an erev shabbos mishap

in which i brought new meaning to the term "hand blender."

my first trip to the ER in many years, and my first ever trip without my mommy [:( ], thank God all limbs intact, and only four stiches...

The moral of the story, and the reason I allow myself to post it despite the obvious "pity me" implications, is:
when yout blender is clogged, clear out the mess with a fork.


Also, one of those "how can economics expain this" questions:
The nice PA who stiched me up told me to come back in "a couple of days" just to make sure healing was happening, and then in abt 10 days to remive the stitches. When prompted, she said explcitly I should just walk into the ER for a follow up. On the advice of my chevruta, who had a similar situationn with her son earlier this year, I called my insurance before going back and they informed me, perhaps not surprisingly, that they don't cover non-emergency visits to the ER but would (also not surprisingly) cover a follow-up if I went to my normal General Practitioner.* One suspects that this is fairly common policy. SO why does trhe ER tell you to come back there? You might think they just "want your business" (I had my own reasons re: not having split liability,though in the end I think my doctor is probably more competent and so it's probably for the ebst...), but I imagine that they don't actually recover the cost of a lot of the allegedly "self-paying" visitors. Or perhaps there's a disconnect between the "treaters" and the "billers"?
anyhow...

*Another moral of this story is why its good to "have a doctor" (which I hadn't really since High School until abt a month ago..) so that you have someone who knows you to whom you can bring all yout minor-but-requiring-attention medical issues...

I received the following email, forwarded, from an indignant friend and fellow alumna:
I think it's fascinating for a number of reasons, some of which have to do with politics and personal relationships with the individual in question (which i think its not nice to blog about). however, while I don't think its a big secret, I think I'll leave out his name for now so as to avoid the appearance of imporpriety...

Dear Fellow Members of the Maimonides Community,


Today, we celebrate Lag BaOmer. One of the important aspects of this day is a commemoration of the courageous leadership of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, who kept Torah learning alive in the face of persecution and personal danger. It is customary to go on outings on Lag BaOmer to commemorate the students of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai going into the forest disguised as hunters when, in reality, they were going to Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai’s secret cave to learn Torah from him. Fortunately, today, we live in a time and place where we can study Torah openly and freely. Nevertheless, freedom has its own challenges, and Jews in America battle assimilation, intermarriage, and demographic realities. Keeping Torah learning alive still depends on the leadership of great Rebbeim.


In that spirit, we are pleased to announce the inauguration of Rabbi [NPQ] as the first Rosh Yeshiva of Maimonides School. Rabbi [NPQ] possesses the rare combination of talents and abilities which makes him a perfect choice for Rosh Yeshiva. His erudition, piety, energy, vision, organizational skills, and overall menchlichkeit have become well known over his many years of devoted service to Maimonides and are deeply appreciated within the entire community. As Rosh Yeshiva, Rabbi [NPQ] has been delegated by the School Committee to ensure that all activities of Maimonides School are consistent with halacha and the established hashkafa of the school.


Rabbi [NPQ] will devote his best efforts to preserving, protecting, and enhancing the religious and spiritual dimensions of the School and inspiring the religious devotion and development of the students. He will be available to entire grades and classes, as well as to individual students, for counseling on religious matters. Rabbi [NPQ] will continue to teach the 11th and 12th grade “Issues” classes and will give a high-level Talmud Shiur to the upper class students. He will also continue his efforts to develop the Rav’s (zt”l) and Rabbi Twersky’s (zt”l) teachings for the classroom setting. In addition, Rabbi [NPQ] will provide classes and lectures to the broader Maimonides community.


The School Committee is gratified that Rabbi [NPQ] has accepted this position and looks forward to working with him. Maimonides School has a unique mesorah and hashkafa from the Rav (zt”l) and Rabbi Twersky (zt”l), and it is our goal to see that the School continues to be infused with this hashkafa. This is the first of what we hope will be many new efforts toward this end.


Enjoy the day. We hope that the rain will stop long enough for all of us to celebrate Lag BaOmer outside in the sun!


