I was fortunate. Being a ships Engineer enabled me to travel and interact with various people, to learn of the thinking, for a person in becoming their own.
In the Middle East I visited countries where law created a failure of freedom. The people were controlled, limited by law in what they could think and become. This control or limit created failure in learning the freedom of thinking needed to learn. I also visited the only Middle Eastern country where thinking, learning, and law, created freedom, Israel.
The Israelites began their freedom of thinking, learning, and law, during their transition from bondage to freedom that began at Mt Sinai. A thinking of law limiting behavior without limiting freedom and the development of freedom. A thinking that developed adhering to the law, into the freedom of becoming their own.
My problem with the freedom of thinking began as a failure in learning of the self. Eventually, writing an interaction of thinking and learning of ideas and thoughts of the self, accompanied with learning an insight of my failure from professional help, began the thinking needed to resolve the problem I created. It was an experience of learning the thinking needed to become more.
Later, when talking of this experience with my cousin Ruth, she said, “Did you know our Great Grandmother was High German and Jewish?” The family had repressed our Jewish heritage because of a fear of antisemitism.
Throughout much of my life I have had Jewish friends. I decided to learn. I registered for a course on Jewish Law at a local Synagogue.
My involvement with Judaism, taking additional courses, the writing of my thoughts, attending holidays, and becoming friends with the Rabbi and the congregation, was an enjoyment of thinking and learning.
I also chose to live within the limits of law, of not committing murder, rape, stealing, lying, or coveting. This choosing became a learning of keeping my thoughts and actions within the limits of what is good and true, a learning that began the freedom of becoming my own, a freedom of self.
This freedom of self, affected thinking. I learned, a reason antisemitism began was because of a fear among those in power of the people learning the freedom of Judaism. Antisemitism then, began as a way to control association with, and of learning from the Jewish people of being free.
My experience in the freedom of religion began, from being raised in the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. The church came into existence during the American revolution, when we separated ourselves politically and religiously from England. The people then, and a reason for the revolution, were interested in becoming their own. When I was a child this church still existed. They didn't tell people what to do. They made suggestions, like adhering to law. This created a freedom of thinking, of being free.
©Ernest G. Jackson 2025 All Rights reserved. | 495 words.
Copyright © Ernest G. Jackson 2025 All Rights reserved - All Rights Reserved.
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