The Purpose  of   HEALING - K.I.S.S.

- as stated 12 years ago - was and is

  to help me and my potential P E E R s 

"to HEAL ourselves into WHOLEness,

and - by extension - all of CREATion!"
Intro to Healing-K.i.s.s. 2001-2013
and Overview of its main libraries

[If you look for a word on this page,
click ctrl/F and put a word in "find"]


I focus my experiencing and awareness on being
"a   pioneer of  Evolution  in  learning  to  feel":
I let my Body vibrate and my Heart 'womb'
pain, shame, fear, boredom, powerlessness,
so feelings can >heal >guide>fulfill>evolve,
and ~~~ offer ~~~"goldmines"~~~ to us all!!
"I want you to feel everything, every little thing!"

 

 

Re-edited on July 22, 2013 ----------- In this research - first completed 41 years ago -
I cannot update, how the central concept of "SIN" has to be radically transmuted.
Sin is "Suende" in German, which derives from "sondern"= to separate.
The actual "Suende" is "Denial", i.e. the separation between Thinking and Feeling,
i.e. the lack of awareness - by ignoring, overriding, repressing -
of what I do not want in my life - a) feelings, b) needs, c) qualities, d) greatness.

These denied parts of myself do not simply disappear ,
but survive in body and soul and all around me,
they even attract more of the same denials, become monstrous,
produce evil doing, perpetration, or evil suffering, victimhood.

The redemption from "Sin", i.e. from denial and "Lost Will"-
and from there the redemption from suffering and death,
begins with learning to feel, i.e. to accept, "to womb" what I feel,
to move it physically and then to understand...
In other words: I can allow myself to feel unpleasant feelings, needs, qualities,
only if I KNOW and PRACTISE - that every feeling, from the tiniest to the biggest -
must be   V I B R A T E D ,  i.e. physically breathed, sounded, moved,
in order to heal and evolve, and then fulfill its task: to guide me and to full-fill me.

Once there was a quantum-leap in evolution,
when humans understood that there was a connection between suffering and doing.
Since they knew from the beginning (unlike humankind today), that the many and the one were tied together,
their "solution" then was, to uproot the one evil-doer from the community, so as to spare it the consequences.
The next quantum-leap in evolution, was,
when it was understood that this "solution" caused even more suffering,
and they evolved the idea of "reproach and protest".
This, also, caused more damage than benefit.

The "solution" people then came up with, was not an evolution, but a re-volution:
it was to deny the connection between doing and suffering altogether
and to ignore the mutual guarantorship between the one and the many.
As the present time-period shows, this was/is a horrendous denial,
yes the culmination of an absurd, monstrous illusion.
Now the time has come, to go down to the deepest roots of both:
the connection between doing/notdoing (=denial) and suffering,
and the connection between me, the individual, and everybody else .

My PH.D.-Thesis, 1966-1982, delivered in Hebrew to the Jerusalem University 1972
Original Theme,1966 : The Idea of VICARIOUS SUFFERING as an ANSWER to INNOCENT SUFFERING
(i.e. my coping with the holocaust).
Final Hebrew Title 1972: "The  PERCEPTION    of    SUFFERING    and    SOLIDARITY    with the    SUFFERERS
in the Thought of the Jewish Sages from the time of the second Commonwealth till the End of the Talmudic Era"
(i.e. in Bible, Apocryphes, Qumran, New Testament, Talmud, Midrash)

Title of the German Book 1978    (Rachel Rosenzweig)
Solidaritaet mit den Leidenden im Judentum
"Solidarity with the Sufferers in Judaism"
Title of the Hebrew Book 1982 (Rachel Bat-Adam)
"kol yisrael 'arevim zeh la-zeh"
"All Israel are Guarantors For Each Other"

See, how in Sept. 2012, my son Immanuel gives an example of how "All Israel are Guarantors for Each Other" needs to be applied.

See the overview of "MY BOOK" in the context of "MY LIFE's HARVEST"

"All Israel are Guarantors for Each Other"
Maryam, alias Christa-Rachel Bat-Adam, married Rachel Rosenzweig, born Eva-Maria-Christa Guth

Etrog, Myrtle, Date, and Willow
-- these are Israel!
Knowing and doing do exist or do not
-- these are Israel!
They shall make one union - Israel!
They will atone for each other -Israel!
An ancient psalm was given to the nation!
A redeeming psalm also for the World!
Without leaves- there won't be grapes!

