=sc_a8 Start input of R. Shlomo Carlebach, xerox manuscript A8, input sa='Steve Amdur', transcriber DON'T KNOW , pp9, copied sa from Collection BZ, probably copied sa from Witt Collection ca. 1988, copy probably held by HH, Mevo Modi'in from whom it may have originated, and if that ain't clear what is. Headed B"H (in Hebrew Script), number A8 assigned by sa when inventorying Witt Collection, Headed "New Tape Pink Ampex 350-360 BZ has copied to disc some old 8" tapes from the HLP days, I don't know if this is amongst them. A few excerpts from those copies from been posted to the ***OFFICIAL RSC WEBSITE*** . EDITIORIAL NOTES: I use 3-dots only for ellision, transcribers -- apparently use them only for space-out pauses ... for which we may blame Herb Caen ... who did thus in his column in the San Francisco Chronicle ca. 1956 ... and called it '3-dot-journalism' So anyhow, whence I encounter 3-dots, I'll replace 'em with 3- dashes -- personally, I used to prefer the 200-yard, since by the time I remembered how to get off the starting blocks, the 100 was half-over ... but I digress ... I set off my interjected remarks in (( double parentheses )) because I'm tzping on a European kezboard, which ain't got brackets , much less squiggly-braces Footnotes that might fluster the feathers of a blackbird are deep_six'd to botdoc In general, I try to match input line-ending to ms. line-endings. ------------------------------------------------------------------ RSC: ... (( 3-dots ms. )) It's very strange you know. Let's say for instance the deepest deepest depths of me, you know. The deepest deepest depths of me, if I take off all the dust and all the covers and all the skins. If I come to my deepest deepest depths of me, it's so pure, I really only want the best. (A8-1) (A8-1) (( Cf. PVK -- there is an inner core of the soul that can never be sullied, never defiled, and one can access that. Similarly, Cf. the early morning bracha, NiShMaH Sh_NaTaT BI tHORaH HIA )) Really. Let's put it this way. You know, even in my relationship to people, you know, if I love somebody very much. Deep deep deep down, I really only want what's the best for them. (A8-2) (A8-2) (( Note (sa) -- and this is the morning passage in the Siddur, MiTyvaT 'aSeH Shel V_AHavaT L_R'eaKh K_MO_Kha , the positive mitzva to be devoted to the welfare of my neighbor ( tendentiously translated 'fellow Jew' by Metsudah Siddur ) as to myself )) But 'till I get to that little inside, in the meantime I also want what's good for me right. (A8-3) Cause it's covered, with about 2000 shells. (( klipot , from the kabala mysticism of the Ari or some such (sa) )) Let's say for instance when parents yell at children, basically you know, they really want their best. But till they get to that part which is the best, in the meantime they're yelling because they're a little bit frustrated. Some- body else hurt thier feeling. Knock it off on their children and they pretend its because they want their child's best. It isn't. It needs a lot of washing. (A8-4) (A8-4) (( and R. Shlomo says somewhere, and everyone knows, at Meor Modi'in at least, that prayers go to the Kineret to be washed before they go up to the Heavenly Host )) Everything needs washing to the utmost. Cleaning you know. Getting to it. OK I pretend I'm only eating because I want to live. I'm eating because I like this cheese-cake you know. (A8-5) (A8-5) (( But it is said, in Heaven will shall be held accountable for every lawful pleasure of which we could have partaken but did not )) Le's be honest. But if I eat just because I ---------------------------------------------------------------- START PAGE 2 OF MS. A8 want the cheescake, so after I knock off the cheese- cake, I can do anything I want to just my life (( sic, just my life )) didn't become more pure or more holy. Just nothing happens to me. but if I could be on the level to wash my hands, you know, helps me a little bit. (A8-6) You see I will not say that every person who washes his hands is already eating cheescake just for the sake of living you know. (A8-7) Then you would be on the highest level. (A8-8) But it helps. There is someting to it. Especially you have to wash your hands before you pray. (A8-9) That's very important. You know what REB ZEDDIK HaCOHEN says, deepest depths. (( WHO IS THAT DUDE, AND WHAT'S HIS WEBSITES . And it's TzeDeQ )) Sometimes we say how come G_d didn't answer my prayer. You know, (( I may be )) a little angry. But the truth is, G_d looked very deep into my