Lodging a Claim Against the Water Company
We will soon be receiving another water bill. If you are like us, your meter will once again show an impossibly large water use.
Please be advised that I have reported Peleg HaGalil to the police for fraud and, in our case, abuse of physically reduced and disabled people.
I would recommend that anyone who feels physically or emotionally harmed from their fraudulent and strong-arm threats to turn off our water if we don't pay their extortion prices do the same.
The policeman I spoke with told me to go to the Court Building, right next to the Police station, and ask for a Claim form from Small Claims.
I did.
I met a unilingual English-speaker who has another Claim while there. So, I know it is possible for English-speakers to file Claims.
I have placed an ad in Hebrew in one of the local newspapers encouraging the public to take action against Peleg HaGalil.
I ask you to do so. Every Claim and Complaint at the Police Department strengthens the others.
I am intentionally *not* organizing a joint action. That would make it relatively inexpensive for Peleg HaGalil to organize their defense. I want them to spend as much money on their lawyers' time in court as possible. I want to break their backs financially.
Another avenue of recourse is to turn to the TV Program "Uvdah". They investigate fraudulent business practices of these kinds of companies ("Ta'agidim") and do exposes.
A multi-pronged approach against Peleg HaGalil is called for. They have proven to be obdurate in their determination to threaten us with cutting off our water supply if we do not pay their outrageous bills.
This will continue, and escalate, if we do not take action as a Community.
It may also be worth our while to turn to Ilan Schochat, the new Mayor and let him know about this horrific company.
Doreen and Daniel Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Thursday, December 18, 2008
God Helps Those Who Help Themselves
Last week, upon returning from the shuq; I met a woman who told me that she is one of the Bank HaPoalim customers whose retirement pension was lost by Bank HaPoalim when they used the accounts, unbeknownst to the customers, to gamble in the bourse and lost.
She told me she went to the bank one day only to be told that her entire Retirement Pension had been lost. Evidently, there is a problem with the insurance covering the accounts. She was told, in a wholly non-committal way, that they hope that they will be able to recover some portion of her pension, offering no percentages or time frame.
She told me that she was told by the staff at the bank to take heart – that she wasn't the only person this happened to. Indeed, it's tremendous comfort and consolation to know that Bank HaPoalim had gambled away the life savings of a large number of pensioners all over the country.
She told me that she is a widow who had been putting away a few shekels every month for fifteen years. She must have been a young widow, as she doesn't look more than about sixty years old.
I asked her what she intends to do about it.
She answered: "What can I do? What can anyone do? "They" do whatever they want to do to little people like us. But don't you worry. There's a God in Heaven and He'll see to it that they get their just comeuppance!"
The singly most dangerous, disempowering, downright crippling social control mechanism that was ever introduced into religion is the delusion that there is a God "out there", "up there" who is going to come to my rescue – some day. "I believe. I believe. I believe with perfect faith in the coming of Mashiach. And even though he tarries, still I await him". So, I need not exert myself to see to it that justice is done. I am exempt from responsibility for righting the wrongs in the world.
I could not decide if I was more heartbroken or livid. I was beside myself but I knew it would not help to tell this woman the truth. I knew I had to keep my silence until such time as she has experienced enough humiliation, fear and suffering personally and witnessed that of others that God Indwelling would burst out from the core of her being and she would know that she must take action for righteousness' sake of her own free will because the fate of her creation depends upon her Awakening. Some day she will take sufficient pity on herself and on humanity and the mesmerizing, soporific tune and repetitive directive that keeps her in lethargic thrall: "I believe. I believe. I believe with perfect faith in the coming of Mashiach. And even though he tarries, still I await him" will be washed away in a flood of light of Self-realization. The fear the RaMBa"M was paid by the Sultan to inculcate in her that if she didn't believe it she wasn't a real Jew will be swept away with it, her fetters will be loosed and will break – and She will arrive and begin to save her world, bit by bit. She will know that She is the Savior, She is God, if not Almighty. There is no other.
Either we find God in the deepest interior of our own spark of indignation at injustice and fan that little spark into an inferno of realization of God Indwelling and save one another and ourselves, or no one is coming to our rescue.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Mommy, Mommy, what are the Illuminati?
Last week, upon returning from the shuq; I met a woman who told me that she is one of the Bank HaPoalim customers whose retirement pension was lost by Bank HaPoalim when they used the accounts, unbeknownst to the customers, to gamble in the bourse and lost.
She told me she went to the bank one day only to be told that her entire Retirement Pension had been lost. Evidently, there is a problem with the insurance covering the accounts. She was told, in a wholly non-committal way, that they hope that they will be able to recover some portion of her pension, offering no percentages or time frame.
