RABBI GERSHON CAUDILL'S JEWISH FLEXIDOX PHILOSOPHY SUBSCRIBES TO THE BELIEF OF A SACRED GLOBAL CONSCIOUS COMMUNITY WHEREIN FOLLOWERS OF ALL RELIGIONS AND SPIRITUAL PATHS ARE ACTUALLY A PART OF THE ONE-RAINBOW RELIGION (See Micah 4: 5), AND WHO ARE DESTINED TO ONE DAY UNDERSTAND THAT, AND BRING ABOUT WORLD PEACE.

According to MANY passages in the Torah, being a Jew is NOT a requirement for being considered a RIGHTEOUS person, or of the CORRECT religion.

However, how you treat your neighbor is considered a requirement for being considered a righteous person.

We Jews do NOT seek converts! We do not view Judaism as the ONLY correct way of worshipping God.

We do view Judaism as the TRIBAL PATH that is the ancestral religion of the Jewish people, but the Tribal Path of other peoples is the correct way for them to worship God, as much correct as our Path is for us.

Judaism does ACCEPT converts, after informing the prospective inquirer of all the Tribal rules and regulations that the Tribe expects that its members will observe. It informs the prospect of the negative forces of anti-Semitism that the prospect will encounter as a Jew. It also informs the prospect of the fact that, although the Torah asks the Jewish people to love converts and accept them into full status as Jews, often converts are not fully accepted as Jews, especially by the various branches of Jewish thinking and practice.

The Jews are not a perfect people! They have all the faults and problems of any other group of people. They have as much infighting and turmoil as any group of Irish Catholics.

Yet, for all that, BEING A JEW HAS ITS POSITIVE SIDE.

A Jew is part of an ancient people who have an unbroken history and tradition of worship that winds its way back through the pages of time to the Exodus from Egypt.

For 2100 years of that time period, the Jewish people existed as a people and nation apart from all other peoples and nations even though the Jewish people dwelt within the other nations, yet it did not have its own country in physical space.

Eretz Israel and Jerusalem were always focal points for Jewish compass directions for prayer and national yearning.

The Jewish people have survived forced Hellenization, Roman occupation, mass genocidal war, exile, extermination, ghettoization, segregation, forced conversions, etc.

Thus, when a person comes for conversion, we are careful to let them know what they could be getting themselves in for.

"When a proselyte comes to be converted, one receives him with an open hand so as to bring him under the wings of the Divine Presence."
(Leviticus Rabbah 2:9)


"Dearer to God than all of the Israelites who stood at Mount Sinai is the convert. Had the Israelites not witnessed the lightning, thunder, and quaking mountain, and had they not heard the sounds of the shofar, they would not have accepted the Torah. But the convert, who did not see or hear any of these things, surrendered to God and accepted the yoke of heaven. Can anyone be dearer to God than such a person?"
Tanhuma (ed. Buber),
Lekh Lekha 6:32


"Beloved are proselytes by God, for the Bible everywhere uses the same epithet of them as of Israel"
(Talmud, Gerim 4:3)


"Wherever you go, I will go. Wherever you lodge, I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die, I will die, and there I will be buried"
Ruth, a Moabite and the
great-grandmother of King David,
who chose to convert to Judaism.
(Ruth 1:16-17)


"You shall love the convert"
(Deuteronomy 10:19)


"You must understand the feelings of the convert."
(Exodus 23:9)

Rabbi Gershon Winkler puts it this way: "For me, personally, the bottom line works something like this: God is not Jewish. Judaism is but one of many paths, of many varieties of ways of doing life, of doing spirituality, of God-Shuttling. It's not the only one. And not the best one for everyone. So since God isn't Jewish, and does not discriminate between peoples and traditions, who am I to turn down someone who requests of me a ceremonial that would enhance their life situation just because that ceremonial will include also stuff from other traditions? Were I to turn them away with the explanation that I'm a rabbi and I only do Jewish stuff, then it would mean that my primary focus of worship and obeissance is not to the Universal Creator but to this thing called Judaism. To me, that would be a lot more like idolatry than doing a Hindu chant at a Bar-Mitzvah."

For most of the past 2000 years of Jewish history, conversion TO Judaism was forbidden by Church Law, on penalty of death to both the convert and the person performing the conversion, while conversion FROM Judaism was greatly desired and promoted.

