because everyone loves to read about other people's car troubles...

for some reason i think this story should be told backwards:
on wednesday morning, i took a car service to work, leaving hom about 45 minutes after i usually get to school. i let myself sleep in over 1 hour becasue it nearly doubled my sleep from the previous night ( i went to sleep at 5 am, which is when i finaly got home from the auto repair shop.) the cab from the shop took about 10 minutes, but came about 50 minutes after i called (and only agreed to come at all after i called three times - no one else was open!). i took the car to the shop in the first place after it surprised me (and embarassed me, because i had waited for 2.5 hours for a tow) by starting just when the nice AAA tow truck man finally came to help me, but i still needed to make sure it would get me to philly this weekend (which it did, and back from philly, too, even!). the car starting was surprise because it had stalled at 1 am in the middle of the street in lower manhattan, and refused to start again, and needed to be rolled onto a sidestreet with the help of passing anonymous gomlei chessed and oren (thank you!).
basic summary - lots of waiting for no reason.
maybe this was Hashem's way of telling me that i shouldn't stay out so late on school nights. Or maybe of telling me that all i really need to survive a day at school (wednesday went amazingly well) is a lot of adrenaline and a little less capacity for rational thought. (It probably also helps to be too tired to raise once's voice...)

notes

esther as dawn take II: a pun
venahafoch hu - esther turns shachor to shachar.
(says Rav Goldvicht this week)

also, on yom kipur as ke-purim,
1-goral echad laShem, ve-goral echad al-azazel; hipil pur hu ha-goral
2-the sting that allegedly changed colors ("mithapech," acc to the gemara); venahafoch hu
3-the kohen gadol enters the kodesh kodashim twice on yom kippur, in special clotehs, though otherwise entering is punishable by death; esther goes to see the king, "vatilbash esther malchut," though that is normally punishable by death, and then meets him twice.

he basically tuned the first thing into an elaboration on ei mazal le-yisrael (israel are not governed by astrological happenings)- "pur" may be chance, but "goral" is not - it depends on our actions.

that's that for now.

moons, suns, etc.

i'm posting this mostly to remind myself to think more on it later, but also because maybe someone has something to say...

so, a gemara (where? you ask. well, i forget... i may also have the wording slightly wrong...) i have long favored as a springboard for divrei torah this time of year (and also for hannukkah) states, "why was esther compared to the dawn (ayelet hashachar)? just as the dawn is the end of the night, so is esther the end of miracles. but what about hanukkah? we are speaking about [the end of miracles that were] given to be written down."
noteworthy things: by this analogy the time of history in which there are miracles is the night, and the rest is the day. esther, however, is the sun. or maybe she is the darkest part before dawn?

tonight rav goldvicht brought down that "Esther" is supposed to mean "moon" in persian. he also cited a zohar on "mi zot hanishkafah kemo shachar, yafah kha-levanah, barah ka-chamah, ayumah ka-nidgalot." (JPS: "Who is she that looketh forth as the dawn, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, terrible as an army with banners" ShH"Sh 6:10) refers to the geulah, that starts like sunrise - a small amount of light that gets bigger and bigger. Rav. G. made the connection between Esther and "Levanah" here. really, the idea is in many ways similar. she is the small ammount of light in a dark space/time.

but there is also a big difference - is esther sunlight (ayelet hashachar) or moonlight (levanah)? each has its own set of metaphysical and physical associations, (eg, most basically, posessing its own light vs. reflecting.) what are the ramifications of implying that esther is the moon? or is the point that at the time she seems to be merely reflecting light in the darkness (hester panim) but turns out to be the early visibility of an independent light source? and how does that all connect to the end of writing-worthy miracles?

LATER: (MOnday evening) - upon second reading the zohar itself is emphasizing the progression of shachar-aka-geulah from"yafah kha-levanah" to "barah ka-chammah" (and on to ayumah ka-nidgalot?" i see the yafah-barah-ayumah progression, but its not totally clear to me how levanah-chammah-nidgalot works...)

(if you don't like posting but have something to say, do email me - i sincerely want to hear opinions on this!)

I went to my downstair neighbors for Friday night dinner. Not having to leave my building almost made me wish I had a shabbos robe to celebrate the occasion, but I settled for going in slippers. (i know, these details are inconsequential...)
anyhow... On their table was a page, "brisk al ha-daf," with a little paragraph for each daily daf this week. This reminded me of one of the absolute collest things about Brooklyn, of which I rarely take advantage due to my gender as well as the hectic-ness of the rest of my life, which is the profusion of Torah (more on this later...).
Anyway, one of the vortlach (?) on the page had to do with "yihiyu leratson imrei fi ve-hegyon libi lefanecha haShem tsuri ve-goali." (if you teach me how to write in Hebrew here I will be happy...) Someone whose name I don't remember/didn't recognize pointed out that "lefanecha" in ambiguous - it may modify "heygon libi" (and, probably, "imrei fi") or it may modify "le-ratson." ie, either "may the musings (better translations gladly accepted) of my heart and the utterances of my mouth be leratson (favored?) before you" or "may the musings of my ehart and utterances of my mouth before you be favored." This ambiguity, it said, explains a minhag of the GRI"Z to say this pasuk twice - once for each meaning.
Now, I feel funny differing with lofty people, but this really struck me.* I mean, I tend to think that one of the cool things about language, particularly canonized langugage, is the possibility for ambiguity, and the realization that both/all meanings are contained in the same words. so saying the verse twice seems to defeat the purpose. that is, saying things twice presupposes a level of clarity about the true Order of Things that doesn't really exist. as if you can list all the possible meanings (ways of thinking) out there and take them into account, one by one. but that was just my intuition. (call it binah yeseirah, and say that's why i don't learn gemara so much anymore?) thoughts are appreciated.

*so much so that i smiled, causing my roomate to ask, "this is funny?" to which i replied "it's just very brisk," to which she replied "i don't know what that is. i never dated a guy from brisk."


so anyway, about the profusion of torah. my neighbor's first-grade son goes to chaim berlin and was singing zemiros (mah yedidus) with absolute gusto, as well as really good pronunciation of all those complicated words. and i thought, wow, could i do that at that age? and then i thought, it might almost be worth having yeshivish children [ok, granted, sons, b/c girls don't really sing - or learn to read ;) ...] if they would do that. though perhaps non-yeshivish children can do it to, if appropriately chinuch-ed? well, that's what i had to say about that.