=scsaaa5 NOTES (sa) to =sc_aa5 Caveat Tabbxcat, Caveat Blackhat. ================================================================= =scsaaa5x Footnotes aa1--aa50 from =scaa5b =============================================================== (aa5-2) { Yes of course. Especially the laughing hyenas in the audience. I happen to be from Massachusetts. And we have been standing up to the Bushie's for a decade and a half. It's not that we regard Texas as practically outside the proper limits of the United States of America, we darned near felt that way about Connecticut. Or anyhow, Rhode Island. ] (AA5-3) [ GLOSSARY: abyis An abyis is a long-legged tropical bird of such exceptional social devlopment that some actually have personal servants within the flock. Such a bird is kown as the abyis of the abyis. They are voracious feeders, but frightfully lazy, and often stand underneath footbridges with their great bills open -- as it is said of the Pelican, "his bill holds more than his bellyx can" -- waiting for tourists to pass by and notice them. This is known as "looking down into the Ibis of the Ibis" . Some birds have become so wealthy from regurgitating and reselling all the fish thrown to them by naive tourists, that they have had to invest their profits in a chain a rather well-to-do hotels. For birds have no pockets. ] (aa5-4) [ PVK says that the 'Void' ain't empty, though it will most likeyl first strike you as tohu_v_bohu , but that it is the realm of all_possiblies (if I follow his conceptual schema, and I'm not confident that I do yet ). R. Zalman has an early essay, "And they bow down to darkness and the void", arguing that the void of Zen is not what the Alenu fears . And of course everyone knows, the Void of Zen is rather a warm and comforting place, especially if one is, only temporarily it must be hoped, a bit weary of life. I mean good grief, they een have cyberspace nudniks nowadays, and 24/7 for goyim. I mean one of the main results of the cyberspace revolution has been to let the rich invade and occupy the private speace of the poor. Gets so I hAve to make an excuse for not carryping a turned-on cellphone and a public number. I tell them, see, last week I was on a cliff-face hanging onto a bush that a bear was nibbling, when just then I happened to see an abandonned bee-hive, so i reached out and picked up my cellphone and called a guy who sells honey, and he coptered right out to get out, and then asked me if he could drop me off anywhere -- or let me repharse that -- ] (aa5-5) { Scarcely. Sadness calls in its own comfort. (And that is why mocking suffering is worse than inflicting it.) Nothingness is a state in which you can find no rest. (And that is why disrupting the religious practices of prsioners is a violation of universal human rights -- for a prisoner may be deprived of eerything, even his own body, in part or whole, but retains the universal right to his own soul.) (aa5-6) { Well, Satre did write of 'L'Etre et Neant', but I'm not clear how that fits in here. Though also, I forget what it was that Satre was talking about, except tht it was boring. } (aa5-7) The image of the Acrobat for a spiritual seeker is expressed in Rilke's poem , based on Picasso's picture, 'Les Saltimbiques' (aa5-8) { Well this is the verse from a Negro spiritual "Ezikeil saw the Wheel": : "Hey there sister, don't you walk on the cross (Way in the middle of the air) / Your foot might slip and your soul be lost " Or as we used to say, "Don't play with it." Like when you're driving down the highway at 90 miles an hour, or even 60, you don't play with the steering wheel. ) (aa5-9) Good heavens, how can a Reverend Minister say that. It is the Calling and responsibility of anyone who serves the LORD -- or anyhow the goyische Lord -- to be at hand to rendor succor "or whatever" whenever anyone does stupid disgusting things. We must love the sinners, even if normal folk are left to patch their own umbrullas, fellas. As_it_is_said, "He who is kind to the cruel" -- or to the stupid and just plain screwed up too -- "will in the end have been cruel to the kind" Well, less than a month till Zenith Camp gets here, if I don't run out of brown rice and granola first. If we are the Chosen People, how come we got last choice on the Real Estate. I mean, not to knock the Land of Israel, only maybe Switzerland has more diversity in less space, but with all our lawyers, we could maybe not have negotiated a bit of a time-share -- the Europeans come in summer to work on their tans while we get to go their mountains and lakes and eat ices -- and a Palestinian state with contiguous borders is established in any one of the lesser cantons, or maybe in Arkansas. (aa5-10) { As the New Yoerker used to say, Block that Metaphor. This one is getting out of control. First of all, the metaphor of a contract, or covenant, or Testament, or Old Testament, is, of course, only a crude antrhopomorphic approximation for a transcendental metapahysical necessity. So if you insist on sticking with the Kiddie Comics model, I will have to say: G_d cannot abrogate the contractd, it is ihnherent in Divine Creation. Now second of all, Reb Nachman is confusing two very differnet things. First of all, Art Green seems to have ben on to something when he stamped Reb Nachman with the oxymoron 'Troubled Master'. (Or whatever his phrase was, if I recall it wasn't quite that. 'Tormented Master' maybe, which is more clearly a self- contradicion. A Master is not troubled, much less tormented. Buddha is maybe the quintessential master. HIK was a Master. PVK was a Master, although he seems to have considered himself of lesser stature than HIK. And I'm not clear how much of that if any can be dismissed by noting that his father died suddenly when he was a child of ten. Reb Nachman says some great things, primarily about the phenomenology of 'spiritual fall' -- I know of no one comparable, though I'm almost illiterate in the literature of mysticism -- . And Reb Nachamn tells some very beautiful stories -- very fluid and romantic, surpising for someone of such an apparently dour personality. But he also comes up with quite a bit of shtuyot, like a deep-sea diver who brings up a bucket with gold coins and mud and a few dead fish. Sexuality is one area in which he seems to have been less than enlightened, if I recall. Now first of all, there is depression, which is a reasonably clean matter, like nice clean mud. But then there is manic depression, which is what RSC is describing here, with his metaphor of somoene intentinally placing himself off-balance, and intentionally riskign a fall. That is a self-destructive reaction to depression -- a sort of panic-strickened and counter--productive attempt to "kick out of it". It is characterized by "blunted affect" -- one often seems to be intentionally destroying one's relationsihps with other people, and with all that one believes in -- "burning one's bridges" as it were -- in a sort of misguided attempt to simplify a life that has become so complex, or rather so self-contradictory, that one is forced to a nervous breakdown -- which is, like Buridan's ass paralyed between two equidistant piles of hay, a situation in which one is forced to choose betwen two unacceptable alternatives. A conflict