leil shimurrim

רמב"ן שמות פרק יב פסוק מב

(מב) ואמר ליל שמורים הוא לה' להוציאם מארץ מצרים - כי שמר להם הדבר מן העת שגזר עליהם הגלות שיוציאם בלילה הזה בבא הקץ מיד, כי בעתה אחישנה (ישעיה ס כב). או טעמו, ליל שמורים הוא לה', שהוא שומר ומצפה ללילה שיוציאם מארץ מצרים, שהקב"ה מצפה לעת שיהיו ראויים להוציאם משם:

According to Ramban, Leil Shimurim is either: the specific date God had destined for the redemption, which God then waited for OR: The night that God has been waiting for, when bene Yisrael finally merit redemption.
In the first reading, God sets the trigger and waits for it. In the second, B"Y are directly responsible for the triggering event. [The first is found in the gemara, the second original to Ramban (as far as I know). ] I just thought that was interesting

Wexis bonus

The Jastrow Bonus (aka Jastrow Jackpot, closely related to the Frank Find) is one of those familiar staples we have all grown to love. Lately, as I've been using less Jastrow and more Lexis/Westlaw, I've had a curious thing happen: In the course of a (usually not so fruitful) search, usually of Law Review articles, for something I am working on, I run into something interesting that I want to read and would never have found otherwise.
For example, I ran into a student note by a high school classmate at a different school who wrote on something I had briefly toyed with working on over the summer.
The mechanism of these "bonuses" is different than with Jastrow, but I think it deserves to be canonized anyway. I just need an alliterative name...

superfluous literary allusions are cool

The Lawyering Program starts the year with an exercise in statutory interpretation and rule-formulation dealing with a rule that says "no vehicles in the park." this particular exercise is, it seems, well worn. Nevertheless, the particular pretensions of the lawyering program add a charm, of sorts. The ordinance in question is enacted, we are told, in a New Jersey municipality called Brideshead. The neighboring town, which comes up in later elaborations, is called Macondo Hills. I've been wondering all year whether this means we will, in fact, revisit the exercise at the end of the year. It seems not to be in the curriculum, but someone else had the idea:

"Return to Brideshead: Driving in Wharton Park"
A debate concerning statutory construction, legislative history,
and executive signing statements
presented by the Federalist Society and the American Constitution Society.

much to my chagrin, they managed to miss the obvious title!

some people...

The case of Rushdie is one of inclusion; the process starts with a certain collusion of classes. I am suspicious of class-bias arguments against Rushdie; however, with Rushdie's recent work (I shall except Haroon and the Sea of Stories, whose wonderful flight into fancy is a compensatory withdrawal into the classless imagination) the following argument holds water. He is from middle-class India, and his joining the educated ranks of the West at Cambridge is more a bringing together of taste and class than the development of a contestatory literature. I realize that any attempt to connect his Satanic Verses with his class background (i.e. as an expression of its failure) can be read as a feeble gesture; but it is more often true than not that writers from his class have, as their central focus, their own career in view. At times, this careerist motivation is clothed in the garb of activism, just as it is expressed in pluralism. Yet their literature is not about the larger sphere of activism. There are, of course, exceptions to this essentially weak rule -- but Rushdie is not one of them.
more

i guess i, as people of my class are presumably wont to do, missed something when my major interest in the book was the characters...

on supervision

email from a professor:

This is a long and detailed email. Please make sure you read through all of it.

A few comments & notes on the ICWA 1st Drafts (I have read them):

Format Issues:

1) The Preliminary Statement starts on page 1. Everything before that (ToC/ToA) is small roman numerals. How does one do this? Ask those in class that have done it already or get familiar with Microsoft Word.
...
3) Check the BB rules for citing to Complaints, Answers, Exhibits. Many of you appear to have made up your own rules. There is a reason for the BB. Discover it.

