THOUGHTS Dietz Ziechmann February 24, 2026

Re: “Uzoh”. I consider this passage TREIF. A few years ago, I shared a platform with Rabbi David Horowitz of the Fairlawn Temple Emanuel Someone from the audience asked him, “what do you consider ‘sacred’?” His answer, “what people invest sacredness in.” Sacred objects vary greatly: a building, a scroll, an idea, whatever. Objects can be made sacred, and lose or have their sacredness removed. A building can be consecrated, as often happens. It’s a matter of psychological and sometimes ritual investment.

Torah scrolls and larger objects such as synagogue buildings were desecrated by Communists and Nazis during their terms of power. The Jerusalem Temple got desecrated and even destroyed by the Romans. The Pharisees switched their focus of attention to a powerful new instrument of attention and devotion, the synagogue, and endured. The inveterate and inflexible Sadducees suffered a terminal shock and disappeared as a group: fortunately they did not take Judaism along with them, as Rabbi Leo Trepp points out (The Experience of Jewish History: Eternal Faith, Eternal People, various editions, NY: Behrman House, 1962, 1973, 2001). If people consider desecrated objects too inflexibly, they can unnecessary lasting psychological harm.

Reb Zalman once warned wrote in an article in Tikkun Magazine against making an idol of Judaism; what holds for the whole, also goes for the parts. The zapping scene is pure and harmful TREIF as far as I am concerned! Has ELOHIM never sued in celestial courts for character defamation? It must be true what they say, “He is slow to anger”,

Following the loss of the First Temple in Jerusalem, Jews gathered in meeting houses in Babylon.
“Those who joined together in common search God became a ‘synagogue,’ a gathering. It [its metaphysical dimension] was not a building and could not be destroyed.”
“The meeting places themselves followed the structural divisions in the Temple of Jerusalem. They had been three divisions in the Temple of old; the courts where the people assembled, the sanctuary where the priests performed their holy service, and the holy of holies behind the curtain, where the Ark which held the Tablets of the Ten Commandments rested.” (Trepp, op. cit., 2rd edition, p. 26) The tripartite Synagogue structure is not cited in the 3rd Edition, perhaps because synagogue structures became greatly varied after Babylon.)

A very interesting book: God’s Ghostwriters: Enslaved Christians and the Making of the Bible (Little, Brown and Company, 2024) by Candida Moss, Ph.D., Yale University, in Theology, undergraduate degree, University of Oxford, Chair of Theology, University of Birmingham, England. (see Wikipedia, for degrees and honors). Moss presents that slaves and low status copyists and public and private performance readers (Lectors) are responsible for frequent insertions and much of the discrepancies between the hand-copied editions of the Bibles in existence before the invention and proliferation of the printing press. She kindly and empathically traces the dimensions and trying conditions under which they worked and the subtle and not-so-subtle impact of their social and psychical environments in which they shaped the transmissions of the texts An amazing and meticulous achievement. The “New Testament” is the focus of her book, but some references are also made to torah preparation. This book is a blow to those who think the Bible in its many versions was simple dictated by God.

Another very interesting book: The First Coming: How the Kingdom of God [A Philosophical and Social Construct] Became Christianity [A Religion of the Supernatural} by Thomas Sheehan, Ph.D,. First published Sept. 17, 1986 by Random House: NY, since published by various other entities. Sheehan, headed the Philosophy Department of Loyola University, Chicago, (a Jesuit institution) and has since also affiliated with Stanford University. Sheehan examines the historical record and separates the actual words of Yeshua bar Miriam who apparently saw himself as a prophet (nabi, spokesman for God), not as God or even a messiah, but stood for what he considered social justice based upon the standards of the Pharisees ) Amazing insights, and he apparently still has tenure.

Has Enlightenment come to the world? Dietz Ziechmann, Feb. 25, 2026.

Who Is Dietz Ziechmann