trivia

1 - i am coming to chicago in the near future. holler if you want to help entertain me.
2 - i have three interviews tomorrow, two involvinv teaching, two involving torah. exciting but tiring.
3 - it's time for bed, to bed i said!

Tanhuma Hayyei Sarah 1

...Rabbi Yochanan said, this (previous discussion) says that one who prays must have his mind settled upon him (daato meyushevet alav) and then pray before the KBH. Abba Shaul says, if a person directed his mind (kiven daato) in prayer, he should be confident that his prayer will be heard, as it is said, 'tachin libam takshiv oznecha - "Thou wilt direct their heart, Thou wilt cause Thine ear to ttend;" (Psalms 10:17). And there is no one who directed his heart and his mind to prayer as our fatehr Abraham, who said before the KBH, "That be far from Thee to do after this manner, [to slay the righteous with the wicked, that so the righteous should be as the wicked; that be far from Thee; shall not the Judge of all the earth do justly?'] " (Gen. 18:25) (Q1) Once the KBH saw that he was requesting merit so as not to destroyt the worl, He began praising him, and He said to him "Thou art fairer than the children of men, etc." (Ps 45:3) He (Abe) said to Him, this fairness is not mine. My son and I enter a city and people do not distinguish between father and son. Because [in those days] a person would live 120 years and would not age. Abraham said, "Master of the Universe, You must differentiate between young and old, so that the elder can be honored in the young." (Q2) The KBH said to him, 'by your life, I will start with you.' [Abraham] went and slept on that night, and got up in the morning. When he got up, he saw that the hair of his head and his beard had gotten white. (Q3) He said before Him, "Master of the Universe, you have made me a dugma (example, or extraordinary thing?)." He said to him, 'a crown of glory (tiferet) is white hair (Prov. 17) and the glory (hadar) of elders is white hair (Prov. 20)." Therefore it is said (Gen 24:1), "And Abraham was old." (Q4)

Q1 - but Abraham didn't get what he prayed for - sedom was destroyed!

Q2 - Is the resolution later a punishment - ie, should Avraham not have said this? (sought his own kavod?) Seems God makes and example of him, kiterally, only then tries to console him. OR, alternatively, the pesukim from mishlei indicate the GOd agrees with Avraham that old people should have a special distinguishing characteristic.

Q3 - It can't be a conincidence that Avraham's hair turned white for the first time as sedom and amorah were being overturned. What does that mean about his connection to them? (and is the connection specific to Avraham b/c he prayed for them, or general to anyone who witnesses destruction?)

Q4 - this pasuk is much later. what does it add?

comparative scatology

i think the difference between U of C and Brooklyn College can be summarized well by a comparative study of bathroom grafitti.

U. of C exchange:

original comment: something to do with "faggots."
response: "kill all bigots!"
meta-response: "that itself was a bigotted comment!

Brooklyn Exchange

original comment: this school sucks
response: so do you
meta-response: and your mother
meta-meta: stop talking trash! don't you know that sh** f***ing sucks?

in a similar vein, the previous round of graffiti in the same Brooklyn bathroom (it gets washed periodically) was a series of "for a good time, call..." messages. the closest i remember from the ladies rooms at U of C was the communal effort to "rank the hottest professors" somewhere in Cobb or the Reg, I think. though that brings me to an Alternative Hypothesis: The U of C bathrooms in question were women only. The Brooklyn ones are coed...

job hunting

it turns out that i have an interview to morrow at a school currrently headed by my old navi teacher. after today, though, i wonder if they even have a job to potentially offer me! anyway, all this trying to sell myself keeps me on my toes, so i suppose its ok.

essentially odd

an old and generally postmodern (or she seems so to me, unschooled in these things, at least) friend says:

"...Which puts me once again in the position of almost making that awful trite statement about language being inadequate, which it's not. Postmodernists are inadequate! Language is just essentially odd."

i liked it, so here it is to be shared.

i just had an inerview for a job that does not now, and is not particularly likely in the near future, to exist. ie, a position that's not open. i am thoroughly confused.

