B"H
Marketing the Pseudo-Kabbalah
On the Forum of the web site of Tzfat, under General Discusssions,
www.safed.co.il
you will find a thread entitled "The Galut As Ignorance of How to Read the Torah".
On that thread you will find the recommendation of a contributor that I visit a site and the URL to the site. Upon visiting that site I found one of the most glaring examples of misuse and marketing of the pseudo-Kabbalah that I have encountered in awhile. I do not think the intentions of the woman who owns the site are dishonorable. I believe she really thinks she is helping people. I think she herself has been misled by her mentors.
My responses to the B-I-G BUSINESS of marketing the pseudo-Kabbalah are to be found on that thread.
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B"H
This is a letter I sent to Sara Schneider, the owner of the site "A Small Still Voice". The subject title was: I'm sorry I had to be gruff. I also sent a copy to Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh, her mentor.
Dear Sara:
I'd like to share a short passage from my book נקבה - הקרבנות והכפרות with you. I hope it will help make you understand why I reacted to your "Eating as Tikun" as I did:
Here is the passage:
Please consider the following חילופים:
השטן = 700+9+300+5 = 1014 = 15 = י-ה
The author is aware that the reader will most probably find the above חילופים for the value 15 disturbing. Upon opening our hearts and minds to the חילופים we become increasingly aware that everything, absolutely everything, without any any exception whatsoever, is ה' יתברך בהתגלמות....We have gone beyond the duality of "good" and "bad" - all is השם. We are now able to understand the meaning of the מדרש that tells us that before אדם וחוה ate the fruit of The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil השטן = י-ה was external. After they ate of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil השטן = י-ה became internal. That is, they understood that both the "good" and the "evil" are י-ה.
Consider this חילוף too:
הנחש = המשיח
You have been taught that אדם was led into sin by חוה. How wrong your teachers are! המשיח came and taught the secrets of Torah to חוה. Your teachers have never had this truth revealed to them. They do not know and presume to teach.
It is because I am aware of this that I cannot conscience the dissemination of pseudo-Kabbalah. It is also the reason that I am not all sweetness and light. God is not all sweetness and light. How, and why, should I be? When I have to rally my yetzer hara to defend the Truth of Torah I can, and do.
Sara, I am sure that you are well-intentioned. I am also sure that you have been mislead by those who understand but a smattering of Torah. Please, be careful and responsible about what you teach.
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Please allow me to demonstrate one last חילוף:
משיח = נחש = השמחה = ספר הגי = את ספר תורה = 1357 = 358
You, my dear lady, *are* the ספר תורה. Understanding this is משיח.
Everything you have been taught about what משיח is in the Pharisaic/Rabbinic tradition is wrong. Now go and learn from the Dead Sea Scrolls.
With blessings for a Shabbat Shalom,
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat
Wednesday, April 28, 2004
B"H
Too Damn Smart
This is a piece I found that I wrote on another board some time ago.
Yes; Doreen is a very, very intelligent person, too damn smart for her own good. Would you expect Catherine Zeta Jones not to be arrogant about how she looks? However, genius is more rare than beauty, and far more difficult to live with. Everyone wants a genius IQ except those who actually have an abnormally high IQ. You say that I am among the most intelligent people you've ever encountered. If you've attained maturity, you've probably met a lot of people. Imagine how difficult it is for me to find someone I can really communicate with. To be what is referred to as severely intelligent by those who are this way and those who suffer the birth defect of genius is as isolating as being profoundly retarded. To exist far from center on either side of the IQ Gaussian curve (Gauss is the mathematician who described the classical “bell” curve) is a defect.
I try to reach out to people, but my parody of normal behavior limps. My social skills are retarded and everyone seems to be thinking in slow motion to me. I can't be like you, that's very isolating. Frankly, I do pick up on your envy. You can't be like me. Are you quite sure you want to be me so bad that you attempt to assume my identity? Would you really want to walk in my moccasins? Could you fill them out?
I was thoroughly disgusted by Uni when she suggested that I divorce my husband. It was an all together idiotic thing to say. In the case of my marriage, it was particularly stupid, as I consider it a miracle that I found someone who understands me, at least in part, and can live with me and still love me for 20 years, even though he readily admits he'll never know just who I am, or understand how I cognate. He also gives me another precious gift - the gift of freedom. If Uni had a long, happy marriage she never would have said what she said. Only a partners in a couple who have been together for a long time know what a victory over happenstance it is to succeed at staying together. She's obviously not married very long, or very happily, or both. I consider my marriage a miracle from God. She suggests that my marriage be put asunder, God forbid - and calls me a religious hypocrite. I truly do consider Uni not only hypocritical herself, but impetuous, singularly unaware and, as a self-appointed spokesperson for the State of Israel, a liability.
Being a genius is actually being the next step in Human evolution. It is a mutation, an advantageous one in the long term to be sure, however in the present it makes one feel as though he or she is in the wrong time frame, and that is a life-long experience – an experience of being existentially alone and perpetually out of sync.
As the honest and fair people on this board know, I use my intelligence to help those who do not attack people. I can also be devastating to those who do attack others because I know how the mind works far better than most of you do. I am far less concerned when people attack me. That amuses me. It’s like someone trying to shoot a light ray with a gun. However, I do not conscience seeing good people attacked, as Shana and Jennifer have been attacked. You'd be much better advised to have me as a ally than as an adversary. I can be of great assistance. I can also do permanent damage to your mind, the way you perceive yourselves and your worlds.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat
Too Damn Smart
This is a piece I found that I wrote on another board some time ago.
Yes; Doreen is a very, very intelligent person, too damn smart for her own good. Would you expect Catherine Zeta Jones not to be arrogant about how she looks? However, genius is more rare than beauty, and far more difficult to live with. Everyone wants a genius IQ except those who actually have an abnormally high IQ. You say that I am among the most intelligent people you've ever encountered. If you've attained maturity, you've probably met a lot of people. Imagine how difficult it is for me to find someone I can really communicate with. To be what is referred to as severely intelligent by those who are this way and those who suffer the birth defect of genius is as isolating as being profoundly retarded. To exist far from center on either side of the IQ Gaussian curve (Gauss is the mathematician who described the classical “bell” curve) is a defect.
I try to reach out to people, but my parody of normal behavior limps. My social skills are retarded and everyone seems to be thinking in slow motion to me. I can't be like you, that's very isolating. Frankly, I do pick up on your envy. You can't be like me. Are you quite sure you want to be me so bad that you attempt to assume my identity? Would you really want to walk in my moccasins? Could you fill them out?
I was thoroughly disgusted by Uni when she suggested that I divorce my husband. It was an all together idiotic thing to say. In the case of my marriage, it was particularly stupid, as I consider it a miracle that I found someone who understands me, at least in part, and can live with me and still love me for 20 years, even though he readily admits he'll never know just who I am, or understand how I cognate. He also gives me another precious gift - the gift of freedom. If Uni had a long, happy marriage she never would have said what she said. Only a partners in a couple who have been together for a long time know what a victory over happenstance it is to succeed at staying together. She's obviously not married very long, or very happily, or both. I consider my marriage a miracle from God. She suggests that my marriage be put asunder, God forbid - and calls me a religious hypocrite. I truly do consider Uni not only hypocritical herself, but impetuous, singularly unaware and, as a self-appointed spokesperson for the State of Israel, a liability.
Being a genius is actually being the next step in Human evolution. It is a mutation, an advantageous one in the long term to be sure, however in the present it makes one feel as though he or she is in the wrong time frame, and that is a life-long experience – an experience of being existentially alone and perpetually out of sync.
As the honest and fair people on this board know, I use my intelligence to help those who do not attack people. I can also be devastating to those who do attack others because I know how the mind works far better than most of you do. I am far less concerned when people attack me. That amuses me. It’s like someone trying to shoot a light ray with a gun. However, I do not conscience seeing good people attacked, as Shana and Jennifer have been attacked. You'd be much better advised to have me as a ally than as an adversary. I can be of great assistance. I can also do permanent damage to your mind, the way you perceive yourselves and your worlds.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat
B”H
THE GALUT AS IGNORANCE OF HOW TO READ TORAH - PART TWO OF A TWO-PART ESSAY
In part 1 of this two-part essay I wrote: ” … the desirable and correct creation and description of time is the continual unfolding of the hidden depths of Torah and the adaptation and application of the mitzvoth to the realities that are created as a result of proper kavvanot and learning.” In this second part of the essay we will, with God’s help, now see that the correct punctuation of time is the correct punctuation and pronunciation of the Torah as we learn it in order to find formerly unrevealed depths and to develop the הלכה.
"רק חזק ואמץ מאד לשמר לעשות ככל-התורה אשר צוך משה עבדי אל-תסור ממנו ימין ושמאול למען תשכיל בכל אשר תלך: לא-ימוש ספר התורה הזה מפיך והגית בו יומם ולילה למען תשמר לעשות ככל-הכתוב בו כי-אז תצליח את-דרכך ואז תשכיל:" יהשוע א:ז-ח
The thesis presented in this paper will be based on the simple meaning of the two פסוקים above and חלופים of a few basic gematriot that demonstrate the points raised in this paper quite simply, clearly and straightforwardly. The encompassing importance of חילוף cannot be overestimated, as we will, בע"ה, see.
A caveat: we always use the גמטריות to elevate what our minds understand to be the ‘meanings’ of the words. The widespread misuse, or more correct to say abuse, of the גמטריות to lend false validity to our delusions of evil or prove that our private prejudices are true is rife throughout the “Kabbalah”.
As is known, when words share a common value they are various aspects of one and the same mega-concept. By showing a number of חילופים for a value we can see its many aspects and layers of meaning emerging. All of those meanings are always true and mutually contained one within the others and all within any one.
Various inflections of the word that we are familiar with in the form הגוי can be found in the scrolls [see The Dead Sea Scroll Concordance, Volume One, the Non-Biblical Texts from Qumran, Part One, by Martin G. Abegg, Jr. with James E. Bowley & Edward M. Cook & in Consultation with Emanuel Tov, Copyright 2003 by Koninklijke Brill, Leiden, The Netherlands for the exhaustive list of cites]. There are apparently anomalous spellings of words throughout the Dead Sea Scrolls. Those “anomalies” are filled with meaning as will be explicated, with HaShem’s help, in a book I am currently writing. The spellings the gematriot of which appear below appear in this form in the scrolls.
Please note that in cite 4Q417 1i17 we find the word הגוי, which, depending on the punctuation and context, can mean ‘the People’ or ‘meditation’. The significance of this will be discussed in brief anon.
Let us first examine the simplest inflection of the word הגוי that appears in the scrolls. It is the word spelled thus:
הגי = 18 = חי
It becomes immediately evident from this one חילוף alone that as we meditate upon and learn Torah, so we live.
We can also see that the following must be true:
הגי + האדם = 628 = חיים* = אגרת הגוי
*Unless I specifically state to the contrary, the אותיות סופיות in my writings are calculated as:
ך = 500
ם = 600
ן = 700
ף = 800
ץ = 900
The Dead Sea scrolls come to teach us that ספר התורה is the Book of Life and as we meditate in it and learn it so will our lives be. It behooves us then to be very, very careful that we learn correctly.
Let us come to understand who and what חוה is. She is referred to in Torah as אם כל-חי and we are taught that that is why Adam gave her the name חוה (Bereisheet 3:21).
From the חלוף of the word הגי above we can see that אם כל-חי can be read as אם כל הגי.
Let’s look deeper into this matter:
חוה = 19 = הוגה = ההגו = גוי = עולם חדש = 1018** = התגים = 19
**According to the tradition of gematria bequeathed to us from time immemorial the letter א' is equal to both one, as it is the first letter of the Hebrew aleph-beit and also to 1000, thus its name. The fact that the letter א' is equal to 1000, as well as to one, is apparent from the fact that if we assign values to all of the letters from א' to ץ' we can see that ץ' is equal to 900. Thus, returning for another “go” around the aleph-beit the letter א' is equal to 1000 as well as one as it is the letter that comes after ץ. Continuing this understanding, the letter ב' is equal to 2, 2000 and 1001; the letter ג' is equal to 3, 3000, 1002 and 2001 and so on.
חוה is אם כל-חי, she is אם כל חגי. The gematria of her name is equal to הוגה and to ההגו and to גוי and to עולם חדש and to התגים as we have seen above. From this we learn that our experience of all that lives, including the Gentile nations (הגוים), is entirely dependent upon our own learning of what the Dead Sea Sect called ספר ההגי and ספר ההגו. From the חילוף above of the name חוה we understand that ספר ההגו is ספר חוה.
We must ask what הספר is. The gematria of the word ספר is 340 or ש"מ. Thus, the word הספר would become 345 or שמ"ה, an anagram of which is the name משה. We see now that משה is the Book. How can it be said that Moshe did not know the Law? Moshe is the Book of the Law!
From the consideration above we can see that the expression ספר ההגו, that is found in The Tzaddokite Fragments (The Damascus Document) CD X,6 which is equal to ספר חוה can also be read as: ספר התגים because 1018 = 19 according to the rules of גימטריא, as we have seen above. It can also be read as משה תגים. Yet the Talmud says:
אמר רב יהודה אמר רב: בשעה שעלה משה למרום, מצאו להקב"ה שיושב וקושר כתרים לאותיות, אמר לפניו: רבש"ע, מי מעכב על ידך? אמר לו: אדם אחד יש שעתיד להיות בסוף כמה דורות ועקיבא בן יוסף שמו, שעתיד לדרוש על כל קוץ וקוץ תילין תילין של הלכות. אמר לפניו: רבש"ע, הראהו לי, אמר לו: חזור לאחורך. הלך וישב בסוף שמונה שורות, ולא היה יודע מה הן אומרים, תשש כחו; כיון שהגיע לדבר אחד, אמרו לו תלמידיו: רבי, מנין לך? אמר להן: הלכה למשה מסיני, נתיישבה דעתו. חזר ובא לפני הקב"ה, אמר לפניו: רבונו של עולם, יש לך אדם כזה ואתה נותן תורה ע"י? אמר לו: שתוק, כך עלה במחשבה לפני.
[תלמוד בבלי מסכת מנחות דף כ"ט עמוד ב, מאגר היהדות הממוחשבת (פרוייקט השו"ת), גרסה 10, כל הזכויות שמורות לאוניברסיטת בר-אילן, תל-אביב, 2002]
Translation: The Talmud in Tractate Menachot (29b) quotes Reb. Yehuda, who said in the name of Rab: When Moshe ascended to heaven to receive the Torah he found Hashem engaged in affixing tagin (three small upward strokes in the form of a crown) to the letters. Moshe then asked, "Master of the Universe, Who is forcing Your hand [that You have to add crowns to the letters ]?" Hashem replied: "There will be a man, after many generations, whose name is Akiva ben Yosef and he will expound a multitude of laws upon each stroke of these coronets." Moshe asked to be permitted to see that man, and Hashem instructed him to turn around. Moshe sat down behind eight rows [of Rabbi Akiva's disciples in the Beth Hamidrash - some say it was 10 rows - and listened to their discussions]. Moshe found that he could not follow their arguments. He felt as if his strength had been sapped, but when they came to a certain topic, the students asked Rabbi Akiva (in reference to a law that was being discussed): "From where do we know this?" Rabbi Akiva responded, "Halacha L'Moshe M'Sinai" - this is an oral law handed down to Moshe at Sinai. At that moment Moshe was comforted (since his teaching was quoted, although he had not yet received the Torah - see Rashi). Thereupon Moshe said to Hashem: "You have such a man and yet You give the Torah [to Israel] by me?" Hashem replied: “Hush, this is My decree (literally, "So it has come to My mind")." [This translation according to: http://www.torahtots.com/torah/tagin.htm].
We can now understand, and sympathize with, the outrage and dismay that HaYachad expressed at the teachings of the Prushim [See: The Tzaddokite Fragments (The Damascus Document) 5:11-13]. Having the Holy Tongue reveal to us that משה and הספר are two aspects of one and the very same mega-existence, we begin to appreciate the extent to which those who claim that Moshe was a person who had to learn the depths of Torah from the Rabbis is based on utter ignorance of the truth of Torah, who and what Moshe is, and that it is hubris that only the abysmally ignorant are capable of. The painful truth that we have been sold a bill of goods by Rabbis who did not understand Torah, and banked on the fact that the masses knew even less than they, begins to sink in. We might like to deny this painful truth. Realizing that we have been betrayed by those we trusted to be our spiritual and moral mentors and guides is a terribly rude awakening. Admitting this truth to ourselves may take much time; but we will never extricate ourselves from the galut if we do not.
There are conflicting opinions in the Pharisaic/Rabbinical literature concerning the weight one should place on learning Torah using the gematriot. Some Rabbis did not consider the gematriot the “tachlis” of learning Torah, for instance this famous quote:
רבי אליעזר בן חסמא אומר קנין ופתחי נדה הן הן גופי הלכות [תקופות וגימטריאות פרפראות לחכמה]: (מסכתות קטנות מסכת אבות דרבי נתן נוסחא א פרק כז ד"ה רבי אליעזר)
other sources do attribute great importance to the learning of gematriot. For instance, this lesser known, quote:
כל היודע לחשוב תקופות ומזלות ואינו מחשב עליו הכתוב אומר את פועל ה' לא יביטו ומעשה ידיו לא ראו. וזו היא ששנינו (אבות ספ"ג) תקופות וגימטריאות פרפראות לחכמה ואם כן תהיה חכמת הגימטריא מצוה. ואם היה דעת בעל ההלכות כן היה מזכיר תקופות ומזלות: (השגות הרמב"ן לספר המצוות שורש א ד"ה והתשובה הרביעית)
Although in actuality there are more quotes in the Pharisaic/Rabbinic sources that tout the learning of gematriot, the opinion of Eliezer ben Chisma on the matter, as quoted above, is by far the best known and the prevailing opinion.
We see from the Pharisaic/Rabbinic sources which mention the gematriot that the learning of gematriot was known by them to be associated with the learning of dikduk, t’kufot and mazalot. A number of Rabbis are said to be experts in these matters (ben Zakkai, Akiva and ben Chisma for instance), or are soi-dissant cognocenti (the Ramba”n, ba’al Sefer HaChinukh, Rabbeinu Yona and Moshe de Leon are among these), but they did not see fit to teach these matters generally and left generation after generation of disciples unable to plumb the depths of Torah.
We have considered some of the gematriot of some of the inflections of the word הגי above. What is הגוי, after all, if not the pronunciation of Torah? And what is pronunciation of Torah if not the use of the punctuations as determined by the Divine Laws of Hebrew grammar that are also the laws that rule the heavenly bodies and thus describe time. As we saw in part 1 of this two-part essay the common gematria of the words זמן, מקראות and להבין is 747. We see from the Pharisaic/Rabbinic sources that gematriot were known to them to be associated with dikduk, t’kufot and mazalot. Whether they really knew these secrets or dabbled in them, having merely heard about these matters from true Masters is unknown. It would appear from their interpretation of Torah that they were not Masters of this knowledge on the level that those who wrote the ‘Dead Sea scrolls were’.
The central lesson we learn from the חילופים of the word הגי, and its inflections, is this: It is the understanding of the Text, ההגוי, that determines everything that we experience in life הגי חי = 18 and in time זמן = מקראות = להבין = 747.
Clearly now that we have returned to Eretz Yisrael we must divest ourselves of the Pharisaic teachings, the physical expression of which is the galut, as well as the improvisations that the Rabbis concocted, which perpetuate and compound the galut, and make an end to it impossible because they continue to generate redoubled and compounded convolutions in space/time, which are the physical expression of their dishonest emotions and convoluted thinking, which they take with them when they gaze into the Torah. We must return to the true Service, which is none other than the elevation and purification of that which we perceive using חילופים. Returning to a state of consciousness that is fully steeped in the Holy Language will be a process and will, of course, take time. Yet the work must begin and in so doing we will halt the continuing creation of distorted and convoluted time/space.
We learn from the scrolls that the Pharisees, as well as the Sadducees who had gone astray, had distorted the Temple practices and did not, or could not, cleanse the Temple of the unthinkable defilement of the Chashmona’im. We cannot ignore the fact that these compromises, changes and distortions in the Temple service eventually brought about the downfall of the Temple and Yerushalayim Shel Mata. They also generated the galut.
