I just got back from wonderful Kibbutz Ma'alei Gilboa, where I spent the second half of my Chanukah break with my friend Eli. For those among my Ramla teammates who are reading this, yes, Eli is indeed the enigmatic "imaginary friend" to whom I so often refer, on account of my talking about him so frequently, in spite of nobody in Ramla ever having met him. Eli is super-smart, in additional to being a wonderful person. I'll describe our various adventures together, after briefly mentioning the earlier occurrences of this, my week off.
I've been a paleontologist before, searching for trilobite fossils in the gorges near Ithaca. It was not until this week, though, that I have come as close to fulfilling my brother Sam's dream of my becoming Indiana Jones (we all know that I'm much more like Marcus than like any other character in the series). On Monday and Tuesday of this week, I had the opportunity to volunteer at an archaeological dig site in Lod, the city where I ordinarily volunteer. School was out, so why not? The process was simple; we chose one of several small sectors of the stone building complex, dug down with wide hoes, and threw dirt over the adjoining wall. After five hours of playing in the dirt, we had dug up... half of such a small room. This might have been some kind of small shop, less than a century ago, when the stone complex was still in use. Since then, it had become more of a garbage heap, with all sorts of trash mixed in the large pile of dirt. I was exhausted, and surprised at how much effort of ours had seemingly accomplished so little, but the archaeologist with us, Lianne, told us that we had done far more work than she had expected. I was amazed at how much loess had blown onto the site in just a few decades. Every moment or so, we found another pottery shard. At one point, I noticed a small greenish object in the loose dirt, picked it up, and realized that I had found a coin. The archaeologists became quite excited, and told me that the coin was undoubtedly from the pre-1948 period, and might have been either British or Ottoman. (Carmel has since informed me that the coin was found to be definitely Ottoman, which means that it cannot postdate the early 1920s, and could be several centuries old.) The coin needed to go to a numismatics expert first (it was heavily oxidized, and caked in dirt), but it was an incredibly rare discovery in this particular site, I was told. I'm honestly just glad that I had the opportunity to contribute to the local museum. Who knows; small finds like this might attract people's interest, and motivate them to become more interested in their history. The only negative part of the day occurred when the archaeologists provided lunch, as promised, and it turned out not to be kosher, as all food on our program is supposed to be. I explained my kosher-vegetarian diet, and, when I eventually opened up my meal, it was a leg of chicken (I gave it to my roommate, so it did not end up going to waste). To make matters worse, the previous night was my first time exercising in more than a month, thanks to a relentless bout of sickness from which I'm only now fully recovered. When I returned from the dig, bleary with dust and sweat, to my apartment in Ramla, my roommate asked me if I had kept the coin, and I got to reply by throwing down my favorite Indiana Jones line:
Ahem. Now, where was I? Oh, right, I didn't return to the archaeological site on Tuesday, because I needed to run some mundane errands in Ramla, such as buying stamps from the post office, acquiring a new bus pass (the last one was in the wallet that was stolen on the bus, slightly ironically), and, yes, buying more dates from the shuk. Mother, in case, I haven't mentioned it, I can buy big, fat, beautiful medjool dates for just ₪14 per kilo (that's about $1.82 per pound, by the way) which makes me very happy indeed. I'll bring some for you and Dad when you visit, if that interests you :). I talked to Eli over the phone that evening, after I spent a fair amount of time studying Hebrew, and we planned my trip of the next day.
I got up early on Wednesday morning, and missed the 8:29 am train to Tel Aviv by a minute, literally seeing it pull out of the station just one hundred meters away. So I took the bus instead. From Tel Aviv, I took a sherut to Afula; I ended up waiting for more than an hour at the station, while the sherut driver chatted to other drivers in Arabic, waiting for all eight seats to be filled with passengers. While driving through cities with high Arab populations, such as Nazareth, I read an essay on Kemalism that Coco had sent to me a few months away. Finally in Afula, I waited another hour and a half for the minibus to arrive. We were extremely crowded; I think that everyone else on the bus was Jewish, and I see quite a few knitted kippot on the other young men. I assumed that they were yeshiva students in Ma'alei Gilboa. The drive up to Ma'alei Gilboa was very scenic. It's a very treacherous, winding path looking down on the Jordan valley. You can quite easily see Jordan from the mountain. Later that day, I saw several people with cameras and tablets photographing the view.
