Many years ago when I was 19 years old I broke up a relationship with a woman whom I loved with all of my heart. Though not yet a Rabbi, nor even a teacher, I felt powerfully called to the spirit. I believed, as I had been taught, that only a full cu ...

Hiyya has passionate sex with Heruta. His new found vitality is alluded to in his springing up the tree top to bring her a fruit. The fruit is a pomegranate filled with seed, classic mythical symbol of Eros. Tragically, he is not transformed by he en ...

posted by Marc Gafni assistant Remember one of the last scenes in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town? Emily, who has died in childbirth, asks the ghosts if she can go back to visit her life. They say — you can, but no one ever does. Emily cannot understa ...

posted by Marc Gafni assistant Although Hiyya usually studies at the academy; On this day he studies in the Garden. The Garden represents a place of magic and sensuality, the alluring domain of nymphs and Goddesses of nature. There he positions himse ...

There is powerful mythic story of perception in the Babylonian Talmud. It is about Rabbi Hiyya and his misperceived wife. Rabbi Hiyya bar Ashi3 was used to prostrating himself and utter the following prayer: “May the all-merciful One deliver me fro ...

Another scene of such erotic perceiving comes to mind. It was in one of those impersonal high rise building in New York City. Sue, one of the women who I worked with there, was having a bad day, or rather a bad 365 days. She had been in a marriage wh ...

Elevators and County Fairs Love is a perception, to be loved is to be seen. I remember when I was a kid, little, scrawny, not worth a moment’s notice by no one or no thing – or so I thought. It was the Bexley Fair. I was there with my parents ...

Feminine Beauty: Eros and Perception: Part VI My partner, Cary, tells me that in high school, she and her friends always said that one of their favorite things about hanging out with their African-American guy friends was that “they knew how to loo ...

installation five in a series of blogs…. ‘Greater is Receiving Guests’ Remember the hebrew wisdom practice I shared in an earlier blog? If you are in the middle of meditation — rapturously receiving the Divine Presence — and guests that ...

Installation four in a series of blogs: Clearly at this stage in his life the sexual was for the Master, like for the Buddha, Jesus and virtually all the saints at some point in their path, a trap to be avoided at all costs. The good news is that thi ...

First we need to remind ourselves that Love in Western consciousness has become a very limited proposition. To begin with, we are used to thinking of love as a storybook fantasy which is all too often marred by the realties of life. Truly great love, ...

installation one in a series of blogs: No sooner met but they look’d; no sooner look’d but they lov’d; no sooner lov’d but they sigh’d; no sooner sigh’d but they ask’d one another the reason; no sooner knew the reason but they sought th ...