A Sample Issue
Due to fiscal constraints, we are no longer publishing Pumbedissa Journal, but please avail yourself to the following excerpted articles from back issues.
Table of Contents
Ancient Jewish teachings about the sanctity and spirituality of the
earth
By Rabbi Gershon Winkler
Re-Interpreting the Prohibition of Homosexual Activity: A Responsum
By Gershon the Winkler
Judaism, God, and Inclusivity
By Gershon the Winkler
From the Talmud of the Schmelves, Baba Maysa 33c
From the Schmelvic Book of the Almost Dead But Not Quite
From the Ancient Scriptures of the Schmelves
Tidbits of Ancient Jewish wisdom
From the Talmud of the Schmelves
Kabbalistic Textual vs. Oral Transmission
Was the Founder of Chassidism a Shaman?
Ancient
Jewish Use of Cypress, Myrtle, and Willows
Re-Interpreting the Prohibition of Homosexual Activity: A Responsum
By Gershon the Winkler
QUESTION: I Read in your book your interpretation of the Torah's prohibition against homosexual acts, and even though you provide ample sources from the tradition to back you up, I still run into resistance when I approach the topic with my rabbi. He insists that the prohibition is absolute, your arguments notwithstanding, and my continuous wrestling with the issue is becoming a lonely experience. Can you offer some encouragement?
RESPONSE Judaism would have died off centuries ago if not for the long cherished tradition we have of constantly challenging and wrestling with our texts and traditions. It is, in other words, Jewish tradition to challenge tradition. I welcome your wrestling and honor it and celebrate it. Thank you. It shows that you are alive. That you feel. That you are not numbed by dogma. "The Jewish prophets," wrote Abraham Joshua Heschel, "were those who spoke out against what we today call Religion." So keep speaking out. Keep challenging. Keep listening to your inner voice when it protests something in the Torah or in the Jewish religion that smacks of wrongness. It is the only way you will ever learn, and in many cases you will discover in the responses to your queries that the question fades away because it arose out of misconcenption, misunderstanding, mis-learning, all plagues that have stricken pretty much most of our people over the past century of unprecedented Jewish ignorance around Judaism. The fact is that most Jews today were spoonfed some shallow labelled Judaism, fed to them by teachers, parents, and rabbis whose own relationship and knowledge of Judaism is based more on contemporary how-to books than on the original sources and their rich spiritual treasures. Another sad fact is that most Jews today know their scriptures mainly through the out-of-context renditions by the Church or as innocenlty misrepresented to them by well-meaning Christians. Most Jews today hold religious moral and ethical values that are as un-Jewish as pork on Yom Kippur.
The Jewish scriptural prohibition against homosexuality appears in the context of laws concerning cultic rites performed by seven specific nations whose religious worship rites we were instructed not to emulate in our own worship (Leviticus 18:3 and 22; 20:13 and 23; Deuteronomy 23:18). Therefore the wording is: "to lay with a man as with a woman," something a true homosexual man does not do. The prohibition is against a horny heterosexual man using another man for sex, which ritually occurred in ancient religious worship among some of those seven nations our ancestors were warned against emulating. To translate that prohibition, therefore, as applying to any homosexual relationship context is to translate it in such a way that it leaves the realm of any divine ordination and enters instead the realm of subjective mortal homophobia.
The ancient rabbis must have had some sense of this problem when they ruled 2100 years ago that any homosexual sex short of anal intercourse was NOT included in the biblical prohibition (Babylonian Talmud, Yevamot 54a-56a; Sotah 26b; Nidah 13a; see Maimonides' Perush L'Mishnayot on Sanhedrin 54a). Why did they bother to offer that qualification if it was so clear to them that homosexuality was forbidden? Also, lesbianism, according to Jewish law, was never prohibited. And though a single third century rabbi attempted to legislate against it, he was overruled by the majority of the sages (Babylonian Talmud, Yevamot 76a). Writing about lesbianism, Maimonides rules: "It is neither a biblical nor a rabbinic prohibition" (Perush L'Mishnayot on Sanhedrin 54a).
QUESTION Can you tell me how you know that the reference is only to forced sex substituting for sex with a woman? What religions practiced that act at that time? What sources tell us they did that? What were the specific acts? How were they used in their worship?
