Monday 27 July 2015

Kneel before your god?

I am currently visiting my sisters (hi Hannah) and Rachel) and Brother (hi Sam) , so it is not to be unexpected that I am subject to having science fiction shows on the DVD. This particular one is from 'Stargate' (ok I think Jack O' Neil is somewhat dishy, but he's not  in this one) : 



So the aliens, who masquerade as ancient Egyptian gods demand to be worshipped as such! Except a Jew would should not ever worship a foreign god or idol. One of the few times where Jews must die rather than transgress (ye'hareg v'al ya'avor ) is when we are forced between Idolatry and death, for as it is written : "I am the L-rd your G-d who rescued you from the land of Egypt gods beside me you shall not know"... and it is also said from our Prophets "there is no Saviour but Me" (Shemot 20: 2 & Hoshea 13: 4).

Before our teacher Moses received the whole Torah at Mount Sinai, he met G-d in  a burning bush : 

"And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I.And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God.

And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows.And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites.

Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel is come unto me: and I have also seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppress them.Come now therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people the children of Israel out of Egypt.And Moses said unto God, Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?

 And he said, Certainly I will be with thee; and this shall be a token unto thee, that I have sent thee: When thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain.And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?

And God said unto Moses, I Am That I Am: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I Am hath sent me unto you.And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, the Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations."


You will note that when Moses asked the Almighty who he should say had sent him to liberate the Jewish nation from slavery in Egypt, he replied 'Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh' (Exodus 3,14). This is commonly translated into English as 'I am that I am', but a more literal translation is 'I shall be that I shall be' or 'Who was , Who is'.

Maimonides, in his guide for the perplexed,  provides an explanation for this  difficult to understand description as follows: 

"When God appeared to our Teacher Moses, and commanded him to address the people and to bring them the message, Moses replied that he might first be asked to prove the existence of God in the Universe, and that only after doing so he would be able to announce to them that God had sent him. For all men, with few exceptions, were ignorant of the existence of God; their highest thoughts did not extend beyond the heavenly sphere, its forms or its influences. They could not yet emancipate themselves from sensation, and had not yet attained to any intellectual perfection. Then God taught Moses how to teach them, and how to establish amongst them the belief in the existence of Himself, namely, by saying Ehyeh asher Ehyeh, a name derived from the verb hayah in the sense of "existing," for the verb hayah denotes "to be," and in Hebrew no difference is made between the verbs "to be" and "to exist." 

The principal point in this phrase is that the same word which denotes "existence," is repeated as an attribute. The word asher, "that," corresponds to the Arabic illadi and illati, and is an incomplete noun that must be completed by another noun; it may be considered as the subject of the predicate which follows. The first noun which is to be described is ehyeh; the second, by which the first is described, is likewise ehyeh, the identical word, as if to show that the object which is to be described and the attribute by which it is described are in this case necessarily identical. This is, therefore, the expression of the idea that God exists, but not in the ordinary sense of the term; or, in other words, He is "the existing Being which is the existing Being," that is to say, the Being whose existence is absolute. The proof which he was to give consisted in demonstrating that there is a Being of absolute existence, that has never been and never will be without existence." 


We have a Sephardi Yemeni Song with goes like this : 

'WHO WAS and WHO IS, desire Your people, listen to my prayer from your holy abode 

Chorus: Behold I yearn for Your Temple, to see the greatness of Your strength, splendour, and glory (2x) Have mercy, my Only One, Who spares those who oppose you, shorten my exile, for I lean on You 

Chorus: Behold I yearn for Your Temple, to see the greatness of Your strength, splendour, and glory (2x)
WHO WAS and WHO IS, desire Your people, listen to my prayer from your holy abode 

Chorus: Behold I yearn for Your Temple, to see the greatness of Your strength, splendour, and glory (2x) Have mercy, my Only One, Who spares those who oppose you, shorten my exile, for I lean on You Chorus: Behold I yearn for Your Temple, to see the greatness of Your strength, splendour, and glory (2x)'

This version is lead by the late and great Ofra Haza, a well know Jewish singer


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