Outgoing

So I’m finally doing Phase Two of settling into my apartment–finding places for all the bits and bobs that’ve been lurking in the corners. This requires going into the cabinets in which I crammed all my stuff and taking things out, so that I can make some space for the corner-lurkings.

It’s amazing, the stuff I’ve saved. I’m recycling pages and pages of stuff from classes I taught 6 years ago, entire Hebrew textbooks, sheafs of ancient paperwork dealing with ancient matters, luachs (Hebrew calendars) from 3 years ago, address books filled with people I don’t remember or who don’t remember me, what I had saved of my rolodex (God bless life before gmail) and throwing away…. lots of floppy discs. (Well, sending them off to a thrift store that might be able to reuse them, anyway). About dang time.

Anyway, I also found a printout of this delightful poem lurking among the stuff, so I figured I’d share:

God Says Yes To Me
Kaylin Haught

I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don’t paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I’m telling you is
Yes Yes Yes

What Comes Around

When I first got to Israel, I was involved in several confusing moments because I reverted to Talmudic Aramaic when I should have been using Modern Hebrew (most amusing: not long after getting to Jerusalem three years ago, flustered because I had just realized that I had been pickpocketed, I went up to the waiter of the cafe and insisted–using a perfectly reasonable phrase for wallet theft in the context of tractate Baba Metzia–, “I don’t have any pockets! I don’t have any pockets!”)

Nowadays, though, when I learn Talmud, I find it confusing that late Antique Aramaic words mean slightly different things than they do in Modern Hebrew. Oh, right.

In other news, I had been feeling a little crispy around the edges. So I’m posting this from the beach. My toes really like wet sand. Also, there’s a skateboarding competition going on right now, which makes me happy (though less than visiting the ocean, natch) in a totally different way. Those kids can take AIR.

Home Remedies

Oddly, the 50 dappim (2-sided pages) I’m learning this summer for my test are chock-full of demon stories. Some of them I’ve met in the past, some are new. Here’s some wacky stuff from Brachot 6a about how to enlighten oneself about the presence of demons in one’s life:

It has been taught: Abba Benjamin says, If the eye had the power to see them, no creature could endure the demons. Abaye says: They are more numerous than we are and they surround us like the ridge round a field. R. Huna says: Every one among us has a thousand on his left hand and ten thousand on his right hand. Raba says: The crushing [sensation one feels when sitting] in lectures comes from them [ie, from the demons pressing in.] Fatigue in the knees comes from them. The wearing out of the clothes of the scholars is due to their rubbing against them. The bruising of the feet comes from them. If one wants to know about them [ie to have a concrete awareness of demon-presence], let him take sifted ashes and sprinkle around his bed, and in the morning he will see something like the footprints of a rooster. If one wishes to see them, let him take the after-birth of a black she-cat, the offspring of a black she-cat, the first-born of a first-born, let him roast it in fire and grind it to powder, and then let him put some into his eye, and he will see them. Let him also pour [this placenta ash] into an iron tube and seal it with an iron signet that they [the demons] should not steal it from him. Let him also close his mouth, lest he come to harm. R. Bibi b. Abaye did so, saw them and came to harm. The scholars, however, prayed for him and he recovered.

Rashi’s comment on the placenta-in-the-eye thing is hilarious: “He should put only a very small amount in his eye.” You can just picture him sitting with the text, saying to to it, “Oh, don’t do THAT. Really–I don’t think that’s an especially good idea.”

Happymaking Things

Tally

Oh, right, that jet lag thing

Gee, I’m tired.

עיר המלאכים

Well, I’m back.

I’m still pretty disoriented, but I’m here, and have successfully sold my soul for a cell phone plan and informed the Post Office that they can stop throwing my mail over some cliff or feeding it to the lions or whatever it is that they’ve been doing. Really, it’s amazing how little written correspondence has made it to me in the last year and a half.

OK, stuff gots to happen before Shabbos.