=sc_a5
R. Shlomo Carlebach, Input (sa) of Xerox ms. transcript A5
From BZ Collection, Inventoried (sa) from Witt Collection
HH also has a copy, I presume; BZ says these ca. 1972 sets may
have originated with him.
Don't note date/place of teaching; likely ca. 1972, likely San
Francisco(?)
Don't know transcriber
Pages numbered D1--D6

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

[START INPUT A5 -- PAGE D1]
[TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:
[This next sranscrition is the words to a teaching that was sung
in thE Shabbos house -- open your hearts, open your sould]

RSC:
So this is the story. Give me good harmony. 
The holy Alexander, the holy Maggid of Alexander.  The holy master
of Alexander, was sitting on a train. Was sitting on a train.  And
he was on his way to Alexander.  And he passed by Warsaw, and you
know thousands and thousands of his followers came to the train to
see him. So he was sitting in the train in the wagon 

[Note (sa): European, 'wagon' used for a railroad-car, as in
'wagon-lits']

, and he didn't want to come out.  He was crying.  He says people
only give me honor because they mistake me for somebody else.  
{A5-1}      

If they would know how low I am, you know the was the holy of
holiest in  humility
{A5-2}

he says I'm just tired of fooling people. G_d knows and I know I'm
really just a low Yiddlah.  
{A5-3}

I just can't come out and great all the people.  And he was sittng
there. Suddenly the story is a little boy of five walked into the
wagon and he took the Rebbe by the hand and he says Rebbe do you
know how many people aer watiing for you there?  The Rebbe loked
at him, strange, all the people told him they're waiting.  Didn't
get through to the Rebbe.  A little boy, a child of five, the
utmost honesty of the child hit the Rebbe you know.  Better come
out.  People are waiting for you.  So the Rebbe took the boy by
the hand, come out.  The Rebbe said to the people you know, I'm
just a little Yiddalah, a little Jew.  But one child tells me
people are waiting I can't help it.  I have to go.  Imagine if we
would
[END MS. PAGE D1]
{A5-4}

------------------------------------------------------------------
[START MS. A5 PAGE D2]

really wait.  If we would really wati.  If we would wait for the
Mesiach to come.  If we would mamish wait there should be peace in
the world.  
{A5-5}

If our neighbor would know we are waiting to love him.  To love
her.  What a world.  What a world.  So you know my friends, Shabos
is two things. Waiting for Shabbos and everybody feels Shabos as
much as he waits for Shabos. We are waiting. We are waiting.  We
are waiting.
{A5-6}

We are waiting.  And we all know my most darling friends when we
came out of Egypt the Almighty told Moses, oru great teacher:  I
have a gift for the Jewish Poeple. And the name of the gift is
Shabos.  You know what the gift is. The gift is that even in the
lowest lowest hell, in Aushwitz, in Siberia, 
{A5-7}

anywhere in the world.  For three thousand five hundred years, G_d
gave us the gift that we can wait.  And the gift is so strong,
that we would like to teach the whole world how to wait.  And
every Shabos, every Sahbos, every Sabbath, because are waiting so
much G_d gives us a foretaste of the great day to come..  And
every Shabos, every Shabos, we are living in a world the way it
shouild be.  The way G_d wants us to be.  Filled iwth love. Filled
with sweetness.  Filled with holiness.  

So give me good harmony:  
Last night, lat night, last night, nast night. The world was so
dark.  The world was so  dark.  All the windows
[END MS. A5 PAGE D2.. 04:10 -- Roosters calling back and forth.]
------------------------------------------------------------------
[START MS. A5 PAGE D3]

were closed, all the doors wee shut up,.  There were no more
candles.  There was no more light in the world.  Suddenly I saw a
holy beggar.  Suddenly I saw a holy beggar.  The holy beggar with
no hands, carrying in his hands a little holy candle.   The
candles of Shabos.  He had no hands to take.  He had only hands to
give.  

I'll tell you something very deep. If people have only hands to
give, what are they living from?  They are only living from 'to
give', because hands who know how to give, they are the hands who
receive the most 'to give'.  

