“Gor zeyer mis, meyn ikh zis”

I was reading this article about the origin of Jewish comedy in the Union of Reform Judaism magazine today, in which Dr. Mel Gordon of UCLA argues that Jewish comedy was born in 1661 when the leading rabbis of Ukraine and Poland met in Vilna to reform Jewish communities in response to Cossack massacres. They decided to outlaw all entertainer professions except for the badkhn, or lewd public jokster. Badkhonim made their careers out of using scatological humor and poking harsh fun at religious professionals (rabbis and cantors) and wealthy congregants.

Badkhonim in Eastern European Jewish towns and shtetls were similar to West African griots in their importance to preserving the oral history of the community and their roles as public entertainers. According to the YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, the tradition of joke telling centered around wedding celebrations as a mitzvah to entertain the bride and groom:

"Originally, this tradition was linked to fulfillment of the commandment to delight the bride and groom and dance with them on their wedding day. Badkhonim were also called marshelikes, leytsim, letsonim, narn, lustik-makhers, katoves-traybers, and freylekhe yidn, all terms evoking laughter, jokes, and comic songs. Some of the performers were simply jesters in the spirit of Jewish popular culture, appreciated for their humor, their gift for joke telling, and their clowning or comic improvisation. Others were poets or musicians, whose main function was to recite epithalamia (gramen zogn; lit., “saying rhymes”)—that is, poems in honor of the bride and groom. The badkhn was therefore a repository of Jewish religious culture and oral tradition, invested with the role of transmitting songs and music, moral messages, and wise counsel along with the fundamentals of Judaism."

Upon immigration to America in the early 1900s, badkhonim became some of the earliest vaudeville performers. To illustrate what Gordon describes of the Jewish American vaudeville tradition, here's a video of the very entertaining Willie Howard from 1941:

End of the Day

We live most of our hours in the realm of the mundane, between great moments. What are more important, the hours, or the moments?

I'm thinking of this as I am listening to my favorite album, Style Antico's Music for Compline, a set of compositions by 16th-century English composers for the compline, or final church service of the liturgical Christian day.





The Catholic prayer service, called The Divine Hours, or Liturgy of the Hours, was adopted from the Jewish tradition of an ordered daily liturgy. Like the Jewish prayer service, it makes heavy use of the Psalms. In the Catholic tradition, there are three major hours services (middle of the night, sunrise, vespers) and four minor services (mid-morning, noon, mid-afternoon, evening).

The Hours Services promote devotion and mindfulness of God, but are also reminders that mundane hours are sacred, even those when we are so very tired at the end of the day.

In pace, in idipsum dormiam et requiescam.

In peace and into the same I shall sleep and rest.


Good night!

Release

What do we have to give up to be free, to be truly ourselves? 

Recently, my office mate and I were discussing the Hindu concepts of samsara and moksha, and I realized something that I hadn't thought of before.

In Hinduism, samsara is the cycle of death and rebirth that we are trapped in, potentially forever. Moksha is the release from samsara, which is the ultimate goal of all life. When one attains moksha, he is reunited forever with the eternal.

It's easy to think of moksha in terms of escaping, but I think it is better to think about it in terms of letting go.

Escaping the cycle of death and rebirth would be like trying to swim out of a whirlpool. The vortex is nothing of your own making, and all you can do is try your best to overcome the forces dragging you down.

In the Bhagavad Gita, however, Lord Krishna counsels that a person attains moksha after realizing his true self, which can only be done by letting go of all desire, ego, vanity, insecurity, doubt, ambition, and fear.

In my mind, this path to achieving moksha could be animated as an image of a hand opening and dropping the heavy weight it is carrying.

Not restricted to Hinduism, a similar idea is offered in the Tao Te Ching:

In pursuit of knowledge,

every day something is added.

In the practice of the Tao,

every day something is dropped.

In Islam, the Prophet Muhammad is quoted in the Hadith as encouraging believers to reject whatever binds them to the world just as a seasoned traveler would avoid packing a heavy suitcase:

“Be in the world like a traveler, or like a passer on, and reckon yourself as of the dead.”

Rather than being morbid, the injunction to be as the dead means to have no cares or burdens, which is a very zen way to travel through life...be it this one or the next!

darkness and light: (y = -1x/2 + 1)

Ah-ha!

I learned something in math class this morning that caused me to have a revelation about the Buddhist concept of emptiness and the Chinese concept of Yin Yang.

I'm not going to share it here because I think I'm going to write an article about it.... (the title of this post gives a little hint into what it's all about)

:)

Living Walls

Is a sacred text fixed, like a stone, or changing? Does it flow? If we observe it long enough, does it start to move? According to rheology, the science of the flow of matter, some things that appear to be solid are actually in motion -- or we could say, on a journey.

