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.

An interesting thing happened to me on my way home from work today. Eric, my coworker dropped me off, and across the street was Rabbi Schapiro, my local Chabad Rabbi and neighbor. In all the years we have lived across from one another, this is the first time we have run into each other on the street.

We chatted about what we have been up to, and true to form, as a Chabad Rabbi, he asked me if I have been laying tefillin, going to minyan, ect… I was completely honest with him about how lazy I can be on a Saturday and Sunday, but weekdays I am pretty good.

He asked me come around to the side of his mini-van and I joked with him about what i must be in for. He laughed and took out a shofar from him bag of Jew paraphernalia. In the moth of Elul, he explained, we blow the shofar every day except Shabbat in anticipation of the new year and redemption. I have read of this custom before but never participated in it. While blowing it I become impressed! Blowing a shofar isn’t exactly easy.

He explained a Chassidic tale of the prince who left his father, the king, to study in a far away land. Over time he forgot how to speak his native language. Upon returning to his home, he couldn’t ask anyone to let him see his father. But the father, hearing him plead in another language, still recognized his son’s voice.

This interaction, as the tale illustrates, is our actions towards G-d. We are crying out for the attention of our Father and to be allowed back into the kingdom of heaven.

You have to love the Besht and his parables.

I would only reply that we should blow it much louder! He did! One long loud burst.

We laughed about now not a single person waling on the street even thought this was odd. 2 Jews up to something Jewish, I pointed out.

As a parting gift he gave me a delicious loaf of chalah made by hand by his wife.

I left with a Shabbat Shalom and a hug!Went upstairs and there was Idan reading on the couch asking if I knew why he was hearing a shofar being blown in Hoboken, NJ.

I am going to try to describe this. A very secular friend of my father and I were once talking about Wilhelm Reich and his Orgone experiments. The conversation tipped towards how this managed to cure cancer and the like. I asked him if he thought orgone energy was a metaphor for the ability of the human mind to heal the physical body. He replied, asking, what isn’t a metaphor for the human mind’s ability?

Good question. Perhaps tefillin are only another metaphor. But, just like sitting in an orgone box, wrapping tefillin is a physical act that focuses the mind on a particular task. The bottom line is when I lay tefillin in the morning I have a nice calm quiet day and things do not get to me.

I stand up in a quiet spot, set a timer for 20 minutes, and follow the ancient procedure of wrapping myself in a tallis, wrapping the arm, the head, completing the arm, saying the Shema, the Amidah, a few other prayers and then standing silently breathing in deeply with my eyes closed, thinking about the challenges of my day, thinking about Idan and hoping he isn’t missing Israel too much, my mom wresting loose from the pain of her childhood, my dad that he doesn’t kill himself on his mountain bike, Adam and Lisa are safe and happy, my sister learns to love herself, and asking for the ability to be patient with all this. Whilst the most important part, asking for the ability to see the lesson from the challenges I will face today, run through the whole ‘conversation’. It reminds me of when I guessed the Hebrew verb l’hitpalel meant to talk to one self. It means to pray. It cracked my teacher up…

20 minutes goes by and I open my eyes, reverse the process and I am calm cool and collected.

Try it, it will change your life. It is a combination of mediation, proprioceptic movement, concentrated thought, prayer, daily review, and recitation of the key components of being a good person conserved for thousands of years.

Kares is defined in the back of one of my books as excision; early death imposed for certain classes of transgressions. It occurred to me in the shower this morning (I often do my best thinking there!) that one of the reasons for a lack of a hell like concept in Judaism is that in a real concrete person and action centric faith there is no need for a theoretical bizarre spot in the middle of the earth where you are tortured forever.

I find it intellectually dishonest when people talk about the vengefulness of the original testament G-d when this modern illegitimate testament creates a dualist alter ego for G-d and invents a notion to scare the crap out of people which plays on a deeply seated pagan myth of the underworld. When you hear Christians talk about Hades; guess what? That is a Roman, Greek, and pre-both myth. Remember Rome didn’t convert to Christianity, Christianity converted to Rome, and Roman myths are lifted from the Greeks.

