Sunday, June 25, 2017

No Body - No Anger

The phrase “He is not a body and not a power in a body” (אינו גוף ולא כח בגוף) contains 16 letters. Written as a square, the corners spell באפו, “in His wrath” = גוף, “body”. The diagonal from lower-right to upper-left also reads “in His wrath.” The lesson: No body – no anger.

by: Harav Yitzchak Ginsburgh

Anthropomorphism (16 letters!) begins with attributing to God the human characteristic of anger. Anger results from corporeality. My body differentiates between me and you, making me not you (both in matter and spirit), thus inviting sentiments of dissatisfaction with you. Dissatisfaction results in anger.

In the Torah we find God getting angry at man, when man sins. From anger comes punishment. Likewise, God is happy with man when he merits, and rewards him for his good deeds. Although “reward for good is always more than punishment for evil,” as an anthropomorphism, God’s finding pleasure with man is simply the counterpart, a derivative so to speak, of His getting angry. Anger, dissatisfaction, is more human-like than satisfaction. Man’s essential corporeality gives rise to anger, which thereafter can be appeased and transformed into pleasure and reward.

Maimonides explains that since God is changeless (as explicit in the Bible) He does not get angry! Anger is the most primal change of composure in the psyche of man, and as such the beginning of anthropomorphism. All anthropomorphisms that appear in the Bible are God speaking to us in our language, for we cannot fathom Him and His ways.

The lesson: The less we emphasize our bodies, the less we feel our “otherness” from one another, the less our composure changes, and the less we become angry.

King David says in Psalms: “A moment in His wrath [= body, as we saw], life in His will.” From this phrase we learn that anger is a time-bound phenomenon (and exists for no more than a fleeting second). God is above time (an essentially corporal phenomenon, dependant upon a body in motion, as explained by Maimonides), but to us it appears as though, due to our misbehavior, He becomes angry. To the extent that we transcend our bodies so do we shorten our experience of God’s anger, reducing the experience to no more than a split second. To nullify anger altogether – our own innate characteristic of anger and our experience of God’s anger – is to live forever, “life in His will.”

Wednesday, June 14, 2017

The RAA is Fighting the Infiltration of Foreign Worship


Today is Wed. Jun. 14, 2017 | Sivan 20, 5777

On behalf of the R.A.A., Rabbi Yehoshua S. Hecht calls upon the government of Israel and its Judiciary to respect the heritage and sacred traditions of the Jewish people by not introducing foreign worship and rituals that are anathema to the unity of the entire Jewish people and disrespect the sacred KOTEL traditions adhered to throughout the millennia.

this blogger: though I am sure everyone knows that his release is regarding WOW - the Women of the Wall. However, I spoke with Rabbi Mendy Miroczink, Executive Vice-President, of RRA on the phone today regarding all the activities of the xtian idolaters taking place. Let us pray that another news release is forthcoming!



Monday, June 12, 2017

Holy Children

Exodus 23:13 Concerning all that I have said to you you shall beware, and the name of the gods (ie J*sus), of others you shall not mention; it shall not be heard through your mouth. Below, you will see holy Jews praising the G-d of our Fathers - there is NO other nation that is Holy. HaShem set the Jews apart from the goyim - gave us the Torah. Tehillim 147:19-20.  


Tuesday, June 6, 2017

Name Analysis of a Convert

I always, but always, had a connection to the Parsha of Lech Lecha from the time that I converted. This conversion took place erev Shavous 2004. Until recently, I could not understand fully why it was that I heard these words over and over again in my head. Now I know.

PREFACE: To quote HaRav Yitzchak Ginsburg - "We are chassidim. We don't try to prove anything. We just try to show the beauty of the Torah in all of the phenomenal of the mathematicals  and the beauty is what arouses the heart. To believe and to be drawn towards the truth. Beauty draws you to the truth of the Torah."

Before Lecha Lecha findings below, I will first show you two verses that I can insert into my davening of Shemoneh Esrei. It is a WOW HaShem toda rabbah for revealing this to me! The 1st one, נשא, is the Parsha of the week - when I converted! The first letter "zayin" is on the top right corner and the last letter "hei" is on the bottom left corner. And in between - Avraham and Sarah can be found!

