From Kaballah to Jesus

What a wild and fantastically interesting day today was. This morning's Kaballah class discussed feminine aspect of God (Shekinha)and the role of sex in the unification (it's a long Kaballah story) of God. Tonight's class on Jewish history focused on the time period of the essential Christian story - Jesus's birth , preaching, miracles, death and resurrection. He certainly crammed a lot into a short life. Incidentally the early Christian views on sex sure differed from the Kabbalists'. With the early Christians, if you wanted to be celibate that was ok - after all, wasn't Jesus going to return pretty soon anyway and then the whole world would change? Good thing for them that they figured out that would be a hard sell. In contrast, the Kabbalists saw the sexual union between married man and woman as an important part of achieving God's reunification and "sexual" union between his masculine and feminine aspects. (I'm sold - where do I sign up?)

When Jesus lived is the time period in human history I find utterly and completely fascinating. If there was a time machine and I had a "ticket to ride", I would unhesitatingly pick this time period. Can you think of another time period which had a greater influence. on the the course of history? And, in which so much was going on?

I also keep thinking about this question: How would the course of human history have changed if Constantine had decided he really couldn't buy the Jesus story and instead really liked the Jewish one? And, so he declares Judaism as the official state religion of the Roman Empire in 313 C.E. Now what?

What would be different? What would be better? What worse? Would we have persecuted Christians as they persecuted us? Or, would we be more tolerant and let them live in peace? Would there have been a different kind of religious holocaust? Is it human nature to prey upon the minority? Would the world be a more peaceful place? Would Christianity have survived as Judaism has survived against incredible odds?

Of course, we'll never know. But, I think it's fascinating to contemplate and speculate. Someone should write a book!