So all week long we are learning not to have hadnds to take.  Only
to have hands to give.
{A5-8}

Then comes Shabos, and G_d gives us the greatest gift of Shabos. 
So I saw the holy beggar.  I saw the holy beggar and he had in his
hands two holy candkes.  

The beggar who was blind, he was blind to all the the evil.  His
eyss only saw what is holy and beautiful  He was deaf.  He never
ehard evil words, small words, words of hatred.  His ears only
heard the angels sing.  He was dumb.  He only knew one word.  One
holy word.  One holy world.  Shalom, shalom, shalom, shalom.  I
saw the holy beggar and I asked him, holy beggar, what are you
doing so late at night.  And he said I am waiting, I am waiting. 
Sddenely I found all the door of my heart are open.  Suddenly I
knew.  I have a 
[END MS. A5 PAGE D3]
{A5-9}
----------------------------------------------------------------
[START INPUT MS. A5 PAGE D4]

soul.  I have a soul.  I'm also waIting.  I heard the first cry.
My owN first cry and I know I am waiting sInce the moment I was
born.  And I asked hiM Holy beggar please teach me what am I
waiting for.  What is the whole world waiting for?  And this is
what he said:

[THE SONG OF SHABBOS]

The whole world is waiting
to sing the Song of Shabbos
              
The whole world is waiting
to sing the Song of Shabbos

The whole world is waiting
to sing the Song of Shabbos
              
The whole world is waiting
to sing the Song of Shabbos


And I am also waiting [or Natanel Shur:  and also I am waiting]
so sing the Song of Shabbos

I am also waiting
to sing the song of Shabos.

When we were slaves in Egypt
we sang the Song of Shabbos
{A5-10}

The Almighty set us free
we sang the Snog of Shabbos

We came to the holy Land
we sang the Song of Shabos

We built the Holy Temple
we sang the Song of Shabos
    
The Holy Temple was destroyed

[END MS. A5 PAGE D4]
----------------------------------------------------------------
[START MS. A5 PAGE D5]

but we sang the Song of Shabos

They sold us as slaves
but we sang the Song of Shabos

I saw six million dying
they sang the Song of Shabos
{A5-11}      

Can't you hear their last will crhying
sing the Song of Shabos

In prison in Leningrad, in Moscow, in Regna, in Cardnal
they sing the Song of Shabos
    
[Note (sa):  This teaching is presumably from the early 1970's,]
{A5-12}
 
In cold Siberia, this is waht keeps them warm
they sing the Song of Shabos
{A5-13}

Let's teach the wole world
to sing the Song of Shabos
{A5-14}

Let's each our children
to sing the Song of Shabos

Come back to Yerushlayim
and sing thte Song of Shabos

Come back to Yerushlayim
and sing thte Song of Shabos

It's up to you and me
to sing the Song of Shabos

Can't you hear teh echos
sing the Song of shabos 
{A5-15}

Can't you hear the footsteps
sing the Song of Shabos

[END MS. PAGE A5--D5] 
----------------------------------------------------------------
[START MS PAGE A5-D6]

The Great Day is coming
sign the song of Shabos

The Day of Love and Peace
sing the Song of Shabos

The whole world will be dancing
sing the Song of Shabos

In Yerushelayim
Sing the song of Shabos

[Hebrew Script:  

MiZMOR ShIR , SHIR L_YOM Ha_ShaBaT

MiZMOR ShIR , SHIR L_YOM Ha_ShaBaT

[END MS. A5 PAGE D6]
[END MS. A5]

================================================================
NOTES (sa) to MS. A5

COMMENTS FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY:
as_it_is_said:  "No comments from the Peanut Gallery."
as_it_is_said:  "Oh Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?"
                "Up in the balcony, where the seats are cheaper."

