Voices in My Head

My goodness

2010-08-16T04:15:00.000-05:00

I spent the morning researching pension funds and deciding on my ideal risk portfolio. When exactly the heck did I become an adult and how does one make it stop, please?

Unstructured Thoughts about the Rape by Deception Ruling

2010-07-22T12:41:00.000-05:00

I am literally seething about this ruling (found via search-for-emes). And actually not the racist, Jim Crow part that bothers everyone else, because although that's horrible, the real problem here is the ruling that all sex achieved through lying is rape.

The ruling seems like a reductio ad absurdum of the Israeli judicial obsession with everyone playing nice. When it came up in contracts and Aharon Barak was saying that everyone must be full of good faith and "homo homini homo" if not "homo homini deos", well, it was sort of cute. When the court decided that good faith applies to all fields of law at all times, well, at least they were sticking to civil law. But do they honestly not understand that there is a line between moral and legal duties and that not everyone who is not nice ought to be tried in court? And fine, tried in civil court or even criminally fined, but you're going to equate this with rape?

The Israeli court has increasingly taken power compared to the legislature and executive branches, and while I theoretically oppose this, I can see how the temptation to sort things out when you're the only competent person involved would be pretty overwhelming. But this- this is simply megalomania to think that every single not particularly nice action ought to be taken to the courts for them to determine whether it's so not nice as to be criminal. I tend towards the libertarian personally, but this- this has zoomed down the libertarian spectrum way past Republicans or Democrats and is currently so distant from it that the curvature of the universe should be coming into play soon.

And like most anti-libertarian ideas, it leans towards paternalism, except that in this case, it's leaned so hard that it fell right over into out and out patronization, claiming that women wander around innocently, victims to smooth-talking con-men waiting to steal their precious virtue. Women have plenty of ways to protect themselves. One of them- and I'm not trying to judge the plaintiff here, but honestly- one of them is to wait a bit before sleeping with someone so you have more time to confirm the story they're telling you. Or, you know, google them, which in this case might have revealed that he was married. And the more that a trait matters to you, and the more devastated you would be to discover that it were false, then the more you wait and the more research you do. You don't go crying to the court to protect you from deception in dating.

Is there anyone out there except the judges who want every bad break-up or unhealthy relationship dragged before the court for inspection? And hey, did anybody else notice that we may have just created a de facto criminal law against cheating in a relationship? Or saying you love her when you don't? Heck, a judge who could keep a good straight face could probably convict a woman of rape for wearing make-up.

I don't have a summation here, but I'm still a little steamed.

Elegy

2010-07-19T03:47:00.000-05:00

for the imperfection of circles

and the asymptotic gap

for acceptable losses

and necessary evils

for satisficing

for entropy

for the way things are

and the way that they ought to be

and for the way thing have to be

because they always will.

2010-06-28T19:48:00.000-05:00

The sign of a fraying friendship is when you find yourself tracking how much of each conversation is about them and how much is about you. Never a healthy calculation, and one that I am reasonably sure ou never do when things swing the other way.

Things I Need to Do Before I Can Feel Properly Grown-Up

2010-06-22T14:13:00.000-05:00

Wash dishes without splashing water all over my front
Purchase a flip phone
Eat dinner on a real plate for every meal for a week
Drink wine without wincing
Wear heels on a regular day
Know what's going on with my Bituach Le'umi payments every month
Rinse my contacts as often as the optometrist says one should

American's View of Israeli's View of America

2010-06-10T07:07:00.000-05:00

It's so odd listening to Israelis describe America, particularly when they are professors and they just keep throwing out random observations, composed of some equal mixture of tv, news stories, and academic studies, all equally detached from any real context. It's not that they're always wrong about things, it's just this weird skewed picture, literally like a caricature, in that some features are there and some are exaggerated and some are under-aggerated and the whole thing is just oddly out of proportional. The professor currently lecturing for example, sees America as a sweltering mass of racism where anybody driving a junky car in a nice neighborhood is going to be continually pulled over by the police. A place where sheriffs patrol the streets of fancy San Fransisco suburbs.

And yet, at the same time, you get this sort of impression that somewhere in the back of their minds, they truly do think that the streets are paved with gold and SUVs. It's distinctly odd. And don't get me started on how fascinated they are with Obama. I think because they think American is so very racist, the idea of those racists ever accepting a black president just blows their minds, so that he becomes even more mythological than he was to Americans.

Things to make your head explode, just a little

2010-06-06T02:04:00.000-05:00

There are signs all over the law building, calling on students to join in on an organized day-long boycott of the new coffeehouse, for:

1) having prices that are too high and
2) not offering products that the student community wants (like sandwiches).

Can someone- anyone- explain the logic behind this? Or is this just knee-jerk Israeli strategy kicking in?

Zombie Day

2010-05-04T08:55:00.000-05:00

One of the cooler things that I have done in my short life (for a given value of cool) happened on Friday and since so often this poor blog (yes, I have decided to anthopomorphize my blog as a hungry, bored little child. run with it.) has to make do (I know that I have too many parentheticals, but did you know that until a few weeks ago, I always thought that was "make due". I am full of shame) with random musings or angst (or random angsty musings!), I decided that I would tell you all about it.

So that was all one sentence, setting aside the fact that it ignored all the decent rules of grammar. Huh.

Anyway, on Friday I was a zombie. And not just in the ordinary recreational sense. I was an official zombie extra for the first Israeli post-apocalyptic zombie movie. (Sidebar: do not see this movie. It's going to be entirely in English, to appeal to the international audience, and it is unbelievably proud of the fact that its zombies are not reanimated corpses but ordinary humans who have been struck with some biological weapon that makes them feral, vicious, and super-powerful. Bless their sweet souls, they seem convinced that this is groundbreaking. And one can't even hope for classic cult B-movie because it doesn't seem to have any sense of humor about itself. Here is their website. You'll see what I mean.)

Anyway, it all started a couple weeks ago when my roommate heard about a zombie training day for people to learn how to be zombies so as to be able to extras in the movie. Zombie training rocked. We learned how to snarl and claw and maul and run and get shot and fall and roll and limp and be electrocuted. On concrete, too. So that was pretty awesome. Then we told them the days that we'd be willing to come (for me, days when my classes don't take attendance, and don't get me started on the fact that I am a Master's student and still having classes that call roll) and off we went.

Then Friday morning, at around nine, they called me up and asked if I'd be willing to come in right away. A bus, a train, and a ride-from-someone-from-the-crew later, and I was in the mall parking garage where they were doing the shooting. I got there around 10:30.

What happened next was 3-4 hours of standing around. When I arrived they costumed me up and then spent the next hour or so being re-costumed. Every so often one person in charge would wander by and criticize the outfit and the person costuming me would mumble and find something else and have me change into that. Fortunately, they were responsive to my expressed desire for nothing too revealing. Unfortunately, what with one thing and another, my outfit translated into "Seminary Girl Gone Feral"- the inevitable tiered, floor-length denim skirt and a white t-shirt covered by a long, black, hooded sweater/jacket. Every time I got a new costume, I stood around in it for several minutes having them dust it up with various colors and types of dust they had. (It was actually pretty cool- they were like a mesh floor bag of dust or something).

After the costuming, we stood around for a long time. Then we got our glowing red contacts put in. Then we stood around for a long time. I should mention that there were only 5-6 zombies, so it wasn't like I was standing around while they were working with other people. We were all just standing. Then we got our make-up, which in this particular case meant that we were squirted, painted, smeared, and generally soaked in a corn syrup-water-food coloring blend. It was pretty cool, actually and a lot disgusting, particularly as it got into my hair, making it impossible to detach my hair from my neck or my shirt.

So then we stood around for a bit more inside the parking garage. Then we went to stand around outside, to be ready for the shoot. Then it started to rain, so we went back inside. Gripping stuff. Eventually, we actually did the shot, which was literally 15 seconds during which the principals run into their car and the zombies chase the car. We did the take several times, but mostly because they kept changing their opinions about where the zombies should come from. I can well imagine that they were having a hard time figuring out how to make six people look like a zombie horde. (yeah, like I said, z-movie territory). Still, the whole thing took about a half an hour. Then they had us do another shot of running directly at a hand-held camera. Then we were done. I'm guessing no more than 30 seconds worth of footage.

Then it was time for lunch, but more importantly, it was 3:30 and I was getting antsy about shabbat. They had promised me that they would send me home by 3:00, which of course I didn't take seriously, but time was a factor. So while people were eating lunch I hovered around being nervous. I also ate a pita, since I didn't want to bother anyone with asking whether the catering was kosher.

Then one of the other extras wandered by and told me that the director had said that he was done with us and we could de-make-up. There was an entertaining bout of cleaning up the upper half of one's body, including most of the hair, in a portable-bathroom sink, but I eventually got enough to be able to ship out.

Almost as soon as I left the bathroom, it turned out that they actually wanted us for another shot. People were entertainingly annoyed at the director. The lady in charge (I have no idea what her real role was) asked me if I would be okay with costuming and make-upping up again. I looked apologetic and mentioned the sabbath thing.

It was, actually, incredible how instantly she accepted that and started reacting to it. Immediately, she sent somebody else to get made up, and recruited a crew member to give me a ride back to the bus station, with the immortal words "One of the zombies is shomeret shabbat. Hurry!" which are words that should be said more in this world. And so, hair mostly covered in corn syrup, torso covered in blood and ditto, I made it to my shabbat destination with a couple of hours to spare. And that is the story of my zombieness. I leave you with this picture. Guess which one is me:

Huh. I really don't particularly enjoy blogging life happenings. I mean not anti, but it's just a bit dull. Good to know.

Random Class Thought II

2010-04-29T02:35:00.001-05:00

If female lawyers choose to work in the public sector rather than the private sector and if the reason they choose to do so is because they feel less of a need to earn money and therefore can pick jobs they like better, is that sexism? Sexism against men? And who should be changing it and how? If women care less about money (perhaps because society does not value them based on their earning power, perhaps because they don't have to support a family)- is it wrong to pay them less?

Obviously, that's not the only possible reason. There could be real sexism. It could also be a question of the insanely long hours. And again- is it sexist if women prefer not to work insane hours? Is it only sexist if they do so because they feel obliged to raise a family?

In other words, I do not think I get a word of what this professor is spouting.

Edit: Do you ever sit in class and listen to people asking questions and think to yourself: "How on earth could you think that's a real question? For your sake, my friend, I hope that is a thought that popped into your head and your hand went up before you finished the thought because if you actually thought about that thought for more than five seconds, I simply don't understand what it must be like in your head." Not questions of failing to understand the professor, but questions of ah-ha! I have thought of something clever and you're just like oh honey. oh no. For example: Can something be disparate treatment and disparate impact at the same time for different groups? Yes, honey. It can. Good question.

What's so bad about genocide?*

2010-04-27T11:47:00.000-05:00

*And then the lawyer in me feels the need to quickly disclaim that the above question is obviously facetious, intended to pique interest rather than to suggest that genocide is anything other than heinous. That said...

Genocide is really the prototypical evil thing, both in terms of convenient rhetoric for a lot of debates and for international law purposes. And I agree that it's pretty darn evil. But I'm not entirely sure what about it is more evil than the murder of an equivalent number of people based on some other grounds. I should note that I also have some instinct that this is the case, although perhaps not so strong an instinct as is common.

Okay, so is it a question of mens rea- the mental state of the genocider? It's less moral to kill somebody based on ethnicity because it compounds the offenses of murder and of racism, so assuming that racism has a non-zero evil quotient, the same murder will be x + y evil instead of just x evil (presumably the justification behind hate crime legislation as well). Although if we are accepting this as mathematical in any sense, at some point the genocide of a relatively small nation would be less evil than the non-racially-motivated murder of a whole lot of people. Which I'm not sure is the case, but it would be interesting to run experiments to see how people feel about that. However, I don't think it's just the compounding effect of racism. I don't really know the full legal definition of genocide (and I'm pretty sure that there's not a simple or uncontroversial one) but racially-motivated mass murder may not qualify unless there is some real goal of annihilation. (Interestingly, I'm not sure mass murder based on other discriminatory patterns- murder of gays or the handicapped or lefties- would count as genocide, even if the goal was annihilation).

This implies that the real concern is something closer to the value that we place in diversity. Perhaps a better analogy than hate crimes would be endangered species. We think that there is value to the continued existence of variety and diminishment of said variety is a real harm. This is all very well and good, but as Rachel (my older sister, for the, like, two readers who are not family members) has pointed out, the value is never to maximize the number of animal species. In fact, those who are most concerned with conservation of endangered species also tend to be those who are really offended by the idea of frankenfruits and so forth or any sort of human-created diversity. And back to the human example, I don't know of that many people who encourage more people to go split off and create new ethnicities or cultures or what have you. Although the general lamenting of globalization and so forth is prevalent, I'm not sure anybody thinks it's as evil as genocide. Is the difference intent? Or is genocide precisely as evil as mass murder + globalization?

Random Class Thought

2010-04-15T07:36:00.000-05:00

The press conference as the modern embodiment of eglah arufa, in terms of form, content, and goals, specifically the public self-humiliation by public figures as a means of illustration the seriousness attributed to murder and specifically unsolved (and thus unpunished) murders and as a means of drawing attention to the murder to ease the solving. Discuss.

Pseudo-Anonymity

2010-04-14T03:13:00.000-05:00

It seems, and this is a fact that flatters and disturbs me, that this blog is actually still being read, not merely by safely anonymous strangers but by people within a degree or two of separation from me, myself, personally. For that matter, who can say but that my family members might not be checking in from time to time? One would have thought the months+ delays between posts would have thrown them off my track, but this does not seem to be the case.

Well, this is in many ways worrisome and I will tell you why. Bloggery- particularly on a most defunct blog- has a comforting sensation of anonymity. At the same time, it allows a sense of officialdom that thoughts and sentiments lack when confined to your own computer or your own mind. The best blog, I am convinced, or at least the best blog in the narrow category of blog-as-diary, which this blog, largely although not exclusively, but definitely increasingly, is, would be one that could be read by anyone but isn't. (Yes, that was a sentence. Ish.) A blog that is read by strangers is nearly as good because everyone knows that strangers aren't really people.

What such anonymity allows is the expression of thoughts/sentiments without complete endorsement. I read a lovely theory of privacy that included the idea that access to people's thoughts is wrong because what is important is the thoughts that people choose to endorse by granting them verbal (or other) expression. Anonymous blogging is not the same as saying something because it does not imply the same level of endorsement.

For me, this is particularly critical when it comes to my angst. I angst rather more than I strictly speaking approve of, and therefore I tend not to endorse such angst by sharing it with others. I do, somewhat hypocritically, write poems with the angst, but I regard that as fair play because: 1) I rarely do anything further with the poems and 2)I try to make sure that they are decent poems and worth existing (it's a low bar, but I think it would keep out most of the angsty poetry out their). And also I may blog the angst- more recently since I became more convinced that nobody who knew me would read it.

The upshot of all this is that my blogging needs to become

1) more anonymous: which would mean killing this blog, so there's that.
2) less honest: which would probably entail less existing (although there's not a lot of room for that with this particular blog).
or
3) less blog-as-diary and more blog-as-random-thoughts, which is all very well and good but I had been hoping that the blog would, to a small degree, chronicle the way I was at this age so that I can read it in a couple years when I have completely forgotten. (I already can barely envision my high school self. It's weird).

Going Gentle

2010-03-23T17:59:00.000-05:00

This too shall pass me by
And I will watch it as it goes.
I will smile.
I will comfort.
I will give sage advice.
I will try to avoid comparisons.
There will be ice-cream.
There will be congratulations.
In either case, there will be hugging.
I will be happy for them.
I will be patient.

Time will pass and denial will be harder.
There will be crying into pillows
But less than you'd expect.
It will not be unbearable.
It will not be a tragedy.
At some point, they'll start to notice.
Subjects will be avoided.
They'll try to be more sensitive.
In some ways that will be better.

2010-03-20T12:52:00.000-05:00

It came to me that I am not entirely sure that there is anyone in my life who really knows me well. Not even in the sense of all my hopes and dreams, but in the sense of being able to predict how I would react to a variety of situations with high accuracy. An angsty teenage delusion or a testament to my uncommunicativeness or inconsistency?

Disney Alienation

2009-08-10T04:04:00.004-05:00

So I've been entertaining myself by watching some classic Disney animated films on youtube, and I was struck by a theme that seems to unite many of them, certainly in the era after they discovered that heroines should actually be given personalities. Beyond even the twisted notions of love for which Disney is so justly famous, almost every protagonist was suffering from a severe case of alienation at the beginning of the film. They all felt different, out-of-place, mocked, and so forth.
I stole the list below from the official Disney site- let's have a look:

1937 –Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: not really, I suppose
1940 –Pinocchio definitely
1940 –Fantasia well, no, but N/A really
1941 –Dumbo yup
1942 –Bambi I suppose not
1943 –Saludos Amigos never heard of it
1945 –The Three Caballeros ditto
1946 –Make Mine Music ditto
1947 –Fun and Fancy Free ditto
1948 –Melody Time ditto
1949 –The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad never seen, not really a classic
1950 –Cinderella well...she is out-of-place and unloved, but she doesn't really harp on it because of the aforementioned personality thing
1951 –Alice in Wonderland haven't seen the Disney version, certainly high on the alienation in the original

okay, this is tiring, let's skip over several because it seems pretty clear at this point that all the films I was thinking about are from one, shorter era.
1989 –The Little Mermaid: whole songs about it
1990 –The Rescuers Down Under: haven't seen
1991 –Beauty and the Beast very much so
1992 –Aladdin: to some degree
1994 –The Lion King: I suppose not.
1995 –Pocahontas: a little, but not a major theme
1996 –The Hunchback of Notre Dame: well yeah, the poster child for it. Not even posting links here
1997 –Hercules: quite
1998 –Mulan: very much so
1999 –Tarzan: oh yes and understandably so

So in that 10 year period, 6 of the films had alienation as a major theme, including 4 in a row. (And all those four with a pretty uniform structure: Someone feels that they will never fit into their society because they are different and flawed. Others assure them that they are wonderful as they are. Then they dare to be themselves, save the day, and everybody recognizes how very wonderful they truly are.) Now I know that alienation is one of the themes of modern existence, but that seemed a little extreme.

And the situation is even more odd when you think about the target audience. Firstly, these are little kids- is it really true that all little children see themselves as ostracized outsiders? And we're not talking about fringe films for the kids who are a little different- this is mainstream entertainment that seems to assume that every child will relate to the problems of this protagonist.

It's possible that these messages are pitching to slightly older children- the little ones will come for the music and adventure and so forth, so the messages of alienation are trying to hook in the young adolescent crowd. And such feelings are stereotypical of adolescence.

It's also possible that Disney just enjoys the message and doesn't really care about the target audience, but that hardly sounds like their M.O.

But still, this sentiment of being a rejected outsider- I had always assumed that it was typical only of those who are atypical. It's strange to think that Disney, at least, assumes that all kids feel this way enough to make it a major theme of their existences.

Ad Hoc Poem

2009-07-27T14:42:00.003-05:00

Explicating the diagram: This evening, I suffered something of a disappointment. Nothing apocalyptic, but enough to be legitimately frustrating. Short version: There was a poetry reading in Jerusalem. Miri talked me into coming and reading with her and I got myself sort of psyched at the idea of reading in public, since I've never done it and I'm trying to make myself have experiences. Psyched enough to re-arrange my studying schedule, ignore the fact I have a final tomorrow (albeit open book), rush out of my final today straight into the 1.5 hour bus ride to Jerusalem, skip dinner to make it there as on time as possible. Unfortunately, there was a technical glitch and my name did not get on the list and this was not realized until it was too late. The following is the extremely ad hoc pseudo-poem that I scribbled on the bus ride back just expressly for the purposes of this very blog post:

I'm not quite sure how to play it.
I mean, I think that once
I have the character down
the line readings should come
more or less naturally.

I mean, okay, anger is a given,
and disappointment, sure,
frustration, sure,
bits of stress slipping over the edges,
sure sure sure.

I think maybe she might cry a little?
Not on stage, obviously,
but off on one of the pockets
soliloquy-style.
Maybe when she's walking home
alone
in the darkening streets
in the rain.
Except obviously it's not raining
and I'm not good at crying
and the timing's all horribly off.
Walking down Yaffa sobbing
crosses the line into bathos.
And this mustn't seem ridiculous.

My instinct, of course,
is to go straight to martyr-
Brave smile, chin up,
think of real people with big troubles.
But would the audience get it?
I mean, would they notice how very, very
wonderful she was being?
Because if not,
well that just misses the point.
and if I have to keep on
shooting them pointed looks,
it sorts of destroys the whole illusion.

I suppose someone else might play it
straight out anger
or grumpiness
or resignation
or whatever.

Actually, I have no idea
how they would play it.
I think I'd like to see
some talented people give it a shot.
Maybe I could pick up
some techniques.

Yeats, Just Because

2009-07-24T07:37:00.002-05:00

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert.

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Automatic Breathing

2009-07-22T03:21:00.003-05:00

Last night while I was waiting for the paralysis of sleep to strangle my brain into unconsciousness, I started wondering about the following hypothetical: what would happen to a person for whom breathing was exclusively a voluntary function?

I don't see any way that they could sleep without being hooked up to breathing machines, given that one generally loses control over voluntary functions with unconsciousness. Perhaps one could train oneself to have some sort of surface-level sleep, like those who can sleep standing up or the descriptions given by soldiers of learning to sleep while marching. Of course, I'm not sure how such a training process would be conducted, under the circumstances.

But the day time is actually, for me, a more interesting question. If we posit that the person would experience all of the normal discomfort associated with holding ones breath when they forgot to breathe, then they might be able to function. Should they forget to breathe, they would be alerted to the fact in plenty of time to take a deep breath without any real adverse effects; their breathing might be more sporadic, but there's no reason to assume that it wouldn't get the job done.

After a certain amount of time, I think it would become an automatic function of its own- not in the sense that the brain stem would handle it, but in the sense that every thirty seconds, the person would remember to take a breath so that it became a part of their daily rhythm. I wonder if that would interfere in any manner with higher brain functioning- having to have a basic point on one's mind constantly, like they say that having to remember a three digit number impairs mathematical ability, etc. It's even possible that the person would prefer to be hooked up to the automatic devices to avoid the trouble of remembering, although this is somewhat dubious considering the degree to which such machines impair ones freedom.

Of course, the person could never fall asleep accidentally, since we've pretty much determined that that would mean stopping breathing. This, though, I don't consider such a huge limitation on freedom, compared to the other stuff, but that could be because I tend not to fall asleep until I have given myself 'permission' to do. In any case, it would probably be wise for the person to have some sort of device monitoring oxygen levels and emitting a loud alarm before they become dangerous, since the unpleasant sensations of holding one's breath might not be sufficient to wake the person up in time.

American Students

2009-07-14T05:56:00.002-05:00

I love American students. It's been years since I've heard Nietzsche quoted with such fluency, such fervor, and so little relevancy.

Update: And today, they presented our professor with a birthday cake. With those trick candles. Our professor, for this particular class, is Dean Kenneth Starr.

Biography

2009-07-07T17:52:00.002-05:00

I have decided that if I could pick one person to write my biography, and under the assumption that I had accomplished something in my life to justify such a work, and under the condition that being dead was not construed as a barrier to such a service, then I would totally pick Irving Stone. I have read only a few of his books (Agony and Ecstasy, Those Who Love, They Also Ran), but from what I've seen he combines sensitivity to historical context and character with healthy dose of fictionalization that would be necessary to make my life interesting and relatable to future generations.

I Prefer Adjectives

2009-07-06T12:38:00.002-05:00

I have recently discovered why I so badly hate the term "Jewess". Not because of any cultural load that it may or may not have adopted over the course of years of antisemitism, sexism or both. It's because it's a noun.

Here me out. There is something about adopting any sort of noun that I find gets deeply on my nerves. I know, on some basic level, that is almost entirely a meaningless semantic distinction to which no real difference can be attributed. Yet there it is. I have discovered that, while I will freely state that I am Jewish, under circumstances when such a statement is relevant, I cannot imagine myself ever using the phrase "I am a Jew" (let alone a Jewess).

