| RaceFail II: The Wrath Of Cohen |
[Feb. 11th, 2009|08:46 am] |
Let me speak only for myself to start with.
Over the Recent Race Kerfluffle, where it became abundantly clear that, among other things, things are messy, people have been living with pain unrecognized outside of their communities for their whole lives, and people often don't understand each other, one thing that was brought up was the idea of white people trying to claim non-white status, for whatever reason, and in whatever way.
Speaking for myself: I sat on my hands for that. And now am not.
Because it's totally true that I have White Privilege. And I don't want to diminish the challenges that people who don't have that, who ARE visible minorities, face, challenges that I don't face. I don't want to make it all about MEMEMEMEME!, because it's not. And the things I deal with are very different than people whose skin colors, face shapes, or speech patterns are different than the majority in the area that they live.
I have White Privilege, I consciously USE it, even. But I don't feel "white". I feel like "The Other". I just feel like I hide it.
Other Jews have been posting about things that RaceFail made them consider -- I don't think any of these people are saying, "We have the SAME experience as black people, or Asians, or whatever." In the United States, we're not legally discriminated against. Being Jewish doesn't block us from marrying whom we choose, unlike some other "invisible", or semi-visible, minorities. We're not generally blocked from education, or jobs, or public life.
Here are three of the posts of people poking around at how being Jewish interacts with the topics brought up during RaceFail:
http://rosefox.livejournal.com/1452657.html
http://abyssinia4077.livejournal.com/274444.html
http://fjm.livejournal.com/728228.html
And yet . . . we don't take our lack-of-significant-oppressedness for granted.
These past fifty years or so, in the United States, have been good. Like under Alexander, some of the times under the Roman Empire, a fair portion of the Caliphate.
But I think many of us consider this to be just part of the way the world goes. Right now is good. That doesn't mean that things will always be good. Hamas or other anti-Zionist organizations will, eventually, get enough friends that people will decide that the Jews don't have any right to Israel -- after all, the Jews killed the Canaanites to get the land, the Canaanites are the Phoenicians, and the Phoenicians are the Palestinians, so they get the right to the land, and the Jews should be kicked out. And, when that happens, the worldwide backlash will include more violence against Jews, and that may well happen within my lifetime, which is one of the reasons my wife and I can shoot, do everything we can to maintain friendly relationships with our neighbors, and think about having skills that are portable in case we have to run.
Because we have White Privilege. But privileges can be granted, and can be revoked. And history is NOT a smooth march toward equality. There are better times, and worse times. Worse times will come, and those who have ANY mark of difference must be prepared for them, even if "worse times" are not NOW.
Who is white? In the United States, right now, Jews, Irish, Italians, and Poles are all white.
But Italians are not white in North Linconshire in England right now. Their "whiteness" was revoked. "British jobs for British workers".
I've got people on my friendslist who can testify to just how tenuous the Irish hold on "whiteness" is in England.
I'm white. Right now. But I'm deeply aware that that could change with really no more than a few months' warning. And that affects how I look at the world. |
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| Cool thing learned about Merchant of Venice |
[Nov. 18th, 2008|10:50 pm] |
Crossposted to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) bard_in_boston and weirdjews
An interesting thing I learned at the Actors' Shakespeare Project Conversations about the play:
There are good things and bad things about having a Jew playing Shylock in Merchant of Venice. The bad thing is that religious Jews read texts that they care about with the same care and introspection that they bring to the Torah, which, I believe, is entirely inappropriate for Shakespeare, which was written by a human.
The good thing . . . Jeremiah Kissel is a ba'al koreh for his shul . . . and, a couple weeks ago, found the name "Shylock" in the Torah.
See, we've all assumed that "Shylock" was just a name that Shakespeare made up out of whole cloth. But Kissel was reading Parshat Noach . . . and found, in Genesis 11:12, "When Arpachshad had lived 35 years, he begot Shelah".
In Hebrew, that name is שָׁלַח -- a better transliteration would be "Shelakh". Which would go into English as "Shylock".
Jeremiah Kissel solved one of the ongoing niggling mysteries of Shakesperian scholarship -- where the hell the name "Shylock" comes from. Of course, it raises a NEW niggling mystery, of how the heck Shakespeare was AWARE of this name -- in English translations of the time, the closest I can find is the spelling "Shelah" in the Geniva Bible -- the other translations put it "Sale", which is even farther away.
One mystery potentially solved, an even more interesting mystery opened. That's the way it goes, right? |
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| How I spent my Yom Kippur, and What I Found Out |
[Oct. 10th, 2008|10:36 pm] |
So, Lis and I usually just go to services in the morning on Yom Kippur, and don't leave all day.
Basically, roughly speaking, services on Yom Kippur go in three chunks. You've got stuff at nightfall, when it begins. Then you go home and sleep, and come back for the morning section, and the Torah reading, and the service to remember dead friends and family, and the service to remember martyrs, and the service to remember how we Used To Do Yom Kippur Sacrifices Back In The Good Ole Days When We Had A Temple.
Then there's a break. If you have kids, that's a good time to take them home and feed them. And you come back for the afternoon service, the closing service, the evening service, and finishing off the day.
During the break, most people go home to rest. But some people don't.
In most communities I've been in, during the break, you find people resting in shul -- a couple people sacked out on benches; maybe someone asleep on the bima, or in the classrooms -- you've basically got people stretching out wherever there's a reasonably comfortable piece of floor or chair, and taking it easy until it's time to pray again.
Now, Lis, of course, gets her superpowers from libraries. The bigger and more impressive the library is, the more power she gets from them, but ANY library will recharge and energize her. And, downstairs in the shul is a room where we have books, and a card catalog system, and a sign saying "Library."
It's not a BIG library, but it's enough for Lis's superpowers to work. So, we just sacked out there, so Lis could soak up enough energy to make it through the fast.
She spent the afternoon reading various Jewish books from the library; I'd brought Lis's Tanakh from home.
( Read more... ) |
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| Three of our neighbors just dropped by |
[Sep. 30th, 2007|06:31 pm] |
To use the sukkah. So we got to meet three neighbors -- who are Jewish and live in town, but their oldest son is having his bar mitzvah tutoring at our shul in Somerville! Small world, eh?
Nice folks, seems like, and pretty much what we were hoping for when we put up the sign. |
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| I yelled at my class today |
[Sep. 30th, 2007|02:06 pm] |
And then lectured them about lashon ha-ra.
I feel vaguely guilty about yelling and lecturing, but I'd feel a lot worse if I hadn't taken some action about students hurting each other's feelings.
I just don't know if I handled it right. One student wrote something that could be construed as hurtful about another student in zir notebook. A second student looked over zir shoulder, read it, and called the student about which it was about over to also see it, who saw it, grabbed the page of the notebook, and crumpled it up. Only the last part of this was obvious, so I yelled at the third student. Who was more upset by this than zie usually is when I yell at zir, so I knew that something else was up, and found out the rest of the story.
I told them that all three of them had done things wrong, but that they weren't of the same magnitude. I said that writing hurtful things in one's own notebook is bad, but that, as it wasn't intended to be seen by anyone, and therefore wasn't intended to hurt anyone, that is mitigating. So it's bad, but not SO bad. I said that grabbing someone else's notebook and crumpling the page was absolutely unacceptable. But that the person who had done the worst thing was the second student. Because that was lashon ha-ra.
And I lectured them about that. And how we, in the classroom, are a community, and lashon ha-ra damages communities. You don't have to LIKE everyone in your community, but you ARE a community. And avoiding lashon ha-ra is one of the ways you preserve communities.
