Tefillin and Unio Mystica

From Leonard Nimoy's Shekhina                           

 בענין מצות תפילין 

 הנה ידוע שמצות הנחת תפילין שקולה כנגד כל מצוות התורה כולן, ועוד שאמרו חז"ל גדול המצווה ועושה משאינו מצווה ועושה (קידושין לא.) . ותימה, אם מתשוקת הנפש ורצון היחיד עולה איזה תאווה להתקרב להקב"ה ולהידבק בו ית' מאי גרעא בכך נגד המצווה ועושה? ועוד, ידוע לכל, שיש כמה מצוות שהן שקולות כנגד כל התורה, ולמה אמרו שתפילין גם מיוחד למדרגה זו? והנה התשובות לאותן שאלות הן תשובה אחת.

ודע שמילת 'מצוה' ששגורה בפפיות כל העולם כלו אין ביאורתו ידוע לכל, אבל פשוט ששורש 'מצוה' הוא בלשון ארמית, במילת 'צוות' שמשמעותה חיבור, קשר, והתאחדות. ואז במשמעות לשון מצוה, שהיא מבחינת קשר, נתגלה הסוד של המעלה שנמצא במצווה ועושה. שעשיית המצווה מביאה ממילא דביקות עם הקב"ה שעשיית איזה מעשה משום חיוב מבטא מאליו קשר בין המחייב ובין הגברא שעליו חל החיוב. ומצוות הנחת תפילין מביאה לפעולה כוונת המצוות בכלל, ומושג הקשר עם האלוהות בפעולת קשר התפילין נגד הראש והלב, ואמירת "וארשתיך לי." וזה לשון השל"ה בפ' ואתחנן: "מצות אחדות השם, ואהבת השם, ותפילין של יד ושל ראש, ומצות מזוזה... כלם הם סוד דביקותינו בהשם יתברך... שנהיה דביקים ממש בשם ה' אלוקינו ומקשרים בו  

The Light Flared and was Hidden Away

The Eighth night of Chanukkah at our home, 3 Teves, 5773

The Mystical Straight and Narrow

Zvi Hirsch Koidanover's, Kav Hayashar (Polna'ah 1816 ed.)

Most of us know of the Hasidic "revolution" in Eastern Europe and the Hasidic movement's success in popularizing Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah. But just how exactly did Kabbalah burst onto the scene and make it's way into the backwaters of Galicia?

According to Moshe Idel:

    Of special importance for understanding the dissemination of Kabbalah in Eastern Europe in the early eighteenth century is Tsevi Hirsh Koidanover’s Kav ha-yashar. An ethical-kabbalistic collection of stories, moral guidance, and customs, it reflects a deliberate effort to popularize Safedian Kabbalah by adopting a much more understandable style in Hebrew; a Yiddish translation by the author reflects a similar approach. Together with kitsurim (condensations) of Shene luḥot ha-berit, popularizing works such as Shevet musar, and pamphlets offering guidance for daily conduct in light of kabbalistic practice (hanhagot), Kav ha-yashar anticipated the popularization of Kabbalah by Hasidic masters in the vernacular, which started a generation later.

I don't know much about the history and nature of the translation of Jewish texts into Yiddish or whether this was one of the earlier tranlations of Jewish esotericism into Yiddish.  But I have to imagine that a bilingual Kav Hayashar was as significant and integral to the spread of Kabballah in a post-Sabbatean world as Artscroll's Talmud is to the spread to the Daf Hayomi in our generation.

On a personal note, this was the only Jewish text, aside from the usual Hebrew Bibles and Siddurim that I found in my grandparents' house when they were moving. Our version was the Romm (Vilna) 1911 edition.
It belonged, according to my Grandmother, to my great, great-grandfather, Moshe Mordechai Hendler.

The book contains many references to the Zohar and some colorful passages on magic, witchcraft and demons. Ever wonder what happened to Bilaam's body after he was killed?  Koidanover tells us (based on the Zohar):
"His bones decomposed and from the flesh and body of Bilaam were made snakes, evil serpents..."
And this, Koidanover warns his readers, is the fate of all sorcerers and practitioners of the dark arts.

From the Garden

Tomatoes from the backyard garden at C.F.'s, photo by N.

