=scsa_b17 FOOTNOTES TO =sc_b17 ------------------------------------------------------------------- GET =b17m1 DEEP_6 OF COMMENTS FROM THE PEANUT GALLERY -- APPENED, AND ALSO FILED OFF TO =scsa_b17 (as_it_is_said, (USA 1940's), "No Comments from the Peanut Gallery") THAT IS, FOOTNOTES (sa) TO SC_B17 -- FOLLOW ----------------------------------------------------------------- When it comes to the last days of Pesach very few words are said. That means it is so high and so holy that you can hardly talk about it. (b17-1a) [YXeah, sure. That and the telephone book. ] (b17-1b) [Oy, apologetics. Half of frumie Yiddishkeit is contrived apologetics. Making simple human error look like profundity rather than acknolege that the sacred scriptures were, if of Djivine authorship, whatever that means, mediated through human beings. Oh shlucks,, make it three-quarters ] The Haftorah for that morning is the chapter from Isiah were he talks aobut the Meshiach. (b17-1c) (b17-1c) [ Yeah, and the goyim ain't stopped rubbing our nose in it ever since the learned to read, more or less. ] You have to realize friends, to become a Rebbe is not like New York, you hang out a sign, you are a Rabbi, you are a Rebbele, its up to you. (b17-1d) (b17-1d) [ N.B: Note the distinction between 'Rebbe', a hasdic teacher. amd 'Rabbi' . In the Good Old Days, a rabbi was the guy who looked at chicken gizzard; in the Brave New World, he is guy who leads the Sisterhood Tuna Casserole Bakeoff [ I got that from Aliza Artz, if I recall, or maybe Ronnie Levin -- the brilliant one who went to work for EPA -- I once raised a point in feminist Judaism, and she said, oh, I know all about that -- -- its for darned sure she's had better things to think of. ] What's happening in the world. There are so many forces, so many strong strong forces. (b17-2a) [ Well, this is a nice step toward an wholistic theory of casuality. I mean, Hume should take his billiard_cue and uise it more appropriately. I mean, Whitehead makes a start in 'Process & Reality' -- though truth to tell, Aristotle got there first, distinguishing 4 types of causality -- Form_al (which is from Plato's Forms, Ideon, what PVK calls Archetypes -- and then 'Final', which is teleologic, which takes biologic growth as the paradigm -- I mean, you want 'efficient design', look no further, Mayne -- and then material cause, I ain't quite clear what that is, and then efficient cause, which Hume took for the be_all and end_all. Which of course entails a materialistic Weltanschauung. And besides that, Hume's model of efficient cause was linear, and that's a simplistic reducdtionism. That gives you only 'necessary casuse' and 'sufficient cause', mazaltov. From that you can play Bushie's 'blame game' -- my mother used to say, never hit a child, they can't understand it -- I once heard R. Shlomo say, or darned near, anyone who hits a child must just as well pack a little suitcase and go back to Auchwitz -- that was at the Mevo Modi'in Bet Knesset ("may the Vaad Ganovim make an honest living selling herring in a chamsin", my apologies to the fishmongers Guild) -- and the guy he said of really did do tchuva before he died, I mean, from where he was holding during his final illness you can make cherubs -- but sad to say, things did not go well with his youngest son -- a terrible story, and someone should really try to help the poor kid rebuild himself, he was most promising, with great imagination, rather brilliant -- and to be sent to a place where they burn your brains out with chemicals, and don't let you out until you say you like it -- I mean, mail Ken Kesey a Gatlineg Gun -- But I digress, I guess. ] (b17-2b) [ Well, that is how the SO says one should attend to the Gathas and Githas and Whatevers of HIK, and I htink HIK said so too. On the other hand, R. Zalman once said of orthodox Judaism, 'You don't have to check your mind when you walk in the door.' Meaning, eheck it with the Hat_Check__Girl in the Theatre Lobby. They used to have such things, before Multiplexes were invented. Looks to me like what was whiteout out was a dash of Compartive Religion from one of the attendant peons. ] until G_d created man, creation was maningless, right. (b17-3a) (b17-3a) [ Well, that is a frightfully