ottersRcats, also known as Meowmix

chemistry hero of this week.... Ryoji Noyori, 2001 Nobel prize in chemistry

2008-02-25T13:21:00.002-06:00

One of the issues I've been thinking about recently is that a number of great scientists end up with less than stellar children. A number of good scientists end up with children who are inspired and go on to do great things. It makes some sense. If you're devoting that much time to your career, then you aren't as able to give your children the time and attention necessary to develop them into the sorts of people who can do really great things for mankind. A rather sad trade-off.

Also, as Emily Carter wrote in her "It's the Culture, Stupid" article of 2005 in _The Daily Princetonian_ addressing Larry Summers comment that women don't stick with it in the sciences or math --women prefer balance and don't want to work at jobs that force them to have imbalanced lives. Often men who are very very successful like that have wives who stay at home and do everything for them. Less often do you see a pairing like Emily Carter and Bruce Koel's where both have won awards and have really great careers of equal stature. Sometimes you'll see people like Dan Kahne and Suzanne Walker, where because she started later on this path, her career will always be dwarfed by his, though she is an excellent scientist in her own right. What I'd like to see is an article from Emily Carter telling us how did she do it... how did she manage that balance?

I just discovered having read this article
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/23/business/worldbusiness/23perfume.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
then going to read this article
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2001/noyori-autobio.html
that Ryoji Noyori is one of the people responsible for the creation of levofloxacin a.k.a. Levoquin.
His work on this BINAP homogeneous catalyst has enabled tremendous advances in chemistry and allowing us to make chemicals of great use to mankind.
I am really really impressed.

_____________________________________________________________
Ryoji Noyori
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2001
Autobiography

Ryoji NoyoriI was born on September 3, 1938 in a suburb of Kobe (now Ashiya), Japan, the first son of Kaneki and Suzuko Noyori. Our family moved to Kobe soon afterwards. I grew up with two younger brothers and a sister in a pleasant city blessed by beautiful natural surroundings. Except for a short period at the end of World War II, I attended an elementary school affiliated to Kobe University from ages six to twelve, and then moved on to Nada Middle and High School from ages twelve to eighteen. I enjoyed many out-door activities in my youth.

My father, Kaneki, was a gifted research director of a chemical company, and his profession strongly influenced the path of my life. At home, we were surrounded by his scientific journals and books and various samples of plastics and synthetic fibers, and were frequently asked to test the quality of products which were under development for commercialization. When I entered middle school, my father took me to a public conference, the topic of which was "nylon". The lecturer explained proudly that this new fiber could be synthesized from coal, air, and water (the then famous catchphrase of DuPont company). Although I knew nothing about industrial technology, I was deeply impressed by the power of chemistry. Chemistry can create important things from almost nothing! The event had an enormous impact on this 12-year-old schoolboy, because it was in 1951, shortly after World War II when Japan was so poor. We were very hungry. It was at this point that it became my dream to be a leading chemist to contribute to the society by inventing beneficial products.

My appetite for chemistry was further wetted through class work led by enthusiastic teachers in middle/high school including Dr. Kazuo Nakamoto (then Osaka University and afterward Illinois Institute of Technology and Marquette University) who gave me my first chemistry lesson. I also liked other sciences and mathematics. Together with regular schoolwork, "judo" (one of Japan's traditional sports) was a major passion at this time. It was very popular amongst us because Nada School and Kodokan Judo School were founded by the same family. I highly appreciate the educational efforts of many schoolteachers as well as the warm friendship of classmates in those days, which strongly influenced the formation of my personal character.

