Judaism Peace Quotes

But let’s not forget the Jew. Anybody that gives even a just criticism of the Jew is instantly labeled anti-Semite. The Jew cries louder than anybody else if anybody criticizes him. You can tell the truth about any minority in America, but make a true observation about the Jew, and if it doesn’t 't pat him on the back, then he uses his grip on the news media to label you anti-Semite.

One who is not in my image is nonetheless in God’s image

So when modern-day religious conservatives wax nostalgic about how marriage is a sacred tradition that reaches back into history for thousands of uninterrupted years, they are correct, but in only one respect - only if they happen to be talking about Judaism. Christianity simply does not share that deep and consistent historical reverence toward matrimony. Lately it has, yes- but not originally. For the first thousand or so years of Christian history, the church regarded monogamous marriage as marginally less wicked that flat-out whoring but only very marginally.

So when modern-day religious conservatives wax nostalgic about how marriage is a sacred tradition that reaches back into history for thousands of uninterrupted years, they are absolutely correct, but in only one respect—only if they happen to be talking about Judaism.

I've learned much from the land of many gods and many ways to worship. From Buddhism the power to begin to manage my mind, from Jainism the desire to make peace in all aspects of life, while Islam has taught me to desire goodness and to let go of that which cannot be controlled. I thank Judaism for teaching me the power of transcendence in rituals and the Sufis for affirming my ability to find answers within and reconnecting me with the power of music. Here's to the Parsis for teaching me that nature must be touched lightly, and the Sikhs for the importance of spiritual strength....And most of all, I thank Hinduism for showing me that there are millions of paths to the divine.

Greek and the Hebrew—and whichever side you embrace more strongly determines to a large extent how you see life. From the Greeks—specifically from the glory days of ancient Athens—we have inherited our ideas about secular humanism and the sanctity of the individual. The Greeks gave us all our notions about democracy and equality and personal liberty and scientific reason and intellectual freedom and open-mindedness and what we might call today “multiculturalism.” The Greek take on life, therefore, is urban, sophisticated, and exploratory, always leaving plenty of room for doubt and debate. On the other hand, there is the Hebrew way of seeing the world. When I say “Hebrew” here, I’m not specifically referring to the tenets of Judaism. (In fact, most of the contemporary American Jews I know are very Greek in their thinking, while it’s the American fundamentalist Christians these days who are profoundly Hebrew.) “Hebrew,” in the sense that philosophers use it here, is shorthand for an ancient world-view that is all about tribalism, faith, obedience, and respect. The Hebrew credo is clannish, patriarchal, authoritarian, moralistic, ritualistic, and instinctively suspicious of outsiders. Hebrew thinkers see the world as a clear play between good and evil, with God always firmly on “our” side. Human actions are either right or wrong. There is no gray area. The collective is more important than the individual, morality is more important than happiness, and vows are inviolable.

There was a difference, besides, between Catholicism and Judaism. He went to the synagogue when he needed company and fellowship with other people. Catholics went to church to seek peace in the presence of God. The church invited silence and visitors would always be left to themselves.

Being Jewish did not compromise the humanitarian and universalist ideals of my close relatives who, having experienced persecution close hand, were more concerned with bringing about peace, justice and equality in the world than in trying to cut out a niche where they could continue an insular — Jewish — fantasy.

Let me tell you a joke, Rora said. Mujo wakes up one day, after a long night of drinking, and asks himself what the meaning of life is. He goes to work, but realizes that is not what life is or should be. He decides to read some philosophy and for years studies everything from the old Greeks onward, but can't find the meaning of life. Maybe it's the family, he thinks, so he spends time with his wife, Fata, and the kids, but finds no meaning in that and so he leaves them. He thinks, Maybe helping others is the meaning of life, so he goes to medical school, graduates with flying colors, goes to Africa to cure malaria and transplants hearts, but cannot discover the meaning of life. He thinks, maybe it's the wealth, so he becomes a businessman, starts making money hand over fist, millions of dollars, buys everything there is to buy, but that is not what life is about. Then he turns to poverty and humility and such, so he gives everything away and begs on the streets, but still he cannot see what life is. He thinks maybe it is literature: he writes novel upon novel, but the more he writes the more obscure the meaning of life becomes. He turns to God, lives the life of a dervish, reads and contemplates the Holy Book of Islam - still, nothing. He studies Christianity, then Judaism, then Buddhism, then everything else - no meaning of life there. Finally, he hears about a guru living high up in the mountains somewhere in the East. The guru, they say, knows what the meaning of life is. So Mujo goes east, travels for years, walks roads, climbs the mountain, finds the stairs that lead up to the guru. He ascends the stairs, tens of thousands of them, nearly dies getting up there. At the top, there are millions of pilgrims, he has to wait for months to get to the guru. Eventually it is his turn, he goes to a place under a big tree, and there sits the naked guru, his legs crossed, his eyes closed, meditating, perfectly peaceful - he surely knows the meaning of life, Mujo says: I have dedicated my life to discovering the meaning of life and I have failed, so I have come to ask you humbly, O Master, to divulge the secret to me. The guru opens his eyes, looks at Mujo, and calmly says, My friend, life is a river. Mujo stares at him for a long time, cannot believe what he heard. What's life again? Mujo asks. Life is a river, the guru says. Mujo nods and says, You turd of turds, you goddamn stupid piece of shit, you motherfucking cocksucking asshole. I have wasted my life and come all this way for you to tell me that life is a fucking river. A river? Are you kidding me? That is the stupidest, emptiest fucking thing I have ever heard. Is that what you spent your life figuring out? And the guru says, What? It is not a river? Are you saying it is not a river?