During the time that the Second Temple all of creation was bent and broken by the desecration of the Temple Service and the putting of the Avodah of HaCohen Rosh in the hands of those not only not from the line of Tzaddok, HaCohen HaGadol in the time of David HaMelekh, but wholly perverse and whose hands were soaked with blood. We are still living in the effects of that cosmic disaster and it will also generate the dissolution of the Jewish enterprise in Eretz Yisra’el if we do not return to the true way. We are already seeing a society so warped by corruption in the State of Israel that the state itself is becoming untenable, r”l. Our only hope for survival here in Israel is to return to the Judaism that is contained in the ‘Dead Sea scrolls’. It is not for naught that HaShem revealed them to us concurrent with the declaration of the state.
We encounter the very same concepts, considerations and lessons that we find in the halakhic discussions and mystical trends of Pharisaic/Rabbinic Judaism in the writings of היחד. Yet היחד present them to us with a depth, intimate understanding, poignancy, immediacy and attainability that we do not find in the writings of the Pharisaic/Rabbinic tradition. It is the teachings of היחד that can return us to the true Service. The Rabbis are nary equipped to do this, as they are the inheritors of the Pharisaic tradition that contained many interpretations inimical to the spirit of Torah. In the Diaspora the Rabbis introduced more distortions into interpretation that were yet further afield and brought us further away from the Source Of Truth. This was, no doubt, based on their mistaken perception of the need for adaptation of ההלכה to changing circumstances in the galut as well as realpolitik and power plays among the Rabbis. This unfortunate state of affairs has left us with the bloated and untenable religion we encounter in our own times that leaves our Soul so very, very thirsty. These distortions, in turn, are generating the bloated and untenable world we collectively create and are trapped in.
Because we are not in a state of consciousness in which we perform the חלופים of the גמטריות naturally, as a matter of course, when reading Hebrew (and that is, indeed, the most abysmal גלות) we do not understand many concepts in תורה properly. As a result, we are reduced to hallucinating evil and plurality wherein none exist in reality. Moreover, because we are not aware of the fact that it is we ourselves creating these phantasmagorias and certainly we are not aware how creation occurs, we live in dread fear of the creations of our renegade minds, with the accompanying imprecation and execration of these phantoms and phantasmagorias. We blame “the goi’im” for our “tzuris”, when in fact it is we ourselves creating them. Thus, we bring the transgression of the מצוה אל תעשה not to curse upon ourselves. Horrible hells are created by the mind undisciplined, untrained in the חלופים of the גמטריא. That is our punishment for having abrogated the Kingdom of Heaven. Understand this. Understanding this is the key to our salvation and emancipation. Only when we realize that we are creating our own historic collective tragedy and personal misery, without knowing how and not being able to control or stop it, can we take pity on ourselves, and others, and pray to HaShem with a broken heart to show us the way out. Only then do we realize how hopelessly lost, confused and helpless we are. We were not intended to be lost in a nightmare of our own making. Reality does not have to be this way. We were intended to create Gan Eden by learning and doing (i.e., being) the Torah properly.
I cannot demonstrate just how the correct reading of Torah is done in a public forum such as this. There are many Jewish scoffers, Jews who misuse the gematriot in their ignorance and enthusiasm to push this or that agenda and, of course, non-Jewish would-be infiltrators who want to learn about HaYachad and arrogate their wisdom, to enter Kodesh HaKadoshim and defile the kelim in it for their own purposes. It is enough that you have been told that this knowledge must be retrieved from the genizah of the Jewish collective memory. It is for you to ask HaShem the rest.
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be for a
blessing.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat
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A response I received from a usually very "anti" interlocutor:
Doreen makes some interesting points, not necessarily all wrong either.
An interesting work on the creation of woman, the original androgyny of man, the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, the dimunition of the Moon and womanhood's staure , the Exile of the Shekinah & the Jewish People, and the ultimate restoration to pre-Edenic times is to be found in "Kabbalistic Writings on the Nature of Masculine & Feminine" by Sarah Schneider 2001.
Sarah's site is
www.amyisrael.co.il/smallvoice/founder.html
-------------------------------------------
My response:
21:54 28 Apr 2004
B”H
Thank you for recommending the site above.
I went to the site you gave the URL to and found the face of a woman I’m sure is very nice and well-meaning smiling back at me.
However, I should like to point out the differences between what she’s (apparently) “on about” and what I am. I think it only right that I send her this critique as well. I’ll send a copy to Rabbi Ginsburgh as well, be’ezrat HaShem.
At the outset I should say that I read on the site that she studied under Yitzchak Ginsburgh. I bought one of his books, The Hebrew Letters, some years ago. Even then I was left unimpressed and found the book simplistic. Evidently, what Mrs. Schneider learned the art and craft of marketing books from her mentor, who knows but a smattering of Torah, something that Rabbi Ginsburgh does excel in. I have chastised Rabbi Ginsburgh before for his “ufaratzta” (and marketing) approach to teaching about האותיות. That was after I found a Xian on the net using what she found on his site and interpreting it in the perverted way that only Xians know how to do. He remained obdurate and unrepentant. Evidently his reputation and income are more important to him than that the Torah should be in Jewish hands. Forgive me, then, if I do not trust one of his disciples entirely.
In contradistinction to Mrs. Schneider and Rabbi Ginsburgh I do not use the Torah I learn as a spade to dig with. I have never received remuneration for my research and never asked for it. I do not receive money to learn and disseminate Torah. I have also been quite stern with those who tried to encourage me to make myself generally known. In actually, I expend money to share that which HaShem has granted me – lots of it – and as a result I am reduced financially to living in a slum. I don’t think that’s any great moral shakes. It is the least a Jew can do for the זכות of serving HaShem. If we were living in communal societies, such as the Isi’im did, a scholar of Torah would not have to be poor. S/he would live at the same economic level as everyone else, no better no worse, and respect would be accorded on the basis of how much Torah one had learned and internalized. However, in the Diaspora there is no choice but to be poor if one intends to remain true to Torah, because the minute that one earns an income for it s/he must compromise her or his morality. As I have written in a number of essays, diverging from Torah morality even a hairsbreadth results in a vast divergence as the resulting “time” and “space” stretch out before us and the קץ is pushed indefinitely away.
Thus, I am immediately wary of Mrs. Schneider, lovely and ingenuous though she may look.
I clicked on the link Eating As Tikkun that is on her home page. This is the URL to that page: http://www.amyisrael.co.il/smallvoice/eatingastikkun.html I should like to request the reader to turn her or his attention to that site now in order to understand the rest of what I intend to write here, be’ezrat HaShem.
I was dismayed at seeing yet another misuse of the Kabbalah on the site, although I should not have been surprised. It is an avera, as it is a sneaky manipulation of people’s emotions, insecurities and confusion to hold out the promise of getting over eating disorders by learning the psuedo-Kabbalah that is so prevalent today. Chaba”d is the perhaps the worst offender of holding out the promise of solving all of one’s problems by learning their teachings, although many groups do this today. I have written about the deleterious effects of doing this. Here in Tzfat, the pseudo-Kabbalah capital of the world we see on an everyday basis that the city is cursed.
While it is most certainly true that foods are physical representations of deep spiritual truths, the Pharisaic/Rabbinic tradition has only scratched the surface of what the moral/spiritual substrate of the physical expression that is food is.
It is also certainly true that the addiction to food, as all addictions, is the Soul desperately trying to find the Truth that was lost. We understand innately that the sensations of all addictive substances, including food, are in essence Godliness and we try again and again, futilely, to get to that level. It is our hunger for the kernel of Torah that compels us to overeat. It is the desire for the spirit of Torah that compels some to drink excessively (thus alcohol is called spirits), it is the desire for blissful union with HaShem that makes some sex addicts, and so on with every addiction. All this is a result of the terrible galut that we are in.
Mrs. Schneider, as all Jews blindly loyal to the Pharisaic/Rabbinic tradition, has some inkling of the depth of what eating is, but not enough to understand. Actually, she has just enough knowledge to sell lessons to those who know even less than she does.
Let us examine what the Torah teaches us about eating:
ויצו ה' אלקים על-האדם לאמר מכל עץ-הגן אכל תאכל: ומעץ הדעת טוב ורע לא תאכל ממנו כי ביום אכלך ממנו מות תמות. בראשית ב:טז-יז
Please note that the word תאכל is written in the pasuk with a חלם חסר and not with a חולם. However, the very next letter after the word תאכל is a ו'. The word תאכל taken together with the ו' directly after it produces the word תאכלו. An anagram of the word תאכלו is כל אות. HaShem is given us a directive to ingest, as it were, every letter of the Torah. We are not talking about trees and fruits; we are talking about the basic building blocks of the Torah, which are also the basic building blocks of consciousness, and thus the creation as it appears to us. The physical trees and fruits that arise in the created world are expressions of how we learn Torah. It is because we do not know how we create the worlds that we do or even that we do, although we do, that we live in a world in which there are fruit-bearing trees and not fruit trees. We live in a world of cause and effect in which there is the artifact of time that our minds create. Thus there is a time delay. If we were not in the galut there would be no time continuum as we are now experiencing it. Creation would occur “simultaneously” concurrent and in accordance with our kavvanot in learning Torah. We would produce fruit trees, not fruit bearing trees. In fact, all creation would arise spontaneously and instantly without delay at all. That is what reality is like when we are not in galut. We can only create this completely satisfying food if we learn כל אות and טעם of Torah.
Note that every letter is the word תאכלו and, necessarily, in its anagram כל אות is an אות שמוש. The words מות and תמות as similarly comprised entirely of אותיות שמוש.
Depending upon the moral/spiritual level of the reader one will see death, another will see the secrets of how to read and permute the letters of the Torah. As Rabbi Kook wrote: “The Book is The Book, but it is the heart that does the interpretation.”
Another example of a story from Torah that is actually a lesson in how to read Torah is the (ostensible) story of the binding of Yitzchak. Without digressing, nor revealing more than those who might abuse the information should know, let it just be said that the word מאכלת is also comprised entirely of אותיות שמוש. Anyone who sees עקדת יצחק as a story about אברהם almost shechting יצחק instead of lessons in the secrets of אותיות השמוש and cannot see the fact that the word צדק is contained within the words עקדת יצחק has a serious spiritual/moral problem. Did you every notice that the letter ח' in the name יצחק is equal to ד+ד? That being the case we can clearly see that using the letter ק' in the radical עקד and the letter ק' in the name יצחק we have the root דקדק contained in the phrase עקדת יצחק. The story is actually lessons in דקדוק, which are not only the laws of Hebrew grammar, but also the very Laws of אמת וצדק that the universes should be conducted according to. Yet people see some horror story in עקדת יצחק, even as they see horror stories in their own lives, in the lives of others and in Jewish history. The Torah is called aspaklaria because it reflects who you are back at you. Understand this.
So, we see clearly that we don’t all have eating disorders, as Mrs. Schneider contends. We all have Holy Language reading disabilities, which is the result of having been given "tincture of diluted Torah" to drink by the Rabbis for so many generations.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat
THE GALUT AS IGNORANCE OF HOW TO READ TORAH - PART TWO OF A TWO-PART ESSAY
In part 1 of this two-part essay I wrote: ” … the desirable and correct creation and description of time is the continual unfolding of the hidden depths of Torah and the adaptation and application of the mitzvoth to the realities that are created as a result of proper kavvanot and learning.” In this second part of the essay we will, with God’s help, now see that the correct punctuation of time is the correct punctuation and pronunciation of the Torah as we learn it in order to find formerly unrevealed depths and to develop the הלכה.
"רק חזק ואמץ מאד לשמר לעשות ככל-התורה אשר צוך משה עבדי אל-תסור ממנו ימין ושמאול למען תשכיל בכל אשר תלך: לא-ימוש ספר התורה הזה מפיך והגית בו יומם ולילה למען תשמר לעשות ככל-הכתוב בו כי-אז תצליח את-דרכך ואז תשכיל:" יהשוע א:ז-ח
The thesis presented in this paper will be based on the simple meaning of the two פסוקים above and חלופים of a few basic gematriot that demonstrate the points raised in this paper quite simply, clearly and straightforwardly. The encompassing importance of חילוף cannot be overestimated, as we will, בע"ה, see.
A caveat: we always use the גמטריות to elevate what our minds understand to be the ‘meanings’ of the words. The widespread misuse, or more correct to say abuse, of the גמטריות to lend false validity to our delusions of evil or prove that our private prejudices are true is rife throughout the “Kabbalah”.
As is known, when words share a common value they are various aspects of one and the same mega-concept. By showing a number of חילופים for a value we can see its many aspects and layers of meaning emerging. All of those meanings are always true and mutually contained one within the others and all within any one.
Various inflections of the word that we are familiar with in the form הגוי can be found in the scrolls [see The Dead Sea Scroll Concordance, Volume One, the Non-Biblical Texts from Qumran, Part One, by Martin G. Abegg, Jr. with James E. Bowley & Edward M. Cook & in Consultation with Emanuel Tov, Copyright 2003 by Koninklijke Brill, Leiden, The Netherlands for the exhaustive list of cites]. There are apparently anomalous spellings of words throughout the Dead Sea Scrolls. Those “anomalies” are filled with meaning as will be explicated, with HaShem’s help, in a book I am currently writing. The spellings the gematriot of which appear below appear in this form in the scrolls.
Please note that in cite 4Q417 1i17 we find the word הגוי, which, depending on the punctuation and context, can mean ‘the People’ or ‘meditation’. The significance of this will be discussed in brief anon.
Let us first examine the simplest inflection of the word הגוי that appears in the scrolls. It is the word spelled thus:
הגי = 18 = חי
It becomes immediately evident from this one חילוף alone that as we meditate upon and learn Torah, so we live.
We can also see that the following must be true:
הגי + האדם = 628 = חיים* = אגרת הגוי
*Unless I specifically state to the contrary, the אותיות סופיות in my writings are calculated as:
ך = 500
ם = 600
ן = 700
ף = 800
ץ = 900
The Dead Sea scrolls come to teach us that ספר התורה is the Book of Life and as we meditate in it and learn it so will our lives be. It behooves us then to be very, very careful that we learn correctly.
Let us come to understand who and what חוה is. She is referred to in Torah as אם כל-חי and we are taught that that is why Adam gave her the name חוה (Bereisheet 3:21).
From the חלוף of the word הגי above we can see that אם כל-חי can be read as אם כל הגי.
Let’s look deeper into this matter:
חוה = 19 = הוגה = ההגו = גוי = עולם חדש = 1018** = התגים = 19
**According to the tradition of gematria bequeathed to us from time immemorial the letter א' is equal to both one, as it is the first letter of the Hebrew aleph-beit and also to 1000, thus its name. The fact that the letter א' is equal to 1000, as well as to one, is apparent from the fact that if we assign values to all of the letters from א' to ץ' we can see that ץ' is equal to 900. Thus, returning for another “go” around the aleph-beit the letter א' is equal to 1000 as well as one as it is the letter that comes after ץ. Continuing this understanding, the letter ב' is equal to 2, 2000 and 1001; the letter ג' is equal to 3, 3000, 1002 and 2001 and so on.
חוה is אם כל-חי, she is אם כל חגי. The gematria of her name is equal to הוגה and to ההגו and to גוי and to עולם חדש and to התגים as we have seen above. From this we learn that our experience of all that lives, including the Gentile nations (הגוים), is entirely dependent upon our own learning of what the Dead Sea Sect called ספר ההגי and ספר ההגו. From the חילוף above of the name חוה we understand that ספר ההגו is ספר חוה.
We must ask what הספר is. The gematria of the word ספר is 340 or ש"מ. Thus, the word הספר would become 345 or שמ"ה, an anagram of which is the name משה. We see now that משה is the Book. How can it be said that Moshe did not know the Law? Moshe is the Book of the Law!
From the consideration above we can see that the expression ספר ההגו, that is found in The Tzaddokite Fragments (The Damascus Document) CD X,6 which is equal to ספר חוה can also be read as: ספר התגים because 1018 = 19 according to the rules of גימטריא, as we have seen above. It can also be read as משה תגים. Yet the Talmud says:
אמר רב יהודה אמר רב: בשעה שעלה משה למרום, מצאו להקב"ה שיושב וקושר כתרים לאותיות, אמר לפניו: רבש"ע, מי מעכב על ידך? אמר לו: אדם אחד יש שעתיד להיות בסוף כמה דורות ועקיבא בן יוסף שמו, שעתיד לדרוש על כל קוץ וקוץ תילין תילין של הלכות. אמר לפניו: רבש"ע, הראהו לי, אמר לו: חזור לאחורך. הלך וישב בסוף שמונה שורות, ולא היה יודע מה הן אומרים, תשש כחו; כיון שהגיע לדבר אחד, אמרו לו תלמידיו: רבי, מנין לך? אמר להן: הלכה למשה מסיני, נתיישבה דעתו. חזר ובא לפני הקב"ה, אמר לפניו: רבונו של עולם, יש לך אדם כזה ואתה נותן תורה ע"י? אמר לו: שתוק, כך עלה במחשבה לפני.
[תלמוד בבלי מסכת מנחות דף כ"ט עמוד ב, מאגר היהדות הממוחשבת (פרוייקט השו"ת), גרסה 10, כל הזכויות שמורות לאוניברסיטת בר-אילן, תל-אביב, 2002]
Translation: The Talmud in Tractate Menachot (29b) quotes Reb. Yehuda, who said in the name of Rab: When Moshe ascended to heaven to receive the Torah he found Hashem engaged in affixing tagin (three small upward strokes in the form of a crown) to the letters. Moshe then asked, "Master of the Universe, Who is forcing Your hand [that You have to add crowns to the letters ]?" Hashem replied: "There will be a man, after many generations, whose name is Akiva ben Yosef and he will expound a multitude of laws upon each stroke of these coronets." Moshe asked to be permitted to see that man, and Hashem instructed him to turn around. Moshe sat down behind eight rows [of Rabbi Akiva's disciples in the Beth Hamidrash - some say it was 10 rows - and listened to their discussions]. Moshe found that he could not follow their arguments. He felt as if his strength had been sapped, but when they came to a certain topic, the students asked Rabbi Akiva (in reference to a law that was being discussed): "From where do we know this?" Rabbi Akiva responded, "Halacha L'Moshe M'Sinai" - this is an oral law handed down to Moshe at Sinai. At that moment Moshe was comforted (since his teaching was quoted, although he had not yet received the Torah - see Rashi). Thereupon Moshe said to Hashem: "You have such a man and yet You give the Torah [to Israel] by me?" Hashem replied: “Hush, this is My decree (literally, "So it has come to My mind")." [This translation according to: http://www.torahtots.com/torah/tagin.htm].
We can now understand, and sympathize with, the outrage and dismay that HaYachad expressed at the teachings of the Prushim [See: The Tzaddokite Fragments (The Damascus Document) 5:11-13]. Having the Holy Tongue reveal to us that משה and הספר are two aspects of one and the very same mega-existence, we begin to appreciate the extent to which those who claim that Moshe was a person who had to learn the depths of Torah from the Rabbis is based on utter ignorance of the truth of Torah, who and what Moshe is, and that it is hubris that only the abysmally ignorant are capable of. The painful truth that we have been sold a bill of goods by Rabbis who did not understand Torah, and banked on the fact that the masses knew even less than they, begins to sink in. We might like to deny this painful truth. Realizing that we have been betrayed by those we trusted to be our spiritual and moral mentors and guides is a terribly rude awakening. Admitting this truth to ourselves may take much time; but we will never extricate ourselves from the galut if we do not.
There are conflicting opinions in the Pharisaic/Rabbinical literature concerning the weight one should place on learning Torah using the gematriot. Some Rabbis did not consider the gematriot the “tachlis” of learning Torah, for instance this famous quote:
רבי אליעזר בן חסמא אומר קנין ופתחי נדה הן הן גופי הלכות [תקופות וגימטריאות פרפראות לחכמה]: (מסכתות קטנות מסכת אבות דרבי נתן נוסחא א פרק כז ד"ה רבי אליעזר)
other sources do attribute great importance to the learning of gematriot. For instance, this lesser known, quote:
כל היודע לחשוב תקופות ומזלות ואינו מחשב עליו הכתוב אומר את פועל ה' לא יביטו ומעשה ידיו לא ראו. וזו היא ששנינו (אבות ספ"ג) תקופות וגימטריאות פרפראות לחכמה ואם כן תהיה חכמת הגימטריא מצוה. ואם היה דעת בעל ההלכות כן היה מזכיר תקופות ומזלות: (השגות הרמב"ן לספר המצוות שורש א ד"ה והתשובה הרביעית)
Although in actuality there are more quotes in the Pharisaic/Rabbinic sources that tout the learning of gematriot, the opinion of Eliezer ben Chisma on the matter, as quoted above, is by far the best known and the prevailing opinion.