CAVEAT TABBYCAT!:
-------------------------------------------------------------------
-

{A5-1}
{Comment (sa):  
Well, that's true enough.  Hoi polloi need their idols, and it
must be darned lonely to be so venerated you can't even pick up a
chick for a quickie without half your self-proclaimed disciples
tearing their handkerchiefs and sneezing into your manuscripts.  
#l2
When Pincheas the Prig -- 
#l3
I do not like Pincheas; and I bet he wrote Parshat
Pincheas for Spin Control -- 
#l2
stopped us snuffling after the Whore o' Peor -- 
#l3
I mean, surely one of the better sins, for that you wind
up in the 5-star Dante Hotel on Full Bored -- 
#l2
then Balaam got smart and said, Where's it at, chpas, is: 
Poverty, Humility, and Chastity.  Put on black with a great
big Capeau Noir and tip-toe lightly as a fairy through this
Vale of Tears, Bears.  Don't listen to the Birdies "in the
morning so early", keep your nose to the Sforim, don't even
take a break to sleep, we got flourescent light
blinkety_blinkety_blinkety__Boo!.
#l3

    That was a contact hit of old Rottenberg; though
nowadays he's the Moshav Shomer and straight as
daybreak.}
#l1

{A5-2}
{Comment (sa):  Not so.  The holy are humble.  The holy of holiest
don't care if they're humble or not.  Humility is a Christian 
virtue; an affectation of transcendence.  Real humility is Tao; go
with the flow, Bo'.}

{A5-3}
{Comment (sa):  Like R. Shlomo says, humility don't mean walking
around town with a garbage pail on your head. 
#l2
(Truth to tell, I said that, just now, all RSC said was,
best's I recollect, 'Humilty don't mean being a schmendrink')
but I'm too humble to claim credit, so I put in off on the
Rabbi.  
#l3
Me and that Spic dude what wrote the Zohar.  
#l2
[I can't now even imagine, much less recollect, that to which
I apparently fancied the following remark relevant:]

When R. Yekutiel came to town, "many lives ago" as the
Beattles didn't quite say, he dreamed to be Rav haMakom; he
maybe reckoned we as orphans what needed another madriach.  
#l3
(And PVK once said, something like, 'Death is one of the
most foolish ideas imaginable.  Just wait and see.')  
#l4
The Black-&-White Cowpoke says, Nowadays, whenever
there's a Red Alert, we toss the pot plants over
the fence into the Rabbi's back yard.  Don't know
how good they grow though.}
#l1

{A5-4}
{Comment (sa):  You call this a Rebbe?  No wonder that other dude
built a big Chasidic Court with fancy carriages and all that jazz. 
This guy don't sound holy, just depressed. 
#l2
It is said in our tradition (I'm talking USA '50's Daddy-O)
that strivers on the Spiritual Quest must beware the fate of
the Fooloo Bird, which flies in ever decrasing circles until
it disappears up its own etc.  
#l3

You read it here first.  
#l4
"Everywhere I go I hear it said / In the good and
the bad books that I have read" (Beattles).  
#l3
Folk wisdom's often gross, but sometimes right on.}
#l1

{Comment (sa):  Similarly, PVK tells the story of St. Seraphiel,
Russian Orthodox, who hid in the woods from his would-be
followers; but he was charmed by children, so the townsfolk would
send the little kids ahead of them when they went into the woods
to seek him.
#l2

    The first RSC teaching I transcribed, =onjoy, ca. 1984, I
put in a few notes with SO cross-references.  BZ said, why
did you write about all those Arabs.  

    Religious intolerance is a bad thing and we must all do
our best to fight it.  Otherwise you get the Crusades and all
that undending cycle of violence (until we give up everything
but Diezengoff Shopping Mall with safe passage to the Jetty).

    Well, this town don't lack for hypersmart pinheads, but
I've seen nigh-on no signs of religious bigotry here 
#l3
(on the other hand I've seen no signs of marijuana usage
either, provided I don't stand downwind from Eliahu).  
#l2
So I think if there's religious intolerance, it's by them,
not by us.  
#l3

Though I think this intifada or war or whatever 
#l4
I mean all I know about is what I read in the
papers, same as the Couch Potatoe in Dubuque, 
#l5
except they can't read anymore, just sit &
suck up TV and then tell us what to do; 
#l6
that's George Bush II.
#l3

is not about religion  -- 
#l4

I mean who really cares for all that old stuff now
that we got MP-3 and DVD too -- 
#l3
but about territory and extortion and meddling from Arab
bloc secret police to distract attention from internal
repression,
#l2
That's why the Arabs are against us.
Here's why the liberals of the earth are against us:

    The best way to evade facing one's own failings is to
take the part of the oppressed peoples of the earth.  
And if you can't find them, grab a bunch of wogs and paint
'em Benneton -- 
#l3
and Jews are just a bit too -- I mean everyone knows,
intellectuals are next-door to queers, 
#l4
even if Arthur Miller did show us the way out of
the wilderness by marrying Marilyn Monroe, 
#l5
whoever she was, poor girl  -- 
#l4
if Joe Dimagio could do it, so could we -- 
#l5
(Mailer lives, if you call that living) -- 

   You know, I'm just barely getting to that
morning bracha, 'sh'ansani Yehudi' 
#l6
[to put it into positive polarity; 
#l7
one should be very wary of rewording
the Siddur; Reform is mostly shlock;
but here I think R. Zalman -- or
maybe just Haverat Shalom -- 

both of which are neo-traditional,
not Reform -- are quite right -- 
#l5
-- who hast made me Jewish -- 
#l6
I mean, you'd better give thanks for what
you are, 'cause you can't change it; 
#l7

this is 'play the cards you're
dealt' 
(Cf. =purav*.txt , =purav9.txt
maybe) -- 

that's on this Website, which in
case we get lost is:
http://www.geocities.com/sa73122a
#l5

it's a difficult one  --   
#l2

    What I'm trying not to say is that I seem to sense almost
a bedrock of anti-Jewish prejudice beneath my liberal
European friends 
#l3
(and USA too, including most Jews except the militantly
religious, and those remaining Miami naifs from the
World War II era).  So -- 
#l2

/-----------------

*** HERE'S ALL I HAVE TO SAY, SPEED-READER *** :

a lot of these eclectic asides are my backhand way of trying
to play to them, not to you.    

 *** THE END ***  

                                   -------------------\
                                     
    I mean, you want humility, look no farther Mather.
#l1


    Ok, it's 3:33 on a Sunday morning.  Hai says, don't go
barefoot, wear even a thin sock with your sandals; a poisonous
snake does not bite, it merely scratches and then places the
venom, so a thin sock will do (in New Mexico they told us, wear
high leather work-boots; so I reckon that was wrong).
    I adds:  about 3 o'clock in the morning, put on your socks;
the mosquitos come out.

   But I digress.} 

{A5-5}
{Comment (sa):  As_it_is_said (by Woody Guthrie, in 'Long Haired
Preachers come out at night [and say]:)  "'You'll get pie in the
sky when you die ('bye and 'bye)" }

{A5-6}
{Comment (sa):  So I says to Harvey:  Multiple redundancy.  He
says back:  "You can say that again."  
#l2
Harvey once learned BASIC, and never quite recovered.  
#l3
Carole Robins Myers was a systems analyst, but then she
got lupus and dropped out to be a basket weaver.  In her
spare time she did dialysis patient advocacy.  Patient
rights and home dialysis in particular, if I recall;
this is USA 1970's.  
She said, programming tends to take over your mind.  

I says:  you'd be surpised who many psychic
structures and vices are mirrored in software
structure.  

Starting with Expanded Memory / Conventional
Memory ( that's what my 286 had).
That's analogous to what PVK termed, more or
lessthe 'higher self'/ ordinary self; which I
suppose is analogous to the Shabat soul /
weekday soul.

  Like when you're in your 'higher self' you
can do anything -- and that's not like a
speed-freak  delusion; you can work out all
the details accurately -- but when you're back
in your ordinary self, in your body with all
its inconveniences, even walking out the front
door may seem an almost overwhelming obstacle.
                   
And this is analogous to:  At Pesach we are
taken out of slavery 'on eagle's wings'; but
then begins the step-by-step climb back up to
the heights of revelation, through the Omer to
Shavuot.  The first time, it is done for us;
the second time, we have to do it ourselves --
with the ordinary self.

And that is why PVK seminars often seemed such
a letdown -- those dazzling revelations were
still there, but one could no longer just
contemplate them; one had to work them out for
oneself through all one's klippot.

And this is, of IshmaEl -- "the LORD will see
the lad where he is at" -- where he is at, not
where he dreams of being -- out in the desert
with a long way to go, not back in the palace
-- 

-- and that too is all Reb Nachman's paraables
of the King's son -- 

Even those popups like mindless evil demons.  

