Theodicy, The Odyssey & the Odd "I See": A Yom Kippur Mangled Midrash Mash-Up

PRELUDE

It is written that God allowed Moses to travel forward in time to see what would become of the Torah (Menachot 29b).

Somewhere in the first century, C.E., God delivered Moses to the back of Rabbi Akiva’s classroom. Akiva taught lessons found, not just within the words, but even within the letters of the Torah.

Moses didn’t get it.

Why was that?

The Potzker taught that Moses, while being a true servant of God, failed to learn to laugh with God about the absurdity of the human condition. Akiva, on the other hand, could see the humour in it all.

Death? Akiva laughed at the miserable end that befell his teacher Eliezer. Akiva’s attitude: why take your baggage of suffering with you to the next level when you can leave it behind in this life?

Destruction? A fox emerged from the belly of the remnants of the Holy of Holies, and a laugh emerged from the belly of Akiva.

Seduction? When the beautiful Rufina attempted to entice Rabbi Akiva with the temptations of her body, he laughed at the fact that she would instead be seduced by the body of Jewish wisdom brought down by Moses himself.

Moses did not get any of it.

The Potzker thought that he understood why.

An afterlife, a messiah, a third Temple, these ideas were all foreign to Moses’ way of thinking, at least as far as the Potzker could tell through projecting himself into the mind of that great prophet.

Like Moses, the Potzker was somewhat confused by the place Akiva and his teachings found within Jewish tradition. Nevertheless, the Potzker felt that he had found a kindred spirit in Akiva in that they both loved to laugh with God.   

Another thing that the Potzker did appreciate about Akiva was his spirit of optimism.

The Potzker taught that one day, Akiva passed the former site of the Temple in Jerusalem with some learned colleagues. All except for Akiva were moved to sadness by being reminded of the destruction of the Temple, while Akiva laughed harder than her ever did when presented with this scene.

They asked: “How can you laugh when a statue of Jupiter stands where we once had the Holy of Holies?”

Akiva replied: “Time travel is not just for Moses.”

Puzzled, they asked for elaboration.

Responded Akiva: “Sometimes the end is the beginning. While Jupiter stands today in Jerusalem, one day the star of David will sit on Mars, moved there by the Spirit.”

His colleagues remained puzzled.

While this story is not found in the Talmud, the Potzker taught that this parable was part of the oral Torah given to Moses at Sinai.

If you don’t “get it,” you are invited to meditate on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extraterrestrial_memorials#/media/File:MER_STS-107_Memorial.JPG

The Potzker was fascinated by the process of “getting it.”

Moses did not “get” Akiva’s lessons.

24000 of Akiva’s students did not “get” Akiva’s lessons.

Even Akiva did not “get” the essence of his teaching until his dying breath.

And within these examples, the Potzker thought he “got it.”

He taught: “Learn from your past and the past of others, because you might not “get it” on your own until it is too late for you to do anything with “it”, other than to teach “it” to others for them to digest.”

He taught: “Life is about information transfer. Pass it on.”

He suspected that Moses would understand this lesson. And so would Akiva. Because he learned this lesson from the both of them.

_____________________________________________

And now, on with another classic Potzker tale to digest during the upcoming Yom Kippur 5772:

Lip Service: A Noirish Midrash

Once upon a time, about 100 years after the crucifixion of Jesus, four jazz musicians were practicing their craft in a cave in the darkness that was Roman occupied Judea.

The four were a cappella masters, refining the tunes that their leader Akiva had learned from his teacher, the fiery and temperamental Eliezer, who had refined his chops at the foot of his teacher, Yohanan of Yavneh.

Niggun jazz, as it was known at the time, was quite different in format from what we call jazz today. Rooted in the thunder and lightning of Sinai, these jazz masters studied and lived all of the songs of their culture, fusing them with the rhythm that they found within the blues that emanated from their people after the destruction of Herod’s Temple in Jerusalem. The stories and the laws that constituted jazz’s musical core were combined and rearranged in a way that made the people groove and move. However, the people also groaned and moaned, for the cruel oppression of the Roman occupiers had become too much to bear. The common folk looked to the four musicians for a sense that salvation from their troubles was on the horizon, but all the musicians could do was incorporate those grumblings into their music.

During one practice session, Akiva, known by his nickname “Head” (because his command of the Torah was considered by all to be head and shoulders above the rest), interrupted to propose an idea to the other group members. These were Elisha (known as “ The Other,” as in other head, because, if Akiva wasn’t around, he would be known as “Head”), Shimon the Wise and Shimon the Quiet.

“We need a name for our group. Any ideas?” asked Akiva.

“How about The Four Heads?” responded Elisha with an air of egalitarian mischief.

Shimon the Wise, ever the peacemaker, tried to steer the discussion to a nonpersonal level.

“Great idea, but better to reduce it to something catchy, maybe even one word. How about Quadriceps?”

Shimon the Quiet responded with a smile large enough to win over the room. He got the joke. He could taste the bitter sweetness in the irony of naming themselves in the language of their oppressors with what the people were demanding from their leadership: muscle.

The lightness of the mood was quickly shattered with Akiva’s next suggestion.

“OK, Quadriceps, I have a gig for us to play. How about being the first quartet to play Pardes?”

“Pardes? You mean the Garden of Eden? Paradise? Have you lost your head, Akiva?” responded Elisha mischievously.

“Absolutely serious,” responded Akiva. “Let’s face it, the times are miserable. And even though I know that this too shall pass, and that it is all for the better, the people are clamoring for an end to their suffering and are turning to us for hope. It is as if they know our secret….”

Shimon the Quiet spoke. “It is time.”

Actually, it was about time. Time travel. The four had, as a group, convinced themselves that they had the ability to crack the code of time and use that knowledge to change history. Although the journey would be dangerous, they had discussed how far back they could go and concluded that the Garden of Eden was a possibility. After all, they thought, why clamor for a messiah to save the world when they had the power to reset the clock and eliminate the need for a savior?

It was doable, they agreed. They were the best and the brightest of their generation. As explorers, they had the right stuff: spiritually, physically, mentally and botanically. The botanical part was the weak link. Shimon the Quiet was an expert in this field, having conducted numerous experiments on himself over the years, searching for the right combination of nature’s gifts that could take the four adventurers to the level of consciousness required for their journey When he said that the time was right, the others assumed that it meant that he had found the right formula. Shimon the Wise was suspicious, but kept his reservations to himself.

The date with destiny arrived. The four prepared to blast off to Paradise, ready to take the small steps that would lead to a giant leap for mankind. They washed down the special cakes that Shimon the Quiet had prepared with liters of water, bringing them to the edge of water intoxication. Then, with eyes closed, they began chanting. First, in a minimally audible murmur that barely disturbed the prerequisite absolute silence, eventually peaking in a harmony that enveloped the entire universe. Was it moments, hours or days that had passed? None was sure, but Akiva signaled that it was time to open their eyes. As they did, four lifetimes of preparation allowed them to instantaneously reach the same conclusion: they had not pushed the envelope far enough. This was not their intended destination of Genesis 3:6. This was Genesis 6:6. The Garden of Eden was devoid of any other human presence, and the presence of The Presence shook them to the core.

A still quiet voice murmured in the distance.

As the four adventurers approached closer to the source, the sound became more distinguishable.

By the time they reached the marble columns at the portal to the chamber from which the sounds emanated, the words became unmistakably clear.

“Water, water.”

At that moment, God was deliberating whether to destroy his creation with the very substance that brought it to life.

“Water, water. Yes, a flood to wash away the creatures that spill their fellow’s blood onto the holy earth from which they came.” God sighed.

“Water, water.” Life, death. Hope, despair. All emanating from the same source.

 God remembered the moment he came up with the idea. A planet based on water, a holy trinity of simple molecules that could lead to a form of fleshy life worthy of being created in his image. In the beginning, somewhere in the beginning, this seemed like such a beautiful idea. Now, God wept daily, a victim of the creative process that he had created.

