Tag: Torah: Output

Things said.

Unplug: Can You Do It?

LAST NIGHT I DREAMED I was drunk, belligerent and enjoying myself — not a good combination, nor one which I experience (or wish to experience) in real life. The subject of my tirade seems to have been the apologetic and paralyzing self-consciousness of the modern Jewish stereotype, and while I don’t remember exactly what I said I was truly “all het up” about it. (Which I occasionally am in real life, and maybe why it felt so good to express it.)

But that sense of muddy frustration evaporated when I discovered http://www.sabbathmanifesto.org/ and their call for a National Day of Unplugging from sundown March 4 to sundown March 5. Wondering what to do with your time? Ten suggestions are right here (from “Avoid technology” and “Get outside” to “Find silence” and “Give back”), but participants are also encouraged to create their own.

The basic idea is this: No one can run 24/7 without burning out, even someone as necessary and busy as you. So take a regular day off. See what’s within arm’s reach, and maybe rediscover who you are and what you’re doing here — or at the very least, take a well-earned nap. (Remember naps?)

(And if you found this via Facebook during one of many five-minute “just checking” sessions, you might just want to unplug right now.)

My Plan For Jewish World Domination

(YOU MAY READ THAT TITLE as either “domination of the world by Jews,” or “domination of the Jewish world.” Either way, it may be better than what we have now, or at least more entertaining. Certainly more well-fed. But.)

The point is this: Build fewer Museums of Tolerance and Holocaust Memorials. In fact, stop building them altogether, and instead build more Jewish schools/centers, for both kids and adults to interact face-to-face with well-trained Jewish teachers. We cannot help but carry the past, of course; but with our hands full, who will build our future — or our present?

The Yad In The Kitchen

IN ONE OF OUR KITCHEN cabinets is a knot shaped like the Hebrew letter “yad.” It’s something we’ve lived with for 11 years but only pondered tonight.

Fig. 1.

According to some of Judaism’s lesser-publicized traditions, “yad” as the first letter of the yad-heh-vav-heh — God’s most holy name — is associated with the element of fire, the tongue of the flame of holy generation and inspiration, which is also the Godhead (that concentrated chunk of God located in the human soul). “Yad” also literally means “hand.” It is also the little sculptured wand (tipped by a hand and pointing finger) which indicate passages in the Torah, itself considered as one long Name of God.

Fig. 1.
So: Yad is the seat of intuition; it is also the hand guided by intuition, and which points to the Sourceless Source of that intuition (and everything else). In orbis veritas. That it’s on the flour cabinet, proves the divinity in food — and ingenuity.

Al Tirah – Fear Not

A MOVE TO KICK DESPAIR out of Lower North American political life is taking a Biblical imperative to the 21st century — and “joining” is as easy as deciding not to be manipulated by people who want you to hate your neighbors.

“When the heroes of biblical times despaired, God would speak to them. ‘Al Tirah! Fear Not!’ God commanded. Good advice then, good advice now,” proclaims the website for Al Tirah USA, a project of Jewish Funds for Justice. “Al Tirah America! Fear Not! Time to shake off our despair, and get back in the game.”

We at Metaphorager.Net applaud anyone opting for calm over cynicism, reason over rancor and thought over fear. (And the cool thing is, you don’t even need to believe in anything other than your own free agency. Right?)

5 Thoughts: How To Preach A Sermon

1. Make ’em laugh with, but not at, you and your topic. But make ’em laugh first.

2. Remember that you’re a student too, no more learned (and perhaps embarrassingly less) than those listening to you. Your task is to reveal rather than entertain, to share rather than “teach.”

3. Be honest. It shows. Continue reading “5 Thoughts: How To Preach A Sermon”

I’m Not Going To Say “God” Anymore

AT LEAST, THAT’S MY AIM, and has been for some time, only I didn’t know it then.

Hear: I don’t know how any/everyone else works It, but I think It is universal, appearing to some as “God,” others as The Muse, yet others Science, still others as some unnamed (nor needing to be named) unifying perspective.

But all these other views still seem, in these eyes, to concern what I call “God.” (That’s either a great oversimplification on my part or something shrewd and cogent. For practical reasons, let’s say the latter.) It’s hard talking about It for a couple of reasons — not least because It is impossible to describe — and the language with which we attempt to do so only makes some people touchy (i.e., “Don’t shove that anthropocentric patriarchal authoritarianism at me, you sexist. I worship only the Goddess”). As one more interested in colloquy than controversy, however, I want to touch the essence of the matter without a lot of side-explanations and other verborrheic runnings-about. (I’m a busy man, after all, and so are you.)

