A Thought Experiment

For my whole writing career I have pursued the belief that words are malleable and language is as much a barrier to knowledge as a means of developing knowledge. Words, like knowledge, can evolve and expand in breadth and depth of meaning and implication, and we can begin to hear undertones and after-tones as our sensitivity to each word expands.

So, remember back when you were learning a new language. At first, you equated words in your known language, 1 to 1 with new words in the foreign language. But if your learning gained any depth, you soon saw that the relationships were not 1 to 1 at all. They were hazy, with only partial overlaps, and often with layers or facets of a word in one language, that in the second language were entirely unrelated.

Now, some time ago I began to believe that the Torah had a depth to it that was beyond human. I came to this belief from the opposite direction of traditional orthodoxy that has always maintained that ‘Torah is the word of God.’ Well, there is much in Torah that I believe is all too human, which is to say, deeply flawed, or at least prone to being understood in a deeply flawed way. But I also began to see layers of causality and fore-knowledge that appeared well beyond the capability of mere humans.

I began to wonder: are we translating the Hebrew incorrectly? Are the meanings we’ve applied to words based on ancient or medieval misconceptions, or on the limited knowledge of our forebears? So, here’s a thought experiment. It’s very simple and yet I’ve found it transformative:

Instead of thinking the word ‘melekh’ means ‘king,’ imagine it means ‘consciousness.’ Simple. But watch what that does to your understanding as you say any standard blessing:

Blessed are You, Adonai, our God, Consciousness of the Universe...

Suddenly, your consciousness is bound up with the Divine, directly, palpably. Your consciousness is part of the Melekh of the Olam.

Oh, oh. What does ‘Olam’ really mean?

Remembrances of Times to Come, 2

On Sept. 23, 2023 I posted the first impressions of a poem that was emerging thru my mind. The poem didn’t even have a name at the time, but I knew it was a powerful energy that would compel me for a long while. Since then I’ve been working assiduously on it, letting it speak, letting it rearrange my thinking, letting it come alive. It now has a name, maybe not a final name, but a first name: Remembrensenz a Tiemz tu Kum, or in standard (old) English: Remembrances of Times to Come.

It is a poem with at least two focuses:
1. preparing for the journey after death, and
2. attempting to reveal the infinite nature of all things, an infinite nature well-hidden not just by the limitation of our 5 senses and our body-focused thinking, but by language itself.

What follows is a short excerpt, first in my evolving English, and then in old English, that is, the English that people are speaking in this era.

Remembrensenz a Tiemz tu Kum, a frag

Wen I wuz nine I koud fienlee heer
the kwesten that bin asken me:
wy am I in this boddee-shel?

An wen I wuz twennee five I koud heer
the Lor Hem kawlen, ‘hu iz heer?’
an I began an anser, ‘henunnee* ………. see Gen. 22:1; Isaiah 6:8
with my broken leeng, awl limmitten krude,
awl mis-derrekten an mis-kunstruez,
awl fragmentes an fule a noiz.
A kors, I didden relize it;
I thot my iyz bin akyuret,
my leeng persise, reflekten tru.

Wen I wuz fortee nine I lern
the Torruh iz but a seengel werd
six hunnert thowzen letterz long.
An me, my werdz ar shatter glas,
three, five, sevven letterz long,
sumtime maybee a fyue mor,
my leeng a meerlee shatter glas.

But a lieftime a riten, shapen a werd,
kunstrukten fraze an parugraf,
bilden grammerz tu ullow mor liets
an ennerjeez tu emmannate,
an awl my rit, life-seel long,
tho porlee spoke an innakyuret,
an wut my ukkomplish?
I am spoke a werd or tu2,
not dissarraed babbel but Godwerd spoeks.

A kawlen respons, a Barrukhu*, ……… * a call to prayer
a breethen owt, a lissen in,
a kawl tu prae, a life-seel long.
A fyue werdbreths I wil breeng with me,
now breth-bown intu my jennek koedz.

And here, the Old English version:

When I was nine I could finally hear
the question that I’d been trying to ask:
why am I in this body-shell?

