To Engelond They Wende

London always strikes me as a dreamlike city -- perhaps because I always land in it in what is for me the middle of the night, and with just enough time to whizz out of Heathrow for tea and fly back into the night.

What little I see of London on the way is pleasing. If it has skyscrapers, I've never seen them -- only rows of brick houses with long yards (gardens, I am corrected, whether or not they've actually been planted with anything); and there is something about those houses - which are probably quite old - that always strikes me as beautiful. Is it the proportions? The windows? They are all more or less alike, but they do not have the monotony of the homes in a US suburb; each house appears to remember the people who designed and built it.

The people reinforce the dreamlike impression of the city: the many men I've seen walking down the street singing - one singing opera at the top of his lungs - and the chap who gave my daughter a present, just like that; and all the elderly men with professorial faces, wearing tweed suits - no one can look as professorial to an American as an elderly Englishman.

Perhaps it is the language barrier (what, if you please, is a slip road?), but it seems to me that signs in England require more thought than signs in America. On a US bus, there will be a line drawn in front of the door, and beside it the floor (and probably both walls and the lintel) will say in large letters DO NOT CROSS or DO NOT BLOCK. On the Tube, there is no line, and a single small sign says, gently, "Obstructing the door can be dangerous," and it is up to you to decide what you want to do about it.

Similarly, in a US train station, there will be large signs all over, and painted on the floor, saying DO NOT LITTER, and perhaps threatening you with the long string of numbers that signifies which law you break by littering, whereas in England there are small signs hung here and there making complex and humorous references to the problems that litter can cause, should you choose to leave it.

I also love the injunction to MIND THE GAP -- Americans watch and beware of a great deal, but they don't mind much besides children. One wonders what mischief the gap will get into if it is not well minded.

Someday, perhaps, I shall be able to spend some more time in Engelond, to get to know the city a bit better, and to stop trying to get into cars from the right, and to see what a moor and  a heath look like off the page; but in the meantime, it is a nice dream to have between Seattle and Lod.

Purim, Mishloach Manot, and Fear

One of my favorite insights from R' Shlomo Carlebach is this:

On a regular day, you never go up to a friend, let alone your teacher, and offer him an apple and a banana. Were you to do so, he would wonder, "Why are you giving me food?"
On Purim, however, you can go up to anyone and offer him an apple and a banana. You can bring an apple and a banana to the Queen of England.
The lesson of Purim is not to be afraid: you can do anything.

Every year before Purim, there is some flurry in the mishloach-manos making department: what should I put in them, so that they are nice enough to give out?
And then Purim actually arrives, and the day itself sweeps away the questions. I can send an apple and a banana to the rebbetzin who so intimidates me that I put on heels whenever I have to telephone her, just to feel like a grown-up. I can send an apple and a banana to our local Aikido master, to Ira Glass, and to the Queen of England. Why be afraid? You can do anything.

The story is told that Rav Shlomo Zalman's family, in the impoverished Jerusalem of yore, sent his fiancee's family dried fruit for Purim; and her family, being equally short on finances, baked it into a fruitcake and sent it back.

Don't be afraid; you can do anything.

Pacific Crest Community School

I am on a quest to visit interesting high schools.

Last week, I visited Pacific Crest, a 6-12th grade school of 70-80 students, each of whom is free to design his or her own curriculum - within limits. Some forty courses are offered each term; students must take a certain number, and of those, a certain number must be math, or language arts, &c. The content is as original as the structure: it is not uncommon for courses to have curious titles like "Geometry of Gothic Windows" or "Physics of Superheroes" or "Take a Walk". (Just think, there is a high school - not a mussar yeshiva - that teaches how to take a walk... I'd like to know what the content of that course is.) A couple of classes are compulsory.

No grades are given; instead, students compile a portfolio, which they whittle down for the purpose of college applications, and submit in place of grades. By now the colleges are used to this.

Pacific Crest is a 'democratic' school: students meet once a week, sitting on the auditorium stage, to nominate each other's heroic deeds for applause, to make announcements, to invite visitors to stand up and say "Your name and your favorite movie character", and to raise issues for discussion (how shall we get each other to stop leaving backpacks on the common room tables?) I had the sense that although some of the students were a bit weary of the proceedings, all were glad to belong to the community of which such meetings are an important characteristic. Teachers are not exempt from being treated as equals in this democracy -- which I think is a pity; if nothing else, they have greater life experience. The school has an open campus: students are free to wander the city whenever they do not have class.

Naturally -- this being the city it is -- half the students wore what would be recognized in any other school as costume: Robin Hood was the first I noticed, but not every costume was that of a recognizable era or world. What, don't you come to school in a cape and fuzzy ears on an ordinary Tuesday?

I think some of this is great (e.g., the diversity of curriculum). But it is one thing to incorporate flexibility into a school as a pedagogical technique, and quite another to assume that sixth graders know what is best for them, and can motivate themselves to pursue it; and I am not sure (should've asked) which is the idea underlying the Pacific Crest democracy.

Anyway, it was a pleasant and enlightening morning; and thanks to the Pacific Crest administration for allowing tours of their school.

Facebook

The reason that Facebook is popular, I think, is that when one longs to see one of one's friends, it offers immediate gratification: your friend is here, and talking; come visit.
This is, of course, an illusion. Your friend is not there, and he is not talking. If you pay him a call, he will not recognize that you visited. You will not even have left footprints in his yard, or a card with the butler. You have, in fact, not interacted at all.
You would do better to think of a reason to telephone.

Culture Shock

Visiting America is like having the top fall off a salt-shaker as you shake it: you can only stare and say, "Wow, that's a lot..."

America is a lot. A lot of foliage, a lot of denim, a lot of noise and art.
Israel is condensed. A wide land, but of condensed character. It has one miniature mountain, one miniature river, one miniature lake, one miniature ocean, one miniature capitol city -- and a high concentration of spiritual energy & holiness. No one I know in Israel ever has spare time, and most do not drive.
So whenever I come to America, where the day unfolds slowly, and much of it is spent in the car getting from here to there beneath the boughs of ornamental plum trees, which are content to grow without producing fruit, and the people I meet jest loosely, and banter loosely, and the houses (containing loose acquaintances) are loosely spaced by loosely growing willows that don't really care about what happens around them -- unlike the keen and insistent landscapes of Israel -- it is disorienting. Why, the rooms of the average apartment or house are so far from each other that it is possible to have different music playing in two of them simultaneously.

Not positive or negative -- just makes for a very different life.

Next Millenium

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

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

Conversation -- on Regret

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

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

Thank you AW

Snow Sleep

Sam Perrin

sperrin at uoregon.edu

Thanks!

Only in Israel

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

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

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

How are you going to sprout today?

WHAM!

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.