Another Deep One From Sid & Some Thoughts of My Own

We certainly hope that we will be receiving material from additional contributors. Thus far, only Sid, Harvey and myself are contributing. Others have suggested they might in the future but none have as of now. Keep those cards and letters coming. Submissions go to riart1@aol.com. And here is Sid's latest:

WHERE DID I COME FROM?

Sid Bolotin


“Grandpa, where did I come from?”

“Well,” he answered, “if you mean where do your roots lie, my grandparents came from the Ukraine in Russia…same as grandma’s.”

“No, no! That’s not what I’m asking. I already know about my Russian heritage.”

“Oh,” he smiled, “you mean like from your mommy’s belly?”

“Oh, gramps,” giggled Brooke, “I’m nineteen, and I know all about sperms and eggs. Remember I had sex education in grammar school. I’m in college now studying to be a child-psychologist.

“Okay, Brooke, then just what are you asking me about?”

“Well, I’ve been learning about the ego and the id and the brain and psyche, and I thought with your explorations of spirituality you could tell me where my ‘I’ came from. Was ‘I’ in the sperm or the egg? Was one half of my ‘I’ in the sperm, and the other half in the egg? And, what about the millions of other sperm? Did my ‘I’ hop from one to the other until ‘I’ landed on the one that fertilized my mom’s egg? Or, did each have a different version of my ‘I’? if you say that ‘I’ was not in the sperm nor the egg, was ‘I’ in space, on a star, or just out ‘there’? If so, then how and when did ‘I’ enter mom’s belly…at conception, at movement, at birth?”

“Whew, my munchkin,” groaned the old man, “you ask some deep, deep questions.”

“Yeah, everyone says that I take after you, gramps. We’ve chatted along these lines before. That’s probably why I’m also taking a course in Philosophy and Spirituality.”

This was not the first time one of his grandchildren had posed such an esoteric inquiry. As Gramps sat and pondered his granddaughter’s gushed questions, his mind swept back through the decades of his own search for such answers by exploring religion, philosophy, mysticism, and science. He sat silent and pondered possible answers…knowing that none were black and white. Then he said, “Brooke, honey, you know that I have no absolute answer to your questions. Throughout my own exploration of such matters, the one certainty that I’ve discovered is that there is no conclusive answer. Science has not devised a test that can address the question. In my opinion it boils down to personal belief based on a person’s private study. For example your brother, Jared, believes that his path to such wisdom lies within the teachings of the Orthodox Jewish Sect called Chabad, and he’s pursuing his learning at a Yeshiva in Jerusalem.

“Most people don’t even involve themselves in such subjects. When your cousin, Zach, was discussing his college course in Philosophy with me, I told him that learning about such subjects and discussing them with people of like minds was the best way to develop a personal understanding. That’s the best that one can do. It’s really a personal experiential journey.”

Hearing grandma call everyone to come and eat, he stood, threw an arm around Brooke’s shoulders, and said, “Let’s eat and continue our discussion over a cup of tea.”

* * *

One Thing Leads to Another (or “Can you get kosher filet mignon in Tel Aviv?”)

Jack Lippman

At lunch the other day, a close friend asked me if I knew the reason why meat from the hind portion of a cow was not kosher. After thinking for a moment I replied that I supposed that was the unclean end of the animal, and that the cuts from that part of the animal just couldn’t be kosher. “Just as I had thought,” my friend replied. “But that isn’t the case. Actually it comes from the story in the Bible about Jacob wrestling with an angel who, in the struggle, pinched his sciatic nerve leaving Jacob lame. Because a cow’s sciatic nerve runs through its hind portion, some rabbis years ago deemed that because of what happened to Jacob, any meat coming from a portion of the cow close to the sciatic nerve couldn’t be kosher.” My friend had also heard that in Israel, where beef has to be imported and is not as common as in this country, they have the expertise to remove the entire sciatic nerve from the cow, making cuts of beef from the hind end of the animal kosher! Such a procedure is not economically feasible in this country, however, even though it is done in Israel.

A few days later I repeated this story to a physician, who happened to be orthodox, who confirmed it all. This led to a discussion of kashruth in general, the reasons for it, and mention of an interesting book, Judaism – A Way of Being, by David Gelertner, a computer science pioneer on the faculty at Yale University.

Gelertner’s book, written from a modern orthodox standpoint, attempts to offer answers to some key questions regarding Judaism: Why are there so many rules observant Jews are supposed to follow? (and kashruth is just one of them), how can Jews believe in a God whose name and image are hidden from them?, what about inequities between men and women in Judaism?, and finally, why has God allowed so many bestial things to happen to Jews and all of mankind throughout history? I’ve read the book and his answers are thought provoking.

But this all goes to show you that one thing can lead to another.