I love photos like this one from the English Anti-Semites BBC. We have a full blown humanitarian crisis in Gaza, blah, blah, blah. But some how, some way, they can continue to smuggle in weapons and better yet lots and lots of green Hamas flags. Maybe some of those tunnels should be used to smuggle in the medicine they supposedly have been prevented from obtaining. I wonder if they are, but it simply isn’t in the interest of the BBC, or other outlets to report that part of story.
Agave Forest 
Josh doing his best Brenda Dickson's Welcome To My Home impression.... 
Rows of grapes 
Grumble...just leave me alone...grumble. 
This it my favorite photo I took in India. It is one of the... 
Josh, for some reason I admit I don't understand, was fascinated... 
The India Gate the site of the Indian Army's Tomb of the Unknown... 
Josh Resting.jpg |
 ✡ Nathan wrote this entry on Friday, 14th of September 2007 at 08:51:18 PM ✡ Nathan wrote this entry on Wednesday, 12th of September 2007 at 06:44:47 PMMy involvement with USH started when I decided to answer an ad in the shofar to help with the That is how I bet Barry Grossman. He met me in front of the building, we chatted for a few A little bit about me Classic Jewish tale: grand parents and great grandparents came over from Involved in Conservative Synagogue and Reform movements Bar Mitzvah: refused to have anyone from my family there, bribed by my grandmother, and Skipping 8-9 year, I moved to NYC, about 1.5 blocks from JTS, but couldn’t get engaged in Jewish Fast forward another 10 years and I was standing in the Jewish quarter of Prague realizing that I This was a little flag in my head. What was I up to? When I returned I was wandering around the book store and came across The Sabbath: Its I began to read as much as I could, bough a new siddur, and a set from artsroll covering the major But this wasn’t enough, because I knew that being Jewish wasn’t only a theological or academic I knew USH was here in my neighborhood, but I still wanted to figure out what kind of Jew I I also enjoy volunteering because of deeply rooted belief that it is the only way to counteract the In addition to the ethical, USH has fostered my spiritual life through good book suggestions on The most memorable moment, by far, was last Yom Kippur, my first at USH, where I felt the But more importantly, this is a place where we are afforded the wiggle room to explore the kind of I encourage you to come bring your story to USH, to find and make your special place in our If you dont know where to start, come ask, take a class, show up, dig in!!! And if you are thinking, wow I cant start this, I have so much else going on or so much to relearn. I ✡ Nathan wrote this entry on Thursday, 6th of September 2007 at 10:52:50 PMWow! Yevamot was 3 volumes and 122 pages, I am guessing about 850 total pages. The Daf Yomi cycle is both sides of the Hebrew each day; meaning this mesechet took 121 days to complete. Why they all start with 2, I don’t know. The entire tractate was devoted to the complexities of yibum: when a woman has to marry her brother-in-law when her husband dies before they have a child. The problem starts because this relationship is otherwise forbidden unless the exact conditions are met. What happens is the son and husband are traveling together and the son dies before the husband? What happens to the co-wives? What is the criteria for establishing the death of the husband (or son)? Who can testify? What can they say that will suffice? The ability to properly separate a husband and wife is paramount because her second union can be nullified by the husband’s return, rendering her an adulteress and any children from the second union illegitimate and unable to marry into the children of Israel. This was the the hardest tractate to slog through thus far. It was highly technical and I kept thinking this was a great application for a computer program that asks a series of questions and then tells you if you can marry the other person. Sorry Rabbi’s but even doctors are faced with expert systems replacing them for common ailments. Another very notable issue brought up in Yevamot: The ability of the Rabbi’s to suspend Torah law for the sake of the community. This so called ‘nuclear option’ appears in chapter 10. From what I can tell this option can be applied to relieve a conflict in stringency or to prevent greater sins from being committed. A common example is the ban on blowing the Shofar on Shabbat for fear someone might mistakenly carry the items into the public domain. A modern example my Rabbi provided (thank you) is the Conservative revocation on the ban prohibiting a Kohen from marrying a divorced woman. FYI, Kohenim have even more stringencies due to additional biblical bans and requirements. Then, and much more to my liking, Yevamot ends with a discussion on how large a wound a person can sustain before a witness can assume he is dead (leg amputation above the knee), how long a person can be in cold water without being bloated and deformed enough to be no longer recognizable (over 3 days) and how long a wound can be in water before it kills a person (under 3 days). And my favorite: if a person hears a mystical voice telling him the husband is dead, how do you know it was the person’s ghost, a demon, or sheidim? They have to have 2 proper shadows. A note on 122 states that the ability to discern the details of shadows has been lost. Could this be the Jewish equivalent of the aura? ✡ Nathan wrote this entry on Thursday, 6th of September 2007 at 10:01:16 AMA new Richard Serra exhibit opened at MoMA with an early opening for corporate sponsors at 8am. There are some amazing large metal torqued and angled installations which are designed to walk through. The feeling I get from walking through them is akin to when I walked through The Siq at Petra.