between loyalties, for example. As in Orwell's 1984, when his protagonist is forced by his torturers to either betray the woman he loves, or aaccpet the thing he fears most. I should add that there are various mays to "kick out" of depression, or certainly seem to be. PVK often faults Alexander the Great for cutting the Gordian knot, but that would seem to be the best way to deal with depression -- a quick fix, by chemical mood-elevators, or by some sort of decisive action -- a small war will do nicely -- or even by a "spiritual bypass", to use PVK's essnetially critical term -- all of which would seem better than paychoanalysis (if not psychotherapy), which Woody Allen describes a process that requires, not a lifetime, but a series of re- incarnations -- "and so it was that, upon reaching his majority, Tom betook himself, furnished only with a bindlestiff [ bundle_staff ] and accompanied by his faithful cat, to London where, after extensive enquiries, he found himself, for reasons he cold not fully have expalined evn to himself, in the offices of a Dr. Freud, lately of Vienna, who greeted him kindly with the words, "and what seems to be the problem." R. Shlomo is aid to have been nearly a genius, and to have studied in the best yeshivas, where he was regarded as one of the best students, but -- his education was disrupted by forced emigration -- and I do not know how much he was able to study in his childhood languages, nor even what those were -- German I assume, and maybe Yiddish, though I wouldn't know -- surely not Hebrew, and certainly not English -- and as far as I know, he did not have a secular education past his early childhood, when, if I recall reading so, he went in Vienna to Gynasia as well as to religious school. I am almost sure that he did not have a college education, nor anything similar -- unlike eg the late Lubavitcher Rebbee, who, if I recall, had a degree in Engineeering. If I recall, somewhere Neila xCarlebach remarks in passing that he got his Ph.d at Columbia, but she has rather a tangential relationship with the realm of truth. Nor does RSC, unlike PVK, seem to hae had an appetite for secular__self_education, And so in short one may find him ignorant of areas of areas of secualr knowlege necessary to the exegesis of points that he makes in almost entirely religous conceptualization. OK, R. Shlomo evolved an enchasnting style of English, sort of New York emigre Jewish English, much better than the guff you get from TV anchorpeople -- but one must acknowlege that it ain't his native tongue, Chum. And that will tend to impose limitations on how he like articulates his ideas. Not to mention that he seems to preent them via Talmudic logic, which is decidely weird, or so it seems to me with my two degrees in philosophy. I have a B.S. degree from Berkeley -- I got it between riots, too late for HUAC, too early for Free Speech, long gone by Peples' Park -- and everyone knows what B.S. stands for (which reminds me of the Arsenal joke, but you don't want even to think about that one -- set in Vermont, of course -- Norhtwet Kingdom, somewhere up by Goddard -- so anyhow I'm walking down Main Stret there, long hair and no doubt a headband -- I'd jumped ship from the SPU bus at a March on Washington when it became apparent that SDS was taking over the Peace Movement -- I was running the NYC office at the time, Gail Paradise having burned the membership file the past summer while I took a vacation with the family on Cape Cod -- so I'm standing by the Washington monument handing out SPU leaflets in the hope that all our lost sheep will pass by and take one and write home and so I'll rebuild the National SPU now that I'm back from vacation -- and at some point I just say to heck with it, and jump busses and go up to Vermont -- there was this chick, I open the door and she's naked, but that's another story -- better in the telling than the doing, but what ain't -- so anyhow this old Vermonter, they still keep a few in town for local colour, says, Hey Fred, ow many ole your orse got. So anyhow, after I got my B.S. degree, I got my M.S. degree -- which stands for "More of the Same" (actually it was an M.A. degree, which is pronounced, Master o' Farts ) -- and then went to Santa Barbara just before the Orgy at the Student Union -- incidntally, they set off a bit of dynamite at the Faculty Club that spring, but that was just a few thugs sent to kill the caretaker -- this is true, I passed by them , I was living in a trailer on Ernst Haeckel's land above the Trout Farm, and he was living in the trailer below me, and they asked me where he lived - - I hope no anarchy student went to jail ffor it -- and at Santa Barbara I darned near got my Ph.d in Philosophy -- and everyone knows, Ph.d menas -- "Piled Higher and Deeper" -- that's a Playboy joke if I recall -- and the truth is, I never had a chance at passing the Ph.d Comps, because I couldn't stand to read all that stuff -- by the time I got to page 90 of Kant's First Critique I could figure out everything he was going to say, and a lot simpler than he could, too -- and darned near But I digress. } (aa5-11) { Now truth to tell, most of these deepest depths bits ain't all that deep, not so's I can see. Fair to middlin' deep at best, I gussed. } (aa5-12) { That ain't repugnance, it's common courtesy. We leave a person in privacy at their time of sorrow, except insofar as we can offer help. And one may and can offer help without acknowleging that one has seen the weakness of another. And there are some bloddy yuppies, self-styled pychotherapists, who will share your weakness without offering real help. You say you love me, mazaltov, give me half your dollar bills, or stick it. } (aa5-13) { OK, stop it or we'll all become Jesus Freaks. Alev said, everyone wants to be seen. If you deny the reality of my sorrow, I might as well go out to MacDonalds, take a table for a year, and eat Cheeseburgers for breakfast. } (aa5-14) { Actually I'd be more inclined to ask, Who is this fruitcake. Or anyhow ask him to shovel snow for an hour or so. } (aa5-15g) [GLOSSARY: Beauty pallor. See 'Jackson'. And 'Geisha'. ] (aa5-16) { But older women do yearn to be beautiful, and like Plato says, beauty is an ok way to start. And there is tragedy in being a woman, and in ageing. Like PVK says, let us try to see "that which transpires behind that which appears." And like the Rabbis say, We are to emulate the Divine Attribute of Compassion, not that of Din. So ok, 'Divine Attribute' is more a Sufi term, and 'Compassion' is the pre_eminent attribute of Islam -- 'Bis_M_ALLAH Er Rachman, Er Rachhim' -- I mean all this 'ALLAH ho Akbar' stuff is for teenagers, they should all only get married to good women quick, before the donkey revolts. } (aa5-17a,b) That won't quite do. First of all, you must not merely love, but also honor your parents. Even you yourself have no intention of ever doing something as stupid as growing old. Like the Greeks say, a glorious death in battle will do quite nicely thank you. And like the Russians say, "Oh you cannot kick your Grandma off a bus" (Pete Seager sang that). I mean, who would want to stay a Jew when there are so many goyishce role models to choose from. If you don't beliee me ask the goyim. { But now compare this