=siddur
Notes on the Siddur
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This will be notes on the siddur, following the weekday not the
Shabat siddur.

It seems not clear to me that I am addressing this doc primarily,
not to those who practice orthodox Judaism -- you have your way,
and so have no need to put my spin on it -- but to those in the SO
who are Jewish but are reluctant to practice religious Judaism.


I will consider only the orthodox siddur.
The orthodox siddur has been refined over almost 2 millenia.  The
others are scarcely a century old.
OK, that's not fair.  As Evelyn Garfield points out, the orthodox
siddur is almost never refined, it aggregates.
But I suppose when its core was formed, that was refined, this
would be in Talmudic times I think.

Let me start with a few outstanding points and then go back for a
sequentional hop-scotch.

Most of these remarks may presuppose familiarity with the siddur.

OK:  I can't accept nor say the Curse of Sammy the Runt.
That's the addition to the Amidah by Shmuel haKatan.
It boils down to a curse upon those who denounce practicing Jews
to the Romans.
I supose those who were denounced were apt to be crucified, sold
into Roman whorehouses, or who knows what.  
But I think a curse has no place in prayer, especially not packed
amongst the sequence of blessings called the 18 Blessings, the
Shemonah Esre.

So if I were called upon to lead prayers, I could not say it.
And one who leads orthodox prayers must say, at least to himself,
all the prayers, except those that one can skip over, in accord
with the custom of the minyan that he leads.
In orthodoxy, the baal tfilla is merely a servant of the
congregation, he is not free to depart from their practice.
In orthodoxy, all the brachot of the Shmenah Esre must be repeated
aloud by the baal tgfila.
So in short I could not lead orthodox prayers.

Let me call the Curse of Sammy the Runt simply 'the 19th'.
I do not say it to myself in the silent Amidah, and do not even
think it to myself.  It calls upon informants to be childless,
among other things.

Shucks, R. Shlomo would someetimes say, "and the sons of Haman are
studying in yeshiva".  That's from Talmud, as far as I know.
Haman is the quintessence of evil, we stamp out even any mention
of his name.  And yet R. Shlomo implies, even his sons not merely
have a right to live, but may earn a place of honor within
Judaism.

I once asked R. Zalman what to do about the 19th.  He said: 
Keter.
So when I get to it, I do not say it to myself, nor even think it
to myself, I just set off a blast of white light in the general
direction of any evildoing, all unspecfied.
I did once use it to kick a guy out of the Zenith parking lot, but
I doubt I was right to do so.  

And when it comes to the repetiion -- well, this is no so easy.  I
answer 'b'ruch shmo' to the 'baruch' in the repetition -- because
so far I am just answering 'b'ruch sh'mo' to 'Baruch '' ' -- but I
do not answer Amen to the specification, because that is at best
the endorsement of vengeance, and at worst acquiesence in a curse.

Though in practice one tends to get carried away by the rhythem of
the repetition, and unless one is quite alert, to answer amen to
everything.

I find this especially the case when R. Zusha is baal tfilla,
because he brings such clarity, light, and neutrality to whatever
he leads, whether it is leyning or davening.
The 19th may be a curse, but he does not say it as such.  No more
than he says the curses in the chumash as curses.  (Nor should
one, the torah is all to be read in neutral tones.)

Ok, that's for the 19th, which I find the most problematic bit in
the siddur.

The 2nd most problematic is 'for they bow down to darkness and the
void' in the Alenu.
I mean, the goyim, and in particular the Christians, can be dopes
here and there, but they ain't that bad.
This passage is omitted in conservative and reform siddurim.  I
grew up with a reform siddurim -- grew up meaning, that was my
first exposure to Jewish religion, as an adolescent.
So anyhow, I follow non-orthodox practice and simply skip over it.
I think many orthodox do that as well.
Since the alenu does not have to be said aloud, and is not even a
silent devotion as is the Amidah, one can do that within orthodoxy
without being said to have contradicted halacha.

Those are my two major objections to the orthodox siddur.
Now I can turn to other points.

I am accustomed to the Ashkenazi siddur, tho lately I have been
using the Sfard, which is in effect the Israel standard, common
denominator siddur.
The differences bewtween the orthodox siddurim -- Ashkenazi,
Sfard, Sephardi, and then the Chabad -- are minor, so one can with
only minor inconvenience use one siddur while the baal tfilla is
using another.

OK, now let's try going through it -- that is, weekday Shaharit --
from start to finish.

I will remark only on those passages where I have something to
say.   
These will be, or should be, points upon which I have long
reflected, and on which I seem to myself to have some insight.
Not top-of-the-head ideas, although my wording is top-of-the-head.

As for washing the hands upon arising, well, one might not do it
if camping out in the snow.
In general, I think Judaism is the religion for the land of Israel
and environs -- i mean, including Syria and Iraq and all that.  As
I have often said, in the land of Israel, Jewish religion is 3-
dimensional, outside the land of Israel, it is 2-dimensional.
So really galutz Judaism, especially the galutz Judaism of Europe,
which meant primarily of eastern Europe, the Pale, far from being
normative, is merely an historically dated holding pattern,
obsoleted by the redemption of the land of Israel, that is by
Jewish resettlement of it, ie Zionism.

So the Jewish people are as much entitled to the land of Israel as
the Hopis are to Hopiland, and the Tibetans to Tibet.
It is a holy land, which means, it is land essential to an
established religion.
As for the self-styled Palestinians, they have no religious claim
to this land.  They are -- generally speaking -- no more than a
bunch of Arab nomads who happened to wander by when the pickings
were good, and the pickings became good only as a result of Jewish
resettlement of the land.
More precisely, many of the Palestinians are no doubt descendents
of the original Jewish settlers of the land.  
And some are obviously of Crusader descent, and some descendents
of Islamic African immigrants.
It is generally agreed that the Islamic religious claim to the
land of Israel is contrived.  It is true that the Dome of the Rock
is the 2nd-holiest site in Islam, but it is only one of many 2nd-
holiest sites in Islam.  The claim that it is a site holy to Islam
is tenuous and contrived, and without historic basis.  And in any
event, parasitic upon the status of Temple Mount as a Jewish holy
site.
But for that matter, Islam is parasitic upon Judaism.  Not that it
hasn't by now established its own identity as a religion.

OK, let's go on.

I don't wear a talit katan, because I can't figure out what to do
with the tzitzit when I go to the privy.
And also I don't like non-functional garmenets.  Eg kippot.

I am saying all this , not to throw it in the face of those who
practice orthodox Judaism, but to suggest to those who are Jewish
and are turned off and away by orthodox Judaism, that one can meet
orthodoxy half-way -- that a liberal intrepretation of Jewish
orthodoxy, and a liberal practice of it, is possible.  Although of
course most orthodox might not accept it as orthodoxy.  At least
not if challenged on the point.

In general though, orthodoxy does not enquire into personal
belief, it only requires public conformity to public practice.
                           
