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: 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”...
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...
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...
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...
[Editor’s Notes: Nice of me to finally put some of these thoughts into writing, but shame I didn’t care for any further development. Recommendation: Be inspired, and then start the project which here is alluded (esoteric complexity irregardless [sic])] Molecular biology and Talmudic study have long been associated in my mind. But I have never thought of anything more specific than the most...
{Part 1 – 20/03/2017} Shema Yisrael It is the year 5777. There have been 3329 years since Exodus, 525 years since the Spanish expulsion, 79 years since Kristallnacht. 69 years since Independence, 50 years since the unification of Jerusalem. To know oneself as Jew means knowing oneself as a witness to history. The words of Shema Yisrael were the words spoken at every morning and evening...
{Part 1 – 26/10/2016} There are 22 Hebrew letters, plus 5 final variants. They are given numerical values. I don’t know if this is commonly thought by those who are better studied. This isn’t a proof, it’s a thought trail, followed by some demonstrations. Why are there only 4 letters in the 100’s order? There are 10 sefirot, but how would they fit? First thought: The...