RESPONSE I quote from Erich Neimann in The Great Mother, a book about the ancient cults active during the period the Levitical proscriptions evolved, and after:
"Not only is the male sacrificed to the Great Mother, but he becomes her representative, a female wearing her dress. Whether he sacrifices his masculinity in castration or in male prostitution is only a variant. The eunuchs are, as priests, also sacred prostitutes, for the kedeshim [male sacred prostitutes], like the kedeshot or female sacred prostitutes, are representatives of the goddess whose orgiastic sexual character excels her fertility character-- The male votaries of the Great Goddess who prostituted themselves in her name were called kelavim, 'dogs,' and wore women's clothing" (Erich Neumann in The Great Mother [Bollingen, Princeton, NJ:1955]; see also Robert Graves and Raphael Patai in Hebrew Myths: The Book of Genesis [McGraw-Hill, NY:1966], p. 169).
In Deuteronomy 23:18-19, the prohibition is spelled out as against both female and male sacred prostitutes, and the term "dog" (see above quote) as in "price of a dog" is mentioned as an invalid donation to the Temple. Although it was forbidden, there were times that our people fell back on the ways of the Seven Nations they were supposed to have driven out, but obviously had not, ways outlined in the Levitical sex abominations, which included, again, nonrelational sex with male sacred prostitutes (for example: 1 Kings 14:24 and 22:47; 2 Kings 23:7). Philo describes the practices as follows:
"They would apply themselves to deep drinking of strong liquor and dainty feeding and forbidden forms of intercourse. Not only in their mad lust for women did they violate the marriage of their neighbors, but also men mounted males...Then, little by little they acustomed those who were by nature men to submit to play the part of women..." (Philo On Abraham, Chapter 26 (pages 134-136 in Volume 6 of the F.H. Colson edition of the Loeb Library edition of Philo [William Heinemann, London: 1958-1962]).
QUESTION Isn't the context of the prohibition on homosexuality, the entire litany of forbidden acts such as sex with a sister, step-mother, etc. Were these all acts committed by other religions of the time? What sources do we have to tell us this?
RESPONSE These were common practices in Egypt and surrounding cultures, which aim was not only ritual but more selfishly to keep property within the family clan (Margaret Murray in The Splendor That Was Egypt [Hawthorn, NY: 1963], pp. 100-101; and Robert Briffault in The Mothers [Macmillan, NY:1927] Volume 3, page 17...et al).
Ancient Jewish teachings about the sanctity and spirituality of the
earth
By Rabbi Gershon Winkler
"You find that when the Holy Blessed One desired to create the primeval human, she consulted the ministering angels and said to them: 'Should we make the human?' Said they: 'What is the human that you even bother thinking about them?' (Psalms 8:5). Replied the Creator: 'The human that I wish to create, its wisdom is superior to yours.' What did Creator then do? She gathered all of the animals and wildlife and birds and stood them before the angels, and said: 'Okay, assign them names.' The angels just stood there and didn't know what to call them. She then brought all of them to the primeval human and said to it: 'What are the names of these?' Said the human: 'Master of all the universes! It is fitting to call this one Ox, and to this one it is fitting to call Lion, and to this one Horse, and to that one Camel, and to the other one Eagle,' and so with all the other animals. Said Creator: 'And what about you? What shall be your name?' Said the human: 'Earth Being (Ahdam), because I was created from the Earth (Ahdamah).'" [Midrash Kohelet Rabbah 7:32]
The tradition in Judaism that the human was formed out of the earth is more than a simplistic metaphor or colorful homily. The theme runs continuously and consistently throughout the scriptural, legalistic, midrashic, and kabbalistic avenues of Jewish spiritual teachings. For example, in the Book of Genesis (2:7), the narrator of the creation story informs us that Creator formed the human out of the earth. In the Midrash, the second-century Rabbi Shim'on ben El'azar taught that not only was the human created out of a clump of soil but out of earth gathered from all four directions (Midrash B'reishis Rabbah 8:1). In the Jewish mystical tradition, the Book of the Zohar describes Creator as forming the human out of the earth of the site of the sacred space of the Holy of Holies atop Mount Moriah in Jerusalem, and that each of the four winds of the four directions were then summoned to gift the primeval human with each its particular power and attribute (Zohar, Vol. 1, folio 130b and Vol. 2, folio 23b). These and other sources imply that the human is a living microcosm of the entire planet earth, and whose very soul is imbued with the powers of the four winds. As the second-century Rabbi Shim'on ben Lakish put it: "All that the Holy Blessed One created in the human had been created in the earth to resemble the human" (Midrash Kohelet Rabbah 1:9).