heart and 'HE' realized I really didn't want it you know. But I didn't know yet. You know all my upper layers wanted it. Deep deep deep down I really didn't want it. It happens to us a lot of times. We want things. Maybe years later we think what do I want this for. Why did I need it for you know. Crazy. (A8-10) Let's put it this way. 80 percent of the aggravation we have is just from the outer skins right. The inside, my inside didn't want any part of it in the first place. So the first thing, this is very very strong. Why is it very ---------------------------------------------------------------- START MS. A8 PAGE 3 very first thing in the morning when I wake up got to wash my hands. Very important. Even make a BraKhaH over it. Very important. Becuase in the morning when I begin to live, momish I'm begging G_d please let me live today really, let me wash off all the outer things. Let me live according to my deepest insides. Completely different life. Completely different life. I'll tell you something very deep you know. There's a washing of the hands and a washing of the face. (A8-11) Washing of the hands means I'm washing off all my outsides right. My hands are my outsides. Because with my hands I can only touch outsides right. Can only touch somebody's skin right. I can not put my hand right in their kishka's unless I'm a doctor. (A8-12) Washing my face is really washing my insides. So this is already once a day. In the morning when you wake up. Not only I'm washing my outsides, my hand --- (Interruption). (( Transcriber's note. )) Rabbi L. (( Not otherwise identified. )) Sholomo, what you say about Reb Zaddik HaCohen is very good on a stupid level, excuse me for saying it, But -- RSC: Doesn't work always, you know. R. L-- Let's say you're really praying for someone you love very very much. Can you really say that underneath you really didn't want ---------------------------------------------------------------- START MS. PAGE 4 them to get well. (A8-13) RSC: No, G_d forbid. You see, you want to know something. I'll tell you something very strong and true. Anything which is always true is already a lie. Cause there is no such thing as always right. Listen I will tell you you are never permitted to turn on a light on ShaBaT. It's not true because if someone is sick I have to. (( This point occurs in the excerpt from Mishna -- Kdoshim 2 was it -- that follows kabalat shabat. )) I will say I'm never permitted to drive on ShaBaT. If somebody G_d forbid has to go to the hospital I have to, right. Because the sign if it's true is, if it's a living thing, living is moving right. So if Reb Tzadik haCohen says about prayers that if I don't want to, it's not always true you know. Listen, you'll say nebach a Yidalah in Auchwitz was praying please G_d let me live, and then nebach he was killed the next day. I'll say he didn't realy mean it? Nebach did he mean it gevalt. But there is soemthing to it you know. Listen, a lot of time --- I'll tell you something very strong. I just thought of it because one little girl in New York called me, she was praying that this boy should like her for two years. And then she met him in the third year and he really wanted to marry her. She took one look at him and said crazy, what do I need ---------------------------------------------------------------- START PAGE 5 OF MS. A8 him for. And for two years she was angry at G_d. she realized, taka a gornischt. G_d was really right. What did she need him for. ? (A8-14) (A8-14a) RL: Some people don't want to buy it but, as much as a person has a tremendous desire to live we've discovered also there are death wishes. (A8-15) RSC: But you see, I'll tell you something very deep. The truth is when you pray you momish pray only with your life wishes. Not with your death wishes. Only with the part of you which wants life. The part of you which wants death doesn't pray. You know to not pray is already to be dead. There's a saying by Reb Nachman, it says that you know, praying you always think I'm asking for something. Reb Nachman says prayer itself is the greatest life giver. Praying itself gives you life. It's like pluggin in to electricity you know. Ok, then I want to hear the radio. But this is a minor thing. In the mean time (( and a mean time it is -- "Mean Streets" and all that )) I'm plugged into life. Then he says something very deep. We always think there is such a thing as permitted or not permitted. There is soemthing much deeper than that you know. It might ---------------------------------------------------------------- START PAGE 6 OF MS. A8 be permitted, but it isn't good. (( Eliahu says: It's kosher but it stinks. )) For instance I will say you know, kvais steak is kosher right. But maybe at that moment I have a stomach ache it's not good for me. I will say, what do you mean it's not good for me -- it's kosher. It's very sweet, it's kosher, but it's not good for you. (A8-16) You see, we always look at it is it right or wrong. Right or wrong is only on the outskirts level. (A8-16) On the inside level its much deeper. Is it good at this moment, or its not so good. So the whole ting is of washing before you daven, washing in the morning, is not only that I should do what's right or wrong, I should be on the level of good. And not only good and bad, but good for that moment you know. It may not even be bad you know. I'll tell you something very deep. There is such a thing like day and night, darkness and light. And then there is such a thing like on Shabos there is no night, you know. By ShaBaT it doesn't say it was evening and it was morning. Shabos it says and it was ShaBaT, YOM Ha_ShvI'I . The seventh day. That means the light of ShaBaT is not something which it can be night and darkness. ----------------------------------------------------------------- START PAGE 7 OF MS. A8 In its light. I don't know if I make myself clear. Usually I can always point out this is bad and this is good right. This is good and this is better. But then there is goodness on such a high level, it's not its better, or there's worse you know. It's just this is good. This is purest good there is. Let's put it this way. The world only knows peace because they think war is bad, right. What do they know about peace. They think killing each other is bad so let's make peace. but they don't hae a taste of what is momish good. So to wash our hands means please G_d let me have a taste of good. Let's wash off all the things you know. He says I am not even talking about permitted or not permitted. Just mommish good. So he says especially before eating, if I momish receive the food on the level of momish good, then after I eat I have no trouble. Because my very physical strength is so purified I just don't feel like doing bad you know. I'll tell ------------------------------------------------------------------ START PAGE 8 OF MS. A8 you something very strong. You can sit there with friends and eat and momish they have such an urge to say something bad about another person. How come G_d gave you strength, you ate. So how come right away you want to do something bad. And it was kosher food. (A8-17) Because , yeah it was permitted, but it wasn't good. If you receive something on the level of good, completely different thing. Ah, this is a very strong thing. We were learning Reb Nachman what he says about uplifitng the level of fear you know. It's a very deep thing. Because the hardest thing in the world is to know exactly what it means to fear G_d. Highest thing there is you know. Because really fear of G_d (A8-18) is the holiest thing int the world you know. Like G_d said to Avraham after he was ready to sacrifice Yityhak: "Now I know that you really fear G_d." Can you imagine what Avraham Avinu went through, would you say he was not fearing G_d before? I'mn sure he was. But the utmost utmost purity of fearing G_d. You know obviously I don't ------------------------------------------------------------------- START PAGE 9 OF MS. A8 fear G_d like I walk on the street I'm afraid if someone comes with a gun. This isn't where the fear of g_d is right. Something else. So the Ishbitzer says something very strong. What happens to you when you have ordinary fear. I'm standing and somene points a gun at me, I'm completely shaky right. The more I'm afraind of the danger the more shaky I get. With the fear of G_d it's the other way around. The stronger my fear of G_d is, the stronger I am. Non-shaky I am. It says a parsuke\\ (( END MS. A8 )) ================================================================ sa, Campra, 25 Oct '04 -- 10 Cheshvan -- 11 Ramadan ================================================================ FOOTNOTES. CAVEAT TABBYCAT. (A8-1) (( Cf. PVK -- there is an inner core of the soul that can never be sullied, never defiled, and one can access that. Similarly, Cf. the early morning bracha, NiShMaH Sh_NaTaT BI tHORaH HIA )) (A8-2) (( Note (sa) -- and this is the morning passage in the Siddur, MiTyvaT 'aSeH Shel V_AHavaT L_R'eaKh