From David Kelsey, The Kvetcher:

 

My night as an interfaith shadchan

Filed Under Interfaith |

I was asked by Amber Sutherland to help her find a Jewish husband. Read all about it in Radar Magazine.

From the Radar story:

A blogger hanging around outside (who personally "wouldn't be interested in marrying anyone who believed in Jesus") said, on the condition of anonymity, "This is a psycho factory. Lots of people here used to be Hasidic. It attracts a lot of freaks in every sense of the term."

Is this "anonymous" blogger of the cow?

On high there is nothing but letters of light set in the form of man, male and female…

(R. Chaim Vital, Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah, 2:5)

-atgate231

BIG JEWISH POETRY READING THURS JAN 31

A BIG JEWISH POETRY READING coming up at the 92nd st Y in NYC Jan 31–the poets will be in NY for the annual AWP meeting.
They are (modesty aside) a brilliant group. Note the discount if you order with code ZEEK.

8:oo PM Thursday Jan 31

Praise, Grumble, Shmooze, Lament: The Voices of 21st Century Jewish Poetry
Lexington Avenue at 92nd Street
Cost: $26.00 / $12.00 with discount code "ZEEK"
Co-presented with Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture. Hear some of today's most eloquent, provocative and meaningful Jewish poets. The program features readings by established and emerging poets, including Alicia Ostriker, Rodger Kamenetz, Robin Becker, Jacqueline Osherow, Dan Bellm, Patty Seyburn, Philip Terman, Scott Cairns, Jay Michaelson and Richard Chess. Reception follows. Get your tickets NOW at 92y.org or 212-415-5500.

Posted by alicia ostriker at 7:20 AM

Zero 7 - Distractions live ( NOT THE BEST VERSION OF THE SONG BUT HER MISTAKE AT 3:10 IS JUST POIGNANT) 

Zero 7 "Destiny" (NOT THE BEST SONG BUT A NICE NYC VIDEO)

edwards and giuliani are dropping out of the race. mccain wins florida. santana goes to the mets. plaxico is dumb enough to make a prediction. and we sit around talking about judaism.

I was very much into learning, but eventually I went to the Lubavitcher Rebbe and he told me that the world needed more rabbis who could talk to people. I told him that I loved learning, but he told me that I should stop thinking just about what I personally loved to do, and focus more on what the world needed. So I started doing that: talking to people about Judaism.

From 1951 to 1955 I was, mamash [really], the Rebbe's right-hand man, Today, Lubavitch sends out messengers all over the world, but then it wasn't yet organized and I was one of the first, actually Zalman (Schachter-Shalomi) and I were the first messengers of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Zalman and I were his representatives, reaching his message to the world.

So I did outreach. But I had some problems and I told the Rebbe about it. "Last night," I told the Rebbe one day, "I had one hundred people come to learn and sing with me." But in those days the Rebbe had the position that women couldn't sing with men [kol isha, women's voices would sexually arouse men according to some Orthodox traditions]. So I told the Rebbe, "When I told them that we had to sit separately men from women, I lost 90 people, and when I told them that women couldn't
sing, I lost nine more, and the one person who remained was the biggest idiot. So instead of spending two hours with people who wanted to know something about Yiddishkeit, I wasted my time on one idiot. Let's assume that it's very important that men and women shouldn't sit together. Still, this is like a manicure for Judaism, making, it super-beautiful, but if the person is having a heart attack you don't give him a manicure. So I can' t do outreach this way.

So the Rebbe said to me, "I cannot tell you to do it your way. But I can't tell you not to do it your way. So if you want to do it on your own, G-d be with you." So I split. If I had stayed, and the Rebbe had
gone with what I was saying, he could have been Rebbe of the world, not just Rebbe of the Chassidim.

Take Woodstock. Why should Swami Satchananda go there - why not the Lubavitcher Rebbe? It would have been a gevalt — it would have changed a whole generation. But the Rebbe chose to be the Rebbe of the Chassidim. You know, a few years after the Rebbe became chosen to be the Lubavitcher Rebbe, he wrote a letter to his Chassidim and said, "I have so many unbelievable dreams, but I can't do them because your heads are so small."

