Saturday, July 30, 2011

Math & Speech

Anyone who speaks a second language will tell you that even after becoming fluent the most difficult test of one's mastery of it is the ability to calculate math in that language. Math calculation then, even mentally, drawing from one's speech. Which is puzzling because they actually are polar opposites gender-wise: boys excelling in math while girls in speech... וצע"ע

זוהר פנחס רכ ע"ב  וחשבון דא הוא עלמא דתליא בדבורא דהא חשבון בדבורא תלייא ועל דא כל גימטריאות ותקופין ועבורין דעלמא בסיהרא הוו

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

שער הגלגולים - without mistakes

Didn't do a truly thorough comparison, only that of one blatant typo, but I found that all the versions of שער הגלגולים that are out there on the web (wikitext, private websites, book archive scans) all apparently worked off of the same mistaken version except for one -- ירושלים תרכג print edition at HebrewBooks.org . The others are full of blatant mistakes and typos. I have yet to read thru the above edition whether it too is full of typos....

Friday, July 15, 2011

תשלומים לק"ש

אמר רב הונא בר יהודה א"ר יצחק א"ר יוחנן טעה ולא התפלל מנחה מתפלל ערבית ב' ואין בזה משום דעבר יומו בטל קרבנו מיתיבי (קוהלת א) מעות לא יוכל לתקון וחסרון לא יוכל להמנות מעות לא יוכל לתקון זה שבטל ק"ש של ערבית וק"ש של שחרית או תפלה של ערבית או תפלה של שחרית וחסרון לא יוכל להמנות זה שנמנו חביריו לדבר מצוה ולא נמנה עמהם א"ר יצחק א"ר יוחנן הכא במאי עסקינן שבטל במזיד אמר רב אשי דיקא נמי דקתני בטל ולא קתני טעה ש"מ 


וק"ל מרב אשי דהא לישנא ד"בטל" איתא נמי בקריאת שמע והוה לן למימר דשוגג בק"ש גם כן איתא בתשלומין. ואולי מהכא הוי ראיה ליש אומרים באורח חיים נח:ז דק"ש איתא בתשלומים. מיהו לישנא דגמרא לקמן "מכאן ואילך לא הפסיד כקורא בתורה" לא משמע כן.... וצ"ע

Monday, July 11, 2011

אחד ואחר

The Vilna Gaon (brought on the pasuk לך רד כי שחת עמך) points out beautifully that the one and only ד רבתי is שמע ישראל ה אלהינו ה אחד while the one and only ר  is לא תשתחוה לאל אחר.
[ ובספר מתוק מדבש פר' חקת מכונים מלכות דאצילות ומלכות דקליפת נוגה].

I'd like to point out that visually, the difference between a ד and a ר is that only the ד points, protrudes, and leans towards the preceding letters before it  (casting itself in the context of its primal roots from which it emerged), while the ר  turns its back, presenting itself as a fully independent extant item, divorced from it's past.

So for example, one man can order a steak in a restaurant and purely relate to the present external shell that is before him, a nice tasty piece of meat. Whereas another, in his conscious mind, is eating it while being mindful of the full gamut of history and existential context within which this piece of meat is currently being chewed in his mouth (the gargantuan task of raising the cows, slaughter, processing, etc, the evolution of cows over the millenia, all the way back to the existential underpinnings of כל רמש אשר הוא חי לכם יהיה לאכלה)  So that what comes out is that the difference between a ד and a ר (and consequently between a ה' אחד and an אל אחר) is purely one of consciousness/mindfulness of context, source, existential roots. It's a subtle yet fundamental difference in consciousness, not in physical action.

It's that mindfulness/awareness/consciousness (זכירה) of present Life manifestations in the context of their primal, fundamental, existential origins that provides the perfect male partner (זכר) to the feminine emergent, manifested reality of מלכות. Without that "looking back from whence this comes" leaves you with the ר of an אל אחר.