In 1957, at the age of 18, I entered Kyoto University, which was known to be the most active institution in the research of polymer chemistry. Incidentally, this was the year when the USSR launched into space for the first time an artificial satellite, the Sputnik, thereby demonstrating the power of sciencebased technology. I recall that this success substantially shocked young science students in Japan. After three years, I started to study organic chemistry, rather than polymer chemistry, under the guidance of Professor Keiiti Sisido. The laboratory environment was very hospitable and I obtained my Bachelor degree in 1961. Upon completion of my Master's degree in 1963, I was immediately appointed Instructor of Professor Hitosi Nozaki's laboratories at Kyoto University and, in 1967, received my doctorate (DEng). My career path, that is the appointment to Instructor without a doctorate, is a little unusual but this is partly due to the difference in Japanese and Western education/teaching systems. Professor Nozaki strongly encouraged us to pursue new, original chemistry rather than tracing traditional subjects, while I served as a leader of his subgroup working on flourishing physical organic chemistry. It was under such conditions that in 1966 we discovered an interesting asymmetric catalysis that later became a life-long interest. This finding emerged during the course of an investigation of the transition metal effects in carbene reactions. Reaction of styrene and ethyl diazoacetate in the presence of a small amount of a chiral Schiff base-Cu(II) complex gave optically active cyclopropane derivatives, albeit with <10 % ee. Although the enantioselectivity was not synthetically meaningful, this was probably the first example of asymmetric catalysis using structurally well-defined organometallic molecular complexes. In the early 1960s, homogeneous catalysis (typically Reppe chemistry) was already well known, however, the notion of "molecular catalysis" that utilizes the structural and electronic characteristics of molecules more positively, was not clearly documented. This discovery opened my research perspective. In any event, I intended first to expand my scientific background under the supervision of an eminent chemist abroad, and Professor E.J. Corey at Harvard kindly agreed to accommodate me in his laboratories as a postdoctoral fellow. This plan, however, was postponed for reasons outlined below.

The situation changed drastically in the fall of 1967, when I received a totally unexpected offer from Nagoya University. I was asked to chair a newly created organic chemistry laboratory. This invitation surprised me. I was a mere 29-year-old Instructor at Kyoto enjoying daily research work with some young students. Nothing had prepared me to be a Professor at a major national university. Being too young and inexperienced to be a Full Professor, I was first appointed Associate Professor of Chemistry. In February, 1968, when I launched my own research group, Professor Yoshimasa Hirata, a senior faculty known for his outstanding accomplishments in natural products of organic chemistry, asked me to create a new stream of organic chemistry at Nagoya, different from his own field, thereby making the Chemistry Department more visible. I immediately decided to focus on organic synthesis using organometallic chemistry, which then comprised a branch of inorganic chemistry. Although not many researchers were aware of the high utility in organic synthesis, I was intuitively confident of the bright future of this scientific field. Professor Hirata consistently helped me in many aspects during his time at Nagoya University.

In 1969, as planned earlier, I went to Harvard. I was amazed by the enormous difference in the standard of living and science between the US and my mother country. Professor Corey was then already a leading organic chemist and I learned much from him. In addition, I became acquainted with many promising students and postdoctoral fellows including K. Barry Sharpless who was working with Professor Konrad Bloch. Later many of these reliable friends, together with their scientific relatives, grew to become eminent researchers in the scientific community and helped me in many ways. Synthesis of prostaglandins (PGs) was my research theme in the Corey group. After completing several works, I was asked to selectively hydrogenate a PGF2a derivative that has two C = C bonds to a PGF1a compound possessing a single C = C bond. This was the start of my three-decade-long work on hydrogenation. My interest in homogenous hydrogenation was enhanced by reading almost all available literature on this very new topic and also through personal interaction with Assistant Professor John A. Osborn, who had joined Harvard Chemistry Department from Geoffrey Wilkinson's laboratory at Imperial College, London. Osborn, an authority of Rh-catalyzed homogeneous hydrogenation, taught me many aspects of organometallic chemistry. It was in 1968, when W.S. Knowles and L. Horner reported independently the first homogeneous asymmetric hydrogenation using chiral phosphine-Rh catalyts, albeit in low optical yields. The fruitful Harvard experience, coupled with our earlier asymmetric cyclopropanation in 1966, led to my life-long research on asymmetric hydrogenation.

