================================================================

FOOTNOTES TO A11
CAVEAT TABBYCAT=
'There may be much here that might ruffle the feathers of a
blackbird, and I do not really want to offend anyone's ostensibly
religious sensibilities.'

(A11-1)
(( Cf. HIK, Gayan:  apr. 'Death is the price the body pays for the
soul having had a name and an identity.'  (I am not quoting
accurately. ))

(A11-2)
(( You know, life is life, and I think the term 'G_d forbid'
should be invoked only when we really want to relinquish our
freedom to Heaven, in order to avoid doing something that would
hurt someone innocent.   Or when we're doing the best we can but
it maybe ain't enough and we really do need a miracle.
Otherwise it seems to be pious superstition, and seems to amount
to taking the Name in vain, Cows Defend Us . ))

(( Hatzkele looked at a CD of teachings, and said, that's a biggie
(averah), it's stealing, it's one of 10 Commandments.  I wanted to
keep that CD, so I said back, 'But there's still 9 left.' ))

(A11-3)
(( Comment (sa):  I once sat in a tipi all night and in the
morning I heard Tellus Goodmorning give Justin Case's son, Milo,
an Indian name.  John Kimmey was sitting at the head of the
chevre, Lama Foundation should know where he is.  So I don't
remember all of the name, because Tellus spoke very quietly as
usual, but -- it was something about the first light of day coming
over the mountain ridge to the East, and mountain sheep around the
ridgeline, and the full moon, and Milo's round face.  Joanna Case
said, 'Milo Mountain-Sheep'.  

But she was sort of into Christianity, which is "cute and sweet",
as RSC would say of Reform Judaism, but is pretty simplistic even
compared to Judaism, much more of a simplistic compared to the
Indian ways, I reckon.
Maybe you wonder why all these great Indians -- and believe me, if
there's a 'spiritual hierarchy' they'd have a pretty good table at
the Banquet -- ( not that they serve rare roast beef, so I
wouldn't be in such a hurry to get on up there -- not till I make
a few more trips to the Deli anyhow, and here I am somewhere up in
the low alps on a rainy day, and not a bottle of Dr. Brown's
Celery Tonic this side of Shilat -- I mean, the air from
hummingbird wings is a great delicacy, but I do like a nice baked
potatoe too, with a dash of butter -- pareve of course, "oh pious
ones" as Rumi would say 
But I digress. ))

(All-4)
(( And George Robinson said, She's Mary Mitchell Famous Gypsy and
that's that. ))

(( But seriously folks, the Sufis used to get Sufi names from PVK,
and sometimes he would do a lot of reflection before he gave a
name, but when a mureed -- that's Sufi for hosid -- maybe got
tired of a name, they would maybe ask for a new one, or maybe
change in themself -- 
I mean, maybe you can see a name as provisional, as one's wazifa
is -- or maybe it's eternal but also sometimes you need a
provisional name for a while -- and PVK used to say, one has
Soulmates ( or maybe he said, a Soulmate ) but you don't
necessarily want to marry your Soulmate -- and I said to Aziz, I
bless you you should find someone dumb enough to marry you, and so
should we all.  And I wanted to say to Aziz, You are not
homosexual, you are British.  There is a distinction, however
subtle.      But I didn't.  ))


(A11-5)
(( And Trader Horn once wrote, a child should have two names, one
with which to get through life, and one to announce himself when
he comes to the Gate of Heaven.))

(( Yakov Sack was named after my Uncle-by-marriage, Jack Sack, who
was an All-American football player, and then later a much liked
and respected businessman and I think something of a philanthropit
in Pittsburgh.  I had never noticed the assonance in the English
name, but Yakov did, and it bothered him. ))

(A11-6)
(( Cf. HIK.  The Complete writings of HIK are available on CD from
the Sufi Order, The Abode, New Lebanon, NY USA, 12125 . ))

(A11-7))
(( N.B.  This transcriber always spells 'level' as 'leval'.  Same
transcriber for all the handwritten transcripts in this Series, it
seems.  So some day I reckon I find out who it was.  Elana
Rappaport Schachter, maybe.  I saw her once at Lama Foundation, in
1970.  All I remember of how she looked was the rainbows.  Gedalya
Persky, who at last count was working as a Mashciach in Albany,
got married to Arshtat at the Abode.  She walked around him 7i
times.  A rainbow. 
I mean, change trains when you want to, but don't deny the one you
came on, your uncle might still be on it.  "But easy rider don't
you deny my name." (Janis Joplin sang that))

(A11-8)
(( By me, this is a Grade C mitzva.  
A Grade A mitzva is when you intend to do a mitzva, and do it.
A Grade B mitzva is when you intend to do a mitzva, but due to
circumstances beyond your control you don't have to do it.
Eg, "With a little bit of luck, when he comes around you won't be
in." (My Fair Lady)
A Grade C mitzva is when you intend to do an avera, but due to
circumstances beyond your control you are not able to do it. ))
                                            
(A11-9)
(( Oh, I dunno, some ham ain't that bad.  I mean, it ain't roast
beef, or even post roast, and it would loose out to a chicken that
went to its destiny happy -- and there ain't that many of those,
but what does a chicken know from destiny -- but it ain't as yucky
as veal, whatever veal is -- I mean, somewhere there's the ghost
of a lamb gamboling on an astral hillside, looking down at your
dinner plate and saying --- but anyhow, ham is defintely better
than pork chops -- I mean those are someting you throw during a
nonviolent militant demonstration -- I just read Fran Leibowitz
and she don't write so good sometimes neither -- and it sure is
better than eating clams or oysters or crab -- I mean, talk of
yucky , they should all be a lobster in some re-incarnation, and
then they still will be something you just look at once and then
go out to McDonald's with a shot of Arak in your pocket.
But I digress. ))