Religious traditions that are text-centered (Judaism, Christianity, Sikhism) tend to refer to their texts as "Living"; in other words, they breathe and move. (See John 1:1-14) This contradicts the image of sacred texts written on stone tablets (see Exodus 31:18), such as the Ten Commandments, but even those tablets are dynamic -- Moses shatters them almost immediately in protest at the unfaithfulness of his people.

Stones in the ancient world were especially useful in accounting. The Latin word for stone is calculus, meaning "reckoning, account," originally, "pebble used as a reckoning counter" (Online Etymology Dictionary).

Artistic mosaics formed from pieces of tile, glass or stone called tesserae were ubiquitous in the Roman empire.  A tessera, or individual piece of a mosaic is also called an abaculus -- related to the word, abacus -- and both are derived from the word calculus. Mosaics are therefore beautiful creations of counting stones, or numbers.

The word "mosaic" calls to mind both art and religion. It has two distinct meanings that derive from the Latin words Musaicum, meaning "from the Muses," and from Mosaicus, meaning, "from Moses." Mosaic texts are the first five books in the Hebrew Bible, also known as the Pentateuch (Greek), or Chumash (Hebrew). In Jewish and Christian religious teaching, Moses is attributed as the author, or "conveyer" of this text, because God gave it to him.

Clearly, artistic mosaics are "from the Muses," and the Hebrew Bible is "from Moses." But the Hebrew Bible is arguably very much like a tile or stone mosaic. Here's why:

The Pentateuch could be described figuratively as a creation of counting stones (tesserae) because it is written in Hebrew, which is an alpha-numeric writing system. Hebrew letters are also counting numbers: Aleph = 1, Bet = 2, Gimmel = 3, etc. The text of the Torah can be read as a string of numbers, which inspired the Kabbalists (Jewish mystics) to derive spiritual meanings from number combinations (words and phrases) in the text, a practice which is called gematria.

Here's a rabbinic tale about coffee in the Jewish Spirit Journal, vol. 1  by Yitzhak Buxbaum to illustrate the practice of gematria:

"Milk Or Coffee First?"

"Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev once visited the Seer of Lublin. The Lubliner brought him some coffee and wanted to pour the coffee into the cup first and then add the milk. The Berditchever, however, asked him to please put the milk in first, and then the coffee, since, he said, "when I drink milk with coffee, I intend mikveh," because milk, halav, in gematria is mem and the letter mem together with kiveh (coffee) equals mikveh.

When the Berditchever drank coffee, was he meditating on the mikveh somehow?"

A little background on the mikveh: it is a ritual purification bath in Judaism that represents re-birth. The water of the mikveh must come from a natural source, as natural water sources are primordial symbols of beginning. When a convert to Judaism immerses herself into the bath, she emerges from a new womb and takes on a Jewish identity.

In addition to being a mosaic of numbers, the Pentateuch is a mosaic of genres (history, poetry, law and aggadah, or myth) as well as text fragments from four distinct earlier sources. The source theory is well accepted by biblical scholars and is called the Documentary Hypothesis. The four major sources are called J (Yahweh), D (Deuteronomy), P (Priestly), and E (Elohim). 

Richard Elliott Friedman, in his wonderful book, Who Wrote the Bible? argues that the ancient redactors of the Bible, in bringing together multiple sources, gave us a new and complex picture of God -- a God that embraces paradoxes, who is both Kingly (Yahweh) and humble (Elohim); ineffable, and capable of grieving at his heart (see Gen. 6:6).

While Islam tends to regard its most sacred text, the Qur'an, as a monolith, uttered directly from God in one voice, not filtered through the lens of human interpretation, the Hebrew Bible is a fragmented whole. Nothing more visually symbolizes this textual difference than the most sacred sites in both religions: the Kabah, in Mecca, and the Kotel, or Western Wall, in Jerusalem. The Kabah is a cube, and it gives the impression of wholeness and impenetrability:

Kabah, Photograph by Jak Kilby (1991)

The Western Wall is literally a remnant, a fragment of the Second Temple period that was destroyed in 70 C.E.:

As a symbol, it is a place of sadness, but also of memory, hope and renewal. I had a Jewish professor who wouldn't fast on Tish B'Av, the fast day to mourn the destruction of the Temple, because he argued that the destruction of the Temple caused the development of Rabbinic Judaism, which was the best thing that could happen for the Jewish people. Unlike Israelite Temple religion based on animal sacrifice that was rooted to Jerusalem, Rabbinic Judaism was capable of enduring over space and time. The rabbis replaced sacrifices with textual study as the primary religious obligation, which could be done anywhere. Textual study produced commentary and interpretation, which many consider to be the crowning beauty of the Jewish tradition.

The vast interpretive Jewish tradition of the Torah is an example of a religious text that is on a journey. The next time you visit a synagogue on Shabbat, think about this as you watch the parading of the Torah around the congregation, encircling all who are present in its living walls. Both Judaism and the Torah, as we know them today, were re-born out of the rubble of the Second Temple. They are fragments that live.

