A bad period for all Czarist oppression incarceration

http://korczak.com/Biography/kap-8.htm

Thousands of Polish elite and intellectuals wre impriosned or sent to Siberia during the Czarist oppression. Korczak spent months in jail with Ludwik Krzywicki,the renowned sociologist ,in

Spokojna prison.Ludwik was a renowned sociologist and was focused and could shut out the irritations of envrionment and by observation Korczak learned discipline when incarcerated by the Nazis.The Universities were closed and the abortive 1905 reforms were rescinded. Released from prison, and back at the orphanage, the Eliasbergs told him of their dream of a modern orphanage and caught him at the right time to make a radical change in his life. He became director of an orphanage ,yes, to feed his reformatory zeal, the real reason being, as is quoted, he felt best when among children. The orphanage was a laboratory for clinical observation where he could detect symptoms of the whole child and enable the scultping of that child's soul. Korczak was a pioneer of moral education "concerned with the grammar of ethics" and the orphanage was his laboratory to conduct the shelter,the utopia as a shelter for the homeless. Krochmalna street had a split personality referred to by Isaac Singer, an uncoverable deep stratum.He was creating a spiritual space apart from the crass world on Kochmalna Street. Note Korczak's eulogy on the death of Waclaw Nalkowski, a man who died the way he wanted to die, that could no longer exhude "sustenance" to Korczak. His visit to the Forest Hill Orphanage in England is most revelatory as described in his biography . Out of that experience he forged himself anew as if reborn as the chidless defender of the rights of the child as he most assuredly was.

