Talmud Bekieut, 10 1/2 dappim of Pesachim
Hebrew exam, much vocab
Halakha HaMaaseh, hilchot Shabbat
Poskim, inyanei kriyat Shema
Midrash, midreshei Bereishit
Mikra, perspectives on Bamidbar
Talmud Iyyun, Avodah Zarah plus Tosafot, Rishonim, Sugyot Yerushalmi, etc.
Hey, guess what? I just learned the truth about the way Torah the Bible works, and it turns out that there were dinosaurs on Noah’s ark!
Okay, I know I’m supposed to be creeped out by these people, but is it wrong for me to just find this particular bit hysterically funny?
No, it’s true–the rest of their website is pretty scary. And their agenda is even scarier. But I do love the proof for the existence of dinosaurs on the ark. The logic (though not necessarily the bottom line*) is just so… Talmudic.
*Yeah, that absolute truth thing? Not so much. The Rabbis were pretty comfortable with multiple truths, multiple answers, using truth as a site in which to play, etc etc. But I can just see them doing the dino-to-cubit math. No question.
Today is my mother’s yahrtzeit, the anniversary of her death. 20 Shevat. Nine years, it’s been.
That was lifetimes ago, it feels like. I don’t remember what the time before it felt like this was the defining moment of my life was like–after my sophomore year of college, my mother was either dying (for six months) or she had died four days after I turned twenty-one. I had run her hospice. The mark was indelible. Anna Quindlen writes beautifully about this feeling, and is quoted in Motherless Daughters:
“My mother died when I was nineteen,” Quindlen wrote. “For a long time, it was all you needed to know about me, a kind of vest-pocket description of my emotional complexion: ‘Meet you in the lobby in ten minutes - I have long brown hair, am on the short side, have on a red coat, and my mother died when I was nineteen.’”
Totally. For a long time afterwards, I wrote and published essays (multiple) about it. I wrote a novel about it. Every year on her yahrtzeit it would be A Day. For a couple of years I took on an old, no-longer-observed stringency of fasting for part of the day. I’d lead services (halakhically, the person with the yahtzeit has the greatest obligation to do so), and say the El Male Rachamim prayer (which one says for a person on their yahrtzeit) with so much juice and emotion that it would stop the place silent for a couple of minutes afterward.
But I guess everything shifts eventually. I went to minyan this morning, said Kaddish, said the El Male, but emotionally, there just isn’t the same turbulence and grief there once was. Some of that’s about time passing. Some of it’s about where I am generally in my life. And I don’t feel anymore like there’s no way to tell my story or reveal who I am without telling that piece of it. It’s part of my story, but it’s only a part. I mean, I still miss my mother, on some level I always will. She was an extraordinary human being, and there’s no question that my life would have been much better and richer for having her in it. I believe that she would have been proud of me, of who I’ve become, and I think we would have become close (we were just starting to when she got sick, the residue of the rocky teenage years had started to wear off a bit.) I do miss her. But I no longer feel sick from it the way I used to, sick from missing her or sick from the pain of losing her, of the suffering she went through at the end, of the great tragedy that I long considered the story of her life to be. I’m sad, it’s her yahrtzeit, but maybe for the first time this year I don’t feel either dragged down by it or like I’m supposed to feel dragged down by it. I’m where I am, she’s where she is, wherever that is (someone once asked a Zen master what happens after death. “I don’t know,” he said. “But I thought you were a Zen master.” “I am. Just not a dead Zen master.”) and it’s OK. Of course it’s OK. It has to be. It is, simply, what is.
This doesn’t mean that I don’t think we shouldn’t be outraged by the fact that the Bush administration appointed a Monsanto executive to the EPA, has gotten itself exempted from an international ban on toxic pesticides, is considering lifting a moritorium on recycling radioactive waste for consumer consumption and much more. Whatever peace I can make with my own story, I refuse to let that mean that it’s OK for our government to poison other people. Did you know that some of the companies (Monsanto, Monsanto, Monsanto!) that make some of the most toxic pollutants in our world also make chemotherapies? So they profit twice–once in giving people cancer and once in helping them get rid of it. It’s disgusting. It’s not conspiracy theory, either–the more I learn about this stuff, the scarier it is.
Cancer is not an “epidemic” because it just suddenly is. There are people doing things that are changing the landscape (literally). And the damage being done now is likely to affect all of us, possibly for many generations to come.
Yeah, it’s easier to make this be about private pain, individual loss. And it is. But it’s also not. I wonder if I should make a new tradition for observing this day that involves getting involved, somehow–donating money to an environmental org, spending time on a campaign, something like that. Something to help someone else not to have to have a day that they mark as a death-anniversary? Hmm.
I have a couple of pictures of my mother on my walls–one from when she was in her 20’s, probably, on a bike, in a city park, short sleeves pushed up onto her shoulders, wearing striped pedal pushers and her hair pulled back. You can’t see her feet in the photo, but–and this is the part that says it all–her shoes are sitting in the basket on the front of the bike.
The other one is from fairly late in her life (3-4 years before she died) at a family bat mitzvah. It’s clear that she had been dancing, hard, and running around and having fun, when they called all the family members together for the group photo. She has this sweet, satisfied, cocky look on her face, like, “Hi, yes it’s me! It’s wonderful to be here! Can we go dance again, now?”
