xxMo0,

Please e-mail me.

Thanks,

CZ (admin)
concrete.zipper@gmail.com

I'm curious...

Are we allowed the benefit of counsel?

Were I to find myself in such a pickle (again), could I have my attorney at law, or attorney in fact, contact you to do the negotiating?

If you can prove the ability to read, you might get the benefit of clergy, but that may not be as beneficial as you think.

Nah, I'm good, thanks.

Fine, we'll do this in public.

Please stop reposting things that the mods have previously taken down. It just gives us more work and paints you in a somewhat adversarial light.

Thanks,

CZ (admin)

Concrete Zipper Wrote:
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> Fine, we'll do this in public.
>
> Please stop reposting things that the mods have
> previously taken down. It just gives us more work
> and paints you in a somewhat adversarial light.

No problem. I honestly thought there was a glitch or a problem either on my end or the other end that was making posts not show up.

I mean it's curious that things tend to get memory-holed when one specific side is losing an argument but that's neither here nor there.

I'm involved in way too much social media these days (FB, Reddit, a few others; banned from the Twatter tho', just as well) and maybe I need to step away from the keyboard in general (nothing to do with this site specifically.)

I actually agree with the policy of trying to get re-focused on Mormon-related topics which is sort of the whole point of the forum, and I've mentioned that before (not to mods but to an occasional post that's way out there.)

"curious that things tend to get memory-holed when one specific side is losing an argument"

I have noticed the same thing.

Delusional.

I’ve learned to give the mods the benefit of the doubt since it seems they have better taste than I do.

The mods have to grasp the sh*tty end of the RfM stick. They do it for us. I'm sure it's not always fun - and it's actually a pity it's necessary - but it is.

Thank you CZ, Tevai, Maud and others who shall remain nameless (at least for me ;-).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/02/2020 04:16AM by Soft Machine.

Soft Machine Wrote:
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> Thank you CZ, Tevai, Maud and others who shall
> remain nameless (at least for me ;-).

Thank you, Soft Machine!

Your words are very muchly appreciated.

Off-topic, but I didn't know another way to contact Tevai.

Tevai, I've started a thread on reddit in the /r/Christianity channel, "If you've never discussed theology with a religious Jew..." You're a knowledgeable Jew with whom I often have mild disagreements; I think your input on that thread would be valuable for the curious Christians. Do please come and play if you'd like.

Theology isn't my strong suit (and historical, normative Judaism is all over the spectrum on this subject, depending on "who" [which Jews, and which KINDS of Jews]...."where" [includes a great deal of the planet]....and "when" [during the last five thousand years or so] theology is being discussed).

The main thing to keep in mind is the old adage: "Two Jews, three opinions"--which is way more true than not, and is one of Judaism's intellectual attractions.

Jewish joke:

Once upon a time there was a castaway (the lone survivor of a shipwreck), on a mythical "desert island," who had--during his time on the island--built two different synagogues. When, after a few decades, he was finally found, one of his rescuers asked him why, if he had existed alone on this island for all of these years, he had built two separate synagogues.

His answer, as he pointed his finger: "Well, you see that synagogue over there? That's the one I DON'T go to!"

All Jews think this fable is funny because it captures an important facet of something very much integral to Judaism and Jewish culture.

Thanks for thinking of me, touchstone.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/03/2020 03:25AM by Tevai.

Nope. The joke doesn't transfer.

caffiend Wrote:
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> Nope. The joke doesn't transfer.


I recall it as an old Zen/Sufi fable, which implies that man's nature is to want to define himself more in opposition to what he's *not* than to cling to what he identifies with. It's like the yin/yang, or Law of Opposition in the BoM. Cain & Abel, J.C. and the 'Luce, gotta have both of 'em to make a cosmos. Otherwise what fun would there be?

After some searching, I found the thread you are referring to. (Reddit and I don't synch easily with each other and never have. My brain just doesn't work reddit's way.)

You did a really excellent job all the way through. Kudos from me!

Obviously, I did not remember (or perhaps did not know) your story. Now that I do know: you did wonderfully well.

One thing I would have likely added: gilgul. [The Jewish concept of reincarnation, going back at least as far as Tzfat times (especially around the 1500s).]

I disagree with parts of the Jewish concept of reincarnation (particularly the idea that it only happens a very small number of times; this is not my experience nor is it the experience of other people I have personally known)....but other, new to me, Jewish ideas about reincarnation have opened my mind to things I never conceived of before I began seriously studying.

My personal opinion is that there are, likely, now enough rabbis, and learned people of various kinds, who have talked to enough people--Jews and non-Jews alike--about their previous lifetime Holocaust memories (often describing in detail things that would be highly unlikely for anyone to know unless they had been there) to change Jewish attitudes and understandings overall on what actually happened to a given person who was once somehow caught up in the Holocaust (as a Jew), after that person died (whether they died during the Holocaust itself or died later on, after WWII ended).

I do know that an on-the-down-low, very highly informal (and mostly unknown), kind of totally unofficial "network" of rabbis exists--rabbis who, on a practical level, are able to function as informal "counselors" (I don't know of another, better, word), and who can, if needed, basically screen the content of Holocaust memories, and explain what this-or-that possibly means.

I have talked to one of these rabbis myself, and a woman who served with me in a Jewish volunteer group was directed to another of these rabbis. The rabbi she went to was able to verify certain specific facts (some of which were unlikely to be known by anyone who "was not there," in those specific circumstances, at that time), and was able, given what she related to him, to knowledgeably estimate how old she had been at the time of her death: about kindergarten age to us, which is the age when Jewish children begin learning the block letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

Very good job, touchstone!

I could not have come close to doing what you did, and you did very, very well.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 07/03/2020 09:05AM by Tevai.