with that commerical recording -- Torah Times maybe -- where RSC, you are in the city, and someone comes up to you and says, which way to thus-and-such -- or says, what time is it. He doesn't really need directions, or need to know the time. He's saying, I don't know where to go. I don't know how to take control of my life. So there is a point to be made here, but the illustrations are entirely wrong. The point to be made is something like Shamai's, "greet everyone with a smiling face" . But it's much deeper than that. HIK says, "greet people with smiles under all circumstances" -- regardless of your personal despairs, keep up a good front -- not to gain anything for yourself, but in fidelity to the One who has sent you as a messenger. And RSC has reversed the focus in these examples. These are teachings about how I should behave in adversity, not about how I react upon seeing others in adversity. They are not about proper social behavior -- "Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone" -- but about keeping one's spirits up, and keeping faith in the Divine Purpose, despie the vississitudes of life. I'm not sure that I could begin to understand RSC without the conceputal background I am trying to get from RSC. I darned well couldn't follow much of Reb Nachman without it. And I must say, sometimes I hve to do a heck of a lot of instand conceptual translation to follow Reb Nachman. And from that perspective, it does seem to me that he makes a heck of a lot of mistakes. There is a dogmatic caste to neo-traditional religious Judaism that strikes me as quite unhelpful. Well, onward and upward. } (aa5-18) { Once again, this is the common conflation of Yud-_K)ay_Vav_(K)ay to Elo(k)im. The former is personal Deity, with Chesed predominante, and that is the Midrash of "Moses my son, bless ME" -- "May YOUR Chesed always prevail over YYOUR Din" -- and that I guess is Jesus Christ translated into Jewish -- Whereas Elo(k)im is the impersonal Deity of Creation, of natural causality, of history. And that is the explanation of how the Shoah could happen -- it happened because of the Stalin_Ribbentrop non_aggression pact, and because the western democraies did not oppose Franco, and because Churchhill was not heeded, and because of Chamberlin -- that isn't the answer you want, but it's the answer -- And this takes us to that Midrash about the Martyrs -- the 10 martyrs we have to remember on Rosh HaShana or whenever -- and they are spiritual masters, and they are pleading with the Heavenly Throne, how can YOU let this happen, and the answer comes back, be still lest I destroy the universe -- meaning, yes, you could by your great piety and spirituality, and the righness of your plea, prevail upon Heaven to supercede the natural laws -- but that by definition means the annihilation of cretion. And this is maybe an aspect, though nto the one I usually think of, of "it is forbidden to rely upon a miracle". My usual take on that, learned the hard way is, that one must cleave to the contrary teaching -- the Sufi "take one step toward us and we will take a hundred steps toward you" (that's HIK) -- with the implicit subtext -- but if you don't take the first step, We can't take our hundred steps, for all that We yearn to do so -- and that points out the paramound importance of human freedom in Divine Creation - - Well, excuse me but all this a several levels deeper than what RSC seems to be saying here -- cheer up, it ain't my great genius and holiness, I'm must typing along waiting for 3 stars so I can knock of an instant Ma'ariv, count the Omer chick-chack, come back inside, drink a Heineken and go to bed thinking wistflly of all the women I never went to bed with -- Oh well -- Getting on time to git-on time --- } (aa5-19) { Evelyn Garfield points out that prayers accrete in the Siddur , and even more in Machzor, because nobody dares take any out. } (aa5-20) { But in minhag Sephardi, one says Slichot before dawn for the entire month of Elul. Ashkenazim get up at midnight to do it, but I think that's unnatural. I might, midnight isn't real, it's just something you read on an alarm clock. But before dawn is real, because you get to see the dawn. Kule built a raft and put it on the Abode lake. Sometimes he would lie on it from sunset to 3 stars. He said, that's great for the subtle bodies. The one good thing you can say for the compression of Mincha__Maa'ariv -- doing Micha as late as possible before sunset -- is that it does acknowlege the very special quality of this time of day. And the time just before dawn is very very special. PVK notes that. Of course if you get it wrong, that its still special but in a not_good way -- this is Ingman Bergman's "Hour of the Wolf". On a sailboat, I would try to take the 3rd watch, the one that starts when its still dark and carries you through dawn to sunrise. ] (aa5-21) No, I don't know. But I reckon it's less than a gvalt. Like I said about conflating the distinction between the Tetragammaton and Elo(k)im, that is, conflating the personal and impersonal aspects of Supreme Being -- and incidentally, the personal is Ishk_ALLAH -- and is Jesus Christ if you don't mind that -- 'meta_language' as Richard Baker, Roshi (Tassajara) termed it at Zenith 1990 -- I mean, if you get dogmatic about this 'whateer happened was what was supposed to happen' bit -- and a lot of the Sufis, the SoupŒes I mean, the S.O.W.'s -- make that mistake -- bit of you get dogmatic about it, you'll make a like of dumb mistakes. I mean, so ok, the Temple was destroyed because of our sins, but much more so it was destroyed because of the sins of the Romans. So you see, causality is what PVK might term 'multi-dimensional'. If we hadn't indulged in causeless hatred it might not have been destroyed, but also a few well-placed nukes at the Roman Coleciusm might have solved the problem, only Einsein couldn't get it done in time because the Swiss were still eating Mastadon blubber. } (aa5-22) { Oy, deliver us from t oo much holiness. The Christians are always talking about heaven, and the Indians say, the Soutwest Indians, wish t hey'd get on up there and leave the rest of us alone. I mean, the greatest sin is to not acknowlege someone else's suffering -- Jane Billote said to me, when I was fliiping out at New Buffalo, that they say, G_d will forgive everything except a sin against the Holy Ghost. Well, I don't know what a Holy Ghost is -- there was this big white auditorium at Oberlin and Viccky Woskoff called it Moby, the Holy Mackeral -- nowaday you can't even find mackeral in the fish stores -- let alone tinker mackeral, the babies, which are delicious -- I mean, Holy Ghost is Holy Geist, Holy Spirit, Ruach haKodesh -- and I don't know how you sin against it, besides freaking out and trying to trash all the relationships that bind you to other people -- and HIk says, a friendship taks so long to build, to bild that bridge, and it had be broken so quick -- and then take so long to to put tht bridge back together again so that even a little something can pass over it -- But anhow, all the emotions are holy, including sorrow, and if you deny someone the validity, the holinsss, of their sorrow -- -- } Look, sorrow is the weeping willow tree by a slow river. Sorrow is when the