(A11-10)
(( 'evil inclination' , a somewhat misleading translation of
'yetzer haRa, the sort of thing that Clint Eastwood does
vicariously for everyone in the USA -- the agressive instinct, in
short, if it wasn't for that we'd all be sitting out in the
pasture eating grass and waiting for the Economy Class shuttle to
the shochet thank you very much ))

(A11-11)
(( transciber, sic, Doggie Dinner, but correctly:  Doggie Diner.
A Doggie Dinner is what you buy at a Doggie Diner.
     As a matter of fact however, 'Doggie Diner' is a mis-spelling
of 'Doug E. Diner'.  Doug E. is of course Doug the Edomite, that
dude who brought King David the news that the Annointed King,
Saul, was dead.  
Everyone knows that King David was furious at hearing that an
Annointed King had been killed.  So King David grabbed his Lyre --
which is what I am at the moment -- and cried out:
'You ain't nothing but a hound, Doeg.' 
     You read it here first. ))

(A11-12)
(( and this is the mnorning bracha, who guides the steps of man:
Ha_MaKIN M_Ty'aDI GeveR
     Like, I set out do something, find a hotel or something, and
it turns out that it's my third choice that was the right choice. 
     First I try the Edomite Hilton, but they're all booked with a
Skinhead Convention, and then I want to go to the Grand
Saturnalia, but I can't find it, and then it's starting to rain
and I say I'll take anything and there's this hole-in-the-wall and
I walk in and it turns out to be Luciano's Glatt Kosher Crash Pad
with Free Broadband and Complimentary Kiddish, Salad with Fresh-
Picked Organic Capers at No Extra Charge, Payment Only by Post-
dated Check. ))

(A11-13)
(( And that, sports fans, is why the Missionary is not your
Friend.  I mean, once on Yom Kippur a few, J for J's maybe, were
waiting outside on the porch of Chaverat Shalom until the stars
came out.  Like, for anyone who concluded they didn't squeeze
through the gates at Neilah, Hey, no problem, what we got us here
is Instant Salvation.  And no doubt you can get to Heaven that way
-- like, a Reform Rabbi once said, "In my FFather's House are many
mansions" -- but it's a bit like getting a free ticket to a very
swanky party that you really didn't want to go to in the first
place.  And so you keep saying to yourself, I should be feeling
good here, this is a very exclusive crowd, so why would I rather
be back eating a cold piece of Shoshana's Pizza with a glass of
Grand Vin Rouge du Crimea. ))

(A11-14)
(( Cf. Jesus' commentary on 'AeLoHeI AvRFaHaM, AeLoHeI YiTyChaQ,
V_AeLoHeI Y'aQov ' -- and also his remark , 'let the dead bury the
dead' -- which seems to elucidate the prophibition upon a Cohen
conducting burials, except in an emergency and for next of kin. ))

(A11-15)
(( As far as I know, the Inquisition did not persecute professed
Jews, all of whom had been required by law to leave, but only Jews
who professed to have converted to Christianity.
It's much too easy to refuse to forgive ordinary human weakness,
to refuse to acknowlege that heroism, and the Christian notion of
'bearing witness', are virtues of only a very few.
I mean, it is not necessary to hate or even snub Germans, I've
done quite enough of that for everyone.
I mean, I've watched the way I too stood passively by and watched
a bunch of facists in the Bush Administration -- Powell being the
outstanding exception, and now myriads of officials busily leaking
to the New York Times -- and Wolfkowitz, to our shame, apparently
one of villains.
Israel really does live in a ticking-bomb environment, and does
what it must to minimize risk to civilians, but surely maintains
decency, otherwise we'd read of it in HaAretz, which writes 2
editiorials and an op-ed each time a soldier sneezes on a
Palestinian. ))

(A11-16)
(( This point is worth underlineing.  One needs a sort of
Wittgensteinian investigation of the contiuum between pure free
will -- which Spinoza says, only one who has achieved
Enlightenment, in the mystic sense of the term, can exercise --
and pure coercion.  Most skillful tyrants are adept at
manipulating others to appear to submit voluntarily.  Eg, the
tyrants of the USSR.  Decent people find even attempting to think
of, to analyze, such things, repulsive.
Orwell imagines such an instance as the conclusion of 1984.  Faced
with what he fears most, the protagonist betrays the person he
loves most.  And lives on a broken man, though nobody even hit
him.  Tyrants, including Rumsfeld and his unidentified cohorts,
know that the first step in betrayal is to betray oneself.
PVK used to speak of "building a beautiful of world of beautiful
people", but later added, "amidst an ugly world of ugly people."
And if the Jews are a chosen people, it is that they have chosen
to try to act decently, not just to their friends, but to
everyone.  Jesus said that, with concise elegance.   Begin, who
knew the horror or arrogant imperialists, was exemplary in this
regard, it was he who reformed the interrogation procedures
tolerated under the Labour Administrations.)) 

(A11-17)
(( And that is what the Christian martyrs must have seen, even
though Rome was as cruel as tyrany as the world has known.  And
that may be why the Roman elite eventually converted to
Christianity, tho I don't know if it helped them much; I'm pretty
ignorant of history.
Rainy day thoughts with a broken modem.  Wonderful how the
Internet can relieve one from lonliness, or at least from having
to confront human aloneness. ))

(A11-18)
(( RSC seems to be speaking of the assimilationist trend in USA
Jewry -- I think largely the children of immigrants from Easern
Europe (the New York yekke's having been a lost cause for a
hundred years, since the mid-1800's) -- the generation to which I
was born, which came of Age in the Great Depression and matured in
the shadow of World War II -- it was not a time hospitable to the
introspective intellectuality of shtetl Judaism. ))

(A11-19)
(( OK fans, this really is a bit of an ordinary-language analysis,
Wittgensteinian I suppose. ))
Oh, and by the way, goulashes are golashes worn by Hungarians, and
golashes are worn to slog through slush, not walk through rain, so
there.

