All Bets Are Off, Except….

Dearest Friends,

I have ignored my blog for a long, long time. So with the New Year, this entry is an expression of the hope and prayer, that it is indeed new and time ripe for new beginnings.

A Teaching:

This was given over by Reb Shlomo, my teacher, not long before he took off from this world. The source of the teaching is the Maharal of Prague (1529-1609). He is most popularly known in association of his creation of a ‘Golem’ – a ‘non-human’ being, formed through the innunciation of a Mystical Kaballah code. He did this to create a force that could protect the Jews from an immediate attack of annihilation. You can google his name and learn much about him.
(http://www.loebtree.com/maharal.html)

Reb Shlomo paraphrases: “Everyone knows that HaShem gives us 49 Gates to walk through in life. Not everyone walks through all the Gates HaShem provides. But if you do, what happens when you walk through the 49th Gate? You get to the 50th Gate. What’s the 50th Gate? I’m just starting.”

Personally, I have gone through a multitude of transformations since posting regularly. It feels as if I’ve walked, been shoved, pulled and jumped through 10 billion gates; backwards and forwards, up, down around, inside ad outside…..

How much has the world changed? How much have I been ‘preaching’ the Torah of accelerated change? How do we take it all in? I haven’t written, because whatever I would have to say, seemed outdated by the time I published it. And then it seemed things would stall and sort of freeze for a bit. That gave rise to question what I earlier perceived. I began to feel that I would appear more crazed than I already do. It seemed pointless and confusing and unproductive.

So what do I know and/or think I know now (take your pick)? That’s really hard. On the one hand, I’m pretty clear that I’ve been on target that the world as we knew it has ended and the immediate coming world has not taken its new shape. But then, it seems the shape of the new world is the one we see daily: Confusion, fear, chaos, at least politically and economically. Maybe the instability of the institutions and constructs of man-made society, IS THE PRESET WORLD, until…..

Until what?The Coming World that we have all been praying, hoping, waiting as well as working and living for? Or will there be another ‘interim’ world? Or maybe it’s all just transition and everything happening makes sense if you could see the big picture?

The thesis that I have been putting forth consistently over the last 19 years can be encapsulated (yet not briefly) thusly:

Imagine you were an architect and you envisioned the perfect building. You first described it by telling the story of life; it’s graces and tragedies, it’s pitfalls and redemptive possibilities, it’s tests, successes and failures, it’s miracles and disasters. You defined health and disease, illness and healing. You told the stories of relationships that worked and those that failed. You repeatedly told stories of greed and power and taught that their exersize could not endure ad the damage they inflicted. Conversely, From this you then provided the blueprint for how to construct a building where there was only grace and miracles, success and redemption. And for all time. Now the obstacles….

The building yet present seemed to always be there and therefore always would. It was the only thing anybody really knew. That which came before was not personally experienced by the people now living and that which was yet to come was invisible. This old building was deteriorating before everyone’s eyes, its foundations rotted and crumbling, its institutions corrupted and its leaders as in the dark as its inhabitants.

However, as long as it appeared still yet standing and people were still invested in its endurance despite the suffering of the overwhelming vast majority of its inhabitants, no true rectification could materialize.

Your solution to the horror of all too many, is to remove the old building and build the new perfect building. Yet again, as few have shared in your vision, the people held back – it was all too unknown – the process of deconstruction and reconstruction was just to awesome and frightening.

But you could wait. The building was indeed coming down, collapsing under its own weight. And the only thing left was for there to be the perfect building that never was.

To be continued….

A Pesach Teaching

It’s Rosh Chodesh Nissan and Pesach is just two weeks away and tonight I teach. I sit reviewing Shlomo Torah on Pesach. I have collected more than 75 pages. It’s like he’s sitting right here, giving it over and the feeling returns with enhanced potency, that he knows ‘what I mean’ and ‘what I see’ and ‘what I feel’ and therefore I can relax. I can hear him telling me, “It’s not you, Moishe’le. You’re sane. Listen to this Torah’le: Reb Shlomo speaking:

“The beginning of Yiddishkeit, Judaism, everybody knows, is Seder, night, That is the night when Avraham Aveinu sits in the doorway of his tent, when the angels come to tell him he will have a son. Do you know what a covenant is? It is that I am receiving G-d the way G-d is. We Jews did not write books on theology, books proving that there is one G-d. Because then we would be lowering G-d to the level of mathematical proof. That is Tree of Knowledge talk. For us G-d is something else.

