Halakha, theology, practice, and the inner life of Jewish observance.
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 … Read more
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.
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 – … Read more
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 … Read more
I found it curious that there isn’t a siphré qodesh bookstore in צפת. Or at least, in the Old City.
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.
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) … Read more
“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 … Read more
The return to the land of our ancestors. So much of human history is bound up in disputes over land. Your land, my land, his land, (rarely) her land. The territorial imperative indeed runs deep in mammals, especially primates; sometimes we seem no better than gangs of monkeys fighting each other over dwindling patches of … Read more
Seduce me.Betray me.Attack me.Raze me.Deport me.Forget me.Hate me. Still I rise. Control me.Colonize me.Crucify me.Conquer me.Convert me.Blame me.Burn me. Still I Rise. Play me for my willing riches.Mark me for the spear and sword.Suspect me for your spreading plague.Conjure me as your darkest demon.Accuse me of your midnight crimes.Condemn me in your halls of power.Cleanse … Read more