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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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I continue to read Vanity Fair, Thackery's that is, with
increasing reluctance.  Behind a florid style, it seems rather
badly written with a herky-jerky plot the lurches of which are
covered in bombast.
Dickens' precison it ain't got; nor his gloom neither.
And every so often the author steps back from the plot and lets
fly a slag or two at one or another of his characters, espcially
poor Becky.  Self-righteous little pratt. 

And as to the Amidah it seems at times as if we might as well be
praying for the good health of Queen Victoria, of the Exilarch of
Babylon; for the Amidah, as Evelyn Garfied points out, has not
been pruned in 1500 years, and was aid to merely accrete it hasn't
even acreted since that unfortunate try of Sammy the Runt.

Oh well.  Even a beattle may get to the end of the oddest
linoleum, and so way me and I'd like to call of Thackery's editor
for a few choice words if they weren't all dust and laughing at us
as such for buying the ruddy old book.
        
"Now Nebuchenezzar was the king of Babylon / He couldn't stop his
baabble so he had to travel on." 

"Said the big Obidiah to the littler Obidiah, I am dry, Obidiah, I
am dry.  Said the llittler Obidah to the big Obidiah, So am I,
Obidiah, so am I ."
     (I think that USA Negro, of a white ripoff of same, but I
can't recall where I read it, and imagine I would rather not)

OK;  
'Emeet' (p125) is like like one of those horns they sound in the
1000 yard indoor track run, which tells you that you have only 10
more laps of the same to go, or some such.  to which the
congregation does reply, 'Emet', so they are all toether again for
the first time since the boruchu and the last time until the next
kaddish.

Orthodox davening is rather like a bunch of greyhounds running,
though in Israel in the gentler sects , reform (and worse yet
conservative, for these are anglophiles, nor even Shenkin street
irregulars, who can be counted on to smash an icon or two before
they go home to their watercress-and-ham sandwiches) everyone
stays together, led like sheep by a Rabbi paid more than all the
Modi'in congregation combined), perhaps to the tune on an electric
organ, so the young ladies might perhaps convert and marry
Bismark, and Disraeli darned near did)
Well, now I'm shooting from the hip with my hat over my chin,
which is sometihng that ordinarily I only pretend to do.

		
The whole passage from Emet on down to the Amidah says just about
nothing, but does so with a fine rhythm indeed.
Again, I speak only of the Hebrew.

Woe to those who go to shul only on the High Holidays, for then
its all packed with piyutim, like the straw in a box of China, and
the translations are atrocious -- "screech and preach" said Aliza
Artz back at Haverat Shalom.

Rina Kling once led Ne'ilah.  I still remember it.
The daughter of Rav Kling, of Kentucky if I recall, and a fine
successor she might have been, but she was just a decade or so too
early to have gone into the rabbinute in her college years. 

Ok, let's try to knock off the Amidah.  If I can finish this, then
maybe tomorrow I go down to Olivone and get something to eat.

lst bracha -- Avraham, Yitzak, Yaakov -- these are all different
concentrations -- Avraham is active, magnanimity (chesed), led
donkey caravans across the Arabian desert, says Albright.
Yitzak is passive tho also gevurah.  The strength of taking a
passive stance -- like a mountain pool below cliffs, that
reflects.  Yaakov is action, always making his way in the
realworld -- he is maybe the first physical figure in the Bible --
"a perfect man" they say, meaning, not that he never did anything
wrong -- heck, he comes on stage trying to take over his brother's
birthright -- but that he was unquestionably human.
Well, I don't have this down just right.
Of course it is Yaakov, not his more exalted predecessors, who is
the anchor figure of the children of Irael.

At this point, the rhetoric of the Amidah is very strong.

As for the kdusha -- well, one gets through it, it is a nice
chance to get high for a moment or so.
As for singing the repetition of the Amidah -- and in that tedious
way the younger generation especially does at Modi'in -- oh, go
blow pink bubble-gum, it's more religious.