I find it amazing that just as Avraham and Sarah were 10 years apart when Yitzchak was born - my husband and I also are a few months shy of 10 years apart and we also were blessed with a son.
     All together, the four names, "Aryeh Boruch", "Zahava", and "Yosef" has 16 letters and can therefore be written in the form of a square, like this.  The value of the four corner letters in this figure אהיף is 96, the value of "God of David" (יי אלהי דויד) Divrei Hayomim II (21, 12)- also it is the value of "דודי הנה זה" from Shir HaShirim 2:8     
     The rest of the letters total 523, the value of "and your faith" (ואמונתך). The gematria of the four letters forming the inner square in this figure, רוהב, is 213 which is the gematria of "Lord, HaShem - how will I know" (במה אדע HASHEM אדניׂ) Lech Lecha 15:8. It is interesting that the letters of the 2 diagonal lines (26) + (283) = 309 minus the 4 letters in the center square (213) = 96!!!!
     The figure here is a possuk from Parsha Tzav and is one of the possukims that I may insert into my davening of Shmoneh Esrei. The gematri"a of Tzav is 96. The first time a Hebrew word Vayadah(96) וידעו  is in Bereishis 3:7. This word is translated as "and they knew". Again, Avraham and Sarah is found in the possuk! The letters "zayin, hei, and vav" is the mispar katan of Avraham. UPDATED May 23, 2018. The reason I have the words Zote/This, bat/daughter, Aaron, har/mountain, and Yam circled is because perhaps in my past gilgul, I could have very well been  the daughter of  Aaron  the Kohen. I read this as  "This Zahava, bat Aharon, was at the splitting of the sea and at Har Sinai and very much connected to Hashem (as all Jews should be and are). And just today Monday April 23rd) Rabbi Ginsburg gave a shiur .... that verified that I am a daughter of a kohen. My name is in this possuk! WOW see below!

Emor: Monday: The Daughter of the Kohen

Our Torah portion contains special laws pertaining to the daughter of the Kohen. In the Zohar it is written that “daughter of the Kohen” is a name for every soul of Israel, the daughter of G-d, Who is called Kohen. The daughter of the Kohen is the shared root of all souls of Israel, “Knesset Yisrael”. The soul is called a daughter because relative to G-d, we all have a feminine identity, the status of the woman, the receiver.  

The soul, however, may become entangled in complexities and troubles, just as the daughter of the Kohen also appears in the Torah in a negative context. Initially, she is in the home of her father, but she eventually is involved with a strange man, and sometimes even descends into prostitution.


Ultimately, the time for the soul, and the entire Knesset Yisrael, to return to her father will come. This can happen the hard way, as is written about the redemption: “If they were not worthy, (the redemption will come) in its time/(b’itah)”.  Fittingly, the numerical value of "Daughter of Kohen/bat Kohen" equals "in its time/(b’itah)."

BELOW IS NOT THE WORDS OF THIS BLOGGER it is from HaRav Yitzchak Ginsburg  - My work is only above

     The world אף (top right letter and bottom left letter in square above) was particularly loved by the Ba'al Shem Tov. Yet, often it is explained that possibly he was referring to a central verse in Isaiah, "Everything that is called by My name, I have created it, I have formed it, I have even [אף]  made it" (Isaiah 43:7), denoting that our lower physical realm is also connected with the higher spiritual ones (the Ba'al Shem Tov's Divine service was always to connect the spiritual realm to the physical realm, to bring blessing into the world as we experience it). But now we can propose an additional understanding of the Ba'al Shem Tov's intention. He may well have alluded to the blessing of Gad, 
וּלְגָד אָמַר בָּרוּךְ מַרְחִיב גָּד כְּלָבִיא שָׁכֵן וְטָרַף זְרוֹעַ אַף קָדְקֹד “About Gad he said: ‘Blessed is he who enlarges Gad’s domain! Gad dwells there like a lion, devouring the arm with [literally, ‘even’] the head.’” (In the fourth reading of Vezot Habrachah), 
to the "even" (af, in Hebrew, af also means "nose", the extended "arm" of the head, the essential power to connect the emotion, which finds expression through the nose, to the intellect) that connects the arm to the head (as in the mitzvah of tefilin and the head tefilin). As we shall see, these last words of the blessing of Gad produce a chazakah (a phenomenon that repeats itself three times over) of "good" (tov) squared, the essential attribute of the Ba'al Shem Tov!  source: inner.org

And now for Lech Lecha findings: 









Monday, June 5, 2017