Less extreme but equally damaging are those who have trained their guilt to be selective.
And then, there are those for whom guilt is distressing but not enough to move to action.
Finally there are those who, in the words of rabbi Elliot B. Gertel ”feel exaggerated guilt before God, have no time to think of Him, and less of an opportunity to understand themselves-their rights as human beings to failure and, above all, to repentance.”
Recognizing that without a sense of guilt one cannot be fully human, but that with inpardonable guilt one cannot function as an individual, Judaism has developed a healthy ”pedagogy of guilt.”
As the Talmud sums it up:
“A human being must always regard himself as though he were half guilty and half meritorious.”
Or as the TaNaKh through the mouth of Qohelet (Ecclesiastes) says:
For there is no human being on earth, who does what is best and does not err.
BY (Bayt Yehudi) is a project to bring judaism into today's world by thinking in terms and concepts that belong to the 21st century.
the current dominant form of judaism is ruled by the medieval thinking of rabbinism. the option open to jews wishing to transcend this medieval frame of mind presently lies outside judaism.
Political ideologies alien to jewish thought are thus considered judaism. forms of spirituality that are more at home in other religions, are called Jewish.
by is a think tank to redress this distortion and offer a Judaism that talks to today's world