The Sfard siddur has chochma, binah, and da'at, the Ashkenaz gives
us binah da'at and sechel if I recall.
The first three are high and pure.  Chochma is what PVK calls Pure
Intelligence, it is the blue of Krishna, and it is the active
light that one can shine on anything and make it conceptually
clear, which is what PVK did -- whatever he turned his attention
on, by speaking of it in meditation class, was clarified.
I fancy I do a little bit of the same, but fancy on.

Binah is I think Perusha, it is passive, or rather, reflective, it
is the faculty of intuition.

Daat is what Einstein had, the sort of analytic intelligence.

And sechel, at least in the Yiddish sense of the term, is what you
better keep in your hip pocket to get past all the idiots that an
honest man must work around to get down his own road.
As Brecht said, If it wasn't for corruption an honest man wouldn't
have a chance.

Well, up to number 5 -- slach lanu -- the pious will there thumb
the chest, in the general direction of the heart if they have one,
the better to arouse or awaken it to repentance.  I find it now
quite enough to touch the region of the heart chakra with opeon
palm, and slowly to rotate the hand clockwise a few times, which
PVK says enhances that chakra.   For if it is thrugh hardness of
heart that we do bad (if not evil), Book 2 of the bible so
repeatedly tells us, blaming it all on Pharoh if ever there was,
then the way to melt the heart is not by striking it, but by
consoling it with a compassionate touch.

Then, having repented our sins, which , as everyone knows and the
siddur says, are what keep all our doctors in their Mercedeses, we
then pray for healing.  And here one may add those for whom one
prays.  And so says the siddur.

As for blessing the years, nowadays I would say, pray that those
idiots in government and industry take some care for the
environment.

And as for our exiles, pray that those racially prejudiced idiots
in the Israel government stopping obstructing the aliyah of the
remining Ethiopians, and instead facilitate it.

As for the prayer for justice, just ask that Eliahu not get
hassled for his hustles, for by him hustling is merely an art
form, he never gets rich from it, being too good-hearted ever to
take advantage at someone else's expense.  But mostly this bracha
is for me just a warning to look out, the Curse of Sammy the Runt
is coming down the pike next, so stay awake enough not to say
Amen, because to curse in the course of saying blessings is
getting too darned close to doing black magic, and for that can
burn or whatever they do there -- catch cold from leaky roofs more
likely, over and over and over again without a shot of rum and
lemon and TV to take away the pain -- in hell.

As for the prayer for the scholars , well that's a nice time to
put in a good thought for those little old white-haired men in Mea
Sharim, scurrying along the streets trying to buy the necessities
of Shabat so they can invite a few guests, before going back to
shul and climbing back up into one or another ethereal loft.

And as for the prayer for Jerusalem, it should only ban all autos
and bring back donkey-wagons, well, hope that its religious
institutions, of all branches of Judaism, may create an ever more
vibrant inellectual--spiritual culture.

And as for this "sprout of David", pray for the government leaders
of Israel, that they might get some sense.

Then comes space for personal prayers, which one should remember
as needed.  And as I often say, Adrian Gomez said to me, don't
forget to pray for yourself.  As Hillel says, if I am not for
myself, who will be for me (Pirke haAvot)

And as for the return to Zion, this is of course Jewish
resettlement of the land of Israel, Zionism in short, and so the
resanctification of the land and the seaons as celebrated in all
the rituals of the Jewish calendar, and as seen in all the farms
and orchards of Israel, except of course the cotton fields watered
with half-cleaned sewage water and depleting the water table.

Then there is giving thanks that "He has the whole world in his
hands" as a Christian pop song of the USA 1950s used to say --
"'HE''s got you and me brother, in 'HIS' hands; 'HE''s got you and
me sister, in 'HIS' hands -- 

And as for the final blessing, for peace, this, says I is where
your pray for all the soldiers of Israel, men and young women,
that they should stay always alert, as much as needed, and never
get taken by surprise by terrorist, and also not have training
accidents.  And so you sweep your mind up and down the land of
Iasrael, from the Hermon to Eilat, as needed, illuminating
whatever or whoever needs it.  And also remember all he other
aspects of he armed forces, including he civillian shomerim,
Ethiopian so many of them, and also those in the intelligence and
secret services, they should stay wise and alert.

