To give you a taste of the book, here are some excerpts from "Famous Biblical Phrases and What They Really Mean": By the sweat of your brow you will eat bread (Genesis 3:19) God's punishment of Adam after he and Eve eat form the Tree of Knowledge. Colloquially, "go get a job." Of your seventy allotted years, deduct the twenty-three spent sleeping and eleven and half spent bathing and eating. That leaves thirty-six. Of those, twenty-three (minimum) will be spent working, which leaves just thirteen for loving, dreaming, thinking, planning, growing, singing, dancing, reading. That's a curse. You are dust and to dust you will return (Genesis 3:19) Nothing focuses the mind like the prospect of being shot in the morning. Death is a blessing because it forces us to distinguish between the lasting and meaningful and the trivial and fleeting. (Ever heard someone eulogized for driving the latest car?) Death wasn't part of the original plan, but after Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge, G-d decided man needs the discipline of a final exam. Am I my brother's keeper? (Genesis 4:9) Cain's evasion of responsibility for killing Abel. He implied the guilt was actually G-d's for failing to prevent the murder from taking place. See: "Where was G-d during the Holocaust?" See also the definition of chutzpah: the man who kills his parents and throws himself on the court's mercy because he's an orphan. An eye for and eye and a tooth for a tooth (Exodus 21:24) The basic principle of justice, known as "the law of talon". Punishment is only just when it's commensurate with the crime. In actual practice, Biblical courts didn't remove eyes or teeth, but calculated their monetary value and assigned that amount as damages. Mothers voice the law of talon when they say, "One day your children will drive you crazy, just like you're driving me crazy!" Rabbi Kalman Packouz
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