And it's not just the tricky things like Jewishness, or femaleness (yes, I vastly prefer to say that I am female than to say that I am a woman. There it is.) It's also the more bland things, like saying I am an American, or saying that I am (going to be) a lawyer. Any noun, excluding perhaps 'person', just seems strangely limiting.

To adopt a noun seems to fully embrace a label, or perhaps even to fully embrace it as a category that can completely define you. It seems to place an equal sign between you and that adjective* and I am not comfortable with making any such equivalency.

*Perhaps if the English language allowed for more complex shades of meaning in 'is', I have less of a problem with the noun. If we could incorporate such mathematical shades of meaning such as "is a set containing, but not limited to, the following element" or "is greater than or equal to" or possibly even algorithmic conventions such as "has the lower limit of" or better "has as one possible lower limit". But I digress.

It's Aliiiiiiiiiiiiiive

2009-07-05T13:11:00.003-05:00

Does that call for an exclamation mark? I find it more entertaining if it doesn't have one. So I shan't. You see, I have reached a new conclusion with regards to my blogging.

Blogging, done right, requires a good deal of devotion. The blogs that succeed are those whose authors work hard at posting frequently, putting up quality posts, keeping updated and involved in the blogosphere, keeping tabs on the world at large, and/or all of the above.

I long harbored a secret wish to have a successful blog. Not a very strong wish, but enough that I would be gnawed with envy at people whose blogs actually had followings or whatnot, beyond their immediate relatives and a few random stumblers-upon.

This was not, of course, the reason that I stopped blogging, but it may have played some part in it. I wanted to blog right - I tend to want to do things right, but I have very limited resources of caring, which I must ration strictly. Blogging doesn't make top twenty.

But I still enjoy blogging and I have somewhat missed it as a template for the organization of my thoughts, so the new plan is this: I will post as I choose and when I choose; I will not mind that I get no readers; I will make no effort to be involved in the blog world as a good little community member; I will post as weird and random as entertains me; I will take down anything that might monitor hits; I will respond to comments if I so choose and likely not at all; I will, in short, pretend that y'all do not exist and see if this is sufficient to support the current vague whim towards unforsaking this particular hobby.

Update: ten minutes from having posted the above, I begin to doubt to my ability to remain uninvested in the process. This will, in all likelihood, simply be another reincarnation, short-lived and inherently ephemeral, that fades into another long lull. I almost prefer to leave the blog dead, unpolluted by posts that will, I know, be increasingly apathetic and low quality. But that would be caring, and I'm really making the attempt to avoid that, in this particular case. So...I guess the update is just to expand my un-caring front to my attempts to uncare. Now I've gotten meta and that makes me cranky.

My Facebook 25 Things List

2009-02-13T01:55:00.001-06:00

1.My favorite form of "athletic" recreation is scrambling up rocks like a spider monkey. Not rock climbing- scampering.
2.When I'm bored, I play text twist in my head, with words picked randomly from my surroundings.
3.I have gotten drunk exactly once, in an effort to discover what kind of drunk I would be. Turns out I talk a lot, demand attention, and use a vocabulary about four times more sophisticated than my regular one. Also, I analyze my level of drunkenness a lot.
4.I was secretly hoping that getting drunk would turn off my continual self-editor, so I could see what it would be like to not have one for ten seconds. It did not.
5.I waste obscene amounts of time fooling around on the internet.
6.I pick up verbal quirks with malice aforethought. Some of them end up sticking, but I never have any way of guessing which ones.
7.I use the terms 'darling', 'dear', 'honeychild', and such like constantly, but on principle I will not use them towards male friends.
8.I stopped wearing my retainers after six months. This was because they broke and I was too afraid of my orthodontist to dare to admit it to him. I spent months afraid that I would run into him at a social gathering, remind him of my existence, and be called to task for not having had a check-up in years.
9.I have at least two alternate personalities that tend to surface when I am around unfamiliar people. One of them is sweet, demure, and quiet. Refraining from the urge to lapse into them is one of the achievements of my adulthood.
10.It bothers me that all of my talents are mental-related. Properly well-rounded people should have discrete talents, in my opinion.
11.I think that I could be very happy as a cat lady. I wouldn't even need cats, per se- I could function chillingly well with little to no contact with other beings. I base this not on conjecture, but on around a year of experimentation.
12.I have never had to work hard in school. I wonder what it would be like.
13. have an eight year old nephew who requested a potter's wheel for his birthday. I have high hopes for his geekiness potential.
14.On the subject of geekiness, I'm not sure that I'm a proper geek, despite my proud self-identification. There is no one topic that I am sufficiently obsessed with to be a geek in that subject. The closest I get is law geek.
15.I have no idea which vaccinations and so forth I have actually received. No doubt records exist somewhere, and I am operating under the assumption that I received all the regular ones, but beyond that it is all an enigma wrapped in a mystery.
16.I am constantly assumed to be vaguely British. This is due to a combination of my slight speech impediment and my tendency to inflect Britishly. I have no way of accounting for either of these.
17.I learned to talk at an insanely young age and was extremely verbose. The rabbi's wife at our synagogue allegedly wrote her doctorate on said phenomenon.
18.In middle school, I wrote poems so typically mediocre that I still cringe to think of them. Poems about the seasons as spirits, rhymes like 'Sunrise, sunset\caught in times endless net'. I can't decide which is more painful: the phase itself, or the fact that there are many adults who do not seem to realize that it's a phase they should finish going through by junior high.
19.I am terrified of speaking in front of crowds. It is for this reason that I forced myself to join the debate club and to act in Bar Ilan plays. They have not been one hundred percent effective, but at least I am learning to play through the fear.
20.My nose is distinctly crooked. All the cartilage veers off to the right side at the bottom. You mostly notice if you have occasion to feel my nose or to look at it from the underneath. I also have weird toes, but that's harder to describe.
21.I am having a surprisingly hard time thinking of 25 interesting things about myself. This worries me.
22.I went to a Beis Yaakov high school and have yet to discover how not to be bitter about it. I was a model student during high school, excepting my tendencies to ask heretical questions and to wear uniforms with gaping holes in the elbows and stapled-up seams.
23. I played the piano for several years, off and on, receiving lessons from my mother. I gave up just after learning 'For Elise', having suddenly realized that I had neither talent nor large amounts of interest in the whole thing. I sometimes regret it.
24.I am magnificently sedentary. During seminary, I could spend weeks at a time not leaving the building without feeling the least bit claustrophobic.
25.I believe that most emotions, particularly in the long run, are decisions. I therefore have little patience for consistently unhappy people. It seems inefficient.

Monkey Shines

2008-12-11T10:40:00.007-06:00

In re this clip of the opening from Monkey Shines: an paper I once wrote analyzing the show from a sociological perspective. I'm reprinting it in full below.

We Have Met the Monkey and He is Us:

Introduction

Who among us doesn’t remember Monkey Shines, that classic sitcom that, despite its truncated tenure on television, managed to win itself a place in the canon of childhood staples? Who among can't still hum its catchy opening theme Monkey Business? Who hasn't caught himself using the catchphrases that it made a part of our language: 'Monkey Attack!', 'What was the baby using?', and, of course,'How many monkeys does it take?'

Yet from a sober, academic perspective, Monkey Shines is notable not for the entertainment that it provided, but what it taught us about ourselves, both in its messages and in its ultimate cancellation. Monkey Shines was a daring ideological experiment, ahead of the monkey-related conceptions of its time and even of our own; it dared to confront The Man with The Monkey. At the same time, the limitations of society's mindset, unconsciously existing even within the writers, subtly blunted, subverted, and eventually silenced this cutting edge message.

As I discussed in my earlier article Monkey Tropes in Popular Culture: From Gilligan's Island to the Justice League, humanity necessarily fears the message of the monkey. In him, we see too much of ourselves, and yet a version of ourselves that we are not ready- or able- to accept. As a result, portrayals of the monkey in popular culture necessarily transform the monkey into the 'other', and marginalizes his message via a variety of tactics. Monkey Shines sought to change this; its very premise was that Man could and should learn from Monkey. Nevertheless, the classic marginalization tactics can be seen within the show itself. Beyond that, the show's untimely cancellation proves how unready society was to hear even the muted version of the voice of the Monkey that Monkey Shines was willing to provide.

In this paper, I will briefly illustrate the use of these marginalization tactics and discuss how the fate of the show and its protagonist reflect the failings of our society in terms of acceptance of the monkey psyche.

A. Vilification

The easiest way for Man to escape the message of the Monkey is to convince himself that the Monkey is evil. By doing so, he avoids having to confront and assess the truth of the monkey. Although Monkey Shines seemingly avoided this pratfall by casting the monkey as a hero instead of a villain, nevertheless, the monkey is subtly cast as a dangerously chaotic character.

Take, for example, the very first episode, in which the monkey steals from rich Jonathan Crouton, and is therefore ordered to serve as his butler. How can we not be disturbed by this blatant portrayal of the monkey character as a criminal? Such a portrayal, furthermore, is strengthened by the recurring motif of the "Monkey Attack", in which the monkey was shown leaping at one of the human characters' heads without warning. Cute, no doubt. Charming. But what sort of implicit messages about monkeys was it drilling into our subconscious? That they are dangerous, erratic, and unpredictable.

And these same messages were reinforced by the 'comedic' rants put in the mouth of the irascible drunken writer played by Neil Gaiman. Frequently, and most notably following his failed attempt to use the monkey to write him a novel by chaining him to a computer (a glaring case of exploitation, which warrants further examination beyond the scope of this paper), he would launch into anti-monkey invective. Granted, the show put such vitriol in the mouth of Gaiman, by no means the hero of the show, and it can be argued that the viewer was supposed to side with the monkey in such circumstances. Nevertheless, in view of the show's premise and the 'Monkey Attack', it is difficult not to notice a trend of vilification of the monkey, even in this show intended to counteract such stereotype.

B. Infantilization

When it is impossible to view Monkey as evil, he is often reduced to an infantile position, allowing us to subconsciously denigrate his message and thus, once again, escape it. This trope is startlingly clear in Monkey Shines, perhaps because its more subtle impact made it more difficult for the writers to identify.

Throughout the show (a simple viewing of the title sequence will support this assertion), the monkey was shown being held and/or cuddled by other characters. Crouton's character went so far as to carry the monkey around on his back, in a manner reminiscent of similar backpacks for children. This, despite the fact that the monkey was, in fact, 44 in monkey years, making him older than any of the other characters on the show. In the episode A Very Special Monkey Shines, this child-like image was further reinforced by deliberately paralleling the monkey with a young child learning about appropriate touching. This attitude was reinforced by the fact that he was never allowed even a passing love interest, unlike all the other roommates. The sole exception would be the scene in A Threesome, a Monkey and a Whole Lot of Ripple, in which his crush on a pretty girl led the roommates to invade a hotel dressed as sheikhs. Nevertheless, viewers will recall that the love interest quickly paired up with the rich Crouton; the monkey's status as the adorable child character thus remained unchallenged.

C. Anthropomorphism

Lastly, to deal with the reality of the Monkey which our society and our minds are not yet willing to accept, we eliminate the unique monkey point of view by recreating him in our image. Monkey Shines did not escape this failing. Beyond the smaller examples of the monkey's modern dance obsession and his Christmas sweater, can we not see the entire premise of the show as an example of this theme? The monkey- the paradigmatic free spirit- is transformed into a butler, forced not only into the human construct of employment, but into the role of a servant. This is, perhaps, the most poignant expression of the failure of the show's ambition.

D. Where are they now?

Such tactics, however, were not sufficient to save the show from Man's opposition to any positive portrayal of Monkey. From our perspective, perhaps, Monkey Shines did not go far enough; from the perspective of its era, it went much too far. Can the show's cancellation and 'disappearance' be regarded as mere coincidence, in light of the messages that it forced society to confront? The opinion of this author is unequivocally 'No'.

Equally troubling is an analysis of the eventual fates of the show's stars. All four of the human protagonists went on to semi-successful careers in their chosen fields; where is the monkey now?

Conclusion

In the end, Monkey Shines must be viewed as a brave, but ultimately failed attempt to confront Man with the message of Monkey. Its primary message, that a man could and should learn from a monkey, was too bold, too daring for its time and perhaps even for our own. The pressures of society and the limitations of our minds muted the message, subverted it, and at last silenced it. But by remembering both its message and its failings, we can remind ourselves of one basic truth: the monkey is a part of ourselves that we must confront, no matter how frightening or how difficult. Monkey Shines, in the end, forced us all, like Crouton in the opening titles, to look into the mirror and see, to our horror, the monkey looking back at us.

Jezebel's Letter

2008-12-03T16:40:00.003-06:00

And Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and also how he has slain all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger unto Elijah, saying, "So let the gods do to me, and more also, if I make not thy life as the life of one of them by tomorrow about this time."
-I Kings 19:1-2

You know I'll win.
You knew it even on your hill,
even as you stood there in your rainstorm,
clutching your fiery truth.
You knew.

Whether you heard it whispered
in your holy-haunted dreams,
or glimpsed it in their ovine eyes,
you and I have seen their naked hearts
and know your Truth is nowhere in them

And don't you wish that you were wicked
and could savor it like hot revenge?

Well, go run to your cave and warm your hands
on your little truth and your mighty rage.
Go enjoy your righteous misery
as I enjoy my wickedness.

And they'll go on, self-delighted,
their fingers in their ears so hard
they gouge their brains out.
And they'll enjoy that too.

How Romantic Comedies Train Women to be Abused Wives

2008-12-01T06:14:00.002-06:00

Today, I had a lecture basically about the Battered Wives' Syndrome (in the technical context of self-defense as a defense for criminal responsibility in cases of murder). As the professor lectured about the typical behavior patterns of the abusive husband before and after the marriage, I realized that a lot of them sounded quite familiar. And that is because I have consumed my fair share of chick flicks in my life.

What do I mean? Well, firstly, I don't mean that chick flick heroines, immediately following the ending credits, would become abused wives (even if they were bereft of the protection offered by fictionality). The movies are written with certain implicit assumptions about time compression and such like that make it impossible to judge the actual relationship. But a lot of the behaviors exhibited by abusive husbands, even long before they become physically abusive, are the very behaviors that chick flicks laud, expressly and implicitly, as healthy and/or romantic. Examples*:

1) The Big Romantic Gesture: Abuse generally works in escalating cycles, typified by extremes on both ends of the spectrum. Immediately after the abuse (and particularly in the earlier stages of the abuse, which usually starts just after the wedding), the husband is effusively apologetic, romantic, sweet. He buys jewelry, presents, new furniture to replace anything that he destroyed. (One police officer says that every time a woman came to report abuse, he could tell how often she hadn't reported it by counting her rings, necklaces, and bracelets.) Every good romantic comedy has a scene in which the hero engages in some over the top romantic gesture to atone for something that he has done to the heroine; the gesture proves that he is a good guy, that he truly loves her, that he will never hurt her again. Obviously, this is never physical abuse, but the core idea of "Gestures atone for misdeeds" is well-established.

2) They're all Just Jealous: Abusers typically seperate the wife from family and friends who attempt to stand in the way of a relationship that they see as problematic. They have never really understood her; they are just jealous that her relationship is succeeding; they want to keep her for themselves; they don't understand how happy she is; they are over-protective; will they never be happy for her? This serves both to silence any voices of protest and to cut the woman off from other people who might be able to help her get out of the situation later. In the romantic comedy form, there is usually only one over-protective parent or jealous friend/sibling and in the end they always acknowledge their flaws and the beauty of the relationship. Nevertheless, the idea that you should listen to your heart and boyfriend over your family is pretty well-rooted.

3) The Stalking of Love: Abusers typically slowly take over every aspect of their partner's life. They want to be with them at every moment, they pop up at unexpected times, because they always just want to be with them. Romantic comedies are full of this stuff, and it's hard not to notice the creepiness even without the abuser stuff going on. Nonetheless, even if the behaviors are exaggerated, the idea that there is something romantic about them wanting to spend every moment with you, and popping up in every aspect of your life, is reinforced. To make matters worse, romantic comedies often have an aspect of fixing your life as you find your man, who is often the one to point out that character flaw that you need to fix to make yourself happy and healthy. Of course, in the romantic comedy, he is generally absolutely right. This does not change the controllingness of the situation, or weaken the message that the man should be introducing major changes into your life.

The list continues, my time does not. In summation: Chick flicks are more than innocent cotton candy for the mind- they reflect some seriously twisted conceptions of love, and not just those of the "love conquers all variety".

*Based on one 1.5 hour lecture on a slightly different subject

Landlady

2008-11-18T06:49:00.004-06:00

The following story will not be funny to you, because you, dear lucky reader, have no idea how psychotic my landlady is, which would make its own hilarious post, but one that would make me feel a little too mean.

Anyhoo, conversation with my landlady, who lives in the apartment above us and comes to nag at least once a week:

LL: (in the middle of a rant about how we are destroying her apartment)...and why don't you just keep the apartment nice, Tomie?
Me: (sick of having her get it wrong for the last month or so) Tobie
LL: What?
Me: Tobie. Not Tomie. With a B.
LL: Tobie, Tomie, there are so many names...
Me: (stares at her dispassionate, trying not to say anything sarcastic)
LL: Tobie...why don't you change it to a nice Israeli name?
Me: (shrug, meant to express 'I don't know, maybe I'm sort of partial to, you know, my name')
LL: Tobie....there are dogs named Tobie.
Me: (blinks at her, waiting to see if at any point she will realize why this might not be an okay train of thought)
LL: (taking the look as disbelief, which it is, in a way) No really, my daughter, she has a dog...
Me: (trying not to make any thought connections between dogs and the landlady, especially the obvious ones) Can I go back to my work now?

Robots Overlords

2008-10-22T11:47:00.003-05:00

(did I say Overlords? I meant 'protectors')

It has been pointed out to me that the large spike that I see in hits after posting is mainly due to blogger and something complicated involving sending updates to feed sites to tell them to scan myself for searching...or something to that effect. I kind of zoned out, but fortunately, the gist of the computer talk was boiled down for me by my sister into the following useful info bite: My main readership is computers. I should direct more posts to this key demographic.

Unfortunately, I have nothing to say to my loyal computer readers. My techno talk is weak, our shared points of interest are few. I suppose I could chat about electricity, but frankly, that's kind of talking to humans about blood*. Not really where the interest is at.

I could compile a playlist of computer-centric songs, but none really come to mind. There are a bunch about robots. Is that the same thing? Most of the songs seem to assume vaguely humanoid robots. My readers are not humanoid, at this point, and probably a lot less sophisticated than the world-taking-over sort of robots. Is it like talking to humans about angels? Is it like talking to monkeys about humans? Would monkeys enjoy that?

So many questions. And yet, none of them matter. Because, unlike all of you fickle human punks out there, my computerized readers will continue to read my blog as long as I publish any sort of random junk whatsoever. Which means that, on the most fundamental level, this post is mostly definitely tailored for just that demographic.**

*Actually, it might be like talking to humans about electricity. It makes stuff in our body do stuff as well, no? Heart and all that jazz.

**For content-reading humans: This is above-averagely weird. Sorry about that.

Adultery and Apathy

2008-10-07T04:38:00.004-05:00

Chana's latest post, a very well-written short story entitled The Adulteress about, well, an adulteress, has dovetailed nicely into one of the rants that have been festering in my mind recently. It has been so long since I have had a good, serious full-throttle rant, so I am planning to enjoy this. I realized after writing this that it was, in many ways, merely an extension of this rant, but I don't really care, so there you go.

Now then. The protagonist of the story (and I know this will surprise you) infuriated me. (I should note that it is possible that Chana intended to make her infuriating. I'm not really sure.) Not so much the moral weakness of the main character, because even my judgmental mind knows that people are weak. Including me, obviously. Not even the self-pity that took the place of the deserved self-recrimination.

No, it was the perverse insistence that somehow the character's love for the 'other man' justified her weakness. This general concept that one's emotions are somehow a more moral basis of action than one's hormones- that this story of star-crossed lovers is different than drunk, hormonal people jumping into bed with each other in respects other than the magnitude of the temptation faced. I know that I am speaking from the insupportably lofty viewpoint of one who has never had to act on their principles, but love does not justify anything. Not butterflies in the stomach love, and not real, true storybook love.

Because really, in the purest moral sense, a marriage is not about love. I mean, don't get me wrong, it is an institution greatly facilitated by love, and I personally am darn sure planning on the two being closely associated, but at its core, marriage is not about love. It's about being motivated- for whatever reason, starting from love and spanning all the way to financial convenience- to accept upon yourself a certain set of duties. Chief among such duties is to be faithful.

And that's really all there is to it. Because the thing about duties- and this is cool, if you think about it right- is that they don't care about your emotions or how you felt when you got up that morning or whether true love is hovering just around the corner. Lack of love may constitute a reason to end the contract, depending on how it relates to the reasons that it was formed in the first place, but it does not constitute an excuse or even a mitigating factor for breach of that contract.

For me, the rant-festering actually started around a week ago, sitting around a Yom Tov table with an assortment of people whose religious affiliation spanned from formerly-religious to ba'alat teshuva. The conversation turned, naturally, to the subject of religion. And what with everybody fumbling to come to some common ground, the general topic was the uselessness of empty symbols, the foolishness of mouthing prayers, etc etc. The newly religious talked about how they connected to the mitzvot, the formerly about how they never could connect to them, everybody else about how they struggled with the connecting thing and what they did and didn't connect to.

The word connect was used a lot. The words 'truth' and 'duty' were not mentioned once. And that is because duty is out of fashion these days. Why on earth would anybody in this enlightened day and age hang about doing things they don't connect to, don't enjoy, don't love, when they can be out discovering themselves and all of the lovely things that they can be connecting to?

And again, I think that emotion and spiritual connection are key elements in one's religion. A religious experience that is lacking them is, well, a loveless marriage, and should definitely be avoided. I will admit that I am, at the moment, having some trouble mustering up emotional attachments to my observance. This bothers and disturbs me and is probably the main thing that I would like to work on in the coming year.

However, that in no way affects the marriage itself. I have chosen, and continue to choose, to accept upon myself a set of commitments for a variety of reasons, many of them intellectual in nature. My feelings don't affect those commitments and duties. The fact that lack of emotional attachment often leads to diminished observance is wholly rational, wholly natural, but not really morally justified.

I'm going to end with a pretty bowdlerized version of a story that I read once a long time ago about some Rebbe, who told his students about his own teacher. The teacher had been so holy, he explained, that every day when he davened, he was overcome by spiritual energy and could feel God's presence around him. What, said the Rebbe, could be more holy than that? And one of the students stood up and said, "I have never felt that. And yet I still daven every day."

Slichot Thoughts

2008-09-21T15:48:00.001-05:00

I once heard what I have since nicknamed the 'Groundhog's Day Theory of Reincarnation', according to which each soul is brought back into the world again and again until it gets everything just right. I don't really think that I believe this on any metaphysical level (of course, I avoid having any beliefs about metaphysics until I am certain that such beliefs make absolutely any difference to my actual life), but there's something about it that just… chills me. Some poor hapless soul- my soul, to be exact- trying again and again over the course of millennia to finally make it count. And to be honest, this life- I can't see it being the one that does the trick.

I did the traditional evaluating my existence thing last night before slichot. I'm generally honest to myself about myself, so I wasn't able to come up with any deep, wrenching guilt. I don't think that I'm a particularly bad person, or that I've been bad this year. In fact, the whole thing can probably be summed up as "Not bad, but not stellar."

Which, in a way, is worse. Because that's hardly what I want on my tombstone. I am coming to terms with getting B's in my classes, because frankly, they don't matter all that much. I don't want to get a B in life.

But the problem with a B, as opposed to an F, is that I can't put my finger on something solid to fix it. I'm not saying that I don't know what areas of my morality I should be working on; I'm reasonably clear on that. I'm just not sure that addressing them solves the basic problem of kicking things up a notch. Mediocrity is hard to cope with, especially because it doesn't leave you with guilt or anguish or disgust. Just a lingering anxiety, a vague sense that this is not all that it should be.

Is Beaurocracy Evil? Is Evil Beaurocratic?