(A11-20)
(( Well, yes and no.  I mean, you don't get that far just reading
the first 5 books of the Bible.  I didn't anyhow.  But then, I
don't think kids need religion, I don't think they can comprehend
it.  It's more for the old folks, to ease their way as they toddle
off this veil of tears and jeers.  I dunno.  ))

(A11-21)
(( you see, this is like Wittgenstein's notion of bedrock, of
"certain very general facts in our natural history" -- not the
same, for Wittgenstein acknowleged but does not seem to have
repossessed his Jewish heritage (I think it was his grandfather
who converted himself and his descendents to an apparently social
Catholicism -- so Wittgenstein, while he seems to have had a
deeply religious temperament, seems intellectually to have taken a
secular, agnostic if you will, position ))

(A11-22)
(( Oh, furfsenpuffle.  Imagine nobody ever died, and there's old
Adam and Eve out in Heryaliya Elite somewhere, still kvetching
over who gave who the apple, and Uncle Noach still caulking up his 
yaught just in case, with summunes he gets every month from the
Muncipality about mooring it in the Marina, and I'd like to go out
an interview him free-lance for the Jerusalem Post, but it's so
crowded that even to walk to Lod takes a week and ten thousand
slichas, because of course there's no room for anybody to drive
anymore -- at least we solved the problem of global warming except
for the cowfarts -- except for Sharon, who as Prime Minister has a
private lane that we use for a bowling alley between 09:30 and --
well, not 5, maybe about two-thirty tops -- and his plan for
evacuating the Jews in Gaza has bogged down because there's no
place to put them, tho the Foreign Minister if any is negotiating
with Zanzibar about building a a second story on that island --
we've got a contractor down in Ashkelon who's done a lot of
parking garages and is offering a very good price , payable in
diamonds of course -- 
But I digress. ))

(A11-23)
(( Sic, shirt.  
COPY TO AUTO:
My father used to sing, to the tune from Carmen -- the entrance
march or some such::
"I want my shirt / I need my shirt / I can't get along / without
my shirt" (repeat 1 time , to the triumphant climax 
He also used to sing:  "Torreador-a, don't spit on the floor-a /
Use the cuspidor-a / Wadaya think it's for-a "
This was from his college days in Pittsburgh, in the late 20's I
reckon.  ))

(A11-24)
(( OK ok, "The trumpet will sound, and all that.  And even Jesus
didn't go direct to Heaven, there was like these three days, from
Good Friday to Easter, when he was -- who knows -- dead to the
world, or stone dead, or maybe even in Purgatory -- I mean, heaven
knows, the dude did plenty of things wrong -- even if two-thirds
of what they say about him , about what they say he said, ain't
true -- 
So OK, maybe 3 days on earth is like 3 million years in that
world_to_come -- I mean, 3 minutes of a dream can seem like a
mighty long time -- and when I would nod off on the bus back to
Modi'in, and my thoughts ran on an on as I was half-asleep, it
sure did seem like a long time -- like, time is maybe measured, as
we perceive it, by the quantity of our thoughts --
But like, I want to say, there's no Intermission, so next time you
want to shoot yourself to get a good night's rest, take a shot of
Jim Beam instead -- it's made with copper, not lead -- 
Like, Reb Nachman says, dying is just like walking from one room
into the next (or maybe he says, into another room, I ain't read
that stuff, heck, I can't even read, not Hebrew nohow
At the moment this chalet, as it pretentiously calls itself -- two
rooms with one radiator -- is wrapped in clouds at 1500 m.  May
sound romantic, but it's just chilly. 
We do seem to see, my Alpsy crowd I mean, that there are a few
days between the time the body dies and the time the soul passes
on.  Whether the soul is sitting in the body all that time,
wondering what the heck is going on, or whether it's like taking a
nap, I don't know, nobody ever told me maybe because I never
asked.
And they say, when the soul is passing, you just sit still, "keep
the aether clear", don't try to call it back.
Well, I don't know, maybe that does not apply to everyone, maybe
having a religious celebration is helpful -- I reckon it must be,
but as for this wailing at the gravesite and all that, I don't
know -- 
Oy McCoy ))

(A11-25)
(( ChanaLeah, from Hawaii, zl'b, told me, she went to the Airport
when R. Shlomo's coffin came in, and when it was he turn she
walked up to stand beside it, and what she heard was, 'Now is a
time to be very grounded.' ))

(A11-26)
(( George Robinson said he asked Little Joe about re-incarntion,
and Little Joe said, "You only get one."
PVK, at an Abode Campground week, once seemed to hint that Noor
Inayat Khan, zl'b, was a re-incarnation of Joan of Arc.
I think HIK does not hold with re-incarnation, but I'm not clear -
- and he has that ironic remark, "every boddy re-incarnates, not
every soul" -- anyhow, you'd have to ask a real Sufi, somoene
who's read all that stuff -- or take the CD and do a Search -- 
I've sketched -- here and there but who knows where, Google could
maybe find it within the 11 Mb on text on my Website -- a
conceptual analysis of the like problematicity of the notion of
re-incarntion -- I mean, I am the reincarntion of Moishe the
Salami Slicer but I eat only quiche and light green salad with
olive oil and balsaam vinegar  ( I miss the Patisserie, in Harvard
Square -- a smoke-filled whole in the ground barely big enough to
play a game of raquet ball when the other customers don't
complain, but it had good coffee too )
I mean, what does it mean to say 'I' when I say, 'I re-incarnate'
-- I mean, I don't even get to bring along  my credit cards, much
less my cellphone, "Ich kann nicht mehr lieben ohne", as the Page
2 girls used to be said to say on Page 1 of the Zurich Blick --
and Blick we did -- 
Where's Woody Allen now that we really need him to do conceptual
analysis -- 
Like, talk of identity theft -- 
So OK, re-incarnation can be a useful metaphor -- you're not a
preening queen, you're merely the re'incarnation of Madame
Pompadour, so tell the guys at bar to go back to watching black-
and-white television -- it's not my fault, and I don't even have a
subconscious, it's just my re'incarnations trying to get out of
their cage again -- 
Oh well, Muscatel.
Justin Case used to say:  Laird Grant used to say:  "Tokay -- OK. 
Muscatel -- Can't tell; might go to jail."
"Love's truth's nonentity made quite explicit.  If it ain't that
then what the devil is it." (Pursewarden, in Durell's Alexandria
Quartet, best's I recollect. ))