We see from the Pharisaic/Rabbinic sources which mention the gematriot that the learning of gematriot was known by them to be associated with the learning of dikduk, t’kufot and mazalot. A number of Rabbis are said to be experts in these matters (ben Zakkai, Akiva and ben Chisma for instance), or are soi-dissant cognocenti (the Ramba”n, ba’al Sefer HaChinukh, Rabbeinu Yona and Moshe de Leon are among these), but they did not see fit to teach these matters generally and left generation after generation of disciples unable to plumb the depths of Torah.
We have considered some of the gematriot of some of the inflections of the word הגי above. What is הגוי, after all, if not the pronunciation of Torah? And what is pronunciation of Torah if not the use of the punctuations as determined by the Divine Laws of Hebrew grammar that are also the laws that rule the heavenly bodies and thus describe time. As we saw in part 1 of this two-part essay the common gematria of the words זמן, מקראות and להבין is 747. We see from the Pharisaic/Rabbinic sources that gematriot were known to them to be associated with dikduk, t’kufot and mazalot. Whether they really knew these secrets or dabbled in them, having merely heard about these matters from true Masters is unknown. It would appear from their interpretation of Torah that they were not Masters of this knowledge on the level that those who wrote the ‘Dead Sea scrolls were’.
The central lesson we learn from the חילופים of the word הגי, and its inflections, is this: It is the understanding of the Text, ההגוי, that determines everything that we experience in life הגי חי = 18 and in time זמן = מקראות = להבין = 747.
Clearly now that we have returned to Eretz Yisrael we must divest ourselves of the Pharisaic teachings, the physical expression of which is the galut, as well as the improvisations that the Rabbis concocted, which perpetuate and compound the galut, and make an end to it impossible because they continue to generate redoubled and compounded convolutions in space/time, which are the physical expression of their dishonest emotions and convoluted thinking, which they take with them when they gaze into the Torah. We must return to the true Service, which is none other than the elevation and purification of that which we perceive using חילופים. Returning to a state of consciousness that is fully steeped in the Holy Language will be a process and will, of course, take time. Yet the work must begin and in so doing we will halt the continuing creation of distorted and convoluted time/space.
We learn from the scrolls that the Pharisees, as well as the Sadducees who had gone astray, had distorted the Temple practices and did not, or could not, cleanse the Temple of the unthinkable defilement of the Chashmona’im. We cannot ignore the fact that these compromises, changes and distortions in the Temple service eventually brought about the downfall of the Temple and Yerushalayim Shel Mata. They also generated the galut.
During the time that the Second Temple all of creation was bent and broken by the desecration of the Temple Service and the putting of the Avodah of HaCohen Rosh in the hands of those not only not from the line of Tzaddok, HaCohen HaGadol in the time of David HaMelekh, but wholly perverse and whose hands were soaked with blood. We are still living in the effects of that cosmic disaster and it will also generate the dissolution of the Jewish enterprise in Eretz Yisra’el if we do not return to the true way. We are already seeing a society so warped by corruption in the State of Israel that the state itself is becoming untenable, r”l. Our only hope for survival here in Israel is to return to the Judaism that is contained in the ‘Dead Sea scrolls’. It is not for naught that HaShem revealed them to us concurrent with the declaration of the state.
We encounter the very same concepts, considerations and lessons that we find in the halakhic discussions and mystical trends of Pharisaic/Rabbinic Judaism in the writings of היחד. Yet היחד present them to us with a depth, intimate understanding, poignancy, immediacy and attainability that we do not find in the writings of the Pharisaic/Rabbinic tradition. It is the teachings of היחד that can return us to the true Service. The Rabbis are nary equipped to do this, as they are the inheritors of the Pharisaic tradition that contained many interpretations inimical to the spirit of Torah. In the Diaspora the Rabbis introduced more distortions into interpretation that were yet further afield and brought us further away from the Source Of Truth. This was, no doubt, based on their mistaken perception of the need for adaptation of ההלכה to changing circumstances in the galut as well as realpolitik and power plays among the Rabbis. This unfortunate state of affairs has left us with the bloated and untenable religion we encounter in our own times that leaves our Soul so very, very thirsty. These distortions, in turn, are generating the bloated and untenable world we collectively create and are trapped in.
Because we are not in a state of consciousness in which we perform the חלופים of the גמטריות naturally, as a matter of course, when reading Hebrew (and that is, indeed, the most abysmal גלות) we do not understand many concepts in תורה properly. As a result, we are reduced to hallucinating evil and plurality wherein none exist in reality. Moreover, because we are not aware of the fact that it is we ourselves creating these phantasmagorias and certainly we are not aware how creation occurs, we live in dread fear of the creations of our renegade minds, with the accompanying imprecation and execration of these phantoms and phantasmagorias. We blame “the goi’im” for our “tzuris”, when in fact it is we ourselves creating them. Thus, we bring the transgression of the מצוה אל תעשה not to curse upon ourselves. Horrible hells are created by the mind undisciplined, untrained in the חלופים of the גמטריא. That is our punishment for having abrogated the Kingdom of Heaven. Understand this. Understanding this is the key to our salvation and emancipation. Only when we realize that we are creating our own historic collective tragedy and personal misery, without knowing how and not being able to control or stop it, can we take pity on ourselves, and others, and pray to HaShem with a broken heart to show us the way out. Only then do we realize how hopelessly lost, confused and helpless we are. We were not intended to be lost in a nightmare of our own making. Reality does not have to be this way. We were intended to create Gan Eden by learning and doing (i.e., being) the Torah properly.
I cannot demonstrate just how the correct reading of Torah is done in a public forum such as this. There are many Jewish scoffers, Jews who misuse the gematriot in their ignorance and enthusiasm to push this or that agenda and, of course, non-Jewish would-be infiltrators who want to learn about HaYachad and arrogate their wisdom, to enter Kodesh HaKadoshim and defile the kelim in it for their own purposes. It is enough that you have been told that this knowledge must be retrieved from the genizah of the Jewish collective memory. It is for you to ask HaShem the rest.
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be for a
blessing.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat
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A response I received from a usually very "anti" interlocutor:
Doreen makes some interesting points, not necessarily all wrong either.
An interesting work on the creation of woman, the original androgyny of man, the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, the dimunition of the Moon and womanhood's staure , the Exile of the Shekinah & the Jewish People, and the ultimate restoration to pre-Edenic times is to be found in "Kabbalistic Writings on the Nature of Masculine & Feminine" by Sarah Schneider 2001.
Sarah's site is
www.amyisrael.co.il/smallvoice/founder.html
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My response:
21:54 28 Apr 2004
B”H
Thank you for recommending the site above.
I went to the site you gave the URL to and found the face of a woman I’m sure is very nice and well-meaning smiling back at me.
However, I should like to point out the differences between what she’s (apparently) “on about” and what I am. I think it only right that I send her this critique as well. I’ll send a copy to Rabbi Ginsburgh as well, be’ezrat HaShem.
At the outset I should say that I read on the site that she studied under Yitzchak Ginsburgh. I bought one of his books, The Hebrew Letters, some years ago. Even then I was left unimpressed and found the book simplistic. Evidently, what Mrs. Schneider learned the art and craft of marketing books from her mentor, who knows but a smattering of Torah, something that Rabbi Ginsburgh does excel in. I have chastised Rabbi Ginsburgh before for his “ufaratzta” (and marketing) approach to teaching about האותיות. That was after I found a Xian on the net using what she found on his site and interpreting it in the perverted way that only Xians know how to do. He remained obdurate and unrepentant. Evidently his reputation and income are more important to him than that the Torah should be in Jewish hands. Forgive me, then, if I do not trust one of his disciples entirely.
In contradistinction to Mrs. Schneider and Rabbi Ginsburgh I do not use the Torah I learn as a spade to dig with. I have never received remuneration for my research and never asked for it. I do not receive money to learn and disseminate Torah. I have also been quite stern with those who tried to encourage me to make myself generally known. In actually, I expend money to share that which HaShem has granted me – lots of it – and as a result I am reduced financially to living in a slum. I don’t think that’s any great moral shakes. It is the least a Jew can do for the זכות of serving HaShem. If we were living in communal societies, such as the Isi’im did, a scholar of Torah would not have to be poor. S/he would live at the same economic level as everyone else, no better no worse, and respect would be accorded on the basis of how much Torah one had learned and internalized. However, in the Diaspora there is no choice but to be poor if one intends to remain true to Torah, because the minute that one earns an income for it s/he must compromise her or his morality. As I have written in a number of essays, diverging from Torah morality even a hairsbreadth results in a vast divergence as the resulting “time” and “space” stretch out before us and the קץ is pushed indefinitely away.
Thus, I am immediately wary of Mrs. Schneider, lovely and ingenuous though she may look.
I clicked on the link Eating As Tikkun that is on her home page. This is the URL to that page: http://www.amyisrael.co.il/smallvoice/eatingastikkun.html I should like to request the reader to turn her or his attention to that site now in order to understand the rest of what I intend to write here, be’ezrat HaShem.
I was dismayed at seeing yet another misuse of the Kabbalah on the site, although I should not have been surprised. It is an avera, as it is a sneaky manipulation of people’s emotions, insecurities and confusion to hold out the promise of getting over eating disorders by learning the psuedo-Kabbalah that is so prevalent today. Chaba”d is the perhaps the worst offender of holding out the promise of solving all of one’s problems by learning their teachings, although many groups do this today. I have written about the deleterious effects of doing this. Here in Tzfat, the pseudo-Kabbalah capital of the world we see on an everyday basis that the city is cursed.
While it is most certainly true that foods are physical representations of deep spiritual truths, the Pharisaic/Rabbinic tradition has only scratched the surface of what the moral/spiritual substrate of the physical expression that is food is.
It is also certainly true that the addiction to food, as all addictions, is the Soul desperately trying to find the Truth that was lost. We understand innately that the sensations of all addictive substances, including food, are in essence Godliness and we try again and again, futilely, to get to that level. It is our hunger for the kernel of Torah that compels us to overeat. It is the desire for the spirit of Torah that compels some to drink excessively (thus alcohol is called spirits), it is the desire for blissful union with HaShem that makes some sex addicts, and so on with every addiction. All this is a result of the terrible galut that we are in.
Mrs. Schneider, as all Jews blindly loyal to the Pharisaic/Rabbinic tradition, has some inkling of the depth of what eating is, but not enough to understand. Actually, she has just enough knowledge to sell lessons to those who know even less than she does.
Let us examine what the Torah teaches us about eating:
ויצו ה' אלקים על-האדם לאמר מכל עץ-הגן אכל תאכל: ומעץ הדעת טוב ורע לא תאכל ממנו כי ביום אכלך ממנו מות תמות. בראשית ב:טז-יז
Please note that the word תאכל is written in the pasuk with a חלם חסר and not with a חולם. However, the very next letter after the word תאכל is a ו'. The word תאכל taken together with the ו' directly after it produces the word תאכלו. An anagram of the word תאכלו is כל אות. HaShem is given us a directive to ingest, as it were, every letter of the Torah. We are not talking about trees and fruits; we are talking about the basic building blocks of the Torah, which are also the basic building blocks of consciousness, and thus the creation as it appears to us. The physical trees and fruits that arise in the created world are expressions of how we learn Torah. It is because we do not know how we create the worlds that we do or even that we do, although we do, that we live in a world in which there are fruit-bearing trees and not fruit trees. We live in a world of cause and effect in which there is the artifact of time that our minds create. Thus there is a time delay. If we were not in the galut there would be no time continuum as we are now experiencing it. Creation would occur “simultaneously” concurrent and in accordance with our kavvanot in learning Torah. We would produce fruit trees, not fruit bearing trees. In fact, all creation would arise spontaneously and instantly without delay at all. That is what reality is like when we are not in galut. We can only create this completely satisfying food if we learn כל אות and טעם of Torah.
Note that every letter is the word תאכלו and, necessarily, in its anagram כל אות is an אות שמוש. The words מות and תמות as similarly comprised entirely of אותיות שמוש.
Depending upon the moral/spiritual level of the reader one will see death, another will see the secrets of how to read and permute the letters of the Torah. As Rabbi Kook wrote: “The Book is The Book, but it is the heart that does the interpretation.”
Another example of a story from Torah that is actually a lesson in how to read Torah is the (ostensible) story of the binding of Yitzchak. Without digressing, nor revealing more than those who might abuse the information should know, let it just be said that the word מאכלת is also comprised entirely of אותיות שמוש. Anyone who sees עקדת יצחק as a story about אברהם almost shechting יצחק instead of lessons in the secrets of אותיות השמוש and cannot see the fact that the word צדק is contained within the words עקדת יצחק has a serious spiritual/moral problem. Did you every notice that the letter ח' in the name יצחק is equal to ד+ד? That being the case we can clearly see that using the letter ק' in the radical עקד and the letter ק' in the name יצחק we have the root דקדק contained in the phrase עקדת יצחק. The story is actually lessons in דקדוק, which are not only the laws of Hebrew grammar, but also the very Laws of אמת וצדק that the universes should be conducted according to. Yet people see some horror story in עקדת יצחק, even as they see horror stories in their own lives, in the lives of others and in Jewish history. The Torah is called aspaklaria because it reflects who you are back at you. Understand this.
So, we see clearly that we don’t all have eating disorders, as Mrs. Schneider contends. We all have Holy Language reading disabilities, which is the result of having been given "tincture of diluted Torah" to drink by the Rabbis for so many generations.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat
Monday, April 26, 2004
B”H
By the grace of God I have, after a great deal of prayer and exertion, been given the words to write this essay - a piece I wanted to write for so very long and didn't know just how. May God watch over me as I write and keep me, so that I do not fail.
THE GALUT IS MISINTERPRETATION OF THE MITZVOT - PART ONE OF A TWO-PART ESSAY
Let me reiterate that: The galut is misinterpretation of the mitzvoth, not an effect of misinterpretation, but the very misinterpretation itself.
Neither is there hope of the galut ending until we relearn to both read and interpret the Torah, as I will, with the help of HaShem, explicate. In this essay, part 1 of 2, I will discuss how the galut is the misinterpretation of the mitzvoth. In part 2, I will, with the help of God, explain how the galut is ignorance of the gematriot and go a bit more into depth explaining that truth and demonstrating how. For the time being, let us consider the gematria of the word זמן, it is 747, which is the gematria of the word מקראות as well as the gematria of the word להבין. From this gematria we learn that our understanding of time, and all that appears to be occurring, event after event, in that imagined continuum is nothing more or less than a representation of our level of self-awareness in המקראות. That which arises in our consciousness and appears to us to be happening in the continuum of time is entirely dependent upon our understanding and observance of ההלכה. As we understand and observe צדק ואמת ההלכות so the events of our lives as if unfold before our consciousness in a procession, i.e., תהלוכה. We now see the deep connection between the words הולכות and תהלוכה.
It seems there were Talmudic Sages who understood this truth. We find the following passage in Tractate Sanhedrin.
שאלו תלמידיו את רבי יוסי בן קיסמא: אימתי בן דוד בא? ...אמר להם: לכשיפול השער הזה ויבנה, ויפול, ויבנה, ויפול, ואין מספיקין לבנותו עד שבן דוד בא.
(Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin 98a, Bar-Ilan University, Tel Aviv, GLOBAL JEWISH DATABASE (Responsa Project) Version 10].
Translation: The disciples of R. Jose b. Kisma asked him, 'When will the Messiah come?' — He answered … “When this gate falls down, is rebuilt, falls again, and is again rebuilt, and then falls a third time, before it can be rebuilt the son of David will come.” (Soncino Babylonian Talmud on Line
http://www.come-and-hear.com/tcontents.html)
Ostensibly the “gate” being referred to is the gate of Caesarea Philippi, the home of R. Jose, a symbol of Roman power. Its fall would, similarly, be a symbol of the destruction of the Roman power by the Parthians (ibid. see note 45). However, we can understand the word שער on a deeper level, as referring to the gateway or portal that leads to the created world as we are now creating it and in which we are trapped in a procession of unforeseeable and painful, sometimes tragic, events.
Did you see the original movie called “The X-Men”? Do you remember the character “Magneto” who has the ability to control magnetic fields and can thus manipulate metals? There is a very cleverly done scene in the movie in which “Magneto” is walking on a bridge. The bridge is quite unlike what we think of as a bridge in that it is nothing more than two metal plates. As “Magneto” walks he moves one plate in front of him and steps on it as he steps off the plate that was behind him. He does this alternating his feet as he goes. Other than the two metal plates there is no bridge whatsoever. It is the magnetic influence “Magneto” exerts on the plates that keep them moving before him to step on as he goes. This is exactly how we are creating the realities that we live in. The only difference between “Magneto” and us is that we are not aware that we are doing this and are thus not in control of where the bridges that we are treading upon lead. That is the galut.
Just as “Magneto” was walking on a bridge that was not a bridge, but rather only that which was beneath his own two feet described by the magnetic force he was exerting on the metal plates, so there is no medium that is called “time”. Time is an artifact of our imagination. If time is an artifact of our imagination, then there is no history, no gilgulim and no space in objective reality “out there”. They exist, but only insofar as we perceive them. They exist as our illusions.
Even a slight misinterpretation of Torah will cause distortions in the mind so that the messages it is receiving from Soul are not being interpreted properly. Diversions from the correct way of doing the mitzvoth result in distortions in the created world as will be explained anon. The mind receives its dictation from the heart and not the other way around. The mind is nothing more than that which creates symbolic representations of our spiritual/moral state. If we have not been utterly honest in interpreting Torah we cause the heart to be twisted. In turn the mind will be forced to concoct convoluted reasoning to try to justify the dishonest emotions. In so doing it creates a very complicated world for us indeed; a world characterized by multi-dimensionality, time frames, fantastic distances, imperfect mathematical systems, personal problems that are redoubled and compounded by circumstances, indeterminable data, uncertainties that are not interesting but rather frightening and all of the other problems we are familiar with that vex and torment us and from which we do not know not only how to extricate ourselves, but even that we can, and should, extricate ourselves from them. The world we live in appears to be an imperturbable given. This is the cruelest illusion of all. There is no hope for us to escape from so tangled a web of perceptions so long as we do not read and interpret Torah correctly.
Thus, if our Rabbis have not interpreted the Law with absolute and uncompromising straightness, rectitude, integrity, and dedication to צדק ואמת they create distortions in the realities we live in and we, in turn, increase and compound those distortions when we perform המצות. Those who have taught us Torah have misguided us and they have no less than led us into a universe of deception and pain.
We are המצות. Understand this. The gematria of the word המצות, written as it should be with only one ו' is 541. This is also the gematria of the name ישראל. ישראל = המצות. We, ישראל, are not merely doing the המצות, we are the המצות. More correctly, we are the mitzvoth being and doing themselves (ourselves) and creating a world. We must be extremely careful, then, to remain true to ourselves. It is precisely for this reason that we cannot make the slightest compromises with what we know to be true in our deepest levels of Being and why we must not act improperly. When we allow any amount of untruth and compromise to enter into our understanding and performance of המצות we have doomed ourselves to being distorted and living in a distorted common reality. We are connected to one another and the reality that we inhabit is necessarily a common and composite one, the result of the kavvanot and behaviors of each and every one of us. This is true even though each of us experiences what he or she does in accordance with his or her own moral/spiritual achievement. Despite the fact that we are individuals, and individually responsible for our learning, understanding and doing ההלכות, we are also connected as a People, not only in this generation, but also in every generation. In reality there is no time, as we have said, thus the entire Jewish People exists at once, even if it doesn’t appear to the eye as such. If even one of us is amiss we will all suffer the effects and live in a distorted reality. קל וחומר (Argumentum a minori ad majus or a majori ad minus; corresponding to the scholastic proof a fortiori) if wanton misinterpretation of ההלכה is the norm, as is the case under Rabbinic Judaism, we suffer the compounded effects of each and every one of us who is not interpreting Torah correctly and become trapped in and endlessly complicated world of distortion upon distortion. This and more: since we are the mitzvoth any distortion of interpretation of the mitzvoth results in a distortion of our expression of being in whatever world we express ourselves.