 

The eyes of the mystical repairmen met each other in horror as they collectively appreciated their miscalculation. Akiva assessed the situation and quickly averted his eyes, fearing the consequences of potentially looking at God face to face. His eyes were drawn to a puddle of God’s tears in which he saw the reflection of his comrades who were, like breastfeeding infants, locking eyes with their Creator. Suddenly the Quiet One died in terror. Then, he saw the Wise One succumb to madness. He watched in disbelief as the belief system of The Other was uprooted, and sadly observed as The Other fled the scene. The dream team Akiva had assembled was no more, leaving him alone and in shock with The One.

Both God and Akiva smelled the stench that comes from pure intentions gone bad.

“Come closer Akiva. I am Disappointment”

Akiva was somewhat confused but responded as quickly and honestly as he could.

“I am disappointed as well, Master of The Universe, and have no excuse…”

God interrupted.

“Pay attention Akiva! Shema! I did not say I am disappointed. I said that I am Disappointment. I have just revealed to you my penultimate attribute. I expected that you would understand. Now I am both disappointed and Disappointment.”

Akiva was not sure how to respond. Surely if God was revealing himself to Akiva, He could have made it clearer that revelation was occurring. At least Moses had a burning bush to clue him in. All he had before him was a dead colleague, one who was running around madly and the memory of the one who had completely vanished. And then, the epiphany: despite the enormity of the disaster unfolding before his eyes, God was with him in his disappointment, because God was Disappointment. Not truth. Not justice. Not love or freedom or any other trait that his comrades attributed to God. A lifetime of illusions crumbled in the chaos that was playing out before him.

“I see,” muttered Akiva.

“It is not about seeing. It is not about hearing. It is about understanding, so shema, pay attention, in order to more fully understand the past, the present and the future, for I am the Time you cannot control, but in which you travel.”

God sighed a sigh that rattled Akiva’s sensory homunculus.

“Generation after generation, from the episode where Cain activated the thirst of the earth for blood, to this very day, I got severe blowback from the angels on a regular basis about what was going on. They encouraged me to restore order to the universe by eliminating the human and sang songs to that effect day and night, an endless earworm that created such a buzz that I couldn’t think straight. Of all of the angels, Satan sang the loudest, proclaiming his love for me and his desire to quickly release me from the pain of my creation. Satan eventually convinced me to end my human experiment and wash away the corruption that is mankind. I was about to set that in motion, when you came along and interrupted.”

Akiva was overwhelmed. Obviously, the world was not destroyed, otherwise there would not be an Akiva. He was not sure what to say or do, as any intervention on his part would change the entire course of history, but he did not have time to create a well-developed strategy. On the other hand, the destruction appeared imminent, as he overheard the angels gleefully singing songs of delight to that effect. The angels seemed too happy for comfort. Akiva made his move.

“Lord almighty, how can you ignore Noah?” asked Akiva.

“Who?” replied God.

“Noah, the most righteous man on the planet,” replied Akiva.

 Akiva’s endorsement of Noah’s righteousness opened God’s eyes to His own compassion, and the tears stopped. God saw clearly that there was still potential in his human creation, and He put his discussion with Akiva on hold, leaving Akiva in silence to grasp the implications of his intervention.

Many months passed, until the silence was broken by the song in God’s voice.

“Akiva, you are invited to a birthday party. Come let us celebrate the rebirth of my creative vision. Look to the sky, Akiva.”

The spectacle of colors was overwhelming. Never in the history of the planet had there been a rainbow as long, as wide and as vibrant as what was before Akiva on that day.

“As you are my witness Akiva, I have made this day a pact with myself. Never again will I use water to express my disappointment in man. These colors that emanate from combining water and sunshine shall serve as an eternal reminder of this pledge.”

Akiva was pleased with himself, but was not sure what to make of this turn of events. Did he just save the world? Could he ever go back to his former life? Was there a former life? Where was Akiva in time?

Suddenly Satan appeared and startled Akiva. God was not surprised.

“ Master of the Universe, allow me to show this earthling named Akiva the consequences of his intervention in heavenly matters.”

God granted Satan his wish

Satan directed his attention to Akiva.

“Time traveler, you know from whence you came. In the thousands of years since the covenant of the rainbow, had the human animal collectively allowed God into its heart as one?”

Akiva responded with silence. Satan continued.

“Obviously not. Time traveler, do you fully believe in the coming of such a time, which I believe you refer to as the messianic age?”

Akiva jumped at the opportunity to respond.

“With all my heart, all my soul and all my strength. Even if it is delayed, I will wait.”

Satan laughed.

“No need to wait, time traveler. Let me take you on a journey through time. No need to go too far ahead. Let us look at the rivers of Jewish blood that will flow when your friend Bar Kochba lifts his sword.”

Akiva saw and wept. And then he laughed.

“The day of redemption will come, as it is written in scripture.”

Satan laughed too.

“Time traveler, can you wait 1000 years? 2000 years? How long, oh puny brained mortal?”

Satan proceeded to show Akiva two millennia of the calamities that befell the Jewish people since Akiva’s birth.

“Do you, Akiva, take pleasure in God’s suffering?” asked Satan.

God interrupted.

“ What can I do Akiva? Satan loves me, and out of that love he cannot stand seeing me in pain because of my creation. Since I have now pledged to not destroy mankind, his plan is to motivate mankind to destroy itself and end my suffering.”

Akiva turned to God.

“Lord, I still believe in your original plan to allow mankind to reach its full potential, despite the bloody tour of time that Satan has presented to me. The tragedies I have witnessed today courtesy of Satan have touched me deeply. What man can witness such tragedy and not be moved to bring the world closer to your vision. I humbly propose that at midday on Yom Kippur, people be instructed to recall the horrors of what man can do to man, so that by nightfall, having sincerely meditated upon this, they will be ready to commit to ending your pain in a positive way.”

Satan smiled.

“Excellent idea, Akiva. I suggest that on Yom Kippur that people recall your death. Here, let me show you what that looks like. A little more time traveling for you, with the permission of the Lord.”

God allowed Satan to proceed. Akiva witnessed the entire scene, from the moment the steel combs of the Roman torturer entered his skin to the display of his shattered carcass at the local butcher shop.

Akiva turned to God.

“Master of the Universe, is that it?”

The Merciful One could bear no more.

“Satan, that was wonderful editing. Where were you when I wrote the book of Leviticus?”

God laughed, as God loves to do.

“Satan, show him the laughing part too.”

Akiva was puzzled and Satan was perturbed. God had called Satan’s bluff. Satan proceeded to show Akiva the moment before his execution, when Akiva was laughing and speaking to his students.

“Master how can you laugh at a time like this” cried his students in despair at their pending loss.

Akiva answered them.

“No need to seek comfort at this moment. All is according to plan. I finally have a chance to understand what it means to serve God with all of my heart, with all of my soul and with all of the strength of my muscles, from the tip of my temple to my quadriceps that will soon not be a part of me. Hear me now. Satan delights in reason and logic. He argues that it is irrational for good to prevail. As Jews, let us act irrationally. Love your neighbour as yourself. Proclaim this principle by action, not words. Blow the shofar on Rosh Hashana, for even though there is not one reason for doing so, the reason I love the most is because it bugs the hell out of Satan. Pay attention in order to hear within the sounds of the shofar God’s cries of disappointment about the imperfection of the world. Commit yourselves to not hearing them next year by repairing the world.”

Satan, having had enough of the earthling’s sugary optimism, humbly asked God to send Akiva back from whence he came.

Tradition tells us that a fully formed fetus knows everything it needs to know about the universe while still in the womb. At birth, upon seeing the light at the opening of the birth canal, legend has it that an angel comes and gently puts pressure on the baby’s upper lip, creating the philtrum or “Cupid’s bow.” By doing so, the angel scrambles that knowledge, and that person spends the rest of its short life trying to re-learn what it once already knew.

God, in appreciation of the re-birth of His vision of what humans could be, lovingly bopped Akiva in his philtrum and sent him back in time.

Akiva awoke alone in a dark cave in the darkness that was the Roman occupation of Judea. He refreshed himself with a splash of water to the face, and proceeded on his journey to anoint Bar Kochba as the messiah. Akiva had much to re-learn.