✡ Nathan wrote this entry on Wednesday, 5th of September 2007 at 11:42:51 PMYeah I know, you are thinking, “hmm 2 work posts in 6 months? What gives?” Sometimes you have to share. This nightmare is about Jive Software and the hustle and hassle they have put my and my project through.We purchased a top notch license that includes source, implemented it on a supported platform, and followed all the rules. After a careful review of this multi grand implementation by their own consultants, at my project’s cost, one year later, it still isn’t working correctly.Their consultants had the nerve to say , “you should upgrade your software and your app server,” as a first and continual response. Give me a freakin’ break. The final straw? My project paid one of their consultants to come to NYC to help resolve the issue once and for all. Including many phone calls with their tech support lead, blah blah blah. This magical consultant left 2 weeks later, my project’s wallet a lot lighter, and the problem not fixed. Not only was the problem not fixed, the code he wrote didn’t work!After numerous attempts to engage Jive Software, I finally seem to have someone’s attention. Caveat emptor! Bad support = bad software. Next time I want to vent about bad software companies, I will write about my experiences exiting contracts with IBM by replacing WebSphere with open source alternatives and thereby saving millions. Yes, millions. In brief: We found more than a few defects in WebSphere over the summer. I would guess that is about 250,000$/defect/year I am paying them! Paying for Java app servers is so 1990′s and paying IBM for software is so 1970′s. ✡ Nathan wrote this entry on Wednesday, 5th of September 2007 at 09:01:16 PM ✡ Nathan wrote this entry on Friday, 31st of August 2007 at 11:38:04 AMI have 2 clams in my tank, don’t ask me to get into detailed binomial nomenclature, one is blue and one is gold. The gold one hasnt been doing so well lately and I wondered what might be causing it stress. 4 days ago I picked it up and many little white snails fell into the water column. This clam has been in my tank for over a year and somewhere along the way I must have introduced a species specific pyramidellid smail. It would seem these snails simple suck the life juices out of large clams and other snails. I followed the advice of several other hobbyists and removed the clam, scrubbed it carefully to remove the snails. I did this every day for a week and the clam is now fully extended. I assume I will have to keep this up for some time until the snails reproductive cycle is interrupted. I hope I can manage this because this clam is turning out to be pretty high acquaintance. But I did manage to keep it alive! ✡ Nathan wrote this entry on Tuesday, 28th of August 2007 at 09:52:19 AMA few more thoughts, as I watch more people I know accept 2nd best.
