Dog days of August

Well, we're into the "dog days" of August. But for me that's a good thing. I love our dogs. Their being canines, as opposed to hominids, doesn't detract from their being full members of our family. When I was doing my annual stint of IDF reserve duty back in the summer of 1993, I was at a small base on the Israeli-Egyptian border about 50 kilometers or so north of Eilat. We were out on patrol one night. Our modified light truck was near the northern end of our patrol route & we turned off the lights & stopped for a break. Our Bedouin tracker made coffee for everyone. I barely sipped mine. We were at least 20 kilometers from the nearest electric light, in the middle of the desert. It was a perfectly clear night & I just stood there looking upward, gaping at the stars. The sky was carpeted with them. I saw the Milky Way. I saw falling stars. I have never seen anything like it either before or since. I felt the wonder & majesty of God that He created such things and afforded me the privilege of being able to see them. Well, when I walk the dogs or just interact with them, I get that same sense of wonder & majesty, I see God's handiwork (as it were) and feel grateful and privileged . Woof!

I mention the dogs because I had a dream a while back in which one of them featured prominently. I dreamed that the bigger of our two dogs carried a very large snake in his mouth. He carried it into our bedroom and dropped it on my wife who was asleep. I know exactly what this means. The dog, as per what I wrote above, is an agent of God. The snake is the same as the one that bit me in my dream on June 6 of last year. The snake that bit me was tiny; this snake was huge. Why? Because a bite from a tiny snake was all I needed to set my mind & heart free. I was well on my way and was ready to be bitten (as it were). My wife (may God bless her!) is nowhere near where I was then, let alone where I am now. She is not ready to be bitten (as it were) and would need the bite of a considerably bigger snake. So, the dog had to drop a whopper on her. In writing this I just realized that my readiness to be bitten was symbolized in my being awake in my dream from June 6 of last year. That my wife is not ready to be bitten may be seen in the fact that she was asleep in my more recent dream.

I had another dream that I was at my Israelite Samaritan friend's home for Shabbat, although I don't remember whether it was his home on Holon or his flat in Kiryat Luza on Aargareezem. It was very late at night & I couldn't sleep because I was anxious and excited about going to the IS synagogue for Shabbat morning prayers, which start before dawn. One day!

I fasted, of course, on the Ninth of Av a few weeks ago although it was solely for appearences' sake. Sigh.

I am looking forward to going back to Aargareezem early next month for my annual visit. By then our youngest son will be back at (boarding) school; our oldest son recently started his IDF service. The boys do not know about the depth of my interest in the Israelite Samaritan (version of our) faith and I would prefer to keep it that way. There has been bad craziness in Samaria of late & I hope it will be OK to drive there.

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.

April angst

Well, our faux Passover has come & gone. I had hoped to be able to go up to Aargareezem to pick some of the wild lettuce that the Israelite Samaritans use for the bitter herb but we were very busy at home & my wife would not, I think, have approved. The boys, who were home, would have asked questions that I would prefer not to answer. The wild lettuce grows just about everywhere in Israel but how spiritual would that be? From Aargareezem it would have been very spiritual and the local stuff would have been a pale imitation. So horseradish it was.

 

It will be easier to go up to the Mountain late this summer, before our "Rosh Hashanah", like I did last year. Our eldest boy will be in the IDF & our youngest will be back in school.

 

I am counting the omer because I am frequently called upon to lead the Saturday evening prayers at our synagogue & when our youngest son is home my wife likes me to count with him. Each night I say to myself before I count I that I am doing so under compulsion.

 

The Israelite Samaritans will begin counting on Saturday night, May 9, I believe. I have asked my IS friend how I must count & what I must say.

 

I finished Gerald Russell's book. Very good, all chapters. I detected one mistake. Mr. Russell wrote that the Israelite Samaritans believe that the Torah was given on Aargareezem not Mt. Sinee. I read where he referred to the Sullivans. What a pity that things did not work out for them. I must admit that I fantasized about Mr. Russell referring to me, the Israelite Jew who became an Israelite Samaritan. May it be Shema's will!

