Sometime over the High Holy Days, Rabbi Scheinberg suggested to check out Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks‘ weekly podcast Covenant & Conversation. In general Rabbi Scheinberg’s reading suggestions are spot on and I had no doubt that a podcast referral would also we worthwhile. A simple synopsis of the references in this week’s commentary should suffice as a description - he ranges from Torah, through Talmud, Shakespeare, and much more. Relating them all to the singularly existential core of Jewish theology as expressed through the final chapters of Gensis.

We live life forwards, but we understand it backwards. The simplest example of this is an autobiography. Reading the story of a life, we see how a deprived childhood led to the woman of iron ambition, or the early loss of a parent shaped the man who spent his later years pursuing fame in search of the love he had lost. There is an air of inevitability about such stories, but it is an illusion. The deprived childhood or the loss of a parent might equally have led to a sense of defeat and inadequacy. What we become depends on our choices, and we are (almost) always free to choose this way or that. But what we become shapes the story of our life, and only in hindsight, looking back, do we see the past in context, as part of a tale whose end we now know. In life considered as a narrative, later events change the significance of earlier ones. It was the gift of Judaism to the world to discover time as a narrative.

Um, warp me back to college philosophy class and I am beginning to understand why it was so hard for a kid studied in Judaism to understand the influence of the Greek classics which lead to eventual and utter disregard of the convoluted fatalistic predestination of mental rapists like Calvin, Luther and even though no one wants to go there right now, the Mormons.

Without going to far off track, it is so wonderfully refreshing to listen to both Rabbi Scheinberg and Rabbi Sacks express the meaning of the Torah in such modernly salient terms while staying so wonderfully true to the texts. There is something almost 6000 years of history really gives you when compared to about 1500.

Monday night at JTS, Dan and I attended a lecture by Dr. Daniel Matt on How the Zohar Reimagines God. Dr. Matt is the lead author on a new translation of the Zohar and a quick internet search demonstrates he is one of the leading scholars in this area. It is important to note that the Zohar is treated very reverently is certain Orthodox circles, so an academic approach to this text is relatively new in the coming, despite it’s age.

His lecture started with a description of the Sefirot and quickly focused on, what I suppose you can call the top and the bottom of a Sefirot chart: Ein Sof and Shekhinah, the ultimate ineffable all-encompassing/encompassing-nothing origin of it all and the final projection of this energy into the earthly realm in the form of the feminine, respectively. He then focused on the female nature of G-d, the history of this notion outside (or around) Judaism, including a conversation on the Caananite female divinity, Asherah. His essential point is that the Zohar reintroduced this idea, it was very revolutionary at the time, and the notion of a female deity or a female component resonates with humans. This was his only real answer to the question posed by an audience member questioning why the Zohar’s concepts spread so quickly.

I have reservations on this whole subject. It feels like a bunch of linguistic machinations to erode the unitary notion of G-d. I admit I do not have enough information to judge either way, but it bothers me. Someone pointed out to me that I maybe 10 people all rolled up in one, so why can G-d not have multiple emanation types. Again, I am just dumb Nathan, not Luria, Cordovero, or The Vilna Goan and I just might not get it.

Here is the start of the Zohar’s commentary on parshat Be-Reshit:

At the head of potency of the King, He engraved engravings in luster on high. A spark of impenetrable darkness flashed within the concealed of the concealed5, from the head of Infinity—a cluster of vapor forming in formlessness, thrust in a ring, not white, not black, not red, not green, no color at all. As a cord surveyed, it yielded radiant colors. Deep within the spark gushed a flow, splaying colors below, concealed within the concealed of the mystery of Ein Sof. It split and did not split its aura, was not known at all, until under the impact of splitting, a single, concealed, supernal point shone. Beyond that point, nothing is known, so it is called ראשית (Reshit), Beginning, first command of all.

Yikes! There are 4 more volumes where that came from, 11 planned.

As for the title of this post, the answer to a question about the important of the philosophy in the Zohar, Dr. Matt answered, “What is the difference between Spinoza and Kabbalah? The Mitzvot!” Seemingly saying in a mind boggling quip, all the once, that The Enlightenment was the de-G-dification of existing philosophy (we all know this!) and that the Mitzvot are central to Kabbalah, cf. Tikkun Olam.

It is very good to have a special room set aside for Torah study and prayer. Such a room is especially beneficial for secluded meditation and conversation with G-d.

The Rebbe said that it is very good even just to sit in such a special room. The atmosphere itself is beneficial, even if you sit there and do nothing else.

Even if you do not have a special room, you can still seclude yourself and converse with G-d.

There Rebbe also said that you can create your own special room under your Tallis. Just drape your Tallis over your eyes and converse with G-d as you desire.

You can also seclude yourself with G-d in bed under the covers. This was the custom of King David, as it is written, “Each night I converse from my bed….”

You can also converse with G-d while sitting before an open book. Let others things you are merely studying.

There are many others ways to accomplish this if you truly want to meditate and express your thoughts to G-d. Above all else, this is the root and foundation os holiness and repentance. We have discussed this many times.

There are many ways of going this, but best of all is a secluded room.

