Liberation as Historical Fact

Most blessings conclude in a participle – describing the Creator as the One who does things.

The subsequent blessing after the Shema concludes with a perfect verb – describing the Creator as the One who liberated Yisrael.

This unique praise of God expresses a fact of history: some 3700 years ago, the Creator intervened in human affairs, and both physically liberated an oppressed nation from within the world’s most powerful empire and spiritually (psycho-socially) liberated them from an oppressive worldview and culture by giving them a new, just Law.

In this blessing, we testify it is true: thus is our history and thus is the Shaper of our history.

It is not a matter of personal aspiration but one of historical inspiration.

Our ancestors were, in fact, liberated and they did, in fact, pass on that liberty to us.

And what will we do with that liberty?

First we kneel in wonder.

Then we stand in the presence of the king, who liberated us.

The Birthright

The birthright
The voice
The hands
The blessing
The escape
The love
The trick
The work
The feud
The sale
The famine
The slavery
The cries
The memory
The bush
The blood
The frogs
The lice
The swarms
The pestilence
The boils
The hail
The locusts
The darkness
The death
The sea
The passage
The song
The complaint
The food
The rest
The count
The days
The weeks
The purity
The thunder
The lightning
The blast
The fire
The mountain
The revelation
The law
The grace
The covenant

Beginner’s Mind

Em. E. A9. The list grows. The transitions are slow. My fingers hurt. And i can pluck out the intro to redemption song on a single string.

May it be a stick in Satan’s eye! Forces of evil ain’t gonna stop me from playin 😛

May the return to a beginner’s mind in something soulful and the re-opening of the wellspring of music in my life these days be a zekhuth for me, for my family, for all of Yisrael.

May the hostages be freed, may the war be ended, may the Big House be rebuilt.

Tensions Are Not Contradictions

I wrote something but I corrected myself by the end, so I erased what I wrote and:

Tensions are not contradictions.

We can and must live with tensions.

And faith must be freed from contradictions.

Why the Mishne Tora Threatened Power

Bar Nativ comes very close in this article.

He definitely gets the main idea of the Mishne Tora – to create a definitive, encyclopedic textbook of the Jewish legal system for practical use – but misses the main point of why such a book is valuable.

Not (just) to resolve disputes by providing information – but in doing so to free Jewish communities from the political monopoly of the Geonate and from the local tyranny of poorly educated rabbis pushing their personal opinions as law from Sinai.

And from this it’s clear why the book faced so much opposition. Not (just) because Rambam’s jurisprudence and Talmudic hermeneutic were opaque to some (but by no means most) of his readers, mamy of whom were often accustomed to a variety of practices and policies at odds with what he recorded.

But because the very existence of the book itself threatened the stranglehold of bad leaders using their knowledge to consolidate power and relying on the relative ignorance of the communities dependant upon them, for their continued social status and position. Publishing an accessible, authoritative guide to Jewish law challenged the local rabbi to justify their decisions against an objective, independent benchmark – and some folks just couldn’t have that.

H/t Nachman Davies

https://blog.nli.org.il/en/maimonides_revolution/

A Choice to Be Responsible

I was reading a book by Sadhguru last night

(Uh Oh I’m in the new age to Hindutva pipeline now)

He was talking about taking responsibility for everything

Not blame or guilt but the chosen agency to respond to any and every situation, however we choose

A rather radical form of responsibility, if I may say so

But it rings very true in a Jewish sense

My question: How much of our mode of relation in this war reflects a choice to be responsible?

No Note Is Discordant

Today’s צפת meditation:

No note is inherently discordant. What determines whether harmony or discord emerges, is the note that follows.

Flow with the go.

Axioms of Divine Ecology

We find ourselves at what we might call pre-axiomatic grounds or ontological commitments of reason itself—that is, the conditions of the possibility of any intelligible model or statement at all.

Here are three such ultra-foundational commitments—call them ground-principles or proto-axioms—from which even Level 0 axioms derive:

GROUND 1: Reality is. (Existence as the first intuition)

This is not an axiom in the logical sense, but the most basic given. To ask anything, to posit anything, is already to affirm the reality of something. Even denying reality presupposes it.

> From this flows: intelligibility, participation, causality, feedback, etc.

GROUND 2: Distinction is real.

To speak of “anything” is to distinguish it—however subtly—from what it is not. All structure, all form, and all communication depend on this. This is the root of both relation and differentiation.

> From this flows: sephiroth (differentiated modalities), othioth (forms), relational being, layered olamoth, etc.

GROUND 3: The whole and the part are meaningful.

Every unit of being is at once part of something and whole unto itself. This is the root of cybernetics, holarchies, ecology, and recursive structure—it is what allows emergence and feedback.

