Table Talk from the desk of Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld
January 5-6, 2024 • 25 Teves 5784 • Shemos (Ex 1-5).
The purpose of this email is for virtuous Shabbat table conversation ... please forward/print/share.
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Dedicated to the refuah shleima of our infant grandson Menachem Dovid ben Golda who had surgery today to remove a hopefully-benign growth.
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Can you recall: when you were growing up, did you ever hear about the "Seven Deadly Sins"?
My own earliest memory of them is in a Mad magazine parody.
Am I the only one who remembers learning something from Mad?
(Or from Dennis the Menace?)
Actually, now that I think about it, many of my first exposures to Christian ideas came via parody.
It may sound funny, but that "pedagogy" had consequences.
For example, on my first trip to Jerusalem at age 18, we toured the entire Old City, including the Christian Quarter. While the guide was explaining the Via Dolorosa, I burst out laughing. It must have seemed incredibly disrespectful. The reason I was laughing was because for the first time I got the jokes in Monty Python's parody of that story.
But to Christians the Seven Deadly Sins are apparently big concept. They call them "deadly" because they believe that even one of them can take a person to eternal damnation.
Try this question at your table: Can you name them?
(pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth)
When I read that Mad parody, I had no idea that it was a Christian idea, it was just a cultural meme.
Now, while it is a Christian concept, if you've known me long enough, you've heard my estimate that 95 percent of Christianity comes from Judaism.
So what would you say — do the Seven Sins come from the 95 percent (Jewish roots) or do they fall in the five percent category?
They have parallels in the 6 "Enemies" of Hinduism, the 5 or 6 "Poisons" of Buddhism, 5 "Thieves" of Sikhism, and surely many other traditions.
What about Judaism? It's a good question for the table.
It seems to me that the first four – pride, greed, wrath and envy – are probably all expressions of the same common denominator, namely ego or selfishness; and the latter three – lust, gluttony and sloth – are all symptoms of a body-centered materialism.
And in Jewish thought, selfishness and body-focus are natural instincts of childhood that adulthood is meant to cure.
That said, it also seems to me that some of the seven might have a time and place when they are not only not sinful, but might actually be virtuous. What do you think?
Shabbat Shalom,
My own earliest memory of them is in a Mad magazine parody.
Am I the only one who remembers learning something from Mad?
(Or from Dennis the Menace?)
Actually, now that I think about it, many of my first exposures to Christian ideas came via parody.
It may sound funny, but that "pedagogy" had consequences.
For example, on my first trip to Jerusalem at age 18, we toured the entire Old City, including the Christian Quarter. While the guide was explaining the Via Dolorosa, I burst out laughing. It must have seemed incredibly disrespectful. The reason I was laughing was because for the first time I got the jokes in Monty Python's parody of that story.
But to Christians the Seven Deadly Sins are apparently big concept. They call them "deadly" because they believe that even one of them can take a person to eternal damnation.
Try this question at your table: Can you name them?
(pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth)
When I read that Mad parody, I had no idea that it was a Christian idea, it was just a cultural meme.
Now, while it is a Christian concept, if you've known me long enough, you've heard my estimate that 95 percent of Christianity comes from Judaism.
So what would you say — do the Seven Sins come from the 95 percent (Jewish roots) or do they fall in the five percent category?
They have parallels in the 6 "Enemies" of Hinduism, the 5 or 6 "Poisons" of Buddhism, 5 "Thieves" of Sikhism, and surely many other traditions.
What about Judaism? It's a good question for the table.
It seems to me that the first four – pride, greed, wrath and envy – are probably all expressions of the same common denominator, namely ego or selfishness; and the latter three – lust, gluttony and sloth – are all symptoms of a body-centered materialism.
And in Jewish thought, selfishness and body-focus are natural instincts of childhood that adulthood is meant to cure.
That said, it also seems to me that some of the seven might have a time and place when they are not only not sinful, but might actually be virtuous. What do you think?
Shabbat Shalom,
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