A Noahide Chanukah Diary
“I printed up instructions for how to light the candles, where to place them. We celebrated with an awkward tension. How do we do this? We have no cultural references.”
Alice Jonsson
Alice Jonsson
Are we Really Shortchanged?
There are moments when lack of community and structure cause frustrations to build up. It's easy to feel angry and like someone is ripping them off…
The Magic Elves
It's not easy, especially for a Noahide, to find one's spiritual niche; But maybe Alice's imaginary dream community will someday become a reality...
Lust for Eating
The Evil Inclination has an incredible number of opportunities to trip us by using food: what we choose to eat, how much we choose to eat, how quickly we choose to eat…
Hashem or Free Will?
Free will on the one hand and Hashem’s involvement in every aspect of existence on the other - it can be tough to figure out where one ends and the other begins...
The Old Work Ethic
The American work ethic tells me us that anything is within reach if we’re willing to exert ourselves enough – spiritually, such world views take us to the wrong places...
Emuna 1 – Anger 0
Even really level-headed people sometimes morph from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde over a person in a car in front of them not seeing that the light has changed.
Concealment
Because God is concealed from us, we forget that He is the Source of everything and that He is involved in every aspect of our lives and in every aspect in creation, ongoing.
Revelation of Godliness
Trying to travel the fast lanes of modern living without spiritual awareness is like driving in the Indy 500 with your eyes closed – and that puts you in big danger of crashing.
God Willing
The use of the phrase “God willing” seems weird to me. Folks say, “God willing, I’ll be picking up my dry cleaning.” Does Hashem really care about their dry cleaning?
Forgiveness
Ten days of repentance (Rosh Hashanah through Yom Kippur) for Bnei Noach: We need to avoid putting ourselves into the role of the punisher during our own days of judgment…
The Chicken Lady
The Yetzer bombards Noahides and tells them that they’ll never succeed or never be accepted, neither by Jews or non-Jews. Why? Because they’re doing the right thing…