And the rest is his story..
Last night I had been thinking about some of the words in the Song of Redemption, especially the crescendo part about transcending the natural order.
After all, when the proud father had stood up just ahead of the song, enthusiastically shouting, "Davey! That's my Davey!", he really set the tone for the impossible to become possible. 🥹
There were fifty mounted cannon in the battery,
Thundering, thundering, louder than before.
Clarinets of ev'ry size and trumpeters who'd improvise
A full octave higher than the score.
"Trumpeters who'd improvise."
I'd wondered if Hebrew for "improvise" was related to ingenuity, so I looked it up:
לְאַלְתֵּר
to improvise
Before I saw the "See also" word at the bottom of the page (sharing the same 4-letter... root), I'd noticed that "to improvise" = 661, the same as Esther. And there was that "signature" L [אל] right at the head of the root. (It's always something.)
The sum was instantly interesting, because what else had Esther been doing in the palace all of that time, isolated from her people. Mum's the word. She couldn't even reveal her identity, but when there's a will there's a way. The alternate explanation for the title of the Megillah -- being the "revealing of the hidden" -- *is* Esther on the very face of the name, not to mention the entire narrative.
If she'd been running around asking questions, it would have been a dead giveaway to her Jewish identity as one of the very People of the Book. This would suggest that she had to improvise, paradoxically an even more obvious 'tell'.
"To improvise" is certainly a fitting activity to equate with the value of Esther. It's not much of a disguise, for those who know what to look for in the quintessential modest Jewish girl. Haman was too busy to ever notice, being too preoccupied with combing his hair and priding himself on his own intrinsic value.
Worse yet, Mordecai the Jew sat at the gate, refusing to march to Haman's tune. "Typical Jew", Haman kvetched to anyone who would listen. "They've all gotta go!"
(There were more than a thousand reeds springing up like weeds!)
"See also". That's where the fun really got going:
אִילְתּוּר
iltur
improvisation
אילתור
Who does Nazi where this is headed?!
That's the Ayelet in Ayelet Hashachar [אילת השחר], the Doe of the Dawn, even the dew of the dawn of Psalm 22 as it were. Esther! Psalm 22 -- the psalm that as tradition has it, was prophetically composed for Esther by King David, so she could have a little something to help her make it through the long years of isolation in the palace.
Despite her tragic circumstances, Esther did not lose faith or hope.
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In the Talmud, Esther is compared to the ayelet hashachar, the first ray of light in the morning. The psalm of ayelet hashachar, Psalm 22, is dedicated to her:
"My Lord, my Lord, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me despite my cries? Oh my God I cry in the daytime but you do not respond, and in the night I have no rest. But you are Holy, enthroned by the praises of Israel" (Psalm 22:2-4)
The Midrash expands on this idea, giving a voice to Esther:
"My Lord, my Lord, why have you forsaken me? My Lord at the [splitting of] the sea, my Lord at Sinai, why have you forsaken me? Why has the order of the world changed concerning me? The order of the mothers? With regard to our mother Sarah, she was held captive by Pharaoh one night and he and his whole household were struck with a plague ... but I have been placed in the bosom of this wicked man all these years, for me you do no miracles. My Lord, my Lord, why have you forsaken me?" (Midrash Tehilim Buber, 22:16)
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Had Esther chosen the path of martyrdom, it would have taught the wrong lesson. God neither wants nor needs our sacrifices. Instead, Esther teaches a different lesson, the idea that kindness is more important than sacrifice, and that a pure mind is at the core of the service of God. Esther's pure mind, coupled with her love of God, saved the Jewish people from annihilation.
LOVE AND REPENTANCE
The Talmud teaches that repentance motivated by love of God is so profound that it can transform a sin into a Mitzvah. Perhaps a "sin performed for the sake of heaven" is another expression of the same idea.
אילתור
The ancient Greek word for "dove" was peristerá,[1][2] which may be derived from the Semitic phrase peraḥ Ištar, meaning "bird of Ishtar".