And when I was tweny five I could hear
the Lor calling, ‘who is hear*?…….. * others say: here
and I began an answer, ‘hineni*…….. * Hebrew for ‘here I am’
with my broken language, all limited and crude,
all misdirected and misconstrued,
all fragmented and full of noise.
Of course, I didn’t realize it;
I thought my eyes were accurate,
my language precise, reflecting truth.

When I was forty nine I learned
the Torah is but a single word
six hundred thousand letters long.
And me, my words are shattered glass,
three, five, seven letters long,
sometimes maybe a few more,
my language merely shattered glass.

But a lifetime of writing, shaping words,
constructing phrases and paragraphs,
building grammars to allow more light
and energy to emanate,
and all my writing, a life-soul long,
tho poorly spoken and inaccurate,
and what have I accomplished?
I have spoken a word or two,
not disarrayed babble but Godward spokes.

A call and response, a Bar’khu*, …….. * literally, ‘we praise’
a breathing out, a listening in,
a call to pray, a life-soul long.
A few word-breaths I will bring with me,
now breath-bound into my genetic code.

New beginnings...

I began working on The Atternen Juez Talen (The Eternal Jew’s Tale) back in 2009. Those days seem like something of another life now. That tale, that literary history, began in 30 CE in Judean Jerusalem, and proceeded to about 1510 CE in the Ottoman Empire’s capital, Istanbul, where it stands now. It is a compendium of tales of Jewish life, real and imagined, tales personal and lived told from a first-person p.o.v. It also includes letters, dreams, and books produced by the characters in the story; stories within stories and books within books.

In the last year I broke my tale out of its chronological trajectory. I began telling the episodes as a montage of interrelated events and ideas. I wrote a Passover montage composed of 8 Passovers in 8 different locations from 150 BCE in Hasmonean Judea to 1950 CE on an Israeli kibbutz. After that I worked on a Messiah Montage about the many and varied failed messiahs in history.

Less than a month ago I realized I had finished the Messiah Montage, or should I say, I was finished with it. And I realized I was done with The Atternen Juez Talen, too. I had begun to leave that story and that life behind already in 2020. But now, wonder of wonders, after months of transitional agony, I could feel a new energy emerging from my depths, a different story that wanted to be told.

Now the world may behold these first images of that newly emerging tale….

Remembrensenz an Deth Jurneez,
thats ware weel start.
Yu say, 'o wo,' 'o dreeree,' 'not me...'


But jes kunsidder.
We ar tole we kum tu this werl
emtee, fresh, a kleen slate.
But that iz an utter fals.
We kum swoddeld in jennettek vaelz,
vast librareez uv knowenz kumpield
uv expereyenz az arktipe us,
embedden, unkonshes intu us:
insteenkt an tallents,
emoeshenz an skilz,
vizhenz an etheks
that nacherlee unfoel
tu respon tu this werl.


Kunsidder:
How eezee an nacherrel
tu lern tu reed.
An yet not a seengel speseez els
kan reed. Not a seengel hyumen
beffor 5000 yeerz uggo
(but a momen in evvolueshennaree time)
evver haz a tex tu reed,
evver red a seengel werd.
An yet az a speseez weer obsest tu reed.
This skil, an mennee unnuther az wel --
     sum we kno:
     myuzek, arts, fillossuffee, maths;
     an sum yet tu diskuvver,
wuz laen intu the thredz uv us,
reddee wen weer reddee fer it.
We kum heer reddee.
We kum heer perpaerd.
We kum heer with a perpessen goel.

An so it mus be
wen we leev this werl
we wil awlso go perpaerd,
tho we kno not how,
tho it seem we hav no knowenz at awl.
But weel go on that jernee wel perpaerd.

So let us kunsidder wut we kno,
wut we wil karee wen we leev this shel.
Wut ar gatherz tu serv ar needz
wen we leev behien ar sensez five,
wen ar werl iz not shaept by nerv?
Wut uv us iz oenlee mien?

Uv kors!
Ar essens iz immajjinnes...

Composing a new haggadah

I have begun the research and writing to create a new, modern Pesach (Passover) haggadah, with a new order, new structure, new histories and midrashim, new questions, new questions to answer questions, new portraits of personality types, while still embedding much of the traditional haggadah. This one will be a looking back, a looking forward, a looking at the turbulence and clarities within. Here granular, there sweeping vistas. Now personal, now transitional, now transformational. Thus…

(translated back to old English from my poetic voice…)

Here. The Crystal Haggadah begins. Hear. The seder, its orders retold.

