Not guilty

 Not guilty

Of getting in your way while you're trying to steal the day
Not guilty
And I'm not here for the rest, I'm not trying to steal your vest

I'm not trying to be smart, I only want what I can get
I'm really sorry for your aging head
But like you heard he said, I'm not guilty

Not guilty
For being on your street, getting underneath your feet
Not guilty
No use handing me a writ while I'm trying to do my bit

I don't expect to take your heart , I only want what I can get
I'm really sorry that you're underfed
But like you heard he said, I'm not guilty

Not guilty
For looking like a freak, making friends with every Sikh
Not guilty
For leading you astray on the roads to Mandalay

I won't upset the apple cart, I only want what I can get
I'm really sorry that you've been misled
But like you heard he said, I'm not guilty

G Harrison

sour milk sea

If your life's not right, doesn't satisfy you

Don't get the breaks like some of us do
Better work it out; find where you've gone wrong
Better do it soon as you don't have long

Get out of sour milk sea
You don't belong there
Get back to where you should be
Find out what's going on there

If you want the most from everything you do
In the shortest time your dreams come true
In no time at all it makes you more aware
Very simple process takes you there

Get out of sour milk sea
You don't belong there
Get back to where you should be
Find out what's going on there

Looking for release from limitation?
There's nothing much without illumination
Can fool-around with every different cult
There's only one way brings result

Get out of sour milk sea
You don't belong there
Get back to where you should be
Find out what's going on there

G Harrison

more on nice and not nice celebrities

 Again, what came into my box. The Jew without mitzvos is not nice and the gentile is nice.

Who is the rudest celebrity you have met, and who would be the nicest?

Don Rickles was so rude ! I was a teen and went to a fancy restaurant in Long Island with my rich aunt and uncle. He was at the table next to us. He treated the server like shit !!! He was so rude and disrespectful that I got a stomachache from watching and listening to him. He belittled and berated her so badly and she was so kind. He sent his dinner back about five or six times , left without tipping. He was absolutely disgraceful! He was alone too… Gee I wonder why?!?!Nicest was Al Pacino ! He was in peds ER with one of his twins. Asked me if there was something he could do for me. I said yes. Please visit my patient in room 15. She’s was a teen , terminal cancer ! Her brother was with her , parents were out of the country. He immediately came with me and spent about an hour chatting with them. Gave them movie tickets and his cell number💙

Have you ever met a celebrity and found they were much kinder or ruder than you expected?

Originally Answered: Have you ever met a celebrity and found they were much kinder or ruder than you have expected?

Joni Mitchell, 1967. Her songs had been recorded by Tom Paxton, Buffy Ste Marie, Dave Van Ronk. Judy Collins had a huge hit with Both Sides Now. Joni’s first album had been produced by Dave Crosby and was great. So Joni was right up there. But she still had some contractual commitments to the smaller clubs where she started out. Like The Riverboat, in Toronto. Held maybe 100 people. Yours truly goes to see her - for the umpteenth time - and afterwards wangles his way backstage to ask Joni if she can give him guitar lessons.

In her dressing room was her manager, there was Bernie, who owned The Riverboat, a guy who looked like a lawyer, and a couple of reporters from the local papers. Everyone’s going “Joni!” “Joni!” “Joni!” She puts up her hand and says, “Wait. I need to show Max a couple of things.”

I’m a nobody, a 16 year old schmo who’s politely pushy, and she told all the movers and shakers to wait while she explained a couple of things. Can you spell ‘gracious’? ‘Kind’? ‘Patient’? She was magnificent.

For the musicians reading this, she checked that I knew the open G and open D tunings and could play the basic chords. She then showed me - she wrote it out on a napkin which of course I lost - a 2-note descending line against various pedals. She also said, “There are no rules. If you like it, it’s good.”

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch on the parsha: Improper parenting Dr. Eliott Resnick

 How could Esav – a child of Yitzchak and a grandchild of Avraham – have turned out so badly?

Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch suggests (based on earlier sources) that the fault partially lies with Yitzchak and Rivkah in that they ignored “the great law of education chanoch la’naar al pi darko, ‘bring up each child in accordance with its own way’ – that each child must be treated differently with an eye to the slumbering tendencies of his nature.”

