"I have read the Quran cover to cover, been through it many times, and know it very well. "
Why? You know you shouldn't be reading all forms of Kefira.
I'm sure that your rabbi read the new testament before arguing with that christian.
BTW, I did explain some of the context e.g. that I did it LONG ago, and it was so I could answer muslims very well, at a time when they were all around me(that was long ago). The Quran is very small, and not difficult to read, and quite easy to remember.
It's not like reading the bible cover to cover which is a really big job! If the quran was longer or more difficult, I wouldn't have spent the time.
I certainly don't advocate reading about other peoples' religions. It's not a generally positive thing.
BTW, I was religious when I was reading that... but part of my point about me reading it long ago, is that you were probably not even barmitzva. Infact, long after that time you started partying.. and so on. Just reminding you ;-)
And I won't even mention muman in the context of discovering judaism rather late!
q_q_,
You should know that it doesnt matter what time you do your teshuva. Also you should be aware that some of our greatest sages came to their religion later in life. Our great sage Rabbi Akiva was unlearned in Torah till the age of 40...
Here is a piece written about Rabbi Akiva:
http://www.ou.org/chagim/elul/akiva.htmRabbi Akiva, Master of TeshuvahRabbi Akiva, as a young man, did not know a word of Torah. He worked as a shepherd for "Ben Kalba Savua," one of the richest men in Yerushalayim. One day, Rachel, the daughter of Ben Kalba Savua, looked at Akiva and was extremely impressed by his modesty and his gentleness with her father's flocks. She also noticed in him a tremendous potential for accomplishment in Torah, although his potential was at this point totally unrealized.
Rachel approached the Shepherd Akiva and suggested that they get married. When her father found out about this, he was very upset, because he had envisioned a Torah scholar as a husband for his daughter, rather than an ignorant shepherd. In his anger, he vowed to cut the young couple off financially, leaving them penniless.
One of Rachel's conditions for marrying Akiva was that he go to a Yeshiva to learn Torah. Even though he sincerely accepted the condition and married Rachel, he initially found it extremely difficult to fulfill it. In fact, while an ignorant shepherd, he had harbored a secret hatred towards Torah scholars
Once, while shepherding his flocks, he gazed into a pool, where he saw a hollowed-out rock resting under a waterfall. He wondered how the rock, one of Nature's hardest substances, had been hollowed out. When he was told that the water had, over a long period of time, made the drastic change in the rock, he reasoned as follows:
"If a rock, though extremely hard, can be hollowed out by water, how much more so should it be possible for Torah, which is compared to water, to change my heart, which is soft. I will begin to study it, and try to become a Torah scholar."
Akiva and his son, Yehoshua, went to the same teacher at first. Together they studied the Aleph-Bet, the Hebrew Alphabet. They went on at their own pace, Yehoshua at the pace of a bright child, Akiva analyzing the meaning of each new fact and idea that he learned, deeply and thoroughly. Rachel suggested that Akiva go to a Yeshiva and devote himself full-time, for twelve years, to the study of Torah. Having the permission and encouragement of his wife, Akiva went to study in the Yeshiva of the great Rabbi Eliezer ben Hirkonus.
Years passed. Akiva studied more and more material, in greater and greater depth, but remained silent in the class. When he proposed his first explanation of a difficult point at the Yeshiva, Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananya, a colleague of Rabbi Eliezer, immediately recognized the depth and profundity of Akiva's analysis.
As more years passed, Akiva received Semichah, Rabbinic Ordination, and became known as Rabbi Akiva. He opened his own Yeshiva, which began to attract many students. At the end of a dozen years, he returned to Jerusalem, to greet his wife, accompanied by twelve thousand students. As she heard their approach, Rachel came out and, out of great love for Rabbi Akiva, and honor for the Torah, she prostrated herself at his feet. When his students moved to push her away, he restrained them, saying, "All the Torah knowledge that I have, and all the Torah knowledge that you have, are the direct results of this woman's love of the Torah!"
