Emphasizing so many individual names and quoting so many other people
demonstrates the main message of my study.


The Biblical and Talmudic literature is overflooding with personal names of individuals,

Israel's Sages even had an expressive principle for quoting,
expressed both in negative and in positive form:

I set out to understand the suffering of innocent individuals
I soon was led to understand the dependency of the individual on his/her community.
And I ended up in understanding, how from this dependency follows the individual's uniqueness.


A Biblical and a Talmudic episode about Moses may exemplify this:
Moses had liberated the Hebrews from external slavery in Egypt
and led them to the desert to make them grow towards internal freedom.
Instead, time and again, (the Bible mentions 7 times), the slaves wanted to return to the meat pots in Egypt.
Moses feels unfit and depressed to death,
until God shows him 70 elders to help him carry the burden.
He gathers them around the Tent of Appointment, so God would take from his spirit and give it unto them.
Two of them, Eldad and Medad, did not come to the Tent, but started to prophesy outside, in the camp.
Josua, later a leader himself, but then a sheepish assistant, projects on Moses his own fear for his honor:
"My lord Moses, imprison them!"
It's then that Moses rises to his full stature and says:
"Is it for my sake, that you are jealous?
Who'd give, that all HIS people were prophets!"
[Numeri 11]

see this song about "My three Peers" in Song-Game 2007

On April 20, 2012, Meirav Meidan told me the interpretation of Rashi to
"imprison them" - "kal'em"
"hatêl alehem tzorkhê ha-tzibbur ve-hem kalim me-atzmam"
"put on them the needs of the public and by themselves they perish"

A Talmudic story depicts another incident of slavish behavior.
In this case God told depressed Moses,
that he would destroy the people once and for all.
Moses jumps to his feet and defies God himself:

The decision to mark the pages, forces me to read them.
This is a "Driving Backward" of the first order.
For all the last 20 years I never could bring myself to read,
what I had written, neither in German nor in Hebrew.
Shame and pain were keeping me away.
Shame, because I might not like my creation.
Pain, because my creation was not received.
Except for 3 feedbacks to the German book (2 positive, 1 negative)
no reaction ever reached me.

The Hebrew book has not been even read , leave alone received, by the man I love:
"Two many quotations!! -
As if you had nothing to say on your own Accord."
And this despite my immense effort to read and grasp his own thesis/book.
He believes, that no one but him has really understood Immanuel Kant so far.
I even invested many hours in trying to translate it from Hebrew into German,
hoping, that in this way I might grasp sentence after sentence and the message.
I had to give up.

But my book is intelligible for an average educated person, isn't it?

I had believed, my books would "make a difference" in the world.
Even now, I fear being judged for having indulged in such illusions.
And the desillusion right now causes me to sob and sob and sob.

Before sleep I zapped into an Hebrew interview with an Israeli woman.
Zippi Fleischer has composed several operas.
Her "Cain&Hevel" is about to be performed in front of a small audience.
"It takes one hundred years, until new music becomes digestible for the audience."
Franz Rosenzweig, my father-in-law, wrote some time before he died in 1929:
"I'll open my mouth only 'posthum'", i.e. after my death.
But I don't believe, that humankind will last for another 100 years,
if the message of Judaism, as distilled in my book, is not applied NOW.

2002_10_19; last update: 2003_06_03

The immense endeavor to facilitate convenient navigation
concerning the spreading of my books on the Internet
drags me deeper and deeper into that old research.
And often I emerge and glare with new wonder.

Isn't this root 'arav of the noun 'arev mystical?

The words 'ivrim', Hebrews and 'aravim, Arabs,
have the same 3 consonants "ayin, beth/veth, resh",
in both Semitic languages, Arabic and Hebrew,
except that in 'arav the two latter are inverted.
'ivrim comes from the word "to pass", "to move beyond",
and 'aravim from a root, that has produced many meanings;
among them "evening/west" and "steppe", desert like land.

For the word to mean guarantor, it has to be pronounced 'arev in the singular,
and until now I never doubted that in the plural it must be pronounced 'arevim.
But since books are usually not equipped with the kind of dots that indicate vocals,
the title of my Hebrew book can be easily read as :
"All Israel are Arabs - 'aravim - to each other".

In fact, some time after the publication of the Hebrew book, Khaled, an Arab journalist called me and asked for a copy. He said with admiration: "That you would write such a book!" I sent him to the shop and never heard a word from him. It dawned on me then, how he must have read the title. I ached - imagining his shame and his disappointment. Now I came across a note in my books saying, that, in fact, the correct plural of 'arev is 'aravim, but the wrong usage - 'arevim - is too ingrained.

What does this mean?

2002_10_21; 8 o'clock in the morning

Just look at today's 'deja vu'!