Daily Archives: February 13, 2020

Last month, I wrote about the first leg of Lost Odyssey and how much I was enjoying it. The second disc and first half of the third have been even better. The worldbuilding is mysterious and intriguing, with each new section making me want to know more about the immortals Im playing as. The narrative gets richer with each new set piece, the bond the characters have growing as they face off against enemies that come in a variety of forms.

Lost Odysseys storytelling acts almost like a counter argument against magic and immortality. About halfway into the game, your party enters the great city of Gohtza. Its a technological marvel, revolutionized by magic industry. But when you talk to the citizens, they reveal that many people have lost their jobs due to magic automating their positions. Although the new industries have great benefits, theyve also resulted in a stratified society where those who arent part of the elite are suffering. The contrast between the wealthy aristocrats and the people in Low Town is stark.

Adjacent to Gohtza is the city of Kent. Their people have been decimated by the magical meteor which struck them at the battle in the opening of the game. They are full of hatred at the immortal they blame for their loss (good thing they dont recognize said immortal is the protagonist, Kaim!).

The argument for immortality doesnt fare much better. The burden of long life takes a terrible emotional toll on those who carry it. You learn at the end of Disc 1 that Kaims wife, Sarah, is still alive. During their search for Sarah, the party hears rumors about an Old Sorceress who is very dangerous. You have to confront her since she has sealed off a cave your party needs to cross.

That ends up taking your party to Kaims old house. Within its walls, your party uses a series of magic mirrors to travel from the decrepit state the mansion has become to the past where everything is spick and span.

The dissolution and messy remains are metaphorical for the Old Sorceresss state of mind. She is surrounded by four Bodies of Thought, each utilizing one of the elements. They take turns attacking her from all angles, but never turn their attack against the party. The partys goal is to save her from killing herself. Since each of the Bodies is comprised of a different element, you have to be careful how you fight.

During the battle, the Old Sorceress will unleash a desperate scream. This changes up all the elements so that an approach that worked previously wont be effective anymore and might actually hurt her. Its only after you defeat all the Bodies of Thought that you realize Sarah is underneath the veil of the Old Sorceress. Driven to depression by the realization that her daughter was dead, she had been torturing herself for decades.

Even after destroying the Bodies of Thought, Sarahs depression nearly overwhelms her again. Its only thanks to her grandchildren, Cooke and Mack, singing an old lullaby, that Sarah finds some semblance of serenity. As Sarah realizes Kaim is back, they slowly make their way through the world together, supporting each other through their grief. Kaim is driven by his desire to avenge his daughter, while Sarah finds motivation in the love of her grandchildren.

Having a kid of our own gave this situation much more gravity. More than any of the Dream flashbacks or cutscenes, this battle revealed so much about the plight of immortality. What would seeing the deaths of those dear to them, and the number of them accumulating with the passing centuries, do to their minds? What seems like a boon for Sarah and Kaim is actually a curse. Their desolation increases with every passing year. Theres an understandable reason why Kaim doesnt seem all that eager to retrieve his memories.

Their amnesia takes on an entirely new wrinkle when they confront the man who caused their memory loss, Gongora. Gongora is a fellow immortal and a powerful magician who wants to build a magic engine called the Grand Staff. In your first battle against him in the Experimental Staff, he annihilates your party. Im so grateful for this gameplay/narrative choice. Multiple RPGs come to mind where you confront an ultimate villain for the first time and proceed to give them a spanking. The villain laughs it off and says something along the lines of, Ill be back for you later. But because youve already defeated them, they dont seem as deadly anymore (one of the examples that immediately comes to mind is Seymour from FFX).

In Lost Odyssey, theres no doubt who has the upper hand. But its not just Gongoras physical and magical abilities that make him so powerful. Having retained all his memories, he accuses Kaim and his fellow immortal of being traitors to a noble cause. Their memory loss was a punishment for their misdeeds. This accusation makes them question if their odyssey is even a righteous one. But Gongora seems to be struggling against demons of his own as hes in a mentally fraught state in the Experimental Staff. Its not clear yet whos on the right. It would make for a surprising twist if it turned out that Gongora is actually fighting for a good cause, while Kaim and company, having lost their memories, are actually the villains. As Kaim states, If the record of a thousand years shows that I am really a traitor, then Ill have to accept that, and pay the price.