That’s mi madre.
Janie Mae Brill, Sima Mayta bat Shalom, your memory will always be a blessing. Thanks for everything. I love you.
And now, I have to get on with my day, because life, after all, is meant to be busy for the living.
I have a new favorite word. It’s slang, but not (as it was explained to me, though it’d be useful to know if someone else out there disagrees) derogatory, for an Ashkenazi* person. The word is “vuzvuz”**, ie “That vuzvuz over there by the bus stop….”
Why that word, you might ask? Because the Askenazim always asking, “Vus is dis? Vus is dat?”
I’m not kidding. That’s really the reason.
Vuzvuz pride, man.
*Jew of Eastern European descent, so someone who might ever speak a bissel Yiddish…
*pronounce like couscous or goosegoose.
Found in my notebook amidst notes for my least-favorite class this semester:
“Not paying attention is hard work.”
For a long time, I have said that there needs to be a really proper punk cover of Garth Brooks’ “Friends in Low Places.” I mean really, any song that starts off, “Blame it all on my roots/I showed up in boots/and ruined your black-tie affair”? Come ON.
Okay, I said that a lot a long time ago, haven’t thought of it in years. But I remembered today, randomly, and decided to find out if there was one. And I’m extremely gratified to discover that not only has some band called Virus Nine had the same good idea, but that their cover is available on iTunes. I haven’t been able to buy it yet (annoyances from the post-stolen-wallet thing, since they only want a credit card with a US address, my new ones are with my J’lem address, don’t feel like dealing with changing it right now blah blah blah) but more than anything, I’m just happy that it’s out there in the world, kicking the appropriate amount of tush.
I got a funny email the other day. One, it was addressed to “Professor Ruttenberg,” which I think is hillarious, not because I might not ever be one (who knows? life is long) than because, you know, right now I’m sitting on my floor, listening to crappy music, decorating a belt buckle with paint pens and trying to cram as many Hebrew verbs as possible into my little brain. Right now I am not the picture of scholarly nuttin’.
Second, they asked for reprint rights for some of the stuff I wrote in my anthology for a forthcoming “scholarly book entitled [REMOVED TITLE, BUT IT HAS “ENCYCLOPEDIA” IN THE TITLE]“. Well, dat’s cool. Between that and the stuff I’m doing now for the EJ, I am a regular Encyclopedia Brown these days.
Third, both the original email and the permissions letter I got today say, “Publication is tentatively scheduled for January 2005.” I checked with the intern who wrote me, and yes, that’s what they meant. Did nobody tell them that a) January’s almost over and b) um, what would they have done if I (and presumably the other writers they’re soliciting) had said no? I know that it’s dang expensive to do major reworks on a mss once it’s in galley (pre-pub proofs) format, and if the original pub date is NOW they should have been done with the galley stage 6 months ago. So the request for permission now strikes me as more than a bit chutzpadik and presumptive, ’specailly as none of us are in feminist publishing for the ca$h money.
What is wrong with me today? I (out of the loop, I guess) learned the word “wigga” today, and it’s like affecting my writing syntax in a bad bad way. Shiznit, gravy. Or maybe it’s just too much caffiene.
Speaking of galleys, I was asked in the comments a bit ago by AmEchad to talk about publishing, so I will–I haven’t forgotten the question and I’m not ignoring it, I’m just in the middle of finals now. More to come on that front soon.
In the meantime, forgive the radio silence to come, I’m working my tail off over here.
The only thing that can fry your brain faster than a day that includes 7 hours of hevruta is many days that include 7 hours of hevruta, plus Tosafot.
is that no matter how messed up it is, no matter how cynical and jaded people can be about the “peace process” and its prospects, no matter how little trust there is on every possible side…
they still play John Lennon’s “Imagine” on the radio every now and again.
I was in hevruta (paired text study–the ultimate in active learning) for seven hours today, plus other classes and a lunch meeting. Everything is a little bleary right now.
Nonetheless, I learned a bit of text that seemed pretty important to share.
So there’s this belief in Rabbinic Judaism about pairs being dangerous–eating, drinking, and doing a few other things in even numbers was thought to render you vulnerable to demons. Particularly drinking alcohol–the gemara tells us that if you drink two drinks and go out (as it’s more dangerous out there than in your own home, natch) the demon could kill you. If you drink an even number greater than two, the demon can’t kill you but he can do some serious damage.
Lucky for us, if you happen to find yourself in a situation where you are vulnerable to demon attack, there is recourse. The solution requires acting a bit like an eight year-old, but that makes sense to me, somehow.
So if you go out after 2 beers, here’s what to do:
And if a man forgot himself [and drank exactly two drinks] and happened to go out, what is his remedy? Let him take his right-hand thumb in his left hand and his left-hand thumb in his right hand and say thus: ?Ye [two thumbs] and I, surely that is three! [ie an odd number, rendering him safe] But if the demon hears him and replies, ?Ye and I, surely that is four!? [ie the person has become three, and three plus the demon are four] let him retort to him, ?Ye [the demon that is now four] and I [the drunk guy] are surely five!? And if he hears one saying, ?Ye and I are six,? let him retort to him, ?Ye and I are seven. This once happened until [someone reached] a hundred and one, at which point the demon exploded.
(Pesachim 110a)
I don’t know about you, but I feel safer already.