#tzaddik

[brother-hermes]

All 6's & 7's: Transforming Water Into Wine

Diving back into the symbolism behind the Wedding At Cana to lead into the narrative of the Samaritan Woman at the Well. Let's unearth the hidden meaning of the 6 Ceremonial Jars. Rock with me on the journey within.

“On the third day there was a wedding in Cana, in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.” -John 2:1 Jewish mysticism has a practice called gematria- interpreting the meaning of scriptures based on numerical values. It’s a very complex Kabbalistic idea I won’t even attempt to capture here because it’s that deep. However, any time you see numbers you can guarantee there is a mystical aspect…

[bdkinz]

Audio - Lessons in Tanya 25

Chapter 14. We continue to explore the uniqueness of the Beinoni. This individual would be someone who recognizes that while they can never be a tzaddik in the soul sense of the term, they should always be striving to reach a level similar enough to the righteous person that they can connect to a truly righteous soul. This chapter lays the groundwork for the connection between a rebbe and…

[quotes-from-the-bookery]

"The dagger flashed its light, illuminating the landscape to the heavens. The darkness vanished. And so did the dragon.

You switched it off, hesitating to place it back in its sheath. Good thing. The dragon was instantly back again, larger and fiercer than before.

Backing off, you attempted the same move again. Foolishly. The result was no different. As long as the dagger emitted its photons, the dragon was gone. As soon as it switched off, the dragon was immediately back.

“They found light sitting in a room,” you heard the voice of your Coach echoing in your mind. “Light, would you like to meet darkness?”

[piano-nefesh]

In case jumblr didn't have enough spelling discourse, I have a new challenge: spell צפת

[vaspider]

Feel free to not give an answer (I understand that you post everything). I'm searching for places to reach out and don't know where to look, and I suspect you might know what direction I could go in? I'm looking to explore conversion. I am currently married to a gentile. The local Rabbi said I can't convert because of it, hard stop. He is not interested in talking to me on the matter. I am confused because I know many mixed Jewish marriages? Is there resources or other Rabbi or anywhere I can reach out? Attempts to Google gave me unclear directions and I don't know what to do next

Hey,

That is unfortunately pretty common with conservative (small c) or Orthodox and some Conservative (big C) rabbis. I would advise you to look for a local Reform, Reconstructionist, or unaffiliated synagogue, as those rabbis are more likely to be supportive. I think that's a very silly and myopic point of view, myself, in no small part because my entire family ended up as gerim tzaddik/converts (ugh I hate that word, I'm a person not a PDF)/adoptees because I started the process and my partners and daughter were drawn into the community with me. A rabbi who rejected me would have ended up rejecting four deeply-committed Jews!

It's pretty common for a rabbi to reject a potential conversion/adoption student 3 times -- and traditional to do so -- to make sure that you are sincere in your efforts, but it sounds like that's not what happened here, so I'd look for a different rabbi. Clearly the two of you aren't a good fit, and that happens.

[maslimanny]

A person who is completely innocent, and has never blemished anything at all, cannot see bad in any human being or hear a report of bad in any human being. This is because HaShem does not arrange for him to see or hear of any bad. And therefore if you perceive that some individual is doing bad, or if you are told of some person doing bad, you need to know clearly that you have in you some speck of that particular bad itself. And even if you are a tzaddik, even so, you have in you some fraction of a fraction of that thing, and HaShem has summoned this perception or tale so that you notice that blemish in yourself and return and fix it.!!

[lina-vas-dom]

Я столько лет не то искала, Не там кораблики пускала, Не той весной, не в том ручье, Писала стих не в том ключе, К тому же, слабого накала. Зато теперь я молодец, Я просто цадик и мудрец, Лишь об одном прошу я слезно: Не говорите мне, что поздно, Что время вышло, что конец.

/Лариса Миллер

I've been looking for the wrong thing for so many years, I've been looking in the wrong place for so many years, In the wrong spring, in the wrong stream, I wrote a poem in the wrong key, And I wrote in the wrong key. I'm good now, I'm a tzaddik and a sage, I only ask for one thing: Don't tell me it's too late, That time is up, that it's over.

