Second Drisha Shabbaton

I was up at 5:45 am on Friday, like normal, and had an easy walk to the train station, and then walked from Penn Station to Drisha, on 65th Street.  There was a conspicuous number of absences in the morning, and I needed to switch minyanim in order to ensure that both groups would have ten people.  Aaron had told us that he would not arrive until around 11:00, so for the first part of class, we listened to recordings that he had made of himself reading, translating, and explaining the day's sugyot (Sanhedrin 46b-47a) the topic of which was the source, Biblical or Rabbinic, of the obligation of burial of the dead, and whether there is in fact any obligation at all, and what the actual purpose of burial of the dead is.  The historical context of this debate was 4th- and 5th-century Iraq, ruled by the (Zoroastrian) Sassanian Persians, who showed honor to their dead by exposing them, rather than burying them beneath the ground.  We discussed this extensively as a class, and, in the context of our conversation on the meaning and significance of the term כפרה‎, I brought out the Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Teshuvah 1:4, which I had fortuitously just learned with Josefin two weeks before.  I'm not certain how much this helped us, though. Abbie and I only had a short amount of time in chevruta to discuss, then the class came together again, after Aaron arrived.

  After shiur, some students gathered together in the Beit Midrash to recite Shir HaShirim together, as it is traditional for some communities, such as the Sepharadi synagogue that I visited in Paris last summer.  I would have liked to have stayed, but Isaac and I had a mission from Devorah to bring the 90-some metal water bottles with the Drisha logo on them bottles to the mikveh.  She needed two men, not because the water bottles were particularly heavy (they weren't), but because the mikveh was open only to men between 1:00 pm and 4:00 pm on Fridays.  We carefully immersed all of the water bottles, and then Isaac brought half of them to the Jewish Center on 86th street, while I returned the other half to the Drisha office, after which sat down to write as much of a Devar Torah as I could.  Unfortunately, I hadn't had much time over the past few nights to collect and consider sources, and I ended up throwing everything together at the last minute.  I got so caught up in what I was doing that I ended up leaving for the place where I was staying the night, Ranana's friend's apartment, rather later than I should have.  She lived on 97th street, and I ended up running into Lani and Avital on the way, which I hadn't expected.  Ranana was already in the apartment when I arrived.  I introduced myself to Sarah Zager, who knows Ranana from Williams, then I showered, and Ranana and I left for the Jewish Center.  Although it was the night of the summer solstice, and therefore the longest day of the year, we welcomed Shabbat in fairly early, following a group meditation on what we wanted our Shabbat experiences to be.  I unfortunately was not entirely mentally present for this, because it was at this time that my body decided to remind me that I had only slept three hours the night before.  However, I did manage to have a good conversation with Ariel, in which I somehow ended up describing Old French, when I had begun by explaining my difficulty on the New York City subway system.

Drisha students were allowed to all go in separate directions, to different synagogues, for Minchah-Kabbalat Shabbat-Ma'ariv; along with about half of the rest of the group, I went to Darchei Noam, a partnership synagogue only a few blocks away.  I had never been to a partnership minyan before, where men lead tefillah, but women lead Kabbalat Shabbat and Pesukei Dezimrah, and receive aliyot; I really enjoyed myself.  The average age of the other congregants was quite young which, for better or for worse, does have something of an impact on my synagogue experience. Avi lead Ma'ariv, very well.  We all walked back together, and I had a good conversation with Aviva on the way.  When we were waiting for dinner, back at the Jewish Center, I had another good conversation with Becka about her first year at college (so exciting!), trying to encourage her, and remind her that, even if initial experiences are negative, there's always a sharp learning curve in every discipline.

During dinner, Avital fought for the other vegetarians' sake, and managed to make certain that we all had something to eat.  Yossi is actually vegan, which is quite unusual (and, I'll add, as difficult to sustain as it is impressive) in the observant Jewish world.  He worked last summer for Shamayim V'Aretz Institute, and was responsible for putting together all sorts of source sheets about animal ethics in halakhah.  Unexpectedly, Aaron Levy and Lazar joined us for dinner.  I was super-excited to see Lazar, so excited that I virtually jumped on him when he walked in the door.  After dinner, we had our tish, and I needed to give my devar Torah.  Ahuva had spoken earlier about the pareshah, and because of this, I could, at least, plunge right into my commentary rather than reviewing the narrative.  I delivered my own devar thinking that I had done a really terrible job, but several people (Shoshana, Julia, Fiona, Rivka, and Raymond in particular) tried to convince me otherwise.  Raymond actually added more to what I had been saying; that guy really knows what he's talking about, not just in Torah, but in other areas as well.  Gavi also tried to lift my spirits too (and needed to ask me about my minyan switch, too).  Abbie actually ended up speaking after me, about the song Tzur Mishelo, and how it actually reflects Birkhat HaMazon rather than any part of Tanakh, as many Jewish songs do.  Eli and Yossi also made a sium, a celebration for having finished a significant milestone in their Jewish learning, the completion of tractate Eruvin of the Talmud.  There was some serious schmoozing going on outside of the Jewish Center, and because it was best for us to walk in groups, most of us waited around.  I became engaged in a very interesting debate with Aaron Levy, doing one of the things that I do best, i.e. deconstructing my own ideas when they are presented to me by other people.  It was a warm night, ideal for loitering underneath the streetlights.

I walked back with a whole group of students.  Because Jon had expressed worry about us walking back alone, Ranana volunteered for the both of us to walk Sarah back to her apartment on 106th Street, only a few blocks north from where we were staying.  Ranana is a really great conversationalist, and I wish that I had had more time to speak with her on our long walk up and down the West side that night.  Afterwards, I fell right asleep, although it was already 1:00 pm.

Unfortunately, I'm not too good at waking up on time when I don't have a clock within my line of sight (one reason why I overslept earlier this week), so I didn't get up until around 8:20 am on Saturday morning.  I had promised to meet Aaron Levy and Lazar at the Spanish-Portuguese Sepharadi synagogue on 70th and Central Park West, which began at 8:30 am (I think -- or maybe it was 8:15 am), so I was late.  I saw Adam Pershan on the way over, who was headed for another synagogue.  I arrived towards the end of Pesukei Dezimrah.  I recited the principal 6 Tehillim of PD, and arrived at Yishtabach at the same time as the cantor.  So, everything worked out.

Before I go any further with this report, I need to describe the Spanish-Portuguese synagogue itself.  First of all, with the exception of the Moorish-style Great Synagogue of Florence, it is the grandest synagogue I have ever entered.  It has an incredibly high ceiling with multiple layers of molding, stained glass windows that flood the sanctuary with light, and a reading/leading bimah in the sanctuary's middle.  The women, rather than being separated by a Mechitzah, stand in a separate balcony gallery; my female friends told me afterwards that they felt as if they had more active participation in this way than they do when they are on a different side, rather than a different story, of the synagogue from the men who are performing the service.  The cantors wear long black robes and special low cylindrical black caps.  Many of the other men in the congregation wear round white straw hats, and all males -- even those below Bar Mitzvah age, must wear a Tallit Gadol (I'm used to this, but most of my Ashkenazic peers probably aren't).  At Petichah, when one of the congregation members opened the ark for the Sefer Torah for the Torah service, I was amazed to see that there were not three or four Sifrei Torah as I had expected, but more than a dozen, all wrapped in scarlet cloths!  I felt as if I were looking at a vault of Sifrei Torah!  On top of the ark was also a carving of the two tablets, which depicted them as having all right angles.  This is significant because, in fact, according to a literal reading of the Biblical text, the tablets did not have rounded tops, even though they are always pictured in this way (I don't know why exactly; by default, though, I blame Renaissance artwork).  However, by far the most noticeable feature of the Spanish-Portuguese synagogue was the presence of a choir!  Really!  They're very good, and have first-class acoustics (they're located above the ark).  Discussing the service afterwards with my peers, we all agreed that the entire atmosphere, though Jewish in content, was somewhat churchlike in form.  Ariel was called up for an aliyah at the Torah; however, men were not permitted to ascend the bimah to read Torah unless they were wearing neckties!  So one man generously removed his own tie, and lent it to Ariel, so that Ariel could have his aliyah!  The whole practice strikes me as so enigmatic -- why does this rule even exist in the first place?  Who was the person first to have the nerve to try to ascend the bimah without a necktie, that made the synagogue institute this rule in the first place.  Throughout the service, I sat with Lazar, who made me laugh at the most inopportune moments.  Ben-Tzion was sitting behind us, and I felt very guilty at the possibility of distracting him