Ramapo, NY

                      A tiny hamlet lost in space and time

Scat of the Ursus americanus

Black bear poop on the Pine Meadow Trail, Harriman State Park


Note the bluish-purple color of the scat, seeds and some mammal hairs.

"Because the digestive system of the bear is better adapted to handling meat than fruit, anyone who has followed many bear trails in blueberry country can attest to the fact that this fruit forms a major part of the grizzly's and black bear's diet in late and summer and fall."

- Bradford Angier, Field Guide to Edible Wild Pants, 1974.

Cyanocitta cristata

Dead Blue Jay in the yard, near feeder, evidently a victim of a fight for food.


"The Blue Jay is very pugnacious, often fighting with birds a great deal larger than itself."

- H. E. Hershey, Otoe Co., Neb., The Oologist monthly, 
Vol. VII, no 1, 1890

Self Denial: Levi Yitzchok of Berditchev and Nietzsche

Title page from the Lemberg, 1864 ed. of Kedushas Levi

Self-denial is common to many Hasidic masters and Nietzsche had a complicated relationship with this way of living and relating to the world, and so it might be worthwhile to do a little comparison, just for fun.
(If this isn't your idea of fun, then fine, I can also think of at least a couple of things that would really be fun...)

Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, also known by his magnum opus, Kedushas Levi begins his mystical exposition of Genesis with this thought:

We say [in Scripture and in the liturgy] "He fashions light and creates darkness" and not He fashioned light and created darkness... rather it is in the present tense, for in every moment He gives life to every living thing, everything derives from Him and He is inclusive of all. Thus when a person attains nothingness and knows that he is nothing at all, only the Creator b"h gives him power, then he may refer to God as the One who Creates, in the language of the present, for now too He creates. But when a person reflects on himself and does not reflect on nothingness, then he is at the level of existence ['yesh'] and he refers to God only in the sense of One who created, that is He created him in the past. And so we say "that he fashioned Man with Wisdom," for Wisdom is on the level of existence."

Of course this view is not unique to the Kedushas Levi or indeed to the Jewish mystical tradition more widely. This sentiment, I think, was first was challenged, called into question and indeed rejected by Friedrich Nietzche,* especially in the Prologue to his Genealogy of Morals. For Nietzche, just as it was for the Kedushas Levi nearly a century earlier, it was essential to begin with a reflection on self-denial.

For me the issue was the value of morality—and in that matter I had to take issue almost alone with my great teacher Schopenhauer, the one to whom, as if to a contemporary, that book, with its passion and hidden contradiction, addresses itself (—for that book was also a “polemical tract”). The most specific issue was the worth of the “unegoistic,” the instinct for pity, self-denial, self-sacrifice, something which Schopenhauer himself had painted with gold, deified, and projected into the next world for so long that it finally remained for him “value in itself” and the reason why he said No to life and even to himself. But a constantly more fundamental suspicion of these very instincts voiced itself in me, a scepticism which always dug deeper! It was precisely here that I saw the great danger to humanity, its most sublime temptation and seduction.—But in what direction? To nothingness?—It was precisely here I saw the beginning of the end, the standing still, the backward-glancing exhaustion, the will turning itself against life, the final illness tenderly and sadly announcing itself. I understood the morality of pity, which was always seizing more and more around it and which gripped even the philosophers and made them sick, as the most sinister symptom of our European culture, which itself had become sinister, as its detour to a new Buddhism? to a European Buddhism? to—nihilism? . . 

*J.K. tells me that some Young Hegelians, like Stirner in The Ego and His Own: All Things Are Nothing to Me already came out against the "Unegoist" well before Nietzsche.

Doyna Airs

French Gypsies, Yale Joel


In mitten drinnen...

of Rilke's ode to orphean praise,

I felt langour and a pall of a doyna's haze.

ever trembling, ever groining scurvy malaise,

but doyna is mercurial flirting with praise,

a sultry dance, a pulsing pelvic haze.

if a mitzve tantz knew of gypsy ways,

threw away the yoke with passion and play,

new couplings and cleavage would burn

and then fade.

Chesepeake Bay, or the Good Moon

I have a brother-in-arms and he’s got a brother-on-track,

He’s soft as glass and a gentle man,

And he’ll be hitched to the mountains

As soon as he can.

My brother-in-arms has a motto:

Nothing’s too hard to bear, no hole’s too big to fill

So he woke me up one night and said:

Shake that sleep off of your eyes and head

And keep with our boys writhing high.