Anyway, back to the point. There is no record, from my understanding, of human imposed early death for a kares transgression. The Chazal were afraid, seemingly, of wrongfully putting someone to death. The only part of kares we find implemented is the excision part.

So why was this enough and how did it obviate hell?

Imagine your whole world revolving around a community, your schul, your eruv, your breeding pool, your entire socioeconomic system. Now imagine being forbidden from it and forbidden from any similar community where the courts could find you. I don’t know if we have a modern equivalent. Jail for life isn’t even this severe because you are fed, clothed, and tended to in prison. If you found yourself wandering in the dessert without food no other tribe was going to welcome you in, especially not a Jew who obviously was convicted of something really bad – why else would he have been kicked out of the tribe?

Sounds pretty severe to me! Maybe death penalty is not the right idea, maybe excision should be revisited.

Looks like I am not the only one thinking about Christians as polytheistic idol worshipers. Check out the lectures of Rabbi Tovia Signer.

Try to imagine the astonished reaction of a Jew (who has his monotheism intact) as he discovers from your question that missionaries use his cherished national creed, “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one” (Hebrew: echad), to prove the doctrine of the Trinity. To the surprise of many, Trinitarians will often use this celebrated verse to support their belief in a triune nature of God.

You can read many answers and his thoughts on various interfaith issues or listen to his lectures on your iPhone.

It also might be of interest to read the thoughts of Martin Luther as pertaining to us Jews. From the intro:

He dares to pervert the scriptural passages which we cite in testimony to our faith, concerning our Lord Christ and Mary his mother, and to interpret them quite differently. With this argument he thinks he can destroy the basis of our faith.

The ‘He’ would be ‘Ye Olde Hooknose’ DBA ‘da Jew’. Love me those German Jew haters. I used to kind of admire ML for taking on the most corrupt institution in the history of mankind: The Catholic Church. Now, well, wow. I don’t know what to say.

I hold that if their Messiah, for whom they hope, should come and do away with their boast and its basis they would crucify and blaspheme him seven times worse than they did our Messiah; and they would also say that he was not the true Messiah, but a deceiving devil.

Because, you idiot, we are so clearly told that we should not expect a magical fairy to come save us and certainly not to count on miracles. We are told that G-d is not man and man is not G-d. Something you confuse several times a day. Oh man I wish for the day of the reverse inquisition.

There once was a man from Belarus who decided to reinvent a language. This man, Eliezer Ben Yehuda, invented Modern Hebrew. Yeah that is pretty much it. He invented it. Some might say resurrect.

But see, while this is FREAKING amazing, it seems to be a not-too-uncommon practice amongst Jews. There are some 20+ recognized synergistic Judeo-X languages. Like Judeo-Spanish is Ladino and Judea-German is Yiddish.

Again, I ask why? The reason given in common parlance is that isolated Jewish ghettos would introduce Herew words into the local dialect to describe unique Jewish thoughts and ideas, then slowly over time, this combination would take on a form of its own.

I don’t know Yiddish, but my German is ok, and I would call Yiddish lazy simplified German, ie German with a lot of the complexities of conjugation and declension removed. So this idea of a slow progression of integration could be mostly plausible.

But I think something else is afoot here. If this occurred once or twice it might make sense, but why over and over again in Jewish populations that at best saw 10 people a year interchange?

It would seem there is an interesting nexus in Islamic tradition and in what our very own Moses was up to.

From a web page about participating the the Hajj: It is Haram (prohibited) for men to wear sewn or stitched clothes in Ihraam (state of participating in the Hajj).

What did Moses wear while consecrating the tabernacle? According to Rav Kahana in Taanis 11b he wore a white frock that does not have a hem or a seam. The note states this means it was woven from a single thread.

I wonder what the significance of these two similarities is?