Life in the shelter became more important to Korczak as life outside became
more harassed. On July 22, 1909, which happened to be his birthday, Korczak´s
sister´s husband, Jozef Lui, died at the age of thirtynine. (Nothing is known of
Lui -whose odd name adds to the mystery- or of his marriage to Anna, who by then
was a French legal translator.) It was a bad period for everyone. In a new wave
of Czarist repression, thousands of the elite of Polish society-among them
intellectuals, socialists, and members of the revolutionary party-were either
imprisoned or sent to Siberia. The universities were closed, and most of the
reforms won in the abortive revolution of1905 were abolished. Society magazine,
which Jadwiga Dawid had started when Voice was closed by the police four years
earlier, was itself forced to stop operating. Whatever the cause, political
pressure or Dawid's involvement with another woman - or a combination
ofboth-Jadwiga had a nervous breakdown. She would throw herself into a well the
following year, at the age of forty-six.
Korczak was rounded up with many
other writers and incarcerated In the same cell with in Spokojna prison. He was
relieved to find himself. Ludwik Krzywicki, the renowned sociologist, whom he
knew from Flying University days. A radical socialist who had translated Marx
into Polish, Krzywicki was as acquainted with jail cells as he was with
classrooms, where he was known for his dazzling lectures - many of them prepared
behind bars. Going in and out of prison had become an accepted way of life for
him, one that he didn't question, unlike Jan Dawid and Waclaw Nalkowski, who had
long felt the futility of political activity as a means of solving Poland' s
internal problems.
Krzywicki had learned to endure life in cramped
windowless cells where his "longest walk" was seven paces and his only companion
a fly (about whom he wrote long letters to his son). Korczak was amazed at how
the professor was able to shut out the irritations of the environment and to
concentrate on keeping his inner self intact. He spent each day as if he were in
his own study, spreading his papers and maps over the grimy floor and tracing
the migrations of ancient tribes. During the two months they spent together, it
is believed that Krzywicki encouraged his young friend to pursue his goals.
(Korczak was to draw upon the discipline he learned from Krzywicki when he was
incarcerated, years later, by the Nazis.)
Released from prison through the
intercessions of a highly placed Polish family whose child he had treated,
Korczak once again spent as much time as he could with Stefa and the children at
the shelter. Eliasberg and his wife confided to him their dream of moving the
children from that inadequate building into a large, modern orphanage. Stefa had
agreed to assume general management, they said, and if someone like Korczak was
involved, they were sure that the Orphans Aid Society could attract more patrons
and raise the large amount of money needed. The Eliasbergs had caught Korczak at
the right moment; discouraged by the political situation and still restless at
the hospital, he was ready to make a radical change in his life.
In 1910,
Warsaw society learned, with some surprise, that Janusz Korczak intended to give
up a successful medical practice and literary career to become the director of
an orphanage for Jewish children. Few people understood that medicine alone was
no longer enough for this visionary pediatrician - that it did not, as Erik
Erikson said of Gandhi´s law practice, "feed his reformatory zeal." The
orphanage would give him a chance to put some of his educational ideas into
practice, and though it might appear he was making a sacrifice in taking it
over, it did not seem so to him. "The reason I became an educator was that i
always felt best when I was among children," he told a young interviewer many
years later. But the decision had not been easy. "The road I have chosen toward
my goal is neither the shortest nor the most convenient," he was to write."But
it is the best for me-because it is my own. I found it not without effort or
pain, and only when I had come to understand that all the books I read, and all
the experiences and opinions of others, were misleading."
Part of the
difficulty in making his decision lay in assuring himself that he was not
betraying medicine by leaving the hospital for the orphanage. (It was a conflict
he never fully resolved.) He wanted to believe that rather than renouncing
medicine for pedagogy, he could combine the two disciplines. Using the orphanage
as a laboratory for clinical observation, he wanted to work out an educational
diagnostic system based on tangible symptoms. Just as a doctor diagnosed disease
by the complaints of the patient, so the teacher had to be aware of the moods of
his pupil: "What a fever, a cough, or nausea is for the physician, so a smile, a
tear, or a blush should be for the educator." Medicine was concerned only with
curing the sick child, but pedagogy could nurture the whole child. As an
educator, he could be the "sculptor of the child's soul."
His little
republic would not be as ambitious as the School of Life he had once envisioned
on the shores of the Vistula-a utopian center with shelters for the homeless, a
hospital to provide knowledge of the suffering of the body "without which there
is no education," a bank for practical instruction on handling money, and a
pawnshop to teach "the transience of unessential things." But it would still be
a just community whose young citizens would run their own parliament, court of
peers, and newspaper. In the process of working together, they would learn
consideration and fair play, and develop a sense of responsibility toward
others, which they would carry with them into the adult world. In helping his
orphans to respect others, a first step toward gaining self-respect, Korczak was
a pioneer in what we now call "moral education." He was concerned not with
teaching children their ABC's - they would go to public school for that-but with
the grammar of ethics.
The underlying philosophy of the children´s republic
was: children are not the people of tomorrow, but people today. They are
entitled to be taken seriously. They have a right to be treated by adults with
tenderness and respect, as equals, not as masters and slaves. They should be
allowed to grow into whoever they were meant to be: the "unknown person" inside
each of them is the hope for the future.
Had Korczak been given a choice,
the little republic would have comprised an integrated group of Jewish and
Catholic children, but that was not possible. Each religious denomination was
responsible for its own, and the Orphans Aid Society was a Jewish philanthropy.
Still, Korczak hoped to bridge the religious gap by being active in the Polish
Teachers Union and presenting his work as a possible model for all boarding
homes, Polish and Jewish alike.
A plot of land was purchased in a poor,
mixed Catholic and Jewish working-class neighborhood at 92 Krochmalna Street.
Like so many Warsaw streets that reflected the haphazard way the Jews and Poles
had accommodated to each other over the centuries, Krochmalna had a split
personality. (Isaac Bashevis Singer, who grew up at No. 10, called Krochmalna "a
deep stratum of an archaeological dig which I could never uncover.") The
sprawling tenement houses at the notorious lower end indiscriminately harbored
thieves, racketeers, and prostitutes along with poor Hasidic rabbis (such as
Singer´s father), pious housewives, and more than its share of Warsaw´s three
hundred thousand impoverished Jewish porters, shoemakers, and artisans.
The
upper end ofKrochmalna, by contrast, was less populated. There was even a small
orchard on the orphanage´s piece of land, which was bordered by small factories,
shops, and wooden houses, and in the midst of them a simple Catholic church.
The planning of the orphanage was a "momentous experience" for Korczak, who
met a few evenings a week with the two architects at the Eliasberg home. For the
first time he understood "the prayer of work and the beauty of real activity,"
He was not merely designing a building with walls and windows; he was creating a
spiritual space. He wanted to get as far away as possible from "the cages of
city apartments" and the unhygienic boarding houses that, "combined the defects
of the convent and the barracks." His goal was a spacious, light, and airy
structure that satisfied the individual need of every child. He marveled that "a
square on the blueprint today becomes a hall, a room, a passageway tomorrow."
But he learned to be cautious in his enthusiasm: "Every snap decision was a
directive to the artisan, who gave it permanent form." Every idea had to be
weighed in terms of money, feasibility, and utility. He decided that a teacher
is not entirely proficient unless he or she understands building materials: "A
small shelf a metal plate, a nail in the right place, each may solve an acute
problem."
The eldest of the Eliasbergs´ four daughters, Helena, remembered
how she and her sisters looked forward to the nights the funny doctor came to
work with the architects: "We had never seen a grownup like him. He kissed our
hands when he arrived as if we were ladies, and came over to us from time to
time to laugh and joke. He even let us draw on his bald head with the colored
pencils he was using on the blueprints."
While waiting for the orphanage to
be built, Korczak spent about half a year in Paris, training with pediatric
specialists and looking at orphanages and detention centers, much as he had done
in Berlin three years earlier. Paris had a long history of sheltering ‚migr‚
Polish writers and artists, and one can imagine that Korczak visited with some
of them.
He would tell friends later of his walks along the Seine and visits
to the galleries and museums. He came away from his experience realizing that he
felt temperamentally closer to the French than to the Germans. Berlin had taught
him "to simplify and be inventive in small matters, to concentrate on what he
knew step by step, and, systematically, to go forward from that," but Paris
taught him "to think of whatever we do not know, but should like to know, must
and will know" Berlin was a workday filled with small worries and efforts, but
Paris was the festive tomorrow with brilliant premonition, powerful hope, and
unexpected triumph. In Paris he pored over the "wondrous" books of the French
clinicians and, flushed with excitement, dreamed of writing the definitive book
on the child.
The death of Stefa Wilczynska´s father in January 1911
probably brought Korczak back to Warsaw. It was an inauspicious beginning for
the new year. Then, in February, Waclaw Nalkowski, Korczak"s mentor from the
Flying University, collapsed on the street at the age of fifty-five and died a
few days later in the hospital. The loss of Nalkowski sent shock waves through
Warsaw´s intellectual community' or what was left of it. Dawid was in Cracow, a
lonely man after Jadwiga' s suicide, writing on the psychology of religious
experience. And now Nalkowski, with his uncompromising principles that made him
foes as well as friends, could no longer give Korczak sustenance. In his eulogy
at the funeral, Korczak sought to console the large crowd of Polish patriots.
A happy man died-a man who lived the way he wanted, and died the way he
wanted, in a hospitalbed. He was not killed by those who today, like cowards,
sing his praise. He was not killed by those who lived and got fat eating the
crumbs of his thought. He was not killed by those who could not see his
greatness. He did not fight any of them. He merely dismissed them with a toss of
his head. It was Death who felled Nalkowski. Let us rejoice that he lived on
Polish soil.
Helping Nalkowski´s widow, herself a geologist, organize his
papers and seeing to last-minute details of the orphanage plans did not lift
Korczak´s spirits. Right after the cornerstone of the building was laid on June
14, 1911, he left for England to visit orphanages there-but also, one suspects,
to shake his depression. He was to have an experience there that appears to have
given him a clearer sense of the direction his personal life was to take. It
began with a refreshing ride from London to the suburb of Forest Hill to visit
an orphanage. He was struck by the large windows and wide benches of the
trolley, the smoothness of the ride. He was equally impressed at finding Forest
Hill an affluent suburb with rolling green lawns as far as the eye could see. He
felt like a country bumpkin as he admired the clippers on long poles which the
gardeners were using to cut hedges, and paused for a while to see how a lawn
mower worked.
But the biggest surprise was the orphanage, "two little
one-story houses sitting together like twins, thirty boys in one, thirty girls
in the other." Why would an affluent area like Forest Hill have orphans? he
wondered. What do the people die of in a place like this? The director greeted
him politely and showed him around "with no trace of German arrogance or French
formality." He saw the carpentry shop where the boys trained, and the laundry,
sewing room, and embroidery workshop for the girls. Every child had his or her
own garden plot, and kept rabbits, doves, or guinea pigs. There was even a
museum next to the school that held, among other treasures, one small mummy.
On leaving, he signed the visitor´s book-Janusz Korczak, Warsaw. He didn´t
need language to know what everyone had been thinking as he was shown around:
´Warsaw? A strange guest from far away. Why is he looking at everything with
such interest? The school? But there are children, so there must be a school.
The orphanage? But there are orphans, so they must have someplace to stay.
Swimming pool? Playground? But all of this is necessary.´
He was conscious
of his threadbare clothes and worn shoes and felt like a beggar who had wandered
in by chance. Walking back to the trolley stop, he was again overwhelmed by the
luxuriant green lawns, the manicured parks, and the large community swimming
pool. Suddenly perceiving his life as "disordered, lonely, and cold," he saw
himself as a shabby stranger, alienated and alone. And it came to him with
sudden clarity that the son of a madman, "a slave who is a Polish Jew under
Russian occupation," had no right to bring a child into the world.
This
realization "cut through him like a knife," he would write, and immediately he
felt as if he had "committed suicide." The child he might have fathered died
with him at that moment, but there emerged a "revitalized" man who took for a
son "the idea of serving the child and his rights." He who was ambivalent about
so rnany things had now settled once and for all on remaining childless. He was
giving up the responsibilities of marriage and family at which his father had
failed-and for which, in truth, he, Janusz Korczak, had never shown any
inclination. Though he could not remain a child´ he would inhabit the world of
childhood, but as the "responsible pedagogue"> his father was not. He was
thirty-three: almost the same age his father had been when he was born.
"Out
of a mad soul we forge a sane deed," he wrote in later years. The deed was "a
vow to uphold the child and defend his rights." No religious order had asked him
for such a vow-but he was to uphold it as conscientiously as any priest.

The international medicinal conference in Munich in October 2008

I will be reading the blog on the Obama overtures to obtain a consciousness overview.I will also be reviewing The international medicinal conference in Munich in October 2008 where the Mochica method was presented before amazed onlookers. (FROM PREVIOUS POST)

The press agent's email for this conference was (and is) I believe
kerstin.buerger@messe-muenchen.de. I intend to email him concerning this medicinal conference and the Introduction of the Mochica Method of Chiropractic.

http://curezone.com/blogs/fm.asp?i=1358827

You can obtain additional information and photos for downloading at www.icmmuenchen.
de
Press contact:
Kerstin Bürger, ICM Project Communications, Tel. (+49 89) 949 20722,

Here is the copy of the email I sent.