2008-09-18T06:12:00.003-05:00

I just finished reading the first two books in Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials series. They're quite well-written, although of course the blatant ideology coming seeping through infuriates me. But that is another rant.*

I have heard that the books were written to be the anti-Narnia series, and I guess I see that. What interested me more was one fundamental similarity to That Hideous Strength, the third book in C. S. Lewis' science fiction trilogy. In both of the books, Evil (whether it be the Church or the anti-Church) is organized into a brutal beaurocracy, while Good is a less organized group of comrades under a charismatic leader.

In his introduction to the Screwtape Letters, Lewis explains why he thinks hell must work that way. Since devils, according to basic Christian theology, cannot love, one must imagine a form that would enable them to be organized enough among themselves to make mischief, without relying on any bonds of love to do so. A beaurocratic authority structure does so, creating mutual dependencies based on ambition, fear, and obedience to protocol (another form of fear). That Hideous Strength clearly depicts such an organization. Since the players are human, the desire to be accepted/admired comes in too, with people desperately wanting to be part of the 'in-crowd', without being very clear on what that means or entails, and thus doing just about everything they are told.

Such a structure differs from the normal 'beaurocracy breeds evil' theme, which plays more with the idea of de-personalization and diffusion of responsibility allowing atrocities beyond what most normal people would do. Lewis is claiming not that beaurocracy breeds evil (A-->B) but that true evil can only be efficient if it arranges itself in the form of a beaurocracy (B-->A).

It's not entirely clear which one of these Pullman is trying to argue. He uses interplay of committes and politics within the Church as a means by which the Church condones and benefits from evil that might otherwise be bad P.R. But it doesn't really seem that the Church, qua organized Church, is contributing to the evilness of anything or anybody. It is a means for some to gain power, but this doesn't result from its structure, but from its size. Everything the Church does, naturally, is evil, and therefore the more it does the more evil it creates (by simple math). However, it is left unclear whether God would be equally evil if His servants were less efficient or organized in different ways. Nor are there any examples of evil stemming from the beaurocratic structure- good people or qualms quieted by the structure itself.

This may well tie into my more general rant that Pullman does not seem interested in exploring the nature of the evil that he condemns. He creates a giant shadowy body, but he never really enters it or explores the thoughts of those within it. The sole exception to this is Mrs. Coulter, whose motives are (as of book 2) painfully unclear, other than her being firmly anti-original sin. But what is going on in the minds and/or hearts of the Church itself- seems to be beyond Pullman's interest, for all that he is willing to condemn everything about it. Lewis is no less decisive about the nature of his beaurocracy, but he spends chapters within its walls, explaining how it functions, why the people within act as they do, and how Evil operates in the world.

*This one, to be exact: Okay, fine, you want to kill God. It's a cool premise and for whatever reason, Pullman hates religion. Fine. He should live and be well, or whatever. But the reasoning being that because evil things are done in the name of religion, hence religion must be evil? Huh? Especially since the characters fighting on the side of good (that is, anti-God) are just as busy being just as repulsive. I mean, if you're going to use intercision as a measure of evil, you got a decent bit on each team, alright? So chill with the moral justification until you manage to come up with something better than this constant assertion: We all know, of course, that God is evil, without any convincing arguments. Maybe the third book will clear things up. It had better.

To the Hyper-Englightened Aliens of a Certain Class of Science Fiction*

2008-08-26T00:01:00.002-05:00

i have wandered your pristine wonderlands
and i have marveled at your innocence.
and i have stood with my various protagonists,
shuffling our feet like underpaid public defendants,
and tried to tell you why our kind
has created sticks that throw death
and explain the mystical properties
of those little green bits of paper.

but pardon me if i seem underawed,
but i have walked the gossamer bridges
of conscience and of law.
and i have bent my shoulders
and done my daily duty, day by day.
and i have whistled in the dark-
miracles that your heavenly utopia
will never glimpse nor guess.

*C'mon, you know the kind. Stranger In a Strange Land. Out of a Silent Planet. Heck, the horse-people of Gulliver's Travels.

International "Law"

2008-08-24T03:23:00.003-05:00

After a course this semester in International Law (well, technically "The Israel-Arab Conflict", but from the perspective of an international law analysis) and another in Jurisprudence, I have more or less come to the following conclusion: Public International Law is the most utter load of malarky that I have yet encountered. Or, to put it in a slightly less incendiary way, it is all very well and good and bears absolutely no resemblance to "law" in its official senses.

Obviously, the question of what is law is a complicated and hotly debated one, which I would prefer not to get into for two reasons: 1)It would involve a lot of typing and 2)I haven't actually finished studying for the test that we have to know all that for. But if you look at some of the most basic modern thinkers on the subject, it's hard to see how exactly international law fits in.

Austin, for example, defines law as norms accompanied by sanctions. That which will be punished, is a law. International law, in contrast, is backed by no official group with any power. The UN, which might theoretically be viewed as the sovereign enforcing these rules, fails to do so under almost all circumstances. Furthermore, the UN Security Counsel, the only body with the authorization to employ force, may do so whenever it identifies a likely breach of international peace or some such, which means that it is not predicated on any violation of international law per se.

H.L.A Hart modified Austin's claim to define law as anything that is recognized as legitimate, legally, from the perspective of those subject to it; law that is not enforced may still manage to be law, as long as all or most of those to whom it is addressed regard is as binding. Just about no state of which I am aware has ever avoided doing something that they otherwise would prefer to do based simply on the logic that it is against international law. They may not want the sanctions that other countries may or may not impose, but again, such sanctions may and are applied without regard to whether the actions officially violate international law or are simply dangerous/annoying/immoral. International law, in and of itself, is not really regarded as authoritative by those to whom it applies.

My personal favorite definition of law is that of Holmes (and not just because the man rocks): Law is simply what the bad man would care to know- how likely is action x to lead to a negative consequence in the form of the state's wielding its power against me if I do it? I think that it is pretty clear from the reality that the bad men of international law- and there are plenty- are pretty relaxed about the legal consequences of their actions. International law does little to nothing to deter them and therefore, does not actually exist.

The above is perhaps a little harsh. It would be more fair to say that international law does not exist according to any modern definitions of law. In fact, it seems quite similar to more classic definitions, which failed to make the sharp distinction between morality and law. International law, as a vague systems of norms that are neither enforced nor defined by any authoritative body, but which are intended to reflect basic universal standards of morality, really fit well with Natural Law theorists. However, in that case, international law is nothing more than one attempt to define morality, as it relates to the actions of nations towards one another, and has no more (or less) force or authority than any other of a hundred attempts to define morality, including religion, philosophy, and just about any ism. (Nor is public international law necessarily incompatible with the very new schools of thought, which tend to believe that all law is simply an arbitrary collection of guidelines aimed at preserving status quo, crushing the lower classes, and so forth. To the degree that you accept such views, international law is no less "real" than any other form of law, except perhaps, in that nobody is real effectively crushed by it. But I kind of hate those particular theories, which is why they are left in smaller-fonted parentheses.)

If that is the way that international law wants to be- and it has every right to be like that- my only real objection is that it should stop calling itself 'law' and thus prancing about in the mask of objectivity, enforcability, authority, and certainty that the title denotes in modern parlance. If we only called it "Public International Morality", I think that it would annoy me a whole lot less.

Link to slightly fuller convention write-up

2008-08-24T03:22:00.002-05:00

by Miri

Also: Oh, yes, there's controversy all right, over this article. My dreams of the J-Blogger convention are coming closer and closer to being realized. Life, sometimes, is just plain, fun.

J-Bloggerness

2008-08-20T16:57:00.003-05:00

Just got back from the J-Blogger convention, which contained, if not all of the beautiful silliness that could be imagined, certainly enough of it to make me fervently hope, pray, and plead that it will transform into an annual tradition. Miri has promised to do all the work of a full write-up, so I will link to her in the proper time.

What I found interesting (among other things) was the generally focused nature of most of the featured bloggers. They all had agendas, perspectives, or at the very least motifs to their blogs. It made me think that I ought to get me one of those and then I looked at myself and I said, 'Really, Tobie? Is that really going to happen?" and I replied that no, of course not, that's just crazy talk.

But I so enjoyed being part of the community/demographic that I have vaguely resolved to ramp up the blog posting again- yes, to more than once a month. Which leads me to the point of this post, insofar as it has one: I'm kinda sick of my blog url (tobiesrandomrants is somewhere between cutesy and blah- alliteration is not a tool for the inexperienced) and not particularly crazy about the title line either (voices in my head is just cliche. and a little mean to schizophrenics.) And apparently blogger allows you to give your blog a new whatnot and have the old one transition directly, which would be nice. So if people have suggestions for more exciting and/or clever titles, they would be most welcome.

Peace out.

The J-Blogger Convention

2008-08-18T13:07:00.004-05:00

On Wednesday, Miri and I will be attending the First International NBN J-Blogger Convention. I am so psyched about it that it's simply ridiculous. I am so psyched that I have been randomly bursting into giggles thinking about the silliness that it might contain. I'm so psyched that I was actually moved to post, and I think we all know that how much that says.

I'm sure it won't actually be all that exciting. The topic is how to improve your blog traffic and whatnot, a subject that interests me very little, particularly because I think it's pretty clear that one principle way of increasing my traffic would be to post anything ever. But in my head, it has a beauty that words can only struggle to capture, complete with levels of meta that make even my head hurt a little.

The pre-conference mingling (over cold-cuts. I know. Cold-cuts!), for example, plays out in my mind thusly: A room, mostly empty. Along all the walls are arrayed j-bloggers, each a discrete unit, each hunched over the keyboard of his or her own laptop, furiously typing clever and snide things about everybody else, glancing up only to look at everybody else to think of more clever and snide things to be able to say about them. The camera zooms in on one computer. The text reads "This guy next to me keeps looking up and then turning back to his computer to write more clever and snide things about me. It's pretty funny." The camera shifts down the line of computers, just slowly enough to give you time to note that the same line appears on each computer.

Or perhaps- equally beautiful- the clumsy cocktails party chitchat enlivened by everybody pretending that of course they have read the blog of the person with whom they are talking- not only read, but are absolute fans- lurkers, one might even say, unless they have the guts and the brains to claim credit for an anonymous or two here and there.

Do you think they'll fight? Really get into the way that they do on the blogs themselves? Will they know how to handle conversations when you get the reply right away and can even- and this is crazy- talk that the same time? Will there be trolls? Will people talk in caps lock? Will random people make crazy and unsupportable statements and then duck away under the beverages table, never to enter the argument again? Will there be anybody there with a bucket full of opinions?

Do you think that groups and cliques will start to form- the photobloggers, perhaps, pulling out first, to stand in their own corner and discuss... composition or something? Will there be rivalry between the religious bloggers and the political ones? Ooooh, will somebody question the hechsher of the deli selection? Will there be blog-level drama and melodrama? Will it all be covered exhaustively via live-blogging on both sides of the issue? Will there be aggregate posts and round-ups collecting all of the posts regarding the big blogger convention fight? Will there be awards for the best live coverage? Could I possibly be a witness to the most analyzed, attacked, defended, recorded, re-recorded argument in the history of mankind?*

I'm so psyched!!

*No. Probably not. In fact, almost certainly not. But still.

A Revolutionary Concept

2008-07-18T10:13:00.002-05:00

You know how annoying it is when your phone hangs up on someone and you try to call them and they try to call you and you both get busy signals and then you both decide to wait for the other person to call and then five minutes pass and by the time the conversation is back on track, you have lost momentum, not to mention a lot of time and energy? The problem could be solved forever if people would just, as a whole, adopt a uniform standard on the issue.

It is for this reason that I propose the general stipulation that whoever made the phone call in the first place should be responsible for the subsequent redialing. There is little to support this system over the alternative one; the important thing is simply that we unite behind a single standard and eliminate the confusion forever. Callers of the world, unite! and all that.

A Psalm by Saul

2008-06-14T16:54:00.002-05:00

The door opens and it is David
always David
laughing, careless,
white and red.

David!
But the women sing his myriads
and shower him with unearned love
and the spirit of the Lord
whispers on his shoulder.

Once it was I who heard that Voice,
thin and certain,
my madness most divine.
But the L-rd of course
prefers the perfect.

And David? Where is my David?
Let him come and fill my head
with psalms instead of ravings,
beautiful rose-red David
with the crystal eyes.
But he ducks away and then is gone.

Turn away. And tear away my mantle-scrap
like the promise of redemption.

Let me forget what is to come.

Song Fu

2008-06-02T09:18:00.003-05:00

Hey, go check this out. And by check out, I mean 'vote for Cloakie' because it would be a crime if the practically plagaristic Eileen person were to advance and Cloakie did not.

Mike and I decided that it looked like so much fun that we each came up with a sitcom of our own. Mine is 'Suburban Ninja': An ordinary housewife who, for reasons mysterious, dresses as a ninja and likes to make the crazy hands. Watch as otherwise banal, but simple, tasks become ridiculously complicated and humiliating when they are done with attempts at ninjary! His is the story of an old businessman who, upon retirement, decides to join a wolf-pack (entitled, of course, 'Julian of the Wolves'). To add conflict, we gave him a bunch of inheritance-hungry relations. The theme song for that one would go something like this, set to wolf howls and harmonica by somebody with actual musical talent, over a scene of wolves howling and Julian playing his harmonica:

Why grow old in Florida,
Golfing all day long,
When you can find a family
And join their happy song?
Yes, you can spend your golden years
With all your lupine friends.
You'll live and love and laugh and learn-
The adventure never ends.

How Normal People Think

2008-05-29T09:45:00.002-05:00

So I was hanging out with a group of friends last night, discussing, inter alia, my theories about mashiach, the wisdom of cutting one's own hair, and how one should cope with the fact that women are basically second-class citizens in Judaism.

[The last discussion was interesting enough to merit its own post, but I have no patience at the moment for chick stuff. B'Kitzur, my friend came up with 4 basic options: 1)Make up and/or believe fluff about it being about how women different and special and spiritual; 2) throw out the whole thing; 3)start picking and choosing within the system based on what appeals to you; 3) work within the system to make it less problematic. We basically chose 4, with a dash of 5) suck it up.

Did you know the etymology of suck it up? Fascinating.]

But what struck me was how similarly we were able to approach the issue. I mean, we were all able to pretty frankly admit the facts of the case, reject the fluff, discuss the historic reasons for such practices, debate the pros and cons of each option, and try to define the boundaries of legitimate action within the system. And, more impressively, we were able to joke about the limits of our own intellectual honesty (just enough to stay frum, to be exact).

And then I asked them all- do normal people think like this? I mean, I'm pretty sure that they don't, certainly not within the Orthodox community. But how not? I mean, how can one be moderately intelligent and not come to these sorts of conclusions? I mean, obviously not my personal conclusions, because they are frankly quite odd, but conclusions of the same general order of magnitude, if the term makes any sense. I understand if one rejects thinking about certain things, but how exactly do intelligent Modern Orthodox people seriously think about Judaism without reaching some opinions- any opinions- majorly outside of the mainstream way of thinking?

This is one of my less coherent posts, and I would delete it, but I really do want to know, and also I have not posted for ages, so I'm just going to let it go, and hopefully some sense managed to emerge.

Before-Sleep Thoughts

2008-05-15T17:08:00.002-05:00

So there was this study that I once heard about that said that people who are told that the placebo they are taking has a side-effect of causing insomnia sleep better than people told that the drug has a side-effect of drowsiness. Apparently the former attribute all of their inability to the sleep to the drug, and stop stressing over it, while the latter figure 'If I can't sleep despite this drug, I must be really, really keyed up about something.'

My question: If you know about this study, and decide to believe that your cough medicine must be keeping you up, so that it won't, and then decide to believe what's keeping you up is your belief that you should be going to sleep faster because you believe that your cough medicine is keeping you up, and then decide to believe that what's keeping you up is your belief that your belief in your belief in your cough medicine's keeping you up is keeping you up..... at what point does the whole thing become ridiculous and serve in and of itself to keep you up?

(This whole thing is remarkably similar to the 'that was my most recent thought' game, that used to drive me crazy when I did it.)

Poetry

2008-05-01T16:13:00.000-05:00

If poetry is self-expression,

Each confession cedes possession,

And I don't think I'm enough to go around.

I'll spill my guts and spill my ink,

I'll mix my soul for you to drink,

But what if you don't want a second round?

So prose is safe and wit is shield,

And every shrug's a sword I wield,

Against the creeping front of dull cliche.

And I'm not saying it's not real,

But if I flaunt Achilles' heels,

Maybe you won't see my feet of clay.

Aaaaaargh!

2008-04-08T09:41:00.003-05:00

A million blogs and facebook notes
full of pith and finger quotes.
And every one sneers just the same
and dreams of fifteen words of fame,
and every horse we beat is dead
and everything we say's been said
and God's been killed a thousand-fold,
then brought back with tactics just as old.
And I know that boredom's done to death
and meta's just a waste of breath.
But if you're in a fractal House of Fun,
the least you can do is look and run.

Guest Post by Talia

2008-03-09T07:11:00.004-05:00

I don't usually write these kind of emails; foreign correspondant reporting from the field. Firstly, I'm aware that my experiences pale in comparison to other people who live here. Secondly, I don't want my identity to be defiined an Israeli in proximity to newsworthy events. After a difficult week, however, I could no longer contain this letter.

Talia

I was supposed to go to Jordan next week. An all expense paid trip, thanks to a student grant, to participate in the American Association of Cancer Research conference and present an abstract. It was going to be the first real conference that I participated in. Preparing my abstract, I put in 18 hour days to meet the deadline. When other group members voiced concerns about traveling to an Arab country, I shrugged them off. Going to Jordan was part of the charm of this conference. It would give me an opportunity to see this new country from the neutral ground of a Sheraton hotel and an international science conference.

I began to realize that this might not be possible when the military operation in Gaza started. I pushed this thought to the side. In three weeks a lot could change, I told myself. That's the beauty of the volatile Middle East. The wind changes direction and all of a sudden we're drinking bottled water and eating pretzels around the negotiating table.

Last Friday I went to Sderot for the day. Sderot is a development town in the South of Israel about three miles away from the Gaza Strip. Over the past few years thousands of rockets known as kassamim have been fired on it from Gaza, however there has been a significant increase in the frequency over the last few months. Because the town is located so close these relatively primitive rockets can hit it, as well as several neighboring kibbutzim in the area. The town has a population of 20,000 but thousands have deserted the city recently.When you hear of the constant rocket attacks on the news, you wonder why anyone would stay. Although there are some who stay for idealogical reasons, a visit to Sderot reveals the truth. Those who stay are those who have no place to go, not enough resources to start again. To combat this notion a campaign has started in the past month "kniot neged kassamim" (shopping against rockets). Every Friday Israelis from all over the country drive to Sderot to do their shopping and bolster the local economy.

When we arrived a volunteer organization briefed us on the "local customs". When you hear the warning siren, a calm lady's voice repeating "tzeva adom, tzeva adom" (color red, color red), you have fifteen seconds to reach a secure location. If there is a cheder mugan (reinforced room, required in all new apartments constructed) you should go in there. Otherwise seek protection in the innermost room, away from windows and preferably a lower floor. Rockets will be coming from the southwest, so try to go to the northeast room. When driving a car do not wear a seatbelt so that you can get out quickly in case of an alarm. After one minute you can come out. Rocket hits can be traced by the sound, loud for a direct hit nearby, and the plumes of smoke. Resume routine until the next warning.

I only experienced three tzeva adoms in my three hour visit there. First one, walking down the street towards the pizza shop with my friend, Shana. Ran into the nearby restaraunt, where everyone was rushing into the kitchen, the inner most room. Most of the patrons were visiting from the center of Israel to support the economy and had never experienced a tzeva adom before. The cook joked around that anyone who wanted to help with the dishes was welcome to stay. When we left the kitchen the waitresses showed us the plume of smoke to identify where the rocket had landed. Around one kilometer away in an open field.'"Bshetach patuach, ein nifgaim v'lo nigram nezek". ("In an open area, no injured and no damage was caused", the phrase used to describe such incidents on the hourly news.) The next two I was in a building. We all gathered silently in the stairwell. Tobie, my sister, got separated from me and I turned around panicked to find her sitting five stairs up.

It was in the middle of this trip that I realized the absurdity of visiting Jordan. As if the security situation was a factor in planning a trip, like making sure there wouldn't be a cold spell for the beach holiday. I remembered that line from Catch-22, where Yossarian exclaims "they're trying to kill me!". It's not just a political situation or struggle for power. The third rocket landed half a kilometer away, a direct hit on a house. One woman was lightly wounded. They're trying to kill me.

After that third rocket it was more difficult to be in Sderot. As we drove in the car looking for a grocery store all I could do was evaluate the surroundings for a good place to jump out and seek shelter, trying to orient myself so we could hide on the northeast side.

You forget and you don't forget. The week after home in Rehovot, a safe fourty minute drive away from Gaza, the everyday sounds of the city sounded like rockets exploding in the distance. The fear that they've brought in better rockets that can do the extra 50km and soon my life will be like the life of those people in Sderot.

I wrote a polite letter to the AACR explaining that I would like to withdraw my abstract due to the difficult security situation. I included a link to the Israeli National Security Council website instructing Israelis not to travel to Jordan.

There was another email I wanted to send instead. I wanted to to yell at them for living in their fantasy world where Middle East peace is only an international conference away, where dialogue and coming to understand the other side is the only solution. For some reason the AACR conference symbolized for me the United Nations, Europe. All those groups who are so quick to condemn but don't give a damn that they're trying to kill me. I know it's obscene to be a Western state and to have a more developed military with modern technology and to believe you have a right to exist despite the European origins of most of your citzens. The world should have thought of that sixty years ago when they decided to give the Jewish people its own state. I'm sorry, I really am. I don't know if this was the best way for history to have been written. When Palestinians tell me how they feel torn away from their land and locked into villages, I wish there was another option. I want to tell the AACR, the UN, those people in conservative suits and coordinated ties who believe the world has evolved past warfare and dialogue is the only solution, they're trying to kill me. Look me in the eye and tell me that you really understand that.

We all are angry at someone. Some turn their anger to Hamas, others to the Israeli government, others at God. I'm angry at the World. And if we are angry long enough and loud enough, we hope to drown out the pain.

The Play

2008-03-06T13:44:00.003-06:00

In honor of the Purim season in general and Rosh Chodesh in specific, I have decided to post a couple of my favorite scenes from the much-described play. I actually wanted to post the whole thing, but Miri very properly pointed out that it is rather long and might have potential theoretical copyright issues if anybody is ever interested in doing anything with it. So I picked a couple of the most fun ones and will post them over the next couple weeks. For good, clean fun, play spot the allusions. Extra points if you spot some we didn't intend. If people are entertained and interested in reading more and promise that they won't steal the whole thing and sell it to their pseudo-Bais Yaakov high school first, they can e-mail me and it could possibly be arranged.

