I wrote this novel to create a setting for my lone character. I wove in Sagan, aliens, AI, global politics and interstellar travel into an intriguing tale. It started at the end and worked towards a new beginning.
God’s Bolt: Amazon.co.uk: Forsythe, Ron: 9781092713597: Books
Here’s an extract:
Chapter 2
Carl Sagan – 1934 – 1996
I don’t know why I became a scientist. It could have been down to my parents. Yes, I think I’ll blame them.
I was born in Brooklyn in 1934. We were a poor Jewish family hustling a living like everybody else. My father had come in as an immigrant from what is now Ukraine and he was full of all that immigrant energy. He was a good man who worked hard and had a joy of life. He ran a garment factory. He wasn’t a religious man but he saw the wonder in everything and was bursting with benevolence. He did not know what science was but he encouraged me to be inquisitive and question everything. I think that was his greatest gift to me.
My mother was born in Brooklyn and was religious. Her life seemed to centre on the synagogue. She came from a very poor family and I think she’d seen too much of hard times. Life had dealt her hard blows and she was frustrated by it all. She had a mind on her but never had the chance to make anything of herself. She was held back by poverty, a lack of education, her gender and her faith. Back then Jewish girls were not expected to do anything other than bring up kids and look after the home and husband. But she doted on me. I think she put all her ambitions onto me. She was very analytical and taught me how to investigate and delve into the detail. That was her gift.
I suppose I married those two gifts together. It made me inquisitive and hungry to discover more. It made me look up in wonder and try to work out what it all meant.
From an early age I was always asking questions.
Brooklyn was a great place to grow up. It was a bustling hub of life. It wasn’t ideal for developing a career in science though. I guess I didn’t think about that too much when I was a child.
I’d play out in the streets with my friends but my Mum did rather cosset me. She spent hours encouraging me to think and do my school work. I was an extension of her dreams.
Sam, my Dad, would take me out with him to the garment factory and show me off to his friends. He was proud of me. My inquisitiveness bemused him but he loved it. He’d laugh at me and there was love in his eyes.
The streets back then were bustling with people. There were shops and street stalls selling everything you could think of and I like that bustle, weaving in and out of the crowds gripping on to Dad’s great paw of a hand. I’d look up and there, between the tall buildings, I could see the sky.
I was only five years old when I had my first epiphany. My parents took me to the World’s Fair. It nearly blew my eyes out of my head and sent my mind into overdrive. It was like I had woken up in a different world.
I was never quite the same.
The first thing that sent my mind whirling was an exhibition of the future. It was crazy – all super clean and modern with huge highways and families driving along in futuristic cars towards cities with gleaming skyscrapers. It looked a million miles from the bustling streets of Brooklyn with its dirty bricks, and all those street vendors with their wooden carts and litter. I wanted to see that world of the future. I wanted to be part of it.
I could imagine it. I could look into the future and see that incredible world that science was going to construct.
Then, with my head still reeling I was taken to the science exhibitions. They shone a light on this cell and it made noises. They made a noise with a tuning fork and it became a wavy line on this screen. I couldn’t believe it. I wanted to understand how light could become noise and how sound became light. I was thrilling with the excitement of it. My five year old brain was trying to make sense of all these wonders.
The most exciting thing of all was the Time Capsule. We went out to Flushing Meadows to see it being buried. It was a big container and they’d filled it with all these things from our age, everything that told a story about us, and buried it deep in the ground. It was like a snapshot of our world and it would sit there buried in the ground for hundreds of years. In my head I could imagine spacemen from some future world thousands of years in the future digging it up and finding out all about us.
The mitzva of observing Torah commandments לשמה within the borders of the oath sworn brit lands, the inheritance of the Chosen Cohen people.
[[[ Within the covenantal framework that you so powerfully defend, how do you see the role of individual conscience? Not as a competing system, but as a faculty formed by oath remembrance and living Torah? I[[[ Within the covenantal framework that you so powerfully defend, how do you see the role of individual conscience? Not as a competing system, but as a faculty formed by oath remembrance and living Torah? In a world saturated with propaganda and revisionism, what disciplines shape that conscience to remain true to Sinai? ]]]
The Books of שמות וויקרא concentrate on the avodat HaShem of dedicating korbanot. This “service” does not exist as offering up a barbeque unto Heaven. The mitzva of the פרט case of Moshiach learns from the כלל of korbanot services of the House of Aaron.
Another בנין אב-precedent, the כלל for faith: צדק צדק תרדוף. Still another פרט-בנין אב precedent: the court case of Hebrew slaves vs. the State of Par’o – beating slaves for their rebellion to meet their brick production quota consequent to Par’o withholding the required straw.
One other בנין אב-precedent learns from the כלל that all ברכות require שם ומלכות.
Just as a korban requires a dedication to achieve a specific specified purpose, so too the mitzva of Moshiach. Specifically in the mitzva case dedication of Moshiach, this dedicated “king” sanctified לשמה to rule the land with Judicial justice, working through the common law lateral Sanhedrin courtrooms. Based upon the Torah Constitutional mandate that the Sanhedrin courts operate through משנה תורה-Legislative Review of any and all statute laws or bureaucratic regulations imposed by the Monarchy and/or his government.
