{"id":450,"date":"2011-10-04T21:47:00","date_gmt":"2011-10-04T21:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2011\/10\/angels-among-us.html"},"modified":"2011-10-04T21:47:00","modified_gmt":"2011-10-04T21:47:00","slug":"angels-among-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2011\/10\/angels-among-us.html","title":{"rendered":"Angels Among Us"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Once upon a time, in the nineteenth century when Reform Judaism was on the road to rational thinking, the editors of its prayer books took a big red pen to the \u201cangelology.\u201d\u00a0 This was their term for the sections in the traditional siddur (prayer book) that talked about the angels.\u00a0 It\u2019s big in the K\u2019dushah prayer (\u201cHoly, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts\u2026\u201d) for example.<\/p>\n

Well that rational trend was reversed in the 1970s with the release of Gates of Prayer<\/i><\/a>.\u00a0 Its just published replacement, Mishkan T\u2019filah<\/i><\/a>, <\/i>also sports angel imagery.<\/p>\n

Now consider the effect such nonsense is having on the lay people.<\/p>\n

In the most recent issue of Reform Judaism<\/i>, there is an article by a lay person entitled \u201cEncounters of the Angelic Kind.\u201d\u00a0 He learned from a student rabbi about a character in the Joseph story who is taken by interpreters to be an angel.\u00a0 This led him to all kinds of wildly supernatural connections about his own life and how he had been led by a [sic] melakh elohim<\/i> (angel of God).\u00a0 Every little coincidence or decision is described by him to be a signal of the presence of these \u201cmessengers.\u201d\u00a0 As he writes:<\/p>\n

So, the next time you are thinking about the twists and turns your life has taken, why not stop for a moment to consider the melakh elohim<\/i> in your life.\u00a0 The answer may surprise.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is just silly magical thinking.\u00a0 It\u2019s demonstrative of how people are unable or unwilling to accept a natural world devoid of presences or ghosts or angels.\u00a0 There are perfectly good psychological reasons to feel these presences, but that doesn\u2019t make them real.<\/p>\n

The fact that such silliness takes up a whole page in their namesake magazine just shows how intellectually bankrupt Reform Judaism has become.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once upon a time, in the nineteenth century when Reform Judaism was on the road to rational thinking, the editors of its prayer books took a big red pen to the \u201cangelology.\u201d\u00a0 This was their term for the sections in the traditional siddur (prayer book) that talked about the angels.\u00a0 It\u2019s big in the K\u2019dushah […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[4,24,25],"class_list":["post-450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogentries","tag-american-jews","tag-liberal-judaism","tag-liberal-religions-and-theologies"],"yoast_head":"\nAngels Among Us<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Once upon a time, in the nineteenth century when Reform Judaism was on the road to rational thinking, the editors of its prayer books took a big red pen\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2011\/10\/angels-among-us.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Angels Among Us\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Once upon a time, in the nineteenth century when Reform Judaism was on the road to rational thinking, the editors of its prayer books took a big red pen\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theatheistrabbi\/2011\/10\/angels-among-us.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Atheist Rabbi\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-10-04T21:47:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jeffrey L. 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