The three students looked abashed and ashamed at their actions, and the rest of the class looked intent and somewhat worried. And at the end of the lecture, I asked if we were all willing to, in a sense, pretend that this whole situation hadn't happened. That, to repair our community, we had to forgive each other, which, in this case, would mean trying to remember the lessons, but forgetting the incident as much as we could.
They all agreed that they would like to move past the whole thing and pretend it never happened. I did try to be certain that all of them knew that, if they DIDN'T feel comfortable moving on, we could still work on it, but they were all embarrassed by it and wanted to just have it over and gone, so we did.
I still don't know if I did the right thing. I think I did an okay thing, but I don't know if I was right.
It's hard to know if one was fair. It's hard to know if one was correct.
Was I right that crumpling up the page was more wrong that writing the page? Was I right that calling attention to the page was more wrong than either writing it, or destroying it? I don't really know. I THINK I was at least close enough to right, but I'm not certain, and am still feeling guilty and unsettled. But I would feel MORE guilty and unsettled if I HADN'T done something like that. I'm responsible, in part, for my kids' moral and ethical development, and for their emotional health. |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 28th, 2007|01:32 pm] |
Our sukkah is gorgeous, and the weather is unseasonably nice right now, so eating outside in it is practical and pleasant.
Sukkot is a holiday of rejoicing, so I'd like to invite anyone who's stressed out to come by to sit in it and de-stress. If I'm around, I can lend you our lulav and etrog to shake if you like, or, if it's close to a mealtime, I'll make you a sandwich or something. But even if I'm not, it's really just a nice spot to sit and think and relax.
Especially if you're stressed and/or depressed like a lot of us are. You are all welcome.
I need to figure out a better way to attach the big sign I wrote up and stapled to the outside of the sukkah, facing the street. It fell down again.
It says,This is our "Sukkah" for the Jewish holiday of "Sukkot", as described in Lev. 23:33-44 (. . . ) "And you shall REJOICE before the LORD". If you would like to celebrate with us, or have any questions, ring the top doorbell. Guests are an important part of the holiday!" |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 16th, 2007|01:33 pm] |
Lis noticed that, in two years, Talk Like a Pirate day will fall on Rosh Hashana.
When we informed my parents of this, my mother, who typically runs High Holiday Services at her community, got very thoughtful and said, "Remind me of that a month before, because I'm not going to remember, and it ought not pass without recognition."
My father thought a moment, and said, "Arrr! Who by cannon, and who by cutlass. Who by scurvy, and who by walkin' tha plank. . . " |
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| I just learned what was done with Haman's body after he was executed` |
[Mar. 2nd, 2007|11:43 am] |
They ate him.
It's right in the Bible: Exodus 16:35
וּבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל, אָכְלוּ אֶת-הַמָּן
U-vinei Yisrael ochlu et Haman.
U-Vinei (And the children) Yisrael (of Israel) Ochlu (they ate) et (a not-really-a-word that says that the next word is the direct object of the sentence) Haman. |
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| Dang. Do we gotta make nice to the Hasmoneans this year? |
[Mar. 1st, 2007|01:11 am] |
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) goljerp just pointed out that Purim is on a Saturday night/Sunday this year.
Which means that it starts after sundown, on Saturday.
Which means that the 13th of Adar is Shabbat. Which means that the Fast of Esther is pushed back to the 12th of Adar. Which means that the 13th is Yom Nicanor.
I hate Yom Nicanor. I much prefer the Fast of Esther.
(Quick recap: Alexander the Great dies. His empire falls into bits. Each of those bits is still "Greek" in culture, but is its own little thingy. One of the Greek-Flavor Mini-Empires was the Selucid Empire, based in Syria, and the dynasty that was in charge of that chunk at the time of our story were a bunch of guys named Antiochus. Antiochus IV had, for a number of reasons that seemed like a good idea at the time, invaded Israel/Judea to find their weapons of mass destruction and depose their dictator. They didn't have weapons of mass destruction, OR a dictator, so they decided it was high time they made both, and they did. The Syrian army marched in and captured Jerusalem, where they were greeted as liberators. And then a fundamentalist cleric from one of the rural villages became the leader of an insurgency. His sons act as warlords, but, of course, they can't stand up to the Syrians in combat, largely because, back in Antioch, most of the people are driving around in their giant carts with yellow ribbons saying "SUPPORT OUR TROOPS" on them. That, however, doesn't keep the insurgency from killing the Syrians piecemeal. However, the insurgents DO manage to win one battlefield engagement, on the 13th of Adar, against the Selucid general "Nicanor". And then the fundamentalist clerics declare that Adar 13 will be known as "Yom Nicanor" forevermore, to remind people of when they kicked Selucid butt. After the Selucids left, the fundamentalist cleric's family became the new dictators, since they didn't have dictators before, and they did the kind of good, careful, and just management of the country that you expect from religious fundamentalist dictators. This, of course, made Yom Nicanor deeply embarrassing to the non-fundamentalist religious leaders who came later, and who instituted a fast day on Adar 13, to wipe out the embarrassment of Yom Nicanor. Of course, about one in every seven years, that fast day lands on the Sabbath, and you can't have minor fast days on the Sabbath, so the fast day moves -- and once it moves, BANG! there's Yom Nicanor.) |
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| My latest Purim Shpeil |
[Feb. 16th, 2007|03:55 pm] |
Okay, I was supposed to have done this earlier this week, but I finally finished it. If anyone wants to read it and critique it, I'd appreciate it. Please make any suggestions you have.
( The schpeil I just wrote ) |
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| (no subject) |
[Jan. 8th, 2007|12:19 am] |
Oh, and having thought about it, I think I got the story of the four rabbis wrong: one died, one went insane, one became a heretic, and Akiva came out unscathed. Mier wasn't part of the project.
And I think I'm getting the details from a work of fiction: Milton Steinberg's amazingly mindblowingly brilliant book As a Driven Leaf. Which is a brilliant piece of historical fiction, in which Steinberg takes the, like, four pieces of information we know about ben Abuyah, and turns him into a fully-realized character.
Frankly, I think that future generations could do worse than to declare that a divinely-inspired work, and put it into the Bible. Various people tried to excommunicate Steinberg for writing the thing, which is always a good sign. |
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| Jokes and co-workers and being Jewish, and why it's fun |
[Dec. 8th, 2006|02:16 am] |
So, I'm totally not "in the closet" about being Jewish at work. I'm a function bartender, and when we function bartenders and waitstaff are talking and getting to know each other, one of the basic questions that we ask is, "So, what ELSE do you do?" 'Cause most of us have other jobs, or school, or something. A fair number of folks basically do waitstaff stuff, but twenty hours for this temp agency, and thirty hours for that hotel, and another ten or twenty hours made up of whatever they pick up.
(By the way, if you're a congresscritter who's bitching about having to work five days a week at, y'know, Congress, note that that adds up to sixty or seventy hours a week, and no benefits, like health care. Just think about that -- that's an entire class of Americans, and that's considered normal. Some of them make sure to take time off once a week to go to church. Many of them have children. Those children tend to have two parents who love them very much, and would be more involved with them and their schoolwork and stuff -- except BOTH parents are working -- one sixty or seventy hours a week, and one twenty to forty, with no benefits. At that, they can probably pay rent on a crappy apartment, deal with some emergencies, and get enough food for them and their children, but can't save for retirement or college for their kids, and can't really pay for health care. Just think about if that's what you want your country to be. But that's not the point of this. Sorry for getting diverted. It's just that it's IMPOSSIBLE to not be political when you deal with people. 'Cause, y'know, that's what "politics" means -- "people". There are lots of different opinions about how things could and should be changed, but the one thing that it's impossible to do is to have NO opinion when this is directly about your life, and the lives of your friends, family, and co-workers. Like, the main reason I'm against crackdowns on illegal immigrants? Because I have worked with them, and like them, and they're cool people, and great to work with, and I want them HERE in the USA, where I can work with them and where they make the country better. The political is always personal.)