Kantian perspective -- tht meaning does not inhere sub specie eternitas, as Spinoua said, but only in the necessarily conceptualized perception of us humans. ] It might be true. But the moment you do something which has meaning, especially when it comes to [ word or two whited out ], somebody's against it. (b17-3b) (b17-3b) [ Of course. Beause it threatens to break the walls of their ego, of their cocoon. Which is what they identify with. Baudelaire saw that and more: "et nous nourissent nos amiables remorses commes les mendicants nourissent leurs vermines" -- I said it too: "SaLute Snake / Sheds skin / I grieve at leaving / even my sins/. PVK says, repeatedely: If you identify with the higher dimensions of your Being, you won't be so afraid to transcend the lower ones -- to transcend (what he terms) your condittioning. ] Let's ay a girl comes home (b17-3c) (b17-3c) [ and the all do, sooner or later, as_it_is_said, 'Leave the cage open, the bird will fly back in' -- that was a line in a movie, but now I forget which. Not Truffaut, though it seems derived form 'Jules and Jim'. ] (b17-4a) [ I think HIK says somewhere, as soon as you say you intend to do something, a thousand obstancles rise up. And everyone knows, I think it is Reb Nachman hwo says it, when you set out to see the Rebbe, obstancels areise in your path. Indeed, there is such a story, the hosid sets out, the wheel falls off his wagon, etc., and so he includes, this is a sign from heaven that I shoiuld not go. And they draw the moral -- the hosid was a fool, superstitious, he shouild have fixed the wheel and gone on. They used to say in the SO, if you plan to do something, dono't tell anyone, lest obstacles arise. At New Buffalos, the Indians would come by, and if they wanted to see someone, they would hide the identify of that person from listening spirits. I guess this is also a threat to one's ego, that's why they oppose it. But it is an indirect threat, on the level of jealousy. And that is releated to 'the revolution of rising expectations' which -- not religious rivalry, no_one gives a daamn about religion, least of all the priests -- is the motivation behind Sam Huntington's misconceived battle of civilzations. It ain't that the Ayrabs are Musselmen's, they could be Presbyrians for all it matters -- or even Methodists, if they'd let them in the door -- it's just that they're poor. Like, if nobody has any potatoes, it's ok. But if I've got potatoes and you don't, you are going to be jealous of me. I mean, I am living in a fixed up shipping container, living on coffee and eating boiled potatoes, and people are so jealous of me thty keep trying to 'knock me off' as R. Shlomo would say. R. Shlomo didn't even own a full night's sleep, and people kept trying to knock him off. This is T.S. Eliot , l'havdil that prat, his 'April is cruelest month' -- as long as no_one has it it's ok, but once I see that you have it and I don't, I realize that I could and should be much more than I am -- I mean, like, I could be eating cooked potatoes, which is only one step short of a being a millionaire -- a millionaire eats soft_boiled hummingbird's eggs for breakfast -- and that "rattles my cage" as they say in the USA, it starts to crack the shell of my ego, my cocoon, and all I really want to do is go back to sleep, so if I can knock you off I can take back your potatoes and then nobody will have potatoes amy more and then I can go back to sleep. I'm of course talking of the non_transferrable type of potatoes. ] (b17--4b) [ You're right, it's unbelieveable. ] (b17--4c) [ "Spring is sprung. The boid is on the wing. But that's absoid; the wing is on the boid." (USA, 1940's) ] (b17-4d) [ Cute, but galutz. Spring is the time of agricultural rebirth in norhtern Europe and most of the USA, but in the land of Israel it is after Sukot that the rains begin, and after Pesach that they end. } (b17-4e) [ Fact is, it takes a heck of a lot of grass to fee one cow. So in dry countries -- the USA SouthWest, which is Indian country still, New Mexico and Arizona, and the land of Israel, especially the central highlands (Judea_Samaria) -- all you can run are sheep and goats. Especially goats. Sheep eat more, I think. ] So every Pesach we conquer a little