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Leon's No Newsletter 167
Jerusalem Monday, January 24, 2011
Marriage and all that Jazz
Dear Friends, Shalom,
Thursday, the day I'd been waiting for showed up, there were no tourists to be guided, so
everything looked clear for me to make my way to Eilat for the Jazz weekend at Eilat harbor.
All I needed now was the all clear from Ettie,
who's not a jazz fan like I am, but Friday was our 30th wedding anniversary and I suggested we take a weekend holiday
in Eilat to celebrate.
How was she going to get away from her Friday morning visit to Mahaneh Yehudah Market, all
the weekend cooking, a cake for this one a pie for that and most difficult of all; we'd miss our usual Fridays with Ophir
and Alon and Saturday with Tamar and Eitan. All that was sacrificed so that we could spend a weekend in Eilat together.
It took us about 4 hours driving and by 5 o'clock we were checking in to a beautiful suite
with a balcony overlooking the shimmering blue bay of Eilat, Aqaba on the one side and Eilat on the other. Someone else must have been celebrating
something on a beautiful white yacht, which I could see large and pure, against the background of the red granite mountains
of Edom, because it looked happy, anchored tranquilly on the calm waters
of the Red Sea, in the middle of the bay.
As evening fell we watched the lights, all around, going on and decorating the beautiful
bay with their myriad golden twinkles.
We finally came to the harbor, after dinner.
As we had been doing for the 30 years of marriage, Ettie
and I did our own things; she went off to her’s, shopping and I to mine, jazz.
For sure this happy mode of life wasn’t achieved without pain which accompanies me
to all the things I do by myself, because enjoying something without her is painful to me and the same goes for her, but we
do them all the same and we end up enjoying them.
Last night, in a lecture by Prof. Rachel Elior about the meaning of Paradise, it occurred
to me that my wife and I, treating each other as equals was in accordance with the Bible’s description of Paradise because
inequality between men and women is only a characteristic of married life after Adam and Eve were expelled from Paradise. This means that while they were in Paradise they treated
each other as equals.
After the expulsion God says:
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you (genesis 3:16)
Before the expulsion the idyllic relationship of equality between man and woman is repeated
several times in poetic language in Genesis 2:
In Paradise woman is described
as: a helper suitable for him, bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh, naked, and felt no shame.
The treatment of woman as inferior is a punishment, not the original normal way that men
and women were meant to live together.
All the generations, since the expulsion from the Garden of Eden have been living according
to the punishment instead of the ideal which was meant to be.
Born into a traditional Jewish family I grew up with the idea that idyllic family life required
the husband to dominate the wife. It wasn’t easy to escape from the conviction that this is the way to live.
Already, as a young child, perhaps round about the age of 7, however, I managed, miraculously
to come to the conclusion that domination was definitely a bad thing.
This was a very revolutionary idea In the environment I lived in, in South Africa; it could
cause one to be branded as “Mommy’s boy”, “girlie boy” and other epithets which I’ve forgotten
but which I dreaded.
I gradually overcame this dread during married life. I even think that the pain I feel doing
something I enjoy without Ettie being by my side comes more from the dread I felt during in childhood, of not appearing to be dominant than from love for my wife; it’s
like being ashamed that I allow her to make her own choices and tolerate her absence from my side.
Whenever I’m doing something without her old photos of happily married ancestors, standing
arm in arm, idyllically side by side, come flashing into my poor, febrile mind and give me an ache that I’m not like
that.
Whatever the reason, I felt sorry to leave Ettie
by herself so that I could listen to jazz all night, (I can’t really understand how people can’t love jazz) but the rhythm of Doron Rephael and his two assistants, one on the bongos and the other
on the synthesizer, soothed my lonely heart and cast me into oblivious rapture.
Then they brought on the Bad plus and I and everyone else went completely crazy, you cannot
believe how wild the hysteria was; our enthusiasm was only matched by the rapid banging motion of Ethan Iverson on the piano.
He gets up, attacks the keyboard standing, sits down, gets up again, while Dave King caresses his drums and Reid Anderson
strums his double bass, one moment profoundly blissful the other enthusiastically profound.
They couldn't go home, the crowd wouldn’t let them, in any case they were having such
a good time themselves that they didn’t want to go anywhere. They were homeless rats caught in the grip of reeling spectators.