There is a real symbiosis, parasistic maybe,
between siddhi's (psyhchic powers, including
telepathy) and computer, especially internet; one
must be quite careful.  

I always say: don't send out good vibes; there's
lots of static in the air, and maybe my radio has a
few old or banged up tubes, or maybe They're trying
to jam me; so use the telephone or telgraph.

Old fashioned personal communication is much more
reliable than psychic fol-de-rol.  
#l5
And anyhow we're supposed to burn witches, 
#l6
or I think stone them -- humanitarian
capital punishment as a cost-efficient
alternative to building a mobile high-
security correctional facility 
#l7
(oh the bureaucratic hypocricy of
the USA; 

Nabakov caught that language; 

but some of the Nazi technocratic
style of oppression is in USA
facism, 

which arrived like a pustule on the
body politic with those perpetual
adolescents the Bushies); 

leave that eye-for-an-eye guff to
Hamurabi; 
we never did it and you know it.

    But I digress.

    My compliments to Cousin's
Coffee Beans, and Camamera Natural
Sugar, lots of it.}
#l1

{A5-7}
{Comment (sa):  They're not comparable.  Communism and Facism, sex
and violence -- these are false implied equivalent poles.
[The better to situate the Turkey at the Fulcrum, oh Golden Mean]
 For example, in Siberia, one could still make Popsicles.}

{A5-8}
{Comment (sa):  So anyhow, on what I reckoned was Purim 2003,
except it was a leapyear so it was Adar I, after about a week of
rain in the woods, on what I thought was Shabat but it was motzi
Shabat, I walked into the Moshav, having been reluctant to impose
and so living nearby, as inobtrusively as possible, in the woods. 
I had much if not all of a pair of pants, with a rope belt as I
recall, and various other attire, most important a cast-off wool
blanket.  The Radbash saw me, and said, Bo shnia, come here a
minute.  He said, Mi atah, who you.  I said, Steve.  I come to
visit Gal-Or.  He said 'Steve' in a sort of a musing tone, and let
me pass.  I will always be indebted and greatful to Eliezar
Handwerker for that.  A bit later, Eliahu Gal-Or took me in.  I am
indebted to him for that.  Meanwhile, I wound up at the Solomon's. 
They have a lovely small home, with that day a wood fire, and a
pretty couch, with a hippie-era cover.  They wanted to give me
clothing, and let me wash.  I didn't want to get anything dirty. 
It was so pretty, from the best of the northern California hippie
days.
]
     Dinah Solomon said, sometimes you have to know how to take,
not just give.}

{A5-9}
{Comment (sa):  I often leave the door open when I type on a
summer night -- the air cools after sunset, but the house stays
hot and muggy almost until daybreak -- despite the risk of
infiltration by cats.  I am greatful to Rottenberg for being on
shmira all night.

There are 3 outfielders on a baseball team.  In 7th grade at Shady
Hill School -- the peak of my academic career -- I took the
position of the 4th Outfielder -- Left Out, as it is termed. 
Whenever someone hit a ball, especially toward shortstop, I would
run behind the infielders, in case it got through. What I would
have done if it had, I'm not quite sure; I had poor co-ordination
-- apt to drop flies and miss grounders --- and a poor throwing
arm.  So in High School I just did track.

Someone said to me, Coach was glad to see taht there was someone
out there.

So my point is:  
The good thing about cross-country ski-ing, as I discovered living
outsdie Boston in the mid-70's, is that it gets one to go out and
challenge winter, instead of staying inside and cowering from it.