And that's the story of the Radcliffe chick who came up to Rabbi
ben-Zion Gold of Harvard Hillel and said, I have to drop out of
Jewish religious practice because I'm not sure whether or not I
believe in G_d.  And R. Gold said to her, why deprive yourself of
all that pleasure and sociability while you're making up your
mind.   As if to say -- the essence of Judaism is not belief, but
practice.
And that's what makes the premise of Chaim Grade's The Yeshiva
dumb.
The goyim used to ask us, like in my High School, what do Jews
believe about Jesus.  And the proper answer, or so my mother told
me, is:  We think he was a great man, but we don't worship him.
Which is ok, but the truth is, we really don't pay any atention to
him, not one way or the other, it's not part of the portion on our
platter.   (Which is part of what the alenu is saying.  They got
theirs, we got ours, and I'm glad I've got ours not theirs.)

Like Tim Leery said, you've got to play the cards you were dealt.
And that's what behind many of the morning brachot.  You've got
it, whether you wanted it or not, so you'd better gives thanks for
it because you can't get rid of it anyhow.
That means your sexual identity, and also your inherited religious
identity.
As for sexual identity, that means that 'sexual preference' is
irrelevant.  
And anyhow face it, sex is not that much fun for most folks most
of the time.                  

(Someone in Placitas once said, bad LSD is like bad sex, it makes
you want to never do it again.
But in high school they used to say:  The difference between war
and peace is that there has never been a good war.
Well, pardon gentles all -- as Shalom Schwartz would say, just a
little something to wake you up, folks.)

OK, on we go.
I'm still on page 1 of the Metsudah Sfard Weekday paperback, so
this may take a while.

I don't know what to say about the tallit.  I don't see how anyone
can not tie techolet, blue tzittzit, and it seems to me that one
must tie them onself, not by a tallit when them ready tied.
And surely if you tie yourself, you must tie them with techolet.

If I were more devout, I would steal one of these all-wool
blankets from Campra, and take it back to Israel, and tie tzitzit
on it.  Or a Hudson Bay blanket, something you can wear through a
winter rainstorm.

Though what you do in the summer I don't know.   A linen tallit I
suppose.
I don't know that the point of tzitzit is.  For starters, its
really a feminine aspect of dress, to entice, so what are all
these soldiers doing wearing tzitzit.  I mean, one can't but be
distracted by the silly things swaying all the time.

When first I came to Israel, I brough a leather jacket, western
style, with lots of leather fringes.  Which are made to shed the
rain I think.  I figured, that's what tzitzit really are.

As R. Zalman has remarked, a tallit must be a full-sized garment
(and so the Talmud says, they tell me.   Those little Snoopy the
Red Baron scarfs they have at Reform -- one really can't call them
Temples, that's tendencious chutzpah, as my father once pointed
out to me -- don't make it.  But on the other hand, kippot too are
merely a token garment, not a real one anymore.

I mean, you can't hide your head from the wrath of heaven, or even
from its blessings, with a kippa.  Can't keep the summer heat off
either.  That needs a monk's hood, or an Islamic woman's head-
cover, or a tallit, or an American Indian's blanket.

And indeed, for American Indians, wearing a blanket is essentially
a religious matter, tho they don't make a cardboard sign to say
so.

Oy.  What are we up to.
Supper maybe?
I might if I can face it try for a plate of sphaghetti at Honest
George's Campra Restorante.  Ain't much else to eat there.  Dump
the whole bowl of grated cheese over it and might get almost
enough protein to glue the inner organs back in place until
tomorrow.
Nope, closed early tonight, Sunday evening.  20:45 and I'm maybe
the only person here at Campra.  Unless Honest George posts a
guard to make sure no-one steals the toilet paper.
He might make more money if he served food fit to eat, Or even
served the food that ain't more often.

If I kept orthodox kashrut here I'd starve to death.
I have always eaten non-kosher cheese.  That means cheese made
with rennet, which is an enyme taken from a cow's stomach , and as
such deemed meat, so that its use in making cheese constitutes
mixing meat and milk and so makes the product unkosher.

And anyhow, I've not found any good kosher yellow cheese in
Israel, although the white cheeses, goat's cheese and sheep
cheeses, are excellent.

For that matter, Greek feta cheese is nice enough, but nothing
spetacular.

I had for many years not eaten meat in Switzerland.  It is not
kosher becaause the animal has not been slaughtered in a kosher
manner.  Oriiginally that may have had some humanitarian
significance, nowadays I doubt that it does.  And anyhow, een
being slaughteed in a kosher manner is no great treat for an
animal.
Kosher meat is with no trace of blood -- so that does exclude rare
roast beef, rare steaks and the like; I grew up on those and
really can't see why one would bother to eat thoroughly cooked
(brown) roast beef.  And anyhow, I like to walk down the street
eating raw hamburger with my fingers -- and a dash of salt of
course -- which I suppose puts me somewhat outside the bounds of
kashrut.
Well, this applies only to the best cuts of hambruger, what they
used to called chopped sirloin.  It did see a few ounces of
something like that on sale in Feldis, even being 'organic beef',
meaning, not feed hormones and such, for about 17 SF for scarcely
enough to make a hamburger of.


I drink the foreign wines, but do not make kiddish with them.  And
in general do not drink the local wines on Shabat.
Wine is the only product that is deemed non-kosher for non-
physical reasons.  Wine is deemed kosher only if he been made by
Jews.
Incidentally, the same applies to grape juice; so strictly
speaking one can not make kiddish with the store-bought grape
juice of Switzerland.

I think it is only in Zurich that one can find kosher wine for
sale.  Although Swiss wine is not much, nor is much of the Chianti
on sale.  Most Israel wines that I've seen, except for the
cheapest (which were once subsidized I think, or else made and
sold inexpensively, so that even the poorest man in Israel could
have wine for Shabat kiddish) are better than most Swiss wines
I've tried.  That applies no only to the glamour labels -- Golan,
Mt. Hermon -- but to the less-well-known labels.  Most of them
selling for not much more than 10 dollars a bottle, which would be
quite cheap by Swiss standards.

Except for the strictest, vegetarian food is kosher per se.
When R. David Zeller came here, there were all sorts of things he
would not eat.  Eg vinegar.
Now we do not drink the wine of the goyim, beacuase it might have
been consccrated to a pagan deity.  Though his is less common
since the collapse of the Empire of Alexander the Great.  But then
what of vinegar.  Well, vinegar is wine go sour, and so it might
have been consecraated to a particularly disagreeable deity.

Beyond kashrut is glatt kosher.  Super-kosher food.  That's what
the black-coats only eat.  Kiryat Sefer, acoss the road from
Modi'in, is an ultra-orthox community (black-coat) so all the food
for sale there is glatt kosher.  It seems to range from mediocre
to terrible.  I suppose most who sell it exploit their captive
audience.  I did see what looked like an excellent 5-star glatt
kosher restaurant in the rebuilt Jewish Quasrter of Praha, but
didn't try the food.

Thackery has just married off Becky Sharp, without telling anyone. 
Without even noting a courtship.
For that he should lose his novelist's license, and I should go to
bed.  In scarcely more than 12 hours I can buy a plate of french-
fried potatoes at Honest George's.  With ketchup.  PVK says, fried
food is hazardous to health.  There is an over-riding rule of
kashrut, that anything hazardous to health is not kosher.  But
this does not keep pace with food technology.  I have seen the
guys from Kiryat Sefer bring into the Bet Knesset, to celbrate if
not sanctify special occasions, brightly-coloured liquers that I
would shudder to see drained from an automobile radiator.