world hurts me, and I have no one in the physical world to hold me, and so I go and hide in my own soul, and my soul comforts me. } (aa5-23) [ GLOSSARY: shinning -- utilizing all one's resources, as when a soccer player manouvers the ball not merely with his feet, but also with his shins. ] (aa5-24) [ 'melancholy' can be used casually, as in the pop song, 'come to me my melancholy baby'. It is our custom at Zenith Camp to sing a song before doing a sort of generic bracha before the meal. One day I waned to sing "Life is but a melancholy flower" , to the tune of Frere Jacques. The main course that lunch was cauliflauer au gratin, a speciality of a young men's private school outside Boston. ] (aa5-25) And Carl Shrager used to remark over coffee at breakfast, or so he said, "It's been nice knowing you, in the biblical sense." As bachelors, we shared a flat in Cambridge, over Taj Mahal. Not THE Taj Mahal, of course, that's in India, this was the black folksinger who took that name, because it has a point to it. It was rather a run-down house. Shrager said, if you put a marble on the floor, it would never stop rolling. We painted the walls, each a different colour. I once invited Millea Levin there -- we were colleagues in the Peace Movement, she worked for Turn Toward Peace, which Steve Slaner called "Burn the Beast" -- as in Mao Tse Tung's description of the USA, "the belly of the beast". Although it was an unhalachic phase of the moon, she was most polite -- that was in the good old days, "when men were men and women were girls" -- but consequently we wandered from place to place, seeking inspiration. Shrager subsequently remarked, "It's always nice to come home and find a girl in your bed, though it somewhat dimnishes the pleasure to find your flat-mate in there with her. But I digress. (aa5-26) No, 'bitterness' connotes an attitude of repressed anger that things turned out as they did. This is what Job is being tempted to when they say, "Curse G_d and die." A refusal to accept that "all is in the hands of Heaven except respect for Heaven [yirat haShemaim, awe before the Divine -- PVK's term 'Divine Programming' is much too IBM, 'Divine Process' is better, and simply 'the Tao' is much better. 'Sadness' is a peaceful state, free of resentment, a recognition that this is where things are at, though I had very much hoped that they would turn out otherwise -- and as Hillel put it, "teach me to accept the things I cannot change". (aa5-26a) "Gevalt, why didn't I do better." Yes, that's one of the worst kinds of bitterness, when one scourges oneself , blames oneself, for what went wrong. "For our sins the Temple was destroyed" is in large part a sort of futile and unnnecessary self-castigation. Like I said, our sins played apart, but the sins of the Romans played the major and decisive part. And so we survived as a living culture, and Rome was sold to Cecile B. DeMille. Though those buggers had a pretty good ride for the next six centuries or so, until the raw__pig_eating Germans wiped the snow off their noses and said, Hey man, them's pansies, let's go for it. The Swiss eat raw pig, but only when they are being refined. The rest of the time it's dead horse. I remember Mrs. Schenk, who lived downstairs from his, in poverty because Hutchins had fired her husband from his job as Librarian at U. of Chicago -- I guess Hutchins wanted to rewrite western civilization as a library of footnotes to what he fancied were the 'Great Books' -- I don't think the Chumash made the cut. Some British poof once said -- maybe it was Whitehead, who should have known better but maybe he was too close to the hogshead of sherry that afternoon -- "all philosophy is a -- maybe he said 'series', but maybe 'set' -- of footnotes to Plato. That's Plato the Poof, best known for Plato's Cave in Manhattan. (aa5-27) And PVK would say, while you sit here you may ask yourself, "What am I doing here." 'What' 'I' and 'here' -- three fallacies. [ I think he included 'what' -- but I don't clearly recall. ] (aa5-28) {Well, I don't know. Whenever I start to break down, everyone looks much younger than me. And when I'm able to do nothing more than evade capture, some people often look attractive. I don't know how much RSC is speaking from experience, and how much is saying what he is sure must be true, because those whom he has been taught to take as his teachers say so. Well OK, RSC chose his own teachers, albeit from a very thin slice of the universe. That's orthodoxy for you. } (aa5-29) { Hereabouts I see an average of one fox every too days. Talmud says, live in no place where no dog barks, and live in no place where no rooster crows. I say, nor in any place where you can't piss out the front door. } (aa5-30) { Not so Joe, as_it_is_said, (Psalms) "If I make by bed in hell, lo THOU art there." And as_it_said "Ki l_Olam Chesd_o" . So that covers the 4 dimensions, but maybe the Rabbi is lecturing upon the 5th dimension, so Space Cadets and/or Extra-Terrestrials. } (aa5-31) [ that is, if your joy it makes you with, I assume -- oh -- all humanity and all the universe "and all that good stuff" as Ciel would say -- well, that is rather a mystic experience -- Wittgenstein writes somewhere that he experienced something like it maybe once in his life -- a feeling of being perfectly safe, he said -- and if ever there was someone who sought with all his soul for spiritual transcendence, it was poor old Ludwig W. -- so anyhow, for the rest of us, this is not ordinarily something which we experience every day shortly before tea_time -- I mean, let's get real, and leave the piety to the Presbytyreans, whatever Presbytyreans are -- something from Scotland, if I recall, often served beside sconces, although the former then consume the latter -- at T_time of course ] (aa5-32) Well, second-place ain't so bad either. I mean, if it's good enough for a rishi I won't send it back to the kitchen. (aa5-33) Well, it depends entirely upon the context and upon the so-called 'dirty joke'. I mean, I've just completed a reciprocally delighful interaction with an attractive young woman, it might be quite appropriate. OK, generally speaking dirty jokes are appropriate to the lowest two chakras -- the Mudalajara, which nice folks usually don't talk about, I mean only Judaism and toilet_training mommies have someting nice to say a out poo-poo -- and then the Svatistana, which PVK -- or maybe this is Saphira Barabara Linden, Detroit Bnai B'rit Woman of the Year long ago -- says is some really nice sexy colour of pink with a dash of orange or some such -- that is the sex chakra, and that we can talk about because after that comes orange, the solar plexus, home of Zen and Adler -- and then you get to the heart, which is golden yellow, and that is Jakov Avinu, the first perfect man -- Jesus simply doesn't make the cut, he should have married that nice young girl from the Kineret, regardless of what they said about her, and settled down and learened what it is to have a family, before he got up on his high horse or ass or cross and started trying to tell honest folk -- well , honest more or less, I mean, the world is the world -- what to do -- I mean, a wise-ass kid like that, who wouldn't want to nail it up -- not that anyone would do it, of course, except