The twelfth-century Rabbi Moshe ibn Maimon in the beginning of his codification of Jewish law and practice taught that the earth, the planets, the stars, suns, and moons, all of what we call inanimate or mineral, are as imbued with divine Soul as is any other living being (Mishnah Torah, Hil'chot Y'sodei Hatorah 3:9). His teaching is more a reminder to the reader than an introduction of anything new to Jewish tradition: "Praise the Creator, O sun and moon, all you stars of light--mountains and hills, fruit trees and all cedars; beasts, cattle, creeping-crawlies and winged beings--all of them praise Infinite One" (Book of Psalms 148:3-4 and 7-11). "The Israelite does not distinguish between a living and a lifeless nature. A stone is not merely a lump of material substance. It is, like all living things, an organism with peculiar forces of a certain mysterious capacity, only known to him that is familiar with it--The earth is a living thing"(Johannes Pederson in Israel: Its Life and Culture [Oxford University Press, 1959], p. 55). Thus, the earth is not merely a sacred concept that exists outside of and separate from the human, which sacredness the human then connects to periodically through rituals and ceremonies. Rather, the earth is an integral component of the human composition. More, the earth and the human are synonymous with one another. They are one and the same. They are named after one another. What we do to the earth, we do to the human, and what we do to the human we do the earth (Genesis 6:11-13). When Cain kills his brother Abel, the cry of the consequence of his action originates from the earth: "The cry of the blood of your brother calls out to me from the earth" (Genesis 4:10).
The human's relationship to the earth, then, involves a serious covenantal relationship (Job 5:23), which, when betrayed, promises consequences of deprivation (Deuteronomy 11:17) and exile (Leviticus 18:25), and which, when honored, promises longevity and a peaceful life (Job 5:23-26; Deuteronomy 11:21). "The Israelites do not acknowledge the distinction between the psychic and the corporeal. Earth and stones are alive, imbued with a soul, therefore able to receive mental subject-matter and bear the impress of it. The relation between the earth and its owner--is a covenant-relation, a psychic community, and the owner does not solely prevail in the relation. The earth has its nature, which makes itself felt and demands respect" (Johannes Pederson in Israel: Its Life and Culture [Oxford University Press,1959], p. 479).
Ancient Jewish rites for invoking mystical experience and for vision questing also involved the earth, ranging from lying down on the earth with stones arranged around the head (Genesis 28:11), to assuming a fetal-like position while facing the earth (1 Kings 18:42). Weeping, too, is among the rites of achieving mystical experience, employed quite often by the second century Rabbi Shim'on bar Yochai (Sefer HaZohar, Vol. 3, folio 166b) while also assuming the fetal-like position of "head between the knees." It is obvious from these accounts and others that the revelatory experience emanates from the earth: "Converse with the earth, and she will reveal to you" (Job 12:8). Upon completion of his vision, Rabbi Shim'on would kiss the earth he had been facing during the entire quest (Sefer HaZohar, Vol. 3, folio 166b and 168a). As the tenth-century Rabbi Hai Ga'on summed it up: "[The seeker of mystical experience] must fast a certain number of days, put his head between his knees, and whisper many traditional chants and prayers to the earth. Then he is shown the inner mysteries of the earth and is invited to journey through her seven chambers" (Quoted in Neil Asher Silberman's Heavenly Powers: Unraveling the Secrets of the Kabbalah [Grosset Putnam, 1998], p. 36). The mystical experience involved could be some profound wisdom, or it could be the revelation of a technique for performing a specific act of sorcery (Midrash Heichalot Rabati 1:3).