The Sfard siddur has a very nice after-blessing, tho noted as
optional.  In that one asks to be humble, to be able to learn from
all, that is, to be able to take cues from the action of the Tao
as it acts through whoever we encounter.  For one thing, that
means when you meet a good woman, don't get up on your high horse
and act so pure, learn whatever it is she has and wants to teach
you.			
And if we don't dare ask all this for ourselves, being miseralbe
sinners and all that guff -- PVK could be most outspoken against
that arrogance of false humility -- "we miserable worms down
below" he would say, carricaturing it -- and R. Shlomo too said,
to be humble does not mean to be a Schmendrik, a doormat -- 
so if you don't dare ask for this in your own name, the siddur
helps out and says, ask for it that the will of Heaven may be
fulfilled -- as Jesus phrased it, "Thy Will be done on earth as it
is in Heaven"                   

Oy.  that takes me through whatever it was I had to say about the
Amidaah.

And though my tone is jive, that's only packing, like crumpled up
old newspaper, for thoughts that have sat with me for some time,
and through many davenings.

Well, its 19:45 and the Resotrante is dark I see.  Honest George
and the Georgettes have gone back down to their sung little homes
in the valley , leaving me once again to defend Campra alone
against Yetti's.  So far I have succeeded, assisted of course by
the cat.

Often at Modi'in the only beings up and awake on shmira would be
me and Jeffry, and Jeffry would be off chasing rabbits,
I was armed with a powerful foot-long flashlight.

Ok, as for tachunun. 
This, for better and worse, is what we have in place of the
Catholic confession.  
It has one pair of great lines -- "let me fall into the hands of
the LORD, and not into the hands of man" -- and that is a great
line, for everyone knows that the evils and evildoers of he world
are drawn to us in response to our own sins and sense of sin --
and the latter is more risky than the former, as you can see if
your drop LSD, or even sit too long in the meditation tent, and
suddenly see in how many ways you have failed, and so lose the
heart and chutzpah that had given you the charisma to fend off all
the jackals who line our daily roads -- and that too is why every
space cadet needs ground control -- PVK says, when you are going
through the dissolve of the dissolve et coagule, you lose all your
charm.

And so paired with that line, coms a bit later the line, "Depart
from me all ye evildoers,for the LORD hath heard my prayers.
Of course at the Tachunun one sits down and puts down one's head
upon the arm -- right arm in the morning, left arm in the
afternoon, thereby I suppose cleaning up both right-brain and
left-brain for the day, or visa-versa, I don't know.
That is, one takes for a few moments the posture of despair, the
better to acknowlege and cleanse oneself of it.
So at "Depart from me" i stand up and take a step or so forward,
the better to tell the sob's to get on back to hell and leave
decent people be.
And then, having made onself again fit for battle, one makes a few
sallies of light on behalf of everyone else -- "Guardian of Isrel"
etc.

Now as for the Monday and Thursday extention of the tachunun, I
must say I can't get into it, and brush past it as fast as
possible, scarcely reading one phrase in ten.  It does seem to me
dated to the time of the European exile, before we had
reconqueresd the land of Israel.
And to have much too much self-denigration.  "Impurity of the
nidah" indeed.  I mean, really.

Well, that's it for the tachunun.  

The tachun are followed by a kaddish, which is of course the
cleansing as well as punctuation of the preceeding section.

Of the reading of the Torah I have nothing much to say, if only
because I'm so rarely in shul.  Of course on days when the Torah
is read one should make a point of going to shul if one is needed
to make the minyan.

