BLOG 19: DEC. 24TH 09 PEERING INTO THE DEPTH

Blog 19:    24^th Dec. 09

Peering into the Depths

-          Laibl Wolf, Dean, Spiritgrow - The Josef Kryss Wholistic Centre, Australia

Take a round piece of soft dough. Press your finger deep into it and then remove it. What do you find?  A hole.  That’s strange. What was visible on the surface is now embedded deep within.

Upon which Kabbalah comments, somewhat cryptically: the foremost intention is hidden in the completion. Well, perhaps the Kabbalah doesn’t use those very words, but you know what I mean.  Or do you?  Let me explain.

You wish to build your dream own home. Your original vision is the pristine ball of dough.  Months of intense planning extrapolates your original vision. The architect drafts the plans. Let the builders begin! Excavation, pouring of foundations, up go wall slabs, the roof, and the finishing trades - the finger presses into the dough - and voila, your new home. Somewhat simplified?  But here is the point. The original inspirational vision culminated in tangibility: bricks and mortar, paint and furniture. Your original vision is now deeply embedded in the physical spread of your new home.  The finger of construction pressed the inspirational design into a deep hole. And the onlooker has to peer through the rooms of the house, into the ‘deep hole in the dough’, to discover your original inspiration.

Another Kabbalistic reading of the same concept: the stone at the top of the wall fall furthest from the wall. The more spiritual the source, the more hidden will be its physical manifestation. It is a bit like Alice in Wonderland. Tumbling into the ‘worm hole’ she finds herself in an upside-down world where the obvious is the obscure and the obscure masks the obvious. We live in that ‘worm-hole’ and find ourselves in an upside-down world: pain, worry, evil, insecurity, anxiety, inequity. Ironically, here, deep below, is where we can discover the profoundest truths: joy, fulfillment, growth, love, faith and profundity.

And yet another Kabbalistic reading: ‘the end is wedged in the beginning and the beginning is wedged in the end’. Meaning: the beginning – the inspirational (spiritual) design for the home - is now embedded in its (physical) structure (down the worm-hole).  But the vision of the completed product (the world at the bottom of the worm-hole) was always there in its earliest moment inspiration (pristine ball of dough).

Hence the Jewish spiritual emphasis on profound respect for the seemingly mundane aspects of life: protecting the environment, nurturing plant life, acting kindly to animals, and sharing our income with others. Thinking right, speaking right, and doing right, at the most practical and material level, reveals the purpose behind the breath of life that animates existence – the highest inspiration: creation.

G-d pressed Its Finger into the Dough. And you and I live in that profound Void. The filtered light that dimly reveals our spiritual environment down here in the void below, allows us to peer through the looking-glass and discover this world’s inverse, the higher truth, viz. the original Creative inspiration. The process of discovery is what facilitates the mystical co-experience of the original moment of Divine inspiration. 

   Laibl’s web site: www.laiblwolf.com                                                                                                                                                                      - Laibl’s blog site: www.laiblwolf.com/blog/                                                                                                      – Spiritgrow – The Josef Kryss Wholistic Center, Australia site    www.SpiritgrowJosefKryssCenter.org

 

BLOG 18 - REB NOIACH

18. Blog: 17^th Dec. 09

Reb Noiach – A Tapestry of History

-          Laibl Wolf, Dean, Spiritgrow - The Josef Kryss Wholistic Centre, Australia

May I share with you? My holocaust survivor parents emigrated from Poland to Australia after the Shoah. I was two years of age. The new émigrés concentrated in Melbourne in an area that in some ways mimicked the Lower East side of NY, albeit on a much more modest scale.  They immediately began work on make-shift cheders, shules, bakeries – all the accoutrements of a transplant from the Old Country. And their children were their life.

I often play back in my mind those early days –the late forties and early fifties. The characters stand out vividly in my memory banks. These colorful, soulful, and oft strange personalities occupy centre stage when I allow myself these reveries. Their quest for survival in their newly chosen country of Australia also revealed eccentricities - the obvious scars of a cruel war, a legacy of tortured spirits. One arena in which these stage characters played their life roles was a small shule that my father took me in those early days – the Shtibel.

The Shtibel was a small house off a back lane leading off a wider Carlton street. The lane was unpaved and entry to the house was from its rear. The first structure that greeted the visitor was an external latrine - the welcome door to the property. But just to have a shule was of itself a miracle. Did it also have to be landscaped and architecturally planned?  Just to breathe Melbourne’s air rather than the Zyklon B of gas chambers was a miracle.

Once inside the Shtibel, this youngster was to find himself in a strange incomprehensible world of unrecognized heros, each of whom could have been the star character of a Broadway stage play based on their destroyed lives.

A Polish dominated shtibel consisting of Chassidim, albeit lapsed Chassidim on the whole, clean shaven, modern (though shabbily) dressed, had its own differentiated character.  Informality of prayer meant conversational interludes not found in the Siddur (Prayer book), and argued debates (to the point of near physical altercation) on the propriety and authenticity of differing customs of prayer order.