Eli was working in the dining hall when I arrived. The student whose job it was to work in the dining hall was still on Chanukah break, so Eli had stepped forward to do his job. Eli had also set aside some food for me from lunch, for which I was very grateful. I had a few conversations with a few of the Israeli students while I was first getting acquainted with kibbutz. Everyone was incredibly friendly, and I felt very good that I was able to speak to them as well as I could. Their English was almost undoubtedly better than my Hebrew, but I think that they recognized and respected that I was making an effort to speak in Hebrew, and bore with me. They all wanted to know what I was doing in Israel, and I explained as well as I could. My Hebrew is improving, but still very far from being good. Eli's shift ended at tefillat minchah, and he gave me a big hug, and helped me bring my things to his room, where I met his roommate Gabe. Soon after Eli and I embarked on one of the most daring and unique tasks ever to be chronicled in this blog. A couple of days before, Eli had found the body of a recently-deceased hawk by the side of the road, which he had scooped up, double-bagged, and placed in safe-keeping for preservation. So, around twilight, after procuring surgical masks from the local clinic, we took the corpse outside, beside the road on a concrete staircase, and began cutting it apart with Eli's schecting knife. Eli did all of the cutting, and I held the flashlight steady, and made anatomical guesses of just what organs we had revealed at each stage. I thought back to the class on Vertebrates that I had taken during my freshman year, and wished, in hindsight, that I had followed up with more such classes that introduced me to animal anatomy, evolution, and ecology. Sure, I could point out the sternum, tell the small and large intestines apart, and tentatively tag the gallbladder and liver, but I couldn't even remember, for instance, where the crop was actually located (I can only remember what function the crop serves because of its pivotal role in the Sherlock Holmes story "The Blue Carbuncle"). When we cut made the dorsal cut, I wasn't even certain if we had found the kidneys, which presumably would have been one of the first things we would have encountered. Eli enormously enjoyed the learning experience. Once finished, we washed our hands very thoroughly. Since then, no reports of disease reported. Later that evening at the yeshiva, we finished the evening by studying the Rif on chalav u'basar. The Rif, by the way, is the cute acronym for Rav Yitzchak al-Fasi, an 11th-century Sepharadic scholar, whose work of the same name is an abridged Talmud, with a few observations and conclusions thrown in. It's still in Aramaic, though, which makes it almost as inaccessible to the uninitiated, such as myself. Eli could simultaneously understand the sugya, guide me through the linguistic straits while explaining Aramaic binyanim, take notes and circle key terms, and cross-reference the Rambam's Mishneh Torah, which was pretty incredible. I felt much, much stupider, trying to study something that was so much above my intellectual ability, both in terms of content as well as in terms of language. Our conversation about meat involved us making a tour of the vegetarian and vegan students at Ma'alei Gilboa, in order to ask them 1) their opinions on consuming kosher locusts, and 2) whether one could eat fish, and still call oneself a vegetarian. Eli and I were up quite late, much to our mutual enjoyment.
Thursday was the very last day of Chanukah. I got up fairly late, at around 8:00 am (an hour after communal morning prayer in the yeshiva). I met Eli in the yeshiva, and throughout the day, we studied a few different things together. We continued the Rif, but switched instead to Berachot, which is a topic of which I am particularly ignorant. Also, it turns out that there is a different medieval Hebrew word for "beer" than the modern Hebrew word בִּירָה . I swear, Eli has so many gears clicking at once. As he explained to me, the Talmud is not meant to be read through linearly, understanding each line before moving on. Rather, the meaning of some words do not become apparent until the end of the sugya. We encountered such a word, אניגרון which apparently is some kind of tonic or elixir into which some people mixed olive oil to drink in order to soothe their soar throats, in order to avoid drinking straight olive oil. Apparently, people simultaneously believed both that olive oil was beneficial for soar throats, and that olive oil was dangerous when drunk straight. I'm not a doctor, but I'd be rather surprised if any doctor prescribed drinking olive oil to patients with a soar throat. We found that Rambam and the Rif actually had a disagreement about what beracha to make over straight olive oil (see Hilchot Berachot 8:2). Eli and I ourselves had a disagreement over their reasons; Eli thought that they interpreted Halacha differently, and I assumed that their different rulings stemmed from their (not necessarily explicitly stated) different understandings of human health. Just after lunchtime (did I mention that the yeshiva fed me, without asking any questions?), we cleaned out the students' apartment, and I did my best to help out, without getting in the way. A group of students started dancing in the dining hall, in order to celebrate the engagement of a fellow student. These students are all approximately my age, by the way, some older and some younger. I really can't imagine getting engaged or married at my age, at all. Later in the afternoon, we also read some of the laws of lost properties from the Mishneh Torah. I'm still quite feeble, but it stands as a testimony to Rambam's writing skills that I can understand many passages from the Mishneh Torah. At one point, Rav Bigman, the Rosh Yeshiva, stopped by, introducing himself, and I explained that we had already briefly met in Drisha last June, when he had answered my friends' questions about Agunot, and my own question on different schools of Talmudic methodology. This man is so knowledgeable and intelligent, it amazes me, reminding me of some of my better professors from university. In casual conversation, the topic of the relative shapes of marketplaces in late-antiquity Palestine and Persia came up. Eli and I read through the source-sheet that he had prepared for a class that he ended up not being able to teach, concerning (I think) Rabbinic fines. Also that night, I had a call with Rachel Silverman, and we finished Sefer Zecharyia! I'm so excited! We're going to delve back into the historical Nach starting this week, beginning with Sefer Shofetim, one of the most neglected books of Tanakh (in my opinion), probably because it's also maybe the most violent book of Tanakh (likewise my opinion).
