Talmudic discourses 5

 

 :Hindert hayzer zol er hobn, in
yeder  hoyz a hindert tsimern, in yeder tsimer tsvonsik betn un kadukhes zol im
varfn  fin eyn bet in der tsveyter.***

FROM: Rabbi Judy:

To: Arthur
Translate, please, for those of us who don't know Yiddish! HI. THE TRANSLATION, WAS UNDER MY NAME, BUT WAS CUT OFF. THE BEST TRANSLATION IS:***"A hundred houses shall he have, in every house a hundred rooms and in every room twenty beds, and a delirious fever should drive him from bed to bed."

I truly don't like to curse, but sometimes a parent, or in my case my Yiddisha grandparents (obm), did Yiddish cursing, as means of  instruction

.

Case in point from the Talmud:

The most sublime blessings are couched in most dreadful terms. This is because whenever a blessing is bestowed by heaven, it must first pass through the heavenly court, where the prospective recipient is judged as to whether or not he is worthy of the blessing. When the blessing is "disguised" as a curse, however, it "bypasses" the forces of strict judgment and can make its way straight to its recipient. In the Talmud (Moed Kattan 9b) we are told that Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai (author of the Zohar) sent his son, Rabbi Elazar, to receive the blessings of a few of the sages. They bestowed upon him what sounded like a string of curses: "May it be the will [of God] that you sow and not reap…let your house be destroyed…let your table be disturbed, and may you not see a new year." His father, expounder of the soul of Torah, revealed to him the meaning of their "blessings," the soul of their words. These sublime blessings had to be couched in terms that seemed to be the opposite of blessing. 

 

When one hears the admonitions read from the Torah either at the end of Leviticus or in Deuteronomy in Ki Tavo, when a Zaddik chants these curses, one does not hear them as curses, but the subconsious meanings, which are really blessings.

 

There is a Kaballistic ceremony with its origins in the Talmud of a serious death curse called the Pulsa diNura (lashes of fire in Aramaic).(Tractate Hagigah 15a) in which God is asked to unleash angels of destruction to block heavenly forgiveness of the subject's sins, causing all the curses named in the Bible to befall him resulting in his death.

 

Then again, I was told the following by a bus driver in Ashdod when I didn't have the correct change and was holding up his line: "Im hayu samim et hamo'ach shelcha b'tarnegol, hu haya ratz yashar l'shochet!"

 

May we all avoid the bitter waters this Shabbat.

 

Many Blessings,
 Arthur
 Arthur Segal

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