As for Ashrei, it makes a somewhat awkward answer and resolution
to the tachunun if one is davening without a minyan, though I
suppose it is an answer of sorts.

Psalm 20 comes next, and is rather an answer to the prayers of the
the tachunun -- remember that you really have done a number of
mitvot in your time, so take heart, for heaven, being fair, may
yet take account of them, and things we be all right -- 

I don't know about you, but I am always inclined to fear the
worst, and so be a bit surpirsed when, as they usually do, things
work out ok -- 

It is a supersition to suppose that if you just keep worrying
about things, your defenses will be strongest, because as long as
you expect the worst nothing bad can take you by surprise -- 

The Soupy Sufis used to say, don't even think about bad
possibilities because that might bring them into being .
HIK seems to come close to saying that tho I can't recall where or
what, if in fact he did.
Well, there is something in it, and that explains much about what
we call "beginner's luck" .
But too, one must consider possible dangers ahead on one's path,
the better to be able to evade them.

As for the Kdushas d'Sidra, I once wrote and asked if one could
say that when davening alone, and was told, yes, one should.
It is in effect a duplicate of the Kdusha -- they say, for those
who come late to shul, but that rings false -- I suspect, like the
pre-boruchu shma, it was an insert, never taken out when the need
had passed, for use at times when the occupiers forbad what they
recognized as the shma, and as the kdusha.

And as for its repetition in Aramaic, that being the vernacular,
well of course nowadays Aramaic is not the vernacular, but change
to the siddur happens a bit slowly in orthodox Judaism.

"A prayer of David," which if I recall is only in nusach Sfard,not
the Ashkenazi, has some good lines -- had it not been for the
LORD, they would have eaten me alive -- which surely applies to my
surviving thaat beachfront vacation on Rodos -- 
Then that is followed by "give me a sign" -- and the answer to
"give me a sign" is immediate -- "House of Jacob, let us walk in
the light of the LORD" -- so I that I go outside, if I am in the
Modi'in Bet Knesset, and gaze at the beauty of the day, for surely
that is a clear sign of the goodness of the kingdom of the LORD. 
Or here in Switzerland it is even easier, for all I have to do is
gaze up at the mounains, magnificent in any weather.

I always say, Nature may kill you, but it will never mock you.

Then in nusach Sfard comes the Psalm of the Day -- there are
differences in order wiht nusach Ashkenazi, but noting of
substance would seem to hang on those differences.

As for the Psalm of the Day, I think that reflects the schedule of
events in the capital of Israel, which was Jerusalem.
On the first day, if you have business there, you walk up, if you
have properly made preparation, whihc includes a proper measure of
purification.
One the second day you have arrived, and get to marvel at all the
wonders of the city.
Those two psalms are very nice.
The next two, for obvious reasons , are not.
The psalm for day 3 seems to indicate that this was the day on
which alleged law-breakers were tried.
And similarly, it seems that Day 4 was the day on which convicted
law-breakers were punished.
Day 5 calls upon one to begin preparation for Shabat, and Day 6
makes that most emphatic.

The Rosh Hodesh Psalm, Psalm 104, is very grand indeed.  Maybe the
greatest of the Psalms.

Delmore Schwartz seems to approach that in some of his poems.

As for the Elul psalm, it has that lovely passage, set to a lovely
tune nowadays, "One thing and one thing only have I asked -- to
sit in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, and to
behold the goodness -- 'of Heaven', one might say.

There are then several passages in nusach Sfard which are not, as
I recall, in nusach Ashkenaz for weekday prayers, although they
are for shabat.  These are nice passages but maybe do not need
discussion here.

Dark has fallen, and its easier to write now.  I suppose I shoiuld
do Ma„ariv, but it is allowed,though not encouraged, to wait.
But Ma'ariv should maybe be the prayer one says before going to
sleep.  In the good old days, before electric light, that would of
course be the case.