Between the ages of three and ten, I sat with my father at one of the tables (no pews in this discordant and motley setting) at the northern end of a large room that housed the shule.  At our table was the gentle giant, Mr. Goldhirsch obm, who always took the trouble to warmly greet this inconspicuous youngster, leaving a warm memory that continues to touch my heart. Then there was Reb Schmiel whose large buck teeth complemented a raucous sense of humour that sent waves of laughter while the ba’al teffillo fought valiantly but futilely to establish his vocal dominance over the room.  The Althaus and Kluwgant boys mischievously tied together talles (prayer shawl) fringes of unsuspecting separate wearers (somewhat safer than co-joining their shoelaces).  And the very correct and dark suited gabbeh (warden), Mr. Gedaliah Segal, did his very best to arbitrate the competing calls on aliyos (honorifics for Torah readings) honors, and seating disputes.

The survivors were nothing if not colourful.  Only later, upon greater maturity, was I to tag the adjective, ‘tortured souls’, to the naively conceived ‘colourful’. But among the many dozens in that shtibel community there was one individual who sat on the opposite side of the room from my father and myself, facing us. He looked younger than the rest. He was short, very thin, with sharp angular features.  He sat symmetrically, always composed, and his talles over his head, lined at the front with the silver embroidery common to the Hassidic movements. His relative youthfulness and poise left a deep impression on me.  I never spoke with him.  But I often watched him, observing carefully, in the way that a small boy sometimes does.  He had such composure, and also a beautifully sweet singing voice.  He also knew nusach (the traditional melodies and intonations) very well and was often called upon to lead the congregation (if that is not an inflated description of this amazing collection of rag tag survivors of the churben – the European destruction). Oh, I forgot to mention.  His name was Reb Noach (Noah). Surname: Herbst.

Many years later, fifty five to be exact, his granddaughter married my son. I find this nothing short of amazing. Why?  Not sure why. Just is. That a youngster of four or five would be curious about a young man who sat on the other side of a prayer room, and many decades later, Divine planning would bring these two families together. Life is wondrous, mysterious, and complex.

Reb Noiach passed away last week. But his memory thereby crystallized into stronger relief in my mind – in inverse proportion to the world’s loss through his passing.

I am still looking at people’s faces.  I still wonder how future unfolds. I remain in awe of the pattern that G-d weaves through the tapestry of history.      

   Laibl’s web site: www.laiblwolf.com       - Laibl’s blog site: www.laiblwolf.com/blog/      – Spiritgrow – The Josef Kryss Wholistic Center, Australia site  (soon up after extensive ‘renovation’)   www.SpiritgrowJosefKryssCenter.org

 

 

BLOG 16

16. Blog: 3^rd Dec. Oct 09

You Are Significant – So Live Accordingly

-          Laibl Wolf, Dean, Spiritgrow - The Josef Kryss Wholistic Centre, Australia

What are you?  A speck of dust in the expanse of the Cosmos? A brief sound in the symphony of creation?  A momentary flash of consciousness in a sentient eternity? A mere blip on the radar of infinity?

Hundreds of generations have lived and died. Civilizations have risen and faded. And here you are – reading a blog.  What does it mean?  What does your life mean?

The nihilists believe that life is pointless and human values worthless. The skeptics believe that real knowledge of anything is impossible. The agnostics ask questions knowing that answers are arbitrary. And fellow travelers generally don’t address any life issues and carried along by the tidal throng.

Is it possible to aspire to a life of meaning? To a life characterized by esteem and self worth? To a life perceived as an essential link in a chain – an indispensable piece of the puzzle of consciousness?

That is exactly what the tenets of Jewish wisdom teachings instruct. In the early morning, when the higher consciousness of dreams give rise to the lower consciousness of a waking world, Jews enunciate a traditional meditative  affirmation Modeh Ani . In that phrased focus there is a definitive phrase that carves out the Jewish response to meaninglessness. It states: You have restored to me my individuality, my distinctiveness, my giftedness – my own Neshama (soul). This single phrase becomes the imprimatur of life’s meaning. Yes, you count. You may be a speck, but a speck that produces an infinite multiplier effect that changes the course of history and creation. You may be a sound but you resonate and reverberate throughout the eons of time providing creation with your own set of life-notes. You may be a mere flash of consciousness, but that flash continues to shine throughout the enormity of time. And you may be a blip on a Divine radar screen, but that blip is observed as a significant positioning of your very being.

Personal significance flows from the realization that you have spiritual assets to contribute to people, life, and world. That your thoughts and feelings leave a real residue in the ether of time/space. That your actions become the spiritual building blocks of higher realms. That you count – and I, together with everyone else, am a beneficiary of your largesse, your inner beauty.

So go out into the world and practice personal leadership. Be a unique contributor to the radical act of creation. Be a true co-creator of an unfinished universe. Practice Tikkun (Cosmic repair of broken vessels) through the act of Mitzvot, the Aramaic root of which (Tzavta) which means: connectedness.  Connect with life and lives, and live a life of significance, self worth, and contribution.

Yes, you count.

   Laibl’s web site: www.laiblwolf.com                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          - Laibl’s blog site: www.laiblwolf.com/blog/                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                – Spiritgrow – The Josef Kryss Wholistic Center, Australia site  (soon up after extensive ‘renovation’)   www.SpiritgrowJosefKryssCenter.org