The often repeated rebuke which the Book of Shmuel makes upon the House of David as Moshiach, the injustice shown to the husband of Bat Sheva. This פרט-specific defines the כלל dedication of the mitzva dedication of Moshiach. No such dedication for the mitzva of Moshiach to become a substitute theology which has some mythical theologically based messiah to replace the chosen Cohen People.
The opening word of the Torah בראשית, through the aggadic stories of the Creation, teaches the k’vanna of tohor time-oriented commandments; as the Av of the תולדות secondary source positive and negative commandments located specifically in the Books of שמות ויקרא ובמדבר. Hence just as the Book of בראשית introduces the Avot Avraham Yitzak and Yaacov, this opening first Book of the Torah introduces Av tohor time-oriented commandments which the rest of the Books of the Torah come to clarify.
For example: what separates tohor spirits from tumah spirits? Avodat HaShem in the Mishkan, only served in the state of tohor middot. For a Cohen to serve within the Mishkan in a condition of tumah middot – this Av transgression carries the din of כרת. Cutting off that person and his children from the oath brit wherein HaShem and the Avot mutually swore to create the chosen Cohen people יש מאין. This latter בראשית most essential idea shares nothing with tuma middot which promote racial or genetic inheritance of the Jewish race – as the Xtian church and Nazis promote – examples of tumah middot.
Hence to swear a Torah oath requires שם ומלכות like as do all ברכות from the Torah. The sin of the Golden Calf – a substitute theology which replaces the revelation of the 1st Sinai commandment revelation of the Spirit Divine Presence Name unto other word-Gods. Avoda zara by definition worships other Word-gods. The sin of the Golden Calf serves as the defining פרט for the 2nd Sinai Commandment כלל not to worship other Gods.
Therefore all Torah oath britot require שם ומלכות. The Name clearly directly links to the Spirit Divine Presence Name revealed in the first Sinai commandment. The term מלך refers to the כלל mitzva of the dedication of the spirit of משיח as expressed through all tohor time oriented Av commandments … the righteous pursuit of justice to achieve shalom among the chosen Cohen people throughout the generations in all Ages and times while Jews rule our ancient homelands.
מלכות understood as the dedication of defined tohor middot. אל remembrance of the Sin of the Golden Calf. רחום the inference which turns pity upon its head. Obliterating the Canaanites, the killing of the minor stubborn and rebellious child, the war against Amalek (Jewish assimilation to foreign cultures and customs of peoples who do not accept the revelation of the Torah at Sinai. And intermarriage with such Goyim). The middah of רחום a Jew dedicates how he shall socially interact with both his people and Goyim in the future; specifically through the dedication of defined tohor middot. חנון the general dedication to dedicate all future behavioral patterns with family friends, people, and even Goyim by and through the future born tohor middot that a person dedicates whenever that Jews does Torah or Talmudic mitzvot/halachot.
Both Xtianity and Islam worship other Word-gods. Therefore both religions do not define faith as the pursuit of justice, but rather belief in the theologies about these Word-gods.
[[[ Also, when you speak of the erasure of Jewish self-determination through revisionist Palestinian narratives, I hear both an intellectual rebuttal and a deep historical wound. Is your critique aimed primarily at the political manipulation of language and borders—or also at the erasure of Jewish covenantal memory from the land itself? ]]]
Unlike the Xtian and Muslims theologies which promote some pie in the sky Universal Monotheism God, the revelation of the Torah at Sinai revealed the local tribal God of Israel. When David fled from king Shaul he declared as he entered g’lut lands: “I have been forced to abandon God”. Just as the Great and Small Sanhedrin courts only have jurisdiction within the borders of the Jewish state so too the local God of Israel. Herein the answer given to the Holocaust survivor who said to me: “I was in Auschwitz, Where was God?” When I lived in the US and Xtian people asked me if I was a religious Jew? I responded with: I am an atheist praise God. But even living within the borders of the oath sworn brit alliance lands I habitually respond to Goyim with “I am an atheist – praise God”. Meaning, I do not believe in any theological/creed construct of Word-gods – praise God. LOL Torah, its deep and requires a sense of humor.
The curse of g’lut-exile of my people almost immediately caused Jews to lose the wisdom how to do mitzvot לשמה. G’lut Jewry does not understand how to employ and work our Yatrir HaTov within our hearts. The בנין אב-precedent of blowing the shofer serves as a פרט to define the כלל of Yatzir HaTov. Meaning, to blow a shofar requires air from the lungs. But to blow a spirit from the Yatzir HaTov within the heart requires the k’vanna, (all time-oriented commandments require k’vanna) the dedication of defined tohor middot spirits. This כללי-general idea of tohor middot, it defines the dedication of the middah of חנון.
Herein a definition of 3 of the 13 tohor middot which a person dedicates through Yatzir Tov k’vannot from within their hearts. Jews uprooted from our homelands by both the Babylonians and Romans caused the g’lut cursed survivors to lose this kabbalah wisdom which defines how to do mitzvot לשמה.