Is writing idolatry? (see full interview here: http://www.parisreview.com/viewinterview.php/prmMID/2693 )

OZICK
Until quite recently I held a rather conventional view about all this. I thought of the imagination as what its name suggests, as image-making and I thought of the writer’s undertaking as a sovereignty set up in competition with the sovereignty of—well, the Creator of the Universe. I thought of imagination as that which sets up idols, as a rival of monotheism. I’ve since reconsidered this view. I now see that the idol-making capacity of imagination is its lower form, and that one cannot be a monotheist without putting the imagination under the greatest pressure of all. To imagine the unimaginable is the highest use of the imagination. I no longer think of imagination as a thing to be dreaded. Once you come to regard imagination as ineluctably linked with monotheism, you can no longer think of imagination as competing with monotheism. Only a very strong imagination can rise to the idea of a noncorporeal God. The lower imagination, the weaker, falls into the proliferation of images. My hope is someday to be able to figure out a connection between the work of monotheism-imagining and the work of story-imagining. Until now I have thought of these as enemies.

i was in brooklyn college in 1992, in the spring, after pesach… i was in the stacks section looking for old american Jewish literature review articles about chaim potok. (out of suny albany, this publication had some nice stuff, one with a title "the crucifixion of chaim potok" about "my name is asher lev", including a rebuttal by potok in the next or same issue. i am paraphrasing here, it being some years ago…this name kept on popping up in these fancy periodicals which at first i completely ignored. then it kept on coming up, and the titles appeared to be straight up my alley. so finally one day i took out "the pagan rabbi and other stories" and headed for the overpass on bedford avenue sitting down on the cement table-seats , seats which nobody ever used and have since been torn down.it was a sunny day. i began at noon and remained there until i could no longer read…. i don't remember even going to the bathroom. i was that transfixed. and it has never really left me. the next book i read was "the messiah of stockholm", a fictional account of an auschwitz survivor turned book reviewer for a stockholm newspaper who believes his dad to be bruno schultz, and of rumors swirling that schultz' mythical lost manuscript, "the messiah", which had thought to be written by him and destroyed along with schultz in the holocaust, that this very document had popped up in stockholm.but besides for brilliant  plot and her sheer b'kius in  jewish texts, from the talmud to history to hallacha to yiddish, and her command of many languages, and the fact that she hapens to be a frum woman who puts up the chulent every friday afternoon for her family, all of this, peaked shall i say, my interest.I wish to do a series here on Ozick, her essays and perhaps excerpts from her fiction, both short stories and novels.She is of the Lithuanian persuasion. she is considered to be one of the top living american writers by the international literary establishment… she is right wing on Israel… but very explorative and open about everything in her fiction. this is hardly what some term "charedi fiction".

Ben Atlas gives some serious treatment to the Coen Brothers' most personal and most Jewish movie, A Serious Man, and here's an excerpt (Ben Atlas should be writing for commentary, not a blog),

The film opens with a rashi quote: “accept with simplicity everything that happens to you”(where did he say that?). Larry Gopnik, the father, enters a Kafkaesque plot preempted by the five-minute Yiddish mini-film. An episode with the Dybbuks omewhere between Lvov and Lublin. And although there is no obvious connection to rest of the story, I see it as an announcement by the Coen brothers that the film is about Jews who call themselves ivrim because they are m’ever, from the other side of the river and everything they do is connected to what happened elsewhere, i.e not here. Ethan Coen said “it feels right”. The paradox of this film is that you are not really sure if this is a comedy or a horror. I am leaning and landing on the horror side of the river.

Continue reading A Serious Man, the Film by and about Coen Brothers by Ben Atlas and here is the addendum.

I read this in an issue of Beis Moshiach (Hebrew). I misplaced that edition so can't relay the date. (Translation, mine)

"

Before I went back to Israel my father's business partner Charlie (Yechezkel Roth) came to bid me farewell. A Jew who was one of the first students of Tomechi Temimim, which the previous Lubavitcher Rebbe had established in America; this person had descended from the path of Torah over the years, and our talk continued until I told him about my studies in Yoga. Our talk continued and suddenly I found myself opening up to him the concerns of my heart. I told him with great vivaciousness of the torah of Yoga which I learnt and on the ways of meditation. All my attempts to tell him of the exaltedness of Yoga he contradicted and in place explained that in Judaism there was the concept of meditation and that it is featured in the book, the Tanya".

I didn’t pay heed to his words and I received them in a mixed manner. I was then a young bochur, and listening to what an older person was telling you, I shed with, ""the world is for the young"…

Towards the end of our discussion, I told him that I dream of going to India, to study where yoga was founded. At this point, he lost his composure and screamed "instead of going to India, where there many diseases, it would be better for you if you went to Kfar Chabad"

The article goes on to say that Bentzion Cohen went to study at University in Israel and went, at the suggestion of charlie roth, to visit his friend, the mashpia, Zushe Posner.