After returning to Nagoya in 1970, I began to study organic synthesis and homogeneous catalysis via organometallic chemistry, while in August 1972, at the age of 33, I was promoted to Full Professor. In the hope of development of efficient asymmetric hydrogenation and other reactions, we became interested in BINAP [2,2'-bis(diphenylphosphino)-1,1'-binaphthyl], a novel C2 chiral diphosphine possessing a beautiful molecular shape. Synthesis of the optically pure diphosphine was unexpectedly difficult. It was in 1974, that I started stereospecific synthesis from optically pure 2,2'-diamino-1,1'-binaphthyl with my long-term collaborator, the late Professor Hidemasa Takaya, who was with me at Nagoya and afterwards moved to the Institute of Molecular Science and Kyoto University. After two years, we managed to obtain optically active BINAP, however, the result was disappointingly irreproducible. In 1978, we reached a reliable method for resolution of racemic BINAP with a chiral amine-Pd complex. Unfortunately, the results of BINAP-Rh(I) catalyzed asymmetric hydrogenation of dehydro amino acids were highly variable depending on the reaction conditions. Eventually, in 1980 after a six-year endeavour, thanks to the unswerving efforts of my young colleagues and students, we were able to publish our first work on asymmetric synthesis of amino acids via this BINAP chemistry.

The success in our asymmetric hydrogenation largely relies on the invention of BINAP and the use of Ru element, which behaves differently from conventional Rh. A major breakthrough in asymmetric hydrogenation came in 1986, when we developed BINAP-Ru(II) dicarboxylate complexes that enjoy a much greater scope of olefinic substrates. Furthermore, in 1987-1988, 179 we developed a versatile general asymmetric hydrogenation of functionalized ketones with BINAP-Ru(II) dihalide complexes. The scope of this method is far reaching. These asymmetric hydrogenation methods allow for the synthesis of a wide array of terpenes, vitamins, b-lactam antibiotics, a- and b-amino acids, alkaloids, prostaglandins, and other compounds of biological and physiological interest. BINAP chemistry has been applied to the large-scale production of the synthetic intermediates of antibiotic carbapenems (Takasago International Co.) and levofloxacin, a quinolone antibacterial agent (Takasago International Co./Daiichi Pharmaceutical Co.). The efficiency of BINAP chemistry rivals or in certain cases even exceeds that of enzymes. In addition, a team of the Noyori Molecular Catalysis Project (ERATO, 1991-1996) discovered the catalysts of type RuCl2(diphosphine)(diamine) leading to another major breakthrough in hydrogenation. The reaction of unsaturated ketones occurs preferentially the C = O function leaving the olefinic linkage intact. The combined use of the BINAP ligand and a chiral diamine effects asymmetric hydrogenation of a range of aromatic, hetero-aromatic, and olefinic ketones. The reaction is very rapid, productive and stereoselective, providing the most practical method for converting simple ketones to chiral secondary alcohols.

BINAP-Rh(I) complexes are useful for asymmetric isomerization of allylic amines to enamines of high enantiomeric purity. In the early 1980s, a fruitful academic/industry collaboration was made between the groups at Osaka University (S. Otsuka and H. Tani), Nagoya University, Institute of Molecular Science (H. Takaya), Shizuoka University (J. Tanaka and K. Takabe), and Takasago International Co., realizing the industrial production of (-)-menthol and other optically active terpenes.

In 1995-1996, we invented a range of Ru(II) catalysts modified with a chiral b-amino alcohol or 1,2-diamine derivative that effects asymmetric transfer hydrogenation of ketones and imines using 2-propanol or formic acid as hydrogen donors. More recently, the reaction has proven to proceed via a nonclassical metal - ligand bifunctional mechanism. My interest in asymmetric chemistry is broad. In 1986, we found a highly enantioselecive addition of dialkylzincs to aldehydes using a small quantity of a camphor-derived chiral amino alcohol, where the alkylation products with high enantiomeric excesses are accessible with a partially resolved chiral ancillary. We could fully elucidate the origin of this striking chiral amplification phenomenon at the molecular structure level. My stay at Harvard in 1969-1970 spurred me to develop an efficient way to synthesize prostaglandins (PGs). In this connection, a series of selective synthetic methods was explored in our laboratories. Our binaphthol-modified lithium aluminum hydride reagent (1979) was applied to the commercial Corey PG synthesis (Ono Pharmaceutical Co.). Furthermore, we realized the long-sought three-component PG synthesis in 1985, which now plays an important role in biochemical and physiological studies of PGs.

