=sc_a8

Start input of R. Shlomo Carlebach, xerox manuscript A8, input
sa='Steve Amdur', transcriber DON'T KNOW , pp9, copied sa from
Collection BZ, probably copied sa from Witt Collection ca. 1988,
copy probably held by HH, Mevo Modi'in from whom it may have
originated, and if that ain't clear what is.

Headed B"H (in Hebrew Script), number A8 assigned by sa when
inventorying Witt Collection, Headed "New Tape  Pink Ampex 350-360

BZ  has copied to disc some old 8" tapes from the HLP days, I
don't know if this is amongst them.  A few excerpts from those
copies from been posted to the ***OFFICIAL RSC WEBSITE*** .

EDITIORIAL NOTES:  I use 3-dots only for ellision, transcribers --
apparently use them only for space-out pauses ... for which we may
blame Herb Caen ... who did thus in his column in the San
Francisco Chronicle ca. 1956 ... and called it '3-dot-journalism'

So anyhow, whence I encounter 3-dots, I'll replace 'em with 3-
dashes -- personally, I used to prefer the 200-yard, since by the
time I remembered how to get off the starting blocks, the 100 was
half-over ... but I digress ... 

I set off my interjected remarks in (( double parentheses ))
because I'm tzping on a European kezboard, which ain't got
brackets , much less squiggly-braces

Footnotes that might fluster the feathers of a blackbird are
deep_six'd to botdoc

In general, I try to match input line-ending to ms. line-endings.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

RSC:

 ... (( 3-dots ms. ))
It's very strange you know.  Let's say for instance the deepest
deepest depths of me, you know.  The deepest deepest depths of me,
if I take off all the dust and all the covers and all the skins. 
If I come to my deepest deepest depths of me, it's so pure, I
really only want the best.
(A8-1)

(A8-1)
(( Cf. PVK -- there is an inner core of the soul that can never be
sullied, never defiled, and one can access that.
Similarly, Cf. the early morning bracha, NiShMaH Sh_NaTaT BI
tHORaH HIA ))
                                    

Really.  Let's put it this way.  You know, even in my relationship
to people, you know, if I love
somebody very much.  Deep deep deep down, I really
only want what's the best for them.
(A8-2)

(A8-2)
(( Note (sa) -- and this is the morning passage in the Siddur,
MiTyvaT 'aSeH Shel V_AHavaT L_R'eaKh K_MO_Kha , the positive
mitzva to be devoted to the welfare of my neighbor ( tendentiously
translated 'fellow Jew' by Metsudah Siddur ) as to myself ))

But 'till I get to that little inside, in the meantime I also want
what's good for me right.
(A8-3)

Cause it's covered, with
about 2000 shells.  (( klipot , from the kabala mysticism of the
Ari or some such (sa) )) 
Let's say for instance when 
parents yell at children, basically you know, they
really want their best.  But till they get to that
part which is the best, in the meantime they're 
yelling because they're a little bit frustrated.  Some-
body else hurt thier feeling.  Knock it off on their
children and they pretend its because they want
their child's best.  It isn't.  It needs a lot of
washing.
(A8-4)


(A8-4)
(( and R. Shlomo says somewhere, and everyone knows, at Meor
Modi'in at least, that prayers go to the Kineret to be washed
before they go up to the Heavenly Host ))

Everything needs washing to the utmost.
Cleaning you know.  Getting to it.  OK I pretend
I'm only eating because I want to live.  I'm
eating because I like this cheese-cake you know.
(A8-5)

(A8-5)
(( But it is said, in Heaven will shall be held accountable for
every lawful pleasure of which we could have partaken but did not
))

Le's be honest.  But if I eat just because I
---------------------------------------------------------------

START PAGE 2 OF MS. A8

want the cheescake, so after I knock off the cheese-
cake, I can do anything I want to just my life (( sic, just my
life ))
didn't become more pure or more holy.  Just nothing
happens to me.  but if I could be on the level
to wash my hands, you know, helps me a little bit.
(A8-6)


You see I will not say that every person who washes his hands is
already eating cheescake just for the sake of living you know.
(A8-7)


Then you would be on the
highest level.
(A8-8)


But it helps.  There is someting to it.
Especially you have to wash your hands before you pray.  
(A8-9)


That's very important.  You know what REB ZEDDIK HaCOHEN says,
deepest depths.

