A Pew survey included a question on their Religious Landscape Survey: “How often do you think about the meaning and purpose of life?”  Nearly half the sample (47%) said that this was a thought they had at least once a week; and two-thirds of respondents said that they thought about meaning and purpose at least on a monthly basis.

Atheists are the least inclined to think about these types of questions. Only 26% of them said that this was a weekly concern of theirs—that was 21 points lower than the full sample and nine points lower than the next group in line (Buddhists).

Agnostics are also near the top of the graph. They’re in the same general neighborhood as Buddhists, Jews, and those who identify as nothing in particular. So non-religious folks and non-Christians like Buddhists and Jews, are thinking about these questions a whole lot less than the average Christian.

Most Jews do not spend lots of time thinking about the meaning and purpose of life because they know that Judaism teaches that working hard to improve society is always the purpose of human life; as Prophet Micah states: (6:8:) “He (God) has told you humans what is good; and what does the Lord require of you; only to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

So who are the really important people in our world? Some people are influential. Some people are powerful. Some people can shut down a government or start a war.

But these people are not the most important people in God’s world according to Jewish tradition. This tradition claims that there are 36 unknown righteous men whose existence sustains the whole world. But this is not entirely correct.

First of all these righteous people are not all males. In Hebrew, a mixed group of men and women are always called men even if 35 of the 36 are women.

Second, there are always at least 36 righteous men and women, but usually there are many more, and often there are many righteous Gentiles and converts to Judaism among them.

For example, Count Valentine Potocki, a young Polish nobleman who went to Paris to finish his education, There he became close friends with another Polish nobleman, Zarembo, Both of them met a Jewish teacher and asked him to teach them Hebrew. After some time each independently decided to become Jewish.

Potocki went to Amsterdam where it was safe to convert to Judaism. Zarembo returned to Poland where he married into the Tishkewitch family. After some years, Zarembo took his wife and 5 year old son to Amsterdam where it was safe to become Jewish. Then the family went to Israel as Zarembo’s friend Count Potocki had done previously.

The Zarembo family remained in the Land of Israel, but Count Potocki grew homesick and took the dangerous step of returning to Poland. He settled in Ilja/Ilia in the Vilna district of Belarus posing as a born Jew, and spent all his time studying Torah.

When the police found out he was a convert to Judaism he........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)