For something like three thousand years or more this tradition, this ritual has been observed yearly in Yisroyel. This, and Shabbat, continuously remembered and observed longer than any other ritual in any other religion or culture in the world.

Observed and honored, festively (or furtively where hate prevails, where laws are writ, where knives are drawn, afraid of us, afraid of our God)…

in Sinai’s shadow; in Judea’s fields; in hovels and mansions in Babylon; in Elephantine ‘way down the Nile, and far up the Euphrates in Pumbedit; in Athens, Rome, and Byzantium; in Medina, Baghdad, Tashkent, Kabul; in Cochin, Calcutta, and Kaifeng; in Kathmandu and Timbuktu; in Algiers, Tangiers, and Tripoli; in Aden, Addis Ababa, and Muscat; in Europe, every shtetl and stadt; in Australia, Sydney to the arid outback; and across the oceans to the New World, in the Caribbean, on every isle, and from Patagonia and Concepcion to Goose Bay and White Horse and Denali Park.

Pesach, the call to liberation; the path to revelation.

Shana Tova 5781: excerpts from life and imagination

Looking critically at myself (these Days of Awe and ow and ecch, and all), I believe the best part of me is my poetry. As a person, as a husband, father, saba, I don't come close to what I may be capable of. But, perhaps, in my poetry I come close, or closer.

Thus I post this excerpt from The Atternen Juez Talen, modified a bit, to try to express my thoughts, grasp the moment, send you Shana Tova greetings, and maybe even lift you a few degrees in the process...

The first light of the new rising sun and Nancy and I, chewing the facts...

Just like any old morning talk before Rosh Hashana and its stairways to heaven where the Judge is waiting to thin the flock.

The seventh month and the first of the year. That’s Jewish time: all relative! And all relative the way we see things; backwards, twisted, turned upside down. Looking up to heaven, and it turns out we're looking down into the pit of ourselves. Imagine.

And there, Divine Being. Imagine! And there, you, and you're not saying, 'cut me a break' or 'this is all a crock' or 'save the religious crap for some other fool'. There you are, saying ‘Hineni’, 'Here I am.' And there your Divine Being is, saying, 'That's not all of you. Stop hiding and show me more!'

Shock and awe. Now the holiness of the day like a mountain hangs over your head. “Will you be My partner or not?” says your Divine Being, and who isn’t ready to faint?

The book of all we say and think, of all we did, and all we didn’t do; the book we wrote with our own hands and spoke with our own mouths; that book! It reads itself back to us while our Divine Being is looking right there into the pit and piteousness of us. Who will stand there and still have faith and not just run, all trauma, away?

The Divine Being of all the worlds is standing before your face and turning your page.
Days of Awe.

May your pages be many, full of wonders, and may they be turned gently.
With love and awe,

Just sayin' #2: Thoughts on a new understanding of 'God'

This little essay is adapted from a lesson I taught to some teenagers who preferred to sit in a discussion with me than to sit with the “adults” during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services. I thank them for inspiring me to develop this topic.

Let me tell you what I’ve concluded after talking with lots and lots of students and adults about “who or what is God.

God is kind of like Santa Claus, a jolly fat guy who gives treats to good little boys and girls, and who spanks bad little boys and girls.

Of course, they don’t ever say it like that, but that’s what’s deep down in there. It’s like the Wizard of Oz: once you pull away people’s curtains and fancy talk, most people have a 5-year-old’s idea of God. They have grown older and maybe wiser, but their core understanding of God is stuck back in 5-year-old fairy land.
Now, I think it’s perfectly reasonable for a 5-year-old to believe in fairy tales like Santa. But when you grow up, even just a little, then it’s appropriate, and necessary to reject your fairy tale beliefs.
Therefore, I’d like to propose a different understanding of God. But this idea will not come to you as something that is full-grown. It is only a seed. YOU will have to grow it, and that will take attention and effort on your part. Like any seed, like any idea, if it falls on infertile ground, or is left unattended through drought and freeze, it will surely die.

To that end, before you can proceed, there are two issues you must address.