Oh, before I forget.  Tachunun are also said in the afternoon. 
Modi'in gets out of that, for reaons that I have never heard
persuaisvely or even coherently explained, but the sophistic
device of starting mincha just before shkiya, so that one comes to
the place of tachunun just after shkiya, when tachunun can still
be said, but having already begun mincha one is obligated and so
enabled to conclude mincha, only without tachunun.  Fry me a BLT.

Well, now to the Alenu, but I need a bit of a break.

A clear night, with nearly a full moon.  The grey wolf is out on
the snow, a good sign and a great -- honour, really.

No one at all at Cammpa but me, no cars in the parking lot. 
Haven't had that since late  fall, before the snows.

So ok, to the Alenu.
One alway hits it with a sense of relief.  Last lap.
For properly, davening should always seem as if it will go on
forever.  Until it ends.

I always say, when you enter the Rova, the Jewish Quarater of the
Old Cit, you take off your watch.  And when you come to kotel
plaza, and then start davening, time stops.
And afer davening, it is nice to have a little bite to eat in
Huvra plaza of the Rova, as in the old days one ate as celbration
before the LORD.

And after that, when you find yourself walking back up out of the
Rova, is time enough to wonder how late you will be to the various
appointments you had planned.  Eg breakfast at the Bet Shmuel
Youth Hostel, the nearest affordable respectable place to the Old
City.  Though I one see a Greek orthodox old hotel by Jaffa Gate,
the Lark I think it is or was, that surely seemed respectable and
quiet.  I once stayed at the Petra, just inside Jaffa Gate,
because I had found no other place for Shavuot, and it was the
Hotel Amdur (really) before the 1948 War -- though on reflection
I'm now a bit confused, for in 1948 the Hotel Amdur was in Zion
Square, at the base of what is now the Midrahov, and as LaPierre
or whatever his name is writes in 'O Jerusalem', it suffered a
terrorist bombing by two British deserters hired by the
Jordanians.
Well, the Petra Hotel had and I would guess still has and is,
quite sleazy, with hookers and drugs and weirdos and whatnot, and
I made a great mistake in opting for a dorm room, the which held
several weirdos, and so in short that stay was a disaster, I
flipped out and didn't get back to Zenith that summer, that was
1997, tho I had been trying to hold onto my money to do so.
But everyone knows, you do not pinch pennies in preparing for
Shabat, nor of course for a Festival day.

Well, as to the Alenu:

It does have a nice cadence, even if not the most inspired
wording.
As I say, one skips over the lines "For they prostrate themselves
to vanity and nothingness" . First of all the goyim ain't quite
that bad, and anyhow, it's none of our worry what they do.

The bowing in the Alenu is the closest you will get to the Islamic
zikr.  PVK has sometimes said, or nearly said -- when your
prostrate yourself, it is as if you will stay there forever,
unless the King  takes mercy on you and raises you up again in
forgiveness of your sins.   As always happens, as we say, Ki
l'olam chesed-o, for his gracousness endures forever, and as they
say, bis m' ALLAH , er Rachman , er Rachmin -- in the name of the
Highest -- [which is predominantly] absolute mercy and absolte
compassion.

And then as one rises up, one rises up not merely into
forgiveness, which is all that one had asked for, but into the
Presence of the Highest -- I used to think of the White Mountains
in the National Park in New Hampshire.           

It had not occured to me before , but it seems that AeFes ZOLaTO -
- and those are words I don't recall elseewhere in siddur nor
Chumash -- is here analogus to to    'illa la   

The passage beginning "We therefore hope --- " seems to me to need
a bit of inner rewrite.  In orthodox davening, we can't chage the
words, but we can re-align the kavanah.
So here I would think of PVK's line -- "building a a beautiful
world of beautiful people" (though in the late 90s he would add,
"amidst an ugly world of ugly people".  So maybe Meshiach got
side-tracked.

