3,000 children dying each day of starvation, according to the NY Times. Shoah, Holocaust, shame .... Jesse Jackson in New Orleans complaining that not enough people are being housed on the cruise boats, Bush chopping bush at Crawford, Nazis .. we aren't Nazis, they are. Hitler did it. Stalin gave me no choice. My niggers love me. We brought them Jesus. All we do is go along.
Yom Kippur is not about confession. That Roman Catholic ritual is about me, about how I deal with my guilt. Yom Kippur does not offer forgiveness
Nor does Judaism offer salvation as a reward. The Bal Shem said that he had no need of paradise if he loved God in this life. But in Judaism love for God is not a good deed. Loving God is a nice thing, like being blessed by the priest at confession, but loving God is not itself a mitzvah, a good deed. The law, ethics, good deeds, obligations to others ... these exist regardless of rewards.
But how can I talk of rewards when 3,000 children starve to death every day in Niger?
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