Tel Aviv

In Tel Aviv for the weekend, enjoying the warm weather, its wonderful to get away from Jerusalem for the weekend, looking forward to a quiet, relaxing few days. Its great to have internet access, check out the last blog I'm very proud of it. I can't believe its beens three months since I got here and I'm almost 50 posts into the blog, I hope you've enjoyed reading it, I've enjoyed writing it. Shalom and Eretz Israel.

Hebrew Names

Our names define us, from the moment we're given a name it becomes our signature. In Judaism our names have a mystical quality, the Hebrew letters used to form them are the same thing god used to create and sustain the world. I've always had a lot of trouble with my given Hebrew name: Mordecai and I felt like I needed to resolve the tension. So this week I went to the Old City's local Chabbad, Rabbi Schloss and talked it over this is what I found out. Mordechi literally means a warrior, my given English name of Myles is derived from miles in Latin, literally soldier. Interesting... Given my discomfort with Mordechi I recently asked my mom what she thought and she suggested my Grandfather Sydney's Hebrew name: Shalom. Which I liked immediately, especially given that I've been told by everyone in my family how much I remind them of him. When I mentioned this to the Rabbi he loved it. Shalom means peace. He suggested that I add it on to make Mordechi Shalom which happen to think is a beautiful name, it works especially well since the names represent opposite ideas, in Ecclesiastes it states:

"Everything has an appointed season, and there is a time for every matter under the heaven (Ch 3, verse 1)...a time for war and a time for peace"(Ch 3, verse 8) Read it, its short and beautifully wirtten.

As for the last part of the name Jew's when called up to the Torah are referred to by their name plus son of ... usually their tribe. You get this from your dad and since mines not Jewish I never knew what to do about this, the Rabbi's advise was to use Adom which means earth in Hebrew, since Adam the first man was made from the earth.

And so I've finally come to peace with my Hebrew name. Mordechi Shalom ben Adom. My translation is: Warrior servant of god bringer of peace son of man. A Good Shabbat to you all.

Updates, Horray!!!

This is the longest single stretch I've gone without posting since I've been in Israel, many, many apologies my family was here for two weeks, and then I started a new program as you'll see if you read on. Hopefully I'll never go this long again without an update, as always I wish it were easier for me to get online and connect with the world. But its just not that simple here in the old city. I've been thinking a lot about what the next few months hold and all in all my future here in Jerusalem is looking bright, I miss everyone terribly even if I hardly ever call or write. Much love.

Gimmel

Three months more or less and its been crazy, in many ways I’ve lost touch with a lot of things that I really enjoyed, in many other ways I’ve discovered things that ring true to me. And in all this time I’ve been forced to evaluate what the things that I’m without mean to me. And at least for now I have no intention to give up many of the things back home. Its my opinion that with most things in my life and life in general its not so much what you do. For instance watching football might take me away form god in the sense that its takes away from my time to directly learn about him. In another way watching football allows me to enjoy creation. In essence when you say no to one thing you’re saying yes to something else. And what is truly important with all human beings is we find our own balance, all else in nonsense. A good Shabbat to everyone, Eretz Israel.

Quotes, Quotes, everywhere but not a drop to drink…

I love quotes, taking a complex idea and summarizing it with a few words or sentences. Over the years I’ve collected quotes from a wide range of sources and in honor of my family delivering my big external hard drive to me from America I thought I’d share a few for your reading pleasure:

"The pagan perceives the divine in nature through the medium of the eye and he becomes conscious of it as something to be looked at. On the other hand, the Jew conceives God as being outside of nature and prior to it. The divine manifests itself through the will and through the medium of the ear. The pagan beholds his God: the Jew hears Him." - Heinrich Graetz

Turn-the-other-cheek pacifism, only flourishes among the more prosperous classes, or among workers who have in some way escaped from their own class. The real working class…are never really pacifist, because their life teaches them something different. To abjure violence it is necessary to have no experience of it.” - George Orwell
Is repetitive action virtuous action? If behavior and conduct are merely repetitive processes then all human relationships actually cease. If I behave mechanically every day, - repeating a certain code of conduct which I have learnt, which I find profitable, or which is pleasant, repeating that over and over again, - my relationship with you ceases, completely - I have become a machine. - J. Krishnamurti
Not how the world is is the mystical, but that it is.
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare. - from "Leisure," by W.H. Davies

There are moments when one feels free from one's own identification with human limitations and inadequacies. At such moments one imagines that one stands on some spot of a small planet, gazing in amazement at the cold yet profoundly moving beauty of the eternal, the unfathomable; life and death flow into one, and there is neither evolution nor destiny; only Being. - Albert Einstein

New York, New York

I’ve been trying to write on a regular basis since I got to Israel, but I’ve found it extremely difficult since I got here. There are many reasons for this, first and foremost being that now ten hours of my day are consumed by yeshiva learning, the second reason is I don’t spend nearly as much time on / around my computer as I used to, thirdly much time after classes is spent talking to the guys about what we learned, or how we’re feeling about the experience. With that much focus placed on personal growth, on internal transformation many times when I do sit down to write I find myself out of ideas, I feel as though I’ve spent so much time working out how I’m feeling or a question that’s been bugging me that I don’t need to work it out. And when you’re in an environment like this one how much time are you really going to spend analyzing your experience. Some of the time you just have to be in the experience or you’ll have wasted all your time sitting on the side lines, being an observer. And yet I’m living half a world away. And I want all the people I have such a hard time connecting to, to know where I stand, what I’m feeling. It’s important, its necessary for me to let everyone know why I’m still here, and how much I’m questioning, struggling and learning. I always tell people I take it one day at a time that I wake up everyday and remake the decision to still be here, even if it means being uncomfortable some of the time, because I know I made the right decision to be here, even when I’m New York City dreaming…

Class Notes: Week 1 Intermediate

Torah tzeevah lanu Moshe morasha khilas Yaakov
Torah was commanded to us by Moses and inherited by the people of Israel

When one accustoms themselves to doing one thing, making the same decisions over and over you set yourself in motion. After the motion has been set, it’s very hard to change it and it is as if your freewill has been taken away. – In reference to Pharaoh’s refusal to free the Jews during the ten plagues.

Learning Torah is an exposure to a reality that’s at the core of existence and when you get to the core of existence you can start being happy and when you’re happy you might just get somewhere.

Mitzvahs that only men have to do means we have an additional hump to get over to reach the same place. Women’s natural tendency is to be needy, emotional giving. While men are more likely to think they’re god. A man is more likely to perform a mitzvah for the right reason of loving god rather then material benefit because our natural tendency is to think we’re master of the universe with no need for god.

When doing techuva(repentance) we can take the things we had in our previous lives and channel them positively, we’re changing our perspective on life, not everything in our lives.

The goal of Torah is to bring a person to real meaning therefore anything that distracts us from real meaning i.e. Torah is ‘idol worship’, it all stems from our search for meaning. So you can do almost anything and its not idol worship so long as the reason and meaning behind it comes from the infinite, god.

Hebrew phrase for the week: effo ata haetz?: where is the tree?