(No Subject)‏
From:
Edward Yablonsky (edwyablo@hotmail.com)
Sent:
Thu 7/16/09 5:29 PM
To:
kerstin.buerger@messe-muenchen.de
Cc:
Edward Yablonsky (edwyablo@hotmail.com)
.ExternalClass .EC_hmmessage P
{padding:0px;}
.ExternalClass body.EC_hmmessage
{font-size:10pt;font-family:Verdana;}
I am writing to you regarding the Medicinal conference in Munich in October 2008 regarding the introduction of the Mochica chiropractic method from Peru introduced at the Conference. Can you obtain info for me on that event. edwyablo@hotmail.com

In Reality Creation does not exist (TANYA)-nullified as to its source

Why do we perceive tangible existing beings as separately existing when they are nullified in their source? The example of the Sun and its rays is extremely apropos to illustrate that all we perceive is as a chimera and that G-d's force must continuously be within them and that, in reality they cannot exist without this force constantly re-creating them.This illustrates G-d's capacity for tzimtzum, or contraction of the divine force to create and sustain the finite creation.

Why do we not actually see existence nullified in their source? Th 4th chapter of Tanya explains this creative phenomenon of Havayah Elokim as Tzimtzum.

Since the Divine activating force responsible for the existence of created
things must continuously be present within them, they are completely nullified
in their source. This means, as the Alter Rebbe explained in the previous
chapter, that in reality they do not “exist”.
Why, then,
do we nevertheless perceive created beings as enjoying a tangible “existence”? —
Only because we are unable to see or comprehend the Divine utterance that is
contained within each created thing and that calls it into being.
The
Alter Rebbe illustrated this by considering the sun’s rays. When they are not
within their source, the sun, but diffused throughout the expanse of the
universe, they are perceived as having independent existence. However, when they
are contained within the sun-globe they clearly have no such “existence” at
all.
The following question therefore arose: Since created


beings, unlike the sun’s rays, must constantly have
their source within them, why do we not actually see how they are completely
nullified in their source?
In order to answer this question the Alter Rebbe
wrote that a certain preface would be necessary — and hence this, the fourth
chapter, now elaborates on G‑d’s capacity for tzimtzum, or contraction.
כי
הנה כתיב: כי שמש ומגן ה׳ אלקים
It is written,1
“For a sun and a shield is Havayah Elokim.”

Edgar Allan Poe's The Gold Bug

http://www.eapoe.org/works/tales/goldbga2.htm

http://needmoreshelves.blogspot.com/2009/07/poe-fridays-on-saturday.html

The craft of an exquisite story teller and story is evident from inception in the character and setting of William Legrand, Jupiter and Sullivan's Island as the plot slowly but richly unfolds.An excellent summary/synopsis is given in the referenced blog especially as posted below and especially on the comment on cryptology.Legrand is the quintessential recluse and this recluse is quite far is more than his seeming and the character is developed and so is Jupiter his loyal servant. In this 19th century American literature,this genre, the use of arcane words in the narrative is a distinct educational experience in the making to be exposed to.Legerand actually draws the beetle tolerably well and it is of a pure gold hue throughout. It resembled a skull or death's head. The drama for the drawing of the scarabaeus on the foolscap was well staged and then the entry of the Newfoundland dog. Domesticaed sacene mixed with the element of mystery of seeing the scarabaeus the next sunrise.

THE GOLD-BUG.
A PRIZE STORY.
WRITTEN EXPRESSLY FOR "THE DOLLAR
NEWSPAPER,"
BY EDGAR A. POE, ESQ.;
And for which the First
Premium of Our Hundred Dollars was paid.
———
What ho! what ho!
this fellow is dancing
mad! He hath been
bitten by the Tarantula.
All in the Wrong. Many years ago I
contracted an intimacy with a Mr. William Legrand. He was of an ancient Huguenôt
family, and had once been wealthy; but a series of misfortunes had reduced him
to want. To avoid the mortification consequent upon his disasters, he left New
Orleans, the city of his forefathers, and took up his residence at Sullivan's
Island, near Charleston, South Carolina. This Island is a
very singular one. It consists of little else than the sea sand, and is about
three miles long. Its breadth at no point exceeds a quarter of a mile. It is
separated from the main land by a scarcely perceptible creek, oozing its way
through a wilderness of reeds and slime, a favorite resort of the marsh-hen. The
vegetation, as might be supposed, is scant, or at least dwarfish. No trees of
any magnitude are to be seen. Near the western extremity, where Fort Moultrie
stands, and where are some miserable frame buildings, tenanted, during summer,
by the fugitives from Charleston dust and fever, may be found, indeed, the
bristly palmetto; but the whole island, with the exception of this western point
and a line of hard white beach on the sea-coast, is covered with a dense
undergrowth of the sweet myrtle so much prized by the horticulturists of
England. The shrub here often attains the height of fifteen or twenty feet, and
forms an almost impenetrable coppice, burthening the air with its fragrance.
In the inmost recesses of this coppice, not far from the
eastern or more remote end of the island, Legrand had built himself a small hut,
which he occupied when I first, by mere accident, made his acquaintance. This
soon ripened into friendship — for there was much in the recluse to excite
interest and esteem. I found him well educated, with unusual powers of mind, but
infected with misanthropy, and subject to perverse moods of alternate enthusiasm
and melancholy. He had with him many books, but rarely employed them. His chief
amusements were gunning and fishing, or sauntering along the bank and through
the myrtles, in quest of shells or entomological specimens; — his collection of
the latter might have been envied by a Swammerdamm. In these excursions he was
usually accompanied by an old negro, called Jupiter, who had been manumitted
before the reverses of the family, but who could be induced, neither by threats
nor by promises, to abandon what he considered his right of attendance upon the
footsteps of his young "Massa Will." It is not improbable that the relatives of
Legrand, conceiving him to be somewhat unsettled in intellect, had contrived to
instil this obstinacy into Jupiter, with a view to the supervision and
guardianship of the wanderer. The winters in the latitude of
Sullivan's Island are seldom very severe, and, in the fall of the year, it is a
rare event indeed when a fire is considered necessary. About the middle of
October, 18—, there occurred, however, a day of remarkable chilliness. Just
before sunset I scrambled my way through the evergreens to the hut of my friend,
whom I had not visited for several weeks; — my residence being, at that time, in
Charleston, a distance of nine miles from the Island, while the facilities of
passage and re-passage were very far behind those of the present day. Upon
reaching the hut I rapped, as was my custom, and, getting no reply, sought for
the key where I knew it was secreted, unlocked the door and went in. A fine fire
was blazing upon the hearth. It was a novelty and by no means an unwelcome one.
I threw off an overcoat, took an arm-chair by the crackling logs, and waited
patiently the arrival of my hosts. Soon after dark they
arrived and gave me a most cordial welcome. Jupiter, grinning from ear to ear,
bustled about to prepare some marsh-hens for supper. Legrand was in one of his
fits — how else shall I term them? — of enthusiasm. He had found an unknown
bivalve, forming a new genus, and, more than this, he had hunted down and
secured, with Jupiter's assistance, a scarabæus which he believed to be totally
new, but in respect to which he wished to have my opinion on the morrow.
"And why not to-night?" I asked, rubbing my hands over the
blaze and wishing the whole tribe of scarabæi at the devil.
"Ah, if I had only known you were here!" said Legrand, "but it's so long since I
saw you; and how could I foresee that you would pay me a visit this very night
of all others? As I was coming home I met Lieutenant G——, from the fort, and,
very foolishly, I lent him the bug; so it will be impossible for you to see it
until the morning. Stay here to-night, and I will send Jup down for it at
sunrise. It is the loveliest thing in creation!"