Flagrant contraventions of Torah like prozbul or heter mekhirah were ‘justified’ by the Rabbis by saying that they were socio-economic considerations that supposedly protected the poor. There is an explanation of why Hillel instituted prozbul on:
http://www.elijahnet.org/The%20Oral%20Law%20as%20InterprA98.html . It behooves the reader to consider (or reconsider) everything that is written on that page. Now anyone with a heart and mind can see that what is written there is utter nonsense and that prozbul is nothing but protecting the interests of the rich. It is very likely true that the rich were not giving loans to the poor close to the Yovel. Why then did the Beit Din not exert pressure upon the wealthy to do as is written in Torah? Why was a ruling harming the poor that is in contravention of Torah devised instead?
The case of heter mekhirah is a similar case of protecting economic concerns ‘against HaShem’ Laws’ because “Moshe did not know the halakhah”, a contention the Rabbis were so outrageously brazen as to write in the Talmud for posterity and teach to their students assiduously generation after generation (generations in a galut created by lies such as these). How the heart hurts to read such things! Anyone with a mind and heart can see that in reality prozbul and heter mekhirah are mechanisms that maintain the economic status quo. Rather than devising a system of economics that would protect the society as well as Torah observance, subversions of the Law were devised. Could it be that HaShem’s Laws if kept would harm society? Did we need “chakhamim” to protect us from HaShem and his servant Moshe who “didn’t know the halakhah”, Ch”V? There is no estimating the twists and turns of self-deception the heart must make within itself and how it must harden itself in order to be able to tolerate such self-deceit and deception of innocent others. In turn, the dictates of the heart that are relayed to the mind, which transcibes those dictates into perceptions, become likewise twisted and distorted in proportion to the heart. This is the galut. The result of rulings such as these is that we have lost the ability to calculate שנות שמיטה with certainty, and thus we do not know when the יובלות are. We have thus been rendered incapable of setting slaves and debtors free by the distortion of the Law that is prozbul. The distortions that those rulings created locked us in “time”, from which we cannot extricate ourselves, because we compound and complicate the distortion every time we conduct ourselves according to these rulings, and thus the galut is perpetuated indefinitely.
Only if we live in correct accordance with the Torah can we live in a world that will be punctuated and described by the holy מועדים. As things stand we do not know the correct time of our מועדים, we are locked in galut, we are out of touch with the other generations of ישראל and we are incapable of getting ourselves out of this sorry estate. All of this is because the Torah as it is being taught and practiced is not the true interpretation. That is not to say that it is wholly untrue. That is not to say that there isn’t a need for continuing הלכה and חדושים. Of course פרשנות is absolutely necessary. No one from any school of Jewish thought has ever denied this. In fact, the desirable and correct creation and description of time is the continual unfolding of the hidden depths of Torah and the adaptation and application of the mitzvoth to the realities that are created as a result of proper kavvanot, learning, doing the mitzvoth aseh and not doing the mitzvoth al ta’ase. The only question is whether or not we are being honest in our פרשנות. The proof is always in the proverbial pudding. The reality is that our common, composite reality is uninhabitable for sensitive, moral, spiritual Human beings – Jew and Gentile alike.
One must be true to one's heart. God has planted many tenets that are anathema to the sensitive heart in each religion. Why? It is so that you will question - not question the truth of the precept, but question your own understanding of it most profoundly. If one comes to God with an honest and humble prayer and says: "I respect what I see written here, but my heart tells me otherwise. How shall I proceed? How shall I act? Have I understood what is taught? Surely I have not seen to the depth of Your wisdom. What do You desire of me?" that person will have fulfilled God's true Will in planting the tenet in the faith - that person will have entered a dialogue with God. This
is God's true desire - to teach you the depths of Torah directly, so they you may see for yourself. This is one of the bases of true Torah Sh’be’al peh – learning those aspects of Torah intended just for you to learn and reveal for the very first time as intended from Beraysheet from HaShem’s “mouth” to your consciousness directly. This is the process of Tush’ba that can never be written down, although the revelations so received can be preserved and shared with others, indeed they are intended to be. Such a one who prays this way will be blessed with vision and insight heretofore unknown to him/her or to the world-at-large. That person will see ways of understanding and interpreting Torah that *resolve* that which s/he thought were contradictions, precepts which limit the freedom of the Soul and harsh commandments. S/he will come to see the righteousness and compassion that exists in the seemingly harsh precepts with clear eyes, in a way that is compatible with all of God's creation. The ability to express these understandings to others will be granted to that person as well. The מסורת will not be contradicted or contravened in any way. Au contraire, it will be strengthened and made more comprehensible. The one who enters into a dialog with God will understand the mitzvot with ever-increasing depth as God personally takes the person “by the hand” and leads her or him through eternity.
HaShem has given us a “yetzher hara” to assist us in interpreting the mitzvoth that are harsh and difficult for our “yetzer tov” to understand. Those mitzvoth the chesed in which is revealed can be easily apprehended by our “yetzer tov”. We do not need to exert ourselves overmuch to understand those precepts. The goodness in them is apparent. We readily understand the kindness inherent in such mitzvoth as not taking the garment of the poor as collateral or of having just weights and measures. We may have to exert ourselves to consider the many applications of the mitzvoth in our everyday lives, but we have no trouble whatsoever in recognizing them as being good immediately. We have far more trouble in seeing the kindness and goodness in the ordeal of the woman accused of being a Sotah, or the mitzvah aseh to put the ben sorer u’moreh to death. We might be tempted either to carry out the mitzvoth as it appears to our untrained and undeveloped consciousness, as the ordeal of the suspected Sotah appears to have been in those cases in which the woman agreed to it, if we can trust the reports of and allusions to the ordeal in the Talmud, or not to carry them out at all, finding loopholes as it were, in the case of the ben sorer u’moreh, again assuming that the passages concerning this matter in the Talmud are in earnest. While we see that the simple meaning of these mitzvoth disturbed the Rabbis, neither carrying out the ordeal nor contriving impossible conditions that render the mitzvah de facto impossible to carry out comes from the depths of wisdom. Neither of those reactions comes from inducting both the yetzer tov and the yetzer ra into the service of understanding the mitzvoth and thus gaining a deeper level of insight such that the p’shat presents itself differently to our consciousness and thus we act on it differently. If we do not engage both the yetzer tov and the yetzer ra when learning Torah we do not have the “stereoscopic” insight needed to understand what Torah is saying to us. We read one-dimensionally and arrive at conclusions that are shallow, even spurious. We then carry out meaningless, even dangerous, actions and, in so doing, create an absurd, nightmarish world for ourselves.
It is the nature of the yetzer tov to be good and kind, but rather insipid, simple and not very creative, interesting or fun. The yetzer hara, on the other hand, while capable of cruelty and perversity, is crafty, cunning, colorful, riveting and creative. It is only when we use both of these abilities in tandem that we can understand Torah properly and, correspondingly, Torah is written and devised in such a way as to encourage us to develop both of these faculties for the sake of serving Hashem. This is the reason why Torah contains both mitzvoth aseh that are apparently good and those which, upon encountering for the first time, shock and offend our yetzer tov, if we are honest with ourselves, even while they engage the attention of the yetzer hara. If we are not honest with ourselves we suppress our yetzer tov when interpreting and carrying out those mitzvoth. If we engage only the yetzer tov we never arrive at the profoundest levels of understanding Torah. Neither of these reactions is correct. We are to summon both our yetzer tov and our yetzer hara to look deeply into those troubling matters and find the chesed hidden within them. The depths of the chesed inherent in the mitzvoth that appear offensive upon perfunctory consideration is far greater than those inherent in the mitzvoth the goodness of which need not be searched for. We are being invited to look very, very deeply into Torah when we encounter disturbing mitzvoth. We are not expected either to deny them or to carry them out according to a perfunctory understanding.
We have seen why HaShem has given us the ability to be wily. This ability is not to be destroyed, but rather harnessed in order to serve HaShem and one another. When our being crafty is used to deceive and otherwise hurt others we create dark chambers in space/time that did not exist before within which to hide our intentions and ourselves. Once caught in those dungeons of the mind and emotions we are locked in them and shackled to their impenetrable walls on all of the levels of our being that exist in the created world. The world that is created by performing the mitzvoth as misunderstood and distorted by Pharisaic/Rabbinic Judaism is a nightmare world of insecurity, upheaval, constant danger, feelings of persecution and proactive persecution, hatred, destruction, death and genocide. The terrible pity of it all is that those who practice Pharisaic/Rabbinic Judaism do not have the first inkling that it is they who are creating that world or that the world does not have to be that way. They heap calumnies upon the Gentles attributing to them every negative trait. They do not, nay will not, understand that it is they who are creating those ignominies and horrors for themselves; they who are attracting those experiences to themselves.
In contradistinction, when we use our ability to be wily and shrewd in order to protect one another and create that which is salubrious and lovely for one another, we create dimensions that did not exist before. We create a world that is complex, interesting and ever changing but not threatening unpredictable, sinister and dangerous. The worlds we create when we ask ourselves how we can apply the Written Torah to deduce, induce and decide הלכות that will serve us, all of us, while remaining true to the Law fascinate the mind, and delight our playful intelligence, even as they protect one another, and us, from harm and shame. One such example from the Pharisaic/Rabbinic tradition of the proper use of the shrewd aspect of our creative intelligence is the following הלכה:
עני שאינו רוצה ליקח צדקה, מערימים ונותנין לו לשם מתנה או לשם הלואה.
[Shulchan Arukh 253:9, Bar-Ilan University, Tel Aviv, GLOBAL JEWISH DATABASE (Responsa Progject) Version 10
Translation: “(In the case of) a poor person who does not want to receive charity we act cunningly and give it to him in the guise of a gift or a loan.”
The radical ערם in this case means: to be shrewd; to be crafty; to be sly; to be cunning. It was in the utilizing of our ability to be ערמומיים, even as we are guided by the dictates of our yetzer tov that we come to a הלכה that is a beautiful example of our good and bad inclinations supplementing and complementing one another to serve Humanity.
It has been amply, and chillingly, demonstrated that matter is compressed energy. There is, to date, no satisfying definition of ‘energy’. Energy is thought of in terms of what it does, and can do, i.e., work. This author should like to posit the following, interim, definition of energy: Energy is the creative Will made corporeal enough to transfer itself from one body to another in the physical worlds. Matter, then, would be extremely compressed creative Will. Matter is not in a form in which it can transfer itself from domain to domain or from body to body, but needs to be transferred. In the case of humans this is accomplished by a motile being that has a will of its own and does the work of transferring purposefully. The world as it appears in our consciousness is characterized by the presence of space, both stored (potential) and flowing (kinetic, mechanical) energy, and matter the form of which is determined and set to some extent over a period of “time” yet also continuously changing. (The question of whether one or any of these “precedes” the others temporally or in importance that might arise in the mind is based on our illusion of time and need not be entertained at all.) In our present state of consciousness matter exists in two states: the material with which we are confronted by nature (raw material) and the statements of our imposition of our will upon the world (finished products). In reality, however, it is our own creative Will, i.e., the aspect of HaShem that takes on the form of human consciousness, that is becoming the space and energy that we perceive as well as all of the matter. The mitzvoth are that which guide us to use the Godly creative Will and our actions to create the best possible reality.
It should not be understood that there exists a cause and effect relationship between Will and the world created by it. There is no time lapse. With the Will the world created by the Will arises spontaneously and “simultaneously” for lack of a better word. Finished products differ from raw materials in that while our Will is creating both by considerable effort required in order to pour our own Life Force into creation, the former is the result of the additional physical effort as well. The strain of existence that we feel is not our struggle with the material world, so much as our exertion to create the physical world. The exertion we put into Talmud Torah is the creation of the world, be it as it may in accordance with our learning.
From this understanding we can draw the simple conclusion that the quality of our lives, indeed how the universe reflects itself back to us, is wholly dependent upon what we will and what we do. It is, therefore, of paramount importance that our intentions be pure and that our actions be correct; for our intentions are that which create the raw material of the universe and our actions determine the finished products.
If we do not both intend and act properly we expend incalculable effort creating a physical reality that is neither hospitable nor benevolent. The collective world that we create becomes increasingly untenable and unmanageable when we do not use our will properly or perform the mitzvoth as they should be performed. Thus, we have to invest greater and greater amounts of effort into maintaining that which is unstable. We exhaust ourselves as we pour our own Souls into a world that affords us precious little joy, serenity or security.
The mitzvoth were designed to create a world of absolute maximum happiness and utility for us. If we perform the mitzvoth as they should be performed with the correct intention the energy that is created transfers the Love, Knowledge and Creative Will of HaShem that is within us unimpeded. The raw material that is created forms the basis of a world of optimum level of habitability. We create finished products that are stable, serve us wisely and well and are maintained with the minimum amount of exertion so that we may be free to learn and contemplate Holiness.
May we have the courage and honesty to admit the error of our way, return to HaShem, to the true Torah and to end this bitter exile.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
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Response
B"H
Doreen: I am happy to answer honestly posed questions that may, with HaShem's help, clarify some misunderstandings and elucidate points many are not aware of.
Interlocutor: If the Essenes had become the majority at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple, how do you envisage an alternative Jewish history?
Doreen: Jewish society would have been like their society: based on common property so that the only power that the leaders had was the power invested in them by the respect and love they won due to their wisdom and integrity; commerce would have been in strict accordance with the Torah; the entire world would be a more sanguine and gentle place in which to live because it would be created based on learning of the highest level of integrity. We would not be confined by the dictates of time and space that now confine us. There would be time, but it would be punctuated according to the rules of Hebrew grammar and HaMo’edim as taught in Torah Sh’bikhtav. Neither would there be chambers within which to hide secrets. God would be clearly perceived in all that is created and more Godliness would be continually being revealed.
Interlocutor: How long would Jewry have survived in the Exile without the Pharisaic fences and restrictions of the Talmudic Sages?
Doreen: There would have been no need for those fences because there wouldn't have been threats. It was the distortions of the teaching of the Prushim and those Tzaddokim who loved money and power more than Torah that created the Greco/Roman/Seleucid menaces. Once we have created a nightmare for ourselves as a result of swaying from Torah, punishment is heaped upon us in that we have to then defend ourselves from the nightmare. In the extreme stages, the stage we are in now, most of us do not even have any inkling that we are creating the events that present themselves to us. We think that we are the innocent victims of happenstance and that someone else is responsible for our woes.
Let’s see what HaYachad had to say about those fences, which were already busily being built long before the destruction of the Temple and the dispersion. So, you cannot argue that they were created as a means of protecting the Torah in the Diaspora.
“They even rendered impure their holy spirit and in blasphemous terms opened (their) mouth against the Laws of the covenant saying: “They are not correct” And they spoke abomination about them.” [Tzaddokite Fragments (Damascus Document) 5:13]. Evidently the Prushim were already claiming that “Moshe didn’t know halakhah”, Ch”V, during the time that the Temple stood.
“All these thing the builders of the wall and the daubers of plaster did not understand. For one who raises wind and preaches falsehood preached to them, because of which God became angry with His entire congregation.” (ibid., 8:12-13; cf. 19:24-26)
“Since he hated the builders of the wall, He became angry.” (ibid., 8:18; cf. 19:13)
Interlocutor: The Essenes may have been a group of apocalyptist idealists, but halacha l'ma'aseh is what counts, and the fact that they disappeared utterly from the scene of history means that they were not up to the task.
Doreen: They were not apocalyptic idealists. They were very grounded in reality. Their society ticked like a Swiss watch. They were also fully aware of the reality of the situation that the Rabbis and the Maccabim had created for themselves and were filled with compassion for them as they were also fully aware of the reality of the world within Torah. Again and again they reached out to the Pharisees, to the Macabbees, and to the Tzaddokim in Yerushalayim who were not keeping the true way and instructed them how to disentangle themselves from the times and events they were creating. Insofar as they were able to, since they were removed from the Temple Service which had become defiled they continued to make expiation for Am Yisra’el, as Cohenim are supposed to do. They did this by performing chilufim and elevations as I hope to explicate and demonstrate in a separate essay. Unfortunately, the Prushim had gone very far down the road in distorting the meaning of Torah Sh’bikhtav in order to win the favor of the masses and placate the rich and powerful, the Macabbim had become monstrously barbaric and the Tzaddokim were engaged in intrigues and money-makeing, so none of them could understand what the Yachad was telling them. The world that was a creation of their own twisted minds and hearts and sins had taken on a life of its own and they were ensconced in it.
There was no need for HaYachad to be up to the task of having to deal with a brutal world because the brutal world was not of their making. They didn't disappear from history because they couldn't hack it, they disappeared from history because they did not need to do a tikkun and didn't need to be punished for anything.
Interlocutor: G-d put the care and successful survival of Jewry in the able hands of the genius Pharisee Sages, the splendour of our nation eg R.Gamaliel,Elazar ben Azariah,Tarfon, Ishmael, Akiva,Yehuda Hanasi, Abaye, Rava, Mar Ukva, Reish Lakish, R.Chisda, R.Huna,R.Yochanan, Bar bar Channa, Rav Ashi etc etc
Doreen: HaShem had mercy and did not obliterate us entirely, but not one of the Pharisees or their students the Rabbis was ever able to lead us out of the exile.
Interlocutor: The name of not one Essene is known to us
The names of a few members of the Dead Sea Sect are known to us. They were subject to admonition on the part of the sect and the proceedings were recorded. They did not call people by names generally. They did not record the names of their members except in the case I just mentioned, they did not refer to the Prushim by name, they referred to a wicked priest when they obviously meant a Macabbee who came to their settlement on horseback on Yom HaKippurim in order to disrupt their t’fillah, but did not call him by name. They used shemot g’nai for the Romans as well.
There are a few ambiguous cites in the Talmud that may, I repeat may, be interpreted as one of the Rabbis revealing himself to be an Essene. I refer to the argument between Rav Asi and Rabbi Shila in which Rav Asi suddenly declares himself as Isi and gives his lineage. See:
Niddah 36b
Pesachim 113b
Yoma 52b
There is also a reference to one Isi bar Hini in Chulin 137b.
These passages are admittedly obscure and it is hard to determine whether these were Isi'im who learned with the Rabbis or not. It is entirely possible that at least some of them did learn together.
Interlocutor: (though some scholars say Jesus was one, to the Essenes' chagrin)
None of the Jewish scholars entertain the idea that Yeshu was an Essene. That is Xian wishful thinking and the contention of Orthodox Jews who wish to remain in a state of denial concerning the fact that they are practicing wannabe Judaism. They denigrate the truth of the way of HaYachad by falsely claiming that Yeshu was one of them. The wholly mistaken notion that Yeshu was an Essene never would have circulated had the scrolls that were sold to Jordan not been resold to Xian researchers originally and had the Israelis not been kept out of the research team for decades. The Xian researchers published their baseless conclusions with unbridled irresponsibility and wanton excitement. Many of those researchers were anti-Semitic and delighted in publishing supposedly scholarly opinions that they knew would hurt the Jews. John Strugnell, a Protestant who converted to Catholicism, was one such researcher. He was on the original team that was comprised entirely of Xians. In 1990 when the research team was finally in Jewish hands he made disparaging comments about Judaism and was summarily fired. It devolves upon us to clean up the mess that Strugnell and others like him made.
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Response:
B"H
Anonymous Interlocutor: So basically you are saying that the Essenes were so righteous that they were taken off the scene of history, like Enoch "who walked with G-d, and he was no more because G-d had taken him" (Genesis 5).
Doreen: Well said!
Anonymous Interlocutor: Whether the Essenes were viewed by G-d as truly righteous who would have led us into an Edenic existence, or as dissidents and kofrim, like the many other wayward groups that multiplied in the last days of the Second Temple, we will have to await Judgement Day & the Resurrection of the Dead.