These seven mystical chambers of the earth to which Rabbi Hai Gaon alluded play no less a role in spiritual questing as do the more popularly known Seven Heavenly Chambers. In fact, the ancient teachers gave them both equal importance, and taught that both meet and conjoin in common mystery at the Seventh Chamber (Zohar, Vol. 1, folio 38a). Each chamber corresponds to one of seven names of the earth (which vary in different texts) and wields a particular attribute:
Eretz, meaning Compressed, whose attribute is Wisdom; Adahmah, meaning Clay, whose attribute is Peace; Ar'ka, meaning Inward, whose attribute is Grace; Yabashah, meaning Dry Earth in Relationship to Water, whose attribute is Potential; Tehvel, meaning Habitation, whose attribute is Bounty; Char'vah, meaning Destruction/Eruption, whose attribute is Life; Gey'a, meaning Gulley, whose attribute is Power.
The sanctity of the earth is described in the Jewish tradition beyond its relationship to the human, but also its relationship to the divine, whose presence, we are reminded, is no less in the earth as in the heavens: "And you will then know that I am Infinite One who dwells deep within the earth" (Exodus 8:18). The ancient rabbis further dramatized the sacredness of the earth by over her" (Genesis 2:15).
Judaism, God, and Inclusivity
By Gershon the Winkler
My take on God is that God is very inclusive. I get this sense not only from my tradition but also from living out in the wilderness for the past eighteen years, where day in and day out I experience God as non-denominational, involved as much with a sapling trying to grow out of a sandstone cliff as with a lazy good-for-nothing mortal not trying to do anything but pry open a bag of chips. In the Hebrew scriptures, too, you find nonchalant mention of how God is busily raising Ishmael (Genesis 21:20), not only Isaac. And how the prophet Jonah learns the hard way that God cares not just for Israel but just as much for the people of Ninveh, and not only the people of Ninveh, but also for their cattle (Jonah 4:11).
Commenting on the Book of Job, the ancient rabbis taught:
In the Book of Job it is written: "And no stranger has been left to sleep outside" (Job 31:32). For the Holy Blessed One does not disqualify anyone from divine concern and compassion, rather receives all; the gates are wide open every moment, and all who wish to enter may enter. Therefore does scripture say: "And no stranger has been left to sleep outside." (Midrash Sh'mos Rabbah 19:4)
And of course there is Psalms 145:9 -- "Infinite One is good to all, and his compassion extends unto all of his works." All, not excluding any person, plant, animal, or star.
Now, granted, sometimes we get the sense that God expects us to be inclusive towards our fellow human while God Itself seems more exclusive, selective and discriminate, in relating to and in approving of humankind. But it is nothing more than that: a sense. A sense born out of our experience of, or reaction to, the injustice and unfairness we see and hear about daily. Seems like God's with the folks down the street all the time because everything is going well for them and they're always buying winning lottery tickets -- and everything is going wrong for the folks around the corner because they're always undergoing surgery for one thing or another, or their plumbing is always breaking down, or there's a death in the family over there at least twice a month.
But I believe that God is as much with the latter folks as with the former. A person's fate or lot in life is for me not any form of accurate measurement for determining the level or degree of God's concern for them. I cannot judge God's degree of presence in someone's life by the degree of their tragedy. God is with each of us like a mother eagle, "hovering," meaning caring and watching over all of us but hands-off enough so as not to interfere with the priceless gift of our free will. God is depicted in the Hebrew scriptures as an "eagle hovering over its chicks" (Deuteronomy 32:11). Interestingly, in reading this verse carefully you can get a glimpse of the mystery of life in the hereandnow all in a single solitary scriptural sentence, as follows:
"Like an eagle stirring up its nest..." -- God stirs us up to get us going, to shake us out of our stupor.
"Hovering over its chicks..." -- God then watches over us like a parent watching over their kid taking her first bicycle ride without training wheels, leaving us enough room to deal with it and to grow by it and to come to our own power through it.
"Spreading its wings over them..." God protects us just enough that we are not overshadowed and can still sense the gift of Selfhood as we make our efforts, face our challenges.
"Gathering them up and..." God takes us back after our time is up down here, "Carrying them on its wings..." God basks us in the bliss of real-time connection with God that is no longer in the "hovering" sense but in the actual touch, holding, carrying sense, with no further worries or concerns.
