The Terrible, Horrible, Erev Yom Kippur Brain Fart.

[richardf8]

So, as morgan1 and I were taking our final meal before our fast, we were sitting and chatting, as we often do, about work, life, theology, and politics. The subject turned to the relationship between the individual and the community -- what it is, what it isn't, what it ought to be for people with verying degrees of socialization etc. It was then I was reminded of a talmudic legend; perhaps visservoldemort can help me with the details; here is what I can recall of it.

A great Rabbi decided one day to devote himself wholly and completely to the study of Torah. He holed up in a cave and spent years poring over the texts and the commentary, meditating on its meaning, and as time passed, the light of Torah began to shine from his eyes with an ever increasing intensity. One day, nostalgic for the life he'd left behind, he came out of the cave and looked out upon the town. So intense was the light of Torah emanating from his gaze that anything his eyes would fall on -- buildings, livestock, crops, people -- was instantly immolated. The Lord appeared to the Rabbi then and said to him: get back into your cave, you are killing my people.

The moral of the story, of course, is that even though this man separated himself from the community for a holy purpose, the separation itself transformed him into something unfit for the community. Even God rejects him, telling him that it is the people living their lives that comprise God's people, and this dangerous hermit must be kept separate.

All well and good so far. But then my mind turned to wondering: this guy can immolate stuff with his gaze. That's got to be good for something. Problem is its always on.

OK, so what if we put some glasses with that special eclipse-watching glass in them on this guy. Or we could get maybe 5 talmudic rabbis together and put them in a Battle-Mecha, and Laser-boy (We could call him Rabbi Eleazar) could be in the head and they could open shutters to let his gaze out to destroy enemies and stuff. Only it couldn't be a mecha, per se, because these are talmudic rabbis, not Japanese orphans, so it would be a Golem that one of the other rabbis made, kinda like the Golem of Prague.

And they'd have adventures like rescuing guys from dragons so they could get back to the synagogue to complete a minyan, and such like.

And the most horrible aspect of all this is that since it happened before we even started our fast, I can't blame it on hypoglycemia.

Comments

[morgan1.livejournal.com]

As I recall, we were having coffee at the time. Blame the bean!

[makovette.livejournal.com]

You are a very disturbed, and very very funny fellow :-)

CYa!
Mako

[richardf8]

That's a relief, because disturbed and unfunny is just . . . frightening.

[deckardcanine.livejournal.com]

First time I've seen you so goofy in your thoughtful LJ. I'm also surprised you didn't mention Cyclops, the X-Man. Maybe you don't pay attention to that kind of thing.

[timtylor.livejournal.com]

(Laughs at volume) To quote the philospher Hobbes (I think): Your train of thought is a runaway. :D

[timtylor.livejournal.com]

Or maybe it was Ozymandias Llewellyn. I need to write these things down.

[deckardcanine.livejournal.com]

Ozy has often been compared to Hobbes the tiger, who was named after Thomas Hobbes.

[richardf8]

The DC and Marvel universes may as well not exist for me; never liked 'em, never will.

I got into comics through Newspaper Comics, 'Zines, and Web-Comics.

[richardf8]

I'm thinking Ozy; I suppose I could try to find it in the archives. But I don't think Hobbes would have ever accused Calvin of "thought."