Right, both Judaism and Islam include the concept of the other in their cosmology, though that has been deemphasized in modern versions.

What I found interesting is that in Islam, if I remember correctly, the spirits could be saved or damned just like humanity, so we have the good and evil jinn of folklore.

Modern Catholicism officially has no stance on the existence of 'spirits' while most strands of Protestantism clearly argue that everything is either angelic or demonic, and most of the time, it is demonic.

From what I remember of the various golem myths, you don't just need to erase the whole name, but just a letter. Hebrew has so much emphasis on power of names, by erasing a single letter, it turns a word from life to death, or so similar concept.

And deborah, pre-Christians were always up the creek since they didn't have God to take care of them, so it is completely normal in early Christian view that they were helpless, especially considering their false gods.

For a very limited and stylized intro to the Kaballah, read the comic Promethea's Kaballah arc. The character goes through a quest through the ten realms of the Kaballah in a stylized dream like manner.

Thanks, Katie - it does read as a very beautiful and sad scene.

I am to my beloved... as my beloved is to me.

This is not an official part of the Jewish wedding ceremony. It is a line from the Song of Songs, which is pretty much the ultimate Hebrew love song (and is very beautiful, and reads just like music when pronounced out loud, and I love it a lot). It has another layer of meaning, not just the connection between a man and a woman, though, because the whole interpretation of the book of Song of Songs is that the woman there is the Jewish nation and the man, the beloved, it G*d, and the whole book is also the story about the connection between the people and their deity, and the best way to metaphor that relationship is through the love story of a man and a woman. That line is definitely one of the most prominant love expressions in Hebrew (in Hebrew it's "ani ledodi vedodi li").

the Aleph symbol

Aleph is just the first letter in the Hebrew alphabet. The explicit name of G*d contains different letters, if I understand what they man twhen they use the phrase "the explicit name of G*d", and I'm pretty sure I don't.

Oh, and just for the record - Arial is very much not a Jewish girl's name (yeah, I know, the little mermaid, but our current prime minister is named Ariel. Of course, his last name is Sharon, so this may not be the best example).

You know, I always thought Hebrew would be the great language for modern magic, not because of it's history, but because of it's numerology. Using words as numbers and equations, to verbally hack the operating system of the world...

It is a line from the Song of Songs, which is pretty much the ultimate Hebrew love song (and is very beautiful, and reads just like music when pronounced out loud, and I love it a lot).

Just an aside, because for various reasons I'm steering as clear of theology discussions as possible right now, but this is something the Old Testament has that the New Testament completely lacks: gorgeous erotic love poetry.

MAN, do I love the Song of Songs. So very beautiful.

We count the years in letters, not numbers, and also the days of the month.

Using words as numbers and equations, to verbally hack the operating system of the world...

Heh, I like that - say a sentence that's also an equation. You get the words and the numbers parts at the same time.

something the Old Testament has that the New Testament completely lacks: gorgeous erotic love poetry

Well, it's hardly being taught anywhere at all, because most teachers don't want to even begin to face the challenge of teaching that kind of poetry and imagery to students (we got plenty of stories from the torah skipped, too, for just those reasons). However, as far as I know, this is an influence from Christian approaches, because all the midrash and talmud have no problem at all dealing with this.

Completely unrelated: right after the movie "American Beauty" was out, in one of my Judaism classes we learned a story from the Talmud which uses for imagery of beauty very similar 'visual' aids that the movie did. Not anything to do with any plot or symbolism, just the imagery, but I was thrilled to find that two storytellers, two thousand years and completely different mediums apart, used similar images to describe their ideal of beauty.

I'm sure it surprises nobody here that that is one of the Bible sections I've read multiple times...wow, everyone has given me so much to think about, in terms of "The Fledgling' and in general.

'Bil, did you see Pi?

It was a killer, killer episode. I loved the bit where the Aryan disses Mulder for being Jewish, and of course, Mulder's character purely isn't. But he points out to the Aryan that Christ was a nice Jewish boy...

IIRC, though Mulder's religious background was never explicitly stated, DD often said he played him as if he was a secular Jew.

Scary, the things you retain even after an intentional mindwipe of an obsessive love of a show gone wrong.

OK, gotta go. It was great to visit this thread - wish I had more time to read around here!

Right. Pi touched on some of the same concepts, turning it into a code-hacking tool on the Torah, though the number of possible permutations that the Torah must have, is well, lots. The perfect ratio, the name of God, an infecting uncertainty equation and a virulent meme...

Yeah. Say the wrong casual sentence, that unwittedly matches some universal constant at the same time, and your world goes wild around you...