Some thoughts on weird "miracles"

[xiphias]

Let me just put it this way: when this happens to Muslims, "Hundreds of Muslims are converging on the mosque to see the vegetable."

When Christians spot this, well, that happened in 1996, and people are still showing up to pray at it.

But when a Jew gets this, he kills and sells the fish.

I just want to point out that the Jew got it right. Carp, and eggplants, are to be eaten. Office buildings are to be worked in. You can feel free to acknowlege the existence of the miraculous in talking carp, a name of G-d in an eggplant, and apparations of the Virgin Mary in water damage to the sun-reflective coating on windows, but that doesn't change the fact that they remain fish, vegetables, and real estate. From a theological point of view, the existence of fish, and eggplants, and humans who can invent and build reflective coatings on windows, is so miraculous in the first place that the addition of speech, or writing, or a picture of the Virgin Mary doesn't make it significantly MORE miraculous. The world exists, we are taught, because G-d, at every moment, believes in every particle of the Universe -- every quark is a manefestation of G-d's belief in it. If G-d, for one instant, did not believe in the universe, then it would cease to exist.

Measured against that, a fish is just a fish, even if it talks.

Comments

[cheshyre]

"a fish is just a fish, even if it talks"

 A fish is a fish,
     Delish-
     ous dish
 And no one can talk to a fish
     You wish!
 That is -- don't bitch -- unless the fish is the famous holy cod!

I'm truly sorry. I was inspired.

[kiya]

You know, this deserves a link posted to it from ravingtheosophy.

[oneironaut.livejournal.com]

Aw, you beat me to it.

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Amen!

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

Amen. I don't think that there is anything I can say other than that.

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

I hope you don't mind, I liked this so much I linked to it in my journal.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

I'm not with you, sorry. Things that talk are for talking to. Or, as Lewis Carroll put it, it's rude to eat anything you've been introduced to. Besides, we could use it to explore seabeds! It could be a low-tech alternative message service, very environmentally friendly! We could see if it breeds true, and then sell a race of supercarp as companion animals!

Okay, I don't believe in God. I can't comment on the relative miracles part. But dude! Talking fish! Tell me Seaworld can't outbid the Manechevitz Gefilte Cabal! [grin]

Mer

[goljerp]

As much as I'd like to think that Jews are more sensible than everyone else, I think that the problem was that the fish said the wrong thing, to the wrong audience.

If that fish were smarter, and said, "Hi! I'm Menachem Mendel Shneerson, the Lubovitcher Rebbe reincarnated, have you put on Tefillin today?", then I think that the story would've ended differently.

Of course, this assumes the audience was Lubovitch. Had the audience been Satmer, then a different outcome would've ensued altogether.

As it was, the guy was Skverr, which I haven't heard of before. (But then again I don't go out of my way to learn about chasidic groups.) My attempt to find out about the group led me to HasidicNews.com, which has a slightly different take on the story. Note that in their view, the important thing is that the fish is eaten by a pious (AKA Chasidic) Jew on Shabbat, thus enabling the reincarned soul to gain bonus points and get into the world to come.

(By the way, "skverr rebbe" isn't quite a google-whack, but it's probably as close as I'm going to get today.)