/Larissa Miller

[bijoumikhawal]

The Pillars of the World

The world stands upon pillars. Some say it stands on twelve pillars, according to the number of the tribes of Israel. Others say that it rests on seven pillars, which stand on the water. This water is on top of the mountains, which rest on wind and storm. Still others say that the world stands on three pillars. Once every three hundred years they move slightly, causing earthquakes. But Rabbi Eleazar ben Shammua says that it rests on one pillar, whose name is “Righteous.”

One of the ancient creation myths found in many cultures describes the earth as standing on one or more pillars. In this Jewish version of the myth, several theories are found—that the earth stands on twelve, seven, or three pillars—or on one. Rabbi Eleazar ben Shammua gives that one pillar the name of Tzaddik, “Righteous,” under-scoring an allegorical reading of this myth, whereby God is the pillar that supports the world. This, of course, is the central premise of monotheism. Alternatively, his comment may be understood to refer to the Tzaddik, the righteous man whose existence is required for the world to continue to exist. Or it might refer to the principle of righteousness, and how the world could not exist without it.

Pg 96, Tree of Souls by Howard Schwartz

[power-chords]

Oh, Pete! You’ll always be my patron saint. Guru. Tzaddik. Whatever.

[todaysjewishholiday]

3 Elul 5784 (5-6 September 2024)

Rav Avraham Yitzhak HaKohen Kook was one of fifty seventh century orthodox Judaism’s most influential and polarizing figures. An ardent vegetarian, a mystic, a prolific Torah scholar, and a coalition builder who threw himself enthusiastically into the major controversies of the Jewish world throughout his life, the Rav was honored as a living tzaddik by his supporters and called a guileful seducer who would lead the Jewish people to ruination by his critics.

Kook was born in the Russian empire in 5625, to a confirmed misnaged and graduate of the Volozhin yeshiva, and the daughter of a devout hasid. Thus, Kook’s upbringing brought together the two major warring strains of Orthodox Judaism in the pale of settlement. Kook followed in his father’s footsteps, attending the Volozhin yeshiva, marrying the daughter of one of his mentors there, and taking a position as a rabbi.

It is during this period that the Rav developed the first of his iconoclastic beliefs— that vegetarianism was the true intent of HaShem and the proper diet for mankind, and that the permission to eat meat which the Torah describes at the conclusion of the flood narrative was a divine concession to humanity’s violent nature which would eventually be revoked as humanity reached a higher level of collective morality. Kook saw the entirety of kashrus restrictions as a divine system to make the consumption of meat more arduous in the hopes that the Jewish people would simply abandon it entirely. He himself adopted a mostly vegetarian diet, eating only a small portion of chicken each Shabbat in recognition of his conviction that humanity as a whole was not yet prepared to abandon all forms of violence including the consumption of animals. Needless to say, Kook’s stance on this issue has not been widely adopted by other Jews, though his thoughts on the matter remain influential among some Jewish vegetarians.

