[Avodah] Timtum HaLev

[Micha Berger]

On Sat, Mar 20, 2010 at 11:16:01PM -0400, T613K at aol.com wrote:
: sheesh, what a Litvishe question!

But isn't my whole point that this atittude toward objects was not
historically part of Litvisher thought? Not just that "tamim tihyeh"
would rule out usng them (which I doubt anyone would debate was true of
Litvaks), but that the whole philosophy about their efficacy is alien
as well. So what kind of question *should* I ask? <g>

: Have you ever seen a kimei'ah?  It's all mumbo-jumbo.   NOBODY can "think 
: about its contents."  (Well, maybe a mekubal can.)...

But is that true of the kemei'os mentioned in the gemara? With the rise
of qabbalah, there were many more things to put down in a qemei'ah than
people would put in back before it emerged from the underground.

A shevisi is also covered in a lot of text, not all of it always normal
words. And yet it too started out being a kavanah tool, to keep the
chazan thinking about Hashem being before him.

THere is a discussion of qemei'os in Shabbos 61a-b. Among the questions
is whether a qemei'ah has qedushah -- first in terms of saving it from
a fire on Shabbos, but also in terms of geniza and taking one into the
bathroom. The assumption is that they contain osios umei'inyanim harbei
shebaTorah.



When I'm working on a middah, I usually keep slips of paper with some
pisgam related to the topic around -- on my alarm clock, on my seat at
the dining room table, my office desk, in my pocket, and the like.

Eg (AishDas's eVaad1 is on zerirus...):
    'Ushemartem es hamatzos' shelo yavo liyei chimutz... al tehi qorei
    'es hamatzos' ela 'es hamitzvos'!

Personally, I don't see how the Rambam or any of the staunch rationalists
could understand the gemara's qemei'os as anything but that kind of
thing. Things that engender meritorious thoughts, and thus might be
effective.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Every second is a totally new world,
micha at aishdas.org        and no moment is like any other.
http://www.aishdas.org           - Rabbi Chaim Vital
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