Leon the tourguide

Leon the tourguide
Leon the Tour Guide

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

My hero Adam

In describing a person who performs actions that are admired and appreciated by society we often use the word "hero"*.

Psychologists and philosophers have had many debates on what constitutes a hero. Usually they take three factors into account: 1) the deed performed. 2) the motivation for its peformance and 3) the reward for it's performance.

But really what makes a person a hero is none of these because in most cases it's not what the hero has done which makes him a hero, neither is it what has motivated him and often not the reward.

In fact what makes a person a hero is what he has sacrificed in order to do the thing for which he is admired.

Most heros have sacrificed something important to them on their way to becoming a hero; some have sacrificed wealth, others family, nourishment, pleasure etc. but the greatest sacrifice is considered to be life.

But there is one thing for sure; a person cannot sacrifice something he doesn't have. He can sacrifice life because he has life.

Therefore, although some heros have sacrificed their lives only one hero in all of history could have sacrificed something much more important than life and that is everlasting life - immortality- eternity.

That sacrifice was made by Adam. He was the only one who ever had immortality and he sacrificed it.

Greater still he sacrificed immortality for all mankind. His sacrifice of immortality brought death into the world. The greatest problem facing mankind.

Without Adam's sacrifice of immortality we would have been immortal. But without it we wouldn't have come into existence.

Instead of admiring Adam for the sacrifice he made to bestow life on us, however we malign him as the originator of sin, the one who robbed man of eternal life, forgetting that in fact he besowed life on man.

Religion has been insisting on this sin and exists as a way to regain immortality, which is deception.

Nevertheless religion's entire function since then has been to regain immortality. It harps on this "blessed" task and even takes on the job of judging people to damnation if they don't follow religious ideas.

In our avid search for ways of atoning for Adam's "sin" we don't take the trouble to examine the heroic act he performed and how it actually brought us into life and taught us the importance of love of one another, most of all the account of Adam and Eve is a lesson that teaches us to make tremendous efforts to love our spouses especially for the husband to love his wife.

The husband must be as prepared as Adam was in sacrificing immortality when it comes to loving a woman. Through this love human beings are brought into the world.

Adam is not only the first man. He is also the first hero because he brought marital love into the world and sacrificed eternity to do it.

*Wherever the masculine is used it refers also to the feminine

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Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Antisemitism in Italy

Before reading this blog read the description of how antisemitism is rife in Italy in the article in Yediot newspaper.

The problem with hatred is that hatred breeds hatred and these days Jews don't take a beating without fighting back like they did in the "good old days". I'm not in favor of painting graffitti like "Am Israel Hai" but that's one sort of reaction that one never saw before.

I much prefer urging support for Israeli products and for loudly voicing support for Israel and for the justice which the country offers to all.

There will always be thugs whose way of life is threatened by a just state like Israel and they will never stop harassing the Jews because we don't let injustice thrive. We are it's greatest threat.

Countries like Italy that support the thugs strengthen them and finally find themselves with deep problems of criminality which finally will lead to their downfall. Thugs turn on their own supporters.

When a country doesn't fight injustice as the Arab countries have been doing for centuries, injustice turns itself against the country itself and head for disaster.

Catastrophe doesn't await Israel but those countries that seek her demise and eventually Israel turns out to be a desirable country for foreign investment because the whole world around her is in turmoil. Israel eventually becomes a safe haven.

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Only one holy place and we don't know where it is.

Every day, before I take a group out on a tour I need to consider whether we'll be visiting any holy places, so that I can advise them to wear long trousers for men, skirts below the knees for women and shoulders covered for everyone because these things are considered unholy and the wearer will be forbidden to enter the holy place, a church, mosque or synagogue.

One could even visit several holy places in one day and not enter any of them because he or she isn't dressed properly..

But is it really correct to declare many places holy? Isn't there after all, only one holy place, namely the holy place is the place that God has chosen to reveal Himself to human beings and He only chose one place.

It's preposterous to think that every time we build a church, synagogue or mosque we have a new holy place. Because we and not God decide that the church, synagogue or mosque we've built is where He should reveal Himself.

How dare we mortals decide where God should or should not appear. What kind of a God can He be if He doesn't choose His own holy place?

Of course there can be only one holy place. That is the one He chose and he hasn't even told us where that place is. All we know is that somewhere on this planet there is a place that God has chosen for His holy place and we don't know where it is.

The churches, mosques and synagogues we have built aren't His holy places because firstly there can be only one holy place and secondly the fact that humans have built it disqualifies it.

Take the Dome of the Rock for example; According to the Moslems that is God's holy place. The Jews aren't sure, they also think it mighit be God's holy place but Jews consider that it might be somewhere else. Moslems are dogmatic about it and even consider it blasephemous to suggest that it's not His holy place.

We have a way of speaking about holy places that makes one think that each religion has its own holy place. But this is absured, because if there is only one God and only He can choose His holly place, He's only chosen one holy place.

So we should change our way of speaking; instead of saying "The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is the Christian holy place" we should say "According to the Christians the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is God's holy place." According to the Moslems the Dome of the Rock is God's holy place."

Saying these things like this we sharpen the subject of the conflict between Jews, Christians and Moslems. Instead of using semantics to hide conflict among the religions we should use semantics to clarify the conflict, that way we might reach a concerted opinion acceptable to all, namely that nobody knows where is God's holy place. All are wrong in claiming this or that place as holy. God Himself doesn't want man to know His holy place because as you can see we end up with never ending conflict where there shouldn't be any confluct at all.

Sunday, June 5, 2011

The lie of Immortality

I've nocked my head against some very hard ones by telling them that immortality is a lie. My head is getting tougher by the day, however, and I won't stop telling people that immortality is a lie.

It's not good and it's not even passively bad. It's not something we can say is okay, it's not something that doesn't do any harm. It's very bad, actively so and it does a lot of harm and it's been busy doing its mischieve for many an age, at leas since Adam.

Adam was indeed born immortal but he died and that's the end of it. Instead some people have been telling us that we can achieve immortality and we are so eager to believe this lie that we embrace the liars with love and honor.

Who could have figured out a lie like this? Only someone who wants to encourage people to accept physical death could have wanted to convince man that he can achieve spiritual immortality.

These are the tyrants of the world who need armies of hundreds of thousands to rush to their death to capture the riches that feed the tyrant's megalomaniac urge for power and wealth.

How they succeed over and over again in every generation is truly the most amazing feat ever achieved. As long as we believe this evil lie men will make war. They go down on their knees before the battle and commit their souls to the Lord.

Let's put a stop to this ridiculous performance. We can stop it and make the world a better place..