Please everyone forgive me...!

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KaliMa,

Thank you. With an avatar as sweet as that, I could never hurt you!

Raven,

I'm the AWA Director for Israel, and I'll be happy and honored to be of service to you and your group with anything I can. Since touring Israel is my special interest, you guys can count on me to give you tips or accompany you somewhere. This is my webpage, with my business contact details: LINK

Do I understand this correctly?

You can be rude or hurtful to as many people as you want and it’s all ok if you make a blanket apology to all people you may have hurt or offended at the end of the year? Then you are allowed to do it all over again and you will be forgiven again as long as you remember to make another blanket apology?

I’m so glad I follow my heart instead of a rule book manipulated by men for reasons varying from attracting more followers, punishing people that don’t think the same way they do, or forgiving themselves of actions they knew were wrong when they did them.

You have not been offensive to me.

I might suggest that it's best to also forgive those who hurt you first. This is because they may not have meant to hurt you first leading to some kind of blow-up. Also, if they hurt first and you hurt back and don't feel bad about it, it is something of an eye-for-an-eye mentality (which leaves everybody blind). Feeling bad about hurting others is okay. Even if you did it in a retaliatory fashion. It is a good thing to forgive and to want to forgive.

Contrary to a prior poster, forgiveness is certainly not some "deity-exclusive" ability. But even if you believe it to be deity-exclusive, I would then put to you that you are the Goddess of Wisdom and are therefore capable

Not a-get-out-of-offense free card topic

The purpose of the confessing and apology is to make make amends. Many religions have this function, including Catholicism and certain Protestant sects. Only heinous crimes are exempt from this.

We all make mistakes and hurt people, intentionally or not. Greentea is asking for forgiveness from those and will forgive the unintentional stuff. We are all blunt and go a little too forward at times. I know I have. If you will not accept an apology from her, then so be it.

I did not mean to speak for you, GT, but I thought I would explain your custom as I have studied your religion and find it one of the more rational ones. And for people to invoke politics is not the aim of this thread. Take your flamin' politics to PPR, and I will come also, and we can debate there.

You owe me an apology, remind me in 12 months, because you didn't send the private message you promised

What impresses me, Greentea, is not the apology so much as the exceedingly clever way you delivered it.

It occurs to me that the internet is a boon to Jews at the time of Yom Kippur. In the old days a Jew would need to trot around and apologize to each offended person. For some of us this would be quite an endeavor. Now, with the internet, one would only need to collect the email addresses of everyone encountered over the course of a year and then send out one blanket apology. And voila!, mission accomplished.

If you could patent your concept, I think you could make a pile of dough .

You are forgiven.

Sorry. I wasn’t trying to be political. I asked questions because this topic struck me as a little odd. I also wasn’t trying to deny GT acceptance of her apology. She’s never done anything to me to apologize for.

Sorry if my questions were offensive GT. /ehug

Yes, from the communication I had with her previously, she is from Israel.

It seems like she avoids disclosing she is Jewish, which is why she put "middle east" as a place of origin, and that is also why she didn't say that "day of attonment" is a Jewish holiday, thus leaving everyone confused. In fact, in response to a religion comment, she claimed that she doesn't participate in "religionS", thus trying to mislead ppl that this is a holiday shared by several religions, as opposed to what it is: a distinctly Jewish holiday.

I am not going to hide my identity and tell you right off who I am. Genetically, I am 100% Jewish, while faith-wise I became Messianic, meaning that I observe Jewish traditions (including kashroot, passover, yum kippur, etc) while maintaining faith in Jesus. Even though I keep all the Jewish stuff, I feel more comfortable consider my belief Christian rather than Jewish, although I keep my new faith away from my Jewish family. So, for that reason, I attended regular, non-Messianic yum kippur with the rabbi my mother found me in India.

Anyway, based on what I have experienced yesterday when I tried to get to the closing prayer for the day of attonment at 6 PM, I must tell you that a paranoia about antisemitism is still prevelent among the Jews. The rabbi that my mom found me have emailed me the adress of his synagoge. But I can only access the email while on-campus, since my email is on a "local" website (whatever that means). I happened to be far away from campus, so I googled his place instead, and printed out a map. I then showed the map I printed out to a rickshaw driver. The rickshaw kept trying to take me to a completely opposite side of town, and it took a lot of arguing with him, mostly consisting of my repeating "I KNOW where I go, I HAVE BEEN THERE" to perswade him to go in the direction I KNEW he should go, which made it even more difficult due to the fact that most of the Indian rickshaw drivers don't even speak English.

