shiksa, with the weight of 3,000 years of brick-like cultural inertia on your dumb - yea, mute and retreating - back - set to grind corn with all the other asses.
Shiksa is a derogatory term for an unclean Jewish girl who doesn’t apply the halakha, the law. I’d guess you know that much.
“Weight of 3,000” years may be a specific reference to a book by that name by Israel Shahak, or a general reference to our “cultural inertia.”
Asses grinding corn - seems to be a reference to Judges 16:21 where the Philistines seize Samson, gouge out his eyes - blinding him, and set him to grinding corn among the asses in the mill-house - which happened to him because G-d had left him.
May also be a reference to Balaam and the she-ass who spoke, bespoken by G-d, to rebuke him. Or it could be a reference to Ramath-Lehi and that same Samson killing a thousand men with the jawbone of an ass. Also, the donkey can sometimes represent the first born. While all first born are dedicated to G-d, asses are somewhat excepted having in their stead a goat, because of the high value of asses as merchant stock and agricultural work, and the association with Egypt & Exodus.
Curious still, when I googled the term, it seems also to have been used by Robert Anton Wilson and refers to the menial task of “grinding corn” - milling grain, with the labor of beasts, as was commonly done with asses in biblical times, and he uses it in the context of futilely upholding false dichotomies.
denied yourselves vainly - closing all other doors to admit yourselves, to give yourselves over to, a dark place which you imagine to be mentally and politically safe.
I’m pretty sure “a dark place” is a reference to Lamentations 3, and Psalms 143. And almost certainly Isaiah 29 when G-d rebukes Israel for being blind to his glories. Shutting doors might be a reference to Nehemiah, might just be reading too much into it.
It has little to do with upending any status quo. Indeed, I prefer the powers of this world to their alternatives. What it really has to do with is the new deal everyone wakes up with daily - what is the actual slicing of the pie day-to-day?
This seems to be a reference to חלוקה הוגנת - the fair distribution of burdens - I think also something of a reference back to the ass.
Of course, the present profit function is an evolute of the profit functions of the past and the institutions which accord themselves to these forces - institutions like the Irgun, like the Likud, like the Israeli state, like the schizoid judiciary, like the fragmentary body politic, and so on.
He’s just saying that the same people who profit nowadays do so because they have antecedents, and that the present is determined by the past - no great insight there.
string of pearls,
Probably an astrological reference to the Pleiades. They’re called the String of Pearls in some Babylonian & Arab systems.
the ward of days as lords over years,
The sun is the lord of days, ‘lord’ is ‘loaf ward.’ He is saying that the sun is the keeper of our loaves. He may also be referring to our way of keeping time since creation.
folding the land beneath the influence and music of the spheres, creating, ray-traced and cut-out, the spheres of influence, the many nations, myriad like unto a pomegranate's seed.
He is saying that the geography of the world are drawn out - its nations - according to the projection of their courses of celestial bodies traced on the earth. There’s some truth to this, especially if one accounts for navigation of the nations on land or sea. “Music of the spheres” means the celestial bodies and their harmonic motions. The spheres of influence are of course blocs of nations, and to say “like unto a pomegranate’s seed” is saying very many things, literally and figuratively; some say that the pomegranate is the original fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and that its many seeds are likened to the seed of Abraham writ into the sky and represented by the stars the time of the covenant. It’s a pretty expansive reference; the pomegranate and its seeds have all kinds of meaning in the qabbalah, too many to mention here. He seems to be an initiate - as I used to be before giving up Judaism, as it’s really so much tiresome twaddle… and leads to this kind of over referenced language that says too little to most people.
You don't remember how we kept time in the desert or which star we followed or what the mana really meant.
He seems to be referring to how the Hebrews past the River Jordan for 40 years of wandering,
I’m not sure what he meant by timekeeping. Possibly our lunar month system.
Recasting manna as mana (an archaic spelling) seems to be some kind of intentional wordplay, perhaps evocative of Salomana, but mostly referring to mana, a Germanic concept of inner force associated with kings - he may be referring to the alleged link between Frankish people and the Tribe of Benjamin’s European diaspora. I think he’s saying that the usual reading of manna as food from heaven conceals, allegorically, a greater meaning - certainly there are other meanings in oral tradition.
Manna/mana means “whatness.” Sort of a riddle in of itself.
As to the star - someone else mentioned there was no star, but a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night. That’s certainly true of the Jews coming out of Egypt, but after the second Passover, and their arrival in the Plains of Moab, the cloud departs - because they are to attack the Canaanites, wherein they fail and are punished by 40 years of wandering.
So, for 40 years, the Jews had no navigation but the stars - which are always the resort of navigators. It is indeed said among kabbalists interested in astronomy that Moses led the multitudes by the stars.
You don't remember how the Tribe of Benjamin was exiled or whither it went.
As to the Tribe of Benjamin, this is a very interesting topic. Jerusalem was originally within Benjamin’s territory. There was a war against them by the other tribes supposedly because of a raped woman (probably more because of their worship of Baal) which culminated in the near-extermination of the tribe. I do not believe this has to do with shibboleth which stems from the Gilead/Eli vs Ephraim conflict.
Later, the first king (Saul) nonetheless came from the revived house of Benjamin. However, before then, many Benjamites had migrated away.
The Tribe was said to have left Israel and gone to, amongst other places, Peloponnesia, Macedonia, Troy & Thracia, Phrygia, and eventually Frankish Romany & Tuscany, and were said to have intermarried with Franks & Goths, reaching England at the time of Athelstan and later more with William. Some of this this doubtful but nonetheless this commonly repeated - at least, in some circles.
You don't remember the four-fold - Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Roman - exile, those breakages of the nation, as you much as you might shamelessly pretend, imagining, perhaps, that you do.
I think he is saying that even though our dispersals are well known, we somehow do not remember as he claims to.
How, then, can you see the last hundred years?
May be a reference to a well known book on Jewish history, “After the Exile: A hundred years of Jewish history and literature” - itself published about a hundred years ago. Probably it just means what it says and we could be reading way too much into it at this point; assuming everything to be a reference. This could just as well not be a reference.
How can you see the Holocaust?
Holocaust means bunt sacrifice - clearly he’s suggesting that some hidden narrative lays beneath it. I cannot think as to what it would be, but mentioning Haavara is certainly suggestive.
How can you see Huseini, or our modern rebbes and their curious lobbies which still animate more than the Orthodox today?
Husseini was the Palestinian cleric ruling over the area before we exerted our mandate there as agreed at the UN. He made an agreement with Hitler that was against the creation of a Jewish state. “Curious lobbies” of modern rebbes probably refers to the different courts of rebbes prevailing in Israel - sephardic, askhenazi, etc., and the political parties which are somewhat determined by them. They are a fairly powerful force in Israeli political life.