A Jew in the Rain

Next Millenium

2012-02-28T12:48:00.001-08:00

What do you suppose the anthropologists will deduce when they dig up these?

We have to remember that the emergence of this type of footwear (some scholars speculate this is earwear, viz. related papers) was roughly coincident with popular alarm regarding the imminent elevation of sea levels by dissolution of polar ice packs - a phenomenon known at the time as "global warming".

The likelihood is that residents of the more affluent continents who were financially able to acquire varietal footwear derived subconscious comfort from awareness of their feet raised above flood level - a comfort which illogically predominated over conscious awareness of mobility.

We can only speculate about how early 21st century humans may have walked on these excessively high, excessively homogeneous, platforms. Imagining their gait is both puzzling and amusing.

Given the overwhelming presence of internal-combustion gas-powered vehicles -the very objects which contributed to "global warming"- it remains probable that early 21st century humans walked as little as possible, on platforms or on any other surface.

Only in Israel

2012-02-28T12:31:00.001-08:00

...do certain people drive around in a van with rainbow lights and music for the sole purpose of cheering up passersby.

Conversation -- on Regret

2012-02-28T12:27:00.000-08:00

SCENE:
ME is washing dishes.

Me: (absent-mindedly) I wonder whether I have enough - yes, there's half a bottle left. What a pretty shade of blue. and a half meters, Yes.

Enter LEFT VENTRICLE, stage right.

Left Ventricle: I wanted to be the Queen of the May when I was in high school.

Me: Will the fabric fit in the- yes, extra. Someday I should probably take a noxious chemical to the outside of this.

Left Ventricle: (slightly louder) I wanted to be the Queen of the May when I was in high school.

Me: (still absent-mindedly) What's that, dear? No, don't - wh- good. Why is this? Oh.

Left Ventricle: (slightly louder) I wanted to be the Queen of the May when I was in high school.

Me: Did you ever tell me that?

Left Ventricle: Yes. We were looking at Grandma's photo album, and there was a picture of her with her triangular 1940's hairstyle and a coat draped over her shoulders and a crown on her head, and she said, "I was the Queen of the May," and I said, "I want to be the Queen of the May too."

Me: Oh. So why didn't you become the Queen of the May?

Left Ventricle: You didn't let me.

Me: What do you mean? There probably hasn't been a Queen of the May since Grandma was in high school.

Left Ventricle: There was.

Me: What did we do? Remind me.

Left Ventricle: (no answer - pouting)

Me: (slowly recalling) Well, let's see. You know that's probably mythology, but anyway, it wasn't that we couldn't be bothered. No, you don't remember that we specifically didn't want to? Don't you remember what we did in those days? We read great works. We met interesting people. We actually did engage in a couple of save-the-world projects that had an effect -- you don't remember those meetings? It was amazing. We walked on banisters. We rowed. We used to walk down the middle of the street from sheer bliss and notice the geraniums. We read sitting in the rosebush. You don't remember any of this?

Left Ventricle: I do, now that you mention it.

Me: We did a lot of good things. You didn't lose out from not being Queen of the May. In fact, it's much better that you weren't. Do you agree?

Left Ventricle. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I do agree. You're right. It was good. It was better that way.

(satisfied pause.)

I wanted to be the Queen of the May in high school.

Me: Will you kindly go back to pumping blood like you're supposed to?

Left Ventricle: Oh! Right.
Exeunt.

Ramat Beit Shemesh

2012-02-28T11:38:00.000-08:00

I spent Shabbos in Ramat Beit Shemesh. I think it's considered a suburb of Jerusalem, though it's a good hour away by bus, through some lovely (and uncommonly diverse) woods.

You know how when you drive down the highway in America and see a mall, you wonder whether anyone actually lives behind it, or if it is just a mall in the middle of nowhere? I discovered a few years ago that there are suburbs behind such malls: block after block of square houses on square green lawns, all of the same vintage. The houses look like children's drawings of houses: triangular roofs, a door between two downstairs windows. Thus far, the American suburb.

Ramat Beit Shemesh does not look like an American suburb: it is row after winding row of short, red-roofed apartment buildings sheathed in limestone. The streets are all named after rivers and it is an apt analogy: they are really like dark rivers flowing through a limestone landscape. There are trees and shrubs - enough to make the place look alive - but no lawns.

Ramat Beit Shemesh is surrounded by green hills (at least at this time of year) with olive trees, shrubs, and the ruins of ancient terraces tumbling down their sides. At least two of these hills are already slated to become Ramat Beit Shemesh C -- before you mourn the development, you have to understand that practically every hill in Israel is covered with shrubs, olive trees, and the ruins of ancient terraces; and remember that the development comes about because the cute little babies in Jerusalem grow up and get married, mazel tov, mazel tov. Taking a walk around RBS on a weekday will bring you to wilderness where you can pick up shards of ancient pottery.

We visited a few young couples and it is surprising to me how seeing that a young lady is in the command of an apartment with high ceilings makes me think of her as more mature than her counterparts back in my neighborhood with low ceilings... until I stop to realize that it is the ceilings conveying this impression. There is something magic about high ceilings. I think my sense of aesthetics froze a hundred years ago, when books were wide & short, and rooms (and their windows) were narrow & tall; since then in popular culture the two have swapped shapes.

What really surprised me in Ramat Beit Shemesh is the quiet: on a Shabbos afternoon in Jerusalem the streets are empty of cars but packed full of children jumping rope and playing tag. In Ramat Beit Shemesh I saw a few tag games, but nothing like Jerusalem. Perhaps I was just out at the wrong time, or perhaps there are not that many seven-year-olds in RBS.

On the whole, Ramat Beit Shemesh reminded me of this insight: One of my teachers was once approached by a gentleman who had spent several years working on an intensive and grand project. Now that the man's project was finished, he was ready to move on to another impressive project -- and none was forthcoming. He felt the lull keenly. "I don't know what to do next," he said. "Life for the past few years has been one thrill after another. Now that I have finally reached my goal, I am bored."
"When life gets boring, make yourself interesting," my teacher told him. You can work on a grand scale, doing astounding things that affect or at least impress the public. And sometimes what is necessary is to become a deeper person -- which is a different kind of thrill.

Ramat Beit Shemesh, unlike a large city, cannot really be said to offer interest of its own: it is new, it is tidy, it is hospitable and welcome; but it is hardly a tourist attraction. I don't think it will last longer than a month as a substitute for living an interesting life. If you live in Ramat Beit Shemesh, you must make yourself interesting.
The people that we visited in Ramat Beit Shemesh have done that: they are all very nice, very thoughtful, very mature (and it's not just the high ceilings).

A nice Shabbos.

Lord of the Rings joke

2012-02-21T05:37:00.000-08:00

Thank you AW

Snow Sleep

2012-02-19T10:32:00.000-08:00

Sam Perrin

sperrin at uoregon.edu

Thanks!

Only in Israel

2012-02-19T10:28:00.000-08:00

Only in Israel can bringing your daughter to the fruit store without a hat on a lukewarm day convince the greengrocer (erroneously) that you are too impoverished to buy her one...
so that he slips extra carrots into your bag...
which you make into a salad for the downstairs neighbor...
who gathers together a basket of foodstuffs for the upstairs neighbor...
who knocks at your door to give you the cottage cheese...
which you feed to the child whose bare head so alarmed the grocer.

Thoughts on Sponja

2012-02-14T12:21:00.000-08:00

An American friend of mine who lives in a small town in Israel once observed that "when we want recreation, we hop in the car and go somewhere."
"What about the people who can't afford to travel?" I asked.
"They do a lot of sponja," she said.

There is something oddly holiday-like about pouring water all over the floor - especially in a country where water use is so carefully measured - and chasing it around.
Sponja is what Israelis do instead of mopping or vaccuuming. There are also miniature, handheld squeegees for countertops.

I heard from Rav Lorencz shlit"a (the younger) that when Ben-Gurion landed in Israel, he was directed to a family in Tel Aviv (then a hill of sand). His hostess, an imposing, strong woman, served him tea, in what may well have been the only teacup in the house. He dropped the teacup, and it fell to the sand floor, breaking. He was terrified.
"Bring the sponjadorlo!" cried his hostess. Ben-Gurion thought sponjadorlo might be a dog or a weapon -- something suitable for punishing those who broke teacups.
The hostess's daughter brought a a sponja stick and began cleaning up. The hostess endeavored to engage the trembling Ben-Gurion in conversation.
"First, the sponjadorlo," he pleaded, anxious to have his punishment over with.
She pointed to the sponja stick her daughter was wielding, indicating that this was a sponjadorlo.
...the moral of the story being not to fear unnecessarily.

The trouble with humanities

2012-02-14T12:06:00.000-08:00

There are some things I wish I had learnt very early in life.
I wish I had learnt earlier than I did that inches are divided into eighths. I wish I had learnt earlier that basting a chicken does not mean sewing it and then picking out the stitches. I wish I had learnt earlier that the right way to commence sponja-ing the floor (Israelis don't mop, they sponja) is to dash water into the corners.
And I certainly ought to have learnt several years ago that COLLEGE CREDITS EXPIRE -- so that college courses taken in high school may have to be repeated... or Clepped.
This has been a public service announcement.

The Humanities Clep covers philosophy, literature, drama, art, music, and film, from prehistory to the present.
On one hand, it is interesting to catch up on what humanity has been doing for all those years -- filling in some spaces in my education.
On the other hand, the material required for the test is the most uninspiring branch of the humanities.

The math Clep tests your familiarity with math. Studying for it makes you appreciate the math in the world.
The science Clep tests your familiarity with science. Studying for it makes you appreciate the science in the world.
And the humanities Clep tests your familiarity with what everyone has to say about the humanities, which is not the same thing at all. Studying for it means memorizing lists like this:

James, Fred, George and Mary of the Tiddlywinks school of art, which emphasized light and movement, were succeded by James, John, George (the nephew of the first George), and Harriet of the Tiddlywoodles school, which emphasized light and color, and were succeeded by the Tiddlysquinks school, represented by John, Harry (the stepson of James of the Tiddlywoodles), Rene, and Mildred, which sought to revive the traditions of the Tiddlywinks, focusing on light, movement, and space, and Michael defaulted from the Tiddlysquinks to pave the way for the Tiddlysqundles who emphasized movement and color; and all the Tiddly movements took place in the age in which the unnaturalist movement of art, which drew on the naturalist movement of art, gave way to semi-naturalist art, and the return of naturalist undertones.

...instead of actually looking at the art.

I thought this was only because the multiple-choice nature of the CLEP test doesn't allow for better, but the art historian of the family confirmed, laughing, that emphasis on categorization (and questions of authorship) rather than content is actually quite common.

There are humanities scholars who spend their lives contemplating some of the greatest efforts of humanity over the millenia... and who, far from being inspired by these to deep and worthy thought, devote their time and energy to quibbling over whether an artist was a Tiddlywoodler or a Tiddlywiddler.
It is embarrassing. I believe it bypasses the point of the humanities entirely.

Occupy Entropy

2012-02-05T12:08:00.000-08:00

How are you going to sprout today?

WHAM!

2012-02-05T11:45:00.000-08:00

A few months ago, when the weather was warm and breezy, we woke up one morning to find that the air felt so cold we expected snow. And so it was winter. And so it remained for months.
I noticed late last week that the almond trees on our block are blooming.
The next day, WHAM! the sun is out, the air is warm, plants everywhere are putting forth flowers.

Many things in Jerusalem are subtle but weather is not one of them.

I, I, I, I, I, I, cont.

2012-02-05T11:35:00.000-08:00

Ran into this the other day in one of Emerson's letters:
"...forgive the egotism of all this letter. Say they not 'The more love the more egotism'?"

...which (if it is so - I am not convinced) I suppose is because one of the nicest things you can do for a person is to share your thoughts with him.

If I ever close this blog, I suspect it will be because I will suddenly come to a nasty realization that nothing - not even the opportunity to affect several million people - can justify the display of loving egotism where several million people can see it.

Film: time-lapse photography

2012-02-05T10:55:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHkq1edcbk4

Time-lapse photography of hummingbirds, bees, flowers, a strawberry.

Rainbow biology. And, "clep" is not Yiddish.

2012-02-01T11:33:00.000-08:00

I once lived among hasidim who were busy clepping cleps. I thought the word 'clep' was Yiddish.
But no. CLEPs are tests administered by US colleges to military members, or other people busy with good things (including homeschooling), to distribute college credits.

Cramming for a Clep is what you make of it.
Ruskin: "They cram to pass, and not to know; and they do pass, and they don't know."
Or, you can cram to know, and Clep to save time. The student schedule in my college looked like Hermione's, so a lot of us wound up taking Cleps. And so I spent the past two weeks cramming biology.