Doreen: This is one of the most central problems with Pharisaic/Judaism, you are awaiting an end that will never come because you keep generating more time by practicing distortions in the law. It is very interesting that the Tzaddokite Fragments were "archived" in the genizah in Kahir around the time that the writings of the Ramba"m were being published. He, or those who recognized the mind control potential in this writings, had the truth put away so that Yad HaChazakah could take over mainstream Judaism without any conflicting opinions. In so doing the Jews of the Diaspora were locked into it. Can't you let yourself see that the Ramba"m was leading you around by the nose when he made it a principle that you must await the Mashiach. He locked you into time and every major commentary on halakhah since: the Tur and the Shulkah Arukh use that mind and emotion control mechanism because it works so well on the gullible.
Anonymous Interlocutor: "This is not the best of all possible worlds. But it is the best of all possible ways to the best of all possible worlds!". What you shamefully call "distortions", the Babylonian & Jerusalem Talmud, are the discussions, applications and rulings of our Sages on the Oral Law that was given together with the Written Law by Hashem to Moses on Mount Sinai, and are as sacred to Orthodox Jews as the Pentateuch itself.
Doreen: Not in every case, but they would sure like you to believe that and seem to have done an impressive job of convincing you of that. I know it is emotionally hard to realize that your soi dissant "tzaddikim" duped you. What do you expect they are going to say?: "We're really sophisticated manipulators and what we say is intended to confound you."
Anonymous Interlocutor: The sagacity and insight of the Mishnah and Gemara and its study over 2000 years is what has preserved Jewry to this day.
Doreen: Actually, it has only perpetuated the galut. It has caused the many persecutions we have endured.
Anonymous Interlocutor: You say your observance is "indistinguishable" from that of your Orthodox Perushi neighbours in South Safed, meaning you physically follow the very rulings and minutiae you call "distortions": is this not hypocritical, or even cowardice, showing lack of faith in your Essenic convictions? Why do you observe the Shulchan Aruch if you believe it is in gross error?
Doreen: It is not a matter of dishonesty. First, I do not follow the all of the minutiae blindly. I choose that which is obviously intelligent in the Pharisaic/Rabbinic tradition. Secondly, I accept the dictum not to cut oneself off from the community. Third, we do not have the entire corpus of Essene Judaism in hand. From what we do have it is obviously superior and infinitely more authentic than Pharisaic/Rabbinic Judaism, but there is not enough extant to reconstruct the whole way of Torah life. If there was I would most probably live their way. For the time being I have no choice but to drink unclean water until clean water becomes available.
Anonymous Interlocutor: Maybe its time you showed courage in your convictions and made a demonstrable, public break for all to see, with these Pharisaic rulings and observances, and became eg like a Karaite, who like you disdains the Talmud and the Rabbis, and observes the strict letter of only the Written Law eg no fire, flame, electricity or hot food on the Sabbath, or literally gouging out an eye for an eye etc!
Doreen: It is you who needs to find courage. I am not a Karaite and it is not you who will determine how I will conduct myself. Clearly you are trying to goad me. You are a simple person, "Anonymous Interlocutor", and your intentions are all too obvious. It takes considerable courage for a person to stand up against the Pharisaic/Rabbinic world and say: "The Rabbis aren't wearing any clothes." Where is your courage, er, "Anonymous Interlocutor". Like every person in denial I have ever encountered, you project your own distortions and games onto others. You become abusive and make yourself ridiculous when you cannot answer intelligently. You also do things like call me "hefty" and make allusions to my husband wearing jeans and having long hair (I do not see the connection in any of these things to my writings) then accuse me of resorting to ad hominems when you cannot answer. Clearly, it is you, not I, who employs every fallacious argument in the book, most especially trying to hurt feelings. You do not employ humor, true, only because it is evident that you do not have a sense of humor (unless the malapropisms are intentional, in which case you really should consider doing Norm Crosby imitations in the Catskills). One of the surest signs that someone is not sure of himself or herself is that they can never laugh at himself or herself, and you clearly cannot. Not one of your answers has ever come close to the least of mine either in depth, in knowledge or in erudition. In order to be what you are you have to be the kind of person that you are - cowardly, angry, in denial, distorting the truth, disturbed, abusive, racist and self-satisfied thinking that you are privy to the absolute truth when clearly the Orthodox world is a spiritual shambles.
Keep talking, though. No one could do a better job of demonstrating the kind of people who cling desperately to the Pharisaic/Rabbinic, such as it is, than you do. How weak and pathetic you sound. How evident it is you are grasping desperately at straws. Keep talking.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat
By the grace of God I have, after a great deal of prayer and exertion, been given the words to write this essay - a piece I wanted to write for so very long and didn't know just how. May God watch over me as I write and keep me, so that I do not fail.
THE GALUT IS MISINTERPRETATION OF THE MITZVOT - PART ONE OF A TWO-PART ESSAY
Let me reiterate that: The galut is misinterpretation of the mitzvoth, not an effect of misinterpretation, but the very misinterpretation itself.
Neither is there hope of the galut ending until we relearn to both read and interpret the Torah, as I will, with the help of HaShem, explicate. In this essay, part 1 of 2, I will discuss how the galut is the misinterpretation of the mitzvoth. In part 2, I will, with the help of God, explain how the galut is ignorance of the gematriot and go a bit more into depth explaining that truth and demonstrating how. For the time being, let us consider the gematria of the word זמן, it is 747, which is the gematria of the word מקראות as well as the gematria of the word להבין. From this gematria we learn that our understanding of time, and all that appears to be occurring, event after event, in that imagined continuum is nothing more or less than a representation of our level of self-awareness in המקראות. That which arises in our consciousness and appears to us to be happening in the continuum of time is entirely dependent upon our understanding and observance of ההלכה. As we understand and observe צדק ואמת ההלכות so the events of our lives as if unfold before our consciousness in a procession, i.e., תהלוכה. We now see the deep connection between the words הולכות and תהלוכה.
It seems there were Talmudic Sages who understood this truth. We find the following passage in Tractate Sanhedrin.
שאלו תלמידיו את רבי יוסי בן קיסמא: אימתי בן דוד בא? ...אמר להם: לכשיפול השער הזה ויבנה, ויפול, ויבנה, ויפול, ואין מספיקין לבנותו עד שבן דוד בא.
(Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin 98a, Bar-Ilan University, Tel Aviv, GLOBAL JEWISH DATABASE (Responsa Project) Version 10].
Translation: The disciples of R. Jose b. Kisma asked him, 'When will the Messiah come?' — He answered … “When this gate falls down, is rebuilt, falls again, and is again rebuilt, and then falls a third time, before it can be rebuilt the son of David will come.” (Soncino Babylonian Talmud on Line
http://www.come-and-hear.com/tcontents.html)
Ostensibly the “gate” being referred to is the gate of Caesarea Philippi, the home of R. Jose, a symbol of Roman power. Its fall would, similarly, be a symbol of the destruction of the Roman power by the Parthians (ibid. see note 45). However, we can understand the word שער on a deeper level, as referring to the gateway or portal that leads to the created world as we are now creating it and in which we are trapped in a procession of unforeseeable and painful, sometimes tragic, events.
Did you see the original movie called “The X-Men”? Do you remember the character “Magneto” who has the ability to control magnetic fields and can thus manipulate metals? There is a very cleverly done scene in the movie in which “Magneto” is walking on a bridge. The bridge is quite unlike what we think of as a bridge in that it is nothing more than two metal plates. As “Magneto” walks he moves one plate in front of him and steps on it as he steps off the plate that was behind him. He does this alternating his feet as he goes. Other than the two metal plates there is no bridge whatsoever. It is the magnetic influence “Magneto” exerts on the plates that keep them moving before him to step on as he goes. This is exactly how we are creating the realities that we live in. The only difference between “Magneto” and us is that we are not aware that we are doing this and are thus not in control of where the bridges that we are treading upon lead. That is the galut.
Just as “Magneto” was walking on a bridge that was not a bridge, but rather only that which was beneath his own two feet described by the magnetic force he was exerting on the metal plates, so there is no medium that is called “time”. Time is an artifact of our imagination. If time is an artifact of our imagination, then there is no history, no gilgulim and no space in objective reality “out there”. They exist, but only insofar as we perceive them. They exist as our illusions.
Even a slight misinterpretation of Torah will cause distortions in the mind so that the messages it is receiving from Soul are not being interpreted properly. Diversions from the correct way of doing the mitzvoth result in distortions in the created world as will be explained anon. The mind receives its dictation from the heart and not the other way around. The mind is nothing more than that which creates symbolic representations of our spiritual/moral state. If we have not been utterly honest in interpreting Torah we cause the heart to be twisted. In turn the mind will be forced to concoct convoluted reasoning to try to justify the dishonest emotions. In so doing it creates a very complicated world for us indeed; a world characterized by multi-dimensionality, time frames, fantastic distances, imperfect mathematical systems, personal problems that are redoubled and compounded by circumstances, indeterminable data, uncertainties that are not interesting but rather frightening and all of the other problems we are familiar with that vex and torment us and from which we do not know not only how to extricate ourselves, but even that we can, and should, extricate ourselves from them. The world we live in appears to be an imperturbable given. This is the cruelest illusion of all. There is no hope for us to escape from so tangled a web of perceptions so long as we do not read and interpret Torah correctly.
Thus, if our Rabbis have not interpreted the Law with absolute and uncompromising straightness, rectitude, integrity, and dedication to צדק ואמת they create distortions in the realities we live in and we, in turn, increase and compound those distortions when we perform המצות. Those who have taught us Torah have misguided us and they have no less than led us into a universe of deception and pain.
We are המצות. Understand this. The gematria of the word המצות, written as it should be with only one ו' is 541. This is also the gematria of the name ישראל. ישראל = המצות. We, ישראל, are not merely doing the המצות, we are the המצות. More correctly, we are the mitzvoth being and doing themselves (ourselves) and creating a world. We must be extremely careful, then, to remain true to ourselves. It is precisely for this reason that we cannot make the slightest compromises with what we know to be true in our deepest levels of Being and why we must not act improperly. When we allow any amount of untruth and compromise to enter into our understanding and performance of המצות we have doomed ourselves to being distorted and living in a distorted common reality. We are connected to one another and the reality that we inhabit is necessarily a common and composite one, the result of the kavvanot and behaviors of each and every one of us. This is true even though each of us experiences what he or she does in accordance with his or her own moral/spiritual achievement. Despite the fact that we are individuals, and individually responsible for our learning, understanding and doing ההלכות, we are also connected as a People, not only in this generation, but also in every generation. In reality there is no time, as we have said, thus the entire Jewish People exists at once, even if it doesn’t appear to the eye as such. If even one of us is amiss we will all suffer the effects and live in a distorted reality. קל וחומר (Argumentum a minori ad majus or a majori ad minus; corresponding to the scholastic proof a fortiori) if wanton misinterpretation of ההלכה is the norm, as is the case under Rabbinic Judaism, we suffer the compounded effects of each and every one of us who is not interpreting Torah correctly and become trapped in and endlessly complicated world of distortion upon distortion. This and more: since we are the mitzvoth any distortion of interpretation of the mitzvoth results in a distortion of our expression of being in whatever world we express ourselves.
Flagrant contraventions of Torah like prozbul or heter mekhirah were ‘justified’ by the Rabbis by saying that they were socio-economic considerations that supposedly protected the poor. There is an explanation of why Hillel instituted prozbul on:
http://www.elijahnet.org/The%20Oral%20Law%20as%20InterprA98.html . It behooves the reader to consider (or reconsider) everything that is written on that page. Now anyone with a heart and mind can see that what is written there is utter nonsense and that prozbul is nothing but protecting the interests of the rich. It is very likely true that the rich were not giving loans to the poor close to the Yovel. Why then did the Beit Din not exert pressure upon the wealthy to do as is written in Torah? Why was a ruling harming the poor that is in contravention of Torah devised instead?
The case of heter mekhirah is a similar case of protecting economic concerns ‘against HaShem’ Laws’ because “Moshe did not know the halakhah”, a contention the Rabbis were so outrageously brazen as to write in the Talmud for posterity and teach to their students assiduously generation after generation (generations in a galut created by lies such as these). How the heart hurts to read such things! Anyone with a mind and heart can see that in reality prozbul and heter mekhirah are mechanisms that maintain the economic status quo. Rather than devising a system of economics that would protect the society as well as Torah observance, subversions of the Law were devised. Could it be that HaShem’s Laws if kept would harm society? Did we need “chakhamim” to protect us from HaShem and his servant Moshe who “didn’t know the halakhah”, Ch”V? There is no estimating the twists and turns of self-deception the heart must make within itself and how it must harden itself in order to be able to tolerate such self-deceit and deception of innocent others. In turn, the dictates of the heart that are relayed to the mind, which transcibes those dictates into perceptions, become likewise twisted and distorted in proportion to the heart. This is the galut. The result of rulings such as these is that we have lost the ability to calculate שנות שמיטה with certainty, and thus we do not know when the יובלות are. We have thus been rendered incapable of setting slaves and debtors free by the distortion of the Law that is prozbul. The distortions that those rulings created locked us in “time”, from which we cannot extricate ourselves, because we compound and complicate the distortion every time we conduct ourselves according to these rulings, and thus the galut is perpetuated indefinitely.
Only if we live in correct accordance with the Torah can we live in a world that will be punctuated and described by the holy מועדים. As things stand we do not know the correct time of our מועדים, we are locked in galut, we are out of touch with the other generations of ישראל and we are incapable of getting ourselves out of this sorry estate. All of this is because the Torah as it is being taught and practiced is not the true interpretation. That is not to say that it is wholly untrue. That is not to say that there isn’t a need for continuing הלכה and חדושים. Of course פרשנות is absolutely necessary. No one from any school of Jewish thought has ever denied this. In fact, the desirable and correct creation and description of time is the continual unfolding of the hidden depths of Torah and the adaptation and application of the mitzvoth to the realities that are created as a result of proper kavvanot, learning, doing the mitzvoth aseh and not doing the mitzvoth al ta’ase. The only question is whether or not we are being honest in our פרשנות. The proof is always in the proverbial pudding. The reality is that our common, composite reality is uninhabitable for sensitive, moral, spiritual Human beings – Jew and Gentile alike.
One must be true to one's heart. God has planted many tenets that are anathema to the sensitive heart in each religion. Why? It is so that you will question - not question the truth of the precept, but question your own understanding of it most profoundly. If one comes to God with an honest and humble prayer and says: "I respect what I see written here, but my heart tells me otherwise. How shall I proceed? How shall I act? Have I understood what is taught? Surely I have not seen to the depth of Your wisdom. What do You desire of me?" that person will have fulfilled God's true Will in planting the tenet in the faith - that person will have entered a dialogue with God. This
is God's true desire - to teach you the depths of Torah directly, so they you may see for yourself. This is one of the bases of true Torah Sh’be’al peh – learning those aspects of Torah intended just for you to learn and reveal for the very first time as intended from Beraysheet from HaShem’s “mouth” to your consciousness directly. This is the process of Tush’ba that can never be written down, although the revelations so received can be preserved and shared with others, indeed they are intended to be. Such a one who prays this way will be blessed with vision and insight heretofore unknown to him/her or to the world-at-large. That person will see ways of understanding and interpreting Torah that *resolve* that which s/he thought were contradictions, precepts which limit the freedom of the Soul and harsh commandments. S/he will come to see the righteousness and compassion that exists in the seemingly harsh precepts with clear eyes, in a way that is compatible with all of God's creation. The ability to express these understandings to others will be granted to that person as well. The מסורת will not be contradicted or contravened in any way. Au contraire, it will be strengthened and made more comprehensible. The one who enters into a dialog with God will understand the mitzvot with ever-increasing depth as God personally takes the person “by the hand” and leads her or him through eternity.
HaShem has given us a “yetzher hara” to assist us in interpreting the mitzvoth that are harsh and difficult for our “yetzer tov” to understand. Those mitzvoth the chesed in which is revealed can be easily apprehended by our “yetzer tov”. We do not need to exert ourselves overmuch to understand those precepts. The goodness in them is apparent. We readily understand the kindness inherent in such mitzvoth as not taking the garment of the poor as collateral or of having just weights and measures. We may have to exert ourselves to consider the many applications of the mitzvoth in our everyday lives, but we have no trouble whatsoever in recognizing them as being good immediately. We have far more trouble in seeing the kindness and goodness in the ordeal of the woman accused of being a Sotah, or the mitzvah aseh to put the ben sorer u’moreh to death. We might be tempted either to carry out the mitzvoth as it appears to our untrained and undeveloped consciousness, as the ordeal of the suspected Sotah appears to have been in those cases in which the woman agreed to it, if we can trust the reports of and allusions to the ordeal in the Talmud, or not to carry them out at all, finding loopholes as it were, in the case of the ben sorer u’moreh, again assuming that the passages concerning this matter in the Talmud are in earnest. While we see that the simple meaning of these mitzvoth disturbed the Rabbis, neither carrying out the ordeal nor contriving impossible conditions that render the mitzvah de facto impossible to carry out comes from the depths of wisdom. Neither of those reactions comes from inducting both the yetzer tov and the yetzer ra into the service of understanding the mitzvoth and thus gaining a deeper level of insight such that the p’shat presents itself differently to our consciousness and thus we act on it differently. If we do not engage both the yetzer tov and the yetzer ra when learning Torah we do not have the “stereoscopic” insight needed to understand what Torah is saying to us. We read one-dimensionally and arrive at conclusions that are shallow, even spurious. We then carry out meaningless, even dangerous, actions and, in so doing, create an absurd, nightmarish world for ourselves.
It is the nature of the yetzer tov to be good and kind, but rather insipid, simple and not very creative, interesting or fun. The yetzer hara, on the other hand, while capable of cruelty and perversity, is crafty, cunning, colorful, riveting and creative. It is only when we use both of these abilities in tandem that we can understand Torah properly and, correspondingly, Torah is written and devised in such a way as to encourage us to develop both of these faculties for the sake of serving Hashem. This is the reason why Torah contains both mitzvoth aseh that are apparently good and those which, upon encountering for the first time, shock and offend our yetzer tov, if we are honest with ourselves, even while they engage the attention of the yetzer hara. If we are not honest with ourselves we suppress our yetzer tov when interpreting and carrying out those mitzvoth. If we engage only the yetzer tov we never arrive at the profoundest levels of understanding Torah. Neither of these reactions is correct. We are to summon both our yetzer tov and our yetzer hara to look deeply into those troubling matters and find the chesed hidden within them. The depths of the chesed inherent in the mitzvoth that appear offensive upon perfunctory consideration is far greater than those inherent in the mitzvoth the goodness of which need not be searched for. We are being invited to look very, very deeply into Torah when we encounter disturbing mitzvoth. We are not expected either to deny them or to carry them out according to a perfunctory understanding.
We have seen why HaShem has given us the ability to be wily. This ability is not to be destroyed, but rather harnessed in order to serve HaShem and one another. When our being crafty is used to deceive and otherwise hurt others we create dark chambers in space/time that did not exist before within which to hide our intentions and ourselves. Once caught in those dungeons of the mind and emotions we are locked in them and shackled to their impenetrable walls on all of the levels of our being that exist in the created world. The world that is created by performing the mitzvoth as misunderstood and distorted by Pharisaic/Rabbinic Judaism is a nightmare world of insecurity, upheaval, constant danger, feelings of persecution and proactive persecution, hatred, destruction, death and genocide. The terrible pity of it all is that those who practice Pharisaic/Rabbinic Judaism do not have the first inkling that it is they who are creating that world or that the world does not have to be that way. They heap calumnies upon the Gentles attributing to them every negative trait. They do not, nay will not, understand that it is they who are creating those ignominies and horrors for themselves; they who are attracting those experiences to themselves.
In contradistinction, when we use our ability to be wily and shrewd in order to protect one another and create that which is salubrious and lovely for one another, we create dimensions that did not exist before. We create a world that is complex, interesting and ever changing but not threatening unpredictable, sinister and dangerous. The worlds we create when we ask ourselves how we can apply the Written Torah to deduce, induce and decide הלכות that will serve us, all of us, while remaining true to the Law fascinate the mind, and delight our playful intelligence, even as they protect one another, and us, from harm and shame. One such example from the Pharisaic/Rabbinic tradition of the proper use of the shrewd aspect of our creative intelligence is the following הלכה:
עני שאינו רוצה ליקח צדקה, מערימים ונותנין לו לשם מתנה או לשם הלואה.