(( WHO IS THAT DUDE, AND WHAT'S HIS WEBSITES .  And it's TzeDeQ ))

Sometimes we
say how come G_d didn't answer my prayer.  You
know, (( I may be ))  a little angry.  But the truth is, G_d
looked
very deep into my heart and 'HE' realized I really didn't want it
you know.  But I didn't know yet.  You know
all my upper layers wanted it.  Deep deep deep down
I really didn't want it.  It happens to us a lot of
times.  We want things.  Maybe years later we think 
what do I want this for.  Why did I need it for
you know.  Crazy.
(A8-10)


Let's put it this way.  80 percent
of the aggravation we have is just from the outer
skins right.  The inside, my inside didn't want
any part of it in the first place.  So the first
thing, this is very very strong.  Why is it very
---------------------------------------------------------------

START MS. A8 PAGE 3

very first thing in the morning when I wake up
got to wash my hands.  Very important.  Even make
a BraKhaH over it.  Very important.  Becuase in the
morning when I begin to live, momish I'm begging
G_d please let me live today really, let me wash
off all the outer things.  Let me live according to my 
deepest insides.  Completely different life.  Completely
different life.

I'll tell you something very deep you know.
There's a washing of the hands and a washing of the
face.
(A8-11)

Washing of the hands means I'm washing off all
my outsides right.  My hands are my outsides.  Because
with my hands I can only touch outsides right.  Can
only touch somebody's skin right.  I can not put
my hand right in their kishka's unless I'm a doctor.
(A8-12)


Washing my face is really washing my insides.
So this is already once a day.  In the morning when 
you wake up.  Not only I'm washing my outsides, my hand --- 

(Interruption).  (( Transcriber's note. ))

Rabbi L. (( Not otherwise identified. ))
Sholomo, what you say about Reb Zaddik HaCohen is very good on a
stupid level, excuse me for saying it, But -- 

RSC:  Doesn't work always, you know.

R. L-- 
Let's say you're really praying for someone 
you love very very much.  Can you really
say that underneath you really didn't want
---------------------------------------------------------------

START MS. PAGE 4

them to get well.
(A8-13)


RSC:
No, G_d forbid.  You see, you want to know something.
I'll tell you something very strong and true.  Anything
which is always true is already a lie.  Cause there
is no such thing as always right.  Listen I will
tell you you are never permitted to turn on a 
light on ShaBaT.  It's not true because if someone
is sick I have to.  

(( This point occurs in the excerpt from Mishna -- Kdoshim 2 was
it -- that follows kabalat shabat. ))


I will say I'm never permitted to
drive on ShaBaT.  If somebody G_d forbid has to go to
the hospital I have to, right.  Because the sign if
it's true is, if it's a living thing, living is moving 
right.  So if Reb Tzadik haCohen says about prayers
that if I don't want to, it's not always true
you know.  Listen, you'll say nebach a Yidalah
in Auchwitz was praying please G_d let me live,
and then nebach he was killed the next day.  I'll 
say he didn't realy mean it?  Nebach did he
mean it gevalt.  But there is soemthing to it
you know.  Listen, a lot of time --- I'll tell you
something  very strong.  I just thought of it because 
one little girl in New York called me, she was praying
that this boy should like her for two years.
And then she met him in the third year and he really wanted to
marry her.  She took one
look at him and said crazy, what do I need
---------------------------------------------------------------

START PAGE 5 OF MS. A8

him for.  And for two years she was angry at
G_d.  she realized, taka a gornischt.  G_d was
really right.  What did she need him for. ?
(A8-14)
(A8-14a)

RL:
Some people don't want to buy it but, as much
as a person has a tremendous desire to live we've
discovered also there are death wishes.
(A8-15)


RSC:
But you see, I'll tell you something very deep.  The truth is when
you pray you momish
pray only with your life wishes.  Not with
your death wishes.  Only with the part of 
you which wants life.  The part of you which
wants death doesn't pray.  You know to not
pray is already to be dead.  There's a saying 
by Reb Nachman, it says that you know,
praying you always think I'm asking for
something.  Reb Nachman says prayer itself
is the greatest life giver.  Praying itself gives
you life.  It's like pluggin in to electricity
you know.  Ok, then I want to hear the
radio.  But this is a minor thing.  In the
mean time (( and a mean time it is -- "Mean Streets" and all that
))
I'm plugged into life. 

