States of Exile

Haviva Pedaya writes on the heavenly Jerusalem in Eretz Acheret : A heavenly city as a system that moderates attitudes toward the earthly is perhaps an idea that was chiefly developed in apocalyptic literature and later in kabbalistic literature; however, the Torah itself contains aggressive legal systems aimed at moderating attitudes toward this world as the most important thing. For instance, there is the commandment to remember that we were strangers in the land of Egypt. Or, for instance, there are the laws governing shmita (sabbatical of the land, when it is lain fallow for an entire year) and yovel (the Jubilee year): “For unto me the children of Israel are servants” (Leviticus 25:55) and “The land shall not be sold for ever” (Lev. 25:23). In fact, it could even be said the heavenly Jerusalem is meant to remind all individuals that they are only temporary dwellers in this world: “I am a stranger in the earth: hide not thy commandments from me” (Psalms 119:19). The heavenly Jerus...

Art from Tzfat Gallery of Mystical Art Even though Jerusalem and its temple lay in ruins, they lived on in the prophet's mind, and Ezekiel saw their mystical significance. . . . [Zion] was what the people of India would call a mandala, an icon for meditation . . . - Karen Armstrong, The Great Transformation

The distinction between problems and solutions has always meant a lot to me. After all, there is such a thing as a problem to which there is no solution, but mysteries are things ones lives in the presence of. . . . And one must remember when one talks of problems and solutions that some people once talked of the "final solution" of a particular problem . . . It's been very much the American way to, as we say, "face" problems, which means settle them and get on running things. But there are some questions which I would call mysteries, and one of the great purposes of life to spend one's life trying to enter more and more deeply into them. - George Grant, Canadian philosopher "Jewish problem" and "Jewish mystery" are two ways of speaking representing two different outlooks on the world. The first: modern, hubristic, worldly thinking. The second: ancient, reverential, mystical thinking. Nazism is exemplary of modern godlessness, the Babylon...

Salvador Dali, monarchist and anarchist, and consequently opposed to a consumer society, is naturally against automobiles, to which he prefers a triumphal chariot... - Salvador Dali As for the appearance of the wheels and their construction: their appearance was like the gleaming of a chrysolite; and the four had the same likeness, their construction being as it were a wheel within a wheel. When they went, they went in any of their four directions without turning as they went. The four wheels had rims and they had spokes; and their rims were full of eyes round about. And when the living creatures went, the wheels went beside them; and when the living creatures rose from the earth, the wheels rose. Wherever the spirit would go, they went, and the wheels rose along with them; for the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels. - Ezekiel

This consciousness of being separate is a constant feature of our spiritual history. Separation is sometimes experienced as a wound that marks an internal division, an anguished awareness that invites self-examination; at other times it appears as a challenge, a spur that incites us to action, to go forth and encounter others and the outside world. It is true that the feeling of separation is universal and not peculiar to Spanish Americans. It is born at the very moment of our birth: as we are wrenched from the Whole we fall into an alien land. This experience becomes a wound that never heals. It is the unfathomable depth of every man; all our ventures and exploits, all our acts and dreams, are bridges designed to overcome the separation and reunite us with the world and our fellow-beings. Each man's life and the collective history of mankind can thus be seen as attempts to reconstruct the original situation. An unfinished and endless cure for our divided condition. . . . It may se...

According to another opinion, the Shekhina originally did dwell here below, on earth. However, when Adam sinned, she removed herself to the first heaven. When the generation of Enosh sinned, she moved up from the first to the second heaven. The sins of the generation of the Deluge caused her to withdraw to the third heaven; those of the generation of the Tower of Babel, to the fourth. When the Egyptians sinned in the days of Abraham, she withdrew to the fifth heaven. The sins of the Sodomites impelled her to seek refuge in the seventh heaven. When the seven righteous (Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Levi, Kehat, Amram, and Moses) arose, they brought her back down to earth step by step. - Raphael Patai, "The Shekhina" Addendum: the sins of the Germans have exiled the Shekhina from earth for a thousand years to match their führer's reich.

You need not leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. You need not even listen, simply wait, just learn to become quiet, and still, and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice; it will roll in ecstasy at your feet. – Franz Kafka, "Senses" The room Kafka refers to has been called Kodesh Hakodashim , sanctum sanctorum and Holy of Holies. Every exile carries it with him.

It is a kind of global forgetting, a laundering of our soiled universe, washing away accumulated layers of names, memories, associations, and leaving it all unfamiliar and fresh and sweet-smelling. It is ceasing to take everything and anything for granted. It is the re-discovery of the obvious as very strange, the given as wonderful and precious, before we bend it to our purposes. It is admitting the glory that was there all along. It is actually looking at the "meanest" stone and fallen leaf, at the "nastiest" piece of garbage, at "irrelevant" things like the shape and colour of shadows and the reflection of coloured city lights in wet roads at night (which we've ceased to see because we don't drive round them). It is consciously being what we really are - Capacity for things - the Space in which each of them is allowed to arrive at its peculiar kind of perfection. It is consciously viewing everything from its Source, reuniting it with the Infini...

The nose of the holy king is the focal point of the countenance. When the forces of power extend themselves and are gathered together, they are the nose of the holy king, and these powers depend upon the single Gevurah [severity or judgment] and emerge from there. When the judgments are aroused and come from their borders, they are tempered only by the smoke of the altar, and then it is written: "And the lord smelled the sweet savor" (Genesis 8:21). The nose of Atika is different, since it does not need [the sweet savor], because the nose of Atika is called long-suffering in every respect; the light of the concealed wisdom is called his "nose." - Wisdom of the Zohar , I

. . . the patriarchs are themselves the Merkavah [divine chariot], and the same is also true of their children after them, and of every righteous man. - Ezra ben Solomon, The Secret of the Tree of Knowledge If man made God rather than the other way around, God would still be man's finest invention and worthy of preservation. We are chariots for an invisible rider, and even if the rider is all in our heads, He still moves us . God doesn't dwell in the land of Israel. God dwells in the individual Israel, "He that struggles." As we are driven into exile, God is that which drives us.

Man is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not. - Protagoras For so long as the scale did not exist, there was no seeing from countenance to countenance, and the primal kings perished, and their species had no existence, and the earth vanished. - Zohar , II Every truth has more than one means of expression.