[Shulchan Arukh 253:9, Bar-Ilan University, Tel Aviv, GLOBAL JEWISH DATABASE (Responsa Progject) Version 10
Translation: “(In the case of) a poor person who does not want to receive charity we act cunningly and give it to him in the guise of a gift or a loan.”
The radical ערם in this case means: to be shrewd; to be crafty; to be sly; to be cunning. It was in the utilizing of our ability to be ערמומיים, even as we are guided by the dictates of our yetzer tov that we come to a הלכה that is a beautiful example of our good and bad inclinations supplementing and complementing one another to serve Humanity.
It has been amply, and chillingly, demonstrated that matter is compressed energy. There is, to date, no satisfying definition of ‘energy’. Energy is thought of in terms of what it does, and can do, i.e., work. This author should like to posit the following, interim, definition of energy: Energy is the creative Will made corporeal enough to transfer itself from one body to another in the physical worlds. Matter, then, would be extremely compressed creative Will. Matter is not in a form in which it can transfer itself from domain to domain or from body to body, but needs to be transferred. In the case of humans this is accomplished by a motile being that has a will of its own and does the work of transferring purposefully. The world as it appears in our consciousness is characterized by the presence of space, both stored (potential) and flowing (kinetic, mechanical) energy, and matter the form of which is determined and set to some extent over a period of “time” yet also continuously changing. (The question of whether one or any of these “precedes” the others temporally or in importance that might arise in the mind is based on our illusion of time and need not be entertained at all.) In our present state of consciousness matter exists in two states: the material with which we are confronted by nature (raw material) and the statements of our imposition of our will upon the world (finished products). In reality, however, it is our own creative Will, i.e., the aspect of HaShem that takes on the form of human consciousness, that is becoming the space and energy that we perceive as well as all of the matter. The mitzvoth are that which guide us to use the Godly creative Will and our actions to create the best possible reality.
It should not be understood that there exists a cause and effect relationship between Will and the world created by it. There is no time lapse. With the Will the world created by the Will arises spontaneously and “simultaneously” for lack of a better word. Finished products differ from raw materials in that while our Will is creating both by considerable effort required in order to pour our own Life Force into creation, the former is the result of the additional physical effort as well. The strain of existence that we feel is not our struggle with the material world, so much as our exertion to create the physical world. The exertion we put into Talmud Torah is the creation of the world, be it as it may in accordance with our learning.
From this understanding we can draw the simple conclusion that the quality of our lives, indeed how the universe reflects itself back to us, is wholly dependent upon what we will and what we do. It is, therefore, of paramount importance that our intentions be pure and that our actions be correct; for our intentions are that which create the raw material of the universe and our actions determine the finished products.
If we do not both intend and act properly we expend incalculable effort creating a physical reality that is neither hospitable nor benevolent. The collective world that we create becomes increasingly untenable and unmanageable when we do not use our will properly or perform the mitzvoth as they should be performed. Thus, we have to invest greater and greater amounts of effort into maintaining that which is unstable. We exhaust ourselves as we pour our own Souls into a world that affords us precious little joy, serenity or security.
The mitzvoth were designed to create a world of absolute maximum happiness and utility for us. If we perform the mitzvoth as they should be performed with the correct intention the energy that is created transfers the Love, Knowledge and Creative Will of HaShem that is within us unimpeded. The raw material that is created forms the basis of a world of optimum level of habitability. We create finished products that are stable, serve us wisely and well and are maintained with the minimum amount of exertion so that we may be free to learn and contemplate Holiness.
May we have the courage and honesty to admit the error of our way, return to HaShem, to the true Torah and to end this bitter exile.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
-----------------------------
Response
B"H
Doreen: I am happy to answer honestly posed questions that may, with HaShem's help, clarify some misunderstandings and elucidate points many are not aware of.
Interlocutor: If the Essenes had become the majority at the time of the destruction of the Second Temple, how do you envisage an alternative Jewish history?
Doreen: Jewish society would have been like their society: based on common property so that the only power that the leaders had was the power invested in them by the respect and love they won due to their wisdom and integrity; commerce would have been in strict accordance with the Torah; the entire world would be a more sanguine and gentle place in which to live because it would be created based on learning of the highest level of integrity. We would not be confined by the dictates of time and space that now confine us. There would be time, but it would be punctuated according to the rules of Hebrew grammar and HaMo’edim as taught in Torah Sh’bikhtav. Neither would there be chambers within which to hide secrets. God would be clearly perceived in all that is created and more Godliness would be continually being revealed.
Interlocutor: How long would Jewry have survived in the Exile without the Pharisaic fences and restrictions of the Talmudic Sages?
Doreen: There would have been no need for those fences because there wouldn't have been threats. It was the distortions of the teaching of the Prushim and those Tzaddokim who loved money and power more than Torah that created the Greco/Roman/Seleucid menaces. Once we have created a nightmare for ourselves as a result of swaying from Torah, punishment is heaped upon us in that we have to then defend ourselves from the nightmare. In the extreme stages, the stage we are in now, most of us do not even have any inkling that we are creating the events that present themselves to us. We think that we are the innocent victims of happenstance and that someone else is responsible for our woes.
Let’s see what HaYachad had to say about those fences, which were already busily being built long before the destruction of the Temple and the dispersion. So, you cannot argue that they were created as a means of protecting the Torah in the Diaspora.
“They even rendered impure their holy spirit and in blasphemous terms opened (their) mouth against the Laws of the covenant saying: “They are not correct” And they spoke abomination about them.” [Tzaddokite Fragments (Damascus Document) 5:13]. Evidently the Prushim were already claiming that “Moshe didn’t know halakhah”, Ch”V, during the time that the Temple stood.
“All these thing the builders of the wall and the daubers of plaster did not understand. For one who raises wind and preaches falsehood preached to them, because of which God became angry with His entire congregation.” (ibid., 8:12-13; cf. 19:24-26)
“Since he hated the builders of the wall, He became angry.” (ibid., 8:18; cf. 19:13)
Interlocutor: The Essenes may have been a group of apocalyptist idealists, but halacha l'ma'aseh is what counts, and the fact that they disappeared utterly from the scene of history means that they were not up to the task.
Doreen: They were not apocalyptic idealists. They were very grounded in reality. Their society ticked like a Swiss watch. They were also fully aware of the reality of the situation that the Rabbis and the Maccabim had created for themselves and were filled with compassion for them as they were also fully aware of the reality of the world within Torah. Again and again they reached out to the Pharisees, to the Macabbees, and to the Tzaddokim in Yerushalayim who were not keeping the true way and instructed them how to disentangle themselves from the times and events they were creating. Insofar as they were able to, since they were removed from the Temple Service which had become defiled they continued to make expiation for Am Yisra’el, as Cohenim are supposed to do. They did this by performing chilufim and elevations as I hope to explicate and demonstrate in a separate essay. Unfortunately, the Prushim had gone very far down the road in distorting the meaning of Torah Sh’bikhtav in order to win the favor of the masses and placate the rich and powerful, the Macabbim had become monstrously barbaric and the Tzaddokim were engaged in intrigues and money-makeing, so none of them could understand what the Yachad was telling them. The world that was a creation of their own twisted minds and hearts and sins had taken on a life of its own and they were ensconced in it.
There was no need for HaYachad to be up to the task of having to deal with a brutal world because the brutal world was not of their making. They didn't disappear from history because they couldn't hack it, they disappeared from history because they did not need to do a tikkun and didn't need to be punished for anything.
Interlocutor: G-d put the care and successful survival of Jewry in the able hands of the genius Pharisee Sages, the splendour of our nation eg R.Gamaliel,Elazar ben Azariah,Tarfon, Ishmael, Akiva,Yehuda Hanasi, Abaye, Rava, Mar Ukva, Reish Lakish, R.Chisda, R.Huna,R.Yochanan, Bar bar Channa, Rav Ashi etc etc
Doreen: HaShem had mercy and did not obliterate us entirely, but not one of the Pharisees or their students the Rabbis was ever able to lead us out of the exile.
Interlocutor: The name of not one Essene is known to us
The names of a few members of the Dead Sea Sect are known to us. They were subject to admonition on the part of the sect and the proceedings were recorded. They did not call people by names generally. They did not record the names of their members except in the case I just mentioned, they did not refer to the Prushim by name, they referred to a wicked priest when they obviously meant a Macabbee who came to their settlement on horseback on Yom HaKippurim in order to disrupt their t’fillah, but did not call him by name. They used shemot g’nai for the Romans as well.
There are a few ambiguous cites in the Talmud that may, I repeat may, be interpreted as one of the Rabbis revealing himself to be an Essene. I refer to the argument between Rav Asi and Rabbi Shila in which Rav Asi suddenly declares himself as Isi and gives his lineage. See:
Niddah 36b
Pesachim 113b
Yoma 52b
There is also a reference to one Isi bar Hini in Chulin 137b.
These passages are admittedly obscure and it is hard to determine whether these were Isi'im who learned with the Rabbis or not. It is entirely possible that at least some of them did learn together.
Interlocutor: (though some scholars say Jesus was one, to the Essenes' chagrin)
None of the Jewish scholars entertain the idea that Yeshu was an Essene. That is Xian wishful thinking and the contention of Orthodox Jews who wish to remain in a state of denial concerning the fact that they are practicing wannabe Judaism. They denigrate the truth of the way of HaYachad by falsely claiming that Yeshu was one of them. The wholly mistaken notion that Yeshu was an Essene never would have circulated had the scrolls that were sold to Jordan not been resold to Xian researchers originally and had the Israelis not been kept out of the research team for decades. The Xian researchers published their baseless conclusions with unbridled irresponsibility and wanton excitement. Many of those researchers were anti-Semitic and delighted in publishing supposedly scholarly opinions that they knew would hurt the Jews. John Strugnell, a Protestant who converted to Catholicism, was one such researcher. He was on the original team that was comprised entirely of Xians. In 1990 when the research team was finally in Jewish hands he made disparaging comments about Judaism and was summarily fired. It devolves upon us to clean up the mess that Strugnell and others like him made.
---------------------------------------
Response:
B"H
Anonymous Interlocutor: So basically you are saying that the Essenes were so righteous that they were taken off the scene of history, like Enoch "who walked with G-d, and he was no more because G-d had taken him" (Genesis 5).
Doreen: Well said!
Anonymous Interlocutor: Whether the Essenes were viewed by G-d as truly righteous who would have led us into an Edenic existence, or as dissidents and kofrim, like the many other wayward groups that multiplied in the last days of the Second Temple, we will have to await Judgement Day & the Resurrection of the Dead.
Doreen: This is one of the most central problems with Pharisaic/Judaism, you are awaiting an end that will never come because you keep generating more time by practicing distortions in the law. It is very interesting that the Tzaddokite Fragments were "archived" in the genizah in Kahir around the time that the writings of the Ramba"m were being published. He, or those who recognized the mind control potential in this writings, had the truth put away so that Yad HaChazakah could take over mainstream Judaism without any conflicting opinions. In so doing the Jews of the Diaspora were locked into it. Can't you let yourself see that the Ramba"m was leading you around by the nose when he made it a principle that you must await the Mashiach. He locked you into time and every major commentary on halakhah since: the Tur and the Shulkah Arukh use that mind and emotion control mechanism because it works so well on the gullible.
Anonymous Interlocutor: "This is not the best of all possible worlds. But it is the best of all possible ways to the best of all possible worlds!". What you shamefully call "distortions", the Babylonian & Jerusalem Talmud, are the discussions, applications and rulings of our Sages on the Oral Law that was given together with the Written Law by Hashem to Moses on Mount Sinai, and are as sacred to Orthodox Jews as the Pentateuch itself.
Doreen: Not in every case, but they would sure like you to believe that and seem to have done an impressive job of convincing you of that. I know it is emotionally hard to realize that your soi dissant "tzaddikim" duped you. What do you expect they are going to say?: "We're really sophisticated manipulators and what we say is intended to confound you."
Anonymous Interlocutor: The sagacity and insight of the Mishnah and Gemara and its study over 2000 years is what has preserved Jewry to this day.
Doreen: Actually, it has only perpetuated the galut. It has caused the many persecutions we have endured.
Anonymous Interlocutor: You say your observance is "indistinguishable" from that of your Orthodox Perushi neighbours in South Safed, meaning you physically follow the very rulings and minutiae you call "distortions": is this not hypocritical, or even cowardice, showing lack of faith in your Essenic convictions? Why do you observe the Shulchan Aruch if you believe it is in gross error?
Doreen: It is not a matter of dishonesty. First, I do not follow the all of the minutiae blindly. I choose that which is obviously intelligent in the Pharisaic/Rabbinic tradition. Secondly, I accept the dictum not to cut oneself off from the community. Third, we do not have the entire corpus of Essene Judaism in hand. From what we do have it is obviously superior and infinitely more authentic than Pharisaic/Rabbinic Judaism, but there is not enough extant to reconstruct the whole way of Torah life. If there was I would most probably live their way. For the time being I have no choice but to drink unclean water until clean water becomes available.
Anonymous Interlocutor: Maybe its time you showed courage in your convictions and made a demonstrable, public break for all to see, with these Pharisaic rulings and observances, and became eg like a Karaite, who like you disdains the Talmud and the Rabbis, and observes the strict letter of only the Written Law eg no fire, flame, electricity or hot food on the Sabbath, or literally gouging out an eye for an eye etc!
Doreen: It is you who needs to find courage. I am not a Karaite and it is not you who will determine how I will conduct myself. Clearly you are trying to goad me. You are a simple person, "Anonymous Interlocutor", and your intentions are all too obvious. It takes considerable courage for a person to stand up against the Pharisaic/Rabbinic world and say: "The Rabbis aren't wearing any clothes." Where is your courage, er, "Anonymous Interlocutor". Like every person in denial I have ever encountered, you project your own distortions and games onto others. You become abusive and make yourself ridiculous when you cannot answer intelligently. You also do things like call me "hefty" and make allusions to my husband wearing jeans and having long hair (I do not see the connection in any of these things to my writings) then accuse me of resorting to ad hominems when you cannot answer. Clearly, it is you, not I, who employs every fallacious argument in the book, most especially trying to hurt feelings. You do not employ humor, true, only because it is evident that you do not have a sense of humor (unless the malapropisms are intentional, in which case you really should consider doing Norm Crosby imitations in the Catskills). One of the surest signs that someone is not sure of himself or herself is that they can never laugh at himself or herself, and you clearly cannot. Not one of your answers has ever come close to the least of mine either in depth, in knowledge or in erudition. In order to be what you are you have to be the kind of person that you are - cowardly, angry, in denial, distorting the truth, disturbed, abusive, racist and self-satisfied thinking that you are privy to the absolute truth when clearly the Orthodox world is a spiritual shambles.
Keep talking, though. No one could do a better job of demonstrating the kind of people who cling desperately to the Pharisaic/Rabbinic, such as it is, than you do. How weak and pathetic you sound. How evident it is you are grasping desperately at straws. Keep talking.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat
B"H
Another Funny ;0)
Just yesterday a man interested in the Dead Sea Sect told me he is anxiously awaiting the coming of a Moreh Tzedek (Teacher of Righteousness).
I explained to him that there is a problem with that understanding of what is written in the Scrolls. "How", I asked, "would you know if a true Moreh Tzedek came if you were not on that level of righteousness? How would you know you weren't being bamboozled and led down the path that Xianity and Chaba"d Chassidus went down?"
I told him: "When it comes to God, it takes One to know One."
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat (very self-satisfied with that funny. I really like it ;0)
Another Funny ;0)
Just yesterday a man interested in the Dead Sea Sect told me he is anxiously awaiting the coming of a Moreh Tzedek (Teacher of Righteousness).
I explained to him that there is a problem with that understanding of what is written in the Scrolls. "How", I asked, "would you know if a true Moreh Tzedek came if you were not on that level of righteousness? How would you know you weren't being bamboozled and led down the path that Xianity and Chaba"d Chassidus went down?"
I told him: "When it comes to God, it takes One to know One."
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat (very self-satisfied with that funny. I really like it ;0)
B"H
Accepting the Law
There is an old joke which explains why the Jews got the Torah. God
didn't offer it to us at first, you see. The two tablets upon which
the Ten Commandments are written were offered to other, greater
Peoples first.
God went to one People and asked them if they wanted the two tablets
with the Ten Commandments written in them. They asked: "What's
written?" God told them and the first People replied: "Don't
steal?!", "Forget it!"
So, God went to another great People and offered them the two tablets
with the Ten Commandments written in them. They too asked what's
written. God told them and they replied: "Don't commit
adultry?!", "Nothin' doin'!"
So it went until God got to Israel, the smallest and lowliest of the
Peoples on earth. God came to us and asked if we would take the
tablets with the The Ten Commandments written in them. To which we
replied: "How much does it cost?" "It's free", God said. "Good", we
answered, "we'll take the two."
Actually, that's not how it went down. We received the Torah on the
basis of Avraham and Sarah's merit, granted, the Torah is our
inheritance from Avraham and Sarah. Yet we merited the Torah on our
own when we said: "Everything that the Lord says we will do and we
will hear." (Exodus 24:7). *First* we committed ourselves to the
doing of the commandments. We did not make our doing the
commandments contingent upon our agreeing to them or understanding
them. *After* we said we will do the commanments of The Lord, we
also committed ourselves to hearing, i.e., understanding them insofar
as we are able. This was and is and always will be our merit.
This is not less true of the Laws of B'nei No'ach. Those who will
merit to become truly righteous Gentiles will first commit themselves
to accepting those laws. Only then will they be blessed with a full
and deep understanding of the Love and Wisdom beyond all description
that they contain.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat
Accepting the Law
There is an old joke which explains why the Jews got the Torah. God
didn't offer it to us at first, you see. The two tablets upon which
the Ten Commandments are written were offered to other, greater
Peoples first.
God went to one People and asked them if they wanted the two tablets
with the Ten Commandments written in them. They asked: "What's
written?" God told them and the first People replied: "Don't
steal?!", "Forget it!"
So, God went to another great People and offered them the two tablets
with the Ten Commandments written in them. They too asked what's
written. God told them and they replied: "Don't commit
adultry?!", "Nothin' doin'!"
So it went until God got to Israel, the smallest and lowliest of the
Peoples on earth. God came to us and asked if we would take the
tablets with the The Ten Commandments written in them. To which we
replied: "How much does it cost?" "It's free", God said. "Good", we
answered, "we'll take the two."
Actually, that's not how it went down. We received the Torah on the
basis of Avraham and Sarah's merit, granted, the Torah is our
inheritance from Avraham and Sarah. Yet we merited the Torah on our
own when we said: "Everything that the Lord says we will do and we
will hear." (Exodus 24:7). *First* we committed ourselves to the
doing of the commandments. We did not make our doing the
commandments contingent upon our agreeing to them or understanding
them. *After* we said we will do the commanments of The Lord, we
also committed ourselves to hearing, i.e., understanding them insofar
as we are able. This was and is and always will be our merit.
This is not less true of the Laws of B'nei No'ach. Those who will
merit to become truly righteous Gentiles will first commit themselves
to accepting those laws. Only then will they be blessed with a full
and deep understanding of the Love and Wisdom beyond all description
that they contain.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat
B"H
Three Difficult Prayers
There are three prayers that Jewish men are enjoined to say every
moring that are so difficult to be able to see God's love in them
that many give up and don't say them at all. They are:
Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe Who has not made
me a gentile.
Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the univerise Who has not made
me a slave.
Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe Who has not made
me a woman.
I am among those who had serious difficulty with those blessings.
Instead of the last prayer Jewish women say:
Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe Who has made me
according to His Will (or as His Will).
Because I was able to see a glimmer of love in the fact that the
Hebrew can mean that I am likened to God's Will Itself, I understood
that the other prayers must contain hidden love in them too.
So, I did what I do when the traditional explanation is not
satisfactory - I asked God. In a flash I saw what gentiles, slaves
and Jewish women all have in common - they have to fight doubly hard
to free themselves of the religious/spiritual/mental/social ties that
bind, be the case as it may be in each individual case, in order to
serve God to the fullest possible in freedom. Free Jewish men serve
the Ineffable One without having to peel off excess layers of foreign
tradition, or belonging to someone else as chattel or the
difficulties that a Soul living in a female body must endure.*** Those
Jewish men who understand the prayer correctly understand that they
were made Jewish men because had they been given the above three
challenges they would not have been strong enough to come to God-
consciousness. Far from saying the prayers with hubris, they say them
in the humble realization that they were given optimum conditions
because they needed them.