a Roman, and they make the Bushie's look civilized -- } (aa5-34) Precisely what the feminist theologians have in mind, they should only all become rabbis's and ministers and like that making 50 Thou a year and then go to Israel and spend it all at Moshav Mevo Modi'in, pardon my dirty joke. Though it was neither particularly dirty nor much of a joke. (aa5-35) What does the Rabbi mean by a "Seven For Seven" This is surely a symbol of perfection -- like a shutout tennis game. When you are in the dead kind of sadness, deep down, you really think, you really think (aa5-36) (aa5-36) Durned tootin' you do. Think and think and can't stop thinking until you get it in the Arras, says Hamlet. "All is sicklied o'ere with the pale caste of thinking." Leary said, sometimes you can get trapped in the mind chakra, and that's a terrible place to get trapped in. T.S. Eliot said, "these matters that I with myself too much discuss, too much debate" -- a horse's ass he was, but quite good at self-portraiture. "That superficial facile Anglophile / hicktown bigot, upmobile." (sa) (aa5-37) And this is Bob Dylan, the Rabbi's kid or nephew or whatever from Hibbings Minnesota: "No need to get excited,' the Thief he kindly spoke, 'There are many here among us who think that life is but A joke. But you and I have been through that and such is not our fate. So let us not talk falsely, the hour is getting late.'" Jesus was crucified between two thieves -- so he could see what it really is to be holy. (aa5-38) For Heaven's sake, get serious. Not who, but what. (aa5-39) Which takes us back -- well, sort of does, not precisely maybe -- to Jesus on the cross -- Eli, Eli, Lama Sabatni -- But on the other hand, under the circumstances he seems to have kept the faith reasonably well. (aa5-40) But on the other hand, this could be "serve without expectation of a reward" (aa5-41) Yes of course, just go to Lost and Found in the Zurich HauptBahnhof, and ask them if they have your soul, and tell them sorry but you don't have a claim ticket, but would they please check, and if they don't say it's right here on the top shelf but you have to go to Tourist Information and fill out a Police Report first, and then take it down to the Bureau of Tourist Information which is actually not on this lake but on one of the hidden mist_shrouded isles off Luganao, and there are no regularly scheduled boats to it not even with Halb-Tax, but a mystic person like yourself who even found the lotus pond 15 years ago can surely find it -- and then if you bring back the countersigned form to us we'll see what we can do, and meanwhile please pay us 7 SwissFranc a day for the time that you think you will be away -- and if in the meantime you re-incarnate please bring your new ID card -- so anyhow, if they don't say that, then presumably you've still got your soul, so then you should go out and drink a very tall beer, if they ever make a drinkable beer in Switzerland, and anyhow get a NORDSEEF FISCH which is the only reason to go to the Zurich HaupBahnhof , and buy a second one and mail it to me, Stee, Campra (Olivone), and that's the only reason I wrote this footnote, SeeLox will do nicely thank you. And also buy me a Jerusalem Post International edition, I think they are still stocking the February 4 edition. } (aa5-42) Well, that lets out sex don't it, as it is said , "post coitum omni animorum tristes est" or something like that. Let's out eating a hot fudge sundae to, they should only discover it in this obsolete old world. Because sundaeos got calories. I mean, get real. Here's Reb Nachman, the Gold Medal Gloomy Gus, and he's tellling us, and R. Shlomo's teaching it as if it was Papal Infallibilityx, he's telling us that if you ain't a hundred percent happy you've obbviously lost your soul. (aa5-43) Yes, I can see how a thing like that might make one a bit sad. I mean, what is this, a footnote to 'The Devil and Daniel Webster' (Stephen Vincent Benet, who for some reason, unhip as I now see he is, remains I think my favorite lyric poet, whether he's writing poetry or prose. (aa5-44) Well, you could take a bit of Prozac or some such. And then you'll really know what it is to lose your soul, or rather, to put it in the pawnshop. And then also you'll realize that sorrow was not costing your soul, it was saving and safeguarding your soul for you. As HIK says: "Don't forget, oh my sorrow, once again joy will arise." I mean, this bullshit is getting dangerous. Because if you see a guy crossing the George Washimgton Bride on the old Loop-do-loop, the one thing you do not do is shout out, Hey buddy, don't do a tap-dance. We ae not at risk from the pitfalls of life, we are at risk only if we despair and think we'll never get back up. (aa5-44a) [ If anyone tells me once more than I maybe don't have a soul, I'm going to join the Jesus Freaks just so I'm sure that I at least have a spare. That's what I did the last few times I paniced over this point. Not too bad if you don't swallow the holy water. And if you're afraid of cathing somethin, like Republicanism, just take a shot of tequila as soon as you can SneakyPete out to a package store. Not to worry, Murray, you can always uncovert when times get better, as:it_is_said (by me), "A Jew who has just been baptized is deemed a Jew with wet hair." We can unconvert, they can't. That's the breaks, mate. We was there first, and you guys is just hitch-hikers. And Ahab the Arab too. (aa5-45) Excuse me, but one's soul is always complete. Maybe you get an Access Denied message from time to time, but it's always there, as_it_is-said (morning brahchot) "THOU wilt return it to me in the time to come. (aa5-46)ÿ [And of course a liverwurst sadnwich on rye with just a dash of mustart, with a Dr. Brown's celery tonic. ] (aa5-47) [eg, "Jump in a lake." ] (aa5-47a) PVK often says, one should never give advice. (He is speaking of leaders of SO chapters; I assume it applies to everyone. That is, of advice on general questions, eg do I change jobs or wives, if not spark plus.) My guess is that this is because, while one may know the external situation reasonably well, one is unlikely to know the inner situation of the person asking for advice, and so one is unlikely correctuly to estimate the ways in which the various alternative scenarios would impact the development of that person. But maybe this is just because Sufis like to swim alone. Something about the way we dress you know. My mother once quit smoking -- through SmokeEnders. Then she became rather a drinker. Though then she quit that, but sold our wine cellar in the priocess. And that's why I'm drinking Merlot these days. So I would only add -- there's orders of magnitude involved here, and thresholds, or whatever physicists keep in stock in the lab. Like, if there is a lion in the wardrobe and I tell you, Run, I may be depriving you of a great spiritual experience, but then again you and I rather than you and he may that evening have supper together. (aa5-48) Cousin Joyce had a transparent shower curtain that said "Body of the Year" This is Cousin Joyce Wallace Malakoff, M.D., who was maybe the first to research the heterosexual transmission of AIDS. (aa5-49) Or maybe he's deep deep down stupid. (aa5-50) Well, that's the 'limiting case' of it, but the 