Far from home in tobacco fields,
under endless skies

Yonder dance my old new friends

For far away where we live, there’s no one,

No others to hold us close and suckle our souls

O’er us, in that bright, windy land of tide and time,

Our old home is waiting and drifting,

For us to gamble our last coins

And bust our good minds.

For N., The Ascent, or Acquiescence

With much toughness in body and sense

Never strident ever the mensch

she watches her progress accounts and laments 

as bright light streams out of Spring to quench

the thirst for ardor in mysterious indifference.

she ardently scratches at that palimpsest

while nature, the gods, or the city insist

that we watch and wait on this rope of suspense

confidently strung over that rickety old fence 

with a monk's repose and the mystic’s prescience. 

April is the Cruelest Month

April personified, Thebes early 6th century


Good riddance April!


April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing 
memories and desire, stirring 
dull roots with Spring rain

- T.S. Elliot, The Waste Land

The Lothair Crystal and the Ideal of Justice Pt. 2

Susannah and the Elders, Gerrit van Honthorst (early 17th century)

There are so many paintings that depict Susannah's fateful "encounter" with the elders in the orchard of her husband. It was hard to choose; they are all so riveting. Look for yourselves and choose the painting that speaks for you... I can't say why this one in particular spoke to me, but there it is.

So, let's continue this conversation about the perversion of justice as we have it in the apocryphal story of Susannah at the end of the book of Daniel.

First, because I'm not a feminist scholar I must, out of ignorance, put aside for the moment the Feminist critique of this tale. I welcome any and all contributions in that vein.

As I see it this is a radical tale. Venerable elders, judges no less, attempt to violate a just woman, and with that, pervert Justice itself. Their plot is foiled by Susannah in her defiance at risk of self-sacrifice and by the intervention of a young man, who comes on the scene, deus ex machina as it were, turns the trial against the Elders, and reveals their perfidious intent. The Elders, erstwhile purveyors of "justice," are condemned to death instead of Susannah and innocent blood is saved. The message is clear: the Elders, the embodiment of an entrenched justice system, may be perverse, and we the readers must be wary of this. It might be that the young, the unknown, without pedigree, will set the scales of justice right once more. Not only that, but it requires wisdom and restraint, and penetrating examination to adjudicate in the proper manner. We are, as the text assumes, too easily persuaded by authority, pedigree and age, that we fail to protect the innocent and persecuted, even a woman of good repute.

The Lothair Crystal and the Ideal of Justice, Pt. 1

Crystal depicting the Apocryphal story of Susannah (9th cent.)

When Edmond Martene saw this gem at the Benedictine Waulsort Abbey in Belgium in 1724, he wrote: "... a rock crystal adorned with precious stones, on which one sees the story of Susanna very delicately engraved, according to report, by Saint Eloi... The abbots formerly wore it on their chests while officiating [at Mass]."

(click on the image above for a closer look at the scenes)

The eight scenes depicted on the crystal, beginning with the orchard scene at top, moving clockwise and then ending in the center, are accompanied by paraphrased excerpts from the trial of Susannah (Daniel, ch. 13) from the Vulgate, the Latin version of the Bible. The crystal was commissioned by Lothair II (d. 869), of the Carolingian dynasty, and so we read in the center of the crystal, above the canopy: "LOTHARIVS REX FRANC[ORUM MEF]IERI IVSSIT," Lothar, King of the Franks, caused me to be made.*

First a rehearsal of the story of Susannah is in order. Then we will get to Justice as an ideal, what we might learn from the near perversion of justice that was averted here and why a King would have chosen to have this story depicted so beautifully and in such fine detail.

Susannah was raised by just parents, was instructed according to the laws of Moses and was, we are told, exceedingly beautiful (Vulg., pulchram nimisi). Two elder judges, who frequented the home of her husband Joachim, became infatuated with Susannah, perverted their minds and chose to ignore "just judgments" (iudiciorum iustorum) in order to pursue their lust for Susannah. Notice the repeated references to words related to justice. Thus, from the outset the reader gets a clear sense of the Leitmotif of the story. The elders sneak up on Susannah in an enclosed orchard bent on seducing her while her servants are away. They proceed to solicit her and warn her, that if she does not accede to their demands they will bear witness against her and declare that she has committed adultery. Susannah refuses in spite of the danger for she cannot "sin in the sight of the Lord (peccare in conspectu Domini)." Susannah is eventually brought to court and condemned based on the testimony of these elders and were it not for the intervention of Daniel, who declares "Return to judgment (revertimini ad iudicium)!" - she would have been stoned. Daniel proves they had given false testimony through some simple but brilliant cross-examination and the elders are stoned instead!

