Date: Thu, 2 Mar 1995 20:58:13 -0800 (PST) From: Al Tauber To: HJ@teleport.com Subject: A True History Of The Jewish People When being asked to read on a subject like this the reader is entitled to know something about the writer and the writers bias. I am a jew by inheritance but have lived a secular and scientifically oriented life. I don't think Jewish or act Jewish. It was the antisemitic world that kept telling me I am Jewish. So I came to whatever Jewish identiy I have from a negative point of view. After staying outside of organized religion for most of my life I had a brief excursion with Reformed, mostly social. And then I found HJ in Portland, Or where I am involved in helping it grow. I have had a 50 year avocation about the nature of human nature and what can we learn from it so that we can design better societies. It was my own way of perfecting the world. Being research oriented one of the things I like about HJ is the commandment to examine the Jewish experience with the view of finding some wisdom that we can apply in our daily lives. In a society in which the melting pot no longer melts and that is into diversity it is necessary for everyone to have an identity. I have been looking at the Jewish experience rather intently for the last 18 months and here is what I found. I am calling it The True History Of The Jewish People. 1. It is the nature of human nature that we are a mix of good and evil. 2. The necessity of having to live in communities to improve our survival rates, which took place over millions of years, selected out those for survival who were predisposed to goodness and predisposed to cooperation. 3. Those predispositions to goodness and cooperation are weak and easily overwhelmed by internal or external stress. 4. We are also impacted by the moment in time and in the culture that we are part of. 5. We then come to the table wounded and imperfect. So that we are imperfect people in an imperfect world and we want to create perfection. 6. At the time of Abraham the cultural was pagen, very cruel, and sacrafice was normal. Women were devaluated. 7. If we accept any of the Abraham myths then this imperfect man had a touch of humanism which led to reject the popular culture that tribal chiefs were expected to sacrafice their sons. 8. Slowly over a period of 1500 years the Jews became more and more humanistic, first adding the concept of Justice to society and then the concept of Charity. This in turn led to the elimination of sacrafice. 9. As the Jews became a cult and regulated every moment of the cults members lives they introduce rules of behavoir that brought out the goodness and cooperative side of its members and supressed the negatives. 10. The God business they used was similar to what is now known as Change Management that is associated with Business Process Reengineeing. What tools and devices, symbols etc. can I use to make dramatic cultural changes. How can I win over the heads and the hearts of those I wiss to change. The God business was just a management tool. 11. The Jews succeeded. This legislated goodness has been copied and now is part and parcel of they all societies set levels of expectations on the behavoirs of their members. It has been called a common religion. 12. So Judaism took those weak predispostions and blew on them until they became institutionalized as the way for all civilized peoples to behave. The fact that many do not practise this does not weaken the power of the contribution or the need to reinforce communities that we belong to and others that we can influence to adopt these expectations. 13. Jewish humanism recognizes that within each of us is this stuggle between self interest and group interest, betweeen the wounded human who wants to be good and cooperative even when not behaving that way. We as a community on one han have to be forgiving when one fails and always encouraging and helping each of us grown as human beings. 14. This analysis does good things for my Jewish identity. What does it do for yours? atauber@teleport.COM Public Access User --- Not affiliated with Teleport Public Access UNIX and Internet at (503) 220-1016 (2400-14400, N81) ........................................................................ [ Part 2.155: "Re. Jewish Identity (fwd)" ] Date: Fri, 3 Mar 95 18:08:37 PST From: Norman Rosenblatt To: hj@teleport.com Subject: Re. Jewish Identity Hi Folks, I found Al Tauber's recent post regarding Jewish identity interesting. Perhaps we can start a dialog on this subject. My own background is quite different from Al's. I was raised in an orthodox home which became secular when we learned of the holocaust. I remember the emotion that ran through my parents and grandparents (and myself). Once we worked out the implications, we began to drift away from religion. Since that time I have been a non-theist though dedicated to Yiddishkeit (Jewish culture). Now for Al's comments: Al says that human nature is a mixture of good and evil. My comment is that good and evil are human concepts; there is no absolute good and evil. Good is what benefits people and their communities, evil is what hurts them. My dog thinks that flea-spray is good, the fleas no doubt think it is evil. :-) I agree that humans need to live in communities. I think that communal living teaches us to balance our private wants against the demands of our community. To get a god's eye view of human behavior, watch a tribe of chimps. I think that the legend of Abraham probably grew to honor a hero whose actual life's events are long lost. When the Israelites, who were nomadic and pastoral, settled among the Canaanites, who were urban and agricultural, they may have encountered human sacrifice and rejected it. The Isaac sacrifice story may be what remains of a myth about rejecting child sacrifice. Farmers offer sacrifices, nomads don't. Judaism has definately become more humanistic with time. I think Judaism is on the threshold of giving-up god altogether. I have long been a fan of Erich Fromm, and my views on this subject reflect his. Al's relating of rabbinic Judaism to Change Management, which he briefly describes, is intriguing. Having studied Gemara (Talmud) as a young man, I was struck by the analogy. I recently read Norman Cantor's book "The Sacred Chain," in which he predicts the demise of Judaism by the close of the next century unless it is radically changed. I see HJ as one instrument of that radical change. For Judaism to survive, Jewishness must replace god. We must cultivate the sparks of Jewish culture (language, art, music, history, etc) and build a humanism on that Jewish base. That is what I do in our local SHJ chapter. Norm Rosenblatt ........................................................................ Date: Sat, 4 Mar 1995 10:59:40 -0800 (PST) From: Al Tauber To: hj@teleport.com Subject: Judaism and Change Management In a prior post "The History of Judaism" I raised the parallel that jewish leaders use change management thinking in changing pagen culture to Ethical ones. There is a body of change management literature that is a companion to Busines Processing Reengineering. BPR is a major movement in corporte America today and introduces radical cultural change. Two thirds of BPR projects fail because of inadequate committment to change management. Here are some of the insites from the literature and a view of how they explain certain historical Jewish actions. Change Management seeks to prevent the development of resistance and addresses the resistance that does develop. It also seeks to develop buyin or commitment to change. This is the reason for wandering for 40 years, at a time when life expectancy was 20, so that those raised for 100's of years in non humanistic cultures could respond to the beginning of humanism. Change is often messy, chaotic, and painful, no matter what leaders do to smooth the proces. IE. the golden calf. A culture is the sum of the unwritten norms, beliefs, and values that define appropriate behavoir. It results from the interaction ofs temperament and experience. Over time, the culture slips from consciousness into the realm of hsbit. People cling to once uselful beliefs and patterns of behavior as if not alternatives existed. Leadershp must: Set the direction for change by providing a new vision and the strategy for achieving the vision. The 10 commandments. Mobilize the necesary resourcess, including the key people who build the organizational coaliions and commitment vital for success. The tribal chief and the priests. Motivate and inspire the organization. a. Bring out in front as a role model. b. Demonstrate conviction and committment C. Communicate the new direction forcefully enough, and often enough, to make their intentions clear. The burning mountain. A few clear signals, consistently supported. The role of the priests. Change takes hold when they are reflected in multiple contrete manifestations through the organization. When the structures surrounding change also change to support it, then change has been "institutionalized." Becoming a cult. Communications is a critical underpinning for all change management techniques. It is a constant, insteractive proceses aimed at creating coansesus. Communications involves the creation, dissemination, reception, and feedback of a message. The Torah and the annual reading of it. A good source on change management is Managing The Human Side of Change by Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Harvard University professor in Business Administration. atauber@teleport.COM Public Access User --- Not affiliated with Teleport Public Access UNIX and Internet at (503) 220-1016 (2400-14400, N81) ........................................................................ From atauber@teleport.comMon Sep 4 16:00:04 1995 Date: Thu, 4 May 1995 19:22:54 -0700 (PDT) From: Al Tauber To: hj@teleport.com Subject: Jews invent humanism I will be quoting from Jews, God and History by Max I. Dimont from time to time. It was copywritten in 1962. Dimont is a non Jewish historian. The following are quotes from this book: It may take another few hundred years to establish that the spiritual, moral, ethical, and ideological roots of Western civilization are imbedded in Judaism. The Jews had the one and only exclusive God; the rite of circumcision; and the prohibition of human sacrifice (as so movingly told in the story of the binding of Isaac). They steered a course between sexual excess and continence. The Mosaic Code laid down the first principles for a separation of church and state. Moses also laid the foundation for another separation, which has since become indispensable to any democracy. He created an independent judiciary. In reading the laws, formulated some three thousand years ago, one is amazed at their humanitarianism. Slaves were treated more humanely and leniently than they were treated in the United States in 1850. Divorce laws were more liberal in the time of Moses than in present day England and women were held in high esteem. atauber@teleport.COM Public Access User --- Not affiliated with Teleport Public Access UNIX and Internet at (503) 220-1016 (2400-14400, N81) ........................................................................ From atauber@teleport.comMon Sep 4 16:00:05 1995 Date: Wed, 10 May 1995 21:43:28 -0700 (PDT) From: Al Tauber To: hj@teleport.com Subject: Paul Johnson's book "A History of the Jews" He says about the Jews: "To them we owe the idea of equality before the law, both divine and human; of the sanctity of life and dignity of the human person; of the individual conscience and so of personal redemption; of the collective conscience and so of social responsibility; of peace as an abstract ideal and love as the foundation of justice, and many other items which constitute the moral furniture of the human mind." atauber@teleport.COM Public Access User --- Not affiliated with Teleport Public Access UNIX and Internet at (503) 220-1016 (2400-14400, N81)