Magic has obvious positive effects, like being able to heal the people around them. But in the merchant town of Saman, its had a strange influence. The villagers walk around in a zombified state, shrouded in a purple aura, giving free rein to their egos. One of the wealthy merchants in the city openly brags about the wealth hes accumulated through corrupt methods. A man in the Erlio Family House spends all his time talking to a doll. Cant you see Im quite occupied right now? Stop bothering me, he snaps at you. Then to the doll, Darling, I love you so much. You are the one that I love the most in this world. A car called Zak laughs at you and calls you pathetic. Another car called Jack complains, Ugh, every day I go around dealing with rude people and carrying their heavy bags. Then they kick me when Im not running well. If youve ever wondered what your car thinks of you, magic can tell you the truth.

Its these weird encounters in each of the towns that reminds me so much of what I love and have missed about JRPGs. Every city feels like a brand new experience full of quirky denizens. Its been a long time since Ive been this excited about seeing whats next in the journey.

Theres a lot of variety in the gameplay and boss battles. In the Experimental Staff, some of the areas are giant puzzles where youre shifting machines and opening up new pathways. Wind caves, slippery slopes, and thieving enemies, make the ice canyon a grueling trial. The battle preceding the Experimental Staff, which is against a Mantala, can be extremely difficult if you dont plan each step. Thats because every time you attack the Mantala, it hides in the ocean and summons smaller Mantas in its place. You have to time your attacks, defensive maneuvers, and spells to perfectly align the strongest blows on the Mantala. Otherwise, the battle can go forever.

Fortunately, theres not that much grinding to do when it comes to experience points. Any time you enter a new area, your characters will level up quickly to where they should be. The reason you still need to engage in fights is to increase skill link levels from the mortals and get SP from bands to learn new abilities. I did find a way to grind my characters beyond their normal levels at the Numara Atolls. Silver Kelolons dot the beach side (theyre akin to the metal slimes of Dragon Quest in giving you a heck of a lot of EXP). If your party has gained the Gamble spell, which is done by praying at all the Kelolon statues in Tosca Village, it makes beating the Silver Kelelons feasible on a predictable basis. I overpowered my characters within a few battles.

Each of the characters gets their chance to shine in battles and more importantly, the story. In an optional cutscene with Ming when you escape Numara, she sees a monument off the shore and recalls a past battle. She saved the city by turning a huge Arthrosaurus into stone, which was how the monument came to be. But the flashback causes her pain and its not clear why, making me wonder about her past. Cooke and Mack are always getting into trouble, including one scene where they hijack a magical train in the hopes of communicating with their mother again. Their hopefulness through some of the darker moments in the game help the characters cope with their circumstances. Jansen, the comic relief, turns against his benefactor, Gongora, in favor of the immortals. He lifts up the bag of gold Gongora had bribed him with and says hed throw it back out of a sense of outrage, but then decides to keep it since he figures thered be no point in giving up the money. Jansen always remains in character, even in his outrage.

The dreams in the first disc focused on Kaims memories. In the second, there are several dreams that your pirate immortal, Seth, regains, and theyre heartbreaking. That is, if you take the time to read them. As I mentioned in the first part of my Lost Odyssey retrospective, I really wish there could have been a way for these sequences to have been more seamlessly integrated. The way it currently stands, the two things that take me out of the immersion of the gameplay are the long load screens (I know Im playing off disc, but some of these load screens are really distracting) and the dreams. I want to read them as theyre very good, but every time I do, it feels like Im being sucked away from the world. At the same time, I realize theyre an additional layer, meant to add texture to the narrative, and entirely optional. Just their existence is something Im grateful for. Who knew reading the story about a shoemaker could be so emotional?

I know some people, including myself, have described Lost Odyssey as a spiritual successor to Final Fantasy. While theres some truth to that, especially due to the developers being who they are, theres also a lot the game does to weave together its own distinctive identity. This middle act is where the game went from being a lost odyssey to an epic one. I cant wait to see how it all ends.

Go here to see the original:

Lost Odyssey Brilliantly Explores The Tragedy Of Being Immortal - Kotaku

Mo Isom, a New York Times bestselling author and national speaker, returned to Lee for spring 2020 Convocation and spoke in two separate sermons focused on restoring relationships with Christ through intimacy and discernment.

In college, Isom was an All-American goalkeeper for the Louisiana State University (LSU) womens soccer team. She was also the first woman to try out for an SEC mens football team.

Isom was a favorite speaker among students since she first visited Lee in fall 2018. Because of this, she was invited to return and speak at Convocation. Starting the day with chapel, Isom spoke on the lack of true intimacy in the younger generation.

I think theres a number of different reasons as to why healthy intimacy alludes us. I do think there is a root of seeing few and being involved in very few truly healthy intimate relationships, said Isom. We see imperfect people trying to walk in a very broken world. Inevitably, we wound one another in the process. I think a lot of people in this generation are struggling to understand the fullness of intimacy because it hasnt been modeled well.