I thought this route must be a shoddy replacement for college proper until I tuned into a top university's Biology 101 lectures. One of the professors spent an entire lecture listing the college faculty and their awards, and then went on to tell stories about himself and to lecture about 'you know, mitochondria and uh, stuff'.

So, I no longer feel cheated that I attended a small college. Half of our professors were holy Jerusalem housewives teaching in addition to working, but they knew their material inside and out, and we never learned about and uh stuff.

---BIOLOGY!---

I discovered that biology is lovable for the same reason as chemistry: it lends itself to metaphor. There are so many unknowns that my textbook gives up on literal explanations, and makes Golgi bodies sound like my mother, and describes the atoms as desiring this and the universe as being intent on that, which is misleading, but cute.
On top of the inherent metaphor, the text I am using for basic information is The Biology Coloring Book. I think the idea is to involve the kinesthetic part of the brain, but for me it is all about the colors.
Yay! Let's be eight again! Scientific conventions have appropriated yellow, red, black, and blue for certain elements - and then I have designated pink for happy things (positive charges or coming-togethers), green for sad things (negative charges and falling-apart), purple for special things (phosphorus and by extension phosphates), Delft blue for anything discovered by Van Leeuwenhoek, and --
but soft! I have a finite number of colored pencils. And so I end up fabricating all kinds of folk-tales to explain why glucose and protons, or fructose and muscle cells, are the same color. And this - the folklore necessitated by a shortage of colors - is what really makes the information memorable.

Current educational theory recognizes eight types of learners - kinesthetic, verbal, &c. If they ever add romantic learners to the list, sign me up.

So I have spent nearly two weeks living in one of those wonderful student study-vacuums, doing nothing but [baking 200 cream puffs and] sitting at our table getting high on biology and rainbows and rainbow biological metaphor; and sometimes to the strains of Signs and Wonders, Rabbi Oppenheimer's Yom Kippur davening -- and wow, what a life.

I thought I would be sorry when the Clep was over - I always liked that finals-week vacuum - but as soon as it ended I picked a biography of R' Yisrael Salanter off the Clep-host's shelf and -- yum, the world is still big and beautiful and full of Torah and all the dishes that didn't get washed while I was cramming, and I am not sorry to get back to it.

Israeli Secular Culture

2012-02-01T11:12:00.000-08:00

When the Spies returned from touring the Land of Israel (Num. 13:32), they said, "It is a Land that consumes its inhabitants."
But yoshveiha - 'its inhabitants' - can also be translated as 'those who sit still in it'.

That, right there, explains the differences between Israeli and American secular culture.
In America, if you want to be secular, you can put your feet up on the table and be secular. No problem. The land offers no resistance.
Americans assume that this is true in Israel as well. It is not.

In Israel, if you want to be secular, you are working against the laws of nature. It is like trying to defy gravity. If you have a spiritual bad hair day, you feel the horizon itself trying to put you back in order.
Israeli secular culture, such as it is, is dizzying, noisy, and more uncomfortable than most, because being secular in Israel requires so much concentrated effort.

There is a certain Israeli author who - at least a few years ago - was immensely popular among Israeli youth because, they said, 'they feel that his stories accurately represent their world.'
What kind of author would American youth pick out as one who accurately represents their world?
(Probably one who says I a lot...) Probably one whose characters spend a lot of time in their own minds... have honestly-expressed emotional ups and downs... get a thrill out of seeing beautiful things or places.
What kind of author do Israeli youth pick out as one who accurately represents their world?
One whose genre is magical realism. His stories are about people impersonating G-d and angels crash-landing on rooftops. At least one of them takes place after death.
This is the world of secular Israeli youth.

Japanese Yiddishists

2012-01-30T12:44:00.001-08:00

What makes this article - on a new Yiddish-Japanese dictionary - citeworthy on this blog is the following line:

All [Japanese Yiddishists], he says, are driven by “healthy intellectual curiosity and interest in traditional Ashkenazic culture, which, unlike modern Israeli culture, seems to have much in common with traditional Japanese culture.”

Catch

2012-01-30T12:44:00.000-08:00

Thank you, Sam Perrin.
sperrin at uoregon.edu .

Snowy Owls in Town

2012-01-24T11:09:00.000-08:00

Bird Watchers Revel in Unusual Spike in Snowy Owl Sightings

I love this image... thousands of white birds leaving to Arctic to swoop down on America.

Another note on Rav Hirsch

2012-01-22T12:43:00.000-08:00

Today, 27 Teves, is Rav Hirsch's yahrtzeit. So I will say a bit more.

I.
A rav here once observed that Rav Hirsch is directly or indirectly responsible for the five defining characteristics of Torah life in America:

1. Formal education for girls
2. The publication of Torah materials in the vernacular
3. The independent kehillah model of community structure (austritt)
4. Outreach to Jews
5. Formal "secular" education (needs a better name -- no part of a Jew's life is really "secular")

II.
On a personal note -- I discovered Rav Hirsch when I was twelve, in the footnotes of the Artscroll Chumash. I had been going through the parsha writing down all my questions ("why did he do that? That's not very nice, that's not consistent with human dignity, that's not remotely PC"), and Rav Hirsch caught my attention because he was always the commentator who addressed them -- and gave the most wonderful answers.
I am no longer twelve, I have lived in a few Jewish communities, and still Rav Hirsch is the one who addresses my questions, and gives the most wonderful answers.
And, better yet, gives them in the poetic style of nineteenth-century German literature -- if you are lucky enough to find the older translation.

III.
Rav Hirsch is still available through the Multnomah County Library system... The Nineteen Letters Yikes! I thought they had the whole Chumash. Well, start there.

Wild Edibles Foraging Tour in Jerusalem

2012-01-22T12:42:00.000-08:00

A lady I know is organizing a tour of Gan Sacher (in Jerusalem) to point out which wild plants are edible.
She picks only weeds and wild plants, not anything that's been planted deliberately.
The link to the event is here.

What to Do with a Landfill - part 3

2012-01-22T12:41:00.002-08:00

It's DIY time here at A Jew in the Rain!
Today I'll show you, in twenty-seven professional-quality photographs, interspersed with gratingly chirpy prose, how to craftily transform a landfill into cotton by the yard.

I wish.
The film in question is here:
The Story of the Hiriya Recycling Park

...
This serves nicely to illustrate another point about teshuva:
Teshuva done out of love turns a misdeed into a mitzvah.
The analogy I usually hear for this idea is that when a rope connecting two parties has been severed, tying it back together shortens the distance between them.
That analogy goes only so far. The idea (someone correct me if I'm wrong) is that what once served as a means of disconnection has become a means of connection. I made a mistake; now, through recognizing that and doing teshuva, I use it to connect. 'Hashem created teshuva before He created the world' -- that's part of how the world works.
(This is what that sign in shul meant. A person who has fallen and used that fall to ascend, can 'stand in a place' where someone who has never fallen could not.)
You can see something similar in certain human relationships -- or in the Hiriya Recycling Park.

And this is how you remind me of what I really am.

Adopted Minnesota Man Learns He Is a Prince - part 2

2012-01-22T12:41:00.001-08:00

This Is How You Remind Me of What I Really Am, part II.

The first time I came to shul in Oregon - I was about eight years old - a large sign on the foyer wall read,
In the place where the true penitent stands, even the most righteous cannot stand,
which is a quotation from the Talmud.

Admitting to myself that I was neither a true penitent nor most righteous, I looked at the many seats available in shul and wondered anxiously which were for the true penitents and which for the most righteous, and whether I would get into trouble if I stood in the wrong place.
Which is not what the sign meant.

Let's drop the word penitence right here. It makes me itch -- I must be associating it with hairshirts and other peculiarities of the Christian Middle Ages. No.
The Hebrew concept that that sign extolled is teshuva, "return".
To 'do teshuva' is to return from what I'm doing that I would rather not do, to the person I would rather be. We say every morning that "the soul You have placed in me is pure" -- no matter what I have obscured it with.

Teshuva is the first thing I thought of when I read this:
Adopted Minnesota Man Learns He Is a Prince

You think you are an ordinary human being... and then something reminds you, or you make an effort to remember, that you are nobility.
And strive to live up to it.

This Is How You Remind Me of What I Really Am - part 1

2012-01-22T12:41:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer: I do not know what the lyrics to that song are about, I have never listened to it deliberately, and I have not heard it in years.

When I was in high school, whenever we drove out of town to an NCSY Shabbaton (youth group Shabbat event), it was on the radio. I came to think of it as the theme song of our trips. We frequently drove several hours, and so heard it over and over and over, passing from one radio zone into the next.

Personally I am not a pop music girl -- quaero mihi similes, et adiungor pravis - and these were about the only occasions on which I was compelled to listen to hours of it on end.

So a decade or so later here I am in a hareidi neighborhood of Jerusalem on Chol HaMoed, and the not-so-religious-and-in-fact-downright-peculiar neighbors are playing very loud American pop music in their sukkah; and we are sitting in our sukkah wondering when they are going to stop blasting that awful noise -- and I start feeling extremely inspired. And suddenly I realize: to me, that awful noise is the music of Driving to an NCSY Shabbaton, and as such it arouses within me extremely strong teenaged emotions of the yay we are Jewish and life is awesome! variety.

And this - of all things - is how you remind me of what I really am.

Upcoming Jewish Events in Portland

2012-01-17T07:26:00.000-08:00

SUNDAY BRUNCH WITH RABBI YAACOV MARCUS

"Who are You?"
Sunday, January 29, 10:00 am at the Portland Kollel [6688 SW Capitol Hwy.]

Rabbi Marcus, a faculty member at Neve Yerushalayim in Jerusalem,
is a popular lecturer who regularly speaks in Portland during his US tours.

In this presentation, he'll explore the Torah's description of who we are
on both physical and spiritual levels,
and offer insights about and practical tools for decision-making.

The hour-long presentation, co-sponsored by Kesser and the Portland Kollel,
is aimed at all skill levels and backgrounds.
Brunch will be served, of course; donations appreciated.

___

The Birds & the Bees (and Your Kid!)
What is the Jewish view of sexuality?
How do you deliver "the big talk" to your child?

As a Jewish parent, you deserve the timeless wisdom of Judaism.
On Wednesday, February 1, join other adults
for an evening of learning & discussion led by Rabbi and Aviel Brodkin.

Explore the role of Jewish values in your home
and identify how you can put them into practice with your child.

This is a special event open to our community
and is hosted by Portland's first Jewish parenting group.

If you struggle with the unexpected and sometimes awkward questions
your kids ask around this topic - this event is for you!

Congregation Kesser Israel, 6698 SW Capitol Hwy., Portland
Wednesday, February 1 at 7:00 pm
RSVP to rabbibrodkin at gmail.com

I, I, I, I, I, I

2012-01-17T06:13:00.000-08:00

...so what I was going to say in the previous post, before Rav Hirsch distracted me, was that over Shabbos I was reading Rav Hirsch
Yay! Rav Hirsch
and he mentioned in passing -- since he was compelled to make an exception -- that it was his habit not to speak of himself in the monthly journal he edited.

And I began thinking about blogs... and how the whole attraction of the medium is that they are intensely personal. I, I, I, I, I, I. Books, too: in modern reference works, authors natter on about themselves shamelessly.
Facebook has become a great deal more popular than newspapers.
To me, all this says that people would rather get their information or news from friends than from an unknown third party.

My seventh-grade teacher taught us never to say "I think..." or "I believe..." when making an argument, because it weakens the argument.
But it adds interest. Now there is a person there, not just an argument.

A gentleman on the radio once observed that exhibits of dinosaur bones in the early 1900's were meant to awe with power; in the 50's, they were kitchy; in the 80's, the velociraptor replaced T-rex as the center of attention because it was like a sleek businessman, the hero of the era -- and nowadays, dinosaur exhibits are (as he put it) "green". The dinosaurs are grouped in cozy home settings; Mama dinosaur is minding the eggs and watching her young play. It's all about friends and family, dinosaur relationships, relating to the dinosaurs.

Is it that people never used to be particular - information was information whether or not we endeavored to relate to its source? Or is the generation is trying to make up for something?

A note on Rav Hirsch

2012-01-17T06:11:00.000-08:00

Over Shabbos I was reading Rav Hirsch.
Yay! Rav Hirsch.
I once received an e-mail from someone saying, "I was just reading Rav Hirsch, and he said something very beautiful, which I am forwarding to you in the original language because it defies paraphrase and I thought you'd like it."
Thereupon followed several paragraphs.