"And this is sufficient for those who know" (Reb Hayim Heikel of
Amdur, in his book, Chaim v_Chesed.)}

{Comment (sa):  This is, obviously, a gloss on Reb Nachman's Tale
of the 7 Beggars; but Reb Nachman does not have the Beggar with No
Hands, if memory serves.  Nor should there be; it is an inept
metaphor at best, nearly grotesque.  
#l2
The lack of sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch(?), speech,
may be natural afflictions, Divine afflictions if you must 
#l3
(but better:  Divinity is not in the affliction, but in
making the best of a bad deal dy chance -- 
#l4

for natural law, and I suppose in some sense Divine
Law --  I'm real unclear on the relations betwixt
the two -- is not individual -- 
#l5
this is why "bad things happen to good people"
(Harry Kushner -- not Larry Kushner from
Sudbury MA); 

or as Hawkins says, attributing individual
affliction to chance, "except for the bad luck
of having contracted ALS" --  
#l4
but aggregate; 
#l5
else there would be no science, only the craft
of Divine proteksia -- 
#l6
which superstition seems to be the main
motivation for korbanot -- 
#l67
another bad habit we got from the
Greeks, no doubt -- 
#l4

except that some room is left for faith-healing and
the like --  
#l5
the good guys got to wait in queue too, but
they get peteks good for at least on Appeal
Hearing --                               
#l2

but to have no hands is not natural 
#l3

[nor was thalidomide more than one more abomination 
#L4
with which all those incarnate little demons, or
rather, their unaware slaves, run around polluting
"G_d's green earth" --  
#L5
as_it_is_said, "Now is the time for all good
(wo)men to come to the aid of their party" 
#L6
which is, of course, the party of those
who acknowlege and respect the Divinity
of Creation, 
#L7
not least those who, for love of
Divine Creation,  reject whatever
they take for religion.  

I mean, there's not much wrong with
paganism.
#L2

it is a mutilation.  And there's no Divinity in the stupidity
and occasional viciousness of mankind. 

But I digress.
#L1
{A5-10}
{Comment (sa):  I'm afraid not.  70 Gates of Defilement and all
that.  It's nowhere said that we kept Shabat in Egypt; if we had,
we could have walked out free the first week they put us to work
building those monstrosities.  
#l2

I mean, a holy man, you can put him in a little ark of daubed
bullrushes and he'll float on out down to the next world;
George W. Bush couldn't get there in the Great Pyramid of
Cheops, even in they put in Air-Conditioning and a Home Video
Center.}
#l1

{A5-11}
{Comment (sa):  I'm afraid slavery, including imprisonment, not to
mention exposure to the psycho-socio-pathologic thanatophilia of
the Shoa, is for most more degrading than that.
#l2

Human beings are breakable, and there's no merit in showing
that; 
the miracle is that they last so long and nobly, and that
many leave the world a better place for their "passing
through".
#l3
(US Folk Song, I heard it in Cambridge in the 1950':
"I saw Adam leave the Garden with an apple in his hand /
Tell me, Now you're out, what are you going to do? /
'Plant my crops and pray for rain / Maybe raise a little
Cain / We're all brothers and we're only passing
through.

"Passing through / Passing through / Sometimes happy,
sometimes blue / Glad that I ran into you / Tell the
people that you saw me passing through."
#l4
And Alev said:  Everyone wants to be seen.
#l5
Well if so, we should do something about it,
in a nice way.  
There's enough not-so-nice ways that folks
find to do it, we should offer something a bit
better.
#l2

To withstand attack is good, but not an unequivocal virtue;
for most spiritual survival is bought at the price of a
toughening of soul, I guess.   
#l3
Maybe Jesus on the cross, and Akiva in the torture-place
of the Roman imperialist occupiers, were exceptions; who
knows.  
#l4
Or maybe it was only when he spoke his last 7 words
that Jesus, so shielded in the Divine Presence,
fully experienced the human condition.  
#l5
D.H. Lawrence ("The Man who Died") was, maybe,
a better Christian than many realized.}
#l1

{A5-12}
{Comment (sa):
Note (sa):  This teaching is presumably from the early 1970's, in
a period when the USSR made it very difficult for anyone who
affirmed his/her Judaism, especially if they wanted to fulfill
that Judaism -- 
#l2
and I think the term 'fulfill' is appropriate here; my first
impression on coming to Israel was that religious Judaism
outside Israel, in exile, galutz, is comparatively two-
dimensional.
#l3

So Diaspora Jewry cannot even claim equal religious
partnership (much less political partnership) with
Israel Jewry 
#l4
(I don't know if I should say here 'Israel
religious Jewry')
#l2