Friday was a very lazy day at the yeshivah. The students had the day off, so only the really energetic scholars (plus, this past week, some guy from Ramla who wandered in by mistake) spend the day in the Beit Midrash. I read several of the Rambam's Shemonah Perakim, from the book that Eli had given to me as a Chanukah gift. I also kept on making progress through the Torah, which I began reading on Simchat Torah, thanks to the text skills that Lani taught me last year. I actually fell back asleep at one point, which felt quite embarrassing. Eli's housemate Olaf also needed to borrow my tefillin. I was reading when the sun set. After dinner, we went back to studying. I was completely stumped by Hilchot Gezeila v'Avodah 14:13, mostly because the key word "וָתִיק" is an adjective meaning "excellent" rather than a noun meaning "and a bag," as I had first interpreted. Frequently, the Hebrew mistakes I make are equally as laughable. Eli and I encountered another disagreement, this one about exactly how to interpret a passage in Hilchot Gezeila v'Avodah 11:3, one with very real practical implications. I went to bed very early.
On Saturday morning, the two of us attended the local Sepharadic minyan, and Eli received an aliyah (shlishi, I think), of which I was very proud. I just stood and enjoyed myself, and tried to follow along. Later in the afternoon, the two of us had more time to spend with our books. I worried throughout Shabbat about transportation, which was completely unconducive to my enjoying myself, but I really couldn't help myself. Before kiddush, we reviewed the laws of Birchat Hakohanim, and, later during the day, we read some of the laws of Pesach. I began to tear up a little bit upon reading Chametz u'Matzah 2:3 (I am probably the only human being in history ever to do so) because of the memories that it stirred up. Much to my dismay, I'm suffering slightly from nostalgia, wary as I am of the deceptiveness of this emotion. I've been thinking recently about all of the parts of the last few years of my life that I've enjoyed. Maybe I'll make a list, and post it as part of a longer blog post?
After Havdallah, Eli helped me find a member of the Kibbutz who was driving down to Afula, and could give me a ride to the train station. I think that at first, he wasn't going to drive me (and the yeshiva student in the back seat next to me) all the way to Afula, slightly out of his way, but I think that I came across as so earnest, and excited to be in Israel, that he decided to drive us both directly to the train station, which was very nice of him. He really liked Eli, too, which may have been part of it. Anyway, I took the express bus from Afula to Tel Aviv, then the train from Tel Aviv to Lod, then walked from Lod to Ramla. The whole journey took about four hours.
The next day, we had our Talpiot training, and I spent an enormous amount of time in the art room, making game cards for a version of Memory with art-relevant adjectives. Afterwards, the Ramla and Ashdod ITF groups toured the Ayalon Institute, a secret munitions factory, where 14,000 bullets a year were produced during the British Mandate period. Who knows, maybe my parents would like to visit this out-of-the-way museum during their visit here next month? Oh, and I got to Skype with Josh that night, which really excited me!
OK, it's getting late, and I need to close, but that sums up my Chanukah Break!
TZ! I miss you! Recover quickly so you can come back to school with me!
~JD
In Israel, schools are closed through all of Chanukah, meaning that I will not be returning to school until Monday, December 9th. During the second half of my break, I will be staying with Eli in Ma'alei Gilboah, in the north. It's now the fifth night of Chanukah, and I've been having an enjoyable holiday thus far.