CODA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFY_KPFS3LA

Genesis Redux: Another Rosh Hashana Tale

The Potzker taught that Rosh Hashana was a time to celebrate the creation of the human being, and that human beings were created for the sake of storytelling.
He used to say:
"From the TAGC of my DNA,
to the ABCs that allow me to pray,
I am a story that generates stories,
Meeting others in my text,
Relieving each other if perplexed."

He would teach the following tale every year before the ceremony of blowing the shofar:

Ahroom With  A View

In the beginning was the word.

And the word was imagination.

And imagination begat music.

And music begat the angels.

And from the angels emerged the complexity of God.

And God awoke to a chorus of angels, singing pure songs of praise, for that is all that they knew how to do.

And God discovered the need to create, and so, he created the creative process.

And God said, “Let there be paradox”, and there was light.

And the delight in the waving particles of light inspired God to create air, sea and land, and creatures to inhabit each of them.

And with each act of creation, the chorus of the angelic praise grew louder and louder, until God could no longer hear himself think.

And within that din, a revelation.

God discovered that he did not need to create, for he discovered that he had a choice.

And God saw that freedom of choice could be the most precious of gifts, and so, he offered it to the angels. And some of the angels chose to refuse that gift, while others took it and discovered that they had the choice of singing songs of complaint rather than songs of praise. And within those complaints, God heard the beginnings of stories. So God, inspired by the angels, created stories of awe and wonder for the angels to appreciate. But alas, the angels were seriously deficient in listening skills. They could not understand the music of mathematics or the dance of chemical bonds. And God was not pleased, so he said to the angels, “Come, let us make a creature that will appreciate the power of choosing to hear stories.” And so, God formed Adam and Lilith from the earth, creating the first earthlings. And God asked Adam and Lilith to create a child, so that God could teach it to tell stories of awe and wonder, for the brains of Adam and Lilith lacked the neuroplasticity required for that purpose. And Adam and Lilith proceeded to follow God’s instructions, but something went terribly wrong. Adam and Lilith, instead of being an audience for stories, became stories themselves. The night that they were to conceive a child, they got into a terrible argument. Feeling that they were equal to one another, as they were both created from the same soil, they both felt entitled to be on top during the creative process. Nastiness ensued, and Lilith left the Garden of Eden, leaving Adam all alone in Paradise. Despite living in her self-imposed exile, Lilith never relinquished her sense of entitlement to living in the Garden. She camouflaged herself by transmogrifying into the form of a snake and stalked Adam from a distance, waiting for the right opportunity to reclaim sole possession of the land. Killing Adam was not an option, but she knew that, given enough time, Adam would initiate his own downfall. God too saw that potential, and decided that it was not good for the earthling male to be alone, so he manipulated stem cells from Adam’s rib, and from that created a mate for him with which to procreate. God spoke to Adam, the world’s first taxonomist, and said: “To this human thou shalt cleave, and with her thou shalt conceive, and though she appears quite naïve, you will be surprised at how easily you believe, and for that you will find that you both will grieve.” Adam, feeling his brain somewhat saturated, decided to name his partner Eve, as that sound was all he could process from God’s soliloquy.

God then refocused the male earthling by instructing him on how to tend to the four types of fruit bearing trees that he had created for the purpose of storytelling. One tree was for beauty (nechmad lemareh), so that eating its fruit would enhance one’s sense of appreciation. The fruit of another provided sustenance and neuro-protectors (tov lemaachal), to ensure the brain was operating efficiently. The fruit of the third was for exuberance (etz hachayim), so that eating it would create the enthusiastic desire for a story to continue. God encouraged the humans to eat the fruit from all these trees but forbade them from eating of the tree of knowledge of creative potential (daat tov verah), because its fruit was to be reserved for their child. God entrusted Adam with the objective of transmitting his instructions to Eve so that she too could understand the purpose of the trees. In order to fulfill God’s request, Adam pointed out the forbidden fruit to Eve, wagged his index finger while making some “tsk, tsk” sounds and convinced himself that he did a good job in communicating God’s wishes. Lilith, witnessing a significant milestone in the history of male-female communication, smelled opportunity and pounced. Eve believed that the fruit was forbidden to touch based on the signals that Adam had conveyed to her, so Lilith manipulated that misunderstanding to get Eve to just touch the fruit. From there, it was not that far of a leap to get her to eat it. Adam, seeing that there was no obvious negative consequence from eating the forbidden fruit, succumbed to the temptation of scientific curiosity and joined his partner in partaking of the mystery. And with the eating of that fruit, Adam and Eve achieved a state of awareness, the awareness of vulnerability, a state referred to biblically as ahroom. Predator and prey both understand vulnerability, each from its own perspective, and the human inhabitants of Eden understood at that moment that either possibility was now open to them. Furthermore, they were aware that they became aware of their vulnerability to each other and to all the dangers that lay outside the protection of the Garden, where God eventually exiled them for breaching his rule.

After the exile, Adam and Eve’s eyes became open to the telling of their own stories. Soon, they began sharing drama-filled stories of their personal struggles with their vulnerabilities, tales of tragedy and comedy and romance and adventure. The art of storytelling was born, and they looked forward with excitement to sharing this art with their sons, Cain and Abel. But that is a story for another day.

In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve exiled God from the storytelling process. Since that time, to this very day, God still struggles to regain his rightful place in the story of each and every human animal. If you pay attention, you can hear God’s still, soft voice revealing itself in moments of awe, wonder or gratitude. All you have to do is put your own vulnerabilities on hold, and listen.

 And if you do not hear anything within those moments, do not despair. The obstacle might be that you are actually an angel.

The Colour of God

Neither An Egg Nor A Bagel, But Some American Pie

It was that time of the year again.

The Potzker pulled his menorah from the shelf, blew the dust off of it, and began to fill it with the special cone shaped candles he had bought for the occasion. One by one, he slid them into their receptacles.

Red.  Green.  Blue.

Red. Green. Blue.

 Red. Green.

And a blue candle for the shamash.

He lit the shamash, and guided it to share its fire with the other candles, proceeding from left to right, in silence, without saying a blessing.

The Potzker meditated on the symbolism of the moment.

The light, well, that could take all day if he just marvelled at the light, so he moved beyond the light to the candles themselves, each colour representing the cones of the retina of the eye. He stood in awe at how these receptors for just three colours, for red, green and blue, created the full spectrum of colours that he experienced on a daily basis. He then, in his mind’s eye, pictured the four lettered name of God, the Tetragrammaton, and the colour that emanated from that word each time he read it. A colour that he could not describe to anybody, because, after all, it was a colour, and how does one go about describing a colour to another person? To the Potzker, the colour of God was the most beautiful colour in the world, an intimate experience that he could not share with anyone but its Creator. Sure, his physician explained his experience to be one of synaesthesia, a cross-modal awareness whereby the reading of letters or words is accompanied by other sensations, like colours or sounds. But to the Potzker, the colour that vibrated at him was not a perceptual phenomenon but a spiritual one, one that connected him to the moment of the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai, because it is recorded that at that moment the people of Israel collectively shared a synesthetic experience by seeing the thunder and hearing the lightning of Sinai, an event in time commemorated on the pilgrimage holiday of Shavuot. The Potzker enjoyed linking his candle lighting ceremony to the pilgrimage festivals, with the message of the freedom of Passover balanced by Shavuot’s message of responsibility, ultimately leading to the theme of impermanence that characterized the festival of Sukkot. With that holiday’s message in mind, the Potzker, as was his tradition, would go to his etrog box and remove the shrivelled fruit that remained from the past Sukkot. He would then take the knife which he used to slice the Shabbat challah and sawed the etrog in half. With half an etrog in his right hand, he proceeded to smash the lit candles of the menorah in a symbolic mimicry of God's rampage as described in the book of Lamentations.While doing so, he repeatedly chanted the phrase from Psalm 137, “If I forget thee, Oh Jerusalem”. He then meditated on his breath and blew out the shamash.

It was another typical evening before Tisha B’Av in the Potzker’s home.