Oh -- when one bows down -- I say, this is not groveling in the
dust before the Sovereign -- though that image does have its
value, as Ihave suggested -- but rather, this is Sunbear (an
Indian who came by the Abode and wrote books and so on) -- drawing
strength from the earth.  And so as I stand in the Swiss
mountains, and acknowlege the strength I draw from them, I can
then rise up empowered to continue trying , with my comrades,
however scattered we may be, to do my bit if not my part to "build
a beautiful world of beautiful people"
So that's how I rewrite the end of the Alenu.
Of course part of that shift is to make a change from the
awkwardly triumphalist 'they' to a simple 'we',

I think you have to have a text of the Alenu at hand, English will
do for this, though of course im general it should be the Metsudah
interlinear blingual -- in order to follow clearly what I'm
saying, tho it ain't that deep nor complex.  Well, deep maybe, but
not complex.

There is a concluding paragraph in nusach sfard that is not in
nusach Ashkenaz, and which I am not accustomed to and so
disregard.  And for that matter, I do not recall hearing it in the
Modi'in minyan, tho they daven nusach Sfard, at least most baal
tfilla's do.   Hai of course davens whatever he brought from
Cochin, of which I would guess he is now a if not the leading
reprsentative in Israel.  But if he does, everyone else just goes
along in their own nusach.

Now, as to the "six verses of remembranc" (p226) which are
optional, and really are the last thing one would say.

Verse 1, remembering the Exodus.  
This is pretty basic to Judaism -- that each person must
continually think of himself as having emerged from slavery --
meaning, spiritual slavery, I should say.

And that is followed by, and paired with, an admonition to recall
the glories of the rule of Heaven that one has observed, and to
preserve that memory, for oneself and for others I would say.  So
this is the revelation at Sinai, but for me it is also, and
compatibly (though a bit of conceptual fitting sometimes required
in some places= the teachings I have heard from PVK, and also
picked up from being near Little Joe Gomez.
So that is why I have spent money at Honest George's Restorante,
to sit at a computer and type.

For it is too easy to lose heart and retreat into a somewhat self-
indulgent cynicism, especially after one's teacher takes leave of
this earth.

So ok.  The third verse of remembrance is to remember to forget
whats-his-name.
"But seriously folks", as Shalom Schwartz would say -- 
What's wrong with the New Germans is that they refuse to
acknowlege the existence of evil.  And I have barked my shins
against that at Zenith.  But evil does exist, and we must not
tolerate it.  As_it_is_said, He who is kind to the cruel will end
up having been cruel to the kind.
PVK once remarked, in the Abode Camp 70s, that there are beings
who, as it were, like to eat ingenue's.
And everyone knows, King Saul took pity on a representative of
Amalek, and for that was deemed by the Prophet Samuel to have done
great wrong to the future people of Israel,
And Islam too has a story, I am told, about Kidr, who is analogous
to Eliahu haNavi, passing by a man who is drowning, because he
forsees that that man will if he lives do great evil.
Of course a human being cannot emulate that pattern.  The rabbis
say, one is to emulate divine Chesed, and forbidden to emulate
divine Din.
So "blot out the memory of" does not mean, kill -- or even deport
-- Arabs from the land of Israel.  But itt does mean, don't
tolerate evil, and don't play games with it.
And that does mean, Yossi Beillin go to SoHo and take your Geneva
Accord with you for use in the privy (adjacent to which I did
indeed place such copies as were philantropically distributed to
all of us at Modi'in.  

Ok.  I have seen one or two people come to Zenith camp who I would
say had come to work ill.  And I have seen many take pity upon
them,and try to befriend them.  And I would say, such people must
be kicked out.  And indeed the Abode, in the good old days, did
indeed have a Bouncer -- I recall some apparent Christian types
come to the Abode, but they were maybe a cult, and I did not hear
what they said, but Elizabeth, Arif's wife, became at once quite
distressed, and I heard her saying, Who bounces -- (ie, serves as
the analog of a barroom Bouncer, and throws people out --
whereupon they will be supposed to bounce on the sidewalk and then
get up and walk away).