Rav Hirsch argues that Esav and Yaakov possessed very different natures and thus should have been raised differently. “To try to bring up a Yaakov and an Esav at the same school desk, make them have the same habits and hobbies, want to teach and educate them in the same way for some studious, sedate, meditative life is the surest way to court disaster,” he writes.

But isn’t there one Jewish archetype to which parents should raise their children? No, writes Rav Hirsch. “The great Jewish task in life is basically simple, one and the same for all, but in its realization is as complicated and varied as human natures and tendencies are varied.”

Rav Hirsch points out that on his deathbed, Yaakov, speaking to his 12 children, prophesied of a Jewish nation that included – yes – scholars but also merchants, farmers, and soldiers, “and he blessed all of them.”

continue

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch on the parsha: Improper parenting (israelnationalnews.com)

performance of action-oriented mitzvot

 In the beginning, as the Midrash teaches,1 G‑d “created worlds and destroyed them.” The Kabbalah explains that this refers to spiritual worlds, Supernal Sefirot (“emanations”), that first existed in one state of being and then in another. The Sefirot in the former state of being — called the World of Tohu (lit., “Chaos”) — underwent a “breaking of the vessels.” The World of Tikkun (lit., “Order”) was then built.

The Sefirot comprise orot (“lights”) and kelim (“vessels”) that contain these lights. The crisis in the World of Tohu occurred because the orot were so intense that the kelim were incapable of containing them. As a result of this breakage, sparks of holiness descended within the kelipot. These sparks are to be found in the Worlds of Beriah, Yetzirah and Asiyah in general, but particularly within the physicality of our world. It is the task of the Jew to sift this materiality by using it properly, in order to extract and refine these sparks, thereby elevating them to their original source in the World of Tohu. This elevation in turn elicits a mighty downflow of Divine energy from Tohu, and from even higher than that level.

(Certain Divine Names, whose respective Kabbalistic meanings are signified by Hebrew letter-combinations, are related to this process of beirurim, the extraction and refinement of the sparks of holiness. Thus the Name known as Ba’n (ב״ן) is the source of the fallen holy sparks; the Name Ma’h (מ״ה) is the power that extracts and elevates them; while the Name Sa’g (ס״ג) is the original source of the World of Tohu. When the extraction and elevation of the sparks deriving from the Name Ba’n is accomplished through the Name Ma’h, a lofty degree of Divine illumination is drawn down from the Name Sa’g, and is vested within the “capacious vessels” of the World of Tikkun.)

This extraction is for the most part accomplished through the performance of action-oriented mitzvot involving physical objects which derive their life-force from kelipat nogah, and which house the sparks of Tohu. Performing a mitzvah with such objects disencumbers the hidden sparks of their corporeal husk and elevates them.

Kuntres Acharon, beginning of Essay 4

If we close our eyes

 You're telling all those lies

About the good things that we can have
If we close our eyes

Do what you want to do
And go where you're going to
Think for yourself
'Cause I won't be there with you

(G. Harrison)

torah and prayer

 We thus see that in one sense Torah without proper intent is superior to prayer without proper intent, for such Torah study creates angels in the World of Yetzirah, while prayer without proper intent is repulsed. On the other hand, when the lack of proper intent in Torah study is such that it prevents it from ascending, as in the case of studying for the sake of self-aggrandizement, then this is lower than prayer without proper intent.

For one proper prayer, or even a compilation of different prayers that add up to one prayer with proper intent, elevates all the other prayers of that year. With regard to Torah study, by contrast, even if one later studies with proper intent, this does not elevate his previous study; actual repentance is required. Until such time one’s Torah study is in exile within the kelipah which spawned his ulterior motive.

Nevertheless, since all Jews will eventually repent, for7 “No one of them will be rejected,” our Sages advise that8 “one should always study Torah and perform mitzvot even when they are not done for their own sake” — and, indeed, even if they involve an ulterior motive — for eventually he will achieve the state of lishmah, when he repents. This is explained by the Alter Rebbe at the end of ch. 39 of Tanya.

Kuntres Acharon, beginning of Essay 3

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Torah for self is lower than prayer without cavanagh. What about Torah that's just for intellectual thrill?