"What? — sunrise?" "Nonsense! no! — the bug. It is of a brilliant gold color — about the size of a large hickory-nut — with two jet black spots near one extremity of the back, and another, somewhat longer, at the other. The antennæ are" — "Dey aint no tin in him, Massa Will, I keep a tellin on you," here interrupted Jupiter; "de bug is a goole bug, solid, ebery bit of him, inside and all, sep him wing — neber feel half so hebby a bug in my life." "Well, suppose it is, Jup," replied Legrand, somewhat more earnestly, it seemed to me, than the occasion demanded, "is that any reason for your letting the birds burn? The color" — here he turned to me — "is really almost enough to warrant Jupiter's idea. You never saw a more brilliant metallic lustre than the scales emit — but of this you cannot judge till [column 2:] to-morrow. In the mean time I can give you some idea of the shape." Saying this, he seated himself at a small table, on which were a pen and ink, but no paper. He looked for some in a drawer, but found none. "Never mind," said he at length, "this will answer;" and he drew from his waistcoat pocket a scrap of what I took to be very dirty foolscap, and made upon it a rough drawing with the pen. While he did this I retained my seat by the fire, for I was still chilly. When the design was complete he handed it to me without rising. As I received it a loud growl was heard, succeeded by a scratching at the door. Jupiter opened it, and a large Newfoundland, belonging to Legrand, rushed in, leaped upon my shoulders, and loaded me with caresses; for I had shown him much attention during previous visits. When his gambols were over I looked at the paper, and, to speak the truth, found myself not a little puzzled at what my friend had depicted. "Well!" I said, after contemplating it for some minutes, "this is a strange scarabæus, I must confess: new to me: never saw anything like it before — unless it was a skull, or a death's-head — which it more nearly resembles than anything else that has come under my observation." "A death's-head!" echoed Legrand —"Oh — yes — well, it has something of that appearance upon paper, no doubt. The two upper black spots look like eyes, eh? and the longer one at the bottom like a mouth — and then the shape of the whole is oval." "Perhaps so," said I; "but, Legrand, I fear you are no artist. I must wait until I see the beetle itself, if I am to form any idea of its personal appearance." "Well, I don't know," said he, a little nettled, "I draw tolerably — should do it at least — have had good masters, and flatter myself that I am not quite a blockhead." "But, my dear fellow, you are joking then," said I, "this is a very passable skull — indeed, I may say that it is a very excellent skull, according to the vulgar notions about such specimens of physiology — and your scarabæus must be the queerest scarabæus in the world if it resembles it. Why we may get up a very thrilling bit of superstition upon this hint. I presume you will call the bug scarabæus caput hominis, or something of that kind — there are many similar titles in the Natural Histories. But where are the antennæ you spoke of?" "The antennæ!" said Legrand, who seemed to be getting unaccountably warm upon the subject; "I am sure you must see the antennæ. I made them as distinct as they are in the original insect, and I presume that is sufficient."

So, The Gold Bug. The unnamed narrator's friend, William Legrand, is bitten by what he believes to be a solid gold beetle. Legrand becomes obsessed with searching for treasure, making his friend, the narrator, believe he might be going crazy. Some time later, Legrand's servant, Jupiter, returns to the narrator and asks him to come to Sullivan's Island to help his master. Legrand is convinced he can find the treasure, and has a cryptogram to help him. After an unusual search, they do find the treasure, buried by Captain Kidd.I think this story proves why Poe is the master of the SHORT story, not the longish-short story. This just felt too long - I didn't care for any of the characters, and portions of the story drug on. The character of Jupiter would probably be considered racist in today's literature - modern writers would be excoriated for writing a character like that.However, I found the cryptology section to be fascinating. It was not fast reading - I really had to concentrate - but the method of solving the mystery of where the treasure could be found was something quite special. After the initial publication of the story, interest in cryptology exploded, and I can understand why.Next week we try another short story, The Devil in the Belfry. Poe Fridays is hosted by Kristen at WeBeReading

Janusz Korczak and Stefa -the team and the not all full orphans

http://korczak.com/Biography/kap-8.htm

These new type of non full orphans grab your hear,street wise , and children of poverty put in shelters and Korczak watched their performance easily moved to tears.They had sorrow in their eyes and bore the weight beyond their 10 years of many generations.These were street wise.Notice the no nonsense portrait of Stefa.She is destined to be responsible for 100's of children for the next 30 years.Stefa's polish patriot background is outlined in her family and her upbringing. Stefa spoke no0 Yiddish and had no knowledge of Jewish ritual.She, her older sister Julia, and her younger brother Stanislaw (Stash) occupied a six-room apartment with their parents in a building that had been part of her mother´s dowry. BIO AND QUOTE) Evidently her upbringing had a bearing on her no nonsense approach to life which was carried over to her responsibilities for the children carried on for 30 years.Stefa's mother, an ardent Polish patriot,saw to it that her two youngest daughters went to Mlle Jadwiga Sikorska´s exclusive private school for girls-where Polish culture was taught surreptitiously-and then to the University of Liege in Belgium rather than to the Russian university in Warsaw. (QUOTE BIO) Yes Stefa's mother was unconventional and taught her organizational ability. Stefa's degree was in the natural sciences but her interest lay in education Stefa. When she returned to Warsaw and noticed the small Jewish shelter near her home run by the Orphans Aid Society, she immediately volunteered her services. Before long, she became so indispensable that Stella Eliasberg put her in charge.(QUOTE) It was as if this were a sychronistic experience especially her teaming up with Janusz later, a near perfect compliment. Her indispensability was noticed right away by Stella who put her in charge of the Jewish shelter.Esterka Weintraub was her only assistant, another orphan became to her at age 13 like a daughter. The early phases of family here were emerging and that emerged with years in extenuating.The earlier circumstances were truly revolting as here quoted: (The director who ran the shelter before the Society took over had used its meager funds for her own purposes, dressing and eating well, while the emaciated children, clad in rags, crawled about the filthy floor grabbing at rotten potatoes that had been thrown to them.) Stefa was close to the Eliasbergs and had no idea of the impending life work with Janusz would yet emerge and noticed. He (Janusz) would cultivate the joy of the children when the balding doctor had pockets full of candy and magic tricks and had a tailored repertoire of riddles and fairy tales always ready for the telling . Stefa could bring order to the ramshackle home, and they bonded with a common spiritual daughter Esterka (Janusz and Stefa) . Along with his "pedagogical love" which was all embracing, they planned to send Esterka to Stefa's University in Belgium.