Chemical synthesis provides a logical basis for molecular science and related technologies which require a high degree of structural precision. I have 180 tried to select general and fundamental research subjects in this important field. A clear-cut solution to a long-persistent problem, when accomplished, often results in an enormous scientific or technological impact. Asymmetric hydrogenation is a typical example. BINAP chemistry is now utilized worldwide in research laboratories and also at the industrial level. In fact, the selective synthesis of single enantiomers using well-designed chiral molecular catalysts has now become common practice. This fascinating field is still growing rapidly, and recent advances have dramatically changed the way of chemical synthesis, opening tremendous potential for molecular technologies.

Our broad research activity goes beyond asymmetric synthesis. In 1994, we discovered the remarkable utility of supercritical carbon dioxide as a medium for homogeneous catalysis. Thus Ru-catalyzed hydrogenation produces formic acid, methyl formate, and dimethylformamide with an extremely high turnover number. More recently, we devised practical, environmentally sound methods for olefin epoxidation and alcohol oxidation using aqueous H2O2, whose utility is highlighted by the direct conversion of cyclohexene to adipic acid (1996-1998). The stereospecific living polymerization of phenylacetylenes was achieved by using a structurally defined tetracoordinate Rh complex (1994). We also developed an efficient synthesis of solid-anchored DNA oligomers using organopalladium chemistry (1990). In my early days at Nagoya, we invented the iron carbonyl-polybromo ketone reaction which allows the construction of five- and seven-member carbocycles in a 3 + 2 and 3 + 4 manner, respectively. In the late 1970s, we exercised initiative in the catalytic use of organosilicon compounds for organic synthesis.

Organometallic chemistry is a scientific space leading to an enormous technical impact and even more general social benefits. I am very pleased to be involved in contributing to the progress of this significant scientific realm. The above described scientific accomplishments are not my own, but the credit in fact belongs to my research family at Nagoya University and many collaborators at other institutions. My initial ideas in solving problems were not always appropriate and, sometimes even nonsensical. However, my serendipitous collaborators incubated such research themes through careful experiments and much deliberation, and eventually reached new chemical concepts and useful methodologies. Their intellect, sense, and skills are highly appreciated. In addition, through my frequent traveling abroad as a visiting professor or invited lecturer at research institutions and conferences, I have met many superb colleagues from the international scientific community. Their encouragement as well as the exposure to different cultures and environments have deeply affected my way of thinking. Furthermore, for over three decades, my scientific work has been supported generously and consistently by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan as well as the Research Development Corporation of Japan, various private foundations, and numerous industrial companies.

My activities are not limited to education and research. I have served on the editorial boards of some thirty international journals including the editorship of Advanced Synthesis & Catalysis (Wiley/VCH) which emphasizes the "practical elegance" of chemical synthesis. Furthermore, I have been involved in much administrative work, for example, as Science Advisor (1992-1996) and Member of the Scientific Council (1996-present) of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology; Dean of the Graduate School of Science at Nagoya University (1997-1999); and President of the Society of Synthetic Organic Chemistry, Japan (1997-1999). Such official duties significantly hamper my research activity but are unavoidable for a senior scientist.

In 1972, I married Hiroko Oshima (a daughter of a Professor of Medicine at Tokyo University) who was studying the immunology of cancer at a research institute in Tokyo. Since then, she has played the most important part in our private life at Nagoya. We have two children. Our first son, Eiji (born in 1973), is an active staff writer of a newspaper company, and our second son, Koji (born in 1978), studies painting at an art university in Tokyo.

Appointments
Kyoto University: Instructor, 1963-1968.
Nagoya University: Associate Professor, 1968-1972. Professor, 1972-present. Director Chemical Instrument Center, 1979-1991. Dean, Graduate School of Science, 1997-1999. Director, Research Center for Materials Science, 2000-present.
Kyushu University: Professor (adjunct), 1993-1996.
Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture: Science Advisor, 1992- 1996. Member of Scientific Council, 1996-2001.
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology: Member of Scientific Council, 2001-present.
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science: Committee Chairman, Research for the Future Program on "Advanced Processes", 1996-present. Science Advisor, 2001-present.
The Research Development Corporation of Japan: Director of the ERATO Molecular Catalysis Project, 1991-1996.
The Society of Synthetic Organic Chemistry, Japan: Vice President, 1994- 1996. President, 1997-1999.
The Chemical Society of Japan: President-Elect, 2001.

Honorary Degrees
Technische Universität München, Germany, 1995.
Université de Rennes 1, France, 2000.

