www.AskMoses.com
Yep, you got it, a jewish search engine, presumably modeled on www.AskJeeves.com . I have no problem with the Jewish faith or Jews in general but when I had a closer look at the website, it all started to appear very very wrong indeed.
Firstly I noticed that instead of writing the word'God' most of the website referred to G-d. Perhaps, i thought, I'm not as worldly wise as I believed and Jews have a different God to us Christians. A kind of abbreiviated God, with the kind of abbrieviation that doesn't actually make the word God any shorter. Why not just write 'Gd' then you're saving a whole character's worth of bandwidth for your website (Not that I'm suggesting Jews are tight or anything, maybe space is just at a premium). On further investigation I found an article here:
Why do many people write God with a dash ("G-d")?
explaining that defacing or erasing the word God is forbidden hence the abbreviation. This is presumably to stop any little God related accidents, like accidentally printing out the word God, then using the same piece of paper to test a pen or to doodle on whilst on the telephone - Forbidden! So presumably these accidents have happened in the past and using G-d is a new preventative measure to save having to store any piece of paper which mentions God in a secure holding facility, out of harms way. I feel however that even erasing or defacing G-d is still two thirds sacreligious because I immediately recognise that it's meant to represent God and therefore, to my mind, the evil deed has still been done. Instaed I think there should be special holding centres to take such God laden pieces of paper to, kind of like when you take your old fridge to the dump and they have to keep it forever so it doesn't destroy the ozone layer. Come to think of it, it's pretty much forbidden to dismantle or destroy a fridge too, so perhaps God and fridges have more in common than we all thought. Looking at the facts I already know about both God and fridges, both are definitely the strong silent type.
The whole God/G-d debate is only the tip of the Goldberg.... sorry Iceberg where AskMoses is concerned. There are a plethora of fascinating and informative articles hidden away. For example:
What does the Torah say about cross-dressing?
What is wrong with masturbation?
and my favourite:
Why is it forbidden to be intimate with a menstruating woman
to which my answer would have been "because it's a bit minging" but apparently it's G-d's way of not letting you get bored with her (oh and by the way according to the editor you should be in seperate beds to sleep for a week too).
Questions, questions, questions
I had a few unanswered questions I wanted to ask Moses, so I emailed him. This is what I wrote:
Hi Moses,
I was wondering if you could answer a question for me.
In Numbers 31:15-18 you called for the massacre of all young boys and any women, except as you know, virgin girls. Furthermore you bestowed upon the Egyptians 10 horrific plagues for the release of the Hebrew people. By modern standards, these plagues would have probably signalled the end of the world to most people, and the tabloid press would have had a field day I'm sure. What with all water turning to blood, plagues of frogs, flies, gnats and locusts, 3 days of darkness and the mass murder of all the first born of Egypt (even the animals). Obviously you know all that, because you perpetrated it all.
My question is, did you ever feel even a little bit guilty? Did you ever seek to question G-d about this apparent ethnic cleansing? And finally, with the enormous fire power and almost xenophobic will you had, how do you think it relates to the struggle between the modern Israelies and Palestinians?
Yours, in good faith, Mick
I'll post any reply I get in the future. If you have any questions you'd like to AskMoses (although I'm beginning to wonder if he's the right person to be handing out advice!) , email him here: mail@askmoses.com
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