What's real can't die.

"What's real can't die" -- New Radicals, You Get What You Give


What an absolutely amazing! quote in such a concise way. So simple yet so elegant.

לםרבה המשרה -- בן איש חי

Someone please make sense for me out of this בן איש חי שנה ב פרשת וארא -- in the second half of the drush. The entire piece is assuming that the words in ישעיהו ט ו  are

  למרבה הםשרה 

when in fact in all of my texts on hand our mesorah is לםרבה המשרה..... what's pshat?

אבל הלל הזקן מדה אחרת היתה לו שכל מעשיו לשם שמים

תניא אמרו עליו על שמאי הזקן כל ימיו היה אוכל לכבוד שבת מצא בהמה נאה אומר זו לשבת מצא אחרת נאה הימנה מניח את השניה ואוכל את הראשונה אבל הלל הזקן מדה אחרת היתה לו שכל מעשיו לשם שמים שנאמר (תהלים סח, כ) ברוך אדני יום יום

The entire derivation of the pasuk is from the fact that אדנ"י, being equal to הל"ל is called שם שמים, which is the כלי/מדה of ספירת מלכות. (possibly also מרומז in the world אבל הלל...) The printers lost this when they quoted the pasuk in Shas Vilna as ברוך ה' יום יום which does not indicate if the pasuk is written with הויה or אדנות.

Giving Waste It's Place

והתקדשתם והייתם קדושים...והייתם קדושים אלו מים אחרונים -- ברכות נג

The inevitable necessity for waste in life in all it's various forms: the wasting of the last remaining crumbs of food on your fingers, one's mental thoughts and focus, time, money, effort, talent, love, strength, sperm, etc., etc. מים אחרונים being then in essence the קידוש of that waste by being מייחד it it's own place in the larger scheme of Existence. It's part of the process.

The recognition that the only לחם that can be without waste is לחם מן השמים. Anything מן הארץ must have waste -- אין צדיק בארץ אשר יעשה טוב ולא יחטא

Possibly then the "waste" of a childless בן עזאי and his life's end that suits the יקר/קרי theme of the pasuk יקר בעיני ה' המותה לחסידיו as mentioned in חגיגה and צדקת הצדיק.
[נ"ל עפ"ז לדייק ה"א הנוספת, המותה, בבחינת צדיק נספה בלא משפט אלא בצדק, כמבואר בזוהר. ועיין באבות סוף פרק ה , מאמרי בן בג בג ובן הא הא שאולי גם כן מרמזים למידה של אות ה כאשר נכתבו בלשון ארמית. ובכן השם ב"ן בג בג וב"ן הא הא כמו ב"ן עזאי וב"ן זומא שמתו בלא בנים]

Consider then the etymology of the phrase "holy crap/ holy sh*t" .

[Quote the Zohar on מים אחרונים here]

Etymology: Contra - קנטר

הלומד על מנת לקנטר is probably from that root of Contra -- arguing just for the sake of going against the other person. 'nuff said.

[very strange to me that ר' אליהו בחור doesn't cite the latin 'contra' in his entry on קנטר... wasn't he very close with a latin bishop or something?!... or maybe it was a greek orthodox priest.... have to look into that further].

וקרקר כל בני שת

עיין בבעל הטורים שמרמז על דוד המלך כאשר קרק"ר באתב"ש הינה ד"ג ד"ג שעולה דו"ד

וקצת תמיהה שהשמיט רמז בוטה יותר לעין של וקרק"ר שעולה בדיוק כמספר רו"ת, כמו שהעיר בספר ליקוטי מהרי"ן  ריש מגילת רות, עיי"ש.

The Beauty of דין

Recently in the big corporate company that I work for (that I often snubbed as being a typical example of the voracious, cheap, careless approach of capitalistic consumerism and it's embedded micro-level corruption/irresponsibility which so often finds therein a home a.k.a the בהמה רביעי of דניאל which is אכלה ומדקה ושארא ברליה רפסה) fired a handful of employees (peons and mid level managers alike) for a corruption they were doing in the company. Some of those employees being people I thought nicely of, friends I'd even say, suddenly in one single day gone. I was really happy.

Not because I don't feel the plight of those workers tempted to dip their fingers in a little extra cash that they probably feel makes up for the many injustices in salary that come with the average minimum-wage job.  Not because I ignore the implications of their loss of income and support to their families, community, etc.   But truly because I was so happy to see in life some Order. Justice. Supervision. Accountability. Care. Not simply in this isolated situation per se, but as a part of Creation. There is Justice. There is Right and Wrong and someone/something in Creation will make sure to enforce it. יש דין ויש דיין.

And so the insight that I realized is that what it takes to be someone who is מצדיק עליו את הדין, or a רבי עקיבא saying שמע ישראל as he's being torn apart, is not necessarily a function of a personality bending itself and submitting itself and subordinating itself to a higher power per se but maybe rather it's a function of someone who loves דין, who knows that the present world we live in is too screwed up through-and-through to not require sweeping radical action that will often affect and hurt villains and bystanders alike (in differing measures though, of course. Someone who's willing to pray for the destruction of an organizational מלכות הרשעה, as in  ומלכות הרשעה מהרה תעקר ותשבר וכולי, even while knowing at one and the same time that that may be an organizational structure that he himself is living and depending on!  The Goldman Sachs' Greg Smith's of our time wanting the fall of the systems and structures that provide them their very wealth and life, if but only to see Justice and דין and Goodness in the world, the way we all know deep down existentially it ought to be. THAT is really the beauty of דין and how beautiful and meaningful and lovely it makes our often screwed up, unfair, chaotic world.   ברוך דיין אמת.

נאום דניאל ברוך