Well, let's move on.  That was the Attack of Amalek, in the
context of the book of Exodus.

Next there is the Sin of the Golden calf.  Rememember "how you
provked" the LORD in the desert.  The word there is HaQaTyPaT , as
far as I can make out.  Ir ia an onamatopoeic word, that means
quite an old word, and it seems to casry the sense of a spoiled
child nagging and nagging at a parent until the parent loses
temper.  Or baiting the parent, or seeing who far he can go in
wheelding something out of the parent.

For one who has received many undeserved graces and favors, maybe
from a sor of sense of guilt at not having earned them -- though
eeryone knows, and they used to say around the tipi, if you ask
for something then when you get it you better take it -- but
anyhow sometimes, instead of taking what we are given and then
trying to make good use of it, so as to have deserved it after all
-- sometimes instead we almost try to proovoke the giver, the
parent in a sense, to get angry and take it back.   And that helps
nothing.
So this is something important to keep in mind as one tries to go
along on the spiritual path.

So ok, then there is, Remember what the LORD did to Miriam on the
way out of Miriam.  
Textually, it is that Miriam criticized Moses, Moshe Rabbenu, our
one and only greatest leader, for having married a nigger.
Not unreasonable, I mean, someone in public position is not
entirely free to indulge his conscience, he must have some
consideration for what the neighbors would say.  Even if the
Africans, especially the Ethiopians, may be one of the holiest
people on earth.
So anyhow, Miriam was immeidately strickened with leperosy, from
which Moses cured her with the simplest possible prayer -- Hoshea
na -- Please heal her now.  (Na seems to mean both please, and
now, I suppose it is just an intensitive.)

So ok, my first reaction is, why ask to us to recall the sin of
Miriam.  I mean Miriam is just about the holiest person in the
Bible.  Remember that scene by the bullrushes, thek papyrus, in
Egypt, where she is just a little girl, and Moses has been cast
into the water in a little watertight, at least for a while, crib,
and Miriam instead of going home and getting past it, because that
is how life sometimes is in a tyranny, and we all have to grow up
sometimes -- well, now I'm starting to sound like Kitov in Book of
our Heritage, but that is an unearned achieement, for Kitov is
great, and really gets sympathetically inside the stories of the
Chumash, and even goes on from there -- 
so instead there is Miriam, still standing by the water, nearly
hidden in the reeds, after her mother has gone home.  Because she
is just a little girl and doesn't know what else to do.  And then
here comes Pharoh's daugher, walking down to the river for her
morning bath, with her handmaidens, and she is also a little girl,
only a few years older, trying very much to act grown up.  And she
sees the baby in the wicker basket, and her heart is moved, and
when she takes him out he starts to cry, and she tries to take him
to her breast but of course she can, and then Miriam comes forth,
for which of course she could have been killed, and says to
Pharoh's daugher, and she could have been killed even for daring
to talk to the daugher of a demi-god, shall I get a wet-nurse for
you, and Pharoh's daugher, trying very hard to act grown up, says,
as imperiously as she can, 'Go', and Miriam runs home and says
mama mama come quick it's all ok, come quick, and her mother is
nearly paralyzed with grief and can't understand what the girl is
talkig about, and comes along anyhow just to end the matter -- and
so it is that Moses grows up as an Egyptian prince and saves the
Jewish people -- 
So that was Miriam, and you ask us to reflect upon her sins -- 
I mean, gvalt, let us if you will reflect upon the sins of Moses -
- he kept trying to weasal out of his misssion with all sorts of
poor excuses -- I can't speak good, find someone more qualified, I
think I'll just stop off at this inn in the desert for a little
while to build up my strenght and then I'll go -- until the LORD
nearly strikes him down except that his wife Ziporah -- who I
suppose is the nigger, the Cushie from Ethiopia -- grabs some sort
of flint knife and circumcises their son and flings the bloody
foreskin in his face -- and what all that means one can't case,
but it does seem to have been powerful woman's magic and to have
saved history -- 
So anyhow, if you want us to remember the sins of someone, we can
remember the sins of Moshe Rabbenu, he always waa a bit of a pain
-- 
Or better, rememeber the sins of Aaron , the High Priest, that
thoroughly civilized chap who wore good clothes so well and
reprsented Moses, quite a wildman of the desert by then for all
that he had had a good upbrining -- that is, it was really Aaron
who represented Moses in dealings with Phareoh -- I mean you can't
really see Moses drawing up a contract of emancipation can you,
the guy could barely talk -- something about having been burned on
the lips with a hot coal when he a baby or something -- or so they
say -- 
and then there's Aaron, supposedly holding the fort while Moses is
up on the holy Mountain on the holdiest retreat that ever was or
ever will be, and everyone gets a little antsy and wantes a golden
idol or something, and Aaron won't even stand up to them, and then
Moses comes back down and says, Excuse me, I don't want to
interupt your party, but as a matter of fact I have no eaten nor
drunk for 40 days, and I do have some rather important things to
share with you, and please, what is going on -- and Aaron says,
it's not my fault, I just made a little fire and put in some gold,
and out came this calf -- 
I mean, gvalt , if we should remember someone's sins, lets
remember Aaron's -- that stuck up chump in all his flowing robes
and head-mitre and old that -- 