The best of the ultra-orthodox are scrupulous with regard to
health foods, and that includes some of the best cooks at Mevo
Modi'in.
Indeed, health food stores are espcially found in strictly
religious neighborhoods.

p8 - V_AHavaT L_R'a_Kha C_MO_Kha -- "to love my neighbor as
myself" -- the Metsudah translation, "to love my fellow Jew" is
simply tendencious ,  It would be true in a contexxt in which all
one's neighbors are Jewish, eg biblical times, but it is not valid
for all times.  And religious truth must be valid for all timess
and places.

10 -- The Yigdal, of Maimonids, is reasonable enough, taken with a
grain of salt it goes down nicely.

p17 -- HaNOTaN L_SeKVI VINaH L_HavChIn VeIN YOM V_VeIN LeILaH
"who tgives the rooster understanidng to distinguish betwwen day
and night"
That is, who gives us understanding to distinguish between good
and bad".  The Rooster is the steersman, Ulysses.  This is
Heraklitus:  "Wisdom is one thing and ne thing one thing only --
to know how thought steers all things through all things"

"who has not made be a goy",  
In this we give thanks for being Jewish, though truth to tell, as
the chap said as he was being ridden out of town on a rail, "if it
wasn't for the honor I'd just as soon walk"
As USA Jews, having grown up in an environment of underlying anti-
Semitism, to give thanks for being Jewish is an overdue
affirmation of what we can't anyhow slough off.
I mean, look at the films of Mel Brooks, permeated by a self-
loathing for being Jewish.  Or even Woody Allen, permeated by a
self-mockery, and then that extravagent over-self-compensation, as
with his silly sybaretic affair with his oriental ward -- 


"who has not made me a slave", 
In this we accept our freedom, though often one might imagine it
more comfortable to be a slave

"who has not made me a woman"
Of course the politically -- or rather, socially -- correct was to
do this bracha is in the affirmative voice, who has made me a man. 
But there is power too in using the negative voice.  "she aches
just like a woman" -- who has spared me all the aches and ooks of
being a woman -- 
one then follows it with a bracha, giving thanks for women -- 

"who gives sight to the blind" -- to see through the temptations
to sin 

"who clothes the naked"
who clothes us in mitzvot, without which we are naked

"who spreads the eath above the waters"
here I sometimes take several steps, 3 is enough, on the earth
I suppose one must best do it barefoot
here too, if you like, you can do the Sufi purification breaths.
The first, the earth breath, must be be sitting with the mulahadar
chakara, the base of the spine, upon the earth, that one can drain
one's polluted energy into the earth, and then take in a fresh
batch of energy.
Shehabudin says, always have water in your room, but change it
often.
Saphira said, when you do the water breath, stand on the earth and
drain energy into the earth, taken in new energy from abobve.

"who prepares the steps of man"
this is quite important
remember, if your plans are disrupted, it may be heven and the
angels "for he will give his angels charge over you, lest you dash
your foot against a rock"
"man proposes and G_d disposes" as the Christians say
so when you make your plans, be cool, stay loose, realize that for
one who follows the Tao, anything can always change
"wary as a man in ambush" said Leary, in his translation,
Psychedelic Prayers, of the Tao te Ching
"what do we do now" "I don't know" -- Good -- the yuppies are
loose.  That was someone, I think Leary, reportingon the 1968
Chicago anti-LBJ demonstraations -- which worked all too well --
the liberals repudiated Humphrey, and so we got Nixon.

Sh_'aSaH LI KoL TyRaKIN -- "who provides me with all my needs" --
I find the translation in my paperback Sfard Metsudah, "who
provided", but I see no justificaiton for the past tense -- maybe
it was a typo -- No, my hardback Ashkenazi Metsudah also has
'provided'
It is a nice bracha, for it reminds one that one can make a
harmonous world with whatever one happens to have, and be happy in
it.  This is what one learned from Little Joe Gomez.  he once
remarked ot me, speaking of himself, "always happy"

one accpets gvurah and tiferet upon oneself 

"do not cause us to be tested or brought to disgrace"
This is maybe the major break between the Sufi way and the Jwish
way.  Puran Bair used to say, tho I think a close reading of HIK
does not support this, "a Sufi loves to be shattered"
What HIK said was only, if you try to reach beyond your present
station, you will be tested.  He did not say to do so.  And though
PVK spoke in the 70s of "risking all in order to find ourselves",
in 1998 I think it was, he said that dissolve et coagule required
great art and self-control, in not allowing onself to break down
more than one could better rebuild

As for the Akeda -- this is page 22 in my paperback though page 20
in my hardback Ashkenazi, so the pages are not correlated, so I
can't cite them as a steady guide -- 
Well, everyone knows that the Akedah is problematic.
Nice rhetoric, though.

Dovid Din, who was more than a bit of a fool -- I mean, anyone who
thinks you can walked out of the Green Berets into super-
frumishkeit without paying a toll has got to be a bit of a fool --
I mean, anyone who freely takes the name Dovid and sits in
Brooklyn as a teaher instead of taking the name David and going to
Israel as a pupil is already making a mistake -- so he once said,
at the Abode Camp to which Gedalya Persky brought him -- and more
fool Gedalya, who if he wanted to leave the SO(W) Adirondack
Chapter for Yiddishkeit could have chosen any teacher in the
world, for taking Dovid Din and staying davka in Albany -- so
anyhow Dovid Din says then, there is much in the korbonot as part
of sharit, but I will have to teach it later.  But I did not hear
him to so, the which I regret.

You can follow the korbanot though it not quite clear what sins ,
that is, the fat of the meat -- for kosher meat means all the fat
has been trimmed off, I forgot to say that, but its important --
unless your're an Eskimo -- I mean, a Jewish eskimo of course --
you do not eat fat.  
And I forgot to say -- in the morning, the Indians near Toos would
eat a bit of meet.  Once there was a vegetarian chick in the tipi,
and she said, I don't eat meat, and the Indian said, eat a little
bit anyhow.
In cold weather, one needs aa bit of meat from time to time.
They tell, rather as a joke:  When the Theosophists learned that
HIK ate meat from time to time, they concluded, this cannot be the
one we have been waiting for.


Darned near nothing in this shack to eat now, except for last
month's fruitcake from Feldis.  Or the eggs from last December.

p49 -- misgav, ashrei, hosheav -- the Divine is a fortress, one is
happy who dwells therein, may it save us -- 
each is recited three times
this is:  body, mind, spirit

or it is :  one's physicality, one's social world, one's mind,
one's emotions, one's soul -- may I be saved from bodily ills
accidents and terrorists, and may I be saved from being hassled by
stupid people even including some Israelis,  and may I be saved
from crazy thinking, and may I be saved from depression and
freakouts , and may I be saved from the dopes who dump junk on the
davening when they're baal tfilla, 
and for the last-mentioned, often I step outside the bet knesset,
unlsss I'm the 10th, and stnad on the front lawn and daven.  I
learned that from the Modi'in teenages.