On Wednesday night, the first night of Chanukah, I had the privilege of leading an enrichment session among my cohort of volunteers. The topic was the historical roots of and meaning of Chanukah. (By the way, if you're interested in an hour-long audio class about Chanukah, here's one from the man who has taught me more Talmud than anyone else in the world, Prof. Aaron Koller). I provided some sources on several topics, such as "Historical Antecedents to the Maccabean Revolt," "Identity and Purpose of the Maccabees," "Rededication of the Altar," etc. My friends split into groups of two and three, presenting the information in each theme in the form of a skit. The skits were quite creative and funny, and included a surrealist allegorical narrative about a cabana boy (Coco, Harry, and Noa), a Jewish father visiting a Greek doctor to have his son circumcised (Noah and Alex), speed-dating with several of the male characters of the Chanukah story (Devin and Natalie), a war correspondent reporting on the combat of the Maccabean revolt (Max, Jordan, and Gabbie), a rap about the reasons why Chanukah is associated with fire and oil (Noach and Ben), and a Capra-esque take on the "true meaning of Chanukah" (TZ, Hannah, and Perrin). We finished with a discussion about what people had learned, and whether that would affect how they might one day teach their own children and students about the real meaning of Chanukah. I think that the activity was successful (and by that, I mean that people learned without being bored or turned off). Max, at the end, reacted with a surprising about of passion about how he felt about finally having what he felt was a well-grounded understanding of the Chanukah story. We never got at all into the observance of Chanukah, or into the Roman postscript to the revolt, which in some ways is just as well. I was doing my best to keep this historical and political, rather than spiritual. Still, we missed out on one of the more interesting sources, a tale about the Roman victory, told in the Babylonian Talmud: "What
did Titus do? He seized a harlot in his hand and entered the holy of holies. He
spread out a Torah scroll and committed a sin upon it. Then he took a sword and
slashed the curtain, and a miracle happened and blood bubbled out of the
curtain. Titus thought that he killed God" (Gittin 56b).
In the process of preparing the activity, I, too, learned a whole lot. This was my first time, for instance, reading the Second Book of the Maccabees, and I also made use of Yeshiva University's Chanukah To-Go Packet. As always, the more I read, the more complicated things become. I wonder if, had I been alive in the days of the Maccabim, whether I would have been a "מתיון" (Hellenizer) or among the rebels. The extent to which pious Jews went in order to protect their values at some times seems extraordinary. In addition to the tales of the murders of those who clearly aligned themselves with the Greeks (see, for instance, the First Book of the Maccabees 2:24), and the forced circumcision of Jewish males (ibid. 2:46), there were persecutions of those who assimilated, even to a lesser extent. The Babylonian Talmud, tractate Sanhedrin, chapter 6, tells the story of an execution of a man who trespassed what was not even a Toraitic mitzvah, but a Rabbinic ordinance. Rambam retells the story in the Mishneh Torah, Sefer Mishpatim, Sanhedrin 24:4: "An incident occurred
concerning a person who rode on a horse on the Sabbath in the era of the Greeks and they brought him to the court and had him stoned to death... All of the required processes of
questioning, cross-examination, and warnings were not followed, nor was
the testimony unequivocal. Instead, their execution was a directive for
that immediate time according to what [the judge] perceived as necessary." The death penalty without a fair trial, because it was thought necessary; that, in my opinion, is extreme.
On Thursday night, TZ and I visited Moshe's house, and TZ met Moshe's family for the first time (I had already met them at Rivka's Bat Mitzvah). I first attended Minchah/Arvit at Lod's בית הכנסת מרכזי. After Minchah, a Rabbi stood up and gave a brief Devar Torah about Chanukah. I strained my ears to understand, and would guess that I understood about half. Not good; I remember being able to fully understand the very first French-language Sorbonne lectures that I attended two years ago in Paris. And, just as history was in French, Judaism is one of my "specialties" in Hebrew. Anyway, I had an enjoyable time at Moshe's house. I spoke English, in order to be polite (except to Rivka, whose English isn't that good). Na'amah's English is first-rate, surprisingly; she can even read Pride and Prejudice in English, which is quite impressive, given the fact that I know a lot of American anglophones who can't. The next time I visit Moshe's I hope to be able to speak in Hebrew with his wife and children, at least, and practice Hebrew with Israelis. I have so, so much to learn.
