touch (responsibility)

25 av 5765
the maor eynayim brings the phrase from chazal "da mah l'maalah mimcha" (lit. "know what is above you") and explains it's deeper meaning: "know that what is above you, is from you." (mimcha has the alternative meaning of 'from you') he explains the meaning of these words: the arousal from below brings about the arousal from above. God's attributes are waiting to be awakened by your awakening those same attributes within you. i take away from this: if you look for strife in the world, you will find strife in your world. if you share love in your world, you will find the world full of love. and it is true for everything: patience, stress, hostility etc. [incidentally, this is the rebuttal to the argument put forward in the beginning of plato's republic.]

touch (silence is golden)

24 av 5765
R' shlomo carlebach teaches (in a torah about purim) that the things that are the most pure and true remain unspoken. similarly R' akiva tatz explains that in judaism we must contemplate ideas a long time before we speak them. in essence (to my eyes) judaism is about reaching the depths of reality. when we touch these places, we need to draw out the truth slowly.. like someone on first waking squints to moderate the bright morning sunlight.

touch (God's pain)

23 av 5765
we are told by our Rabbis "more than the calf wants to drink, the cow wants the calf to drink." I understood this to mean: just as the cow suffers if the calf doesn't nurse, so too, God wants so much to give us good, that if we aren't willing to receive it, it "causes him pain." We need to be open to the good that God is always ready to bestow upon us.

touch (21 av 5765)

tzadik b'emunato yihyeh - a tzaddik will live through his faith
before God allows a tzaddik to attain a new level, he first takes away his previous level. this is the meaning of the passuk in mishlei - a tzaddik falls seven times and arises. the tzaddik must maintain his faith that this loss, this fall, this mini-death is in order to receive even greater revellation from God. thus, through his faith, the tzaddik will rise--the opposite of falling which is like dying. through his faith a tzaddik lives.

google talk is really nifty

which reinforces what i've always felt: google makes user-friendly apps.. i don't care if they are privacy-invasive. every tool i've ever seen come out of google 1) looks good, 2) is intuitive and 3) is responsive. microsoft will never be able to fathom these three things and so they will never compare to google. (despite how bill gates may attempt to draw comparisons between the two companies)

alan & liz's wedding

it's really nice to see all the family and friends that inevitably show up at a wedding.. also the dancing and atmosphere was very charged.. i think they set a great precedent for all of their friends' weddings. we were all just jumping around nonstop till the very end, i'm pleasantly exhausted.

i will be stateside this week

from the 15th till the 21st i will be in the nyc/nj area. my israeli phone number will be roaming there: +972546401406

touch (for the holy arizal's hillulah)

it says in megillath echa: "all those who pursue her will grasp her in the narrow[ way]s." i heard in my rav's kollel yesterday that this is talking about the torah. all those who pursue the torah wil grasp her 'bein ha meitzarim' (during this time we call 'bein ha meitzarim', the time from 17 tammuz until 9 av). wow. that explained so much for me right now.

you've never seen anything like it

the old city (of jerusalem) last night was something almost unimaginable--we tried to get to the kotel-- it was the holy arizal's yarzheit(sp?), the anniversary of his death (he was, i think, 37 when he died and all of his teachings that he gave over comprised less than three years of interaction between he and his main disciple r' hayyim vital) we all went to the kotel to pray in his merit for the redemption of the jewish people, and to save us from all of our pursuers (in this, the darkest time of our year). the city was so full it was like veins of people flowing, you couldn't fight the pressure of the flow, you had no choice but to go where it would take you. we tried so many routes to the kotel but there were so many people, we couldn't get in. we did catch a glimpse from the road that goes down there, but it was packed solid as well--we couldn't get any closer than just that glimpse. i've never ever seen so many people in the old city.. even getting out of the city was virtually impossible. (the traffic in (the new city) was backed up all the way to the entrance from the main tel-aviv jerusalem road) it took me 45 minutes to get most of the way to the old city in a cab before i had to get out and walk/run.

