In the final generation…there are zaddikim who can recognize transgressors and heretics who are connected to their soul root. Therefore, they (the zaddikim) have to deal with them (the heretics) in wondrous manners in ways impossible to comprehend from an exoteric perspective Rav Kook: Shemoneh Kavazim !: #326 A heretic can be found who has strong illuminating faith which flows from the source of supernal holiness than thousands of ‘believers’ of little faith Rav Kook: Orot Ha-‐Emunah 21
I know not of roots and souls “shoresh veneshama” Technical terms that are disconnected from our experiential vocabulary (despite being bandied about by kabbalists as if understood by them!) I know I am disconnected, from tradition, belief, authority, praxis and worst of all, Self. For I feel its anguish. I sense its forlornness I hear its cry. I hear words like root and soul and could scream! The latest fallen idol…you may ask? The realization that I was strung between the Soloveitchik/Netziv/Volozhyn textual mastery axis And the Kook/Carlebach/Izhbitz/Breslov prophetic intuitions. And now…decades later, The shattered remnants on the ground look up at me With a sense of betrayal and chronicles of wasted time. The new agnosticism, informed by “Rabbi” Nietzsche, the passage of time watching the religious fads come and go Each group (Hassidic or otherwise) reaching its height then fracturing into warring parties The cross cultural nature of believing communities, authorities, doctrinal wars The real dark side of ideologies and collectives.
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In the hollowness of the absence of ideology and hope In the grey landscape of memory for the comfort of ritual and community In the solitude of no chevraya Das Niemandsrose Takes center stage. In the silence, in the night, in the study of my father I feel his pain, and his lessening interest in anything outside. He watches me for approval of his 94-‐year-‐old lips Blowing the shofar, it gives him pleasure, not many things do. And my accompanying him to shul once more For selichos… Like in London 50 years ago in the cold fog Wiping the chilly mist off the windscreen To don his precious t’fillin That survived the war, now over 70 years ago. He called it “selichos weather” as the cold wet autumn chilled the bones. I see too much. The contrived nature of Halachic praxis The endless upmanship of those imitating Brisk’s Obsessive focus on Halachic minutiae The clear historicity of its development The mistakes and errors of the scribes affecting the most ancient sacred texts The holy piety masking the fear of nonconformity The outrageous Kiruv claims for happiness and fulfillment The absent acknowledgment of the dark forces beneath the surface Of community, The violence subtending all collectives and ideologies. The unacknowledged problems of sex abuse and pedophiles in our community The hushed victims by spiritual authority, bribes, threats. The heroin crisis in our midst and loss of fine young people. The neo-‐Hassidic fervency and naiveté The petty in fighting between gedolim and Rebbes And in my loneliness With no one to lend ear I scream in the wilderness of this silent study… Of the failure within and without This creeping awareness of my part, my culpability and inertia in this generation’s error. And my timidity and absent courage to fight
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Preferring the nihilism of my couch and the endless ways To escape the pain, I seek. And, of course, this aging thing The nightly discomfort wakens me to stumble towards the relief station Maybe even twice! The memory of objects, keys cel phones forgotten on planes and offices The missed appointments (because I failed to write it down) A slow awakening to the dementia that awaits The inertia preventing me from exercising with all sorts of excuses, primarily the utter boredom of it all. “Crustaceous” came to mind when describing other’s slow insistence on the old ways Behaviors, habits, jokes, immediate responses, food choices and divrei Torah. Admonitions, opinions, politics, all become ossified in this web of calcification, tangles, And amyloid. I used to call others this term. Watching it in the mirror actually happening to me now, And the echoes of mortality Sounding louder and louder Having watched parents and in laws decline I now submit to the same process The inevitability of time’s course And its seeming acceleration Towards this end Of self Of being Of life How did I ever feel so immortal when young? Reading medical articles one by one About my sins of omission and commission Of diet and exercise and diabetic control Of early brain rot due to all three And persistent avoidance of periodic insertion of scopes into every orifice To avoid this or that cancer It’s like watching the play of my life, fast forwarded So that I cannot escape the anxiety of its inevitability. As a child I always feared the passage of time Dreamed of facing death as an old man with a pot belly out of a Dickens novel, It would awaken me in a sweat from my sleep. Now, Without the promises afforded by religious claims (never believed them anyway)
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not even the spiritual claims of mysticism, I am left with the psycho dynamic wish fulfillment theories Of my 20th century “Rebbes” Freud Jung and Fromm, Hillman et al. I must prepare myself, finally, having avoided doing this work, for the ongoing struggle to take back all the projections And own this failed life Own the past The people I have hurt Admit the past, Live in the reality, And silence the inner Kritik. I must come to acceptance Of this life as it is With its failures and upsets The essentially moral failure To live one’s essence This false self Born in the violence of being educated by survivors (and abused) exposed to irrational rage and power by fiat, tyranny no less with no protection. The wounded boy had to survive. But this is no excuse for the individuated man Who should have done the inner work of healing right? Having examined his core beliefs and resentments on the couch Of self awareness And by this age have made peace with the past Not continue to be driven by it Triggered by authority and criticism Into rage And powerlessness. And destructive behaviors. "The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time." Mark Twain
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This is a general principal in the war of ideas…every idea that comes to contradict (listor) an idea from the Torah, we must first approach it not by invalidating it, rather by building a palace of Torah (armon ha-‐Torah) above it. And thus we are uplifted by it. And by means of this elevation, new ideas are revealed.
