The Sages asked why was Mordechai called a "Yehudi". Today we understand the word to mean a Jew (or Jewish). But it means from the tribe of Yehuda [Judah].
He was from the tribe of Benjamin. So what could it mean?
They answer because he denied idolatry -- because anyone who denies idolatry is as if he confess to the whole Torah. Anyone who admits idolatry is as if he denied the whole Torah. [Yehuda comes from the word admit.]
Thus I decided to stay away from idolatrous cults that seem to infest Orthodx Judaism like lice. Even if they are the only show in town. To me it is more important to stay away from idolatry.
This clarity only came to me after learning Sanhedrin 63 fairly well. Before I learned that page in Sanhedrin the whole concept of idolatry was fairly ambiguous to me. I wrote some of my ideas about that Gemara in my little booklet on the Talmud. Mainly I was concentrating on the Tosphot there. But learning it in depth helped me understand the subject better.
An example of idolatry a person says any created thing besides God, "You are my god, save me" that makes the thing itself into an idol. The person himself gets the normal penalty for idolatry.
I should mention in this context that the belief system of Torah is Monotheism. That is that God made the world something from nothing. That is Torah belief excludes pantheism. And it excludes worship of tzadikim.
God also is a simple One. He is not a composite of substance and form. He has no form nor substance nor anything that we can conceive of. There is a limit to human reason and even to pure reason in this regard. We can know he exists and that is all.
Also in the Torah there is no sense that God is imminent in nature or tied to natural substances or phenomena. Nature also is not divine. It's de-divinized; the created world is not divine, it is not the physical manifestation of God. The line of demarcation therefore between the divine and the natural and human worlds is clear.
Nature isn't God himself. He's not identified with it. He's wholly other. He isn't kin to humans in any way either. So there is no blurring, no soft boundary between humans and the divine.
So, to summarize, the view of God is that there is one supreme God, who is creator and sovereign of the world, who simply exists, who is incorporeal, and for whom the realm of nature is separate and subservient.
He was from the tribe of Benjamin. So what could it mean?
They answer because he denied idolatry -- because anyone who denies idolatry is as if he confess to the whole Torah. Anyone who admits idolatry is as if he denied the whole Torah. [Yehuda comes from the word admit.]
Thus I decided to stay away from idolatrous cults that seem to infest Orthodx Judaism like lice. Even if they are the only show in town. To me it is more important to stay away from idolatry.
This clarity only came to me after learning Sanhedrin 63 fairly well. Before I learned that page in Sanhedrin the whole concept of idolatry was fairly ambiguous to me. I wrote some of my ideas about that Gemara in my little booklet on the Talmud. Mainly I was concentrating on the Tosphot there. But learning it in depth helped me understand the subject better.
An example of idolatry a person says any created thing besides God, "You are my god, save me" that makes the thing itself into an idol. The person himself gets the normal penalty for idolatry.
I should mention in this context that the belief system of Torah is Monotheism. That is that God made the world something from nothing. That is Torah belief excludes pantheism. And it excludes worship of tzadikim.
God also is a simple One. He is not a composite of substance and form. He has no form nor substance nor anything that we can conceive of. There is a limit to human reason and even to pure reason in this regard. We can know he exists and that is all.
Also in the Torah there is no sense that God is imminent in nature or tied to natural substances or phenomena. Nature also is not divine. It's de-divinized; the created world is not divine, it is not the physical manifestation of God. The line of demarcation therefore between the divine and the natural and human worlds is clear.
Nature isn't God himself. He's not identified with it. He's wholly other. He isn't kin to humans in any way either. So there is no blurring, no soft boundary between humans and the divine.
So, to summarize, the view of God is that there is one supreme God, who is creator and sovereign of the world, who simply exists, who is incorporeal, and for whom the realm of nature is separate and subservient.
Indeed, creation takes place through the simple expression of his will. "When God began to create heaven and earth," and there's a parenthetical clause: "God said, 'Let there be light' and there was light." He expressed his will that there be light, and there was light and that's very different from many Ancient Near Eastern cosmogonies in which there's always a sexual principal at work in creation.