First, you have to ask yourself: do I want to try to grow this idea? Or, in truth, am I more inclined to just ignore it? Or, being totally frank, do I really just want to kill it? That’s the first choice you have with any idea. If you want to grow it, there will be things you will need to do. I won’t take time here to tell you what they are, but you can figure them out. It’s not hard. And remember, like any seed, even if you attend to it, even if you attend to it with great zeal, it may never flower or produce much fruit; it may even die.

Second, there are some serious difficulties with knowing God or believing there is a God:
1. Our senses are limited and we base nearly all our thinking on our senses. But God cannot be experienced, in any way, through our senses. Further, our science is based on our senses. Our science, at least as it exists today, cannot help us find God, experience God, or even understand God.
2. Our experiences are limited and yet we build our knowledge from our experiences. Science teaches us to judge and understand the world through what we can experience and measure. Therefore, if you are inclined to think scientifically, and if you have not experienced God, it will be very difficult for you to believe that there is a God, because we measure the world through our own experiences.
But consider: there are people who have had genuine experiences that can be called “God-experiences.” Unfortunately, most people don’t ever have them, so we need to put aside the fantasy that because we imagine ourselves to be so wonderful, God will step down and tap us on the shoulder and say, “Okay Jack, it’s time for you to wake up!” But if you want that to happen, you have to prepare the ground. It’s not much different than aspiring to become a concert pianist or professional athlete. It takes a lot of preparatory work. And even then, you may not achieve your aspirations. You may not experience God.
3. This world is full of a vast number of distractions, and opportunities to waste our time on entirely meaningless and useless activities, from social networks, to shopping, to TV and internet, to sports. And on top of it, we have to spend a substantial portion of every day going to school, and after that, working, and very little of that time will help prepare your mind (or as some would argue, your soul) to understand God better, or to experience God.
4. We must face the problem of pain, disease, and evil. This is, of course, an enormous stumbling block for many people, and I’m not going to attempt to “solve” it, which is to say, rationalize it. I’ve read many answers and none have greatly satisfied me, and the answers that I’ve tried to compose don’t satisfy me either. I have resigned myself to living with the unknowing and the discomfort. That may be a deal-breaker for you. If so, fare thee well.

So, in short, the world is a hostile place for helping us to find and understand God.

Realizing all that, if you still want to seek a new and more meaningful understanding of the idea of God, then the first step is really quite simple. Consider Copernicus. When Copernicus re-imagined the solar system placing the sun at the center and earth orbiting it, rather than setting the earth at the center, it was nothing more than a change in perspective. It required no new data, whatsoever. But it had a massive impact on our understanding of the universe. Everything changed by simply changing perspective.
Here are 2 perspective changes you can explore, if you want to develop a more meaningful understanding of the idea of “God”.

1. First, we must first rethink what “I” am and what our body is. Our body is but a receptacle. Life/Consciousness creates the body; the body does not create Life/Consciousness.
Consider this metaphor of plumbing:
When you turn on a faucet, it allows water to pour out. That water is under much pressure coming from a vast reservoir far away. Think of that water as “life” and the faucet opening as the germination of a sperm and egg into a foetus, a new life. Like plumbing, life flows into us. Our body does not create that life. Rather, it becomes the receptacle for it, growing as that life-energy unfolds into the world, and aging and declining as that life-energy begins to depart.
Consider: Is a table alive, or a building, or the ocean or a mountain? No. It doesn’t matter how much matter there is, how many chemicals and compounds are mixed together. Atoms aren’t alive, so no matter how many you gather together, you won’t create some kind of strange but living thing. Atoms aren’t alive; therefore, they cannot create life! It’s a simple, scientific fact. It’s like creating something from nothing. It can’t be done.
Think about it:
If a person is in a room and the oxygen is pumped out of it, in 5 minutes that person will be dead. That person’s atoms are all still there. Nothing has changed about their body. But their body doesn’t just spontaneously pop back to life if oxygen is suddenly made available again. Their body didn’t create the life; if it did, it would pop back alive again! No, life departed that body. The door closed. It’s gone, and all that is left are atoms, lifeless atoms.

