I see it is going to be difficult to keep Ger Think Tank focused. Someone just posted a teaching from a Karaite that had nothing to do with Ger and nothing to do with Think. So please read my request and respect it or leave the group. I set this page up as a resource for ideas for Noahide Gerim and for Jews who are interested in learning how to help build and nurture Ger, which I believe is the same as building and nurturing Israel and is a fundamental aspect of the Final Redemption, and Karaism does not figure in the Final Redemption at all. 

With Karaism it does not matter what they say. It is a matter of what they are.  If you look at the history of Karaism, you will see that the entire birth and development of Karaism was political and financial, a battle over who would be the Raish Galuta (Exilarch) in Babylon in the late 800's or early 900's. Karaism is pretty good when it comes to showing the deficiencies of traditional Orthodox Judaism, namely the Oral Torah. But it is a piece of cake to show the deficiencies of any religion. What is hard is to eliminate your own deficiencies and Karaism is hardly anything but deficient. It is empty of soul from beginning to end. They have no share in the G-d of Israel. They can love the Torah as much as they want and they can determine the New Moon by actual sighting, where Orthodox Judaism does not, but they reject Sinai when they reject the Oral Torah, and when they reject Sinai, they reject the L-rd G-d of Israel, Who created the heavens and the earth and took the Hebrew slaves out of Egypt and made an eternal covenant with them at Mount Sinai. Karaism has placed itself outside that covenant by rejecting the Oral Tradition. So please, if anyone has random cool and nifty Torah teachings, and their heart is pumping to share them with the world, there are other FB pages devoted to Ger. Try over there.

And so, I am announcing that to combat the onslaught of ill-suited non-Ger Think Tank posts, I have hired a team of robotic trolls who will be sweeping this page every 25 seconds to see and expel all traif Ger Think Tank posts. If you ask me how these robots know what is traif and what is kosher, they were programmed by the technical branch of the Secret Society known as the Jewish Templars. Nehemiah was a Jewish Templar. So was Zerubavel. They were the Keruvim on the Ark in their generation.

Speaking of the Book of Ezra, one of the teachings that set me off on a path where blind acceptance of the Talmud is forbidden, is a Tosefot somewhere that says, “We used to learn a third Scripture, a third Mishna and a Third Gemara, but now we say to learn only Gemara because it includes both Scripture and Mishna.” And I said to myself, “Let us see how much of Scripture is taught in the Gemara and I chose the Book of Ezra as my model. There were around 819 verses in the ten chapters of the Book of Ezra. And how many of those verses are discussed in the Babylonian Talmud? Twenty. Hardly a fair representation. So this is what I say to the Karaites on one side of the coin and the High Rabbinic Council of Wherever on the other side. The Oral Torah is to be found in the Babylonian Talmud, known as Gemara, which means teaching. And if you ignore or reject the Talmud, then you have rejected Jewish Law, which at its core contains the highest ethics in the world because it is the only one that is nullified to the G-d Who gave it. At its core, but only at its core. And that is the problem. The Babylonian Talmud contains the core of the Torah, but it also contains many coverings over the core that are known as kelipot. 

A kelipa (singular) is generally translated as a husk or a shell, like a corn husk or an almond shell. Inside the husk or shell is the kernel or the nut, so you have to remove the husk or the shell to eat the ear of corn or the almond. The Babylonian Talmud’s kelipot are well known and mentioned throughout the Talmud itself, but Talmudic scholars are in a deep hypnotic trance and they have come to be taught to look at black and call it white and look at falsehood and call it truth. The Babylonian Talmud is filled with politics and superstition (go blow out a candle at a Chassidic bar mitzvah and see what happens), and it is filled with error and contradictions, and breeds pirud (separation) and a society of individuals who are suspicious that people are suspicious of them. It is called maaris eyin. I will give you a classic maaris eyin. If you fall in a puddle on Shabbat and get your shirt wet, you are forbidden to hang it up to dry where it can be seen because people will think you washed it on Shabbat which is a melacha, a forbidden work activity. The consciousness of maaris eyin produces is an evil consciousness. The consciousness of the Torah is l’chaf zechut, to judge a person favorably, even if it looks bad, give them the benefit of the doubt. The consciousness of the Talmud is a descent from what came before it.

However, as I said above, much of the Oral Tradition from Sinai is in the Talmud. So what can we do? We can sift through the Talmud (the entire Babylonian Talmud is online as a free download, here is the link: https://halakhah.com/ Sifting is the secret. Sift the wheat from the chaff. 