At the kiddush afterwards, they served sacramental wine, i.e. the very sweet wine typically used at Catholic communions, which just confused things even more.  I tried to speak to Ben-Tzion in Hebrew, and ended up making a total fool of myself.  I also spoke to Victoria, and managed to finally articulate just what I had been trying to say about the Micah Haftorah the night before in my devar Torah.  Pretty much, I had focused in on Micah 6:5, עַמִּי זְכָר נָא מַה יָּעַץ בָּלָק מֶלֶךְ מוֹאָב וּמֶה עָנָה אֹתוֹ בִּלְעָם בֶּן בְּעוֹר מִן הַשִּׁטִּים עַד הַגִּלְגָּל לְמַעַן דַּעַת צִדְקוֹת יְהֹוָה ("My people, remember now what Balak king of Moav planned, and what Bil'am the son of Be'or answered him. From Shittim to Gilgal, may you recognize the righteous deeds of the Lord").  Specifically, the key term was מֶה עָנָה אֹתוֹ בִּלְעָם. I was arguing that Micah was essentially delivering a devar Torah, trying to make a point by reminding Jews of a particular section of a narrative passage from the Torah.  Bil'am's replies to Balak (I guessed that Micah was referring to 23:26, "הֲלֹא דִּבַּרְתִּי אֵלֶיךָ לֵאמֹר כֹּל אֲשֶׁר יְדַבֵּר יְהֹוָה אֹתוֹ אֶעֱשֶׂה," because it seemed to be the most relevant reply, although this is only supposition) are not frequently brought up as the most critical and important elements of the narrative in our own times.  We tend to focus more on Bil'am's blessings of the people; the Rabbis really enjoyed "מַה טֹּבוּ אֹהָלֶיךָ יַעֲקֹב מִשְׁכְּנֹתֶיךָ יִשְׂרָאֵל," and used it to speak about the laws of personal privacy, for instance.  However, in Micah's times, the people's needs were different, so Micah emphasized a different passage of this Torah narrative.  This was especially significant, because Bil'am was not Jewish (as far as I can tell, he is the only non-Jew to speak in song or poetry throughout the entire Tanakh, with the exception of Sefer Iyov), and yet his prophecies have shaped Jewish self-perception.  This has been the case throughout Jewish history.  The Jews certainly became more self-conscious about their circumcision when the kingdom of Judea fell under Syrian Greek dominion (the 7 Canaanite nations, the Phoenicians, and the Egyptians all circumcised their sons) because the Greeks scorned this particular aspect of the Jewish body, which ran contrary to the Greek ideal of beauty (see Aristophanes's Ἀχαρνεῖς for a good example of this).  When Christianity became a distinct entity from Judaism in the early 4th century, both Jews and Christians consciously acted to differentiate themselves from the the other group.  In medieval Christian Europe, when Jews were forced to wear headgear, and, in the medieval Muslim world, to wear distinct headgear and sashes in their dimi status.  Following the rise of National Socialism in the early 20th century, Jews began to think of themselves in the very racial terms that their antagonists had assigned to them.  However, Jews should not be passive objects in these definitions of identity in essence; rather, they should take hold of and accept these definitions.  For example, in medieval Europe, the enforced Jewish headgear became a sign of pride rather than of shame among the Jewish communities; there are Jewish depictions of Moses wearing such a pointed hat, showing to the extent that they identified Judaism with this feature.  Likewise, the Torah proudly records Bil'am's prophecies about the Jewish people, making deliberate parallels between Bil'am and the Avot (especially Avraham Avinu), and the Rabbis write in even more parallels, even arguing that the line from Deuteronomy לֹא קָם בְּיִשְׂרָאֵל כְּמשֶׁה עוֹד indicates that Bil'am was at least as great a prophet as Moses (here's Wendy giving a great Devar Torah on just this subject <3).  However, I stuttered over my words so much on Friday night that I didn't get most of these words out!  Also, Raymond pointed out to me that Bil'am is a descendant of Midian, a son of Avraham by his wife Keturah/קְטוּרָה (see Genesis 25:2), which further strengthens the Avraham-Bil'am parallel.  Also, Victoria spoke to the cantor, and found out that this synagogue might be the home of the oldest religious Jewish community in North America, which is really incredible!

We all walked back to the Jewish Center for Shabbat lunch.  Lani had davened there, and had seen Leon Davis, who is in the city this summer; I really wish that I had been able to see him.  Another contingent of Drisha students had returned to Darchei Noam, and Esther had even received an Aliyah!  Also, much to my surprise, just a few meters before I entered, I saw Judah Rosenblatt, Rivka's older brother and a Cornell alumnus who I partially knew before he graduated, walking out!  We're mutual friends with Sam Moss, and I spoke to him a little bit about his Teach For American experience.  Avital and Adam both gave pre-lunch chaburot.  I attended Adam's, about the the passages in the Talmud that cryptically state that although the Halakhah ("way" or "law") is one way, we do not act in this way.  One of them I had already learned with Rav Ami, in the context of cooking on Shabbat; others had to do with sharpening knives on festivals, and wearing tefillin after dark.  We then compared these to a Rashi responsum stating that although it was his opinion that, although it was technically permitted by the Torah to collect interest on loans through an agent, if this teaching were actually abided by, then it would destroy Jewish society, and have the disastrous consequences that the the law stood up to prevent in the first place.  Raphi contributed some very good comments.  I personally thought that, among other differences between the examples in the Talmud and that brought to Rashi, those in the Talmud are chukim, ritual ordinances, and dictated the relationship between humans and Hashem, whereas Rashi's case was that of a mishpat, a political law, dictating relationships among human beings.  During lunch, Raymond got in a very intense, interesting discussion with Mati and some of the other people sitting at our table about the necessary (or unnecessary) strictness of modern Jews for such laws as Shomer Negiah.  Fiona also answered people's questions about the Spanish-Portuguese community, because her family is Spanish-Portuguese.  After lunch, a group of students walked to Central Park to play improv games, under Lani's leadership.  It was so-so; I've had better improv experiences before (Marissa, you're still my best improv partner ever <3; Jeff and Lauren, you're still the funniest improv couple I know).  One of the improv skits had me being very mean to Sherona, which made me hurt a little bit, because she's such a sweet person, and I felt bad about even pretending to throw question her intelligence, which is exactly what I did.

We were back at Drisha at 5:30, and three more students gave chaburot.  I listened to Avi's which was based on his senior this.  He was discussing synoptic parallels in Mishnah Ta'anit, i.e. parts of one section of the Mishnah that shared an origin with other texts.  If I understood him correctly, he ended up showing, with the help of some geniza fragments of Ben Sira, that the Mishnah was drawing elements from the Tosefta that pre-dated the Rabbinic era, and actually dated back to the Second Temple era.  He also included a passage from the Talmud Bavli, the significance of which I didn't really grasp.  He's a very erudite guy, and is definitely one of the most learned students here at Drisha.

Following this, we had Minchah, and, following that, Rabbi Silber gave a shiur on the character of Yoash in Sefer Shmuel and the beginning of Sefer Melachim.  He made some very interesting points about this Biblical hitman, and how David and Solomon used him in various ways at various times, and how, at other times, he acted of his own initiative, sometimes more concerned for the future of the House of David than David himself.  Really, the shiur just made we want to re-read all of Sefer Melachim!  One of the things that I really enjoy about Drisha is the intellectual honesty with which the instructors approach canonical texts.  Orthodoxy can't always approach with honesty, and neither, in my opinion, can secular scholars; the former are often too willing to excuse, sterilize, and apologize; the latter are too eager to attack and degrade.

At Seudah Shlishit, Denise gave the Devar Torah that she had prepared.  Ma'ariv and Havdallah followed.  After Shabbat was over (which, because Jon was there, necessarily involved some pretty ecstatic dancing), we had an open-mic event, kind of like a talent show, but more fun.  Raphi performed two pieces on the guitar, and (deservedly) received a standing ovation.  Netanya delivered some very emotional slam-poetry that she had composed herself, and Adam sang (?) something that he characterized as a "Scottish poem."  Rivka, Fiona, Julia, and Shoshana all performed the "cup song," which is apparently a camp thing, and then Brenda, Fiona, and Julia tried very hard to rap some nursery rhymes, but laughed too hard to sing; luckily, Raphi came to the rescue, and bailed them out by beatboxing for them, and keeping a steady rhythm.  Adi and Ariel performed a humorous dialogue making fun of Americans trying to speak Hebrew, and Israelis trying to speak English, and had most of the room in stitches.  Eli spontaneously gave us his impression of the last 2 minutes of the movie "Titanic," and the last act, performed by our very own Rivka Rosenblatt was -- a startlingly convincing horse impression.  More than anything else, it reminded me of how I imagine the Houyhnhnms in Gulliver's Travels to communicate.  She felt so embarrassed, and so we all had to support her, and remind her that she was among friends, who were not going to think less of her.  Pretty much what she and everyone else had done for me after my devar Torah.

Ranana and I walked back to Sarah Zager's apartment with some other students.  There were two goodbyes that night: Daniel and Avital.  I fell asleep almost immediately, but not before I saw that I had received a distress signal from a certain special person overseas right now, who really had needed to talk to me, while it was still Shabbat in the United States, but I had been unavailable.  The next morning, I bought my suit for Andrew's wedding, called Sam and my Mother, and took the train back to New Jersey.  After making a necessary Skype call, I wasted a fair amount of time, and procrastinated working further on the spiel.  Still, somehow I managed to finish this post before 1:00 am.

Have a fun week, whoever you are, wherever you are!

~JD

Drisha Week 4

 Wow, I have an audience now, thanks to Neesa's encouraging me to share the existence of my blog with my fellow Drisha students!   Unfortunately, I haven't been diligent this week about writing about Drisha (I got carried away with my Sunday adventure instead), so I'm just a little bit uncertain about the specifics of many of the events I'm about to record (especially morning shiur).As was typical of me, I stayed up too late on Sunday night, so was quite tired when I rolled out of bed at a quarter to six on Monday morning.  I've come to enjoy the walk to the Millburn train station in many ways.  By the time I've arrived at Drisha on 65th street, my body is awake, and my tongue is as flexible as it's ever going to become, which is good, for Shacharit.  Again, I had the privilege of performing hagbah, for which I was very thankful.