Scene 5

Night time. Bigsan enters, strolling thoughtfully. A few seconds later, Seresh runs up and then nonchalantly falls into step beside him. Quite possibly on the pocket.
S: What are we doing tonight, Bigsan?
B: Same thing we do every night, Seresh...waiting on the king.
S: Well, the waiting, I don't mind. It's the running to get him things-
B: -and then running to put them back-
S: -and then running to get them again-
B: -because now that he thinks about it, he really does think that maybe he wants a drink over water after all-
S: (all in one breath and getting so carried away that he forgets where they were going with this)-but actually maybe not, because it's true that he's thirsty, but does he really want to drink in bed, and actually Bigsan, I think he's really better off if he doesn't, because every time I try drinking in bed I get it all over my chin and usually down my neck too and then sometimes it goes down the wrong pipe and you start choking and then it's really just not worth it, but then again, if you'd just sit up to drink, you know, it wouldn't happen, but then of course, you get all woken up and then there was this one time when I-
B: (hurriedly) Precisely. (insinuatingly)...gets pretty annoying, doesn't it?
S: Well, yeah, because then you're all wet and your shirt-
B: I mean about the king.
S: Oh. Right. Yeah. That too.
B: are you pondering what I'm pondering, Seresh?
S: Um....I think so, Bigsan, but won't uniforms made entirely out of cotton candy get sort of sticky in the summertime?
B: (sort of stunned for a second or two, opens his mouth to say something, then shakes his head and moves on in an “Anyway...” sort of way) Um, no....I was pondering the idea that it's about time that we (lowers voice dramatically) did something about the king.
S: You mean like ignore him?
B: (still more dramatically) I mean like...kill him
T: Kill the king?
B: Precisely.
T: What, our sovereign king?
B: Indeed.
T: For making us run errands?
B: Exactly.
T: Yeah, sure. I'm in.
B: Well, as it just so happens, I've got a cunning plan...
Exeunt, Bigsan's arm over Teresh's shoulder and whispering conspiratorially. Mordechai either emerges from some nook or cranny or the spotlight highlights where he has been hiding in shadows.
BLACKOUT
Throne room. King on throne. Bigsan and Teresh are lead in by Charvonah and Guard 1.
Ach: (trying to look stern and cunning and stuff)
Gentlemen- if I may call you that-
The time has come we had a chat.
Tell me, how do you enjoy your work?
Are the hours long? Do you like the perks?
Teresh: Well, actually, I was just saying to Bigsan the other day that the dental plan was a bit-
Bigsan: (speaking over him) By which he means to say that we are completely satisfied with our jobs, your most excellency.
Ach: And against myself- you've no complaints?
No qualms, no wrath, however faint?
Bigsan: (groveling really quite pathetically at this point) Oh, no, sire, your most wise and unfailingly pleasant highness. Who could dare to have any hint of thought of inclination of lack of complete satisfaction in your greatness's employ?
Ach: Such thoughts are sweet, if they are meant...
Now. You two claim that you're content
But I put this to you instead:
You hate my guts and want me dead!
Bigsan: My lord! The very notion! I assure you, the idea is the furthest thing from my mind. In fact the very mention fills me with such sorrow and horror that-
Ach: Indeed? A reliable source has told the Queen
Some Marduke? More-duck? Meredach I mean-
Or was it- bother, never mind-
Now, is it true that you are so inclined?
Bigsan: Oh most gracious source of all wisdom, if I could be so daring as to suggest that you could possibly be in error-
Ach: We've heard enough from you today-
Let's hear what your sidekick has to say.
Teresh: (quite probably not faking his forgetfulness) What, me? Well, you know...it's hard to say, really...you know how things are....I'm sorry, but I've forgotten the question... was it something about mushrooms?
Ach: Just one tiny piece of information:
Are you plotting my assassination?
Teresh: (nervous glance at Bigsan) Oh, sire, please. What a ridiculous idea! I can tell you, your majesty, sire, sir, with really complete confidence, that my friend here is not planning to kill you even just a little and that the only reason that he might possibly maybe just happen to have a vial of poison in his pocket is for some entirely legitimate reason, like he's planning to build up a resistance over the course of years, so that someday, if he is ever is challenged to a battle of wits-
By this time the guards, who are quite a bit sharper than Achashveirosh (who is just standing there sort of stunned by the flow of words) have gone through Bigsan's pockets and found the vial.
Ach: Good gracious! Jeepers! Oh my! And wow!
I'll punish you villains- by hanging, I vow
And the story- including the name of that guy-
Shall be writ in the records of Paras and Madai.

Self Sacrifice

2008-02-20T05:36:00.006-06:00

In my heart, I shall build a temple
To the splendor of His honor.
And in the temple, I shall build an altar
To the radiance of His glory.
And for an eternal flame,
I will take the fire of the Akeidah.
And for a sacrifice,
I shall bring up my only soul.
(בלבבי משכן אבנה by Rav Hutner (?) )

I just finished reading Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis. As I often find to be the case with Lewis, it was literarily a bit dull and theologically complex and fascinating. The story is a retelling of the myth of Psyche and Cupid, so its heavy-handed allegory is to be expected. One of the main themes of the book, as I understood it, was the question of love and selfishness. Love, according to Lewis, is often only a mask for selfishness- a lust to devour the other person, to co-opt their personality. True love means to give, to meld, to relinquish your selfish interests in owning the other person.

So far, so good. But the extension and corrollary of this is that to love God, we must utterly submit to His will. As Lewis expressed it in Screwtape Letters, we must yield even our individuality to Him and then He may choose to regift it to us, according to His will. In the book, the primary metaphor for this was Psyche's required unquestioning obedience to her god/husband and the horror caused by Orual's attempts to fight the gods or question their will.

Reading the book, I found that this bothered me. At first, I tried to attribute it to the medium. Since I am morally opposed to feeling any need to worship my theoretical husband, the metaphor of spousal obedience as our duty to God rubbed me a bit the wrong way. (Although I don't think that the decision was purely incidental on Lewis's part. But that gets in to larger and even more confusing questions of how I feel about his take on gender in this book and in general, so I'm going to leave that to the side for the moment.)

But that's not really it. Because even if you grant that no reverence is due a regular husband, surely nobody can doubt that Psyche must and ought worship her husband who happens to be a god. The problem is that I think that I do doubt that. And I'm not sure how I feel about that fact.
To elaborate: upon realizing that the gender issue was not the main thing at stake here, I found myself attributing such views of total self abnegation to Lewis's Christianity. And it is true that there is something very Christian about the concept of man's nothingness in comparison to the infinitude of G-d. (Or perhaps more exactly, there is something very that idea about Christianity.) To the best of my very limited knowledge, that's why they invented Grace and did away with good acts, for the most part.

Be that as it may, reverence and submission towards God are hardly foreign to Jewish theology. The phrase "Negate your will before His will" is a pretty succinct description of the basic command and I think that it's a sentiment that one can found repeated pretty regularly throughout the sources.

But nevertheless, I find myself unable to accept the premise that God is somehow greater than my soul. And so I have a convenient set of beliefs which include a God who enjoys humans giving Him a run for his money; a soul that is fundamentally composed of the same material as God Himself, just in difference concentrations; a morality that is created through the struggles and the choices of the human soul; an emphasis on the human-crafted halacha; and a few very creative interpretations of the akeida story. I am perfectly willing, on an intellectual level (which is the easy level to be perfectly willing on), to die for God. I am equally okay with the idea of killing myself or others for Him, provided that it seemed a moral thing to do. But I will not destroy my self for Him.

And I am very fond of this theology. It is, after all, mine. However, I wonder- I can't help but wonder- if I created it as a very long and roundabout way of getting around the basic statement that there's really no getting around: God is greater than me.

I know, I know. It's pretty fundamental. And intellectually, I almost, almost believe it. Except that when you translate 'me' to 'my soul', I just can't find myself buying it. And I can't decide whether that is a theological victory- the inherent divinity of the soul standing up for itself- or a triumph of my baser pride refusing to bow even to God. Since I currently believe in my belief system, it's hard for me to see that it might be having negative implications on my entire religious practice, but I nevertheless have some sense that accepting the premise that I should and must sacrifice even my self to God is a pretty major theological point, that ought to be impacting almost all of my daily life, once I've figured out how I feel on the subject.

Here's why I'm worried: I can't seem to work up a proper awe of God. I can blame it, perhaps, on my non-royalistic background and the general culture of equality, which means that I don't have a default setting of humbled submission to apply to the situation. But sometimes I find myself yearning for some visceral, emotional, paganistic reverence laced with terror that I simply cannot find myself capable of feeling. Somewhere along the way, I have dialed up my conception of my self and dialed down my conception of God so that I can't really, really fear Him.

And even worse- as a cause or effect or side-effect or parallel phenomenom- I think I have managed to deanthromorphize Him to a degree that I'm having a hard time loving Him either. It's not good. And I try to explain it away by saying that emotions are not critical and that I'm not a particularly emotional person, but I felt more once and I'm pretty sure I should be feeling more now.

But to throw my current beliefs about God out the window for the sake of some visceral emotionalism that I'm not sure I'm ever going to be able to acheive hardly seems to be the answer. Especially since I'm still pretty convinced of their accuracy. And not at all sure that they contradict the emotions that I'm trying for. Which leaves me.... nowhere really. Confused, mostly.

I'm going to close with a poem that I wrote a bit ago, ostensibly on behalf of a character (right. Okay. So here's the deal. I know that people ought to write what they know, but what I know is largely typical hackneyed teenaged angst and I'm not interested in reading it, let alone writing it. So when I am bored and in the mood to versify, I often create a character who is writing a poem about a situation which he is in, which allows me to borrow not only his circumstances, but often his voice, which I find to be less self-conscious and more talented than my own. I know it doesn't make sense. Go along with it), but with a pretty clear realization of its allegorical accuracy:

Our lips spell out the love songs
that so many sang before us.
We add our thin falsettos
to their ever-soaring chorus.

And only fools, we whisper,
wear their hearts upon their sleeve.
And if we have lost nothing,
then there's nothing we can grieve.

So let us ask no questions
and we'll have to tell no lies.
For we can kiss like lovers
if we only close our eyes.

Beinisch on Friedmann

2008-02-18T14:27:00.002-06:00

I know that nobody other than me really cares about Israeli judicial politics, but sometimes the Supreme Court just bugs me so much that I have to rant about it somewhere, even though I am perfectly aware that a decent constitutional lawyer would probably make mincemeat out of my feeble rage. The following is a quote from a JPost article about Chief Justice Beinisch:

She also criticized his bill to establish a search committee to choose the presidents and deputy presidents of the magistrate's and district courts instead of the current arrangement where the appointments are made by a joint decision of the justice minister and the president of the Supreme Court.

"This is [part of] a program to take away the prerogatives of the president," said Beinisch.

"Friedmann says this is because the Supreme Court president is not responsible for his decisions because he is not elected by the public. This is an incorrect understanding of the judicial system. The whole court structure is such that it is not made up of elected officials. Trying to weaken it because it is not responsible to the public goes to the very roots of the judicial tradition in Israel. There has been a constitutional understanding since the establishment of the state.

"Every justice minister knew who was in charge of the judicial system."

Beinisch added, "[Friedmann] has plans, that is true. It is part of his world view. I hope the Knesset will understand the ramifications of these plans and act accordingly. If the Knesset approves his legislation, I will hand my concern over to every Israeli citizen."

Beinisch said she was not sure the changes Friedmann wanted to made were constitutional.

What principally annoys me about all of the above is the way that Beinisch pretends that the current system is somehow divinely or even nationally mandated. The Constitution of which she spoke was not reached through any special process nor based on any special majority. Bits of it demand that any amendments require 60 votes (i.e. the majority of the members of Knesset and not simply of those voting.) That's it. There was never any intention for it to be anything beyond that. Whether the history of Israel has always supported apolitical appointments is not really clear. The reason that there was never any real clear constitution on any subject at all was because nobody ever agreed on anything.

And the committee for appointing Supreme Court justices is full of political figures. In fact, the special apolitical nature of court appointments is largely caused by politics: The members of the court come to the appointment committee as a bloc, while the members of Knesset and the government are drawn from the Coalition and the Opposition, which means they're at each other's throats. So it's not really at all clear that the judicial self-appointment was ever what was intended.

But beyond that, Beinisch refused to address the question of whether the measure is a good idea (at least, not in this article. I can't pretend to be an expert on her opinions.) She hides behind the current legal situation as though it were the gospel, which is particularly ironic coming from one of the most activist courts out there. The fact is, she is loudly and angrily pointing out that the proposed reforms are, in fact, different than the existing situation- that Friedmann is using these reform to change things. Gasp.

Particularly interesting is the fact that in the same article Beinisch decries the fact that the court is dependent on the Justice Ministry for budget and is involved in senior court appointments. Somehow, this legal (and possibly constitutional. I don't know which laws govern the question) arrangement is not part of her hallowed status quo, not an expression of the basic tenets of the Israeli legal system. I guess that honor only goes to the bits of it that promise absolute judicial freedom, not the bits that might aim at some clumsy balance of power.

Neo-Sabbateanism

2008-02-11T16:19:00.001-06:00

Sometimes, the meandering pathways of the interwebs lead you down twisted and unexpected paths, so that, leaping from link to link like stepping stones scattered at random in the ocean of knowledge, you come upon things that just make you say huh.

(I personally most like the bit where they subtly explain away the conversions.)

Vampires

2008-01-22T04:07:00.000-06:00

So I've been thinking about vampires and their aversion to religious objects and, overanalysing as is my wont, I have a few questions:

Are all religious symbols valid or just Christian ones? If the latter, does that conclusively prove the validity of Christianity? If the former, do either vampire or victim have to be aware of the nature of the symbol or would it be sufficient for the symbol to exist even in some distant, unheard of tribe somewhere? Would a cross work for a Jew? Does it depend on the religion of the vampire? If a cross would work, would it be forbidden for the Jew to use one because that would constitute idolatry? Is a Magen David a valid religious symbol, given its relatively modern origins and the lack of religious power attributed to it? Could vampire-shunning be used as a test for the religious validity of a practice or symbol? Can the cross be made out of any material and if so, why don't people just make one with their fingers at the critical moments? If there are limitations on material, what are they? Do they relate to the permanancy of the material, the consistency, or is there a closed list of valid materials? Would a plastic cross do the trick? Would a tattoo of a cross work? Must the vampire see the cross or is general presence sufficient? Can he avoid the problem by closing his eyes? How much of a barrier is required to block the influence of the cross? Is a single layer of material sufficient, and if so, could vampires wear sunglasses, or would protective material be required for all exposed areas of skin? If a priest recited a prayer and spat on the vampire, would that constitute holy water? What if the priest is secretly not a very holy person at all? What if a regular person said a bracha and spat? What bracha would you make? Would it be a bracha l'vatala? If so, would that negate the holiness factor?

Shomer Follow-Up

2008-01-17T06:46:00.001-06:00

I had forgotten the oh-so-sweet rush that comes from a blog posting- the sense of accomplishment when you look at the torrents of words that have somehow poured forth from your fingertips; the anticipation laced with a bit of anxiety as you wait to see how the world has accepted your offering; the thrill of joy each time you check and see that there is a comment, and the curious suspended excitement as you wait for the page to load. So addictive it is. Enough to stir me from my habitual torpor, actually having something useful to say be darned.

And from that unusually florid introduction onward:

I was talking to one of my roommates about my last post (She reads, apparently, but will not comment, thus necessitating actual verbal dialogue. The horror, the horror.) and we both attributed the shomer negiah phenomenon to reason #2 below: the gap with the values of society.

To elaborate: once upon a time, Jews lived largely among Christians or various ascetic sects and could generally go along with the idea that sex was- generally or entirely- bad. Of course, they realized that sex in marriage was a different story, but then again, so did the Christians and so everybody was happy and halacha developed along lines that fit everybody's values and that was that.

But nowadays, general society has massively different opinions on a number of different fronts. The first is that sex is pretty much alright when done for almost any reason or situation (barring a mutually accepted loveless marriage, which still is somehow very immoral.) The second- and more interesting- is that love justifies all. People in books, movies, real life will do unbelievably silly and/or immoral things under the banner of love and even if it ends tragically for themselves or others, Love is brought out as some ineffable, overarching, incontrovertible justification.

Last year, I attended a shiur in which the speaker suggested (based, I believe on Paradise Lost and C. S. Lewis) one of the most compelling definitions of Avoda Zara that I had ever heard: Idolatry is taking one value or ideal and setting it above everything else- putting it in the place of God. Over the years, there have been idolatries of nationalism, of honor, of nature.

And ever since then, those have been the terms in which I have framed my annoyance with almost all bits of culture out there, from ridiculous paeans to Love like Enchanted to otherwise sensible books. They seem to worship love. But I believe (with the firmness of one who has no personal experience on the issue) that love justifies nothing that is not otherwise justified, and nothing that is overwise justified needs love to justify it. (Including sex.)

The problem is that even for those who intellectually agree with that sentence, I think society's canonization of love makes it difficult to wholeheartedly pledge themselves to a standard that is often going to be in conflict with the all-important Love. And therefore pro-shomer arguments are forced to base themselves on the relatively weak ground that shomer is actually the best servant of Love, rather than the stronger and less arguable point that it is a religious requirement likely formed with little to no interest in what effect it will have on Love, one way or the other.

Shomer Negiah

2008-01-15T09:21:00.000-06:00

Izgad linked to an interesting article by Matthue Roth (author of the 'great but flawed Orthodox novel') discussing shomer negiah. Actually, the article simply described a phenomenon of which I think people are pretty generally aware: Modern Orthodox young people tend to view shomer negiah as optional, if not downright nerdy.

This is a fact that has always fascinated/annoyed me (according to context, mood, and audience.) For me, personally, it is less a religious issue at this point than a sociological one. (Also, not a personal one. I have had no personal experience on the subject, besides the awkward work-handshake situation, so I have no dog in this fight.) But here's my religious take off the bat, just to get it out of the way:

To the extent of my knowledge, shomer negiah (when the girl is a niddah, as most unmarried girls are these days) is possibly a Biblical level prohibition, possibly a Rabbinic one. (Based on the verse "To a woman in her niddah, you should not approach to bare her nakedness." Not, perhaps, a necessary reading by modern standards, but in Talmud homiletic terms, a pretty strong one.) Like most prohibitions found in the Talmud, you can discuss the legitimacy of the Biblical reading, the societal influences pushing the reading\prohibition, and the moral/psychological value of the prohibition from here until the cows come home, but there is little intra-halachic basis to write off the commandment. And, as is generally the case, there are various loopholes that the halachic system and the Jewish community has chosen not to go with. So, from a purely halachic standpoint, there isn't really any intra-system reason that it should be weaker than almost all the kashrut we currently keep, or 99.9% of shabbat.

But for some reason, it is considered a legitimate question in even observant circles to ask "Are you shomer?" And they don't mean shomer shabbat or shomer kashrut, or general shmirat mitzvot. And for that same inexplicable reason, answering 'no' gets you nothing worse than being thought at worst 'a little left-wing' and at best 'normal' in a way that admitting to not really keeping kashrut never would.

I am at a loss to explain these things. I can come up with a few general guesses, but they fail the basic test of explanations, which is that they could predict which things would be like this and which wouldn't. But here they are:

1) It's too hard. Unlike turning on lights and eating milk and meat together, shomer negiah offers too much temptation for hormone- or love- addled minds can overcome. The problem: this doesn't really explain why it's okay to state in general that you don't even attempt to be shomer; if the action is regarded as a irresistable sin, you'd think there'd be more shamefacedness about it. Also, Jews are pretty insane about the oddest stringencies in the most difficult situations. I doubt that shomer negiah presents any insurmountable obstacle to people who really, really believed that it was wrong.

2) It's too weird. Society, as a whole, has changed drastically from the Victorian mindset that would have regarded such a thing as even semi-normal. Society today, instead of stigmatizing love/sex, has nearly idolized it, so that the most ridiculous and immoral actions seem to gain validity if done in the name of love. As such, the official halachic stance is simply not tenable in the modern world and under modern sensibilities. To be modern, in effect, means to disobey the halacha in this case. The problem: there's plenty of weirder and/or more 'offensive' things that the modern orthodox will continue to do. Shomer negiah, actually, sounds pretty good when phrased in sweet, airy terms to the general world (Read, for example, Gila Manolson). Certainly better than shechitta or various other things that we keep.

3)It's not all that exceptional. Maybe Modern Orthodoxy, in general, is dropping prohibitions left and right, and this is simply the only one that occurs to me at the moment. If so, the shomer negiah phenomenon is symptomatic of a general trend in modern orthodoxy that is well beyond the scope of this suddenly-quite-long blogpost.

4) Who knows? Sometimes religion just evolves, working along its own path, weaving in and out of history. In a hundred years, perhaps this will just be one of those things. I think that what makes this trend different is the fact that halacha has never really caught up. Nobody's trying to reinterpret the law or challenge the validity of the prohibition. They just ignore it, in a manner that must be causing some pretty unhealthy cognitive dissonance out there.

Does my ever-wise blogging audience have any suggestions?

A Timely Post

2007-12-25T08:03:00.000-06:00

It was not until I had begun typing that I realized how timely this post was, so I went back and change the title and decided to run with it.

As part of my ongoing attempt to bring myself up to the proper level of culture and general knowledge that I would be getting from a normal college, I have begun to read the New Testament. The following are my general thoughts on the subject, in no particular order. While none of them are particularly original, they all interested me at the time:

There is no possible way that I can read this without a bias. Even ignoring any prior conditioning I have, I'm simply not reading this as an article of my faith that it is morally useful to appreciate. Quite the opposite. So any comparisons to Tanach are simply not going to be fair.
That said, I'm not overwhelmingly impressed. It's nice. It's certainly nice and sweet and preachy, and just jam-packed with all sorts of quotable quotes. And that's it. I can see sweet, moral people being all inspired by its sweet, moral lessons, but it doesn't feel like it has any meat to it. For me, it's rather like my high school Navi class (and I'm sure they'd both love the analogy): full of pretty lines and "how can we apply this to our lives?" without firm guidelines or anything real. I'm sure there are people who like that sort of thing; I'm just not one of them.
The story of John the Baptist's head is exactly- I mean uncannily- like the story of R' Yishmael the Kohen Gadol. I mean, isn't John even the son of the Kohen Gadol or something? And the girl and the face... There's got to be some copying or joint source there. I bet there's a doctorate somewhere out there on that very subject.
Wow, there's a lot of stuff about faith and the world to come. A lot. I actually like worldviews that have less of an emphasis on both. Which seems to be more common in Tanach than in modern Orthodox society.
It's quite repetitive, isn't it? I mean, aside from the Gospels being the same things in slightly different wording, each gospel has multiples of each story. Twice with the loaves and fishes, at least three predictions of the Crucifixion, countless lepers and demon-possessed. I wonder if there's Bible criticism on this stuff.
They, like the gemara, are really, really big on Eliyahu. There doesn't seem to be any such emphasis in the later bits of Tanach, except for that one quote at the end of Zechariah.
I keep getting annoyed at Jesus for being egotistical and self-centered and overconfident. And I know that when you're G-d, you're allowed to wander about and think that you're so special and that it's better for people to bathe your feet than help the poor and that loving their families more than you is evil and whatever, but it's still really annoying when it's coming from the mouth of a character who is technically human. (Maybe it's my sidekick sympathy kicking in) You just want to tell him to get over himself. And I guess one could have the same objections to G-d, but to me it's quite different when you're incorporeal and infinite and so forth.

Enchanted

2007-12-24T05:25:00.000-06:00

Many movies annoy me. Quite a few bore me. Some offend me. But Enchanted may well be the first movie that left me not only irate, but also genuinely puzzled how anybody who saw it could be otherwise.

You see, the charm of fairy-tales and chick flicks is that they don't ask certain questions. Boy meets girl, boy and girl overcome wicked stepmothers or their modern substitutes, boy and girl ride off happily into the sunset and everyone applauds. And if somebody cynical chooses to sneer and ask questions like "But what do they know about each other?" "What sort of basis do they have for a relationship?" "Can they even have a normal conversation with each other?" "What's going to be in thirty years when they're both ugly?", well, that's between me and whichever unfortunate person I'm ranting to.

But Enchanted decided to ask those questions. And I was really pleased. Here, I thought, reading the brief plot blurbs in ads, here would be a fun, crazy, charming movie where Disney gets a chance to laugh at itself and its skewed vision of romance, where fairy tale people learn about the real world and real world love.

Spoilers ahead, I suppose. But only for those who were naive enough to believe the above.

After the opening Disney-fairy-tale part of the movie, I was excited. The musical number was pure classic Disney, overdone enough to be read as a brilliantly subtle self-parody. The gritty little chipmunk worried me- grittiness was enough of a pseudo-twist that it almost made you think that they meant the whole thing. But still, my bubble remained unburst.

The real-world. The divorce attorney who's getting engaged. A very promising speech about love being about knowing the other person, understanding their strengths and weaknesses. Yay, I thought, they really are going to talk about how silly- and ephemeral- fairy tale love is.

As the attorney chatted with his daughter about women accomplishing things in the world and why that's nice, I turned to my friend and said, "What they had better not do- and actually I have enough respect for them to have faith that they won't do this- is have this man become involved with the princess."

Yeah. Really, I don't know why I bother with my tireless optimism.

But I kept hoping, even as the chance grew smaller and smaller. Right on through the silly scenes. Despite even the catching and the bath towel, I truly hoped. I think it was Nancy who shattered that hope- Nancy, without enough personality to make the viewer sad when Robert would break off a five year relationship (five years!) for the girl he met the day before.