By the time Korczak arrived at the shelter in the dilapidated former
nunnery on Franciskanska Street, the program in honor of Maria Konopnicka, a
poet and children´s writer, had already begun. He stood in the back watching the
pale, spindly performers with their shaven heads, their clean but ill-fitting
clothes, reciting the poems they had been rehearsing all week. He was so moved
by their shy smiles, he could hardly hold back his tears.
They were not all
full orphans. Most of their fathers had died of consumption, malnutrition, and
overwork; their widowed mothers, unable to manage, were forced to put them in
shelters like this while they went out to work. The older ones were already
streetwise and tough, with the same sorrow in their sunken eyes, in their uneasy
high-pitched laughter, that Korczak had observed in the Polish waifs of the
Warsaw slums -"rare children who bear not only the weight of their ten years,
but deep in their souls the burden of many generations."
Korczak noticed
Stefa standing to one side coaching them, her lips moving with theirs. Whenever
a child finished, he ran to her for a hug, and then stayed close, clinging with
the others like magnets to her long skirt.
No one would have called Stefa a
beauty, even then. At the age of twenty-three, she was eight years younger than
Korczak and a good head taller. Her dark, serious eyes - the best feature in her
broad, plain facerevealed both warmth and strength. In a picture of her taken at
the time, a short functional hairdo frames an intense, no-nonsense expression,
which already suggests the woman who is destined to carry responsibility for
hundreds of children on her shoulders for thirty years. A white Peter Pan collar
rests without artifice on a black sweater that covers a plump figure bordering
on the matronly.
Stefa´s acculturated background was in many ways similar to
Korczak´s. She spoke no Yiddish and had little knowledge of Jewish ritual. She,
her older sister Julia, and her younger brother Stanislaw (Stash) occupied a
six-room apartment with their parents in a building that had been part of her
mother´s dowry. The two oldest daughters had already married and moved out.
Stefa's father, the owner of a textile factory, was in fragile health, and left
much ofthe responsibility for raising the children to his wife. in a period when
few women received a higher education, Stefa´s mother, an ardent Polish patriot,
saw to it that her two youngest daughters went to Mlle Jadwiga Sikorska´s
exclusive private school for girls-where Polish culture was taught
surreptitiously-and then to the University of Liege in Belgium rather than to
the Russian university in Warsaw. While they were away, she busied herself
adding to their trousseaus, which she kept in large hope chests in her bedroom,
little imagining that neither of them would ever marry. Everything was
fastidiously prepared, down to the last properly sewn button; she judged the
character of a person by how tightly his buttons were secured. Tied to home by
her young son and her husband, this energetic woman who loved to travel
contented herself with touring remote areas of the city by tramcar. She would
come back refreshed, as from a long adventure. It was from this unconventional
mother that Stefa absorbed many of her values and her organizational ability.
Stefa´s degree was in natural science, but her real interest lay in
education. When she returned to Warsaw and noticed the small Jewish shelter near
her home run by the Orphans Aid Society, she immediately volunteered her
services. Before long, she became so indispensable that Stella Eliasberg put her
in charge. (The director who ran the shelter before the Society took over had
used its meager funds for her own purposes, dressing and eating well, while the
emaciated children, clad in rags, crawled about the filthy floor grabbing at
rotten potatoes that had been thrown to them.) Stefa´s only assistant was an
energetic thirteen- year-old ward of another orphanage, Esterka Weintraub, who
had become like a daughter.
Stefa had also become very close to the
Eliasbergs in the course of her work. When they told her that Janusz Korczak was
going to attend the shelter´s party, she had no doubt that this famous advocate
of children´s welfare would be interested in their project-but how interested
she could not have anticipated. Korczak began stopping by the shelter at odd
moments to chat with her and play with the children. The orphans would scream
with delight at the sight ofthe slim, modest, balding doctor whose pockets were
always filled with candy and magic tricks, and whose repertoire of riddles and
fairy tales was limitless. They made an effective team: Stefa with her ability
to bring order to the dark, ramshackle quarters, and he with his natural way
with children. His love, which he would one day call "pedagogical love" (not
sentimental, but based on mutual respect), embraced them all, and especially
little Esterka Weintraub, whose sweet, helpful disposition made her as appealing
to him as to Stefa. When they talked ofsending her someday to Stefa's university
in Belgium, it was almost as if they were discussing the future of their own
daughter.

Janusz Korczak -his literary works

http://www.ibe.unesco.org/publications/ThinkersPdf/korczake.PDF Bibliography of the works of the prolific Janusz Korczak

http://www.diapozytyw.pl/en/site/ludzie/janusz_korczak

Many of these are obscure works that I have never heard of,are hard to access, and I would give my eye teeth (metaphorically) to read and savor.He wrote in several different genres and explored various disciplines in the social sciences and literature outside the realm of children's literature.King Matt the First and Th Bankruptcy of Little Jack are two books, only the first of which I have read in snippets and the second I am not familiar with. Certainly not with Kajtus the Sorcerer (1934). He also wrote for adults including the following books: Children of the Street (1901), Child of the Salon, 1906,Moski, Joski and Srule, 1909.Jozki, Jaski i Franki, [Jozki, Jaski and Franki, 1910],How to Love a Child, 1920,The Child's Right to Respect, 1929,Rules of Life, 1930. He also wrote poetic prose [One On One With God: The Prayers of Those Who Do Not Pray].

From E. Ringelblum, Kronika getta warszawskiego (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1983), pp. 606-607. ) This is an acc ount of Korczak as given by Nachum Remba, and supposedly he was the last to speak with Korczak and was to go to the community (he propsed) to seek intervention for Korczak which refused ,never wanting to leave the children for a moment.That was not a march to the wagons, but an organized, mute protest against banditism! Those were the first ranks who went to their death with dignity, looking at the barbarians with contempt. (...) Even the Order Service stood at attention and saluted. (QUOTE)

Marek Rudnicki's account gives a very different perspective: The atmosphere was dominated by an enormous sense of passivity, automatism and apathy. No one was visibly moved that it was Korczak who was going, there was no saluting (as some people describe), there certainly was no intervention on the part of Judenrat members, and no one approached Korczak. There were no gestures, no singing, no proudly lifted heads, and I don't remember whether anyone was carrying the banner of the Orphans' Home, though some people say this was the case.(QUOTE)

H. Grynberg, Prawda nieartystyczna (Unartistic Truth), (Berlin, Archipelag, 1984), p. 122. Here is yet another account of the final trail of Janusz Korczak "That amazement that a sick, old person, exhausted, abandoned, betrayed by the world in which he believed, a professional altruist, monk and the realest of saints (despite the anger, which he did not conceal) did not betray himself and did not hide in a hole to save his own pathetic biological being-that amazement-this was almost an abrogation of his entire life's work. Those speeches and tales of his heroic death because he did not want to leave the children on the way to the gas chambers and live as if nothing had ever happened-constitute the greatest disrespect for his noble soul."

This account depicts Janusz as a noble betrayed and necessarily angry soul; his "heroic death" is a false picture disrespecting that noble soul.

