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
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