'limiting case' ain't the only case, nor even the 'essential case', it's merely one end of the rainbow -- from Bat Yam to Modi'in. And anyhow, let's be a bit Aristotelian about this -- Golden Mean and all that. I mean, are we spiritual Bachantes -- one spiritual orgy and then we hope back up on the shelf and turn on the Standby button for 80 years. Lou Kessler haCohen never took a bath because he was waiting for Eliahu haNavi to come running up shouting, quick, Meshiach is coming, everyone to the mikva. So they put him in a Funny Farm I fear, and put all the local gonovim on the Vaad because they were normal. Well, none of that's quite true, but that don't prove it ain't true. GET =scsaaa5y ================================================================= NOTES (aa5-1)--(aa5-50) Deep6'd to =scsaaa5x These notes to be Deep6'd to =scsaaa5y Which is to be pasted onto botdoc of =scsaaa5x And the whole to be renamed =scsaaa5n ============================================================= (aa5-51) To be serious for a moment. What's with this talk of imagination of flying. Flying is astral travel. So that suggests that Reb Nachman was very much into astral traval. And surely his "7 Beggars" story has that quality -- that or else they grew some Grade A pot in the Ukraine. (aa5-52) I think PVK makes a similar distinction, between what he terms 'ioagination' and 'fantasy'. Where imagination is of that which exists, maybe in the non_physical world, whereas 'fantasy' may be mere whimsy. (aa5-53) First of all, it's not clear what Reb Nachman is referring to here, it could be one of several inner phenomena. PVK talks of it, but I can't clearly recall what he says. He does speak of a phase in which one may make the error of being overly self_critical. I suppose that would be one of the many Temptations that Jesus had to withstand before he could become a Master. (This is getting pretty Theosoophical "or something", but ma l'asot, "let the chips fall where they may".) Of course there is Musar, which is merely ethical self-criticism - - Mao Tse Tung and his Red Chinese were veery much into that, and in the decadent bourgeois West it's quite a popular pasttime in what they call Enconter Groups. This is much of a spiritual danger because it's on quite a low level, so it's just stupid. Although one can get run over by a cement mixer as well as stomped by an Albatross with a hotfoot that he got at Joe's Bar & Grill (Ladies Invited). Oh by the way, stick this up above where it fits best: Footnote (aa5-25) to be precise: "Who was that lady I saw you with the other night?" "That was no lady, that was my wife." And also, as PVK teaches, there is the last disidentification in the process toward samadhi: One disidentifoes with one's body, then one's emotions, then one's personality, and finally with one's consciousness. At each stage one then becomes a sort of watcher, watching what one had previously taken to be oneself. And when there's nothing left with which you can identify, you're in samadhi. Have fun; you can't get back to earth until a train comes along and picks you up, and there ain't no taxis up there. And no train schedule neither. So PVK has said, though scarcely in my jive wording. } (aa5-54) Are you sure you want to ask that question? I mean, for starters, have you considered why this origin of all evil is a snake, not, eg, one of T.S. Eliot's Flying Hippopatomi (which, in one if not all of his witty sallies, he takes as a metaphor for the Anglican Church). Carl Shrager was rather taken with Norman Mailer's poem (in "Deaths for the Ladies"): "I never scored / said Snake. " (aa5-55) Well, more likely I just see him and I can't quite recall why I hated him -- or at least that I hated him -- (aa5-56) No, joy ia the mood -- attunement, in Soupy/Sufi terminology -- the term is of course taken from musicianship, as eg a master musician of India would attune his vina -- on Sukkot, specified as "the season of your joy". It does not characterize the mood on Yom Kippur. And I am not speaking of the gloomy moods mistaken for piety in Galutz assimilationist minhag -- the mis-termed 'Reform' and 'Conservative' movements -- I remember in particular the lugubrious kaddish at our suburban 'Reform' 'Temple' -- I mean, gvalt, ever since Herod built that atrocious imitation-Greek Temple, it's all been assimilationist shlock -- of course in Israel kaddish is said chick-chack - the mourner is all but pushed into re-affirming life, which is of course the text of the kaddish Now in Israel, the attunement of Yom Kippur is transcending materiality, and returning to an acknowlegement of Heavenly values, to be hopefuly better integrated into our everyday lives - - so it is customary to dress, not in the black of an accused criminal, but in the whiite of an angel -- and a very important minhag is, before breaking the fast, you take the first step in building a sukkah -- so you leave the day of repentance into a mood of joy -- from inside -- inside the Bet Knesset, inside your soul -- to outside -- nature, and the world of action -- ) (aa5-57) Nope, that don't go, Moe. If you're planning to do wrong, it's back to the drawing board for you. Everyone knows, even you, that you'll do wrong again, and everyone knows that's just part of being human -- but just as "ist is forbidden to rely on a miracle" so is it forbidden to assume that wou will do wrong, and so it is forbidden to assume that you will be forgiven -- as Kitov remarks, quoting Talmud I assume, he who says, 'I will sin and sin and Yom Kippur will make amends' -- well, that don't go, Joe. (aa5-58) [Twice a day is Shaharit and Ma'arive, 3 times a day includes the prayer before going to bed -- or to sleep, I'm not clear which -- though I assume before going to bed, since most people, myself excluded, do not ordinarily go to bed fully dressed. There are, however, various advantages to bachelorhood. Orthodox practice seems to be to say prayers only when one is at least reasonably fully dressed. Though I do not comprehend why there are not prayers to be said with regard to having sex; that does seem to be the sort of situation in which a bit of heavenly guidance could be useful. PVK once said, angels are attracted to love_making. I heard that about 1974, in a lecture in Boston, but did not subsequently hear nor read of his saying that. } (aa5-59) [ I capitalize 'Heaven' and not 'hell', because, like Plato says, the Eternal is real, and sin, shadow, whatever you call it, is an illusion, unreal. And PVK says, in Zenith lectures, "Damnation is not eternal." Though he don't said that you can get up and go out to Nedick's for a hotdog and an orange soda when you're done there. So like Woody Allen would say, in that case why bother. Woody Allen is useful because he reminds us, with his somewhat forced and disingenuous whimsy, to value and cherish this everyday world, at least if one has a reasonably nice apartment in Manhattan. This is The New Yorker sensibility. If The New Yorker still exists; for a while they seemed to be getting a bit faggoty. So anyhow, there I as in the Rio Grande hot springs after a somewhat difficult preceeding day, and this Indian comes down, and after a while he remarks, "He went through hell yesterday." (aa5-60) Well, PVK would often