From: goldberg@techunix.technion.ac.il (Jacques Goldberg)
Subject: Re: Send a fax to the Almighty!!!
Organization: Technion, Israel Institute of Technology
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 09:12:02 GMT

ehrlich@bimacs.BITNET (Gideon Ehrlich) writes:

>In article <C18MJ7.9Jt.1@cs.cmu.edu> clamen+@CS.CMU.EDU writes:

>>I am having trouble chuckling and dismissing this story, for two
>>reason:[...]
>>
> To my best knowledge the origionator of that idiotic custom of puting
>the garbage beneeth the western wall stones is Rabin who hold the
>title of chief of staff during the six day war.
>When he arrived to the western wall he put there some written paper.
>Religious persons never put papers ther.[...]
 
  Being obviously older than Gideon (I am currently 57+), I have read about
this tradition before the Six Days war.
   While agreeing with Gideon on many issues, I deny Gideon, myself, and
absolutely everybody else, except He who answers these papers the way He wants
( having no body, He even is not an exception to "everybody", by the way) the
capability to know and therefore the right to say who is religious and who not.
   I know more than one person whom I guess Gideon would qualify "religious",
whose behavior confirm the theory of evolution that they descend from an ape,
and I know more than one distressed person (a broken heart, in Hebrew LEV
SHAVUR) who by the act of ostensibly placing themselves in HaShem's "hands"
through the insertion of those pieces of paper, may well be (I cannot say for
sure) more "religious" than some ape descendants.
   There is a very beautiful Israeli song that talks about humans equipped 
with a stone heart, and stones equipped with a human heart. Guess which stones
this is about. The daily prayer has a place for a person to think and eventuallyutter any individual prayer. Does Gideon rate as "non religious" a person who
uses this facility to pray for the health of a sick baby? If not, where is it
written in our Law that this prayer must be recited mentally or uttered only,
but not written?
   Thanks to HaShem, I am a physicist, not one of those archeologists who,
contrarily to their proclaimed belief that they descend from apes, clearly
descend from hippopotames (based on recent almost contiguous apppearances
of the two species under discussion on Israeli TV screens). But one day these
or such archeologists will no doubt want to write a paper on the contents of
these small messages. And many people will be surprised by the contents.
   I apologise for this verbosity, but I wish to add an hypothetical example
for the sole benefit of those readers who have not understood so far what I am
trying to say.
   There may well exist a very "religious" Jew somewhere, unfortunately bound
to some medical treatment making it impossible for him to get to the Kotel
with less than a flying and a field hospitals. What, can you tell me,
would be wrong if he would FAX a message to be placed in the Kotel with the
following contents: 
"Dear HaShem, on the coming day of Birkat Cohanim at the Kotel, please count 
this silly piece of paper as if one more Jew was there, as close as permitted to
your Temple, along with this crowd of your People."

   There is a very terse alternate to my long post. Don't judge a person who
places a piece of paper, even a FAX, in the Kotel, before you have read the
message and been exactly in the same situation. And remember that there is
a HEREM (interdiction) on reading mail not meant for you. And go hear the
beat of the heart of the stones of our Kotel, before letting the stone in
your heart measure the "religiosity" of your brother.
>  Shalom   Gideon
   Shalom   Yaaqov