She told me that she was told by the staff at the bank to take heart – that she wasn't the only person this happened to. Indeed, it's tremendous comfort and consolation to know that Bank HaPoalim had gambled away the life savings of a large number of pensioners all over the country.
She told me that she is a widow who had been putting away a few shekels every month for fifteen years. She must have been a young widow, as she doesn't look more than about sixty years old.
I asked her what she intends to do about it.
She answered: "What can I do? What can anyone do? "They" do whatever they want to do to little people like us. But don't you worry. There's a God in Heaven and He'll see to it that they get their just comeuppance!"
The singly most dangerous, disempowering, downright crippling social control mechanism that was ever introduced into religion is the delusion that there is a God "out there", "up there" who is going to come to my rescue – some day. "I believe. I believe. I believe with perfect faith in the coming of Mashiach. And even though he tarries, still I await him". So, I need not exert myself to see to it that justice is done. I am exempt from responsibility for righting the wrongs in the world.
I could not decide if I was more heartbroken or livid. I was beside myself but I knew it would not help to tell this woman the truth. I knew I had to keep my silence until such time as she has experienced enough humiliation, fear and suffering personally and witnessed that of others that God Indwelling would burst out from the core of her being and she would know that she must take action for righteousness' sake of her own free will because the fate of her creation depends upon her Awakening. Some day she will take sufficient pity on herself and on humanity and the mesmerizing, soporific tune and repetitive directive that keeps her in lethargic thrall: "I believe. I believe. I believe with perfect faith in the coming of Mashiach. And even though he tarries, still I await him" will be washed away in a flood of light of Self-realization. The fear the RaMBa"M was paid by the Sultan to inculcate in her that if she didn't believe it she wasn't a real Jew will be swept away with it, her fetters will be loosed and will break – and She will arrive and begin to save her world, bit by bit. She will know that She is the Savior, She is God, if not Almighty. There is no other.
Either we find God in the deepest interior of our own spark of indignation at injustice and fan that little spark into an inferno of realization of God Indwelling and save one another and ourselves, or no one is coming to our rescue.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.com
Mommy, Mommy, what are the Illuminati?
Friday, December 12, 2008
The Truth About the Jews and Christ Hidden in Plain Sight
Recently, there is a huge push among Protestants, who think that if they rid Christianity of Catholicism then all will be pure and good, to pin all of the brutality of Christianity on the Catholics. That is a self-deception. Let's hope, however, that it is attributable to nascent recognition of the heinous acts committed in the name of Christ, the inner meaning of which will be explained below.
All of Christianity is a death cult.
It was Protestants, not Catholics, who carried out the witch hunts (although I'm sure the Vatican had a great deal to do with it, the Protestants were enthusiastic participations), enslaved the Blacks and devastated the Natives in North America.
Surely, you are familiar with the Chi Rho symbol.
The Greek letter rho in the symbol is another pronunciation of the name of the Egyptian sun god Ra. All languages in the Middle East are very flexible with the pronunciation of vowels, as they change with grammatical rules. One of the pronunciations of Ra was Ro, as is commonly known and acknowledged.
So, every time one ascribes divinity to christ, that person is ascribing divinity to chi RO ist. That person is saying that s/he is a ChiROist. The Chi, of course, has been integrated into Buddhism as a central teaching and we know that the occultist Catholics, like the Nazis who based themselves on the beliefs and hierarchical structure of the Jesuits, were obsessed with the Tibetans. The Nazis planned to set up an Aryan settlement in Tibet. They wanted to soak up the occult energy of Chi. It evidently compliments that of Rho.
It's hidden in plain view in the designation Christ, as is their wont to do things.
And I'll tell you what else is hidden in plain view - the identity of the true child of God who was sent to this world as a sacrificial lamb. The word Jews is hidden in the name Jesus.
The Hebrew word בני (b-n-i) can either be pronounced b'nei, meaning the sons or sons and daughters of, or it can be pronounced b'ni, meaning my son or it can be pronounced b'nai, meaning my sons or my sons and daughters.
The Hebrew Bible is not punctuated to allow for elasticity of interpretation. Thus the phrase בני ישראל (b-n-i Yisrael) can mean: the sons or the sons and daughters of Yisrael; my sons or my sons and daughters, Yisrael; or my son, Yisrael.
When the God of Yisrael says b-n-i Yisrael, God is referring to us as Its Children and also Its child in the singular.
Yisrael is the Child of God. We have no need of mythology or deification. We are the Child of God in human form and we act according to human abilities *for the sake of all humanity*.