Europe is dying because it has become morally incompetent. It isn’t that Europe stands for nothing. It’s that it stands for shallow things, shallowly. Europeans believe in human rights, tolerance, openness, peace, progress, the environment, pleasure. These beliefs are all very nice, but they are also secondary. What Europeans no longer believe in are the things from which their beliefs spring: Judaism and Christianity; liberalism and the Enlightenment; martial pride and capability; capitalism and wealth. Still less do they believe in fighting or sacrificing or paying or even arguing for these things. Having ignored and undermined their own foundations, they wonder why their house is coming apart.

Christianity, the grown-up child of Judaism, time to time got free from the leash of the Jews but it was always brought back under their secret control. The secret Jewish influence on the Christian Church never was more powerful and more effective than in our day. This is the time of the last revolutionary activity of the subversive Jews, which - according to their plan - has to culminate in taking over all the world under their control. The Judaic twins, Christianity and Communism have only a temporary role in the Jewish plan; the twins have to prepare the way to the universal one-world of the chosen-people. Thus will be the real Kingdom of Heaven, the Rabbinical One-World, the Messianic Age, established on the Earth, eternal peace and eternal happines for the "Jews", as they dream it, eternal slavery, hopeless as the grave, for all the other nations on the Earth.

Only when Christianity came into its own as a political force, and emperors as well as other Roman officials embraced the Christian faith and were subject to pressure from Christian leaders, did Jews everywhere began to experience physical peril regardless of whether they had long maintained peaceful relations with governing authorities. The question of what to do about the Jews was far more pressing than what to do about pagans for the church fathers, given that Christianity developed out of Judaism and was seen as the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy. These prophecies eventually had to be twisted to fit the official events of the Christian story. The refusal of faithful Jews to accept that the story of their faith ended and was fulfilled by the arrival of Jesus was a constant challenge and reproach to Christianity in a way that the unrelated beliefs of pagans could never be.

One of history's greatest lessons is that once the state embraces a religion, the nature of that religion changes radically. It loses its nonviolent component and becomes a force for war rather than peace. The state must make war, because without war it would have to drop its power politics and renege on its mission to seek advantage over other nations, enhancing itself at the expense of others. And so a religion that is in the service of a state is a religion that not only accepts war but prays for victory. From Constantine to the Crusaders to the contemporary American Christian right, people who call themselves Christians have betrayed the teachings of Jesus while using His name in the pursuit of political power. But this is not an exclusively Christian phenomenon. Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism—all the great religions have been betrayed in the hands of people seeking political power and have been defiled and disgraced in the hands of nation-states.

But any intuition that vegetarianism and humanitarianism go together was shattered in the 20th-century by the treatment of animals under Nazism.266 Hitler and many of his henchmen were vegetarians, not so much out of compassion for animals as from an obsession with purity, a pagan desire to reconnect to the soil, and a reaction to the anthropocentrism and meat rituals of Judaism. In an unsurpassed display of the human capacity for moral compartmentalization, the Nazis, despite their unspeakable experiments on living humans, instituted the strongest laws for the protection of animals in research that Europe had ever seen. Their laws also mandated humane treatment of animals in farms, movie sets, and restaurants, where fish had to be anesthetized and lobsters killed swiftly before they were cooked. Ever since that bizarre chapter in the history of animal rights, advocates of vegetarianism have had to retire one of their oldest arguments: that eating meat makes people aggressive, and abstaining from it makes them peaceful. Some