I spent Shabbat Chanukah in Jerusalem. It was my first time at the Western Wall on Shabbat, and it was quite an enjoyable experience reciting all of Shir Hashirim on Erev Shabbat among the throngs of Jewish men assembled at the Kotel. The next morning, I arrived at the Kotel before 8:00 am, and, again, had the opportunity to pray with a minyan. It's a real experience being on the men's side of the Kotel; I sometimes wonder if the experience is the same on the women's side. I slept and lighted the Chanukia at the Jerusalem Heritage House, which is a free hostel (with definite right-wing leanings), and ate at Rabbi Eli Deutsche's house. He's the Rabbi who visited Ramla just before Rosh Hashanah, and invited me back to his house. He in a very friendly way tried to convince me to study in a Yeshivah in Israel, something which I politely explained I was not interested in doing, if I can find work this coming year.
On Monday and Tuesday of this week, before I travel up north to Ma'alei Gilboa, I'll be involved in an archaeological dig, in Lod, with some of the Community Involvement Oranim people. I'm very much looking forward to this opportunity. However, I thought that I would share my Chanukah thought of the year. Although the books of the Maccabees were not canonized into the Tanakh, the Jewish Bible (to be fair, they describe events which took place well over a century after the end of the אַנְשֵׁי כְּנֶסֶת הַגְּדוֹלָה, the group of scholars to whom Biblical canonization has been ascribed by the Jewish Oral Tradition), they are of great historical importance. They were both obviously written by pious Jews, and I would go far as to assert that the Second Book of the Maccabees was written by a Rabbinic Jew (see the end of chapter twelve for an explicit reference to מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים). There is a very well-known passage in the First Book of the Maccabees 2:31-38, describing an incident in the early days of the revolt against the Greeks: "And it was reported to the king's officers, and to the troops in
Jerusalem the city of David, that men who had rejected the king's command had gone down to the hiding places in the wilderness. Many pursued them, and overtook them; they encamped opposite them and prepared for battle against them on the sabbath day. And they said to them, 'Enough of this! Come out and do what the king commands, and you will live.' But they said, 'We will not come out, nor will we do what the king commands and so profane the sabbath day.' Then the enemy hastened to attack them. But they did not answer them or hurl a stone at them or block up their hiding places, for they said, 'Let us all die in our innocence; heaven and earth testify for us that you are killing us unjustly.'
So they attacked them on the sabbath, and they died, with their wives
and children and cattle, to the number of a thousand persons." What just happened? Well, one thousand Jews just died because the Greeks attacked on Shabbat, and the Jews refused to defend themselves on that particular day of the week, because work is forbidden on that day, and bearing arms is considered a form of work. In fact, according to Jewish Law, one is not just permitted, but obligated, to perform acts of labor on Shabbat, if doing so will save a human life. As codified by Rambam, Mishneh Torah, Sefer Z'manim, Hilchot Shabbat 2:25 (explaining how the Oral Tradition interprets Deuteronomy 20:20), "We may wage war with [enemies] on any day, even on the Sabbath, until we conquer [the city], even if the war is voluntary in nature... Indeed, it was on the Sabbath that Joshua conquered Jericho." Here, we have a case of Jews acting piously to the point of allowing themselves to be killed, something that the Law neither demands nor desires.
In another incident, mentioned (to my knowledge) only in the Second Book of the Maccabees, another incident occurs, involving death and Shabbat: "In the language of their fathers [Yehudah Maccabee] raised the battle cry, with hymns;
then he charged against Gorgias' men when they were not expecting it,
and put them to flight. Then Yehudah assembled his army
and went to the city of Adullam. As the seventh day was coming on, they
purified themselves according to the custom, and they kept Shabbat
there. On the next day, as by that time it had
become necessary, Yehudah and his men went to take up the bodies of the
fallen and to bring them back to lie with their kinsmen in the
sepulchres of their fathers. Then under the tunic of
every one of the dead they found sacred tokens of the idols of Jamnia,
which the law forbids the Jews to wear. And it became clear to all that
this was why these men had fallen" (12:37-40). According to the narrator, these Jewish men who were killed in the battle against Gorgias died because they were wearing idols around their necks, something which was only discovered after Shabbat had passed, when the Maccabees went to collect their dead.