Anyway, my point is that you have the conversations, about "what else do you do when you're not waiting tables/tending bar/whatever". Some folks are college students, some folks are parents and are the primary caregivers of their children, some folks have other jobs, some folks are college students and have children and have other jobs (they're the ones with the dark circles under their eyes that NEVER go away). Me, I tell folks that this is my main job, and I teach Hebrew school on Sundays. So everyone knows I'm Jewish. Which is cool.
So, today, I was hanging out in the kitchen of the MIT Sloan Center Faculty Club, and the dishwasher turns to me. He's, I guess, maybe forty, maybe fifty or so -- could be younger with a rough life, could be older and aged well, dunno. I think he's from Chile or somewhere in that area -- he looks like he's got a little Indian blood in him somewhere, as well as Hispanic, and there's something about his face that just says "Andes" to me. He speaks perfectly reasonable English, although his accent is thick enough that you have to listen.
So, he says, "Hey, Rabbi." I grin and say, "Yep?" "I got a joke, about a rabbi and a Catholic priest."
Turned out it was one I know, but it's one of my favorites, so I didn't have to fake a laugh.
You know the one. I'm going to tell it about the way he did. 'Cause I liked his delivery.
A rabbi and a priest are friends, and one day, they're talking. The priest says, "So, rabbi, your laws say you can't have pork, right?"
"Yes."
"Well, you ever, you know, once in a while, go and have some?"
(Here, he kind of looks around, over both shoulders like he's checking for anyone listening.)
"Well, yes, once in a while, nobody's around, I'm in another town, maybe I'll have some pork, some ham, something."
"It's good, yes?"
"Yes. Well, your rules say you can't, you know, have any business with a woman, right?"
"That's true, yes."
"So? Do you?"
(He looks around, just like before.)
"Well, every once in a while, maybe, yes."
"Better than ham, eh?"
Why do I like that joke so much?
Well, in this case, because it was a Latino/Indian Catholic telling it to an Anglo/European Jew, in the kitchen of a function hall, while we were killing time and working together. That's why. |
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| On translations for the word "tzedakah" |
[Dec. 2nd, 2006|10:22 am] |
The word "tzedakah", in Hebrew, is often translated as "charity", which I hate. The connotations of the two words are totally different. "Tzedakah" is an obligation -- something you do because you have to; "charity" is something that you do because you are a good and kind person.
I realized a word that I like better in English to mean "tzedakah". I like the word "tithe". People who give charity do so because they want to. People who tithe do so because they have to. You can grumble about tithing all you want, just the same way as you grumble about having to pay taxes. But you still have to do it.
And that's the way "tzedakah" works.
So that's what I like. "Tzedakah" approximately equals "tithe". Instead of "charity". |
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| One of the cool things about Sukkot |
[Oct. 20th, 2006|11:38 am] |
So, I just went to the convenience store across the street to get a drink of juice (I have plenty of juice in the house, but I saw that Fonzi, the owner, was in, and I wanted to buy something and say hi), and he asked me whether Anna had put that thing up in my front yard for grapes or something, and I said that, no, I'd done that for a Jewish holiday. There were two other customers in the store at the same time, and they had both been wondering what it was, too, so I gave them the one-sentence summary ("Two thousand years ago, everyone would go to Jerusalem for the Jewish new year, but there was another holiday like a week or so later, so, instead of everybody going back home, they'd just put up those things and live in 'em for a week, and so we do that to remember it. 'Course, if you're in the Mediterranean, you can actually live in 'em -- around here it's a little cold for that, so it's more symbolic. But when I was a little kid, I'd sometimes get my sleeping bag and camp out in it, but I'm a little old for that these days.")
One of the folks said that he used to know a rabbi down on one of the streets around here that would do that, and I told 'em all that, next year, when I put the thing up again, feel free to ring my doorbell and I'll feed them, 'cause we're supposed to have guests over for it.
I like living in a neighborhood. I like having neighbors. I like being able to do weird Jewish things and have people ask me about them. It feels good, y'know? Our town has Anglicans, Baptists, Catholics, Unitarians, Congregationalists, Jews, Pagans, atheists, and all sorts of folks, so I feel comfortable talking about being Jewish. If you live around here, you've got to be more-or-less cool with other kinds of folks. Fonzi is, I think, a Lebanese-born Christian, although I'm not sure about either of those parts, and he's got no real problem with Jews, Muslims, Anglos, or anything.
The other thing I notice, and this is kind of unrelated to my first point, but I've been thinking about it for a couple days, anyway: I do religion because I like it. This is good, because it means that I've got no problem if other people DON'T like doing religion. If I didn't like my religion, but did it anyway, I'd be doing it because I felt I had to, and I'd get kind of put out of other people didn't do religion.
But, for me, I like religion, and I like role-playing-games, and, if you don't like doing religion, that bothers me exactly as much, and for exactly the same reasons, as if you don't like playing role-playing games. Which is to say, "not in the slightest," and "why should it?" |
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| The Ten Days of Repentance |
[Sep. 25th, 2006|11:41 pm] |
So, the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are for dealing with open issues interpersonally.
The biggest part of this is apologizing for things that you've done wrong, and trying to make amends.
But, it's really more general than that, I think. I think it's a time to work on any relationship that is having problems and imbalances.
Right now, I know of one relationship which I have with someone with big, glaring open issues. And it's been open for YEARS. And I'm STILL not figuring out how to fix this and make it work. To you, Kiralee, I say that I'm still not doing well at working towards making things work, but I haven't stopped trying to stumble towards some sort of resolution. I don't know how to fix things, and things are awkward, and I'm sorry about that. And this is not going to be fixed before Yom Kippur. And I'm sorry about that. But I'm going to continue to try to figure out ways to stumble haltingly in the right direction.
That one relationship, I know about. And it's precisely the sort of thing that one is SUPPOSED to work on in these ten days, and I can't. I'm sorry.
There are other relationships which are changing and growing and figuring out their place -- those are fine. As far as I can see, they don't need to be pushed or resolved or anything like that -- if we are becoming friends, or figuring out what kind of friends we are, or anything like that, and you are comfortable with how the relationship is growing, then so am I.
But -- if you and I have some sort of relationship which has a breach, or a roughness, or a disharmony of some sort, these days are a time to try to work on it. If I have hurt you, that is a disharmony, and please tell me, so we can try to figure out a way that we can fix it. If I have insulted you, please tell me, so I can try to apologize.
If I have unhonored commitments to you, remind me of them. That is a disharmony. And if it is not too late to honor them, I can try to. And if it is. . . I can see if there is a way to make amends.
If we have unanswered questions, confusions, or unclearness in our relationship, these days are a chance to clarify them, to define them, to understand them.
So, please. If there is a disharmony in our relationship, let me know. You can comment here, or email me at ian@io.com. If you know me in the flesh, you can talk to me face-to-face, or telephone me. I can't promise that I can fix things. But I'd like to try. |
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| A followup to the letter I sent about the Bat Mitzvah |
[Sep. 13th, 2006|11:43 am] |
Hi Ian,
I appreciate the thoughtfulness and consideration inherent in your email
below. As Executive Director, I too am concerned about what we have been
seeing in Bnai Mitzvah celebrations. We don't want to encourage this
either.
I have asked our Executive Committee to delegate a task force to more firmly
outline what is permissible at a temple function so that both members of our
community, and others, like yourself, who participate here in one way or
another are not made to feel as you did on Saturday night.