 

I wish everyone a happy & healthy new year. May Shema shower His blessings on you!

February ramblings

I've posted what I think about Esau, that he gets a bum rap, & how I think that our Jewish Sages love to demonize him. I asked my Israelite Samaritan friend how Ishaab (to use the IS style) is seen by the IS community. He replied, "As holy as his brother, seeker of peace and pampered by the Almighty, so human and so compassionate." How wonderful!

I saw a review of Gerald Russell's book "Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms: Journeys into the Disappearing Religions of the Middle East" & ordered the book. I had it shipped to my parents in the US & Dad forwarded it to me here. I am almost finished with the first two chapters, on the Mandeans & the Yazidis. I am reading the chapters in order & will get to the (5th) chapter on the Israelite Samaritans eventually. It is a very good read so far. My IS friend said it is "good and accurate."

I first became aware of the "Samaritans" way back after my (Conservative) bar mitzvah. I received from the synagogue a Hertz chumash which I still have (actually I have my brother's; maybe he has mine?) In his commentary on Genesis 49:7, Yaaqob is giving his blessing to Shehmoon and Libee. The Masoretic Text version reads: "Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce, and their wrath for it was cruel; I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel." The Hebrew for "Cursed" is arur. Rav Hertz writes in his commentary: "It is characteristic of the untrustworthiness of the Samaritan Text that instead of the reading arur, 'Cursed be their anger,' it has adir, 'How splendid is their anger!'" The IS Version of the Torah reads "Great is their anger, for it is strong, and their wounding, for it is so hard. I will disperse them in Yaaqob and scatter them in Yishraael."

His sneering condescension aside, I think that Rav Hertz completely misreads the Israelite Samaritan version. Adir also means great or mighty, which is clearly the meaning it has in the Israelite Samaritan version. I don't get that Yaaqob is praising or commending his sons' anger at all. Otherwise he would not "disperse them in Yaaqob and scatter them in Yishraael." That Yaaqob wasn't praising their anger is also obvious from Genesis 49:6, which reads not all that differently in the two versions. The Jewish version reads: "Let my soul not come into their council; unto their assembly let my glory be united; for in their anger they slew men, and in their self-will they houghed oxen." The Israelite Samaritan version reads: "In their secret my soul will not be involved, and in their assembly my honor will not be angry; Because in their anger they slew men. And in their will they lamed an ox."

So until I discovered the Israelite Samaritans and their version of our faith, I would read Rav Hertz every year and think "Those poor benighted Samaritans..."

A few Shabbats ago at our synagogue, as we were waiting for 10 men to show up so we could say the afternoon prayers, the discussion turned to whether Jews should or should not go up to the Temple Mount. The guys looked at me and I said that I don't go up there. I wanted to shout, "BECAUSE IT IS NOT THE HOLY PLACE CHOSEN BY GOD!!! THAT IS AARGAREEZEM!!!"

But I didn't. Shouting rarely does any good.

In Exodus 24:7, the Jewish Masoretic Text says, "...we will do and we will hear," whereas the Israelite Samaritan Text says, "...we will hear and we will do." Our Jewish Sages make such a big deal that we declared that we would do God's words even before understanding ("hearing") them & that without doing there can be no understanding. Now that I think about it, I think our reading makes little sense. How can we do God's words if we do not know what they are & what God in fact wants?

Ramp (not Stairway) to Heaven

We (my wife and I) went to the Western Wall for a bar mitzvah this past Monday morning & I felt the nothing that I have felt there previously. I didn't touch it & didn't feel the slightest inclination that I should. I said the IS prayers that I say every day & recited the Shma in IS mode as I now do. What an irony - the would-be Israelite Samaritan praying at the Western Wall.

