outside it all, watching

Levi came over and asked me to join him in a dance. I got up and entered a circle of Hasidim with Levi at my side, and danced.

We danced around Danny, who stood clapping his hands and singing, and I looked at Danny and felt a part of myself slide out of the dance and look coldly at what I was doing, and heard it telling me how strange it was to be dancing with Hasidim, whose way of life I disliked, whose ideas were so different from mine, whose presence was destroying my world, I continued dancing, but for the rest of that night that part of me remained outside it all, watching.

-- familiarities on so many different levels. so many.
The most awesome is to slide out of the sliding out, and just be there.

in this moment

I feel freee

to breathe

and fly

How incredible to see the tangle in all and still experience the faith of just
this moment.

:') blesss blesss blesss

I feel

like it's irrational
and dangerous.
And why would I jump off a mountain; why would I free fall over what from here looks like a rocky ocean of endless dark blue...
Why would I leap off this jet and into the clouds without knowing clearly what lies below?
Why would I carry any of this out, when I suddenly, finally, feel a comforting sun surrounding me, soothing me, appeasing me, warming me,
right
here
where I am?

Why?

you will be eased

resolve
and fears
and commitments
and studiosity
and specialness
and dark light offices
and unfiltered filters of computers
and noise
noise
and then quiet
and ease
eased.

ììììĬìììì

oooooooh, it's a 'appy 'anookah for me, and, me hopes, thee. :')

Donna

sung by Joan Baez

how the winds are laughing...
But whoever treasures freedom,
Like the swallow has learned to fly..

Full version on youtube, but there's a precious melancholy about this live one..tx d for inspiration
c

I found myself intrigued by those books. They were written in a clear and on occasion almost exquisite prose style, the kind of style one rarely finds in works of philosophy and theology. And they were filled with blunt questions: Do you believe the world was created in six days? Do you believe in the order of creation given in the Bible? Do you believe Eve was created from Adam's rib? Do you believe in angels? Do you believe in the biblical account of the Revelation at Sinai? Do you believe in miracles? Do you believe that G-d guides the destiny of every living creatures? Do you believe that G-d talked, actually talked in the manner described in the Bible? How is one to react to the findings of archeology and anthropology and biology and astronomy and physics? How is one to react to the discoveries of modern biblical scholarship? How might one not believe literally in the Bible and still remain a traditional Jew? Are total belief or complete abandonment the only available choices, or is it possible to reinterpret ancient beliefs in a way that will make them relevant to the modern world and at the same time not cause one to abandon the tradition?

The problems he raised fascinated me.

They didn't fascinate me, though. They cast a calm and a frenzy over me. They cast a calm and a frenzy over me. over me.. in me.

got to go

I don't know where but I've got to got to go there, got to go there.
so high..


so low..
I don't know where but I've got to, got to go there

let it be soul

that we can't be convinced,
that we must hear it resonate within us, to the point that we can't deny it.
that we must simply learn it,
that by recognizing the profundity of each chapter, of each event... by recognizing the depth of each word we simply won't be able to deny it.

now I don't know if that's true. I don't know if I agree with the impossibility to deny it on such grounds.
but it was so incredible to hear as I was taking my seat. because it really was so heavy on my mind.

on loneliness, on Jacob's struggle which took place at night, of our journey through the darkness, of the unity of kindled spirits..
oh, let it be soul, let it be soul

Cain and Abel

Abel will open his eyes..

in me.

I am standing upon the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white
sails to the morning breeze
and starts for the blue ocean.

She is an object of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her until at length
she hangs like a speck of white cloud
just where the sea and sky come to
mingle with each other.

Then someone at my side says,
"There, she is gone!"

"Gone where?"

Gone from my sight, that is all.
She is just as large in mast and hull and spar
as she was when she left my side.
She is just as able to bear her load
of living freight to her destined port.
Her diminished size is in me, not her.