Isom currently has two published books Wreck My Life and Sex, Jesus, and the Conversations the Church Forgot. The latter book focuses on conversations about sex, sexuality, immortality and addiction that are often forgotten in the modern-day church.

Isom is currently in the process of writing her third book which takes a deeper look into the messages she spoke at Convocation intimacy with Christ.

It centers around the very things we spoke about [in chapel]. Intimacy with God. To know my God and be known by God what does that really mean? said Isom. It sent me on this beautiful and layered journey where I explored true intimacy with God. He revealed some really beautiful layers of how the physical model of intimacy that Hes given us parallels our model of intimacy with Him.

Isom first began her writing career as a college student blogger. Studying broadcast journalism, Isom did not foresee book publishing in her future. After one of her blog posts reached over 250,000 views, Isom realized the impact of her words.

I just shared when the Lord gave me a word, said Isom. I remember after I got engaged to my husband Jeremiah, I wrote a post called I just got engaged and immediately doubted my decision. Heres why I still said yes. It went, like, psycho-viral. I had a literary agent reach out to me after that post.

Isom accepted a two-book deal with a publishing company, starting her career as a writer. Isom stated that at the beginning of the whole process, she had no grand plan for what was to come. She said it all comes from the faithfulness to just listen and obey.

I think that when we sort of give [God] our faithful obedience and earnest heart, Hes the one who leads the way, said Isom. Its really cool. I never thought I would write books.

Isom did not shy away from the traditionally taboo topic of physical intimacy and the shame which can accompany it. She paralleled the captivity of the Egyptians in the Bible to the lack of intimacy and depth in relationships that enslave this generation.

I believe that the Spirit of the Living God is calling His children out of captivity and back to His heart, said Isom.

To combat this atmosphere of enslavement, Isom often uses jarring and descriptive language in her messages such as adulterous hearts. She uses this language to draw a connection from physical intimacy to connect her audience back to true intimacy with Christ.

The Lord opened my eyes to the prophetic parallel between the physical interactions that we see in the natural, and the same interactions that we see in the spiritual, said Isom. Its really beautiful to me to see that God gave us this physical act that deeply resonates with us. Everyone in the audience jeers and jars at those words because its a very intricate thing that we all recognize and understand in our flesh.

Isom believes using this descriptive language enlivens the ideas and messages she is attempting to portray.

[These words] bring it to life for us. Suddenly, its easier to understand, said Isom.

Isom concluded her Convocation message Tuesday evening with a call to action and a heartfelt prayer for the student body.

Convocation will continue with a concluding message from Mark Walker on Wednesday night.

For more information about Mo Isom, visit her website here.

See the rest here:

Mo Isom speaks on intimacy during Convocation week - Lee Clarion Online

Music festivals celebrate both art and artists of various genres of music. They also provide a platform for veterans and new artists to showcase their talent in front of a dedicated audience. From good food to good company, music festivals are the perfect space for magic to happen for those who dont mind a little bit of crowd. Listed below are some of the best music festivals in the world for anyone who wants to visit them.

Also Read |UK's Health Chief Slams Gwyneth Paltrow's Lifestyle Brand

When compared to other major music festivals, Green Man is quite small and intimate. However, it manages to combine various genres of music with a host of different types of art, which includes painting, poetry, literature, and films. Featuring favoured, talented local artists, this music festival is a beautiful combination of bonfires and secret musical performances.

Also Read |Railways To Run Special Train From Odisha For 'Urs' Festival

Held in the Byron Bay town, this splendid gig in Australia is a perfect mix oftemperate weather, delicious seafood, and dazzling sun. It involves performances by some of the biggestnames in the music industry. The name of the festival has been derived from Wordsworths iconic poem: Ode: Imitations of Immortality.

Also Read |Rihanna's Top Musical Collaborations That Gave Her Worldwide Recognition

One could expect a country with a rich cultural history as Zimbabwe to host one of the most vibrant music festivals in the world. Harare was started in 1999, and since then, it has become one of the central art festivals in the country, including music, dance, and art. It showcases the local culture of the African continent, including genres such as Afro-pop. Some of the biggest names in the African music industry are associated with this music festival.

Also Read |Urvashi Rautela And Other B'Town Actors Who Featured In Yo Yo Honey Singh's Music Videos

The USA has a rich past of country music, and the CMA festival continues to preserve this culture. Not only does the festival include days of awesome concerts, but it also organises meets and greets where the audience members can meet and interact with their favourite artists. Almost anyone associated with country music has performed a gig at the CMA festival.