During Aaron's morning shiur, we returned as a group to many of the sections we had only sparsely read, and also worked our way through Rashi's long explanation of the story of Baya the tax-collector.  I've finally found the place where I read this story, as a freshman or sophomore in high school -- the story went under the title "The Witches of Ashkelon," and appeared in Elijah's Violin and other Jewish Fairy Tales, a book that I had found downstairs on my parents' bookshelf.  We discussed the debate between Rabbi Yehudah and the other Sages about what constitutes יפה מתה, which involved cross-referencing a seemingly contradictory debate in Mishnah Sotah.  Although I can't be certain, I believe that we also discussed how preservation of the body's integrity became an important priority in the Rabbinic literature concerning capital punishment, and for this reason, the בית הסקילה was only the equivalent of three people's stature in height  Monday afternoon, I had to leave class very abruptly to resolve a personal issue that I knew that I would need to address before leaving New York City.  By the time I returned, I had missed Jon's afternoon class on Kavod Ha-Met, and I simply returned to New Jersey, arriving relatively early, shortly after 8:00 pm.  Many of my fellow student gathered in Fiona's apartment that afternoon for a party, which I was sorry to miss.  However, as those of you who read this blog are aware by now, I have a long commute, and sleep little enough as is.  I had a distance chevruta with Josh that evening, and we read the first sugya of Makkot together.  It was quite enjoyable, although I admit that I would have been in deep trouble had I not read the sugya beforehand in the ArtScroll Talmud that I had found on Shabbat in the Rabbi's house.

This week, I had my typical 4:45 am start to my Tuesday, and still needed to jog a bit to catch the 5:46 am train out of Millburn.  I did, however, arrive at Drisha in time for my 7:30 am class, and even had time to pick up some figs from a street vendor.  Esther was teaching that morning in place of Aaron, and we read some contemporary Israeli poetry, which I'm rather certain I understood less than anyone else in the room.  I switched minyanim on Tuesday morning, which confused quite a few people, who know me to consistently attend one rather than the other.  Regardless, Abbie and I worked very hard at learning our Gemara that morning.  We ended up reading some sugyot from chapter seven of the Gemara (we're studying chapter 6) in order to understand the other forms of capital punishment proposed by the Rabbis, since our mishnah principally addresses סקילה.  Aaron managed to bring some interesting comparative sources, in order to show us what kind of methods were being used by the nations among whom the Amoraim lived.  Fiona, Ariel, Brenda, and a few other students have gotten in contact with me concerning the end-of-term spiel.  It looks as if I'm going to need to try to be funny -- I wonder how that will turn out?  Tuesday afternoon, in Yaffa's Mishnah class, Talia and I read the sixth and seventh chapters of Sanhedrin; Yaffa brought out a great argument with Halakhic Midrash and other Second Temple literature in order to explain the seeming invention of חנק by the Rabbis.  The argument went that some of the earlier Tannaim (Rabbi Eliezer) probably assumed that the default means of execution was סקילה, and that it was Yehudah Ha-Nasi who definitively made חנק into the default.  Quite a few Cornellians visited Drisha Tuesday afternoon during open learning night.  Eli and Josefin were there, as usual, but Ezra also showed up, too, and spent Wednesday with us, too.  Ilan appeared, too, although, as with last week, I didn't have much opportunity to speak with him.  Josefin and I continued to study Hilchot Teshuvah, finishing the second chapter and beginning the third.  Devorah gave her penultimate class on the Aggadah of Yavneh, discussing the narrative of the argument over the Oven of Achnai, and of the fight that breaks out between Rabbi Eliezer and the rest of the Sages.  As always, Devorah tried extremely hard to explain the narrative in relation to the other narratives we've learned, and to make the readers drop their preconceived notions about the story's meaning.  Now that I've studied the beginning of tractate Megillah with Rav Ami, I was struck by how Rabban Gamliel's statement to the wave is identical to that of Yonatan ben Uzziel response to the earthquake; both involve natural disasters and a bat kol.  I have no idea how to account for this.

On Wednesday, I overslept an hour, and, were it not for Eduardo's sympathy for me, I would not have made it to Drisha on time.  He drove me to the station, where I caught my 6:57 am train by less than a 60-second margin.  I arrived at Drisha on time, and had an excellent morning shiur again.  Abbie and I delved again into the Gemara, focusing on the obligation of תלויה, and to whom it applied.  Aaron brought sources from the Dead Sea Scroll, the New Testament, and two Aramaic Targumim, in order to elucidate just how differently the same strangely-worded Biblical passage could be interpreted.  We also looked a Sanhedrin Tosefta, told in the name of Rabbi Elazar Tzadok, in order to better understand just how שרפה was expected to be carried out, comparing it to a similar Baraita in our Gemara.  I discussed the Spiel more with Ariel, and led Minchah, making mistakes as I always do: I become incredibly self-conscious, and trip over my own words, and unable to articulate anything correctly. In the afternoon, I had Jon's class again, picking up my chevruta with Ranana where I had left it off last week.  We struggled through what was easily the most linguistically-challenging Aggada (from Berachot 18b-19a) I have ever seen, a trio of stories from the Bavli about the possibility of continued consciousness after death.  Thank goodness we were using Koren's study-aid, and could look it up for the obscure words -- which was really all of them (how was I supposed to know the Aramaic word for "eye-shadow?").  I continued to study mishnayot by myself until 7:00 am.  I finished Bava Batra, although I needed Ezra's help to understand the concluding mishnah about guarantors of loans.  Rabbi Yishmael has a student who makes a very intelligent point, and Rabbi Yishmael goes on extensive praise of the student for his cleverness.  The student's name is... בן ננס.  Yes, if spoken quickly, it sounds like "bananas."  Which inspired Ezra with the following joke: who is Sarah Sonenberg's favorite Tanna?  בן ננס.  Yes, bad, I know; bad enough for the KOACH weekend update.  Later that evening were further installments on the series of Judaism as Art and Meta-Halakhah.  In the former, we discussed intention in the Shemoneh Esrei, and in the second, the guest-speaker spoke about the uniqueness of each iteration of a repeating event, and about making the right decision when you know that your choice affects your entire community.

Today, I was up with lots of energy at 5:45 am, and had a great day.  I had hagbah (again -- a repeating theme) in the morning.  Aaron had told us all that he was going to be late, and so the class did its best to function well until he arrived.  The theme of the day was Rabbi Meir's understanding of תלויה, and why the victim needs to be taken down.  This is all a very puzzling mitzvah, because the Rabbis make it clear that they do not want תלויה to be a public spectacle.  Denise and I continued to discuss this after class -- she didn't understand why the Rabbis insisted on interpreting תלויה as an obligation, but then refusing to perform it in any sort of serious way, very much contrary to the way that they seem to want people to observe most mitzvot.  In the afternoon, Talia and I read chapters 8 and 9 of Mishnah Sanhedrin.  I was getting quite tired, and the discussion afterwards with the rest of Yaffa's class, about a teaching in the name of Rabbi Yehudah that originated in Israel, but was brought to Bavel, corrupted, then brought back, rather confused me.  I ended up getting in a low-animosity debate with Avi about the reason for five whole mishnayot devoted to the process of judging the בן סורר ומורה.  There are five mishnayot on the situation, which together make the entire situation entirely impossible.  Avi and I differed mostly in our willingness to offer explanations for why there are (relatively) so many mishnayot to a negated mitzvah.  Uncharacteristically, I was the less skeptical, and was ready with several explanations.  I think that I'm both less sensitive to criticism in Torah than in my secular studies, as well as more willing to admit that I'm wrong. I don't know what that is.

During evening seder today, after a good conversation with Julie, I read about half of Mishnah Sanhedrin by myself before the Thursday night Tish, that lasted until around 9:00 pm.  There's a utilities problem back at the CJL, I need to finish suit-shopping for Andrew's wedding, my laundry is in the dryer, it looks as if I'll be getting under four hours' sleep tonight (again), and I'm trying to get in touch with Sam about the wedding.  I'm really, really looking forward to Shabbat, though.  After completing a Top Secret mission with the awesome Isaac Choua on behalf of Devorah, I'll be participating in Drisha's second Shabbaton of June term.  I need to prepare a Devar Torah for tomorrow night.  Uh, oh.  Regardless, I'd like to express my gratitude to Ranana for getting me a place to stay, as well as to Neesa and Danielle, who made certain that I would have a place to sleep, and to Aaron Levy and Lazar Polevoy, who were willing to allow me to stay in their apartment, if I couldn't find anywhere else to stay.

Have a Shabbat Shalom, cool people!  Again, I apologize for typos and misremembered events!

~JD

Man of Steel

I spent Sunday in New York City.  Although my pretext for visiting the city was to buy clothes, I mostly just wanted an excuse to see Maria, one of my friends from High School whom I haven't seen in over four years.  Among other things we did together, Maria and I both took Mr. Anderson's AP English-Lang class as seniors, reading, among other amazing books, George Orwell's Collection of Essays, still one of the most influential books in my own life.  It was nice to again be around someone who had the Ithaca upbringing that I did, who had the same friends in high school that I did, and who didn't necessarily know all of my college friends.

Maria and I went to see "Man of Steel," out for less than a week (note: spoiler alert).  I was rather disappointed, to be honest.  The film lasts a powerful 148 minutes long, alternating between heart-pounding action and dull scenes that I probably won't remember a few weeks from now.  My main criticism of the film is that it lacks a beginning, a middle, and an end.  Call me an old Aristotelian, but the pacing of the entire story was completely unbalanced -- the beginning lasted far too long, the middle dragged on disproportionately, and it was impossible to distinguish the climax from any other part of the film.  There was no denouement to speak of, and there were no really memorable lines.  The fight scenes that played out in Smallville and Metropolis mostly made me think about how sharp broken glass is, and how much it hurts to trip and slide across asphalt.  Some of the film's premises seemed completely unbelievable.  I'll believe in alien civilizations, but there's no explanation for how the Kryptonites are capable of communicating with humans.  Likewise, in the ordered society described, in which every member fulfills a specific role, how is it possible that the world's greatest scientist is also its best warrior?  In the first scene minutes of the film, Jor-El makes it quite clear that he is stronger than Zod's small squadron, singlehandedly defeating them all, despite the fact that he is unarmed and surrounded as the fight begins.  If he's such an amazing scientist, how does he have the time to practice for this kind of combat?  And what kind of scientist is he, anyway?  Science-fiction films seem to consistently forget that science is a method in which individuals have different fields of expertise: by "top scientist," the script-writer meant "most brilliant computer-programmer."  As the son of a scientist, I take the distinction between science and engineering seriously.  In a similar vein, Superman has no combat training and stayed out of fights his entire life: how is it that he defeats Zod at the end, despite having no weapons?  Why is the Kryponian military, in other words, consistently unable to defeat unarmed Kryptonian civilians? 