or it is:  may I be saved by my phsicality -- that I can go
hiking, or eat a nice breakfast, and the like
and may I be saved by the sangha -- by all my friends on the
Moshav, who support me when I would get off-track
and may I be saved by my mind, that I can read about general
relativity or hear a talk about from Eliahu, and get my mind away
from the shtuyot of the Vaad et al
and may I be saved by my emotions, that I may feel love "and all
that good stuff" as Ciel was wont to say
and may I be saved by my soul and all those meditation practicies
I never do, and by my religion because it works fine when I'm by
myseelf and not having to push off the overlay of some puffed-up
fool who's leading davening -- worst of all the ones who sing it
on Shabat, thinking that they are continuing R. Shlomo's way, but
all they are doing is putting on his tunes like a plastic wrapping
-- 
If R. Shlomo did a 2nd Coming bit -- though even Jesus seems to
keep stalling off doing an encore, so why should R. Shlomo -- 

Fact is, I think PVK was maybe the 2nd Coming of Jesus, but it
don't do to make a big deal of that -- so its a darned good thing
the Christians never got wind of it -- well at least he stayed out
of trouble this time around, even if he didn't move us along much
farther -- 

I hadn't intended this doc to be quite so candid, but I'm still in
the tailwind of the Autobiography I just dashed off, which I
wanted to have down as a sort of last will and testament -- I
mean, I feel ok, with no particular inclinations to jump off a
cliff, but -- I seem to have done most of whatever I coulld on
earth, though life's still nice enough if only Honest George sold
hotdogs with mustard from time to time -- kosher hotdogs i mean,
I'd not put off suicide for less -- , but who knows -- 
But the sauerkraut is optional -- let me make that quite clear --
so like, nobody has to rush, it's cool ---- 

When will the USA be worthy of its Negros 

Ok, if everybody's awake now maybe I can go back to bed ---- 

"Morning comes early" wrote Cat Stevens.  
So the Bushies took him off a plane in Bangor and sent him back to
England.  If they could lock up hippies and cello players I reckon
they would.

My Swiss watch told me it's 7 AM, but it's 6.  
I have bccome a collector of Swiss watches, because someone didn't
want to take tzdaka from me, for fear that I could then not spend
the money I needed on myself, so I want to say, is it more
justified  that, rather than buy you a few potatoes and turnips, I
further augment my collection of Swiss watches. 

Like I say, and others too from whom I read it:  Charity, Latin
caritas, is from the heart.  Charity need not be deserved.  Tzdaka
is from the Greek, dike, justice.  Heraklitus tell us what dike is
-- it is the essential socialist notion --- like Marx said "to each
according to his needs, from each according to his means".  I have
a nice formula for that in a recent jr*.txt on my Website, but
it's too early in the day for me to remember it.


I like to get up to see daybreak, which is the proper time for
morning prayers.  One optimally does the shma "when one can tell a
dog from a wolf" of "tell pale green from pale blue" or recognize
his friend a -- some certain distance.
Pale green and pale blue are the first colours of daybreak, on the
skyline, which is the ridgeline or the horizon.  Sunup is the
horizon as is sundown.  One is who impure, by reason of having had
sexual fluid on his body, is clean, after having washed if not
bathed in water, as soon as the sun has gone below the horizon. 
Just like that -- one moment your're impure, then you're pure . 
Was it Lorca who wrote of someone, she becoms a virgin again with
every new day.


I would like to see more Jewish-Islamic dialogue, because we have
a lot to learn from each other.  Islam branched off from Judaism
in the Arabian desert, where all our intellectuals had gone in
exile and rebuilt a great intellectual Jewish culture.  So I
reckon Islam preserves many of the biblical Jewish traditions
better than Judaism does, because life was a lot more stable in
the Arabian desert than in Europe.

In Islam they say, you do the morning prayer when you can tell a
black threat from a white thread.  So now we have identified a
major religious dispute between us and them.  We say pale blue
from pale green, they say black from white.  I mean, if we live we
Arabs they could be eating up all the breakfast while we're still
at our devotions.
We wash the hands, they wash all the parts of the body, even the
nose.  We bathe, they only wash.  That's because there's more
availale water in the Jordan River, etc. than in the Arabian
desert.
They kneel for prayer.  For us this is now residual, in the alenu,
but now fully done only in a residual prayer on Yom Kippur. 

R. Shlomo once said -- the nusach, the tunes, of Temple times are
all lost now, except they survive in the nusach of the High
Holidays.

I have a gold Swiss watch.  It has enough gold on it to make an
earing for a medium-sized mosquito.  So now I can give tzdaka,
because one should give a tenth, a tithe, of one's money for
tzaka, but not more than a fifth, "lest he himself become in need
of tzdaka".

One must give to everyone who asks, unless they would harm
themselves or others thereby, and one must give "with a smiling
face" -- with courtesy snd words of encouragement, offering honor
not dumping condescension on the one reduced to begging.  But you
don't want to be a fool about it.  So if you think the guy's just
a hustler, only give a token ammount.  Anyhow, if everyone gives
the dude a token ammount he can buy a falafel by afternoon.

Ok, I should open the siddur again.

It's 06:35, light is just breaking.  A small wolf, or maybe a fox,
is out for the stale bread I throw out.  One must never throw away
bread, one puts it out in the open.  Another criterion for when
one can begin the shma is "when one can tell a dog from a wolf". 
This wolve is so unafraid I took him first for the housecat.  Who
sits outside when its 10 below zero Centigreade.

Jews do not hunt for sport.  That is gratuitious cruelty to
animals.
Nor do the Indians.  Frank Waters wrote a book, The Man Who Killed
the Deer, about how much religious preparation is required before
one goes out to shoot a deer.  Which one does only if someone
really needs the meat to go on living.  I think it's that strict,
but I'm not sure anymore.

The Jewish practice of animal sacrifice was most barbarian, and in
our enlightened times we do not do that: we simply go out to
MacDonald's, where meat is born in plastic wrappers.

In biblical times it must have required a heck of a lot of red
tape before you could have a hamburger.  You had to take the poor
old animal up to Jerusalem and sacrifice him.

"Higamous hogamous, woman's monogamous;  Hogamus higamus, man is
polygamous."
That's why we eat billy goats.  Can't have too many studs, they'll
just fight.  

A morning coffee at Honest George's.  About half a teacup full,
including the milk.  Put ten of them together, reheat it up almost
to boiling, and you could sell it at a U.S. truck stop without
getting lynched.
With a side of buckwheaet flapjacks, preferably with real maple
syrup on the butter.  Even if you have to truck it from Vermont.

Switzerland is wasted on the Swiss.  We should conquer it, en
route to Tehran or Syria or whatever comes next.

If the Bushies decide to make Syria another notch on Georgie Jr.'s
cowboy belt, we could lose Israel in the process, not that they'd
much notice after 2 or 3 days on CNN.  Not likely to be much left
of the north in any event.  You could collect all the brains in
that administration and put them in an exceptionally alert dog,
with room left over for the New York Times. 
And Sharon is merely a persistent Toady running on autopilot.

Ok, back to the Siddur:                                      

p49 -- misgav lanu, ashrei, hoshiah -- each said 3 times -- 
Again, this is body soul mind -- or if it's not too Aristotelian -
- 
physical world, social world, mental world, emotional world,
spiritual world -- the 5 elements of Heraklitus 

There are many high points in the Siddur, and I will not comment
nor take note of all them, only where I have something to say.

I say, davening from the siddur is like going to the Modi'in Post
Office.  Each day there are about the same number of letters, and
sometimes a few are for you, though in general different ones each
time.

