#shabbatverseoftheday
16. Joseph answered Pharaoh, saying, “It isn’t in me. God will give Pharaoh an answer of peace.”

#verseoftheday
Psalms 41: 4-5
G-d will sustain him when he is on his sickbed. Even when he is ill, you attend to him and turn him from one side to another.

#rabbinachmanmoment

I was watching, last night, Rabbi Alon Anava's YouTube on the month of Tivet. It was quite excellent however he said to not be surprised by a trial of your faith this month. The month of Tivet is about judgement.

Thus when I read this by Rabbi Nachman it seemed most appropriate for this month.

To taste the hidden light

One who wants to taste the taste of the hidden light – the secrets of the Torah that will be revealed in time to come – must elevate the attribute of fear to its root. This is done through Judgment. Examine yourself and your life and carefully weigh all your various activities and interests. This will enable you to dispel all your fears of people and forces other than God. These are called “fallen fears”. You will then be able to elevate your fear and attain true awe of Heaven. When a person fails to examine and judge himself, he is examined and judged from on high. God can use any means He desires to execute His judgments: He has the power to clothe them in anything in the world. All things are His messengers This is visible in practice. When something bad happens to a person, the precipitating cause often seems quite insignificant. One would never have expected such a tiny thing to cause such a train of illness, suffering and other dire consequences. What has happened is that the Divine decree against the person has been clothed in these mundane circumstances in order to send him what he deserves. However, when a person takes the initiative to examine and judge himself, the heavenly decree is removed and there is no need to fear anything. Worldly objects and occurrences will no longer veil and cloak God’s decree. Taking stock of oneself dispels the heavenly judgment, because the person is already sufficiently aroused and spiritually awake not to need things of this world to shake him. He has elevated fear to its root: he is not afraid of anyone or anything except God. This will enable him to attain God’s hidden light. Likutey Moharan I, 15

@ephraim-holland Check these for me? http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_slc.asp?Lprice=100&Hprice=199.99&Nav=|c:2627|&Sort=3&Recs=10

Happy New Year!! 2018 is going to be very exciting. We hope everyone is ready to get back to studying tomorrow, but until then the A-T Minecraft server is up and running. HAVE FUN!!

#verseoftheday
Psalms 41 6-9
My enemies speak evil against me: "When will he die and his name be destroyed?" Even if my enemy comes to see, his prostrations of concern are false; As he sits there, his heart gathers up malicious thoughts, which he will then go out and spread. All those who hate me whisper together against me and plot evil against me. They say how, "All his evil has now returned on his own head in the form of his illness, and now that he has succumbed, he will never get up again."

#rabbinachmanmoment
1 of 9
Several of us are reading the Story of the Seven Beggars. I thought I would share this story with all of you but only in small doses. So we can read and absorb.

הבית של שבעה קבצנים - The House of Seven Beggars Online Synagogue Rabbi Nachman’s Story of The Seven Beggars

The Seven Beggars
Who brought gifts to the beggar bride and groom
A famous story of the nineteenth century chassidic Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav, told by Meyer Levin in "Classic Chassidic Tales" (Jason Aronson, 1996)

There was once a king who had an only son, and while he lived the king decided to give his crown to the prince. He made a great festival to which all the noblemen of the kingdom came, and in the midst of pomp and ceremony the king placed the crown upon the head of his young son, saying, "l am one who can read the future in the stars, and I see that, there will come a time when you will lose your kingdom, but when that time comesyou must not be sorrowful; if you can be joyous even when your kingdom is lost, I too wil be filled with joy. For you cannot be a true king unless you are a happy man."

The son became king, appointed governors, and ruled. He was a lover of learning, and in order to fill his court with wise men he let it be known that he would give every man whatever he desired, either gold or glory , in return for his wisdom; then all the people in that kingdom began to seek for knowl- edge, in order to get gold or glory from the king. And thus it was that the simplest fool in the land was wiser than the greatest sage of any other country; and in their search for learning, the people forgot the study of war, so the country was left open to the enemy.

