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But her Jewishness was different from my prejudice, that was formed by my encounters with business people and my historical knowledge of the Jewish capitalists, the owners of the financial institutions, who had been financing every war of recent history, as well as Hitler and Stalin at the same time and who had become rich and powerful by doing so. Her Jewishness was spiritual and genuine and had nothing to do with the Rothschild's or the managers of J. P. Morgan or Drexel Lambert or with Hank Greenberg, who I had become to know in my professional life. Lian spoke to me about the Old Testament and she showed me how little I knew and how little I had read about the spiritual roots of the seemingly contesting religions. I knew that the Old Testament constituted the first section of the Christian Bible and were based primarily upon the Hebrew Bible, a collection of religious writings by Israelites before the birth of Christ. But did I know, that the first five books of the Bible (the books of Moses) were known as the Torah or the Pentateuch - followed by a minimum of 39 books - the books of wisdom and the Prophets? - In honesty NO.
And though I had lived with a friend by the name of Jeremias I remembered little - that the Book of Jeremiah was the second of the latter "Prophets" of the Hebrew Bible portraying Jeremiah as a "second Moses" but in reverse, presiding over Israel's banishment from the Promised land and of the poetic passages of a more personal nature consisting of poems in which the prophet agonizes over the apparent failure of his mission. And what did I know about the Talmud the book of instructions and regulations, for learning, from a root the central text of Rabbinic Judaism - a compendium put together over thousands of years filling ten thousand and more pages - NOTHING! I rejected the Christian teachings, which were based on the New Testament - a catalogue of guilt-which I could not bear, as I led a sinful life and never went to confession after my 8th birthday. And I never read the Bible - only passages, as they suited me. All religion constituted for me the source of all problems between people, our teachings being the furl for wars and destructions since recorded history. But was it really true, or was it an excuse for other shortcomings of the human nature, concepts of racism and of "being different" by your looks or the color of your skin, or your attitude to life?
It is said that there is nothing more dangerous than a bit of knowledge.
So, when Lian spoke about the Kabbalah - I immediately associated this with the worldwide conspiracy of the evil forces, the financial institutions and the leaders who were conspiring for world domination. Nothing did I know about this ancient Jewish mystical tradition based upon esoteric, mysterious, secret interpretations of the hidden meanings of the Hebrew Scriptures. But Lian mentioned mysterious subjects to me that the Kabbalah included text under the heading of ZOHAR -
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