Ha, I said, this has got to be this man's first time reading Rav Hirsch -- because if he keeps reading, he will discover that everything Rav Hirsch writes is stunning and beautiful and impossible to paraphrase, and although he will be desperate to forward it to everyone he knows because it is so exquisite, he will abandon the effort because Rav Hirsch was - lucky us - such a good friend to his pen that there is just too much to type up and mail to everyone we know.
It would be like someone e-mailing you two pages of The Tempest and saying, "I was reading Shakespeare and I am sending this to you because it is an impressive bit of English."
And to test my hypothesis, I looked to see which passage of Rav Hirsch this man had sent me.
And sure enough: it was the very first few paragraphs of the very first essay of the very first volume of Rav Hirsch's writings.
Yup.

Rav Hirsch -- Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch -- lived in the mid-1800's in ~~Germany~~ Prussia and wrote, among other things, the best explanation of Judaism in a nutshell I know (The Nineteen Letters) and the book on Judaism that I would take to a desert island if I had to pick one, since it was written for that purpose (Horeb), and a commentary on the Torah, and another on Psalms, and quite a lot more.

And you can please add him to the list of things I wish you'd go read instead of this blog.
The Multnomah County Library system has some copies.

A two-syllable word meaning "stops"

2012-01-17T02:46:00.000-08:00

H: What's a two-syllable word meaning "stops"?
[thinks]
Oh, yeah. "Stoppeth."

G-d

2012-01-16T12:32:00.000-08:00

Once you have got past my hang-up about using a hyphen instead of an o, if I say "G-d", do you picture an old man with a long white beard, slinging thunderbolts?

That is not the Jewish idea of G-d.
Don't look so disappointed.

I once heard a rav of my acquaintance speak of "the Eternal".
That gives a better idea of the Jewish idea of the Eternal than the word "G-d" does.

Once you say "G-d", people think you are talking about the subject of Christian radio shows, and then it is all over.
Most Jews I know do not talk about "G-d" except when they are trying to translate themselves for people who don't speak Hebrew. In Torah texts, the Eternal goes by many different names -- names with the emphasis on love, on justice, on our relationship, on our responsibilities, "Ancient One", "the Place".

For the record -- all phrased in the negative since the precise identity of the Eternal is beyond what our minds can handle - G-d, in the Jewish concept, is not a person, male, female, narrow-minded, Christian, physical, Zeus, Iluvatar, hydrogen, strings, trees, machinery, outer space, light, out-to-get-you, Hallmarky, evil, or a fusspot.

Double Book Review: women and Torah study, women and Jewish law

2012-01-10T03:22:00.001-08:00

I recently re-read two books once lent to me in high school, on the subjects of Jewish women's Torah education, and Jewish women's role in general.
Those interested in such matters should know about these two books' existence.

The first is And All Your Children Shall Be Learned: Women and the Study of Torah in Jewish Law and History, by Shoshana Pantel Zolty, a Torah-observant academic from Toronto.
It is not light reading -- more like a Ph.D thesis.
The first half is a survey of halachic sources on teaching women Torah, or their learning on their own. If there is only one line of thought to follow in this section, I couldn't find it: as the author writes, her purpose is only to gather the relevant references, not to string them together to emerge with a legal decision. Interesting reading; not particularly helpful if you want to know what the halacha is.
The second half is a survey - which seemed to me comprehensive - of Jewish women's education through history.
This is not the book you curl up with to help you space out; it is not even a collection of anecdotes: it is an academic work, and the author tries to stay out of it - mostly. It is a good reference to have on hand if you need to look up who-was-it-that-said or where-did-she-live-again.

The other book, which treats a broader topic, is Jewish Woman in Jewish Law, by Rav Moshe Meiselman (shlit"a), a talmid chacham (Torah sage) of Jerusalem.
This one is a book you can curl up with - it is felicitously written, easy to follow (even when he is detailing the American laws of inheritance), and enlightening.
The first half treats women's role in Judaism generally (including women and Torah study); the second thoroughly addresses specific issues which were controversial when the book was printed (1978) and which in some circles are just as controversial today.
As the author writes in the introduction, the book is not apologetic; it starts by explaining the Torah value system, and treats its subject accordingly -- but the outcome is eminently satisfying even to one who cannot grasp that value system.
I wish more people knew of this book's existence, and would read it.
Excerpts here: http://books.google.co.il/books?id=t3zQAoncEnwC&printsec=frontcover&hl=iw&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Pitched Battle

2012-01-10T03:22:00.000-08:00

The other night, while the man of the house was out, a war was fought in my living room.
Chariots and cavalry and foot-soldiers poured out of the bookshelves.
The beleagured ran for shelter in the fuse-box.
Sentries stood guard, raiding parties went forth across the dinner table, many were slain...
-- and then a key turned in the latch and all the soldiers and civilians, dead or alive, scuttled under the bookshelf.

"Did anything interesting happen while I was out?" asked the man of the house, looking around the tidy living room.
"No," we said.

I had forgotten how vivid is the study of Nach.

Sewing resources

2012-01-09T12:36:00.000-08:00

...so this is supposed to be a blog about Torah and poetry, but I did warn you that it would be about poetic Torah lives also... and, like, everything else...

I had a legitimate need (teaching beginners) to poke around online for some sewing resources. Here are the best of them, to save others the same poking.

Background Information

One of a series of excellent articles on the fibers used in textiles, and their manufacture -- about 100 years out of date, but quite fascinating. I knew subconsciously that there are many steps between plant and garment, but I didn't realize that it takes quite so much work... http://www.oldandsold.com/articles04/textiles9.shtml

Halfway down this page is a highly magnified photograph of different textile fibers. Just below that is a magnified image of the differences between regular and washable wool. http://www.medicalsheepskins.com/wool.htm

Projects

Simple baby clothes patterns. I have used a couple of these. http://babypatterns.atspace.com/overview.html

Fabric dollhouse pattern and instructions. http://uklassinus.blogspot.com/2008/08/fabric-dollhouse-tutorial.html

A series of tutorials on sewing pockets. http://www.ikatbag.com/2010/12/pocketful-of-sky-summary-and-giveaway.html

Shoe patterns and instructions:

Leather moccasins: http://www.nativetech.org/clothing/moccasin/mocinstr.html
Children's elasticized ballet slippers: http://www.ikatbag.com/2008/12/dress-up-box-tippytoes.html
Baby shoes -- ribbon-tied: http://www.homespun-threads.com/hp_zencart/download/strappyshoes.pdf
pleated: http://www.homespun-threads.com/hp_zencart/download/pleatedballerinashoes.pdf
asymmetrical: http://www.homespun-threads.com/hp_zencart/download/pleatedballerinashoes.pdf
Awww.

And here's how they do it in Finland

2012-01-09T09:01:00.000-08:00

You may have guessed by now that one of the blog writers is an Education major...

Finland is a fascinating country for many reasons -- women receive three YEARS of maternity leave (not all of it paid) and picture books from the government on the birth of a child, the lack of sunlight makes many people depressed, children eat candy only once a week on "candy day", there are beautiful auroras, the word "not" is an inflected auxiliary (we not, he nots), and the Samis assign their children not only a name but also a melody.
Altogether one of the more interesting pockets of the planet.
There are an estimated 1500 Jews in Finland.

This post, though, is about the Finnish public schools, which are rated (using purely academic criteria - not on anything like self-control) as some of the best in the world.
Finland spends approximately $1000 less per student per year than America - but Finland has it easy: it is a country of Finns, not of emigrants, there are not many of them, and they are all literate in Finnish. They also pay exceedingly high taxes.

The purpose of this post is to mention a few points of interest in the Finnish school system, not to hold them up as ideals. Some, I believe, are better ideas than others.
Here:

Children enter school at age 7. Most attend kindergarden starting at age 6, but the kindergarden program is not very academic - mostly about play.
Teaching jobs are highly sought-after. Teachers must have at least a Master's degree.
Each teacher has his or her own office in the school. A teacher spends 20 hours a week teaching and 20 hours a week preparing. Teachers choose their own textbooks.
Classes are small, and there may be three teachers in a classroom, to ensure individual attention.
Teachers may stay with a particular class for two or even four years.
School typically starts at 8am and finishes at 2pm, and students have no more than half an hour of homework each night.
Skills like sewing, knitting, woodwork, downhill and cross-country skiing, and horseback riding are taught in school.
Students start learning English in 3rd grade, Swedish in 7th, and other languages in 8th.
Schools have a great deal of latitude in designing their own curricula.
Schools often have a common room with a functional fireplace.
Students do not wear shoes in school.
Outdoor recess is mandatory unless it's colder than -13 degrees Fahrenheit.
High school is not mandatory.
Hot lunches are free, university is subsidised, and children living in remote areas are picked up and dropped off by free taxi.

There are some contradictory articles on Finnish education - they do or don't use a great deal of technology, they do or don't have a great deal of testing, students do or don't address their teachers with an unusual degree of familiarity - and then there are all the liberal policies one would expect of a Nordic country.

Charlotte Mason on secular studies

2012-01-09T07:23:00.000-08:00

Charlotte Mason is one of those "names" in education, like Maria Montessori. I first heard of her when my friend quoted her that it is better for a child to practice writing a few perfect "m"s than to write a whole page of sloppy ones.
I am waiting for someone to make a systematic analysis of what in Charlotte Mason's approach to education is compatible with Torah and what is not. But, I don't think it's going to happen. She appears to have had some influence in turn-of-the-century England; but nowadays she is largely unknown to all but homeschoolers.
Her theology is incompatible with Torah; her analysis of character development is something I am not qualified to evaluate; but here are some of the tenets of a Charlotte Mason approach to secular studies:

-"Never be within doors when you can rightly be without" - preschool children especially.
-Training preschool children in the habits of sustained attention, close observation, and faithful description.
-One of the first areas of study for preschool children, therefore, is nature study, performed outdoors (while Baby soaks up his Vitamin D) --- the other is foreign language; [and these, of course, along with my friends and I used to call (after Dr. Pangloss) philometaphysicotheologocosmolosophololololoardoanthrosociopsychomusarology, which to Charlotte Mason was more like "theology and character", but which in Judaism is infinitely more complex - Rav Hirsch calls it "Divine anthropology" - and which therefore, as indicated above, is beyond the scope of this post.]
-"Living books" - teaching language and history by reading to one's children, and eventually by having them read on their own, original sources, especially biography: not textbooks or children's adaptations - and even fiction read for leisure should be well-written and rich in ideas.
-Similarly, geography is to be acquired from travel accounts, not from textbooks.
-Narration: children read a passage only once (no "cramming" allowed), and then narrate what they have read. This is so that they pay attention to what they read, and reflect on it enough to put it into their own words. Good composition comes from good reading and so is not harped upon much as a separate subject.
-Short and varied lessons - to maintain the habit of sustained attention: when a lesson lasts ten or thirty minutes, and is both preceded and followed by something totally different, you can't space out for part of it. Charlotte Mason homeschoolers are notorious for managing to fit a graduate-school-level education into a few hours a day over twelve years, and spending the afternoons on extra-curriculars.
-Art instruction is what I would call right-brained, and handicrafts are useful, not just for the sake of doing projects -- teaching children to do dry-brush sketching ("nature journals" are one of the props of a CM education) or to cane chairs, not to poke popsicle sticks into a flowerpot. Examples of art, like nature, are studied with emphasis on close, appreciative observation.
-Math starts with manipulatives - but there are no fancy manipulatives in any subject; you have to use your imagination.
-Grammar and music are pretty much the same as anywhere else.

Charlotte Mason differs from Montessori in that the latter creates a child-sized environment, whereas CM makes use of an adult-sized world.
~~

There is relevant material in Vol. VII of Rav Hirsch's Collected Writings, of course - especially pp. 112-117. But it is too scary to paraphrase a wee bit of Rav Hirsch in a blog, especially in so trifling a post, when he has an entire OCEAN under his words. Look it up in your friendly local kollel library.

"Learner-centered" Torah day schools

2012-01-09T05:40:00.000-08:00

This is a nice article, about the Torah day schools in Seattle and Portland:

http://www.jewishreview.org/local/New-schools-leaders-explore-Seattle-schools-curriculum

It will be very exciting to see what happens next.

Metal Menora-Making, Part 2

2012-01-05T08:14:00.000-08:00

...so in the end, it worked.

We used bobby pins to keep the wicks in their holders upright.

And CD jewel cases as a windbreak.
The freezer coil is great stuff: soft enough to bend and break by hand, with a wire running through it to hold it together if you split it by accident.