Then
he says something very deep.  We always
think there is such a thing as permitted
or not permitted.  There is soemthing much
deeper than that you know. It might
---------------------------------------------------------------

START PAGE 6 OF MS. A8

be permitted, but it isn't good.

(( Eliahu says:  It's kosher but it stinks.  ))

For instance
I will say you know, kvais steak is kosher
right.  But maybe at that moment I have
a stomach ache it's not good for me.  I will
say, what do you mean it's not good for
me -- it's kosher.  It's very sweet, it's kosher,
but it's not good for you.  
(A8-16)


You see, we always
look at it is it right or wrong.  Right or 
wrong is only on the outskirts level.  
(A8-16)

On the 
inside level its much deeper.  Is it good at
this moment, or its not so good. 

So the whole ting is of washing before you 
daven, washing in the morning, is not only
that I should do what's right or wrong, I should be on the level
of good.  And not only good
and bad, but good for that moment you 
know.  It may not even be bad you know.

I'll tell you something very deep.  There is
such a thing like day and night, darkness
and light.  And then there is such a thing
like on Shabos there is no night, you know.
By ShaBaT it doesn't say it was evening and
it was morning.  Shabos it says and
it was ShaBaT, YOM Ha_ShvI'I .  The seventh day.
That means the light of ShaBaT is not something
which it can be night and darkness.
----------------------------------------------------------------

START PAGE 7 OF MS. A8

In its light.  I don't know if I make myself 
clear.  Usually I can always point out this
is bad and this is good right.  This is good
and this is better.  But then there is goodness
on such a high level, it's not its better, or
there's worse you know.  It's just this is good.
This is purest good there is.  

Let's put it this
way.  The world only knows peace because
they think war is bad, right.  What do they
know about peace.  They think killing each
other is bad so let's make peace.  but they
don't hae a taste 
of what is momish good.  So to wash our
hands means please G_d let me have a taste
of good.  Let's wash off all the things you know.
He says I am not even talking about permitted
or not permitted.  Just mommish good.  So he
says especially before eating, if I momish
receive the food on the level of momish good,
then after I eat I have no trouble.  Because
my very physical strength is so purified I just
don't feel like doing bad you know.  I'll tell
-----------------------------------------------------------------

START PAGE 8 OF MS. A8

you something very strong.  You can sit there
with friends and eat and momish they have
such an urge to say something bad about another
person.  How come G_d gave you strength, you
ate.  So how come right away you want to 
do something bad.  And it was kosher food.
(A8-17)


Because , yeah it was permitted, but it
wasn't good.  If you receive something on
the level of good, completely different thing.

Ah, this is a very strong thing.  We were
learning Reb Nachman what he says about
uplifitng the level of fear you know.  It's a
very deep thing.  Because the hardest thing
in the world is to know exactly what it
means to fear G_d.  Highest thing there is
you know.  Because really fear of G_d
(A8-18)


is the 
holiest thing int the world you know.  
Like G_d said to Avraham after he was
ready to sacrifice Yityhak:  "Now I know
that you really fear G_d."  Can you imagine
what Avraham Avinu went through, would
you say he was not fearing G_d before?  I'mn 
sure he was.  But the utmost utmost purity
of fearing G_d.  You know obviously I don't
------------------------------------------------------------------

START PAGE 9 OF MS. A8

fear G_d like I walk on the street I'm afraid if
someone comes with a gun.  This isn't where the
fear of g_d is right.  Something else.  So the
Ishbitzer says something very strong.  What
happens to you when you have ordinary
fear.  I'm standing and somene points a 
gun at me, I'm completely shaky right.
The more I'm afraind of the danger the more
shaky I get.  With the fear of G_d it's the
other way around.  The stronger my fear
of G_d is, the stronger I am.  Non-shaky I am.
It says a parsuke\\

(( END MS. A8 ))

================================================================
sa, Campra, 25 Oct '04 -- 10 Cheshvan -- 11 Ramadan
================================================================

FOOTNOTES.  CAVEAT TABBYCAT.