Again, I appreciate your reaching out to us.
[REDACTED]
Executive Director
Temple [REDACTED] |
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| Tending bar on Saturday night |
[Sep. 11th, 2006|09:05 pm] |
Friday, I tended bar for an event at MIT; tending bar at the Sloan Center is always weird, because they've got the weirdest system of inventory management and alcohol setup: bartender's choice. Every other place I've ever worked, the event planner and the event holder jointly choose what will be served at the bar; at MIT Sloan Center, if there's a full bar, the rule is just "Go into the liquor closet and grab what you think people will want, and keep track of it." I guess it's pretty fun, but it's weird. Oh, and they lack some things that I consider basics, like Jack Daniels. They won't buy the stuff -- their bourbon is Wild Turkey. No idea why.
Anyway, on to Saturday night. It was a bat mitzvah, but not through Bruce. I like to think that, had Bruce been in charge, it wouldn't have been like that.
Here's a copy of the email I sent to the Temple:
I was one of the people working at [REDACTED]'s bat mitzvah celebration this past Saturday.
It was an example of the kinds of excesses that I had heard about in the past, but had never seen at any bar or bat mitzvah celebration.
Booze luges are inappropriate at a bat mitzvah celebration, and, indeed, at a Temple except possibly during Purim.
And go-go dancers are significantly beyond the pale.
Several of us who were working the event were shocked and dismayed at the event. While the dancers were perfectly nice people, this was not an event at which they should have been working.
If the [REDACTED] family did not have a basic comprehension of what constitutes appropriate behavior, as, evidently, they did not, I believe that the rest of the community should have taken action and not allowed such a shonda. Several of the people working were Jewish, and, although they did not make us ashamed to be Jewish, the [REDACTED]s certainly made us ashamed that they
were Jewish. We found ourselves having to explain repeatedly to our co-workers that they were not typical examples of Judaism.
While a celebration of a bat mitzvah should be a simcha, this party was something else entirely.
Such an event reflects badly not only on their family, not only on your community as a whole, but would have reflected badly on the entire am Yisrael, had those of us who are Jewish not explained how abberant the [REDACTED]s' actions were.
If anyone at the Temple, including the [REDACTED]s, would like to contact me to communicate further about this, this email address is usually the best way, but I am also available by telephone at [REDACTED].
Thank you for your time;
- Ian Osmond
There were other examples of excess, as well, of course, but those weren't worth getting into in an email. And, really, the the bat mitzvah's best friends reading a three-page poem they'd written about how much of a slut she was, that wasn't really the family's fault. |
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| For those of you who are unclear on the "number of the Beast" thing |
[Jun. 6th, 2006|07:08 pm] |
[This isn't a humor post, or a political post. This is a history/theology geeking post. Just so's y'all know what to expect.]
First off, as you all know, the Number of the Beast is "616", not "666" -- the whole "666" thing is a transcription error. The earliest versions of the Book of Revelations have "616".
Second, as you all know, in Hebrew, every letter also has an associated numerical value, and Hebrew numerology is based around the numerical values of words.
| Hebrew Letter | Value | Name | English Approximation of Sound |
| א | 1 | Aleph | Silent |
| ב | 2 | Bet | B or V |
| ג | 3 | Gimmel | G (historically, also could sound as j) |
| ד | 4 | Dalet | D (historically, could also sound as djz) |
| ה | 5 | Hay | H |
| ו | 6 | Vav | V, or oo, or oh (historically, sounded as "w", "oo", or "oh", and was called "waw") |
| ז | 7 | Zayin | Z |
| ח | 8 | Chet | kh (as in "Bach") |
| ט | 9 | Tet | T |
| י | 10 | Yod | Y |
| כ | 20 | Kaf | K or kh |
| ל | 30 | Lamed | L |
| מ | 40 | Mem | M |
| נ | 50 | Nun | N |
| ס | 60 | Samekh | S |
| ע | 70 | Ayin | Silent, basically |
| פ | 80 | Pay | P or F |
| צ | 90 | Tzade | ts, as in "pizza" |
| ק | 100 | Kuf | K or Q (a little more gutteral than K) |
| ר | 200 | Resh | R, more or less |
| ש | 300 | Shin | Sh or S |
| ת | 400 | Tav | T, T or S in some dialects, T or Th historically |
As an aside, I find it interesting that, historically, the following letters had two sounds:
Bet, B and V (no English equivalent of which I know)
Gimmel, G and J (the English letter "g" maintains both sounds)
Dalet, D and djz as in the French "gendarme" (no English equivalent that I know of)
Kof, K and Kh
Pay, P and Ph
Shin, S and Sh
Tav, T and Th
So, a fair number of the Hebrew two-sound letters made it into English. . .
Anyway, that's not what I'm posting about.
The Book of Revelations is clear that "616" refers to a person's name. So you need to find a name, or name and title, which adds up to 616.
How about קסר נרו ? That's 50+200+6 + 100+60+200 = 616. What are the English equivalents of those letters? NRV QSR. Of course, that "V" may be a "W", a "U" or an "O", and we need to add vowels.
NRO QSR. NeRO CaeSaR.
Hard to argue with that one. Emperor Nero pretty much deserved the title of "the Beast", and, for that matter, was the Emperor when the Book of Revelations was written.
So, my point is to just plain relax about the Book of Revelations. We KNOW what the "number of the Beast" is, and who it refers to, and why. It's not a great End-Times Mystery or anything. |
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| Easter dinner on Pesach. |
[Apr. 16th, 2006|08:28 pm] |
So, as a lot of you know, I come from an intermarriage. Okay, both my parents are Jewish now, but that's pretty recent. Dad's family isn't Jewish, and so Easter dinner was today.
You know, for not being Jewish, the non-Jewish part of my family does a pretty good job of accommodating us Jews.
We showed up at my Uncle Walter and Aunt Diane's house in Bolton, about an hour away from our house, at about 11:30. It was pretty small -- just Diane, Walter, two of their four children (Erica and Meghan -- Liz is in Barcelona, and I forgot to ask where Stephen was), my Uncle Bob, my grandparents on that side -- Papa Ralph and Nonie Grace, my father, and Lis and me.
Of course, one of the main courses was the traditional ham, but Diane also made a salmon fillet with dill and lemon for folks who keep kosher. There were two quiches which weren't Peasadich, but there was a potato pancake thing, sort of like a flat kugel or a giant latke, that was -- and was delicious. There was a stewed cherry tomatoes and onions thing that was fantastic, and asparagus.
Dessert included a cheesecake and cream puffs (from Costco -- they're really good) -- not kosher for Passover -- and grapes and strawberries with sour cream and brown sugar to dip them in -- kosher for Passover.
Dad, Lis, and I had no trouble finding plenty to eat. And it was amazingly good, too.
So, that's my father's side of the family. I like them. |
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| That was so much fun!!! |
[Apr. 13th, 2006|12:27 am] |
So, we had a seder at our house.
I've got to say, we had a WONDERFUL group of people. I had such a great time, because we had such wonderful guests.
The seder was very simple -- we led out of the Maxwell House haggadah, with occasional snippets from other haggadot. The plan was to start at 7 and finish at 10; we actually started closer to 7:30 and went until 11:30. Which, for Jews, is pretty good.
We would have gone later if people didn't have to do things like sleep and go to work in the morning and stuff like that. I would have loved to keep that whole group of people at our house until 4 in the morning hanging out and singing songs and stuff. But I think several of them would have had their eyeballs explode from lack of sleep if we'd done that. And that would have been bad.