For those interested in trying their hands at serious metalcraft, the following site looks like an excellent reference:
http://www.alleycatscratch.com/lotr/makingem/Tips/MakingCirclets.htm

1906 observation of Jews

2012-01-05T07:46:00.000-08:00

It is always cute to run into your nation in other people's books.
I found this today in a treatise on education, written in 1906 by a Christian Englishwoman:

"The writer is familiar with a German watering-place much frequented by Polish Jews of the poorer sort, sent thither probably by benevolent brethren of their race. These men are by no means phlegmatic; groups of three or four will engage in talk for hours at a spell, enviably earnest talk, impersonal, one would gather, from the faces of the speakers, and not like the chatter about baths and symptoms to be heard in passing other groups of talkers.... But the curious thing about all these men, whether of the ruddy or dark type, is their tranquility of aspect; their faces are like those of little children, simple, interested, untroubled, and very free from lines of anxiety. Is it that, like Goethe, they are aware of themselves only as "sheep of His pasture," and for the rest, take life as it comes?"

Charlotte M. Mason, Studies in the Formation of Character, pp. 415-416.

Tree Steam?

2012-01-05T07:40:00.000-08:00

Here is a question for the naturalists.
A few nights ago, we had a heavy rain. The next morning, as I was walking through the park, I saw the trunk of a pine tree, struck by a shaft of direct sunlight, giving off steam.
Huh?
I went over to investigate, and to see if it had caught on fire. It was warm, perhaps from the sunlight, not hot; there was no fire.

Have I passed by thousands of pine trees giving off steam and just never noticed?
Do pine trees never give off steam, so this must have been the smoke of a potential fire?

Any clues?

String

2012-01-04T00:10:00.000-08:00

It was once a common enough prank on New York's Lower East Side for two boys to suspend a string across a street, just high enough to go unnoticed by passers-by, and just low enough to knock off their hats as they passed under it.

I passed under such a string this week: walking toward the neighbor's bay window, I observed him standing before it, learning; and, crossing the street, I found our upstairs neighbor standing with his Gemara at his own window. A string of learning is strung across our street.

Koreans Visit Ponevezh Yeshiva

2011-12-20T12:31:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seAUU2K3BYk&feature=player_embedded

It is by now fairly common knowledge that portions of the Talmud have been translated into Korean and are avidly studied in South Korea.
The fascination of Koreans with the Talmud is partly because of its values, and partly because they recognize that its study sharpens the intellect. But as the rav in this short film explains, the real value of Talmud study is changing oneself.

A Tricorne for Every Vinegar

2011-12-19T11:28:00.000-08:00

He was going to wrap the bottles in paper gift bags.

I thought they'd look better in frock coats, jabots, and tricornes.

Tacoma

2011-12-18T06:31:00.000-08:00

Tacoma is about 30 miles south of Seattle.

For years, we have been passing Tacoma on the way to and from Seattle.

MT had heard that Tacoma is a nice place and today we decided to visit Tacoma.

Because it's a long drive and daylight doesn't last very long, we didn't see a lot of Tacoma.

However, we saw enough to agree that it is a nice place.

Like everyplace else on the Pacific Northwest coast, it started its American life as a muddy beach dotted with hastily-constructed wood buildings that functioned as saloon, church, school, hotel, stable, post office, and city hall, with about one-third as many buildings as functions.

Lean individuals captured in daguerrotypes as relentlessly stern oversaw the government of fishermen, loggers, fur traders, itinerant peddlers, schoolmarms, and fancy persons.

A mill was constructed. Then another.
Mill hands were housed in tiny bungalows arrayed along the streets sloping up from the Pacific.

Ship captains built big houses with verandas and widows' walks at the tops of the slopes.

The mud got paved.
The railroad came through.
The bungalows added lean-tos for kitchens and then indoor toilets.
Brick storefronts arrayed themselves on Main Street.
Lawyers came.

And then the whole thing just sort of mushroomed.

The City has invested heavily in preserving what remains of 19th century Tacoma.
There is a 5-mile long linear park between the Pacific and the railroad tracks, which run parallel to each other.
That's where we spent most of the day.

There are museums we did not get to and a really impressive Union Station with a broad dome ornamented with oxidized copper building-sized brooches.

The factory where Almond Roca was invented and where it is still made is in Tacoma.
MT stocked up on factory seconds.

We figure we need to go back when daylight lasts longer and see more.
Maybe cross the bridge and walk to Gig Harbor.

In Tacoma today it was cold and wet and all the tree branches were bare.
Just terribly atmospheric . . . like when the fog rolls off, those lean, stern guys will amble out of the woods wearing their leather pants and demand to know what we're doing in Tacoma.

Adventures in Metal Menora Making

2011-12-18T06:24:00.000-08:00

A few years ago, I decided to make a menora for lighting with oil.
"Ah!" I said. "I'll do pysanky and make it out of eggshells."
"Sorry," said the Sages. "You may not make a menora out of eggshells."
("You are a very interesting person," said the halacha teacher. "I never needed that halacha before.")

The Sages said that a menora must be pretty, and that the prettiest material is silver.
So all my dormmates went out and bought tin menoras, and I went to my teacher's house and begged the foil lid of a disposable pan.
(My dormmates mistook it for a silver menora. Cool.)

I do not have a picture of that menora, but it looked almost exactly like this:

Menora the First

I shaped modeling clay ("Plastalina") into a log, scored it, glued down strips cut from the pan lid, poked in metal bells filled with Plastalina (clappers intact but invisible), and rammed the glass bulbs into the bells.
DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME, because it is forbidden to rely on miracles.
My menora lasted for eight nights, and at exactly half an hour after it had been lit on the eighth night of Chanuka, the bulbs swam out of the bells, overturned, and - thank G-d - extinguished themselves.
Thus I learned that Plastalina melts when it gets hot.
Duh.

The next year, our dorm became a construction site, so I scavenged twists of wire used to hold scaffolding together, and tried to get the rust off by soaking them for four days in a cup full of Coca-Cola.
I think that is the only time in my life that I have ever bought Coca-Cola.
It didn't work. The wires still looked like construction junk. I didn't think that was what the Sages had in mind when they said metal is pretty. Back to Plan A.

Menora the Second

I used Fimo instead of Plastalina - because Fimo (like Sculpey) hardens when it gets hot.
I added a string of beads with interesting reflective properties.

But, these two menoras were very fragile; and we decided we want something stronger this year. Also, my husband wanted to use more oil, so the lights would last longer, because in our neighborhood people stay out late.

Then it was Rosh Chodesh Adar, a day of something like metaphysical comedy. I had just returned from America, so the floor was strewn with suitcases and their contents, and with the other housework that had accumulated during the unpacking. The freezer had broken in my absence, so defrosted vegetables were dripping on all available counters and tables. Two workmen in muddy boots squeezed into our kitchen to fix the freezer.
And then the government called and said, "We are sending you someone to take pictures of your house."
Haha. Happy Adar to you, too.
"No, really. Can he come in three minutes?"
And he did. "Welcome," I said, "we are seeing how many people we can fit into this apartment at once."
And at that point I just had to laugh, because I am SO not in control of my life, it is funny.

Anyway, the workmen removed from our freezer this curious creature:

Ex Freezerus

And it said,
"I want to be a Menora, Claudius. Make me a Menora."
So I did.

A Princess of Fire and Ice

But, before I could straighten, improve, and decorate it, we discovered that it is too long to pass by in the doorway.
I have one week to figure out how to make most of a freezer coil into a metal menora long enough to hold nine shot-glasses and strong enough to support them suspended in the doorway.
If anyone has a good idea, let's hear it!

Conversation

2011-12-11T07:39:00.000-08:00

Crater Lake: (being)

S: Big!

Crater Lake: Yeah.

S: Blue! Very blue.

Crater Lake: Oh, come on. You can do better than that.

S: Umm... no, seriously, I thought you were the size of a postcard, since that's where I've always seen you. Ripply. Matte.

Crater Lake: (waiting)

S: Too bad I didn't bring dishes to immerse... oh, give me a minute. I'm out of practice.

Crater Lake: (waiting)

S: You're not helping.

Crater Lake: (waiting)

S: Jacob desired to dwell in tranquility.

Crater Lake: (caught off guard) What?

S: You were waiting for me to say something profound, and that was the first thing that came to mind.

Crater Lake: But what do you mean by it?

S: I guess... that you have no outlet. You aren't going anywhere. You have no challenges. You don't interact with the rest of Oregon. The area around you is a desert, and you sit here. Aren't you a bit ahead of the times, kicking back like this?

Crater Lake: Do I look like I'm doing something I shouldn't?

S: No. You look all right. Quite lovely, in fact. I guess... you remind me of the Chazon Ish, sitting sixty years in the back of the House of Study. To come see you people have to know you exist, or go out of their way to trip over you. Are you going to run into the sea one of these days?

Crater Lake: I don't think that far ahead.

S: Don't you feel a bit uncomfortable about being a lake?

Crater Lake: Not in the slightest. I love it.

S: I could never be a lake. That is SO not my way of doing things.

Crater Lake: Are you sure?

Occupy Shabbat

2011-12-08T00:49:00.000-08:00

Cute baby story of the week

2011-12-05T09:43:00.000-08:00

My baby daughter has frequently watched me thread needles.

On Shabbos, she tried to buckle herself into her booster seat, but lacked the coordination to get the clasp into the buckle - so she put the clasp in her mouth, pulled it out, and tried again.

We have since caught her using the same needle-threading technique to fit the lid onto a marker.

A Visit to the Oregon Coast Aquarium

2011-12-05T09:38:00.000-08:00

When there are no children in the house, it is easy to forget to visit zoos and aquaria and natural history museums.

And should you remember to go to one of those places, you have to adjust to not being preoccupied with who might be hungry, or sleepy, or needing the restroom, and with rushing to appreciate what a child has discovered.

You can take your time and free-associate.

When I had a child at home, we visited the Marine Science Center in Newport, on the Oregon Coast. This is a branch of the State University system, and has windowed enclosures where you can behold fish in something like their native habitat . . . and sea anemones and other animals that look like plants . . . and pet an octopus.

Yesterday, we aging parents visited a newer establishment in the same city: the Oregon Coast Aquarium, largely because I'd never been there.

When the season changes to one with longer days, we'll have to go back to Newport and visit both establishments, one after the other.

And instead of driving three-hours each way, we'll rent a musty oceanside cabin and see and smell more of the Coast.

We might even get up to Tillamook where we can buy a ten-pound loaf of kosher cheddar cheese.

I really like Newport. You can walk among the piers and look at the fishing boats. You can walk across the stupendous Yaquina Bay Bridge. You can visit the two marine life "museums" [mouseion – seat of the muses]. You can have the pleasure of finding a genuine fishing gear shop among the waterfront storefronts that over time have morphed from sources for nets and sailmaker's awls to sources of tasteless T-shirts and glass balls. You can sit in the sun at a waterfront cafe and listen to the sea lions barking.

The Aquarium, being relatively new, partakes of advanced ideas in display. For example, there is a manmade well of ocean and in the middle of that is an acrylic tunnel for humans to walk through. So there you are with sharks and sturgeons and rockfish and rays swimming over you and under you and on both sides of you.

Since the fish require an undersea environment, they appear through the eight-inches of acrylic as dark figures in a dark darkness. You become acutely aware of, say, a leopard shark when it swims up to the tunnel and passes you on its way back to black.

Visitors like to take flash photos into this darkness.

I wonder if they get fabulous illuminations of iridescent fish scales and giant fish eyes, or murky renditions of acrylic lamina.

I wandered from exhibit to exhibit, taking lots of time to study the anaconda and the iguanas and the jellyfish and the giant 13-foot Japanese crabs and the crabs that resemble piles of sand and the animals that look like plants and one thought kept resurfacing in my head: "God has quite a sense of humor".

The jellyfish exhibit, in particular, grabs you with the first printed sentence: 'A jellyfish has no lungs, no heart, and no brain.'

What they do have is four systems: a digestive system, a reproductive system, a defensive system, and a propulsion system. That's it.

The absolute basics.

At the other end of the equipment scale is the iguana.

I find iguanas really unattractive but fascinating. They seem to have lots of spare parts - frills around their heads and translucent pouches along their jaws and extremely complex legs and feet. I would like to keep an iguana to look at.

I wonder if they respond to humans - like Franklin, the domesticated turtle our friends have.

I believe iguanas are commonly kept as pets in Mexico - but I don't know that that implies that iguanas are personable.

I think my granddaughter would be tickled pink if her granny kept an iguana . . .

Torah says humans are paramount creations, with responsibility for and hence dominion over animals. Not that we should bestride the world like so many colossi; but that we have powers of reflection and appreciation and compassion and invention to employ.

It helps to visit jellyfish and piranhas to measure the differences between them and us.

The colorful little fish in the aquarium in the pediatrician's waiting room circle the waters with their mouths open, testing every mote of dust to see if it is food.

