Michael - this nugget is for you and for all of you who take time away from ongoing work and life matters to engage in this daily Torah probe:
Heschel makes the following observation:
A Christian scholar who visited Warsaw during the First World War, wrote of a remarkable experience he had there: "Once I noticed a great many coaches on a parking-place, but with no drivers in sight. In my own country I would have known where to look for them. A young Jewish boy showed me the way: in a courtyard, on the second floor, was the shtibl of the Jewish drivers. It consisted of two rooms: one filled with Talmud-volumes, the other a room for prayer. All the drivers were engaged in fervent study and religious discussion...It was then that I found out...that all professions, the bakers, the butchers, the shoemakers, etc., have their own shtibl in the Jewish district; and every free moment which can be taken off from their work is given to the study of the Torah. And when they get together in intimate groups, one urges the other: 'Sog mir a shtickl Torah -- Tell me a little Torah.'"
A.J. Heschel, The Earth is the Lord’s (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1950), pp. 46-47.
Amichai, I appreciate, as ever, the courage, tact, and wisdom of your approach to the "problematic".
It's interesting that the Cabrini clip is 1914, the 11th hour before a war that prompted Wilfred Owen to write his terrible elegy "The Old Man and the Young,"
So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
and builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.
What springs to mind for me are (1) the opioid epidemic with its toll of adolescents and (2) the murder of school children. I think the un-reason for this madness is beyond Bertrand Russel's appeasement theory. Let Moloch represent the ultimate suicidality of our species, a tendency, writ globally now in what seems an irreversible tide: the consequences of "climate change." Countless starving children, countless refugees, and everywhere a sense that human life is out of control. Not even Kali has this awful stature. Enter Moloch. Moloch for Owen's "Ram of Pride"; Moloch for utter hopelessness. Moloch as the last word we humans have for that in us which is capable of blinding and blindness: "1000 blind windows" indeed.
Michael - this nugget is for you and for all of you who take time away from ongoing work and life matters to engage in this daily Torah probe:
Heschel makes the following observation:
A Christian scholar who visited Warsaw during the First World War, wrote of a remarkable experience he had there: "Once I noticed a great many coaches on a parking-place, but with no drivers in sight. In my own country I would have known where to look for them. A young Jewish boy showed me the way: in a courtyard, on the second floor, was the shtibl of the Jewish drivers. It consisted of two rooms: one filled with Talmud-volumes, the other a room for prayer. All the drivers were engaged in fervent study and religious discussion...It was then that I found out...that all professions, the bakers, the butchers, the shoemakers, etc., have their own shtibl in the Jewish district; and every free moment which can be taken off from their work is given to the study of the Torah. And when they get together in intimate groups, one urges the other: 'Sog mir a shtickl Torah -- Tell me a little Torah.'"
A.J. Heschel, The Earth is the Lord’s (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1950), pp. 46-47.
Excellent quote from Rabbi Ginsberg. He read that in 1994 at the Knitting Factory.
Amichai, I appreciate, as ever, the courage, tact, and wisdom of your approach to the "problematic".
It's interesting that the Cabrini clip is 1914, the 11th hour before a war that prompted Wilfred Owen to write his terrible elegy "The Old Man and the Young,"
So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
and builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.
What springs to mind for me are (1) the opioid epidemic with its toll of adolescents and (2) the murder of school children. I think the un-reason for this madness is beyond Bertrand Russel's appeasement theory. Let Moloch represent the ultimate suicidality of our species, a tendency, writ globally now in what seems an irreversible tide: the consequences of "climate change." Countless starving children, countless refugees, and everywhere a sense that human life is out of control. Not even Kali has this awful stature. Enter Moloch. Moloch for Owen's "Ram of Pride"; Moloch for utter hopelessness. Moloch as the last word we humans have for that in us which is capable of blinding and blindness: "1000 blind windows" indeed.