It was then that I realize that this movie was not a self parody. It was not correcting the foolishness that every Disney movie innocently propagates; it was going to deliberately and in cold blood, with malice aforethought, support, justify, and embrace every single one of them.

And so there was no hope left to be shattered by the rest of the movie, nor was I thrown off by the clues that almost suggested the lesson that I had once hoped for: the support for dating and actually getting to know your partner; the brief re-emergence of Nancy as a kind of sweet person; Robert having the courage and decency to break off the kiss.

No, it was clear that if the movie was going to preach against giving your life to somebody you had known for a day, it was definitely going to come down clearly in favor of giving your life to somebody you had known for two days. In favor of believing that love can conquer all, no matter the marital difficulties that have thrown you into bitter divorce proceedings. In favor of happily ever after and true love's kiss.

And what made it all more painful is that the movie had so much. It was a clever premise, and it was executed cleverly. The musical number in Central Park, the vermin cleaning song, the prince were all terribly fun. And if they never actually crossed over into self-parody, they could have done so easily. Even at the end, there were places when I could daydream of the movie being saved from itself. I even saw one brilliant ending where nobody kissed the princess and she died and then paramedics burst in, gave her CPR, pumped her stomach, and she ran to Robert and he told her that a day of song and dance doesn't trump five years of commitment and understanding....

But despite what Enchanted may have to say on the subject, many dreams don't come true. And the dream of Disney presenting a mature, balanced, moral, clever, self-deprecating love story is apparently one of them.

A Complex Problem in Game Theory

2007-11-21T11:36:00.000-06:00

Alright, ever wise blog audience, solve the following story problem:

1) Due to the semi-strike currently existing in the university, there is one particular class (Class X) regarding whose convening there is a constant state of uncertainty.

2) The professor has stated that he will come every week, but will only give class if enough people show up.

3) Enough seems to be defined as 9+ students. Perhaps 10.
a) Normally, there are 10-12 students present.

4) Most members of the class would prefer that class not take place at all, since then they will not have to come to campus, often in the pouring rain.

5) Once members of the class have arrived, there is some disagreement about whether they would prefer that there be class or not.
a) The class is incredibly boring and most people are anyway only taking to fulfill some requirement.
b) Some members of the class seem to genuinely enjoy it.

6) Nobody wants to miss a class that does take place, since the material will be on the test and they are scarily obsessed with their grades.

7) If enough classes fail to take place, the class may be canceled, which would waste any effort already invested into class attendance.

8) There is a possibility that if the course will be canceled even if all classes take place, either because not enough students have had any attendance or because the semester as a whole will be canceled.

9) The professor, in planning the test, says that he will make every effort to accommodate students that have not been present, but that he has no idea how he will do this.

10) Neither the students among themselves, the professor, nor the university has any power to coordinate things. The only forum in which information is shared and tactics can be discussed is in the classroom itself, the discussion thus limited to people who have chosen to attend.

So....do I go to class?

The Rebbe

2007-11-10T15:28:00.001-06:00

Like all young children, Yitzi fashioned G-d in the image of his father. Thus, Hashem was bearded, solemn, and sacred. Hashem loved everybody, just like Tatty did, but Hashem loved Yitzi the best because he was special and he would become the rebbe when Tatty went up to Hashem and left all of the chasidim for Yitzi to take care off.

At seven, he was securely expectant. By ten, he began to doubt. He was not holy when he prayed and he did not remember all his Torah and he went to sleep long before the light went off in Tatty's study. He had known that he would not be as great as the rebbeim of the stories. Now he wondered if he would be great at all.

He buried the hot-stomach doubt and continued learning. Eager teachers found signs of genius in his willing intelligence and signs of piety in his tired, wary eyes. They told each other that he was G-d-fearing and when he heard them, he wanted to tell them that he never thought about G-d. But he didn't, because he was a liar.

One afternoon when he was eleven, he came into Tatty's office. Tatty talked to him about the Tosafos's reading of Rashi and he thought about the boys playing outside and how only he had to be great and wasn't. And then he looked suddenly into Tatty's sacred eyes and it came to him that Tatty did not know. Tatty did not know that he was not great or that he wished that he could play outside instead of standing in the office learning with the Rebbe. It was too big of a thought for him to think at all once and so he broke it down into little pieces and thought it for the next few months.

These were the pieces of the thought: Tatty does not know that I am not great. Tatty is very great. Hashem gives him help to know how to lead the chasidim. But Tatty doesn't know that I am not great.

He wavered for a moment on the brink of doubt. But Tatty was great.

So there must be greatness that he could see in Yitzchak, like everybody said there was. And yet at the same time, Yitzchak was not great.

He pushed himself harder, stayed up later, clenched himself tighter when he prayed. But he never felt the still, small flame that he could see in Tatty's eyes. It seemed to him that trying was not enough, and yet he knew that fear of G-d was in his hands and the failure must be his.

Meanwhile, boys treated him with ginger respect. Meanwhile, his teachers' eyes blazed with devotion. Meanwhile, Tatty got sick and weak as though his soul was eating up his body. Meanwhile, Yitzchak's prayers and nights got longer and longer and nobody knew what a liar he was.

Tatty died when Yitzchak was twenty. His voice trembled at the funeral when he spoke of his father's greatness and his own inability to be a tenth of what Tatty had been. Weeping chasidim comforted each other with the new rebbe's humility.

Almost before shiva was over, they came to him, asking him about their businesses and their wives, begging him to pray for their sick and dying, bringing him their chickens and their consciences for his examination. They expected him to know everything the way that Tatty had.

But there was no certainty in him. The chasidim piled faith on him like a boulder and questions like volleys of stones, and wanted to tell them that he didn't know, that he couldn't do this, that he wasn't great. But the chasidim deserved greatness, deserved certainty delivered in Tatty's calm voice.

Sometimes he tried to tell himself that Tatty must have felt the same way, that certainty was a myth and Hashem did not speak to anyone clearly. But he had seen the light in Tatty's eyes and he had heard his voice and he knew that there was something there that he had not achieved.

He was twenty three the first time that a tale of piety sparked no hunger, but only a distant wonder. Examining the feeling, he realized that he already knew that he would never become great. That he could not be great. There was an odd certainty to the thought. But it could not be true. Greatness was a choice that belonged to him and Hashem expected him to choose it.

He pushed harder. Late at night, he would lean his head against his books and beg Hashem for the one gift that he knew that he must earn. And his students, tiptoeing past, heard him sobbing and gazed at the door in humbled awe.

He tried harder, so much harder that he could feel the straining, but he was still not great. He felt it breaking him and there was a curious desperation in his eyes that even the chasidim whose questions he answered did not know how to read.

One Friday night, he looked over the rim of his cup at the rows of devout faces staring up at him. Words boiled up in his mouth like vomit and he closed his mouth so they would not spill out. In the brief stretch of silence, he almost heard himself shout that he was not a rebbe, that he had no certainty, that he had failed them and never become great. And he could feel the relief, the burden lifted. But where would it go? Who should bear it if not the rebbe?

He could not speak. He closed his eyes on the crowd of faces, felt the tears well up beneath his eyelids and knew that the next day, the chasidim would be whispering about this latest proof of his holiness.

Then he finished kiddush, gagging on despair and his declaration that the L-rd had chosen him from among all nations and desired him from among all peoples. The chasidim passed the cup around, each awed to drink when the rebbe had put his lips.

Five Things

2007-11-08T04:18:00.000-06:00

I've been memed by Miri. (Is that pronounced mehme or meem? I never know.) The meme is to list five semi-interesting things about you that aren't in your frumster profile, even if you don't have and would never, ever have a frumster profile. I'm not entirely sure what that means, but I'm never loathe to talk about me, so...

1) My nose is distinctly crooked. You don't notice it so much just looking at me- until I point it out to you- but if you were to look up my nose- and why would you not- you would see that all the cartilage in the middle is on one side. Which makes it slightly harder to part my hair down the middle because I can only trace up the nose starting from between the eyes.

2) I have never gotten drunk. Maybe a little giggly on Pesach, although really, that's always been more nauseous and gagging on matza, but never actually drunk. I'm secretly really curious about what kind of drunk I will be.

3) I can compose bad doggerel pretty much extemporaneously. Like so:

With no need to haw or to hem,
I am fulfilling a meme.
It's harder than it might seem,
Because I think that it might be said 'meem'.

Lousy, but fast. Of course, for all you know, I spent a half hour and rhyme dictionary over that baby.

4) I don't eat salad. Or almost any vegetable. Ever. I have recently been forcing myself to occasionally eat lettuce, but it's an uphill battle.

5) I deliberately pick up verbal quirks and use them until I get bored of them or else they become permanently incorporated into my vocabulary. The word of the week is taka, but it's starting to annoy, especially since always proceed it with a click of the tongue, like so: "*click*. This taka thing is taka a problem." Quirks that have made it include calling people dear, saying "not unlike...a ninja" with little to no correlation to the conversation at hand, and 'your nose'-ing everything. It's annoying. Your nose is annoying! Not unlike...an ninja. Who happens to be annoying.
....stopping now.

I tag anybody who actually reads this who has not heretofore been tagged.

Legal "Dvar Torah"

2007-11-04T16:07:00.000-06:00

A piece of Torah given over by one of my Mishpat Ivri professors:

There seems to be a question in parshat Chaya Sara. Avraham says clearly that he intends to purchase only the cave of Machpela itself, but when the property is transferred, the pasuk clearly states that he received the cave, and the surrounding field, and everything on the property. Why is this? So Nechama Leibowitz says how can we explain the change? (insert thumb scooping ai-ai-ai-aiaiaiai here) If you look at the archaeological records of Hittite law texts that have been found, we see that the law ordered that when a piece of land was only partially transferred into new ownership, with the original owner maintaining some of the rights to the property, the original owner was liable in the full burden of royal taxes on the land and was absolved of such only when the land was entirely sold. So Ephron, once he realized that he was selling the most valuable part of the property, realized it made more sense to give Avraham the whole thing and make him worry about taxes.

Making this parsha, perhaps, the earliest written record of what lawyers like to call "tax planning" and cynics like to call "tax evasion".

Oh, and what I like best about this 'vort' is imagining the dozens of inspirational/brilliant chap (the talmud kind, not the British kind) explanations that have been given on the same pasuk.

Note: Ignore the craziness that the computer is doing with sizes. We just can't seem to agree these days.

To My Internet Connection

2007-11-03T17:04:00.000-05:00

Dear 725597:

I don't think I ever really understood you. Sure, I was delighted when things started working out between us and we had some good times, back in the days when you connected easily and smoothly. But I never really understood what caused your random moodiness, your capricious silences, your sudden disconnect. Sometimes I blamed the computer; maybe sometimes it really was his fault.

But nowadays you ignore me more and more. You lie to me, saying that everything is all right, but when I test this claim, it's clear that you're not connecting to anything. And I try again and again, every means of communication possible, but there's nothing there. Sometimes you get along perfectly with all of my roommates and only sulk at me. Sometimes you strand the entire apartment.

Do you not realize how much I depend on you, how much I miss you when you aren't there, how long I sit desperately trying to force you to cooperate, pleading and cursing as you sit there, unheeding?

Someday, I am so going to find a new internet provider. And then you will be really sorry.

Tobie

A post that requires no effort

2007-10-30T15:17:00.000-05:00

Here, read this. It's brilliant.

Random Post about a Random Thought

2007-10-25T05:31:00.000-05:00

Her children included: Cerberus (the three headed hell dog) Orthrus (the less famous hell dog) Ladon (a snake who coiled under an apple tree. Hmmm), Chimera (the goat/lion/snake) Sphinx (Woman/lion who like riddles) Hydra ((the many-headed dragon), Ethon, Nemean Lion, and Teumessian fox (from DovBear)

Now I really want to write a story about Orthrus, the hell dog who never really made it big.

Storytelling

2007-10-24T05:08:00.002-05:00

One of the few interesting things said by my professor for Law and Literature (a class that I anyway had planned on dropping due to scheduling conflicts, which gave me a somewhat inexplicable smug sense of satisfaction) was a quote from some lawyer attacking circumstantial evidence. He claimed that we have learned to see life as a Chekhov play, where every detail must have some significance, while in fact life is chaotic and random and never ties together nicely at the end.

While his claim re: evidence was weak (he made some ridiculous statistical mistakes: "Sure, he beat his wife, but what percentage of husbands who beat their wives end up killing them?" when the proper question is "what percentage of dead wives whose husbands had beaten them were killed by those husbands?" But I digress), the idea itself intrigues. Do we distort our perception of reality to fit into literary conventions?

I know that I tend to describe and perceive reality in terms of short stories or scenes from TV shows. A lot. In the past few days, I have said that the word Focaccia would make a good name for a menacing, black-mustachioed villain, and invented lines for that villain ("Beware the wrath of Focaccia!"). I declared a shabbat guest's description of a rich kids' camp where the director drives around in a souped-up golf cart and throws dollar bills- and one hundred dollar bill- for the children to fight over, usually violently, so ludicrously exaggerated that it was exactly a bad short story that I would read and get annoyed over its clumsy plot devices. I said that I wanted to write a short story about an heir to a chasidic dynasty who is convinced that he is not holy enough to be a rebbe. I listened to my Bioethics prof get annoyed at people trying to find solutions to avoid the moral dilemmas he posed and thought that one could write a short story for each one, trying to eliminate every possible outside factor that would avoid the dilemma itself and that perhaps this was the secret of science fiction. I constantly say "if this were a sitcom, x would happen now," or "if I were writing this short story, it would turn out that y." Not even to mention the degree to which my 'natural' personality, speech, and writing style are consciously and literarily affected.

But I think that maybe- except for the affected thing- it's not entirely a bad thing. Literary works may be unnatural, but thinking in terms of them provides a structure by which we can notice themes, congruities, and incongruities, a sufficiently impersonal perspective that we can see ourselves as others see us, a way of analyzing our lives as we live them. Which, of course, is a very me thing and may not be suited to others.

But the question still remains- does doing this distort our perception of reality or merely channel it? Do we force the story into the events or read it out? Or maybe neither and whatever his face lawyer was simply wrong?

House Meeting

2007-10-10T10:27:00.000-05:00

For those of you too old, young, rich or anti-social to experience the glamorous life of the apartment-dwelling college student personally, I humbly submit the following minutes of the last house meeting to give you a taste of the experience. Enjoy.

Apartment Seven

Full Board Meeting One

Minutes

Chair: EK (henceforth EK)

Presiding: EH (henceforth EH)

Secretary: Tobie (henceforth T)

Sitting around and looking pretty: Miri (henceforth M)

Honorary looking awkward: Gabe (henceforth 'the llama')

Sleeping on the couch: L (henceforth L)

The meeting was preceded by a dinner prepared by the Dinner Committee. Despite a delay in the rice preparation, which led to a member who will remain nameless eating another member who we shall for the purposes of this story call 'Bob' although her real name was Shprintza, the meal was received favorably. And then eaten.

During the dinner, the board raised and discussed a variety of pertinent issues, among them vegetable cravings, American cucumbers, and showing The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to schizophrenics. The first was viewed favorably, the latter two not so much.

The first item on the agenda was raised by EK, calling for a vote on the American phone line issue. Upon the motion's unanimous approval, area codes for the telephone were discussed. In the end, Chicago was chosen for its plurality of board members and Maryland for its convenience for chatting with the president. EK, as punishment for her initiative, was made responsible for the procurement of above line.

Broccoli was shared.

M deplored the darkness of our condition and called for an immediate increase in the purchasing of lightbulbs. The motion was accepted, although no member concretely agreed to take responsibility for the issue, thus severely decreasing the chances that it will be resolved.

EH agreed to contact the Hot guy for wireless installation. Details of the hilarity that ensued regarding the epithet are omitted here, but the reader is invited to imagine it for his or her self.

In an effort to clear the bathroom counter, bathroom shelf space was allocated as follows: EK 1, T 1, M 2, EH 2

At this point, L was abducted by angry faeries, who agreed to return her only in return for being mentioned in the minutes with the cool archaic spelling. Attempts at bargaining were made impossible by the fact that they speak only Dutch.

Toranut was divided among the members, a system of permanent responsibilities being agreed upon as the most prudent course. It was further resolved that above toranut be finished by Shabbat, under penalty of severe being scowled at by other members. And possibly even verbally reprimanded. [EH: Bathrooms, EK: Floors, T: Kitchen, M: Living Room, Garbage, Assorted Misc]

Hosting for the upcoming Shabbaton was agreed upon by all parties, except for EH who is vacating the premises for the relevant time period in an effort to avoid all of this 'socialization' that she hears so much about.

T suggested that the Va'ad Bayit be contacted about the secret lounge behind the gas door. Possible uses included luggage storage and crowded but riotous parties. A delegation will be sent to the proper authorities on the sixth floor, preferably a delegation in fedoras and carrying ominous violin cases, for ease of negotiation.

N will be nagged regarding her property and her electric bill. N, be warned.

A full and only slightly fascist set of apartment rules were drawn up (see enclosed). Secretary will note that her efforts to ensure cohesion and order among them were largely mocked.

During aforesaid rule composition, the llama arrived and commenced looking awkward. And he did it very well.

M took exception to EK's doubt about whether any member would have a boyfriend in the coming year. In fact, she came across as remarkably defensive. Curious...

M's pointed suggestion of a strict no-skunk policy, as well as EK and EH's attempts to frame a no-puking-guest policy, were only moderately successful. (see rule 8: "Drunken revelries must be kept to a minimum")

EH promised the other members to explain some of the genders of some of the utensils at some point. The llama mocked the concept of utensil gender and had to be suppressed, Alice-in-Wonderland style.

M and T expressed concern about rumors of a secret conspiring coalition being formed between the red-headed members of the board. The rumors were denied. These denials, however, being made both in unison and in a secret code language and followed by an elaborate shared wink, did little to allay suspicion.

Arnona retroactive refund must be explored. T accepted the heavy task upon her slight shoulders, bowing under the weight like a dainty Atlas.

M raised the random underwear issue. Underwear Cinderella was suggested and rejected.

The board pondered the darker side of Sheri Lewis.

The meeting adjourned, EH and EK to their respective homework and M and T to face the dishes, exploding plates, brooms on the counter, encrusted green rice, and evolving vegetables. And much fun was had by all.

Sidekick Sympathy

2007-09-10T16:02:00.000-05:00

Once again, I post not out of inspiration but out of desperation and a vague sense of duty. Miri shrugs at me. 'Eh. It's a blog. Who cares?' And she very well may be right.

I have never been able to enjoy Sherlock Holmes properly. Not that he isn't all very clever, for a supercilious druggie, and not that the stories aren't well told, evoking a period aura as thick as the fog that the stories always take place within. But I just can't read sidekicks. Especially admiring, inferior, happily condescended to sidekicks like Dr. Watson, who round about being straight men and wagging their tails every time their master throws them a 'scintillating'. (Not unlike the way that they're trying to force me to write Zeresh, but that is a different rant.)

I was once going to write a short story in which Watson shoots Holmes to death, gibbering about 'Capital, am I? Good old Watson, am I? The one steady thing in a changing world, eh? Well, steady this!' and so forth. I never did because frankly the above is all the cleverness that could even theoretically be gotten out of it, but still.

For some reason, the idea that one person would devote their life to the joy/success/fame/service of another person is like a rake on sidewalk to me. But I mean, why not? If you can contribute X to the world on your own, but you can help another person to contribute X+Y more than he would have without you, then it's clearly the better part to do so. And if you end up being the cheerful, bumbling comic relief of life- the one whose big heart never saves the day, but often warms those around you- well what of it?

For some reason, I tend to mind the 'brains behind the throne/boys in the back-room' sort of sidekick less. Maybe because I generally think that they're laughing at the hero behind his back. Maybe because often enough, the hero is secretly their sidekick.

(When I was younger and my brother and I had to share video games- generally of the Masters of Orion/ Civilization genre, he would have me be the Emperor, while he would serve as General, Grand Vizier, Secretary of State, and Chief Adviser. This meant that I got to push the buttons and he got to tell me what to push.)

Maybe the difference is just ego and internalization. Because I think I could stand being a boy in the back-room in a way that I could never stand being a big hearted bumbler. See, boy in the back-room doesn't require you to admit that you are in anyway deficient- that the hero is actually in some way more honorable or worthwhile or special than yourself. He may get the charisma and the girls, but really you know that you're the one who gets the intense close-ups and real contributions, so it all evens out. While the other kind of sidekick is constantly being rescued, ridiculed, and generally dependent.

I guess it's the dependent that gets me. I hate being dependent. I have an almost phobic dislike of asking for help- an inconvenient thing in a country without parents- because dependence admits weakness. Even when it comes to lifting heavy closets up narrow flights of stairs, I am practically offended by the idea of summoning male friends to do heavy lifting. It is not a feminist thing- at least not a rational one if it is- it's simply that I'm loath to admit that there is anything that I'm not just as capable of doing. Said practice almost got me crushed to by said closet, but what can you do?

But I think the sidekick thing is something more than that. A sidekick automatically accepts his secondariness. Robin would never dream of trying on the Batman costume because he knows his place. He thinks of himself in terms of Batman- his definition is 'youthful ward', even in his own head. And I don't like that. I think that everyone should- must- be their own main character, even if their lot in life is to serve by standing and waiting, or waiting on others. Watson should have been able to write some fun autobiographic stuff as well, regardless of the preferences of the public. And every cheery bumbling sidekick should see their life as episodes into which the hero occasionally wanders, not vice versa.

Yeridat Hadorot

2007-08-31T05:29:00.000-05:00

Others may praise ancient times, I am glad that I was born in these
-Ovid
Do not say 'Why were the old times better than these?' for you did not ask this out of wisdom.
-Ecclesiastes
....the idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone/ all centuries but this and all countries but his own...
-Gilbert and Sullivan (I've Got a Little List)

This discussion happened ages and ages ago, in blogging terms, but I didn't bother posting my opinion, largely because of the above sentiment. But then I decided that it's better to have a poor post than no post at all. Although I'm starting to doubt that.

It is neither useful nor intellectually sound to wander around moaning about how lovely things used to be. First of all, you weren't there, so how would you know and second of all, well, suppose they were, what does that have to do with anything that we can do anything about? (I do not think that the belief in yeridat hadorot has absolutely anything to do with the legal principle of certain precedents being binding, which is the only nafka mina that I've heard anyone come up with.)

That said, I do have a sort of nostalgic longing of days of auld lang syne. Sure, they lived to be forty and had most of their children die before turning ten. Sure, they beat their wives and owned slaves. Sure, their food was bland, moldy, and scarce and their lives were uncomfortable and precarious. But the characters that you read about in Tanach and the Talmud and old history books do have one thing on us: they were so much realer.

When they were evil, they were no milk and water villains, watered down and diluted by troubled childhoods and post-modern relativism. When they believed, they did so without constant self-awareness, self-doubt, meta-questioning, and philosophical indeterminacy. When they acted, they really actually did so, without second-guessing or whining. They hadn't invented angst.

I'm not saying they were better. Quite often- and quite possibly as a whole- they were worse. But they were moreso. And in an age when you can't stop analyzing your own feelings long enough to have them and you can't identify your own opinions without pondering on the fundamental multiplicity of truth and you can't go ten feet without bumping into existential questions on the nature of life, death, being, and pain, it's hard not to be a little nostalgic for a premodern age.

If, of course, that's anything like the way and not simply an effect of the style of history, the sparsity of sources, the motives of the narrator and so forth.

See? We can't even nostalge without analyzing how valid that it is.

The Play

2007-08-21T04:17:00.000-05:00

I have been above-averagely remiss in posting in the recent past, but at least on this occasion I have a long and semi-entertaining narrative to offer as an excuse for why my writing energy has been diverted into other efforts. (Besides finals. Which are important, but kind of boring, excuse-wise.)