The early Church understood the mission of the Jews in this world - that we are the Child of God sent into this world to redeem it – to be a light unto the Gentiles.
In order to hide the truth from the world, they contracted the story of an entire People, the Jewish People, in every generation, into the figure of one character - Jesus.
To make the Jews further unrecognizable as the true Child of God they then applied the supernatural attributes to Jesus that they found in pagan religions attributed to the various deities and mythological figures.
This also helped the Church attract the various heathens to Christianity - they made Jesus look familiar to the heathens they conquered by applying to him the mythology the heathens believed in.
The heathens thus acquiesced and the figure of Jesus became ever more fantastic, as he took on more and more mythological, supernatural qualities.
The identity of the true Child of God, the Jews, the People sent to redeem this world, to be a light unto the Gentiles, was thus hidden - eventually even from most of the Jews themselves.
This is the Truth (תורת) that the Church has been hiding from the world. First and foremost, we Jews must recall who and what we are and why we came into this world.
The early Church understood the mission of the Jews in this world - that we are the Child of God sent into this world to redeem it – to be a light unto the Gentiles.
In order to hide the truth from the world, they contracted the story of an entire People, the Jewish People, in every generation, into the figure of one character - Jesus.
To make the Jews further unrecognizable as the true Child of God they then applied the supernatural attributes to Jesus that they found in pagan religions attributed to the various deities and mythological figures.
This also helped the Church attract the various heathens to Christianity - they made Jesus look familiar to the heathens they conquered by applying to him the mythology the heathens believed in.
The heathens thus acquiesced and the figure of Jesus became ever more fantastic, as he took on more and more mythological, supernatural qualities.
The identity of the true Child of God, the Jews, the People sent to redeem this world, was thus hidden - eventually even from most of the Jews themselves.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.comEllen
Recently, there is a huge push among Protestants, who think that if they rid Christianity of Catholicism then all will be pure and good, to pin all of the brutality of Christianity on the Catholics. That is a self-deception. Let's hope, however, that it is attributable to nascent recognition of the heinous acts committed in the name of Christ, the inner meaning of which will be explained below.
All of Christianity is a death cult.
It was Protestants, not Catholics, who carried out the witch hunts (although I'm sure the Vatican had a great deal to do with it, the Protestants were enthusiastic participations), enslaved the Blacks and devastated the Natives in North America.
Surely, you are familiar with the Chi Rho symbol.
The Greek letter rho in the symbol is another pronunciation of the name of the Egyptian sun god Ra. All languages in the Middle East are very flexible with the pronunciation of vowels, as they change with grammatical rules. One of the pronunciations of Ra was Ro, as is commonly known and acknowledged.
So, every time one ascribes divinity to christ, that person is ascribing divinity to chi RO ist. That person is saying that s/he is a ChiROist. The Chi, of course, has been integrated into Buddhism as a central teaching and we know that the occultist Catholics, like the Nazis who based themselves on the beliefs and hierarchical structure of the Jesuits, were obsessed with the Tibetans. The Nazis planned to set up an Aryan settlement in Tibet. They wanted to soak up the occult energy of Chi. It evidently compliments that of Rho.
It's hidden in plain view in the designation Christ, as is their wont to do things.
And I'll tell you what else is hidden in plain view - the identity of the true child of God who was sent to this world as a sacrificial lamb. The word Jews is hidden in the name Jesus.
The Hebrew word בני (b-n-i) can either be pronounced b'nei, meaning the sons or sons and daughters of, or it can be pronounced b'ni, meaning my son or it can be pronounced b'nai, meaning my sons or my sons and daughters.
The Hebrew Bible is not punctuated to allow for elasticity of interpretation. Thus the phrase בני ישראל (b-n-i Yisrael) can mean: the sons or the sons and daughters of Yisrael; my sons or my sons and daughters, Yisrael; or my son, Yisrael.
When the God of Yisrael says b-n-i Yisrael, God is referring to us as Its Children and also Its child in the singular.
Yisrael is the Child of God. We have no need of mythology or deification. We are the Child of God in human form and we act according to human abilities *for the sake of all humanity*.
The early Church understood the mission of the Jews in this world - that we are the Child of God sent into this world to redeem it – to be a light unto the Gentiles.
In order to hide the truth from the world, they contracted the story of an entire People, the Jewish People, in every generation, into the figure of one character - Jesus.
To make the Jews further unrecognizable as the true Child of God they then applied the supernatural attributes to Jesus that they found in pagan religions attributed to the various deities and mythological figures.