I am an expert at just about nothing. I know something about how to maintain a Ducati, run a saltwater fish tank, a bit about philosophy. I even was once pretty well versed in the state of the art in neurological research. There are also the computer systems I have built. But I always have something to learn, lots and lots to learn. Always room for improvement.

But there is something I know about and it is the deep philosophical implication of cyclic tolling and reinvestment that occurs to the human soul as viewed by just about every major religion and some minor ones as well. This is something that I truly enjoy studying.

To this end I am going to correct 2 things I read about so much and hear people say. I am going to lift this from Wikipedia, because, well, it saves me from having to rewrite it.

1. Karma is a sum of all that an individual has done, is currently doing and will do. The results or “fruits” of actions are called karma-phala. Karma is not about retribution, vengeance, punishment or reward. Karma simply deals with what is. The effects of all deeds actively create past, present and future experiences, thus making one responsible for one’s own life, and the pain and joy it brings to others.
2. The process view of release (moksha) from ego-consciousness (ahamkar) through individual responsibility for the totality of action with its inherent karma can be contrasted with the soteriological view of mainstream denominations of Christianity: grace given by faith in the suffering, death and resurrection of a singular savior.

I want you to think about this very carefully: it is saying that karma is all that you ever do and will do in your soul’s life and acceptance of what you have done will release you from ego-eccentricities which are preventing you form obtaining a higher state. That is my redux.

So statements like, oh that is bad karma are just blatant misunderstandings of a centuries old theological tradition.

But MORE IMPORTANTLY this aspect is something that is key to the teaching of Christ (not Christianity as it is see today) and Judaism in a non-orthodox form: reduction of egocentric behaviors creates good.

I am certain we can think of all the ego-driven things we do in our life, like lie to people, lie to ourselves, cheat on trusting others, lie to our families, change our appearance, be deceitful to our coworkers, mislead friends of our intentions, not properly compensate people for their work, take things that do not belong to us, speak ill of others, and on and on and on.

I am going to end this post by quoting something from the Amidah:

My God, keep my tongue and my lips from speaking deceit, and to them that curse me let my soul be silent, and like dust to all…As for those that think evil of [against] me speedily thwart their counsel and destroy their plots…May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight…

As long as I try to live up to my part of this I will be protected from those that try to do me harm through their words and deeds.

From a note in Beitzah 4b:

There non-Jewish residents of Cutha were brought by the Assyrian king, Shalmanesser, to settle the parts of the Eretz Yisrael left desolate by the exile of the 10 Tribes. Although they converted to Judaism, the validity of their conversion was the subject of considerable dispute. They reminded a sect onto themselves - known as the Samaritans because they lived in Samaria - and exhibited animosity towards the Jews.

Huh! I had no idea that was the origin of the Samaritans. Cool factoid.

I want to share another fun tidbit from my reading yesterday. It has to do with consulting the Urim VeTumim. There are rules, this is Judaism, after all, there are always rules, about the proper method of consultation. However, the gist is there is a piece of parchment, given to Moses by G-d, with the tetragrammaton written on it, slipped into the fold of the breastplate worn by the Kohen Gadol that had the power to make the letters inscribed on the breastplate rise up or glow in order to spell out the answer to the question at hand. There is some debate as to how the Kohen Gadol would read and interpret this vision, but the essential process remains the same. While reading, I made note of the nice “take home message” not ask a multi-part question, but be clear and concise as to what you want to know.

This is well above and beyond the whole supernatural freakiness of this tale. Dad please take note: Indians are not the only ones who see the manifestations of the supernatural (I could not resist). I guess it isn’t any more strange than a burning bush that isn’t consumed, parting of the Sea of Reeds, and so on. I can just imagine the letters glowing and being transcribed and interpreted à la Indiana Jones or something. I go back to my earlier statements: rationalism, which I am a fan of, killed this kind of mysticism and Jews are one heck of a strange freaky cult!