In exile, we shrink, everything shrinks. What is Exile all about? What is a slave? A slave is somebody who appears to be half his real size. He does everything, but really nothing. Where did it all begin? The lshbitzer says “, . . and he sent Judah before him” Yosef the Tzaddik, the doer of mitzvot, sent Judah, who represents the blessing on the mitzvot, before him. You make the blessing before you do the mitzva. So, Judah is the blessing before the mitzva, and Yosef is the mitzva itself Yosef is the person who just wants to do the mitzva. Yehuda (Judah) wants more. He is like Haninah ben Dosa. When he is performing a mitzva, he wants to be connected to G-d. “Make me holy with Your mitzvot.” Every mitzva is holy. What does this mean? You can do a mitzva, but where is the heavenly mitzva? Where is the great light shining from heaven when you do a mitzva? Yosef the tzaddik wants to do everything right. He does everything right. But Judah wants more. He wants something deeper, more heavenly.

Yaakov thought that Yosef was Mashiach. He bought him the colourful garment. You know what Judah did? He dipped the garment in blood. He said: “My dear brother, just by doing everything right, you don’t redeem the world. You have to go through so much pain, until it’s clear to you that you need much more. When do we realize that we need more? When we realize that whatever we have is not enough. You know, sometimes you are such good friends with somebody, and it doesn’t work. You know what the problem is? You have to be so much better, so much deeper, so much more.

Seder night, one night a year, one night a year. We live in a world where we have to work our way up slowly, until we can come up to kedusha (holiness). Seder night I am ready for everything. I want the whole thing.

You know why we lose touch with our kids? We think, they are little, so we will give than a little. But, they want the whole thing. Seder night we give them the whole thing.

I saw in a Midrash that when “Judah approached him” “vayigash eilav Yehuda” this was on Seder night. “Eilav” means “to him”, to the very depths of him.”

I hear Shlomo reminding me of the hardest truth: It’s not your fault. This is the way HaShem wants and needs you to be. Someone has to be connected to the pain and therefore reach for more and inspire others to reach for more.

I’ve Got A Job

Dearest Friends,

I have been working for the last month+ with the New Sanhedrin in Jerusalem as a consultant for its think tank. We are working on awesome projects connected with assisting conscious community, communal self-reliance and an organic communal partnership in communal well-being. For anyone whom this strikes a cord, please drop me a line at rebmoish@gmail.com.
Blessings for all things good and sweet.

An Invitation: Pesach Seder

Shalom Friends,

I will be conducting a Pesach Seder in the spirit of Reb Shlomo Carlebach in Jerusalem. Anyone interested in participating, please send me an e-mail to rebmoish@gmail.com. There will be both a veggie and non-veggie menu. It will be a ‘leave your watch at home’ seder, probably commencing between somewhere between 8:30-9:00pm and hopefully will go till dawn. Lots of singing, lots of joy, lots of laughter, lots of deep, holy Torah. All participants receive a 74-page Reb Shlomo Hagaddah Guide. PLACES ARE LIMITED – do not tarry in being in touch.

Blessings

Is The End Near?

Below is the link an article about the state of the American economy. I have been seeing something along these lines for quite a while. I also have been expecting this for almost two decades. There is much to be said in addition to provide context.

Read the next posting for my thoughts. All the best, Moish

International experts foresee collapse of U.S. economy

And you thought that I had a gloomy outlook on the economy. Now the bad news
pops up everywhere.

Harry Koza in the Globe and Mail quotes Bernard Connelly, the global
strategist at Banque AIG in London, who claims that the likelihood of a
Great Depression is growing by the day.

