{"id":6845,"date":"2008-10-30T13:29:20","date_gmt":"2008-10-30T21:29:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=6845"},"modified":"2008-10-30T13:29:20","modified_gmt":"2008-10-30T21:29:20","slug":"caseys-imaginary-friend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=6845","title":{"rendered":"Casey’s Imaginary Friend"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hyper-educated goy Casey blogs<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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One of my ten best friends<\/a> (she wouldn’t have guessed she was in the top ten; but so it goes…) has been doing these ridiculously entertaining "Torah Talks" on a — how to describe it? — unpredictable<\/em> website called lukeford.net<\/a>. They’re covering everything awesome in this latest talk — from the nature of G-d to the nature of sex to close readings of Genesis and so on.<\/p>\n

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I really recommend you watch some of these videos<\/a>, but I want to focus briefly on the last one (scroll to the bottom of the page). In the video, Monica’s making a superstar point about how knowledge can bring melancholy — Luke, our moral leader, asks the question: "Like which knowledge has been the most… unhappiness-giving?" Here’s Monica’s reply (starting around the 2:10 mark in that last video on the page):<\/div>\n

The more I learn about religion, the more I learn about Judaism, the more I learn about the Hebrew Bible, the more I study it – it’s kind of a paradox because in many ways I feel closer to G-d, but in other ways I feel farther because I learn so many things about like the construction of the text and so on and so forth that, like, I don’t know any more, I don’t know the answer. <\/span>I don’t know… what G-d is anymore. <\/span>I don’t know. <\/span>I mean I know—I know the Hebrew Bible, that I know, but I don’t know what that means… I think that… that’s just, it’s scary, I mean there’s something liberating about it, but I think it can be kinda frightening too. <\/span>Like it’s easier just to know – that’s what’s so easy about Christianity… it’s… just, Jesus is [inaudible]. <\/span>That’s so easy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

My favorite part of this learned discussion is when Monica refuses to choose between Judaism and Christianity because that would be binary:<\/p>\n

My whole thing about being confused does, in fact, stem from my being pulled in both directions. My history is in Christianity, and I can’t deny this because it is what led me to do what I do today, and it is what compelled me to love the sacred texts as much as I do. But it is Judaism that opened them up for me in a new way and showed me a way to love G-d again in the wake of (what I experienced as) Christian legalism and hypocrisy. Whenever my Bible as Lit students used to ask me whether I was Christian or Jewish, I would say "Both, and neither." And that’s complicated, but for me it’s more authentic than choosing one side of a binary religious construction. But, then, as I implied, sometimes it would just be easier to pick one…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hyper-educated goy Casey blogs: One of my ten best friends (she wouldn’t have guessed she was in the top ten; but so it goes…) has been doing these ridiculously entertaining "Torah Talks" on a — how to describe it? — … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[590],"tags":[13016,13946,13949,668,13948,1454],"class_list":["post-6845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-torah","tag-hebrew-bible","tag-imaginary-friend","tag-judaism-and-christianity","tag-moral-leader","tag-s-monica","tag-unhappiness"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t