In conclusion, I have seen and heard about miracles happening for Christians, for Buddhists, for Jews, for Sufis, for Moslems, for Lakotas, for Navajos, for Choctaws, for Hindus, for Agnostics, and for Atheists. To me, this is a clear statement that God is there for everyone, inclusively and indiscriminately. Even for a single blade of grass in some far away uninhabited place on the edge of the earth (as taught in the Jerusalem Talmud, Ta'anit 3:2).
Look around you and observe how God's presence is in all beings, in all people, in all creations, caring for them, gardening them to fruition, patiently waiting even to the dying breath of those devoted to sinfulness (Midrash Pesik'ta D'Rav Kahanah 163b).
If this does not indicate a God of inclusivity, then what, pray tell, would?
And then there's the verse in Isaiah:
In that day shall Israel be third alongside Egypt and Assyria, as a blessing on earth; for the Infinite One of the Many will bless them, saying "Blessed be My people Egypt, My handiwork, Assyria, and My inheritance, Israel." -- Book of Isaiah 19:24
Or as God tells us through the Hebrew prophet Amos: "Did I not bring out the Israelites from Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor, and Aram from Kir?" (Book of Amos 9:7).
The people of Aram were, after all, exiled by Sancharib to Kir (2 Kings 16:9) as mentioned earlier in Amos (1:5). The Philistines had been invaded by the people of Caphtor (Deuteronomy 2:23) from whom they eventually were liberated and became a power in their own right. The Philistines were of the Avvim mentioned in Deuteronomy 2:23, as alluded to in Jeremiah 47:4. So, again, God is depicted in the Hebrew Scriptures as being involved with other peoples no less than with the Jewish people.
These and other like teachings in the Jewish tradition demonstrate that in the ancient Jewish mindset there is no such thing as any one right path for everyone. Judaism does not put itself up to be the only right path. We believe there is wisdom among other peoples, too (Midrash Eichah Rabbah 2:13).
It is written: "There never again arose among the Israelites a prophet as great as Moses" (Deuteronomy 34:10), among the Israelites there never again arose a prophet as great as Moses, but amongst other peoples, it is certainly probable." (Midrash Bamid'bar Rabbah 14:19)
Anyone who claims that Torah is the only true path has obviously never read the Torah without first removing their sunglasses. One scholar wrote: "we can fall into darkness simply by straying from the Torah path." Statements like this are sorely misleading and imply that the Torah path is the only true will of God for all. Now, if he were solely addressing Jews, then fine. Jews need to stick to their path, Torah. But if his book was addressing the universe, it is a false statement.
A great many people worldwide try real hard to stick to biblical traditions in their endeavor to discover the "right path." But I propose that all that bible stuff is plagiarized material ripped off from the Jewish people by Christianity and Islam who then declared it absolute and universally applicable even though neither religion abides by it. In fact, both religions were forced to invent their own supplemental scriptures because they couldn't get their hands on the Jewish oral tradition that accompanied the Hebrew scriptures, as in "batteries not included."
If you want to find the right God path, chances are you're already there. God is not a member of any denomination or religious persuasion (Midrash Sh'mot Rabbah 19:4). Otherwise, we Jews would have made great effort in proselytizing our way to the rest of the world. We didn't do this because we believe that everyone goes to heaven, Jew and non-Jew alike (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 105a and Tosef'ta Sanhedrin 13:1), because God cares about your actions, not your religious affiliation, and it is your actions in life that determine your station in the hereafter, not your religion (Midrash Tana D'Bei Eliyahu Rabbah 10:1). And that all paths that strive to improve the individual and honor the creations are godly, not just ours. Most of our converts through the millennia came to us because they liked what we had, not because we went after them threatening them or insisting that our way was the only truth. When King Solomon built the first temple, he included non-Jews in his vision, that they, too, can come and worship there. He didn't say they had to convert first, but to come as they are and find there, too, a place to engage God no less than any Jew who came there (1 Kings 8:41-43).
This is why you will find no less than thirty-six mentions in the Torah of the ger toshav, or literally: "The stranger [non-Jew] who dwells with you," a category of Israelite short of a convert, whom we were instructed to "love as yourself" (Leviticus 19:34). All that they were required to observe were seven simple rules of basic morality known as the Seven Laws of Noah:
1. Not to murder (as opposed to killing in self-defense) 2. Not to steal 3. Not to be cruel toward animals 4. Not to commit sexual abuse, including using sex to destroy someone's marriage 5. Not to worship as the source of all powers anything other than Creator 6. Not to invoke any of the sacred, magically powerful God names to curse someone 7. And the mandate to establish a system of justice in every community.