The Cross: my old belief in struggling!
The Etrog: my rejoicing in fulfillment!

Click and hear my song created in December 2008,
 based on the metaphor of "The Four Species,
connected to the Succot-Festival and the motto of my book:
Each is special, UNIQUE , but none is preferable!
Only by integrating, coalescing into ONE UNION
can we LIVE and LOVE in zest and full-fill-ment!

TABLE   of   CONTENTS  in
German/English/Hebrew
and Links to all chapters

Biographic Background
to Thesis and Books
and their Consequences
First stimulated by the appendix Cain&Habel to pp37 Adora/Erfurt
2002_05_16; completed: 2003_06_05

 


Original Hebrew Ph.D. thesis:
Rachel Rosenzweig,
The Perception of suffering
and solidarity with the sufferer
in the thought of the sages of Israel
- from the time of the second commonwealth
till the end of the Talmudic Era.
Hebrew University Jerusalem 1972

German edition:
Rachel Rosenzweig:
Solidaritaet mit den Leidenden im Judentum
(De Gruyter, Berlin-New York 1978)
This is my own translation, compression and modification
of the Hebrew thesis.
Initiated by my teacher, Dr. Reinhold Mayer,
Institutum Judaicum, Tuebingen,
financed by the Geschwister Boehringer Ingelheim Stiftung
fuer Geisteswissenschaften

Hebrew Edition:
Rachel Bat-Adam
"kol yisrael arevim zeh la-zeh"
("All Israel are guarantors for each other")
Tel-Aviv 1982.
This is my own translation of the German edition
+ 4 indices + 50 biographical pages.
Initiated, brought to print and financed
by my co-worker in "Partnership", Abraham Lisod,
may he rest in peace.

 

2002_05_16; last update; 2002_09_20


I hated the "study-prison".
I wanted to do, to act, to fulfill my vocation, to change the world.
But there was always someone
whom I let force me to stay in that prison.
And when I finally finished that hell they call University,
I didn't have a certificate that had any value in Germany.
A Christian shouldn't become Jewish,
while making her M.A. in Protestant Theology.

So 2 years after my immigration to Israel, in 1966
my husband came back to his old idea of a PH.D.
At the beginning of our common Destiny Path,
during my scholarship year in Jerusalem in 1960-61,
he said I should write a Ph.D. about Jesus.
I laughed at the idea:

"First of all, I hate studying.
Studying for years for a PH.D.?
No way.
Second - why write another book?
There are too many books in the world already."
He had a good answer then, about the "right" book.
But up to this very day,
and much more so after all these years, I believe what I said.

Now, in 1966, he had another argument:
"With all your skills and studies you have no profession at all.
What will happen, if I should die? Get at least a Ph.D."
I had an additional argument this time:
"Let's assume, I'll get that title, what about you?
Won't you feel ~~~~"

I don't remember, what delicate phrasing I found in order to express my fear,
that he would feel his own lack of self-worth even more stringently.
For once, yes, the only time ever in our 16 years of matrimony,
did he respond to my fear:
"If this will happen, you'll tell me so, won't you, and help me."

But he wouldn't let me tell him
and I couldn't help him and myself
and it wasn't only because of the PH.D.
that "this man feels invalidated by your very presence",
a swift observation by a wise woman in summer 1980.
Her interest was in my Partnership-work,
but she was a V.I.P., that's why my husband wanted to be present.

This utterance was the culmination of all my frustrated endeavor
to make the man whom I loved - love himself.
And it was, when I finally understood, that love had failed,
yes that it had achieved the opposite of its purpose.
It was then - that I could let go, and that I could go.

When I did start with the preliminary research
for what 5 years later was, in fact, delivered as a Ph.D. thesis,
I had my own motives:

 

 

I had a friend, a painter, Reu'ela Salzberg.
Once the still small kids wanted her to teach them how to paint.
So she just moved the brush across the paper, with no intention.
But then she saw, that it did represent something after all.
She said:
"This is Rachel,
carrying all the burden of the world on her shoulders."

One motive was, that, maybe, if a title would be attached to my name,
people wouldn't throw me to the garbage right away (only a little later),
when they would have to face my crazy ideas of "changing the world".