It's a bit hard to read through the various kinds of sacrifice,
since their contemporary analogues are not all that clear.
There is sin, guilt, and the like, but the distinctions are not
clear, and the legal biblical correlates barely relevant.
One does consider the four sides of the gold altar. 

Of course we could have rebuilt the Temple, and restored Temple
sacrifice, and did not, and must start to accept responsiblity for
that instead of ducking out into legalistic excuses.
It won't quite do to say that the Temple can be rebuilt only by
Meshaiach -- however one translates that anthropomorphic imagry
into spiritualistic metaphysics -- nor, more simply, that the
Temple is to be rebuilt, but not on the physical plane ("build
with Thine own Hands the Universel", as the Sufis say quoting HIK
-- us western yuppie Sufis I mean, not thhe real ones sitting on
the trash piles of Arabia (no offense intended, that's PVK's image
of the dervish on a pile of bannana peels -- though I say, bananna
plants, not peels 

A grackle or some such outside my window -- large bird with a
spotted breast -- first one I've seen all winter -- 

I tried to say that in one of my first Israel poems:  "unable to
tear down or build up / pillars or beams of light"

The preliminary brachot conclude with a summary of the logic of
Talmudic exegesis.  As presented in the Metsudah siddur, it
conveys nothing to me.  The descriptions are too abstracted.  The
notes in the Artscroll siddur are quite helpful.

I simply cannot use the ArtScroll siddur, because it always
translates '' as HaSHEM , the NAME.  Which would be ok, except
that with repetition it quickly falls down into the status of a
proper name -- 
"and Shemi Messias said / HaShim sent me / I'm taking over"
Which is precisely the opposite of what we were trying to do.
And you can see that too clearly in the natterings of all those
little baala tchuvas who should be back in the sorrority house
painting their toenails .  And the young men baal tchuvas out in
the football bleachers cheering mindlessly.
As so it may seem at morning Shabat Shaharit at Meor Modi'in, and
little enough information it is that from us flows forth.

I mean, how long will Modi'in keep selling plastic Shlomo
wrappers, and pretending there's candy inside.
Every quaver of a single set of niggunim seems cast now in
concrete.
Well, the home hospitality is unstinting, and usually for real.

Once I ate at the Trugman's.  It was the only time I left feeling
that I had been a guest.  "Make the poor as members of your
household."  And so I feel at Modi'in wherever I am invited.
Though I have more disposable income than most.  But often not
even enough spiritual capital to make kiddish, and so for that I
must beg an invite.

I was down at Ein Gedi one Shabat evening, making kiddish over a
bottle of wine, and me with less Yiddishkeit than one of the
Witts' 3 year olds.  So I do so, and drink my glass of wine, and
one of the self-regarded secular Israelis who fill the dining
hall, for their weekend hike, comes up to me and says, you are
very selfish, for you did not share the kiddish wine with the
others.  Not that they did not have wine, but that they thought
they did not dare make kiddish.
As R. Shlomo would have said to "The Rabbinute", thoough that
exists more in the mind of the secularists than in reality, where
almost all the strictly observant are almost always entirely
tolerant of the awkward religious gestures of the supposedly
secular -- 
R. Shlomo would have said to such an imagined rabbinute, "How dare
you make a Jew, any Jew, ashamed of his religiosity"
And R. Ovadya Yosef said, do not call any Jew non-religious. 
Simply say that there are some who, being seen only 3 times in a
religious setting -- at birth, marriage, and death -- apparently
observe fewer mitzvot than do some others -- apparently.

Oy.  A few words with Honest George in the morning is hazardous to
one's emotional health.  I have to read the Herald Tribune to
clean my mind.  Like one of those shots of Shalom Schwatz's
tequilla.
He puts on a pose too, so that his fire won't scald the
congregation.
So did David Herzberg, who could have walked through brick
buildings and all those therein, so instead chose to prsent
himself as a jokester.
He always showed me great gentleness, without making it apparent
enough to be patronizing, though he could have incineratged me
with a word.

I must have driven hundreds of well-intentioned hippies away from
New Buffalo with my words.  And hope to evade having to pay the
price for that.  Well, maybe that's why I spent a few years
homeless on the beach.
And may our sins be cleansed in the infinite mercy of heven, not
by affliction.  So it says in the Siddur, tho not in quite those
words.
We don't need Jesus, we've already got it.  But you have to look
hard sometimes, especially if your grew up under the misconception
of Judaism held in Christian lands.

About 8 below.  Looks and feels like snow.  No day to go out.

The davening is punctuated by the kaddish.  (This is the kaddish
of the baal tfilla, not that of mourners.  In reform they recite
the kaddish with great lugubriousness, the better to evoke the
dearly departed in their last collapse, though that really isn't
the pose in which most of us would like to be immortalized in
memory, cha-cha-cha.)
In orthodox, the mourner's say the kaddish briskly, clean and
quick.  That is proper.  For the kaddish is prayer of praise for
the heavenly order, which is why mourners are called upon to say
it, that they may not dwell in grief.

It seems to me that at the kaddish, incense is put on the coals.

Avraham Sands has recreated as essential oils all the seperate
scents of the Temple incense, although of course one would not
dare to mix them until Meshiach comes.  That is said to be darned
near a capital offense.  ("He who made personal use of it was
liable for the death penalty."  Tho I don't think I recall that
aright.)
I asked Hai, is it ok even to smell those oils.  He said, don't
worry, I doubt it's close to the real thing.
Though Sands does his utmost to be historically accurate.
As did Reuven Praeger with the tcholet, but there I think he
succeeded.  And indeed, though few of the ultra-orthodox wear
techolet, I have never seen objection to it at the Kotel.  Where
they would object if a lady sparrow flew by without a techel.

Well, then we come to the preliminary psalms, p68 in my paperback
Sfard weekday siddur, Psukei dZimra.  When I can, I stand outside
the Bet Knesset to say them, and come inside only at the Boruchu.
To set them to tunes is problematic, it may help some if the
singer is inspired, as was R. Shlomo; but if not the sound
overlays the spiritual hits.  Another reason why I find the
Modi'in Shabat morning minyan almost intolerable.  Ok for high
school kids and sophmores I suppose.  And again, that was much of
why R. Yekutiel created the Old Fogey's minyan , which properly
sits on the high ground of the Moshav.
It is said that a Bet Knesset should be on the highest ground of
the community, tho that is often disregarded.  I saw an orthodox
minyan on the bottom floor , even a few steps below ground level,
in Zurich; I think that does not go, except maybe if there is no
choice, then I think you can daven just about anywhere, for one is
not rquired to do more than one's best possible under the
circumstances, so they could legally keep praying even in the
horrors and filth of the concentration camps, as far as I know.
And this too applies to the Islamic detainees so shamefully
mistrated and humiliated by the all-American -- imitation
American, rather -- Bushies.  Though they be denied the proper
water for washing, the sin is upon the captors, not the prisoners.