When Shlomo Chaim Kesselman went into yechidus and asked for bentzion Cohen’s resolution to think chassidus before davening, the rebbe stood up and exclaimed, "bentzion cohen meditates on chassidus before davenimg?! shlomo chaim would repeat this story at many farbrengens.

Bentzion Cohen resides in Kfar Chabad with his wife and children.

Tzemach wrote pertinently in an email,

 The problem with Chulent is most people there need to move forward but
the framework is set up to pull people backwards. Instead of detox
from the Judaic indoctrination it is a comfortable opiate figuratively
and literally.

I cant believe that in NY there is no place for cultural
deconstruction and reconstruction. Instead there is a regurgitation of
the same uninspired and gaseous matter. People need to take the past
to task instead of succumbing and resigning to it.

This letter was sent by the Rebbe Reb Bunim to one of his Chasidim who couldn’t make to him for the holiday. It was also signed by some of his other Chasidim as well as Reb Bunim’s son Avraham Moshe.

Sunday, Ki Savo, 1826 – here in Pershuschah.

Life, peace and joy to his honor, the friend of my soul and heart, the brilliant and sharp rabbi of renown, the perfect sage, his name is known at the gates, his honored name, our teacher the Rabbi Alexander Ziskind, may his light shine.

Since it is a number of years (until the coming of the Redeemer) that ‘the honor of his torah’ resides within the chamber of my heart, and is a friend in the hidden reaches of my thoughts’ legacy, I will speak this time as to my own heart.

It is written (II Kings, 4:13) “I dwell in the midst of my people” and it is written (Jeremiah 31:3) “God appeared to me from afar” – and this is the secret of Rosh Ha-Shanah. The joy and the anxiety are concealed in fear (ha-simchah ve-ha-da’agah musteres be-pachad) may god grant us both together. The understanding grows from the deed; for the deed is “mystery” and the understanding is “light,” and they resemble each other (ha-binah tigdal me-ha-ma’asah ki ha-ma’asah “raz” (=207) ve-ha-binah “or” (=207) ve-sh’neihem domim).

And bless God, who has preserved and sustained us, that we rise in remembrance before the Lord of all, so that perhaps it arouse mercy to take us from darkness to light. With God’s help, ‘the honor of his torah’ will not be forgotten from our hearts and from the hearts of all the members of our group, for a good remembrance. And may God in His mercy give him joy and life and a “writing and sealing of good” to him and his household and his entire city.

Thus the words of his soul and heart which yearns with love,

Simchah Bunim.

We too, his loved ones and friends, seek his welfare with love and may the blessing of our Rabbi (may he live) be fulfilled and may we merit to hear from him good tidings and rejoice together always, with his soul and the souls of his friends,

The small one, Yitzchak of Zarik (Vorker Rebbe)

The small one, Yitzchak Meir (Chidushey Ha-Rim)

The small one, Menachem Mendel of Tomishov (Kotzker Rebbe)

Meir Kvaller

R. Yaakov Vorker (Radzminer Rebbe) and R. Shlomo Zalshiner indicate his welfare as they are in the middle of praying.

I, the young one, too seek his welfare and I ask of him that he preserve this letter and bring it with him, god willing, when he travels here and then we shall study it together in an in-depth seminar.

The words of his beloved friend, the small one,

Avraham Moshe

-atgate231

when i first started The Awareness Center I had never heard of Carlebach. I received over a hundred phone calls from women all over the world who were victimized by him. I had to ask around about him. One highly respected rabbi explained to me that "Carlebach loved his women". He went on to say that Carlebach had at least one woman a day. Times that by 40 years. . . Then figure out why I got so many calls.

Carlebach didn't just sexually harass women, he really reached out and touched them against their will. The youngest I know of was 13. I just got an e-mail yesterday from a woman in her 70's who still has nightmares about him.

btw she's asking for nedoves:
The Awareness Center, Inc.
(the international Jewish Coalition Against Sexual Abuse/Assault)
P.O. Box 65273, Baltimore, MD 21209
www.theawarenesscenter.org
443-857-5560

in the name of full disclosure:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRYm5YtaCQo

Oprah has lots of extra bucks for Rebbetzin Vicki

I was going to write a poem while walking on Eastern Parkway but chanced upon a Psalm when I suddenly found myself outside the Rebbe's room.Forget the poem, David's way better…

PSALM 88

1 1 A song; a psalm of the Korahites. For the leader; according to Mahalath. For singing; a maskil of Heman the Ezrahite. 2 LORD, my God, I call out by day; at night I cry aloud in your presence. 3 Let my prayer come before you; incline your ear to my cry. 4 2 For my soul is filled with troubles; my life draws near to Sheol. 5 I am reckoned with those who go down to the pit; I am weak, without strength. 6 My couch is among the dead, with the slain who lie in the grave. You remember them no more; they are cut off from your care. 7 You plunged me into the bottom of the pit, into the darkness of the abyss. 8 Your wrath lies heavy upon me; all your waves crash over me. Selah 9 Because of you my friends shun me; you make me loathsome to them; Caged in, I cannot escape; 10 my eyes grow dim from trouble. All day I call on you, LORD; I stretch out my hands to you. 11 3 Do you work wonders for the dead? Do the shades arise and praise you? Selah 12 Is your love proclaimed in the grave, your fidelity in the tomb? 13 Are your marvels declared in the darkness, your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion? 14 But I cry out to you, LORD; in the morning my prayer comes before you. 15 Why do you reject me, LORD? Why hide your face from me? 16 I am mortally afflicted since youth; lifeless, I suffer your terrible blows. 17 Your wrath has swept over me; your terrors have reduced me to silence. 18 All the day they surge round like a flood; from every side they close in on me. 19 Because of you companions shun me; my only friend is darkness.

