VERSION|0.5.1|SUBJECT|The Big Chief Rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks, Baron Aldgate   |CONTENT|[b]Rating[/b] 3 out of 5 (Fairly platitudinous)

[url=http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap130322.html][img=images/2013/03/pic130322.jpg popup=false float=right][/url]There's a big Jewish festival coming up. Happy Passover everyone!

As big Jewish festivals go, this is the really BIG ONE! This is the defining event in Jewish history, even though it never happened. We tell stories and sing songs about how the Invisible Magic Friend slaughtered the children of our enemies (although this never happened) and gave us the Promised Land, unfortunately already occupied by people who would also have to be slaughtered (although this also never happened).

Religion is all about ritual. Don't listen to all those TFTD presenters that insist that ritual is superficial and much less important than getting to know the Invisible Magic Friend. They're wrong and I'm right.

Jews have survived over the generations by having children. I thoroughly recommend this to any civilisation that wants to survive, or indeed, any species for that matter. Then you can tell stories and sing songs with your children about being freed from slavery, although this never happened. You can eat the flat  bread and bitter herbs of the slaves, although this never happened. You can remind your children of the never ending battle for human dignity, because you can remember the enslavement of your people, even though you can't because it never happened.

Passover is all about children, unless you happen to be an Egyptian child, in which case you would probably get killed, but that's OK because it never happened.

I remember when I was a child, being told stories about things that never happened. Now I tell those stories to my children about things that never happened. In this way, stories about things that never happened are preserved across the generations. For 3,000 years now, we've been defining our identity by remembering things that never happened.

[url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p016q9f3]Listen/Read[/url]|CATEGORIES|79|IP-ADDRESS|94.168.119.214|DATE|1363939750|CREATEDBY|admin