Yet, even when vast numbers of Jews did convert to Christianity, either due to force by the secular arm of the State, or due to the missionizing efforts of the various Church orders, as in Spain during the period from 1391 to 1492, when 200,000 Jews converted to Catholicism, these conversions were not accepted as completely nor totally valid by the very Church who instigated them in the first place.

The Church's Office of the Inquisition suspected these first "Jews for Jesus" as being secretly still Jewish in their hearts, practicing the ancient rituals of their heritage in secret, and often the Church was correct about this.

Therefore, the Church imposed the penalties of the INQUISITION upon these suspected secret Jews and persecuted them ruthlessly for 400 years, often subjecting them to terrible tortures and the auto-de-fe (being burnt at the stake publicly).

During the Age of Reason, the power of the Church was stripped from it, this in the mid-18th to late 19th century. The Church could no longer conduct itself towards those it considered as "HERITICS" in this shameful manner. With the rise of Protestantism, and its world-wide missionary programs towards those IT considered as not being Christian, thus pagan, and fair game for the Protestant Churches, many more Jews began to again find reason to convert out of Judaism.

For a long time these outward bound converts were viewed as traitors to the Jewish Tribe and its practices of religion. The Jews who remained faithful to their various Tribal practices of their particular "Clan" of Judaism drew themselves into a more closer knit group.

Some Rabbis of these groups even instigated death rites, such as sitting shiva, to any person who converted out of Judaism, linking the apostacy of the Jew to the death of his or her linage within Judaism.

However, more recently, some of the Rabbis of Judaism saw that this conversion out of Judaism in the early period was a method that God used to fulfill the promise made to Abraham, that "all the nations of the earth shall bless themselves through your offspring" Genesis 22: 17-18).

The fact remains that a Jew is a person born of a Jewish mother or a person who has made conversion to Judaism. No if, ands, or buts. You CANNOT opt out of being a Jew even if you opt out of the religion of the Tribe.

If a person converts to another religion, they do not cease to be Jewish, instead they become HYPHENATED Jews; i. e., Christian-Jews, Buddhist-Jews, Mormon-Jews, Hindu-Jews, etc., but still they are Jews.

Even the very religions that they convert to do not let them forget their ancient Jewish Tribal heritage. They are set apart as "our Jewish convert brother or sister."

Often, a grandchild will learn of the Jewish ancestral tradition in the family past history, and will then seek to return to that ancient Tribal connection. Then, the circle of the ancestral Tribal Hoop is repaired and that family is returned to its rightful place in the flock.

According to the Hope of the Israelite Prophet Micah, in his book, chapter 4, and I paraphrase; "In the Day of the Messianic Age, every person will call upon God by their own understanding of the God Name acceptable to that person, and the Israelite peoples will call upon God by the Tribal God Name, YHVH" (verse 5).

Each and every person has to find the Path to God that gives to that person solice, direction, stability, and hope. If that means that a non-Jew will seek to become a Jew, fine. If that means that a Jew will become of another religion, also fine.

However, it is VERY OFFENSIVE for ANY religion to single out another religious Path for conversion. It shows the intolerence and bigotry of the missionizing religion. It shows that they are still going through their own adolescent, questioning who they are, phase.

A LITTLE STORY FROM "What Is Man?" Chapter 2, by Mark Twain

Old Man: I will tell you a little story:

Once upon a time an Infidel was guest in the house of a Christian widow whose little boy was ill and near to death. The Infidel often watched by the bedside and entertained the boy with talk, and he used these opportunities to satisfy a strong longing in his nature -- that desire which is in us all to better other people's condition by having them think as we think. He was successful. But the dying boy, in his last moments, reproached him and said:

"I believed, and was happy in it; you have taken my belief away, and my comfort. Now I have nothing left, and I die miserable; for the things which you have told me do not take the place of that which I have lost."

And the mother, also, reproached the Infidel, and said:

"My child is forever lost, and my heart is broken. How could you do this cruel thing? We have done you no harm, but only kindness; we made our house your home, you were welcome to all we had, and this is our reward."

The heart of the Infidel was filled with remorse for what he had done, and he said:

"It was wrong -- I see it now; but I was only trying to do him good. In my view he was in error; it seemed my duty to teach him the truth."