(A8-1)
(( Cf. PVK -- there is an inner core of the soul that can never be
sullied, never defiled, and one can access that.
Similarly, Cf. the early morning bracha, NiShMaH Sh_NaTaT BI
tHORaH HIA ))

(A8-2)
(( Note (sa) -- and this is the morning passage in the Siddur,
MiTyvaT 'aSeH Shel V_AHavaT L_R'eaKh K_MO_Kha , the positive
mitzva to be devoted to the welfare of my neighbor ( tendentiously
translated 'fellow Jew' by Metsudah Siddur ) as to myself ))

  
(A8-3)
(( Note (sa) But this is Hillel, If I am not for myself, who will
be for me, and if I am only for myself, what am I (Pirke haAvot) -
- and I say -- even after we reach Highest Perfect Englightenment
or whatever, one should still be for oneself as well as others,
otherwise this is the sin of Pride -- imagining oneself so humble
that only the needs of others matter -- ( and once at the Abode
Camprground I overheard R. Shlomo offer someone "my humble
business card" ) -- Like, the Christians did thus, but what do
goyim know of the teachings of the Jesus -- and we sure have
picked up a lot of bad habits from them, mostly black -- my
compliments to Twinings Teamakers ))

(A8-4)
(( and R. Shlomo says somewhere, and everyone knows, at Meor
Modi'in at least, that prayers go to the Kineret to be washed
before they go up to the Heavenly Host ))

(A8-5)
(( But it is said, in Heaven will shall be held accountable for
every lawful pleasure of which we could have partaken but did not
))

(A8-6)
(( Why do we wash our hands before eating karpas at the Seder. 
Because in the good old days, in Temple times, they washed hands
not only before eating bread, but before eating any food that
could get dirt from the hands.  I mean, in those days, long before
even the Pentium 3 , work was shoveling up cowpies to put on the
turnip patch, etc. ( I did that once, at New Buffalo, hauled about
40 tons of it, planted turnips, pulled them out and put them in
sand in the root cellar, and then split for philosophy in grad
school at Santa Barbara (pothead section) before I had to eat
them. ))


(A8-7)
(( They were putting up the meditation tent.  It was Saturday
(really, we ought to rename the days of the week, I mean, who
wants Saturn hanging around on Shabat ) so I stood on the edge of
the platform.  I said, It's a tough job, but someone has to do it.
))


(A8-8)
(( Oh good heavens.  At Modi'in, once about every half-dozen
simchas, a bottle of real Scotch, or once even Jameson, appears,
if you look sharp enough.  BZ said, if you're offered a drink,
chug it down in a single swallow.  I say, only after Mincha after
saying Kaddish, when you need a shot of firewater to take you back
into l'chaim, after passing for a moment through the realm of
shades and shadows. ))                                  

(A8-9)
(( Everyone knows, you use cold water, it takes away the bad vibes
better.  But I say, they made those rules for the land of Israel,
and sunny Iraq, not for Ashkenaziland.  To keep the faith in
Ashkenaziland was not so simple, as is even less so nowadays. 
Much honor to those who preserved it there, against the time we
regained our land.  For the religion of Judaism is interwoven with
the ecology of the land of Israel, and that gives the Jewish
people a dimension of claim to that land which the Arab peoples do
not have. ))


(A8-10)
(( Similarly, PVK would often remark, aren't you glad that you
didn't get what you wished for, years ago.  
And later he would sometimes add -- or sorry that you did. ))

(( You see, one of my sidelines is trying to build bridges.  Who
knows, maybe someday some being crosses over one.  A frog maybe. 
Or even a small fast deer.  I mean, these ain't matchsticks, it's
all good lumber, tho I ain't got the patience to be a carpenter.
))


(A8-11)
(( I was flipped out and walking down the Arroyo Hondo road.  I
passed Tellus Goodmorning who said to me:  Wash your face. He was
one of the elders of the Taos pueblo, as gentle a man as one could
ever meet.   He prayed Cave Dave out of jail once, after Cave Dave
found Jesus -- I mean, it's all true enough, but this not such a
smart move when you are Jewish -- and turned himself into the cops
for something he did during the Chicago Yippie demonstrations
against -- poor old Hubert Humphrey's collaboration in LBJ's macho
continuation of the war against the civilization of Southeast
Asia, if I recall -- I mean, JFK was a mensch, from Massachusetts
of course -- we've been standing up for things since the Boston
tea Party -- and some say, he was getting reading to pull out of
Vietnam when they shot him down -- not Oswald, who cried out "I'm
a patsy" when they caught him, but THEY -- Jim Garrison was on the
track, I reckon -- LBJ seems to have worked monumentally at trying
to "play the part of a man".  I mean -- "where there are no men,
strive to be a man" -- Pirke haAvot -- that's very honorable, if
it's done in good faith, not faking it -- Norman Mailer saw that
"and if you can convince him that you are less queer than he, and
less stupid than he, then, if he honest sort, he will ask you to
run for President" -- a fast mind, so you have to untangle the
irony to see what he said -- like me -- but I digress. ))


