I used a musical metaphor yesterday, conceived mid-thought, and today I’m appreciating its aptness. I mentioned well-tempered vocabulary, making an analogy (or anomalogy) with tempered scales to which harpsichords, pianos and most other keyboard instruments are tuned.

I have been looking for just the right set of English translations of Hebrew words for the sefirot and olamot and related ideas. I am also bringing some decades-old ideas to this work. I am pursuing internal harmony within the traditional framework but also across tradition to my own personal understanding, which, being a product of my own limit-bound finitude, certainly contains the usual scotomata, oblivia and eye-beams. Nothing lines up perfectly, but by looking at whole and part together, hearing chord and harmony in each meaning, they can be gathered in approximate inter-perfection.

My hope is that this sincere attempt at harmonious assimilation will coax my reason upward to be graciously met and tempered by intellection in descent, and that any work I do in this spirit will effect the same for anyone who tries to play golden ball with these words and ideas.

Perfection in such translation work is impossible. There are always trade-offs, audible disharmonies, humilities. Perfection is our holy asymptote, and it is not ours to have. The best we can do is give ourselves to this infinite perfection and play our finite part within it, at our finite, imperfect best.