blog 29

Blog 29:    2^nd March 2010

Of ‘Bluebeards’ and Soul-speak

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

I was participating at a farbrengen tisch last night – it being Purim. farbrengen, you ask? An old style Hassidic rap-session around a table where you get high on Torah, charisma, and a little help from the ‘geller’ and ‘vaysser’.  Purim?  Read: carnivale - Jewish style. ‘geller’ -  Yiddish: yellow, colloquial Hassidic jargon for whiskey). ‘vaysser’ – Yiddish: white, colloquial jargon for vodka.  Tisch – Yiddish: lit. table, but laden with food.  Now you know exactly where I was and what I was as doing last night. Reads like a long tweet, no?

Here we were – a bunch of ‘blue-beards’ (and some younger black-beards) and some ‘fremder mentchen’ – guys off the street who don’t get it as yet because they walk the ways of the western person. Quite a motley assortment of humans cutting loose because Purim is when you cut loose.

And the ‘blue-beard’ with the whitest hue was holding forth, regaling each guy around the table with his ‘neshomodicker’ (soulful) challenge: “You’re laughing but are you really happy?”. The ‘vaysser’ was really kicking in and a truer level of self was beginning to reveal itself. (Lest the cynical distort this modern tale with a suggestion that a farbi - Aussi slang for Farbrengen – is a tenuous excuse for a drink too many, let it be quickly notedf that the elders in our tradition keep the less experienced ‘farbrengenners’ well in check!)

There are occasions when intellectual repartee can lead to truths. Off hand. I don’t recall any example. Just watched an u-tube when a supposed ‘Kabbalist’ ( a dime a dozen these days on Google)  posed this question  and went on to dissect the elements of happiness with such depth and clarity that I felt truly sad. Oy! Painful. Happiness is experienced not intellectualized, man!  Don’t you get it? Well I guess he won’t because he makes a mint dissecting – bit like a spiritual morgue.

So the head ‘farbengenner’ was beginning to work his way deeper into the psyche of his fremder mentchen and they were beginning to wonder whether they should be smiling or crying because the ‘bluebeard’ was now challenging their most basic understandings of happiness. You mean watching a guy kicking a piece of leather around the ground does it for you? Conquering another chic is your high point of life? (These contemporary Hassidic types are quite up with the lingo!). And so he went on destroying each one’s veneer of happiness.

‘Don’t you get it?’ he roared. “Happiness means connecting! Means looking the guy seated next to you and being willing to put your life on the line for him. Looking G-d in His face and saying with the fullness of heart: I am with you Man! Happiness is not about ‘me’.  It’s about Oneness. You know how Haman (the villain of the Purim piece) got so close to annihilating the Jews of ancient Persia?  Because they were ‘scattered’. No, not just scattered in mind, that too, but scattered from each other, separate, uncaring, unable to act in unison, lacking a sense of achdus (one-ness).”     

And so it went. And the miracle occurred – as it does at all farbengens. The façade disappears.  The veneer is penetrated. The lies we live dissolve. The feet might feel a fraction rubbery as we leave the tisch but the wobble gives us freedom to change direction. We swivel on a new fulcrum. It’s not longer the play of mind and heavy rationalizing justifying why we are the way we are and a mentality of ‘poor me’.  It’s the soul singing. We stop being a victim and wake up from our stupor. And we feel a new liberation – the pathway to true happiness.

Purim is about waking up, not about losing it!  Where were you this Purim? Where are you now? Happy? Pesach is around the corner - spiritual liberation. Get ready. How?  Make Purim every day till Pesach. 

(Your comments are invited: Click on reception@spiritgrow.org and let me have the benefit of your insight) 

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