We rushed the post-eating part of the seder, as is all-but traditional, but we actually managed to DO it. Okay, so we did Birkat through Nirtzah in about five minutes flat -- but we DID it.
The food was pretty good. I SUCK at timing things, ("Well, Lis said that the roast would take about three hours, so I should put it in at about five. I put it in at three, to cook for five hours.") but the roast turned out fine, anyway -- I cooked it by thermometer, and turned the oven down to keep-warm once it was to temp. And I guess I didn't dry it out too much, since juices were SQUIRTING out of it when it was cut.
Here's what went wrong with the cooking:
1. With the chicken soup, I used white pepper instead of black pepper. I discovered that I don't like white pepper.
2. I forgot to make soup carrots.
3. The matzah balls were tough enough to require knife and fork to cut -- I don't actually know HOW I made them that dense, but they had a measurable gravitational field.
4. I screwed up the timing on the veal roast. However, I don't know if I can really count this one as a problem, since the roast came out fine, anyway.
5. Again, because of timing, the spinach pie was VERY dried-out.
6. The torte I made for dessert was kind of lopsided and looked weird.
Here's what went right with the cooking:
1. Everything else.
There were a few dishes I'd intended to make but didn't get around to -- sauteed green peppers and garlic, a stuffing for the turkey. But given that we (as anticipated) have more than 50% leftovers (this is deliberate: the plan was to cook for the seder and not have to cook again for the rest of the week), I don't suppose that anyone went TOO hungry. |
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| So, we're gonna have a seder. |
[Mar. 28th, 2006|06:41 pm] |
Lis and I, having had two people mention that they were looking for seders, have decided that, what the heck, we're gonna have a seder this year, for first night.
So, who needs a first night seder? Replies are screened, so that you can reply without anyone having to know that you're still looking for a spot.
We've got service for eight, there are two of us, two people have already asked, and vonbeck automatically gets a spot if he wants it, 'cause he shares the dining room with us. So, is there anyone else who's looking?
It's gonna be a) fleish, and b) pretty simple -- a Maxwell House seder, if that makes sense -- bog-standard, real simple.
If you need a place,
1) any dietary restrictions I should know about? (It will be kosher.) Vegetarian is going to be difficult to accommodate, because it will be a meat meal; gluten-free will be tough, too, but I may be willing to give it a shot. (Low-gluten matzah exists, and is AWFUL. It's oat-based. And it doesn't hold together very well, because it's low gluten.) But I'm willing to make the attempt.
2) What time could you be to our house? We're in Melrose; there's a commuter rail station right down the hill from us; the closest T stop is Oak Grove, two and a half miles from our house -- it's walkable, but there are also a couple buses that go from there to pretty much in front of our house. Normally, I'd offer to pick people up at Oak Grove, and I can certainly drive people back, but I'm gonna be busy in the "before" part.
3) What time would you need the seder to be over? It's a Wednesday night, and not everyone can take Thursday off. And, anyway, some people turn into pumpkins at 9 or 10 at night or whatever.
4) Do you have cat allergies? The cat normally doesn't go downstairs much, but she IS allowed to. And if you come upstairs, where I'm going to be cooking, and where the bathroom is, there's cat dander.
5) Wanna come over early and help me cook/set table/whatever else?
Edited to Add: One important caveat. Lis's grandmother is very sick. There is a non-zero chance that she will die right before Pesach. If this happens, the whole thing is off as we are going to go out to Chicago for the funeral. |
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| Some notes on Purim |
[Mar. 14th, 2006|11:51 pm] |
First, Lis was, unfortunately, wiped out, so didn't come with me. So I went to shul by myself. As Lis couldn't wear the costume I made for her, I wore it instead.
I took an old t-shirt, and drew on it the chemical structures of 3-methylbutyl acetate, octyl butrate, pentyl acetate, methypropyl butate, pentyl butyrate, and a couple other molecule chains of the same family, along with the general formula of
R - C=O
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OR'
Which doesn't look good 'cause I don't know how to do the HTML pretty for chemical structures.
I wore a crown, and, for added verisimilitude, my Mad Scientists Local 42 logo lab coat.
Then I challenged people to guess which Purim character I was.
A good half-dozen or dozen people got it.
( Some pictures and more notes within ) |
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| As many of you know, I hate Hannukah |
[Dec. 9th, 2005|09:44 pm] |
So I've been looking for things I could like about Hannukah -- ways to redefine it, make it something OTHER than a simple "yay our repressive theocracy killed their repressive theocracy."
As usual, I discovered that the Rabbis got there first.
When Adam [the first human] noticed that the days were getting shorter, he said: "Is the world becoming darker because of my sins? Will it soon return to chaos? And this is what God meant when He punished me with mortality?" He prayed and fasted for eight days. When the period prior to the winter solstice arrived, he saw that the days were now growing longer. He realized: This is the way of the world. Adam then made eight days of celebration. (Talmud Avodah Zarah 8a)
That's something I can get behind much more easily. |
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| Okay. So you've all heard about Elizabeth Brook's Bat Mitzvah party? |
[Dec. 3rd, 2005|11:40 pm] |
Elizabeth Brook's father is David H. Brooks, a defense contractor who made hundreds of millions of dollars selling sub-par body armor to the United States Army.
Her Bar Mitzvah included Aerosmith, Tom Petty, Kenny G, and 50 Cent as acts. It cost an estimated $10,000,000.
He also stiffed the help, paying them HALF what he agreed to. As Susan Felber realized, her brother, who barbacked the event, made less money for 44 HOURS of work than any one of the guests got in their goodie bags.
My question: can we find out what shul David H. Brooks goes to, and do we have any connections to the rabbi of that shul -- and can we have that rabbi issue a cherem against Mr. Brooks?
(As one comedienne commented, "At the kiddush, Mr. Brooks drank a large glass of the blood of Christian children, just to make certain that he didn't miss any potential offensive stereotypes.")
There comes a level of crudity that turns into a . . . well, the only word that comes to mind is shonda. I mean, no word in English seems to have the emotional impact.
And I think that this is a case where the Jewish community as a whole has to stand up and say that we don't stand for 1) selling substandard body armor to the army of our own country, 2) stiffing the help, or 3) turning a celebration of a religious event into a FUCKING LAUGHINGSTOCK OF OVER-THE-TOP CONSUMERISM. I mean, I can't even find a word in YIDDISH to express what this. . . THING is. "Ungepatch" is far, far to kind. "Shonda fur di goyim" is certainly a part of the problem -- when you act THIS badly, THIS obviously, in ways that reinforce preexisting negative stereotypes, well, that's what the phrase "shonda fur di goyim" is for. But, hell, he'd deserve a cherem even if this happened entirely within the Jewish community.
So: how do we go about contacting his community and issuing a cherem? I doubt HE'D care much -- I doubt he goes to shul. But I think it would send an important message to the world: this isn't who we are. |
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| Shavuot |
[Jun. 13th, 2005|08:04 am] |
As a good portion of my friends list is aware, it's the Jewish holiday of Shavuot. On Shavuot, one eats dairy foods, and, ideally, stays up all night studying Torah. I didn't manage to do this, 'cause I was tired.
Lis and I managed to move back into our apartment yesterday!
Okay, the place is still a mess, but it's almost marginally habitable. The downstairs isn't, and won't be for months. But we've got our bed back, which is REAL nice.
Temple B'Nai Brith, where I teach Hebrew School, and the Tremont Street Shul, where like 80% of my friends go, decided to do stuff together this year. There was a dinner at TBB, with some study sessions, and then, at 9:00, everyone who wanted to could troop over to Tremont Street to continue studying until five in the morning, and then go back to TBB for breakfast, and morning prayers.