And just at the moment when someone at my side says,
"There, she is gone!"
there are other eyes watching her coming
and other voices ready to take up the glad shout,
"Here she comes!"

And that is dying.

—Henry van Dyke

the leaves of the Sycamores

Then there were the twilight weeks, a length of gray time between October and December when the weave formed in the summer seemed to come apart...

The patterns of our lives were being spun out in different worlds, and as the sycamores turned and the air grew cold the summer became a distant dream, and I could recall it sharply only in the very early mornings as I lay in my bed, no longer asleep but not yet fully awake.

At odd moments of the day... a disconnected piece of the summer would float slowly toward me and expand into dim memory... but the strange conjunction of events that had begun with the carnival appeared disentangled now, and the summer faded together with the leaves of the sycamores.

faded...faded

cocoon

it's a dark cocoon of confusion, i told her. it's cold and bare, but sometimes you don't have the liberty to choose a warm one, and anything that will wrap you up is better than being left out on a branch in winter.
shavuah tov means another shavuah :'(

he talked

Can you feel the sun, Reuven? Can you feel how hot it is? Did you know Giordano Bruno was burned alive in Rome in 1600 for writing that the stars were suns? Did you know the gases in the interior of the sun are more than ten million degrees Kelvin? That's hot. They burned him alive because he wrote that the were suns. I wonder what it's like to be burned alive. Fire on your feet and around your legs and the pain as the fire creeps up. When do you die when you're burned alive? I think about that sometimes. They cheated Bruno. They killed him for the truth. But he didn't cheat. He wrote the truth. You have to get killed sometimes but you can't cheat. The cheating never hurts the stars but your eyes get clouded. I really believe that. Your eyes get clouded and you can't see through the telescope, any kind of telescope. There are different kinds of telescopes. Did you know that? There are refracting telescopes and reflecting telescopes and there's the Schmidt telescope. I read about them in a book. Refracting telescopes are okay but you have to watch out for chromatic aberration. Reflecting telescopes don't have that problem. But they have other problems, lots of other different problems. God, listen to me talking. I can't stop talking. Why can't I stop talking? What was I saying? Problems. The Schmidt telescope has problems too. Everything has problems. There's nothing anywhere without problems. There's no one without problems. Look at the clouds. They're beautiful. God, they're beautiful. There's one that looks like someone burning. Yes. Someone is burning. Who doesn't have problems?

We sailed and he talked and then we were near the shoreline and he talked and I could make out clearly the trees and the boulders and summer homes and people on the lawns and a deer at the edge of the woods and still he talked. Then, quite suddenly, he was silent. We sailed in that silence the rest of the way to the dock.

----beep

hey, yknow what's so cool about answering machines? that no matter what mood you're in right now, on here you always sound so mellow and cheery, like - yourself. anyway, call me back.

my little box

s: [nice things plus '!, !' ]
me: I will pack those exclamation points up into a little box and carry them around with me.
s: [nice things]
me: that's positive. I will pack that into my little box as well.
s: and watch as the little box grows.

tx. I is will watch. :')

see the image of G-d

How you treat others is how G-d treats you. How you forgive them is how He forgives you. How you see them is how He sees you.

When you show empathy for the plight of another human being, G-d takes empathy in your plight.

When others slight you and you ignore the call to vengeance that burns inside, G-d erases all memory of your failures toward Him. When you see the image of G-d in another human being, then the image of G-d becomes revealed within you. (tzvi freeman, daily dosage)

The Ghost of Corporate Future.

People are just people, they shouldn't make you nervous.
People are just people, are just people
like
you. :')

yes.

A father can bring up a child any way he wishes, he said softly. What a price to pay for a soul.

Open quote. Human beings do not live forever, Reuven. We live less that the time it takes to blink an eye, if we measure our lives against eternity. So it may be asked what value is there to a human life. There is so much pain in the world. What does it mean to have to suffer so much if our lives are nothing more than the blink of an eye?