Ben Kalba Savua, remorseful over how he had mistreated his daughter, went to Rabbi Akiva, whom he did not yet recognize, but of whom he knew only that he was a great Torah scholar, seeking an "opening" for his vow. (Briefly, an "opening" of a vow means that if the circumstances of the vow were such that if the maker of the vow had known about some fact, he would not have made the vow, that is its "opening.")
When his father-in-law came before him, Rabbi Akiva asked him whether he would have cut off his daughter if he had known that her husband would become a Torah scholar, Ben Kalba Savua answered, "Even for one chapter, one Mishnah, one verse, I would not have done it." Then Rabbi Akiva revealed his identity.
In his joy, Ben Kalba Savua turned over half of his fortune to his daughter and son-in-law. Rabbi Akiva was now able to fulfill a promise he had made to his wife, to give her a model of Jerusalem made of gold to wear in her hair.
Later, Rabbi Akiva heard Rachel say to her neighbors that she was so happy and proud of her husband's accomplishments that she would be happy to let him go away for another dozen years, to completely realize his potential. She discussed the matter with Rabbi Akiva, he determined that she would be happy with the arrangement, and he agreed to do as his wife wished. He did that, reached his full measure of greatness, went on to become one of the eternal heroes of the Jewish People, great in Torah, great in love of Hashem, great in "Emunah," "Belief," in the Almighty, and great in appreciation of and devotion to his wife. (Masechet K'tuvot: 62b-63a)
Sometimes, a person may do Teshuvah for the "wrong" reasons. But there is a principle in the Jewish Tradition, that if a person does a good deed, such as learning Torah, even for the "wrong" reason, he or she will eventually come to do it for the right reason.
Also you should know the famous statement in Berachot 34b which reads
"In the place where Baalei Teshuva stand utter Tzadikkim cannot stand". Here is more on this concept:
http://www.meaningfullife.com/torah/holidays/1b/Teshuvah.php#_edn15The tzaddik is one who has made the divine will the very substance of his existence. Everything that becomes part of his life—the food he eats, the clothes he wears, the ideas and experiences he garners from his surroundings—are elevated, their “sparks” divested of their mundanity and raised to their divine function. And he confines himself to the permissible elements of creation, never digressing from the boundaries that Torah sets for our involvement with and development of G-d’s world.
The baal teshuvah, on the other hand, is one who has digressed; one who has ventured beyond the realm of the permissible and has absorbed the irredeemable elements of creation into his life. His digression was a wholly negative thing;[16] but having occurred, it holds a unique potential: the potential for teshuvah, “return.”
Teshuvah is fueled by the utter dejection experienced by one who wakes to the realization that he has destroyed all that is beautiful and sacred in his life; by the pain of one who has cut himself off from his source of life and well-being; by the alienation felt by one who finds himself without cause or reason to live. Teshuvah is man’s amazing ability to translate these feelings of worthlessness, alienation and pain into the drive for rediscovery and renewal.
The baal teshuvah is a person lost in the desert whose thirst, amplified a thousandfold by the barrenness and aridity of his surroundings, drives him to seek water with an intensity that could never have been called forth by the most proficient welldigger; a person whose very abandonment of G-d drives him to seek Him with a passion the most saintly tzaddik cannot know. A soul who, having stretched the cord that binds it to its source to excruciating tautness, rebounds with a force that exceeds anything experienced by those who never leave the divine orbit.
In this way, the baal teshuvah accomplishes what the most perfect tzaddik cannot: he liberates those sparks of divinity imprisoned in the realm of the forbidden. In his soul, the very negativity of these elements, their very contrariness to the divine will, becomes a positive force, an intensifier of his bond with G-d and his drive to do good.[17]
So before you knock someone who has done an honest teshuva you should consider what you are saying...
muman613
Topic: BBC online article on judaism looks like it's written by a muslim. (Read 1684 times)