Rav Kook: Iggrot, 1:163, 164 Yet I do still find my voice in strange places (Leaving more global issues to my children) I prefer the quiet spaces where my heretical readings of sacred texts Fill my heart in my search for meaning. These “friends” have been with me for decades during my struggles with orthodoxy Refusing to merely give up on them, now, Merely because of their human authorship. I am choosy however, restricting my archive to Aggadah from Talmud, Midrash, Parshanut and Hassidut, Post Holocaust writings on faith and covenant… I prefer to return to them once again Seeking hidden mysteries as yet undisclosed In the archeological textual digging of the multi-‐layered opaque Black letters on white landscape or parchment I love the first editions, smelling of old times on fragile cheap paper, With the editions framed in the front with ornate baroque designs. Trained with much patience and in gratitude, to use the tools of analysis of Talmud, by my revered father in law, Reb Hershy, Professors Brettler, Fox, Fishbane, and my beloved George of course, Who taught me how to be committed to one text for decades (the Leshem). And reading Rav Kook in a new key, with the new uncensored versions of letters and essays As well as the traditional Hassidic masters, Plumbing them all for Jungian undertones: Searching for that text that quickens the pulse and makes me gasp (they still do!) that ahaah! moment having discovered something new that reflects the engine of my self. Mirroring the soul’s desire, Finding dark spaces The space between the lines Uncovering what was not said What needed to be said What was left unsaid
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And the author’s unconscious desires, That mirror my soul’s. In these readings I find solace In the company of other like minded souls And a purpose in leaving a slight trace Of my self, my struggles, my search, my path, In such writing, I find comfort that others journeyed this path With the same tightrope balancing act, Struggling with tradition readings against the grain, At times exposing the past textual immoral assumptions Without regret or piety, For the ongoing battle for moral sense The authority and sheer weight of rabbinic tradition vs. the moral equity Of our times and struggles Like a good judge/reader should. Unlike the academic, the Wissenschaft schools I read and study for pleasure and for purpose This study is my lifeline, my oxygen, in the constant refining of the ultimate questions That have plagued me since childhood But also I am in love with the sacred text Albeit like Celan, denuded of philosophical and theological claims, More like a love poem that will not let me rest. And in the space between doctor and patient I will find ongoing solace As we both traverse life’s decay Ostensibly my documenting decline Yet also providing solace for wounded souls Who I firmly believe express their woundedness in the various symptoms Presented on arrival into the examining room. In that sacred space a magical force Operates, of trust, mutuality of suffering, and wisdom. This mystical bond keeps growing deeper as I age And empathize more and more And objectify less and less For medicine as an art has become that intuitive sense Of what is unique to this or that particular patient Not what they have in common with every other sufferer of that malady And in the interaction with children and grandchildren
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Where the transmission of culture, memory and my very being Is the currency worth more than gold, But just watching them chat away among themselves also fills my heart with comfort, as do their constantly inquiring minds with incessant questions It fills me with pure joy. In study work and family, I must find meaning In this path Where death alone defines just how precious My remaining time is. Framing my life as I would a literary work Allows me to focus on the unfinished business… As a coda, The dreams as yet to fulfil of travel… The sweet air of Snowdonia, the rolling Cotswolds, Other places I need to visit To feel the wind in the sail on the Pacific And feel the awe before the blue ice glaciers of Alaska The Aurora Borialis… A pilgrimage to Sobibor concentration camp where my grandparents perished. And once again to stand barefoot in the Paradeisi Synagogue in Cochin Where I felt an alteric connection to my ancestors. Of study… To finally to complete with George the Leshem, and thereby understand the Lurianic project. Of music To complete the Bach prelude and fugues And understand Chopin. Of family… To see my kids settled and independent Each making his and her contribution. So much left to do…
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