Is this reflex or fear of scarcity or true hunger or boredom?

Small fish troll for plankton, big fish for small fish, pirhanas for anything, shore birds for eggs and garbage.

At the Oregon Aquarium, the signs on the exhibits and the film on marsh habitat and who eats whom confirm it's all about food.

On fast days and when a season of yomtov surrounds a Shabbos and when I didn't want to eat because I was ill, I become acutely aware of how much it's all about food - growing it, buying it, preserving it, preparing it, consuming it, composting and cleaning up and putting away the dishes.

Most of every week, I'd guess.

Swimming in circles.

On this road trip to Newport, look at what we have –admirable and despicable- that jellyfish haven't: airplanes and autos and signs with written language on them and concrete and heart attacks and emphysema and commerce and taxes.

We swim in circles ever alert to food, but that's not all we do.

Mnēmē is the muse of memory.

I heartily recommend taking your adult self to aquatic and zoologic seats of the muses to visit Mnēmē, the mezuzah of human spirit.

Memento Menu: Jewish Europe in 2002

2011-11-30T01:50:00.000-08:00

In 2002, I led my only child on a trip to Europe. Sara was then 14.

It had started as a trip to Vilne to study Yiddish, and grew and grew.

We travelled "student style," with backpacks, by train, and staying in hostels and homes.

When we returned to our home in Oregon, we sponsored a kiddush lunch at Congregation Kesser Israel and published this document to summarize both what we saw there and the food we served here.

MEMENTO

M E N U

Sara and I traveled for 3 months. We visited 20 cities in 15 countries. We changed languages 2 times a week. We visited 22 synagogues, where we attended 15 services. We visited 100 bookstores and wrote 5 volumes of our own journals. We spent 31 days at the Vilner Yiddisher Institute with 50 other people from 13 countries.

This trip intentionally had more breadth than depth. Still, there is a lot to write about.

I won’t write it all here.

Americans who grew up in the 1950s and 60s were puzzled by their parents scolding, “Think about the poor children in Europe! Eat your vegetables!”

Huh? How do I benefit poor children in Europe by eating vegetables? This made no sense.

(And besides, no one, least of all a poor European child, should have to eat green vegetables processed until they are gray . . .)

A couple of weeks ago, we co-sponsored and prepared a Kiddush Lunch IHO “our safe return to Portland (especially from the Russian visa police)”; and also IHO “the children (of all ages) of Kesser Israel who value and participate in Torah education; because,” we added, “when you have visited places where one in a hundred survived, you appreciate anew the importance of dor l’dor education”.

The menu was intended as an edible sampler of our itinerary: Russian borsch, Lithuanian kasha varnishkes, Ukrainian bean salad, Swedish cucumber salad, Hungarian cholent, Italian biscotti, Belarussian kichelech, Yiddish rozhinkes-mit-mandeln, and Valencia oranges . . . because every meal should include fresh fruit even if the cook neglected to go to Spain.

So now you have read three paragraphs and you are asking yourself, “Yes . . . but what is the point?”

The point is that I finally figured out the connection between “poor” European children and American vegetables; and I will use the Kiddush Lunch menu to explain what I learned.

Russian borsch:

Sankt Petersburg, Russia is a textbook case of absolute power corrupting absolutely.

Petersburg was built in the 18th century in a great hurry. Tsar Peter wanted a capital city that would look out upon and rival the glittering capitals of Western Europe. He built grand avenues and sinuous canals and luxurious dwellings for the nobility whom he abruptly moved west from Moscow. He built all this on a swamp.

After this, there were costly wars, murderous shifts in dynasty, Napoleon, a World War, and a Revolution that drove Tsarist ambitions into the ground head first and substituted a collective system that extinguished all incentive to maintain anything. Recently, Petersburg started anew and a lot of the city is being rebuilt. But in 2002, Petersburg remains a tissue of impractically grandiose projects that were not maintained for 100 years enduring in a breeding ground for mosquitoes. On the street, babushki lay out on newspapers their inventory of 6 cabbages, 12 onions, and some small white flowers. For such businesses, the overhead is low; the income is vital.

Petersburg has a population of about 5 million and it has one synagogue. Like so much else in Petersburg, the synagogue is being rebuilt incrementally as funding permits. The street façade is totally redone; but if you were able to enter the locked front doors, you’d walk into a construction site. Behind the synagogue is a smaller, old building that has a chapel and some offices. It is a Chabad outpost. The rabbi is not Russian.

Lithuanian kasha varnishkes:

If we learned anything in Vilna, we learned how thoroughly Lithuanian Nazi collaborators exterminated not only native Jewish communities, but also Jews shipped into Lithuania from elsewhere in Eastern Europe. Every week, white-haired survivors took us to killing fields, crude prisons, partisan forest bunkers, memorials, and cemeteries. They led us through former Jewish quarters, pointing out the locations of former Jewish government offices, former shuls, former yeshivot, former athletic clubs, former theatres, former libraries, former publishing houses.

Before the war, Vilna was 60 percent Jewish and had 103 synagogues. Now it is one-half of one percent Jewish and has one synagogue. We attended the synagogue regularly. There were never more than 30 people there.

Chabad also has a center in Vilna. The rabbi is from Boston; the bokherim are from New York and Canada. They have started a Jewish school for all Lithuania. It has 40 students.

Ukrainian bean salad:

Kiev is a large, fabulous city full of wonderful old edifices accommodating the dignity of state, of literature, and of opera; cobbled streets that wind up and down hills bathed in color by the setting sun; and hundreds of churches with multiple gold onion domes.

In Kiev there are 100,000 Jews and one synagogue. Marko is the head of the Jewish community. We recognized Marko in Kiev because he has a funny but radiant face you can’t forget, and because he had joined our group in Kovne, Lithuania, for a concert of Jewish music. If they can, Jews from Kiev happily travel 500 miles to Lithuania to hear music.

Swedish cucumber salad:

Stockholm is another city of grand edifices and picturesque old neighborhoods illuminated by the reflections off numerous rivers, inlets, and canals. Taxes are high, but life is comfortable.

We stayed in Cell 201 of a whimsically converted island prison, and spent an entire day traveling back in time at Skansen, a huge outdoor folklife museum. Our cousins took us to an innovative history museum where we examined the still-unexplained artifacts of our Viking ancestors; and Bernard, who just turned 77, complained to us about “alter cockers” as he drove onto and off of curbs.

On impulse, we rang a stranger’s bell and actually got a tour of the apartment where my mother, Sara-the-First, was born. It’s a lovely apartment – a lot lovelier than I would have guessed was within the grasp of my grandfather, a circa-1900 Russian draft dodger.

There are 3 synagogues in Stockholm. We went to the Great Synagogue – the one that is open in summer. The rabbi is from Pennsylvania.

Hungarian cholent:

We both loved Prague. (Everyone loves Prague). In addition, Sara loved Stockholm . . . and I loved Budapest.

In Budapest, buildings have gone from private to public ownership and back again without ever having been restored. We rented a stuffy apartment that had too many doors and too many furry textiles, and shopped in grocery stores generously stocked with kosher delicacies and soil-dusted produce from the countryside; but where the checkout mechanism was a clerk with a hand-held calculator.

Budapest has a melancholic, nostalgic, and occasionally self-mocking character that suited my temperament more than the frantic entrepreneurship of Prague.

In Erzsebetvaros, the Jewish Quarter, the ground floor of any building may still be occupied but the top floor may be a bomb crater. Soot-blackened and shrapnel-pocked windows are brightened by trays of red geraniums. We entered a tiny storefront selling “Judaica,” and inside found a treasury of worm-bored old Talmuds and museum-quality spice boxes. For Sara, this was The Magnetic Center of the Universe.

The Dohaney Street Synagogue is large and splendid and a tourist attraction. You buy a ticket and go in to see its golden adornments and the leaning headstones in the adjacent cemetery.

The Orthodox synagogue nearby is undergoing renovation. The floor tiles smell of dampness and the stained glass ceiling is draped with spattered plastic. Meanwhile, the “regulars” daven maariv in a nearby shtiebel. The women wait outside in the courtyard, listening, and gently rocking the babies in their prams.

Italian biscotti:

The word “ghetto,” we learned, comes from Italian geto, the old foundry district where Ashkenazic and Levantine Jewish traders were permitted to settle in the fourteenth century when Venice became a mercantile world power.

The Levantine Jews had more privileges and more income than the others in the ghetto. But all 5 remaining synagogues empty into the same piazza. Makes one wonder what things were like on your average shabbos in, say, 1612, when the Haves and Have-Nots dispersed after mincha.

In the ghetto now, there is a gondolier stand, wonderful artisan shops, a couple of kosher restaurants, a museum, and a Chabad center. The rabbi is American.

Belarussian kichelech:

Two great men came from the area around Vitebsk: Marc Chagall and my grandfather. I knew that too much time had passed to see anything of their world; but I wanted to go to Vitebsk, anyway.

Vitebsk was dream time – an impression much enhanced by the smoke in the air from field-burning; by the absence of anyone who spoke any language except Belarussian; and by arriving at 3:00 in the morning and leaving 25 hours later at 4:00 in the morning. (Our planned 3 days in Vitebsk shrank to only one because of difficulties with the train schedule.)

Our first stop was the Marc Chagall Museum – the only museum in Vitebsk. It was closed . . . but it was in an interesting neighborhood near one of the city’s 3 rivers. So we walked around inspecting Soviet-era factories surrounded by high concrete walls and mossy board fences; old “worker housing” long since abandoned, roofless, and hollow except for plants growing in former stairwells; heroic statues of people we never heard of; and wood houses that were barely tall enough to stand up in, with roofs slanted badly by years of wind, each with its apple tree and chickens. It’s a cliché, I know; but those crooked little houses with their trees and chickens were VERY Chagall-esque.

In fact . . . chickens were everywhere in Vitebsk. Even next to huge, featureless, Soviet apartment blocks where no resident had a yard, there were high-rise chicken coops – one coop compartment for every apartment-dweller. I figure that traditionally, everyone kept chickens as a reliable source for eggs, and maybe even for a little extra cash from selling eggs; and that, under the Soviets, the need for this bit of self-reliance was even more pronounced.

We got into a conversation with a babushka who found us photographing her tumble-down house. I told her that we were admiring her tree and her chickens. This made her very proud, and she ran back and forth to show us the fine eggs from her fine chickens, and to tell us what fine blini she made with them.

We made kichelech for the Kiddush Lunch because kichelech, like blini, are more egg than anything else; but blini are made fresh and you just can’t do that for 70 people on shabbos.

We never found a synagogue in Vitebsk.

Rozhinkes-mit-mandeln:

In dem beys hamikdash
In a vinkl kheyder
Zitzt di almone Bas Zion aleyn.
Ir ben yokhid, Yidele,
Vigt zi keseyder,
Un zingt im tzu shlofn a lidele sheyn: ay-lu-lu...

I always liked this song, though I did not understand the words until recently. Now I know enough Yiddish to wonder whether the words are just pretty nonsense, or if they have subterranean meaning. What to make of a widowed mother named Daughter-of-Zion who sits cornered in a study hall, singing a lullaby about his future as a wanderer and trader in raisins-and-almonds

-party food- to her son, Little Jew? And why is there a bleach-white kid under Little Jew’s cradle?

And what has any of this travelogue got to do with eating vegetables in order to aid the poor children of Europe?

The Point

Well, folks, this is what came clear to me.

Europe used to be very, very rich in yiddishkeit. And I am optimistic from the healthy seedlings we saw that it will be rich again.

But right now, Europe is poor. In the erstwhile capitals of Jewish learning, Jewish letters, Jewish trade, Jewish music, Jewish art, and Jewish craftsmanship, very little is left.

In some places, all that remains is 4 synagogues deconsecrated and made into a museum that explains Judaism to non-Jewish visitors. “This,” it says in 4 languages on the front of the glass case, “is the Jewish sacred book. It is called a Torah.”

If you want to open the glass case and study the Book, you have to walk miles across town to the one remaining shul, or wait for the shul to be rebuilt and for the 40 students to grow up and bear the children that will fill it, or go to the very lovely repainted shul where selections from the Book are read to you in the local vernacular, or petition the government to return the Book which was “given as a gift” to a museum in the 1940s.

Or you can go to Israel.

Or you can go to someplace American: for instance –believe it or not (and this was a surprise to Europeans)- Portland, Oregon!

American post-war children were right: eating vegetables in the U.S.A. does not feed children in Europe.

But it does feed Americans.

Absorbing Torah and yiddishkeit in the U.S.A. does not promote Torah and yiddishkeit in Europe. But it does promote Torah and yiddishkeit in America, one of our two remaining vigorous kehillot.