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In post-biblical Judaism, souls are envisioned as bird-like (Bahir 119), a concept that may be derived from the Biblical notion that dead spirits "chirp" (Isa. 29:4). The Guf, or Treasury of Souls, is sometimes described as a columbarium, a dove cote. This connects it to a related legend: the "Palace of the Bird's Nest", the dwelling place of the Messiah's soul until his advent (Zohar II: 8a--9a). The Vilna Gaon explicitly declares that a dove is a symbol of the human soul (Commentary to Jonah, 1).
The dove is also a symbol of the people Israel (Song of Songs Rabbah 2:14), an image frequently repeated in Midrash.
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A four-letter root is uncommon, and sometimes indicative of a root of foreign origin.
This one is of foreign origin, and also a contraction:
(לְ)אַלְתַּר adv. PBH on the spot, at once. [Aram., contraction of אַל־אֲתַר (= אֲתַר עַל), lit.: ‘on the place’ (see עַל and אֲתַר). For sense development cp. Eng. on the spot, Fren. sur-le-champ, Ger. auf der Stelle.] Derivative: אלתר.
אלתר to improvise, extemporize.
— Pi. - אִלֽתֵּר he improvised, extemporized.
— Pu. - אֻלֽתַּר was improvised, was extemporized.
[Formed from אַלֽתַּר.] Derivatives: אִלְתּוּר, אַלֽתּֽרָן, מֽאֻלְתָּר.
The above link can be explored for its continued etym. trail. What happened is that אתר "traced" over to the tav-shin letter swap between Aramaic and Hebrew, leading to asher אשר the relative pronoun. In modern Hebrew it's usually contracted down to the letter shin, as a prefix to introduce a clause:
אֲתַר, אַתְרָא m.n. PBH place. [Aram., related to Arab. - athr, ’ithr, Ethiop. ’ashar (= track, trace), Akka. ashru (= place). See אשׁר ᴵ and cp. אֲשֶׁר.] Derivatives: אתר, אַלְתַּר. cp. בָּתַר (prep.).
It's like that "tour guide" = 475 image I posted at 22:
Going back to:
The soul of Mashiach has two dimensions. One is the enlightenment that all of creation will enjoy; and one is that there will be an individual (or a couple) that will master mind and master heart this giant planetary-scale project of coordinating all of humanity into a single, smoothly operating organism, that will run as efficiently as a person's body. According to Kabbala, all of humanity, actually all of creation, is really a single partzuf, a single Adam. In fact, one main feature of messianic consciousness is a greater awareness of our oneness in this regard.
This giant planetary-scale project of coordinating all of humanity...
People would be blown away by seeing how it all fits together.
Torii -- it's a gate that "symbolically marks the transition from the mundane to the sacred". The literal word meanings are not a mystery; however,
The origins of the torii are unknown and there are several different theories on the subject, none of which has gained universal acceptance.
tori-i: the map symbol for a shin-to [שינטו] shrine. That's shin ש - to. A "ten", a "Ju". The details are rather specific:
The reading ten is more commonly achieved by reading the decimal point as ten (点), meaning "point".
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The Hebrew side of the Torii Wiki page provides the simple meanings, that the first element "tori" is the tzippor ("bird") and the "i" ending is the makom ("place"):
("אִי - "מקום) and ("טוֹרי - "ציפור)
(And in Hebrew, "אי" is an island.) אילתור
It blew me away that a joint like this was possible and at that stage I didn't have a clue on how it went together. Many years on I saw another photo and decided to give this intricate joint a try. This article shows some of the techniques and tools that I used.
Prepare yourself
For this kind of joinery it really does help to have a steady hand, good eyesight up close, and a pinch of patience.
Challenges: Nisayon (נִסָּיוֹן) -- New Levels, New Devils
Dare to go higher, because
For this kind of joiny, it really does help to have a little Levity, for the proper operation of all things "Temple". It blew me away that a joint like this was possible.