A unique thing about this music festival is that it never stops. Once the line-up of performances for the day is complete, the audience will not have to go back home;instead, they can go to the after-hour gigs and listen to some more music there. Several big names associated with the pop music industry have played at this music festival, which makes it even more enjoyable.

Music lovers can choose to visit any of the above music festivals, or similar ones held in other countries. Once you visit a new country for the festival, you even get a chance to explore that country as a tourist. Take your pick and get packing!

The rest is here:

Popular music festivals from around the world for music lovers - Republic World - Republic World

Use your (arrows) to browse

There was a once in a lifetime kind of feeling in the air on Wednesday night in Vancouver. An epic tale of twin brothers, Daniel and Henrik Sedin came to a beautiful close at Rogers Arena when they witnessed the numbers 22 and 33 become officially retired and raised to the rafters forever. Talk about the perfect storybook ending, well deserved for the two best Canucks of all time.

The amount of appreciation and paid respects from former teammates and fans alike was overwhelmingly tremendous, but truly just a fraction of what the Sedins did for the City of Vancouver. They poured their hearts and souls into this city and hockey club both on and off the ice. They were truly the two most iconic top-class NHLers to sport the blue and green. Both equally respected by many, and it showed.

Want your voice heard? Join the The Canuck Way team!

A must-see, the Canucks legends, and former teammates were in attendance to celebrate the successful careers of their idolized and accomplished leaders. Nobody was going to miss this one, even Ryan Keslerbraved the storm and was warmly welcomed back, possibly getting the loudest cheers a smile from ear to ear. Heartfelt speeches and great memories were shared, and it all ended with the twins getting the ultimate honor, immortality in Vancouver, a place for their name to live on forever.

The only way to polish it all off would be a victory against the twins arch-nemesis, the Chicago Blackhawks. They were bound to come out strong, but could the Canucks fend off the hungry hawks and give Sedin Night the perfect cherry on top? Lets take a look at Wednesday nights results.

Use your (arrows) to browse

Original post:

Canucks: 3 takeaways from 3-0 shutout win over Blackhawks - The Canuck Way

The new Amazon Prime Video web series Afsos is supposedly based on a novel whose author remains unidentified. Was Golpur Goru Chaande ever committed to the page or is it a joke, like the fake disclaimer that precedes the Coen brothers 1996 cult movie Fargo (This is a true story. The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in 1987. At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.)

Keep wondering. Meanwhile, there is no ambiguity about who is driving Afsos, which has unusual subject matter that makes it vastly different from other shows on streaming platforms. The irreverent series has been created by Anirban Dasgupta and Dibya Chatterjee and written by them along with Sourav Ghosh. Director Anubhuti Kashyap deftly navigates the peaks and troughs of a black comedy with lashings of existentialism and a penchant for alternative history. The cast is stellar, with the always-watchable Gulshan Devaiah in pole position as the man who doesnt want to live but is simply unable to die.

Devaiahs Nakul is a serial suicide attempter who has failed despite his best efforts. His therapist Shloka (Anjali Patil) ladles out life-affirming cliches (Quitting is not an option, Nakul!), but he is unmoved. Nakul contacts the merciful duo at the Emergency Exit agency to organise a hit on himself. Emergency Exit, which helps people reach their makers faster, is run by Maria (Ratnabali Bhattacharjee) and Vikram (Ujjwal Chopra) out of a trailer somewhere in Mumbai and has Fargo signs all over, presumably as a tribute to the Coens macabre vision.

The task of liberating Nakul from his agony is handed to the single assassin on the agencys payroll (the operation is as lean as it is mean). This grim reaper is better known by her surname, Upadhyay, and she would win the Employee of the Year award hands-down once she takes on an assignment, she will fulfill it, even if the client has a change of heart.

Upadhyay (Heeba Shah) carves notches on her hand representing her kills, but she is somehow unable to finish off Nakul. The answer has everything to do with the quest for immortality represented by Fokatiya (Robin Das), a sadhu from Uttar Pradesh. Fokatiya believes that he holds in his palms amrut, or elixir, the same fluid of eternal life written about in the holy texts. The inspector Bir (Akash Dahiya) from Uttarakhand thinks that Fokatiya is a killer. The suited-booted scientist Goldfish (Jamie Alter) predicts that by 2054, humankind will have conquered death and will live forever.

Nakul, meanwhile, chooses his side of the debate and decides that he wants to live after all. Upadhyay is unmoved. Weapons are discharged. Declarations of love are made. A police investigation gets underway. Fokatiya arrives in Mumbai, as does inspector Bir and a mysterious tourist (Danish Sait).