more, it's not the same like last year. Every summer something happens. It's not the same voice. (b17-4f) (b17-4f) [ This is a nice move, from cyclic to dialektic -- in the terms Sartre used when he remarked that his play 'Les Sequestres d'Altona mounts in a helix' , it is the move from a circle to a helix -- but it ain't entailed by nothing the Rabbi said hitheto, Moe. ] Each year it's a spceial voice again saying, 'Please G_d, don't create man, let it be winter, let it be dark.' (b17-5a) (b17-5a) [ Well, anyone who believes in that might just as well tie his tzittzit to the flagpole and join the United Pagans of Hoboken >New Jersey. Anyhow, the got better orgies. ] because nature doesnt' trust the tree. (b17-5b) (b17-5b) [ Say what, Mutt ] That means the tree is not completely giving life to us. (b17-5c) (b17-5c) [ Tell it to the Sequoisas. ] That means there is so much life in the matzah, it can keep you going for your whole life. (b17-5d) (b17-5d) [ We ain't talkiing Manichevitzz. Real shmura matza from Mea She'arim -- I had some once at the Witts, R. Johsua had gone out special to get it -- maybe. ] (b17-8a) [ Animals do not hate each other, they eat each other. as_it_is_said, "and we like sheep" , by the wolves. ] ----------------- When Cain killed Abel something horrible happened (b17-8b) (b17-8b) [ Here's a USA--maybe Appalchian -- or English Foksong, I once heard from Carl Shrager: Maybe he got it from Ellen Faust Brandywine. As I recall his saying, it is called 'Eduard my son' What is that blood on your hunting knife, my son now tell to me It is the blood of my old hound dog that roaned the hills with me It is too red for your old hound dog my son now tell to me It is the blood of my brother John who ploughed the fields with me What did you fall out about my son now tell to me He chopped down yon little bush that might have been a tree [ as sad a line as any I know] What will ye do when your father comes home my son now tell to me I'll set my foot on yonder ship and sail the ocean round And when will ye come home again my son now tell to me When the sun sets under yonder hill and that shall never be. --------------------------- (b17-8c) [as_it_is_said (by Woody Allen), "'The lion will like down with the lamb' (Isiah the 2nd)) but the lamb won't get much sleep." ] Because the wolves that pursue the sheep (b17-8d) (b17-8d) [wolves don't persue sheep, that would not be much of a race. They simply hang around, and pick them off, as_it_said (by Herman and the Hermits, if memory serves), "Hey Little Red riding Hood / you sure are looking good / You're everything that a big gad wolf could want." ] The sheep is holy because they Xays say, 'Let there be man.' (b17-8e) (b17-8e) [ Yup, they say it all the way to to their shearing, as_it_is_said, "Bah bah, Black Sheep, Have you any wool?" "Yes Sir, Yes Sir, Three bags full. One for my Master, and one for his Dame, and one for the Little Man who lives down the lane." And if that ain't a key to Olde English Blacke Magicke, what is. For a sheep, the ultimate in consciousness__raising is to sit the Muztton Pot. Which brings us to the subject of the Gaza 'Evacuation'. Because believe me, if there was once some soul in Gaza, since the Good Old Days when Shimshon called on early curfew on the Temple Orgies, that soul left with the last Sefer Torah, and what you got now is a whirlpool in a cesspool in the Void. Good luck to the Gaza Holiday Inn. "Topless in Gaza" as Dry Bones once fantasied, and that was gback in the late '80's. But I digress. ] (b17-8f) [ Dty Bones once had a cartoon in the Jerusalem Post: Two Shmendriks -- the Everyxman of Dry Bones -- says to the other -- Look, we're in heaven, and there are the haredim. ' The other says, 'Ssh.' The first says, 'Why'. The other answers, 'They think there the only ones here.' ] The Baal Shem Tov says, before the Meshiach is coming, everything comes more clear; that means the good peple become better, and the evil people become more evil. (b17-9a) (b17-9a) [ And we all read black_and_white comic books, mazaltov. I mean, where did we get this Manichean heresy bullshit from, and who needs it. ] -- and acocding to Chasidut, anything whichh comes from the same letters means it comes from the