(A8-12)
(( That's why masage was invented, and lovemaking too, especially
foreplay and afterplay etc. ))


(A8-13)
(( Oh, Cows Defend Us , this is legalistic extrapolation, RSC said
R. Tzadik HaCohen just said it's sometimes thataway.  I mean,
like, causuality is linear only in the simplest case, and
petiionary prayer is like as complex as case as one could imagine.
))

(A8-14)
(( Yes, for years after I broke, or was broken, from someone in
the USA, and then went to Israel because I said, everyone gets
married in Israel, not just people with Ph.d's and yuppies who
have made Junior Vice President, and so I was praying to get
married and have known children, but mostly because I thought I
needed that for my geneology, I mean, I would have been just as
glad if the chick then split and raised the kid or kids herself, I
mean, like they sometimes wake you up at night.  So I suppose I
was praying that heaven send me a wife, more or less, and an
inexpensive or prepaid Nanny too; and on my income, if any, that's
a harder package to put together.  Oh well.  Tragedy veiled as
light burlesque in a footnote. Story of my life.  But I digress.
))


(A8-14a)
(( There's a story that HIK, in is early years I think, met a guy
on a train who said, please make this young women like me, so HIK
did something and said, go to her now, you'll find her in a good
mood, and she was; and that happened one more time, and then HIK
said, no I can't do it any more.  Meaning, I take it, that he
should not.  Because of course, that's siddhi's, white magic at
best.  Judaism is quite clear that we don't do magic, and I reckon
that means, not even white magic.  And as I've said, PVK, unlike
the RSC chevre (tho maybe not unlike RSC, if you recall clearly)
was very hesitant, to say the lease, about offering blessings to
people, he once said, he would not dare to do so were he not in
the consciousness of HIK -- I guess because HIK, being on one of
the upper balconies, had a better perspective -- I mean, if you
ain't free of the klippot when you get to Heaven, what's the point
of dying.
So anyhow, petitionary prayer does come close to attempted white
magic, which may be why it has no explicit place in the siddur.))

(A8-15)
(( You and Sigmund Freud, to be precise.  
And Wittgenstein said, this is in Culture and Value if I recall --
If you think I am against Freud because I am a prude, think again.
I mean, death wish is not simple.
I'm sitting in this yuppie-dippie Yoga Center in davka Frankfurt,
where it's so politically correct that gentlemen are requested,
with an international graphic of the sort you don't see in the
Holy Land, to be seated before -- Doing Number 1, as they used to
say, I was once informed that the German word can only be Pinkle -
- so anyhow, there's enough aovda zora on the walls to keep a
frummie brigade busy printing posters for a month -- including a
depiction of Shiva as a naked chick dancing on Mt. Everest or
Kalas or whatever -- some place you can't walk up to on a Sunday
afternoon and eat lunch -- and someone says, Shiva, that's
destruction.  And I want to say, gevalt, change is necessarily
dialektic, thesis--antithesis -- which is destruction of the
thesis -- and then a synthesis that incorporates both the thesis
and the truth of its negation --
And that's the easiest thing to say about this so-called 'death
wish' -- 
I mean, if middle-aged rabbits didn't acquire a death-wish, we'd
all be wearing Wellingtons.
Too, the Elizabethans considered what it means to wish to "die",
and came to rather different conclusions, so to speak.
"Turn off your mind, relax and float down stream -- this is not
dying " -- the Beattles, speaking of ego-loss under psychedelics.
"But those who know this but by half / mistake this truth for
epitaph" (sa)
So ok, a nervous breakdown is something like a death wish -- there
I as on the beach on Rodos, acting as if I wanted to die, or at
least that I believed this was what I was supposed to want at that
stage in my life, except that my body was much more interested in
scraping up enough money to buy another lemon sherbert cone, since
the weather was rather hot.  Not having at that time a goal in
life, I let it default to survival, which is a bit more self-
motivating than eg writing a definitive book on the
Wittgensteinian revolution.
Facism is thanato-philia.  (Unanumo said that, in his comment on
the one-arm, one-eye Falangist general who stood up at an Academic
Convocation and started shouting, 'Viva La Muerte'.
Facism, especially Islamic Facism, is a quest for Purity, but
they're frightfully simplistic about it.
I rarely through anything out.  ("I grieve a leaving / even my
sins"),  Amy said, I always throw things out.
The Germans have always been keen on hygiene.  At one stage they
decide that Jews are dirty.  Nowadays they have excellent
standards for organic produce.
OK, maybe that's enough for now.  Back to work. ))