The game of who gets to live and who dies is a familiar one. The makers of Afsos, which is always meant to be taken lightly despite tackling metaphysical themes, have an added challenge who cares? It helps that the characters are sharply etched and mostly superbly performed, and that the deadpan comedic tone remains more or less consistent throughout the eight-episode run. When Fokatiyas elixir doesnt work as expected, a laidback Mumbai police inspector has an excellent response: its a matter for the consumer court, he says.

Theres no shortage of imagination here, only a familiar tendency to keep the strangeness coming at all costs. A track involving Shloka and the granite-hearted Upadhaya carries on for far too long, just like the series, which expands its scope to include urban legends and conspiracy theories. The regrets include the underutilisation of the talented Akash Dahiya, Danish Saits silly fake Russian number, and the underserviced Nakul-Shloka romance, which is among the reasons Nakul chooses to try living over dying. Gulshan Devaiah and Anjali Patil make a fine pair, but their connection gets lost as the chase for the man who will live forever wanders on, about and off course.

See the article here:

In Amazon web series Afsos, black humour and a high body count on the road to immortality - Scroll.in

Express News Service

Spring is in the air, and so is love. Valentines Day is around the corner and notwithstanding the moral police and the prissy prudes, love will have its day, a day when love can be expressed in unequivocal terms to those we truly care about.It is so difficult to talk about those we love whereas we have a hundred things to say about those we dont. This is where literature and its bards come to our aid and we find ourselves quoting lines that speak to us directly.

The Bard of all times says in a sonnet: Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks/ But bears it out to the edge of doom. My all-time favourite lines are from W B Yeats: I have spread my dreams under your feet/ Tread softly because you tread upon my dreams. In another poem, he says, Yet one man loved the pilgrim soul in you and loved the sorrows of your changing face.

In The Anniversary, the metaphysical poet John Donne draws us to the immortality of love: All other things to their destruction draw/ Only our love hath no decay/ This no tomorrow hath, nor yesterday. And Christopher Marlowe says, albeit to a vision of Helen, Thou art fairer than the evening air clad in the beauty of a thousand stars. I have yet to come across a more pristine expression of beauty. A good friend wanting to propose to the girl he loved gifted her a book, Of Human Bondage, and the flyleaf said. Leading you to an overwhelming question... Never has Eliot been set to better account. No doubt the question was answered in the affirmative.

In the initial years of love with all its hyperbole and metaphor, Shelley would come to the rescue: The desire of the moth for the star/ the night for the morrow/ The devotion to something afar/ From the sphere of our sorrow. Jalaluddin Rumi, the Sufi mystic, says true love is close to divinity: I am ashamed/ to call this love human/ and afraid of God/ to call it divine. As we get on in years and love has only ripened with the years, we have Walt Whitmans words, There we two content, happy in being together, speaking little, perhaps not a word.

And yet while these lines resonate with their relevance across time, the best words are from oneself from the core of ones being as when my husband said to me, I miss you all the time, I miss you even while you are with me. A paradox I thought at that time but with years I learnt all love is an eternal missing. Happy Valentines Day!

Sudha Devi Nayak Email: sudhadevi_nayak@yahoo.com

Read the rest here:

Its that time when love is in the air - The New Indian Express

Grimware Games has announced its new 2.5D action platformer, Ghost Knight: A Dark Tale. This new action platformer will be using Unreal Engine 4, and you can find its announcement trailer below.

The game is set in a toon dark fantasy world, where a mad king, in search for immortality, opens portals to a dark dimension. Players must traverse an epic land of undead, demons, witches, and beasts to stop the mad kings misled quest.

Unfortunately, Grimware Games has not revealed any additional details. As such, we dont know when this new platformer will come out. We also dont know the platforms for which it will release. My guess is that it will hit all major platforms, but thats just me speculating.

Anyway, well be sure to keep you posted about its progress. Until we have more to share, you can go ahead and enjoy the following trailer!

View post:

Ghost Knight: A Dark Tale is a new 2.5D action platformer, powered by Unreal Engine 4 - DSOGaming

Author photo by Emily Tobey

If you are not already experiencing "climate dread," the feeling that you're living in a slow-mo ecological apocalypse that you're powerless to stop, then Jenny Offill's latest novel, Weather, will fill you to the brim with it.

Granted, your capacity to care about "climate dread" may be reduced if you're currently suffering from rent-hike dread, hospital-bill dread, getting-shot-by-the-cops dread, and inability-to- retire dread, and that diminished capacity may prevent you from diving into Offill's sustained meditation on the subject. However, if you are a little curious about it, her black humor and occasionally deep insights will keep your eyeballs glued to the page in search of a cure.