Then the mother said:

"I had taught him, all his little life, what I believed to be the truth, and in his believing faith both of us were happy. Now he is dead, -- and lost; and I am miserable. Our faith came down to us through centuries of believing ancestors; what right had you, or any one, to disturb it? Where was your honor, where was your shame?"

Young Man: He was a miscreant, and deserved death!

O.M. He thought so himself, and said so.

Y.M. Ah -- you see, his conscience was awakened!

O.M. Yes, his Self-Disapproval was. It pained him to see the mother suffer. He was sorry he had done a thing which brought him pain. It did not occur to him to think of the mother when he was misteaching the boy, for he was absorbed in providing pleasure for himself, then. Providing it by satisfying what he believed to be a call of duty.

Y.M. Call it what you please, it is to me a case of awakened conscience. That awakened conscience could never get itself into that species of trouble again. A cure like that is a permanent cure.

O.M. Pardon -- I had not finished the story. We are creatures of outside influences -- we originate nothing within. Whenever we take a new line of thought and drift into a new line of belief and action, the impulse is always suggested from the outside. Remorse so preyed upon the Infidel that it dissolved his harshness toward the boy's religion and made him come to regard it with tolerance, next with kindness, for the boy's sake and the mother's. Finally he found himself examining it. From that moment his progress in his new trend was steady and rapid. He became a believing Christian. And now his remorse for having robbed the dying boy of his faith and his salvation was bitterer than ever. It gave him no rest, no peace. He must have rest and peace -- it is the law of nature. There seemed but one way to get it; he must devote himself to saving imperiled souls. He became a missionary. He landed in a pagan country ill and helpless. A native widow took him into her humble home and nursed him back to convalescence. Then her young boy was taken hopelessly ill, and the grateful missionary helped her tend him. Here was his first opportunity to repair a part of the wrong done to the other boy by doing a precious service for this one by undermining his foolish faith in his false gods. He was successful. But the dying boy in his last moments reproached him and said:

"I believed, and was happy in it; you have taken my belief away, and my comfort. Now I have nothing left, and I die miserable; for the things which you have told me do not take the place of that which I have lost."

And the mother, also, reproached the missionary, and said:

"My child is forever lost, and my heart is broken. How could you do this cruel thing? We had done you no harm, but only kindness; we made our house your home, you were welcome to all we had, and this is our reward."

The heart of the missionary was filled with remorse for what he had done, and he said:

"It was wrong -- I see it now; but I was only trying to do him good. In my view he was in error; it seemed my duty to teach him the truth."

Then the mother said:

"I had taught him, all his little life, what I believed to be the truth, and in his believing faith both of us were happy. Now he is dead -- and lost; and I am miserable. Our faith came down to us through centuries of believing ancestors; what right had you, or any one, to disturb it? Where was your honor, where was your shame?"

The missionary's anguish of remorse and sense of treachery were as bitter and persecuting and unappeasable, now, as they had been in the former case. The story is finished. What is your comment?

Y.M. The man's conscience is a fool! It was morbid. It didn't know right from wrong.

O.M. I am not sorry to hear you say that. If you grant that one man's conscience doesn't know right from wrong, it is an admission that there are others like it. This single admission pulls down the whole doctrine of infallibility of judgment in consciences. Meantime there is one thing which I ask you to notice.

Y.M. What is that?

O.M. That in both cases the man's act gave him no spiritual discomfort, and that he was quite satisfied with it and got pleasure out of it. But afterward when it resulted in pain to him, he was sorry. Sorry it had inflicted pain upon the others, but for no reason under the sun except that their pain gave him pain. Our consciences take no notice of pain inflicted upon others until it reaches a point where it gives pain to us. In all cases without exception we are absolutely indifferent to another person's pain until his sufferings make us uncomfortable. Many an infidel would not have been troubled by that Christian mother's distress. Don't you believe that?

Y.M. Yes. You might almost say it of the average infidel, I think.

O.M. And many a missionary, sternly fortified by his sense of duty, would not have been troubled by the pagan mother's distress -- Jesuit missionaries in Canada in the early French times, for instance; see episodes quoted by Parkman.