You see, around a month ago, I received an e-mail from a close high school friend. It seems that the principal of our alma mater- obeying the dictum that if you want something done, give it to somebody who has too much to do- contacted her and asked her to write the school play. Her mother- adhering apparently to the dictum that it's good for people to sleep occasionally- forbade her from taking on this additional assignment, so she decided to work on it in an illicit sort of way- late at night and so forth- but transferring much of it to other people. She contacted a best friend in Stern and the two of them realized that they had absolutely no idea how to write a play and contacted me, under the erroneous impression that I did. (Actually, it seems I do. You just stick things down on paper and keep ignoring how badly it's written and voila! A play. But I digress.)

Anyhoo, it sounded like fun, so I agreed to come on board, malevolently sweeping Miri along with me. It was then that the complications began to ensue. Chief among them was that this play, apparently, was not actually going to be written as a group effort among the four-ish of us. Apparently, the principal had commissioned a whole posse of other alumnae/mothers to chip in. First we thought that it was going to be a wide-spread effort. Then there was a meeting where it seemed like only our team (or rather, the state-side representatives thereof) had brought anything to the table and so we dibsed it. Then there was an e-mail that indicated that it would be a general effort, with everybody sending in scenes as their spirits moved them, with the various parts calibrated with one another by some directive power at the end. Then there was a suggestion that different authors take different characters, which would keep the voices nice and different, but also mean that people would go around writing one character's lines in a scene and leaving little breaks to be filled in for other characters. And then in the end it became clear that actually, our team (mostly, if I might say, I. And Miri, to some degree) was the only one doing any work and thus we got to write the play just as we liked. Which is nice, because it's problematic enough without being composed by committee.

The play, you see, is the story of Purim and we must walk the thin line of making it actually good without making it preachy or sappy, while at the same time conveying a definite midrashically-supported message. This is particularly difficult for Miri and myself, in our newly acquired/discovered Modern Orthodoxy, since I don't know that our messages are quite the same as the school's. But we soldier on, keeping it general and about faith in G-d and so forth. And I must note that both the principal and our friends from high school are being totally tolerant and sweet, not caring about the gaps in philosophies and life decisions and treating us just like people and not ideologies, which is just what the world needs more of, so yay them.

Still, there are occasional conflicts. We have been edited for making Mordechai too wishy-washy (gedolai hador have strong opinions! and no doubts! ever!) and Zeresh too 'it's really good, but I'm not sure if it's exactly what we want for this play' (i.e. sardonic). Achashveirosh is comic, speaking entirely in rhyming couplets (I objected only until I discovered how darn fun they are to write), although at times he has lapsed closer to Shakespearean. There are occasional debates about how much midrash to include and subtle shifting of the focus from "trust only in Hashem" to the nearly-but-not-really-indistinguishable "a nation in exile must not despair." Nobody else has seemed to notice, but every scene written by the team on this side of the Atlantic uses "G-d" and everything written on that side uses "Hashem", so that it would be quite easy for a Bible-critic style reader to see exactly what was added/edited and where. I suppose that's one of the things that the as-yet-nonexistent final compiler will handle.

I'm actually, quite enjoying the whole thing. Sure, much of it is dull or cheaply comic. But there are definite comforts: the bits of good writing that you can sneak in through the cracks; the witty banter that you can write between Mordechai and Haman (we're praying that it doesn't get gadol-hadored out); the subtle sardonicness that flies completely below the radar (there's a character called Reb Yid, acting as a foil for Mordechai. We really hope they put him in a bekeshe) ; sardonicness slightly more inside the radar (Miri's first act stage directions read 'Enter Esther, stage right. Probably carrying a bowl with food in it, or a broom. No, if she’s carrying food she can be wearing an apron. Ooh, puts the food down on the table and picks up a broom in the course of the conversation! And the apron stays! Sorry, stopping now') ; and, of course, the cultural references that nobody will ever get but nonetheless make me warm and happy all over. So far, I have managed to insert two Pinky and the Brain quotes, a reference to Princess Bride, a Firefly near-quote (by Mordechai, no less), a line from Shakespeare, and a nod to Mr. Ed (that one was faint, even for me). The Pinky and the Brain ones are the most obvious ('What are we doing tonight, Bigsan?' 'Same thing we do every night, Seresh- wait on the king.' and 'Are you pondering what I'm pondering, Seresh?' 'I think so, Bigsan, but won't uniforms made entirely out of cotton candy get kind of sticky in the summertime?') but so far, nobody has spotted them, so I think that they'll probably make it to the play. It's really the one thing that's keeping me going when I have to contemplate the idea of writing yet another scene without any particular inspiration or desire. Also, I got to use the word exeunt. Repeatedly.

The play is almost over by now. A couple of the ending scenes, really, is all that's left, and it would be lovely if one could rely on somebody else to write them, but of course I can't. But then it will be over and, assuming they don't discard the whole thing and choose an entirely differently play, as has actually happened in the past to other hard-working students, the play produced by my former high-school, to which most of the student body will devote three months of their lives, will have been almost entirely written by a pair of subversives, not to mention Zionists. Sort of makes the whole thing worth it, doesn't it?

Random Question of the Day

2007-08-01T16:02:00.000-05:00

If somebody took a pill knowing that it was a placebo (or at least knowing of the high possibility), but believing strongly in the placebo effect, would there be one? Does it depend on whether they think the answer to this question is yes? And if so, why don't people sell more placebos?

Changing the Tal Law?

2007-07-31T03:33:00.001-05:00

I'm not sure what I think of this new effort by Israel's Finance Ministry. While of course, everybody sympathizes with the effort to get charedim to work, or alternatively get them to work legitimately and report their earnings to the tax authorities. The current arrangement forces the charedi community to basically starve or cheat the government, which everyone can agree is a negative thing. On the other hand, is it the government's responsibility to change their demands to prevent a community from imploding just to thwart them? I mean, if they enforce the current law, then maybe it's just the charedim's problem is they choose to starve rather than give a year to National Service. Cruel, but true. Although they're currently a burden on welfare, so I suppose it's in the government's interest to get them to work. If, of course, it is the threatened army service and not their ideology that is keeping them in yeshiva.

But it seems like the main thing being incentivized here is having two children by the time you're 23. Granted, charedi men marry early, but that means that you would have to marry by 21 and really hurry. Given that wives pretty much have to be younger than the husbands, you're encouraging the community to marry people off before they're out of their teens, which they do anyway to some degree, but hardly as much as you're encouraging them to do.

At the same time, the movement basically acknowledging that charedim don't have to/won't
serve in the army, which defeats the ideological purpose of the Tal Law and is bound to make the secular outraged for pretty legitimate reasons.

And from a legal point of view (it's fun to actually know stuff!) I am extremely dubious that the Supreme Court is going to let the arrangement stand even should it be fortunate enough to get passed. The Tal Law barely survived the Barak Court (then, specifically Barak himself). I can't see this one doing much better.

Basically, when a law is challenged as unconstitutional (or contrary to the Basic Laws) and found to actually infringe upon rights or equality or some such, it's tested according to 3 criteria: 1)That it fits Israel's values as a democratic and Jewish state: it's anybody's guess what that one means. But judges usually let laws slide past this test as law as there's some legitimate-ish purpose going on- which is the third test
2)It has a worthy purpose: Probably met here, what with the incentivizing into the workforce. But quite possibly not-the court doesn't tend to think that religious sensibilities are legitimate concerns, so they could be annoyed with any exemption at all.
3)It's proportional- which is interpreted to mean that a)it is effective at attaining the purpose, b)that the benefits outweigh the costs and c) that it is the means of achieving the goal that involves the smallest possible infringement. Basically, any time that a judge can think of a law that he likes better than the current one, he can strike down the law. And for judges, money isn't an issue- several cases have stated that when it's a choice between rights and money, rights always win.

Of course, you could employ these rules and let the law stand. But the Tal Law itself only squeaked by Barak because he liked the fact that it was aimed at integrating charedim into the army and therefore decided that the infringement on equality (and slight injury to everyone else in the country who has to serve in reserves a bit longer each year) is justified. I'm not sure that the court is going to be as fond of this law. And the above rules are certainly wide, vague, and flexible enough for them to express their disapproval by declaring the arrangement unconstitutional, either because they don't like the purpose, or don't see it as proportional.

Tisha B'Av

2007-07-23T14:18:00.002-05:00

I like to think that there is Tisha B'Av in heaven.

That all the tears and screams
and questions that are too big for their answers
of every woman who slit her baby's throat
or felt it die of hunger as it tries to nurse
or ate its flesh
or caught its blood in her skirts
and every maiden who mourned a slaughtered groom
and every groom who held his bride as she collapsed
and every woman raped
and every husband and father forced to watch
and every priest burnt alive
and every elder whose corpse was spread like dung across the streets
and every blind man stumbling in blood
come before G-d.

And they say
You know what the worst part was?
Beyond the pain and shame and loneliness and sorrow?
It was You.
Behind every sword and gun and flame and knife
and hunger and rapist and disease and massacre.
It was always Your face,
looking down like an abusive father.

And G-d says Yes.

And the tears and anger and questions
look at Him and say And?

And G-d says nothing.

And all the angels look scandalized and shout
Answer them!
You have answers! You have a plan!
You have rationales and explanations and larger pictures
and greater goods!

And G-d says Not today.

And then He sits down among the victims
and cries in pain.

Musing

2007-07-18T04:11:00.001-05:00

Reading over various classmates' notes in preparation for exams, I find that not only do they refer to the professor by his first name, but they also seem to be on a first name basis with the authors of every article mentioned. Does this say something significant about the Israeli mentality, or have they just never had composition teachers beating them over the heads and telling them that an author is referred to by both names at first mention and only last name thereafter?

Screwtape on Prayer

2007-07-09T16:18:00.000-05:00

While reading these semi-recent posts (although I know that this wasn't Miri's focus), I kept thinking of a certain passage from The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis' semi-humorous theological work, down in the style of a senior devil writing advice on tempting to his nephew:

If this fails, you must fall back on a subtler misdirection of his intention. Whenever they are attending to the Enemy Himself we are defeated, but there are ways of preventing them from doing so. The simplest is to turn their gaze away from Him towards themselves. Keep them watching their own minds and trying to produce feelings there by the action of their own wills. When they meant to ask Him for charity, let them, instead, start trying to manufacture charitable feelings for themselves and not notice that this is what they are doing. When they meant to pray for courage, let them really be trying to feel brave. When they say they are praying for forgiveness, let them be trying to feel forgiven. Teach them to estimate the value of each prayer by their success in producing the desired feeling; and never let them suspect how much success or failure of that kind depends on whether they are well or ill, fresh or tired, at the moment.
But of course the Enemy will not meantime be idle. Wherever there is prayer, there is danger of His own immediate action. He is cynically indifferent to the dignity of His position, and ours, as pure spirits, and to human animals on their knees He pours out self-knowledge in a quite shameless fashion. But even if He defeats your first attempt at misdirection, we have a subtler weapon. The humans do not start from that direct perception of Him which we, unhappily, cannot avoid. They have never known that ghastly luminosity, that stabbing and searing glare which makes the background of permanent pain to our lives. If you look into your patient's mind when he is praying, you will not find that. If you examine the object to which he is attending, you will find that it is a composite object containing many quite ridiculous ingredients. There will be images derived from pictures of the Enemy as He appeared during the discreditable episode known as the Incarnation: there will be vaguer—perhaps quite savage and puerile—images associated with the other two Persons. There will even be some of his own reverence (and of bodily sensations accompanying it) objectified and attributed to the object revered. I have known cases where what the patient called his "God" was actually located—up and to the left at the corner of the bedroom ceiling, or inside his own head, or in a crucifix on the wall. But whatever the nature of the composite object, you must keep him praying to it—to the thing that he has made, not to the Person who has made him. You may even encourage him to attach great importance to the correction and improvement of his composite object, and to keeping it steadily before his imagination during the whole prayer. For if he ever comes to make the distinction, if ever he consciously directs his prayers "Not to what I think thou art but to what thou knowest thyself to be", our situation is, for the moment, desperate. Once all his thoughts and images have been flung aside or, if retained, retained with a full recognition of their merely subjective nature, and the man trusts himself to the completely real, external, invisible Presence, there with him in the room and never knowable by him as he is known by it—why, then it is that the incalculable may occur. In avoiding this situation—this real nakedness of the soul in prayer—you will be helped by the fact that the humans themselves do not desire it as much as they suppose. There's such a thing as getting more than they bargained for!

Which is all very brilliant and theological, but you have no idea how unhelpful when you're trying to pray. Because if we don't navel gaze, check our feelings, indulge in human understandable imaginations- what's left? Just saying the words?

Final Bow

2007-07-05T03:12:00.000-05:00

The final act is about to start,
and everyone knows their part by heart,
and you know what you'll do though you don't know how.
And you can't react and you can't turn back,
you've gone too far for you to change tracks,
and you gotta keep going right through to the final bow.

Well, David was a youth and then grew old,

covered in blankets and he shivers with cold,

but he keeps getting encores from the madding crowd.

And Elijah exits left off the world too tame,

returning to the fire from which he came.

He leaves his mantle and makes the storm his shroud.

And Agag can see that the die is cast,

shrugs and says that death's pain has passed,

stands there watching as the prophet strikes him down.

And Saul, finally done with making amends

tries to act surprised but he always knew how it ends,

and someone comes by to take the fallen crown.

And they prop Ahab up against the flood

and all the while runs the blood,

and he stands repeating I'm sorry, but I can't go now.

And Jezebel took what she could get,

says I may be damned, but I'm not dead yet,

And puts on her face to take that final bow.

And the curtain will fall on a silhouette

and the crowds will clap and then forget,

and you've gotta go on, though you don't know how

until the curtain falls on that final bow.

My Life at Templars

2007-07-03T13:44:00.000-05:00

Wow. Chana tells about how my high school treated her. Although I know none of the details of her personal story, it certainly does not sound like something wildly inconsistent with the personalities involved. The fact is, there are few things more merciless and terrifying than sweet, well-meaning, condescending people determined to save your soul.

I was talking to Miri over the fast, desperately trying to remember my own high school experience. I know, for example, that Templars neither quashed me nor attempted to do so. I remember being largely happy. And yet at the same time, without remembering the content, I am reasonably sure that I constantly asked questions. So really, the question becomes, why wasn't I quashed?
]There are two basic reasons. The first is: my massive ego. Really, I think that this was the principle cause. You see, I spent high school convinced that I was a heck of a lot more clever than any of my teachers (I am not saying that this is true- ego rarely allows for objectivity). I was similarly convinced that I was right, about really just about everything. Thus, arguments posed no threat to me- if I was unable to convince them, it's because they didn't understand me. If I failed to win an argument, it had no impact on my practice. Even if they had presented me with brilliant, powerful, and irrefutable arguments that my beliefs were wrong, I was strongly shielded with the walls of ego and would shrug and skip off my merry way.

So why did I argue? Because, quite simply, my largest problem in high school was not quashing, but sheer intolerable boredom. I wrote stories and poems in the margins of my notebooks; I took notes in script, fancy colors, or mirror writing; I memorized poems and speeches from Shakespeare; I wrote stories on my calculator; but mainly I asked questions. Good questions, argumentative questions, pointed questions, whatever. As long as my mind would be on, would be fencing or grasping or doing something.

Of course, I exaggerate somewhat. I was involved in the sides that I argued, often really trying to understand what the teacher was saying. (A snippet of memory where I earnestly insist that Ramban and Rashi can't both be right if they disagree) I had the Zionism argument, and the free will one about a billion times, and a couple of bad-things-good-peoples, and I really did care about what I was saying. But, I am ashamed to say, I cared very little about what my teachers had to say about the matter. This granted me a lovely combination of not objecting to stopping when the teacher demanded it and also not acting as if I were particularly vested in the case- as if it were all an intellectual game. Thus, people tended not to realize that I needed quashing, and when they tried it to some degree, I sort of didn't notice/care. Just like I didn't care enough about the argument to try it when not only their points, but their entire philosophies, perspectives, everything, annoyed me. Sometimes it just wasn't worth the trouble, because I just didn't care. That's not a boast, mind you- a more idealistic, honest, passionate, deep person (like Chana) would have cared, would have invested herself in them or their philosophy or even our arguments. But I was too practical, too egotistical, too bored, too sardonic. They could frustrate me, confuse me, enrage me, insult me, but they couldn't get close enough to quash me.

The second reason is my group of friends. I hung out with the good girls- the ones who went on to Michlala or BJJ. And to their everlasting credit, they had no problem hanging out with me, for all of my crazy arguingness. They even argued a bit themselves. And, more impressively, they hung out with the girls who wore pants and talked to boys, just so long as they were geeky enough to want to play word games or discuss books at the lunch table with the rest of us. So first of all, I had a lovely smoke screen- everyone assumed that I was with the good girls and would eventually shape up, settle down, and marry a kollel boy. And secondly, there were enough thinkers in the group- including those who went to BJJ and also people like Miri- that whenever I got a little quashed, they were there to tell me how darn right I was, and also give the old ego another pat by assuring me that I was clever and justified. We would argue amongst ourselves, quite a lot, but they tended to respect me, or at least tolerate that quirky Tobie. I was blessed to have them.

I don't know if I would have had the courage to actually fight them. I'm not a fighter by nature. I tend to smirk quietly on the sidelines and then go off and do my own thing. You can call it discretion, or cowardice, but there it is. But because I never really suffered, I do feel obligated, just briefly, to mention this point:

They were good people. Probably not every single one of them, but in general, they tended to be sweet and well-meaning. I feel as if I know them, because some of my friends or classmates are probably going to be them in a generation. Most would cook all night for you if you needed a meal. Most were living difficult, stressful lives for their ideals. Most really wanted you to straighten out because they just didn't know what would be with you, and it would be a tragedy, rachmana litzlan, if you turned out wrong, because you were such a smart girl, such potential, such a good heart. Most were willing to go above and beyond to help you, devoting their lunches and breaks to talking to you. They may not all be smart, or tactful, or sensitive. Few of them are open-minded or understanding. Fewer still treat you as an equal. But they are sweet and they mean so very, very well.

The Ran on Secular Government

2007-07-02T03:46:00.000-05:00

Want to hear an utterly brilliant Ran? Of course you do. And because I am such a good bloggress, you are even going to get a translation and not a paraphrase:

But in my eyes, the simple explanation of the verse is thus: It is obvious that the human species needs a judge to judge its members, because without it, each man would swallow his fellow alive, and the entirety will be destroyed. And every nation needs for this purpose a civilized state (bad translation- ישוב מדיני), until the wise man said "Even a band of thieves agreed on justice between them." And Israel needs it like all the other nations. Separate from that, they need this for another purpose, and that is to firmly establish the laws of the Torah and to punish those liable for lashes or death by the court who transgress the words of the laws of the Torah, although these transgressions may not harm the state's civilization at all.
There is no doubt that for both of these sides there will be two issues. One will obligate to punishment every man according to the true law. The other, when he is not liable to punishment according to the true just law, but will obligate him to be punished according to improve the national order and according to the needs of the time.
And G-d assigned each of these issues to a special body. And commanded that judges be appointed to judge the true, just law, as it says "And they shall judge the people a just law."...And since the national order will not be complete with this alone, G-d added its repair, in the commandment of the king....
It says in the Mishna in the chapter Hayu Bodkin [that they asked the witnesses] "Did you recognize him?....Did you warn him and did he accept that warning, freeing himself for death? Did he kill within seconds afterwards?" There is no doubt that all this is right from the perspective of justice. For how can a man be killed if he did not know that he was entering into something for which there is a capital penalty and still transgressed?...But if , the transgressors are punished only in this way, the national order will be completely lost, for murderers will be numerous and will not fear punishment. And therefore G-d commanded for the sake of settling the world that a king be appointed...
And the king may judge without a warning as he sees necessary for the national welfare. Thus, the appointment of a king is the same for Israel and for the other nations that need national order, and the appointment of judges is unique and more necessary for Israel...

Awesomeness, no? I'll tell you what I thought was so cool and fun for a modern reader.
1) He frankly acknowledges what everybody tries to apologetics away: The Torah's legal code is not all that effective in the real world.
2) He breaks things down perfectly into how legal theorists divide the purposes of law: the deontological and the utilitarian. All legislation is trying to strike a balance between the two, and he makes the Torah system be just the same way.
3) Under his system, the religious norms- the victimless crimes of the religion- are designed to be basically unenforceable (okay, he has a paragraph that raises the option that the court can be extra-legal for those things, but I choose to go with his other opinion), while those things needed for society are left flexible and in human hands, to sort out with the changing state of society.
4) I like the idea of there being a body who just represents justice. Even though everybody knows that the final result isn't going to be the same, it's good to have them around reminding what strict justice would say. Kind of like the role of a largely powerless religious force in a secular country.
5) According to my Mishpat Ivri teacher, there was a great debate on this Ran between R' Chaim Ozer Grodzensky and R' Herzog. R' Herzog, I think the first chief Rabbi of Israel, wanted the Israeli legal system to incorporate aspects of Jewish law. R' Chaim Ozer, charedi and anti-Zionist, suggested using this Ran to establish a completely independent, completely secular system of criminal and civil law in the state of Israel. R' Kook seems to have taken the Ran much the same way.
6) According to the Ran's perspective, the king is a very practical, earthly sort of role. There is nothing all that divine about his purpose and therefore no reason that it should actually be an anointed, hereditary king. In fact, both R' Grodzensky and R' Kook extend the Ran to any sort of head of state, including a democratically elected one. After all, it's just like what all the other countries are doing to cater to their civilization needs. Which means that Mashiach could, in theory, be a democratically elected leader operating a thoroughly secular legal system. Which is actually just a little freaky.

Blocks

2007-06-29T10:00:00.000-05:00

I built myself a castle out of blocks,
I made each column straight and corner tight,
And brightly colored letters on the sides
Spelled out words like normal, safe, and right.

I sat and read the writing on my walls,
And slept and dreamt that it was real,
That all my words had meaning
And that all my walls were steel.

Really, angsty existential poetry almost writes itself...all you need is a boring class, a malleable metaphor, and a complete shamelessness regarding cliches. Go on, try it.... it's fun....

How to Vote

2007-06-28T10:38:00.000-05:00

My Constitutional Law professor raised an interesting argument today in an otherwise not particularly interesting class, which meant that I had a good hour or so to mull it over. He said that citizens, when voting, should not pick the candidates best for themselves (that is, the voters) personally, but rather the candidates best for everyone as citizens. His reasoning was that if everybody picks the person who will help them the most, then things will necessarily not be good for everyone, because everyone's personal interests necessarily conflict. If everybody picks the person best for them as citizens, on the other hand, than nobody's interests need conflict and everyone can go home happy.

What? I mean, really, what? I didn't raise the question with him, due to constraints of English, time, and energy to try to argue around any point that he has already settled in his head, but I really can't decide whether I like his argument or his conclusion less.

First the argument: Okay, maybe I just don't understand what he was saying, but the whole basis seems flawed. Do people have entirely different sets of interests as individuals and as citizens? Does government have a goal other than increasing the personal joy of all of the citizens? So either everybody's best interests necessarily conflict, in which even a candidate who really just wants what's best for everyone is going to have to favor the welfare of the majority of citizens over that of the few. Or else they don't conflict and a set of representatives chosen selfishly, given adequate representative-ness (actually, even more applicable in Israel than America), will include sufficient people pushing for everyone's selfish interests that the minority will get as much as it is efficient in terms of general happiness for them to get, via wheeling and dealing and alliances and all that good political jazz.

But even assuming his argument is correct and that more total happiness is achieved via candidates chosen for the benefits to the voter "as a citizen", I don't think that it's a smart way to vote. For one thing, you have a giant prisoner's dilemma, with every single other voter in the country having a lot of incentive to vote selfishly. If you look out for the public good only, you're probably going to end up left out. Secondly, who the heck knows what is in the public good? Can the average voter take a survey of the entire country and see which policy benefits the majority of them the most? Or perhaps is the exact same result achieved if everybody just picks the guy best for them? (It's like a survey, only easier!) Thirdly, you assume that most of the things that benefit people personally are going to be in conflict, while I think in reality at least 90% of differences in voting are based not on different selfish interests, but on different values, opinions, and beliefs about reality. Everybody wants a secure country; nobody agrees about how to get it. And so no situation is going to make everyone happy no matter how you want to slice it, and you can't pretend that less selfish voters will solve anything. Fourthly, I think the question assumes that interests 'as a citizen' are more important than 'selfish' interests- that it's more morally proper to vote your political agenda than your pocketbook. I don't buy it- the whole genius of democracy is that you get a system best for everybody by having everybody look out for themselves. Pork isn't inherently morally wrong, it's wrong because it causes more harm to the whole than it earns to the individuals and sufficiently intelligent and selfish voters will stop it just as well as altruistic ones. Democracy, certainly from the perspective of the voters, isn't about weighing the good of society, it's about a perfect balance of selfishnesses.