Ok, let's slog on a bit, as R. Shlomo might almost have said.
I mean, everyone knows that orthodox davening is often more a
chore than an inspiration.  So R. Shlomo would often say, "let's
knock it off 7 four 7.  Meaning, quick and clean as a Beoing 747
on a shuttle flight from New York to Israel.  R. Zalman once said
oy, he could be a graet rosh yeshiva -- as of course he could have
been, at the least -- and instead his shlepping those heavy
suitcases all around the world, continually.
Those heavy suitcases being filled with sifrei kodesh, sacred
texts, which R. Shlomo would read at any opprotunity, to be able
to teach them to those who otherwise would scarcely know a word of
it.

Well, I do need to get more coffee filter papers, and something to
eat.  By Honest George's Restorante one can barely "keep body and
soul together", all the necessities are circumsribed with
pettinesses.

Time to scamble up a half-dozen of the December eggs, washed down
with a dash of cold 3-day-old coffee. Might not get the trots,
though I'd rather not check it out on the trail today.  Only 2
hours before I can apply for a 14-dollar plate of sphaghetti at
Honest George's.  How the congregation must envy me my Swiss ski
vacation.

Mark my words, that Gaza pullout ain't going nowhere, and everyone
knows it.  Even Netanyahu voted against it, and he wouldn't be on
the losing side even of Armageddon.  We'd see him pop up back in
Brockton selling Hoover vacuum cleaners once again.
And planning another run for Prime Minister just as soon as the
half-life exponetiated out.

Cha-cha cha.
Or as Vonnegut that pratt put it:  "So it goes." (Slaugherhouse 5,
his eulogy for the firebombing of Dresen.  Nu, even a qqaisi-neo-
Nasi nihilist can gete something right.  But I prefer Trout
Fishing in America.  (after Kilgore Trout?).

Ok, onward.
I doubt that Seidman ever truly respected Athority, as I recall
our high schol driveabouts.  Those were the days of Pogo, and we
would speak often of "Our Fearless Leader".  Or Peerless, I forget
which.  Well, maybe that was part of what cost him his military
career.  He did have a sharp sense of irony.

Ok, this is modulating into a bit of an extention of my
Autobiography 2, the which I hoped I was done with, except its
cold and damp today.  Sorry about that, but I'm too lazy to cut
and paste.  Going a week or so in the same clothes, day and night,
sometimes tends to have that effect.

I have not always been unitdy however.
As a college undergraduate student of philosohy at U.C. Berkeley,
from which I graduated with honors and a B.S. degree --- had to
sling it 75 yards or better left-handed to qualify, of course -- I
shared a shack with Shrager, so close to the mudflats that we had
to kick out the clams at night.  I wrote about that idyll in a
novellette -- 30 pages or more -- entitled, 'The Ugly Pad'.  Lost
now though.  It began "I picked another tick out of my -- "

How nice women have ever put up with me I can't imagine.  A
triumph of compassion over aesthetics maybe.

Well, my compliments to the chicken; I seem to have the energy to
think again.

So ok;

p72, Hodu -- the psalm has a line, "prostrate yourselves" -- at
which point I make a minor genuflect, but inconspicuous enough to
be unnoticed

I saw Agnieska walk past the open door of a church once, in
Wroclaw.  She turned and bent the knee etc. scarcely breaking
stride.  One could almost have glimpsed the downturned sword in
her hands, and then this was just one more college student again.

Needless to say, one always faces Jerusalem while davening, and
almost always stands, unless you're too tired.
I used to sit during the reading of the tora, so that only those
caslled to aliyot would be standing, but now I stand, slouching as
inconspicuously as possible against the wall.  Or did; if I stay
much longer out her by the snow I'll be eating cheeseburgers. 
Already I type on compter on Shabat, which I'd not done before. 
When I started becoming doti, it was still typewriters.

One more slug of cold coffee and on I go. I do not know if one
ordinarily mixes garlic with strawberry jam.

p78 -- -"what good is there / in [the shedding of] ny blood"
Or as I have paraphrased it, to the traditional tune
"What good would it do / says I to me / if I would go and eat a
flea"
Cut down all the suicides quick, they won't get out of it
thataway.
It is such a temptation to stop trying to paddle upstream agains
the wind, and just drop it all and let it carry you back
downstream.  Then one can have rest.  But it don't work that way,
you're still stuck with all your stuff, and on a much less
pleasant playing field.

Catholicism teaches strongly that suicide is a mortal sin. 
Judaism merely mumbles something about, well if you do then don't
expect to get buried in one of the better neighborhoods.
Well too, every rule has its exeptions.
Gretchen took her own life, with a few saved-up painkillers, her
sister said her condition had worsened.  It seemed to me that she
had mde an end-run into the end zone for a touchdown.  For it is a
crime to try to take your own life, at least in Massachusetts,
they can lock you up for that.
She stuck around for her own funeral -- an eclectic memorail
service to be more accurate -- but methinks that was just as a
courtesy, she was well on her way to a very nice place, with the
taxi honking.
That was Gretchen Grossner, zl'b.  They lived down the street,
West Avenue, from my grandmother's apartment.  She was head of the
Columbia U. chapter of SPU when I went to philsophy grad school
there, just to stay out of the draft.  A very fine person, rather
a mentor or roll-model to me I suppose.  I took over the position
from her, and worked in the SPU for about a year; I wrote of that
in =auto1.zip , on my Website thanks to the Vanzettis saving my
discs for 5 years when I disappeared myself.
The family was CP background I'm sure, they had that kind of New
York German-Jewish comfortable refinement, books and heavy
furniture and intellectual informality and all that, with that
overlay of subtly-shaded American patriotism.

I wrote then, "We who would rage muwt sing eulogy ... "

p78 -- We say three times, '' melach, '' malach, '' yimloch -- so
there you think first of the sovereignty of heven, which is the
theme of Rosh HaShana, and then of that ideal world when the
kingdom of heaven was real, in the time of Moses, if it ever
existed, and then you think , as HIK says, that life will go on
forever, long after mankind has "strut and fret"ed its half hour
upon the stage.  But the universe will still go on, and that is a
bit of a consolation -- 

The National Geographic 1999, Novembeer I suppose, had a map of
the universe, which i really must try to get.

Copped a cup of coffee and walk back to my shack carrying most of
it, in my hand and on my coat.  For some reason I do not find
myelf comfortable in that Restorante.  Gal-Or once said that
Kahane, stomp on his nose -- I mean I've already argued that one
can't quite say "may his name be  blotted out", because R. Shlomo
said, "and the sons of Haman are studying in yeshiva " -- R.
Shlomo often gave concerts for the Germans -- so he says that
Kahana one said, don't eat while you're walking down the street. 

Ag is as delicate a person as I've met, though she's no "blushing
violet, born to flush unseen"
She has created a lovely little house with him, though I could
scarcely walk three steps in it without falling through the floor.
Unless I took off my boots, of course.

You know, not everything I say is true.  Only the important stuff. 
Not what I write about myself, including this sentence.  Gotcha.
That was the paradox of the liar, the Cretan who says all Cretans
lie.  As no doubt they do.
Ok ok.

p80 -- Baruch sh'amar is very beautiful -- a daybreak prayer.

Some will start the morning brachot before daybreak.  Legal, if
you don't hit the shma until first light.  
So anyhow, there we were crossing the Sinai looking for a place to
plug in the electric lights -- 

You must know that much of shaharit is very beautifully written
Hebrew.  Of various styles.  
Not all of it though.