Martin Wolf, celebrated columnist of the U.K.-based Financial Times, cites
Dr. Nouriel Roubini of the New York University’s Stern School of Business,
who, in 12 steps, outlines how the losses of the American financial system
will grow to more than $1 trillion – that’s one million times $1 million.
That amount is equal to all the assets of all American banks.

Every day now, thousands of people all over the U.S. and Great Britain are
walking away from their homes – simply mailing their house keys to the banks
- as housing bailout plans fail.

With unemployment growing, the next phase will hit commercial real estate
making the financial institutions the unwilling owners not only of quickly
depreciating houses, but also of empty strip malls and even larger shopping
centres.

The next domino to fall will be credit card defaults, and after that… who
knows? There are so many exotic funds out there, with trillions of dollars
in paper – or rather computer-screen money – all carrying assorted acronyms,
and all about to disintegrate into nothingness. Over the next couple of
years, scores of banks that have thrived on these devices, based on quickly
disappearing equities, will fail.

The most frightening forecast so far comes from the Global Europe
Anticipation Bulletin (GEAB), available for 200 euros – about $300 – for 16
issues annually. Its prediction is quite specific.

Where my warnings never spelled out an exact date, this think tank has it
pegged precisely. Here are its very words:

“The end of the third quarter of 2008 (thus late September, a mere seven
months from now) will be marked by a new tipping point in the unfolding of
the global systemic crisis.

“At that time indeed, the cumulated impact of the various sequences of the
crisis will reach its maximum strength and affect decisively the very heart
of the systems concerned, on the front line of which (is) the United States,
epicentre of the current crisis.

“In the United States, this new tipping point will translate into – get this
- a collapse of the real economy, (the) final socio-economic stage of the
serial bursting of the housing and financial bubbles and of the pursuance of
the U.S. dollar fall. The collapse of U.S. real economy means the virtual
freeze of the American economic machinery: private and public bankruptcies
in large numbers, companies and public services closing down.”

The report goes on to say that we are entering a period for which there is
no historic precedent. Any comparisons with previous situations in our
modern economy are invalid.

We are not experiencing a “remake” of the 1929 crisis nor a repetition of
the 1970s oil crises or 1987 stock market crisis.

What we will have, instead, is truly a global momentous threat – a true
turning point affecting the entire planet and questioning the very
foundations of the international system upon which the world was organized
in the last decades.

The report emphasizes that it is, first and foremost, in the United States
where this historic happening is taking an unprecedented shape (the authors
call it “Very Great U.S. Depression”).

It continues to predict that, although this crucial event is global, it will
be the beginning of an economic ‘decoupling’ between the U.S. and the rest
of the world. However, non ‘decoupled’ economies will be dragged down the
U.S. negative spiral.

Concerning stock markets, the GEAB anticipates that international stocks
would plummet by 40 to 80 per cent depending where in the world they are
located, all affected in the course of the year 2008 by the collapse of the
real economy in the U.S. by the end of summer.

The European authors of this report – it appears simultaneously in French,
German and English – state that they simply and without prejudice try to
describe in advance the consequences of the ominous trends at play in this
21st-century world, and to share these with their readers, so that they can
take the proper means to protect themselves from the most negative effects.

So there you have it. Three reports from three different sources, all well
regarded, and all pointing to a disastrous fall-out from our monetary moves.

This and earlier columns can be seen at hielema.ca. Comments to
hielema@allstream.net.

Article ID# 918803

http://www.intelligencer.ca/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=918803

Special lecture Series

This is a belated announcement of a lecture series I’m giving. Two hours or so after the live lecture, you can access it in mp3 by connecting to the following link:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/yeshivatSimchatShlomoPodcast

Here is the flyer about the series:

Yeshivat Simchat Shlomo Presents:

The Rebbe and The Rav; Reb Shlomo and Rav Soloveitchik;
Uber Alter Chassidut and Hyper-Intellectual Brisk/YU Modern Orthodoxy

with R.Moshe Pesach Geller

Sunday, March 2nd 2:00pm – 4:00pm:

Identifying Their Essential Hashkafa
(source material will be provided)

Monday, March 3rd, 3:30pm – 5:00pm:

Delving Into Their Depths,
Searching for Convergence and Difference

Tuesday, March 4th, 4:00pm – 5:30pm:

