After staying up very late to talk with my good friend Gella about Plato’s Phaedrus, I simply could not resurrect myself from bed this morning. The modeh ani did not happen. I did not rise like a lion to the service of my Creator, but I will tomorrow morning. The alarm alarmed at 6:30 but I didn’t get out of bed for good and all until about 10:00. There were a few snoozes and alarms in between. O, how I hate snooze alarms! Snoozing is nice, but the constantly alarming interruptions of that snoozing send papercuts into my soul with lemon juice.
Plato is still deep deep deep in my psyche. Socrates’ radical passion for truth and his radical love of love – his belief that the philosophical search for truth is the path of love – still guide me and push me to identify myself as more Platonist than Jew in my deepest values. A Jew’s deepest values, as far as I can tell, are loving HaShem by living and studying His mitzvoth. How do Platonic and Jewish values intersect? I think I really need to take a class on Rambam this semester, and if I can’t then I’ll have to read some books about him in my spare time.
Today I davened shacharit by myself at home between 10:20 and 11:10. There’s really a lot between Pesukei d’Zimrah (songs of praise meant to help the davener to focus) and Kriat Shema that I still don’t understand. I just don’t know what the Hebrew means. I need to learn the meaning of the Hebrew. I think I might discontinue my blogging on the siddur and study the Hebrew in the siddur instead until I feel a lot more comfortable with it.
There was no minchah for me today. I organized a brainstorming session for a few rabbinical school applicants to help them with their application essays. That took up about two hours. How else did I spend my time?
I davened maariv after seeing Journey to the Center of the Earth with Gella and Tad. It was an awesome movie, even if it only had one allosaurus in it and even if that allosaurus didn’t get much screen time. Now I really want to read Verne’s novel.
Tomorrow morning: Misrad Hapnim (The Office of Faces) to make an appointment to request a student visa. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
Why could it not be the case that love of HaShem is love of Truth? What is “God’s name” but ultimate Truth? The pursuit of mitzvot, the pursuit of a disciplined life, the living of the lessons that God teaches us through our sages, why should this not be seen as a means by which to pursue Truth?
Rambam would say that the mitzvot are, at least in part, a means by which to train oneself, to make oneself fit in body and mind by pursuing a middle path of behavior, in order to be able to receive prophecy (which is Truth, right?). That is, if you have the temperament. Some people are just animals and the mitzvot are there to keep them from eating one another… but Rambam was also an arrogant *****.