Roughly 25 percent of humanity is Muslim. For every Jew, there are roughly one hundred twenty-five Muslims. Judaism is about 2500 years older than Islam, and yet it has not been able to attract nearly as many followers. If we construe religions as memeplexes (a collection of interconnected memes), to borrow Richard Dawkin's term, the Islamic memeplex has been extraordinarily more successful than its Jewish counterpart (from an epidemiological perspective, that is). Why is that? To answer this important question, we must look at the contents of the two respective memeplexes to examine why one is more "infectious" than the other. Let us explore the rules for converting into the two religions and apostatizing out of them. In Judaism, the religious process for conversion is onerous, requiring several years of commitment and an absence of ulterior motive. (For example, converting to Judaism because you are marrying a Jewish person is considered an ulterior motive). Not surprisingly, given the barriers to entry, relatively few people convert to Judaism. On the other hand, to convert to Islam simply requires that one proclaim openly the sentence, the shahada (the testimony): "There is no true god but Allah, and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah." It does not require a sophisticated epidemiological model to predict which memeplex will spread more rapidly. Let us now suppose that one wishes to leave the religion. While the Old Testament does mention the death penalty for apostasy, it has seldom been applied throughout Jewish history, whereas to this day apostasy from Islam does lead to the death penalty in several Islamic countries. But perhaps the most important difference is that Judaism does not promote or encourage proselytizing, whereas it is a central religious obligation in Islam. According to Islam, the world is divided into dar al-hard (the house of war) and dar al-Islam (the house of Islam). Peace will arrive when the entire world is united under the flag of Allah. Hence, it is imperative to Islamize the nations within dar al-harb. There is only one Jewish country in the world, Israel, and it has a sizeable non-Jewish minority. But there are fifty-seven member states of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

On reading a translated copy of the covenant, Philip V was horrified. The Muslim ruler of Jerusalem, through his emissary, the viceroy of Islamic Granada, was extending to the Jewish people the hand of eternal peace and friendship. The gesture was occasioned by the recent discovery of the lost ark of the Old Testament and the stone tablets upon which God had etched the Law with His finger. Both were found in perfect condition in a ditch in the Sinai Desert and had awoken in the Muslims, who discovered them, a desire to be circumcised, convert to Judaism, and return the Holy Land to the Jews. However, since this would leave millions of Palestinian Muslims homeless, the King of Jerusalem wanted the Jews to give him France in return. The guilty homeowner Bananias told French authorities that after the Muslim offer, the Jews of France concocted the well-poisoning plot and hired the lepers to carry it out. After reading the translation and several corroborating documents, including a highly incriminating letter from the Muslim King of Tunisia, Philip ordered all Jews in France arrested for “complicity . . . to bring about the death of the people and the subjects of the kingdom.” Two years later, any Jewish survivors of the royal terror were exiled from the country.   The

The vast majority of Muslims still breathe in a universe in which the Name of God is associated above all with Compassion and Mercy, and they turn to Him in patience even in the midst of the worst tribulations. If it seems that more violence is associated with Islam than with other religions today, it is not due to the fact that there has been no violence elsewhere—think of the Korean and Vietnam wars, the atrocities committed by the Serbs, and the genocide in Rwanda and Burundi. The reason is that Islam is still very strong in Islamic society. Because Islam so pervades the lives of Muslims, all actions, including violent ones, are carried out in the name of Islam, especially since other ideologies such as nationalism and socialism have become so bankrupt. Yet this identification is itself paradoxical because traditional Islam is as much on the side of peace and accord as are traditional Judaism and Christianity. Despite such phenomena, however, if one looks at the extensive panorama of the Islamic spectrum summarized below, it becomes evident that for the vast majority of Muslims, the traditional norms based on peace and openness to others, norms that have governed their lives over the centuries and are opposed to both secularist modernism and “fundamentalism,” are of central concern. And after the dust settles in this tumultuous period of both Islamic and global history, it will be the voice of traditional Islam that will have the final say in the Islamic world.