Honorary Professorships
Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, China, 2001.

Fellowships and Memberships
Fellow, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1996.
Honorary Member, Chemical Society of Japan, 1998.
Honorary Fellow, Royal Society of Chemistry, UK, 2000.
Foreign Honorary Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2001.
Honorary Member, European Academy of Sciences and Arts, 2001.

Awards
The Chemical Society of Japan Award for Young Chemists, 1972.
The Matsunaga Prize (Matsunaga Memorial Foundation, Japan), 1978.
The Chunichi Cultural Prize (Chunichi Newspaper Co., Japan), 1982.
The Chemical Society of Japan Award, 1985.
The Naito Foundation Research Prize (Naito Science Foundation, Japan), 1988.
The Fluka Prize, Reagent of the Year (Fluka Chemie AG, Switzerland), 1989.
The Centenary Medal (The Royal Chemical Society, UK), 1990.
The Toray Science & Technology Prize (Toray Science Foundation, Japan), 1990.
The Merck-Schuchardt Chair (BOSS Symposium, Belgium), 1990.
The J. G. Kirkwood Award (Yale University, USA), 1991.
The Asahi Prize (Asahi Culture Foundation, Japan), 1992.
Tetrahedron Prize for Creativity in Organic Chemistry (Pergamon Press, UK), 1993.
The Keimei Life Science Prize (Keimei Foundation, Japan), 1994.
The Japan Academy Prize, 1995.
The Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award (American Chemical Society), 1996.
Bonn Chemistry Award (University of Bonn and Pinguin Foundation, Germany), 1996.
The Arthur C. Cope Award (American Chemical Society), 1997.
The Chirality Medal (International Symposium on Chiral Discrimination), 1997.
The George Kenner Award (University of Liverpool, UK), 1997.
Person of Cultural Merit (Japanese Government), 1998.
The King Faisal International Prize for Science (King Faisal Foundation, Saudi Arabia), 1999.
The Cliff S. Hamilton Award (University of Nebraska, USA), 1999.
ISI Citation Laureate Award (ISI/Thomson Scientific Inc., USA/Japan), 2000.
The Order of Culture (Japanese Emperor/Government), 2000.
The Special Award (The Society of Synthetic Organic Chemistry, Japan), 2001.
The Wolf Prize in Chemistry (Wolf Foundation, Israel), 2001.
The Roger Adams Award in Organic Chemistry (American Chemical Society), 2001.
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry (Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences), 2001.

Publications
Over 400 publications in scientific journals.

Patents
Over 160.