The bored-again Xians ("borned again Christians") like or
liked to speak of Jews who accept Christianity as
'fulfilled'.  
     It is certainly a tempting offer -- I think most of have
a sense of unfillment in religious Judaism; I'm not sure from
where.  
    I doubt that it's an inherent limitation in the nature of
mitzvot as obligatory, though the Xians seem to say so.  
    It may be something as simple as that it takes so long to
become fluent in the religious language -- the Hebrew of the
Siddur; the biblic allusions, halacha as second nature.  One
could much quicker become a virtuoso on Bass clarinet.  
     To become fluent in Judaism -- to the point that it
becomes transparent to one, I suppose -- would seem to be, at
least from my standpoint -- 
#l3
I first went to kiddish's when I was in my mid-40's;
after Shabat sharit -- I forget if we did Musaf at
Chaverat Shalom -- I would, most piously, duck out to
the convenience store and buy a jug of cider, or some
such -- 
#l2
to be more than a lifetime's work.   

But I don't think that it's fulfillmenet for a Jew to become
a Christian, though some of the Jewish "Believers" -- who
apparently follow the halachot while cleaving to Jesus, or I
think to Jesus Christ -- may come closer.

But the worst place to try to learn Christiantiy is from the
Christians; they tend to idolize the poor chap.  
#l3
And idolatry, we all know, us a cop-out from freedom,
from taking personal responsiblity.  
   Quite the guru-trip.  
   Still trying to hold onto a father-figure, 
#l4
perhaps an internalization of the repression
inherent in child-rearing,.
#l2
It's rather a pity Jesus died young; he might have become a
perfectly good rabbi in a few decades.  
    He might even have saved us from the Roman occupation --
that is from the destruction of Jerusalem and Israel by the
Roman occupation -- albeit saved via pacifism, not militarism
-- and so ironically have, in a sense, beecome the Messiah
some claimed him to be. 
    So his claims of being Messiah were at the time prophecy,
not description.  And that prophetic mission -- to save
Jerusalem from destruction and Jewish religious culture from
dispersal and academization -- failed.  For the usual reasons
-- a leader's youthful arrogrance, undue  provcation of stodgy
entrenched authority (a young bull challenging an elder,
thinking it all in sport), the petty treason of a jealous co-
worker, the vicious opportunism of an exploitative occupying
power.

As it stands, Christianity, for a Jew, is merely a side-trip
-- it's nice to be told you have an unlimmited bank account
with all that love, but then it does get a bit boring, and
quite lonely, cut off from one's own people -- not by some
flaming sword, but merely by a different attunement -- like,
you can't keep listening to Kol haMusika if you've switched
your dial to pick up Tops of the Pops -- and then you've got
to live with all that shlock, "grin and bear it" as they used
to say (a comic cartoon, USA Boston Globe et al., 1940's).

Well, maybe a Sufi could juggle both , but even a juggler has
to keep the 2nd ball in the air while he relates to the first
one -- 
                      
I don't know if the same applies to a Jew choosing other
spiritual paths -- maybe others are compatible with Judaism,
where Christianity seems not to be -- because after all,
Christianity did evolve in contra-distinction to Judaism.
Maybe Buddhism is compatible.  The SO path seems to be,
though not unproblematically.  And oy, is that another story.
 
  But I digress.}
#l1

{A5-13}
{Comment (sa):  Well, let's not trivialize.  There were many Jews
who did spiritually survive exile into Siberia; their stories
merit telling.  Begin, Sharansky --- }

{A5-14}
{Comment (sa):  Well, let's get clear on the agenda.  Becuase
elsewhere it's said that Shabat was not given to the goyim.  I
have tried a bit to share it, and on them it doesn't seem to
stick.  They're quite polite, and enjoy the nice music and good
words, but just don't seem to catch the idea of taking a day --
out -- .  I tell them, you've just come off an intense retreat,
don't climb back onto your Autobahn, accept the gift of a day off,
to ease back to earth.  }

{A5-15}
{Comment (sa):  PVK would lead the class in a wazifa, then stop,
and say, now just listen in to the echo.} 
================================================================
sa, Mevo Modi'in, 11 July '04 -- 22 TaMUZ -- 22 Jumaada al-awal
Hot, windless day as usual -- 
================================================================