Yes, I acknowledge that the above statements are a bit extreme, trending towards all sorts of icky utilitarian calculus and tyranny of the many, but the principle is sound. And anyway, the flaws would in no way be solved by voters who try to guess at the greater good instead of simply taking a vote and finding it out.

Giyus

2007-06-27T08:57:00.000-05:00

So I finally got my draft notice in the mail. I thought that it had been a little long, considering that I've been a citizen for around ten months by now, but apparently another notice had been sent to an old address (my ulpan dorms), so that this one was officially entitled "Last Warning Before Imprisonment." Charming.

Tomorrow I'm going to the base to present my letter from the Rabbinate affirming that I am just too darn religious of a female to be able to serve in the army and earning my official exemption once and for all.

I feel horribly guilty.

I mean, be honest. My religiosity is not such that it would interfere with my army service. But beyond the whole lying on official documents thing, I really and firmly believe that all citizens of Israel ought to serve in the Army. I certainly don't approve of people who say that they're too religious to serve the country, or girls who claim to have a problem with the army but refuse to do National Service either. I would have a bit of a problem dating a guy who finked out of the army in the way that I am doing.

But what can I do? I'm in the middle of university, not really at a stage in my life where I have the time or will to put my life on hold for a year or so. I have plans, I have a schedule, I'm a real-live grown-up person and just can't see myself stopping, no matter what ideological ideas I throw at myself.

I know. It's a really lame excuse. I have better ones. I have the "oh, please, does the army really desperately need another bureaucrat?" one. I have the "I'm giving this country my entire life, not to mention living a couple continents away from my family and earning half the salary I could have" one. I have one about "I couldn't do it anyway, the language barrier blah blah blah." I have one that says that had I taken potential army service into account I would never have made aliyah. I have one that blames my parents.

I don't buy any of them. The fact is, I could serve in the army. And I'm not going to. For really no good reason whatsoever.

Circles and Lines

2007-06-19T15:36:00.001-05:00

The guided tour of the Israeli Supreme Court loves to harp on the architecture of the court and the philosophy thereof. A favorite line- much mocked among my friends and family- is "Circles and lines, circles and lines," pointing out the use of circles to symbolize justice (מעגלי צדק) and lines to symbolize law (לפנים משורת הדין). (Mocked because really, what other shapes are there to make things out of, if not circles and lines?)

Anyway, sitting in a boring ConLaw class, I decided that the metaphor really works as yet another way for me to formulate my legal/halachic/rambling philosophy. As follows:

Justice is a circle. Now, there are two ways that you can try to draw a circle. The surer way is to construct a polygon made out of lines. The more lines you use, the closer you'll get to an actual circle. But as long as you're using lines, there are going to be gaps between your polygon and the circle of justice. You can keep adding lines, but you can only use as many lines as your 'program' can support. The original Nintendo graphic circles were octagons; now they're something like 96 sided figures, maybe more. But even then you have gaps, and programs like that take up a not of memory, and you have to be really careful to make sure you're adding in the lines right, so that your figure is still transcribed inside the circle and not bulging out all over outside of that.

The other option is to try to draw your circle free-hand. Which is very tempting when you have a octagon and are sitting there staring at the gaps. But actually, it's virtually impossible for a person to draw a real perfect circle. It's bound to bulge over the real circle here, and have a huge gap there, not to mention being different every time. It may well happen that your free-hand drawing- if you're good at it- is better than the octagon, but then again maybe not. It all depends on the person drawing.

I personally like the first model better. Not only is it sure, predictable, and easy to apply, but as your system's 'memory storage' or sophistication of thought, tools, or institutions improves, you can keep drawing in more lines, or very delicately breaking up the ones you have. As opposed to the free-hand style, which is simply chaos.

Which means that law not only is not always just, but it cannot be. Because a circle cannot be perfectly matched using straight lines, especially when the number is limited by the capacity of the system. No matter how clever (or Divine) the drawer of the lines happens to be.

Zaken Mamre

2007-06-06T03:30:00.001-05:00

Deutoronomy 17:8-13
If there arise a matter too hard for you in judgment, between blood and blood, between plea and plea, and between stroke and stroke, being matters of controversy within your gates, then shalt you arise and go up into the place which the LORD your God shall choose. And you shall come unto the priests, the Levites, and unto the judge who shall be in those days, and inquire; and they shall show you the sentence of judgment. And you shall do according to the sentence, which they of that place which the LORD shall choose shall show you; and you shall observe to do according to all that they inform you.According to the sentence of the law which they shall teach you and according to the judgment which they shall tell you, you shall do. You shall not stray from the sentence which they shall show you to the right hand nor to the left. And the man who will do presumptuously, and will not hearken unto the priest who standeth to minister there before the LORD thy God, or unto the judge, even that man shall die; and you shall put away the evil from Israel. And all the people shall hear, and fear, and do no more presumptuously.

Mishna Sanhedrin 11:2
A judge rebelling against the Great Sanhedrin is commanded in the Scripture as in Deut. xvii. 8-13: If there arise a matter too hard for you in judgment...cases come before your court that are too difficult... And in case a judge in the country had a dispute about the law with his colleagues... all of them came to the Great Sanhedrin which was in the Temple treasury, from which the law proceeds to all Israel as it reads [ibid., ibid. 10]: "From that place which the Lord will choose, and thou shalt observe to do according to all that may instruct thee." Then if the judge returns to his own city and continues his lectures as before, he is not culpable. If, however, he gives his decision for practice, he is subject to capital punishment. As it reads [ibid., ibid. 12]: "And the man that will act presumptuously," etc., which means that he is not culpable unless he decides for practice.

I testify against him, modeling my composure after the blankness of his face. I tell them what he said when we warned him of his sin: I know, my sons, I know, but what should I do? Should I hang myself on this High Court, to follow the logic of the servants and transgress the words of the Master?

I do not know how to describe the tears in his voice when he asked the question, and anyway, it is not relevant.

The judges whisper sagely to each other as if they have something to say.

We feel like school-children making solemn games out of the day's lessons. He withdraws into an invisible glass box, watching the earnest young faces debate, balanced on the knife-edge between suicide and perversion of justice.

The sentence is given in a carefully level voice, as though the judge reads a text in an unfamiliar language. The teacher nods once, with grave restraint. The glass bowl is broken in some indefinable way, and it is only then that we realize how firmly he kept himself in check. The judges stand before him for a moment uncertainly. Then the hour of departure arrives and they go their separate ways, they to live and he to die.

Before the trial, he was compactly intense, treating his prison cell as though it were his study hall. He discussed the laws of prayer in prison, the ruling on a maternal aunt’s co-wife married to a brother, questions of how to purify ovens. He committed and recommitted the crime for which they would try him, citing logic, tradition, sources to back his opinion, his colleagues looking awkwardly away. We did not know if believing that his ruling was wrong would have made it easier or not.

But after the trial, he refuses to teach his students, saying that we should not study with one whom the court has convicted. Still we hang around the prison, not knowing where else to go.

They lead him to the execution through frozen crowds that shy away from the procession as though we are lepers or seraphim, but follow behind us, another set of unwilling actors. I want to wake up and go to the study hall and have somebody explain my dream favorably. A dream of a teacher's execution, they would say, is a portent for future greatness. And then we would fall silent and wait for the lecture to begin...

A little before the end, they instruct him to confess, the passages from Joshua intoned as they have been intoned to hardened criminals and sobbing convicts. He listens as though hearing them for the first time. He asks them to help him to bow and they gently lower him onto his face.
This is his confession in the cold damp wind:

Master of the Universe, I am before Thee like a vessel full of shame. For Thy Name is desecrated daily and Thy commandments are transgressed, because I did not succeed in having my words accepted by my fellows, in punishment for my many sins. Let my death atone for all my sins and let Thy Name be sanctified through me.

Someone prompts him to confess the sin for which he will die. Should I confess, he asks, and then wait until you ask me to rule again? He who says ‘I shall sin and repent, I shall sin and repent…’

But, Rabbi, says a judge, at least confess conditionally, for who can say whether you have ruled correctly?

And he replies: And you who follow the ruling of the High Court and act as they have permitted- do you confess conditionally?

Four cubits before the end, they remove his clothes. We cannot bear to watch or look away.

They sink him in the dung up to his elbows and we tear our clothes as we would if a Torah scroll were flung to the ground. I hold my hands to keep them still.

They wrap the scarf around his neck, hand the ends to the witnesses so that our hands will be first against him. He looks up at me and quotes softly: There are two paths before me- one to heaven and one to hell and I do not know which one they will lead me on. Should I not cry?

We bury him among the adulterers, murderers, and false prophets, and our tears burn like coals in our throats.

This stab at Tannaitic fiction was brought to you by this shiur (audio file), this post, and my Mishpat Ivri class. I am aware of the anachronisms in the quotes and allusions, but I'm okay with that.

Sotah

2007-05-30T04:06:00.000-05:00

Just a quick thought. The crazy thing about sotah is that it works about equally well if it kills nobody at all. Think about it- it is only used when there are only two people who know whether or not the woman is guilty, and both of them have a vested interest in keeping the information secret. If the woman is actually guilty and nonetheless gets away with it, she's hardly going to tell anyone. She goes off, perhaps with her faith challenged, perhaps thinking at her husband cheated on her, but the husband is happy and the society continues to function thinking that everything works.

The more important use of the water is to keep everybody scared off, both of adultery and later of failing to admit it and agreeing to go through the ritual. Even if nobody ever dies, belief in the efficacy of the whole thing is probably not going to be shaken- firstly, because there's a general presumption that only the innocent would dare to go through with something that they know will kill the guilty and is besides shameful and scary, and secondly, because the whole thing is probably so rare that nobody thinks that there's an overwhelming trend (after all, they stopped the practice when there were a lot of adulterers.) And when everyone really does believe in it, only the innocent will dare to go through with it, so that there becomes absolutely no practical impact to the question of whether it would kill the guilty.

Everyone avoids adultery to a large degree, chooses uncompensated divorce the rest of the time, and the truly innocent have a foolproof way of convincing their communities and husbands of their innocence, all without actually ever requiring open miracles. Not that I'm saying that it didn't actually work the way the text claims- miracles and all- but it doesn't need to. (And after all, the gemara says that even G-d lies for shalom bayit....)

Random Philosophical Question

2007-05-29T05:09:00.000-05:00

Question for thought and discussion*:

Would you pay for a pleasure that you will not remember after having experienced?

Example: You are offered the choice of two meals, equal in nutritional value. One is entirely bland- not unpleasant, not pleasant. The other is extremely yummy. You can pay a small sum of money and receive the second, which you will enjoy quite a lot. The catch: as soon as you have finished eating, you will not remember what decision you made and will have no memory of any pleasure you experienced. Would you pay for the pleasure?

If yes: Would you pay to have a really pleasant dream that you will not remember upon waking?

If no: What if you remembered your decision for ten minutes following the meal? Twenty? An hour? A day?

Would it make a difference whether there was an objective record of your decision which you could not access? What if you could access the record or otherwise deduce which decision you made but you would still not remember the experience of pleasure? Does it matter whether or not you notice and/or derive pleasure from the money saved? Does the kind of pleasure make a difference? In continuity a factor- does it matter if you will remember a point when you remembered the pleasure without memory of the pleasure itself?

I have absolutely no answers, myself. And I'm not looking less for philosophical answers than for some clues as to how people are wired, because it is a fact that we pay for pleasures that we know we will remember only in the short term- is this merely because we choose to ignore that fact in making our pleasure-related choices or is the experience of pleasure itself sufficient without any impact on later memory?

*preferably in my comments, because I love comments

Inspiration

2007-05-27T05:43:00.000-05:00

and inspiration hits
like an itch in the back of the throat
and you cough up words

lego towers shaking with their own weightiness,
spiral staircases of ever-metaing cliches,
trackless trains thundering to no point whatsoever,
collages of actual genius,
pictures worth about three words each

Shavuot Potpourri

2007-05-23T16:37:00.000-05:00

Not a real post, but I have school tomorrow (at last!) so scattered thoughts from over my Shavuot:

When speakers introduce a paradox into their philosophical lectures, how often do you think it's really a question of having a source that doesn't agree with their theses that they have to do something with?
My favorite Megillat Rut thought is still the one I read on vbm.com during seminary: Rut and Job are actually pretty similar stories- a person who lost everything, who feels that G-d has turned against them. The difference? In Job, the victim spends some 40 very long-winded chapters pondering the reason for his tragedy, trying to dissect and analyze the workings of G-d. In Rut, humans take the tragedy and deal with it and get on with life- painfully, but resolutely, and most importantly with kindness. It's an oddly areligious book- there is nothing divine nor superanatural; instead, humans deal with tragedy by making the world a better place for other humans. Job ends with G-d coming down and basically saying that the whole discussion is pointless- humans cannot understand Him and there's really no point in trying. Rut ends with birth and hope for the former victims, leading to royalty and, of course, Mashiach.
So the above dvar torah has a really funny story attached to it. I was called upon to deliver it at 8 am Shavuot morning, without notice, after having stayed up all night, when we all really wanted to stumble back the 40 minute walk to seminary and sleep until havdala, but the seminary instead forced us all to come to a kiddush that a very sweet donor was throwing for the school, which was really very nice except that nobody could eat because of the aforementioned exhaustion. So anyway, I gave this dvar torah because it was the only one I knew and besides I really did like it, and after I finish one of the madrichot comes over and says, "Oh my gosh, that was so perfect. This family- their son died and they got really involved in tzdaka organizations." To which I said, "Oh" in a tone that I hope conveyed all of the my-freaking-goodness- are-you-kidding-me- why-didn't-somebody-blinking-tell-me- do-you-think-I-would-have-had-the-I-don't-know-what- to-actually-say-that- holy-mackeral-I-can't-look-at-them-blast-blast-blast feeling that it was intended to convey.
So I went to a wedding on Monday night and it was so very nice and my favorite bit was watching the chosson watch the kallah coming down the aisle with this wubbly little look on his face, and of course I had the girly moment of wanting there to be somebody who looked at me wubbly and then last night it occured to me- G-d looks at me wubbly. That's right, G-d- the one with the lightning and fire and rainbowness and inscrutibility and all manners of infinitude- He looks at me wubbly. And frankly, He thinks I'm adorable. (I know it's cliche, but addiction to nonconformity is itself a cliche)
Talmud is so funny when it's being ironic. It supports the general thesis that all really intelligent people have finely honed senses of ironic humor.
Did you know that there is a street called Rut in Katamon and the explanation line on it reads "Wife of Boaz, grandmother of David?"
Do you know who's a cool character? Yoav ben Tzruriah. Someday, I want to give a shiur on him. He keeps popping up here and there doing insane things and getting away with them.
I sometimes think that if I were not so painfully self-aware I could easily become a performer. You know the type- the one whose quirkiness dominates every conversation; who will do shtick at every wedding, regardless of talents or closeness to the principles; of whom it is constantly said "I love him, he's such a character"; who really doesn't mind when everyone is looking at them or wonder what's being thought behind the faces or worry that he looks like an idiot. It sounds like it would be wonderously refreshing, but perhaps from the inside it's completely different.

For the love of G-d, world!

2007-05-11T02:57:00.000-05:00

It's= it is
Its= belonging to it

Exactly

2007-05-09T15:38:00.000-05:00

A terribly fun article, mostly because it accords with my personal ire.
Favorite quote:

Israel is an immature democracy, poorly governed; its political class is mediocre and corrupt; it floats precariously in a lethally hostile Muslim sea; and it really could use a constitution.

Did you know that yesterday I was at a forum about the EU and when one of the speakers said "ICompared with its neighbors, Israel is low on corruption", every single person in the room snickered quietly? In unison.

Chinuch

2007-05-08T15:48:00.001-05:00

I was sicced onto this article by Yoni, since apparently I have not been getting ired enough in the recent past. The approach of the author is not, I may say, unfamiliar to me, although I had never had the whole thing spelled out in quite so much detail- R' Grossman was the principal of my former high school and I may well recognize the people behind some of his anecdotes. (I don't seem to have made it in there myself.)

Well, first of all, let me say that there's a lot valid there. I think that he is correct that people do not stop being frum because of the temptations, seductions, and lures of the 'Goyish' street, but rather because they are dissatisfied with what they are being offered in their schools. I certainly agree that harsh discipline is the wrong approach the problems and everyone should go for understanding and discovering underlying issues whenever possible. I think that he is also correct that it is time to fight the battle that is in front of us instead of the one that we fought in the past, or would like to be fighting now.

I do not, however, agree on what that battle is. I do not think that 'mussar haskel' and warm life lessons are insufficiently emphasized in our chumash and nach classes; the conclusion that many people are intellectually dissatisfied with Judaism but stay for emotional reasons does not, for me, naturally lead into the conclusion that we must create emotional bonds so that people will stay. I do not believe that students are being educated with too large an emphasis on the cognitive and intellectual, and I do not believe that suitable gentle peer pressure will be enough to make everybody realize that everything they are taught is 100% right. I can't say that I think that a question about why tzniut is emphasized so much more than other midot is necessarily indicative of deep rebellion, as the article seems to assume we will assume. I don't really think that the goyish street is actually a cesspit of stupidity, emptiness, and fleeting pleasures, but that's a bit of a different issue

And- perhaps this is bias speaking- I certainly not believe that children are simply 'empty shells, waiting for the right teacher to fill the vacuum'.

I'm not sure that I believe that I have the answer for the chinuch problems, but I certainly have a novel suggestion: Why don't we try assuming that the students are intelligent, reasonable people, who are bothered by genuine cognitive and intellectual concerns? It's not, of course, always true. Most teenagers are pretty dumb, and those that aren't are so young and proud and earnest and confused and simplistic that they might as well be. (I speak primarily of myself).

But maintaining this illusion will 1) give them the feeling that you view them as actual people with minds and thoughts and contributions and so forth, instead of charming little tabula rassa's just waiting to be filled up with lovely sketches of kollel husbands and wives, 2) will let them know that questions- their questions- are valid and not necessarily contradictory to being Orthodox and that nobody is going to run after them screaming "An atheist! Burn her!" and 3) might actually give them some useful answers or tools to discover them.

I sat through 4 years of high school and I had inspiration and gushiness and love and morals and trust until they poured out of my ears. My heart was played on day after day, and my notebooks managed to look after themselves, but nobody was really doing much to deal with the head.
What I didn't get was answers. Or a license to ask questions. Or a reassurance that I was respected by those who claimed to hear me but who poured my words into their molds and boxes so that they could help the only ways that they knew (more love and so forth).What I didn't really get was a sense that my religion actually was valid and brilliant. Which is a pity. 'Cuz I tend to think it is.

*All this relates to the intellectual style rebel. The behavioral rebel- the kind who wants to act out and talk to boys or wear pants or both (maybe even at the same time)- they usually straightened out in seminary unless they had been turned off by censure and harsh discipline- another point that I agree with in the article- or had the intellectual issues as well.

Sefer Shmuel

2007-05-02T13:26:00.000-05:00

So this afternoon I read the end of Sefer Shmuel I for a shiur. The shiur focused on the chronology, which is problematic and confusing, but preparing, I was more struck with the tragedy of the whole story. All the characters are so miserable in their own complicated ways.

I mean, obviously we feel bad for David, who is not only described as perfect and holy, horribly tormented and oppressed, but also gets all of Tehillim for us to feel his pain. But all of the other characters have their own twisted storylines of tragedy interweaving so that the sefer is like a really good novel, but not a very happy one.

Take Michal: falls in love with David, gets lucky enough to marry him. Early in the marriage, her father tries to kill him, forcing her to turn against her father and not see her husband again for quite a while. Meanwhile, she gets handed off to another husband as revenge against her husband's 'rebellion'. The new husband seems quite fond of her and maybe she's vaguely happy. In any case, soon enough she gets taken back to David in another power statement. Yay, true love. Except that he's picked up another couple of wives in the meantime, who already have kids by him and everything. The only other time we see her, she's trying to assert her dignity and acting very acerbic to the husband that we were told she loved; he snaps back at her and mentions that G-d likes him better than her and her father's household (all meanwhile dead). She has no more children to her dying day, possibly because her husband no longer likes her. Oh yeah, and fun little point- her five children, as survivors of Shaul, are given by her husband to be murdered to buy off Shaul's blood guilt.

Or Yonatan: he may have gotten the hang of it that David will be the next king, but he's willing to accept that. He doesn't believe that his father would really try to kill David, but when convinced, he's takes David's side and gets cursed out in front of the whole court. Other than meeting David in secret from time to time, he has no contact with him until his last battle, where he probably dies under the impression that David is fighting on the other team.

Or Shmuel, who selects Shaul as king and then is told by G-d to reject him. He is upset but still has to be the one to yell at Shaul pretty forcefully. While still feeling bad about this, he is told to get over Shaul and commit treason against him by picking somebody new.

But Shaul is really the most tragic character of all. He's really like the figure in Greek myths who tries to thwart the oracle and never does. It's not clear whether he believes Shmuel that he's been rejected as a king- maybe he thinks it's later down the generations, or that he'll die early, or that he can repent. But in any case, as soon as this happens, G-d deserts him- something we probably can't imagine never having had G-d rest upon us- and instead a depressed, raving sort of mental illness attacks him. The harp player he finds helps out, except that pretty soon he becomes a national hero, that everybody seems to like better than him, who can fight the battles that the king should be handling, but can't since G-d doesn't like him anymore. He sees everybody in the nation falling in love with David- his own son, his daughter, the people, and probably he remembers the prophecy and gets freaked out. But there's nothing he can do. He tries to fight it. He sends people to get David and finds that his daughter and son and personal prophet who anointed him and (he thinks) all the priests are with David. He tries to chase him himself and ends up naked, raving in public and being mocked by the entire nation. For years, he tries to catch David, occasionally coming to himself beset by remorse. The whole effort just sends away his best warriors so that they're not there for the final battle that kills him. Maybe if he hadn't, he or one of his sons might have survived. Maybe if he had been willing to let David be king, it would simply have been a son-in-law coming to power instead of the son, who seems sort of okay with the whole idea. But he can't accept it, partially because a king can't accept people rebelling, especially when their fatal flaw has been to not be assertive enough, and partially because he can't, physically can't survive assuming that G-d really has rejected him.

His death is perhaps the only heroic part. He realizes that G-d has entirely left him- no prophets, no priests, no spirit of G-d- and he turns to witchcraft that he feels are so evil that he tried to anihilate them. And he is told that he will lose the war, that he and his sons will all die. Everything he wanted to deny is true, undeniably so. It is with a sort of tragic grandeur that he goes to field, knowing that he will die, determined to do so with the modicum of dignity left to him. He dies alone, killed by himself, possibly finished off and certainly looted by a passing stranger, but I think that his death was as a king.

Blogosphere word salad

2007-04-28T12:53:00.000-05:00

I think I mean I want I should I shouldn't I should've I say I maintain I feel I did I am I wrote I made I wonder I guess I think

My diary my soapbox my column my gallery my community my fifteen minutes my novel my confessional

Hear me validate me agree with me love me visit me censure me help me understand me convince me explain to me obey me admire me love me enjoy me laugh with me enlighten me pity me argue with me talk to me forgive me accept me love me hear me

Edit: This really seems to keep happening, which probably means that it behooves me to clarify before posting random experimental writing. This is not about me. Really not. Not in a "but secretly it is" sort of way. This is....an attempt to dissect, analyze, boil down this crazy phenomenon that is "the blogosphere", the crazy elusive charm that so many people seem to see in it and all the different reasons that different people enjoy it and what is it exactly and....well now that it's explained it's really kind of dull.