But remember Miriam's sins -- are you kidding -- if she's not
holy, who is -- 

And that's precisely the point.  As Alev once said to me, you will
keep wanting to make idols of people, and that's not quite fair,
because people are only people, and will mistakes, even the best
of them, so quit trying to deny your own freedom and your own
responsibility by making or someone an idol that you can say you
must, oh so nobly, follow bllindly -- 

Once I was standing around the tipi, and some of the great Indians
were there, wisdom that I could never dream of attaining, and I
said , most loyally, a good team player, 'I'm just follwoign
orders' -- a rather ghastly think for anyone to say, especially a
Jew -- and could feel at once tht they diapproved of that remarkl.

so that was , Remember the sin of Miriam.

And so at last we come to , Reember the Shabat and keep it holy.
I mean, we've just found out that we can't count even on Miriam,
or the Rabbi, or anyone to do it for us, so I've got to do it for
myself.
Well at least I don't have he sin of Miriam on my shoulders.
I mean, no one said, remember the sin of Shabat, so I guess I can
make Shabat even if she can't -- (as R. Shlomo might almost have
said, and you know I do have a reasonably good record with regards
to human rights, I mean I was once even arrested , with James
Farmer of course (head of CORE then -- this really happened by the
way) in a civil rights protest at the Schaeer Pavillion the day
before he opening of the World's Fair in Flushing, Long Island,
New York (in a last minute protest to take the fire away from a
miilitant non-violent demonsration organized by Milton Galaminson,
involving people standing in subway doors to stop the subways from
moving, for which some were clubbed quite violently -- so we were
to the good guys, and treated quite gently= -- 

So ok, that was one last little bit of autobiography, I think I
wrote of it in =auto1.zip , or =auto5.zip or whichever I call it -
- 

So anyhow, the point is, to wrap this up, and as Sue Persky once
said to me in a different context, more fool I, -- We're only
human.

And as Little Joe used to pray:  We mistake, forgive us.

And so one must go on, and each week sanctify the Sabath as best
one can, even though one will always be fallible, and always
sometimes make mistakes, but to sanctify the Sabath is to do the
best we can to add to the sanctity of humanized creation, whichis
the purpose of life of course, even tho we rarely even glimpse
what it might all up to.

And that really does take one to the end of weekday shaharit.

"So snick snack snout, this tale's told out."

-----------------------------------------------------------------
sa, Campra, 21 Feb '05, 12 Adar A, don't know Islamic date, a
clear cold evening, 22:25. with nearly a full moon over the snow,
and the grey wolf probbly gone to her/his den by now.  
================================================================