Speaking of Mr. Anderson, though, this film, the previews that preceded it, and the last movie I saw in theaters ("Star Trek: Into Darkness") have had me asking the questions that my friend George Orwell taught me to ask about popular media, in such essays as "Boys' Weeklies" and "Raffles and Miss Blandish."  As Orwell points out, there is a great deal of sociological information hidden right beneath the surface (and sometimes not hidden at all) of films, regarding the values of their filmmakers, as well as the values of the societies that consume them.  As I always do, I found myself asking questions like:

 
- Are heroes necessarily stronger than villains?  Are heroes necessarily underdogs?  Are they conquering in spite of the odds, or are they victorious because of their strength?
This was always a serious concern of Orwell's, addressed directly in the case of British novels in "Raffles and Miss Blandish."  As he states, "Until recently the characteristic adventure stories of the English-speaking peoples have been stories in which the hero fights against odds. This is true all the way from Robin Hood to Pop-eye the Sailor. Perhaps the basic myth of the Western world is Jack the Giant-killer, but to be brought up to date this should be renamed Jack the Dwarf-killer, and there already exists a considerable literature which teaches, either overtly or implicitly, that one should side with the big man against the little man." There's a real mix among current movies in this regard.  The Pixar movies have been excellent at providing unlikely heroes who persevere against the odds.  Just think about it: "Ratatouille" stars a garbage boy and a rat; "Up" stars a grumpy old man and a chubby boyscout; "Wall-E" is about a robot whose job is to push garbage.  On the other hand, one of the main thoughts repeating again and again when I watched "Avengers" last year was: the heroes are all superheroes, and are far stronger than the villains.  Yes, there are more villains than there are heroes, especially at the end, but does The Hulk really ever meet any enemy that's stronger than he is?  Thor is much stronger than Loki -- the latter succeeds because of his trickery, a trait much more befitting an unlikely hero than a principal antagonist.  Even characters like Black Widow, technically lacking superpowers, are nevertheless superhuman in the feats that they accomplish.  Likewise, one telling change between The Hobbit and the recent film adaptation of the first part was what became a fight scene between the Dwarves and the Trolls (Bert, Tom, and William).  The Dwarves don't even carry weapons at the beginning of their journey in the book, yet in the movie, they are seen as highly capable fighters, far better than the Trolls. Why do they lose the fight in the movie?  Because of the weakest link of their party, Bilbo, who is not strong enough to defend himself.  Although Bilbo partially redeems himself by stalling the Trolls until Gandalf can arrive to save the day, his physical weakness is still the cause of the group's problems.  This is not the case in Tolkein's work, in which the Dwarves are ambushed in pairs by the Trolls; Thorin alone puts up a struggle of any kind.  In the movie, however, if Bilbo were not present, or were physically stronger, the Dwarves would not have been in such serious danger, and probably would have killed the Trolls without Gandalf's help.
- Do the strong need to respect the rights of the weak?
 To take a look at another recent superhero movie, "Avengers" -- no.  They don't.  In "Man of Steel," a Superman makes explicit in the last ten minutes that he does what he does because of his patriotism.  In other words, if he chose to become a supervillain, he could probably terrorize the entire world, as simple as that.  There is no sense that he needs Earth as much as Earth needs him, because he is strong, and strength answers to nobody in this universe.  Jor-El preserves over Zod and his followers in the opening scene because of his martial ability, doesn't he?
- Does violence solve problems?  Is it seen as having any consequences?
Violence solves characters' problems in all of these films, plain and simple.  They wouldn't be blockbusters if they lacked action, I know, but "Man of Steel" is nothing but a B-grade slugfest by the end.  You can have a perfectly exciting movie that lacks this kind of violence.  Just take a look at, for instance, "Spirited Away," which though full of action and danger, lacks anything that could be qualified as a fight scene.  "Man of Steel," by contrast, is full of gratuitous violence.  Did Superman ever stop to see if there were any people in the buildings that he demolishes when tackling the other Kryptonites?  What about all of those exploding gas stations -- are we really supposed to believe that Superman only ever took a single life in the course of this film?  At the end of the day, the villains are so wicked, and the difference between good and evil so clear-cut, that, yes, violence is the only answer to the world's problems.
- What is considered to be "justice?"  What kind of punishment, if any, do villains receive, who dispenses it, and how?
I will say that "Star Trek: Into Darkness" scores very well in this category, constantly forcing the characters and audience to confront the moral and ethical issues associated with Khan and the Star Fleet high command.  Who has a right to punish whom is one of the movie's main themes, in fact.  Villains act lawfully (such as when the Klingons attack Kirk, Spock, and Uhura, who have illegally descended onto Chronos), and heroes act unlawfully (such as when Kirk repeatedly punches Khan). 
- When the villains are defeated, is that considered the conclusion to society's problems?  Or is building what has been destroyed depicted as harder than overthrowing evil?
"Man of Steel" has one of the simplest divides between good and evil.  It is good's responsibility to destroy evil, when evil threatens.  Superman generally doesn't care about destroying things, although he does make a singular effort to catch a falling pilot who has just tried to shoot him, and to save the family in the train station at the end.  At the end, Metropolis miraculously returns to normal.  There is no lingering on the rubble as there was in "Dark Knight."  When the Bad Guys are defeated, what more is there to worry about?  According to "Man of Steel," nothing.
- What social classes are represented among the characters?  Which are depicted as heroic, and which as villainous?  How do members of different classes interact?Looking at the previews leading up to "Man of Steel," class-consciousness is not taboo in the U.S., at least so long as it's at least partially concealed as science fiction.  Both the Hunger Games books and movies are noticeable for addressing the issue; likewise, the upcoming "Elysium" has a similar bent, although I only saw a short preview.  The Kents' rural roots in "Man of Steel" are emphasized, but there really isn't much in the way of social commentary.  By way of previews, it' interesting to see that there is a sequel being made to "300," that seems to focus on the Battle of Salamis.  Athens was a democracy at the time of the Persian wars, and it fought its wars democratically, on land and sea alike.  The invention hoplite formation in ancient Greek warfare is one of historians' favorite examples of factors contributing to the rise of democracy in the Hellenic world.  A less well-known story, that I recommend looking up in Barry Strauss's Battle of Salamis, is how trireme warfare depended upon the common men laboring over the oars; they, not the archers and marines above decks, were the real heroes of the story.  I have no idea of how the Battle of Salamis will play off in this "300" sequel (they seem to have included the devious Queen Artemisia), but I saw examples of Greek warriors running around as individuals to attack Persians, a clear violation of historical fact in order to please audiences.  This is the reality of warfare in the Illiad, in which aristocrats battled aristocrats one-on-one as champions, sometimes quite literally in duels, and in which fighters were professional soldiers.  By the Greco-Persian Wars, which probably took place more than 700 years after the sacking of Troy, Greek soldiers' lives depended upon their ability to maintain a solid shield wall -- which meant no breaking rank to play the hero.  For the benefit of both sides, virtually all land battles among Greeks were fought on level ground, to mutual consent.  Herodotus speaks with wonder of Athenian soldiers who broke every convention by running into battle.  The point is, if the preview is accurate, the "300" sequel violates historical fact in order to depict the reality of ancient warfare as less democratic than it really was.
- How are police officers depicted?  Are they seen as stoic heroes, goofy blue-collar members of their neighborhood communities, or menacing antagonists?
This is one of my favorite questions.  Think about the policemen in, say, "Be Kind, Rewind."  Compare them to policemen in the Sherlock Holmes stories (or in Poe's Dupin stories), to the policemen at the end of "Avengers," to the policemen in a typical Hitchcock film ("Dial M for Murder" or "The Thirty-Nine Steps"), and to Vimes, Colon, Carrot, Nobby, and the rest of the Night Watch in the Discworld series.  What differences, despite the fact that these are all more or less sympathetic depictions!  None of these organizations are naturally threatening; Orwell wrote, in 1944, that "It is implied throughout No Orchids that being a criminal is only reprehensible in the sense that it does not pay. Being a policeman pays better, but there is no moral difference, since the police use essentially criminal methods. In a book like He Won't Need It Now the distinction between crime and crime-prevention practically disappears."  For whatever reasons, human police officers are treated quite sympathetically.
- How is the government depicted?  What sorts of characters represent the government?  Is this film patriotic or subversive?
Yes, "Man of Steel" is patriotic, and not the least bit subversive.
- Does race play any kind of role in power hierarchies?
 Even though I brought this question up, I'm rather afraid to touch it.
- If there are criminals in this film, how are they treated?  What are the racial demographics of criminals?  Are criminals victims of society, or is society victim to their malevolence?
I think that the most interesting depiction of convicts I have seen in a recent film was the scene of the prison ship in "Dark Knight."  The film depicts the convicts as more upright and humane than either their guards or the other Gotham residents.  The scene is entirely believable.  The United States has the second-highest incarceration rate in the world, and has a very strong history of seeing prison occupants as, at best, sinners in need of reformation, and, at worst, as biologically-determine criminals undeserving of ever being released.  I'm still amazed that nobody talks about this scene, and that it didn't have as much of an impact on others, as sociologically telling, as it did on me.