It would appear that the standard verse for my name - נתן is Proverbs 20:27

• נר יהוה נשמת אדם חפש כל חדרי בטן
• A man’s soul is the lamp of Hashem, which searches the chambers of one’s innards

A note in my Tanach says: By means of the soul, G-d searches man’s innermost thoughts and scrutinizes him (Rabbeinu Yonah)

Pondering the end-times…the topic of Reconstructionism, particularly the removal of the supernatural makes me think of The Jefferson Bible. I have never read it, as I only learned of it recently. Seems like many a person has tried to remove the supernatural before (even though this case it is re: Jesus, but the sentiment it there.)

Do you think it is possible to remove the supernatural and still believe in a messiah? It seems like Kaplan thought they were incompatible. This is a topic my brother and I discuss for hours at a time, because we both have this sense that the supernatural is so far beyond our ability to comprehend it is like taking the limit of infinity in calculus: it just isn’t perceivable with our limited minds.

But if the messiah should not be expected to bend the laws of nature (per Rambam) then he or she will not necessarily be supernatural. No? Maybe theses concepts can coexist? I wonder what Kaplan’s rationale looked like.

In an attempt to prevent my soul and life from being comoditized 24-7-365, I have decided to try to not spend a dime on Shabbat. Not a new proposition, there are buy nothing days and other anti-consumerism events. But this one is the original! A reminder to take one day and spend it with your friends and family engaging in them, not in enriching China. A reminder to study and edify. A reminder of the sancitiy of time - the slow march forward of our lives through time.

From Haaretz:

38 of the 272 suicide bombings in Israel (roughly 14 percent) were carried out by terrorists that had received Israeli citizenship in the context of family reunification

What do you say no? Those of you who want to decry Israels reticence or as some of you put it - inhumane - treatment towards families wanting to reunify in Israel.

There is no equivalent to this. Wake up people, would you willingly allow murders to come to you nation to live? We in the US certainly do not, if you are even convicted of the breathing too hard you are disallowed entry and forget about citizenship.

This is something that bewilders me - and I include the increasing Muslim population in Europe in this. Why are you moving to the West if you hate it so much? Just don’t come, do us both a favor. But passive apathy is one thing, you people have taken this to a new level. You come to our nations and then proceed to try to change them to be more like the places you fled. Just go back!

If you want burkas and head coverings and you think Western women are harlots, then go back to Saoodi Aravit and live the way you want to. If you think the society is too free and open then do not participate or just go home and live under dictatorial or martial law.

And if you are about to say, “Well just leave us alone” then, do not look at me. I am not an interventionist.

Katie and I are just back from making some deliveries around Hoboken for some of the less fortunate. I have to admit that I had no idea there was that level of struggling right in my own backyard. On the cusp of 2007, I am going to use this feeling to volunteer even more in Hoboken.

One older lady, who only spoke Italian, was so happy to see my sister and me with bags of food she wouldn’t stop kissing us and hugging us.

I feel badly about the level of excess I have. There are 5 computers in this house and nearby there are people who need food donations. This is definitely going to change.

This is a new one for me! I was always under the impression this was about how we were oppressed, beaten down, and almost rendered extinct, but suddenly a hero appeared and all was not lost.

Jews once again were saved by a miracle.

But in reading last night I read a redux that stepped back a bit and pointed out this whole thing started because of Greek religious and cultural intolerance. If the Greeks had just believed a bit more in freedom of religion there would have been no need for a revolt!

I can take this one to heart. And once again feel a bit humbled by the many shades of our lore.

Now excuse me, I need to eat another latke!

I have always had this notion that the supernatural part of religion can be set aside, you don’t have to debate it, it might have happened, it might not, I don’t care either way. Because, the real point, is that some very smart people wrote down the way a society should be run, in a culturally specific context, and they strove to transmit this to us over the millennia. Therefore the information is highly valuable, but suspect because of the context. Combine what I learned from my readings on the Messiah (he will not subvert the laws of nature) with the ~20% of The Talmud I have completed and more and more I get this feeling that this is a religion very detached from a supernatural source. I start to see where the Karaites were coming from (are coming from, I suppose). Even worse, and I am not certain how to say this correctly, but this is a religion that has little or nothing to do with the supernatural G-d! Hmm, another way to put it, ask people why they think going to services and being in a community is important and I am not certain G-d will come up all that much. It is as if a whole section of Jewry already internally admitted that the G-d we read about is a metaphor for something, not something in upon himself. I know I open a can of worms as to where this came from - Hellenic influences, Christian influences, and so on. I know, also, that I know almost nothing about this, from a historical-philosophical context. What would people say if they knew that these really important rules no longer were backed up by a supernatural G-d? Does it make this ethical, cultural, legal, moral system less valid?

Put yet another way, modern science has shown us the value of almost every action we do as Jews. Washing our hands, reading, studying, reflection in prayer add the double whammy of psychology that shows people who take time out of their days to enumerate why they are thankful and “meditate” tend to be calmer, lower blood pressure, and so on. I can see how every line of The Amidah is about being thankful for something that has both a supernatural and very physical context. I should say that I am fully willing to accept that this paradox is one of the things that makes Jewishness so, well, cool, that is can be both at the same time. But is certainly undermines fundamentalism, but that is a tangent for another day.