I learned a long time ago, Reuven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignifcant. Do you understand what I am saying? A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life. It is hard work to fill one's life with meaning. That I do not think you understand yet. A life filled with meaning is worthy of rest. I want to be worthy of rest when I am no longer here. Do you understand what I am saying? End quote.

time will tell

Sometimes it tells loudly,
sometimes it whispers.

שלמה ארצי - Drunk and Happy

:-p

drunk and Happy.

drunk and Happy. happy. happy. Drunk. and happy.
:'(

in der Luft

Zol Zayn by Chava Alberstein

Demanding more.

I will give an answer from the realm of physics. Once, when I was a nice, honest young man, I was interested in that field. There is something in physics - you have a certain amount of pressure on something, and there is a point at which it can take no more. When you put then times, on hundred times taht pressure on it, something happens. The molecules collapse, and the very nature of the object changes.

In astronomy, you have what is called "white dwarves." These are small stars, the size of the earth, sometimes even smaller. The mass they contain is many times that of the sun. Each cubic centimeter weighs many tons. Why? Because the matter collapsed and became something else; the laws themselves changed.

Elie Weisel

But during one of our conversations, I did ask a question about the Holocaust. I asked, "What did you learn from your Holocaust experience?"

Two things, he replied. The first thing he learned is not to delay when fighting evil. "Fight evil immediately, " he said. "Don't wait. Don't try to convince yourself that it's going to get better."

And the second thing he learned was this: "Don't let other people tell you what you questions should be. Don't let other people's questions become your questions."

I asked him to explain, and he said, "For example, if somebody says to you, 'Why do you wear that beard?' don't feel that you have an obligation to answer that question. It may not be your question. It's somebody else's question. You don't have to justify yourself to others. Don't let other people's questions become your questions. Don't let others force their questions on you."

~Arthur Kurzweil in On the Road with RS

I love the light in Jerusalem.

And I'm not speaking mystically.

The Jewish approach to life considers the man who has stopped going - he who has a feeling of completion, of peace, of a great light from above that has brought him to rest - to be someone who has lost his way...

He whose search has reached a certain level feels that he is in the palace of the King. He goes from room to room, from hall to hall, seeking Him out. However, the king's palace is an endless series of worlds, and as a man proceeds in his search from room to room, he holds only the end of the string. It is, nevertheless, a continuous going, a going after G-d, a going to G-d, day after day, year after year.

~The Thirteen Petalled Rose

marja wanna

"The issue is who is the master and who is the slave. If you are the master, fine. If you are the slave, then you are in trouble no matter what you're the slave of, whether it be coffee, exercise, or Torah study.

So you have to ask yourself, 'Who is the master and who is the slave?' "

familiali ties

Evidently, the ordinary definitions of a religion or a nation do not fit the Jews. Nevertheless, when the Jews are seen as an enlarged family or clan, their essence and way of life become aspects of the relationship of Jews as individuals to their family. The religion and faith are part of the rational and emotional tie between "children" and their father. The patterns of behavior and of life are the family way of the ancestors, and the national connection is only an extension of this family bond. It is a family that grew over the generations until it became a nation and yet remained in essence a family.

This is perhaps the unique quality of the Jewish connection. Sociologically, the family is the elemental unit of humanity. It is in many ways the most primal and primitive of social bonds, in contrast to national loyalty and belonging to a religious community, relatively modern and sophisticated connections. National, cultural, and religious ties are rational and conscious.

Family ties, however, are obscure and profound and far more difficult to articulate. But it is this very depth of experience that may have secured Jewish existence. It may be seen as a primitive and emotionally charged quality in the human soul, and not to be explained. It is, nevertheless, inexorably real and enduring.
~We Jews by Adin Steinsaltz

joyous Resolve!

1. to seek truth
2. with respect
3. and to keep tally

with His warm, loving guidance