Judaism teaches that any non-Jew who lives minimally by these seven very basic Noahide laws is considered a Righteous Member of the Nations of the World with full equal status like any Jewish-born citizen of the Hebrew Nation, and considered no less an Israelite than a Jew (Babylonian Talmud, Megilah 13a).
See? Inclusive.
From the Talmud of the Schmelves, Baba Maysa 33c
It once happened that Rabbi Dorten and Rabbi Hinnen were walking on the road in the heat of day when a gnat landed on Rabbi Hinnen's forehead. Noticing the gnat, Rabbi Dorten slapped Rabbi Hinnen's forehead. Rabbi Hinnen was startled by the slap and slapped Rabbi Dorten on his forehead. His feelings hurt, Rabbi Dorten slapped Rabbi Hinnen on the forehead a second time and the two continued slapping one another until they wrestled each other to the ground. While they were fighting, their wives Ahzoy and Geyt'us passed by and stopped for a moment to observe their husbands scuffling. Said Ahzoy: "Would two gnats behave thus?" Replied Geyt'us: "Now I understand the Talmudic teaching that if it goes to your head, remember that the gnat preceded you in the order of creation." Said Rabbi Lomirdavenen: "How did the women know that a gnat had been involved?" Said Rabbi Nochnisht: "They derived it from the verse, 'Thou shalt not bear a grudge or take revenge.' Read it not as 'not' but as 'gnat.'" Rabbi Veizmir said: "From the verse 'Thou shalt not plow thy field with thy ox and thy donkey hitched together.' Read it not as 'not' but as 'gnat.' For Rabbi Hinnen is likened unto an ox and Rabbi Dorten unto a donkey." Said Rabbi Nochnisht: "And who is the field?" Said Rabbi Veizmir: "You are." Said Rabbi Nochnisht: "And you are the hitch." And they broke into a fight when their wives Gevalt and Nu walked in. Said Gevalt: "Blessed is the one who graced us with men who fight out of their love for Torah." Said Nu: "And blessed is the one who gave us the Torah to keep our men preoccupied so that we women could go on with the real business of living."
From the Schmelvic Book of the Almost Dead But Not Quite
He who gazes upon a leaf with one eye shall merit to gaze upon a leaf with both eyes. It was said of Rabbi Gornisht that he was wont to gaze upon leaves with three eyes, two of his own and one belonging to a disciple. Who was the disciple? Rabbi Hobmir said it was none other than Rabbi Schloffen bar Cholem; Rabbi Vaksenviatsibeleh said it was none other than Rabbi Lozmir. Rabbi Feiltmir said that actually Rabbi Gornisht gazed upon leaves with four eyes, two of his own and one from Rabbi Lozmir and one from Rabbi Schloffen. Just then, Rabbi Hobmir's wife Genuk entered the House of Study with a frying pan and smashed them both over the head, saying: "Blessed is the one who exempted us from the studies confined to men."
From the Ancient Scriptures of the Schmelves
And it came to pass on the morrow of the yore that Geyavek, lord of the Schmelves, went out to battle against the Nudniks and the Dybbuks. And they called unto him, saying: "Why seekest thou to war against us? Hath we but taken from thee or thine so much as a single donkey?" And Geyavek sent unto them, saying: "I seek neither thy harm nor thy destruction. I seek only to war against thee, for mine wife hath her period and I, being of the male clan, envy her and thus doth I thirsteth for blood of my own. And therefore doth I pursue thee to draw thy blood and for thee to draw mine." And it came to pass that Geyavek gathered four hundred foot soldiers and seventeen crates of Tampons and went off to make war against the Nudniks and the Dybbuks. And it happened that as he prepared to leave the village with his army that his wife spake unto him, saying: "Alas! it was not my period after all! I am pregnant with thy child!" And it was evening and it was morning, and Geyavek sent peace offerings to the Nudniks and the Dybbuks and called the Schmelves together and made a great celebration and named his child "Dotwasclose."