And do I find my self regurgitating Zen and The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance… ✡ Nathan wrote this entry on Friday, 24th of August 2007 at 04:35:35 PMAn interesting thing happened to me on my way home from work today. Eric, my coworker dropped me off, and across the street was Rabbi Schapiro, my local Chabad Rabbi and neighbor. In all the years we have lived across from one another, this is the first time we have run into each other on the street. We chatted about what we have been up to, and true to form, as a Chabad Rabbi, he asked me if I have been laying tefillin, going to minyan, ect… I was completely honest with him about how lazy I can be on a Saturday and Sunday, but weekdays I am pretty good. He asked me come around to the side of his mini-van and I joked with him about what i must be in for. He laughed and took out a shofar from him bag of Jew paraphernalia. In the moth of Elul, he explained, we blow the shofar every day except Shabbat in anticipation of the new year and redemption. I have read of this custom before but never participated in it. While blowing it I become impressed! Blowing a shofar isn’t exactly easy. He explained a Chassidic tale of the prince who left his father, the king, to study in a far away land. Over time he forgot how to speak his native language. Upon returning to his home, he couldn’t ask anyone to let him see his father. But the father, hearing him plead in another language, still recognized his son’s voice. This interaction, as the tale illustrates, is our actions towards G-d. We are crying out for the attention of our Father and to be allowed back into the kingdom of heaven. You have to love the Besht and his parables. I would only reply that we should blow it much louder! He did! One long loud burst. We laughed about now not a single person waling on the street even thought this was odd. 2 Jews up to something Jewish, I pointed out. As a parting gift he gave me a delicious loaf of chalah made by hand by his wife. I left with a Shabbat Shalom and a hug!Went upstairs and there was Idan reading on the couch asking if I knew why he was hearing a shofar being blown in Hoboken, NJ. ✡ Nathan wrote this entry on Friday, 24th of August 2007 at 08:32:57 AM
Good question. Perhaps tefillin are only another metaphor. But, just like sitting in an orgone box, wrapping tefillin is a physical act that focuses the mind on a particular task. The bottom line is when I lay tefillin in the morning I have a nice calm quiet day and things do not get to me. I stand up in a quiet spot, set a timer for 20 minutes, and follow the ancient procedure of wrapping myself in a tallis, wrapping the arm, the head, completing the arm, saying the Shema, the Amidah, a few other prayers and then standing silently breathing in deeply with my eyes closed, thinking about the challenges of my day, thinking about Idan and hoping he isn’t missing Israel too much, my mom wresting loose from the pain of her childhood, my dad that he doesn’t kill himself on his mountain bike, Adam and Lisa are safe and happy, my sister learns to love herself, and asking for the ability to be patient with all this. Whilst the most important part, asking for the ability to see the lesson from the challenges I will face today, run through the whole ‘conversation’. It reminds me of when I guessed the Hebrew verb l’hitpalel meant to talk to one self. It means to pray. It cracked my teacher up… 20 minutes goes by and I open my eyes, reverse the process and I am calm cool and collected. Try it, it will change your life. It is a combination of mediation, proprioceptic movement, concentrated thought, prayer, daily review, and recitation of the key components of being a good person conserved for thousands of years. ✡ Nathan wrote this entry on Thursday, 23rd of August 2007 at 06:50:15 AMAs you might be reading about our President’s recent speech in which he continues to show his detachment from reality. From the Wash Post:
Bingo. Once again. We on the left were correct. ‘Nuf said. ✡ Nathan wrote this entry on Wednesday, 22nd of August 2007 at 09:00:53 AMKares is defined in the back of one of my books as excision; early death imposed for certain classes of transgressions. It occurred to me in the shower this morning (I often do my best thinking there!) that one of the reasons for a lack of a hell like concept in Judaism is that in a real concrete person and action centric faith there is no need for a theoretical bizarre spot in the middle of the earth where you are tortured forever. I find it intellectually dishonest when people talk about the vengefulness of the original testament G-d when this modern illegitimate testament creates a dualist alter ego for G-d and invents a notion to scare the crap out of people which plays on a deeply seated pagan myth of the underworld. When you hear Christians talk about Hades; guess what? That is a Roman, Greek, and pre-both myth. Remember Rome didn’t convert to Christianity, Christianity converted to Rome, and Roman myths are lifted from the Greeks. Anyway, back to the point. There is no record, from my understanding, of human imposed early death for a kares transgression. The Chazal were afraid, seemingly, of wrongfully putting someone to death. The only part of kares we find implemented is the excision part. So why was this enough and how did it obviate hell? Imagine your whole world revolving around a community, your schul, your eruv, your breeding pool, your entire socioeconomic