hodayot [thanksgivings] for today


My Body, my Partner, my God
I give thanks to our Metabolism
the complete set of chemical reactions that occur in our living cells.
These processes are the basis of life, allowing cells to grow and reproduce, maintain their structures, and respond to their environments.
Metabolism is usually divided into two categories.
Catabolism yields energy,
an example being the breakdown of food in cellular respiration.
Anabolism, on the other hand, uses this energy
to construct components of cells such as proteins and nucleic acids.

I'm grate-full that in the midst of my "sacrificing"
Cain's need la-tet [to give]
I could coach Meirav and "give" something
"give" to her
"give" from me....

Big Brother Drama

This time my "wishful" guess was wrong:
not Yossi was dismissed by the public but Asher.
Asher has transformed under the eyes of the public during the last 2 weeks,
and I very much wanted to go on and watch this transformation.

I suspect, that the "lobby" of the Sephardic Jews, especially in the town of Ashkalon,
the home of father Yossi and daughter Einav,
is stronger than the "lobby" of Religious Jews in Asher's town Tiberias,
especially since most religious Jews may have objected to Asher's participation
in the first place or may detest and not watch the program at all

So I personally have to continue and watch Yossi, whom I judge heavily:
his unabashed contempt for his peers
and his incapacity to learn, enjoy or change in any way
(Leon to him: "But you can learn so much here!"
sarcastic laughter: "Learn? It's the same all the time, what's different here?")
but to be fair, he also impressed me several times,
when he expressed his appreciation for his wife
and his caring for his daughter.
The latter, by the way, came again to the forefront,
when Big Brother asked him: "Have you learnt something about your daughter?"
"Yes, I learnt about her being weak!
At home and among her friends she is the big boss,
and here - she wants to run away ever so often!"
(So he did learn something, after all, only what is it, he learnt?
His own weakness - denied so fiercely - also came to the forefront
through his dramatized contempt for Asher's asking for forgiveness,
after he had been punished by Big Brother for his intrigues,
together with Yossi's daughter Einav,
against Shifra and Tzabar after their Rosh-Hashanah "crime" against religion.
Even now - 11:10, when I heard Yossi talk to Itai, while I had breakfast-
he said it again: "The poor guy (Asher) fell because he has no spine."


Another enormous shortage in the Big Brother game is the fact,
that their is no teaching of "social skills" whatsoever,
neither before nor during the game.
Either the organizers have no idea, that such skills can be learnt,
or they believe, that "suspense" will suffer, if people don't fight.

IN addition to the truly abominable rule of "Mutual Betrayal"
(Ranin came to the "confession-room" devastated :
"I so much hate myself for having proposed Einav for dismissal.
I was vacillating between her and Asher,
and if I could return to the day before yesterday, I would choose Asher.
Now Einav is sharing her pain with me about all the people,
whom she suspects to have proposed her for dismissal,
believing she can trust nobody any longer,
but she is sure, that I am not one of them.
I feel choked ...)

[by the way, the background of this frame - right at this point -
shows the hands of Einav, which I once photographed]


Itai:
"For how long can you be in the ass of each other, even when you are in love.
We also have to spend time apart from each other, each one alone."
It's the old rule of Ecclesiastes, taught by me ever so often [for instance in a song]:
"There's a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing".
[Recently I zapped into a doc of 2001 "Eboded" "on a lonely island"
- the couple - very happily married - said,
that in addition to the dire problems of physical survival - hunger, rats -
the problem was, "what to do with our time",
and how to part sometimes, so as to think about the other and yearn for him.]
On the photo, by the way, they laugh because Vanessa mimicked a phone-call
- so perfectly as did Mika , when she called her big sister Elah on Shabbat

Finetuning to my Present

I must confess, that a fantasy has started to nestle in my mind,
ever since I showed Micha - during our Succot celebration in the desert -
what my perspective is of what he calls an "abominal reality show" :
("Ra'ayah started to watch it, then Ayelet, the last time even Arnon, only I ....")

The fantasy depicts me
as "a teacher for all Israel by walking my talk in a live community".
The fantasy is, of course, totally opposed to what my whole being knows:
that my assignment on this planet is becoming full-filled
"without anyone even knowing that I am there".

