Hello Bloggers,
Welcome and thank you for your continuing participaion. I would like to note for anybody that owns a Tanak or Bible you can intepret the parsha too! I am excited to dive in to Exodus and without further instruction here is my interpetation of just a small chunk of the parsha that really popped out at me.
People say ignorance is bliss. That makes my eyebrow curl up. According to dictionary.com ignorance is the state or fact of being ignorant; lack of knowledge, learning, information, etc. My question to you is how is that bliss? Because of ignorance the Holocaust, because of ignorance the World Trade Center towers went down, because of ignorance the Spanish Inquisition, and because of ignorance Gaza. How is that bliss? Every terror, every genocide, every war, every murder, every shooting…..ignorance. How is that bliss? This relates back into the parsha this week because of ignorance the Egyptian pharaoh Raamses II thought the Israelites would over power the Egyptians and so he threw every Hebrew boy born after his order in the Nile River. (The Hebrew midwives did not follow his original orders of just killing them…go figure?) Because of ignorance. How is this bliss?
How did you get so insightful. I think there is much more to ignorance being an excuse for people rather than just being ignorant.
ReplyDeleteYes, people can say how far we've come, but let me tell you I know a thing about ignorance. I AM IN MIDDLE SCHOOL!
ReplyDeleteAwesome insight Adam!
ReplyDeleteIgnorance is contagious and that's what makes it so scary.
Just check out CNN these days. CNN's coverage of the entire Gaza conflict is the epitome of ignorance. But most people take everything CNN says as the cold hard facts. (As someone who worked in TV news for 15 years, I can attest just because its called news... doesn't mean its 100% true)
Here's a better example of how ignorance is contagious.
In this week parsha, Pharo's ignorance was so contagious - the Jewish men started to believe there was no hope. According to our sages, the men ‘gave up’ to the point they began to divorce their wives. They thought "everything Pharo said is true so they decided there’s no reason to stay married and no reason to have kids."
But thank G-d, Miriam (Moses' Sister) never gave up faith, she convinced her parents to get back together and soon all the other Jewish couples reunited. The rest is history. So what’s the lesson: The lesson is this - The way to overcome ignorance (especially the contagious part) is by staying true to your beliefs and standing up for what is right. Good will always beat evil. Truth will always beat ignorance. But it doesn’t happen automatically. We have to play our part – like Miriam did in Egypt and like what you’re doing with your weekly blog. Shkoach!
I’m excited to read it every week and excited to have you over as our Shabbas guest one day soon so you can share more of your knowledge with us.
Cousin Seth
Seth - you are right ignorance is contagious and you are also correct that the truth will always beat ignorance. I always tell Adam that if you have the truth behind you - you need nothing else.
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