My identity as Jewish cannot be reduced to a religious affiliation. Professor Said quoted Gramsci, an author that I’m familiar with, that, and I quote, ‘to know thyself is to understand that we are a product of the historical process to date which has deposited an infinity of traces, without leaving an inventory’. Let’s apply this pithy observation to Jewish identity. While it is tempting to equate Judaism with Jewishness, I submit to you that my identity as someone who is Jewish is far more complex than my religious affiliation. The collective inventory of the Jewish people rests on my shoulders. This inventory shapes and defines my understanding of what it means to be Jewish. The narrative of my people is a story of extraordinary achievement as well as unimaginable horror. For millennia, the Jewish people have left their fate in the hands of others. Our history is filled with extraordinary achievements as well as unimaginable violence. Our centuries-long Diaspora defined our existential identity in ways that cannot be reduced to simple labels. It was the portability of our religion that bound us together as a people, but it was our struggle to fit in; to be accepted that identified us as unique. Despite the fact that we excelled academically, professionally, industrially, we were never looked upon as anything other than Jewish. Professor Said in his book, Orientalism, examined how Europe looked upon the Orient as a dehumanized sea of amorphous otherness. If we accept this point of view, then my question is: How do you explain Western attitudes towards the Jews? We have always been a convenient object of hatred and violent retribution whenever it became convenient. If Europe reduced the Orient to an essentialist other, to borrow Professor Said’s eloquent language, then how do we explain the dehumanizing treatment of Jews who lived in the heart of Europe? We did not live in a distant, exotic land where the West had discursive power over us. We thought of ourselves as assimilated. We studied Western philosophy, literature, music, and internalized the same culture as our dominant Christian brethren. Despite our contribution to every conceivable field of human endeavor, we were never fully accepted as equals. On the contrary, we were always the first to be blamed for the ills of Western Europe. Two hundred thousand Jews were forcibly removed from Spain in 1492 and thousands more were forcibly converted to Christianity in Portugal four years later. By the time we get to the Holocaust, our worst fears were realized. Jewish history and consciousness will be dominated by the traumatic memories of this unspeakable event. No people in history have undergone an experience of such violence and depth. Israel’s obsession with physical security; the sharp Jewish reaction to movements of discrimination and prejudice; an intoxicated awareness of life, not as something to be taken for granted but as a treasure to be fostered and nourished with eager vitality, a residual distrust of what lies beyond the Jewish wall, a mystical belief in the undying forces of Jewish history, which ensure survival when all appears lost; all these, together with the intimacy of more personal pains and agonies, are the legacy which the Holocaust transmits to the generation of Jews who have grown up under its shadow. -Fictional debate between Edward Said and Abba Eban.

Hamas is for Muslims who favor Jihad. ...Hamas aims for every inch of Palestine. ...No part of it should be given up. ...Hamas is opposed to initiatives, peaceful solutions and international conferences. Jihad is the only solution.

Judaism and Christianity both agree with Islam in affirming a downward trend for humanity which is to continue until the cataclysms heralding Doomsday. Sometime during the late stages of this process, the Antichrist shall appear, who is not only the epitome of all evil but also the inverted image of Jesus, may peace be upon him, whom he will claim to personify. The Prophet, may God’s blessings and peace be on him, called him the ‘Impostor’ (al-Dajjal) since his characteristic attribute will be relabeling good as evil and evil as good, Heaven as Hell and Hell as Heaven, himself as the Christ and Christ as the Antichrist. And this is precisely what the West has already succeeded in doing. They have redefined the human being by bringing his physical form to the fore and denying his spirit, redefining him thus as an animal; and they have set the stage for putting everything to the service of the body and thinking solely in material terms. Whereas all religions say that man is degenerating, the West claims that, on the contrary, he is improving by the day; with the implication that they are now far more ‘advanced,’ far more clever and mature than anyone in the past. This evidently gives them the right to dismiss lightly the Prophets and sages of old and their timeless wisdom and speak of them in condescending and derogatory terms. Religion has been redefined as superstition, and the life-to-come as a childish belief deriving from an inability to face reality.

Now that we have seen what is in the Koran, let’s consider what is not in the Muslim holy book. Islam, being one of the “world’s great religions,” as well as one of the “three great Abrahamic faiths,” enjoys the benefit of certain assumptions on the part of uninformed Americans and Europeans. Many people believe that since Islam is a religion, it must teach universal love and brotherhood—because that is what religions do, isn’t it? It must teach that one ought to be kind to the poor and downtrodden, generous, charitable, and peaceful. It must teach that we are all children of a loving God whose love for all human beings should be imitated by those whom he has created. Certainly Judaism and Christianity teach these things, and they are found in nearly equivalent forms in Eastern religions. But when it comes to Islam, the assumptions are wrong. Islam makes a distinction between believers and unbelievers that overrides any obligation to general benevolence. A moral code from the Koran As we have seen, the Koran recounts how Moses went up on the mountain and encountered Allah, who gave him tablets—but says nothing about what was written on them (7:145). Although the Ten Commandments do not appear in the Koran, the book is not bereft of specific moral guidelines: its seventeenth chapter enunciates a moral code (17:22–39). Accordingly, Muslims should:           1.    Worship Allah alone.           2.    Be kind to their parents.           3.    Provide for their relatives, the needy, and travelers, and not be wasteful.           4.    Not kill their children for fear of poverty.           5.    Not commit adultery.           6.    Not “take life—which Allah has made sacred—except for just cause.” Also, “whoso is slain wrongfully, We have given power unto his heir, but let him not commit excess in slaying”—that is, one should make restitution for wrongful death.           7.    Not seize the wealth of orphans.           8.    “Give full measure when ye measure, and weigh with a balance that is straight”—that is, conduct business honestly.           9.    “Pursue not that of which thou hast no knowledge.”           10.  Not “walk on the earth with insolence.” Noble ideals, to be sure, but when it comes to particulars, these are not quite equivalent to the Ten Commandments. The provision about not taking life “except for just cause” is, of course, in the same book as the thrice-repeated command to “slay the idolaters wherever you find them” (9:5; 4:89; 2:191)—thus Infidels must understand that their infidelity, their non-acceptance of Islam, is “just cause” for Muslims to make war against them. In the same vein, one is to be kind to one’s parents—unless they are Infidels: “O ye who believe! Choose not your fathers nor your brethren for friends if they take pleasure in disbelief rather than faith. Whoso of you taketh them for friends, such are wrong-doers” (9:23). You