God loves the Gentile with a special love who, despite having been
born into a tradition which has elements of idol worship, still
struggles and perseveres to serve God as God would be worshipped. As
I have quoted my teachers before (and most certainly will again, God
willing): We are rewarded in direct proportion to the effort we
put in. God knows you will not succeed easily.
Being born a Christian is a particularly difficult test, Eileen. It
is being so close, yet so far. It is much easier to find The
Ineffable One from being a total non-believer as I was, than to have
to unlearn everything you were taught about who you believed was God
and find the Ineffable One. I respect your struggles tremendously and
know that God loves you very much and believes in you implicitly to
have entrusted you with so difficult a challenge.
---------------------------------------
***Copying this now, rethinking it (it was originally written on Dec. 10, 2002) I realize that matters for free Jewish men are not nearly so simple as I conceived of them when I wrote this piece originally. They must struggle with their own illusions and delusions and they must struggle to find truth amidst the distortions that have been handed down to us by the Pharisaic/Rabbinic tradition (if they are honest enough with themselves to recognize that there are distortions in the tradition). I would no longer say that the conditions under which free Jewish men live are "optimum" religiously. However, they are certainly easier than for Gentiles, women (Jewish and Gentile), and slaves (Jewish and Gentile) all of whom have to contend with all of the spiritual/mental/physical problems that Jewish men have, in addition to the particular harships they each endure specific to their station in life, as described, in brief, above.
With deep abiding respect,
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat
Three Difficult Prayers
There are three prayers that Jewish men are enjoined to say every
moring that are so difficult to be able to see God's love in them
that many give up and don't say them at all. They are:
Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe Who has not made
me a gentile.
Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the univerise Who has not made
me a slave.
Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe Who has not made
me a woman.
I am among those who had serious difficulty with those blessings.
Instead of the last prayer Jewish women say:
Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe Who has made me
according to His Will (or as His Will).
Because I was able to see a glimmer of love in the fact that the
Hebrew can mean that I am likened to God's Will Itself, I understood
that the other prayers must contain hidden love in them too.
So, I did what I do when the traditional explanation is not
satisfactory - I asked God. In a flash I saw what gentiles, slaves
and Jewish women all have in common - they have to fight doubly hard
to free themselves of the religious/spiritual/mental/social ties that
bind, be the case as it may be in each individual case, in order to
serve God to the fullest possible in freedom. Free Jewish men serve
the Ineffable One without having to peel off excess layers of foreign
tradition, or belonging to someone else as chattel or the
difficulties that a Soul living in a female body must endure.*** Those
Jewish men who understand the prayer correctly understand that they
were made Jewish men because had they been given the above three
challenges they would not have been strong enough to come to God-
consciousness. Far from saying the prayers with hubris, they say them
in the humble realization that they were given optimum conditions
because they needed them.
God loves the Gentile with a special love who, despite having been
born into a tradition which has elements of idol worship, still
struggles and perseveres to serve God as God would be worshipped. As
I have quoted my teachers before (and most certainly will again, God
willing): We are rewarded in direct proportion to the effort we
put in. God knows you will not succeed easily.
Being born a Christian is a particularly difficult test, Eileen. It
is being so close, yet so far. It is much easier to find The
Ineffable One from being a total non-believer as I was, than to have
to unlearn everything you were taught about who you believed was God
and find the Ineffable One. I respect your struggles tremendously and
know that God loves you very much and believes in you implicitly to
have entrusted you with so difficult a challenge.
---------------------------------------
***Copying this now, rethinking it (it was originally written on Dec. 10, 2002) I realize that matters for free Jewish men are not nearly so simple as I conceived of them when I wrote this piece originally. They must struggle with their own illusions and delusions and they must struggle to find truth amidst the distortions that have been handed down to us by the Pharisaic/Rabbinic tradition (if they are honest enough with themselves to recognize that there are distortions in the tradition). I would no longer say that the conditions under which free Jewish men live are "optimum" religiously. However, they are certainly easier than for Gentiles, women (Jewish and Gentile), and slaves (Jewish and Gentile) all of whom have to contend with all of the spiritual/mental/physical problems that Jewish men have, in addition to the particular harships they each endure specific to their station in life, as described, in brief, above.
With deep abiding respect,
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat
Sunday, April 25, 2004
B”H
The Tenets of Our Faiths
Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen Kook, of blessed memory, the first
Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of the new settlement of the Land of Israel,
was a spiritual giant. He is almost universally considered to have been one of the greatest Jewish mystics not only of the last century, but of all time. He wrote: "The Book is the Book, but it is the heart that does the interpreting."
To be a Jew is a spiritual test. Now every Jew knows that and it is a well-worn canard to say so. I do not intend the statement in the way most Jewish people do. I do not mean that the test is to perform the mitzvoth according to our basic understanding of what they mean no matter how trying the circumstances. When I say that to be a Jew is a spiritual test I mean that we are being tested to see how we will react when we are confronted with a Text that appears to adjure us to perform mitzvot that challenge our innate sense of loving-kindness, cause us a sense of superiority and chosenness, are unintelligible, are isolating, etc.
How do we react when the tenets of our faith tell us to remain in a state of isolation from other Peoples, so that we do not become "defiled" by others and their ways, to remain a People separate from every other People in creation, complacent in
our "chosenness"; when our hearts tell us that all of Humankind are a brotherhood and we yearn to reach out to them, to be a part of them?
How do we react when the tenets of our faith tell us that our way is the one and only correct way, that every other way is folly, or at the very least misguided ignorance, and that it is our religious duty to convince other Peoples by any and all means of the truth of our way, for their own good; while our heart tells us that diversity is the way of creation and every being has the right to self-definition and self-determination and that everyone will find their own way to Ultimate Truth?
How do we react when the tenets of our faith teach us that the way to God is to sit in imperturbable silence, rapt in the bliss of meditating or learning the holy Writ of our faith, unmoving, not stirring from our places, no matter what our senses tell us; when our hearts go out to the indigent and suffering around us, and we yearn with all our being to act in the created world in order to alleviate their distress?
How do we react when the tenets of our faith tell us that in order to prove our strength and resolution to our way and preserve our ancient traditions, as handed down to us from time immemorial, we must inflict extreme pain on our bodies in religious ceremonies; while our hearts tell us that the body is as sacred as the Soul and that to harm the body is to fly in the face of the sacredness of nature?
There are many who because of these apparent "contradictions" in established religions decide upon one of two ways to resolve the problem: they choose to adhere to the tenets of their faiths silencing their hearts, or they leave the religion they were born
into, some going so far as to disavow or even execrating their heritage. Some take a third way: they adopt another religion, only to find that their new religion presents them with as many quandaries as did their own.
Know that God has placed these apparent "contradictions" in every religion. They are the planting of God's hands so that your Soul may grow. You are not meant either to betray the People and tradition you were born into, or to unthinkingly accept the tenets of your faith that your heart tells you need examining. In the first case you betray your People, in the second you betray yourself. Both of these responses are a cutting yourself off from that which God wants for you.
Those who leave their religion are demonstrating not only their complete lack of faith, but are also demonstrating arrogance and disrespect toward their elders. Could it possibly be that their own singular understanding is greater than the collective wisdom of the many in so many generations who held their faith dear, very dear? If one has even a shred of respect for those who have come before him/her they do not abandon the way of their forefathers and foremothers.
One must be true to one's heart. God has planted many tenets that are anathema to the sensitive heart in each religion. Why? It is so that you will question - not question the truth of the precept, but question your own understanding of it. If one comes to God with an honest and humble prayer and says: "I respect what I see written here, but my heart tells me otherwise. How shall I proceed? How shall I act? Have I understood what is taught? Surely I have not seen to the depth of Your wisdom. What do You desire of me?" that person will have fulfilled God's true Will in planting the tenet in the faith - that person will have entered a dialogue with God. This is God's true desire - to teach you the depths of your faith directly, so they you may see. Such a one who prays this way will be blessed with vision heretofore unknown to him/her. They will see ways of understanding and interpreting the tenets of their faith that *resolve* that which s/he thought were contradictions, precepts which limit the freedom of the Soul and harsh commandments. S/he will come to see the righteousness and compassion that exists in the seemingly harsh precepts with clear eyes, in a way that is compatible with all of God's creation. The tradition of their People will not be contradicted or contravened in any way. The one who entered into a dialog with God will understand them with ever-increasing depth as God personally takes them by the hand through eternity.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
The Tenets of Our Faiths
Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak HaCohen Kook, of blessed memory, the first
Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of the new settlement of the Land of Israel,
was a spiritual giant. He is almost universally considered to have been one of the greatest Jewish mystics not only of the last century, but of all time. He wrote: "The Book is the Book, but it is the heart that does the interpreting."
To be a Jew is a spiritual test. Now every Jew knows that and it is a well-worn canard to say so. I do not intend the statement in the way most Jewish people do. I do not mean that the test is to perform the mitzvoth according to our basic understanding of what they mean no matter how trying the circumstances. When I say that to be a Jew is a spiritual test I mean that we are being tested to see how we will react when we are confronted with a Text that appears to adjure us to perform mitzvot that challenge our innate sense of loving-kindness, cause us a sense of superiority and chosenness, are unintelligible, are isolating, etc.
How do we react when the tenets of our faith tell us to remain in a state of isolation from other Peoples, so that we do not become "defiled" by others and their ways, to remain a People separate from every other People in creation, complacent in
our "chosenness"; when our hearts tell us that all of Humankind are a brotherhood and we yearn to reach out to them, to be a part of them?
How do we react when the tenets of our faith tell us that our way is the one and only correct way, that every other way is folly, or at the very least misguided ignorance, and that it is our religious duty to convince other Peoples by any and all means of the truth of our way, for their own good; while our heart tells us that diversity is the way of creation and every being has the right to self-definition and self-determination and that everyone will find their own way to Ultimate Truth?
How do we react when the tenets of our faith teach us that the way to God is to sit in imperturbable silence, rapt in the bliss of meditating or learning the holy Writ of our faith, unmoving, not stirring from our places, no matter what our senses tell us; when our hearts go out to the indigent and suffering around us, and we yearn with all our being to act in the created world in order to alleviate their distress?
How do we react when the tenets of our faith tell us that in order to prove our strength and resolution to our way and preserve our ancient traditions, as handed down to us from time immemorial, we must inflict extreme pain on our bodies in religious ceremonies; while our hearts tell us that the body is as sacred as the Soul and that to harm the body is to fly in the face of the sacredness of nature?
There are many who because of these apparent "contradictions" in established religions decide upon one of two ways to resolve the problem: they choose to adhere to the tenets of their faiths silencing their hearts, or they leave the religion they were born
into, some going so far as to disavow or even execrating their heritage. Some take a third way: they adopt another religion, only to find that their new religion presents them with as many quandaries as did their own.
Know that God has placed these apparent "contradictions" in every religion. They are the planting of God's hands so that your Soul may grow. You are not meant either to betray the People and tradition you were born into, or to unthinkingly accept the tenets of your faith that your heart tells you need examining. In the first case you betray your People, in the second you betray yourself. Both of these responses are a cutting yourself off from that which God wants for you.
Those who leave their religion are demonstrating not only their complete lack of faith, but are also demonstrating arrogance and disrespect toward their elders. Could it possibly be that their own singular understanding is greater than the collective wisdom of the many in so many generations who held their faith dear, very dear? If one has even a shred of respect for those who have come before him/her they do not abandon the way of their forefathers and foremothers.
One must be true to one's heart. God has planted many tenets that are anathema to the sensitive heart in each religion. Why? It is so that you will question - not question the truth of the precept, but question your own understanding of it. If one comes to God with an honest and humble prayer and says: "I respect what I see written here, but my heart tells me otherwise. How shall I proceed? How shall I act? Have I understood what is taught? Surely I have not seen to the depth of Your wisdom. What do You desire of me?" that person will have fulfilled God's true Will in planting the tenet in the faith - that person will have entered a dialogue with God. This is God's true desire - to teach you the depths of your faith directly, so they you may see. Such a one who prays this way will be blessed with vision heretofore unknown to him/her. They will see ways of understanding and interpreting the tenets of their faith that *resolve* that which s/he thought were contradictions, precepts which limit the freedom of the Soul and harsh commandments. S/he will come to see the righteousness and compassion that exists in the seemingly harsh precepts with clear eyes, in a way that is compatible with all of God's creation. The tradition of their People will not be contradicted or contravened in any way. The one who entered into a dialog with God will understand them with ever-increasing depth as God personally takes them by the hand through eternity.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
Friday, April 23, 2004
B"H
Yeshu - Anachronisms and Other Discrepancies
B"H
This is a bit of that which the Talmud relates about Yeshu:
When Yannai* the king killed the Rabbis, R. Yehoshua Ben Perachiah
and Yeshu went to Alexandria of Egypt. When there was peace, Shimon
Ben Shetach sent to him "From me [Jerusalem] the holy city to you
Alexandria of Egypt. My husband remains in your midst and I sit
forsaken." (That is to say that Shim'on ben Shatach missed his
beloved friend ben Perachia and called him back to Jerusalem from
Alexandria).
[*Yannai is King Alexander Jannaeus (who reigned from c.103 to 76
BCE). Note the dates. The Talmud tells us that Yeshu was a grown
man when King Yannai died in 76 BCE.]
R. Yehoshua Ben Perachiah left and arrived at a particular inn and
they showed him great respect. He said: How beautiful is this inn
[Achsania, which also means innkeeper].
Yeshu said: Rabbi, her eyes are oozing.
R. Yehoshua Ben Perachiah said to him: Wicked one, this is how you
engage yourself?
R. Yehoshua Ben Perachiah sent out four hundred trumpets and
excommunicated him.
Yeshu came before R. Yehoshua Ben Perachiah many times and said:
Accept me. But R. Yehoshua Ben Perachiah paid him no attention.
One day R. Yehoshua Ben Perachiah was reciting Shema [during which
one may not be interrupted]. Yeshu came before him. He was going to
accept Yeshu and signalled to Yeshu with his hand. Yeshu thought
that R. Yehoshua Ben Perachiah was repelling him. He went, hung a
brick, and bowed down to it.
Yeshu said to R. Yehoshua Ben Perachiah: You taught me that anyone
who sins and causes others to sin is not given the opportunity to
repent.
And the master said: Yeshu the Notzri practiced magic and deceived
and led Israel astray.
The early Christians were also aware of the name "ben Pantera" for
Jesus. The pagan philosopher Celsus, who was famous for his arguments
against Christianity, claimed (178 CE) that he had heard from a Jew
that Jesus' mother, Mary, had been divorced by her husband, a
carpenter, after it had been proved that she was an adulteress. She
wandered about in shame and bore Jesus in secret. His real father was
a Roman soldier named Pantheras.
2 - The other figure mentioned by the Talmud is Yeshu "Ben-Stada"
(son of Stada). This Yeshu was the illegitimate son of a woman
Miriam ("Mary") bat Bilgah who committed adultery with a Roman
soldier. The name "Stada" in Aramaic comes from "Sta Da" -- "she
deviated."
The pagan philosopher Celsus, who was famous for his arguments
against Christianity, claimed (178 CE) that he had heard from a Jew
that Jesus' mother, Mary, had been divorced by her husband, a
carpenter, after it had been proved that she was an adulteress. She
wandered about in shame and bore Jesus in secret. His real father was
a (probably Germanic) mercenary soldier in the Roman army named Panthera.
2 - The other figure mentioned by the Talmud is Yeshu "Ben-Stada"
(son of Stada). All the information we have on ben Stada (also known
as ben Sotera or ben Sotira) comes from the same sources concerning
Yeshu, and there is less information on ben Stada than about Yeshu.
Various beliefs surrounded ben Stada -- some claiming he was a
madman, others claiming he was a spell-master, and some claiming he
was a beguiler. This Yeshu was the illegitimate son of a woman
(Miriam ("Mary") bat Bilgah) who committed adultery with a Roman
soldier. The name "Stada" in Aramaic comes from "Sta Da" -- "she
deviated."
The Talmud relates that this Yeshu incited many Jews to deviate from
Judaism and was therefore put to death for doing so.
Yeshu not only incited Jews to desecrate the Holy Shabbat, as well as
other commit other sins mentioned in the Talmud, he also execrated
the Jewish People. Whether or not the "descriptions" of the Jews'
sins were acurate or not, one who loves someone hides his/her shame.
There is nothing more hateful to God than one who execrates his/her
own People.
All of Humankind is forbidden to engage in idol worship. Whoever
wrote what is written in the "New Testament" teaching that there is
no way to God but through Yeshu, God forbid, led masses of people
astray. Everyone, but everyone is always able to enter into a direct
relationship with God. Not only can everyone, it is the very purpose
of our lives.
Yet, Yeshu remains one of us, blood of our blood, flesh of our flesh,
spirit of our spirit. Know that the Jewish People have never
forsaken him and that the Talmud tells us that we are enjoined to
pray for Yeshu. I do pray for Yeshu. The task that Soul took on is
awesome. What is the task he took on? His task is trying the
Gentiles to see if they would forsake idol worship and turn to God
without any intermediaries, no matter how "spiritual" a teaching
leading them astray might sound. Don't fail him.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat
Yeshu - Anachronisms and Other Discrepancies
B"H
This is a bit of that which the Talmud relates about Yeshu:
When Yannai* the king killed the Rabbis, R. Yehoshua Ben Perachiah
and Yeshu went to Alexandria of Egypt. When there was peace, Shimon
Ben Shetach sent to him "From me [Jerusalem] the holy city to you
Alexandria of Egypt. My husband remains in your midst and I sit
forsaken." (That is to say that Shim'on ben Shatach missed his
beloved friend ben Perachia and called him back to Jerusalem from
Alexandria).
[*Yannai is King Alexander Jannaeus (who reigned from c.103 to 76
BCE). Note the dates. The Talmud tells us that Yeshu was a grown
man when King Yannai died in 76 BCE.]
R. Yehoshua Ben Perachiah left and arrived at a particular inn and
they showed him great respect. He said: How beautiful is this inn
[Achsania, which also means innkeeper].
Yeshu said: Rabbi, her eyes are oozing.
R. Yehoshua Ben Perachiah said to him: Wicked one, this is how you
engage yourself?
R. Yehoshua Ben Perachiah sent out four hundred trumpets and
excommunicated him.
Yeshu came before R. Yehoshua Ben Perachiah many times and said:
Accept me. But R. Yehoshua Ben Perachiah paid him no attention.
One day R. Yehoshua Ben Perachiah was reciting Shema [during which
one may not be interrupted]. Yeshu came before him. He was going to
accept Yeshu and signalled to Yeshu with his hand. Yeshu thought
that R. Yehoshua Ben Perachiah was repelling him. He went, hung a
brick, and bowed down to it.
Yeshu said to R. Yehoshua Ben Perachiah: You taught me that anyone
who sins and causes others to sin is not given the opportunity to
repent.
And the master said: Yeshu the Notzri practiced magic and deceived
and led Israel astray.
The early Christians were also aware of the name "ben Pantera" for
Jesus. The pagan philosopher Celsus, who was famous for his arguments
against Christianity, claimed (178 CE) that he had heard from a Jew
that Jesus' mother, Mary, had been divorced by her husband, a
carpenter, after it had been proved that she was an adulteress. She
wandered about in shame and bore Jesus in secret. His real father was
a Roman soldier named Pantheras.
2 - The other figure mentioned by the Talmud is Yeshu "Ben-Stada"
(son of Stada). This Yeshu was the illegitimate son of a woman
Miriam ("Mary") bat Bilgah who committed adultery with a Roman
soldier. The name "Stada" in Aramaic comes from "Sta Da" -- "she
deviated."
The pagan philosopher Celsus, who was famous for his arguments
against Christianity, claimed (178 CE) that he had heard from a Jew
that Jesus' mother, Mary, had been divorced by her husband, a
carpenter, after it had been proved that she was an adulteress. She
wandered about in shame and bore Jesus in secret. His real father was
a (probably Germanic) mercenary soldier in the Roman army named Panthera.
2 - The other figure mentioned by the Talmud is Yeshu "Ben-Stada"
(son of Stada). All the information we have on ben Stada (also known
as ben Sotera or ben Sotira) comes from the same sources concerning
Yeshu, and there is less information on ben Stada than about Yeshu.
