To suggest a framework, within a narrative of textual commentary, for understanding (a) on what basis a de novo commentary could be written; (b) how this is seen within the 1st/10th commandments, and to do so, explain how Torah framing can, without internal contradiction (within this write-up) accommodate the universal uniqueness (which includes, e.g. “enemies of the faith according to any...
Editorial notes: This is one of Shai’s longest essays, written in seven instalments, six within a period of just ten days in 2016 (from 13th October to 23rd October 2016) and the seventh, a year later, on August 31 2017. Reflecting on Shai’s complete collection of writings, this can be seen, perhaps, as the zenith and culmination of his intellectual journey. As he was writing this essay he was...
Editorial notes: These reflections are about the quest to find underlying enduring meaning in the transitory experiences and events that make up our lives and constitute our world. It suggests that there is no such underlying enduring meaning, at least none accessible to us. But there can be crucial turning points in which we are surprised by experiences that transcend what we thought were the...
Editorial notes: The title suggests that a person who is unable to speak (such as a seeker for truth or reality or God who cannot articulate just what is being sought nor where it resides), nevertheless emits a deep prayer that “echoes” and thus can be heard in some sense. The text of this essay is that prayer. “Part 1” is unclear. “Part 2” is more comprehensible. “The Book of the Spirit Ladder”...
A new psychology, or “A Title Which Says QUICK HELP” I’ve dabbled in a model for my vision of Torah-originated mapping of our experiences, such that it would not defy approach by strange elocution, whose tempo and logic dance and lose themselves in weaves, and would instead welcome by dazzling with meaningless colours until their audience was ready to hear what they were ready to know: What’s the...
In my heart, the real challenge awakened into quarrel’s inner courtrooms by Korach is the essence of post-theodic[I] egalitarianism[II], i.e. if all are facets of the same diamond, and all the centre of the stage, then why arrange ourselves by systems that force us to interact with each other and the world in specified protocols? This is both (1) unfair, why should only royalty enjoy fame’s...
Editorial notes: Shai opens this essay on how life and beauty (symbolised in the term “lilacs”) can be produced out of what looks at first like mere dead materiality (“dead soil”) with what looks like a claim to have had a mystical experience of God. He terms that experience as “How I solved the theocratic paradox in trans-noumenal space” – “trans-noumenal space” refers to the infinite...
Editorial notes: This is a meditation on the Shema, and the nature of love. It is pointed out that, as Midrashic commentators say, the reference in the Shema to loving God with all one’s hearts (plural) signifies both with the good and the bad impulse, etc., bringing the evil urge into conformity with the good urge and directed to God. Within the fleshly and worldly is the spiritual and heavenly...
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...
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...