(A11-27)
(( Oh for Pete's sake.  I mean, who needs this literalism.  And it
sure does cause a lot of vexation and anxiety and expense too,
from one end of the world to the other, from those Pharoh's who
enslaved an entire people -- ours, as a matter of fact -- just so
they could get a good cabin on that Grand Cruise across the River
Styx -- I mean, save it for the New Yorker and Woody Allen -- and
all those poor Japanese eunichs keeping their privates in a
porcelain vase, so the next time around they could be what the
good Lord made them -- and anyhow I say, gotta play the cards
you're dealt, male homosexuality is not a choice, it's a cop-out -
- and as for preference, really -- I'm beggging on the street,
somebody gives me half a cheese sandwich, and I say, I would
prefer the Chateaubriand -- I mean, most husbandmen would prefer
half their neighbors' wives and two-thirds of their daughters, but
so what.                                      

So ok, some say, if you stop off in the next world, the world-to-
come -- 

and this crazy woman from Denmark who tried to save me from the
beach on Rodos, and came there for that purpose, even remembering
to bring along a laptop and a nail scissors, spoke of "the world
to come, and the world after that" 

-- they say, PVK seemed to remark that oncee if I recall, from HIK,
that you can have a body on the djinn plane, which is Upper
Mezzanine, and maybe even a djinn girlfriend too -- that must be
what the suicide bombers are promised, l'havdil x 1000 -- and the
Tibetan Book of the Dead is maybe talking about that too -- and
maybe you live there 1000 years, whatever 1000 years means in a
place where you'd can't even buy a Rolex -- and maybe -- I guess
this was 'Morning of the Magicians', which I never read -- Nazi-
ism drew much of its otherwise inexplicable power from evoking --
but then perverting inspeakably -- a sort of shlock mysticism -- 

You know, if Judaism, especially Chabad, has one thing to teach --
like, suppose each great faith could only put forward one horse --
it is maybe -- It don't much matter what you prefer, there are
some things you just can't do -- so get on with life with a bit of
decency if you please -- there are others folks on this bus you
know -- believe it or not -- 

But I digress. ))

(A11-28)
(( And even PVK once said of the world-to-come -- "But what do we
know" -- that was at a Zenith Camp, mid-90s, as I recollect. ))


[[ get A11FN2 ]]

FOOTNOTES FROM PART II:

      (A11-29)
[ "By the waters of Babylon [ ie, when we about to cross the River
that is the boundary between the land promised to people of Israel
-- and that includes Jordan, as England ackknowleged in the Balfour
Declaration -- and for that matter, includes Syria too --  ] we
hung up our harps and wept.  How can we sing the songs of the LORD
in a strange land.
    Why are we in exile when we're not in Israel.  Because the
religion of the people of Israel can only be fulfilled in the land
of Israel.  Whereas the religion, if any, of the self-styled
'Palestinians' has no connection to any land, except that its
focal point in Mecca.
    Judaism outside the land of Israel is merely a holding
pattern.  A plane may circle Newark Airport a long time, but you
don't tell the Captain, OK, stop here and let us out please.
    Maybe most of the mitzvot can be fulfilled outside the land of
Israel.  I can not_steal in the USA too ( tho motivation is a bit
harder to access ), and possibly even not_commit adultery (tho
that's what adults do in the USA . (Brecht said it first.)  
    So maybe I score 65 percent in the USA, and only score 45
percent in Israel because there's this really sharp chick at the
Kibutz disco where I had to go because I couldn't get a pad at
Meor Modi'in.  So nu, I should stay in Boro Park rather than going
to Israel and living on Kibutz Chozer, yes.  No.  In Israel I am
living Judaism.  In galutz, no matter how many black hats I put
on, I am only waiting to live Judaism.
     I can't say the bracha over washing my hands with proper
kavana on a dogsled in the Arctic circle.   I mean, in 2 seconds I
have icicle fingernails that a Valley Girl would die for, and for
this I should feel grateful?  

     So the despair at the border of Babylon, the Euphrates River,
was quite reasonable.  And it was a no less than a "Copernican"
conceptual Revolution, like the change from a Terro-centric to a
Helio-centric cosmology which so challanged the Church, that
enabled Judaism to make an isomorphic tranforation from animal
sacrifice centered at Jerusalem and fulfilled within the land of
Israel, to galutz with the priesthood destroyed (and apparently
practically the entire educated class, for we retained the names
of only two of the months.=

     And this is how Judaism could then claim to be a universal
religion, a light unto the nations, and all that jazz.  
    But we never wanted that job; I mean, let the goyim learn to
tie their shoelaces by themselves, independent of us, even if
takes them an extra millenium to figure it out. 
    And anyhow, both the Christians and Islam made a bit of hash
of it.  Two seperate hashes, that is.  
    It is not that we have three "seperate but equal" religions:
we have Judasim and its two rather muddled offshoots.  
    Christian theology is preposterous, and what Islam did to
Midrash -- I dunno, it ain't read it yet. 
    But I digress. ]


