Rainbow Israel is winding down, and i'm not there anymore. Among important things heard, felt and seen there, that one song, "Mi ha ish ha chafetz chaim" got played alot. from proverbs:

Who is the man
who longs for life
loves days, to see good

save your tongue from evil
and your lips
from speaking "deceit" (MiRMah)
ask for peace
and pursue her.

I asked Josh Laufer, what is Mirmah? He said, trying to get someone to belive that what you're saying is true. I nodded thoughtfully, processing, and he grinned, saying: What? You really believed me?

I asked Yaakov about that pasuk, and he sighed: "How can we talk, make each other feel things, how we express something deeper without lies and deceit? I don't like that idea at all."

Is Jesus Christ the Messiah, he asked someone?
No, I don't think so, they said. He was Jewish, of course, and was programed from birth to believe in the non-divinity of Yayshu above all things.

Is Christianity a lie then?
The same person COULDN'T QUITE say "no." How could something so many people be living be called a lie?

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The Israeli Rainbow gathering secretly commemorates one of the oldest Israeli anti-jewish holidays, the eighth month festival of Yerovoam ben Nevat. Upon seceding from King Solomon's empire, along with most of Israel, with the full permission and authority of God to annointed king over the new Israel, Yerovam makes it illegal to go to Jerusalem for the seventh month holidays, Rosh Hashana through Hoshana Rabba, instead instituting the eighth month, cheswan, to be the messianic holiday season. Eight is higher than Seven, some say.

This is the level of Lo Bashamayim hi, taking the holidays and making them our own, by re-decreeing when and how they are celebrated. And so, the Cheshvan rainbow holiday is so important, that even when one year I had to be in America for it, I threw a Mushroom Party in my parent basement (don't tell my mom!) with hopes of invoking some divine voice to speak with/through me and my friends.

There's two voices in heaven, commerorated every time we say the Kedusha. The Ophanim maintain religiously that Holy Holy Holy is the Lord of Hosts, and All the World is Full of His Glory. The Seraphim, flaming SeRPents that they are, insist that Blessed Is the Glory of God In It's Place, followed by the piercing question "Where is the place of his glory" and, "When will he rule in Zion? Hopefully soon, and then forever (but not yet.)

I heard an old Chabad child at Rainbow this year insist that the rule says very clearly, for everytime one says "yechi hamelech" the king lives, he has to match it with "Ad Musai?" Until when? will the Other thing rule in his place.

And so, when the trip began, we started banging on drums, and singing and talking... and somehow the secret history of chassidus came up, and out.

The Baal shem tov was annointed by the same master who annointed Jeroboam Ben Nevat, Ahijah the Shilonite, along with Elijah the Prophet. He came to him in visions with the secret to working out what the good in Judaism was/is.

What did these two figures have in common? Both lost their places in the world to come for the sake of bringing something profound to the world. Yeroboam's holiday was celbrated in two temples, in Shilo and Dan, with less controlled pietistic services, instead featuring a ritual around two Golden Calves. Some Chazal maintain that these were idolotrous practices, the Ibn Ezra insists not. The Golden Cows were a symbol of Josephean heritage, and perhaps some older popular tradition relating to cattle cults, and the great fruit of their shit: Mushrooms.

Once the voice spoke so loud, almost to us all, and we said Stop: or we'll die. In Israel, it's not so clear that they weren't so willing to die, a few hundred years later. The Davidic Messiah lives and does not die, he stays Jewish forever. But only the Josephean Messiah dies, and trancends Israel to light up the whole world with the Torah, as we learn in the midrash

When Joseph was born
Jacob stopped fearing Esau, Rome, the World
Because if Jacob was a fire
Then Joseph would be like a match,
And Esau-Rome, like a big pile of hay

A Josephean Messiah speaks the seventy languages of the world, ultimatly appearing to die as he assimilates into it, ultimatly coming to rule it in the guise of a very good slave, with access to divine wisdom. The Ten Tribes of Israel assimilate into the world? Or become the whole world, infecting it with montheism and making it safe for the Judean children to play in, maybe.

And so the Baal shem Tov received the secret semicha from a band of wandering Kabbalists, who taught him how to learn directly from ascended masters. Next time, we will talk about
where the tradition went from there, and Other Things Mushrooms have taught me.