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[otkaznik]

Я небольшой любитель кино. А с годами даже то малое любопытство к киноприключениям, которое неизбежно сопровождает молодость, съежилось и ушло вместе с ней. Тем не менее время от времени, в основном под влиянием моей лучшей половины, я что-то смотрю. Сегодня мы закончили минисериал Lessons in Chemistry. Конечно я полностью сознаю святочный характер

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[tijd]

Лорд Джонатан Сакс, главный раввин Великобритании, объяснял, что идея о том, что человек обладает свободой воли и может изменить себя и свою судьбу, проникла в западную цивилизацию из иудаизма:

Where did Western civilisation get the idea that people can change?
It is not an obvious idea. Many great cultures have simply not thought in these terms. The Greeks, for instance, believed that we are what we are, and we cannot change what we are. They believed that character is destiny, and the character itself is something we are born with, although it may take great courage to realise our potential. Heroes are born, not made. Plato believed that some human beings were gold, others silver, and others bronze. Aristotle believed that some are born to rule, and others to be ruled. Before the birth of Oedipus, his fate and that of his father, Laius, have already been foretold by the Delphic Oracle, and nothing they can do will avert it.
This is precisely the opposite of the key sentence we say on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, that “Teshuvah, tefillah, and tzedakah avert the evil decree.” That is what happened to the inhabitants of Nineveh in the story we read at Minchah on Yom Kippur. There was a decree: “In forty days Nineveh will be destroyed.” But the people of Nineveh repent, and the decree is cancelled. There is no fate that is final, no diagnosis without a second opinion - half of Jewish jokes are based on this idea.
The more I studied and researched, the more I realised that Judaism was the first system in the world to develop a clear sense of human free will. As Isaac Bashevis Singer wittily put it, “We have to be free; we have no choice.”
This is the idea at the heart of teshuvah. It is not just confession, not just saying Al chet shechatanu. It is not just remorse: Ashamnu. It is the determination to change, the decision that I am going to learn from my mistakes, that I am going to act differently in future, that I determined to become a different kind of person.
To paraphrase Rabbi Soloveitchik, to be a Jew is to be creative, and our greatest creation is our self.

Идея самосовершенствования и изменения - это и есть пресловутая «американская мечта».

Неудивительно поэтому, что среди тех, кто считает, что ничего изменить нельзя и что судьба человека предопределена обстоятельствами его рождения или генетики, находятся тяготеющие к анти-американизму и антисемитизму,

[otkaznik]

Roses are red, violets are bluish
If it is not for Jesus, we'd all be Jewish