K_MO_Kha , the positive mitzva to be devoted to the welfare of my neighbor ( tendentiously translated 'fellow Jew' by Metsudah Siddur ) as to myself )) (A8-3) (( Note (sa) But this is Hillel, If I am not for myself, who will be for me, and if I am only for myself, what am I (Pirke haAvot) - - and I say -- even after we reach Highestt Perfect Englightenment or whatever, one should still be for oneself as well as others, otherwise this is the sin of Pride -- imagining oneself so humble that only the needs of others matter -- ( and once at the Abode Camprground I overheard R. Shlomo offer someone "my humble business card" ) -- Like, the Christians did thus, but what do goyim know of the teachings of the Jesus -- and we sure have picked up a lot of bad habits from them, mostly black -- my compliments to Twinings Teamakers )) (A8-4) (( and R. Shlomo says somewhere, and everyone knows, at Meor Modi'in at least, that prayers go to the Kineret to be washed before they go up to the Heavenly Host )) (A8-5) (( But it is said, in Heaven will shall be held accountable for every lawful pleasure of which we could have partaken but did not )) (A8-6) (( Why do we wash our hands before eating karpas at the Seder. Because in the good old days, in Temple times, they washed hands not only before eating bread, but before eating any food that could get dirt from the hands. I mean, in those days, long before even the Pentium 3 , work was shoveling up cowpies to put on the turnip patch, etc. ( I did that once, at New Buffalo, hauled about 40 tons of it, planted turnips, pulled them out and put them in sand in the root cellar, and then split for philosophy in grad school at Santa Barbara (pothead section) before I had to eat them. )) (A8-7) (( They were putting up the meditation tent. It was Saturday (really, we ought to rename the days of the week, I mean, who wants Saturn hanging around on Shabat ) so I stood on the edge of the platform. I said, It's a tough job, but someone has to do it. )) (A8-8) (( Oh good heavens. At Modi'in, once about every half-dozen simchas, a bottle of real Scotch, or once even Jameson, appears, if you look sharp enough. BZ said, if you're offered a drink, chug it down in a single swallow. I say, only after Mincha after saying Kaddish, when you need a shot of firewater to take you back into l'chaim, after passing for a moment through the realm of shades and shadows. )) (A8-9) (( Everyone knows, you use cold water, it takes away the bad vibes better. But I say, they made those rules for the land of Israel, and sunny Iraq, not for Ashkenaziland. To keep the faith in Ashkenaziland was not so simple, as is even less so nowadays. Much honor to those who preserved it there, against the time we regained our land. For the religion of Judaism is interwoven with the ecology of the land of Israel, and that gives the Jewish people a dimension of claim to that land which the Arab peoples do not have. )) (A8-10) (( Similarly, PVK would often remark, aren't you glad that you didn't get what you wished for, years ago. And later he would sometimes add -- or sorry that you did. )) (( You see, one of my sidelines is trying to build bridges. Who knows, maybe someday some being crosses over one. A frog maybe. Or even a small fast deer. I mean, these ain't matchsticks, it's all good lumber, tho I ain't got the patience to be a carpenter. )) (A8-11) (( I was flipped out and walking down the Arroyo Hondo road. I passed Tellus Goodmorning who said to me: Wash your face. He was one of the elders of the Taos pueblo, as gentle a man as one could ever meet. He prayed Cave Dave out of jail once, after Cave Dave found Jesus -- I mean, it's all true enough, but this not such a smart move when you are Jewish -- and turned himself into the cops for something he did during the Chicago Yippie demonstrations against -- poor old Hubert Humphrey's collaboration in LBJ's macho continuation of the war against the civilization of Southeast Asia, if I recall -- I mean, JFK was a mensch, from Massachusetts of course -- we've been standing up for things since the Boston tea Party -- and some say, he was getting reading to pull out of Vietnam when they shot him down -- not Oswald, who cried out "I'm a patsy" when they caught him, but THEY -- Jim Garrison was on the track, I reckon -- LBJ seems to have worked monumentally at trying to "play the part of a man". I mean -- "where there are no men, strive to be a man" -- Pirke haAvot -- that's very honorable, if it's done in good faith, not