The other motive was, that, maybe,
I could find an answer to my perpetuate torment,
which didn't start with being downcast by the Holocaust,
but was poked by it day by day, night by night.

Today - 2002_09_20 - this very minute, 12.25 local time in Israel -
I am finally able to recognize:
I did achieve these two goals.

In 1967, after I had finished to gather and edit the
"Letters and Diaries of Franz Rosenzweig",
[some crumbs of info can be found in bundle 13 of the books]
and after the Hebrew University had done the extraordinary
and recognized my M.A. thesis at Heidelberg
and my pro forma exams at Tuebingen as a valid M.A. exam,
I started.


My own extreme pain about the holocaust
and the question
"Is there a meaning to suffering?"
as well as my not less painful identification as a child
with the so-called "Death of Atonement of Jesus",
[I dealt with this, mainly in bundle 5, bundle 6, bundle 23, bundle 27]
found an expression in the original title of my thesis,
started in 1967:

"The concept of vicarious suffering
as response
to the problem of innocent suffering".

The task was to search the ancient Jewish sources for answers,
from the beginning of the Bible (a library of more than a thousand years)
to the end of the Mishna-Talmud period (5th century of the Christian Era).

Soon I learnt, that my question,
if suffering had meaning,
was not relevant.

The sources taught me to ask:
What is the reason for suffering,
and how can it be prevented?

What struck me, was, that the sources had no doubt
about the link between the individual and the community,
Any person may suffer for the actions or lack of action
of other people or of the community,
and particularly for the actions of the community leaders.
But also a whole community might suffer
for the actions or lack of action of one single person,
be the person a powerhungry dictator,
or a spiritual prophet,
or just an ordinary human being.


I call this a LAW of reality, which Jewish thinkers,
like Jeremiah and Ezekiel were aware of as early as in the 6th century B.C.
The awareness of this mutual dependency had a natural result:
the feeling of solidarity with each other.


Not a trace of this awareness could I find in Christian teaching or behaving.


A story to demonstrate this lack, is the one about the nun Edith Stein,
a German Jewish woman, professor for philosophy,
who joined the strict Carmelite Order in the thirties.
When persecutions became worse, she hid in a monastery in Holland.
What did her sister nuns do, when the Nazis came to fetch her after all?

In the book, that was published by the nuns 20 years later, it says something like:
"We all cried, and some of us tuck sandwitches into her pockets."

Not one of them said:
"Either all of us or none",
as was proposed in the ancient sources [see especially bundle 25]:

"When a group of women are attacked on their way,
- give us one, so we can rape her, and the rest may go -
it would be better for all to be raped, than to hand over one of them."
I don't blame the nuns for what they haven't done in that situation.
Nor am I sure that such a group of women ever existed.
I'm not sure, how I myself would have reacted in such a situation.
But I am judging Christianity, that even after 20 years
there is not even the theoretical question in the nuns' book:
"Why did we let her go alone? Why didn't we join her?"

Solidarity in Israel, as I perceived it even before studying it,
was the main reason for my transition from Christianity to Judaism

 


The result of this awareness of mutual dependence and solidarity was twofold:

a) If I want to be free
- and freedom, after all, is the Biblical message of the Exodus -
I must take responsibility for taking the action that prevents my suffering,
i.e. I'm responsible - not for other people -
but for my dependency on other people.

b) If "everything depends on me",
then "every person weighs as much as the whole creation",
i.e. what follows from the law of mutual guarantorship or dependency
is the awareness of the immense value of the individual,
or - the understanding of the person as a hologram..
[see mainly bundle 16]


I worked on this thesis for 5 years, 5 hours per day on the average.
The first 120 pages I threw away, feeling, it would be unacceptable.
I started from scratch and after another 120 pages
I asked one of my 2 tutors, a professor for Talmudic literature,
if I was on the right track.
He felt helpless and sent me to an expert in Bible, Prof. Yaacov Licht.
2 weeks later, after reading, Licht said:

"What you want is 'science engagée' [expression of the philosopher Satre],
which I oppose strongly.
The Nazis have caused scientists to "be engaged".
We should return to "l'art pour l'art", science for science's sake.
Moreover, your style - though beautiful, even poetic, - is not at all academic.
This will never be accepted."

I cried for some days, but happy,
that at least someone had understood me.
Usually people say to me: "I don't agree",
but I can see, that they haven't understood a thing.