Weather has much in common with Offill's last book, Dept. of Speculation. Both enjoyed lots of pre-publication love on social media from the New York publishing industry's tastemakers. Both present a domestic fiction using literary collage, a technique popularized most recently by nonfiction writers/poets such as Maggie Nelson and Claudia Rankine. And both are overhyped but still very much worth a read.

In Weather, Offill places the reader in the mind of Lizzie, a librarian in the big city with a supportive partner and a "gifted and talented" kid in school. In short, diaristic, pithy but breezy paragraphs, we learn that Lizzie spends a lot of time caring for her brother as he struggles with addiction, worrying about her child's future on a doomed planet, and reflecting on the pleasures and temptations of married life. When she takes a side gig answering e-mails for her former writing teacher's doomsday podcast, her focus on climate dread and prepping for the end-times begins to consume her, and the narrative gains steam.

Fans of NYC dinner-party zingers and stumbled-upon profundities will appreciate Offill's contributions to the field. Some of the funnier moments in the book come at the expense of wide-eyed businessmen whose devotion to technology allows them to escape the cold reality of a warming planet. "These people long for immortality but can't wait ten minutes for a cup of coffee," Lizzie's mentor quips at one point. The more profound moments arrive in Lizzie's fervent search for new perspectives to combat her growing dread, though these new perspectives aren't always comforting:

"Young person worry: What if nothing I do matters?

Old person worry: What if everything I do does?"

Though some of Offill's jokes and profundities can feel a bit pat, the overall structure of the book is greater than the sum of its parts, offering readers the pleasure of looking back through a diary and realizing that all our apparently disparate anxieties may fall under the umbrella of the larger one: fear of extinction.

Weather suggests that climate dread is its own crisis, a collective psychological block preventing us from taking the action necessary to stave off ecological collapse or, at the very least, to manage it more effectively.

Though fiction can allow us to diagnose this problem in all its messy human nuance, Offill knows it can never give us the cure. To that end, she concludes her story with an obligatory note of hope that lies outside the book itself, literally a website URL: http://www.obligatorynoteofhope.com. The site appears to be a place where climate-dreaders, or people who caught the disease from the book, can connect and take collective action to dig each other out of the doldrums.

Read more:

Jenny Offill's Novel Weather Looks at "Climate Dread" with Humor and Plenty of Gloom - TheStranger.com

From when does one read the shma in the evening?Opening words, Mishnah and Talmud

Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is One.

This simple sentence in the Hebrew Bible, known by its first word as the shma (hear), is also the first subject addressed in the Talmud and the first biblical verse taught to Jewish children. It is, at once, the most famous affirmation of Jewish belief and the most misunderstood. To appreciate this paradox, we must begin with the text itself, two of whose three brief sections make up a key element in Moses string of passionate valedictory charges to his people in the book of Deuteronomy. Here is the first section (6:4-9), in which the greatest of prophets sums up Jewish theology:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is One. And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thy heart. And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.

From the words urging that this teaching be recited when thou liest down, and when thou risest up came the central inclusion of the shma in, respectively, the evening and morning liturgy. And yet, in reciting it, Jews for millennia have added another sentence immediately after the first, and before proceeding to the rest. It is a sentence that appears neither in Deuteronomy nor anywhere else in the Bible and that, notably, is recited in a hushed tone, thereby signaling that it is both a part of and apart from the shma prayer as a whole:

Blessed be His glorious sovereign Name, for ever and ever.

Needless to say, the addition of this sentencethe exact date of its inclusion is unknowndid not evade the gimlet-eyed exegesis of the talmudic sages, who were struck by its oddity. Why is it there in the first place, and, if it is part of the liturgy, why not recite it aloud? In responding, the Talmud tells a tale, according to which the shma originated not with Moses but long before him: with his ancestors, and specifically with one of the biblical patriarchs and his family.

The story goes like this: at the end of his days, Jacob, as described in Genesis, gathers all twelve of his sons around him. Feeling his life and his powers of prophecy slipping away, he expresses concern that one of his children might abandon the Abrahamic mission (something that had already occurred with a child of Abraham himself as well as with a child of Isaac). Seeking to reassure their father on this point, his sons address him by the covenantal name bestowed upon him by an angel (Genesis 32: 22-32). The rabbis explain:

His sons said to him: Hear, Israel our father, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One. They were saying that just as there is only one God in your heart, so, too, there is only one in our hearts. At that moment Jacob our father, [reassured that all of his children were righteous], replied in praise: Blessed be His glorious sovereign Name for ever and ever. (Psaim 56a)

For the rabbis, Jacobs relieved exclamation linked the Almightys eternity with his own. That is to say: Gods name will be blessed forever because Jacobs family will serve Him forever. Now included in the shma prayer, this same sentence links Gods immortality with the posterity of every Jewish family. Because the words are not actually those of Moses, the rabbis stipulate that the sentence is to be voiced quietly.