This also helped the Church attract the various heathens to Christianity - they made Jesus look familiar to the heathens they conquered by applying to him the mythology the heathens believed in.
The heathens thus acquiesced and the figure of Jesus became ever more fantastic, as he took on more and more mythological, supernatural qualities.
The identity of the true Child of God, the Jews, the People sent to redeem this world, to be a light unto the Gentiles, was thus hidden - eventually even from most of the Jews themselves.
This is the Truth (תורת) that the Church has been hiding from the world. First and foremost, we Jews must recall who and what we are and why we came into this world.
The early Church understood the mission of the Jews in this world - that we are the Child of God sent into this world to redeem it – to be a light unto the Gentiles.
In order to hide the truth from the world, they contracted the story of an entire People, the Jewish People, in every generation, into the figure of one character - Jesus.
To make the Jews further unrecognizable as the true Child of God they then applied the supernatural attributes to Jesus that they found in pagan religions attributed to the various deities and mythological figures.
This also helped the Church attract the various heathens to Christianity - they made Jesus look familiar to the heathens they conquered by applying to him the mythology the heathens believed in.
The heathens thus acquiesced and the figure of Jesus became ever more fantastic, as he took on more and more mythological, supernatural qualities.
The identity of the true Child of God, the Jews, the People sent to redeem this world, was thus hidden - eventually even from most of the Jews themselves.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
DoreenDotan@gmail.comEllen
Immanent God
Part 1
I've been experiencing profoundly disorienting confusion. I find I don't know how to think about anything anymore.
It began with someone on the net who said: "Don't you understand? Satan won."
I thought about it and said: Let's assume that that's true. I refuse to surrender. I refuse to give in. I still stand for justice.
And then I thought: What if I imagine a state of being in which there is no more God to pray to, no perfect being, no one to extricate us, no one to save us, no one out there.
Still, said I, I refuse to surrender to injustice. It is conceivable that I am the only being in creation that still stands for justice, not because I'm commanded to, not because I'll receive a reward if I do and a punishment if I don't - but because that is what I genuinely stand for. That is my value system. That is what really matters to me. At that point I realized that weak, fallible, ephemeral as I am - that would make me God.
There is no one out there to pray to. Every prayer I have offered to God to save the world has gone unanswered. I have to redefine prayer, because I still experience the need to pray. Prayer, in this case, can only be the calling forth of strength from my own depths. I am all alone. I am my only hope. I am God, if not almighty. The experience I've had of God all my life has not come from without, but from within.
My conception of God as Omnipotent has been the conceptualization of a moral/spiritual infant.
I have been left all alone, to my own moral/spiritual devices and I will either find my own salvation within myself, or not at all. No one is coming to my, or anyone else's, rescue. There is no transcendent God. There is only Immanent God.
Part 2
I've been reflecting on this experience hard.
At the time that I wrote it I felt it was overstated, but wasn't able to express the experience correctly. I entitled this Religious Atheism, but even at the time I understood that is only a very rough approximation of what I meant. I just didn't find the words for my experience and I do not now.
It is not that there is no God Transcendent. God most certainly can, and does, exist in purely transcendent form. And It interacts with us as such *so long as we need it*.
It can be alikened to a gene that switches off when it has carried out its function and is no longer needed. It's there, but inoperative - for that particular individual, although the gene certainly exists and is operative for other individuals of the species.
When we reach the highest rung we can at the level of understanding God as Savior; It takes us to the next level - the level at which we we are no longer dependent supplicants, but rather must find and cultivate God "within".
Never have I felt so small, so feeble. Never have I felt so ill-equipped for the task. It has been decades since my heart was so obdurate, so unwilling to stir. I used to experience that when I first tried to arouse myself to prayer to God Transcendent. Now, more sluggish still; my heart won't respond when I try to summon it to compassion. Learning prayer as arousal of God Immanent will be harder, much harder than was learning to pray to God Transcendent, Who is easily aroused to mercy because It is not limited by a body. Praying to my inner core to be aroused to mercy at will is orders of magnitude more difficult. The lowest rung at this level is far higher and vastly more demanding than the highest level of understanding God as Transcendent Savior, as Rescuer.
It is precisely because I am not filled with megalomaniacal "I AM GOD!", but rather with a feeling of being so very small and weak, even more lost and cognizant of how much danger I am in that I know that this is real. I remember feeling this way decades ago when God Transcendent first revealed Itself to me. But it is harder now, much much harder.
I asked Dan if the thought that what I'm saying would be considered heretical or antithetical to Judaism. I know I went past the pale of most Jews, Judaism being infiltrated and compromised at it is today. I wanted to know if there is an understanding like this in Judaism.