Engraved in the crystal, based on the Vulgate, are the words: FECE RQE ISSICU TMA LE/EGE RANT, shorthand for "Feceruntque eis sicuti male egerant adversum proximum (Vulg. Daniel, 13:61)."

Or as many Jews and readers of the Hebrew Bible know it (Deut., 19:19),"ועשיתם לו כאשר זמם לעשות לאחיו" In the final, center scene the judge proclaims Susannah's innocence before two onlookers and "innocent blood (SANG... IN/NOXIVS = sanguis innoxius) is saved that day."

*I took the Latin of the crystal, translations as well as some references from Genevra Kornbluth's, Engraved Gems of the Carolingian Empire.

Bird of Prey

Falcon on the prairie with a prairie dog in his talons, somewhere near Boulder, Colorado.

Taken by my good friend Benjamin R. Hesse.

Take a look at his site for other great images and artwork from the front range.

http://benjaminhesse.wordpress.com/

Jacob, Fear Not!

In light of the recent tumult and fear over the Iranian threat I thought I'd share a song of hope sung by the great Cantor, Berele Chagy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoedHOmwMpA&feature=player_detailpage

Of Vessels and Garments or Inside Out

The Tosher Rebbe

Of all the Chasidish Rebbes I've seen in person and in photos, the Tosher Rebbe seems to lead in best bekeshes (long coats). He is certainly presented to the public as a regal figure and this is conveyed with beautifully embroidered silk garments, fur, and a gold-handled cane.

Compare this image of the great Lithuanian leader of the yeshivah world and brilliant Talmudic scholar, Rabbi Avrohom Yeshaya Karelitz, the Chazon Ish.

So I want to bring to your attention two interesting texts that reflect on the spectrum of the garments that clothe and convey the bodies of holy men... Some are hunger artists, like the Litvishe crowd (Brisk, and Novardok, Slobodka, le-havdil etc.) while others take on the appearance of a well-fed monarch. We'll not be so crass as to name names...

First from S. Ansky's, The Dybbuk is this exchange between the three Batlanim (men who are supported by the community that they may maintain their days in the synagogue learning and praying) and the Messenger:

In a dimly lit synagogue three men sit entranced

First Batlen: By Reb Dovidel Tolner, may his merit guard us, was a golden chair and on it was inscribed: "David king of Israel, lives and endures!"

Second Batlen: Reb Yisroel Ruzhiner of blessed memory, went around like a real monarch. By his table an orchestra of 24 musicians would stand and play and he was used to traveling in a wagon with no less than 6 horses in front!

Third Batlen: They used to say that Reb Shmuel Kaminker would go around in golden slippers... golden slippers!

And then the messenger comes in to the conversation, in a soft voice, as if from afar.

The Messenger: The holy Reb Zusha Anipoler was a pauper his whole life, collected donations, and went about in a peasant's coat fastened by a rope and was no less worthy than the Tolner or the Ruzhiner.

First Batlen: No offence, but you don't know what you're talking about, and you intrude anyway? When one tells of the greatness of the Tolner or the Ruzhiner is one speaking of their wealth?? Are there only a few rich people in this world? One must understand that within the golden chair and the orchestra and the golden slippers lies a deeper secret, a hidden cause!

Third Batlen: It's understood! Who doesn't understand this?

...

Who indeed? Now consider this text from over a millenium earlier:

From the Talmud, Nedarim 50b

A The Emperor's daughter said to R. Joshua b. Hananiah: ‘Such comely wisdom in an ugly vessel!’ He replied. ‘Learn from thy father's palace. In what is the wine stored?’ ‘In earthern jars.’ she answered. ‘But all [common] people store [wine] in earthen vessels and thou too likewise! Thou shouldst keep it in jars of gold and silver!’ So she went and had the wine replaced in vessels of gold and silver, and it turned sour. ‘Thus,’ said he to her, ‘The Torah is likewise!’ ‘But are there not handsome people who are learned too?’ ‘Were they ugly they would be even more learned,’ he retorted.