root. (b17-9b) (b17-9b) [ That's making an ontology out of etymology, but what the heck, that's cool. I mean, the Common Man and Everyman and Common Sense got more wisdom that half tghe Ph.d's put together in a Sherry Hour. "Tea with lemon or cream." "Both." "Surely you jest, Mr. Feynemann." Shrager would sing in the Berkely coffee houses. When someone offered to buy him a drink, he would ask for beer, because that way he at least got a few B vitamins. ] So before Meshiach is coming, everything will be very: those who are bad will be very bad. Eventually they'll wipe each other out. (B17-9c) (B17-9c) [ Oh Goody. "Aggravate the contradictions" in the words of St. Lenin. That's just what the JW's say. I used to read their little booklets on the beach on Rodos, where I was not staying at a 4_star hotel, and although the food was often adequate, the self_service did leave something to be desired. I mean, doesn't anyone realize that when Meshiach comes the earth goes. That's the Apocalypse that all these self_styled Christians are looking forward to. I mean, at the Second Coming we will all be screwed. So tell them they can stop booking reserved seats at Har Megido to watch Armageddon, because it will happen in your own private fallout shelter, and the last thing you will see will be Blushie on TV -- because they have already rented Lenin's Masoleum to put him in, and Disney Studios already have most of the script and animation done. I blame Jimmy Carter, he started it all, with that Sinai Giveaway. Piece process indeed. Christians should jot be allowed to run for President. But I digress. ] So the thing is, the world needs a little bit cleaning out. It really does. (b17-9d) (b17-9d) [ Yup, Cheney kept saying to Israel, maybe you could just drop a little nuke on Damascus, some day when the wind atin't blowing too strong toward the Golan. Hell, half the Bush Administration thinks Golan is some new kind of ladies shoe. ] When we open the door for cleaning. (b17-9e) (b17-9e) [ Especially not if the SuperBowl is on that afternoon, and I just got a six_pack of Schlitz. ] (b17-9f) [ 3-dots typescript --- presumably signifying, not an elision of text, but merely that the Rabbi had taken out his super_mini__Uzi -- "don't leave home without it" as the Leaarned Elders always tell us while we are baking matza in their comic books -- sorry, I've just been reading a monagraph by Josef Jaffee written for the Vidal Sasson Center for the study of Anti_Semitisim, at Hebrew U. -- thy're still doing blood libels in the lland of Ahmed the Noble Camel Boy, as he fights the ancient battle against Hymie the Hardware Store clerk (that'w a line from Ursis or Mitchner, I get the two mixed up -- -- and used it to pick his nose. The mini__bullets they give us at the airport -- but only if you have pre_registered for the Kosher Meal, which is well_boiled baseball gloves with tzimus -- are rather useful for that. But I digress. I mean, everyone knows, Jews are ok but Israelis are bad. I'm just trying to colour in the picture a little bit. I mean, your comic_book picture. Sorry, but if one more goy sings a cute Jewish Shabat song at Zenith camp, I might pick up the phone and dial CHABD--õ-800. Chabad is the McDonald's of Yiddishkeit. But I digress. ] You know there are lot of people that are so eager in fighting evil ... [3-dots typesxcript ... ] (b17-9f) it's the greatest thing in their life. (b17-9g) (b17-9g) [ I once heard R. Shlomo say, at Modi'in -- He once met a guy who was standing on Bar Ilan street on Shabat throwing stones at passing cars -- I mean, this is not a major sin, like thhrowing stones at an adultress who did it on Kotel Plaza on Yom Kippur on the wrong side of the mehitza, but still, and its true that there's no need to keep Bar-Ilan street open on Shabat, if they can afford a car they can afford to drive from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea Steakaria via Ramot or Beersheva -- so "they only do it to annoy" (Lewis Caroll) -- but still it is a bit infra_dig as the Brits would say if anyone could understand them -- So anyhow, R. Shlomo says something to this guy, and he says back, 'But it's my oneg'. My special pleasure on Shabat. ] So we're saying to G_d, if there has to be some wiping out of evil, please, YOU do it. (b17-9h) (b17-9h) [ As often noted, though maybe it was in years subsequent to this treaching, R. Shlomo used to say, Do not translated it, 'Pour out YOUR wrath', but rather, 'Pour out YOUR wamrth.' 