...
Thats it for now. Please enjoy the rest of your break. I have spent the last 5 days reading 28 briefs and commenting on them - I cannot think of a better way to enjoy a week "off."

apparently, someone didn't get the memo: expressing your dissatisfaction with your job to the people you are employed to teach does not motivate them to like your class more. in fact, iot may make them act a lot like you: bitter and unhappy about assignments.

maot hittim

my mother, like many women with houses, thinks the most notable thing about tu bishevat is that it's 2 months before pesah. i, however, have trouble keeping track of it all. So, first. a friendly rmeinded to myself and others to give ma'ot hittim before it's too late.
Last year, i neglected to do so, and ended up scrambling to give to some chareidi organization that took donations online, which put me on the mailing list for an endless stream of sob stories. I have considered posting about this for a while, and always think better of it. I mean, poor people need money, organizations tell sob stories to get it to them. and it's not a crime to write melodrama at a middle school level, even if i personally find it irritating. I have no reason to doubt the honesty of most organizations, though i suspect that many tsedakah organizations, like noprofits (and businesses) in general, could learn a lot re: operations and efficiency. I don't think too hard about not giving htem money because I prefer to give locally. but still, something about these brochurse just drives me bonkers. the passover special from a "widows and orphans" fund was no exception:

cover page: "when their king is gone, who will answer their questions?"
inside:

tall and brave, twirling his black peyo with termbling hands, Shaya begins reciting the Haggadah. He's the man of the house now, and it's up to him to lead the Seder. he's all of sixteen years old, but Mommy and the children are looking at him expectantly, trusting him to guide them through the whole leil shemurim (sic).
...
Four year old Yitzy asks the questions shyly, skipping the standard opening sentence of Tatte... (his rebbe had told him that it wasn't really part of the Mah Nishtanah and could be skipped.)
...
Yom tov brings with it happiness and excitement - but also memories... memories of their father presiding over the Seder table like a king; memories of their mother, glowing like a queenas she served the most delicious meals. the memories hurt; the pour salt on the wounds that have never healed properly and they overtax the victims (sic) strength, leaving them ill equipped to endure the crushing poverty that has become their lot.

I feel like by picking this apart I will end up inadvertently saying bad things about trgic situation, so I'll leave it there, but it seems to me the problem as presented needs a lot of fixing that has nothing to do with money...

ghosts

of course, two weeks after we do our taxes, a W-2 arrives from the board of ed regarding $500-some that I never actually received as part of the retroactive union contract. I actually thought this might happen, but I let myself pretend it wouldn't... arg.

help for the ignorant

why is the first aliyah of Ki Tisa so long? I can see why the whole egel story is in one long (second) aliyah, but why not break up the first aliyah a bit and condense some of the short ones at the end?
all i can think of is that there is soemthing about having the egel be read at Levi - imaginative, but, i suspect, not correct.
i also don't know how to find this out in a methodical way.
thoughts?

of tube sock sleeves and sleep deprivation...

one side-effect of oren not waking up early every day (well, he is, it's just not in this country, but even when he was here and sleeping late...) is oren not going to sleep early. in turn, i have quickly reverted to my unproductive staying-up-way-too-late of yesteryear, and, now as then, in the guise of working on something school related. grrr.

that said, in some of my non-working i stubled upon this via volokh. there are various products that i think would be useful to me that are available only, or most cheaply, on websites that market to muslim women. (on that note, aside from the price differential, what is the difference between an "abaya" or "jilbab" and a "shabbos robe"?) i've never ordered from one, partly because i don't actually need more clothes or headcoverings or such, (though who can resist long arm sleeves?*) . But even if i did, somehow it rubs me the wrong way.
the first issues is the knee-jerk "what if my money is supporting terrorism?," which i think is largely irrational given all the other things i buy without asking questions. the second is that most of these sites have selling points about how great it is to be recognizably muslim, etc, which, well, i don't want to be. so even if i could use an item and still look jewish, i feel weird, like somehow i'm crossing into territory where i don't belong. an analogous test-case might be buying tsniusdik wedding dresses from mormons, which i've heard of more than once. on this note, i am pretty sure i would not be comfortable buying such clothing from a flesh-and-blood "islamic clothing" store. should that impact internet shopping choices? does any of this make sense?

sleepily...

*In Camp Sternberg, people used to make items for similar purposes out of tube socks. I guess camp is a little less formal...