[A11-30]
[ Maybe I make a Christmas Tree this year -- so OK, I better call
it a Pfumpernickleshtickle or some such, but I mean  --
Christianity seems ant_agon_istic to Judaism -- I mean, it's cute
and sweet and true enough, and least for primary school, but it's
not our Agon, it's another agon, so that's anti- our Agon,
as_it_is_said, "With one tochas you can't dance at two weddings".
And the same goes for polytheism, eg Greek polytheism, tho the way
this world is run is sure does often look like it's a bunch of
Dagwood Bumstead's up there.
    So what I want to say is:  paganism is maybe compatible with
Judaism.  Somewhat anyhow.  Like herbology and Druids maybe. 
Whatever Druids are.  I mean, insofar as paganism is the religion
of nature, how could it not be compatible with Judaism.
    Little Joe Gomez said he had not read the Bible; he read it
all in nature.  I heard him say that, tho I don't recollect his
exact words.  And I think I heard someone say he said it, someone
at New Buffalo, George Robinson maybe, or maybe not. 
     In The Symposium, Plato recounts the seven stages of hearsay
through which Diotma's speech is brought down to Sokrates.
     There's a children's game like that -- one person whispers a
phrase to the next person in the circle, and it goes all around,
and then you see how much it got distorted, or simplified. 
    But I digress. ]

((A11-31))
[ Oy.  The JW's say the same, and I don't like it.  I mean shucks,
the good old days were not always so groovy neither, I mean, even
us, some of what went down in the good Old Testament, fry me a
persimmon.
Dudes who forsee Apocalypse, I think their prophecy is just of
their own private Void, which is called pupik in Yidish.  Maybe
his chick has been getting it on with the milkman, and he mistakes
the end of his world for the end of the real world. ]



[A11-32]
[ Hold your horse Rasserflass.  I still like Plato -- No man does
evil but through ignorance -- evil is merely the shadow of good,
it has not independent existence.  I mean, otherwise nobody would
ever go to hell, because what it hell but the agony of regret at
not having realized one's own goodness.  
I mean, isn't the whole point of the Shma an unequivocal
repudiation of the Manichean heresy -- of the Zoroastrian notion
taht there are two real and equal forces, good and bad.
I mean gvalt, to you want to end up as George Bush Jr.? ]


[A11-33]
[ As long as you don't dance around a golden calf.  Although you
can make one and still be Cohen Gadol.
I mean, argle:  metaphors, man.  'Meta-languages' as I heard
Baker, Roshi (Roshi, Tasahara, California) say.  That's how the
rabbis excuse the golden calf, so let's take it and run with it.
Trust me, I'm a comparative metaphysician. ]


[A11-34]
[ I do not think that in the USA of my generation -- I can still,
barely, remember the blackout shades of World War II, and I listed
to the Republican convention on a big portable radio from Maine ,
when Eisenhower beat Robert Taft -- and I once saw Ted Williams
hit a homer -- he took a strike, and I think a ball, and then you
could see, and my father had us tickets in the resrved grandstand,
a good way behind first base and a bit further out, that he had
decided to hit a homer, and he did, into the left field net as I
recall -- so that's how I grew up, and I was wearing a tie and
jacket to school, from choice, and I had an erector set and a
bicycle and ice skates and a sled, and I rode my bike to the
library to get out science fiction books and Oz stories, that was
when we lived in Cambridge -- 
So anyhow, I do not think that in my generation there was pressure
from goyim to abandon Judaism, I would say, the abandonment was
voluntary -- of course one might be expected to work a half-day
Saturday, and it would have been unthinkable to leave work early
on a winter Friday afternoon, and even in 1986 I more or less got
fired -- I mean, that was a weekly occurence for me, I worked temp
office jobs, and as soon as the crisis has passed, they trade the
Abdominable Snowperson for a painted simpering fluffhead --
American geisha who makes coffee too  -- for keeping my hat on at
work --  
Oh well. ]

[A11-35]
[ Oh well.  The Palestinians were there first.  Everyone knows
that the Philistines were a displaced sea-people from the Aegean,
I suppose when the short dark Baltic peoples came down and kicked
out the tall blond Aryans, I guess this is about the time of
Agemmenon, the Iron Age of Mycenae, but believe me, I don't know
ABC Greek history, so I'm faking it.  I reckon those giants the
spies saw were the Philistines.  Maybe they were the last of the
Cro-Magnon, and the rest of us our Neanderthals.  Sharon for sure.
That was a Sharon joke; they're very popular nowadays in Europe. 
Before that it was Begin with his yeshiva-bocher eyeglasses and
his Eastern European accent, and a first name at least one
syllable too long.  I mean, forget statesmanship -- as Sharon
obviously has -- media-image is where it's at.  We all live in a
comic-book world -- Idols of the Agora, as Plato said, that fop. ]

[A11-36]
[ Ok Fred, for starters, the name of this supposedly holy land is
not Israel, the name is 'the land of Israel'.
And anyhow, who wants to live in a holy land.  It's heavy, man. 
And apt to get goo-y.  I mean, once they fall down from the
religious spheres onto the astral planes, that's gooey.  When I
walked backed to Zenith Camp, you could see the goo a quarter mile
away.  Like fog, you can't see it when you're in it.
I went back to the USA in 1986 and couldn't quite get grounded,
the aether is empty.  "There's no there there." (Maybe that was
Dorothy Rothschild Parker who said that of L.A., I don't rightly
recollectd nowadays -- they say marijuana is bad for the --
whatever -- )  Maybe we shouldn't have killed all those Indians. 
Left a few in their wigmams to burn sweet sage or something.
Medicine Story, the last of the Wampanags, used to say, when you
go out of a sweat lodge, say 'All my relations.'  That was at
Another Place Farm  in Greenville New Hampshire. I guess he was
from Martha's Vinyard, but Bill Clinton lives there now and the
beach is all fenced off.  Melville's Ishmael never came back. ]

