The Music of Words

Poetry flows through my veins,

It is the way words do song.

Human voices sing melodies,

Words offer song in poetry.

The Infinite Light parted,

Exposed a finite clearing.

Here, the letters first danced,

Uniting, forging potent words;

Brightened vessels bearing souls,

Lights in concrete expression.

High energy can't be dry n' pale,

It can't escape the lyrical.

So prophets let loose in poetry,

Moses and Isaiah spoke prose.

They spoke the music of words,

As the Creator Himself had.

The whole world is His poem,

Just find your own within His.

              ~ O ~

A Little Miracle for a Little Boy

My nine year old son is enjoying a Lubavitch sleep away camp in the Catskill Mountains – a resort area in a very country setting. No doubt besides sports, refreshments, games, trips and daily Torah study, he’s also taught about the great spiritual accomplishment and deeds of the Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson o.b.m., the movement’s latest Grand Rabbi. Though he passed away some twenty years ago, his spiritual influence on Jewish life all over is very much alive and well.

On visiting day, the other week, I took him off campgrounds. We picked up his sister, my eleven year old daughter, from her sleep away camp down a winding country road. Then we enjoyed a family outing in a small town which sports a row of kosher restaurants and general Jewish shopping. After I dined them on lavish ice cream sundaes, I took them to a Judaica bookstore and allowed each child to select a book.

My daughter didn’t particularly love the selection, largely because she’s a fast reader and didn’t want to end up with anything whose reading pleasure wouldn’t linger. However, despite her concerns, she settled on a book pretty easily.

My son’s selection effort was more dramatic. He insisted that he wanted a book about the Rabbi Schneerson. The only problem was that all such books in stock were well above his reading level. So he came up with a secondary option, a comic book. He picked one up from a selection styled after graphic novel, but, designed to convey timeless Torah lessons or poignant moments in Jewish history. We brought his book to the counter. Right before I purchased it I noticed its subtitle, “How the Lubavitcher Rebbe Saved the Jews of Soviet Union from Destruction”.

A smile lit up my face. I turned to my son and exclaimed, “What an unexpected miracle! You wanted a book about the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Look how the Creator cherished your desire. He brought you to the kind of book you sought, one tailor made just for you.”

The Talmud teaches,” Those who seek holiness are aided from Above.”

Future Male/Female Dynamic

Traditionally speaking, Kabbalah teaches that male means giving and female means receiving. The Lubavitcher Rebbe explained that while giver/receiver are sufficient as descriptions of male/female roles before the Messiah arrives, during the messianic era these traditional roles will change and the giver/receiver paradigm won't hold - neither cosmically nor personally.

As a whole, the messianic era will be characterized by greater equality on every level, including gender. Since giver and receiver are unequal roles, they are out of character with a messianic era. Obviously, male/female will continue to exist, but along different lines. For a while I wondered what could a messianic era male/female relationship look like.

My thoughts took me back to the way Rabbi Bachya Ibn Pequda explained the Creator's Oneness. Obviously, anything about the Creator cannot be described directly. The closest one can get to a description of the Creator is to describe what He's not, rather than what He is. The old term for this kind of description is “negative theology”. In common contemporary parlance it’s called, "process of elimination".

What Rabbi Bachya explained the Creator’s Oneness by explaining that He’s not multiple. He eliminated multiplicity by explaining that any oneness humans can conceive of is composed of parts. Even the smallest seemingly indivisible item at the very least has a beginning, middle and end - i.e. it can be conceptually segmented. Even such subtle segmentation does not apply to the Creator - as His Oneness must be absolutely real and a oneness composed of parts is not ultimately real.   

From Oneness, Rabbi Bachya explains the Creator’s Infinity in a way which ends up eliminating limitation. He explains that since the Creator’s Oneness is absolutely seamless, He has no beginning, middle or end. A Being with no beginning, middle or end has no limits and by definition is Infinite (which also literally means “not finite” - an eliminative description). So the Creator is at once Seamlessly One and Absolutely Infinity. In Him, Oneness and Infinity are the same. It’s our minds which divide them into two concepts.

It occurred to me that the Creator's Infinity and Oneness is the very earliest possible root for any version of duality echoing throughout the vast and varied levels of His creation. Since what's male in creation tends towards outer growth and expansion, maleness is an echo of Infinity. Since what's female in creation tends towards inner growth and building inner space, femininity is echo of Oneness.

Therefore it seems to me that in the messianic era, a couple's union will be one merging the forces of inner and outer growth into a singular whole. It would stand to reason that as we draw closer to this era, more and more couples will bask in the light of this new paradigm.

This does not mean that women will be confined to the home and men only venture into the wider world. That’s actually part of the pre-messianic inequality. What it means is really equal access for both genders to move about in both domains - inner and outer. However, when a females venture into the outer domain, they will bring with them a sensitivity and understanding which comes from being denizens of life’s inner domains. This can be compared to an immigrant who opens to restaurant to bring her native culinary traditions to her adopted country; thereby, enriching her new locale with something uniquely special.

Similarly, when males venture into the inner domain, they bring with them the long range focus and vision which comes from being native to life’s outer domain. This can be compared to a psychologist/life coach who ventures into a client’s feelings, yearnings and dreams in order to shape them into long range life goals and accomplishments.  

Of course, long term exposure builds life experience which works on one’s overall skill sets. So over time, females can feel comfortably at home venturing into the outer world and males venturing into the inner world. In any event, since gender tends to be a range and people are vastly varied, very often archetypal generalizations don’t neatly fit individuals - an amazing reminder of each individual’s special uniqueness. Our Creator shaped us from a place beyond books and cookie cutter academic styled definitions.