You may wonder about the meaning of the menorah lighting ceremony. The Potzker explained it this way:

“What is the meaning of Chanukah? What is it that we are celebrating for eight days in the depths of winter? Even the rabbis did not understand why this holiday became popular. It was taught that, when the Temple was rededicated by the Maccabees after being defiled by the Greeks, the Jews immediately celebrated the holiday of Sukkot for eight days. That was the first celebration of Chanukah, a one-time holiday meant to fulfill the obligations of a festival postponed due to inclement spiritual weather. However, the people enjoyed having a holiday to break up the darkness of winter, and so, demanded that a winter holiday become an annual event.  Due to the persistent demand by the people, the Jewish leadership eventually agreed to initiate a home based menorah lighting festival every year, in contrast to the pagan celebration of the winter solstice, and created what they thought would be a minor holiday to satisfy vox populi. It was because of its connection to the belated Sukkot celebration that Shammai ruled that the lighting of those annual Chanukah candles should begin with a full menorah and decrease by one candle every night, the same way that the bull offerings of Sukkot started with thirteen and decreased every day by one. Both the opinion of Shammai and the historical basis for an eight day holiday in the winter were relegated to the dustbin of history. My ceremony links Chanukah to Tisha B’Av because they are part of the same process. The rise of the Maccabees was not a great victory for the Jews, but actually ushered in the beginning of the end of the days of the Temple. Marking the Hasmonean victory is understandable, because we must remember that without the light of proper leadership, darkness ensues. But celebrate it? Why? Chanukah marks the beginning of an era of top-down corruption, where ignorance and incompetence among the priests eventually became the order of the day. Leadership from the bottom-up was no better, as a toxic attitude of causeless hatred within the Jewish people was the final tipping point that led to the Temple’s destruction a few hundred years after the “miracle” of Chanukah. The rabbis of the Talmud rightly asked: “Mahee Chanukah,” what is this holiday called Chanukah? I ask, Mahee Tisha B’Av, what is this holiday of the 9th of Av? Both of these holidays are like an inkblot test of the mental health of the Jewish people. The convoluted, diluted, polluted, galuted celebrations of Chanukah are just as pathological as the frozen grief of Tisha B’Av. We are a people in trouble.”

And that is why the Potzker, when he lit the candles on the 8^th night of Chanukah every winter, felt a sense of incompleteness until he lit the candles on the 8^th of Av ( a day he called ChanuB’Av) and then symbolically smashed them, bringing temporary closure to the wound that re-opened in his soul every Chanukah.

As for the verse of the137th Psalm, it never ceased to amaze the Potzker how cruel humans can be to one another. From the Babylonians forcing the exiled Jews to sing songs of Zion as described in the Psalm, to the Nazis who found amusement in torturing Jews with their own culture, the tone of the Psalm seemed to capture the spirit of Tisha B’Av. It sickened the Potzker to his core to imagine the cruelty inflicted upon Jews in the past, and he felt that pain as if it was transmitted to him epigenetically. While repeating the phrase "If I forget thee, Oh Jerusalem" the Potzker thought about how he would translate the verse to his own satisfaction: " If I someday appear to forget what God did to thee Jerusalem, it would only be because I have suffered a left hemispheric stroke, explaining why my right hand has lost its power and why my tongue feels as if it is stuck to the roof of my mouth." The Potzker was committed to never forgetting the source of the churban, and was just as committed to someday making sense of the destruction. Tisha B'Av was the one day of the year that he dedicated to this task.

The 9^th day of AV was the day designated by the rabbis to remember a fully functional Jerusalem, the Ur of Shalem, the City of Unity, and to imagine its future restoration as a world centre to serve man’s need to be inspired to serve God. He tried to imagine what that day would be like. He would look at the state of the world and feel despair as to that possibility.It was enough to give the Potzker indigestion, but just in case his thoughts failed to do so, his actions guaranteed it. The Potzker had a tradition of eating symbolic foods for his final meal before the fast of Tisha B’Av. He based his meal on his teaching of Deuteronomy 7:16: “And you shall eat all of the nations that the Lord Thy God gives unto thee.”

And so, he would begin his meal preparation by raising a glass of water in a toast to Hezekiah’s “victory” that saved Jerusalem from destruction by Sancherib just a few centuries after the completion of Solomon’s temple. The Potzker visualized the time that he himself had stood in the technological wonder that constitutes the tunnels of Hezekiah, and pondered the “miracles” involved in that event.  He wondered why the only commemoration of that moment in history was just a brief mention in the Haggadah at a point in the seder where most people miss it. The Potzker would say: “The caged bird sang his song, and the Jewish people have done him wrong.” And with that, he felt that he had corrected a historical injustice by remembering the waters of Hezekiah in his ChanuB’Av ceremony.

He then proceeded to chop and then fry some Spanish onions in olive oil. With tears in his eyes he would inquisitively listen to the onions as they were frying until he could hear voices rise from within the pan. As soon as he heard the sound of the babbleonions, he was satisfied that he had properly remembered the Babylonians and the destruction of the first Temple at their hands. 

Setting the onions to the side, he meditated on the olive oil and its connection to the Maccabean “victory” described in the Chanukah story. He then drizzled some honey left over from Rosh Hashanah into the onions. He did so in memory of Miriam, the last of the Maccabeans, whose body was preserved in honey by her husband Herod the Great (Killer), but whose memory is preserved in Talmudic legend.

He then opened a can of Romano beans, in recognition of the Roman Empire’s destruction of the second Temple that Herod had massively renovated. From there he proceeded to commemorate the destruction inflicted by the Nazis upon the Human Temple of Torah by cooking up some vegan bratwurst. He chose this food to remind himself that Hitler was a vegetarian who enacted animal protection laws, but refused to see Jews as human or animal. When the “sausages” were done, the Potzker would, at that moment, think to himself, “Jerusalem does bring out the best and the wurst in people.”

He then combined the sliced sausages and fried onions into the beans, ate his feast, and when he was satiated, picked up his bottle of the  extra virgin, fair-trade, Palestinian grown olive oil that he had cooked the onions in, studied its label, and sighed a sigh that stretched back almost three thousand years, to the building of the first Temple by King Solomon, his sigh resonating with the sighs of the workers who toiled for Solomon, unaware that the product of their labours would still resonate in the human imagination to this day.

He then began his fast.

The Potzker taught that Tisha b'Av is the happiest day of the Jewish calendar, because it is the one day of the year that people can completely experience the joy that comes from the intimacy of absolute, unrestrained honest communication in the relationship between man and God.
The Potzker taught that Tisha B'Av is the saddest day of the Jewish calendar, because it was the one day of the year that people could completely experience the oy that come from measuring the distance between those partners.

Tisha B’Av.

The only day of the year that the Potzker, no matter how hard he tried, could not see the colour of God.  

_______________________________________________________________

While it is customary to not listen to music prior to and during Tisha B’Av, it was the Potzker’s tradition to permit listening to music that he reclassified as dirges (and thus being permissible) while eating the pre-fast meal. The Potzker chose to listen to an endless looping tape that he had made of Don McLean’s version of Babylon from the album American Pie over and over again until he finished his meal, at which point he did not need to eat on Tisha B’Av, because the earworm of that song ended up eating him until the end of the day. Throughout the day, it is reported that the Potzker could be heard muttering to himself “I am an endless loop, I am an endless loop…………………….”

Mangled Midrash Mash-Up: Purim Style

Besamim Mucho (Yemei Merukeihen)

On Purim, the Potzker Rebbe was pained and embarrassed to hear of even one Jew who appeared inebriated in public in celebration of that day.

“A shande to the goyim,” he would mutter to himself on such occasions. The Potzker wished that people focussed on the wonderful intricacies within the Talmudic passage that formed the basis of the “obligation” to drink alcohol on Purim instead of using it as an excuse to get sloshed. With that in mind, every year at his Purim feast, he taught his guests his interpretation of that Talmudic text:

Raba said: It is the duty of every adult male to “get spiced” on Purim, up to, but not beyond the point that he cannot tell the difference between the phrases “cursed be Haman” and “blessed be Mordechai”.