[A11-37]
[ And this is:  Everyone found his/her own path through the Sea of
Reeds.  And as a corallary:  compared to finding your soul-mate to
marry, parting the Sea of Reeds was easy.  And that is -- before
you try to do kabala, better get married (because then you'll have
kabalot every day ). ]

[A11-38]
[ And I think this is what the chevre call "cash Torah's" -- words
or teachings that are so real, so useful, for you, that you carry
them around in your pocket like ready money. ]

[A11-39 EDITORIAL NOTE]
[ Sic, but I don't quite get it -- if I did, I could punctuate it
to bring out the meaning.
One often has to go back to the tape to find out, from inflection
and timing, what RSC was getting at.  And I have no idea what tape
was transcribed for this transcription, nor whether a copy is
still extant. ]

[A11-40 -- EDITORIAL NOTE ]
[ Notice how RSC uses certain catch-phrases for punctuation -- to
indicate when he has concluded one point, and to indicate when he
is starting the next point.
I think he does not such much develop as concept or do an an
exegesis on a point, as take a concept and run with it -- see how
many things he can apply it to.  A lot gets brought out that way,
but it ain't precisely conceptual exegesis. ]

[All-41]
[ Yeah, if you really want to be holy, you can be as holy as
Jesus, as long as you don't mind sitting up in the same position
for a long time. 
I mean look, sports fans, enough of this 'spiritual materialism',
as Chungyam Trumpa, Rimpoche, termed it.  Like, holiness is not
something to covet, at most it's a garment you put on to do a job,
like putting on a rainslicker and a hardhat.  And it can be a drag
to put that stuff on, but you do it because you believe in doing
whatever you can to makes things better, within reason. 
Look, the Catholics recogniue a lot of saints, but most of them
didn't precisely retire to the Riviera to sip gin-and-tonics and
play bridge. ]

[A11-42]
[ In Israel you can't run much more than a hundred yards in the
rain before it stops.  Here it's been raining for the past 9 days.
(sa, Campra, 2 Nov '04, and may George Bush Jr. find a new place
in Dante's Hell.  He may or may not be better for Israel, but it's
not obvious that there would be anything else left in the world
after another 4 years of his acting out apocalyptic fantasies. 
The liberals want to sell Israel off piecemiel for a bit of a
discount on oil, and the bored again Christians want to nudge us
off the cliff into the Apocalypse, so that they can make a really
super big mess and then Jesus will come back and clean it all up
and put them at the head of the class with a lollipop for each
one. ]

[All-43]
[ Bachelors should not be allowed religious fervour.  It's a
dangerous and roundabout substitue for shtumpping.
Lenny Bruce once said.  "'Ir's shtupping time.'  'But I'm watching
the football game, and they're 3 points down on the 20 yard line.'
'I don't care, its shtupping time.'  And Lenny Bruce commented: 
Those are the marriages that last. " 
Needless to add, in Judaism sex is the right of the woman.  In
Islam, and apparently Christian tradition, it is the rivht of the
man.  ]


[All-44]
[ OK.  The notion of 'test' figures very much in the SO, at least
among the disciples.  (HIK simply says, if you try to do something
that is beyond you, you will be tested.  But Puran Bair used to
say, 'A Sufi loves to be shattered.'  To which I wanted to reply,
'A hobbit HATES it.'
PVK used to say, when you are tested, it is always in that on
which you would least like to be tested. (Orwell seems to have
glimpsed that in 1984, expressing it in its diabolic mode --
rather than a test voluntarily undergone in quest of the higher,
it is a test involuntarily imposed upon one by repressive forces.)
I say, well, if you keep blowing up a balloon, its going to be
stressed at its weakest point.
So has Kierkeggard said with this characteristic verbose
awkwardness,  the test always seems infinite, since by defintion a
test is an opportunity to transcend oneself -- or rather, one's
supposed self, one's ego.  So it seems infinite, it seems like one
is about die.  (And so too, as the Elizabethans noticed, with the
"little death" of orgasm.  Or so I read on the cover of
Cosmopolitan.)  But as HIK notes, this is merely like the horizon,
it may look like the end of the world, but one finds it was merely
an extention of it, or a world-to-come. ]

[A11-45]
[ Because since you can't, by definition, get there with your
personality, since a test is a matter of transcending your
personality, you either have to make Kierkegaard's ruddy "leap of
faith" -- and why didn't it ever occur to him that Avraham might
merely have been meshuga going to the Akeda -- or be sustained by
fantasy -- and believe me, Ive used that to get over some rough
patches -- and that's applied mishigas -- or be motivated by an
ethical committment -- this is R. Zalman's story of the Chabad
train engineer who held on to the red-hot brake handle as the
train, attacked by terrorists in 1948, went down the mountain from
Jerusalem toward Sha'ar Hagai -- and have real faith, and hold on
to that -- and this is the hasidic story, which RSC has told, of
those two young guys who would go down the steep icy slope to the
river for a mikva, and someone said, but how can you do it without
falling, and they said, we hold on above. ]

[A11-46]
[ Yup.  Some things you can't quite learn sober.  Get too overawed
to even think.  Like making love. ]

[A11-47]
[ Yup.  And maybe 40 years later, there's George Bush Jr. , who
quit drinking and laid it all on Jesus. ]

[A11-48]
[ Well, I dunno.  Mostly what they say is, I love Jesus.  Justin
Case sat in Dennis Long's tipi one night.  Lost his Din, which was
pretty much a good thing, but then started letting go of his
gvurah too.  I told him, That road goes all the way.  Jane Billoti
Gaughram said, He fell in love [ with Jesus ]. 
I mean, I don't want to conceed to Christianity, but at least
image-wise, for all that we always say, ki l'olam hesdo, love is
more easily predicat ed of Jesus.  Awe is predicated of the
Highest. ]

[All-49]
[ Well, PVK was critical of this.  And also RSC says, humilty
don't mean self-abnegation.  Like, there's also a place for holy
chutzpah, like in Ibn Arabi's parable the Tale of the Birds -- as
PVK retells it, they finally dare to sit on the King's throne, and
realiye that we share in the Divine Attributes -- and too, all the
tales of Rebbe Reb Zusha, whose whole life is love of G_d, ina
completely comfortable way, and one time he asks to experience
Yirat haShem, Awe of G_d, or Fear of G_d, and he's so overwhelmed
with fear he hides under the bed and doesn't dare come out.   

