The lack of awareness is the lack of ego, and the lack of ego allows us to do the impossible without hesitation, like little kids believe that everything is possible.

As a bookseller in San Francisco, I looked up to the great booksellers of the city from times gone by. There was a time when downtown San Francisco was dotted with a fine variety of booksellers, new, used and antiquarian. Even in my time we had dealers like Jeremy Norman who specialized in rare medical books and handled the Albert Einstein letters, along with McDonalds Book Shop in the Tenderloin, whose dilapidated collection was known as “a dirty ill-lit place for books.”

Most names for God in Yiddish come directly from Hebrew, but in the process of their translation, they take on connotations that are unique to the Yiddishe Neshomeh, the Jewish Soul. These Hebrew names, when translated to English, retain a sense of loftiness and power. In Yiddish, they mostly become more approachable.

Ziame Telesin (1909-1996) was born in Kalinkovitsh, Polesia, Belarus. He and his wife, the poet Rokhl Boymvol, lived in Minsk and wrote in Yiddish, translated Russian literature into Yiddish, and also wrote Soviet patriotic poetry. He volunteered on the Russian front in WWII and suffered severe shell-shock. He wrote for several Yiddish journals including Eynikeyt and Folks-shtime. He and Boymvol immigrated to Israel with their son in 1971.

“Every (spiritual) light which doesn't take away a darkness can't be relied upon.”

We are told that in order to really make a difference, we need to convince our friends and family of our rightness. This is true, but at what cost? Given that our directive was ordered from afar, is there going to be any sensitivity instructed for these conversations?

Fear of the other is a significant part of Jewish experience and thinking, and not without reason. We have lived as a minority people wherever we were, at the whims of kings and princes.

…”purification is an inner process which is never ended but in which we continually become ourselves.”

In lieu of my Makhshoves this week, I decided to translate a Yiddish poem by the author Avrom Zak (1891-1980). Zak was born in Amdur, in Russian Poland, and wrote and lived with the Yiddish literary community in Warsaw before escaping to the Soviet Union in 1940. He returned to Warsaw in 1946 and settled in Buenos Aires in 1952, where he wrote his volume Fun heysn ash, which includes this poem. In “My Years,” the poet reflects on living life as a poet.

When God confused the languages of the builders of the tower, he perhaps did so to prevent the "Tyranny of the majority” as Mill puts it. Cooperation and understanding could appear positive, but a healthy development of societies comes from disagreements. The entire Jewish tradition and thought is constructed upon accounts of disputes.

דער מלמד פֿון אַ מאָל באַקומט נישט קײן בכּובֿדיקן אָרט אין דער אַלטער הײם, סײַ צװישן די קינדער, סײַ פֿון די װאָס האָבן זיך דערמאָנענן אין זײערע קינדעריאָרן װעגן זײערע דערפֿאַרונגען אין חדר. ער האָט צװײ שיטות פֿון לערנען: דאָס זיסװאַרג און די שטראָפֿן (ד.ה., שמײַסן). ער איז אויפֿן נידעריקסטן שטאָפּל פֿון לעבן, דאָס איז זיכער.

R’ Gamaliel writes that tohu and bohu, formlessness and emptiness, were some of the eternal materials that God used to create the world. This transformation entails a logical contradiction. How can formlessness be a material? The very lack of form becomes form.

It was a good week. The remainder of the surviving Israeli hostages were returned to their families.

According to Feynman, science was only occupied with “How” questions. As soon as one asks “Why,” one has to assume several given truths, otherwise one would keep asking “Why” in perpetuity.

I'm definitely in the midst of a research slog at the moment, sorting through over 7,000 entries for the query "Yiddish" in the digital Colorado Historic Newspapers archive in an effort to not to miss anything. It's frustrating, it's painful, and so far, it's a bit demoralizing. So, why should I do all of this? What's the point in digging up an obscure past that even the participants believed was small and constantly on the verge of death?

One key aspect of kabbalistic thought borrowed from Plotinus is the doctrine of emanation. In the kabbalistic myth of creation, there was first nothing, the ein-sof, literally meaning “without end.” The divine existed imperceptibly with no created universe. The divine then “retracted” to create a space or thing outside itself–I picture this as an exhale, because when we exhale, we create space by making ourselves smaller—and the world, and then humans, were created in that negative space through an emanation of light.

The Catholic church had not been well served by clergy in early times. The missions were established by fathers rather than priests and it had not been the seat of an archbishopric. In 1853 Tadeo Amat became the bishop of the diocese that included all of Alta California, from Monterey southwards. This would bring a wave of change in the way that Catholics of Los Angeles practiced their faith.

Why did Moses break the tablets? Did he break them, or did they slip out of his hands due to the shock of what he saw? Was it a calculated decision or a heat of the moment act?

The following are two poems from his 1921 collection of poetry, influenced by the modernist movement, called Nakete Lider (Naked Songs.) I (Malke) shared “Solitude” during the Musaf service on Day 1 of Rosh Hashanah.

We reach a high point in the Ashamnu prayer well into the repetition of the Amidah. We rise and beat our breasts as we intone each of the categories of sins that we have committed. The “we” is important, because the list is long. Have we all been violent, and killed and robbed? Are all of the sins that we committed exactly the same as the sins that others among us committed? No, but we take responsibility for all of the sins that we have committed as a community. When we are standing before God we know that we can’t all save ourselves.