   

(This is a brief synopsis of the main points of an essay I wrote a few years ago called "Future Couple". The full length version is available on my blog.)

Dream/Think Moshiach

Tonight is the 9th of Av and it's time for me to go to sleep. I wish everyone "Moshiach dreams", as today uniquely contains the light of Moshiach. The true secret of darkness is the afterglow which remained after the Creator cleared away His Infinite Light to make a space for creation. Compared to the Infinite Light the lingering afterglow was very very dark and indeed the source for all subsequent darkness in creation - whether spiritual, psychological or physical.

However, the afterglow had a unique strength. It was the aspect of the Infinite Light which resisted the effort to be cleared away. It was a survivor, proving that it was literally the strongest aspect of the Infinite Light. Based on this understanding, darkness comes from the most intense light. How can that be?

Truthfully, there's no such a thing as being outside the light. Darkness is created by light suppressing itself. Light in a state of deep suppression becomes darkness. Know, that only a very strong light can affect self suppression. A weak light is doesn't have enough strength for such a feat.

This is why specifically on the darkest day of the year, there lurks the highest light, the light of Moshiach himself. So have Moshiach dreams tonight and Moshiach thoughts tomorrow my friends.

Be Pleasure

Around a table sat Sensualist, Artist, Intellect, Sage and Mystic.

Said Sensualist, "Do you know the taste of women, wine and fine dine? What a pity. Look at what you are all missing."

Artist responded, "Do you know the sweet taste of creativity in the artistic moment? Your’s is the pleasures of the flesh and mine is of the heart. It's far more refined. So it has to taste better than women, wine and dine."

Intellect turned to Artist, "My work is even more refined. Yours is the heat of the heart, mine is pure abstract detachment. My brainstorming is a creative explosion which lights up the way for discovery. When I find a diamond of pure truth, I encounter a taste far sweeter than you can ever imagine."

Sage turned to Intellect "You merely pursue facts in specific areas, but integrating whole systems and sensing the underlying unity and oneness, is a higher taste of sweetness, one I wish you could attain. Try, the effort is worth the pleasure."

Mystic turned to Sage, "Why is everyone talking about attaining pleasure? Why? Just give pleasure, then you'll be pleasure."

One World Under Two Divine Programs

One World Under Two Divine Programs

In his work "The Understanding Heart", Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto teaches that the world functions under two major Divine programs - the program of "reward and punishment" and the program of "Divine Unity".

Briefly stated, the program of "reward and punishment" is for the purpose of bringing about Divine justice as a means to eventually provide humans with properly "earned" spiritual pleasures. The program of "Divine Unity" is a series of events throughout history which leads to the revelation of the Creator's unity of control over everything, i.e. that there's nothing outside of His control.

Rabbi Luzzatto explains that the program of "Divine Unity" can bring disaster or good fortune to the undeserving and this is what the Creator meant when He told Moses, "I will be gracious upon whom I will be gracious to and merciful upon whom I will be merciful to." What happens in this program really does not depend on one's deeds, but, rather on one's place in the historic chain of events which bring about the eventual revelation of His unity of control.

However, Rabbi Luzzatto qualifies this teaching a bit by explaining that even when tragedy is inflicted under the program of "Divine Unity", it still needs to be introduced by some misdeed - however slight. His example is the Talmudic story of Rabbi Judah the Prince who told a hiding calf to go to her slaughter for this is her Divine destiny. For this moment of insensitivity he became seriously ill, until he asked household members to leave alone a weasel bantering around his house for "His compassion is upon all His works." (Psalm 145)

Rabbi Luzzatto points out that strictly speaking his crime did not fit his punishment. The seriousness of his illness far exceeded what he deserved for guiding a calf to her Divinely ordained destiny, albeit an uncomfortable one. Truthfully, his suffering occurred under the program of "Divine Unity". However, it needed to piggyback on a misdeed, even a slight one. In this case, it was his trace of callousness for the calf’s yearning to live.

When it comes to the holocaust, there have been Torah scholars who point to a various sins in their struggles to justify why it happened. The Lubavitcher Rebbe explained that no matter what sins were alleged to have committed, the sufferings were much too severe and wholly out of proportion with the alleged sins. Also, what tends to be so trivialized by such claims are the very special and holy people of that period, filled with kindness and good deeds, who suffered the unspeakable and unimaginable!

To me, it seems like the holocaust may have been part of the program of "Divine Unity" rather than part of the program of "Reward and Punishment". At worst, the alleged sins may have introduced the tragedy, but, was not its real cause.

While this does not provide any answer for the holocaust whatsoever, at least it provides a model to show that the answer probably does not lay in the direction of "Divine Justice". Hence, it’s mostly unproductive to look there for such answers. The answer is probably in an entirely different direction, one which is still highly classified ~ the program of "Divine Unity".

Speakers to Thinkers

Kabbalah recognizes four basic levels of life: mineral, plant, animated and human. Each of these four, has a special Hebrew name which conveys something of it's essence. In the case of the human level, the special name is "mih-dah-ber", which literally translates into English as "speaker". Until today, I wondered why humans are referred to as "speakers" and not as "thinkers".

Then today, I heard a science radio program which presented studies on speech. It turns out that without speech, there's no real thinking as we know it. Now, this does not necessarily have to be verbal speech. The studies showed that there was a marked improvement in thinking among deaf people as they develop in their understanding and usage of sign language. So any style of speech supports the whole thinking process and builds it up.

Now I understand why we're referred to as "speakers". It's obvious that we could never become "thinkers" if we weren't first "speakers".