 Full Article @ Havurah Shir Hadash

-hat tip to isaac

[NOTE: In conjunction with his new series of live classes on "Christ the Kabbalist" (Mon-Wed, 8 pm est on PalTalk) we are reposting Reb Yakov Leib's classic lectures, "The Jesus Papers."]

B"H

Chaverim v' Ma'aminim,

"We [Chasidic Kabbalists] believe that Jesus was taken away from the Jews. He was a great power, he could have been a great Talmudic scholar or a Tzaddik, [but] he was drawn to the other side of the fence." — Anonymous Hasidic Jew (Quoted in Legends of the Hasidim, by Jerome R. Mintz, University of Chicago Press, 1968, p. 140)

With this installment, I continue the Neo-Sabbatian lectures on "Jesus." I suspect they have already offended some Christians and disturbed some Jews. The former because I challenge many of their beliefs, the latter because I (an "Ultra-Modern Orthodox" Jew, as I like to call myself) would seriously consider discussing "Jesus" at all. However, my goal is neither to extol nor criticize Yehoshua HaNotzri, the name by which he was known to his contemporaries and by which later Jewish Sages, such as Maimonides, called him  — which in Hebrew means simply, "Joshua of Nazareth;" my goal is to make an objective analysis of the man "Jesus" within the well-defined framework of Christian Gospels and Jewish Scriptures,  both "oral" and "written." (For a definition and discussion of Jewish "Oral" and "Written" Scriptures, and the differences between them, see my previous lectures on the subject in the Donmeh West Library and Archives as well as the attached post.)

Jesus as the "Son of God"

"[Sabbatai Zevi] will restore to holiness . . . Jesus Christ." (Rabbi Nathan of Gaza, 17th Century; Quoted in Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi: the Mystical Messiah, Princeton University Press, p. 285)

In all four Gospels, Jesus is repeatedly called "Son of God," as if  that title were unique to him and conferred upon him a special divine status. For example, in the Gospel of Matthew he says of himself, "I am the son of God" (Matt. 26:43). Now to Gentile ears,
both at that time and even now, that must sound astonishing but to his fellow Jews, who knew better, it was merely a declaration of what they already knew to be their common heritage as the B'nai Yisroael, the "Sons of Israel," whom we have already seen in my previous series of lectures was a supernatural being and the first "son of God." (For example, see Exodus 4:22, "This is what
Yahweh God says: Israel is my first-born son.") Indeed, only a few centuries earlier Yahweh, through Moses, had told the entire Nation of Israel that they were all the sons of God:

"I hallowed unto me all the first-born [sons] of Israel . . . . Mine shall they be: I am Yahweh." (Numbers 3:13)

And also:

"For you are a people consecrated to Yahweh your God; it is you that Yahweh our God has chosen to be his very own people out of all the peoples of the earth." (Deuteronomy 7:6)

Consequently, the descendants of Jacob (of whom Jesus was only one among many) share in his sonship with God — conferred upon Jacob when he vanquished Satan and was elevated to the status of Yis-ra'el, a "Prince of God" (Genesis 32:23) — by virtue of the Holy Seed they inherit from that same  Jacob. (See my previous series of lectures on "Sefirah Malkuth: The Mystical Body of Israel.") Thus, Jesus was, indeed, a "Son of God," but no more so than any of his other fellow Jews — and certainly not by virtue of special  divinity, but through his non-exclusive membership in the "Community of Israel," the B'nai Yisra'el. (There is another meaning given in the Zohar to "Son of God" — that is, it identifies a descendant of Cain or a sorcerer. I will discuss this demonic meaning of "Son of God," and its significance to Jesus, in a future lecture of this series.)