faking it -- Norman Mailer saw that "and if you can convince him that you are less queer than he, and less stupid than he, then, if he honest sort, he will ask you to run for President" -- a fast mind, so you have to untangle the irony to see what he said -- like me -- but I digress. )) (A8-12) (( That's why masage was invented, and lovemaking too, especially foreplay and afterplay etc. )) (A8-13) (( Oh, Cows Defend Us , this is legalistic extrapolation, RSC said R. Tzadik HaCohen just said it's sometimes thataway. I mean, like, causuality is linear only in the simplest case, and petiionary prayer is like as complex as case as one could imagine. )) (A8-14) (( Yes, for years after I broke, or was broken, from someone in the USA, and then went to Israel because I said, everyone gets married in Israel, not just people with Ph.d's and yuppies who have made Junior Vice President, and so I was praying to get married and have known children, but mostly because I thought I needed that for my geneology, I mean, I would have been just as glad if the chick then split and raised the kid or kids herself, I mean, like they sometimes wake you up at night. So I suppose I was praying that heaven send me a wife, more or less, and an inexpensive or prepaid Nanny too; and on my income, if any, that's a harder package to put together. Oh well. Tragedy veiled as light burlesque in a footnote. Story of my life. But I digress. )) (A8-14a) (( There's a story that HIK, in is early years I think, met a guy on a train who said, please make this young women like me, so HIK did something and said, go to her now, you'll find her in a good mood, and she was; and that happened one more time, and then HIK said, no I can't do it any more. Meaning, I take it, that he should not. Because of course, that's siddhi's, white magic at best. Judaism is quite clear that we don't do magic, and I reckon that means, not even white magic. And as I've said, PVK, unlike the RSC chevre (tho maybe not unlike RSC, if you recall clearly) was very hesitant, to say the lease, about offering blessings to people, he once said, he would not dare to do so were he not in the consciousness of HIK -- I guess because HIK, being on one of the upper balconies, had a better perspective -- I mean, if you ain't free of the klippot when you get to Heaven, what's the point of dying. So anyhow, petitionary prayer does come close to attempted white magic, which may be why it has no explicit place in the siddur.)) (A8-15) (( You and Sigmund Freud, to be precise. And Wittgenstein said, this is in Culture and Value if I recall -- If you think I am against Freud because I am a prude, think again. I mean, death wish is not simple. I'm sitting in this yuppie-dippie Yoga Center in davka Frankfurt, where it's so politically correct that gentlemen are requested, with an international graphic of the sort you don't see in the Holy Land, to be seated before -- Doing Number 1, as they used to say, I was once informed that the German word can only be Pinkle - - so anyhow, there's enough aovda zora on the walls to keep a frummie brigade busy printing posters for a month -- including a depiction of Shiva as a naked chick dancing on Mt. Everest or Kalas or whatever -- some place you can't walk up to on a Sunday afternoon and eat lunch -- and someone says, Shiva, that's destruction. And I want to say, gevalt, change is necessarily dialektic, thesis--antithesis -- which is destruction of the thesis -- and then a synthesis that incorporates both the thesis and the truth of its negation -- And that's the easiest thing to say about this so-called 'death wish' -- I mean, if middle-aged rabbits didn't acquire a death-wish, we'd all be wearing Wellingtons. Too, the Elizabethans considered what it means to wish to "die", and came to rather different conclusions, so to speak. "Turn off your mind, relax and float down stream -- this is not dying " -- the Beattles, speaking of ego-loss under psychedelics. "But those who know this but by half / mistake this truth for epitaph" (sa) So ok, a nervous breakdown is something like a death wish -- there I as on the beach on Rodos, acting as if I wanted to die, or at least that I believed this was what I was supposed to want at that stage in my life, except that my body was much more interested in scraping up enough money to buy another lemon sherbert cone, since the weather was rather hot. Not having at that time a goal in life, I let it default to survival, which is a bit more self- motivating than