Editorial notes: In October 2016, Shai opens his eighth blog, entitled “A Bashful Hope“ and sub-title “Dreaming of meaning”. Between October 2016 and December 2016 he posts 13 articles in this blog. This blog is clearly a work-in-progress and its menu structure suggests that Shai planned to incorporate articles across the vast areas of Kabbalah, Torah commentary and Zionism. I can only speculate...
By the late decade, he was an architect for a new data trawler innovate, designed to ease the congestion in cross-domain strategy development. These projects had stalled for weeks and were the major advantage of the Democrat party, which held them their single greatest advantage in the “Wise Decisions polls” TM. The party made a drastic decision to pool resources from alternative...
Editorial notes: This post was found in ‘Draft’ mode in the original blog and may be incomplete. It is published here in its original state. It was last updated on 27/09/2016 Hint: To properly appreciate this essay, explore the links. They add another dimension into the message Shai wanted to convey. The foundation of all foundations and the pillar of all wisdom is to know that there...
I am small and the world is great and beyond my comprehension right now. This at least I can say without doubt. But here is a dream. Once there was a fish in a fishbowl. There were pebbles on the ground, water all around, a toy castle, and a filtration system of some sort. Every so while food would fall from above the water, from where there was no water, a place of nothingness except pain of...
Editorial notes: This post was found in ‘Draft’ mode in the original blog and may be incomplete. It is published here in its original state. It was last updated on 13/09/2016 A rabbi who was kind to me and who gave me hope before I could understand it, told me that we travel in circles, forever repeating our lessons with opportunities to rise ever higher. I reflect on my biography but...
Editorial notes: This untitled post was found in ‘Draft’ mode in the original blog and may be incomplete. It is published here in its original state. It was last updated on 13/09/2016 Like a captain far from any familiar shore, gifted with a map without which he could only be utterly lost, yet dreading the fear that his past mistakes can only repeat so that he will lose even the ken...
I started by asking myself, “How is the story of Egypt abstracted?” There are many ways this can be done, some of them deeply personal or mystical. But in the spirit of the assignment, I decided to look at the story as the myth of a community repressed to its core and finding a spiritual liberation which allows them to externalize their identity into expression. I browsed randomly until I came...
A few thoughts on Holocaust Remembrance Day. Every culture has its ancestral story. This is one of mine. This is a story of survival. The Holocaust happened The Holocaust happened because of a world embedded deeply in antisemitism. It was embedded deeply with antisemitism because every country in Christendom had subjected Jews to second-class citizenship, to be denied, ransomed, evicted and...
Editorial notes: This post was found in ‘Draft’ mode in the original blog and may be incomplete. It is published here in its original state. It was last updated on 20/11/2015 This is a variation-on-a-theme. Where I previously wrote on reading Talmud with Levinas, here I revisit the issue, simplifying some aspects, and expanding on the concept and role of will. There is one idea I wish...
Editorial notes: On this day Shai publishes his first post dedicated specifically to Judaism. This is significant as it is the beginning of the fourth phase in Shai’s intellectual journey. After having first devoted a substantial body of writing to scientific inquiry and to the study of ancient and classical Western philosophers, and having recently commenced his study of Eastern Wisdom, Shai...