Thursday, July 7, 2011

ונקתה ונזרעה זרע

סוטה כו א --  תניא ונקתה ונזרעה [זרע] שאם היתה עקרה נפקדת דברי ר' ישמעאל אמר לו  ר' עקיבא אם כן יסתרו כל העקרות ויפקדו וזו הואיל ולא נסתרה הפסידה אם כן מה תלמוד לומר ונקתה ונזרעה זרע שאם היתה יולדת בצער יולדת בריוח נקבות יולדת זכרים קצרים יולדת ארוכים שחורים יולדת לבנים


People often are not careful in reading R' Akiva here. It's clear from the words that his objection is NOT that מי סוטה will act as an incentive for עקרות to be מקלקל, but rather the injustice of a system where those who are מקלקל get a child and those who "stay good" do not. Were the good ones to also get a child through other permissible ways R' Akiva wouldn't have a problem with R' Yishmael. I'm pretty confident that this is the correct way to read it.  Only problem is, as tosafot asks, how to understand R' Akiva's interpretation as better!? In R' Akiva's world also it'll come out an injustice, the "bad girl" getting a better child than the "good girl"....how is his explanation any better?


I'd like to answer that there is no comparison between the existence/non-existence of a child versus a pretty/ugly child. Having a child is an existential true value/asset! Not having one is an existential true loss. That is an injustice of inequality. On the other hand, having a handsome child or an ugly one, shtuyot in the grand scheme of things...

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Notrikon: Boston - בו שטן

So I was watching this history documentary of Great Britain. They got to discussing the Boston Tea Party and frankly, atleast from the way it was presented there, those Boston people were a real cantankerous bunch. If what was aired is true, all taxes were repealed (as per their protests) and the only think that was left was one tax on tea-- but they'll be damned to let the British have this one! Instead let's storm the ship and toss out the entire cargo of tea (that traveled untold months and miles) into the ocean! like... helloooo.

That coupled with a general modern-day stereotype of bostoners being rude made me consider more seriously the above notrikon.

Saturday, July 2, 2011

Pi and Tau; ד and ה

There is discussion in the math community regarding the better way to define the circumference of a circle: either as pi-- 3 times the diameter, or as tau-- 6 times the radius.

Note the parallel to מלכות being represented both by ד and ה.
ד as the emergent culmination of 3- חג"ת.
ה as emergent culmination of ו in יהו"ה.

Note also that Vilna Gaon's derasha of pi from קו/קוה by ים של שלמה
[ 111/106 = 1.0471698  times 3 yields 3.1415  ]

will still hold true to the thousandth place for tau as well
[1.0471698 times 6 yields 6.28301 while tau equals 6.28318...]

[as a complete aside, it came to me that the duality of מלכות as ד and ה could very well be the issues of חומש מלבר which is רבע מלגו]

אונאה, און, Heliopolis

[Disclaimer: if you follow fully the logic you'll understood the necessity of the vulgarity]

Note the word און having reference to ספירת יסוד in the following:
כחי וראשית אוני  1
2   אכלה ומחתה פיה ואמרה לא פעלתי און (משלי ל - (the food/sex connection being well established in Torah)
3  the zohar on כהן און and יוסף. Also, עיין תרגום יונתן בן עוזיאל עה"פ ולכהן מדין- ולאוניס דמדין
4 אונן בן יהודה

So with this I thought to put a new dimension on the pasuk   ולא תונו איש את עמיתו ויראת מאלהיך כי אני ה' אלהיכם. (being the source of the איסור אונאת דברים)

Artscroll translates as "do not aggrieve" but I thought (considering the above) the vulgar usage is actually the most accurate: "do not be a jerk/ a dick / a prick".

There's nothing technically wrong in what he said and yet in every mention of זכור מעשיך הראשונים (Bava Metzia 58, Sifra Behar Perek 4) there's an אונאת דברים in just being a jerk at heart (explaining nicely the ויראת מאלהיך i.e. it's not the words themselves but the heart's meanness which is what is so egregious)

Also note the Egyptian city of און / Heliopolis known for it's phallic obelisks and worship of the Sun (male). 'nuff said.

ועיין שם במשלי ל -- דרך אניה בלב ים..דרך גבר בעלמה...

[ Fascinatingly enough, according to wikipedia, Heliopolis/און was capital of the Province of Goshen and became known as "the city of bread" for the storehouses of Yosef.. the further יוסף, ברית, משביר, לחם interconnections here being numerous... ]

וצע"ע the בנימין vs בן אוני issue....

[ Note also the interesting ראובן connection to און-- in כחי וראשית אוני and ואון בן פלת בני ראובן ]

[ועפ"ז מבואר על פי סוד למה חז"ל בחרו בשיעורו של שתות לאונאה]

Etymology - Omni - אמן

I'm curious if there's any connection between the latin "omni" (all, everything) and the hebrew אמן whose gematria is 91 along with it's equivalents האלהים, סוכה, הוי"ה אד"ני...