- What roles do women play as members of a team?  Are women's bodies on display any more or less on display than men's?  Are there any moments at which two women speak to each other dialogue beyond the scope of the men they are both interested in?
Yikes, this is another difficult one.  Lois Lane pulls weight, but less than the other heroes, and Ma Kent's sole job is to offer moral support.  Yes, there's a very frightening femme fatale, but the existence of a single powerful female character -- especially a villain -- does not make the superhero trade an equal-opportunity industry.  Superhero saves Lois far more than Lois saves Superman; the only real role that she serves in the finale is to transmit a message from Jor-El to Superman; i.e., she is a messenger between the two male characters who are actually capable of solving the world's problems. Warriors and scientists alike are men in this film; this is not unusual.  The only female Avenger is also the weakest (albeit the only one who isn't dysfunctional), and The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, books and movies alike, are stories by men and about men.  Most of the Enterprise's officers are men, aren't they?  This is somewhat inevitable: looking at the credits for scriptwriting and directing, I can't help but notice a preponderance of male names.  Unsurprisingly, men are better at writing lines for male characters than they are at writing lines for female characters.  I know for a fact that if I ever try to write fiction, of any sort, I will need to consult one or more female friends when trying to write female-female dialogue.  Women, have you ever considered that men have no idea what you talk about when you are alone with other women?  However, I think it's worth mentioning that, for all of the male-dominated great films out there, animated films produced by Hayao Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli are about as gender-equal as you can find.

I'll let you think more about these questions, and perhaps you'll think about them the next time you visit the movie theater (or maybe not).  In the meantime, the critics of Rotten Tomatoes seem to have agreed with me on many of my opinions of "Man of Steel."  Here are a few of the most insightful comments: "The chief problem here is one of rhythm and balance in the storytelling and directing. The movie swings between destructive overstatement and flat-footed homilies." "Man of Steel's violence doesn't escalate; it simply, tediously, iterates. We keep waiting to thrill, to exult, to cheer our hero on. When the lights come up, we're still waiting." "The original superhero is given the sense of spectacle he deserves - but this is a cold, emotionless film that never makes us care for Superman the way he's supposed to care about us." "Man of Steel marks an unexpectedly dour revisionist retelling of the Superman myth, a 2 1/2-hour epic laden with emotionally misconnecting characters prone to uttering speeches in lieu of actual conversations." "The movie can't decide if it wants to be a particularly thoughtful brand of superhero saga or a deafeningly generic summer action movie. So it ends up being both, to the detriment of it and us."

After reading these reviews, I felt somewhat vindicated.  Also, if you do decide to go ahead and see the film, bring your own earplugs.  There is a painfully loud burst of light and sound every time a Kryptonian firearm goes off -- which is quite often.

Oh, also, despite the incredibly high number of conspicuous product placements in this film, one brand name printed on a truck appearing in the final fight scene is of particular importance to the DC Universe.  I'm hoping that the mention of this very important corporation is a foreshadowing of the Superman sequel.

OK, this post has taken long enough.  Next post will be more about Drisha, I promise!

~JD

Drisha and Cute Preschoolers

Shabbat Shalom, everyone!

First of all, shoutout to Alex Feldman for being the man.  Just pointing that out, to anyone who didn't know.  Also to Raymond Habbaz, for more or less the same reasons.

On Thursday at Drisha, we stopped our ordinary schedule of morning study of Talmud in order to perform some community service on the Lower East Side.  After Shacharit, during which I had the honor of performing hagbah, the entire Drisha program packed onto the subway, and somehow made it to the Lower East Side of New York City without losing anyone.  It was a little bit crazy.  Anyway, we arrived at the Educational Alliance a little bit before 10:00 am, and were split into groups of four, to help out in various preschool classrooms.  There were sixteen or seventeen 5-year-olds, mostly boys, in the classroom where I was working, all of them with tons and tons of energy.  I had a somewhat difficult time getting any of them to pay attention to me, because they were almost all ESL, speaking (I think) Chinese as a first language.  The instructor spoke to them in (again, I think) Chinese, but they were quasi-oblivious to my classmates and me.  Although I have to say, Aviva did a fantastic job; she had three or four of the kids crawling over her, playing with playdough.  Sharona, likewise, managed to get widespread attention when she read a story aloud, and one little boy cried when she left.  I did my best to compliantly play with the children, but give myself a C+.  These were all kids from families living below the poverty line of around $23,000 per year, the annual family income in this particular sample size averaging about $18,000 per year.  It's really an excellent service that the Educational Alliance is serving.  It also provides adult education programs; right in the entrance hallway is a poster specifically encouraging parents to attend higher education with the support of the organization.  Although virtually nothing inside the classroom would mark this particular charity work as explicitly Jewish, when the children's lunch came in, I noted that the milk jugs were marked "חלב ישראל" on their caps.  Clues like that tip you off.  There were a few other "clues" to the fact that the students we were dealing with belonged to an economically underprivileged group.  When Rivka used a puppet of a policewoman to speak to one of the children, the child referred to police officers' job as "putting you in jail."  Likewise, the little boy who became attached to Sharona cried in a strange, quiet way when she left.

At 12:40 pm, my partners and I left the classroom.  We were supposed to have left for a group meeting somewhat earlier, and due to a miscommunication, we missed a majority of the presentation on the functional role of the Educational Alliance.  At the meeting's end, we were given time off until 5:45 pm Minchah, to explore, return to the Beit Midrash, or do anything else, as we pleased.  I needed to run an errand, so although many of my classmates went to see an Israeli movie together, or to explore the Lower East Side (in the rain), I headed my own way, walking with Rivka most of the way, and eventually made my way back to Drisha, where I continued to study Bava Batra on my own.  I also spoke to Alissa, whose program (not actually part of Drisha, but using their facilities) finished that day, and to Avital, who is a very, very intelligent person, and has bonded with Lani for being a linguistics major.  Around 6:00 pm, Aaron taught a class comparing Biblical texts and archaeology to non-Jewish texts and structures of the same period, and, following this, the Rabbi led his weekly class in the Beit Midrash.  I ended up taking the 9:51 pm train back to the Millburn station, where Eduardo picked me up.

Friday morning, I was up just before 6:00 am, walked to Millburn station, took the train to Penn Station, then walked from Penn to Drisha.  Aaron's Talmud class plunged ahead, and we worked ourselves to the bottom of Sanhedrin 45a (although the middle third of 44b we still haven't read at all).  During our chevruta time, Abbie and I finished the crazy Rashi story about the customs officer's funeral, that ends up really being an explanation of why a bunch of sorceresses' relatives conspired to sentence Shimon ben Shatach's son to the death penalty, but we also discussed the argument between Rabbi Yehudah and the other Rabbis about nakedness, which the editors of the Talmud had cross-referenced with a seemingly contradictory debate in the tractate of Sotah.  Drisha had its typical weekly singing session, during which Jon played the guitar, we all sang happy birthday to a (very deadpan) Aaron, and Eli and Daniel showed themselves for the Chasidim they are by getting up and dancing with Jon.  I walked back to Penn, for a bit of the way with Ranana, but ended up taking a fairly late train back to Millburn.  This gave me time to finally finish Burke, who was beginning to bore me with his tireless tirade against Revolutionary French political economy, and pick up John Locke's Second Treatise on Government where I left it off last summer.  The truth of the matter is, I don't think people actually read Locke any more.  He's surprisingly conservative (at least, to my mind), given his reputation.  For instance, he writes in Chapter 7, section 85 that "But there is another sort of servants, which by a peculiar name we call slaves, who being captives taken in a just war, are by the right of nature subjected to the absolute dominion and arbitrary power of their masters. These men having, as I say, forfeited their lives, and with it their liberties, and lost their estates; and being in the state of slavery, not capable of any property, cannot in that state be considered as any part of civil society; the chief end whereof is the preservation of property."  This is hardly the kind of progressive thinking that I was taught in High School to associate with Locke.  Also, not in this work, but elsewhere, Locke proposes what is one of the strangest ever conceptions of the mind, a theory labeled by later philosophers as "property dualism."

It began to rain immediately after I arrived in New Jersey, so Eduardo picked me up again.  I prepared for Shabbat, and even managed to take a brief run (note: running is terrible; the roads are not built for pedestrians).  At around 7:45 pm, I left for Rabbi Bogomilsky's house.

The Rabbi had offered to host me this Shabbat, a favor for which I was very grateful (his family lives in the Chai Center, the makeshift synagogue).  I felt welcome the moment that I walked in.  I didn't know what to bring, so, just as I had with Eli's family, I had washed and cored two boxes of strawberries that I had bought in the city.  The community is too small for a minyan for Kabbalat Shabbat, unfortunately.  Shabbat dinner at the Rabbi's house consisted of the Rabbi and his wife Rivka (who works with Patricia, and remembers my attempt to buy a Gemara from her Judaica store), their daughters Hadassa and Luma and sons Eli Moshe and Yosef, and Hadassa's husband Yisroel.  I slept very well that night, and was given the Third Aliyah in the morning.  Most of Shabbat afternoon I spent reading and studying.  Throughout my time, I heard extensively about the lawsuit against the congregation by a group of neighbors who are trying to block the construction of a synagogue.  Too bad.  Yosef and Eli Moshe are filled with energy, somewhat mischievous, and rather adorable.  Hadassa and Yisroel also have a newborn baby, who was sick, and slept most of the day.  After Havdallah, the Rabbi drove me home, a favor for which I was, again, very grateful.