say that Heaven and hell are not up there somewhere, they're right here. He would say particular of hell, that it is an aspect of earthly existence. I suppose a non_physical aspect, but I'm not clear about that. Or one might better say, the non_physical aspects of physical exisence follow us and linger on when we leave the physical realm. PVK would often say, our notion of death is most inaccurate. (aa5-61) Surely one of the air_conditioners from the original "temporary" steel__re_inforced__concrete bungalows at Moshav Mevo Modi'in. The Moshav has been requested by Ben Gurion airport to instigate noise_abatement procedures. Misc: PVK often speaks of the role of the Guide in spiritual progress. You chose a guide, for technical mountain-climbing, and he tells you, do thus_and_such, and you can't see the reason for it, but you do it and take the risk of a fall, because you trust him. Well, that for us is the Torah. More or less. (aa5-62) This is either a tautology or pious nonsense. (aa5-63) Oh, save it for your Meditation Club. Like I say, the Shma is a conjunction, and the 2nd half of the conjunction is, don't just stay up there in 7th Heaven, get on back down the mountain, Moe, and start doing your best to put this into action, "with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all you've got." So here's this guy, rattles off the Shma while he's thinking of the stock reports, grabs a quick espresso with a shot or two of grappa in it, goes to his office, and writes a check for a few thou to the Jerusalem Post Forget Me Not Fund. Maybe you call that non_being, but a lot of folks will be saying a lot of brachot over some food they ain't had in months. You know, , I can like walk on the street (aa5-64) To 'like walk on the street' is to use a scooter, in particular one of those new hydrofoil models that scoot along on a little current of air. (aa5-65) Mazaltov. Then give the poor bum a dollar. In his old age, John D. Rockefeller, having made a fortune bankrupting little businessmen, would stand out on a streetcorner handing out shiny dimes. My father said, some people would tell him what to do with his times. (Those were not his words, but ours was a rather civilized household. Then we moved to a better neighborhood and I went to public school -- that means a state-run school -- (aa5-66) When he was a college student, my father used to answer the telephone, "It's your nickel, you speak first." So one day the voice at the other end of the line said, "Do you know who this is? This is the Dean of the College." My father replied, "Do you know who THIS is?" The Dean replied, "No --- " "Thank heaven!" said my father, and slammed down the phone. (aa5-67) Jesus said that too. [ GLOSSARY: Medachdik -- Don't know. Best Guess: A Czech automobile made in the 1970s, with 3 cylinders and an oversize trunk for rutabegas. ] (aa5-66a) [ Meaning, you are one of the greatest thinkers of our time, and you interrupt your intellecutal voyages to tell some Shmendrik the time -- with as much precision as if he were a temporarily unemployed rocket scientist waiting for them to invent rockets.] Little Joe used to say: Put it. (aa5-68) Offhand, I think this is the worst RSC teaching I've input. Though I think that's in large part because what we got us here is Reb Nachaman on an off_day. So ok: It is most unhelpful to be telling the well_washed masses, you are in hell. I mean, this is also not in accord with the principle of ordinary_language__philosophy, which is, don't say shtuyot when you don't have to. First of all, that notion barely exists in Judaism. They barely admit life_after_death, most seem to say, it all goes on Hold until Meshiach gets here, but if you're worried we can do an Egyptian and have you buried with an alarm clock. But more to the point, insofar as a notion is meaningful, it is exceptional. And insofar as it ain't exceptional, it lacks differentia, and hence meaningfulness. If I say, everyone is an armadillo but me, then it ain't clear what the term 'armidillo' means. Or better, I apparently ain't using using in a designatory mode. So all that Reb Nachman seems to be saying with this blather about everyone being in hell most of the time is: life ain't perfect, usually. Mazaltov. But that ain't the way to say it. For starters, because everyone knows, a prisoner ain't obligated to do the mitzvot, and hell is the greatest imaginable prison, or better, the limiting case of 'prison', so therefore, if you say, you are in hell most of the time, I will say, mazaltov, I'm joining the Reformies because they don't pretend I'm obligated to do the mitzvot. I mean, sometimes I think Talmudic logic is like pre_literate metaphysics. Picture_painting. The Windows iconographic principle of language, which they ripped off from Apple. I just work here. } (aa5-69) Oh, get a job. I mean, one of the more useufl teachings, this is from Pirke haAvot, is: If you have to be a rabbi, at least have an honest job on the side. Or else you'll be telling decent working folk to put pencils in their ears because you hae just deduced that the Talmud says so. Or because HaGaon Rabbi FliegelFlicker said so. I mean, I don't think anyone should get a Rabbi License until they have gone to College and read all the great books, if any, of wesern civilization -- which means goyische western civilization, because everyone knows Jews have beards -- except the Kiryat Sefer Glatts -- and so they're barbarians. I mean, a gentleman makes like the Egyptians and keeps his beard, or beards, with his neckties. So what triggered off this particular tirade was that line, "if it's not completely >heaen, then its like a little bit hell, right". To which the answer is: Wrong, it could be Il Purgatorio. Plato's Cave as Dante's nave, Clive. OK, one more charge up the hill: Block that dualism: Analytic philosophy is built on the principle that every dusalism can be subdivided. So whatever Melvin says, however he conceptualizes a situation, Smelvin can come along and subdivide Melvin's conceptualization, usually in a way that finds exceptions fo Melvin's Rule. So that way there is an infinite regress of publishable papers, and everyone can get tenure if enough folks die in time. So then along come the ordinary_language analysts -- one can scarely cold them 'philosopehrs', in the old fashioned sense of that term, you won't be a darned bit happier for having read the lot of them, better you should take the time and go selling herring, and use the money to buy a shot of schnapps, chaps .. and the ordinary_languate philsophers say, Greetings Comrades, sorry to overtip the old apple-cart just when everyone was pigging out, but -- it's a continuum of particulars, characterizeable at bet by 'family resemblacne'. ] (aa5-70) Oh be serious. Everyone needs and has the right to, and usually has some space of their own. (aa5-71) If I recall, the Pythagoreans had a number mysticism. But maybe I am thinking not of Burnett's Fragments, but of that Rudolph Steiner or School of Rudolph Steiner mini-book, an imaginative re-creation of Pythagorean mysticism. But I had never heard of anyone regarding 2 as incomplete. Nor is it clear how one can regard an even number as incomplete. Seems to me that Reb Nachman is rather over-rated. He's good, but I