Parallel story of Saul and Shabbatai Tzvi to create a single narrative that turns the conversion of the latter into an act of secret heroism, frame the whole story as being told by Monsieur Chouchani as a commentary to the story of Isaac’s celebration by his father, to a street urchin called Avram in Paris 1945, revealing to him that the secret of the story is not helplessness and confusion, but...
Henry Rockovich; or, Do Magic Mirrors Cause Evil Proclivities (Wicked Witches vs Nokia)? “The ghosts and their assorted undead et al were the first to adopt the new mobile technology. For those who had kept their thumbs when transitioning into the bright light, the keypad was an obvious winner in an industry previously dominated by Ouija boards and foggy mirrors. There were the usual grumble and...
Editorial notes: The worldly focus of Torah teaches that daily life on earth, with all its trivialities, trials and difficulties, is the realm that is given to us to sanctify and raise up. So, the path to the sublime leads through things we mistakenly take to be ordinary and even obstacles. Suffering really can elevate one to deeper wisdom. Each situation is actually a gateway to God, when seen...
{Part 1 – 01/06/2017} [This is a draft, because a polished version is not necessary right now, from my perspective] Letter to a variegated nation of nations, On one foot here is a summary of where we’re all at: We’re in a world filled with all sorts of people, all asking “How can we all think ourselves as each one being on the most important journey, how can we think...
From me, Not really the same colour as you. There is a potent danger which I mostly leave unstated – due to seeming irrelevance to most – but which I hope I can articulate by imagining you as my audience. Bullet points thinking: Moshe unites oil into menorah that is tended by Aaron’s offspring Teruma and ma’aser etc (?) allow am ha’aretz to unite with cohanim etc...
Editorial notes: This essay offers a meditation on the meaning of the festivals, and especially of course Shavuot. Since Shai merely alludes in passing to Rashi’s interpretations, Midrashic accounts, and Kabbalistic teachings, any fuller explanation even of some of his allusions must be longer than his account [EZ*]. *Many thanks to Dr. Evan Zuesse for providing the commentary for this essay...
Yochanan Goodall’s research into non-human primate linguistic capacities results in an unexpected plaintiff (gorilla or whatnot) for the courtroom of Rabbi Moses. The genius judge had considered himself to be a lone wolf, but in the eyes of a being who becomes a synecdoche of all that he opposes, he finds for the first time a mirror and sympathy. “The Torah does not deal in extraordinary cases,”...
Editorial notes: This meditation is too self-coded and allusive, playing with letters and word hints in a distinctive fashion, for it to be fully comprehensible. But it seems to be referring to the self’s ability to either create its own world and project itself onto others as a self-centered form of communication (Lot is the example, as if the house in which he dwelt included in his mind those...
Editorial notes: Reflections about drug (and love) experiences, in which emotions and feelings are analysed (“Hacking”) that are intensely felt but too changing and formless (as in “chariot mysticism”) to give reliable solid information; “to be studied but not believed; or Hacking the chariot of fire.” The reflections are deeply introspective. They relate to the levels and qualities of the...
Editorial notes: This commentary on the Shema makes reference to the ten sephirot, the underlying spiritual modalities structuring the divine image or “Tree of Life” on which the universe is designed according to the Kabbalah. These sephirotic powers are merely implicit and potential in the highest realm of infinity that is the source of all lower worlds, but are given more and more material form...