the amazing thing was the noise--no one shouted, no one shoved (that i could see anyways), the pushing was polite 'i'm here don't crush me' pushing.. but there were so many people it was loud to the point of overwhelming. in the end we went to king david's tomb[getting out through shaar tzion was quite a challenge of patience and will power], where we couldn't see anything because of the trees, but we could hear people from all over.. it was sooo many people. it must have been close to midnight before all the traffic had cleared out.

we were rescued by a really kind and unusually well-mannered police man and a cab driver with enough personality for 10 people.

touch (6 av 5765)

before we learn or pray we must awaken within ourselves a great desire to cleave to our creator. this awakening of desire is the nature of eliyahu hanavi. when we connect to our creator with this tremendous longing, we reveal the nature of mashiah(moshiach/messiah), from the word mey-siah(communicator). thus, the maor eynayim explains that eliyahu always precedes the meshiah. "behold i send [every moment/constantly] to you eliyahu hanavi." eliyahu is "to YHV", our soul is rooted in the final heh of hashem's name, so eliyahu is bringing our soul "H", back to "YHV" which is the revellation of the geulah (the redemption) every day. (As hazal tell us, "we must keep geulah close to tefillah. we connect first to eliyahu and then to mashiah.)

touch (5 av 5765)

a textual discrepancy: moshe says at mt. sinai we didn't see images, even though moshe says we saw images at sinai. rav moshe hayyim luzzato (the ramhal) in his sefer daath tevunoth explains the confusion: prophets, he says, are given insight into hashem through images, but along with the image comes the explanation. part of the hidden explanation, he explains, is that it is obvious that the image is not what hashem looks like, but rather what he wants the prophet to see and understand. there's no confusion that the image might be god's visible form--since there's no such thing. when moshe was telling us about seeing and not seeing images, he was simply reminding us of this phenomenon which we ourselves experienced, so he didn't go into detail.(--but to us who don't remember the revellation at sinai it's confusing.)

touch (tamuz 29 5765)

the maor eynayim sums up all of creation as follows: a fruit tastes sweet only to teach us that the godliness within the fruit is sweet. similarly, in order for a rav to teach a student, he must clothe his ideas in metaphors that the student's mind can comprehend and digest. this is exactly how hashem relates to us.

touch (hidush--hence a little longer than usual)

before man (aleph daleth mem) is created, the passuk (bereishith 2:6) says and a mist/dew (will) rise up over the land. the word for dew/mist is spelled aleph daleth. i always wondered why the first part of the name man (*aleph daleth* mem) was said to rise up on the land prior to his creation. a week or two ago, my rav told me that the yetzer harah (the evil inclination) is purified through our overcoming it, and the mem from its name (i refrain from mentioning the name because we don't say it (although it's usually abbreviated samech"mem)) is removed, and then the resulting name is the source of the three crowns with which we are crowned: kingship, priesthood, torah. so the language of the passuk, with this in mind, makes more sense. the aleph daleth of man will rise up, when the evil inclination is cleansed, when the mem is removed. at which point, all that is left, aleph daleth has the same gematria as the letter heh. teshuva, hassiduth teaches us, is teshuv-heh, returning the final heh to the name hashem (the tetragramaton). so even before man is created, our role here is clearly described--our essence is in our name.

touch (tamuz 27 5765)

the essence of a creation is the letters that make up it's name. the letters of our name derive from the 600,000 letters of the torah, the 600,000 soul roots of the jewish people. these roots split into many many parts. (one rendering counts 613 (mitzwoth) x 70 (faces of torah) x 600,000 (letters of the torah) = 25,746,000,000 (the total number of souls, but i think it's probably more complicated than that.))

touch (tamuz 26 5765)

hassiduth (and the kabbalah) teach that hashem created the world and everything in existence through speech. speech has a number of components. first comes the breath. this breath is modified in five areas of the mouth. each area of the mouth has the ability to produce certain letters. finally, the assembled speech leaves the lips clothed in letters. the letters are further combined into words. (but the atoms of speech, and therefore existence, are (the 22 hebrew) letters.) hashem's will is expressed through the combinations and interactions of the letters. the further (lower in the *created* spiritual hierarchy) a creation is, the more permutations and combinations the letters must go through.

touch (tamuz 25 5765)

the maor eynayim explains that when one sins s/he creates an accusing angel. how is this possible? first one thinks of doing the sin, at which point the soul of the accusing angel is created, then one does the sin, and the body is provided for the soul of the accusing angel. when one does teshuvah, so the soul of the angel is taken back from it, and it's body is left a lifeless stone.

