More on counting

The Israelite Samaritans are celebrating Shavuot today (Sunday, 28 June). Last week, I emailed my IS friend & asked him until what day should I count the Omer, until this past Friday night/Saturday, making 49 days, or unil last night (Saturday)/this morning, making 50 days. Jews, if course, count only 49 days. While our Shavuot is the 50th day, we do not count it; our last day is 49. He said that ISs count 50 days & so I did as well. (May God grant that I one day celebrate Shavuot on Aargareezem as it is meant to be celebrated!)

Yesterday, I looked the source of this whole kerfuffle, namely Leviticus 23:15-16, which says:

"And you shall count unto you from the morrow after the Shabbat...sevencomplete weeks; even unto the morrow after the seventh Shabbat you shall number fifty days..."

The plain meaning of the text is that we count 50 days. The Jewish sage Rashi comments on this and says that it means "until, but not including, 50", i.e. 49.Thus the Jews count only 49 days. The claim is that if we were to count 50 days this would not be "seven complete weeks." But the problem with hat is that the text clearly says that we are to count 50 - not 49 - days! Why can't it mean that we re o count seven complete weeks *plus* one day. This would be in keeping with "...you shall number 50 days." I think that this more Rabbinic sophistry that does not jibe with the plain written sense of the Torah.

I counted 50 days. May it be God's will that I do so next year as well (and the year after that, and the year after that, etc., until a ripe old age)!

nb

Little goats & such

I wrote another poem:

Slaughterhouse Rules

by Northwardb (northwardb@gmail.com)

Copyright April 2015; all rights reserved.

#

Once I played the doubter

and killed a sacred cow.

I didn't mean to do it.

("What will I do now?")

I had savored holy blood

and scarce knew what I'd done

But I swung my knife again

and killed another one.

I put away my blade,

shaken to the core,

but the taste on my tongue lingered

and bid me butcher more.

I raised my arm and slashed

and quickly felled my third.

Now no longer playing

I greatly culled the herd.

Staggered by the slaughter

of much that I'd held dear,

"Where," I cried to Heaven,

"Where can I go from here?"

I led the remaining cows

away from what I'd known,

my knife now dull from wear,

into a land that wasn't sown.

I started writing this very late one night while I was out walking the dogs. It just started cming to me & I started writing on my phone (I saved it as a looong SMS).

I've taken a fierce liking to to Chava Alberstein's version of the classic Passover Seder song Chad Gadya. Click here for a YouTube clip. She has a beautiful voice, which I think even non-Hebrew speakers could appreciate. While I do not share her rather left-wing politics and certainly do not share her sentiments regarding the song & all the controversy it originally generated (click on the first link above, the one on her name, go to page #4), the song really speaks to me. A single work of art (a poem, a painting, a song, etc.) can mean 100 different things (none of which may have even remotely occurred to the artist!) to 100 different people. That is the beauty of art; its ability to inspire is limitless.

So after Chava Alberstein sings about the Angel of Death taking care of the butcher (she leaves out the part about God taking care of the Angel of Death), she sings (rough translation by yours truly):

"...Spring hasn't arrived, Passover hasn't come.
What is different? I am different this year.
On all [other] nights, on all [other] nights I asked only four questions.
Tonight I have another question:
How long will this cycle of terror continue?
Tonight I have another question:
How long will this cycle of terror continue?
Pursue and be pursued,
beat and be beaten,
When will this insanity end?
What is different? I am different this year.
I was a lamb, a whole kid;
today I am a leopard and a ravenous wolf.
I was a dove and I was a deer;
today I don't know who I am..."

Ooh, this talks to me.

Spring heralds hope & Passover heralds deliverance and I feel that I have little of either. Asking a fifth question signifies a breaking of forms (after all, there are only fourquestions). The cycle of terror and the insanity are a hint to the next image. That I was a lamb, a whole kid & a deer means that I used to be accepting and satisfied with the forms and conventions of (in my case) orthodox Judaism. But now I am a pursuing, beating ravenous wolf who upsets the applecart, who is not accepting and who is not satisfied with the forms and conventions of orthodox Judaism. Once you've upset the applecart, you can't get the apples back. Some roll away and are lost, others get smooshed, etc. I long for some kind of rest, some kind of equilibrium ("How long will this cycle of terror continue?...When will this insanity end?...") but am disheartened because I don't see the possibility of that happening. I tried to capture this dynamic in my first poem above. Alberstein's song continues
_____ 

"...One little goat, one little goat

which my father bought for two zuzim

_____ 

(this is how the song starts; this is actually the opening stanza) and then ends
_____ 

Here we go again, back at the beginning.
_____ 

How's that for optimism?

I've been reading up about Uriel da Costa & have tracked down a copy of his book in a library here in Jerusalem. Light summer reading, eh? What a pity he was not aware of the Israelite Samaritans. Some of his criticisms of rabbinical Judaism seem to jibe with certain IS views. 

I have been counting the omer in the Isrselite Samaritan mode; today is the 39th day, by the way.

I actually spoke today to an acquaintance who knows a bit of how I feel about the IS's, Aargareezem, etc. This person was struck how one can just go right up and stand / walk on Givot Olam on Aargareezem, where the Tabernacle stood. Even those o'dox rabbis who say that one can go up to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem say that you have to immerse in a ritual bath first and wear only certain kinds of shoes and then you have to avoid certain areas up there. My acquantance marveled at the contrast. I cited Deuteronomy 30:14, "Because the word is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it." Rabbinical Jews have a fetish for (figurative) fences, around their holy place nd around the Torah itself. To this IS's say that fences are barriers that impede contact! "Because the word is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it."

I have to go back to the US in October for a visit. I will definitely want / need to go to Aargareezem first, possibly in early September, before our "Rosh Hashanah." Every Friday night, as we welcome in the Sabbath, I implore God to send me of the holiness of that Place, Aargareezem.