When Calls A Promise: I made a promise to someone that I would protect humankind with my life - that I would let no savagery, no prejudice, no sectarianism tear my people apart - that I would spend every breath of my life in uniting my people - the people of earth. And my very existence is the living manifestation of that promise. Don't make promises that you know not whether you will be able to keep, but once you do make a promise, keep it at all cost, even at the cost of your life, which is exactly the kind of promise I made - to give my life in the unification of humankind. Initially I thought I would achieve that by erasing the religious barriers amongst people. Hence, in the beginning I wrote ceaselessly on religion, but as I kept studying the tenets of the society, I came to realize that the barriers amongst people have invaded every aspect of life and society, much beyond the mere traditional bounds of religion - they have invaded the very lifeblood of society and have been tearing the society apart from inside out. I came to realize that the religion of the future is not going to be christianity, islam, judaism or any such traditional system, rather, the religion of the future is going to be social justice. And the best way to shape the future is to envision it early on and start manufacturing it today. Thus, though initially the primary premise of my work was religion, eventually it acquired much wider and diverse societal roots. My purpose remains the same, that is, to unite you all, to unite my seven billion sisters and brothers of earth, but I had to make a few changes to my approach based on the need of the time as I kept evolving with my work. I started off as a scientist, but the needs of the society turned me into a reformer. Society needed not yet another scientist, it needed a reformer scientist, so I became one. All my life my need has been to serve the need of the society - need mark you, not desire. There is a difference between what the society desires and what it really needs. Society may desire for more bigotry, more segregation, more rigidity, more separatism, but that's not what the society needs - a civilized society needs humility, not bigotry - it needs inclusion, not segregation - it needs reason, not rigidity - it needs assimilation, not separatism.

But he chose the tribe of Judah, Mount Zion, which he loves. He built his sanctuary like the high heavens, like the earth, which he has founded forever. He chose David his servant and took him from the sheepfolds; from following the nursing ewes he brought him to shepherd Jacob his people, Israel his inheritance. With upright heart he shepherded them and guided them with his skillful hand.

1. Christ is known in a new way, no longer "after the flesh," but in spirit, on High. "Touch me not... ascended" (John 20:17). 2. Believers are given a new title—"brethren" (John 20:17). 3. Believers are told of a new position—Christ’s position before the Father (John 20:17). 4. Believers occupy a new place—apart from the world (John 20:19). 5. Believers are assured of a new blessing—"peace" made and imparted (John 20:19, 21). 6. Believers are given a new privilege—the Lord Jesus in their midst (John 20:19). 7. Believers have a new joy—through a vision of the risen Lord (John 20:20). 8. Believers receive a new commission—sent into the world by the Son as He was sent by the Father (John 20:21). 9. Believers are a new creation—indicated by the "breathing" (John 20:22). 10. Believers have a new Indweller—even the Holy Spirit (John 20:22); How Divinely meet that all this was on the "first of the week—indication of a new beginning, i.e., Christianity supplanting Judaism!!

What are the chances that of all 1.59629 quadrillion square feet of physical land on planet Earth, three major world religions are literally fighting over one single rock?