Coming to Conclusions and Bringing Clarity to Our Own Journey

Where: 18 HaGilboa Street. Jerusalem, 94314, Israel. +972 (2) 622 1456
Rabbi Sholom Brodt, Av Rosh Yeshiva.
A Project of Sukkat Shaleym.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/YeshivatSimchatShlomoPodcast

The New Edition

Dear Readers,

Back in October 2006, I initiated this blog. My intention was comment, expound, analyse and explicate on the issues and imperatives of the day. However, I found that it emerged to be a public description of my personal journey. The blog became the stimulus for me to put down on paper what I was living as I was living it. And I hoped it would be meaningful and useful for those working on their own journey’s.

I imagine that more of such writing will appear. But now the time has come for me to speak outwardly.

So here’s my prayer and intention for this blog: To speak clearly and truthfully about that which inhabits public discussion and bring new light it; to illuminate, educate, provoke, stimulate and inspire. And maybe with the help of the One Above, make some change.

Simple as it is.

See you soon, Moish

Coming Soon

I have been away from blog for a long time as you know, but stayed tuned, for the new edition. Thanks, Moish

Finally, Thank G-d

Well, the long journey home is just about complete. Tonight, Sunday night, I received my last two bags. First off, I have to acknowledge and give thanks to El Al for effort above and beyond the call of duty in perservering in tracking them dowm and delivering them to me. It bothers me that El Al had to fulfill American Airlines responsibility.

More good news: One of my nieces gave birth on the second day of Rosh HaSHanah to her second child, a boy. Yeah! Mazal Tov! Her sister is expecting her first. Yeah! B’Sha’a Tova! One of my closest brothers became a father on Shabbat. The bris will be on Yom Kippur! Yeah! Mazal Tov!

As for me, I have received confirmation that my estimation that I had completed an 18 year life cycle and was embarking on a new unknown period, is correct. Nothing has been as it’s been. The clear revealed magic of my American journey has been replaced with unending ups and downs – within the same day! What it all means and portends is not yet revealed or at least clear.

But I am sobered, and paying close attention. I am in a position to move in a multitude of directions with my life this year. I have never had so much opportunity. And I have no idea as of yet which way I shall go. All I can say at the moment is, stay tuned to a Moish blog near you for coming attractions.

I pray y’all had an energizing, renewing Holy Day Weekend and that it continues with blessings for all things good and sweet.

Let me hear from you, either in comments or my e-mail – rebmoish@gmail.com.

It’s Time For Something New

Dearest Brothers and Sisters, Friends and Family,

So much has happened in the last three months, the last quarter of the year. And it’s clear that has been an awesomed time of preparation gifted from Heaven, to prepare for the next two days – days that Heaven gives us to participate and influence our year and that for the whole planet. We are invited into the Throne Room of the King – The One and Only One, the One who created our souls and has given us the blessing of life in this awesome Creation. We are blessed to be active conscious tools and partners of the One in bring perfection and the dream that yes, one day soon, the world will be only beauitiful and making that dream come true.

I bless one and all to pull out all the stops, pray not from brokeness, but from love, not from anger but from love, not from fear but from trust. I bless us all that are be open and the passion and love and focus should be strong and clear and ever flowing. I bless us all that we find a new closeness with all whom we love.

In the words of my saintly, holy Master, Reb Shlomo, “There are two books; the Book of Life and the Other Book. And the Other Book isn’t that you get up and die. It’s that one is shallow. In thios world, death means to be shallow. Life means to be deep. So I pray that your prayer will be as mine: That I should be inscribed in the Book of Life, but also that I be on the same page with everyone I love.”

I bless us all with Life. And the blessing of Life is Life itself.

May we all know it, may we all be so inscribed, may we all bless each otgher and everyone we meet and see with it.

I love you all. And I send you my gratitude for your respect, friendship, brotherhood, sisterhood, support and respect. May you all have it for yourselves. May you all see and know your own holiness and Light.

Have the best year. G’mar Chativa v’Chativa Tova – A good beautiful sweet year for one and all. See you next year.