On the 613 mitzvot

Seems excessive? Possibly reflecting an insecure priesthood anxious to secure its continued relevance? You really need the rabbi to keep track of all those mitzvot, and Rambam and Rishi and all those volumes of the Talmud. They are so superstitious about menstruation, some Orthodox rabbis inspect the underwear of their female congregants.

God’s intelligence permeates your being, so it’s highly unlikely that God can really rest, so all these rules about the Sabbath seem to be rather a pentalty for ignoring the prophets. Most of the Torah was imposed long after the prophets; it only dates to around 150 BC, long after Malachi, around 400 BC, the last of the prophets until John the Baptist. Most of the Torah dates from the Intertestamental Period.

I’m quite sure there is a God, and that Israel possessed the voice of the true God for a time. There is a consistent strain of rebuke in the prophets, and the consistency alone gives it weight, much like the persistence of the Jews bears witness to the existence of one God. I also think Shakespeare and Bach and Beethoven had the Holy Spirit, in droves. More recently, Dylan Thomas and T.S. Eliot, P.G. Wodehouse. One-hit wonders like “A Whiter Shade of Pale.” I am absolutely sure that Alcoholics Anonymous, while not a religion, comes from God.

I think God can be known, not perfectly or completely but partially, through experience; and that if experience of the divine were a part of general education, we could attain to world peace, as prophesied. The Sufis and the alchemists, the Eastern texts often reflect genuine experience. If we focused on literacy and the arts, and discarded some of the harmful influences, I think we could fix things up.