Kook’s adolescent years had included the outbreak of antisemitic brutality following the assassination of Czar Alexander II (which was blamed on Jews despite none of the conspirators themselves being Jewish), and the outbreak of another such wave of violence following Russian setbacks in the Russo-Japanese War (blamed on the Empire’s Jewish residents despite the Jewish population being concentrated entirely on the opposite end of the empire and absolutely removed from the levers of military or political power) helped convince Rav Kook to accept an offer of a position as a rabbi in Jaffa in Eretz Yisroel, then still a part of the Ottoman Empire. Kook remained there for a decade, focusing considerable energy on outreach to the secular— and often socialist— agricultural communes established by early Zionists. At that time, the majority of orthodox Jews in the holy land— and indeed the world— wanted nothing to do with Zionism, which was widely seen by the Orthodox as a chillul HaShem and usurpation of the messianic prerogative to restore the Jewish people to their ancestral home. While there had always been a small Jewish population in Eretz Yisroel no matter who ruled over it, and numerous sages through the generations had made pilgrimage from the diaspora, living in the land as subjects of the existing rulers was seen as an entirely different matter than seeking to establish an independent Jewish nation— especially a Jewish ethnostate. And Zionism’s leading lights so far had all been secular assimilated Jews who were committed to the project specifically as a form of assimilation— to establish a modern secular liberal state modeled on those of post-Napoleonic Europe to allow Jews full integration into the modern European project of patriotism in an ethno-linguistically homogenous political unit, while also establishing a refuge from antisemitic discrimination within the very nation-states they wished to emulate. Zionism was meant to be an answer to the antisemitic accusation that Jews were rootless wanderers who disrupted the peace of other nations by infiltrating them. For most Orthodox Jews of the time, however, Jewish exilic diaspora was HaShem’s will, and ought only to be ended by divine intervention and messianic restoration of the Jewish people, and making a Jewish nation without divine intervention was a fundamentally idolatrous project. Kook departed quickly from this established consensus, instead seeing secular Zionists as unwitting tools of a divine plan. He sought to build bridges to the early kibbutzim, encouraging Shabbat observance and other religious practices without pressuring them to adopt fully Orthodox observance. Curiously, one of his specific entreaties was for the Zionists, who were among the first large scale Jewish agricultural communities in the region since the late Roman period, to practice the mitzvot of terumah and other agricultural tithes, telling the secular settlers that they could be part of restoring a mitzvah that very few Jews had been able to practice in over a thousand years.

After a decade in Jaffa, Rav Kook returned to Europe to attend an international conference of the newly formed Agudath Israel, which was a charedi political organization that had been founded specifically in opposition to the growing Zionist movement. Kook hoped to persuade other European Orthodox Jews that they should participate in the Zionist movement with the intent of making it more religious rather than continuing to boycott and oppose it. His intentions were dashed even before he was able to begin however, because the outbreak of the First World War caused the cancellation of the conference and stranded him in Europe for four years. However, Kook’s mission would bear fruit years after his death, with Agudath Israel reaching an understanding with David ben Gurion following the establishment of Israel as a independent nation state, and now Agudath Israel, founded to oppose Zionism, operates a political party in Israel with representation in the Knesset.

After brief internment in Germany as a foreign national at the start of the war (as a Russian citizen, since Russia was at war with Germany and Austria) followed by a similarly brief sojourn in neutral Switzerland, Kook spent the majority of the War in England, where he served as rabbi for an Eastern European immigrant synagogue and continued his advocacy for the development of a religious wing of the Zionist movement. In this capacity, the Rav worked alongside British secular Zionists and influential British Jews to seek British support for the creation of a Jewish nation in Palestine.

As the war drew to a close, Kook returned to Eretz Yisroel, where he was offered the position of Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem. Within a few years, Kook and his allies had persuaded the British, who were now governing Palestine as a colonial mandate, having promised the territory to both their Zionist Jewish supporters and Arab allies prior to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, to appoint him as the very first Chief Rabbi of the Palestinian Mandate. The establishment of the chief rabbinate gave Kook a major platform for his position that Jewish religious law and orthodox rabbinical guidance should be integrated into Zionist institutions and the nation they hoped to create. Kook lectured widely, wrote prolifically, taught extensively (even establishing his own yeshiva in Jerusalem to promulgate his unique blend of Litvish Orthodox Judaism, Hasidic influenced kabbalistic mysticism, and political Zionism). It is during this period that the Orthodox mainstream routinely castigated him as a heretic and deceiver whose eloquence risked leading an entire generation astray. Several of his books were placed under cherem by other Orthodox leaders, who even went so far as to purchase and destroy the entire first printing of one of his books to keep it out of circulation. It was only after the Shoah that a wider portion of Orthodox Jews both in Palestine and elsewhere would come to accept and celebrate Kook’s stances on Zionism and become staunch supporters of the newly established Israeli state.