(A8-16)
(( and yet some folks think it's it a mitzva to eat 3 or 4 meals
on Shabat whether you're hungry or not.  And some eat the most
preposterous foods, like cholent on a summer day in Israel.  And
eat at the most preposterous times, like noontime in Israel.  I
mean, this is all from Ashkenaziland.  Like, on a cold cloudy day
in the Alps I sure would like a Shabat cholent at noontime; in a
chamsin in Israel a tall glass of yogurt with chives after
Shaharit, before 10 AM, will do fine.  And R. Zalman once wrote,
maybe you want to do a fast on Shabat.  So OK, that should maybe
be forbidden, more or less, for folks in a Poland shetl, otherwise
nobody would ever eat anything but cold grass.  But for Yuppies in
Philadelphia, it's something else.
And what goes down with Glatt Kosher is often an exploitative
outrage.  I mean, I've seen them bring brightly colored liqueurs
to the Bet Knesset for a simcha, that I wouldn't put in the
radiator of my car, especially as I don't have a car.
But I digress. ))


(A8-16)
(( The Navajo Indian women wear lots of skirts in winter, one over
the other.  And maybe the Beduin women too.  The Yuppies
discovered this and call it layering.  Like, you add insulation by
creating layers of dead air between the various garments.  At New
Buffalo I wore two pairs of pants over my longjohns in winter. 
One winter I would piss behind the house, and wait for it to melt
in springtime.  But before that, I broke down.  So then they
invented Qang Fa, or whatever that Chinese Interior Decoration is
called, that says, keep your house a full of good vibes, and as
free of bad vibes, as you can.  Why anyone has the privy inside
the house I can't imagine -- I guess so grandpa don't slip on the
ice on a moonless night.  At least in Israel nobody puts the
toilet in the bathroom.  Even the Romans, those damnable idiots,
weren't that stupid.
But I digress. ))


(A8-17)
(( With kosher additive, no doubt.  I used to tell folks,
Styrofoam is made from pigs' knuckles.  I mean, it was a byproduct
of napalm, or something.  I'm sitting in the Dan Hotel in Lugano
this Tishrei, stealing porcelain cups off somebody else's table to
drink tea in.  I mean, Reform is quite right, and R. Zalman is its
Prophet -- he used to ask, is electricity for a nuke kosher -- I
mean, just because it wasn't put in the contract on Mt. Sinai -- I
mean, talk about fine print -- and R. Zalman used to say, more or
less, when you go into the Great Shul of Orthodoxy, you don't have
to check your mind with the hat-check girl.
All through the 1930's, men always wore hats.  And ladies too, if
not women.
In the South, this was in the 1950s, then had a Ladies Room for
the whites, and a Women's room for the Afro-Americans.
In olden time, ladies had white skin, as if to say, I don't have
to go out in the fields and work in the hot sun.  And gentlemen
wore silly frills, as if to say, I don't have to worry about
getting dirty, I scarcely even touch the earth.  (And some kings
were carried, so that their feet never touched the earth.  Ah, the
good old days.)
Gentlemen still wear a sports jacket, and a necktie.  (R. Shlomo
once said, I think Hatzkele told me that, "They put the gartel in
the wrong place. ")  The sports jacket is cut away, just where you
want to button it up against a cold win, as if to say, I'm so rich
I can buy a heavy jacket and then cut a hole in it. 
But I digress. ))

(A8-18)
(( yirat haShem, better translated, awe before the Majesty of the
Heavens  -- I mean, Yitzak lives all his life in yirat haShem, but
this is not cowering churchmouse, he is laughing with his wife,
and becoming a very prosperous cattle-rancher indeed -- or sheep
and goats and whatever -- but this was one of the richest men of
his era, or so the Bible seems to say -- and a very modest guy
too, no bluster and braggadicio -- I mean, we ain't talking LBJ,
much less Bushie, l'havdil ))