 

The Shabbat afternoon before last, at the lesson that the Rabbi always gives over the third Shabbat meal at our synagogue, we discussed this classic Chassidic text, specifically the last paragraph. Where the English in the link uses the word "level", the original Hebrew (the lesson was in Hebrew) uses the word madrega, which can mean "level" but it is also the modern Hebrew word for "step" as in to go up or down steps (but not to take a step). An insight just came to me & I said that the problem with that text is that the Torah never talks about steps, only ramps. True Torah spirituality is not akin to going up (or down) steps, but a ramp. I cited Exodus 20:22 (see parallel Hebrew & English texts): "Neither shalt you go up by steps to Mine altar, that your nakedness not be uncovered thereon." From this, the Rabbis taught that the priests went up to the altar via a ramp. (Click here.) What "nakedness" is the Torah talking about here? It cannot be, I said, actual nakedness because the priests wore short pants (i.e. "linen breeches", Exodus 28:42) specifically to cover their nakedness! I said that I heard once that Exodus 20:22 must be referring to spiritual nakedness, i.e. that of going up a step and stopping as it were on one's spiritual journey to get closer to God. When it comes to such a spiritual journey one is either ascending or descending, going forward or going back, there is no standing in place, which steps would allow you to do. And standing in place on a ramp is much more difficult than on steps (try it without a pronounced lean). I said that the Chassidic text's use of a steps analogy is faulty; it should have used a ramp.

 

Why am I telling you all this? What I didn't say at the lesson at the synagogue is that I think classical rabbinic (orthodox) Judaism is like steps but that the Israelite Samaritan (version of our) faith is like a ramp and, therefore, closer to the Torah. One can rest, possibly for a long time, on steps as one climbs. There can be landings on the way. These stops & halts can facilitate change. Look at how classical rabbinic Judaism has changed and evolved over the centuries and millenia. Extra books (the non-Torah parts of the Tanakh, which is what we call what Christians call the "Old Testament") were added on. We built Temples. Then we developed a non-priestly clergy (i.e. the rabbis), then we articulated an Oral Torah, which eventually gave rise to the Mishna & Talmud. Then the Chassidic movement was born. All of these developments were made possible, or at least facilitated, through classical rabbinic Judaism's step-by-step (every pun intended) progress up historical/spiritual steps. (And remember, steps are alien to the Torah.) The Israelite Samaritan (version of our) faith has, by contrast, changed but very little over the centuries. Because its spiritual journey has been up a (Torah-true) ramp, where it is much harder to stand in place to stop and refit for long, its history has been marked by an enduring sameness. There's a famous rabbinical legend in the Talmud (Tractate Menachot) that God plopped Moses down in Rabbi Akiva's study hall one day & Moses was quite bewildered & didn't understand what Rabbi Akiva & his students were talking about. I would venture that if, say, Moses, as the ISs understand him, or Baba Rabba, were to visit an IS synagogue today, they would fit right in. 

 

Ramps vs. steps.

 

The two Jewish Temples, of course, had steps but the Temples are a post-Torah development. The Torah itself talks only about the Tabernacle, in which there was no steps, only a ramp.

Weird dream

I had a weird dream earlier this week. I dreamed I was with a group of other men waiting to be circumcised. I said (to whoever was in charge) that I am already circumcised and I even showed him. (Despite my showing my penis there was no sexual or erotic content to this dream whatsoever; it was not that kind of a dream.)

I know that circumcision is a sign of one's being inducted into the Jewish faith, whether you're born into it or converted. Israelite Samaritan males are, of course, circumcised at 8 days just like we are. I imagine that someone who isn't circumcised (a non-Jew) who wished to adopt the IS (version of our) faith would have to be circumcised & I also imagine that a Jew who wished to adopt the IS (version of our) faith would be OK as is (no drawing a drop of blood with a pinprick as a symbolic circumcision).

I wonder what this dream means in terms of attachment to the IS (version of our) faith. Any ideas?