Editorial notes: One of Shai’s special skills was writing short stories in a style used by famous authors. The two short stories below are a reflection of these attempts. The first written in the writing style of the American-British novelist and screenwriter, Raymond Chandler[I] and the second in the writing style of Jorge Luis Borges. Instant Noodles with Egg by Raymond Chandler The night...
Editorial notes: This post/story appears in two versions (see also Warm Rays in Cold Rooms (v1)) and it is not clear which one is the later or more up to date of the two, hence they are both published here. I was walking around the room, trying to focus on discovering new meanings between the storylines that were painted in items and their histories amidst history. I returned to sit on the bed...
Editorial notes: This essay/story appears in two versions (see also Warm Rays in Cold Rooms (v2)) and it is not clear which one is the later or more up-to-date of the two, hence they are both published here. After paying his respect to the anonymous pornstar, Professor Steven Stephenson, said, slurring his words [it was the one and only time I caught him blind drunk (nb. ethanol)], “I tried to...
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”...
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...
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...
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 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...