Y.M. Well, let us adjourn. Where have we arrived?

O.M. At this. That we (mankind) have ticketed ourselves with a number of qualities to which we have given misleading names. Love, Hate, Charity, Compassion, Avarice, Benevolence, and so on. I mean we attach misleading meanings to the names. They are all forms of self-contentment, self-gratification, but the names so disguise them that they distract our attention from the fact. Also we have smuggled a word into the dictionary which ought not to be there at all -- Self-Sacrifice. It describes a thing which does not exist. But worst of all, we ignore and never mention the Sole Impulse which dictates and compels a man's every act: the imperious necessity of securing his own approval, in every emergency and at all costs. To it we owe all that we are. It is our breath, our heart, our blood. It is our only spur, our whip, our goad, our only impelling power; we have no other. Without it we should be mere inert images, corpses; no one would do anything, there would be no progress, the world would stand still. We ought to stand reverently uncovered when the name of that stupendous power is uttered.

Y.M. I am not convinced.

O.M. You will be when you think.

By its very nature missionary activity devalues the religious traditions and practices of the people that the missionaries proslytize.

Since the beginnings of early Christian missionary activity, and later Moslem missionary activity, many indigenous cultures were destroyed by the missionary in the Name of Christ or Allah.

In America, we see this most blatantly in the destruction of the Native American Indian religions and indigenous cultures.

The pattern has always been the same. The missionary seeks, with the support behind him of the militant power of the invading government to devalue the ministers and clergy of the native existing religion so as to replace them with the ministers and clergy of his own religion.

Native religious practices are decried as being "superstitions," while the stories and traditions of the replacing religion are "acts of God."

The Native languages are replaced with the language of the dominant religion, often through penalties imposed upon the Native speaker.

Traditional sacred objects and "books" are destroyed and replaced with the sacred scriptures of the proslytizing religion.

This often leads, as in the case with many Hopi and other Native American Indian religions practitioners, to a taking of the religion underground and practicing it in secret, as did the secret Jewish "conversos."

If there is not a strong enough family and Tribal connection of support for those who wish to keep the traditions of the Tribal Path alive, it dies! and is replaced by a somewhat Native version of the missionizing religion, i. e., Jews for Jesus or the Native American Christian Churches.

Judaism REJECTS all caste and race ideologies. Being a JEW is NOT being a member of a particular race as ALL races are represented among the Jewish peoplehood and Tribe. Hierarchy of ethnicity is not a "Jewish" concept. Judaism denies all notions of racial superiority or ethnicity that is better than all others. The Prophet Amos made it unmistakenly clear when he wrote, in the 8th century BCE; "Are you not just like the Ethiopians to Me, O people of Israel (God is not just speaking to the Jews)? says YHVH. It was I who brought the people of Israel up out of Egypt, also, it was I who brought the Philistines from Caftor and the Syrians from Kir" (Amos 9: 7).

One must realize that both the peoples, the Philistinians and the Syrians, were traditional enemies of Israel, and Ethiopians were thought of as only a slave people. But the Hebrew Prophet tells Israel that his Yahweh-God is also the God of those people, and that this God guides the destinies of those peoples as well, and most important, that they are all alike in the sight of the Hebrew God.

In the Messianic Age, the Age of Shekhinah Consciousness, the Aquarian Age, so the Hebrew Prophet Isaiah (7th century BCE) tells us; "Israel will be in a three part partnership with Egypt and Assyria as a blessing in the midst of the earth, with the blessing of YHVH Tzvaot that 'Blessed be Egypt MY PEOPLE, and Assyria THE WORK OF MY HANDS, and Israel MY HERITAGE"' (Isaiah 19: 24-25).

The ancient Sages tell us that the Torah begins with the story of Adam and Eve to remind us (Israel) that all people descend from the same two parents. The tradition also says that God took earth from the four corners of the earth to make the first Adam. Red from the North, Yellow from the East, Black from the West, and White from the South, so that the first Adam was of all races.

Just as with all other people's stories of CHOSENNESS, the chosenness of Israel was dependent upon Israel serving its God as a HOLY people, a LIGHT UNTO THE NATIONS, as an EXAMPLE, not as a missionary religion. "And you shall be holy unto Me" (Exodus 22: 30). The first century rabbi, Rabbi Ishmael said: "IF you are holy then you are Mine."