Miymor Letodah, Psalm 100.
I learned that in English in 3rd grade at Shady Hill School in
Cambrige.  So I was 8 then.  I think that was my best year to dae.
I made a map of the solar system with a washtub, and lectured on
it to my class, and we had several very pretty apprentice teaches,
and also some pretty girls in my class, especially Kitten Cushman. 
I saw her in my 20s, at an upper East Side apartment, having
walked acorss the park, as I did and one could do in those days,
from my grandmother's Upper West Side apartment, really much
nicer.  But I was still too much in awe of her to make a play,
though I suppose by then I was old enough to do so.
They lived in a nice house on Shady Hill , and we were in one of
the run-down old neighborhoods, though we had much more land and
trees . 

At Ashrei (p85) I try to sit down for a minute, since that's what
it says.  A bit affected though, and I just touch and go, though I
do try to stretch out my legs for a minute, as if I really
belonged there for a minute.
The Artscroll points out clearly that this is an alphabetic
Psalsm, each line starting with a successive letter of the Hebrew
alphabet.  This is a conceit in Jewish religion -- from some
period or other -- that if you put each line of the alphabet in
your psalm or prayer or piyut, that you can be considered to have
offered thanks, prayer, or contrition as the case may be for every
possible situation.  Keeps the rubes awake too, I don't doubt.

The British have a charming way of trying to use the English
language.

Scenes through a railway car window.

In the hospital on Rodos was a guy who would come in to give
haircuts.  He would sometimes buy me a bottle of water.

Life is but a melachonly flower.
That is sung to the tune of 'Frere Jaques.'
I had intended to sing it once at the Zenith Camp circle, but
didn't, though it was the right day to have done so.

"Jerusalem, Jerusalem, sing for the night is o'er.  Hosana, in the
the highest, hosana for evermore."
Hosana is 'hoehea na' -- save us please.  It does not mean 'praise
to you.'
Jesus rode into Jerusalem, davka on a donkey to impress the rubes
with a bit of contrived retroactive prophetic fulfillment, and the
crowds waved palm brances shouted 'hosana' or rather, 'hoshea na'. 
R. Zalman remarks, reckon he came in on Hoshana Raba, the last day
of Sukot, when one walks around the bima carrying the lulav and
chanting Hoshea na.
    
Walked down to the Nonest George Washroom to wash my coffee pot,
in case it really can make Espresso.  Walked back to the shack and
knocked the icicles off my fingers.  They bill me for this luxury. 
If it wasn't for my dignity, I'd do a bunk. 
Weird way to make coffee, it seems to me.  We had all sorts of
things in the USA when I was growing up, but never that.  Drip and
Perc and who knows what.  Ground the coffee beans at the check-out
stand, as a matter of course.
My mother always drank strong coffee.  Might make about 4 cups of
instant diner coffee from one.

Many of the psalms are very beautiful.  Nature poems.
I'm on page 90-91.  "sends the snow like fleece"

Kol haNeshma -- another beautiful psalm, giving praise for
everything.  R. Zalman did it once at a retreat, and very nicely.

Might be it works and might be it don't.  That espresso routine. 
Sure makes it come out bitter though.  This is a yuppie
desideratum?   That and a few sugar cubes might get me another 5
pages.
By golly it really does, if you don't mind a soupcon of
volatalized bakelite.  Gvalt am I cosmopolitan now.  Wait till I
show the rubes back at the Moshav.  Like Eliahu, even if he does
import organic coffee beans from Brazil.  On credit of course.
Luciano, from Napoli.  His father was soldier passing through. 
Died somewhere in the north in the war.  Maybe an undercover
officer, something noble.  His mother was by all appearances a
good woman, and it was proper of Eliahu to bring her to Israel for
her last years.  Yitzak would go and sit and talk with her at
legth, and Yitzak is a true nobleman.  He admired her, and his
good opinion cannot be begged nor bought.
I mean, coffe tastes bad enough as it is, did they have to invent
a process to make it more bitter.   

"and a double-edged sword in their hand"  ( Psalm , page 94.)  I'm
not sure what this is, but it sounds like it might be real useful
on some occasions, so I'll try to keep in mind to have it at hand
when needed.
Of course that's the whole point of davening from the siddur.  Not
much for what happens while you do, before going back to the house
for a bowl of cornflakes -- and Shmuel Silver says, when you
finish davening, eat breakfast -- and that is a great wise
teaching, for otherwise you might float off on the first or second
passing cloud, and never get anything done.
That is, the poiht of davening is to have at hand what you need
when you need it.

p95.  How much music they must have had with their religion in the
good old days.  Nowadays only the Reformies do that, I read that
they once had a flute at Shabat morning service.
R. Shlomo says once, I have it down somewhere, if the -- Cochmaim,
or whatever we call them -- had known how long the Exile would
last -- it still going on, otherwise the world would look llike
one of those pretty pictures in the JW giveaway tracts -- the JW's
really are close to Judaism in many respects -- their morality,
and acceptance, even love, of modern knowlege, and their love of
careful exegesis of biblical text -- it was some of those tracts
that sustained me as I lay on the beach at Rodos, though I should
never have bought the package, and fortunately did not.

I've been baptized once or twice.  A Jew who has been baptized is
thenceforth known as a Jew with wet hair.  Until it dries.

But it ain't reciprocal.  One who converts to Judaism,
halachically, cannot halachically unconvert.  That door slams shut
behind you, and like R. Zalman once said, if a bit later you find
yourself on a train on the way to the gas chambers, that's the cut
of the cards.

At the very least, regardless of where his spirituality then goes
-- for surely that is something that no mman can constrain -- a
convert must acknowlegement himself permanently politically
obligated to the Jewish people.  As are the German people, for the
sins of their forefathers.
So ok, there was much heroic resistance amongst the German people,
and at incredible risk.  Well, some resistance anyhow.  The White
Rose movement, for one.  Weisse Rose.
"All those, known and unknown, who held aloft the torch of truth
amidst the darkness of human ignorance."  I wanted to say that a
Sufi weekly meeting in Hamburg once.  At the home of Maria Dvorak,
which was on a street in the old Jewish quarter, next to the
University.  R. Shlomo's uncle went from there to his doom,
because he would not leave his congregants.  There's a plaque to
him in one of the clean new squares.

You can maybe see why I can only maybe do a little of this at a
time, and with coffee and bad jokes and walks in the cold between.

p100 -- Shirat HaYam.

Incidentally, no-one in Israel uses the Ashkeazi s in place of the
Sephardi t, except a few of the frummies.   R. Shlomo did so, but
as R. Zalman said, he really was from the old world.
What they speak in Zurich is even stranger, probably closest to
Yiddish.  Both Yiddish and Swiss-Deutsche have branched off from
Alt-Hoch--Deutsch, so I hear the latter and think it Yiddish.
I suppose this is the only natural German-speaking Yiddish
community left.

Drowning the Egyptians in the Reed Sea -- a lake swampland, filled
with papyrus reeds, not the salt sea between the Sinai and Arabia
-- is burying one's sins.  Getting througgh the Reed Sea -- and it
is said that each person who crossed the Reed Sea had to find
their own path -- is threading our ways through all the hassles of
everyday life.
Shirat HaYam is magnificent language, no doubt one of the oldest
passages in the Bible.

