Pox

Hello, everyone, I’ve decided to revive my blog, at least for the time being. Although I don’t expect the entries to be as long, I hope to keep the style enjoyable and entertaining.

As some of you may already know, Gannet Health Services diagnosed me with chickenpox, and have put me in quarantine in my room for a period of six days, until this coming Wednesday, February 22^nd. This has forced me to sit tight and read. I devoured books three, four, and five of Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris, and have also read about rice planting techniques in West Africa and South Carolina, Jewish discrimination in Paris under the Vichy Regime, Robert Boyle, the disintegration of democratic regimes in the 1960s and 70s in Chile, Brazil, and Argentina, Hitler’s and Mussolini’s s foreign and domestic policies… I could go on, but to no purpose.

I’ve also been wasting a fair amount of time on the Internet. The final hours of the Order of the Stick Reprint Drive at Kickstarter have had me at the edge of my seat, trying to snag some signed books, I’ve read articles by my friends Judah Bellin (on Technion, in the Cornell Daily Sun) and Sam Moss (on nuclear Iran in the Cornell Progressive), listened to a lot of reggae on Pandora, found Arlo Guthrie singing “Alice’s Restaurant” on YouTube, tried to catch up on some e-mail backlogging.

In some ways, I feel as I did back in France -- lonely, most of the time, and immensely happy whenever somebody has taken time out of his or her day to reach out and make human contact. I don’t feel sick, beyond the itchiness of the rash itself, and the worst part of this whole situation is the quarantine — apparently, you can catch chicken pox just by being in the same movie theater as someone else who has it, so that means no guests inside of my room, and I can’t go and sit in the living room downstairs, either.

This gets me to thinking of the story of another student, who lived more than eighteen centuries ago. I sadly don’t know his name, or any details about his life, except this one, which the Talmud relates: “It once happened that one of Rabbi Akiva’s students became sick, but none of the sages went to visit him. Rabbi Akiva, however, went to visit him. Because he swept and cleaned the floor for him, the student recovered. The student said to him ‘Rabbi, you have revived me!’ (Nedarim 40a).

On the surface, what Rabbi Akiva did for his student in visiting him was really quite modest: a bit of cleaning. (Though if his student were as messy as some Cornell Students, sweeping and cleaning might have been a strenuous task for the aging teacher.) Like Rabbi Akiva’s student, I have been helped by the kindness of a few people who have made the effort, going above and beyond, to make me feel better about my situation. Unlike him, I am not serious ill, but this does not exempt me from gratitude, and I’d like to thank everyone who has made a special effort of kindness over the past five days, in no particular order.

Dad, thank you so much for calling: it was the best part of my whole weekend. Josefin, thank you so much for buying me groceries: I would be out of food if it were not for you. Victor, thank you for delivering my Shabbat dinner. Mom, thank you for your unceasing support, and your concern. Peninah, thank you so much for stopping by my door, and engaging me in normal conversation, lending me just a bit of your unflagging optimism. Aaron and Nick, I really appreciate your offering to take notes for me, so that I don’t fall behind in my studies. Elliot, thank you for the favor that required you to know my Hebrew name. Sam, thank you for your article, and for speaking with me over the phone. Also, thanks to everyone who has wished me well by e-mail, or anyone whom I may have forgotten (you know who you are).

I’ve got to get back to work (or to sleep, rather, by now). Regardless, on Wednesday, I’m free. See you all soon, and love to you all.

~JD

“Whether at a crucial moment for Jacobin hegemony in the French Revolution, at the point of Stalin’s bid for controlling authority, the implementation of Nazi policy in Germany, or the triumph in Iran of the Ayatollah Khomeni, emergent ruler have justified dominion… as masculine, and made that code literal in laws that put women in their place” (Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” The American Historical Review 91, 1072).