistic religions have adopted these ideas as absolute truths and have been perpetrating the most horrible atrocities accordingly, that I didn’t want to read any more of their ideas. Perhaps I’ll find some redeeming values in this book about Augustine.

Lucky Jim (above) has so far carried my mind into a world of light relief, where academics, such as history professors fool around with love and get intoxicated rather than dealing with important subjects like good and evil in the eyes of sages and cruelty to animals as dealt with by JM Coetzee in his brilliant short story, The Lives of Animals (Coetzee, 1999)

With winter here I lent my old Renault to Avishai, my son the chef so that he doesn’t have to ride his motorbike in the rain. According to the weather forecast, this week the weather will be fine, so he’s bringing me back my car. In the meantime I take rides with Ettie, who uses our other car, a Prius (Hybrid) which usually means that I’ve got to be up early, even on Friday, which is one of the days I consider meant for lying in bed, to ride with her to Tel Aviv.

This last Friday I went off to visit Ariel in Kiriat Ono and Etti went to celebrate the birthday party for her cousin Lavi’s twins, Alma and Jonathan, at their Kindergarden. She always makes beautiful birthday cakes. This time she made a ballerina cake for Alma and a chocolate cake for Jonathan. I’ll put the picture of the ballerina on my blog above.

She dropped me off at Aluf Sade junction, where I had a 55 bus to Ariel’s, while she continued to Tel Aviv. I found him enjoying TV linked to the computer. So we watched some pictures of the kids from his computer on the TV. Now he’s done away with channel TV because he gets 5 stations with a special box called Idanplus. I’ve got to get myself one of those also.

Lilach had the car to fetch the kids so Ariel and I took a walk to the 104 bus to go to Tel Aviv. Just to walk around, have some lunch, enjoy the weather and have a chat.

I always seem to lose great eating places in Tel Aviv and keep finding new ones. After searching all over for a great restaurant, I remember being in Lewinsky str., we looked in the window of  a restaurant called Sender and while we were wondering someone opened the door in front of us, saying this is a great place, it’s Polish. So in we went, even though it sounded a bit too much like the kind of food my late mother, may she rest in peace, used to make. Please don’t misunderstand me, I love that kind food, but I don’t have any hope that any Polish restaurant will ever be able to reach the high standard of cooking of my late mother.

In those days I’d never heard of Polish food. I just ate it and loved it, without considering what kind of food it was. Actually even my mother in law used to cook polish, so, comparing this food with my mother’s and my mother in law’s, this wasn’t a great polish restaurant yet it was busy. Their specialty on Fridays was “Hamin” (hot food) something that Jews start cooking on Friday night in a sealed pot, which is opened on Saturday morning, steaming hot, and it’s fantastic, I mean at my mother and mother in law but here it was just ordinary.

Then like two stuffed turkeys Ariel and I strolled down Aliyah Str to Settlement Square, a famous throbbing heart of Tel Aviv in the 1920’s, now a quiet corner, were it not for all the traffic from the central bus station on its way to the center of town, but pleasant, nevertheless, to sit in the sunshine of a Winter’s day and wait for the 70 bus back to Kiriat Ono.

On Saturday night I had a date with Tamar at our usual haunt Aroma coffee shop and then a shopping spree at an accessory shop, then a toy shop to pick up a coloring book and crayons to placate Eitan who had to stay at home, being too young for such haunts as Aroma Coffee Shop.

Don’t get the idea that I spent all weekend in restaurants, we also had a vegetarian meal with Ittamar and Anat, but you would be correct in guessing that the weekend was spend in food of one kind or another. By lunch time on Saturday with Carmela and Shimon at Link in Jerusalem, I was so stuffed that I only managed some fish and chips. Now I’m planning a meal in Avishai’s restaurant, Citara, which is the best, so I’ve heard.

One of the many aspects of Christianity that I’ve gleaned from the books I’ve read recently (Stendhal, 1956) is the importance of meals; take the last Supper for example and the celebration of the Eucharist. Why, for example was it called the Last Supper and why was it so important?  Stendhall (Stendhal, 1956) points out that partaking of a communal meal was a way of demonstrating who were authorized members of the community (the community of the righteous who lived by the Dead Sea, mentioned in one of the scrolls found there, known as the Manual of Discipline). This also calls to mind the Jewish myth (originating in the Talmud) (Dennis, 2007) that the righteous people will partake of a great banquet to celebrate the coming of the Messiah at the end of days, a last supper.

Whatever you do I hope you find lots of reasons to eat together and to enjoy each other’s company in preparation for a great New Year full of the Lords mighty blessings.

Best wishes

From Leon