So ok, Borachu.
This is the essential start of services.
One stands at borachu, and the frumies then sit down, but I remain
standing.  The frumies can be rather opportunistically
literalistic, like.  And then sanctimonious about it.  
Well, some maybe, most are maybe quite tolerant and genuinely
humble albeit insular.

The whole passage, through the shema to the Amidah, is magnificent
rhetoric, long lines building and  building, almost like sea-waves
maybe.
Of course I speak only of the Hebrew, I don't know ho the English
holds up.
R. Shlomo says in a Yakar talk that I transcrdibed, the Hebrew
siddur has direct spiritual designation, but as for the English
translation of it -- he said, "I don't know".

It's not that this stuff is so trgic -- that one of Atum's
romantic misconceptions of Judaism -- I mean, the Shoah was a
terrible thing, for which we may yet be avenged, but we don't
dwell on it, except some of the USA Jews who have nothing else in
Jewish practice upon which to pin their identity -- Pin the Tail
on the Donkey was the childhood game that somehow evokes that --
many childhood games are such -- Ring around the Roses is of
course a game of the Black Plague -- "a pocket full of Moses /
ashes, ashes / wee all fall down,."  Dead, that is, with the ring
of sores of Bubonic plague.
The goyim had killed that cats that ate the rats that carried the
fleas that held the germs of bubonic plague.  So then the goyim
blamed the Jews.

Day's getting sunny and mild.  Vanzetti was right, no snow today.

I think that Cousin George likes having nothing but pigmeat to put
on the table when I walk by.
PVK teaches, see things from your antagonist's point of view, but
often its best not to.  Unless of course you want to forgive your
enemies, and as Ciel once said about sex, Sometimes I wonder, why
would anyone want to do THAT.
These days I find it hard to imagine what anyone would ever want
not to.                                                   

I think I leave out words now and again.  Well, put 'em back in if
you can, I ain't getting paid for all this, not even by the hour.

For our graduation from John Marshall Junior High School, which
was of course held in the Rose Bowl, we learned the school song:
"In the valley lies John Marshall / 'twitxt the mountains and the
sea / of all schools in east or west / our love is most for thee /
we all love thee dear John Marshall / we love your cloths of gold
/ we love your friendly spirit /I and the truths that you unfold /
True to John Marshall, her standards so high / with XX ever, our
praises reach the sky / friendships unbroken / will carry us on
through life / We'll fight with brain and brawn to rally round
your standard, / onward, John Marshall on."

"John Marshall 'Twixt" said the louts.
                 
An excellent bowl of pasta with butter and grated cheese and even
a spoonfull of chopped garlic (at my request) at Honest George's,
washed down by a bottle of 35% Apfelsaft.  The cook is from
Macedonia, a refugee perhaps, and a thoroughly decent sort.  He
always goes out of his way to speak to me with frienship.

I put the leftover chunks of bread, only somewhat stale, in my
pocket, to throw out as usual for the grey wolf.
One copes.  Especially the wolf.

Well, if Russia really plans to sell arms to Syria, we're back in
the cold war, with Israel caught in the middle again.  Only this
time with a lunatic in the White House.

Ok, I'm at the Boruchu, let's eee where we can go.

The kdusha is very high indeed, one scarcely wants to speak it
aloud, only inwardly.
One enters, or is invited to enter, the Divine Presence -- but
everyone seems to agree, one cannot stay there.  So after a moment
you fall back, innumerable light-years back as it were, where you
are no longer blinded by that light, but can view it and give
praise.  For to observe such things is maybe more pleasure than to
be a part of them.       

For me, "bruch shem kvod malchuto" -- praise be the -- ultimate --
in its place -- my touchstone happens to be the Abode dining room
with some fresh bread baking (that having been my first view of
the Abode, on a R. Zalman weekend) -- that is, the comfort of
having found shelter in a truly spiritual community, composed of
warm and friendly beings.
Where one may take comfort in being surrounded by those who serve,
and whose faith, collectively if not individually, is not subject
to being shaken by crisis.

R. Zalman once said, "that all my friends should be under the same
blankets".  Or maybe he said, 'blanket'.  I think that's in his
writings, early ones, not later than early 70s.

NEWS ITEM (Retyped in its entirety from The International Herald
Tribune, 21 Feb '05):
"LONDON:  Mayor Ken Livingston will robably express regret this
week for comparing a Jewish newspaper reporter to a Nazi
concentration camp guard, his deputy said Sunday  (AP)"

The logic and structure of the siddur is not always the clearest. 
I mean, how is it that all this is some sort of subordinate clause
to praise of the sun, or some such.
Isn't that more for the Aztecs or whatever they are than for us
Western Civilization United States of Monotheism Juat Say No? Nu?
(p116)
But I digress.	

p117:  "to listen, to learn, and to teach"
Cf. Chaucer, "and gladly would he learn, and gladly teach"
(Canturbury Tales, Introduction)

(though the next line does seem to put a bit of a sectarian spin
on it:  "all the words of instruction of your Torah" -- I mean,
who snuck that line in.

"and unify our hearts to love and fear" (L_AHavaH v' L_YIRAH)
This is an extremely important concept, and we mark it by
gathering the four tzitzit in one hand -- these are the two sides
of the road to the Divine, and they are both important, both
essential, and must be balanced.  And that is not so easy
sometimes.
I would say that love is the most important, and should be
predominant.
Everyone knows the story of Rebbe Reb Zusha, who lived his life in
love of G_d, but one day asked to experience Yirah, Awe (somewhat
misleadingly termed fear, although there is substance in that
translation too) of G_d.  So his wish was granted, and he was so
overwhelmed with -- terror, I suppose, but maybe not quite that --
that he hid under the bed and would not come out.

I want to say, that was where I was at when a lay on the beach on
Rodos for several years, and walked, at best, nor farther than the
small-boat harbour, less than a kilometer away.
But also I think I was convinced, or beguiled by the idea that, 
that I was bound by the Shabat strictures on not walking more than
2000 parsangs or whatever those things were.

Well, this is not the place to go back into all that.
So, "moving right along":

"from the four corners of he earth" -- here I am more comfortable
with the Ashkenazi version, which is "and gather our exiles from
the four corners of the earth" -- correction, it is there that one
takes the 4 tzitzit in hand -- and so one can concentrate on Jews
in galutz in the 4 parts of the world -- 

"who chooses Israel with love" -- this too is very important, for
all the Christians claim to have cornered the market on it.


Note that the Shma is a short but compound statement -- that is,
it is two conjoined statements.  'Shma Yisrael '' elokeha '' Ehad
AND you shall cleave to --- that which is expressed in all
religions -- with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with
all your possessions.
It is the second half that is the most important.  It calls for a
comitment to joy, in the best sense of that term, and it calls for
a commitment to meditation practices, on  whtever path or paths
one chooses, and it calls for a substantial person commitment to
sharing one's wealth with those less fortunate.
The rest of the shma simply emphasizes the importance of the
precceding statement -- that it guide your actions private and
public, in the home and in the business world, etc.
And also it is said that if this religious commitment -- religious
in the broadest least ideologic sense of that term -- is the
guiding principle of a society, that the favorable impact will
extend even to ecology; and that conversely, a degenerate society
is more prey to natural disasters.
Well, the Hopi, being dependant for their crops on natural
rainfall, have based their survival on this principle.

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