Why are They Converting to Islam? - Op-Eds - Arutz Sheva One of the things that worries the West is the fact that hundreds and maybe even thousands of young Europeans are converting to Islam, and some of them are joining terror groups and ISIS and returning to promote Jihad against the society in which they were born, raised and educated. The security problem posed by these young people is a serious one, because if they hide their cultural identity, it is extremely difficult for Western security forces to identify them and their evil intentions. This article will attempt to clarify the reasons that impel these young people to convert to Islam and join terrorist organizations. The sources for this article are recordings made by the converts themselves, and the words they used, written here, are for the most part unedited direct quotations. Muslim migration to Europe, America and Australia gain added significance in that young people born in these countries are exposed to Islam as an alternative to the culture in which they were raised. Many of the converts are convinced that Islam is a religion of peace, love, affection and friendship, based on the generous hospitality and warm welcome they receive from the Moslem friends in their new social milieu. In many instances, a young person born into an individualistic, cold and alienating society finds that Muslim society provides  – at college, university or  community center – a warm embrace, a good word, encouragement and help, things that are lacking in the society from which he stems. The phenomenon is most striking in the case of those who grew up in dysfunctional families or divorced homes, whose parents are alcoholics, drug addicts, violent and abusive, or parents who take advantage of their offspring and did not give their children a suitable emotional framework and model for building a normative, productive life. The convert sees his step as a mature one based on the right of an individual to determine his own religious and cultural identity, even if the family and society he is abandoning disagree. Sometimes converting to Islam is a form of parental rebellion. Often, the convert is spurned by his family and surrounding society for his decision, but the hostility felt towards Islam by his former environment actually results in his having more confidence in the need for his conversion. Anything said against conversion to Islam is interpreted as unjustified racism and baseless Islamophobia. The Islamic convert is told by Muslims that Islam respects the prophets of its mother religions, Judaism and Christianity, is in favor of faith in He Who dwells on High, believes in the Day of Judgment, in reward and punishment, good deeds and avoiding evil. He is convinced that Islam is a legitimate religion as valid as Judaism and Christianity, so if his parents are Jewish or Christian, why can't he become Muslim? He sees a good many positive and productive Muslims who benefit their society and its economy, who have integrated into the environment in which he was raised, so why not emulate them? Most Muslims are not terrorists, so neither he nor anyone should find his joining them in the least problematic. Converts to Islam report that reading the Koran and uttering the prayers add a spiritual meaning to their lives after years of intellectual stagnation, spiritual vacuum and sinking into a materialistic and hedonistic lifestyle. They describe the switch to Islam in terms of waking up from a bad dream, as if it is a rite of passage from their inane teenage years. Their feeling is that the Islamic religion has put order into their lives, granted them a measuring stick to assess themselves and their behavior, and defined which actions are allowed and which are forbidden, as opposed to their "former" society, which couldn't or wouldn't lay down rules. They are willing to accept the limitations Islamic law places on Muslims, thereby "putting order into their lives" after "a life of in

Every Religion is Right Religion (Unscriptured Holiness Sonnet) Islam* is not the right religion, *peace is. Christianity** is no right religion, **kindness is. Judaism is not the right religion, equality is. Sanatana isn't right religion, nonsectarianism is. All scriptures are blasphemy, when peddled as exclusive, infallible handbook to divinity. Literature that demands rejection of backbone, is a lot of things but not material of sanctity. Every religion is right religion, or none are; Claiming exclusive rightness all breed cowards. Every faith is an attempt at divine, or none are; Claiming monopoly of truth faith forfeits regard. By saying your religion is the only right religion, you only prove, your religion is the wrong religion. Religion as an excuse for separation is always wrong, till you transcend religion, all faith is delusion.

You don’t make peace with only with God. You make it with people. Sin isn’t global. It’s personal. If you do wrong to someone, the only way to fix that is to go to that same person and do right by him. Which is why murder, to a Jew, is unforgivable.

Repentance might bring peace to the killer, but what about the ones who’ve been killed? I may not consider myself a Jew, but do I still have responsibility to the relatives of mine who were religious, and were murdered for it?

After the Oslo peace process dissolved into violence and hopelessness, the Israeli left and center-left had increasingly moved their focus from the quest for a land-for-peace settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a more social, civic agenda, promoting issues such as gender equality, civil marriage, LGBTQ rights, public transport on the Sabbath, and accommodation toward the more liberal, progressive streams of Judaism with which the vast majority of affiliated Jews in North America were identified, and which were repudiated by Israel’s Orthodox religious authorities.

This is but an attempt to locate evil outside the boundaries of “Israeliness.” In my opinion Yigal Amir [Rabin’s assassin] is one hundred percent “Israeli.” In it one must search for the problem not in his Judaism. His Israeliness discloses the ugly face of Israeliness. Moreover, this nationalistic-religious Messianic is an Israeli product par excellence, which indeed has roots in certain aspects of Jewish history prior to the establishment of Israel, but has mainly grown out of Israeliness and its values. The Israeliness is Messianism, and it emphasizes admiration of power.