OK, looking for a good week!  Hope to see you soon!

~JD

Third Week at Drisha

Monday was my last day staying at Victor's.  I was up at 5:45 am, made the 6:30 train from Summit to Penn Station, and had a leisurely walk up to Drisha, on 65th street.  Although it began to pour heavily during the day, the morning was clear.  Continued to make my way through Burke on my Kindle, reviewing all his Francophobe fulminations.  The man was clearly smart, but also had very different political opinions than I do.

Monday morning, we took a tangent to look at the history behind a single aggadic statement (אע״פ שחטא ישראל הוא) in our Talmudic passage, and how that had been interpreted (or ignored) variously by Geonim (Nitrai Gaon), Rishonim (Rashi's students), the Acharonim (the Avnei Nezer), and the Conservative movement.  Abbie and I were both fascinated by how complicated the legal question had become, and, as the Conservative writer pointed out, the extent to which contemporary circumstances affected Rabbis' opinions.  I did a very poor job leading Minchah, and then had my afternoon class with Jon, beginning to discuss the laws of burial, its relative importance, and its source, Biblical or Rabbinic, which even the Rabbis leave in an ambiguous state (assuming that we're not mis-reading the Talmud).  Ranana Dine has become my regular chevruta in this class, which I very much enjoy; I think that she's sweet, and I'm already good friends with her older brother Elliot, who lived next door to me during the fall 2012 semester (he has been abroad since).  I was able to leave relatively early in the afternoon because it was a Monday, and made it back to Summit a little bit before 7:00 pm.  Victor picked me up in the downpour, and, after I packed my bags, he drove me to my next host house, 11 Fenton Drive, Short Hills, NJ.  I'm staying with Victor's family friends, Patricia and Eduardo, to whom I'm very grateful for giving me a comfortable place to stay, and plenty of support (Eduardo is willing to drive me to and from the train station, which is otherwise about a 40-minute walk, when I need it, if he is awake).  Monday night I skyped with Rachel Silverman (hooray!).

Tuesday morning, I had early-morning class beginning at 7:30 am, so I needed to be up by 4:45 am in order to catch the 5:45 am train from Millburn station.  This was not fun, but I made it, surprisingly without getting lost.  Early morning class on Tuesdays is led by Aaron, describing the Shemoneh Esrei, and this week, we reviewed the basic structure, highlighting many of the ambiguities between nationalism and universalism present in the first three berakhot.  I find that every time I learn something new about Shemoneh Esrei, directly or indirectly, it permanently affects my recitation.  Morning class was tragically cut short when an instructor burst into the Beit Midrash asking if anyone knew CPR.  A man in an adjacent building had jumped out of his 14th-story window, and landed on the roof of the apartment building next to Drisha's.  Cheryl, Marissa, and Aaron, who all know CPR, gave the man what first aid they could until the ambulance could arrive.  The medics needed to pass through Drisha in order to find and carry away the victim, who was not responding.  This whole sequence of events, which, all told, lasted under thirty minutes, affected the rest of the day; I only hope that it does not affect the rest of the term.  Several of the girls cried, and many people were distressed.  The staff invited us to share our feelings.  Everyone since then has been acutely conscious of how much death has been appearing in our curriculum.  I realize that my early-morning class had discussed the phrase "mechayei hameitim," both my Talmud class and my Mishnah class on Sanhedrin discuss capital punishment, and my last class deals exclusively with Jewish rituals of death and mourning.  Furthermore, my individual chevruta with Josefin, on Hilchot Teshuva, ended last week with discussions of death.  Mishnah class on Tuesday with Yaffah went on as scheduled, much to my relief (I may seem callous to you, but I never met this man who jumped, do not know his name, and there is absolutely no way I can do anything for his benefit by continuing to brood on his death).  Talia and I worked our way through the fourth and fifth chapters of Sanhedrin, and the class ended with a manuscript comparison of a very famous passage in Sanhedrin 4:3; the question was whether the word מישראל had originally been in the Mishnah, and when it had been deleted or added.  It seems most likely to me, given our review, that the word was absent in the original Mishnah, added sometime during the middle ages, and then censored out again among some editions of the Talmud in the 19th century.  I'm only about 60% certain about this, though.  Before Devorah's night lesson on Aggada began, I had about an hour in the Beit Midrash with Josefin, continuing to study Hilchot Teshuvah.  Mishneh Torah must be one of the easiest Jewish books ever written.  With the exception of an occasional unusual word, Josefin and I can read fairly fluently.  Eli showed up, too, and spent most of his time with Raymond, Isaac, and (I think) Ezra.  Devorah's night lesson described the tradition of Rabbi Yehushua discussing with his students Elazar ben Azaryah's innovative lectures, and how that tradition fit with the subsequent narrative describing Rabbi Eliezer, and last week's narrative (about the confrontation between Rabban Gamliel and Rabbi Yehushua).  Again, Devorah is excellent, and did a fantastic job, trying to show how a narrative had essentially been plundered for its elements, that had been scattered across Rabbinic writings.  I got home quite late on Tuesday night.

This morning (Wednesday), I was up at 5:45 am, easily making the 6:57 express train to Penn Station.  Most of the morning's Talmud lesson was taken up by discussions of the unfortunate event of Tuesday, as well as students' individual thoughts and feelings regarding studying Talmud.  Personally, I have felt the same pleasure that I feel when decoding a page of Talmud somewhere else -- when I was first able to read books written in French.  The idea is the same: what was before just paper and ink becomes a transmission of thought from human mind to human mind across time and space, which is pretty incredible, when you think about it.  (The fact that I'm able to make sense of a language written in script other than the Roman alphabet is an added bonus, a phenomenon Willard Spiegelman brings up in his essay on the joy of reading in Seven Pleasures.)  Eventually, though, we sat down with our Talmud again, and began to read an interesting narrative, told differently in the Babylonian Talmud, Jerusalem Talmud, and Tosefta, regarding one convict's last words.  We also began a very long Rashi passage, but ran out of time.  I lead Minchah, somewhat better than I had on Monday.  I'm trying very hard to improve.  The truth of the matter is, my principal obstacle is my own stagefright and nervousness, and I know that only through repetition can I learn to stop tripping over my consonants (and swallowing my final-kafs).  In Jon's class, Ranana and I surprisingly successfully struggled through a few responsa regarding reburial, including a very challenging Gaonic one in Aramaic.  We make a good team, and I'm very glad to be able to study with her; she has only slightly better linguistic skills, but we otherwise have complementary study skill sets.  Devorah then gave a fantastic (but rather long) class on egalitarian tefillah, and two and a half different approaches to reach the conclusion that women should count towards making a minyan for tefillah.  I thought that she made a very good argument.  Following this was a continuation of last week's lesson on Judaism as art (bringing up the rather unusual aggadah of Moshe's visit to Rabbi Akiva), and, after this, a presentation about human dignity as presented by Sanhedrin 4:3 by Yitz Greenberg, a guest speaker.  Apparently, Rabbi Greenberg is a very big deal, and there was a sense of awe among some of my fellow students.  I had never heard of him before I came to Drisha.  I thought that he made some interesting points, but I nothing terribly incredible.  I barely made the 9:51 pm train back to Millburn, where Eduardo picked me up from the station.  On Tuesday night, I had felt unsafe walking down the busy road after dark, and even though Patricia was already in bed, Eduardo graciously drove me back to their house.

Tomorrow, it's supposed to rain.  We're going to be outside, unfortunately, on a service learning trip.  Unfortunate because, meteorologically speaking, today would have made such a better day to spend walking the East Side.

~JD

Drisha Shabbaton

On Wednesday, I was quite exhausted, not having slept much.  Again, I crawled out of bed at six, slept on the train to the city, and staggered my way to Drisha.  There was a lot of learning action: Abby and I struggled through the end of the second page of Talmud that we're learning, around a quarter of which was censored out, and contained some interesting passages.  We ended up cross-referencing the sugyot with other mishnayot, as well as extensive Biblical citations.  I noticed that one of Ulla's statements in the censored section seemed to contradict, or at least create an exception for, one of Abbaye's statements made towards the end of the censored section, regarding the reasoning behind the need for public announcements of convictions of capital crimes.  I kind of hoped that there might be something brought down in the halakhah about this, but there wasn't, which either means that Ulla wasn't saying what I thought he was saying, or that the law is not in accordance with his statements.  That's just Talmud for you, I guess.  Also, on the third page, I really didn't understand one of Yehoshua ben Levi's statements.  Again, I suppose that that's just Talmud.

During lunch (which Drisha provided), the vice-dean of Drisha gave a talk on the week's Haftorah's heroine, Rachav.  I thought that it was kind of dull, but this might have been because I was tired.  Throughout the whole day, in fact, I was rather lethargic.  Following Minchah was my afternoon lesson on honor of death in Judaism, which was my most painful class at Drisha yet, because I was losing focus so quickly, and barely understood what we were reading, despite spending a fair amount of time poring over it.  There were several quasi-contradictory opinions in the midrash, the Mishnah, and the Bavli concerning tzitzit and the dead.  I at least partially understood the quotes from Maimonides's Mishneh Torah, but the sections from the Tosafot, the 12th-century French commentators, were rather opaque to me.  I was very glad when that class ended, and I could return to some solo study reviewing the day's Gemara, as well as continuing to read the Mishnayot of Bava Batra (I finally finished the third chapter).  At 7:00 pm, the Beit Midrash opened to the community at large, and some speakers gave some very interesting talks.  One was about Judaism-as-art, which I thought was just a little bit hokey, but still OK (it brought up some significant details of the narrative of Alexander the Great's encounter with Shimon ha-Tzaddik that I hadn't heard before).  Much better, though, was a very tightly-organized and well-delivered class on the clout and judicial significance of community rules and regulations, which brought up a series of very interesting medieval sources that I had never seen before.  After Ma'ariv, it was around 9:30 pm, and Eli (who attended the community learning night) walked to Penn Station together, much to my pleasure.  I took the train back, and did my laundry in preparation for the next few days.