He left behind a great deal of literary and theoretical works, including
works of children's literature such as Krol Macius Pierwszy (King Matt the
First, 1922); Bankructwo Malego Dzeka (The Bankruptcy of Little Jack, 1924;
Kiedy znow bede maly (One Day I Will Be Small Again, 1925; Kajtus czarodziej
(Kajtus the Sorcerer, 1934), as well as for adults (including Dzieci ulicy
[Children of the Street, 1901]; Dziecko salonu [Child of the Salon, 1906];
Moski, Joski i Srule, [Moski, Joski and Srule, 1909]; Jozki, Jaski i Franki,
[Jozki, Jaski and Franki, 1910]; Jak kochac dziecko [How to Love a Child, 1920];
Prawo dziecka do szacunku [The Child's Right to Respect, 1929]; Prawidla zycia
[Rules of Life, 1930]) and poetic prose, (Sam na sam z Bogiem: Modlitwy tych,
którzy sie nie modla [One On One With God: The Prayers of Those Who Do Not Pray,
1922]; Bezwstydnie krotkie [Shamelessly Brief, 1926]), as well as dramatic
works, of which only one has survived: Senat szalencow (Senate of the Madmen),
staged at the Ateneum Theater by S. Jaracz in 1931.

The following text is from an account by Nachum Remba, a member of the underground self-defense organization in the ghetto, who had been delegated to Umschlagplatz. In his account, he was the last to speak with Korczak, proposing that they go to the Community to seek intervention. Dr. Korczak refused, however, because he did not want to leave the children alone even for a moment. "No! I will never forget that image. That was not a march to the wagons, but an organized, mute protest against banditism! Unlike the crushed mass of people who went to slaughter like cattle, a march began the likes of which had never been seen before. (...) Those were the first ranks who went to their death with dignity, looking at the barbarians with contempt. (...) Even the Order Service stood at attention and saluted. When the Germans saw Korczak, they asked: "Who is that man?" From E. Ringelblum, Kronika getta warszawskiego (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1983), pp. 606-607.

Marek Rudnicki's account gives a different perspective on the last journey of Korczak and the orphans. Rudnicki followed Korczak and the children from the Orphans' Home on Sienna Street all the way to the "gate" on Umschlagplatz. "I don't want to be an iconoclast or a debunker of myths, but I must relate what I saw then. The atmosphere was dominated by an enormous sense of passivity, automatism and apathy. No one was visibly moved that it was Korczak who was going, there was no saluting (as some people describe), there certainly was no intervention on the part of Judenrat members, and no one approached Korczak. There were no gestures, no singing, no proudly lifted heads, and I don't remember whether anyone was carrying the banner of the Orphans' Home, though some people say this was the case. There was a terrible, exhausted silence. Korczak dragged his feet, hunched over, mumbling something to himself from time to time (...).

One other legend still exists for which no one has ever found solid evidence-that the Germans actually suggested to Korczak that he leave the Umschlagplatz. H. Grynberg has provided a very incisive interpretation of Korczak's final journey: "That amazement that a sick, old person, exhausted, abandoned, betrayed by the world in which he believed, a professional altruist, monk and the realest of saints (despite the anger, which he did not conceal) did not betray himself and did not hide in a hole to save his own pathetic biological being-that amazement-this was almost an abrogation of his entire life's work. Those speeches and tales of his heroic death because he did not want to leave the children on the way to the gas chambers and live as if nothing had ever happened-constitute the greatest disrespect for his noble soul." H. Grynberg, Prawda nieartystyczna (Unartistic Truth), (Berlin, Archipelag, 1984), p. 122.

Summer camp ends back to Warsaw Korczak goes to Berlin to study

http://korczak.com/Biography/kap-7.htm

Korczak arrives in Berlin to study after camp ends. Camp is contrasted with Warsaw the big dirty city with all of its attendant ills.The campfire and the last sunset and the stork's nest. How nature has a spiritual and healing affect on these young boys!. Germany, Berlin, was looked to for light and knowledge and Janusz went there to study community hygiene and infant and orphan services. He took other courses he paid for (he lamented this as knowledge for sale) in neurology, electrocardiography,tuberculosis and other childhood diseases.He admired their advanced techniques but their automated approach posed doubts if he learned much to apply tro his own practice and this confirmed that in the last analysis ,he would himself have to test and confirm relying on his own observations and not any theory. Korczak studied under world famous German Jewish pediatricians Heinrich Finkelstein and Adolf Baginski, and shorter visits to insane asylums and detention centers and was able to more than glimpse the face of poverty stricken boys with brutal fathers. In the book Jozki, Jaski, and Franki, he was at camp with 150 Polish boys, authentic rascals, and won the trust of these children of poverty with arranged humor. Note the Minister in the Blue Shirt episode explained below and the way Korczak handled it, himself bursting into laughter.Note the softening of the 3rd culprit and the forest prayer episode related below. The Jewish Monthly asked Korczak to compare Jewish and Polish children and he quoted John Ruskin as saying:that one should look for the similarities and not the differences in children. (Quote) He contrasted himself to the true scientist in trusting his personal experience and not psychological tests whereby he did not trust their results. Thew return to the old despair at the Children's Hospital was not in vain and it was no9t a fortuitous occurence , his meeting Stefania (Stefa) Wilczynska, htrough his colleague Izaak Eliasberg, The occasion was that the Orphans' Aid Society was fund raising for a shelter it supported. They coulod draw wealthy philanthropists and Janusz accepted and met there Stefa who helped make possible his ideal haven for poor children.