Thus, with a throw of hands in the air, we at Metaphorager.Net suggest “The Mystery.” That seems accurate, since a Mystery (philosophically speaking) is something which can only be understood through experience, and one thing we can say about It is that each one of us has a different (if overlapping) experience. An example: No one quite knows what I mean when I say “God,” or “love,” or “chocolate,” since I specifically associate these words with what I have invested in them through lifelong acquaintance. But enough of It overlaps to where I can order “chocolate” and expect the waiter not serve me meatballs. Which is good enough — I seem to be less concerned with Truth than with Usefulness, anyway — but there are certain particulars which do not overlap, and these are the points which either spice the conversation or begin wars.

To avoid those exchanges, we must speak generally. And “The Mystery” is about as general as I can get and still sound like I’m talking about something of interest to those interested in Such Things, whereas “God” just sounds reactionary to those who pride themselves on their modernity. (And we can’t have that.)

Torah Word: Kedoshim

Torah Portion: Acharei Mot-Kedoshim Leviticus 16:1-20:27
Haftorah: Amos 9:7-15

“Kedoshim t’hyu, ki kadosh ani Adonai Eloheicha — Be holy, for I am holy, Adonai your God.” (Leviticus 19:2)

The second half of this week’s double portion takes a breather from Leviticus’ endless sacrificial and ritual minutiae and addresses the topic pondered by philosophers the world and centuries ’round: How shall we live?

Torah tells us to be “holy,” which in the original Hebrew carries the sense of set apart/dedicated/specified to a particular intention. That’s easy for God — after all, God’s uniqueness and absolute indefinability makes God’s holiness something of a byproduct. For us, it’s hard enough to concentrate on one thing for more than an hour let alone our entire lives.

But “Kedoshim t’hyu” doesn’t only translate as “be holy.” The prefix “t” connotes assurance: our holiness isn’t really God’s desire or insistence so much as God’s promise — “Do this, and that will follow.” By following Torah — which also means wrestling with Torah until you see where it’s taking you — we enter a way of life which ensures life’s own continuation: a way of honesty, compassion, intelligence and closeness to the One.

Have an amAzing Shabbat!

This Week In Torah: Vayak’hel/Pekudei

VAYAK’HEL/PEKUDEI (Exodus 35:1-40:38; haftarot I Kings 7:51-8:21 and, because Nisan starts on Tuesday making this a special Rosh Chodesh Shabbat, Ezekiel 45:16-46:18) WRAPS UP THE BOOK of Exodus by building the Tabernacle: the traveling God-tent whose structure and contents are so lovingly detailed in the previous four portions. After making certain that all the parts are laid out and accounted for, Moses proceeds to assemble the people’s manifold contributions into a single coherent whole — after which “the kavod (honor, glory, gravitas) of Adonai filled the Tabernacle.”

At the beginning of Vayakhel, God asks Moses to assemble “the generous-hearted … the wise-hearted … all of the Israelite community” — the distinction being that the generous provide the materials and the wise shape them into meaning. Earlier commentators might see this “those who can, do — those who can’t, contribute” metaphor as a prooftext for community support of Torah scholars (or one’s synagogue!). But another meaning might be that building the sacred — especially sacred community — requires each member to provide the raw ingredients and wrestle them into place; to be and to become; bumping along together, shaping each other and being shaped into something that (we hope) looks a little more like God than it did before.

Shavua tov, gut woch and have a nice week,

Reb Neal (from our synagogue e-letter)

R. Crumb, Darshan

MOST REVIEWS OF R. CRUMB’S “The Book of Genesis Illustrated” seem astonished that the man who kept us truckin’ through the ’60s could possibly give the Goode Booke such a serious rendering.

But what astonishes me is that Crumb has added yet another level to the endless depth of serious Torah study.

First, about the art: Crumb is one of those Heavy Guys (like Will Eisner and Moebius) whose art defines comics through mastery of the medium and extending its possibilities. His compositions pull the reader into each panel, where subtle figures express humanity unadorned — crankiness and weird smells along with idealism and tenderness. Continue reading “R. Crumb, Darshan”

Favicon Plugin created by Jake Ruston's Wordpress Plugins - Powered by Briefcases and r4 ds card.