The only part I showed up for was the dinner, and helping run the kids' stuff at TBB during the study sessions. Then I just went home instead of going over to Tremont Street.
None of my friends from Tremont showed up at TBB, which disappointed me. I'd hoped to see folks.
The kids' program I helped with was fun. It reminded me of the birthday hunts which my family does.
Each team of kids got a clue. The clue led to a second clue, which led on and on, seventeen clues in all. The point of it was mainly to have fun running through the shul and seeing all sorts of weird corners and bits that you wouldn't otherwise see, but at the end, everyone did get a little bouncy ball. But the point was the doing of it, not the getting of the prize. And the kids had a total blast.
Then there was ice cream. |
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| Today, my father is a man. |
[Apr. 2nd, 2005|10:46 pm] |
Today was my Dad's bar mitzvah. As many of you know, my Dad is a ger, and converted in 1998 or so. The trigger was that he realized that he wanted to have an aliyah at my aufruf before my wedding. So he converted, and he and Mom had a Jewish wedding.
But he never read from the Torah.
B'nai Or, the Jewish Renewal hippy Jewish community that my folks belong to, and my mother is a longtime lay leader for, did an adult b'nai mitzvah class this past year. And Dad, and five other people, signed up for it, and read from the Torah today.
It was wonderful.
( Read more... ) |
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| (no subject) |
[Dec. 7th, 2004|11:28 pm] |
As I am many years, I'm struck by how little the Channukah story really has to do with the historical events on which it's ostensibly based.
And I taught my class, again this year, the story of Channukah. Which is a different thing than the story told in the Books of Maccabees I and II, which is why those books aren't in the Jewish scriptures, and is a very different thing that the historical events which actually happened.
And of those three things -- the historical truth, the Biblical record, and the folktale passed down from generation to generation -- I decided, and rightly so, that the important one to teach was the folktale.
Because that's the one with the lessons that I want them to learn. And I'm quite willing to tell them that this is the folktale, not the historical events. And that, in this case, the folktale is more important than the history, at least for them, at least right now. |
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| Another thing that Lis wanted me to blog |
[Nov. 5th, 2004|07:31 pm] |
So, Maralyn is this woman I work with.
She's a nice enough person, but she's maybe a little untrained in critical thinking skills. I'm trying to find a nice way to put it, and that's what I came up with.
She's also vaguely interested in Judaism, because her father was Jewish, and she never learned much about Judaism growing up. So she asks me questions sometimes, which I'm more than happy to answer.
"Hey, Ian," she called across the cafeteria at lunch yesterday, "I got a question about Jewish stuff."
"Sure, shoot, whaddya wanna know?"
"It's about sex with a sheep," I thought I heard her say.
"A SHEEP?"
"No, not a SHEEP -- a SHEET. With a hole in it."
"Oh. THAT thing. Yeah. It's not true."
"Whaddya mean it's not true?"
"That whole thing about how Orthodox men and women have sex through a sheet with a hole in it? Yeah, it's total bullshit. No truth to it at all."
"How do you know?"
"Whaddya mean 'how do I know?' I know. It's not true."
"Yeah, but I read it once somewhere."
"I don't care. It's not true."
"But you're not Orthodox, so how would you know for sure?"
"Because a lot of my friends are Orthodox, I hang out with rabbis, my mother's a religious leader, I teach Hebrew School, I study this stuff, and I learned about this one and why it's not true."
"I don't believe you."
"Why not? Why would I possibly lie about this? Look -- my theory is that people saw people doing their laundry, and there's this kind of undershirt thing that Jewish men wear which looks kind of like a poncho, so my theory is that other people saw those talitot katanot hanging up on the clothesline, and thought it looked like a sheet with a hole in it, and made up the story."
"I think you're wrong -- I read it somewhere that it's true. I mean, you knew what I was talking about when I said it, right? You'd heard of it!"
"Yeah, sure -- I'd heard of the fact that there was this lie going around. But I know it's bullshit."
"I think you're making that up."
At this point, of course, everybody else in the entire cafeteria is totally cracking up. |
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| Wow. Life got overwhelming all of a sudden. |
[Oct. 3rd, 2004|01:05 am] |
Why is it that you can go for years without particularly having much to do, and then, all of a sudden, you're overwhelmed?
Earlier this week, my father's cousin Ann died. She was 38, and his goddaughter. She left a fifteen-year old son. She'd had substance abuse problems for most of her life, and died suddenly. Didn't seem to be actually directly related to any substance abuse, except in that it had probably left her in more fragile health long-term.
The wake was Friday, the funeral this morning.
This morning, Mom and Dad's friend Mark Rosen died. It wasn't a surprise -- he'd had pancreatic cancer for years, and had been in a coma for days. Although, he'd dragged himself out of the hospital on Rosh Hashana in order to lead part of services. There comes a point where, hell, you're dying, so there's no reason NOT to leave the hospital in order to go to services -- it's not going to significantly affect your lifespan one way or the other, so long as it doesn't increase your discomfort.
And most of Mom's family was coming over to Mom and Dad's house for Sukkot, between two and three today.
And I had to be at work at four.
( Read more... ) |
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| We have a sukkah! |
[Sep. 29th, 2004|03:31 pm] |
Okay, it's a little ratty-looking -- maybe a bit short on schach -- Dave took the branches and stuff he'd cleaned from the yard to the dump, and I'd kind of been thinking of using it for schach, but I never mentioned that to him, so I've been going around and pulling random other bits of vegetation from the ground and throwing it on top, which is more-or-less okay.
Still need to put in a table and chairs, but it's a sukkah! |
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| Building a sukkah |
[Sep. 28th, 2004|03:11 pm] |
It's raining. Really hard. I just started building my sukkah.
Some things I learned:
1. It is possible to fit 8 2"x3"x8' studs and 12 1/2"x2"x8' pieces of strapping into a Toyota Camry.
2. But it's not actually EASY to do so.
3. Rain is wet.
4. Another pair of hands might help. . .
Anyone wanna come over and help me build my sukkah? |
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| So, I'm back from shul. And exhausted. |
[Sep. 25th, 2004|09:41 pm] |
Yeah. Sleepy. Yom Kippur is really, really spiritually uplifting and all that, and totally, completely exhausting. It takes a lot out of you. Really, I suppose, it takes EVERYTHING out of you -- that's the point.
And now I've got to do class prep for tomorrow morning. Sleepy. . .
Anyway, there was a bit of excitement this afternoon at services. We were having a discussion on what "forgiveness" was, and how it worked and all that, and all of a sudden there was a crash and a circular hole appeared in one of the windows.
( <mode:'AnthonyTrollope'>Now, dear readers, I do not wish you to worry about this rather dramatic development. As you will soon see, this event, which may seem so sinister at the outset, nonetheless, indeed, had an innocent and harmless cause.</mode> ) |
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| I probably should have posted this days ago. . . |
[Sep. 23rd, 2004|09:13 pm] |
So, this is the period of the Ten Days of Repentance, when Jews try to look at all their relationships, with friends, family, with G-d, and with themselves, and see what they can do to patch them up. Before Yom Kippur. Which starts tomorrow night. So I'm kind of leaving this until the last minute. . .
(Okay, there's actually quite a bit of wiggle room later in the next couple weeks, so this isn't REALLY the last minute. It's just the last minute before you have to file for an extension. . . )
If I have done something that hurt you, leave a comment here, or email me, and let me know what it is, so we can talk about how I can make it up to you, make amends, and make things right.
I know I've got one relationship which is in a really weird holding pattern, and has been for over a year. And that one, unfortunately, isn't going to be all nicely resolved by tomorrow night. That's one which I will be attempting to work with, though.