On the day before the boys were to return to Warsaw, Oscar, the camp poet,
wrote:
The children celebrate because they are going horne.They will
exchange the green forests for the dank walls.Theflowerslaugh in the sun now,But
when winter comes>> they willfade.
That night the boys surprised their
counselor by presenting him with a stork´s nest. Then they all sat around a
campfire watching their last sunset. Tomorrow in Warsaw they would not see such
a beautiful sight, Korczak reminded them, only the ugly yellow lanterns that
lined the streets. It was the lamplighter who changed day into night in the
city, while in their camp it was the sun itself that turned off the light and
turned on the night.
As the sun dipped into the horizon, disappearing little
by little, a few boys cried out, "It>>s gone!"
"No, there"s still a
little left,´>> others shouted.
"And now we should take each other by
the hand, sing our song, wave our flag over our heads, and begin walking,"
Korczak told them."But not back to Warsaw.""Where? Where should we walk?" the
boys wanted to know."To the sun."
Everyone was surprised."It will be a long
journey but we can do it. We´ll sleep in the fields and earn money along the
way."The boys entered into the spirit. Gerson could play his violin in exchange
for some milk, Oscar could recite one of his poems and Aaron one of his tales in
exchange for bread."We will walk, walk, walk for a very long time," their
counselor told them. "If Weintraub gets tired, we´ll make a wheelchair and take
turns pushing him." "And then what?" asked the boys.The bell rang, calling them
to supper before he could answer. The next day they made their way by train back
to Warsaw, and shortly after that Korczak left for almost a year in Europe.
In going to Berlin that fall to do advanced work in pediatric medicine,
Korczak was following in the tradition of Jan Dawid and other Polish
intellectuals who had looked to Germany for "light and knowledge." Berlin, the
capital of the prosperous German Empire, had one of the best medical systems on
the continent: it was known for its highlv developed program in community
hygiene and its infant and orphan services. While deciding whether or not to
make the trip - it meant taking a leave from the Children>> s Hospital and
from his mother as well-Korczak discussed the pros and cons with his colleagues,
some ofwhom felt he would benefit from study there, and others that he would be
disappointed. Of all the suggestions given him about how to behave with the
Germans, he chose to take only two seriously: not to indulge his penchant for
shaking hands indiscriminately with everyone regardless of rank, and to change
his collar twice a day.
Korczak did not arrive in the capital city as a
famous writer but as a poor student. He found a modest room that was clean and
offered a regular change of towels - breakfast was included but some nights he
had only enough money for two glasses of milk and bread.
He admired Berlin´s
good bus system (which Warsaw lacked) and its many free libraries, open twelve
hours a day, but the city seemed "indifferent" to his presence. From August to
September he took vacation refresher courses for doctors sponsored by the Berlin
Medical Association. He was impressed that the professors, like the buses, were
always on time, but he hated the idea ofhaving to pay for lectures. Selling
knowledge made the university into a "marketplace." Nevertheless, he chose
special courses, along with other foreigners, in neurology and
electrocardiography, and studied the latest findings on tuberculosis and other
childhood illnesses. Watching how the Germans checked urine and took blood, he
couldn>>t help comparing their advanced medical techniques with the less
developed ones in Poland. Yet, by the end of two months>> he felt he was
in a "factory." Reading over bis notes, he wasn´t certain that he had learned
very much that would help him in his own practice; they only confirmed what he
already knew. that he had to rely on his own observations, and not accept any
theory that he had not tested himself.
Korczak also spent two months each
studying under the world-famous German-Jewish pediatricians Heinrich Finkelstein
and Adolf Baginski, one month in a home for the retarded and another in Theodor
Ziehen´s psychiatric clinic at the Charité. He made shorter visits to insane
asylums and detention centers for so-called juvenile delinquents. Leaving
Germany in the late spring of 1908, he stopped off in Switzerland, where he
interned for one month in a neurological clinic in Zurich. When he re- turned to
Warsaw in the early summer of 1908, he was struck by how poor and provincial the
city was.
Before resuming work at the Children>>s Hospital on Sliska
Street, Korczak treated himself to four weeks at a camp for one hundred and
fifty Polish boys, where there was "no lack of authentic rascals." In the book
he wrote about this experience, Jozki, Jaski, and Franki, his readers were once
again charmed by the adventures of the awkward, bespectacled counselor trying to
reach street urchins set loose in nature for the first time. But though he was
playing the buffoon in print, he was still trying to develop the strategies he
had worked out the year before at the Jewish camp. These children of poverty,
many with drunken fathers and invalid mothers who could not care for them, also
set snares for him, but this time he was prepared. He carefully memorized
everyone´s name and made notes on his initial impressions, spotting the most
aggressive boys, who were certain to be troublemakers. On the second day, when
the boys became raucous in the dormitory before dawn, he heard one proclaim: "I
am the Minister in the Blue Shirt!" Instead of being angry, Korczak stomped in
dramatically and asked; "All right, who is the Minister in the Blue Shirt?" The
tension lifted as he burst out laughing. "Like Napoleon winning a battle with
one successful attack," he had won the trust of the children-a trust "without
which it would not only be impossible to write a book about children, but also
impossible to love, rear, or even observe them."
Experimenting further with
his court, he noted that when three of the meanest boys were outrageous enough
to steal berries from little Jasiek, who was weak and stuttered, the judges
acquitted them because they had already been punished by the other campers who
refused to play with thieves. Two of the culprits became friendly and kind right
after that, but the third didn>>t until he heard "the forest´s prayer"
-that moment when the trees speak and the sky answers. Whoever hears it "feels
funny in his soul" and bursts into tears although he´s not sad, and doesn´t know
why. And the next day he wakes up much better than he was before he heard the
prayer.
As he worked to help his Jozkis overcome their problems, he was
reminded of the struggles of his Moshkis. Years later, when the Jewish Monthly
asked him to compare Jewish and Polish children, he quoted John Ruskin´s opinion
that one should look for the similarities and not the differences in children.
With wry self-mockery, he contrasted himself to the "true scientist" who would
test 32,000 mice to the eighth generation to find out the influence of alcohol
on the mouse, while he had access to only two hundred children a year. And even
ifhe believed in psychological tests, how could he trust the results? True, he
had heard it said that Jewish children were more emotional than Polish, but he
had seen tears of joy and sorrow in both groups watching the same movie-and
without counting the tears one by one, he would not feel qualified to verify the
emotional superiority of either group. He preferred answers based on personal
experience.
Back at his post at the Children>>s Hospitalthat
September, Korczak found his old despair waiting for him. What was he doing
there? What good was it to cure sick children when they only returned to their
unhealthy surroundings? When a colleague, Izaak Eliasberg, a highly respected
diagnostician in dermatitis and venereal disease, told him about the Orphans Aid
Society, to which he and his wife, Stella, belonged, Korczak listened carefully.
The Society was holding a fund-raising party for a shelter it supported. They
could draw some wealthy philanthropists if he were able to come.
Korczak
accepted, little knowing how fortuitous the occasion would be. He was to meet
Stefania (Stefa) Wilczynska, a woman who would not only share his dream of
creating an ideal haven for poor children, but would help make it possible.

The lost art of conversation -power of the word

http://majorityoftwo.blogspot.com/2009/07/sounds-of-silence.html

The power and reality of speech as divine breath was evanescent n the ancient world and in the Edwardian Age was given a to and fro exchange quality where meaning transpired and conversation ensued. Truly in these barbarian time frames we are caught in, words are reduced to meaningless and shallow chatter like a barrage of bullets occasioning nausea and voids,words beating the vapid air. Blessed silence!!

Has anyone else noticed lately that people seem to be getting louder? No
one listens anymore, they talk more, but they say less. It's just babble to fill
the air. People seem to be losing the gift of making conversation. I think
conversation should be speaking with someone, rather than "talking at" them, but
I have noticed that conversation now seems to consist of someone jabbering away
at people, rather than engaging them in a to-and-fro exchange of thoughts and
ideas. We are held captive by the rapid-fire talker, who spews words at us like
bullets from a machine gun, and there's no escape. Any attempt to engage them in
conversation with us is futile, because -- they're not listening.The young lady
in the Japanese restaurant chattered away at her three companions, completely
unaware that they looked like deer caught in the headlights of a car. Do we owe
this lost art of conversation to the fact that we are living in a louder
society, and we have to talk louder in order to be heard? Or perhaps we are so
used to watching the "talking heads" on TV that we subconsciously emulate them
when we speak with people, and we think we're making conversation.

Ceaseless re-creation ex nihilo the miracle of all time

Ceaseless re-creation ex nihilo the miracle of all time

Reanimation ceaselessly in the creative act "from nothing" is the greatest miracle never mentioned of the creator. The force consists of the creative letters emanating from 5 supernal organs of verbal articulation as is stated .Every creature only appears to have an existence of its own but is absolute naught and of nothing in relation to this activating force animating it.This force is continuous and the true reality of existence.

The Alter Rebbe has explained that the activating force of the Creator must
constantly be vested within creation, ceaselessly recreating and reanimating
created beings ex nihilo. This force consists of the creative “letters” which
emanate from the five supernal organs of verbal articulation.
והנה אחרי
הדברים והאמת האלה
Now, following these words of truth concerning the nature
of creation, namely, that the activating force must continually be vested in
created beings and create them ex nihilo,
כל משכיל על דבר יבין לאשורו איך שכל
נברא ויש הוא באמת נחשב לאין ואפס ממש
every discerning person
will
understand clearly that every creature and being, even though it appears
to have an existence of its own, is in reality considered to be absolute naught
and nothingness
לגבי כח הפועל ורוח פיו שבנפעל המהוה אותו תמיד ומוציאו מאין
ממש ליש
in relation to the activating force which creates it and the “breath
of His mouth” which is within it, continuously calling it into existence and
bringing it from absolute non-being into being.
Since this function must be
continuous, it follows that the creature’s activating force is the true reality
of its existence; the being itself bears no comparison to the activating force
which is wholly responsible for its existence.