And at congregations like Kesser Israel, the vegetables are freshly prepared.

Aha!

Thinking about Europe's “poor children,” visiting the “poor children,” davening with the “poor children,” singing with the “poor children,” and studying with the “poor children,” makes us appreciate the availability of the Torah "vegetables" right here on the plate in front of us.

So this is what I learned: Let’s eat!

. . . another thing I learned from our travels is that I speak French with a Hungarian accent . . .

Muskrats

2011-11-27T12:32:00.000-08:00

Somehow I always expect the weather, in every region, to follow the pattern set by the storied weather of New England. I expect the trees to drop leaves that look like this: http://www.filthwizardry.com/2009/11/leaf-rubbing-and-paint-mural.html

I was taken aback the other day to realize that I have never seen a muskrat.

public domain

There just are not as many muskrats running around our house as there were around Thoreau's Concord. Or else I never went out to look for them.
I wonder what else I have been content until now to observe secondhand.

Autumn in Jerusalem - at least at this writing - does not come in red and orange. The winter rains are bringing forth new grass from between the fallen leaves, and what I call the Improbables - because I never saw another flower that color - are still tumbling all over the walls, and putting forth buds. It feels like snow weather, but looks like Spring. I feel offensive wearing a coat.

I suppose the flora in this neighborhood takes after the people, who stay up late: just as it is safe for people to walk around at 2:00am, it is safe for the grass and flowers to put out shoots and blossoms at the end of November. There is no time to sleep, there is no time of day or year when stepping out is solitary - there is just too much for everyone to do. On with life!

Elul in Slabodka - 1913

2011-11-27T07:25:00.000-08:00

Rabbi Bechhofer graciously granted permission for his translation of this diary entry from 1913 to be posted here in its entirety.
I will add a partial glossary at the bottom; and - I hope Rabbi Bechhofer doesn't mind - move his introduction to the end, also.
Elul is the month leading up to Rosh Hashana, the beginning of the yeshiva year. I thought about saving this post for next Elul but I can't; it is too delicious.
If you are one of those people who can't read anything longer than a paragraph, make it the last paragraph of the entry.

The original link is: http://www.aishdas.org/rygb/elul.htm

From the Diary of Rabbi Avrohom Eliyahu Kaplan zt"l:

[Elul 5673 (1913). Slabodka]
Excitedly and joyously I jumped from the train's steps. Within me sparkled the happy thought: "Kovno!... Slabodka!..." [Slabodka is a suburb of Kovno.]

Even though I couldn't find even one acquaintance among all the people that I saw in the terminal and that traveled with me in the tram car, they all seemed related to me. The streets through which I passed all gladdened my still heart, as if they were calling to me and saying: "Here you are, drawing closer to Slabodka. Another street, then another, the bridge, the sand, Yorburg Street - and, then... the Yeshiva, the Rav's [Rabbi Nosson Tzvi Finkel zt"l, the Alter from Slabodka] small house. And then... the Rav himself!" But who knows if he's here? Perhaps he hasn't yet returned home... While walking on the bridge, my eyes began to glance around with special eagerness. Perhaps I might meet one of my friends. There at a distance, two young men are coming closer! Who are they?... Perhaps Yechezkel [Rabbi Yechezkel Sarna zt"l, later Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivas Chevron in Jerusalem, then a student in Slabodka, a close friend of Reb Avrohom Elya], or another one. My heart started pounding... But I was mistaken: A young Ben Torah that I did not know passed by.

I passed over the entire bridge and did not meet a single acquaintance. I became angry. Another unfamiliar bochur passed by and I greeted him angrily, thinking inwardly: "Be it as it may! Perhaps I do know him but have forgotten..." So distorting was my powerful desire to meet some Slabodker that I knew. This is a bit of that Slabodker egoism!

By now I was already standing by Chaim Meir's [Reb Chaim Meir Gitelson zt"l, later of Jerusalem, then a student in Slabodka, a close friend of Reb Avrohom Elya] doorway. Before I managed to open the door, it opened before me, and opposite me came, nodding and smiling - Yechezkel himself. "Shalom Aleichem - Aleichem Shalom!..." - "Is the Rav here?"

- "Not yet," answers Yechezkel, "tomorrow."

Two or three of our friends came over. The conversation dragged a bit, as among people who have no idea what they should discuss. I could not look into their eyes. I wanted to spill everything... to grab Yechezkel from among them, to bring my mouth close to his ears - and to spill everything. Within me were amassed so many fragments of thought and emotion which had arisen from various events and incidents. These feelings now demanded revelation from mouth to ear ...

Yechezkel arose and said: "Let's go!" We scattered, each to his own way. Yechezkel and I remained to stroll on Slabodka's dusty and stony main street, waiting for each other with a little embarrassment and anxiety, wondering where to begin our conversation.

In the end I told him all that transpired with me. After I finished my account I suddenly saw that it was all emptiness: I had only taken leave of Slabodka for two months. I had imagined that it had been a long time, because in the meantime I had ample time to pass through several new segments of life and its events... Now, after I had told him all these things over the course of a few minutes, I suddenly realized that it was all nothingness. There was no significance to those entire two months. The essence of it all was that I had bathed in the sea and returned to Slabodka - and nothing more... Indeed, "Fools when will you learn!"

The next day, Monday of the week of Ki Savo, was the great day of Slabodka: The Rav has arrived! When I came to seem him a somewhat amusing and uncomfortable incident occurred: He stood among a group of younger students who greeted him by shaking his hand. They did not kiss him. I, however, without thinking, bent over to kiss him... Of course, he too "responded" with a kiss, but I was very embarrassed. I felt compelled to hide behind their shoulders. The pleasant experience that I always have when first meeting with the Rav after having been away for a while was a bit marred. I stood hiding and listened to the course of conversation between him and them...

"We come now from the material vacation to the spiritual vacation: From the months of Tammuz and Av in the forests and the fields to the months of Elul and Tishrei in the house of the yeshiva. What distinguishes that vacation from this vacation? We know, of course, that just as that vacation is essential to fortify the body, so too this other one is necessary to heal the soul. Even more so, for all are sick vis a vis Elul..."

- Indeed, Am I an "Elul"-seeker? Am I a yarei Shomayim?

What then - am I not an Elul-seeker? Am I not a yarei Shomayim? ...

How amusing and how pathetic, that I can ask these two questions in quick succession, yet they do not contradict each other.

When later I went out into the street I met Shaul Margolis [later a Rav in several cities in Polish Lithuania, then a student in Slabodka] walking alone, stick in hand, eyes fixed on it, pacing slowly and pondering. I saw him from a distance... I knew instantly that he had something to say to me. And indeed! "The man is amazing," Shaul said as I came to him, "He is mighty beyond compare. The man comes from Krantz, sits next to the table, surrounded by youngsters, and immediately begins from where he left off two months ago... He speaks pleasantly, clearly, sincerely, and [yet it is] his silence [that] is [most] profound, sure and penetrating to the heart... When he is silent, it seems that he has nothing at all to relate about all that transpired with him through the entire summer, what he met and whom he saw. He forgets it all, forgets himself [There seems to be a typographical error in the original Hebrew here. The Hebrew here reads "ve'eino yodei'a elah es atzmo." I translated the phrase as if it had read "ve'eino yodei'a es atzmo." Rabbi Tzvi Kaplan shlita (Reb Avrohom Elya's son) wrote to me, however, that he believes there is no mistake here, and that the intent here was that the Alter was only aware of atzmo in the sense of atzmi'us, essence, i.e., the lofty ideal that he lived, with which he identified and to which he constantly dedicated himself] - and is silent... This restraint of all emotions upon careful consideration is true mightiness. Mighty!..."

That evening I heard a shmuess. He [the Alter] stood in the middle of the small room, next to the table, and around him they gathered. The students packed together. They yearned to hear and to understand. They gazed with eyes partly happy and partly anxious, a decent number of young men, and immediately my heart began to absorb the warmth...

It is a time of true and thorough pleasantness: Every matter is clear, every thought succinct and every movement measured and balanced. The entire experience bespeaks tranquility and sincerity [ne'emanus]. There is no confusion nor haste.

He stands before us and states his complaint: People [outside Slabodka] lack belief in the power of Mussar. They do not acknowledge that the young men here genuinely involve their hearts, more or less, in the subject of yir'as Shomayim . Though he tries to impress this upon them, they remain adamant. They claim it is all superficiality, verbal pilpul, an empty and muddled waste of artificial ideas.

Immediately after this complaint he consoles himself: In the final analysis it is this [lack of appreciation] that provides all the contentment that there is in Mussar. If Mussar was not a hidden thing that the world does not recognize, it would be entirely worthless. It would stand only on the same level as "lamdonus," as a tool of public discourse. Let us be grateful to those who indict Mussar. It is because of them that the little that we do have is genuine and modest, in "hatznei'a leches"... After all, no matter how much positive publicity Mussar receives, all that the publicity achieves is that people will not mock Mussar, not complain against it. To recognize and believe in its depths [pnimiyus] and in the education of hearts in which Mussar deals - that will not happen!

Immediately after this consolation (that followed his original complaint) came another complaint: We have acquired something, we feel inside ourselves traces of the impression Mussar has made upon us. When, however, we analyze this impression deeply, we realize that it has only come about because we habitually steer our thoughts in that direction. Our minds constantly review the realizations that they have absorbed from the [literally: "kneaded from the dough"] words of Chazal and the Rishonim. Because of this habit, our hearts have been conditioned to identify the negative components that the Torah perceives as "evil" in any situation. Naturally, the heart then distances itself somewhat from that situation - because it has become conditioned to thinking of it as base - but not because of yir'as Shomayim.

In other words, it is not because I fear the sin [that I avoid it], but rather because it is unpleasant for me to get involved in something that I have already become conditioned to hear of and consider as a "sin". If, however, some powerful issue overcame that unpleasantness, then I might no longer distinguish between good and bad, and I would do what my heart desired... - I contemplated: "This is the crux of the matter!..." [Literally: "Here the dog is buried!" Rabbi Gershon Eliezer Schaffel pointed out to me that the Alter from Kelm zt"l discusses this subject in Chochma u'Mussar vol. 2. chapter 8.]

The following day - Reb Avrohom [Rabbi Avrohom Grodzhenski zt"l hy"d, Menahel Ruchani in Slabodka]. came to me and began to "check my pulse." I saw in him all the characteristics of an expert physician. He did not want to surprise the patient under examination, so he came "from the side of the left ear," and began by discussing simple things. He succeeded. Only a few minutes later, I already stood before him like a priest before the altar, and I was sacrificing my heart upon it...

... Several bochurim stood around us. They did not understand the process that was appearing within their daled amos, that Avrohom Elya was standing and revealing his heart before Reb Avrohom... because we were talking in "the third person," i.e., [I would say:] "Some say thus," and he would respond: "And some say thus, and the second opinion is correct - the first one, meaning: yours, is distorted..." ...

The next day (Wednesday in the week of Ki Savo), I harvested the fruit of my heart's revelation. Several times the Rav alluded to the themes I had expressed before Reb Avrohom. The mail had already achieved its purpose. My heart's meditations had already reached the proper address, following the simple route: From my mouth to Reb Avrohom, from his mouth to the Rav, and from him back to me.

"You complain," the Rav remarked to me, "about our abstract words, about the disputes that float in the air, [you say] that they barely touch upon practice, that they lead to inactivity and quibbling, and that they cast a fog over the eyes so we can no longer see anything simply and satisfactorily," thus the Rav reported my criticisms to me. He did not deny them, but rather battled me on my own terms: "Nu, on the contrary," he stood and asserted, "turn as you say to matters of substance, check and analyze your deeds and your self. Don't become involved in abstraction, for why, indeed, do you need it?"

I stand and hear the simple, yet profound, words: "The primary part [ikkar] of Torah is the Torah of Middos. At the core of middos [that we must fight] are delusion [dimayon] and falsehood [shav], no more. Jealousy, lust and pride - these are fancy terms for concepts that seem to possess substance, but in reality do not. The only reality worth pursuing is the intellect [seichel]. The intellect alone can recognize the true essence of every entity. Only intellect, therefore, can accurately judge how man should conduct himself vis a vis any entity [for more on the Alter's perspective on intellect, see Reb Yaakov p. 48]. A drive born of the middos, however, will only lead to mistakes. A drive is constantly and always mistaken. There is no hope to be saved from a drive's mistake. One who but opens his eyes widely will realize the degradation of that mistake. Then his heart will no longer pursue it..."