But there is a problem. You have to know how to sift, which means you have to be able to distinguish truth from falsehood and wisdom from folly. My assessment is that the Babylonian Talmud is around 40% Torah and 60% other. And rather than see the 60% kelipa as a corn husk or an almond shell, I prefer to see it as a clamshell containing a pearl. And rather than strip away the husk or break the shell, we should be able to gently pry open the clamshell and take out the pearl. But if the clam is strong, it will not let us open it. Then we can use force or wisdom. Here is the way of wisdom:

  A government study in Israel showed that there are two approaches to establishing a school curriculum. One way is to begin with Tanach, the Hebrew Scriptures, and do not move on to higher learning until the students have a basic understanding of all 24 Books of Tanach. And the other way is to jump into Gemara by the time they are eight years old. And the first way produces a more advanced student than one who jumps right into Gemara right away. Neither way mentions Kabbalah which almost no Jewish Day School and or yeshiva looks at, which is why nobody knows anything. Too much Light for the vessel on the one hand, and not enough on the other. And that is why the Talmudic yeshiva world has a very small share of Geulah, because it is encased in a clamshell made of high-density carbon fiber . It contains the pearl but it is trapped in the mightiest clam that the world has ever known. The Catholic Church, l’havdil, is a sunday school for sissies compared to the rabbinic brotherhoods, a 2600 year old spiritual collective of some of the greatest geniuses the world has ever known since they were formed as an official religion in Babylon after the destruction of Solomon’s Temple in the year 586 BCE., by the Men of the Great Assembly. They said three things and formed the religion of Judaism with them: “Be careful in judgment, raise up many disciples, and make a fence around the Torah (Avot 1:1).” 

The creation of Judaism was the way the sages adjusted the Torah to fit the new consciousness of Exile, known as Galut consciousness — guilt and alienation — that is the consciousness that was the Jewish psyche from 586 BCE until 1987 CE, corresponding to 5747 in the Hebrew calendar.

In 1987 things began to change. Very slowly, the consciousness of the world began to change, leading many to destruction, and some to redemption. Parts of the world resembles ancient Egypt and their cruel treatment of the Children of Israel, the chosen people of G-d, whom He will never change for another. Just like the ancient Egyptians treated the Children of Israel cruelly to the extreme, so to the Europeans treated and often still treat the Jews cruelly to the extreme. (What is Sweden's problem? They are so implacably ant-Jewish.) And it is beginning to look like western Europe is in the process of being crushed under at least ten plagues. And the ones who are doing the crushing were also cruel to the Jews and they will also be crushed.

The image is of the two silver horns used to alert the nation of Israel in the desert. These two hors were made by HaRav Tzvi Rogin, shyichyeh, who lives in Jerusalem and has great knowledge or the halachot of the Temple, such as the garments of the Cohanim. It seemed appropriate today because we should be able to hear the call of Purim and Pesach, the holidays of redemption. Once we pass Tu B'Shvat the New Year of the Trees, we have rounded the corner and are moving away from winter and heading towards spring and the almond trees have gone into lush pink and white flowers, the first of the year.

It appears to me that this has been the test of the nations in the Galut: how well did they treat the Jewish guests in their lands? The way I am hoping it will go is that Hashem will open their eyes and give the Christian countries a chance to do tshuvah like He did with Nineveh in the Book of Jonah. It appears that Hungary and the Czech Republic and even Russia are beginning to push aside Church dogma and do the right thing. They will come to realize that there is no greater blessing for a nation than for it to treat Israel well. G-d will never fail a country who treats Israel well. May Hashem bring the Czechs and Hungarians and Russians to the truth of the Torah. It says in the Talmud that when G-d exiled the Jews after the destruction of the Second Temple, He made a pact with the other nations. Part of the pact, maybe the most important part, was that the nations were forbidden to treat the Jews harshly. If they obeyed, their nations would continue and prosper. If not, G-d forbid, the nation that was cruel to Israel would cease to exist, like Egypt ceased to exist, and the Assyrian Empire ceased to exist and Babylon ceased to exist, and the Greek Empire and the Roman Empire ceased to exist and now it appears as if Germany will cease to exist. The barbarians are conquering the barbarians who conquered Rome. 

Here is all they have to know. Be worthy of keeping Shabbat. Be good to the Jews. And love Jerusalem. Do those three things and you will be good with G-d. You will see blessings and you will continue forever. And let us say, “Amen.”