Anyway, I came there, it was 7:20, not 6. The prayer was still going on, but it went may be for another 5-10 minutes and then we ate (they are supposed to fast on day of attonment and once its over they eat to afficially close the fast). So it totally put me in embarassing situation since it made it look like I weren't interested in a prayer and just came there to eat! I did find few apportunities to tell 2 or 3 ppl what happened, but, as you can see, I can't just go around and say it to EVERYONE, so I am sure most of them still tihnk I just came to eat!

Anyway, when I approached rabbi about it, and I asked him "was it the right adress", he said "thanks god not the right adress". He didn't even say that it was due to antisemitism, I was supposed to guess that. Nor did he apologise AT ALL for the fact that he made me miss the event. I then actually told him outright "if you had the right adress I would have been here at 6". He still repeated "thanks god not the right adress". Again, no appologies! I then tried to point out to him that in USA they all have right adresses and nothing happens to them. I asked him whether he thinks there is more antisemitism in India than USA. No direct answer. I then told him "look, in USA there is KKK, there are Aryan Nations, all of them are antisemitic, how come they all have the right adresses?" His answer "they are not violent". I then said "oh yes they are, they are known for violence". No direct answer.

Now also think about it: whatever "wrong" adress he provided, some people must be living there. So, if he is so afraid that someone would come and terrorize him for being Jewish, how come he has no concern over these other people being terrorized? Well, probably because they are non-Jews, so of course an ultra-orthodox Hassidic rabbi won't care about their well being!

I think most of the modern anti-semitism has nothing to do with direct violence, or any negative attitude towards Jewish INDIVIDUALS. In my experience, whenever I tell someone that I am Jewish, the worst I get is they just remember it just like they remember my name, and the best I get is "we LOVE Jewish people". No one ever disliked me for being Jewish. So the Jews are the ones who don't seem to want to move forward from their past, and this is ultimately what fuels anti-semitism. I mean, would YOU like to be friends with someone who holds some grudges against you because of what your ancestors done to theirs?

Now, yes I agree there IS antisemitism today, and yes it is directed against Jews; just not the one you are the most concerned about. The antisemitism that exists today is when people IGNORE anything Jewish. Like for example, in Israeli-Palestinian conflict they IGNORE the fact that Palestinians are the ones who start the terroristic attacks, and what Israel does is merely a RESPOSE to their agression. No one ever says that Jews killed Jesus or anything like that. Whatever they say Jews did, they indeed did; but the problem is that they IGNORE part of the picture, namely that they did it in response to something else.

Do you know that a lot of Jews could have been saved during World War 2 if the other countries were to simply let them immigrate? But these countries IGNORED Hitler, in much the same way as todays world IGNORES palestinians, which is why they didn't save them. There were even proposals to bomb the railways that lead to concentration camps. But "somehow" there were "some reasons" planes couldn't "exactly" get to the right location, even though they were all around this location for reasons OTHER THAN bombing the railways!

So what it seems like is that the "natural" stance of ppl to "ignore" the Jews. During WW2 they successfully ignored them. But, when Palestinians terrorize them, the "ignoring" didn't work, since the Jews started to fight for themselves. But they still managed to "ignore" it: they ignored everything that Palestinians did, which is why they see actions of Israel as an agression!

Now, why am I bringing it up? Because the way Jews avoiding antisemitism is similar to the way antisemites ignore the jews, so it makes no sense why are they doing to others exactly what hurts them? For instance, Greentee avoided calling her country Israel rather than middle east, much like antisemites avoid defending Jews as opposed to "minorities" in general (and then the examples of minorities are arabs and never jews). Don't you see how similar that is?

