An Invitation to Hashem Echad: The Gospel Of Inanna

[LaMar]

Hi HashemEchad,

Thanks for clarifying. I have a couple of specific questions for you, and then I’m going to counter-missionary you. Hope you enjoy it…

I need to correct some things you said, that misrepresented my view.

Judaism does not believe in trying to convert nonJews to Judaism, so you and your family would be “safe”. In fact, when a nonJew approaches a traditional Jewish rabbi for conversion, he is required by Jewish Law to turn them away 3 times, to test their sincerity. We want to be sure someone is very sincere, because traditional Judaism is not an easy religion to follow.

Without getting into too much detail, my spouse’s family made a partial conversion to Mormonism (which is how she got brought into my tribe) when she was young. It included her but not her elder brother, who has recently become very religious (he calls himself “orthodox” now, though he doesn’t sound quite as fired up as you do in your articles).

Mixed families and mamsers are a problem in my tradition too. One day, when my eldest daughter was about 5 or 6 (she was in kindergarten), she came out of sunday school upset about the fact that her Hebrew cousins “might not be with us in heaven”. The chuckleheaded Mormon lackwit who was assigned to teach her class actually made her cry.

See, that was a wakeup call for me. Before night fell, we were both laughing about how ridiculous all this nonsense was, and she has never taken any of this afterlife crapola seriously again. Over the course of several years she spread the realism to the younger people in the family. So, you (or anyone else here) is welcome to try to indoctrinate my kids into whatever mythology you like. I’ve taught them to sit quietly in the presence of a grownup and pay attention, and they’ll hear you out, but they’ll never believe it.

Much of your theory is based on the fact that Jews should remain Jews. In the United States we have historically lacked a lot of the institutionalized anti-Semitism which kept us separated. Again, Mormons are big on genealogy, and my experience is that if you take the average American WASP and deconstruct his history you’ve got about a 50 percent chance to find a couple of Jews in there, and an even greater chance to find a Roman Catholic or two.

When you work as a missionary, where do you draw the line? Is it people who were born Jews that should be reverted? Is it their children or grandchildren? Are you a fan of the matrilineal theory, and only try to convert those whose mother or maternal grandmother was born Jewish?

I mean, why stop at Judaism or Christianity? Why not go further, and say that worshipping Inanna is the birthright of city-dwellers everywhere? She inaugurated the first civilization. She was doing great things before Jesus or Moses had been dreamt up. Maybe we should both start a Sumerian Temple and spread the good news…

I never said CONVERSOS are “flawed”. “Converso” was a term used for Spanish Jews who were FORCED to become Catholics during the Spanish Inquisition, but who remained Jews in secret (they converted only to save their lives, iow.) They were also known as “Marranos” (a derogatory term used by the Spanish), or more properly called “anusim” (Hebrew for “those who were forced to convert”.)

My mother descends from conversos on one side of her family (I did not find this out until the 1980s when I became interested in genealogy), so that gave me incentive to learn their history more fully.

I descend from Spanish conversos too, through my paternal grandmother. I was actually dumb enough to ask her about this when I was a teenager and she got really upset and started crying. (Jews weren’t popular with her generation, and for Mormons it’s not so easy to hide your ancestry). But you know, we ultimately descend from lots of folks. When you do genealogy you realize just how meaningless it all is. A few generations past my grandparents, and I’ve got thousands of Amsterdamers being spit out of the computer. Saints, sinners, con-men, crooks, conversos, Jews, Catholics, Marranos, Muslims, and every other variety of person who ever wandered around Europe for the last ten thousand years.

With that in mind, I hope you’ll someday consider leaving this nonsense behind, and working (it’s a sin not to work – even on the sabbath) for the betterment of humankind. I’d bet that in your town there are hungry children, people without medical care, immigrants being exploited, and hundreds of other real problems that need solving. The people suffering are of all religions and no religion. And the people causing the problem? Do you think they’re united by anything more than money?

Once these issues are eradicated, then we’ll have the luxury of fighting over who has the cooler imaginary friend, and the most interesting mythology. Until then, it’s just another distraction which is dividing, subjugating, and keeping us all down.

 

[Kaninchen]

Why not go further, and say that worshipping Inanna is the birthright of city-dwellers everywhere? She inaugurated the first civilization. She was doing great things before Jesus or Moses had been dreamt up. Maybe we should both start a Sumerian Temple and spread the good news…

I don’t know about Hashem Echad but I’ve got my copy of Wolkstein & Kramer’s “Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer”.

Interesting intellectual archeology.

 

[LaMar]

I don’t know about Hashem Echad but I’ve got my copy of Wolkstein & Kramer’s “Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer”.

Interesting intellectual archeology.

Thanks for that suggestion. Looks like a great book.