Dan said: That is the original Judaism and a flood of passages and teachings that I didn't formerly understand the meanings of passed through my mind. I knew he was right.
I suppose that most people who come to this understanding would become a Buddhist or an atheist. That would certainly be the easy and comfortable path. It's always easy to join an established way of thinking and have people endorsing you and identifying with you.
But I find myself going in a direction that no organized thought system that I know of comprehends. There are certainly elements of what I'm coming to understand in other religions and in atheism, but those elements aren't satisfactorily understood and developed, at least not for me.
And so, I go it alone, again, unguided into the uncharted.
Once, when I was young, I asked: How did You become God?
It answered: This is the story of your life.
D2
Part 1
I've been experiencing profoundly disorienting confusion. I find I don't know how to think about anything anymore.
It began with someone on the net who said: "Don't you understand? Satan won."
I thought about it and said: Let's assume that that's true. I refuse to surrender. I refuse to give in. I still stand for justice.
And then I thought: What if I imagine a state of being in which there is no more God to pray to, no perfect being, no one to extricate us, no one to save us, no one out there.
Still, said I, I refuse to surrender to injustice. It is conceivable that I am the only being in creation that still stands for justice, not because I'm commanded to, not because I'll receive a reward if I do and a punishment if I don't - but because that is what I genuinely stand for. That is my value system. That is what really matters to me. At that point I realized that weak, fallible, ephemeral as I am - that would make me God.
There is no one out there to pray to. Every prayer I have offered to God to save the world has gone unanswered. I have to redefine prayer, because I still experience the need to pray. Prayer, in this case, can only be the calling forth of strength from my own depths. I am all alone. I am my only hope. I am God, if not almighty. The experience I've had of God all my life has not come from without, but from within.
My conception of God as Omnipotent has been the conceptualization of a moral/spiritual infant.
I have been left all alone, to my own moral/spiritual devices and I will either find my own salvation within myself, or not at all. No one is coming to my, or anyone else's, rescue. There is no transcendent God. There is only Immanent God.
Part 2
I've been reflecting on this experience hard.
At the time that I wrote it I felt it was overstated, but wasn't able to express the experience correctly. I entitled this Religious Atheism, but even at the time I understood that is only a very rough approximation of what I meant. I just didn't find the words for my experience and I do not now.
It is not that there is no God Transcendent. God most certainly can, and does, exist in purely transcendent form. And It interacts with us as such *so long as we need it*.
It can be alikened to a gene that switches off when it has carried out its function and is no longer needed. It's there, but inoperative - for that particular individual, although the gene certainly exists and is operative for other individuals of the species.
When we reach the highest rung we can at the level of understanding God as Savior; It takes us to the next level - the level at which we we are no longer dependent supplicants, but rather must find and cultivate God "within".
Never have I felt so small, so feeble. Never have I felt so ill-equipped for the task. It has been decades since my heart was so obdurate, so unwilling to stir. I used to experience that when I first tried to arouse myself to prayer to God Transcendent. Now, more sluggish still; my heart won't respond when I try to summon it to compassion. Learning prayer as arousal of God Immanent will be harder, much harder than was learning to pray to God Transcendent, Who is easily aroused to mercy because It is not limited by a body. Praying to my inner core to be aroused to mercy at will is orders of magnitude more difficult. The lowest rung at this level is far higher and vastly more demanding than the highest level of understanding God as Transcendent Savior, as Rescuer.
It is precisely because I am not filled with megalomaniacal "I AM GOD!", but rather with a feeling of being so very small and weak, even more lost and cognizant of how much danger I am in that I know that this is real. I remember feeling this way decades ago when God Transcendent first revealed Itself to me. But it is harder now, much much harder.
I asked Dan if the thought that what I'm saying would be considered heretical or antithetical to Judaism. I know I went past the pale of most Jews, Judaism being infiltrated and compromised at it is today. I wanted to know if there is an understanding like this in Judaism.
Dan said: That is the original Judaism and a flood of passages and teachings that I didn't formerly understand the meanings of passed through my mind. I knew he was right.
I suppose that most people who come to this understanding would become a Buddhist or an atheist. That would certainly be the easy and comfortable path. It's always easy to join an established way of thinking and have people endorsing you and identifying with you.
But I find myself going in a direction that no organized thought system that I know of comprehends. There are certainly elements of what I'm coming to understand in other religions and in atheism, but those elements aren't satisfactorily understood and developed, at least not for me.
And so, I go it alone, again, unguided into the uncharted.
Once, when I was young, I asked: How did You become God?
It answered: This is the story of your life.
D2
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