I started a third time from scratch
and in 1972 delivered an "academic" thesis, with 600 notes.
A year later, after pressure from my husband, they finally read it
and after the obligatory "public lecture", around Purim,
in which I let my kids read the sayings of Esther and Mordechai
[bundle 15]
I was granted the title, very grudgingly.
I won't quote the humiliating remarks of the judges.

Some years later, my former teacher at Tuebingen University, Reinhold Mayer,
pressured me to edit the thesis in German and found a foundation to pay for it.
That's how the thesis - greatly compressed and in a less academic style -
appeared first in Germany, in 1978.

The German prospectus, formulated by myself:

 

Rachel Rosenzweig
Solidarity with the Sufferers in Judaism

1978
297 pages, Studia Judaica, Volume 10

The author asked the question
- especially relevant after Auschwitz-
how people coped with national suffering
in Jewish Thinking and Acting.

She hit upon the postulate for Solidarity with the Sufferers.
This expresses itself mainly in the responsibility,
which the individual takes upon him/herself for the community,
in order to prevent suffering or help to bear it.

It is the - constantly present - consciousness
of mutual dependency between people,
which leads towards solidary behavior.

Only in solidary responsibility for the community
can the individual actively shape his own destiny.

 

The author studied Protestant Theology in Germany
and achieved a Ph.D. in 1973 in Jerusalem
with the Hebrew original of this book.

Today she teaches
at an institute for Academic Teachers of PrimarySchools
and actively participates in the Organization "Partnership",
founded by her
("Association for Creating Conditions of Partnership
between Arabs and Jews").



Editor
Walter de Gruyter
Berlin - New York


Again some years later, the most dedicated person in "Partnership" ,
an old man, Abraham Lisod, urged me to publish the book in Hebrew.

I said, that the German edition was so changed,
that I couldn't go back to the original.
"I don't want to hear another word of this,
no one is interested in the book."
Abraham went ahead anyway
and started to translate the German edition into Hebrew.

He went so far as to bring one third of the translated book to a publisher,
whom he paid from his old age pension,
thus making his wife his enemy for the rest of his life.

He ventured to show me the result and I almost fainted.
He knew German, but his mother tongue was Russian.

Seeing him so dedicated to the message of my book,
I succumbed and translated and edited the book myself.


I called it

"kol yisrael arevim zeh la-zeh",
"all of Israel are vouchsafing for each other",

according to a Talmudic proverb, still quoted daily in Israel.

It goes without saying,
that neither the German nor the Hebrew book became bestsellers.
That's my pain talking, of course, and I'll leave it at that,
before I misuse this space to do the movement of the deep grief,
that's still "grouching" at the bottom of my soul.

I naively believed
- though I then was already a woman of 44 years -
that my book would cause tangible change...

 

 

2002_09_20
But it certainly shaped the course of my life.
The first year and a half after the delivery of the thesis were the deepest hell I ever drowned in.

Unlike my Hell in Sinai in 1996,
where the hell of humankind burnt me from the outside
that hell in 1972-3 was completely inside of me,
utter depression, as I've always been familiar with,
but never before or after did it last, as if for eternity.


Other people had warned me, that this might happen.
But I had said, "It will not happen to me,
because I've so clear goals for the time of freedom
and such a structured plan of what to do the next day."

But then
- like it happened later in my hell of 1988 -
an angel shook me by the shoulders.

How can a person learn to discover and to do the work/labor

that gives him/her satisfaction and self-worth?

And how can the world find the people who do the work/labor,

that needs to be done, effectively?
I was researching and preparing for the goal I had then,
which I haven't yet mentioned on this site [2003_06_05].
This is unbelievable,
since this goal has permeated my whole being for 40 year.

 

In the train of interviewing professionals ,
I got an appointment
with the director of the Hadassa Institute for Vocational Counseling in Jerusalem.
He said to me:
"You should stop learning, studying, researching!"
Just start doing a kind of job that is related to your goal."
2 days later, the librarist, with whom I had talked while waiting for the director,
sent me an ad:
"Wanted are: placement officers in Absorptions Centers for new Academic immigrants from East Europe."

I started a few days before the outbreak of the 1973 war,
in Israel called "the Yom-Kippur War".
From among 50 candidates four were accepted,
and I was the only one who stayed for a year.

The upheaval in my soul cannot be conveyed.