[This Slabodker perspective, is developed in one of the Alter's shmuessen that Reb Avrohom Elya transcribed (ibid., p. 233). In that shmuess, the Alter said: "All of creation, except for the intellectual reality that man attains within himself, is insignificant! Concede the truth: All of creation is but the knock that a person in a foyer [prozdor] knocks upon the door of a banquet hall [traklin] so that the door may be opened for him to enter. Does that knock possess any independent value? Does the person who has already entered the hall even recall that he once knocked on the door?!... The essence of reality is, therefore, only the goodness a person toils to pursue and then finds. Everything else is but a fleeting shadow..." The rest of the shmuess resembles the one Reb Avrohom Elya recorded here. After negating the ambitions and aspirations of the overwhelming majority of mankind, that are but pale shadows of the purpose the Torah has set forth for humanity, the Alter concludes: "If so much light may be found in the shadow of a reflection of a reflection, how great is the light concealed [or haganuz] in the concealed light itself!"]

"If anyone wants to disagree, let him come and do so, let him come and prove otherwise!" the Rav calls out to us. He lifts his head, and he looks into our eyes with a gaze that caresses with love and pinches with the strength of perception. You feel him drawing out the complaints and criticisms that you have against his words. His gazes draw all that you think about him. The mail will soon bring these matters to the right address, via the simple route: From your heart to his heart, from his heart to his mouth, from his mouth to your ear, and from your ear once more to your heart, to uproot and to plant, to destroy and to build... Another moment of silence quickly passes. Again he speaks, with strength and hidden love:

"I understand your difficulty... I know what you must be thinking right now. You are amazed that all those matters that stand at the heights of the world, all those ambitions, aspirations and desires for which endless rivers of blood have been spilled for generation upon generation in countless countries, all those middos that prevail among the living... You are amazed: How can we regard these matters, in our four amos, as irreparable broken potsherds, as shadows of no substance? I understand you. I am as amazed as you are, but amazement does not lead to blindness! Truth is truth, even if others disagree! And I, in my understanding (if not in my actions), do not see in any of these desires anything more than fruitless delusion!!" This last statement was expressed with such wonderful strength that it seemed to cut the air to shreds...

Erev Shabbos - immediately after I finished breakfast, I rushed to the Rav's house. After a whole day of unhappy desolation I was hungry for a thoughtful word. I yearned to hear. I cannot explain, even to myself, the meaning of these longings, what they are and from whence they come - but I feel that they emanate from my heart, and are often intense...

The Rav's words that I heard that day were boldly expressed and clearly spoken. It seemed as if they were primarily intended to lift my dark mood. The Rav based his talk upon these words of Chazal: " Blessed is He from whose food we have eaten, and in [u'be'tuvo] whose goodness we live.' Anyone who says from his goodness' [u'me'tuvo] and not in his goodness' - is a boor" (Berachos 50a). Hashem's entire bounty of goodness is compressed into a small loaf of bread. Anyone who sees in the loaf just a part of His goodness is an ignorant, uneducated boor. Just as we know that there is none like our G-d, the Creator of the Heavens and the Earth and all the Olamos, so we must also know that there is none like our G-d the Creator of a small loaf of bread; both are acts of G-d. Were it not for the Creator, no creature could make such a thing. We must therefore recognize Hashem's entire bounty of goodness in this loaf...

"The Gemara then asks: "Does it not say, and from Your blessing may the house of your servant be blessed' etc.?" The Gemara answers: "A request is different." Rashi explains: When a person makes a request, he asks like a poor beggar standing in the doorway that dares not lift his head to make a large request. If so, how much should he request? If all Hashem's goodness is compressed into one kezayis - what then should a person request for his sustenance? Should he ask for less than a kezayis? Of course not! Rather, man is indeed forced to request for himself all of the Creator of the world's goodness, yet at the same time he makes his request he must feel the great weight of his prayer. [He must be aware of] what he is asking for himself..."
[This Slabodker perspective, mentioned briefly here, is perhaps best expressed in another one of the Alter's shmuessen that Reb Avrohom Elya transcribed (ibid., p. 221). In that shmuess, the Alter discusses Chazal's statement (Bereishis Rabba 10:6-7) that every blade of grass is controlled by a malach that causes it to grow. Man casually walks upon thousands of blades of grass, not considering the great wisdom and transcendent purpose of the thousands of malachim upon which he treads. How uplifted a person should become when he realizes how many malachim were created to serve him! His heart should fill with both the glory of this kedusha and emotions of gratitude for this gift. How can one not be ashamed to enter the sanctuary of kedusha that is this world with soiled shoes and dirty clothes? How is he not embarrassed to be engrossed in frivolities while at the same time making use of the malachim created to facilitate man's destiny? The entire world - from its most general principles to its finest details - serves as a reminder at each step we take to be cognizant of G-d, and, bechol derachecha da'eihu, "In all your paths you shall know Him."

All these many great malachim were created to enable man to develop his spirituality. Man is the "Rebbe", and all the spiritual forces are "talmidim" created to serve him. How terrible it is, when a Rebbe sins in front of his students! Yet at the very moment that the malach of the blade of grass serves the man who treads upon him, the man who is supposed to make use of all the vast spiritual potential underfoot, that great Rebbe involves himself in frivolities and corrupt behavior. This Rebbe suddenly becomes an animal in the eyes of his student, the malach.]

A loaf of bread also contains the great wisdom and transcendent purpose of the thousands of malachim that comprise it. The goodness of Hashem manifest in the bread is another aspect of the great weight involved even in a mundane loaf of bread. The entire creation demands serious consideration, and demands of man that he use its great potential for the right purposes and lishem Shomayim.

The Rav continued on. He began to worry: "What shall we do in our tefillos this coming Rosh haShana?! How can we open our mouths?..." As I stood and listened, my heart felt how authentic his outlooks were. My thoughts followed in the footsteps of his ideas. At that moment, I imagined that I was already belonged entirely to him, that I was completely directed toward all those great and lofty ideals of the Rav's Torah, and that soon I would become... a true Ba'al Mussar...

That Shabbos (Parashas Ki Savo) passed over me quickly, without the emotions I had expected would flow from my longing for the Rav's table, at which I sat for Shalosh Se'udos... I passed Sunday of this week (Nitzavim) in a similar fashion, until evening. That evening another mighty wave came, and again shook my soul...

I came into the yeshiva at the beginning of mussar-seder. In order not to distinguish myself from the tzibbur, I took a sefer from the shelf, and I sat at my place to look into it. As I glanced at it, I immediately saw that it was the sefer "Reishis Chochma". A desire to learn it and immerse myself in one of its sections suddenly filled my heart. All my life I have so intensely loved this holy sefer, this boundless encyclopedia of all the depths of kedusha in the heart; of all the inner heights of tahara; of the thousands upon thousands of Chazals that sparkle in the light of their Torah that penetrates the heart [the next phrase here: "u'bochen kelayos" cannot be translated!]; and of thousands of the Rishonim z"l's comments, each of whose words casts a new light on Torah horizons broader than the ocean... There came to my hand a page from the Sha'ar haKedusha, where he discusses the truth in the heart. "The essence of the matter - is the intent of the heart. Hashem is close to all who call unto Him, to all that call unto Him in truth. The call to us is that our hearts not focus on matters of falsehood. One should worship neither man, nor glory, nor anything else that is in reality just sputtering wind." The pure sefer with its small letters spoke more of this to me. My heart pursued its words. My soul was aroused by the sound of the statements aflame with fervor [eish dos] that my lips pronounced. My spirit blissfully concluded: I shall indeed return from now on. I shall improve my pathways in the future. From this moment I will redirect my thoughts, and purify them for the sake of truth. All of my conduct will be kissed by the directives of the Torah in Hilchos Dei'os and Ma'asim... I thought a great deal along those lines at that hour, and I consoled myself that I would yet do complete teshuva. I forgot all else and remembered only teshuva! ... And I hid my face in the pages of that beloved sefer, like a child in the embrace of his beloved mother, like a child whose cries spilled forth on all that was, and all that chas veshalom was yet to be... In short: Why should I reflect at length on that hour? I can succinctly describe it to myself in two short words: "[I] learnt mussar!..." I then davened Ma'ariv with the tzibbur! With that great and impassioned tzibbur, whose constituents' heads shook as if in a storm, and whose whispered voices cascaded like waters gushing down a waterfall...

(B'Ikvos HaYirah, pp. 157-162)

Glossary:
Seuda Shlishis - third meal on Shabbos
Gedolei HaDor shlita - greatest sages of the generation
Avoda - lit. work; here, more like work on oneself
derech halimud - method of learning
Machashava - thought
Mussar - oh, help, how does one translate this concept, let alone this word? Read the last paragraph; that will explain it.
Lomdus - learning, as in intellectual study
talmid chochom - excellent Torah scholar
Yomim Nora'im - Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, and the days in between
Ba'alei Mussar - masters of mussar study
This Rabbi N. T. Finkel is not the same as his descendant of the same name, who was the subject of the previous post.
Ben Torah - "son of Torah"
yarei Shomayim, yiras Shomayim - one who is consistently aware of Heaven; awe of Heaven
shmuess - Mussar lecture
Chazal and the Rishonim - Sages of the Talmud and of the medieval era
middos - character traits
kezayis - a unit of measure (lit. "like an olive")
malach - lit. messenger, usu. translated angel - but if you are picturing frescoes of cherubs, you have the wrong idea
kedusha - sanctity
talmidim - students
lishem Shomayim - with proper intentions, lit. "for the sake of Heaven"
tefillos - meditations/prayers
Shalosh Se'udos - another name for the third meal of Shabbos (as the Swedes say, "A dear child has many names")
tzibbur - assembled congregation
tahara - purity
davened Ma'ariv - prayed the evening meditation/prayer

"... You already know well the great benefit to be acquired for one's entire life in one Elul day in Slabodka." (A letter from 5670 [1910], B'Ikvos HaYirah p. 195)

I {Rabbi Bechhofer} was once privileged to spend Seuda Shlishis with one of the Gedolei HaDor shlita in Yerushalayim. In the course of our conversation the gadol remarked: "In this generation, everyone honors Rabbi X and Rabbi Y, because they can relate wonders that these rabbis are supposed to have performed. In my youth, the person we respected most was the Alter from Slabodka. You could not relate a single wonder that the Alter had performed. We respected him because he was the wisest individual we had ever met, and he had a deep understanding of our personalities, and how to help us develop our unique potentials."

Rabbi Avrohom Eliyahu Kaplan was the Alter's most beloved student. There was a close personal relationship between the two. Reb Avrohom Elya often contemplated leaving Slabodka - and did leave from time to time, feeling the intensity of the Avoda there was sometimes overwhelming. In the final analysis, however, he writes (ibid., p. 194): "One Sinai have we in our generation - Slabodka is its name! Anyone who leaves Sinai cannot hope to find another. More correctly, anyone who leaves the mountain falls into the valley..." Even when he was away from Slabodka, his heart and soul remained there.

Although this is not the place to dwell on Reb Avrohom Elya's greatness, a few words of introduction are necessary. Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetsky zt"l once remarked that Reb Avrohom Elya possessed such remarkable powers that had he lived longer (he died at the age of 34), he would have restructured the entire derech halimud in the yeshivos with his proposed new commentary on Shas (Reb Yaakov p. 85). He was a wonderful synthesis of Telzer Machashava, Slabodker Mussar, Lithuanian Lomdus and German meticulousness. He was a gifted writer, poet and songwriter, and at the same time a talmid chochom and posek of the highest caliber.

When Reb Avrohom Elya became a Rosh Yeshiva in Berlin, he brought Mussar to Western Europe. His pleasant demeanor and refined personality were the foundations, and his discourses the framework that enabled his German students to develop and perfect their spiritual selves. His personal Avoda was exemplary: "One who has not heard him read the Pesach night Hallel in lofty ecstasy in the unique melody that he wrote yet in his youth - has not seen true Jewish life in our generation. One who has not seen him dance the Kotzker Rebbe's dance in the joy of Sukkos - has not seen true Jewish joy in our generation. He was alive and gave life." His talks: "ignited hearts with the lightning flashes of his ideas, heads were enwrapped in illumination, a purifying tremor enveloped all existence..." (ibid., p. 294).

It seems that talmidim in Slabodka were wont to keep diaries. The Alter himself kept a diary. The Alter kept the diary hidden. Clearly unbeknownst to the Alter, Rabbi Yechezkel Sarna zt"l discovered the diary in an attic. Interestingly, none other than Reb Avrohom Elya himself copied the diary word for word the day after Yom Kippur in 1914! It can be found in Rabbi Dov Katz's Tenu'as HaMussar (vol. 3, p. 220). Another Slabodker, Rabbi Yitzchok Hutner zt"l (whom the Alter had room with Reb Avrohom Elya when the latter, after he had already moved to Berlin, would return to Slabodka for Yomim Nora'im) kept a diary as well. That diary served as the basis for Rebbitizin Beruria David shetichye's inspiring biography of her father in the Sefer Zikaron l'Maran Ba'al HaPachad Yitzchok. Diaries and private notes were tools often employed by the Ba'alei Mussar. These soul searching, intense chronicles wrestle both with personal avoda and with great issues. They offer rich inspiration and profound insight.