B A certain woman of Nehardea came before Rab Judah for a lawsuit, and was declared guilty by the court. ‘Would your teacher Samuel have judged thus?’ she said. ‘Do you know him then?’ he asked. ‘Yes, He is short and big-stomached, black and large teethed.’ ‘What, you have come to insult him! Let that woman be under the ban!’ he exclaimed. She burst and died.

So what to make of these disparate, divergent views of the relationship between the outer and inner? Well for starters, as I noted, the Talmudic text was produced over a millenium before the Chasidim spoken by the Batlanim of The Dybbuk burst onto the European Jewish scene. Needless to say, Jewish culture was vastly different back at the time the first part of the Talmudic text was produced. What's interesting here is that the Talmud places two very different aesthetic views cheek by jowl. In A physical beauty is spurned, while in B from the Talmud, an insult to the physical appearance of Samuel, a Rabbi, is admonished to say the least.

As far as the regal accoutrement of the Hasidic Rebbes is concerned we can offer a very simple explanation. From the time of the rise of the Babylonian/Persian Jewish leadership there was an emphasis on presenting leaders who carried the mantel of authority, that entailed all sorts of civic responsibilities beyond the juridical, as leaders, as kings of their court with all that the Persian culture back then entailed. So with the Men of Silk, as one author refers to the Chasidishe Rebbes.

This is simply the way it was to be; in that historical moment:

Es muss sein! (As a great composer once wrote).

Dress the part if you want to be the King! And yes, there are hidden meanings and mystical reasons for the flourish, the flare, the grandiosity, and the unabashed bravura; not like "a guy who takes his time" who goes for big commotion as Mae West sang of the amateur.

Metropolis Capital

Frozen Assets. Fresco by Diego Rivera, 1931

Human Resources: Bodies and Money stored away beneath a teeming city.

There's an old Greek proverb attributed to the comic Epicharmus, who lived in the 6th century BC. "Where there is money (Gr. argurion - or Heb. kesef, Fr. argent ) all things run and are driven." Think New York City, capital of capital, art and fashion.

Meleagris gallopavo

Wild Turkey hens on Lime Kiln Road, Suffern, NY

The Wild Turkey

"As early as the middle of February, they begin to experience the impulse of propagation… If the call of the female comes from the ground, all the males immediately fly towards the spot, and the moment they reach it, whether the hen be in sight or not, spread out and erect their tail, draw the head back on the shoulders, depress their wings with a quivering motion, and strut pompously about, emitting at the same time a succession of puffs from the lungs, and stopping now and then to listen and look. But whether they spy the female or not, they continue to puff and strut, moving with as much celerity as their ideas of ceremony seem to admit. While thus occupied, the males often encounter each other, in which case desperate battles take place, ending in bloodshed, and often in the loss of many lives, the weaker falling under the repeated blows inflicted upon their head by the stronger.

I have often been much diverted, while watching two males in fierce conflict, by seeing them move alternately backwards and forwards, as either had obtained a better hold, their wings drooping, their tails partly raised, their body-feathers ruffled, and their heads covered with blood. If, as they thus struggle, and gasp for breath, one of them should lose his hold, his chance is over, for the other, still holding fast, hits him violently with spurs and wings, and in a few minutes brings him to the ground. The moment he is dead, the conqueror treads him under foot, but, what is strange, not with hatred, but with all the motions which he employs in caressing the female."

- John James Audubon, Ornithological Biography, Vol. I, Philadelphia, 1832

The greatest Sages find the chutzpah right under our noses

The Akedah, from R. Crumb's 'Genesis'

There are so many transgressions available out there in the world for which we may indict "Western" culture. But here's one we don't think about much or at least I never heard it uttered by any scholar of Biblical literature.

In a note from Nietzche and Philosophy, Gilles Deleuze quotes this passage from Beyond Good and Evil:

"the taste for the Old Testament is a touchstone in regard to 'great' and 'small'... To have glued this New Testament, a species of rococo taste in every respect, on to the Old Testament to form a single book, as 'Bible,' as the 'Book of Books': that is perhaps the greatest piece of temerity and 'sin against the spirit' that literary Europe has on its conscience."