sheshes yomim taavod...

the rabbi of the shteible i daavened at on shabbos said a lot of things i didn't quite follow (though at least he spoke in english), but one thing i liked:
shabbos is supposed to give you strength for the whole week. so, "sheshes yamim taavod...ve-yom ha-shevii shabbas la-Shem..."
you need to do avodah, = avodas haShem, every day of the week, through your mundane pursuits, but on shabbos you concentrate on serving Hashem as such, without the the mundane melacha.

yavneh

apparently, yavneh has a blog, and it links to me. you can take the girl out of the minyan (insert necessary women and judaism comment here), but you can't take the minyan out of the girl, i suppose. or just that zev wishes i (and he, soon enough) were still there... in any case, i don't know if that means i have to post divrei torah or what? well, fear not, there's something in the works from shir hashirim rabbah, i just don't have the text handy now...

portrait of a shabbos table

there were about 15 people there, and some of us were such characters. in the cartoon-characterizable sort of way, that i just had to share. it reminded me of the feeling you get when you meet someone straight out of the boyfriend book. so here's the frum version of that very book, maybe...

1- the earnest baal teshuvah guy. he used to be a musician, until they told him it was bad for shabbos, so now he's in a band called "kol geulah" and had a scraggly beard. being a man, he gets to sit next to the baal habayis, and he waxes poetical about how important it is to have divrei torah at the shabbos table. sometimes he says things like "i don't know if you know..." to a table full of ffbs (pardon my french) about things that everyone who went to any frum high school knows, because to him its all new and esoteric. he likes to tell over things he's learned, not always perfectly, and everyone encourages him while smiling to each other at his endearing misrepresentations.

2- the self-righteous pseudo intellectual guy. he is smart enough to present a logical argument, but not smart enough to forsee, or even understand, its inevitable flaws. he makes claims that seem very wise to the earnest baal teshuvah guy, and seem patently false to me. (eg, we know from rashi that loshon hakodesh can have two letter roots, so this whole thing called hebrew grammar is really just a farce of the moderns.) while he can dispute something that e.b.t. guy says, you cannot dispute what he says. because he just doesn't know how to respond, except by ignoring you or repeating what he said before. he certainly does not expect that a woman might know something he doesn't.

3 - the straight-talking-no-nonsense-frum lady. (wife of #2) she's realtively intellectual in that she uses logic in ordinary conversation and sometimes uses big words. she too, in her own way, can't be argued with. her mother and some other women are talking about whether it makes sense to push off teaching reading until nearly all children are "reading ready" - about 6 or 7. parents are reluctant, but why rush things, leaving kids who are developmentally normal, but just not advanced, "behind?" lady #3 says "parents just don't want to deal with the fact that their kids aren't special" and that's the end of that. she, too, can't respond to an argument except by repeating her position more difinitively. she is not afraid to argue with her husband or remind him when he is talking about something un-shabbes-dik. and she is very organized.

4 - the beautiful young new wife girl. she's pretty. really pretty. and you know that she, unlike the rest of the women at the table, had equally nice hair before she got a wig. she's quiet bordering on meek, and she asks earnest advice about housekeeping and buying furniture, but only when she goes into the kitchen and can talk to the baalebuste alone. not that there's anything wrong with that. her taste in jewlery is poor (aka, very frum), but its ok. her husband is older than her and you keep wondering what's secretly special about him that he got such a "good" shidduch.

5 - the too litvish (or is it modern?) for her own good, but we'll show her yet girl (me). she forgets her shabbos clothes at home and is a bit underdressed. she seems clueless and leaves without lighting shabbos candles, but then comes out with phrases like lechem mishneh that make you think maybe she knows something, after all. she tries to talk about halachah during dinner, which one alternately humors for kiruv purposes or treats seriously because maybe she's heard of the problem with teflon pans, after all. every woman engages her in the requisite small talk about her hometown and her job, and she fails to produce any long-term conversation out of it all. she falls asleep at the shabbos table and is generally a nebach. and a vegetarian.*

6 - the serious, still on shlicus guy. he is softspoken and knows stuff. and very skinny. he sings with an intensity that seems to belong more to an 18 year old in yeshiva than to a father in his late 20s. he clearly needs everything to be meaningful. he gets very animated when discussing the details of a particular video of the rebbe - if you look closely, you can see that it's raining. (others disagree, but he insists. apparently, this matters a lot.)