To the Potzker, marking differences was one of the central themes of Purim. In fact, it was to him a central message of the Torah, reinforced every week in the havdalah ceremony separating the holiness of the Sabbath from the ordinariness of the other six days. The process of recognizing boundaries, establishing limits and appropriately responding to the crossing of lines captured the Potzker’s imagination and occupied much of his thinking. He was most intrigued by the narrowest and fuzziest of such lines, the thin grey zone between black and white, the type of line that Raba was referring to in his teaching. The Potzker loved the way that those types of lines weaved their way through Megillat Esther. The lines between Mordechai & Haman. Us & them. Good & evil. Uniformity & diversity. Fact & fiction. Truth and myth. Fate & chance.

The Potzker emphasized that lines of differentiation kept the planet intact, but at the same time, constantly threatened to rip it apart. The tension of that dynamic was explored in the Talmudic text that immediately followed Raba’s teaching.

The Potzker taught that text as follows:

Rabbah and Rav Zeira worked through “getting spiced” together by sharing a Purim feast. At one moment within that process, Rabbah, intoxicated by the essence of Rav Zeira’s wisdom, decided that he would eat his colleague in order to become one with the uniqueness that was Rav Zeira’s brain. Rabbah arose, and began to prepare for the ritual slaughter of a shocked and traumatized Rav Zeira. What happened next, well, that is left to the imagination. Suffice it to say that, on the next day, prayers of compassion were offered, and Rav Zeira was miraculously revived to his former pre-traumatized self.


One year later, Rabbah invited Rav Zeira to recapture the highs that they had experienced one with the other at their famous Purim feast.


Replied Rav Zeira: “Even though all of time is miraculous, miracles do not happen all of the time.”

The Potzker always chuckled when he finished recounting this tale. With the delivery of the story’s punch line, he imagined he could see Rav Zeira standing in the room smiling with him.

One Purim, the presence of Rav Zeira felt so real that he took a chance and directed a question to that entity.

The Potzker asked: “Rav Zeira, it has long troubled me that it was not clear in the Talmud what prayers were offered the morning that you were healed of your wounds. Teach us, so that we too can learn to heal from our own emotional wounds.”

Replied Rav Zeira: “The answer is in your siddur. In fact, it is the first line that all Jews recite together every morning when they gather together in a minyan to pray."
Rav Zeira then quoted that prayer:
"With humility, we acknowledge You, The Nameless One, Our Primary Focus, Monarch of Eternity, who gave the rooster the wisdom to differentiate between the day and the night.”

“That morning, as Rabbah and I said our prayers together, we recited that line and glanced at each other. I gave him a wink and he gave me a grin, as we both realized that a chicken had more wisdom in its tiny brain than the wisdom the two of us shared over the preceding 24 hours.”

From that day onward, the Potzker began the rhythms of his day by humbly meditating on the chicken principle taught to him by Rav Zeira.

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POSTSCRIPT: Der Oylem Iz A Goylem רבא ברא גברא

Tradition has it that kreplach are eaten at the feast of Purim. While the origins of this practice are not clear, the Potzker suggested that it was rooted in the incident involving Rav Zeira and Rabbah.

He taught:

“Kreplach, a food with three edges, are eaten three times a year: before Yom Kippur, on Hoshana Rabbah and on Purim. Why a food with three edges? Because on Yom Kippur we are brought to the edge of repentance, on Hoshana Rabbah we are brought to the edge of the human potential for change, and on Purim we are brought to the edge of freedom of choice. Rabbah fell over the edge of Purim, but regained his balance and was fully forgiven by Rav Zeira before Yom Kippur. However, human nature being what it is, he had to be rescued from the temptation of repeating his transgression the next Purim when Rav Zeira reminded him of the lesson of Hoshana Rabbah.

Nevertheless, on the second anniversary of their famous Purim feast, Rabbah, still craving to recapture the mystical high that eluded him ever since that fateful day two years earlier, fashioned a golem out of clay and sent it to Rav Zeira’s home, hoping to entice his colleague to come over to his place and break bread. When the golem arrived at Rav Zeira’s door, it said nothing, and just stood there. Having just begun his Purim feast, Rav Zeira realized that Rabbah was still somewhat under the influence, despite the passing of 24 lunar cycles. Rav Zeira took a bowl of soup filled with kreplach, put it in the hands of the golem, and sent the golem back to his master, hoping that the gift would remind Rabbah of the lessons of kreplach. And just in case it didn’t, Rav Zeira started packing his bags, inspired by the golem to pursue a different type of high than the one Rabbah sought, the high that comes from breathing the air of the Holy Land rather than the high that comes from breathing air into the body of a golem made of the soil of a foreign land.”

And that is how the Potzker explained the eating of kreplach on Purim. Committed to learning, whenever the Potzker shared holiday kreplach with anyone, he always asked if they knew of a good reason for that tradition. He still roams the world searching for a more satisfying explanation than his own.

A Bokser, A Kotzker, A Potzker

As the sun set, the Potzker began meditating on the meaning of the 24 hours that lay before him. As dusk began to solemnly usher in the 22nd day of the month of Shvat and the anniversary of the death of the Kotzker Rebbe, the gray aura of the yahrtzeit stood in sharp contrast to the joy experienced one week earlier, when the Potzker had celebrated the holiday of Tu Beshvat. He had made it a tradition to spend that day outdoors in arboreal awe, on a good day basking in the illumination of a cloudless blue sky, marvelling at the beauty of naked trees in the winter landscape. He was fascinated by the shadows that the winter light etched upon the bark that, beneath its surface, hid a fractal network of capillaries branching off in the direction of their infinite source. Whether the sun shone through on that day or not, the Potzker reminded himself that every day was a sunny day, it just depended on what one thought about clouds. The Kotzker’s yahrtzeit was the only day of the year when the Potzker accepted cloudy days as they were, appreciating the unique beauty created by the diminished light as nature’s tribute to the memory of the Rebbe.

The Potzker thought about the impact that the Kotzker had upon the world. He noted that it had been over 120 years since the passing of the man who did not make it to 120, but only had 4x18 years of life on the planet, the last 20 of those years spent in self-imposed isolation. Tradition teaches that the Kotzker strived to create a new Torah insight, a chidush, every day of his life in order to elevate his consciousness to a higher plane of being. This superhuman goal probably explains why he spent those last years alone, for even God himself could not go longer than six days in a row without requiring a respite from the creative process.

Whether the last twenty years of the Kotzker’s life years were spent engaged in the light of a spiritual high or entangled in the darkness of a depressive low is a matter open to debate. It would have been possible to close that debate if one had access to the Kotzker’s writings, but, as the legend states, whatever the Kotzker wrote in the day, he burned that very night.

It is said that the Kotzker said: "All that is thought should not be said, all that is said should not be written, all that is written should not be published, and all that is published should not be read."

You may stop reading now out of respect for the Kotzker.

Or you may wonder, as the Potzker did, about the meaning of it all, and whether the Kotzker had anything significant to say about that question.

To the Potzker, the nature of last years of the Kotzker’s life, whether they were spent in metaphorical light or darkness, seemed to offer within them a teaching that could help him solve the mystery of his own life. In honour of the Kotzker’s yahrtzeit ,that evening, the Potzker focussed his imagination on the nature of light and the dark, striving for a chidush of his own on the topic, but the light and the dark were not talking. The Potzker thought that maybe they were just whispering, so he decided to put on his coat and his boots and take a walk in the snow in order to be better able to listen. Walking through the nearby woods, the Potzker’s attention was drawn from the sparkling of the diamonds in the snow to the blinking of the stars that filled the night sky, some providing a light that shone at that moment in time, even though, like the Kotzker, the fire from within their bodies had been extinguished long ago. The Potzker wondered whether the answers to his question about the meaning of it all might come from above, and so he listened harder, but all he enjoyed at that moment was the peace of silence intermittently broken by the crunching of the snow beneath his feet.

Suddenly, the light of the moon spoke to the stardust within the snowflakes, and what the Potzker overheard was apparently said in the voice of the Kotzker himself.

"People are accustomed to look at the heavens and to wonder what happens there. It would be better if they would look within themselves, to see what happens there."

The Potzker, finding himself somewhat discombobulated by what he had just experienced, tried to gather his farmisht senses together. He called upon his sense of self to do the job, so his sense of self proceeded to join together his already engaged senses of sight and sound with his senses of time, space, joy, purpose, dignity, propriety and absurdity. Once assembled, this minyan of senses, in unison, spontaneously erupted in a recitation of the Kaddish in honour of the Kotzker Rebbe’s yahrtzeit. Within that moment, the Potzker found some of the peace asked for within that prayer, and with the help of the Kotzker’s message in the snow, the Potzker discovered a significant piece in his quest to solve of the puzzle of his life.