Let me give you another example, how my Jewish mother disapproved my dating a non-Jewish girl, Jennifer, who is now my ex. Basically what happened is this:

1) She was "surprised" I wanted to go to North Carolina with Jennifer (i.e. she IGNORED any reasons why we should go, it was unimportant; this is similar to Europe treating Jews as unimportant)

2) I was upset about her regarding Jennifer as unimportant, so I attacked Jennifer myself in order for her to defend Jennifer against my attacks

3) She ignored all my attacks and failed to side with Jennifer

4) I then presented evidence of Jennifer attacking me back, to validate the fact that my attacks of her are real and not fake

5) My mom insisted on ignoring my attacks on Jennifer, and viewed her counter-attack as her being an "agressor"

6) My mom continued to ignore the fact that I ever attacked her

7) As a result of combination of 5 and 6, she decided I was naive that I fell in love with an agressor (never mind the fact that if she were to take 2-4 seriously she would never think I fell in love with her anyway)

8 ) My mom started her own compain against Jennifer that laster far longer than mine (my compain lasted only a couple of weeks while my mom's lasted the whole year) and her compaign was much more agressive than mine, she said the kinds of things I NEVER would have!

Now when I typed up what happened it turned out to be quite long, so may be I should refer you to another post to read it: http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp2404786.html#2404786

But for the purposes of this post, in 1-4 I was Hitler, my mom was Europe and Jennifer was a Jew. In 5-8, I was Palestinian, my mom was, again, Europe, and Jennifer, again, was a Jew. So during holocaust Europe neither sided with Jews nor opposed them, it ignored them. That is how my mom treated Jennifer, despite my obvious attacks on her. Then, in 5-8, Jennifer defended herself, just like Jews defend themselves against Palestinians. But, since Europe INSISTS on denying the agression against Jews (just like my mom insists on denying the agression against Jennifer), Europe goes out of her way to ATTACK Jews for their "defense" against "non-existent" agression, just like my mom goes out of her way to ATTACK Jennifer against her defense of "non-existant" neglect/mistreatment from my side.

Now the interesting thing is that my mom was the one who was Jewish, Jennifer was NOT. So Jews do to others exactly what is being done to them.

I actually do get it. She is referring to Yom Kippur, and I know enough about the holiday to be able to comment on it.

It's not that I have a problem with the concept of an annual day of atonement. I think it's more the way she presented it. It came off like this to me: "I hope I didn't offend you and I'm sorry if I did... unless, of course, I meant to offend you, in which case I'm not sorry at all. And if I said something blunt that offended you, I'm not sorry, either. That's just the way I am." So, in reality, she's not really that sorry. Maybe just a little bit.

im not in charge of the group so i cant arrange any meeting but i would love to keep in touch to know how awareness of autism is over there. for example how do people react towards seeing people with disabilities. how much public awareness of autism is there. does the average person know what it is? ectcera

The average person will know it means that you don't understand them as easily as someone else does, and they will be respectful and a bit more patient. But only if you say you're Autistic. If you don't, they'll treat you like s**t for not conforming.

Awareness is just now starting for Asperger's. It's a hot subject these days. There are very few organizations and persons dealing with it and trying to help Aspies, and the stereotyping, misinformation and lack of knowledge is rampant among the so-called specialists in gov't positions such as municipalities and Social Services Ministry dependencies. However, there's a thirst for knowledge and to listen to Aspies to learn from them.

So overall I'm very pleased.

I read it more as "I hope I didn't offend you and I'm sorry if I did, unless I did it deliberately in response to something you said. And if I said something blunt but, within reason, true that offended you, I'm not sorry either." I made the assumption, on no particular basis, that she wouldn't deliberately be saying something blunt but untrue, because that wouldn't be a sensible thing to do.

I'm not sure I agree with the sentiment, or with the idea of asking for forgiveness on a recurring yearly basis! -but I got caught up wondering whether the Supreme Lord and Creator of the many billions of light-years of Universe keeps Earth time or not. I guess that's the "terrible sharpness" of God taking an interest in this little place.

Yom Kippur (The Day of Atonement) atones for sins between man and God, but not for sins between man and man. You have to ask forgivness from the person first and only then will you get atonement for those sins.

Allways forgiven as long as you keep saying nice things to people in general.

Silvervarg, I appreciate kindness, sweetness and wisdom when I come across them.