Sunday, October 11, 2015

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks: The Art of Listening

This is actually Rabbi Sacks' dvar Torah, one of his excellent weekly commentaries on the Torah portion of the week. 

I wanted to post it because I thought it was an excellent explanation of the difference between Judaism and other religions.  I really like his explanation of the guilt and shame models of culture.

(But seriously, Rabbi, I mean-obviously Judaism is a religion of guilt. Like, duh! "You never call! You don't care about me! I gave birth to you! No, being a chiropractor is not the same as being a doctor, etc..)

I'm just joking around, but Rabbi Sacks talks about the larger picture-guilt cultures versus shame cultures.

I think it's an excellent essay and frankly-there is too much importation of shame culture (sharia) going on in the Western world today.

This essay gives a very good vocabulary to discuss the phenomenon.