The School Committee

I see two basic roads of interpretation, which probably ultimately meet:

1-the school was looking for a formal title for an individual who is still highly involved despite having left his previous official positions. they gave him such a title in the form of a standar honorific/powerful role accpeted in other allegedly similar institutions (yeshivot)

2- the school felt a pressing need for a "rosh yeshiva," or a need for some sort of control and/or a need to have someone called "rosh yeshivah" to stay frum, and this individual fit the bill.

...delegated by the School Committee to ensure that all activities of Maimonides School are consistent with halacha and the established hashkafa of the school.

I am extremely curious what this is about. Are they afraid people are not observant enough, or is the concern really along the "hashkafah" lines? i would guess the latter is a big part, given the focus on the rav and rav twersky, which brings us back to the perennial challenge of "modern orthodoxy" (or whatever alias they choose to adopt) of trying, paradoxically, to freeze the world in the "modernity" of decades past...

On the other hand, one might see this as a sincere attempt to preserve the character not of a "movement" but an institution - just as roshei yeshivah in other places tend to (perhaps?) try and carry on the "mesorah" or such of that place, so too , maimonides honestly sees itself as a yeshivah in which the people currently in power should have been very close to the people previously in power to help continue a vision. not frozen in the past but organically connected to it.
maybe, but i still wonder whether adopting terminology favored by the "right vingers" isn't still a surreptitious nod in the "we're-frum-too!" direction. (perhaps not so much for the frummer-than-thous as for the we're-modern-we-don't-have-to-observe-halakhah crew?)

Anyway, I'll quit rambling about it, but I think its interesting, at least to me ;)

~
a question: what (if any) otehr coed-type/college-prep dayschools have a "rosh yeshivah"?


~~
PS - i just noticed i actually had read about this before (on the next-to-last page), i just forgot. i still wonder if the position wasn't created with the candidate in mind. and the focus on "hashkafah" in both write-ups is striking.

support your local immigrant

I'm sure a lot of people have written extensively about all this, placing this post more into the "what I had for (breakfast) [activism] yesterday" category, but whatever...

After a weekend of minor annoyances (eg, losing my phone) and other forms of relaxation (of or pertaining to the modern life of the soul) I went with a drisha compatriot to Union Square yesterday afternoon. There was the expected assortment of middle-of-the-road/liberal/humanist sentiment (from "We just want to pay income taxes," "we work for you, now work with us," to various "what ever happened to 'give me your ...huddled masses...'?"), mildly political ("I didn't cross the border, the border crossed me"), and socialist/internationalist/etc "coalitions" (I for one had forgotten about the existence of ANSWER since I graduated from college) with stickers tht say things like "Bush is the symptom, Capitalism is the Disease, Revolution is the cure."

It seemed that no-one could agree on the pronoun that starts of the slogan "___ pueblo, unido, jamas sera vencido," which was kind of funny. Also funny, in a different way, was the rapper who did a song about immigrants in which he talked about being sent "home." Not necessarily the thing to stress when the theme is "we are america." ;)

The crowd was almost exclusively non-black latino, with the exception of the hatians who appeared more to demonstrate about what goes on in Haiti than here. I wondered how much anyone even tried to organize in non-Spanish-speaking communities. (ISO posters in English, Arabic, and Spanish notwithstanding - which, btw, always strike me as more of a backwards orientalism than any real attmept at connecting with arabs...)

My favorite speaker, of those I heard, was probably the catholic priest ("there are no "undocumented ones" before God"), proving once again that I probably am more of a religious person thanI often think. Maybe I just liked him because he was the one who's spanish i could follow best, but maybe that itself was because he (unlike some other speakers) didn't feel the need to yell unintelligibly just because he had a microphone.

Two 6-7 year old brothers cought on to the "yell about what's important to you" theme and briefly started chanting "No More School."


Today I got one comment of the "you went to _that_ but you couldn't come to the Darfur rally!?" sort (apparently neither the eight hour travel-time differential nor the fact that even more Jews than have suffered genocides have been immigrants is not relevant here...), which was silly for a number of reasons. Perhaps some other time I'll rant about How Orthodox Jews Discovered Non-Israel-Related Political Activism {That Still Lets Those Who Want To Hate Arabs} Without Engaging In Domestic Politics.

Look at me, I think it's ok to post half-formed political opinions.
Maybe I'll improve in Law School...