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As I wake up to this brand new day, this day, no matter what happens, no matter how unfair it seems to my small eyes, no matter what stress and strain it may bring to me or my family, no matter how inconvenienced I am, no matter if I lose money, pride, honour or possession…I won’t stop giving my thanks to the ONE who gave it all.  I WON’T.

No matter how hard it is.

For we have NO idea what good may come of it.

None.

Written Erev Yom Kippur 5770

Erev Yom Kippur

Just saying it brings shudders to the kishkas. I mean it all comes down to this, right??

After Yom Kippur, the book is sealed above and we await the results for the coming year.

What is the main work we have to do leading up to this Holy day??

Its all about forgiveness.

Forgiveness to everyone we can think of that we messed up the relationship over the past year. Yeah, you know who it is!! Don’t try and pretend you don’t. He knows ALL!!

But I think there is one person we forget about. One person that is the hardest person in the whole world to forgive.

And we all know who that is right??

OURSELVES!!

Ourself is the hardest person to forgive because all of our dumb,stupid,idiotic mistakes that could have been avoided, had we paid a little bit more attention to what was going on, could have been avoided. If only we had remembered something we should have known, something we promised we wouldn’t forget. Then it would never have happened. Then we wouldn’t have said that one thing that caused our loved ones lots of pain. Ourselves as well.

Stop kicking yourself and forgive yourself.

Imagine if Adam Harishon, the first man knew how much that first mistake really meant. If about half an hour after he ate from the apple he knew what would take place over the next 6000 years, I bet he would be screaming in pain his whole 930 years…How much it cost humanity! How much it cost klal Yisroel. Instead of going straight into the times of Moshiach and bringing immediate geulah, or so the Holy books tell us, he lost his celestial body sent everyone working and sweating for our bread and gave all the Jews the biggest tikkun or correction in history.

But thats not what happened. You see Adam Harishon was after all a prophet. Anyone who can communicate directly with G-d is. So He knew exactly the severity of his deed. However, he didn’t go around moping. Directly after the first sin, the next verse or posuk, says that Adam “knew his wife Chava and she conceived and bore Cain” No wasting time. No self flagulation.

“Come on Chava, lets start a family”

“But they are going to go through so much suffering?”

“Lets see what happens. After, 6000 years isn’t all that long”

This is our job Erev Yom Kippur. To forgive everyone around us, and then say to ourselves

“Come on, lets move on. Lets see what happens. After all. 120 years isn’t all that long.!

A blessed year to all

The sefer Noam Elimelech is sometimes referred to as the sefer Tzadikim. It constantly refers to the avodah, or service to G-d by the Tzaddik, who’s absolute perfection in his relationship with the Creator is a sight to behold.  For instance, in the parshah  of the week at the time of writing, Re’eh, he writes that the special light that Hashem hid in the 7 days of creation, called the Or Haganuz  used only by the Tzadikim, is actually utilized everyday by them with all of its special powers.  And the proof: when we say in tfilla in the morning “yotzer ohr uvorei choshech”  it is expressed in the present tense, not in the past as it should have said, if it were talking about the light that Hashem created at the very beginning.  In other words, Hashem is always creating this special light. ALWAYS. And  only the Tzadikim know how to access it. And he says also, that all the while that the Tzadik goes up and up on even higher dizzying height of service to the One Above, the light is revealed to them more and more.

As for us regular folk who have still a long way to go in the Holiness stakes, we can benefit from this. By attatching ourselves, as it were, to a particular Tzadik, we can access this Or Haganuz too. Through them. By them.  With them.  And you know something, the Tzaddik doesn’t even have to be alive.  We can go to his place of resting and pray for our needs, and that Holy light that he had access to when he was still in this world, can be siphered down to this world in the form of a little Hashgach Pratis. That’s when G-d pays us a little visit and we go “oooooooooooohhhhh!!”

Now recently my wife and I spent a lovely evening in one of the most beautiful places in Israel. The tzion of Abaya and Rava, 2 Amoraim in the times of the Gemorrah. To get there, you take a lovely scenic road just outside of Tzfat into a nearby forest. From there, just a short 15 min walk from where the paved road ends you enter the forest and come to an incredible view of the valley and mountainside. It really feels like one of the “tops” of the world.  They really knew where to be for thier last resting place in this world.

So there we set up our BBQ and enjoyed the quiet. The last time I was there, as I remembered was Hoshana Raba. One of the local synagogues in Tzfat have a custom of davening there every year at netz, or sunrise, on this auspicious day which occurs on the last day of Sukkot. I joined them and prayed, and really felt my prayers were being heard. Little did I know, that they were.  The next year, on that same day my first child was born, on Hoshana Raba.  The Hashgacha, or Divine Providence was not lost on me. Perhaps this is a way of letting me know that I have a Tzaddik  to feast in his share of the Or Haganuz that he acquired.

Not to say thats all we need to get by while we are alive, but a little helping hand doesn’t hurt now, does it?

I thought I’d like to get a response from the Torah minded folk throughout the world about todays Jewish music scene, which is a subject close to my heart as you can well imagine…. Send your comments/thoughts/ideas through this space and we’ll make a better world, bezrat Hashem.

For example: Is todays top Jewish musicians, as good as todays pop/rock stars in terms of musicianship/performance ability/originality/inspiration ability. Who do you admire in the Jewish music scene and why?

I value all of your precious comments and looking forward to making a new disc soon, bezrat Hashem…

I would like to welcome everyone to the Banjo Billy Blog.

Yep, its a living. Its also a Holy life. I don’t think I can compare with all the Talmidey Chochomim that are writing on the net these days. With thier words so inspiring, and their message so clear, my humble offering would seem trite and unnecessary. However, and I quote the back of one of my discs, we should ALL try and connect our unique voices to the Creator of the world, like the rooster in Perek Shira, who has seven songs to sing to his creator, not just one.

Thus far, I have put out 20 songs which try and express ones voice with the Creator. One such song is “G-d In a Bagel”. Each of us have a place within ourselves that has immense abilities. I mean IMMENSE ABILITIES. This is the hole in the middle of the bagel. A very tiny hole, that only exists on account of the bagel itself, which is representative of the physical world, or that which acts a barrier to get the potential.

There have been countless Torahs about the body – the barrier,  and the soul – the absloute potential. One such Torah is by the saintly Rabbi Moshe  Chaim Luzzatto Z”L or his initials the Ramchal. It is from “Daat Tvunot” translated into English with the title “The Knowing Heart”. In it he writes:

“Know that the essence of the body is darkness, and that even if it realized its greatest potential of refinement, it will still be distinguished from the soul, that distinction consisting in this difference alone: the soul is a noble, luminous entity, emanating from the radiance of the Blessed One’s countenance, whereas the body is not so , but an entity, dark in essence, resulting from the concealment of the Blessed One’s countenance. It is susceptible of refinement, however, to the extent of its nature – to that extreme degree where very little difference is perceivable between it and the soul. But in spite of this, the soul will remain soul, insusceptible of defect, and the body, to the contrary, a thing defective by nature, but attaining the refinement afforded it” p113

In other words, we can only do so much to refine our bodies – i.e curb the desires that feed it. But our souls, ahhhh, the beautiful soul – THATS the one thing NOTHING can touch. It will always remain just that. A soul, which is  pure potential.