Other than that one, though, I can't think of any off the top of my head. Which is why, if YOU know of something I've done, or not done, that needs to be resolved, I ask that you let me know. I don't promise that I will fix it. But I will try. |
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| A business name |
[Sep. 23rd, 2004|06:40 pm] |
On Rte 28 in North Reading (a town which is pronounced as "Red-ing", not "reed-ing"), we passed a business that almost caused us to have an accident as I stared at in in amazement.
"Hashem Realty."
"Wow!" I said. "I bet they're REALLY good!"
"Naw," Lis said. "Sold the same property to three different families." |
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| Hebrew school and stuff |
[Sep. 19th, 2004|05:21 pm] |
So, last night, I cut out of the Lefton's End-of-Summer party for like an hour or two to go home and do class prep for this morning. Then I went back to the party and stayed until about midnight. I was in bed by quarter to one or so, and woke up at seven-thirty or so, which has been a reasonable amount of sleep for me recently.
I got to Hebrew school around 8:45 -- class starts at 9:30. And I found that my classroom had been used for childcare during Rosh Hashana services. Which is fine. And that the room hadn't been put back together again afterwards. Which is not fine. I mean, it wasn't a mess or anything -- but my table was gone, my whiteboard markers were gone (and they're MY freakin' markers -- they don't belong to the school), my sign on the wall which says "Kitah Gimmel" and all the kids' names in English and Hebrew was gone, there were piles of toys and games in the corner -- I know my class: toys and games in the corner of the room is a BAD thing to have -- my papers and stuff were all stacked on a shelf in the corner.
I went and did some photocopying of worksheets I'd make up, and came back downstairs, by which time all the other teachers had shown up. It was a Gan day -- the kindergarten class only meets every other week, and only for an hour -- so Tamara, who is the Gan teacher besides being the Gimmel co-teacher, would only be available for the first hour.
That's when Rafi got the phone call that Isaac, the Kitah Bet teacher, was in the hospital with a fever.
( Read more... ) |
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| Rosh Hashana cooking update, final. |
[Sep. 15th, 2004|05:04 pm] |
Food is on the table. Looks wonderful. Yes, we took pictures, but we take pictures on this stuff called "film", which goes through various chemical changes when exposed to light, and needs to go through a chemical process before the pictures -- called "photographs" -- can be shown around. We're hungry, and ready to say kiddush. It's about five o'clock here, services start at seven, so we've got time to say kiddush and brachot, eat, change, and head out.
Gut yontif, chag sameach, l'shana tova u'mitukha, and happy new year everybody!! |
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| Rosh Hashana cooking update |
[Sep. 15th, 2004|02:27 pm] |
First, let me state for the record that helpful cats aren't.
Honeycake put up a valiant fight, but was eventually unmoulded, and is currently in the fridge on a plate covered with tinfoil.
Challah is baked, beautiful, and smells great.
Soup veggies and soup chicken have been removed from the soup; soup is ready to be heated and served.
Spatzle is made -- tastes good, but I made them too thick, so they're too tough. Oh well -- if I was going to screw something up, I'm glad it was the spatzle.
Rice for soup is in the rice cooker.
Stuffing is made.
Stuffing is stuffed inside veal roast. Unfortunately, the veal roast didn't actually unroll. . . I thought I'd untie the roast, and unroll it, and there would be a nice oblong piece of meat I could spread stuffing on and re-roll. Nope -- it just sort of fell into a bunch of odd-shaped chunks that HAPPENED to be vaguely round when tied together in a particular way. So I stuck stuffing in between the bits, and we'll see what happens. Browned the roast on all sides, poured some chicken stock over it, and threw it in the oven.
Still to do: defrost frozen kreplach, steam string beans, set table, chop up apples for apples and honey, pour wine, &tc. |
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| Rosh Hashana cooking update. |
[Sep. 15th, 2004|09:49 am] |
Okay: soup still smells really, really good. I let it cool off on the stovetop overnight, and it's still warm.
Honeycake smells wonderful, but I think I've got to work out better ways to grease bundt pans. It's not coming out of the pan. At all. Not even close. Not even THINKING about coming out of the pan. Oh well, if we have to, I'll serve it as a bread pudding and just SCOOP honeycake with a spoon.
I shaped the challot last night, and put them in the oven to rise.
They're FRIGGIN' HUGE!!!!! Okay, they started rising just fine. They're currently both larger than my head. HUGE!!! The two of them take up most of the oven.
We've got a picture, but it's on film, so it will be quite some time before we develop it, put it to CD, and get it up here so you all can see it.
Okay, should shower now and start cooking. |
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| Rosh Hashana cooking update |
[Sep. 15th, 2004|12:10 am] |
Challah: finally decided to rise; two loaves now braided and rolled. (Yes, Rosh Hashana has round challot -- but you make them by making long braids then rolling the braids. The challot which are not braided but just rolled into rounds are for Sukkot, not Rosh Hashana)
Soup: Cooked for six hours, smells wonderful. Now to let it chill overnight which means that I'll be able to just pick the excess fat off the top before reheating.
Honey cake: cooling in bundt pan on rack. Not really wanting to come out of the bundt pan, and rather sticky and undercooked.
My main problem with baked goods is underbaking. I have this tendency to cook things until the eggs reach safe temperature but not much longer than that. So they end up really gooey.
This isn't so much of a problem for my gooey cheesecake or my gooey brownies (which tend to be eaten with a spoon instead of with fingers), and I don't know that it will be that serious a problem for honey cake, either. Maybe we'll be eating it with a spoon, but that's not really that bad, is it?
Tomorrow: make stuffing, cook veal, make spatzele, cook green beans, boil potatoes for soup, defrost store-bought kreplach. I wanted to make kreplach on my own, but that got cut for time. |
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| Shopping, then cooking today |
[Sep. 14th, 2004|04:06 pm] |
'Cause, well, since we're not in Florida, I have to make Rosh Hashana dinner.
So far: the chicken soup looks like it's coming together nicely. Lis and I decided that neither of us really likes eating dark meat, so we bought two chickens, took the white meat off and bagged it for later, and used the dark meat for soup. This, of course, means that we've got little butchered chicken bits boiling merrily away in the soup, rather than the whole chicken that we've done up until now. I'm interested to see how this works out.
On the other hand, the challah dough is completely not rising. Not even in the least. And the yeast is still good -- it proofed fine. I'm wondering if the dough is just too plain stiff and heavy to rise -- the poor little yeasties can't work up enough gas pressure to pump it up. Or maybe I managed to kill the yeasts. . .
It's a weird recipe -- I've made it before, and it sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. The recipe really makes too much dough for our standing mixer to handle -- when I started smelling that wonderful burning insulation smell, I pulled the dough out and finished it up by hand, and it's insanely dense and heavy. I have no idea what's wrong with it this time.
I bought a two pound veal roast -- the kind that's rolled up and tied -- and I'm looking for really good recipes for that. I think I want to do some sort of breadcrumb/walnut/onion stuffing, unroll the veal, lay the stuffing on it, roll it back up, and re-tie it. But I dunno. |
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| Rosh Hashana |
[Sep. 12th, 2004|09:10 pm] |
So, I chickened out on the Florida trip. We were supposed to go down to visit Lis's family for Rosh Hashana, but I hate flying in the best of times, and just chickened out on flying into a hurricane. Even though it looks like Ivan is going to totally miss Lis's folks' area. We got a credit from the airline, so we can reschedule.
This, of course, means that we now have to work out where we ARE going for Rosh Hashana. We've got several possibilities. Cherie Kohler-Fox is going to be running services for the first day, and we got an invite to go there, which we'd declined since we were going to be in Florida, but which we can phone up and find out if we can un-decline. For the second day, we probably will go to the shul where I work.