Among the philosophers in the young king’s court there were clevermen and infidels who soon filled his mind with doubt. He would askhimself ,"Who am I; why am I in the world?". Then he would heave a deep sigh, and fall into melancholy. Only when he would forget this doubt would he again become a happy king; but more often everyday he thought, "Why am I in this world?" , and sighed.

One day the invader came and attacked the unprotected kingdom, andall the people fled. Men and women left their fields and their homes,and the high- ways were filled with carts and wagons, with people on foot carrying infants in their arms. The fleeing people went through a forest, and there it befell that two five-year-old children were lost: a boy and a girl. After all the people had passed, the children heard each other crying. Then they went up to each other and joined hands, and wandered through the forest. Soon they were hungry, but they did not know where they could get food.

Just then they saw a beggar going through the woods, carrying his beggar’s sack. They ran to him and clung to him."Where do you come from?", he asked."We do not know", the children answered.He gave them bread to eat, and turned to go on his way. They begged him not to leave them alone, but he said,"I cannot take you with me." Then the children saw that he was blind, and they wondered how he found his way through the forest.But as he was leaving, he blessed them, saying, "May you be as I am, and as old as I am." Then he left them.

Night came, and the children slept. In the morning they cried again for food: then they saw another beggar. They began to talk to him, but he placed his fingers against his ears and showed them that he was deaf. He gave them bread to eat, enough for the day, and as he went he blessed them, saying, "May you be as I am."

On the third day when they cried for bread another beggar came, who stammered so that he could not speak to them. He, too, fed the children, but would not take them with him, and as he went away he blessed them with the wish that they might become like himself.

And so each day as they wandered through the forest the children were fed: on the fourth day by a beggar with a crippled throat, then by a hunchback, then by a beggar who had no hands, and at last there came a beggar who had no feet. And each beggar left them with the wish that they might become as he was.

On the eighth day they came out of the forest to a town: they went to a house and asked for food, and as the people saw that they were only little children, they were given food and drink. So the children said to each other, "We will go on like this from one p1ace to another, and we will always remain together". They made great beggar’s sacks for themselves, for carrying whatever was given them ,and they went over the countryside, into the towns, to the fairs,and into the cities. Wherever they went, they sat among the beggars,until they became known to all the poor folk on the roads as the "Two children who were lost in the woods."

Years passed, the children grew. Once, when all the beggars of the kingdom were assembled at a fair in a great city, a leader among them thought,"Let us marry the children, one to another" He told his companions of this thought, And they told others and when the children were told they said, "Good". So it was decided to marry them at once. All that was needed was a place for the wedding. Then the mendicants remembered that the king was holding a festival, where food and drink would be provided to all who came. "That will be the wedding feast " they cried.

The beggars went to the king’s garden and received meat and breadand wine; then they dug a great cave in the ground, large enough to hold a hundred people; they covered the cave with branches and with earth, and they sat up a wedding canopy within the cave. There they made the wedding, and feasted, with eating and dancing and merriment .But the children sat together , and all at once they remembered their days in the forest, and the blind beggar who had been the first to bring them food. And they longed for the blind beggar to be at their wedding

#rabbinachmanmoment
4 of 9 of the story of The Seven Beggars

The Stammerer

On the third day the children cried, "What has become of the stammerer! "Then the heavy-tongued beggar came, and embraced them, and said, "Here I am!".

In a clear voice he spoke to them. "On that day when we met in the woods I blessed you with the wish that you might be as I am; and today I bestow it upon you as a gift: for look you, you believe that I am dumb, yet in truth I am not heavy-tongued, but I have no use for all men’s words except those that are uttered in praise of God, and all other earthly words are not worthy of utterance. Indeed I am gifted with speech, and can sing so beautifully that there is not one creature in the world, bird or beast, that will not stop to hear my song.

And I have proof of this from that great man who is called the Truly Godly Man. For once all the sages of the world came together to prove who was cleverest; the first said, ‘I have brought iron out of the earth’; and the second said, ‘I have found a way to make brass’.;and a third knew how to make tin, and another could make silver, and still another had discovered gold; then one came who had made guns and cannon for war, and yet another had discovered how to make gun-powder.