I had promised myself,
that I wouldn't leave my children
until the youngest would be ten.
But a mother, who only counts the years
until the youngest one will be forteen,
so she can leave life,
isn't a good mother.
So I started to leave the house for the first time,
and little Micha (7) had lunch with a good neighbor, when he came from school.

Five months in Kfar Yona and another five in Natanya,

in each center about 120 immigrants, mostly from Russia.
I once knew Russian to the extent
that I could write a postcard in Russian to my fiancé,
for whose sake I delved into this language too.
But Hebrew and Arabic had wiped it out, literally,
I couldn't even decypher the Russian letters anymore.
Communication, therefore, was pressuring and frustrating,
and so were the results.
I once made 22 attempts to find work for a water engineer from Rumania.

In vain.

I now see, it's like with my books -
I am the only one to benefit from my superhuman dedication to everything I do
(my husband once wrote me a note:
"Don't do everything with your total being,
leave something also to others").
I was out of the depression.
Before I had envied any young girl,
who worked at a bank and brought a salary home.
And I lost somewhat my telephono-phobia and other phobias.

And - for the continuation of my path - I was offered an additional job.
I had about ten Russian musicians in Kfar Yona
and the idea was, to convert them into music teachers.

I went to see the inspector for music in the Ministry of Education,
Immanuel Amiran, a famous composer of Israel folksongs.
He liked me
and decided to open a course for these 10 future music teachers,
provided, I would teach them Bible and Zionist History.

Ha-Ma'ayan , The Spring         by          Immanuel Amiran
To the spring came a small kid, came a white kid.
From whence do you come, kid? It answered: from Haran .
Has Laban, son of Bethuel, shalom [=is he well]?
Have Ya'aqov and Rachel shalom? - Shalom (=they are well)
See the song now in Song-Game 2007

I had no idea of Zionist History,
since I hadn't even gone to a school in Israel,
but studying it was an important beginning:
The wife of that Rumanian engineer, Felicia, found her own way to a new institute,
where students from universities, who wanted to drop out , mainly women,
could train themselves towards becoming educators.
Felicia asked me to call the director, Yitzkhak Peri.
[here seen among the 70 Jewish faces on my book,
in this collage surrounded by 4 of my pupils,
a woman from South America,a man from Syria, a religious woman
and Talli Shemer,a "normal" Israeli born woman,
who gave me the most devastating feedback at the end of that year,1982:
"Now we are conscious of our responsibility,
but we still don't do anything, and all we feel, is guilt!"]

Peri loved me right through the phone and asked me to visit,
to find out about his institute.
There and then he invited me to work with him as a teacher of Zionist History.
"But I have no qualification for that!
What I know is enough for those musicians but not for your students!"
He said: "You've learnt   h o w   to learn!
You can learn anything new you need to learn."
Sept. 18, 2013: Though Felicia is not on the book or on any other photo, it is she who has kept contact with me for exactly 40 years now, despite my efforts to escape this contact. See a hint of the shame I feel towards her during these days.

While also going on with the musicians for another year,
I started at Peri's institute in September 1974.
After 3 years and people's complaint about my "dovish" teachings,
Peri let me teach Jewish Thought, and later also Arabic literature.
Among the angels in my life, he deserves a great thank-you.

After my first lesson I felt that old scourge wipping me again:

"You finally stopped studying, but you still don't do anything!
How can you teach and not do what you teach?"

Two months later I started to do, what I taught.
To walk my talk.

I had needed the experience of doing a job outside my home,
and I had needed to encounter those early Zionist pioneers
who had transformed from pale city employees into agricultural laborers,
and who had revived a language that had been dead for 2000 years.
They had been putting into action, what my book was all about.

And what they had been able to do , I could do.
They gave me strength and courage and faith.

I had launched peace-work before, several times.
I stopped, when I realized, that it endangered my marriage.
This time I was determined to not let anyone or anything stop me.

My real goal was "Man and Labor" - not at all to work for peace.
But it was what I needed to do first.
"We blamed our parents in Hitler Germany: Where have you been?
I don't want my children to grow up into more terrible wars and terror
and ask me: where have you been?"

That's how I started in November 1974
with what in 1977 became the non-governmental organization,
"Partnership"
"Association for Creating Conditions of Partnership between Arabs and Jews"



TABLE   of   CONTENTS  in
German/English/Hebrew
and Links to all chapters