Comment by Yaqov Sack on Long Live the Holy Good Name

 Yea for Radha expressing what we all are honestly afraid to say.

The malady that yet carries us all -

this blight on our soul,

always hidden,

always there in the heaven of Jimmy Steward.

All rights are wrong.

All pain is gone as GOD wipes the tear from every eye.

Radha is a sort of a bad Jesus, the man you love to hate.

this is no concession.

I am not patronizing anyone,

but what if the word of the living God were somehow embedded in our Torah?

What fools we’d be for never having suspected,

for having gone down the 9th of Av: the path of destruction,

fully aware of self-deceit,

condemned to everlasting hell for doing the right thing that's wrong,

the bad thing that's good,

the acquiescence to evil that constituted the best decision to who?

to our own best interest.

Sacrificing the world to our own best interest,

on the altar of greed,

on our knees,

standing free of tisha b'AV - our father,

who was destroyed by some filthy Arab of our own creation,

relation,

of whom I ought to be.

From the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv,

קנאביס חסידיס: על הזיקה העמוקה שבין היהדות והמריחואנה

האם היתה ביהדות העתיקה מסורת שורשית של עישון מריחואנה? יוסף לייב, אחרי מחקר מקיף בישיבות ירושלים והסביבה, טוען בספר חדש שאמנם כך – ושואף (עוד מאז התיכון) להפוך את היהדות להרבה יותר רגועה. תומר פרסיקו שמע ממנו איך עוזר הגראס להתקרב לאלוהים

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תומר פרסיקו | 25/5/2009 8:55

הבעש"ט - דיוקן דמיוני,  עטיפת הספר. תת-תרבות יהודית ענפה של המראה למחוזות שמימיים

המזל, אומרים רבים משומרי המצוות, הוא שהגראס לא אסור על פי ההלכה. הבעיה, יהיה מי שיוסיף, היא שחסרה מסורת יהודית (שלא לומר קבלית) שמנחה את היהודי כיצד להשתמש בסם כדי לקרב בינו ובין הקב"ה. כדי לענות על השאלה האחרונה יצא יוסף לייב, יהודי אמריקאי צעיר וצמא דעת, למסע מעושן ברחבי ירושלים וארץ ישראל, בחיפוש עיקש אחר מקורות עבריים לסוטול.

כעת יצא הספר (באנגלית) שמתעד את מסעו המפותל, תחת השם המרומם "חסידיס קנאביס: תורת הסמים הקדומה והמתחדשת" - Cannabis Chassidis: The Ancient and Emerging Torah of Drugs (הוצאת "עצמוס")

את הגראס פגש לייב לראשונה בתיכון – חברים שאינם יהודים סיפקו לו מעט חומר על פי בקשתו. בתשובה לשאלתי הוא אמר: "שמעתי רק דברים טובים על זה במשך שנים, וזה גם התקשר אצלי לכל האמנים, המשוררים והמוזיקאים שאהבתי". כשהגיע מארה"ב לירושלים, לפני שבע שנים, הוא גילה, לשמחתו, שמי שעישן בעיר הקודש בדרך כלל עשה זאת מתוך התכוונות לממד הרליגיוזי שהגראס יכול לעורר ולעודד.

לייב הצטרף מיד לעבודת השם, אבל לא התכוון להסתפק בכך – הוא חיפש את המסורת היהודית העתיקה, שעל פי דעתו היתה חייבת להתקיים, שהרי "איך ייתכן שלתרבות עתיקה כל כך אין מערכת יחסים עם אחד הצמחים הרפואיים והקסומים שבבריאה?"

וכך יצא לייב לחיפוש עיקש, בין השאר בישיבות שונות בהן למד וכחלק מ"סצנת קרליבך" בירושלים וסביבתה, כאשר את הרפתקאותיו הוא מתעד בבלוג שלו, ששמו כשם הספר. על פי עדותו, מסתבר, ישנה תת-תרבות יהודית ענפה של המראה למחוזות שמימיים בעזרת חומרים פסיכואקטיביים – תרבות שהוא קושר לה גם מסורת יהודית עתיקה. עם צאת ספרו שאלתי אותו כמה שאלות בעניין.

For the continuation & interview & picture, see here:

http://www.nrg.co.il/online/55/ART1/895/137.html