1. IT IS EXTREMELY LAME TO apologize to people electronically en masse. But I’m going to do it anyway.
Category: Living
Each moment is different. Here are some of mine.
Pithyism #210a
AWARENESS: NOW HERE, OR NOWHERE.
Only great pain is the ultimate liberator of the spirit […] I doubt that such pain makes us ‘better’; but I know that it makes us more profound.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Pithyism #12a
ANYTHING CAN BE LEARNED, BUT not everything can be taught.
What Maimonides (Or Was It Lao-tse?) Really Meant
“THOSE WHO KNOW, CHUCKLE.”
Keep It Under Your Hat
IT PAINS ME ON SEVERAL levels to do this, but I am currently wearing a fisherman’s cap over my kippah. The reason is simple — a dear friend sincerely and greatly fears for my safety in an era where Jews…
5 Thoughts: How I Spent My College Intuition
1. THEY SAY THAT IF YOU can remember certain events or associated places, it means you were never there; space-time knots whose experience is colored by the hazy circumstances of the experiencer. Case in point: the Neo-Pagan Society of Diablo…
… Each of us sits alone within the cell of our subjective awareness. Now and then we receive cryptic messages from the outside world. Only dimly comprehending what we are doing, we compose responses, which we slip under the door. In this way, we manage to survive, even though we never really know what the hell is happening.”
— John Horgan
EACH PERSON’S PERCEPTION OF TRUTH is different. This one has a broader outlook, this one a narrow outlook. But the sincerity of each one’s devotions is all that counts.”
— Reb Nosson: Plato to Rebbe Nachman’s Socrates
When faced with [a piece or opinion of Torah] that is on its face absurd or contradictory, the rabbis do not dismiss it, but actively work to understand it. What would it look like for us, when someone says something apparently illogical and absurd, to assume that they are making some kind of internal sense and actually thoughtfully work to understand their reasoning?”
— Sara Ronis, “A Daily Dose of Talmud (Pesachim 78),” @myjewishlearning.com
Jedi Wisdom
OVERHEARD IN THE GROCERY CHECKOUT line, the following exchange between tall father and fidgety small son: SS (holding a 2021 Star Wars calendar): Look! It’s Darth Vader. And Luke Skywalker. TF: Luke is a Jedi, right? SS: Right. TF: Jedi…
A young person who goes out and sees this great conjunction now can potentially see the next close one in 2080. It’d be a nice connection between generations, one that makes you think about all those who have seen these conjunctions in the past–and those who will glimpse it in the future.”
— Astronomer Patrick Hartigan on tonight’s celestial event