These two stories, it seems to me, have something in common. At first glance, they have opposite morals: the Jews who allow themselves to be murdered because it is Shabbat die because of too much piety; the Jewish soldiers who die because they are carrying idols die because of too little. However, both cases seem to be to be the result of a lack of education and understanding. If the Jews who died on Shabbat had known the Law better, they would know that the Torah is a law which one is meant to live by; dieing merely because it is Shabbat is not, according to Rabbinic thought, acceptable. Again, according to Rambam, Sefer Mada, Yesodei Hatorah 5:1 "Should a gentile arise and force a Jew to violate one of the Torah's commandments at the pain of death, he should violate the commandment rather than be killed, because [Leviticus 18:5] states concerning the mitzvot: 'which a man will perform and live by them.' [They were given so that]
one may live by them and not die because of them. If a person dies
rather than transgress, he is held accountable for his life." The Jews carrying tokens of Jamnia were also most likely lacking in education. Let's not forget that they were putting their lives on the line for the sake of fighting an against-the-odds war on behalf of Jews and Judaism; they can by no means hardly be written off as pretenders. Rather, what they seemed to have lacked was knowledge of the Jewish belief that monotheism is incompatible with such forms of superstition as the belief in the apotropaic or protective properties of wooden statues. Although I am clearly skeptical about the pious narrator's assertion that it was their idols that caused these Jews' deaths, in the same way as it is obvious that the Jews killed on Shabbat were killed because of their overly pious nature, I would certainly say that the fact that these carried such images reveals their lack of strongly-founded knowledge of what they were really fighting for, and why.
Knowledge is at least as crucial today is was twenty-two centuries ago. Israel is one of the only two countries in the world which has an education arm to its military (the other is Japan), in order to teach its soldiers just why their service is so important. Sometimes, even in what seem like the centers of Jewish learning, such as the yeshivot, there is a lack of strong knowledge among the students as to what it really means to be Jewish, observantly or otherwise. One of the yeshivah students whom I met this weekend admittedly was only studying in order to prolong his time before attending university and eventually joining the workforce. As I am coming to realize, much to my shock and discomfort in the school in which I work, many of the students harbor prejudices against non-Jews. On my first day, one of the female students told me that Arabs caused all of the problems in Lod, and that Lod was not such a bad city before the Arabs showed up and began stealing things (she seemed unaware of the fact that, before 1948, Lod was an Arab town). Likewise, one of my favorite students harbors a very strong scorn of Christians and Christianity, insisting, for instance, that I erase any pairs of intersecting lines that I may have drawn on my whiteboard while trying to teach him English grammar. What is so shocking about such incidents is that I work at a school which in theory instills its students with Jewish values. Almost every morning, Rabbi Yosef lectures the males on the importance and sanctity of their tefillin, and why it is absolutely crucial that they wear them six days a week, in the correct manner, after having prepared their bodies properly, etc. Never is there any mention of ethics, tolerance, or love. All of the halachot I hear pertain to prayer, the holidays, etc. As Eli has pointed out to me before, there is a very good reason that Rambam places Hilchot De'ot, the laws of character development, before Hilchot Talmud Torah, the laws of the study of Torah, within Sefer Mada. Compassion, fairness, empathy, and respect are all Jewish values. If we lose these values, we lose our Torah. As Ben Azzai says in Avot 4:3 "אל תהי בז לכל אדם, ואל תהי מפליג לכל דבר, שאין לך אדם שאין לו שעה ואין לך דבר שאין לו מקום." (He would also say: Do not scorn any person, and do not discount any thing.
For there is no person who has not his [or her] hour, and no thing that has not its
place). The word used, "אדם" means simply "person," notably neither "אִישׁ" (man) nor "בֶּן בְּרִית" (Jew).
But, really, who am I to speak in such ways about Jewish education? I am very, very far from even knowing Hebrew, let alone knowing Aramaic, let alone knowing the law. I have a very, very long and rocky road ahead of me.
Before I close, I ought to mention that, as one of my friends who suffers from UC informed me, this week of December 1st-7th is Crohn's Disease and Ulcerative Colitis Awareness Week. Just to copy and paste a little bit: "Ulcerative colitis is a chronic [probably autoimmune] disease of the large intestine... in which the lining of the colon becomes inflamed
and develops tiny open sores, or ulcers, that produce pus and mucus.
The combination of inflammation and ulceration can cause abdominal
discomfort and frequent emptying of the colon... Ulcerative colitis may affect as many as 700,000 Americans. Men and
Women are equally likely to be affected, and most people are diagnosed
in their mid-30s. The disease can occur at any age and older men are
more likely to be diagnosed than older women. While ulcerative colitis tends to run in families, researchers have
been unable to establish a clear pattern of inheritance. Studies show
that up to 20 percent of people with ulcerative colitis will also have a
close relative with the disease. The disease is more common among white
people of European origin and among people of Jewish heritage."
Happy Chanukah!
~JD