Thursday was a long day.  It began with my falling asleep on the train to Penn Station again, but managing, somehow, to make it through my Torah reading with only one error in pronunciation (perhaps a few more in cantillation).  I survived -- and then had one of my best Talmud lessons yet.  We sped through more than a page, reading through the Talmudic description of the episode of Achan and Yehoshua, and wound up in a certain episode that I recognirzed from the opening pages of tractate Megillah; as far as I could tell, the two passages were identical.  I've heard about such repetitions in the Talmud before, but I've never encountered any before.  The purpose of the story was to midrashically (exegetically) prove that the study of Torah is more important than the daily sacrifices made in the Temple, through a cryptic conversation that Yehoshua has in Yehoshua 5:13-15.  Abbie and I also reviewed the relevant Biblical narratives.

In the afternoon, I had my Mishnah class with Yafah, in which we read the third chapter of Mishnah Sanhedrin (the tractate that all of Drisha is studying in our separate Talmud classes).  The third chapter discusses the qualifications for judges, witnesses, and evidence.  Talia and I worked together studying this chapter -- her Hebrew is much better than mine, but I think that we made a fairly good team.  Something that rather surprised me is that various kinds of gamblers (dice-players, pigeon-racers, etc.) were singled out as being ineligible, not for any concern that they might have vested interest in the trial (for example, betting on the outcome), but, demonstrably, because the Rabbis considered them to be morally corrupt people.  The theme of the day was Tosefta; we discussed whether the Tosefta can be read as an alternative Mishnah compiled by another Rabbinic school, a pre-existing Rabbinic codex of laws, or even an early commentary on the Mishnah (Yafah seems to agree with this list opinion).  The evening's classes ended with Rabbi Silbur, Drisha's head instructor, giving another lecture to the students.

Afterwards, my classmate Daniel and I took the subway, through the rain, to 100th street, to the Anschei Chesed synagogue, where we were participating in service learning, i.e. volunteering.  Anschei Chesed runs a homeless shelter for ten carefully-screened employed men working their way out of homelessness.  It is the job of two volunteers to be there to ensure that they go to sleep and wake up on time (5:00 am), and are all outside waiting for the bus by 6:00 am.  It was really a very easy job, and Daniel and I had a chance to speak to each other for a time, and, a little bit, to the men, although I was hesitant to distract them.  They were very gracious and grateful people, but had also clearly been through more hardships in their lives than we two volunteers could probably imagine.  It isn't easy being down-and-out in city, in this country, or anywhere, for that matter.  Right as our shift began, three of the men walked into the volunteers' room, and began to have a serious talk with the previous two volunteers, who apparently had nearly begun a fight, because they had taken a very accusatory tone when inquiring about something that one of the other men might (or might not) have done.  The problem had been that, after voicing open accusations, they tried to speak to some of the other men privately, making it seem as if some of the men had been acting as tattletales.  This was our introduction to Anschei Chesed, but nothing negative came of the encounter, for us, anyway.  Daniel and I couldn't turn off the lights, and the men were awake before us, but we made certain that they had everything that they needed, helping them put their bunks back, disposing of dirty laundry, etc.

 On Friday morning, it finally looked as if everything was going to end smoothly at 6:30 am, until, while locking up, the loft key became jammed in the lock, and would not budge.  We had no choice but to explain to the janitorial staff what had happened, and leave.  Daniel left for his apartment, and I left for Drisha (where else was I going to go), where I fell asleep reviewing the previous day's Talmud lesson, and then we had the morning lesson taught by D'vorah, who explained the Achan narrative, and why the Talmud reads it the way it does (Achan as the worst human being possible, but also with very particular misdeeds ascribed to him).  We then packed our bags onto the bus, and left for Camp Moshava, where we stayed for Shabbat.  I sat next to Raffi on the bus, but fell asleep over my Kindle (I was reading Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France) while "V for Vendetta" played on the bus's video system.  Falling asleep at inopportune moments seems to be a motif of this blog post, doesn't it?

When we arrived, it was raining; it continued to rain all through the afternoon and evening, and remained in the 50s all day.  Camp Moshava is an overnight Jewish summer camp with a very religious-Zionist bent.  I've never been to camp, and was in the minority.  Throughout my stay, the other students referred to their summers at overnight and day camp, some of them spent at Moshava.

After some much-needed lunch, I ended up playing dodgeball and, later, basketball with a few of the other students.  Ariel was particularly amused when, stepping off court for a moment to take off my hoodie, I had my back turned when a teammate passed the ball to me.  I've never gotten to be particularly good at basketball, mostly because I play so infrequently (same goes for soccer and baseball), but I was impressed with how good some of my classmates were.  I expected Raymond to be good, but I hadn't expected Ariella or Aviva to have as much speed and agility as they displayed.  before I took a welcome hot shower (I was getting chilly), and dressed for Shabbat.  We welcomed in Shabbat, and then had a communal Shabbat dinner, somewhat reminiscent (to me) of dinners in 104 West!  I sat in the corner, near Lani, Ahuva, Raymond, Batsheva, Sharona, and Ariel (who seems to be in all of my classes, and around me all the time).  After dinner, we all all congregated in the camp's Beit Midrash, where some people shared divrei Torah that they had prepared, alternating with singing of traditional songs, and where we ended up sharing name stories.  I told the story behind my double name, and heard some very fascinating accounts of the legacies and expectations many of my classmates inherited with their names. I stayed up a little bit later learning a few Mishnayot in Bava Batra (finishing chapter 5), and then went to bed around 1:00 am.  I was warm thanks only to the excellent sleeping bag provided to my by the Feldmans.

I woke up on time on Saturday for 8:30 am prayer.  I did not need to read Torah or lead, Wendy, Raymond, and Rabbi Silber did an excellent job reading.  We also recited a very fun communal Pesukei D'zimra, in which each person led one or more of the Tehillim; I read 148, which, thank goodness, I at least quasi-know.  I also lifted the Sefer Torah in Hagbah; it was easily the heaviest Sefer Torah I've ever lifted, and I nearly dropped it (thank you to everyone who physically supported it).  Wendy led an Aggada class before lunch on the accounts of Yehudah ha-Nasi's death given in the Talmud Yerushalmi and Talmud Bavli, respectively.  Wendy is the reason that I'm studying at Drisha right now, is really a fantastic instructor.  We ate together, and were encouraged to sit with instructors with whom we don't have any classes.  So I sat with Esther, who lives in Israel, and, coincidentally, Abbie was at the same table.  Neesa joined us, too; we talked a little bit about ourselves, our educations, our plans for the future, etc.  Throughout the entire Shabbaton, I got to know my classmates all a little bit better.

Throughout the afternoon, we alternated between free time, and time spent in fairly relaxing lessons in the Beit Midrash, and, because it was sunny, on benches outside, too.  At one point, when Jon was talking, Stu walked over with his baby, and I could feel the thirty-some pairs of eyeballs around me all swivel in their sockets to follow the baby.  I ended up with a little bit of time in the Beit Midrash, where I used a Steinsaltz Talmud to review the opening pages of Megillah, which I studied with Rav Ami last semester.  I thought that I would be able to read through it without difficulty, but ended up needing to refer to an Artscroll study aid for a few passages whose meanings I just couldn't recall.  Late in the afternoon, we had a panel discussion from some of Drisha's instructors about approaches to study of Torah.  Because of the nature of the program, we spoke about the (closing but still extant) gap between men's and women's Jewish education in the (Orthodox) Jewish world.  However, Rabbi Silber also had an opportunity to discuss his motivations for founding Drisha.  Much to my surprise, he complained of a lack of foundation in Mikra, explaining that he had mostly just studied Talmud in his early year.  Which is fascinating to me, because although I rarely hear him reference the Talmud, he (and D'vorah) seem to know Mikra backwards and forwards!  Following this was se'udah shlishit, where there was, as I have come to expect, more singing and divrei Torah.

After a musical Havdallah, Shabbat was over, and some people watched a movie, and other of us found other ways to occupy ourselves.  We were scheduled to have a bonfire later that evening and, tired as I was, I realized that it would be stupid and antisocial to act on my impulses and go to bed early.  So after finding the (well concealed) bonfire with Amy, the two of us directed the rest of the Drisha group to its location, I ended up staying up until around 2:00 am or so singing with my classmates, Raffi and Shoshana accompanying on their guitars.  It was a medley of pop songs, traditional Jewish melodies, and Zionist songs.  Some of these songs I knew; others I did not.  I had a good time, though, and walked back to my bunk with Lani, who is staying in one of the two women's bunks.

I was up for 7:15 am morning prayer on Sunday, and opened the ark for the Torah service (it was Rosh Chodesh Tammuz).  After a quick breakfast, we packed ourselves back on to the bus (except for those driving, such as Lani, who drove Meir and some others to a friend's wedding).  We arrived at Drisha a little bit before noon.  I dropped off some belongings, then walked to Penn Station.  It was significantly warmer in New York City than it had been in Pennsylvania.  I arrived back at Victor's house in Summit, and Peter let me in.  Within an hour or so, after a shower, I had fallen asleep, waking up briefly between 9:30 pm and 10:00 pm, and then falling asleep again until I got out of bed at 5:45 am Monday morning.  Very welcome rest!