Injustice is suffered by both sides. The Palestinians have suffered much. And when the Israelis come and describe to us their suffering, we are able to see that they too have suffered. That kind of understanding is crucial. Once understanding and compassion are born in our heart, the poisons of anger, discrimination, hate, and despair will be transformed. That is why the only answer is to remove the poison and to allow the insight and compassion in. Then we will discover each other as human beings and we will not be deceived by outer layers like "Buddhism," "Islam," "Judaism," "pro-American," "pro-Arab," and so on. This is a process of liberation from our ignorance, ideas, notions, and our tendency to discriminate. When I see you as a human being who suffers so much, I will not have the courage to shoot you. I will ask you to come and work with me so that we have a chance to live peacefully together. It is a pity—the Earth is so beautiful and there is enough room for all of us, yet we are killing each other.

If one feels he is in possession of an absolute truth such as, “God gave this Land to us,” there is little that can be said, which is convincing and rational, that has the power to persuade someone that there is even the slightest bit of room for a different possibility or that they may be wrong. If the Israeli-Arab conflict is in fact a conflict between Judaism and Islam, then it cannot be resolved. But, it is not.

Zionism was not the same as the classic colonialist enterprises of European states in Africa and Asia. There are many differences—mainly that Zionism really is the story of a people returning to their historic land. Those who call Zionism Western colonialization refuse to recognize the legitimacy of Zionism and reject the notion that Jews are a people, asserting that Judaism is solely a status of religion. Ironically, while they demand the right of self-determination for the Palestinian people, they reject the idea that Jews too have that very same right—to determine their identity and to fulfill a territorial expression of their identity in their ancient homeland.

Possibly the deepest and widest split, however, was between Zionists in Europe and Palestine, on the one hand, and American Zionists, on the other. American Jews—even those positively inclined toward Zionism—were living in a setting radically different from that in Europe and could not embrace the statehood-centric version of European Zionism. Even the First Zionist Congress foreshadowed how difficult it was going to be to get American Jews on board; despite the fact that there were some 937,000 Jews in America, of the approximately 200 delegates to the Congress, only four came from the United States.* American Judaism was becoming anti-Zionist even before there was Zionism. In 1885, American Reform rabbis adopted what is now known as the Pittsburgh Platform, the movement’s statement of core beliefs and commitments. In it, these rabbis declared, in part, that the Jews were no longer a people but now constituted a religion. “We recognize, in the modern era of universal culture of heart and intellect, the approaching of the realization of Israel’s great Messianic hope for the establishment of the kingdom of truth, justice, and peace among all men,” they said as they jettisoned Judaism’s long-standing particularism and embraced the universalism then much in vogue in philosophic and cultural circles. “We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community,” they said, and since Jews were no longer a national community, they expected “neither a return to Palestine,* nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state.

Men and women complement each other’s strengths well. However, when a male perspective dominates female ones, the world ends up living narratives that may be successful in some situations but simply cannot get us the results we want in others. For example, if we want peace, why do we keep telling war stories? Why don’t we turn to the half of the human race that has fostered other means of resolving conflict? Force can stop violent behaviors temporarily, but authentic sharing through story, which often has been nurtured by women, can move antagonists toward understanding one another and building the trust that leads to lasting peace. Similarly, in our politics, warlike competition prevails when candidates run for office, but to govern successfully, they need to utilize more feminine modes, reaching across the aisle to solve problems together. All of the major religions in the world instruct us to love one another as a road to a better collective and personal quality of life. Jesus repeated this decree over and over, in slightly different words: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13:34, NIV). “If you love me, feed my sheep” (adapted from John 21:17). And quoting the Torah, “Love thy neighbor as thyself” (Lev. 19:18; Matt. 22:39, ASV). It was his major message. Rabbi Sefer Baal Shem Tov, founder of Hasidic Judaism, spoke to the deep roots of love in the Hebrew faith: “‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.’ Why? Because every human being has a root in the Unity, and to reject the minutest particle of the Unity is to reject it all.”1 The sayings of Muhammad, selected and translated by the Sufi Kabir Helminski, include the very strong statement, “You will not enter paradise until you believe, and you will not believe until you love one another.”2 Rumi, the thirteenth-century Sufi mystic and poet, proclaimed, “It is Love that holds everything together.”3 The Buddha enjoined us to “radiate boundless love towards the entire world—above, below, and across—unhindered, without ill will, without enmity.”4 Loving-kindness remains a cardinal practice of modern Buddhism. In the Hindu tradition, love also is the religion’s central tenet. Swami Sivananda sums this up in these words: “Your duty is to treat everybody with love as a manifestation of the Lord.”5

There is much in Judeo-Christian doctrine and history that can be used to support a peace system, but it is so far a minor current. The main stream has adopted the violent, dominator mode of late Palestinian Judaism with its foundation in Old Testament holy war. It is a somber fact of history that in the name of Christ men have murdered and condoned murder, tortured women and children, slaughtered in war, and executed each other without remorse. The Crusaders saw Jesus in terms of their own society, that is, as their feudal lord.