eg writing a definitive book on the Wittgensteinian revolution. Facism is thanato-philia. (Unanumo said that, in his comment on the one-arm, one-eye Falangist general who stood up at an Academic Convocation and started shouting, 'Viva La Muerte'. Facism, especially Islamic Facism, is a quest for Purity, but they're frightfully simplistic about it. I rarely through anything out. ("I grieve a leaving / even my sins"), Amy said, I always throw things out. The Germans have always been keen on hygiene. At one stage they decide that Jews are dirty. Nowadays they have excellent standards for organic produce. OK, maybe that's enough for now. Back to work. )) (A8-16) (( and yet some folks think it's it a mitzva to eat 3 or 4 meals on Shabat whether you're hungry or not. And some eat the most preposterous foods, like cholent on a summer day in Israel. And eat at the most preposterous times, like noontime in Israel. I mean, this is all from Ashkenaziland. Like, on a cold cloudy day in the Alps I sure would like a Shabat cholent at noontime; in a chamsin in Israel a tall glass of yogurt with chives after Shaharit, before 10 AM, will do fine. And R. Zalman once wrote, maybe you want to do a fast on Shabat. So OK, that should maybe be forbidden, more or less, for folks in a Poland shetl, otherwise nobody would ever eat anything but cold grass. But for Yuppies in Philadelphia, it's something else. And what goes down with Glatt Kosher is often an exploitative outrage. I mean, I've seen them bring brightly colored liqueurs to the Bet Knesset for a simcha, that I wouldn't put in the radiator of my car, especially as I don't have a car. But I digress. )) (A8-16) (( The Navajo Indian women wear lots of skirts in winter, one over the other. And maybe the Beduin women too. The Yuppies discovered this and call it layering. Like, you add insulation by creating layers of dead air between the various garments. At New Buffalo I wore two pairs of pants over my longjohns in winter. One winter I would piss behind the house, and wait for it to melt in springtime. But before that, I broke down. So then they invented Qang Fa, or whatever that Chinese Interior Decoration is called, that says, keep your house a full of good vibes, and as free of bad vibes, as you can. Why anyone has the privy inside the house I can't imagine -- I guess so grandpa don't slip on the ice on a moonless night. At least in Israel nobody puts the toilet in the bathroom. Even the Romans, those damnable idiots, weren't that stupid. But I digress. )) (A8-17) (( With kosher additive, no doubt. I used to tell folks, Styrofoam is made from pigs' knuckles. I mean, it was a byproduct of napalm, or something. I'm sitting in the Dan Hotel in Lugano this Tishrei, stealing porcelain cups off somebody else's table to drink tea in. I mean, Reform is quite right, and R. Zalman is its Prophet -- he used to ask, is electricity for a nuke kosher -- I mean, just because it wasn't put in the contract on Mt. Sinai -- I mean, talk about fine print -- and R. Zalman used to say, more or less, when you go into the Great Shul of Orthodoxy, you don't have to check your mind with the hat-check girl. All through the 1930's, men always wore hats. And ladies too, if not women. In the South, this was in the 1950s, then had a Ladies Room for the whites, and a Women's room for the Afro-Americans. In olden time, ladies had white skin, as if to say, I don't have to go out in the fields and work in the hot sun. And gentlemen wore silly frills, as if to say, I don't have to worry about getting dirty, I scarcely even touch the earth. (And some kings were carried, so that their feet never touched the earth. Ah, the good old days.) Gentlemen still wear a sports jacket, and a necktie. (R. Shlomo once said, I think Hatzkele told me that, "They put the gartel in the wrong place. ") The sports jacket is cut away, just where you want to button it up against a cold win, as if to say, I'm so rich I can buy a heavy jacket and then cut a hole in it. But I digress. )) (A8-18) (( yirat haShem, better translated, awe before the Majesty of the Heavens -- I mean, Yitzak lives all his life in yirat haShem, but this is not cowering churchmouse, he is laughing with his wife, and becoming a very prosperous cattle-rancher indeed -- or sheep and goats and whatever -- but this was one of the richest men of his era, or so the Bible seems to say -- and a very modest guy too, no bluster and braggadicio -- I mean, we ain't talking LBJ, much less Bushie, l'havdil ))