by danya | May 22, 2006 | Blog
Aviel Barclay is the only living certified soferet S”M (Jewish scribe) in the world. And now she’s starting a program to train other women in the magical mysteries of the scribal arts. Sofrut coolness! Check out the shiny new website here. ETA: Jen Taylor...
by danya | May 21, 2006 | Blog
Tomorrow (Monday), twenty-ish of my friends and colleagues are going to enter the Rabbi-tron as mere gifted students of the Torah and are going to emerge, triumphantly, glitteringly: clergy. It’s the coolest thing ever. Truly, truly. Watching an ontological...
by danya | May 20, 2006 | Blog
Four Ejected in Cubs/White Sox Brawl. We Ruttenbergs are Cubs people. My mother was a rabid, and I mean rabid, fan. To root for the White Sox, as far as I was raised to be concerned, was a little bit like committing avodah zarah. (And yes, it’s midnight...
by danya | May 17, 2006 | Blog
I just learned that an old friend, Leigh Ann Hussey, was killed in an accident yesterday. She was a sweetheart, rapier wit, kickass sub-alto and nine hundred kinds of trouble with a fiddle. Baruch dayan haemet. I haven’t seen her in years and I can still feel...
by danya | May 9, 2006 | Blog
Am leaving tomorrow for a week in Chul (Chutz L’Aretz, literally “outside the land”, which all this time later I still find hillarious. Like my brother had this friend from high school for whom there were two places–Chicago, and everywhere...
by danya | May 7, 2006 | Blog
Fifty-six different versions of “Stairway to Heaven”. I rather like the Gilligan’s Island version, though, I do have to admit. And Pat Boone just kind of rocks the house. But that doesn’t mean I’m not a little frightened by the whole...
by danya | May 5, 2006 | Blog
So I’ve now done one full pass on the biggest chunk of my Scary Talmud (Review Awfully Necessary) Graduation-Level Exam (STRANGLE) material–22 dappim (2-sided pages) of Pesachim, the full last chapter. I don’t have it perfectly–there are some...
by danya | May 4, 2006 | Blog
Breaking story! This just in! Traditionally undervalued work is actually worth quite a lot! A full-time stay-at-home mother would earn $134,121 a year if paid for all her work, an amount similar to a top U.S. ad executive, a marketing director or a judge, according to...
by danya | May 3, 2006 | Blog
Participants from the International German Beard and Moustache Championships in Hesel, Germany. I’m not saying that the Chabadnikim and the Bresloverim and the Gerrerim and whoever else has to go competetive if they don’t want, but come on, boys! We have...
by danya | May 2, 2006 | Blog
I just got my first intimation that I might be able to live my life, in any sort of long-term meaningful way, outside of California. I have recently inherited a bamboo mat, and today completed acquisition of the necessary ingredients. And of course went home and...