When a sperm fertilizes an egg, the 2 cells rapidly begin to divide and expand. Life is rushing in, like water pouring through the pipes in your home. The shape of that life pouring in is what shapes the body that evolves. We say, oh no, it’s genetics that determines the structures. No, your perspective is backwards. It’s life that shapes the genetics! Our genetics, our DNA is the effect, not the cause, of the life-energy pouring into the world!
And once you realize your body is not creating life, you realize your life is connected in a direct way to everyone else’s life here on the planet, and, most likely, on other far flung planets, as well. Life is like a vast reservoir of water, flowing throughout the whole universe, connecting us to all other living beings!
And suddenly, our small life is connected to a vastness that staggers our imagination. And yet, although its entirely unmeasurable, it’s right here, the very essence of us.

And seen this way, we can understand Life (or if you prefer, Consciousness) as one of the faces of God. It’s not all of God, but it’s a tangible and accessible part of God. With just this small change in perspective, suddenly God is flowing through your veins. This is no fairy tale god; it is the God that is LIVING YOU. God is in you and living you, and like a canoe on a white-water river, you are paddling hard as you can, to try to control your movement on that rapidly flowing river.

2. Second, we need to actively realize that God is Infinite and Eternal. God is not like our finite, limited world. Forget the word ‘God.’ It’s got Santa Claus attached to it. Think ‘Infinity’ or ‘Eternity.’
The rules that operate in infinity are entirely unlike the rules of logic that define how we think and understand the world.

Consider: In our simple, deeply limited “rationality” 1+1= 2, pure and simple. There’s one answer, and everyone knows what “1" is: one penny, one chair, one person sitting in a chair. But let’s think about this.
What is “1” ? We represent it in writing by a figure, a short vertical line. But really, isn’t it 1 plus a decimal point plus a zero. But what if we write 1.00000001? Is that 1 or 1 and just a little more? What if we add a million zeros and then a 1, is that 1, or 1 and just a little more? When does 1 become just “1"? Can we add an infinite number of zeros to get to 1?
How do we add an infinite number of zeros? We can’t. And even if we could, we could still add a 1, because infinity doesn’t follow our very limited and simplistic rules. In fact, all numbers are infinite and unfathomably complex.

Let’s look at another aspect of the infinity that is all around us, shaping us while we thoroughly ignore it. Is a penny a penny? Of course. I give it to a store clerk and she’ll give me a piece of gum (well, maybe a long time ago I could get a piece of gum for a penny). But just a second. Look closer.
Where does that penny begin and where does it end? If you look at that penny with a very powerful microscope you run into a problem. Suddenly you see that you can’t actually determine where it begins and ends. Some electrons and other sub-atomic particles can jump from the penny into my finger, and electrons from my finger attach to the penny, and suddenly I’m in the penny and the penny is in me.
Same with you. Where does your physical body begin and end? You breathe in air. It’s in your lungs. Is it part of your body? It’s a judgement call. Some of you may say ‘yes’, and some may say ‘no’. Okay, where do the electrons of you begin and end?

You see, we live in a simplistic, rationalistic world where we make artificial, and false distinctions between things. I am I, and you are you. Right?

But in the world of infinity, in the World-That-Shapes-Us, things are much, much different. It’s not that they’re impossible to imagine. It’s just that they don’t follow our simplistic, childish logic.
In this simple 3-dimensional world, mathematicians state that a properly designed equation has one solution. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always hold, but once we start getting multiple solutions, we know we’re in a very problematical realm. If a problem has 10 solutions, which one is the right solution, or which solution applies to the question I’m trying to solve right now? We don’t know. But in the world of infinity, every equation has an infinite number of solutions, and they’re all correct!

In the world of infinity, I am I, but I am also you, and I am not-I, and the not-I of me is also the not-you of you, and on and on.

And most importantly, in the world of infinity, if our minds could grasp such ideas, they would not only make sense, they would make infinitely more sense than our simplistic, childish ideas such as: I am I and you are you, and there’s nothing more to say!