Holiness is not a self-glorification but a hard discipline of self-purification. It was never assumed that Israel would be perfect, beyond sin or transgression. God does not ask the Israelite people to be PERFECT. THERE ARE NO PERFECT PEOPLE OR NATIONS!

Israel was only "chosen" to show that all people can progress to a better understanding of God and the relationship between God and humankind, and the requirement of STEWARDSHIP towards the environment. If God can cause Israel to become a better, more compassionate, caring people , then all people can do it. That is the goal! It is up to us who have accepted the mission to rise to the challenge! IF YOU CHOOSE TO RISE TO THE CHALLENGE - THEN YOU ARE CALLED - ISRAEL!

With the dawning of the Modern Age, the Age of Aquarius, as it is often called, the religious superiority complex has been called into question.

Those religions who have traditionally been the source of the most missionary actions have had to re-evaluate they way they connect to the indigenous peoples of the world.

And, the indigenous peoples of the world are rethinking how they view their ancestral religious heritage. Often they can find more in their own tribal heritage and history that is meaningful to them than they can find in the religions that were imposed upon them, especially those imposed by the threat of the sword.

IT IS TIME THAT ALL RELIGIONS ABANDON THE MISSIONARY SELLING OF THEIR RELIGIOUS VIEWS.

It is TIME for honest, and honorable, dialogue, WITHOUT THREAT OF COERSION, between peoples of differing religious views.

We can learn much from seeing religious, ethical, moral, and traditional perspectives from the place around the table of TRUTH where the other person views these things from.

However, we must be open to a completely honest and open forum of dialogue wherein all religions respect the other religions as also being Paths to that which each religion holds as the Supreme Power.

No ONE RELIGION holds God captive! God is the Giver of all religious traditions to the peoples of the World (see the Tanakh, Book of Amos, chapter 9, verse 7). IT IS ALL ONE GOD!

THE JEWISH CONCEPT OF THE MESSIANIC AGE

The Jewish concept of the Age of Messiah( Tikupat Deli), which is part of the Aquarian Age, is based upon the scenario of Isaiah 2: 2-5; Isaiah 11 and Micah 4: 1-5, wherein ALL religions, of ALL peoples, are able to live together in interrelationship, respect, harmony and peace, without fear or prejudice or coercion, in a DEMOCRATIC One World government of peoples, races, religions and ethnicities, when the FEMININE MESSIAH SHEKHINA PRESENCE of God covers the world as the waters cover the sea (Isaiah 11: 9).

However, one can understand the missionary religions if one desires to do so. The "missionary" faiths are still in a state of religious adolescence and uncertainity. As they grow up and become more sure of their own position in the world of religions, they will become less convinced that it is ONLY THEY that have the sole ownership of THE TRUTH. Then they will have seen the LIGHT!

Missionary religions are like purvayors of soap or used cars, but they serve a purpose in the Divine Plan too, as they also help to gathering people together that relate to the unique message of that particular missionary religion, which in turn, puts them in a place where EVENTUALLY they can be taught to be more accepting and tolerent of others who differ from them.

In this way, God is sorting out from all of the mixed peoples of the earth those who carry an Israelite soul. This, in order to fulfill a promise made between God and Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and their seed, as an EVERLASTING Covenant, a Covenant of Tradition, Torah and Land.

But, this does not mean that only the Israelite seed is CHOSEN by God. ALL PEOPLES ARE CHOSEN BY GOD.

Each people's Sacred Writings or Stories teach that it is THEY who their concept of God has called to a special mission in the world. It is like a father who has several children, each of whom he tells that he loves that child the best (see Amos 9: 7).

Some of the many Hebrew bible scriptures that can be viewed as references to the Days of the Messiah (or messianic-age) are:

Psalms 72: 1-4; 17-20; Isaiah 11: 1-10; Isaiah 49: 6; 52: 13-15; 53: 1-6; Jeremiah 23: 1`-4; 30: 3-11; Ezekiel 34: 23-31; 37: 21-28.

BEYT TIKKUN SYNAGOGUE (Rabbi Michael Lerner) click here

CHOCHMAT HALEV INTERFAITH JEWISH BASED COMMUNITY (link) click here