think not a Master. Of course the whole thing gets muddied by his being taken as a dead guru. I mean, one can do that, but you better be darned sure that your dead guru is still alive and broadcasting. And that your antenna ain't got tangled up in the telephone lines. Or at least that you can tune into the dude as he was in his lifetime. I mean, they do that with Jesus, and I would say with some others -- } (aa5-72) { Believe you me, if most of those turkeys were blessed with my presence --- } OK: First of all, I wonder if I've ever understood anything R. Shlomo has taught. It was always a pleasure to be in his presence, and he made the world make sense, and he endowed us all with dignity. And it was a pleasure to listen to him, but I'm darned if I know what he said. And when people would ask me the day afer I heard him speak, I could not say. Second of all, I fail to see why he could not have discussed his material critically, like a proper academic lecturer. And then there's the story of the black-coat kids who went to some sort of subsidized_stipend government in religious studies, and were shocked when they were given a test. They complained, "you just said we would do some learning, you didn't say we wouldhave to learn anything." [ OK -- What's wrong with the standard computer keyboard. First of all, as I've said, and overwrite key is almost never needed in text work, and should be only an optinal feature. In general, everything to the right of the standard keyboard is unnnecessary and mostly just gets in the way -- except the Home an dEnd keys, and I guess the Page Up and Page Down (They are essentiall for scrolling in the half-screens of the Compose mode in Einstein, of of course the four cursor keys. The numeric keyboard is not necessary except for accounting work. Now then: the Insert key, which simply toggles between insert and overright, is about 1 cm. from the Required backspace key, and from the CR key, both of which are in continual use. So every so often I hit the Insert key by mistake, and start over-writing text. So it should go down out of the way. Nor do I ever use the Delete key -- which deletes the character under the cursor only -- that is, it deletes only 1 character. So it can go away, and be called only a an option. In general, I think foreign-character-set keys could be seperate options. In general, one might go to a standard character set, without supercharacters. After all, modern Hebew gets along without nekudot. And also, one could go back to a a 1-stroke force_backspace key, for superdot and subdot. Brackets especially, but also squiggly-braces, should be 1-stroke not 2-stroke keys. There should not be extra keys to the right of the last character on the standard keyboard -- the little figure position. Because the right hand is always lifting off the keyboard, eg to hit the CR, and has to be replaced by feel. Mamy of my typos come from dropping it down on the wrong place. This keyboard has little ridges on the F and J keys, but there needs to be a stronger tacticle cue. Those cutsie Windows keys are at best nnecessary, and sometimes mess things up. } (aa5-73) Everyone says so. PVK notes it -- the last watch, starting at about 03:00 AM , and encompassing daybreak. But, if I understand, beautiful as daybreak_thrugh_dawn_through sunrise is, the last darkness of the night has an even more refined character. And this is especially true in the land of Israel, where , in summertime anyhow, it becomes just about too hot to be outside from about 10 AM on -- so in Israel, on Shabat by 10:00 one should be finished davening and sitting down in the shade at one's meal, outdoors with a sukka / palopa sort of roof to allow whatever movement of air there is. Also in Israel in the dry season the light is harsh all day. So only through the early mornig is the light gentle in summer. (aa5-74) No. Evil exists. Eg the Nazis. This ain't that so can the crap. (aa5-75) But it's easy to be married to 18 women you don't know. RSC: I'll tell you later, OK? GIRL: "It's very ptertinent we're talking about distraction." (aa5-76) ME: [ A rather elegant point, a bit of a meta. This chick is maybe a mathematician from Berkeley. ] (aa5-76a) [ So OK, what we got us here is: PiRQeI AvOT 3:7 (Metsudah Siddur, Ashkenaui) Rabbi Yaakov says: One who walks on the road while he is stuying and interrupts his study to exclaim, How beautiful is this tree. How fine is this field' the Scrpture regards him as if he sins against himself." PiRQeI AvOT G:Z ... RaBI Y'aQov AOMeR : Ha_M__Ha_LeKh B_DeRReKh V_ShONeH V_M_PsIQ M_MShNaT_O V_AOMeR "MaH NAeH AILoN ZeH, NAeH NIR ZeH" -- M_'aLeH 'aLIV Ha_KaTUv K_ALU M_TChIV B_NeFeSH_O So the word in question is V_M_PsIQ M_MShNaT_O translated here "and interrupts his study" RSC recalls it imprecisely as; HaLIMeD M_PSQ RSC then seems to focus on 'cut off' , not merely as cutting off one's study, which is what the text seems to me to say, but rather, as being in some sense cut off from the world, or his soul. And that seems to me an interesting but forced reading. So I'm not sure that RSC's apologetics to nature lovers for this passage will work. And I must say, I'm rather bored with orthodox apologetics, I find more spiritual depth in starting from the assumption that the sacred scriptures are revealed through human agency, and hence apt to include errors. Incidentally, a field ain't inherently beautiful, so someone who remarks on the beauty of a field would seem to be thinking of its financial or anyhow agricultural value, and that would be a bit of bringdown form studying Mishnaos or whatever. On the other hand, if (as is my impression) the tree in question is specified as an Israel oak (Alon), and if accordingly a fruit tree could not have been the designata, then 'how beautiful is this tree' refers only to its aesthetic and spiritual aspects. (aa5-75a) [ Must have been one of those fast-growing potseeds I put in the flower pot when the cop come by to ask if had I license to sell that cow. ] (aa5-77) To me it has always seemed that I am tying my hand and arm down so I won't punch everone in the nose before breakfast. I mean, if you like you can say I am not tying my hand away from things, I am tying it to something, but that ain't the most obvious interpretation. And if it ain't, then this is rather opportunistic intellecutality. And if it is, then RSC ain't an intellectual, and ain't an aademician, he's a pedagogue. And if so, what am I doing putting in all this time on archiving his teachings, because my gig is to augment the realm of truth, teaching the little snots to be nice people is chicks' work. (aa5-78) {When RSC gets a theme, he's like one of those dogs that won't let go of it until he's worried everything out of it that he possibly can. Then he drops it and picks up another theme the next day. So I don't think, if work on his Nachlass ever gets that far against all sorts of extraneouis obstructdions, that you'll find his thought falling into a sysstem. Just a very large aggregate of hermaneutics, whateer hermaneutics are. } (aa5-79) Well, so much for non_orthodox Judaism. ================================================================== FOOTNOTES CONTINUED AS =scsaaa5o ==================================================================