Goo that wwaas gooood!!
Eventually I cuddled up to Ettie and made it up
to her, she liked that.
Even the weather was great. I always tell people that January is the best time of the year
to visit Eilat. You don't have that burning heat of Summer. But people stay away, thinking it's going to rain and of course
it never rains in Eilat. The place is surrounded by desert and even a few millimeters of rain would start an amazing flood.
That's typical of a desert climate.
The next day, our anniversary day, I discovered that shopping is quite a popular activity.
In fact it seems to me that in Eilat the only thing “real” people do is to go shopping and lie by the pool or
on the beach.
30 years have gone by since I met Ettie. I’m
happy that it feels as if they were never there and now they’re all in my memory. I can only relive them in my mind
and there’s pain when I do that, but ultimately there’s a lot of satisfaction.
Many unmarried people look at a married person with a certain envy which says that if it
wasn't for his faults, conceit, selfishness, stubbornness, etc he would been married. He's jealous because he thinks that
married people have all the qualities he lacks; generosity, sense of humor, selflessness, charity, concern for others, like
children etc.
That’s not true but through marriage one can learn those good characteristics if one
wants to.
You don’t have to be perfect to live with another person because that’s the way
you learn to accept and even love imperfection.
Wishing you a great no news day
Yours truly
Leon Gork
Leon's No Newsletter 166
Jerusalem Friday,
January 21, 2011
The Temple and The Garden of Eden
Dear Friends, Shalom,
Sometime or other everyone finds himself in a fix. It might be only a puncture that makes
us late for an important appointment or it may be something much worse like having our home washed away in a flood, as has
happened recently in Australia and Brazil.
If we are going to cope and find a solution to our problem or, failing that, resign ourselves
to accepting that the catastrophe was inevitable and suffer it calmly to make
the best of a bad situation we need to develop an attitude that will calm our nerves and ease our tension.
This attitude develops with age and experience but it's discovery is usually the result of
a deliberate, life long search. Some people have succeeded in discovering such an effective attitude that they are able to
accept even a catastrophe like a flood with equanimity.
Seeing that catastrophes have been with us since creation it seems reasonable that man has
been searching for an attitude to help him since then.
The search lead to the idea that there must be a place where catastrophes never happen, utopia.
The description of this place can be found in the literature of practically every religion.
The Jews described it as "The Garden of Eden" in the Bible. In other words, this idea explained
why catastrophes occurred, namely, everywhere outside the Garden of Eden
catastrophes can occur but not inside.
The idea concerning man's expulsion from the Garden of Eden was used to explain why man is
now living in a world of catastrophe, outside the Garden of Eden, instead of inside, where there are no catastrophes.
Then came the idea that angels prevented man's return to the garden. I've could never understand
the origin of the idea of angels, after all no living person to the best of my knowledge has ever seen an angel. The only
creature that comes close to that is a bird.
Then, while standing with some tourists by the magnificent entrance of the Church of the
annunciation, in Nazareth, decorated with carvings of angels, in memory of the angel Gabriel, who announced the coming birth
of Jesus to Mary, one of the tourists, who happened to be a pilot for Delta Air, explained that the idea of wings was to represent
immortal creatures because unlike mortals they're not connected to the earth.
This now explained why man couldn't return to the Garden, namely because he is now mortal
and inside the Garden only immortal creatures exist, hence the angels at the entrance.
The two concepts, sin and mortality were perfect for explaining man's predicament of no return.
This idea was revolutionary because for the first time it associated catastrophe with a place
and not with a mood of this or that god or even the mood of God Almighty, the only God.
There is a place where there was sin and death, where catastrophe could occur at any time
and where man lived and there is a place where there is no sin and immortality where man was forbidden to enter.
Jews understood that sinlessness and immortality were unattainable on an individual basis.
No matter what he did there was no returning to the Garden of Eden for the individual.
This of course lead to the idea of the creation of one place which would symbolize the place
of no catastrophe in the midst of that part of the world where catastrophe is inevitable.
This place was the temple in Jerusalem.
Naturally just as there was only one Garden of Eden so there could be only one temple. This idea was fundamental to Judaism
and differed greatly from the pagan idea of building many temples in many places. In fact the Bible doesn't even specify a
particular place as long as there is only one.