'on the nations that have not known YOU.'] Why is the earth the most magnetic thing in the world. (b17-10a) (b17-10a) [ Now that is just about an ideally ridiculous question. ] Reb Nachman says: There is no gravity from heaven; thaere is only gravity from earth. (b17-10b) (b17-10b) [ Reb Nachman was brilliant, but, or so I read or heard somewhere, an anti_intellectual with regard to secular knowlege. So here he demonstrates than an anti_intellectual ultimately moves in a closed universe of discourse. This was, after all, after Copernicus. And Newton. ] (b17-10c) [ Well, that is "cute and sweet" -- I mean, learning or laying feelgood spirituality and/or religion to or on the tourists is almost as honorable a livelihood as selling herring on a Grand Banks Dory -- but it makes much sense to say also, Heaven is drawing mankind upwards. PVK suggests that much of sorrow of mankind is from failing to respond to the call to fulfill one's Divine Purpose. That is why he says, that while spirituality may be trivialized by being used as 'spiritual bypass' -- an escape from the problems we came back on earth to solve in a good way -- so too, psyhology, while necessary, may be trivialzed as a 'psycologic bypass.' Marcue made that point too, though he was more concerned with asiyah, making societal change through political action, than with spiritualiy. That of course was why Marcuse was furious at Wittgenstein for saxing "philosophy leaves everything as it is " -- Ricky Sherover told me of his attitude on that point, when she was studying under him -- pardon the pun, as Sharager would say, though truth to tell Ricky was a loyal family friend at the time -- at Brandeis. Of coursse Marcuse had no comoprehension of what Wittgenstein was doing, and I think Ricky shared that opinion. ] What is the holiness of the Jew. He can bring G_d down to the world. (b17-10d) (b17-10d) [ Oy vey, keep it to yourself, or next thing they'll be saying we can make golems. I mean seriously folks, I do take it as axiomatic that no people is inherently any better at anything than any other people. Žnd that there is no Divine intervention to change the odds.] Or I can eat the apple, and just remember the cutting off, and the, I don't receive life, right. (b17-18e) (b17-18e) [Wrong. We got dominion over all the lesser orderrs of cretion, right. And you can tell that to your saber-tooth tiger. I mewan, I do not have to do tchuva for picking an apple. Tell it to the worm. Or the bluejay. ] (b17-18f) [ Well, maybe it does and maybe it don't, and maybe it does and it don't. Like, it has 4 letters like the Universe is upheld by our pillars -- Lion, Eagle, Man, and I forget the 4th -- PVK had them in his Cosmic Celebrtion. And like, in Islam you have 99 Divine Attributes. And like, we have 10 sfirot. And there were 12 Tribes. And how many sounds are there in AUM. Robert Graves, in The White Goddess, has a reaonable approach to what the sound of the Ineffable NAME might have been. Becuase of course none of these numbers are numeric. ] (b17-10g) [ So ok, analogous to the Cahtolic distinction between sins of omission and sins of commission, thest are mitzvot of omission and mitzvot of commission. I call them Grade B and Grade A mitzvot respectively. A grade C mitzva is when I intend to do a mitzva, but am unable to do it due to circumstances beryond my control A Grade D mitzva is when I intend to do an avera, but do not do so due to circumstance beyond my control.} ----------------- GET =b17n2 PART I OF NOTES CUT OFF TO =b17n1 The blood is really my soul. (b17-11a) (b17-11a) [ This was the view of the pre_Socratics, who spoke of a 'blood soul' and a 'breath soul', as I recall being taught. ] There is a tremendous force of 'drawing' in the world, and a force of 'coming'. (b17-11b) [According to Picasso, some lithagraphers apparently managed both. But I digress.] There are some people, when you meet them, there is a tremendous force of drawing. And there some people, when you look at them, they really cut you short.