Piecing together

The word "fragment" comes to English from the French, derived from the Latin verb frangere. It means:

"A part broken off; a small, detached portion; an imperfect part; as, a fragment of an ancient writing." (Wiktionary)

This is the same verb from which we get the word, "fraction."

Fragments abound in religions -- in texts, beliefs and practices. Religions are essentially wholes made from fragments; they are dazzling mosaics that offer new perspectives every time you study them.

I have lots of examples in mind of fragments (and maybe even fractions) that I am going to share soon. Stay tuned. :)

The Eternal Present

Taoism and Judaism tell us that when the first day was created, the eternal became elusive. As the story of Adam and Eve attests, we humans have always been on a quest to find it.

The day is the foundational unit of time in the Book of Genesis. Creation takes place over six days, and the Creator rests on the seventh. The boundaries around the unit are evening and morning, representing the prinicple of Yin Yang, or the balance of oppositional forces:

And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. - Genesis 1:5 (KJV)

But before the first day was created, what was the universe like? There were no oppositional forces, only oneness. It is hard to imagine, but a helpful description of this eternal present can be found in Chapter 14 of the Tao Te Ching:

Look, and it can't be seen.
Listen, and it can't be heard.
Reach, and it can't be grasped.

Above, it isn't bright.
Below, it isn't dark.
Seamless, unnamable,
it returns to the realm of nothing.
Form that includes all forms,
image without an image,
subtle, beyond all conception.

Approach it and there is no beginning;
follow it and there is no end.
You can't know it, but you can be it,
at ease in your own life.
Just realize where you come from:
this is the essence of wisdom.

This description fits well with the primordial as described in the beginning of the Book of Genesis,

"And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." 1:2 (KJV)

A more interesting exercise, though, is to read the Tao Te Ching passage alongside the Gospel of Thomas. According to the Gospel of Thomas, a non-canonical Christian text dating to 50 C.E. (earlier than the canonical gospels) the eternal present, called the Kingdom of God, is within the self.

Thich Nhat Hanh quotes from the Gospel of Thomas in his wonderful book, Living Buddha, Living Christ:

Jesus said, "If those who lead you say, 'See, the Kingdom is
in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they
say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you.
Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you.
When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and
you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living
Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty
and it is you who are that poverty."

The imagery of the birds of the sky and the fish of the waters call to mind the first week of creation, but this story from the Gospel of Thomas moves in the opposite direction of the Genesis version, backward from the creation to the eternal. The geography of creation includes the sky and the sea, but the geography of the eternal is the unity of the life that is within us with the rest of the universe.

According to the Gospel of Thomas and the Tao Te Ching, the eternal is elusive only when we engage in self-denial. We have to return to ourselves in order to begin to understand it, and reap the benefits of that understanding.

From the Tao Te Ching, Chapter 13:
See the world as your self.
Have faith in the way things are.
Love the world as your self;
then you can care for all things.

 

Tree on 14th St.

Whispers of Death

I was inspired tonight to make this poetic dialogue (read: mashup) between Whitman and Frost, about Death:

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

(Whispers of Heavenly Death)

Whose woods these are I think I know.

Whispers of heavenly death, murmur’d I hear;   

Labial gossip of night—sibilant chorals;  

His house is in the village though;

He will not see me stopping here 

Footsteps gently ascending—mystical breezes, wafted soft and low;  

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

Ripples of unseen rivers—tides of a current, flowing, forever flowing;  
(Or is it the plashing of tears? the measureless waters of human tears?) 

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

I see, just see, skyward, great cloud-masses;  
Mournfully, slowly they roll, silently swelling and mixing;  
With, at times, a half-dimm’d, sadden’d, far-off star,  
Appearing and disappearing.  

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

(Some parturition, rather—some solemn, immortal birth:  
On the frontiers, to eyes impenetrable,  

But I have promises to keep,

And miles to go before I sleep,

Some Soul is passing over.)

And miles to go before I sleep.

Wheels of fire

"Wheels of fire, cosmic, rich, full-bodied honest victories over desperation."
-Thomas Merton, on Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night

Starry Night LEGO Mosaic, by Ed Hall

Farewell Rev. Peter J. Gomes

Rest in peace, dear Reverend Peter J. Gomes, a spiritual warrior for tolerance and justice:

"It is interesting to me to note that those who most frequently call for fair play are those who are advantaged by the play as it currently is, and that only when that position of privilege is endangered are they likely to benefit from the change required to 'play by the rules.' What if the 'rules' are inherently unfair or simply wrong, or a greater good is to be accomplished by changing them? When the gospel says, 'The last will be first, and the first will be last,' despite the fact it is counterintuitive to our cultural presuppositions, it is invariably good news to those who are last, and at least problematic news to those who see themselves as first."

— Peter J. Gomes (The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus: What's So Good About the Good News?)