Rav Kook died on the 3rd of Elul 5695, sixteen years to the day after his arrival in Jerusalem following the Great War. His funeral was attended by 20,000 mourners. The influence and controversy of his legacy still lives on nearly a century later.

[bdkinz]

Audio - Lessons in Tanya 23

Audio – Lessons in Tanya 23

Final section of chapter 12.  We finish the initial discussion of the Beinoni as it relates to the righteous and wicked person. Much of the focus is on how the categories might be a case of mind over matter.   Episode 23 Do you want to work on taking the actions of your life and find meaning in all you do and who you are? Are you struggling with your spiritual growth. Contact New Beginnings…

[quotes-from-the-bookery]

"Until the dragon reaches Eden, it is still a dragon.”

[dragoneyes618]

"A famous Talmudic passage teaches that "a woman is more apt to begrudge guests than a man" (Bava Mezia 87a). For understandable reasons, this passage, with its implication that women have stingier dispositions, is commonly regarded as misogynistic. Rabbi Berel Wein, who inspired me with the title and the idea for this entry, disagrees: "This is not a discriminatory remark, nor is it even a critical comment. It is an objective statement regarding the one who really bears the burden of hosting guests in the home."

Throughout history, and in most homes today, the cleaning, cooking, and caring for guests falls mainly on the woman. It is unsurprising, therefore, that "a woman is more apt to begrudge [the] guests" whom her hospitable husband suddenly brings home. Wein does not regard a man who brings home surprise guests as a generous figure; rather, he is, in the words of a Yiddish expression, "a tzaddik (a righteous person) on someone else's shoulders." The first person to whom you owe consideration is your spouse.

The Book of Jewish Values, Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, page 207

[cruelsister-moved2]

yaaay thank you @jaggerbowiesextape <333!!!

last read

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin The thing I forget every time I read her is I don't start to really care about the book until like 60% through but I guess the last 40% is usually worth it. For me it gains a star for the unexpected Martin Buber reference but loses one for the fact they didn't have gay sex in a tent while traversing the icy wasteland together </3

A Dreamer's Tales by Lord Dunsany I am a dunsanator but this was honestly his worst so far like more self-conscious than his earliest but less sophisticated than his later work.

The Trembling of the Veil by W.B. Yeats Constantly had me wanting to google trembling of the veil ending explained and kind of made me wish I did more drugs.

currently reading

Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin (trans. Lisa Hayden) I'm only 4% in but I think this might be the best book ever it's so beautiful.

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life by George Saunders Listening as an audiobook and the narrators are very fun and Saunders is a great orator. Mixed feelings on the craft talks, some of the points made are a bit too steeped in MFAology for me PERSONALLY.

Tales of the Hasidim: The Later Masters by Martin Buber Beautiful philosophy, folklore, theology, oral history in one. Some tzaddikim are less inspiring than others but the politicking and drama is part of the fun. Cringe when the translation says stuff like 'sabbath bread' but I'm being so brave about it. Also it has a beautiful cover<3 i got my copy for £7 at a used bookstore and just found out it goes for like £50 online so now I feel bad for folding over pages -_- Someone's written in my copy but it's only on one page and it's the name of a specific tzaddik they've underlined and put two big ticks around and wrote 'LEADER' adhfdihfafd

next up

wild: tales from early medieval britain by amy jeffs a la ezra, starting the world's smallest gayest book club out here

I don't usually think that far ahead because it depends what kind of mood I'm in when I finish a current book. I have some re-reads in mind and a ton of non-fiction I want to get to. Maybe the way spring arrives and other stories by Yu Chen (translated by a team of women and nonbinary people) if I'm in a short fiction mood! TAG @steeleyespan @mogblin @halomit @berrytart @37q @nutongzhi sorry i only tagged people who have recommended me books before so i know you read but im soooo serious if youre an oomf who reads i would love you to tag me in yours i want to see 🥺

[brother-hermes]

YESHUA, TRANSFIGURATION, MERKHABAH

“And after six days Yeshua took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became radiant, intensely white, as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, and they were talking with Jesus. And Peter said to Yeshua, ‘Rabbi,it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.’ For he did not know what to say, for they were terrified.”