Jesus as the "Son of Man"

"In the Gospels, the term [Son of Man] is always found in the words attributed to 'Jesus' himself. One gains the impression that he used it without explanation and left it to his hearers to decide what meaning should be attached to it. It is a Semitic phrase that would be familiar to Jewish hearers, [but not likely to] Hellenistic Christians." (S. E. Johnson, "Son of Man," The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, p. 418)

To summarize, the Jewish title "Son of God" [Hebrew = Ben Elohim]  was attributed to "Jesus" by other Jews not as an indication of any special divine status on his part (as Gentile Christians later came to believe), but of his membership in the Community of Israel, of which all are "Sons of God" according to Scripture. Thus, the term was used by other Jews not to hail "Jesus" as a God, but to acknowledge him as a fellow member of the B'nai Yisroael ("Sons of Israel") to which he, like they, belonged — much the way other fraternal societies, such as the Freemasons, for example, have "secret" greetings that identify one member to another.

Here, I propose to move on to an analysis of the second title by which "Jesus" is known in the Gospels — that of "Son of Man" — a title which, if we step back from the Christian attempts to understand it, makes no sense, really, unless we approach it within its Jewish context.

To begin with, "Son of Man" is always used by "Jesus" to describe himself, rather than as a title attributed to him by others.  Moreover, according to most (even Christian) scholars, it was a Jewish title which he used without explanation, believing that his fellow Jews would understand its meaning — in other words, it was a reference to the Oral Torah or "transmission" of Kabbalah. Thus it was intended by "Jesus" to somehow convey to his fellow Jews the essence of his self-perceived Messianic mission according to the esoteric oral transmission of the Torah, or "Kabbalah," which they all understood at the time. What was
that meaning?

These scholars furthermore agree that the  Hebrew term by which "Jesus" identified himself as the "Son of Man" was Ben Adam ("Son of Adam/Man") and not Ben 'Ish ("Son of Mankind"). Therefore, if we look at the Hebrew title "Jesus" used, it actually has two meanings: the one being "Son of Man" and the other, more likely still, "Son of Adam." Now, by Jewish usage, had Jesus meant to identify himself as a son of mankind, he would have used the term, Ben 'Ish; instead, however, he used Ben Adam. Thus, he was not identifying himself as  the "Son of man" but as the "Son of Adam" — or, as I have shown in previous lectures, not as Cain or Abel but as Seth –  with all the mystical implications contained in the oral Seth Scriptures contained in the Kabbalah, and particularly the Zohar.  So we see that once again, as with so much else in Christian scripture, a Hebrew term is mistranslated and thereby looses its intended Jewish meaning. In the next part of this lecture I will elaborate on exactly what that "intended Jewish meaning" could have been within the context of the esoteric oral Jewish transmission undoubtedly known at the time by "Jesus" and his fellow Jews to whom he was speaking.

[To be continued]

HaKol Mayal Motzai,

Yakov Leib HaKohain ("YaLHaK"), Founder & Director
DONMEH WEST

"May Yahweh, Who makes heaven and earth, bless you from Zion!" — Birkas Kohanim

London - Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger has been quoted as calling for Gazans to be transferred to the Sinai Peninsula, to a Palestinian state which he said could be constructed for them in the desert.

In an interview in English with the British weekly The Jewish News, the chief rabbi also said that while peaceable Muslims should be allowed to pray in Jerusalem mosques, they should recognize that Jerusalem belongs to the Jews. Muslims have Mecca and Medina, he was quoted as saying, adding that "you don't need a third place."

Metzger called for Britain, the European Union and the United States to assist in the construction of a Palestinian state in Egypt's Sinai Desert.

According to Metzger, the plan would be to "take all the poor people from Gaza to move them to a wonderful new modern country with trains buses cars, like in Arizona - we are now in a generation where you can take a desert and build a city. This will be a solution for the poor people - they will have a nice county, and we shall have our country and we shall live in peace."

Metzger was quoted as telling the paper that the plan was new and he had not presented it to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

"I have thought about it with some wise people only in the last two weeks, and I think it is a great idea - nobody spoke about it before." He expressed his intent to discuss the matter with Olmert and anticipated that the idea would find popularity among Israelis.