Now, perhaps you’re thinking, OMG, Steve has gone off the rails, and this is all so complicated, and I have better things to do than to imagine how crazy infinity is. But folks, this is not really so hard. What’s hard is that I’m asking you to turn around your perspective, and think in a way that’s a little different than you’re used to.
Why am I asking you to do this? If you want to begin to have a more grown-up and insightful and enriching understanding of ‘God,’ the Infinite; if you want to replace your Santa Claus idea of God with a more substantive understanding, an understanding that will help you grow, and will enrich you and will elevate your sense of purpose and wonder, and that will have a genuine relevance to you, then you have to begin rethinking what ‘God’ is. You have to expand your ideas and stretch your horizons.

One last comment: we humans are growing up. We are beginning to leave the childhood of our species behind. Our holy books are remarkable accomplishments, full of many brilliant ideas. But they were written by, and for a humanity that was in its young childhood. They are not the last word; the are but the first words. We are growing up, and yet we are just as much in need of holiness now as when we were hunter-gatherers, bewildered and terrorized by nature. We are perhaps more in need of moral uprightness, and more in need of an appreciation of the vulnerability of the world and the value of diversity than we ever were before. If so, then our understanding of ‘the holy’ and ‘the divine’ may not be childish artifacts to be thrown away. They may be guiding lights, more needful now than ever.

Towards an understanding of 'Soul'

Transcribing recent scenes of The Atternen Juez Talen from my notebook, I found this spiritual-psychological sketch:

Last night Jonah wailed when he was not allowed to have cake. He is 15 months old. He already knows about “fair-not fair,” about justice. This is not learned; it is innate. The essence of a life of meaning, value, intention, justice is laid into us, altho nurture can amplify or de-amplify it. I believe this innate capacity emerges from the ‘Soul.’ Thus, I unconditionally reject the belief that the world, and our own life, is random, meaningless, amoral. Meaning and purpose are so fundamental and innate that, literally, we cannot think without them (although we can surely resist them on more surface levels of thought). Thought itself emerges thru, and is infused with our sense of meaning and justice. Our sense of meaning, purpose, and justice, like consciousness itself, like a sense of “I” and “I and you” and “I and Thou” all emerge from the infinite and unknowable, and are foundational to all we think and do. This is why, when people experience a loss of meaning or purpose, they find it so existentially devastating. Their access to their foundations, to the infinite, has been blocked or disrupted. It’s like drowning, like an absence of oxygen.

Morality, the sense of justice, is more than an innate inclination created by evolution. Genetics “channels” morality and a sense of meaning, but does not create them. The actual ability to seek meaning, justice, order precedes the physical. It precedes our existence. Its origins are from the infinite, the divine.

Let me state that in another way: Moral judgement is not an evolutionary innovation randomly derived. It is a capacity that has been evolutionarily facilitated, but it transcends and precedes physical being. It originates beyond being, in what may be called soul. The soul is not created by the body or by evolution. Rather, it is expressed, or given the capacity to be expressed thru the evolutionary development of the animal body (and perhaps even the plant body, as well). The body is but a physical vessel for life, for the soul. Indeed, the soul shapes the body, calling it into organization in a way that we might liken to a magnet rearranging iron filings.

The realization that life is distinct from the body can generate a startling sense of wonder. What once seemed bounded and finite (our lives) now expands to the infinite. It is a moment of divine contact. For many it causes a dormant spiritual inclination to awake from its ancient sleep.

Singt frum the upper werlz

Three fragments excavated from my current notebook….

The first is a piece of poetry from the upper worlds. Our language down here, so limited, will have trouble making sense of it, tho pieces of it will sound familiar. This is what I transcribed:

… He heerd Davee play.
He iz a reed uv iz werd.
He iz heer
selammen seen in iz song,
drippen iz hunnee fraegren a spise.
He iz rae Izayah an Hozayah too
an iz hert iz braken it
in winder abownz.
Ammajjin aer seengen the upper werlz.
I wil breeng em aer fer the aenjelz be heer…


And this opening to a parable…

There was a king who lived in a castle unknown to his people. He employed many ministers and envoys. He was a modern king. He spoke to them by texting!
One of his envoys was determined to meet the king in person. He texted to him, “How can I meet you in your castle?” The king texted in response, “You are too deceitful to meet me. Not only your thoughts, but your senses too are full of deceit.…”

And finally this…

The closer I get to the truth, the more alienated I am from myself and the world.
The closer I get to the truth, the less rational my thinking.
The infinite is not confined by human ratios.

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