-Mark 9:2-6

Six Days- if we work our way down from the three supernals- Keter, Chockmah, Binah- towards the world we live in- Malkhut- we quickly realize that each of the remaining 7 sefirot relate to the seven days of creation. It is absolutely vital we pay careful attention to numbers in scripture because they’re always alluding to a deeper understanding of the Divine. In the case of the transfiguration of Yeshua six denotes Yesod, or the foundation through which all the Divine Light of G-D pours into creation.

High Mountain- think of Jacobs latter and ascent to the throne room of El Shaddai- or Most High, ‘The Lord of the Mountains’ to their neighboring Samaritans. Where Jacobs vision occurred became Beth-El, or the House of God right.

Radiant- this is what we call Shekhinah Glory. The tzaddik- saint in simplest terms- is rooted deeply in the path of hakam- seeking wisdom under the guidance of Chockmah- one of those supernals I mentioned earlier. Anyways, this is the Divine Mother, that female aspect of G-D’s dwelling and immanence in the created world. Yeshua has awakened to the Divine Feminine coursing through the fabric of the Universe and was raised up- brought forward into Yesod- a higher state of being. The Bar-Enash, or “Son of Man,” represents the new humanity Yeshua taught must be born within each soul. We must all awaken to Her presence.

Moshe and Elijah are prophets of the Most High and like all prophets are deeply related to Netzach and Hod. (the Pereshat Pekudei in the Zohar goes into detail for those interested in learning more about the Hekhalot and the essence of Heaven) Prophecy-divine vision emanates through Netzach, Hod and Yesod in Yeshuas transfiguration as these three represent the zeir anpin- the small face in Aramaic. (it’s the mirroring of the three supernals into the physical world of malkhut and the subject of quite a bit of debate amongst kabbalists. It was still firmly nestled in the realm of oral tradition in Yeshuas time so a lot of our way of seeing it just didn’t exist yet)

Three Tents- remember tents is the word for the tabernacle found in the Torah. It represents Shekhinah glory- G-Ds dwelling among us. This is exactly what will happen to any of us who follow Yeshuas halakhah- the way- and internalize love and justice in our everyday thoughts and manner of living. Whereas Netzach and Hod distribute that divine flux from on high it’s Yesod that determines what we receive. (Kabbalah meaning “to receive”) Yeshua offered us explicit instructions to follow that would allow us to elevate ourselves to a higher calling as He Himself did.

They were terrified- Yeshua brought them on High because Peter, James and John had shown promise. They had internalized the halakhah and were living in the way. (the first church was actually called the way) As such, they were ready to be initiated into the Higher Mysteries and receive Chockmah directly from the source. Think of Solomon saying “The fear of Adonai is the beginning of Chockmah.” The word for fear in Hebrew is yara- to fear, be in awe, tremble with joy. Awakening the baet- transformative awe of God- would shake a disciple to their core as they move beyond the stage of halakhah.

This is what merkhabah is at its core. It’s moving beyond mere words and codes of conduct. To be wrapped in a cloud doesn’t mean a meteorological fog or something trite like that. Anan literally means a covering, or hiding place. It’s the mysterious realm of Yesod- in this case the environment of Divine vision. Ancient accounts from various cultures are full of examples of how people tremble and their hair stands up on the back of their necks when this sort of mystical experience occurs. Hence, the disciples were terrified.

Don’t be shy. I know I shrouded a mystery in a mystery on this one. Symbolism is a kink for me though. Just remember whose yoke is easy and whose halakhah is light. As a Rabbi Yeshua provided a lifestyle and manner of thinking rather than ritual and dogma. Anyone can have a merkhabah experience by following the way of the prophets. All it takes is willingness, not wuwu new age nuance.

That is all. 🫳🎤