Thought Experiment

2007-04-27T03:30:00.000-05:00

or The Random Thoughts Currently Bumping around my Head

I once heard somebody asked the classic question 'Can G-d make a rock that He cannot lift?', to which he gave the very interesting answer, "No. G-d can do everything except that He cannot not be G-d." Well, I like the answer insofar as it goes, but it leaves two interesting holes: A) Then there is something G-d can't do and B) then G-d does not really have free will. Which I suppose are not killer questions, because face it, we can't hope to understand even the concept of infinitude, so what do we know?

But here is an alternative train of thought: What if G-d thought of a scenario in which He could be not G-d- not infinite, that is? And what if that thought experiment is the world?

No, really. Listen. For G-d to be truly infinite, He must contain even the possibility of non-infinitude- He must be able to create a situation in which He cannot lift the rock. And from that quality of G-d's infinitude, He can create matter, space, time-crazy ideas really for a Being that is not bound in any of them.

So G-d creates/thinks of (I'm not sure there's a difference for Him) a universe in which He isn't infinite. If that universe is this one, it happens in two ways: 1) He makes a set of rules that He agrees to play by- but these rules probably aren't all that binding and choosing not to do something isn't the same as inability and 2) He creates flakes of Himself that are bound up by finity. By which I mean man.

Thus the universe is simply the forum in which G-d binds Himself up in non-omni-ness. Which would seem to deprive the whole thing of a sense of purpose. Unless- here's where B comes in. G-d in His infinite sense cannot have free will because He just is by virtue of being. And stuff. But G-d given limitations can then have the choice to choose whether or not to be divine. The universe- and specifically man- then becomes a place for man to choose to be divine, and all the rest of it is just thrown in to give man both true free will and a place to wander about being finite without being dead and stuff. A place in which G-d asks "What if I could choose not to be G-d?" and sees what happens.

Okay, it's a little random, and it may very well be stupid and/or heretical. But there you go.

The Strike

2007-04-26T10:52:00.000-05:00

Meanwhile, in Tobie's world, the strike continues. I must confess, I really don't get the strike. The person in charge of my school's student organization sent around an e-mail trying to explain it and it just seemed like an odd mixture of "secretly, we are making great strides" and "we aren't making any promises- who knows what will be tomorrow?"

Background: All the university students in this beautiful country are on strike. It's been three weeks now- I haven't had class since before Pesach. And Heavens only know when I will next. We're striking because the government wants to cut the subsidies that it gives to college education, thus raising our tuition, and also because the committee to discuss the whole thing is headed by people we don't like or have already said they don't like us or something like that.

Now, I have yet to talk to a single person who thinks that the strike is a good idea. I mean, for starters, we're the customers. Customers don't strike, and they certainly don't continue to pay for a product while refusing to actually use it. For seconders, you don't stop going to university to protest the government. Governments are fought with rallies and- crazy but it just might work- voting. I just somehow can't see ministers and officials crumbling to their knees sobbing, "please, please don't continue to refuse to become educated! I can't bear it any longer! Noooooooooooooo....." and so forth. I mean, the only real threat that we have in our arsenal is that we will all fail out of university and ten years down the road the country won't have an educated workforce and oh, boy, won't you all be sorry then.

Not that we're even turning to that doomsday weapon just yet. We won't go to classes, but tests, assignments, and projects are all still go. Because a strike is a strike, but we wouldn't actually want to jeopardize anything.

Which leaves aside the whole question of whether I even think the goal is worthy. Now, granted I don't pay my own tuition- it's one of those new immigrant perks- but maybe that makes me objective enough to see that maybe university students are not on the top ten list of people who most need to be subsidized. Most countries have something called student loans, under which you internalize all the costs of your education, thus enabling you to decide whether or not it's really worthwhile for you to get a college diploma, instead of simply earning one because it's cheap for you. The student leaders talk about how lack of subsidies will lead to everyone deciding not to go to school and so on and so forth, but it seems as if most countries seem to work things out decently well, and it's not like Israel has too few citizens looking only for high-educated, white-collar work.

Which is still not the main objection to the strike. The fact is, I'm bored out of my brains, not getting the education I came to this place for, not able to do anything actually fun since nobody knows when the strike will end, and probably about to get stuck with an extra week or two of classes or a frenzied month of make-up classes crammed into every hole in the schedule. Got to love socialism.

Oh...right...

2007-04-24T16:07:00.000-05:00

I forgot...it's still Yom Ha'atzma'ut for you people and I should prolly leave you with something more inspiring than the below...ramble. But...I got nothing...you can all go read this again, I still think it's pretty.

Dream come true

2007-04-24T15:34:00.000-05:00

This was going to be turned into some vague sort of poem, but nothing poetic was really happening in my brain, despite the plethora of bus rides which usually serve as the best forum for creativity, plus my relatives (not to mention any names) have a habit of mocking my poetry, so I'm going to be terribly dull and actually say things out in prose. It may still become a poem some day, depending on how long this silly strike keeps going and thus how bored I shall end up becoming. Also, extra disclaimer, reading this back, I don't think it worked at all. But there is a point hidden there in the pomposity which I kind of like, although I don't think it came through at all. Anyhoo, enough with the typically long introduction, here goes:

Israel has problems. Really quite a lot of them. And not just the big exciting 'look, everybody wants to kill us' problems, not that those aren't fun too, but also all of those standard little typical problems, like corruption, and social rifts, and a weird little semi-socialism thing going, and a judicial system that makes me want to pull my hair out, and more beaurocracy than should be capable of fitting in one itty-bitty country, and all sorts of other wacky fun.

She's also got a shortage of good answers. To all those fun little problems and all of those big exciting ones, like how to not get destroyed or blown up or nuked or out of control.

And this all tends to depress people. Most particularly people who come all tra-la-la starry-eyed Zionist. I had a bit of a head-start in the cynical, unidealistic thing, but even so, it's a bit daunting. But here's the thing.

It's been all very well and fun to have a dream going for a couple thousand years, all about how cool it's going to be when you get back to Israel and/or have autonomy. And you get to build yourself awfully pretty visions of the utopia that it's all going to be. And in the dream, it can be. Because in the dream, everybody's sweet and friendly and wants to join hands and do folk dances between the fields of grain, unless the dreamer is more religious, in which case the dancing will be strictly seperate and with a nice mechitza. In dreams, there isn't real dirt or real stairs and nobody needs to figure out how exactly you're going to clean up after the party. In dreams, things just work out and everybody goes home a winner.

And the best part of the whole dream sequence when it concerns Israel is that even if those practical problems started forcing themselves on your attention- 'but how will we fit everyone?' 'what about a balance of power?' 'can you have a theocracy without getting all evil?'- you can foist them all off onto Mashiach. It'll be different then. The rules won't apply. People really will be warm fuzzy blankets of niceness. Monarchy works when you have a G-d-guaranteed benevolent monarch. We won't have to have an economy when bounty will drip off all the trees. And so on.

Well, and maybe it will be like that at some point. I've never really been clear on what's going to happen and when thing and tend towards the 'we'll find out when it happens, won't we?' But it's not like that now.

I know that there are some people who are holding out for the dream- who won't accept the reality because face it, it's a really long way from perfect. But I have to say, and maybe it's just me, I kind of prefer the model in which G-d says, "Okay, people, here's a chunk of land. Go figure things out,' to the one in which a savior comes galloping in on his white donkey to save the day. Kind of like the idea that the country is just bumbling along in its blessedly silly and confused little way, trying to figure things out and perhaps not always doing the best job in the world. Kind of like that there are problems, because that's what you get when dreams come true. We could have an ideal country, but only so long as we stay asleep, waiting for someone else to give it to us.

And illusions are nice and fun and so forth. But I think that I'm kind of fond of disillusionment.

Saying of the Day

2007-04-17T10:50:00.000-05:00

Until I have time to write a real post, here's a self-quote for the day:

Angst is like hormones. It's an unavoidable part of being human- certainly of being a teenager- but there's no point in wallowing in the stuff.

Disillusioned Novels

2007-03-26T16:49:00.000-05:00

Miri and I were discussing A Complicated Kindness- a novel that we both just finished reading and both really enjoyed (the former hardly a coincidence- it was recommended by a common friend and also there aren't all that many books around the dorms, so any book that she gets her hands on will be mine pretty soon). It's really a very good book, of the angsty disillusioned rebellious intellectual teenager sort, but the girl has more of a right to be angsty, disillusioned and rebellious than the average teenager, so you had to forgive her for it. We were wondering whether it's possible to write a good novel about a community without it being a scathingly disillusioned and bitter indictment. That is, whether one could write a book about the Jewish community that would both be decent and not a 'look at me, I'm airing dirty laundry and exposing the corroded infrastructure of the so-called moral authority' sort of thing.

Here's my theory. Every good novel- community specific or not- must be disillusioned. Because illusions simply don't work in a novel. Those that share the illusion will be bored and unchallenged; those that don't will think that you're a naive idiot and be entirely unable to relate to you or your little narrative. In fact, a possible definition of the greatness of a novel could be having the fewest illusions possible. If a novel is measured by how much it resembles reality or by how much it reveals about the world and the human condition, then it can't really afford to have any illusions at all.

But the thing is this. These illusions aren't just the ones that sneering black-bereted intellectuals like to be disillusioned with, like the morality of authority figures, the efficacy of the system, or the perfection and happiness of everybody in the community. A real novel can't afford to have illusions like that the sneering intellectuals have any answers, that everybody is miserable, that there's no truth or beauty or love or honesty in the system. Illusions like that the author is better or wiser or more honest than everybody else. A good novel has to be painfully truthful, but I don't know that truth is necessarily bitter or angsty.

"Religious Views"

2007-03-21T08:23:00.000-05:00

So now I'm getting so desperate that I'm stealing my own random notes off of facebook, except that this is the first note that I've made on facebook because I am pretty convinced that facebook is an agent of the devil (or of Sociability, a monster almost as fearsome.)

So I bet you've been wandering around facebook, looking at various things, and thinking to yourself, by golly! I wish there was somebody, somewhere who could analyze it far past the point to which it has meaning! Well, wish no more!

So, I was thinking about this category "religious views". First of all, it reminds me of the distinction my professor drew between religions that focus on theology and those that focus on practice. For Christians, he said, everything is about doctrine- you're Christian if you believe x,y, and z. Maybe a lapsed Christian or a bad Christian, but you're not outside of the faith.
Judaism, according to his theory at least, puts much more emphasis on practice; you ask whether somebody is shomer shabbat and shomer this more than their beliefs. The whole idea of having a list of beliefs didn't come around until the Rambam, and there were plenty of people who have made it into the halachic tradition who disagreed with several of the big 13.
I'm not so sure that we really are more into practice than belief nowadays. We seem to have plenty of fights about doctrine, but usually only when it affects practice. The problem is that it's hard to construct a "would you prefer your daughter to marry" question because it's hard to think of somebody who would have all the beliefs without the practices.

Secondly, I have to wonder about the phrasing "religious views". Which views, exactly, are religious in nature? Only the metaphysical ones? Do views about the nature of truth or whatnot fall into my "religious views" or are they more philosophical in nature? What about my views about my religion?
Or is "religious views" just code for "religion", except that religion seems to demand a sort of conformity, picking your choice off a drop-menu sort of thing, while religious views is open and multi-cultural? And if so, why do those different connotations exist?
I think that one difference between the terms is that religious views invites you to define your own religious views, not fitting into other people's boxes. But religion, for almost all of us, really is boxes. Especially on facebook, where the identification serves to place you in everyone's community. "Religious views" lets everybody who's uncomplicated enough to fit into a box, to pick the box, without thinking or majorly over-analyzing things, the complicated people to have a chance to be witty and deep and open-but-at-the-same-time-

showing-how-complicated-you-truly-are.
So I suppose it's really a win-win all around.
And I'm not sure what the point of this note was.

Pesach Rant

2007-03-19T12:51:00.000-05:00

My roommate has pointed that I have a bitter and/or cynical rant for just about every holiday (including Tisha B'Av, Tu B'Shvat, Succot, and even Rosh Chodesh, sorta). This, combined with the fact that the theme of almost all of them is "nobody but me really gets the point" probably makes me a bad person, but what can you do?

Anyway, Pesach rant. I sort of lost steam in that long introduction, but here goes.

I think it's a shame how Sippur Yitziat Mitzrayim has evolved. I mean, the root of the mitzva is to tell the story. You know, once upon a time, Ten-Commandments\Prince-of-Egypt style, with details and characters and maybe even voices. Not, I'm afraid, to tell brilliant vortlach about how the haggada is written or who the four sons represent or why everyone was staying up all night that night. Just tell the story.

I know that it seems a little immature, but then again, the haggada sort of acknowledges the issue when it says "Even if we are all old and learned and brilliant and clever, we still have to tell the story. As much as possible." I've been to seven or eight shiurim that analyze with elegance and flair how the mitzva of sippur relates to reliving and how it's all so important and so forth, but I have never been to a seder that actually focuses on the story telling. Instead, the haggada is plowed through, with varying degrees of interpretation. As if the point was to reach the p'shat of the haggada.

Not that anything can really be done about the subject. Because once we have a haggada, we've sorta got to use it. Although really, there's only one section that claims to be mandatory.

The only real hope is children. (There are 3 buzzwords that one is supposed to use in every argument for Israel: hope, future, and children, in any combination that seems convenient. 2 out of 3 is not bad to use on a subject like this.) Because when you have kids, they actually want to know what's going on and you actually have to tell the story to them, and there you go. But the older the population gets, the more sophisticated everyone feels that they have to be.

I don't know, really. I've never run a seder and I think that I would probably run it just the way that everybody else does, but my ideal seder- as it conglomerates in my head just now- would have minimal emphasis on the haggada and a whole lot on a really good story-teller, telling a really good story complete with visual aids and so forth.

A Cautionary Tale for Dorm Life

2007-03-19T03:25:00.000-05:00

"The Girl Who Cried Engagement"

Once upon a time, there was a girl who screamed all the time in the hallways. One day, she passed an exam and started screaming and jumping up and down and squealing in the hallways, and everybody rushed out to see if she was engaged. But she wasn't. And then another day a song she liked was playing on her music list and she started squealing and jumping up and down with all her friends in the hallways, and everyone rushed out to see if she was engaged. But she wasn't. And then another day she discovered some other terribly exciting thing, and she started squealing and jumping up and down with all her friends in the hallways, and everyone rushed out to see if she was engaged. But she wasn't.

Ending I:
And then one day she got engaged and nobody cared.

Ending II:
And then one day her hair caught on fire and nobody could tell.

And Crusade Part II

2007-03-11T14:58:00.000-05:00

(Revenge of the Crusade)

You know how sometimes you get yourself all psyched for some big, superhero, music-swelling, no-holds-barred sort of conflict and then everything ends up working out so nicely that you just feel silly, like having the door opened just as you come charging with your battering ram?

I was afraid that was going to happen with my crusade- that is, that after all that sound and fury and build-up, it would end up being a simple question of beaurocracy, easily solved by some secretary. So the adventures of the morning were not untinged with relief. Adventures as follows. Omitted, but important to note is that every step of this process is carried out in terror and unidentified guilt and wobbling knees and so forth. G-d did not give me the backbone of a revolutionary (although it would doubtless make a lovely conversation piece):

I am directed from bored secretary to bored secretary to the secretariat of the law faculty, who already knows me terribly well because I pop in there every couple of days with one problem or another, most of them relating to my having changed ID number mid-semester and the issues that spring therefrom. Visiting the secreteriat is always a bit daunting of an experience; they are calm and confident and give swift instructions in Hebrew, and they know all of your grades and like to make oblique references to them. The conversation went something like this:

Me: Hey, I'm having a bit of a problem with my Mishpat Ivri class. See, I want to switch into a higher level-
Law Department Secretary: Oh, yes, we've heard. You're in the middle level. That's the highest level you can get into.
Me: But...I'd like to switch up.
LDS: You can't.
Me: Because I'm a girl?
LDS: It's not a question of being a girl. It's the department rules- it's all based on your previous education.
Me: I know, but see, I've done a year of post high-school learning. There are boys in that level who only-
LDS: It's not a possibility.
Me: I see...is there somebody I can talk to?
LDS: No. It's over. There's nothing you can do.
Me: But...
LDS: But nothing. No girl has ever been in the highest level and none ever will be.
Me: Okay...but it doesn't really seem fair...
LDS: That's the way it is. Those are the rules.
Me: But the class is really not on my level...
LDS: So you'll get an easy A. You're getting good grades, Tobie, that's what's really important.
Me: Um....thanks [leaves office highly flumoxed, on verge of tears, having no clue what to do next]

So then I go downstairs and out of the building, a little shell-shocked by the burst of utterly confident finality. But it seems too quick, so I go back upstairs to attempt to appeal to the Dean. While standing outside of the Dean's secretary's office, waiting for her to finish chatting with another secretary, a nice lady, passing by, asks me what I would like, hears my situation, and, with limited sympathy for my cause but a lot of niceness, tells me that the thing to do is to write a letter to some committee or other and give it in at the law faculty's secretariat. It probably won't work, she tells me, but I'll feel better if I've done everything I could. (Yes, that is really the way that things work in this country. Most of human knowledge, and all of it that relates to beaurocracy is attained through random nice ladies in hallways. They are the Israeli equivalent of gurus on mountaintops.)

So I go home and write a nice little letter and then print it out and give it in, full of terror and so forth because the letter is being given to the same LDS who earlier told me the whole "no girl has ever gotten that class" line, which, by the by, sounds like I'm making it up for the purposes of making my crusade more crusade-y, which is just what I thought when she said it. But she is sweet and friendly and the terror is wholly unjustified.

Then I go back home and start making plans about what I should do when and until my request is rejected. Together with my dream team of advisors (my roommate, a sympathetic boy from Law, the random people he consulted, the random other people I consulted), the general consensus is that I should turn to the vice-dean, one of my first semester professors and all-around nice guy. He is out of his office in the morning, so I settle into my room, full of schemes and worry and a general sense of despair at ever having this ridiculous thing sorted out.

Which is why the 2:30 phone call came as such an utter and complete shock. It was the LDS, calling to tell me that the committee had decided to approve my request, giving me the number to call to change my registration, and congratulating me on my success. I know- battering ram\door thing at its best, but in a good way. I could not shake off the nagging feeling that the whole thing was some odd sort of prank- is there really a committee that works within three hours from submission? they actually let me in without any letters of recommendation or even transcripts? no impassioned arguments, debates, anything? It's all a little too good to be true. But nonetheless, my registration is changed, my official schedule marks the class, and I guess I am good to go. (Yay!)

My Crusade

2007-03-08T12:28:00.000-06:00

I prefer not to tell stories from my personal life, mostly because they're terribly dull. But I'm going to make an exception, because I currently find myself embroiled in just the sort of practical decision that I have previously hoped would remain academic and feared it would not. Well, it didn't.

A story:

Once upon a time, there was a girl who went to Bar Ilan law school. All the students in law school had to take a class in Hebrew Law, for which they were classified according to background and/or level. There were three classes: A class for chilonim, a class for religious students, and a class for graduates of "yeshiva gevohah" (basically, post-high school yeshiva). The girl, through cleric whatnot, was placed in the lowest level, but the people in the law secretariat promised her that she could switch levels when the proper time came, all on her own, without the filing of papers and so forth. And the girl was very happy.

Now, just to clarify, this girl was very into the learning of Gemara, and she had not only done a year of post-high school learning, but also had been involved in all sorts of various crazy Beit Medrash programs and learned Daf Yomi and so on and so forth, and so she decided that she was going to transfer herself into the highest level. She knew that the level would be largely male, but this was not a particularly novel experience for the girl and she figured it would be worth it.

Time passed and the girl tried to switch levels. But the nice people at the class-registering place told her that she could not go into the highest level. "That level is only boys," they said. "Is it forbidden for girls to join," asked the girl a little annoyedly, "or is it just that there aren't any currently there?" "'No, no, no girls," said the people, "you see it's really just for boys who have gone to hesder yeshiva." "But I am positive," said the girl, "that I am capable of keeping up. I have male friends who are in the class who only did one year of post-high school learning. Is there some test I can take? Is there somebody to whom I can talk? Are you sure this is totally impossible?" "I will check," said the nice registration people, "and then I will call you back." And a little while, they did call back. "Yes, yes," they said, "we have checked and it is totally, absolutely, and categorically forbidden for girls to be in this class. So sorry."

And thus was born the crusade. Now, let me say. The girl is not in the mood for a crusade. She has neither time nor energy. Nor a desire to become the sort of crazy feminist that she enjoyed mocking in her more contemptuous youth. She isn't dying to be a Rosa Parks, nor yet a suffragette. She really, really doesn't have the will to play beaurocratic tag with every department in the law faculty. But the girl has three reasons for really wanting to switch classes.

1) Her Americanly liberal principles are just a tad offended by the idea that the boys get their own special higher level class, while all religious girls are thrown into the same group, regardless of level, background, or ability.

2) The level that she is in is really stupid. Maybe it was just the first one, since it was all introductory-like, but she isn't crazy about the professor, the material seems to be on a low level and taught slowly (what there was of it) and her classmates....well... Most of the girls are ulpanistiot (the term isn't really translatable). She is increasingly discovering that the average religious zionist, well-educated, intelligent, choosing-to-go-to-secular-college Israel girl has religious opinions so conservative and...traditional that they would put the girl's former Beis Yaakov classmates to shame. The example that she loves to quote: The professor mentioned that the Code of Hammurabi (sp?) was written before the Bible. One girl raises her hand and says, "But the Torah was written before the world was created!" Everybody is crocheting kippot and mumbling shocked mumbles of "kefirah!" and "Nu! Really!" and so forth. There are all of 12 boys in the 60+ person class, and at least 4 are ex-religious. Perhaps the higher level won't actually be any better, but it ought to be more challenging, and will at least theoretically have a more educated group of students. (And if it isn't harder, why exactly won't they let her in it?) Plus, her current schedule gives her 9 consecutive hours of class, and she really just can't take it, although this probably isn't one of the reasons she should most publicize.

3) She is more than a little bit of a dafkanik.

The good news is that many of her classmates, including some of the boys in the higher level, are very supportive and helping the girl be slightly less of a chicken. The bad news is that absolutely nobody was in their offices today, nor will they probably be so at any point before the first class on Sunday morning. So the next couple of days (that is, after the weekend) are going to be spent running around to various departments and secretaries trying to find who exactly is in charge of this decision, convince them of her right to switch or, failing that, find who's over their heads that she can whine about sexism to. It's all, I'm afraid, a bit of a pain.

Boxes within Boxes

2007-03-05T03:31:00.000-06:00

Do you ever worry that you're terribly unoriginal and will always be so? And as hard as you try and as much as you twist and turn and wriggle to break out of molds, you just throw yourself more and more into other molds?

There are 6 billion people on this planet. Telling someone that they're one in a million means that there are a thousand people just like them in China.

You think that your writing style is an original blend of geekiness and craziness and meta-ness, and then you read another blogger who does it all much the same, only about actual interesting topics instead of random thoughts.

Everyone's a type and the most annoying type of all is the intellectual type. The type who thinks that it's so clever and so self aware that it could never be a type. And you look at others of the type, at parties and shabbat tables and colleges, and you wonder "Am I really that much of a type?" But of course, you aren't. You're the one exception.

What is the obsession with not being a type? Is your personality so little inherently justified that it needs uniqueness for it to be valid? Are you afraid that you don't count if you don't create a type of your own? Or is it simply ego?

Second person is a cheap way out.

Random Poem

2007-02-18T14:44:00.000-06:00

The style is totally stolen from this poem of Miri's, except that hers is rather better.

well, Faith and Reason are getting divorced
and the custody battle is going to court
and Truth’s afraid he'll have to pick who he loves more

well, Reason says they just chose different routes
and Faith says it’s about his brother Doubt
and the filthy places that the two hang out
and he says she doesn’t know what she’s talking about
and would you listen to the junk he has to hear her spout?

and he’s getting bitter and starting to mope
and she comes home blind drunk on hope
and Truth watches it snowball down the slippery slope

and they fight at night, both high on pride
and Truth sits and stares, his bright eyes wide,
looking lost and lonely like someone died
hands clenched in fists at his skinny sides.