But one said, ‘I am wiser than all of you, for I am as wise as the day’. They did not understand him, and so he said, ‘If all of your wisdom were taken together it would not make a single hour, for one of you takes things out of the earth and mixes them together to make powder, and another takes iron out of the earth, and another brass,but all of your silver, and iron, and brass, and gold is taken out of the earth that God made in a day, and all of the things that you take out, if put together, would not make a single hour of that day;while I, I am as wise as the entire day!’

"Then I asked him, ‘What day?’ And he tumed to me and said, ‘No matter which day it may be. you are wiser than I, for you have asked. "What day?" ‘

"And I explained my wisdom to them, saying. "You must know that time does not exist of itself and that days are made only of good deeds. It is through men who perform good deeds that days are born, and so time is born; and I am he who goes all about the world to find those men who secretly do good deeds: I bring their deeds to the great man who is known as the Truly Godly Man, and he turns them into time; then time is born, and there are days and years.

"And this is the life of the world: At the far end of the world there is a mountain, on the mountain top is a rock, and a fountain of water gushes from the rock.This you know: that everything in the world possesses a heart, and the world itself has a great heart.The heart of the world is complete, for it has a face, and hands, and breasts, and toes, and the littlest toe of the world’s heart is more worthy than any human heart.So at one end of the earth there is the fountain that flows from the rock on the mountain top, and at the other end is the earth’s heart.And the heart desires the mountain spring; it remains in its place far at the other end of the earth, but it is filled with an unutterable longing, it burns with an endless desire for the distant fountain of water.

In the day, the sun is like a b1azing whip upon the heart, because of its longing for the spring; but when the heart is utterly weak from the punishment of the sun, a great bird comes and spreads its wings and gives the heart rest.But even while it rests, it longs for the mountain spring, and it looks toward the peak of the mountain, for if it were to lose sight of the spring for but one instant the heart would cease to live.

"Because of its great longing, it sometimes tries to go to the fountain, but if it goes nearer to the foot of the mountain it can no longer see the spring on the top of the mountain, and so it must remain far away, for only from a distance may a mountain peak be seen. And if it were for an instant to lose sight of the spring, the heart would die, and then all the world would die, for the life of the world and everything in it is in the life of its heart.

"So the heart remains longing at the other end of the earth, longing for the spring that cannot come toward it, for the spring has no share in Time, but lives on a mountain peak far above the time that is on earth.And the mountain spring could not be of the earth at all, since it has no share in the earth’s time but for the earth’s heart, which gives the spring its day.

And as the day draws to its close, and time is ended, the heart becomes dark with grief, for when the day is done the mountain spring will be gone from the earth, and then the earth’s heart will die of longing, and when the heart is dead all the earth and all the creatures upon the earth will die.

"And so, as the day draws to a close, the heart begins to sing farewell to the fountain; it sings its

grief in wildly beautiful melody, and the mountain spring sings farewel lto the heart, and their songs are filled with love and eternal longing.

But the Truly Godly Man keeps watch over them, and in that last moment before the day is done, and the spring is gone, and the heart is dead, and the world is ended, the good man comes and gives a new day to the heart; then the heart gives the day to the spring, and so they live again.

As the day comes, it is brought with melody, and with strangely beautiful words that contain all wisdom; for there are differences between the days, there are Sabbaths and Mondays, and there are holidays, and days of the first of the month; and each day comes with its own song.

"All these days that the Godly man gives to the heart of the world he has through me, for it is I who go about the world to find the men who do good deeds, and it is from their deeds that time is born, for each deed becomes a melody in my mouth, and from the melody the Godly man makes a day, and the day is given to the heart, and she sings it to the fountain.

Therefore I am wiser than the sage who said he had the wisdom of an entire day, for from the Truly Godly Man I have a gift enabling me to sing the songs and know the wisdom of all the days on earth.And today I bestow upon you, as a wedding gift, the power to be as I am." At once there was joy among them, and the beggars all sang together .

Sothey ended that day with joy.

I found rubber dryer balls at Dollar General for 1$... :D They work great!!

BREAKING NEWS!! It seems that a new group within A-TeC, disgruntled by an extraordinary amount of poetry homework, have recently found inspiration. https://assemble-together.org/a-tec-history-club/youtube/2548/the-poets-rebellion-part1