The meaning of the exodus /deliverance from Egypt

The love of G-d for Israel and their deliverance from Egypt and the reasons therefore.

The rescue from Egypt was for the purpose of showing his inestimable love to Jewry and bind Jewryto His name and to G-d himself. The Jews.children of Israel, were in a perilous condition of reaching the ultimate bottom level of spirituality, termed sitra achra, to elevate Israel "that is to say, He elevated us from the nadir of degradation and defilement to the acme of holiness and to His infinite and boundless greatness.25" Ch46 Pt I Tanya. Egypt is termed the "obscenity of the earth. ( 27. A reference to Tanya, Part I, chs. 46-49, where this manner of love (“face reflecting face”) is discussed at length.)

ואחר כך יתבונן באהבת ה׳ הגדולה ונפלאה אלינו
Then, following his
meditation “in a particular way,” he will contemplate G‑d’s great and wondrous
love to us, a love that led Him*—
לירד למצרים, ערות האר׳, להוציא נשמותינו
מכור הברזל, שהוא הסטרא אחרא, רחמנא לצלן
to descend even to Egypt, the23
“obscenity of the earth,” to bring our souls out of the24
“iron crucible” into which the Jewish people had then descended, which is the
sitra achra (may the All-Merciful spare us),
לקרבנו אליו ולדבקנו בשמו ממש,
והוא ושמו אחד
to bring us close to Him and to bind us to His very Name — and
He and His Name are One, so that by being bound to His Name we were bound to G‑d
Himself;
דהיינו: שרוממנו מתכלית השפלות והטומאה לתכלית הקדושה, וגדולתו יתברך
שאין לה ק׳ ותכלית
that is to say, He elevated us from the nadir of
degradation and defilement to the acme of holiness and to His infinite and
boundless greatness.25
When
one has meditated in detail upon G‑d’s greatness and His tremendous love for the
Jewish people:
אזי כמים הפנים לפנים
Then,26
“As in water, face reflects face, [so does the heart of man to man,]”
Just as
one person’s love for another awakens a loving response in the other’s heart,
so, too, our contemplation of the ways in which G‑d has manifested His love
towards us will inspire within us a love for Him,
תתעורר האהבה בלב כל משכיל
ומתבונן בענין זה בעומקא דלבא
and love will be aroused in the heart of
everyone who contemplates and meditates upon this matter in the depths of his
heart,
לאהוב את ה׳ אהבה עזה, ולדבקה בו בלב ונפש, כמו שיתבאר במקומה
באריכות
to love G‑d with an intense love and to cleave unto Him, heart and
soul, as will be explained at length in its place.27

23.
Bereishit 24:9; see Yalkut Shimoni, ad loc., and Kohelet Rabbah 1:4.
24.
Devarim 4:20.
25.
Note of the Rebbe: “And the more he knows in specific detail the infinite gap [between himself and G‑d] etc., the greater will be his love [for Him]. See ch. 46 [of Part I].”
26.
Mishlei 27:19.
27.
A reference to Tanya, Part I, chs. 46-49, where this manner of love (“face reflecting face”) is discussed at length.

LEVELS OF G-DLINESS

LEVELS OF G-DLINESS The Jewish soul has several levels whch are trelative to assimilating the love of G-d within that soul and its level of G-dliness.

Neshamah=soul level- this love cannot be created but man can only enable it to be revealed by refining himself to an extraordinary degree .This kind of love is not attainable by all.

The second soul level is through earnest meditation,the love of G-d in the heart of the Jew.This love on this level is contemplative (Zohar 19. Part III, 67a, 68a.) to the extent of his intellect and beyond >With the former, the level of contemplation is within positive knowledge.The negative knowledge "even beyond" is beyond the range of his intellect and not subject to limitations of emanated worlds and beings. It is a quasi state of comprehension.

which is superior to the level of Ruach (the soul-level at which one’s divine
service focusses on one’s emotional attributes) and Nefesh (the soul-level at
which one fulfills the mitzvot out of an acceptance of the Heavenly
Yoke),
כמו שכתוב בראשית חכמה, שער האהבה
as explained in Reishit Chochmah,
Shaar HaAhavah.
There the author explains how the above level of love is
specifically related to the soul-level of Neshamah.
In sum, it is clear that
this love cannot be “created” by man. He can only enable it to be revealed
within him by refining himself — but to such an extraordinary degree that it is
not attainable by all.
והשנית היא אהבה שכל אדם יוכל להגיע אליה, כשיתבונן היטב
בעומקא דלבא
The second [level] is a love which every man can attain when he
meditates earnestly, so that its echo resounds in the depths of his
heart,
בדברים המעוררים את האהבה לה׳ בלב כל ישראל
on matters that arouse
the love of G‑d in the heart of every Jew,
הן דרך כלל: כי הוא חיינו ממש,
וכאשר האדם אוהב את נפשו וחייו, כן יאהב את ה׳, כאשר יתבונן וישים אל לבו כי ה׳ הוא
נפשו האמיתית וחייו ממש
whether [he meditates] in a general way — how He is
our very life,18
and just as one loves his soul and his life, so will he love G‑d when he
meditates and reflects in his heart that G‑d is his true soul and actual
life,
כמו שכתוב בזהר על פסוק: נפשי אויתיך וגו׳
as the Zohar19
comments on the verse,20
“[You are] my soul: I desire you,”
The Zohar explains that since G‑d is the
Jew’s soul and thus his true life, the Jew loves and desires Him.21
והן
דרך פרט, כשיבין וישכיל בגדולתו של מלך מלכי המלכים, הקב״ה, דרך פרטית
or
whether [he meditates] in a particular way,22
when he will understand and comprehend in detail the greatness of the King of
kings, the Holy One, blessed be He,
For example, he may reflect on the manner
in which G‑d fills all worlds and encompasses all worlds, and on how all
creatures are as naught before Him.
כאשר יוכל שאת בשכלו, ומה שלמעלה
משכלו
to the extent that his intellect can grasp, and even beyond.
These
two phrases refer respectively to concepts that are within the reach of
“positive knowledge,” and to truths that lie beyond it and are perceptible only
through “negative knowledge”; i.e., though one may not understand such a thing
itself, he may understand how it is not subject to the restrictions of a lesser
order.
In terms of comprehending G‑dliness this means to say, that one will
at least understand that those levels of G‑dliness that are beyond the range of
his intellect are not subject to the limitations inherent within created and
emanated worlds and beings. This “negative knowledge” — in the Alter Rebbe’s
words, “even beyond” — is also considered to be a quasi state of comprehension.

18.
Note of the Rebbe: “As explained above, ch. 44 [of Part I].”
19.
Part III, 67a, 68a.
20.
Yeshayahu 26:9.
21.
The Rebbe notes that the Alter Rebbe terms this a “general way” in meditation, because its subject — life and the love of life — is by nature universal, with no great differences in the degree of love or in the details of the meditation.
22.
Note of the Rebbe: “As explained above, ch. 46 [of Part I].”