It's a bit odd -- I have never in my adult life paid for High Holiday tickets. I've always either been someone's guest, like when we go down to Florida, or gone to places where my mother or I work, so get I get comped in. So that's our next challenge. |
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| A;as, Worldcon is over, Part B, Sunday. |
[Sep. 7th, 2004|05:09 pm] |
When I finished my last post, I was just telling you about the thing which I had done which defined new levels of stupidity.
I'd decided to drink my way through the Worldcon parties.
On a Saturday night.
Forgetting that I was on medication that increased the effect of alcohol.
Two medications that do so, actually.
And that I was working in the morning.
Nine-thirty in the morning.
As a Hebrew school teacher.
( Read more... ) |
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| My day. |
[Jul. 9th, 2004|02:54 am] |
Worked the Grill Bar this morning. A woman came in at 11:30, which is before we officially open, and ordered a draft beer, which, since I was already set up, I served. She stayed at the bar until about 1, had a total of three beers, and was just a lot of fun to have there. She lives in Chicago, and was staying at the Harvard Club while in Boston.
Her family's been in Boston for generations: Stoneham is named for one of her ancestors. Her mother is really very big on the glory of her ancestors; this has always annoyed her. Once, when she was a kid, she got totally fed up with her mother going on and on about how great their family was, and quoted Plutarch: "It is indeed a desirable thing to be well-descended, but the glory belongs to our ancestors."
Her mother slapped her for that.
She made a good chunk of her money as a banker. Ken Lay's indictment was on TV; she mentioned that it wasn't fair that they weren't going to torture him to death. At one point in her career, she worked down the street from Andrew Fastow.
Back when Enron was riding high, some of her friends tried to get her to invest in it. She looked over the company, and found that the CFO was Andrew Fastow, and backed away FAST. See, Andrew Fastow was known far and wide as "Fast Andy", for his dishonesty and trickery.
She was just neat, and it was fun talking to her.
After my shift, I went home, showered, made whipped cream and decorated a chocolate pie I made, and went out to a sheva bracha celebration at the house of some friends, for the brother of one of them. Was cool; was a lot of people who I like and virtually never see. |
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| You know how annoying it is to watch people flail about helplessly? |
[Apr. 28th, 2004|06:54 pm] |
So, I was poking around online looking for a list of what Hebrew letters were orignially what pictograms. And I come across an evangelical Christian website with a web discussion.
And they're trying to figure out what "eit" in Hebrew means -- aleph tav.
They end up deciding it is a name of God.
IT'S A FREAKIN' GRAMMATICAL MARKER! IT JUST TELLS YOU WHICH WORD IS THE DIRECT OBJECT!
See, Biblical Hebrew doesn't really have word order, not real strongly. So, if you have two nouns and a verb, there's not necessarily any way to tell which noun verbed the other.
But if the direct object of the sentence is definite -- that is, it is THE whatever it is, or it's a proper noun -- then you can stick aleph tav in front of it, and that means it's the direct object.
I've registered for the site so that I can log in and explain what it is and how it works. I just can't stand to see people flailing about this helplessly. It hurts. |
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| Once again, I'm not sleeping |
[Apr. 13th, 2004|05:08 am] |
I'm so tired.
But between this toothache and our cat, who bangs on my wastebasket every time I nearly fall asleep, I can't sleep.
And it gets to the point that my sleep schedule is so messed up that I can't sleep, anyway. I'm tired, I'm not sleepy.
I don't think I've fallen asleep before three AM this week. I pulled one all-nighter, Saturday night, in order to do class prep for Sunday morning. I didn't get anything done on it -- I spent six hours staring at the computer screen trying to come up with stuff, and failed. And I had to improvise my entire class. Which went okay, mainly because my kids are great -- as we finished up the class, the two kids had, on their own, laid out three different, consistent positions on kitnyot -- 1. they're not chametz, so they should be allowable on Pesach; 2. they're similar to things that are chametz, so they should be forbidden, just to be on the safe side; and 3. corn-on-the-cob should be allowable, since it's clearly a vegetable, but cornmeail and things made out of cornmeal should be forbidden, since they're too close to bread.
As class ended, Benjamin had just asked, "But what about corn fritters, where you have kernels of corn?"
I swear, this class teaches itself. These are the sorts of questions THEY come up with.
See, for those of you who are not Jewish:
During Pesach, we don't eat chametz, which, broadly, consists of anything made from oats, barley, wheat, spelt, or rye, UNLESS you first turn the oats, barley, wheat, spelt, or rye into matzah (by grinding it into flour, mixing it with water, and baking it very quickly into flat, crunchy sheets). That's perhaps a bit of an oversimplification, but that's the idea. Matzah has to be baked quickly, because, if you take time with it, it could pick up naturally-occuring airborne yeasts and rise. And the whole point of it is that it doesn't rise.
But after this, it gets tricky.
Most authorities think it's fine to take that matzah and then do stuff with it -- you can grind it back into matzah meal and use matzah meal the way you'd use cream of wheat, for instance. You can make matzah balls out of matzah meal. You can even grind it finely enough to, sort of, use it like flour. And that's okay, according to most authorities. (There are some people that don't do this, and, in fact, go to extreme lengths to make sure that their matzahs don't even get WET.) And according to everybody, there are things that are NOT chametz, like potatoes, that you can make flour out of, and you can make stuff with that.
Anyway, that's a digression -- that's not where I was intending to go with this, but I'm writing this because I'm really tired and not tracking well, so there.
What I was INTENDING to say is that there are a whole bunch of grains and so forth that are not mentioned as chametz, but which many Jewish communities decided to treat as chametz, anyway. Most obvious among these are rice, corn, and beans -- they're obvious because in OTHER Jewish communities, many favorite dishes are MADE with rice, corn and beans.
Mostly, Ashkenazic Jews (Jews whose ancestors came from Gemany and points east of there -- Poland, Russia, Lithuania, &ct) avoid these kitnyot. And Sephardic Jews (ancestors from Spain, northern Africa, generally around the Mediterranian, and so forth) have favorite Pesach dishes that involve rice, corn, or beans.
But the list of what is kitnyot goes way, way beyond those things. In some communities, it could include peanuts, garlic, mustard, all sorts of things. There's no actual LIST of what's kitnyot, because it varies from community to community. It's really random. I mean, you find a lot of people avoid garlic, but consider garlic powder to be okay. Or, who consider peanut butter to be okay, but whole peanuts to not be. Or consider whole peanuts to be okay, but not peanut butter. Whiskey tango foxtrot, over?
Basically, there's no actual halachic definition of what is or is not kitnyot. It's more or less an emotional response to, "this thing feels like it is similar to things which are chametz."
Which is why all three of the answers which the two kids who showed up for Hebrew School on Easter Sunday are really good, plausible, consistent answers, and why the question of corn fritters is so interesting.
They also asked me how come almost nobody showed up, and I said, "Probably because it's Easter." They said, "But we're Jewish." I said, "Yes, but lots of us have non-Jewish families, and we tend to spend Christian holidays with non-Christian relatives."
Which is true. Both the kids who were there are from intermarriages. As, for that matter, am I. Although I'm not, anymore. My father converted about six years ago. I actually like to present that one as a brain-teaser when the subject comes up in class.
They managed to distract me a lot from the lesson plan I'd worked up (about counting the Omer). Mainly because I was tired, therefore easily sidetracked.
I need to get to sleep. I'm tired, and have to pack up Pesach dishes tomorrow -- no, it's 5 am. Today. And I have to go to work in the afternoon. |
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