In my course on kabbalistic meditation, the rabbi that taught us required that we not correct or aim to “fix” each other’s comments; rather we should trust that everyone has a “teacher within” that will impart the right lesson. Like psychoanalysis, meditation does not liberate the practitioner by simply listening to a teacher and internalizing the information. The lesson has to come from within oneself, even if a teacher is present to offer new ways of seeing and provoke the realization.

There were many experiences that gave me a sense of a nationhood that surpassed the boundaries that I had previously understood, until the point came that I started seeing Judaism as a civilization, one that was fragmented in its scattering and through the impositions put on it by different governments. More than being a diplomat who could defy a system for a higher purpose, I started to understand that there might be something heroic in representing another nation entirely: my own.

To have rights as men, Jews had to assert their rights as a nation. Dubnow’s accomplishment is in recognizing this as a consistently arising element in Jewish history. He believed that the creation and maintenance of Jewish institutions and of a certain amount of self-government was needed in order for Jews to thrive. This had been the case before emancipation. Emancipation hadn’t changed that fundamental element in Jewish history.

“Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”

Torah, as a concept, is the light that ultimately illuminates the world, but its form shifts from one house to another as it enters our world — couched in one unending breath at first (the hhh sound), the static background that we cannot hear, to the words that are audible and inform us. 

If the primary inherited elements for imagining the Jewish future are assimilation, Zionism, autonomism and a retreat into (faux) traditionalism/messianism, can we make do? Or, do we need something else, or some new admixture of these existing ideas? (Judeo-Futurism?) What, if anything else, do we have at the ready?

This dualism in the priesthood's role, that of bloodshed on one hand and peace on the other, is not new in the Torah. 

The Hebrew system is called the Binyan system. The Binyan system takes the root and makes it into a fundamental “word” which then must be conjugated or shaped depending on its tense and gender into becoming a full-fledged word. Unlike the Mishkal system, the Binyan does not make you instantly understand this new word — it merely gives direction as to what it is becoming. Each Binyan dictates something that will happen to the root, but will not give definitive meaning to the root by its nature as a noun form would. 

Dubnow was the leading exponent of Autonomism, an ideology opposed to both assimilation and political Zionism. He believed that the cultural Zionism of Ahad Ha’am was much more closely compatible with Autonomism, although he sparred with Ahad Ha’am in the press over the differences that remained between them.

In his philosophical writings however, James made contributions in Epistemology by exploring the definition of truth. To James, an idea was true as long as it proved useful — hence, pragmatism.

“The public sphere, which once confronted the state with the principle of rational-critical debate, has lost its critical function. It has become a sphere of ‘public relations,’ in which large organizations—state and private—seek to manipulate public opinion rather than engage with it.” 

The narratives that appear to be closed and well mapped can play too much of a role in our understanding in the events of our own time.

Foucault tells us that while our identities are designed by our manipulation of things and manipulation of language, and while we are also products of the manipulation of the institutions that govern us, we also take an active role in shaping our own identities, by re-inventing and creating ourselves using different methods that have changed throughout history. 

The Hebrew letters here tell us that we need our yearning for flesh brings with it the news of true life, life of breakdown and crises, life which we were meant to overcome — and every time we do, we might feel that we are a tiny step closer to the Divine.

The Jewish point of view is clear: there is no justification to attack the weak and the vulnerable. The Jewish point of view is clear: there is no justification to attack the weak and the vulnerable. 

The sense that Jews have ever lived in a situation where the texts that a Jew encountered would not require some kind of internal habit of cultural comparison, at least over the last 2000 years, seems unusual and uncommon: a kind of aphasia of the Jewish mind.

“If religion has given birth to all that is essential in society, it is because the idea of society is the soul of religion. As society progresses, the forms of religion change, but its essential functions remain.”

 “If the ancestors’ eyes what might we see, if their hands what might we touch, if their ears, what might we hear? Whakarongo ki te tai. E tangi haere ana. ‘Listen to the tide, lamenting as it flows on.’ Words radiate a ring path, skimming thin, slicing obsidian smooth – a face. Like the tohunga 'spiritual expert’ scanning the pools of Te Waiariki – have you ever tried to read water? Can you feel their thinking about movement, sound, rhythm, light, space, distance, surface and … silence?”

Our portion clearly states that the Israelite camp was made of distinct individuals who were very different from one another and deserved to maintain their individuality (with a placement, a role, banners, flags down to the names and number,) and individuality and identity were preserved.

עס שטעלט זיך די פֿראַגע, ״װאָס טוען די חסידים מיט דער אינטערנעץ?״ דער ענטפֿער: שאַפֿן דער אויפֿקום פֿון דער ייִדישער שפּראַך װאָס קען יאָ צונויפֿפֿלעכטן דעם מאָדערנעם אינהאַלט מיטן מאַמע־לשון.