7 - the shaliach's wife. sweet. benign. and with a very cute, pleasant child.


*actually, i had my first pareve chilent in a long time at this house - apparently they alway s make it that way. yay! ;)

there's something comforting and routine about finding these people everywhere. there is also something amazing about tables where people really just talk torah, even if one is forced to spectate from the back table. the end.

i spent shabbos in crown heights, with a lovely family. some things i observed:
1 - working in crown heights ofr a year has made the whole rebbe thing normal to me.
2 - people in crown heights are less likely to return a good shabbos" on the street from a stranger than people in flatbush. maybe een than in boro park!*

* this makes me feel slightly better about the fact that my students complain that "jewish people" don't respond when "black people" say hello. because its not jsut black people ;)

i;m not sure how to organisze the rest of these observation, so you'll have to wade through these ramblings if you care:

3. chabad is chasidish. this should be obvious, but here's what i mean. i mean that being with the family i was with, all very nice, was just as alienating as any chareid experience i;ve ever had, and in exactly the same way.

for some reason, the fact that chabad people tend to dress more modernly fooled me into thinking they are more modern. but those same women who wear too-trendy-for-williamsburg clothes still sit at the end of the table, still don't express opinions in discussions being led by men (confining themselves to talking amongst thje ladies about shatels, children, schools), still talk during zemiros, becasue appraently not singing = not caring about singing. it's so sad for me, because the music is so beautiful, and in a way that you don't get in most environemnts, because everyone is so earnest about it. in fairness, what can you do but learn to be elsewhere if you're not allowed to participate. consistently listening without singing is probably just as bad for your soul, and sadder, than tuning out.

4. lots of frum people are just plain afraid of black people. now, i did make sure i got someone to walk me home at night. you just never know what will happen, and i was coming from a not so jewish area. (my school secretary and at-work-surrogate-mom told me that between utica and nostrand 'they know, if they mess with one jewish person they gotta deal with all of them,' but still...) but at 2 pm on a saturday my hostess recommended that i walk down eastern parkway rather than president street to get to the botanical gardens, "even if you teach in an urban public school." (i didn;t tell her that i had actually walked exactly there before lunch) i mean, i saw the place. this is one semi-convincing proof, but it happens a lot that people are afraid of, eg, suburban bourgeois black kids who are clearly too rich to rob them. whatever, however racist i may have become this year, i still hate uninformed racism...

sitra achara

i found myself in boro park for shabbos, at the home of members of the self-described "sheeris hapletoh" of mizrachi people in the area. lovely people. more on that later, maybe. anyway, they suggested i go to shomrei emunah (big shul) for the annual boro park yom haatzmaut celebration. i was promised that i would get to hear the chazan of that shul, himself a bobov chassid, sing hatikvah (substituting "am kodesh"[sic] for "am chofshi").
now, this is exactly the sort of thing in which i take perverse pleasure, so i decided it was worth sitting through yet another impassioned plea for gush kattif jsut to be able to say that i celebrated yom haatsmaut the boro park way. (as for thursday's nidcheh version of the holiday, for the first time in my life, since i've known what yom haatsmaut was, i didn't know when it was until it was basically over...)
well, i sat through the apocalyptical gush-katif-ish fire and brimstone of an aging, not quite as cogent as he used to be, rabbi, as expected. what i did not expect was
1- they would start on time, and if the chazzan sang (i am guessing he did b/c i saw him there), it was at the beginning and i missed it
2- same aging rabbi would predict, in no uncertain terms, the downfall of the french government to muslims within twenty years. (then he threw in england and belgium too.)
3- another rabbi would rail against the world gay march in jerusalem.

so yeah, a sad story for me, but whatever, its a story...