system. Now imagine being forbidden from it and forbidden from any similar community where the courts could find you. I don’t know if we have a modern equivalent. Jail for life isn’t even this severe because you are fed, clothed, and tended to in prison. If you found yourself wandering in the dessert without food no other tribe was going to welcome you in, especially not a Jew who obviously was convicted of something really bad – why else would he have been kicked out of the tribe? Sounds pretty severe to me! Maybe death penalty is not the right idea, maybe excision should be revisited. ✡ Nathan wrote this entry on Sunday, 19th of August 2007 at 07:31:39 PMWhat is it with people and being ok with mediocrity? I look all around me and I hear people accepting what they see in front of them as good enough! This is not some rant about national issues or even pot holes in the road. I am talking about the way people treat each other in interpersonal relationships. It would seem that we have become so attached to psychobabel we have forgotten that behind buzz words and jargon there are real people doing some really fucked up things to each other! But instead of putting a foot down and saying, “wow this is fucked up, I am not going to let this happen to me anymore,” people seems to say, “eh, as if I can do better, it isn’t so bad.” Worse yet, people blindly accept platitudes with zero perspicacity. I am certain there are some parents that sit there and think to themselves that they are so happy their kid grew up to be mediocre, because at least he isn’t in jail. That, may indeed be the case, he may be lucky he isn’t in jail. I am the first to admit that the inequality in society gives us each a somewhat relative sense of achievement. Or to put it bluntly, you have a messed up childhood and you managed to go to school, get a job, and eek out a living? That can be a HUGE and respectable achievement under your circumstances. I get it. I respect it. That said, I am thankful that the parents I have were some what engaged enough to raise me to want the stars and figure out how to get them – even as I watched both of them do some pretty mediocre things. As my father points out, he taught me sometimes by negative example. Indeed we have the reverse as well. The guy who is a zero but thinks he is ‘all that’ and deserves the stars but hasn’t made one iota of effort to get them. We can all think of people we know who are in either state and more to the point: we can think of times when we ourselves are in either state. The new year is coming, it is time for reflection on the year past and the year next. I challenge you to think about how you fall into either states throughout your life and to become more humble when you are the winner and more driven when you are the looser. ✡ Nathan wrote this entry on Sunday, 12th of August 2007 at 02:07:52 PMFor real, I started to get that watery feeling in the back of my throat that means I am about to puke:
While the Bugatti is an astonishing vehicle, this type of excessive display of wealth is so sickening in this day and age. 1.5 million USD for this? That would bring an entire nation in some parts of the world out of poverty. The worst isnt even the Bugatti:
Just pathetic. ✡ Nathan wrote this entry on Saturday, 11th of August 2007 at 08:40:14 PMWhat was on my mind this Shabbat? I was thinking about the relationship between certain classes here in the my area. How basically people like me ignore and avoid certain other classes in the name of PCness. Simply put, we are not allowed to complain about how other behave so we perpetuate our own segregation. Just look around you! There are malls for one set of the population and malls for another. It is a shame that PCness has let us ignore what some call “home training” as a virtue. I have also been thinking about how it is worth reminding yourself every morning that the choices you make each and every second of your life define who you are. This is vital to understanding why you are a success or not, why you are liked or not, why you are anxious or not, why you need medication to sleep at night or not, allow yourself to be abused in a relationship or not, and on and on and on. I have been thinking more and more about how there are people I observe who in one context are earnestly trying to make the world a better place, but at the same time refuse to see the ugliness of patterns of behavior. This incongruousnesses lies at the heart of how choices define who you are. Being good to only those you choose is easy, being good to everyone is really hard! But I ask you, what is more virtuous? The cynical relativists out there will say, “well it is hard to be good all the time, so why should I try to be, especially if no one is going to cut me a break?” The answer is so simple, break cutting starts with you. Do you see how these 2 are related? To a certain class of people everything is about “respect”. Every other words out of their mouths is some derivative of this term. I think they really want what is more commonly called politeness (again home training) or perhaps break cutting. I don’t know how to solve this problem and this divide, but a little bit more break cutting certainly wouldn’t hurt!! |
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Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius. |
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I am going to try to describe this. A very secular friend of my father and I were once talking about