(For)Getting God's Goat: T.O.R.A.H. Part 2

In anticipation of Yom Kippur 5771, a Potzker tale


1001 Jewish Nights


The Potzker Rebbe (if he ever existed) taught the following (if it ever happened):

In the formative years of rabbinic Judaism, the schools of Shammai and Hillel were burdened with the task of directing the Jewish people onto the path of God’s vision for mankind.

Conflicts regularly arose between the two schools as to which tracks were true to the path, and like partners in a marital dispute, each school was sure it held the correct opinion. However, their shared love of Torah helped them to realize that they could both be right, and peace prevailed for the sake of a higher purpose.

Their world was Torah, and Torah was their world.

A non-Jew, hoping to bring order to the chaos of his personal world, heard of the reputations of these two schools, and decided to seek spiritual guidance from their heads.

He first presented himself to Shammai, who was busying himself in his trade of carpentry by building a stool.

“Please teach me the minimum I need to know to become a Jew. What are the core principles that come together to create a unity of purpose? Is your religion like the stool that you are creating, such that, if you remove one of its legs, the whole entity falls over and breaks? What is that leg?”

Being the carpenter that he was, Shammai did indeed see the world as a finely crafted but precariously balanced stool. The world, represented by the stool, only continued to exist because of mankind’s collective pursuit of the three legs of the stool: truth, justice and peace. The fragile balance of these three legs was dependent on a state of constant dynamic correction by their three feet: scholarly pursuit, humble worship and deeds rooted in compassion and understanding.

The somewhat hostile nature of the question posed by the potential convert seemed to indicate to Shammai an attitude that was ill-prepared to handle the nuances of the stool metaphor. His reluctance in answering the question was quickly superseded by a sudden realization that the stranger’s inquiry may have been motivated by a desire to somehow use the answer at a later juncture in time as ammunition against the Jewish people. Fueled by the paranoia that comes from living in dangerous times, Shammai chased the potential student away with the measuring stick that he had been using to cut the wood for the stool. Shammai thought that the symbolism involved in that action would give the gentleman something to ponder should he wish to make a second attempt at feeding his curiosity.

Disappointed but not discouraged, the next day the man sought out Hillel, who had a reputation for being more compassionate.

The stranger asked Hillel the same question.

“I would like to become a Jew. What is the one principle that I have to understand?”

Hillel looked the man straight in the eyes in order to assess the questioner’s sincerity. It appeared authentic

Hillel responded.

“Do not do unto others as you have just done unto me. Do you understand the pain that you can bring upon another by asking a bad question? There is one answer to your question. Go and learn how to ask questions.”

The stranger, having experienced the pained expression in Hillel’s eyes, understood the potential toll that a bad question could take, and made a commitment to become a master of the art of the question.

His name, you ask?

Yehuda ben Damah.

Never heard of him? Perhaps you are aware of his work. For example, he was the person who popularized the custom of answering a question with a question, a Jewish tradition that exists to this very day.

By the time he officially converted, Yehuda was recognized as a person who could capture the heart of any matter with a few simple questions. Some say that his simple but profound questioning purified his soul to a level that no other rabbi of his era ever matched.

Day after day, Yehuda sharpened his mental probe, until one sunny afternoon, he came upon what seemed to be the ultimate simple question that could serve as his companion throughout his life journeys.

“Where is it from?” he would inquire of all that was presented to him.

Yehuda loved tracing anything to its roots, whether it was an idea or a material object. At his Shabbat dinner table he would pick an item and trace it back to its origins, telling stories for hours on end about all of the components of the subject under consideration and the different types of people it may have met along the way, until ultimately, the question and answer became one.

The source?

The Source!

Iconoclastic by nature, people lovingly embraced this mischievous but penetrating question, and the man who introduced them to it. Whenever the rabbis of the day insisted on enforcing religious rituals, the people insisted on asking where the idea came from in the first place, and it wasn’t long before they simply reduced the process to singing the two word chant with the musical inflections and intonations Yehuda had taught them:

The source???

When they were convinced that the source of the rabbinic ruling was indeed the Source of All, the people praised the rabbis and the God who gave them the wisdom to ask questions.



Yehuda made a point of visiting both the schools of Shammai and Hillel on a regular basis to hone his skills and enlarge his base of knowledge. He was fascinated by their ability to agree to disagree on most issues, and studied the dynamics of how they managed the questions before them.

Each school saw brilliance in the other school’s arguments, and day after day strove to rise to the challenge of coming up with points to outshine the other. This process took an enormous toll on Hillel, Shammai, and their students, physically, mentally and at times emotionally.

It is said that in a low moment, Shammai thought to himself, “Better that Hillel was never born so that God’s vision, as I see it, can unfold smoothly.”

Hillel was once overheard mumbling to himself, “Better that I was never born, so that I would not have to suffer endless nights of sleeplessness trying to counter Shammai’s brilliant arguments, for a man needs his sleep. Without sleep, I am not myself, and if I am not myself, who am I?”

Once, in the heat of an argument with Hillel, Shammai blurted out, “Better if man had not been created.” Hillel did not realize that Shammai was referring to Hillel, and, according to the rules of engagement, accepted this argument as the opening question for a debate between the two schools.

Thus began a mental battle that went on for day after day, and for Hillel, night after night, for two and a half years.

In the end, both schools agreed with Shammai’s argument that it would have been better if God had not created man.

Upon further reflection, Hillel suspected that this declaration may be misunderstood over time, so he insisted that the statement be amended. Since there was no way of reversing God’s mistake in creating man, and since every human being, having been created in God’s image, was therefore also vulnerable to mistakes, Hillel made it clear in his amendment that it was incumbent upon each individual, when challenged with a decision, to carefully examine the deeds involved in the decision making process for potential errors, such as the error Hillel had made in agreeing to debate Shammai’s ill-conceived argument. Hillel regretted the fact that he engaged in debating a bad question, unsure as to why he had pursued a line of action that he would normally strongly advise others to avoid. It is said that when Hillel encountered Rabbi Yehuda after the compromise with Shammai had been publicly proclaimed, both men simultaneously avoided making eye contact in order to avoid inflicting unnecessary pain on the other, a pain that only a teacher and student can share.



Nevertheless, after 900 days, the issue had been resolved. At least that is what Hillel thought at the time, especially after Shammai had accepted his amendment. However, for the next 100 nights, he still had problems sleeping, frequently waking to the bitter aftertaste of the sour compromise that he had agreed to.

On day 1001, Hillel’s world changed.

It was on that day that the soul of Yehuda ben Damah was severed from its connection to its body.

Hillel witnessed the public execution of Rabbi Yehuda at the hands of his Roman torturers, a death so horrible, that the details are still unspeakable to this day.

That night, it is said that Rabbi Yehuda visited Hillel in a dream. Yehuda taught his teacher that God was delighted that Hillel and Shammai reached the appropriate conclusion in their debate, confirming that the human animal was encumbered by some truly significant design flaws. However, Yehuda also taught that any aggrieved individual who had suffered as a result of these flaws should carefully listen to the shofar blasts on Rosh Hashanah, because within the silence between these sounds one can hear an apology from God for that person’s pain. Yehuda urged Hillel to teach people to pay attention to this silence in order to give them the opportunity to fulfill the mitzvah of forgiving all sincere repentance offered during the Ten Days of Repentance, even if the repentant is God himself.

Personally, Hillel did not need to wait for Rosh Hashanah. That very night, within the period of time that flies within one dream, Hillel was able to fully forgive God by liberating all of the healing power found within the soul that God had given him.

Hillel slept peacefully through the rest of that night for the first time in 1001 nights.

The source of his peace?

The Source.



ADDENDUM

Some question the authenticity of this teaching, as converts are usually named after our forefather Abraham, i.e. ben Abraham.

The Potzker tells a tale about how Yehuda ben Damah was named.