I'm out of touch

i've always been careful never to lose touch with the world around me, mainly because i was always affraid that's exactly what would happen. but as my friends come to visit me here in israel more and more i feel i've lost touch with them--the ways i've grown and the ways they've grown have diverged. that scares me a little, mainly because i feel like they would benefit too from knowing what i've learned..so as an attempt to get back in touch, i will try to post daily micro divrei torah based on my day's learning.. so that any of my friends who want can keep up and stay in touch with my life and the lessons it teaches me.. i'd be happy if anyone did the same for me..
so all my posts with (touch) in the title are there to keep in touch.

Interesting DNA research

here are clipped pieces of the linked article:

As the DNA 'alphabet' contains four letters - called bases - there are as many as 64 three-letter words available in the DNA dictionary. This is because it is mathematically possible to produce 64 three-letter words from any combination of four letters.

But why there should be 64 words in the DNA dictionary which translate into just 20 amino acids, and why a process that is more complex than it needs to be should have evolved in the first place, has puzzled scientists for the last 40 years.
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One of quirks of the genetic code is that there are groups of codons which all translate to the same amino acid. For example, the amino acid leucine can be translated from six different codons whilst some amino acids, which have equally important functions and are translated in the same amount, have just one.
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The University of Bath researchers suggest that the primordial 'doublet' code was read in threes - but with only either the first two 'prefix' or last two 'suffix' pairs of bases being actively read.

By combining arrangements of these doublet codes together, the scientists can replicate the table of amino acids - explaining why some amino acids can be translated from groups of 2, 4 or 6 codons. They can also show how the groups of water loving (hydrophilic) and water-hating (hydrophobic) amino acids emerge naturally in the table, evolving from overlapping 'prefix' and 'suffix' codons.
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The theory also explains how the structure of the genetic code maximises error tolerance. For instance, 'slippage' in the translation process tends to produce another amino acid with the same characteristics, and explains why the DNA code is so good at maintaining its integrity.
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The new theory also highlights two amino acids that can be excluded from the doublet system and are likely to be relatively recent 'acquisitions' by the genetic code. As these amino acids - glutamine and asparagine - are unable to hold their shape in high temperatures, this suggests that heat prevented them from being acquired by the code at some point in the past.
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"As the code evolved it has been possible for it to adapt and take on new amino acids. Whether we could eventually reach a full complement of 64 amino acids I don't know, a compromise between amino acid vocabulary and its error minimising efficiency may have fixed the genetic code in its current format. "
---end of article---

what i want to know is how does this relate to the hebrew letters which can be seen as 22 unique entities, encoded by a 5-'letter' encoding alphabeth. [in some sense there are 5 bases (incl. uracil which isn't exactly a different base), and potentially more amino acids, but still how does it all relate?]

World-Wide Shema

An appeal has been made to every Jew around to world to simultaneously read the first lines of the prayer known as Shema: "Hear O Israel, The L-rd is Our G-d, the L-rd is One" on Wednseday.

The prayer is intended to ask for Divine help to prevent violence toward the planned expulsion of Jewish residents from Gaza and northern Samaria and for Divine intervention to cancel the plan. The prayer is organized under the motto, United We Stand, Divided We Fall.

The prayer will be recited at 9 p.m. Wednesday at the Western Wall (Kotel) in Jerusalem, at 2 p.m. in New York, and 11 a.m. in California.

Children around the world also are being asked to pray together the following night, one day before the beginning of the new Hebrew month Av. Former Chief Rabbi of Israel Mordechai Eliyahu will lead the Thursday night prayer at the Western Wall.

An unidentified group of women initiated the call for the children's prayer, which will take place at 7:30 p.m. in Israel (12:30 p.m. in New York); they are encouraging children to attend the prayer rally at the Western Wall, where more than 20,000 children are expected.