Theos-Talk Archives (September 2001 Message tt00229)

Leon you do chose your words carefully for effect don't you? ;)

Anyway here's my glib response- and all borrowed from R.A Wilson...

http://rawilson.com/main.shtml

Thoughts for the Week 
   
Bloomsday 2001 e.v.
16 Juno 80 p.s.U. 
Schrödinger's Jew 

97 years ago today Leopold Bloom, a fictitious man, wandered the streets
of Dublin, a real city; and Joyce scholars still argue about his odd
odyssey. I would like to add to the confusion with a note about Bloom's
"Jewishness." 

"Is" Leopold Bloom a Jew? 

Not according to Orthodox Rabbinical law, which defines a Jew as the
child of a Jewish mother. Bloom as the child of a Protestant mother "is
not" a Jew. 

According to Nazi law, however, a Jew "is" a person with a known Jewish
ancestor. Bloom as the son of Rudolph Bloom [born Rudolph Virag], "is" a
Jew. 

See how easily a person can "be" and "not be" a Jew at the same time? 

On the third hand, most humanists define a Jew as one who believes in
and practices the Judaic religion. By this definition, Bloom who neither
believes in nor practices any religion "is not" a Jew. But Marilyn
Monroe, who practiced and probably tried to believe in Judaism while
married to Arthur Miller, "was" a Jew by that definition-- for those few
years, if not before or after. 

Extensionally or phenomenologically, a Jew "is" somebody considered
Jewish by all or most of the people he meets. By this standard the
multi-ordinal Bloom "is" a Jew again. 

Once more: in terms of pure existentialism a Jew "is" somebody who
chooses to consider themselves Jewish. Bloom obviously doesn't consider
himself Jewish but Irish, most of the time. Only when under verbal
assault by the anti-semitic Citizen in Barney Kiernan's pub does Bloom
define himself as Jewish ["And Jesus was a Jew too. Your god. He was a
Jew like me."] Here he obviously has in mind the "known Jewish ancestor"
rule, because he adds "And so was his father," to which the Citizen
replies, as a correct Catholic, "He had no father," and Bloom,
unfamiliar with that theology -- logic played with deuces, eights and
one-eyed jacks wild -- can only pragmatically reply, "Well, his uncle
then." 

But recalling the incident later, Bloom says "And he called me a Jew,
which as a matter of fact I'm not." Here he returns to his customary
"believer in Judaic religion" definition. 

I suppose Joyce made Bloom such a tangled genetic and cultural mixture
to expose the absurdities of anti-semitism; but I also suspect that he
wanted to undermine that neurolinguistic habit which postmodernists call
"essentialism" and which Korzybski claimed invades our brains and causes
hallucinations or delusions every time we use the word "is." 


For more on Korzybski's criticisms of "isness," click here
 

-----Original Message-----
From: leonmaurer@aol.com [mailto:leonmaurer@aol.com] 
Sent: Sunday, 23 September 2001 4:08 PM
To: theos-talk@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: Theos-World US Karma - Protocols


To balance out the fomenters of racial and religious hatred in 
this forum, 
who follow the Hitler-Nazi propaganda line -- check out the 
below sites. 

Compare this information with the bigotry, prejudice, opinions 
and attitudes 
of these neo-Nazi "haters" in previous correspondence on this and other 
topics. Also, compare it with the teachings of HPB and the Masters... 

http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/Writings/ProtocolsHistory.html
http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~antis/doc/graves/graves.a.html
http://www.floodlight.org/faq/prot1.html
http://www.thewinds.org/arc_editorials/government/protocols_of_z
ion03-98.html
http://www.cdn-friends-icej.ca/antiholo/protocol.html
Etc.
(There's much more, pro and con, at:)
http://www.google.com/search?q=protocols+of+zion&hl=en&start=0&sa=N 

After a thorough study of all the conflicting views, let's decide, each
for 
ourselves, what is and what is not the truth... 

"There is no religion higher than truth" (HPB)...  
"The truth shall make you free" (of hatred. prejudice, and bigotry)...  

And, then, we all might get back to the real theosophical work of
bringing 
"Universal Brotherhood" to ALL of Mankind -- of whatever race, creed,
sex, or 
condition.

LHM

 

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