The passage we will pursue here captures the essence of such journals. Like many Slabodker students, Reb Avrohom Elya saw noble qualities in the great European movements and zeitgeists of the day. In the post-Holocaust era it is difficult for us to see significant value in cultures and ideas that did nothing to impede the worst atrocities imaginable. In those yet innocent days, however, many prevalent "isms" still possessed a romantic, even transcendent appeal, that generated contemplation. Thus, for eample, Reb Avrohom Elya has a diary entry from 5671 (1911) in which he analyzes and rejects the great Russian writer Tolstoy's perspectives (p. 250). It is hard to imagine any contemporary yeshiva bochur feeling it necessary to address the views of a secular thinker. At the time, however, such ideologies roused fervor and passion. Slabodka's young idealists found their emotions stirred. They would ponder an ideology: "How should we respond to it? What claim does it make upon us? And should we concede somewhat to it, or deny it altogether?..." (p. 154). This passage affords us a glimpse of how the Alter - who encouraged his students to grapple with great issues in their quest of growth - dealt with his students' internal struggles.

The primary purpose of this free translation is to inspire and motivate. The secondary purpose is to whet the reader's appetite to pursue Reb Avrohom Elya's writings. These writings so eloquently express his Master's spirit and derech, that they will inevitably lead the reader to aspire to greater attainments in Avodas Hashem.

I should add that while this is not the place to dwell on the topic at length, it is high time that we attempted to revive the Mussar Movement. May Hashem grant that such essays serve as an impetus for us all to proceed in that direction!

Note: I am indebted to Rabbi Tzvi Kaplan for correcting several errors and to Rabbi Yisroel Leichtman for critiquing and editing my translation.

On the rosh yeshiva of Mir

2011-11-27T03:12:00.000-08:00

The head of the Mir yeshiva passed away two weeks ago.
This is going around, but here it is for those who haven't seen it yet - and if you've seen it before, it can't hurt to think about it again:

"Mishpachat Ritholtz" added this comment:

This is what I mean by inspirational. Rav Nosson Tzvi was a regular American boy... who came to learn at the Mir after spending his childhood in Chicago. He became the Rosh Yeshiva of the largest Yeshiva in the WORLD, with over 6000 students. The Rosh Yeshiva is the epitome of a role model for everyone on how to aspire to greatness, even with the most distressing physical limitations. He NEVER missed a Shachris at the Yeshiva! His 68 short years on Earth impacted hundreds of thousands of people. And he wasn't a Gaon at age 5. He was an "ordinary" bochur who became an extraordinary Rosh Yeshiva. Believe in yourself! Gedolim are made, not born.

[Gaon = genius.

bochur = boy

Gedolim = great people.]

Occupy

2011-11-23T15:07:00.000-08:00

Occupy, By Mendel Hirsch

To occupy is more than to consume space; more than inhabiting. To occupy is to influence an environment. When being influenced, you are being occupied.

I occupy.

At home, I occupy. Whether I’m aware or not, I occupy. I’m a husband and a dad.

In the community, we occupy. Whether we’re aware or not, we occupy. We are a Jewish community.

When unaware, we may be influencing negatively. We occupy and we may be destructive. When aware, we can focus on being constructive.

Occupy; be present.

35 by 35 sewing challenge, and a teddy bear

2011-11-22T11:38:00.000-08:00

I asked a dressmaker whether I should take a course in pattern drafting. "No," she said, "just sew 35 garments from patterns, and then you'll know how patterns work."
My goal is [to save the world! and in my spare time] to sew 35 garments by the time I turn 35 - at which point the Babyloops will be old enough to care about how she looks, and it will be a real advantage not to be dependent on the fashion industry, with its "one-yard wonders": we are a yardage-loving people.
Personally, I am one of those anachronistic wish-I-could-wear-hoopskirts-to-work people. (No, no, not all orthodox Jews are weird like that...)

I'm defining "garment" loosely. Here is project No. 3 out of 35:

He is a wedding present for the new wife of our neighborhood greengrocer - hence the garlic print.
I used Simplicity pattern 5461, and hand-stitched most of him on buses and in waiting rooms. (Somehow I'm convinced it's a him.)
I like how he came out.

Entish for humans

2011-11-20T12:30:00.000-08:00

If you don't know what Entish is, you obviously haven't read enough of Tolkien's fiction. The intrepid may venture here: http://folk.uib.no/hnohf/entish.htm
Entish words run extremely long, because each contains a detailed description: "Forestmanyshadowed-deepvalleyblack Deepvalleyforested Gloomyland". Trees, and their Entish shepherds, have time to talk like that. If you love poetic language, it's enough to make you want to be an Ent.

Is there a language with the integrity and evocative description of Entish that can be spoken at a pace suitable for humans?
There is. It's called Hebrew.

In Hebrew (Biblical Hebrew), every word - every word - has a three-letter "root". That root has a meaning.
This system exists, to some degree, in English: spoke, speak, and speaking are clearly related - enough that if you come across spake in an old text, you know what it means.
English is like Silly Putty - every language that ever got thrown at it stuck. By now English contains also spokes of a wheel, and specks, and spic and span, so that knowing speak does not help you figure out what these other words mean. Speak and a dime will get you a ride on the subway.
In Hebrew the subway is free. All words with the same root are related.

More: all roots that sound alike are related.
More: each letter has a meaning (e.g. a ch will take the place of an h in a root to convey a harsher meaning), and all letters that sound alike are related. Entish is the language of Tolkien's trees, but Hebrew is shaped like one.
There are families of roots. There are families of letters. If you know one word in Hebrew, it isn't hard to learn a second. The Hebrew alphabet functions like the Periodic Table of the Elements.

This is seldom taught in Hebrew courses, which is a pity. People come out of Hebrew classes grousing that the language has two genders to keep track of, like French, and thinking that Hebrew is a difficult and sprawling language. Non, non, non. I used to teach Hebrew, and the shortcuts are real, and even before we get into its being a Divine language, it is an insanely gorgeous one, because if one letter has a meaning,
and you add to that another letter with another meaning,
and make of this a word with a root with a deeper meaning,
and this root calls to mind all the other words that grow from it, as well as the other related roots - by a power of association which does not exist in English- why, here we are with as complex a word as Entish, a word that expresses the essence of the thing, with perfect integrity, to say nothing of a great deal of poetry or of the joy of all those words being related to each other. And it took only three letters to get here.

(Why two genders? Having male and female words allows for subtle shades of meaning: e.g., using a female adjective for a male noun indicates something feminine about it.)

The Voice of the Kotel

2011-11-20T11:07:00.000-08:00

I asked my friends to post here. Instead, they all sent their compositions to me.
Here's one by a friend in high school. Don't skip it just because it rhymes - I suspect it's better than you expect, especially if you've been to the place it's about.
The Kotel is the Western Wall of the Temple in Jerusalem, which was destroyed by the Romans c. 70 ce.
It isn't like a colosseum - it is a living place.

The Voice of the Kotel

I am a watcher, standing by
As thousands come to me to mourn.
They cry for what was lost to them,
And hope for it to be reborn.

Some never had the chance to come,
Though they've waited all their years,
Yet children can come touch my face,
Who have forgotten all those tears.

I cry out to my master's ear:
You've left your nation all alone.
How much longer must they weep,
Until you finally come home?

Sometimes I try to speak out-loud,
To some of those who come to me,
To show them answers to their prayers,
As they stand begging at my feet.

When my master told them how to act,
When my master told them what to do,
He said what's missing from their lives,
To make these dreams they have come true.

Until they listen, here I stay,
Observing, still, always the same.
Silently waiting, hoping, sure,
But always crying for their pain.

Delicious Links

2011-11-17T07:35:00.000-08:00

The English language needs new words for "friend".

There are the friends who can read you like a book, the girls in the next apartment whom you don't know as well as you should like, your former elementary school teacher with whom you now go out for coffee, and the people who so awe you that you can't bring yourself to address them in anything but the third person, even when speaking to them directly.

The Spilmans are what would be called "friends" of mine if it did not feel presumptuous to say that about people old and wise enough to be my parents.
http://jacobspilman.wordpress.com/ is Mr. Spilman's notes from learning Talmud with one of my favorite rabbis on the planet. It is delicious. It is my favorite webite. Check it out.

http://devorahspilman.wordpress.com/ is films of Mrs. Spilman's storytelling, and something she calls "guided imagery", which I like when she is the one leading it.
She has always seemed to me like one of the characters in her stories: the holy Jew in the woods.

Frogs and Spoons and Orthodox Jews

2011-11-17T07:12:00.000-08:00

I do not want to write a blog. I think it is demeaning for an adult to spout the details of her everyday life to an invisible audience of millions of strangers.
But, I sometimes suspect that there is no one addressing the general public to make the point that "Orthodox" Judaism is
1. not necessarily urban, but organic, green, skookum, alive, warm, familial, and comfy
2. not small-minded, but deep and profound
3. not Establishment, but personal
...in sum, poetic.
4. unlike any other "organized religion" you've ever heard of.

It is a bit contradictory to create a blog to make this point, because the medium itself is inherently impersonal - I do not believe that blogs have the power to change their readers in the same way as books, let alone conversation with real people. If you have a choice, and if you do not find it too daunting, stop reading here and go to http://www.shabbat.com/ and sign up to meet real people.
Otherwise, keep reading, because you probably will not find any other Orthodox women spouting the details of their everyday lives to millions of strangers.
I have asked several people to contribute to the blog - so there will be many different voices behind the word "I".

The decision to try writing a blog came when I read a newspaper article interviewing an Orthodox rav. He said something about how we should all do what G-d wants us to.
An observant Jew reading this paper will see what the rav said, and understand that although the thought was not expressed poetically, there are mountains and rivers under that idea, and births and deaths, and frogs and spoons, and nostalgia and parties, and if you just add water to those words and stir, they will burst into flame like potassium.
The average person reading this particular paper sees sees the word "G-d" and turns the page. Next.

Too bad. Someone has to demonstrate that Torah is poetic.
Stay tuned.

A Jew in the Rain

Next Millenium

Only in Israel

Conversation -- on Regret

Ramat Beit Shemesh

Lord of the Rings joke

Snow Sleep

Only in Israel

Thoughts on Sponja

The trouble with humanities

Occupy Entropy

WHAM!

I, I, I, I, I, I, cont.

Film: time-lapse photography

Rainbow biology. And, "clep" is not Yiddish.

Israeli Secular Culture

Japanese Yiddishists

Catch

Snowy Owls in Town

Another note on Rav Hirsch

Wild Edibles Foraging Tour in Jerusalem

What to Do with a Landfill - part 3

Adopted Minnesota Man Learns He Is a Prince - part 2

This Is How You Remind Me of What I Really Am - part 1

Upcoming Jewish Events in Portland

I, I, I, I, I, I

A note on Rav Hirsch

A two-syllable word meaning "stops"

G-d

Double Book Review: women and Torah study, women and Jewish law

Pitched Battle

Sewing resources

And here's how they do it in Finland

Charlotte Mason on secular studies

"Learner-centered" Torah day schools

Metal Menora-Making, Part 2

1906 observation of Jews

Tree Steam?

String

Koreans Visit Ponevezh Yeshiva

A Tricorne for Every Vinegar

Tacoma

Adventures in Metal Menora Making

Conversation

Occupy Shabbat

Cute baby story of the week

A Visit to the Oregon Coast Aquarium

Memento Menu: Jewish Europe in 2002

More Good Links

Muskrats

Elul in Slabodka - 1913

(B'Ikvos HaYirah, pp. 157-162)

"... You already know well the great benefit to be acquired for one's entire life in one Elul day in Slabodka." (A letter from 5670 [1910], B'Ikvos HaYirah p. 195)

I should add that while this is not the place to dwell on the topic at length, it is high time that we attempted to revive the Mussar Movement. May Hashem grant that such essays serve as an impetus for us all to proceed in that direction!

Note: I am indebted to Rabbi Tzvi Kaplan for correcting several errors and to Rabbi Yisroel Leichtman for critiquing and editing my translation.

On the rosh yeshiva of Mir

Occupy

35 by 35 sewing challenge, and a teddy bear

Entish for humans

The Voice of the Kotel

Delicious Links

Frogs and Spoons and Orthodox Jews