Naturally David chose the place to be in Jerusalem
for political reasons to unite the Jewish Nation, which basically was his construction.
Naturally the temple and everything associated with it, the design, the utensils, the priesthood
and the ceremonies, symbolized the Garden of Eden.
The distance one was from the temple in Jerusalem
symbolized the distance from the Garden of Eden. The nearer one approached the temple the nearer one came to symbolic sinlessness
and immortality.
Immortality was the most important aspect of the Garden of Eden to symbolize. This was done
by placing the Ark of the Covenant at the centre of the temple with two angels on top of it keeping guard, like the two angels
that guarded the gates of the Garden of Eden against entry by any mortal.
The priests were symbols of sinless man before he was expelled from the Garden of Eden. Being
the symbol of sinless man only the high priest could enter the Holy of Holies, the precinct of the Ark of the Covenant, the
place where symbolic sinlessness and immortality resided.
Holiness became clearly defined as the condition to be fulfilled by the high priest for entering
the Holy of Holies and the common people for entering the temple in general.
For example any association with death made the high priest unholy and therefore unable to
enter the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement, the only day when he was permitted, actually compelled to enter to pray
for the well-being of the Nation of Israel.
With this knowledge, now one can understand that the legend of the high priest dying while
in the holy of holies, is impossible because there can't be death in that place of immortality.
From this one can also understand why, generally speaking, a dead body is unclean in Judaism
and one who had touched a dead body or anything associated with death, such as blood or feces is forbidden from entering the
temple.
In fact as long as the temple stood in Jerusalem
it was necessary for a Jew to keep himself holy even if he lived far from the temple.
Because the holiness that resided in the temple was like a star whose rays shone throughout
the world and benefited all people who were holy as the sun's rays benefit all the world.
All the actions of a Jew are related to making himself holy, because without being so he
was forbidden to go up to the temple. In fact uncleanliness symbolically precluded him from symbolically basking in the symbolic
atmosphere of holiness that emanated from the temple.
This emanation of holiness was symbolized by the 7 branched candelabra that burnt by day
and night in the temple.
The number 7 is used because it symbolizes eternity, which was in the Garden of Eden; 7 is
the basic number which expresses the eternity of creation by its weekly repetition, in a never ending cycle for 52 weeks equaling
the cycle of the earth around the sun.
Judaism emphasizes the Sabbath because its weekly repetition is proof of God's covenant with
the Jewish People that they and the world will continue to exist for ever.
All the laws which Jews have to obey have the function of keeping them holy. This way they
can symbolically experience the same holiness that Adam and Eve felt in the Garden of Eden before they sinned.
Observance of laws is not to prevent catastrophe. Nothing can prevent that because we live
in a world of catastrophe but being symbolically holy we can be happy despite the constant catastrophes that befall us because
we have a taste of holiness and immortality.
Perhaps there's even a chance that the whole world will become symbolically holy and then
there will be a return to the real Garden of Eden and human beings will once again be sinless and immortal.
There isn't a Garden of Eden for individuals only one for the whole a universe. It's either
everyone or no one.
Wishing you a great no news day
Yours truly
Leon Gork
Ref: Prof Rachel Elior –
Temple and Chariot, Priests and Angels, sanctuaries in ancient
Jewish Mysticism (Hebrew) published by Magnes press. The Hebrew University
of Jerusalem.
Email: magnes@huji.ac.il
Banias
Dear friends, Shalom,
Like many others we visited the Huleh Nature reserve to watch
the thousands of birds gathering here from Europe and Asia for their annual migration to Africa. There were storks, pelicans, cranes,
egrets and many others; our guide told us that more than 500 species of bird could be seen here every year. This is double
the number you’d find in England,
for example.
Since the beginning of time herds of people and animals have
been on the move, migrating from one place to another, either because of an irresistible, inborn instinct which pushed them
to move in search of richer pastures or, in the case of humans, for richer markets where they could sell the products they’d
cultivated or manufactured.
Banias came into being like most other well developed places
because it lay on one of these migration routes and was destroyed and left deserted because the route was made unsafe by marauding
bands of human beings who lived off hunting and plundering the rich caravans moving along the route.