This rabbinic story and its accompanying explanation have been embraced in Jewish law as the normative foundation for the shma as it has been recited until today. Even Maimonides, who so often reads talmudic tales as other than literal, included the ruling in the Mishneh Torah, his code of Jewish law.

In short, in the recitation of the shma, two different statements from two different moments in biblical history are being made simultaneously. In one and the same act, Jews quote the words of Moses speaking to the people of Israel and then the response to the twelve sons by their father Jacob, the original Israel. In the first, the shma is a theological-political statement; in the second, it is an assurance of Jewish continuity. The first is philosophical, the second familial; the first is public and ceremonial, the second private and emotional. Even as Hear O Israel is being sounded aloud, Jews quietly reaffirm their solidarity with the patriarch and his children.

That latter commitment is reenacted with particular force and poignancy in the longstanding practice of reciting the shma before sleep at night. For Jewish parents putting their children to bed and saying it together with them, few rituals are more powerful. At that moment, we are uniquely aware that our children will not always be small and safe under our protection, and that one day we in turn will become dependent on them, and on the family they perpetuate, for our own immortality. As Rabbi Norman Lamm once put it, in saying the shma aloud and then, quietly to ourselves, blessed be His glorious sovereign name for ever and ever, we, just like Jacob, and together with our own progeny, play our part in ensuring that Gods name will continue to be blessed here on earth.

And therein lies another lesson, this one about the nature of Judaism itself. For this purpose, we can compare the Talmuds tale about Jacob and his sons, about the recovery by a dying Jewish patriarch of his familys immortality, with the account of another famous deathbed scene in the ancient world.

In that account, related by Plato in the Phaedo, the Greek philosopher Socrates finds himself on the brink of death in an Athenian cell, attended by his students, pondering his legacy, and reviewing with them the great issues that had long absorbed his mind, not least the immortality of the soul. Serenely he assures these students that he welcomes his impending, self-inflicted death by hemlock as a release from the bonds of physicality that are the curse of earthly humanity. Freed from the constraints of the body and its passions, Socrates hopes for an afterlife happily occupied with the contemplation of eternal verities.

One could hardly imagine a starker contrast between two men. Socrates is wholly absorbed in his students and in his own immortal soul; he seems utterly uninterested in his family, calmly dismissing his wife and their baby son with nary a tear or emotional farewell. Jacob, the father who in creating and rearing faithful children has united his physical life with his spiritual legacy, commands those children to bear his lifeless body to the Holy Land. By rooting it in sacred soil, he will have prepared the way for the eventual return of his offspring to their national home.

As Eric Cohen has written, for all its renown, the death of Socrates seems less fully human than the death of Jacob, which unites the private drama of father and sons with the public drama of Israels beginnings as a nation. Just so; and in contrasting these two very different deaths, Cohen also points to one of the central differences between Greek and Jewish civilization.

In Aristotelian texts, the family merely provides preparation for service to the polis, and the great-souled man embodies the ideal of excellence. Plato goes farther, having Socrates declare in his Republic that in the truly just city, the philosopher-king will produce anonymous offspring whom he will pointedly not raise as his own lest he thereby compromise the universal compassion for all citizens that justice requires.

This, to a Jew, could not be more distant from Gods explanation for his choice of Abraham: For I have known him, that he will command his children and household after him, to keep the ways of the Lord, to perform righteousness and justice (Genesis 18:19). For Jews, the domain of the family is where the blood bond and the spiritual bond are joined, where transmission takes place, where children are taught about the God of their fathers, where the realm of the truly sacred and the truly human conjoin.

The Greek world is not the Jewish world; even attempts to find similarities reveal more about the differences. Take, for example, the frequent likening of the Passover seder to the Greek symposium. Both meals involve a choreographed series of imbibings and a discussion of philosophical and theological subjects.

And yet: would a Greek symposium welcome children, much less focus on them? Is a single child to be found in Platos Symposium? On the contrary, we find the best and the brightest of Greek society: Socrates is there; Alcibiades is there, physicians and philosophers, scholars and statesmen are there. No one has brought his progeny; to do so would ruin the conversation.