Those in the Shammai camp had heard that their teacher had initially rejected Yehuda’s request to be taught to be a Jew. In the Rabbinical Court prior to the conversion, they raised concerns about his lineage.

“This man descends from a long line of butchers, and we suspect he may in action be a spiritual descendant of Cain, the first human to shed the blood, the dam, of his brother on God’s holy adamah, the earth granted to him by his father Adam. Slaughtering animals and eating their blood is in his blood. What if he is damah, resembling his ancestors in ways that cannot be changed? He has tasted of the finest of meats, from all of the animals that non-Jews enjoy. Surely he will drift into his old ways and taste the forbidden.”

Hillel is said to have risen and taught those present:

“I personally will train this man to become a ritual slaughterer. Let him be named Yehuda, in recognition of his sensitivity to the largest of our tribes to survive slaughter. And let him be named ben Damah in recognition your concerns. You, who doubt that this man is entitled to a name with the holy letter aleph in it, will some day in your minds recognize that he is indeed a man of adamah, the pure earth that existed in the paradise of Eden before the creation of Adam. But, because of your baseless hatred, his name shall forever be ben Damah, stripped of its holy aleph, as a reminder to others not to do what you have done today with your prejudice toward this man’s spiritual purity, for such hatred only brings calamity upon all of us.”

And so, after the conversion, Hillel took Yehuda under his wing and taught him how to approach all creatures with the purest of mindsets, recognizing the Creator in each and every business encounter with an animal in his new job as a ritual slaughterer.

As Yehuda continued in his studies with Hillel, his attitude at work began to shift. It was not long before Yehuda cried tears of compassion prior to each and every slaughter, no matter if the animal before him was the most magnificent of cows or the lowliest of chickens.

Identifying a need in the community, Yehuda opened a butcher shop that was innovative for its time. He lovingly cleaned and properly salted all of the meat, liberating the women of the town from this non-rewarding task and thereby giving them more time to attend to higher tasks. The townspeople appreciated his efforts and grew to love their butcher who loved them back, and he showed it through the quality of the food that he tenderly prepared for them. In his efforts to make life more meaningful for his clients, he added one innovation to his store that changed everything. Yehuda sold meat that he had personally cooked, using a special blend of herbs and spices. The aromas wafting from his shop filled the neighborhood, and people flocked to his store to taste what Yehuda had prepared to please God’s nose. Hillel had taught Yehuda that when God was angry, his nostrils flared. Yehuda undertook his cooking as a form of prayer aimed at bringing peace upon the heavens by appeasing God’s nose, and thereby indirectly bringing peace back upon the earth. The people of the town gave Yehuda plenty of opportunity to worship God in his unique way, and within a short period of time, they stopped cooking meat altogether and relied upon Yehuda. After a while, the people even forgot how to cook meat, but that did not matter, as they had a taste of heaven readily available at the local butcher shop.

Over the years, the people noticed a change in Yehuda. He would serve each customer with a tear in his eye, and the people soon realized that they were not just purchasing meat, they were buying the flesh of animals that Yehuda had a personal relationship with. As a result, the townspeople eventually lost their appetite for eating any animal from which blood had to be drained. Out of compassion for the man they had grown to love, business dwindled to a trickle before it ceased altogether, making Yehuda the happiest man in town. Eventually Yehuda the butcher became Yehuda the baker, creating the most aromatically pleasing baked goods known to man and God. From that time on, the only tears that ever crossed his eyes were tears of joy.


It is said that the torture and execution of Yehuda ben Damah by the Romans involved a roasting pit and a special blend of herbs and spices. No other details were ever spoken. Since his death almost two thousand years ago, Jews throughout the world remember the name Yehuda ben Damah every Yom Kippur.

No additional words are said. Just the name, followed by silence.

Some contemplate the connection between the Hebrew word for teardrop, dama, and the Hebrew word damah, which means bearing a similarity to, and shed tears in comparing our world to his.

Some meditate on the aleph that is missing from his name, channeling the energy of this letter through the pain in their hearts, releasing it through a thin crack in their lips as a whispering sigh, a kol demahma dakah.

Others strive to smell the aroma of his baked goods and mingle that sensation with the one emanating from their empty bellies, creating a craving that, for a moment, fulfills the task of the day, the affliction of the collective Jewish soul.

Others can smell the odors of his execution, odors that mysteriously re-appeared in Europe generations ago, and worry about the vulnerable humans who can still to this day be seduced by these very same odors.

A few maintain the name Yehuda ben Damah in their heads from the time his name is mentioned until the end of the Yom Kippur service. Upon leaving the synagogue, they gaze upwards at the almost full moon and silently contemplate a midrash about the moon’s creation. Legend has it that God, feeling guilty for humiliating the moon by asking it to diminish its size relative to the sun, ordered that a goat that be sacrificed every new moon as atonement for his sin. They find some solace in thinking to themselves that, even if they failed to hear an apology between the shofar blasts ten days earlier, it is easy to extrapolate that a God that could feel guilty over the suffering of a huge rock would logically be apologetic for the unnecessary suffering that his human creations inflict upon one another. Seeing the moon not quite full serves as a reminder that, being a human with limitations makes it difficult to emulate Hillel and fully forgive God, as history teaches that events over the course of the upcoming year will surely challenge even the most sincere desire to forgive the Creator of All. Nevertheless, in memory of Yehuda ben Damah and other role models from the past, these people dedicate themselves annually to redeeming God’s vision for what mankind could be.

The story of Yehuda ben Damah, as taught by the Potzker, can generate much thought and action. But it is characterized by the silence. By not saying anything about Yehuda ben Damah on Yom Kippur, we emulate the example set by Aaron after the fiery death of his two sons, Nadav and Avihu.
Vayidom Aharon (Leviticus 10:3).
And though Aaron’s blood was hot, his lips were not.

And by remembering the encounter between Shammai and Yehuda, we are reminded that the world is, indeed, a stool.

Rosh Hashinui: The Potzker's T.O.R.A.H. (Teachings Of Repentance And Healing).

The following is presented in honour of the upcoming New Year 5771.
May we all be blessed with a sweet year.

Magen Avraham


The Potzker Rebbe taught:

“Understanding comes from reading between the lines, but wisdom comes from reading within all spaces.” He meditated upon these words daily.

Every Rosh Hashanah, the Potzker was troubled by the lack of peace he found within the choice of the binding of Isaac as the Torah reading of the day. Every year he wished with all his heart and with all his soul that this time, somehow, he could find some mental stillness within the reading. Anticipating the usual commotion in his mind during the Torah reading, he rose early one Rosh Hashanah morning and took a walk through the woods near his home, while vigorously and repeatedly chanting to himself:

“Understanding comes from reading between the lines, but wisdom comes from reading within all spaces.”

That morning, as the time for the Torah reading approached, an air of melancholy swept through the Potzker’s soul. It appeared that there would again be no respite from his discomfort, despite the efforts exerted during his walk. However, as the holy passages of the Torah portion were read aloud, the Potzker noticed that the melancholy began to lift, and was replaced by a lightness, a physical illumination that became brighter and brighter with the recitation of each word. By the conclusion of the Torah reading, the Potzker had found a new interpretation of the binding of Isaac that, at least temporarily, resonated peacefully within his sense of reality. What follows is that teaching:

The human being proved to be one of God’s greatest creative challenges. Despite the initial setbacks of the Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel, the Nephilim episode, the Great Flood and the Tower of Babel, God balanced his disappointment with divine optimism. God felt that, with Abraham’s moral development, he had finally succeeded in creating a human being that captured the essence of what he had envisioned at the conclusion of the sixth day of creation, when he saw that all that he had brought into motion was full of potential for good.

The angels as a group were never supportive of the creation of the human, and dutifully reminded God of the previous setbacks on a regular basis, while repeatedly and lovingly encouraging God to the abort the project.

God countered their arguments by demonstrating to them Abraham’s pureness of heart through a series of nine tests. As Abraham passed each test, his soul rose to a higher level. With each level of ascension, the angels felt increasingly threatened, because a human was approaching a level of sanctity that they believed only angels were entitled to possess.

The Satan stepped forward.