And I was in a breakdown once -- my usual perceived conflict
between an ancestral commitment to Judaism and a spiritual
commitment to this so-callled 'Sufi' way -- maybe that's what I
was being called to when I was sitting in New Buffalo, this was
the winter after I'd first heard PVK, at Lama -- this chick comes
by, she'd been riding down the Hudson River on Pete Seager's boat,
some sort of ecologic demonstration -- I was drawn to go back with
her -- it had been a difficult winter for me and Susie, especially
for her I'm sure -- some chick once came to New Buffalo, and said,
'But what about women's liberation', and I said back, politically
correct as usual, 'Oh, we don't believe in that shit.'  Said it as
a bit of a joke, but I was a male chauvinist in those days, I
gue3ss I imagined I was modeling myself after my father -- but he
was a lot more mellow than that, tho he did make my mother quit
work at one stage, early in their marriage, before the childdren I
think, and she once remarked that she would have been glad to have
had a daugher too, "but your father only wanted two."  Well, in
those days he was just starting out at MIT, as an Instructor, tis
would be early 1940's, in those days -- no, about 1954, when I
researched it -- a MIT Instructor was paid about $2200 a year --
and this was just after the Depression of the 1930's, when even to
have a job was not something to be taken for granted -- ]

 hanging out a Modi'in which is where I susually run to, and R.
Shlomo is walking by, this is outside Eliahu's pizza, he's talking
to BZ and a few of the others, and he says, I bless you, you
shouild be strong like a lion. ]

[A11-50]
[ Well, I can be a bit coarser than that.  I'm trying to learn.  I
figure if I shoot a rack of pool a day, maybe in a few months I'll
be coarse enough to drive a pickup truck.  And maybe to stand up
at a bar and drink a beer without worrying whether my fly is
zipped.  Maybe even learn to listen to a bit of Country Music. 
One has to work at it. 
I mean, pious prigs are a bit of a drag, like all the clean shaven
frummie kids in ties and jacket from the better yeshivas, not to
mention names, I mean they're so square they could grow up to vote
Republican, Cows Defend Us.  But still, there are worse sins and
greater sinners.  Eg the Bushies. ]

[A11-51]
[ Aw shucks -- I mean, absolutely pagan is a naked be-in at Big
Sur, with a nice bonfire, and not even thinking about next week's
philosophy quiz, and great flowing waterfalls, and whole wheat
bread and all those chicks being little witches and lots of white
magic and some pot and punch and cookies, and not having to get up
until 10 o'clock on Sunday morning, and not even worrying about
Sharon -- and English muffins and fried eggs and coffee and white
wine and sausages for Sunday breakfast, and lying in bed with a
chick in the attic as sun comes in the windows, not doing much of
anything, just "thinking long thoughts", and going to Indian
dances and making things with feathers -- I mean, surely the
hippie movement was as pagan as we could be, at least from a ptit
bourgeois upbringing -- and also, the hippie movem3nt was quite
religious, so pagan is religious, so no problem, QED Charlie. ]

[A11-52]
[ Seems to me that Avraham messed up by not taking redemption on
faith.  He keeps asking questions, asking for signs, so Heaven
says, ok, you want a sign you get a sign, from a really big
sacrifice, and all that dark smoke and those vultures coming in,
and this is the only place in the Chumash that dreadful sort of
thing happens, and so you wanted a sign, you got a sign, the sign
is a signpost saying, you wouldn't take the promised land on
faith, you wouldn't take the high road, so go down into exile for
400 years and take the low road back, maybe you got what you
wanted. ]

[A11-53]
[ I guess one of the drawbacks of the world_to_come is that you
don't get any time outs.  I mean, on earth, we get half our time
as time out, I mean, at the end of the day we can hang it up and
go to sleep, as_it_is_said, "Sufficient unto the day is the evil
thereof. "  So I try not to nudnik people after sunset.  I tell
people, you want to hassle me, do it in working hours, 9 to 5. 
Like, human decency, man.  How to play football:  Don't tackle the
players on the sidelines. ]

[A11-41]
[ I should think not; there's scarcely a good restaurant in the
whole town.  Except for Sergio's, of course.   Although nothing
can compare with Lucianao's Gourmet Al Fresco Restorante in Moshav
Mevo Modi'in.
But I mean, have you have tried to get a slice of quiche on the
Midrahow.  Or even a normal American breakfast with a few slices
of whole wheat toast, or a short stack of buckwheat cakes with
butter and real maple syrup. ]

[All-51a]
[ Oh, I dunno.  Deep is only one trip.  I mean, what about Mozart. 
Or even Chopin if you can stand him.  Well, Debussy anyhow,
floating along on the astral plane.  I mean, not everybody has to
be deep all the time, look at the flying fish. ]

================================================================
EDITORIAL NOTES:
The usual:
(( double parentheses )) set off my interjections.

Where the ms. has 3-dots ... I use 3 dashes --- 
that indicates a pause, not an elision
Where I have trouble reading a ?word?, I bracket it in question
marks.
I repuntuate the ms. at whim, but try to keep the ms. line-
endings.
Since I often add paragiraffs to explication the like logical
structure of this-here disquisition, that makes for some short
lines.