Tidbits of Ancient Jewish Wisdom
It is far simpler to raise an entire orchard of olive trees in the most arid of deserts than to raise a single child in the best of villages. Midrash B'reishis Rabbah 20:15
If you must discipline someone, don't push them away with both hands. Rather, as your left hand pushes them away, make sure that your right hand brings them closer to you. Babylonian Talmud, Sotah 47a
From the Talmud of the Schmelves, Tractate of Baba Meiseh, folio 133j
We have learned: Never walk three cubits behind six women. Rabbi Punktyetz said: "Four cubits behind four women and two men." Rabbi Ungehpatsht said: "Ten cubits behind three women, six men, and one duck." Rabbi Lozmir said: "Four cubits behind two-and-a-half women." Rabbi Soandso said: "Four cubits behind Rabbi Lozmir." And the law is like Rabbi Soandso.
One should never walk more than four cubits without shrugging a shoulder, as is written: "What does God ask of you but that you shrug?" Said Rabbi Lozmir: "And from whence do we know that 'shrug' implies the shoulder? Perhaps it means a leg, as is written, 'Shake a leg, shake a leg, sayeth the Lard.'" Said Rabbi Soandso: "For it is written , 'I shrugged and my shoulder hurt.'" Said Rabbi Lozmir: "Yes, but it is also written, 'And it came to pass that they shrugged and ran.' Is it customary for people to run on their shoulders?" Said Rabbi Soandso: "But it is also written, 'And it happened that as he drew nigh onto them that their noses ran.' Is it possible for noses to run?"
As they were debating, Derinnen the wife of Rabbi Soandso walked by and asked: "About what are you debating, to begin with?" Said they: "Alas! We have forgotten!" Rabbi Soandso then shrugged while Rabbi Lozmir wiped his nose. Said she to them: "I have learned in the court of Rabbi Azoigeyts, 'Those who debate and forget the subject of their debate, are likened onto those who plow and forget to plant.'"
Kabbalistic Textual vs. Oral Transmission
All the teachings of the great kabbalist Rabbi Yitz'chak Luria, may his memory be for a blessing, are true from one point of view and not true from another point of view. They are true as understood by Rabbi Yitz'chak Luria and others like him, but not true at all in the way we understand them. This is because all that is written in the books is the plain sense of the Kabbalah, which is not truth, only the esoteric sense of the Kabbalah alone is truth, and it cannot be written down in any book!
(18th-century Kabbalist Rabbi Ya'akov of Emden advocating that Kabbalah remain confined to oral transmission [Mit'pachat S'forim, pp. 77-78])
Was the Founder of Chassidism a Shaman?
He asked me whether I had studied the Kabbalah. I answered that I had. A book was lying in front of him on the table and he instructed me to read aloud from the book. I recited a few paragraphs to him.
He then stopped me and said, "Here, let me show you how to read it."
He began to read, and while he was reading he rose, trembling, and lay me down upon the bed in the shape of a circle. I was not able to see him any more. I only heard voices and beheld awesome visions. From this encounter I learned to never study the Kabbalah, only to experience her. (18th-century Rabbi Dov Ber of Mezeritsch writing about his first encounter with the Ba'al Shem Tov [Shiv'chei HaBesh't, pp. 128-129])
Ancient Jewish Use of Cypress, Myrtle, and Willows
At the birth of a girl, a cypress (or other evergreen) tree is planted, and at the birth of a boy a cedar tree is planted. When they are ready to marry, two branches are cut from each tree to make up the four poles that hold up the chuppah (Babylonian Talmud, Gittin 57a).
Myrtle represents immortality, and sprigs of myrtle were often buried with the dead to aid the soul in her journey. In ancient times, its scent was inhaled during the passing of the Sabbath (Saturday night) and two bouquets of myrtle were used to welcome the Sabbath. In the sukah ceremony, boughs of myrtle were used to invoke the spirits of the ancestors (The Encyclopedia of Jewish Symbols by Ellen Frankel [Jason Aronson 1995] page 116).
It is an ancient Jewish custom to use willow branches left over from the harvest rites of Sukot to start the fires of the oven for baking matzoh for Passover, this is to link the spring and fall harvests (The Encyclopedia of Jewish Symbols by Ellen Frankel [Jason Aronson 1995]page 193).