“Clearly Abraham has the purest heart of any human that has thus far to set foot on the planet. But as we all know, your spiritual shield, the magen, the invisible constant presence that keeps his hands clean, protects him from harming another human being. On behalf of all of the angels, I respectfully ask for one final test, one where you remove your shield from Abraham. Let him show us that he is capable of mastering the vulnerability involved in free choice. With that success we will thereafter praise you night and day for finally having created a human that has achieved a level of spiritual growth that separates him from his predecessors, many with blood on their hands.”

God withdrew to consider the request of his loved ones and came up with a plan to satisfy the angels. He then assembled them together and revealed it to them.

“ In this test, I shall, at the proper time, completely remove the magen that allows a man of absolute faith, such as Abraham, to function in this world. I will present Abraham with a challenge that will demonstrate to all of you that a human is capable of managing the rigidity that stabilizes the core of his spirituality, without any intervention on my part. He will rise to the challenge of the choice between employing rigidity and flexibility, for a healthy spiritual being is a master of both. You will witness for yourselves my ultimate animal creation, a person who, by independent choice, has both clean hands and a pure heart.

I shall command Abraham to sacrifice his son to me. He will sanctify me by defying me. When he passes this test by challenging the limits of intelligent design with the laws of intelligent defiance, you will know that I have finally successfully created a human of integrity who is able to stand on principle, the world’s first true mentsch. I have so much confidence in the success of this test that at its conclusion I shall reveal myself directly to a human being for the first time, face to face. I shall be seen.”

The Satan applauded, and the other angels, taking their cue from him, created a chorus of approval, winking to one another with an air of relief.

.And so, after the above, the process began.

God called out: “Abraham.”

Abraham replied: “Here I am, at your service.”

God proceeded.

“ Take your son, and go to yourself.”

Abraham recognized the latter part of the request from a previous request from God, and awaited further instructions. There were none.

Abraham broke the silence.

“Forgive me, but I do not understand.”

God attempted to clarify the situation by presenting it as a demand.

“Find your selfish side, and indulge it.”

The muscles of Abraham’s forehead wrinkled to form what looked like two gigantic questions marks.

God realized that Abraham was not aware that he even had a selfish side. He decided to clarify the principle to Abraham.

“Take your son, the one, who opened your heart to the love that emanates from creation, Isaac by name. Sacrifice him to me upon my altar, and I will reward you with a blessing, a blessing that is even beyond your imagination. Do this for your self, for the reward.”

Abraham, still not fully comprehending the mission, responded.

“I will do and through this I will understand.”

Abraham slept poorly that night, perplexed by God’ strange request.

In the morning, he awoke to the realization that perhaps that it was not God who had created this scenario, but the Satan masquerading as God. Abraham decided to test his hypothesis. He began talking to himself.

“Many living creatures, from the largest of beasts to the smallest of insects can see what humans cannot see. Surely the donkey of a prophet should have this ability. If I saddle up my donkey and take him on this journey, surely it will refuse to proceed further once it spots the Satan on the road, and this bizarre circumstance will come to its timely end.”

And so, Abraham, the donkey, Isaac, and his two companions began their pilgrimage to the holy mountain. On the third day, Abraham saw the humble elevation to which God had directed his attention, and realized that the donkey hypothesis was not valid. At that point, he decided to proceed without the donkey, and left it in the care of the companions, asking them to watch it carefully for any sign of distress, and to shout to Abraham should it act strangely.

Abraham understood the power of pilgrimage to open the eyes of the heart to the guts of the soul, but was at a loss to explain why he was still on the path that would lead to the sacrifice of Isaac.

Suddenly he was inspired.

Surely God would reject a sacrifice that had a flaw. All he had to do was discover a flaw in Isaac’s soul, and the nightmare would be over.

The questioning began. Abraham probed and probed, but could not find anything to indicate that his son’s heart was impure.

Abraham and Isaac reached the base of Mount Moriah. They bowed towards its peak and then Abraham turned around, hoping to see the companions beckoning them back because the donkey had spotted the Satan. All he saw were smiles and waving arms, blessing them on a successful journey.

The ascent began. Bearing the firewood on his back while his father carried fire in one hand and a knife in the other, Isaac became suspicious.

“Where is the lamb for the sacrifice we are about to make?” he asked.

“God will show himself the lamb to be raised up,” said Abraham cryptically.

Isaac flawlessly accepted the explanation.

The two journeyed together as one up the mountain.

Once they reached the peak, Abraham, maintaining the silence that carried them up the mountain, gave Isaac a look that sent chills up his spine. No words were spoken. No words could even be imagined that could be spoken.

Isaac’s eyes darted back and forth, from the fire to the long shiny knife that was looking more and more like a sword of battle. His eyes finally reconnected with his father’s. Something was missing. The glow of kindness and compassion that usually emanated from the face of Abraham was not there. Not a single blink disturbed Abraham’s focus.

Isaac wanted to speak out, but suddenly fell to the ground paralyzed, unable to move a limb or say a word. At that moment, God temporarily replaced Isaac’s consciousness with that of his own, and waited for events to unfold as he had planned.

Abraham bound the body of Isaac and laid it upon the altar that he had constructed.

God tried to make eye contact with Abraham through Isaac’s eyes, expecting his loyal servant to recognize that it was now God himself that was upon the altar. But something went terribly wrong. Abraham’s glazed eyes soon became filled with tears. To make matters worse, Abraham’s tears dripped directly into the eyes of the body on the altar, disrupting the connection that was essential for Abraham to recognize God in Isaac’s body.

Abraham had a crazed look in his face that so distressed the angels, they began to cry like colicky babies. A salty rain started to descend from the heavens, and God, gazing upward, struggling to make eye contact with Abraham, was hit by a torrent that made it painful to keep open the eyes of the body that he temporarily inhabited. Abraham sent his hand to overcome the force of his mind that prevented him from raising the knife for the completion of his task. Sacrifice was imminent.

The Satan could take no more.

“Abraham!!!!!” yelled the Satan.

The trance failed to be broken.

“Abraham!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” he yelled once more, this time breaking the spell that only fanatics can relate to.

“Here I am” responded Abraham.

Abraham’s eyes were now wide open. He at last saw The Presence in the light spot of Isaac’s eyes, and trembled.

The Satan continued.

“Do not through your handiwork inflict your flaw upon this innocent being. I have been authorized by God himself to read to you the following statement.”

The Satan opened up the envelope marked “B.”

“And you did not withhold thy son, thine only son, from me.”

Abraham understood. He had failed the test.

Distraught and panicky, he started searching for an animal, any animal, to sacrifice in order to complete his mission. After all, wasn’t the purpose of the mission, to go to the mountain and make a sacrifice to God? How did Isaac get on the altar and what was God doing in his body, and…...?

Abraham’s mind whirled and whirled, and to regain his balance, he whirled his body in unison with his brain. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted a ram with its horns stuck in a bush. Abraham stopped spinning and approached it in silence. He channeled all of his energy into his knife. With one quick swipe across the innocent animal’s neck, Abraham swiftly separated the head from the rest of its body. Leaving the head still entangled in the bush, he gathered up the ram’s body and offered it upon the altar as a sacrifice.

“Yeah, that is it, that is what I came here to do,” he thought to himself.

God was not impressed.

After confirming that Abraham would receive the blessing that was promised to him, from that point onward, God refused to ever speak to Abraham again.

But that did not stop Abraham from speaking to God.

“I name this place God Will See, Yeraeh. In this humble space that barely qualifies as a mountain, you will see in the future how mankind will see you, in this very place that today you hoped to be seen by a simple man. May the blessing that you bestowed upon my self today come to completion, shalem, here. Here, the place where, I, on a mission from God, was ready to kill God in the name of God. Yeraeh Shalem. Yerushalem. Jerusalem.”

Abraham descended the mountain in silence, alone, and for the first time in his life, without the heavenly shield that protected him in the past. God decreed that no human being would ever again have the privilege of experienciencing the shield that protected Abraham. Instead, on another mountaintop in the Sinai desert hundreds of years later, God instructed each of us to become that shield, to take on the duty of protecting the naïve, the innocent and the pure of heart from others and from their own extremism. Jerusalem awaits the sacrifices required to fulfill that vision.