Again, I hope that readers more learned than I -- and there ain't
that many much less -- will add references, commentary, etc.

[ EDITORIAL NOTE:  
I'm trying to add Paragiraffs to the Manuscript transcription, in
order to like articulate -- butcherboy work -- the like logical
structure of RSC's like disquisition.
Anyone who has read Beis Yakov, (me, I've never even opened it,
and I don't even know if there's an English translation of it --
like, for a kiruv pad the Mevo Modi'in Bet Knesset sure don't have
hardly anything in English -- ) -- 
So OK, I'm trying to separate out RSC's restatement on the passage
from Beis Yakov, and then separate out his own Commentary on it.
Beyond that, I sometimes try to separate out the Hegelian
structure of traditional Jewish exposition.  Like, thesis,
antithesis, synthesis.  
Did poor old Marx have a traditional Jewish upbringing?  Or some
acquaintance with Talmudic exegesis, if that's what they did in
the cheder's then. ]

----------------------------------------------------------------


(A11-11-ii)
TEXT:  Experience, greatest thing in the world.  Gotta try it.  

[ There's an old pop song, where a woman, regretting an
unreciprocated love affairs, sings, 'And it's one more experience'
[ 'and it's on the road again', or something like that. ]
Someone did a cover, and carelessly reworded it, 'And it's one
more the experience' -- completely changes the tone from rueful,
the tragedy of a woman lowering herself to look for love,  to the
sort of banal modern hedonism that T.S. Eliot, that prat, so
decried ("'when lovely woman stoops to conquer she' adjusts her
hair with automatic hand / and puts another record on the
gramaphone. ) ]

[ 'crayziest'='so crazy even a crayfish would know better, and he
ain't even kosher, except in Alabama' ]

[A11-18b]
[ AG tells me that it was Joe Miller, not, as I've often writtn,
Shamsher Bryn Beorse, who said:  "You can get more stinking from
thinking than drinking."  Well, if memory serves, I heard that
from David Lees, d/b/a 'Shahabudin', so I reckon he could like
supply the context  ]


[ Ok, here's my excuse today for not wfearing a talit katan:

A mityzva is to be done as need.  Somoene  who contrives an
occasion for doing a mityva and then does it, gets no Brownie
Points, as_it_is_said, You shall not add nor subtract (Dvarim),
and as_it_is_said, the Torah was made for man, not man for the
Torah.
    We are to put tzitzit, whatever they are, on the corners of
our garments.  The rabbis interpreted this to mean, only on a
garment that has corners, and they ruled that only a rectangular
garment has corners.   Well maybe in the good old days, before
sewing machines were invented, and when even a needle could take a
week to make, and still do more harm than good, and thread would
be something you had to buy with gold, it being so labour-
intensive to make, so maybe then all garments were rectangular,
essentially the blankets that traditional American Indians still
wear, as frummies wear a talit katan.
Nowadays the only rectangular men's garment I can think of
offhand, is a Snoopy the Aviator scarf, itself primarily
decorative not functional.
So the frummies make a rectangular garment, in order to have
something to put tyityit on, and then put tztityit on it, and say
they've done a mityva, and that everybody should.

Besides, I have never figured out to do with the ruddy thing when
one goes to the potty.  The halachic rule is that one must revove
a talit gadol before going to the privy, but need not remove a
talit katan.  But "this is not making sense" , as Claudia Kocyba
would say.

I mean, it's a mityva to give to the poor, so J.D. Rockefeller
bankrupts thousands of people in order to do the mityva of giving
each one a time.  This does not go, as RSC would say.

Also, who says a talit katan has corners.  A topologist might
argue, it has four corners on the outside, and an infinite number
on that ellipse on the inside, therefore it is not a four-cornered
shape.
And also, in the good old days, you could not make a talit katan,
you could not sew that head-hole.

So ok, is there then no merit in acquiring and wearing one of
those beautiful outside poncho tallits that Reuven Praeger makes.
I want to say, yes there is merit, indeed, it's l'mehadrin, it
takes an obligation and makes something of beauty of it.

I want to say, the outside tallit is functional, it keeps me warm,
the undershirt tallit katan has no function (as I said to Yael
MSina once, back in '82, about why I didn't want to wear a kippa,
it has no function, and she said back, well, 100 mityvas later it
has no function? )
Nor is the talit katan even serving the function of modesty, a man
who appears in public wearing only a talit katan for a shirt, does
not appear to us as modest, where a T-shirt would be acceptable.

So ok, what of the chicks.  A woman's shawl is four-cornered, does
it require tzitzit -- why not.  It is functional.  It is
rectangular.  This is not a time-bound mitzva  And you can not say
it a woman trying to dress like a man, because the commandment to
put on tyitzit has logical and chornologic priority.

So ok, what of the talit gadol, which really is four-cornered.  Is
it too not worn only to fulfill a mitzva, does it have any
function.
Well, yes and no.  It is put on to fulfill a mitzva -- it appears
as the outer garment, worn over all, like a warm Hudson Bay
blanket on a cold night in a tipi.  But was it put on to keep
warm.  No.  But do we sometimes use it to keep warm.  Yes.  But
what one of who then puts on an overcoaat over the talit gadol, on
a winter morning in Modi'in.
Well, what of the Reform talit, at least back in the 50s in
suburban Boston -- scarcely larger than a silk scarf, and no
warmer.  Many say, RSC too, and I think also Kitzer Shulchan
Aruch, this is not adequate, the talit must be a full-sized
garmet.

Well, that's more than all I can say on this now.

----------------------------------------------------------------


[GLOSSARY:  'mityvas'='basari mitzvas done on a European
kezboard']