Still, the fantasy helps me to radiate on the people who set the game up,
what I think would improve its influence on the public:


I understand that the rule of "dismissal" [Ayelet: "a rule in all reality shows!"]
(if the term in English is indeed "elimination", I'll try to not use it any longer!)
is vital for providing "enough suspense",
without which "the rating" will be low.

I also understand - now! not before! - the importance of this combination:
Each inhabitant of "the house" proposes 2 people for dismissal,
while the public votes for whom of the 3-5 final candidates they want to stay.
But it is vicious and the ugliest of devices
- unworthy of the decendants of the Jewish people
who so often became the victims of defamation and betrayal
to let the "inmates" propose their candidates  b e h i n d  their back.
It wouldn't decrease "suspense" - on the contrary it would increase it -
if the group would sit together
and everybody would listen,
when everybody would SHARE
their unavoidable proposals and the reasons for those.
Of course, the Big Brother voice, in this case,
should come from an expert
who can facilitate such a difficult, but highly teaching process.

[the fantasy vanished totally
and was replaced by horror scenarios
about me having to live in such a prison for 100 days,
but it rose its head again and intensely on November 11,
only to make room for more horror scenarios
which probably derive from that past life,
in which I rotted in a dungeon,
"and he didn't die for a very long time"....]

I suddenly understand that even Arnon himself was not pleased with the fact,
that I "used" the duet which he and Yael had played for my birthday,
in order to add my own creation of "lyrics", so as to make their music singable.
How often have I encountered this phenomenon which I can't really grasp:
I think of Michael Brandt in Dimona, who had voiced such a great idea,
in an assembly of the "Ha-Olam Ha-zae" party, in 1969 or 1970.
The idea was about holding a continuous "vigil" of 2 persons somewhere.
I won over my husband for making a Shabbat trip with the kids to Dimona.
But there - in the modest flat of the man whom we believed to be a big entrepreneur -
I could not get the two men to work on how to realize the "vigil".
On the contrary, they were ridiculing me.
I had many ideas myself, but I thought it would be more efficient,
if I would help others to realize their ideas and not push my own ones....


I also remember my latest shame - about my birthday thanksgiving
Shame seems to be always connected to my wanting to give what I create
I finally want to sacrifice this patterned need.
"my greed to create + Cain's need la-têt to give"

About Meirav.
Having heard her exterior and interior problems,
I asked: "What is it that's really bothering you?????
Is it lack of full-fill-ment?"
That was the clue! As it is the clue always.
All the problems which we stage are there for the learning and healing,
or for ...... filling, passing the time...
"What then is it, that brings full-fill-ment?" She asked in despair.

"It's not the big things, the satisfying work,
as I thought at the age of 16-27-40.
It's not the realization of a vocation in the exterior world.
It's seeing, sensing, feeling life in its tiniest expressions.
It's what Judaism has taught you:
to say thanks for each and every detail,
even for being able to pee in the morning.
It's a pity, that everything was titled a "mitzvah",
-this conceals the so vital message.
But when you look underneath,
there is real "Torah", i.e. "showing the way":
finetuning to your present, closeups to your past,
thanking, thanking, thanking."

"But how will this cause tikkun-olam -repairing the world?"

"Only this will cause tikkun-olam!
All the big manifestations for bettering the world
- since they were mingled with so much denial -
had their setbacks, their regressions, the evil that came out of the good."

To my surprise she understood all this perfectly well.

"So, now - until Nov. 13, 2009, when you'll reach the age of 37,
which - according to the Kabbalah - is the age of being grownup ,
(following the midrash, that Isaac was 37, when he bound himself ),
go and discover the tiniest things for which you can be grate-full
and you'll find excitement and full-fill-ment
and when you find it, you'll radiate on the world."

Watching the bored postures and faces in the Big Brother community,
I again want to walk in and awaken them all to the million-fold beauty
in their posh prison.
"Why is this condition for Heaven-on-Earth not even an issue,
not even a question and a quest
among all those philosophers, psychologists, artists, spiritual leaders etc.!
This is what makes me angry and frustrated", I said to her.

Another thought:
I've been rehearsing "If I could save time in a bottle...
but there never seems to be enough time
to do the things you want to do
ONCE YOU FIND THEM",
this is my experience.
The question is, if this greed to do is a cover-up for lack of full-fill-ment
or a real desire? ???

[See the answer in the following days]