A Tapestry of Gefilte Fish

In the aftermath of the Waco siege in 1993, when countless followers of David Koresh, the self-proclaimed Messiah, died in the inferno that blazed through their military compound, the Jewish community winced when it was discovered that ten or eleven of them were Jewish, some of them Israelis. Now look at the lists of the movers and shakers of the various alternative movements and cults of the '60s and the '70s - the hippies, yippies, 'Jesus people', 'Children of God', TM etc., etc. You'd think that you were looking at the class register at the Jewish Free School.

What is going on here? Haven't we Jews got our own religion - Judaism? Why the need to shop around? The answer is obvious. Jews, just like anyone else, but perhaps more so, have a spiritual yearning, a hunger that could never disappear until it was satisfied. The only way to do this is to fill the 'God-shaped' gap in the heart with the only thing, or person that could. And that person is God himself. So, all you need to do is find God.

This is an impossible task if we leave it to ourselves to do all the donkey work. We tend to get distracted into all kinds of diversions. We get sucked into this or that, or even invent a religion for ourselves, with a single disciple, or more if we're charismatic enough to draw in the gullible and the easily misled. But, believe me, the work has already been done for us. God himself has done the work, all we need to do is understand that fact and accept it. God has revealed himself to us, but most of us have been too distracted to notice.