The ritual of the seder, for its part, though it may seem superficially Greco-Roman, is actually the inverse: it is all about children and family. In the Haggadah, philosophical inquiry is balanced by imaginative storytelling and covenantal re-creation. Father and mother teach children about the Almighty taking to Himself a people, and in going to sleep the children joyously respond: Hear O -Israel-Father, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

This, finally, returns us to the opening question of the Talmudfrom what time may one recite the shma in the evening?and its seemingly technical answer: from the time that the priests enter to eat their trumah.

The reference in the final word is to the end of twilight, when the priests of the Temple are once again permitted to partake of food they may eat only while ritually pure. But if thats when recitation of the shma can begin, what is the last point at which it can still be recited? Here a debate emerges, with three opinions followed by a story:

Until the end of the first watch. These are the words of Rabbi Eliezer.The sages say: until midnight. Rabbi Gamliel says: until the dawn comes up. Once it happened that [Gamliels] sons came home [late] from a wedding feast and they said to him: we have not yet recited the [evening]shma. He said to them: if the dawn has not yet come up, you are still bound to recite. . . . Why, then, did the sages say until midnight? In order to keep a man far from transgression. (Brakhot 2a).

The children of Gamliel, arriving after midnight but before dawn, and therefore assuming that, since the law accorded with the sages, they could no longer fulfill their obligation, are informed by their father that the sages established midnight only as an ideal deadline, in order to encourage early recital; but as long as dawn has not occurred, the commandment can still be obeyed.

Stop for a moment and consider who is telling this story. The author of the Mishnah is Rabbi Judah the Prince, a grandson of none other than Rabbi Gamliel. Judahs story therefore concerns his own father and uncles interacting with their father. This small succinct story thus shares a subject with the shma itself: the subject, that is, of familial fidelity.

Where, Rabbi Judah is asking, is true wisdom to be found? Gamliels sons have been to a drinking party: the term is often rendered as a wedding, but no textual evidence supports such a reading. More likely, in the Greco-Roman world in which the Mishnah was composed, it referred to a symposium, an event at which, by the lights of that culture, true sophistication and wisdom were to be found. Yet, for these aspiring young rabbis, the symposium has caused them to forget the central obligation of Jewish life. They arrive home thinking that the deadline has passed and contritely confess that they have failed.

At that point, new wisdom is transmitted from parent to child: it is not too late. In the darkness before dawn, this family can still give full-throated voice to the foundational words of Jacobs sons to their father Israel: Hear O Israel-Father, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.

That is why the practices and regulations surrounding this sentence, than which no other sentence is more powerful, are the very first matter taken up by the rabbis of the Talmud, and why it is the sentence occupying so central a place in every evening and morning prayer service, the sentence proclaimed in their dying breath by martyrs throughout history, the sentence repeated in gratitude and joy with children as they drift off to sleep, the sentence uttered as one prepares to bid farewell to this world, sanctifying the Lords name for ever and ever.

Read more:

The Mysteries of the Sh'ma - Mosaic

Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones has given up the cigarettes, making way for many more years of life to live. This comes after beating alcohol addiction and even the likes of Heroin.

Unless youre Ozzy Osbourne or Keith Richards, addiction often takes the lives of many rock stars in their younger years, taking them from us much too soon. Keith Richards, however, doesnt want to abuse his apparent immortality, and has decided to finally quit smoking. Now that nothing stands in his way, he might just outlive us all.

Outside of playing guitar in one of the most legendary music groups of all time, Richards is also known for his battles with drugs and alcohol, especially early in his career. Its honestly an absolute shock the man is still alive, but hey were very thankful he is. Hes 76 years old and is still kicking ass while touring with the Rolling Stones.

Luckily, the rocker has dropped another one of his vices, as he revealed in a new interview with Q104.3 [viaNME] that he quit smoking and hasnt touched a cigarette since this past October.I think bothMick [Jagger]and I felt that on the last tour we were just getting going, he explained.[We]ve got to continue this.

The guitarist first admitted that he was trying to quit about a year ago in an interview withMojo Magazine, but noted that its even more difficult to stay away from cigarettes than heroin. Quitting heroin is like hell, but its a short hell. Cigarettes are just always there, and youve always done it. I just pick em up and light em up without thinking about it, he said.

In addition to cutting off nicotine, Richards has also been open about his decrease in alcohol consumption.

You can catch him Cigarette-free touring with the Rolling Stones this year.

Watch the Noisey interview with Keith Richards below.

Read more from the original source:

Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones has finally quit smoking - Tone Deaf