Banias owed its richness to the fact that it lay at the crossroads
of a road leading from Tyre in Phoenicia (Lebanon), on the Mediterranean sea, to Damascus and Antioch in Syria, on the one
hand and the road, which joined it from Bet Shean, the great Canaanite city and later Jewish city and still later Roman city
South of the Sea of Galilee.
In every era, excepting the last 1300 years of Moslem control,
Banias thrived; in the Canaanite period people came to worship at more than 40 shrines devoted to the Phoenician god Baal
and others. In the Greek period magnificent temples to Pan, Zeus, Dionysus and many other gods were built and visited by millions
of travelers; even Alexander the Great is reputed to have visited here. In the Roman period a great city was built here called
Caesarea Phillpi and according to the Gospels Jesus visited here and even shows amazement at the variety of gods worshipped
here by asking his disciples “Who do men say I am?”
Being on such an important trade route Banias was a rich
city and one can assume that, like most cities on such strategic routes it must have been attacked and even destroyed many
times in its long history. We’re told that it was destroyed by an earthquake in the 4th century.
Banias, like many cities throughout Israel were destroyed, rebuilt and again destroyed many times. This is how a “tel”
is formed. Some “tells” like Megiddo or Hazor,
have as many as 21 layers of alternating construction and destruction. Jerusalem
has about 30 layers.
The shocking thing about the Moslem conquest of Israel in the 7th century is that it brought an end to this
pattern of construction and destruction which had been going on for about 10000 years.
This makes the Moslem rule of the country during the last
1300 years a disaster of enormous proportions.
They brought it about because they were nomadic tribes that
didn’t seek to establish a more civilized society than the one they conquered but sought only to acquire wealth through
plunder and destruction.
They made the roads, once the pride of the Roman
Empire so unsafe that travel and transportation of goods became impossible and the inhabitants, mostly Jews, couldn’t
export their goods and left their towns and farms to find lands further a-field where they could produce, transport and sell
their goods.
In the modern world of air and swift, motorized land travel
the great ancient cities like Banias aren’t needed for the once important function they fulfilled as productive cities
and way stations for travelers, but have become vital lungs for breathing the relaxing atmosphere and brisk, healthy air,
not found in our busy cities.
Banias has become a nature reserve for people seeking peace
and quiet from the hustle and bustle of modern city life and a little history of the “good old days” before the
evil of barbaric nomads came upon us.
The care which we lavish on our national parks and the archaeological
excavations carried out there are a kind of reconstruction these sites have been waiting for since their destruction 1300
years ago.
Archaeologists have revealed that the sheer, white limestone
cliff where we stand looking down at the shimmering pools fed by an enormous spring, which breaks out at its base, formed
the back wall of the temples of Pan and Zeus, built by Roman builders more than 2000 years ago as a shrine for thousands of
worshippers coming here after disembarking from luxury barges at the Roman port of Tyre, where they spent a few days of fun
and pleasure in the theatres, stadiums and hippodromes of that city before continuing on their way to Antioch in the Roman
colony of Syria.
This is what Edward Gibbon has to say about Roman Society
in Atioch:
Fashion was the only law, pleasure the only pursuit, and the splendour of dress and furniture
was the only distinction of the citizens of Antioch. The arts
of luxury were honoured, the serious and manly virtues were the subject of ridicule, and the contempt for female modesty and
reverent age announced the universal corruption of the capital of the East (Gibbon: The Fall of the Roman
Empire)
The great attraction to worship the shrine of Pan, like most
other Roman gods was that the worshipper could acquire qualities which the statue or idol of the god represented. So by performing
the correct ritual to Pan, which consisted of dancing with the holy goats and having an individual dressed like Pan, with
the upper body of a man and the lower body of a goat, pour water over various parts of his body the worshipper could acquire
the qualities of sexual power and gaiety which the goat appeared to possess.
The Romans had an uncountable number of gods because each
one represented different qualities which the individual considered desirable. This is the basis of Polytheism.
Judaism, on the other hand considers that God possesses all
qualities that is why He alone may be worshipped and idolatry is prohibited. This belief lies at the basis of Monotheism.
The Bible is God’s list of qualities which are illustrated
by the behavior of human beings in various situations, unlike Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and other Greek and Roman books
that make the gods the possessors of desirable and undesirable qualities.
Wishing you a great no news day
Yours truly
Leon Gork
Come for a tour with Leon
Jerusalemwalks.com
Tel: 0523801867
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