The first time I heard the phrase 'holy envy' I knew it was an improvement over the plain old envy I felt while studying other faiths. When the Jewish Sabbath came up in class, I wanted it. Why did Christians ever let it go? When we watched a film of the God-intoxicated Sufis spinning, I wanted that too. The best my tradition could offer me during worship was kneeling to pray and standing to sing. My spiritual covetousness extended to the inclusiveness of Hinduism, the nonviolence of Buddhism, the prayer life of Islam, and the sacred debate of Judaism. Of course this list displays all the symptoms of my condition. It is simplistic, idealistic, overgeneralized, and full of my own projections. It tells you as much about what I find wanting in my own tradition as it does about what I find desirable in another. This gets to the heart of the problem: with plain old envy, my own tradition always comes up wanting. The grass is always greener in the tradition next door. I know my Christian pasture so well. I know where the briars are along with the piles of manure. I also know where the springs of living water are, but when I look over the fence at the neighbor's spread, it looks so flawless, so unblemished and perfectly tended, at least from where I stand. From a distance it is easy to forget that every pasture has its turds and stickers along with its deep wells and beds of clover. So when I look longingly at my neighbor's faith, am I really looking for greener pastures, or am I simply trying to make peace with the realities of my own?

Chapter 1: Genesis 37 3 And Israel loved Yosef (Joseph) [most] from all his sons because a son of his old-age he [was] to him, and [he] made for him a striped tunic. 4 And [they] saw – his brothers – that their father loved him [most] from all his brothers, and [they] hated him, and [they] could not speak [of] him for peace.

Chapter 1: Genesis 37 14 And [he] said to him, “Go, please, see [to] the peace of your brothers, and [to] the peace of the flock, and return to me a word, and [he] sent him from the valley of Ḥevron (Hebron), and [he] came to Shechem. 15 And a man found him, and behold: [He was] mistakenly [wandering] in the field, and [he] asked him – the man – saying, “What [do you] request [to find]?” 16 And [he] said, “My brothers I request [to find] – Say, please, to me: Where [are] they shepherding?” 17 And [he] said – the man – “[They] journeyed from this [place] because [I] heard [them] saying, '[We] will go to Dothan.'” And [he] went – Yosef (Joseph) – after his brothers, and [he] found them in Dothan.

Not surprisingly, Interfaithism denounces fundamentalism of any kind, but especially fundamentalist Christianity and Biblical Judaism. As I write, the World Council of Church is condemning Israel for defending itself after terrorists in Gaza launched hundreds of missiles aimed at targets all over Israel. We should suspect a malevolent, duplicitous agenda when Interfaithism mechanically turns a blind eye to terrorist activities of radical extremists, but categorically and harshly condemns Christians and Jews. Nevertheless, global Interfaithism bulldozes forward, forever trying to put a pretty face on its diabolical agenda of crushing all religions, purportedly in search of common ground for all faiths. These deluded globalists would have you believe that someday a one-size-fits-all religion will finally come into existence, and with it, a one-size-fit-all messiah. But on close inspection, their ethereal “global peace” mantras follow in the tradition of many of the world’s most evil and pagan occultists, such as Madame Helen Blavatsky, Alice Bailey, Aleister Crowley, Albert Pike, Robert Muller, and even “enlightened” and “illuminated

The Torah teaches that God created all beings, all creatures are good in and of themselves, and that the Creator remains personally invested in creation. Scriptures also indicate that human beings were created “in the image of God” by a deity who is munificent and compassionate toward all creatures. The Creator assigned human beings the task of protecting and serving creation . . . . Jews are to be compassionate, to avoid harming anymals, and Jewish law specifically protects anymals as ends in themselves. Jewish religious traditions honor anymals as individuals, and as our kin. God created a vegan world, peaceful and without bloodshed, and the Tanakh encourages people to work to create a path back to this original Peaceable Kingdom.

It doesn't matter what path you choose to reach it. Be it Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, quantum physics, Taoism, atheism—what matters is to find what works for each of us, and since each one of our minds is a universe on its own, it's not surprising that each of us would need to find a different way to reach his own state of inner peace. No one thing is better than another; no one religion is more effective or more valid than another. The key is to find one's own way.