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Great Thoughts Deep Thoughts
BY MOSHE KATZ
CEO
ISRAELI KRAV INTERNATIONAL
January 6, 2025, Israel
How great are Thy works, O LORD! Thy thoughts are very deep. (Psalms Chapter 92)
Friday night I was sitting in the synagogue along with our local congregation, as part of the introductory part of the Friday night Sabbath prayers I recited words that I must have recited many thousands of times in my life, and as it often happens, suddenly a new thought came to me. In my view the Biblical passages should be studied in several different ways, they should be studied academically, they should be studied based on religious beliefs, but they should also be felt. This happens to me when in a meditative state. This is when the messages come, effortlessly.
Back in the Oyama dojo I was introduced to the concept of meditating briefly before class, it was explained to us as a cleansing process. You enter the dojo with all your troubles, your headaches, your challenges, but this is no way to train. You cannot train when you are thinking about your upcoming midterm, or job interview. During Mokuso, meditation, we push all that out, and now we train, hard. After class, after a good hard training, we are ready to face our challenges with new vigor and renewed energy.
It is the same with prayer. When we enter the House of Prayer, we do not use our cellphones, unless one is a medical professional or part of a security team, there will be no interruptions. For a short while we are free of this world and can enter another world. As I was sitting in this state I recited the ancient words from the book of Psalms, or Praises, dating back millenniums, How great are your works O God, how deep are your thoughts. (In Hebrew of course, and the feeling is completely different.) And I felt something, I did not think it, I felt it.
I felt; what is the connection between these two parts of the verse, two sections to one short sentence? How Great, how large, and then how deep. They are opposites. We are praising God for his Big things, Great things, and then we are saying, how Deep are your thoughts. I felt in this world it is very difficult to see anything correctly. Two people will produce two views of the same thing. How does one see truth? How does one see greatness? How does one distinguish between light and dark, good and bad? Life is difficult and confusing; our vision is blurry. And then it hit me, to see Great, to see Big, you have to see Deep.
God, we see that your works are great because we went deep and saw the thoughts that created these works. If we don't go deep, we can look at something great, it can be standing directly in front of us, but we will not see it. As Rabbi Moshe Haim Luzzato of Italy writes, there is a form of blindness where you see a tree and say hello, thinking it is a man, you see a man and to you it looks like a tree.
To see Big, we need to first go Deep, otherwise, we will be like those who confuse a man and a tree in the dark. Perhaps this is a simple idea, but it is also to me, amazing. To be able to see the greatness of something, we must be able to perceive the depth of it. Otherwise, it is not impressive. Bruce Lee often said that he only wanted to teach those with black belts in other arts, otherwise they would not appreciate what he was teaching in his Jeet Kun Do. To see the greatness of a technique one must have some depth of understanding, otherwise it all looks the same; There is no difference from one style to another. If you go deep, if you have true understanding, you can see the difference and ...Urika!! Enlightenment!
How great are your works O God, but I can only appreciate them if I go deep. Without depth all I see is nonsense. In the modern world people often think religion is nonsense, outdated. But if they were to truly experience prayer, they would find ecstasy beyond any drug, If they truly felt community, they would never know loneliness. If they would experience the peacefulness of a true Sabbath, a day when you are "not allowed" to use your computer or engage in business, they would never see it as a burden or silly set of rules. If they would experience modesty, they would never see it as "oppression" but would understanding the joy in it and how it is actually liberating. To see the beauty of our way of life one needs to go deep. It does not come from ignorance. As the rabbis say the ignorant one cannot be wise. This does not necessarily refer to book knowledge but to the study of life. If one cannot appreciate a great work of art, the lacking is in himself, not in the Mona Lisa. To see great works, you have to have deep understanding.
I recall a story of a man who was born deaf, he happened to walk into a dance hall where people were dancing happily and wildly. He looked at them with their strange, contorted bodies swaying to the music and the rhythm, he saw their bizzarre expressions, and he reached the only possible logical conclusion: surely, I have accidently entered an insane asylum, these poor wretched souls have all lost their minds. He could not hear the music so he could not understand the dance.
And it occurred to me as well. Those who go deep, see the beauty of our IKI system. Those who do not go deep, see "just another form of Krav Maga, they are all basically the same".
Same verse, after thousands of repetitions, yields yet another lesson. Look at the world and see how wonderful it is, the miracles that occur every single day. We must be grateful for every day of life. We can grow every day.
Moshe Katz, training continuously for nearly 4 decades, 7th dan Black Belt, Israeli Krav Maga. Certified by Wingate Institute. Member Black Belt Hall of fame, USA and Europe.
Understand the Israeli Fighting Mentality - Israel a Nation of Warriors by Moshe Katz
What is the cultural background of Krav Maga? What makes it unique? What makes the Israeli military so effective? Why are Israeli security systems used all over the world?
What are the Biblical origins of Krav Maga and who was the first Krav Maga instructor?
What weapons and military strategies did our Biblical ancestors use?
How has Krav Maga developed in Israel and what are its goals?
All that and more in this unique book.
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