I'm now living in a new location; I have my housing figured out.  However, now I need to get to bed!  Again, apologies to any typos due to my lack of proofreading.

~JD

Israel Day Parade weekend

I'm beginning this post on Monday night, but will probably not finish writing it until Tuesday, on account of my need to get to sleep.

After my second day of classes at Drisha Institute, on Friday, May 31st, I left for Eli's house on Long Island, directly from New York City.  I made a detour on my walk to Penn Station, mailing some postcards and picking up four pounds of strawberries as a gift for Eli's family.  I left on the Far Rockaway train for Hewlett, in the Five Towns, where Eli lives.  He picked me up from the train station, we picked up wine for Shabbat, and drove to his house.  Eli's two sisters who are in the United States right now, Efrat and Michelle, know me by this point, as does Eli's mother.  However, this was my first time meeting Eli's maternal grandparents or his uncle Tzachi.  This may sound strange, but I am constantly surprised by how young Eli's family seems to me.  I am the youngest of three, while Eli is the oldest of his siblings.  Tzachi is younger than Eli's mother, and, the result is that Eli's uncle Tzachi is not much older than my brother Andrew.

I helped Eli's mother prepare fruit for Friday night dinner, which was a lot of fun.  What can I say, I just enjoy chopping up fruits and vegetables.  After dinner, Eli and I studied some of the mishnayot of the sixth chapter of Mishnah Sanhedrin, which I'm studying at Drishah.  We compared the standard printed text with a much older and less corrupt manuscript, and found a surprisingly large number of differences, although most of them were nothing more than deletions of single letters.  The next morning, Eli and I walked to his neighborhood synagogue, where the congregation members were all excited to see Eli, whose father is very well known in the community.  I was honored with opening and closing the ark, and the Rabbi gave a (I thought) devar Torah on the different leadership styles of Calev and Yehoshua in this week's pareshah.  Afterwards, Eli and I returned to his house, where we read together until his family was ready for lunch.
Eli then had the awesome idea of visitng Rachel Blady's house.  Rachel only lives about an hour's walk away from Eli in the Five Towns, and we had an excellent journey; Eli even remembered a shortcut over a footbridge that saved us a significant amount of time.  Rachel was happy to see us both, and we were both happy to see her.  We spent around two and a third hours at her house, talking on her porch together.  As I said about my conversations with Eli during our road trip last week, if you know our three personalities, you can almost write the script yourself; we talked about our friends, about our college careers, about next year, about the books that we had been reading, etc.  Where the conversation ended, I think we were discussing historical linguistics, when Eli and I needed to leave.  We made it back to his synagogue in time for a 7:30 pm lesson on Pirkei Avot, prayed, had an evening meal, prayed again at the end of Shabbat, and walked back to Eli's house.  I went to bed early that night, around 11:00 pm, after practicing my Torah reading for Monday morning.

Sunday was the day of the Israel Day Parade.  After picking up some books (Bavli tractate Sanhedrin for Drisha, Bavli tractate Makkot for a chevruta with Josh, and a full Mishnah set for my own purposes), Eli and I drove to the train station in Hewlett, where we met Rachel Blady, and took the train back to New York City.  We walked to the appointed street where we had all been told to gather.  There were other University Hillel organizations there; Cornell's representation was quite small, and I did not know most of the other students (mostly Hillel affiliates) and alumni.  We began marching late, around 2:20 pm, and somehow, I ended up as the only student carrying the two-person banner, because there was nobody else to carry.  This was rather ironic, because I was not only wearing my backpack, but also carrying my Shabbat clothes in a bag, and was rather weighed down otherwise.  The parade was loud, fun, and full of excitement, though, and I really appreciated an opportunity to carry the Cornell banner.  The parade ended near Central Park, and I wound up walking to Matt's farewell picnic, which was a happy coincidence.  Matt will be moving to Cincinnati, and I'll probably see him in a little over a year, after I return from Israel, whenever I next visit Andrew and Allison.  Matt is the first of his siblings to move away from the Northeastern U.S., and I took it upon myself to allay some of his mother's concerns.  I explained that my mother had also had her first son move to Cincinnati a couple of years ago, and that although the distance was far, it is not impossibly so.
After Matt's picnic, I walked through the park with Eli, after which we met up with Sarah, Josefin, and Rina, Rachel having already gone home.  I peeled off from the rest of the group, because I needed to return to New Jersey.  I walked to Penn Station, hopped on the train for Summit, and made it to Victor's house in the still-early evening, a little bit after 7:00 pm.  This was Sunday night, and I ended up wasting time instead of simply reviewing my Torah reading and getting into bed early, as I should have.  I did, however, have the opportunity to make write the last blog update.

Monday morning, I got up around 5:50 am for my commute to the city.  I read Torah during Shacharit, and give myself a C in quality.  I was not good and knew I was not good, as did everyone else in the minyan.  I had my first real Gemara shiur, too, following breakfast, which was amazing.  Really, amazing.  Morning shiur lasts for around three and a half hours, most of which is taken up with study with a chevruta.  My chevruta, Abby, knows a lot more than I do, and has a much wider Aramaic vocabulary than I do.  Still, I'm putting a lot of effort in, and feel at least capable of struggling through the Talmudic text, with the help of the instructor's comments beforehand.  These passages contain mostly halakhic (legal) material, without any of the famous aggadata (narratives), which makes comprehension significantly easier.  The arguments are very technical, with multiple speakers proving the same point using different arguments.

I ended up leading minchah, perhaps for the first time ever during a weekday.  I certainly wasn't expecting this, but the gabbai approached me a short time before minchah, and I didn't want to disappoint.  I give myself a C+ on this; I stumble over my words quite frequently, especially during kaddish, and I think that everyone, especially the gabbai, knew that I was a little bit shaken.  However, as I was leaving, I spotted Wendy, the Drisha instructor who visited Cornell and convinced me to try applying to Drisha, and I was really overjoyed by this.  I took a few minutes to speak to her, telling her how much I was enjoying myself, and letting her know my plans next year.  It turns out that she has family in Ramle, where I will be spending next year.  This an amazingly happy coincidence.  Because of this, I was a little bit late for Jon's afternoon lesson on Kavod HaMet, honor for the dead.  We read the Talmudic passage from tractate Berachot that details the proper respect due to a human corpse.  We found some interesting ambiguities.  It's unclear, for instance, when people are exempt from performing certain commandments when they have a corpse that they need to bury, whether they have this exemption because burial is a special obligation, or because it is an activity resulting in mental duress.  Interestingly, the laws for transporting a body are the same as those for transporting a Torah scroll.  My chevruta in this was Ranana Dine, the younger sister of my friend Elliot. She's very sweet, and the two of us are more or less equal in our textual skills.

Drisha ends in the late afternoon on Monday, and I took the train back to Summit, arriving before it was fully dark out.  I began writing this post, and got to bed relatively early, but also spoke with Rachel Silverman over the phone.  She's working at a geothermal energy company this summer, and living in a cabin the middle of the woods.

I was awake this morning at 5:00, and made it to my 7:30 Wednesday morning class on the Shemoneh Esrei with time to spare.  I had another excellent Gemara session this morning, finishing the second page of the chapter.  There were, again, some rather obscure discussions, but nothing too difficult to understand.  The memories preserved in the Talmud are sometimes surprising.  For instance, wealthy women of Jerusalem apparently found themselves a charitable cause in providing cups of wine to convicted criminals walking to their place of execution (these cups of wine were meant to ease the pain and distress caused by impending death).  This rather reminded me of the beginning of The Sorrow and the Pity, which describes wealthy Parisian women providing money to plant rosebushes in the trenches in the Maginot Line of fortresses.  I guess wealthy unemployed people will find all sorts of causes that they think should be supported.

There was also, unfortunately, a disagreement at the end of my Gemara class between a student and the instructor.  The instructor quoted a 19th-century German rabbi who challenged Maimonides's ruling on the subject described in the (rather ambiguous) passage.  The student objected, stating that the 19th-century rabbi had no right to dispute a ruling that Maimonides had made with his full understanding of the early Arabic-language commentaries of the Talmud.  The instructor responded that the student was giving the early commentators and Maimonides too much credit for having a received tradition to a singular solution to each and every Talmudic teaching, especially those that ended in overt ambiguity.  I felt rather bad for the student, because I understood his outlook, but did not get involved.

 I had a rather disappointing Mishnah lesson on the second chapter of Sanhedrin (dealing with the laws of the King and High Priest in Israel).  I think that our instructor's preoccupation with particular commentaries and forms of commentary was the cause of this.  While she was more interested in literary style and historic compilation of Rabbinic documents, I tend to prefer legal insights as to the ramifications of the laws in question.  This is really too fascinating a chapter to waste, in my opinion, on speculations as to the differences in style in certain parts of the Mishnah.

Drisha fed us dinner (yay!), and then, some Cornell friends showed up.  I studied with Josefin, and we found that we can, together, with a bit of help, read Maimonides's Mishneh Torah.  At 7:30 pm began the first of a series of weekly Drisha lectures on narrative passages describing the life of the Rabbis at Yavneh.  The instructor did a really fantastic job, and I was very glad that I attended.

I didn't get back to Victor's house until around 11:00 pm.  I spend so much time on public transportation that I'm really getting good use out of my Kindle; I just finished another Shakespeare play, "As You Like It," this evening on the train.  I'm quite tired, and need to sleep (so please excuse errors in spelling and grammar, as well as sloppy writing).  I did get some unfortunate e-mails; it looks as if I will not be staying in the CUNY Hunter dorms this summer.

~JD