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The Dream of a New Day Creator of peace, compas- sionate God, guide us to a covenant of peace with all of Your creatures, birds and beasts as well as all humanity's reflecting your Image of compassion and peace. Give us strength to help sustain Your prom- ised covenant abolishing blind strife and bloody warfare, so that they will no longer devastate the earth, so that discord will no longer tear us asunder. Then all that is savage and brutal will vanish, and we shall fear evil no more. Guard our coming and our going, now toward waking, now toward sleep, always within Your tran- quil shelter. Beloved are You, Sovereign of peace, whose embrace encom- passes the people Israel and all humanity. Jules Harlow
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Our Words "There is no word in Hebrew for ‘thing.’ Objects are called Devarim/words. An object is a specific vibration, every thing, or subject, is an expression of a variant frequency. ‘Things’ are mere externalized manifestations of internal, cosmic vibrations. Creation begins with a subtle, (spiritual) vibration and movement within the Infinite Creator, which then gives rise to a physical vibration of energy, which is eventually solidified into matter. At every moment, every physical time/space expression is an externalized manifestation of a spiritual vibration. Man below is a reflection of the Above. The power of human speech below mimics the creative power of Divine speech. Divine speech creates reality and human speech qualifies reality, calling it good or bad. On a deeper level, our words and how we language our thoughts is a process of continually creating the world around us. In other words, things are to us what we say they are... Just as we have the power to create with speech, we have the equivalent ability to destroy through speech. Our words, which are our projections and vibrations, alter the inner frequency of the universe, for good and for the opposite." Rav DovBer Pinson 84.
The Great Silence In the Sinai Desert, on a cloud of granite Sculpted by the Genesis- night, Hewn of black flame facing the Red Sea, I saw the Great Silence. The Great Silence Sifts the secrets of themselves night. Unmoving, its thin flour falls on my brows. Silently, whispering, I ask the Great Silence, If I could I would ask more silently: How many stars did you count Since your beginning, since your hovering steady Over the Genesis-night facing the Red Sea? And the Great Silence replies: When I shall count it all-- From nothing to the very first thing, Then, son of man, I shall tell you first. Abraham Sutzkever (translation by Barbara and Benjamin Harshav) 83. Prayer The twentieth century Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig remarked that we are not praying for God to change the order of nature, rather, what we pray for is that, as we go out to the world, we may experience God's love. 82.
Shabbat Afternoons Shabbat afternoons continues to this day. Most synagogues begin studying Avot after Pesah and complete one chapter each week. The custom culminates with the study of Kinyan Torah in the final week before Shavuot, the holiday on which we celebrate the giving of the Torah. Some congregations continue to complete further cycles of Pirket Avot and Kinyan Torah throughout the rest of the summer months. Aryeh Tuchman 81.
Ten Things were created on the eve of Shabbat In history, secreted away, are ten tools that were created on the day that God made humankind—a thin stratum of momentary miracle within history so that history might not come to a complete end. And so, in every unfolding of history there exits some miraculous apparatus that preserves what exists from the destructive power that lies within human beings. Planted within existence, the miraculous does not appear at those times when we are uplifted, but at humanity's most horrific moments, when human beings shake the very foundations of existence and history almost plunges into oblivion. Then, suddenly, reality attaches itself to something exalted, something that screams its frenzied fear of nothingness and its trembling agitation in the face of human iniquities. Then the eternal God whispers that, nonetheless, despite everything, we shall survive. That is the meaning of the phrase “God suspends earth over emptiness.” (Job 26:7) The divine voice lurks within history, and in certain miraculous moments it calls to human beings and hands them the instrument with which they can choose to be partners again. In that moment they determine whether82 the divine voice will be heard, and whether and how it will be answered. 80. “Simpler solutions are more likely to be correct than complex ones” Occam’s Razor 79.
1:27: Silence How is a wholeness shaped from all the attractions, directions, words, outlooks, attitudes, and inner propensities that together constitutes a single identity with so many facets? The Torah needs not only words. It is a secret language of holiness, where all existence and reflections of life hide among the letters and the spaces. Torah teaches a person to seek out not only words, but the space between the words as well—that while silence in which there are no forms, no choices to make, nothing subtracted, a silence that comprises a broad and open quietude in which the colors settle alongside one another and become one, through a permitted sparsity. Silence is an expression of faith, containing the doubt that softens all convictions and kneads all possibilities int one. A ralm of quiet is necessary for the journey of Torah and for the journey of the individual through life.It creates an opening to sense some great container to which things slowly are reconciled, in a manner beyond intellectual acuity, beyond cognition, and it finds res and wholeness. The quiet is an open space that is always present within, as Nahman of Bratzlav taught, “When a question about God comes upon you, be silent, and through that silence your thoughts themselves will provide you with the answer to your problem: (Sefer Hamiddot, Faith, &15). Like any other precious thing to the world, silence too can be used for unsavory purposes. It is not a safe haven from reality. Silence is not a spiritual program of inactivity, of randomness, of justifying everything. Silence is a power plant fo the souls suffering from the work of attempting to contain all that one has experienced, a station that seeks rest to enable the mind to feel at one with itself and then take action in the world. A person should speak little: and out of the multiplicity that lies in confusion and doubt, within that silence, the which needs to be will rise to improve the world. 78,
2:13: Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai posed this question to his disciples: Look about you and tell me, what is the right path for a person to choose to live a good life? Rabbi Eliezer said: A generous eye. Rabbi Joshua said: A good colleague. Rabbi Yose said: A good neighbor. Rabbi Shimon said: Foresight. Rabbi Eleazar said: A generous heart. He said to them: I prefer the answer of Eleazar ben Arakh, for his view includes all of yours. 77. 4:23: Your colleague When a person needs a colleague, don't be a teacher. Know that this is the time to extend a hand and say little. Pedagogy is not a substitute for being a mentsh. |
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