Various beliefs surrounded ben Stada -- some claiming he was a
madman, others claiming he was a spell-master, and some claiming he
was a beguiler. This Yeshu was the illegitimate son of a woman
(Miriam ("Mary") bat Bilgah) who committed adultery with a Roman
soldier. The name "Stada" in Aramaic comes from "Sta Da" -- "she
deviated."
The Talmud relates that this Yeshu incited many Jews to deviate from
Judaism and was therefore put to death for doing so.
Yeshu not only incited Jews to desecrate the Holy Shabbat, as well as
other commit other sins mentioned in the Talmud, he also execrated
the Jewish People. Whether or not the "descriptions" of the Jews'
sins were acurate or not, one who loves someone hides his/her shame.
There is nothing more hateful to God than one who execrates his/her
own People.
All of Humankind is forbidden to engage in idol worship. Whoever
wrote what is written in the "New Testament" teaching that there is
no way to God but through Yeshu, God forbid, led masses of people
astray. Everyone, but everyone is always able to enter into a direct
relationship with God. Not only can everyone, it is the very purpose
of our lives.
Yet, Yeshu remains one of us, blood of our blood, flesh of our flesh,
spirit of our spirit. Know that the Jewish People have never
forsaken him and that the Talmud tells us that we are enjoined to
pray for Yeshu. I do pray for Yeshu. The task that Soul took on is
awesome. What is the task he took on? His task is trying the
Gentiles to see if they would forsake idol worship and turn to God
without any intermediaries, no matter how "spiritual" a teaching
leading them astray might sound. Don't fail him.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat
B"H
Types of Suffering and Moral/Spiritual Advancement
Rabbi Moshe Cordevero, called HaRama"k, was one of the teachers of
HaAr"i.
"The Palm Tree of Devorah" is probably his most famous book. In
Chapter 2 he writes: "...a person whould constantly recall his sins
and desire purification, rebuke and suffering, asking himself: "Which
type of suffering is the best in the world and will not distract me
from Divine service?" Surely, there is none better than these - to be
scorned and despised and insulted, for these will not weaken his
strength and vitality with illness, nor will they rob him of his food
and clothing, his life, or his children's lives. Hence a person
should actually desire this form of suffering, saying to
himself: "Why should I fast and torment myself with sackcloth and
self-affliction, which weaken my strength to G-d's service? Why
should I desire these for myself? It is far better for me to be
afflicted with contempt and shame while my strength does not depart
or weaken."
Thus, when insults are meted out to him, he should rejoice in them.
Contrary to the typical reaction to them, he should desire them.
I offer Jewish sources because those are the ones that I am most
familiar with. From what I've read the mystic traditions of many
cultures say the same thing: it is not by way of illness and
mortification of the body that we nullify the ego and come to G-d,
this being taught by those who attempted the way of mortifications,
including myself. Although we show God our "seriousness" about
approaching holiness by being willing to endure pain, God in It's
mercy soon shows us that this is not the way. God does not "suffer",
God does not have nerve endings. We do not emulate God by suffering.
It is in the equanimitous acceptance of insults and contempt that we
nullify our ego. While we are not to make ourselves contemptible, we
are to accept the insults which come to us as opportunities to put
our pride in place.
Physical pain is the wrecking ball which fells the wall. Then comes
the bulldozing of the stones to clear them away. But after the
initial very gross stages in the process of taking down our barriers,
there is no longer any need for the "heavy artillery".
Ask yourselves honestly: Has pain led you to equanimity? Even after
protracted physical pain, can you honestly say that you react to
insult and praise in exactly the same manner - with utter
indifference?
Doreen
Types of Suffering and Moral/Spiritual Advancement
Rabbi Moshe Cordevero, called HaRama"k, was one of the teachers of
HaAr"i.
"The Palm Tree of Devorah" is probably his most famous book. In
Chapter 2 he writes: "...a person whould constantly recall his sins
and desire purification, rebuke and suffering, asking himself: "Which
type of suffering is the best in the world and will not distract me
from Divine service?" Surely, there is none better than these - to be
scorned and despised and insulted, for these will not weaken his
strength and vitality with illness, nor will they rob him of his food
and clothing, his life, or his children's lives. Hence a person
should actually desire this form of suffering, saying to
himself: "Why should I fast and torment myself with sackcloth and
self-affliction, which weaken my strength to G-d's service? Why
should I desire these for myself? It is far better for me to be
afflicted with contempt and shame while my strength does not depart
or weaken."
Thus, when insults are meted out to him, he should rejoice in them.
Contrary to the typical reaction to them, he should desire them.
I offer Jewish sources because those are the ones that I am most
familiar with. From what I've read the mystic traditions of many
cultures say the same thing: it is not by way of illness and
mortification of the body that we nullify the ego and come to G-d,
this being taught by those who attempted the way of mortifications,
including myself. Although we show God our "seriousness" about
approaching holiness by being willing to endure pain, God in It's
mercy soon shows us that this is not the way. God does not "suffer",
God does not have nerve endings. We do not emulate God by suffering.
It is in the equanimitous acceptance of insults and contempt that we
nullify our ego. While we are not to make ourselves contemptible, we
are to accept the insults which come to us as opportunities to put
our pride in place.
Physical pain is the wrecking ball which fells the wall. Then comes
the bulldozing of the stones to clear them away. But after the
initial very gross stages in the process of taking down our barriers,
there is no longer any need for the "heavy artillery".
Ask yourselves honestly: Has pain led you to equanimity? Even after
protracted physical pain, can you honestly say that you react to
insult and praise in exactly the same manner - with utter
indifference?
Doreen
B"H
More Cliche Accusations
We have the Neo-Essenes. And now, shock horror: the Neo-Sabbateans!
And judging by their site, it looks like they mean business!
http://www.donmeh-west.com/
The Baal Shem Tov said that Shabbetai Zvi had a spark of the Moshiach in him. And the Alter Rebbe that the Shechinah wailed when the Frankists left the Jewish fold.
If something exists, it must have a spark of truth in it.
From a Lurianic Messianic viewpoint, those few sparks residing in Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Sabbateanism, Buddhism, Capitalism, Communism, Nazism and even Atheism, have to be disencumbered from them, elevated to Kedushah, leaving the emptied husk to wither & disappear.
-----------------------------------------------
Doreen Dotan Responded:
21:36 22 Apr 2004
B"H
You can put Chaba"d in a distinguished place on your list.
POINT OF INFORMATION FOR THE PUBLIC: HaRav Auerbach, Head of the Beit Din in T'veria, has forbidden Chaba"d sh'chitah because their kavvanot during the time of sh'chitah are heretical.
Today the safest kashrut is Landau and Bada"tz for meat and everything else. HaRav Machpuz is the greatest authority on chakla'ut in Eretz Yisra'el today according to the Rabbinc tradition. When it comes to buying produce he is the ultimate authority that we have to rely on.
Chaba"d are the last to know that they are inching out of the pale. The only reason that they have not been excommunicated is that they provide such good amusement. They are the laughingstock of the Orthodox world.
Personally I have mixed feelings about Chaba"d sh'chitah. On the one hand I know they do have all kinds of unkosher kavvanot when they shecht. On the other hand I am loathe to reject their kashrut as it is one more step in ousting them from the fold. I would not buy Chaba"d shchitah, but for the time being if it is served at friends' houses I will eat it. Yes, I do have Chaba"d friends, even though the way is errant and Chaba"d attracts as many loo-loo chozrim b'tshuvah as does Breslov, there are individuals in both Chaba"d and Breslov whom I like very much as individuals. Chaba"d in particular, but Breslov too, attracts two basic types of people - confused, needy individuals who grasp at any straw handed out to them to help them have some sense of stability and purpose and those who prey on them. This is not always the case, certainly, but the rare instance in which it is not true serves to prove that in in most cases this is true.
Unfortunately Chab"adnikim are completely convinced of the correctness of their way and are quite sure that the rest of the Jewish world are just not spiritual enough to understand what they're on about. Indeed, Chaba"d hype is built on culturing a sense of belonging to the elite of Jewry in their adherents, people who because of profound feelings of inferiority desperately need to cling to an illusion such as this. If they continue that line of thought they will fall over the edge at some point.
It's interesting that Chaba"d are so obsessed with other heretics and so quick to accuse others of heresy. Offen ganif brent das hittle.
More Cliche Accusations
We have the Neo-Essenes. And now, shock horror: the Neo-Sabbateans!
And judging by their site, it looks like they mean business!
http://www.donmeh-west.com/
The Baal Shem Tov said that Shabbetai Zvi had a spark of the Moshiach in him. And the Alter Rebbe that the Shechinah wailed when the Frankists left the Jewish fold.
If something exists, it must have a spark of truth in it.
From a Lurianic Messianic viewpoint, those few sparks residing in Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Sabbateanism, Buddhism, Capitalism, Communism, Nazism and even Atheism, have to be disencumbered from them, elevated to Kedushah, leaving the emptied husk to wither & disappear.
-----------------------------------------------
Doreen Dotan Responded:
21:36 22 Apr 2004
B"H
You can put Chaba"d in a distinguished place on your list.
POINT OF INFORMATION FOR THE PUBLIC: HaRav Auerbach, Head of the Beit Din in T'veria, has forbidden Chaba"d sh'chitah because their kavvanot during the time of sh'chitah are heretical.
Today the safest kashrut is Landau and Bada"tz for meat and everything else. HaRav Machpuz is the greatest authority on chakla'ut in Eretz Yisra'el today according to the Rabbinc tradition. When it comes to buying produce he is the ultimate authority that we have to rely on.
Chaba"d are the last to know that they are inching out of the pale. The only reason that they have not been excommunicated is that they provide such good amusement. They are the laughingstock of the Orthodox world.
Personally I have mixed feelings about Chaba"d sh'chitah. On the one hand I know they do have all kinds of unkosher kavvanot when they shecht. On the other hand I am loathe to reject their kashrut as it is one more step in ousting them from the fold. I would not buy Chaba"d shchitah, but for the time being if it is served at friends' houses I will eat it. Yes, I do have Chaba"d friends, even though the way is errant and Chaba"d attracts as many loo-loo chozrim b'tshuvah as does Breslov, there are individuals in both Chaba"d and Breslov whom I like very much as individuals. Chaba"d in particular, but Breslov too, attracts two basic types of people - confused, needy individuals who grasp at any straw handed out to them to help them have some sense of stability and purpose and those who prey on them. This is not always the case, certainly, but the rare instance in which it is not true serves to prove that in in most cases this is true.
Unfortunately Chab"adnikim are completely convinced of the correctness of their way and are quite sure that the rest of the Jewish world are just not spiritual enough to understand what they're on about. Indeed, Chaba"d hype is built on culturing a sense of belonging to the elite of Jewry in their adherents, people who because of profound feelings of inferiority desperately need to cling to an illusion such as this. If they continue that line of thought they will fall over the edge at some point.
It's interesting that Chaba"d are so obsessed with other heretics and so quick to accuse others of heresy. Offen ganif brent das hittle.
B”H
I Nominate Kurt Godel for The Nobel Prize
I recently made this announcement in a conversation. Someone bound and determined to shoot down my grandiose, and seemingly baseless, pronouncement retorted: “You can’t nominate Kurt Godel for the Nobel Prize”. “Why?”, I asked simply, feigning innocence [See my article “Two Types of Intellect” in issue #145 (of Gift of Fire, the journal of The Prometheus Society) for an explanation of these lethal “Why?”s.]. “First off, you’re not on the Norwegian Nobel Committee”, my interlocutor said, in a transparent bid to take the wind out of my sails. That position is technically factual, but I was not about to be daunted by a mere technicality (or fact that wasn’t really germane). I dismissed the contention by stating: “That is merely due to the fact that I am not Norwegian.” I didn’t let him get another word in edgewise about the make-up of the Committee. “Second”, my would-be shooter downer continued, certain that the second point he was about to make would be the coup de grace that would render him the victor in this friendly altercation, “there is no Nobel Prize for Mathematics.” I began to salivate a bit as my prey fell into the trap that I had methodically and meticulously set for him. “Well, John Nash was granted a Nobel Prize.”, I stated. Amused I watched the wannabe poo-pooer bloating and gloating as visions of a victory he would never realize danced in his head. “John Nash was granted a Nobel Prize in Economics, not Mathematics”, he responded in a ‘so there’ tone of voice. “Exactly”, I responded calmly. I went on: “Although it may be argued that some of the other work that Nash did in pure math was more brilliant and original than the Game Theory, he was granted a Nobel Prize on the basis of how his Game Theory proved that economic activity is improved when it is conducted in a win-win manner. Nash’s work in economics is characterized by the inherently moral content of the work. Similarly, my intention is that Godel should be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize because, when assiduously analyzed, it will be discovered that Godel’s Theorem proves that Humanity is inexorably moving in the direction of social anarchy, which I define as ultimate social freedom, i.e., society characterized by the generalized ability of its citizens to react morally to the unbounded and unexpected, without the need to aggressively impose arbitrary structuring laws. I contend that Kurt Godel is entitled to be a Nobel Peace Prize laureate on the basis of his Undecidability (or Incompleteness) Theorem, which, simply put, proved that there are problems that cannot be solved by any set of rules or procedures because this would always require a higher set of rules. Kurt Godel proved that any system of laws that we may contrive are going to reveal themselves be internally inconsistent at one point or another and we will have to devise laws that are greater in scope in order to iron out the kinks of the inconsistencies. That, of course, will avail us nothing, as the system of laws that is greater in scope than the system of laws that generated it because it was found to be internally inconsistent will, likewise break down, as did those that antedated it. Kurt Godel has shown that Human beings who devise laws for themselves to describe their societies, just as they devise mathematical laws in an attempt to describe their universe, will, upon observing, and admitting, that no number of revisions or sophistications will yield a system of laws that describes either an internally consistent society or description of physical reality, have to come to the conclusion that all laws must be abandoned. At that point two things will have occurred. We will be living in anarchy, unfettered by arbitrary and superfluous laws and we will be living in a physical universe unlimited by a mathematical grammar or syntax of any kind. We will have transcended mind and the unavoidable limitations that come along with living in a mind that generates systematizing laws.
Henry David Thoreau presaged the work of Godel when he wrote the following in his book WALDEN:
“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
In writing out his Theorem, and making it available to other Human beings, Godel answered Thoreau’s request. He laid the foundation for the vision of Thoreau, the anarchist and lover and Humanity and nature. Thoreau, and then Godel after him, said exactly the same thing. The former wrote in the language that the INFJs among us resonate with and the latter in the terminology that the INTJs among us grasp intellectually.
Kurt Godel is, in my humble opinion, the paradigmatic mathematician, the mathematician par excellence. His theorem spans the entire range from “pure math” to “applied math” yet goes further than this, further than the math of any other – it describes and proves that ultimate freedom is built into the very laws of the universe. For this Kurt Godel deserves recognition and we deserve to admit to ourselves the ramifications of his work. We are destined to be increasing free. The Human mind has generated a mathematical grammar and syntax that not only describes a universe that urges us ever onward and upward, but inevitably transcends itself.
In summary: We are evolving, both in our consciousness and socially, into living (to be understood as being capable of creating at will) in the stateless state that Christopher Michael Langan calls Unbound Telesis (UBT) and what the mystical strain of Judaism calls Ayin – that which our minds now perceive as Nothingness, not because it is a void but only because we can not yet imagine unbound ontological potential. However, we are moving in the direction of being able to exist in that state which is no state at all. This is the promise that Thoreau and Godel hold out to us.
Now that I think about it, a wave of largesse and great pride in Humanity fills me. I nominate us all for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
I Nominate Kurt Godel for The Nobel Prize
I recently made this announcement in a conversation. Someone bound and determined to shoot down my grandiose, and seemingly baseless, pronouncement retorted: “You can’t nominate Kurt Godel for the Nobel Prize”. “Why?”, I asked simply, feigning innocence [See my article “Two Types of Intellect” in issue #145 (of Gift of Fire, the journal of The Prometheus Society) for an explanation of these lethal “Why?”s.]. “First off, you’re not on the Norwegian Nobel Committee”, my interlocutor said, in a transparent bid to take the wind out of my sails. That position is technically factual, but I was not about to be daunted by a mere technicality (or fact that wasn’t really germane). I dismissed the contention by stating: “That is merely due to the fact that I am not Norwegian.” I didn’t let him get another word in edgewise about the make-up of the Committee. “Second”, my would-be shooter downer continued, certain that the second point he was about to make would be the coup de grace that would render him the victor in this friendly altercation, “there is no Nobel Prize for Mathematics.” I began to salivate a bit as my prey fell into the trap that I had methodically and meticulously set for him. “Well, John Nash was granted a Nobel Prize.”, I stated. Amused I watched the wannabe poo-pooer bloating and gloating as visions of a victory he would never realize danced in his head. “John Nash was granted a Nobel Prize in Economics, not Mathematics”, he responded in a ‘so there’ tone of voice. “Exactly”, I responded calmly. I went on: “Although it may be argued that some of the other work that Nash did in pure math was more brilliant and original than the Game Theory, he was granted a Nobel Prize on the basis of how his Game Theory proved that economic activity is improved when it is conducted in a win-win manner. Nash’s work in economics is characterized by the inherently moral content of the work. Similarly, my intention is that Godel should be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize because, when assiduously analyzed, it will be discovered that Godel’s Theorem proves that Humanity is inexorably moving in the direction of social anarchy, which I define as ultimate social freedom, i.e., society characterized by the generalized ability of its citizens to react morally to the unbounded and unexpected, without the need to aggressively impose arbitrary structuring laws. I contend that Kurt Godel is entitled to be a Nobel Peace Prize laureate on the basis of his Undecidability (or Incompleteness) Theorem, which, simply put, proved that there are problems that cannot be solved by any set of rules or procedures because this would always require a higher set of rules. Kurt Godel proved that any system of laws that we may contrive are going to reveal themselves be internally inconsistent at one point or another and we will have to devise laws that are greater in scope in order to iron out the kinks of the inconsistencies. That, of course, will avail us nothing, as the system of laws that is greater in scope than the system of laws that generated it because it was found to be internally inconsistent will, likewise break down, as did those that antedated it. Kurt Godel has shown that Human beings who devise laws for themselves to describe their societies, just as they devise mathematical laws in an attempt to describe their universe, will, upon observing, and admitting, that no number of revisions or sophistications will yield a system of laws that describes either an internally consistent society or description of physical reality, have to come to the conclusion that all laws must be abandoned. At that point two things will have occurred. We will be living in anarchy, unfettered by arbitrary and superfluous laws and we will be living in a physical universe unlimited by a mathematical grammar or syntax of any kind. We will have transcended mind and the unavoidable limitations that come along with living in a mind that generates systematizing laws.
Henry David Thoreau presaged the work of Godel when he wrote the following in his book WALDEN:
“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”
In writing out his Theorem, and making it available to other Human beings, Godel answered Thoreau’s request. He laid the foundation for the vision of Thoreau, the anarchist and lover and Humanity and nature. Thoreau, and then Godel after him, said exactly the same thing. The former wrote in the language that the INFJs among us resonate with and the latter in the terminology that the INTJs among us grasp intellectually.
Kurt Godel is, in my humble opinion, the paradigmatic mathematician, the mathematician par excellence. His theorem spans the entire range from “pure math” to “applied math” yet goes further than this, further than the math of any other – it describes and proves that ultimate freedom is built into the very laws of the universe. For this Kurt Godel deserves recognition and we deserve to admit to ourselves the ramifications of his work. We are destined to be increasing free. The Human mind has generated a mathematical grammar and syntax that not only describes a universe that urges us ever onward and upward, but inevitably transcends itself.
In summary: We are evolving, both in our consciousness and socially, into living (to be understood as being capable of creating at will) in the stateless state that Christopher Michael Langan calls Unbound Telesis (UBT) and what the mystical strain of Judaism calls Ayin – that which our minds now perceive as Nothingness, not because it is a void but only because we can not yet imagine unbound ontological potential. However, we are moving in the direction of being able to exist in that state which is no state at all. This is the promise that Thoreau and Godel hold out to us.
Now that I think about it, a wave of largesse and great pride in Humanity fills me. I nominate us all for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat, Israel
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