> From this flows: holarchic divine ecology, feedback loops, multidimensional participation.

These are not “provable” in the usual way; they are the conditions of any model whatsoever. Even denying one of them would already presuppose its opposite. That’s what makes them pre-axiomatic rather than axiomatic.

True Axioms (Level 0)

These are irreducible ontological commitments—statements we accept without derivation, forming the absolute foundations of the model.

1. Existence is intelligible.
Meaning: Reality is structured such that it can be understood—patterns, causes, and meanings are not accidental or chaotic.

2. Being is relational.
Meaning: Nothing exists in isolation; every entity or process exists only in relation to others, whether causal, formal, or symbolic.

3. The One (Ein/Shoresh/Ratson) precedes all multiplicity and manifests through structured differentiation.
This is both a metaphysical and cybernetic axiom: emergence arises from unity through lawful branching.

4. Will is prior to form, and form is prior to function.
Will (ratson) initiates; form (sephira) structures; function (oth) expresses. This is the fundamental causal triad.

5. Feedback is real and active.
The system is not linear but recursive. Lower levels affect higher ones, shaping future emanations—making the divine ecology interactive, not deterministic.

Derived Principles (Level 1 and up)

From the above axioms, we derive the structure of the olamoth, the geometry of each realm, the role of sephiroth as vectors of intelligibility, the function of othioth as patterning principles, etc.

Here is a foundational list of basic premises for our ontological/topological/cybernetic model of the divine ecology, integrating olamoth (worlds), sephiroth (emanatory dimensions), and othioth (letters/principles of form). These premises aim to be rigorous and systematic, while remaining faithful to your framework and to the rationalism of R. Mosheh b. Maimon and the critique of metaphysics by R. José Faur.

PREMISE 1: Existence is layered through ontologically distinct but interdependent realms (“olamoth”)

Each olam represents a distinct modality of existence or state-space of being, descending from pure abstraction (Atsiluth) to material multiplicity (‘Asiyya). These realms are not spatially separated, but ontologically and topologically stratified, each nested fractally within the next.

PREMISE 2: Each olam is structured by a unique topological geometry defined by its dominant relational logic

The geometry of relations in each olam differs:

Atsiluth is holonomic, all at once and without boundaries;

Beriya introduces first separation and form through archetypal differentiation;

Yetsira manifests structured processes and laws (e.g., angelic intelligences);

‘Asiyya gives rise to causal space-time and embodiment.

PREMISE 3: The sephiroth are not substances or beings, but dimensions of divine relationality

The ten sephiroth are modalities of expression or interaction by which divine intentionality manifests within and across the olamoth. They are ontologically necessary vectors of divine intelligibility and emergence, not metaphysical hypostases.

PREMISE 4: The othioth are pre-linguistic principles of pattern-formation and information encoding

The letters of creation are not mere phonemes but topological and cybernetic operators—archetypal codes through which structure, differentiation, and information become intelligible. Each oth is a node of form-function binding between olam, sephira, and event.

PREMISE 5: Emergence flows cybernetically: from pure will (ratson) through form (sephira) into function (oth)

The flow of divine creativity is recursive and cybernetic: the ratson (will), operating at the level of Kether, configures sephirotic vectors, which are modulated by othioth to produce new emergent states within and across the olamoth.

PREMISE 6: Feedback from lower olamoth conditions higher-level relational possibilities (tzimtzum and hitgalluth are feedback cycles)

Rather than a one-way emanation, divine ecology functions as a self-regulating system. Lower realms (like human action in ‘Asiyya) feed back into higher ones (e.g., midoth and will), shaping future configurations—this is the secret of prayer, mitswoth, and teshuvah as feedback modalities.

PREMISE 7: All creation is participatory—each being is a node in a divine cybernetic ecology

Nothing exists passively. Every entity, being, or process partakes in and contributes to the cybernetic balance of the whole. Existence itself is relational participation in this multidimensional divine ecology.

PREMISE 8: Ontology is bounded by rational intelligibility—no assertion is valid without inner coherence and generative function

In fidelity to R. Faur’s critique, no mystical claim is valid unless it can be shown to function coherently within the logical structure of this divine ecology. Ontology must always be subject to logical discipline and interpretive rigor.

Kabbala’s Many Influences

“I wouldn’t say academic or traditional scholarship on kabbala would support the claim that it’s a combination of neo-platonism and gnosticism; those count among its many influences, but just as the bible’s akkadian, egyptian, and canaanite influences are plentiful without making the bible a simple combination of (just) those influences, neo-platonism and gnosticism contributed much to kabbala without making it a simple intersection or merging of those discourses.”