Selected References
Monograph: "Asymmetric Catalysis in Organic Synthesis." R. Noyori, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1994.
Asymmetric Induction in Carbenoid Reaction by Means of a Dissymmetric Copper Chelate. H. Nozaki, S. Moriuti, H. Takaya, and R. Noyori, Tetrahedron Lett., 5239 (1966).
Organic Syntheses via the Polybromo Ketone-Iron Carbonyl Reaction. R. Noyori, Acc. Chem. Res., 12, 61 (1979).
Synthesis of 2,2'-Bis(diphenylphosphino)-1,1'-binaphthyl (BINAP), an Atropisomeric Chiral Bis(triaryl)phosphine, and Its Use in the Rhodium(I)- Catalyzed Asymmetric Hydrogenation of a-(Acylamino)acrylic Acids. A. Miyashita, A. Yasuda, H. Takaya, K. Toriumi, T. Ito, T. Souchi, and R. Noyori, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 102, 7932 (1980).
Prostaglandin Syntheses by Three-Component Coupling. R. Noyori and M. Suzuki, Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. Engl., 23, 847 (1984).
The Allylic Protection Method in Solid-Phase Oligonucleotide Synthesis. An Efficient Preparation of Solid-Anchored DNA Oligomers. Y. Hayakawa, S. Wakabayashi, H. Kato, and R. Noyori, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 112, 1691 (1990).
An Organometallic Way to Prostaglandins: The Three-Component Coupling Synthesis. R. Noyori and M. Suzuki, Chemtracts-Org. Chem., 3, 173 (1990).
Chiral Metal Complexes as Discriminating Molecular Catalysts. R. Noyori, Science, 248, 1194 (1990).
BINAP: An Efficient Chiral Element for Asymmetric Catalysis. R. Noyori and H. Takaya, Acc. Chem. Res., 23, 345 (1990).
Enantioselective Addition of Organometallic Reagents to Carbonyl Compounds: Chirality Transfer, Multiplication, and Amplification. R. Noyori and M. Kitamura, Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. Engl., 30, 49 (1991).
Stereoselective Organic Synthesis via Dynamic Kinetic Resolution. R. Noyori, M. Tokunaga, and M. Kitamura, Bull. Chem. Soc. Jpn., 68, 36 (1995).
Homogeneous Catalysis in Supercritical Fluids. P. G. Jessop, T. Ikariya, and R. Noyori, Science, 269, 1065 (1995).
Asymmetric Hydrogenation. R. Noyori, Acta Chem. Scand., 50, 380 (1996).
The Catalyst Precursor, Catalyst, and Intermediate in the RuII-Promoted 184 Asymmetric Hydrogen Transfer between Alcohols and Ketones. K.-J. Haack, S. Hashiguchi, A. Fujii, T. Ikariya, and R. Noyori, Angew. Chem., Int. Ed. Engl., 36, 285 (1997).
Asymmetric Transfer Hydrogenation Catalyzed by Chiral Ruthenium Complexes. R. Noyori and S. Hashiguchi, Acc. Chem. Res., 30, 97 (1997).
A "Green" Route to Adipic Acid: Direct Oxidation of Cyclohexenes with 30% Hydrogen Peroxide. K. Sato, M. Aoki, and R. Noyori, Science, 281, 1646 (1998).
Asymmetric Catalysis by Architectural and Functional Molecular Engineering: Practical Chemo- and Stereoselective Hydrogenation of Ketones. R. Noyori and T. Ohkuma, Angew. Chem., Int. Ed., 40, 40 (2001).
Self and Nonself Recognition of Chiral Catalysts: The Origin of Nonlinear Effects in the Amino-Alcohol Catalyzed Asymmetric Addition of Diorganozincs to Aldehydes. R. Noyori, S. Suga, H. Oka, and M. Kitamura, Chem. Rec., 1, 85 (2001).
Metal-Ligand Bifunctional Catalysis: A Nonclassical Mechanism for Asymmetric Hydrogen Transfer between Alcohols and Carbonyl Compounds. R. Noyori, M. Yamakawa, and S. Hashiguchi, J. Org. Chem., 66 7931, (2001).

From Les Prix Nobel. The Nobel Prizes 2001, Editor Tore Frängsmyr, [Nobel Foundation], Stockholm, 2002

This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and later published in the book series Les Prix Nobel/Nobel Lectures. The information is sometimes updated with an addendum submitted by the Laureate. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.

Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 2001

so here I am, once again, procrastinating?...

2008-02-19T01:10:00.003-06:00

It turns out that my mind goes to pot after about 5 weeks of 13.5 hour work days 5.5 days a week. Yeah, YOU work that one out. Hah. I'm tired and grouchy and ought to be working.. which is why I'm posting online?

A couple of studies talk about how your brain needs help processing stuff. In fact, in one article I particularly like, searchable if you look for "Richard Hamming" Your Research at Bell Labs,-that isn't the real title of the talk, but it's enough keywords you'll find the transcript I'm talking about... discusses how if you sleep enough.. "you get some answers for free".. but only if you've "starved your subconscious." Dick Hamming is a riot -laughter-wise- and a phenomenal scientist and lecturer. His talk is well-worth reading in transcript form.
_______

In other news, I think John Greally is silly for putting up a blog and allowing comments, but not reading the comments... oh, yeah, wait... I do that myself. oops.

______
In even more unrelated comments... I got a real mussar shakedown from my personal guilt about not learning more or enough. We had a really nice shiur the other day from R'Yitzchak Blau. He gave a lovely shiur about sins, which I really thought was very nice. He also paid me a compliment which made me very happy and inspired the self-inflicted guilt-trip about oh, if I'm a natural, why don't I learn more and apply that talent more. Sigh. I keep promising myself that once this awful work crunch is over I'll go back to my normal learning schedule. It's just that this work-crunch has turned into a crunch-year... v'im lo achshav, eimatai?

winners fo the recent Heroes of the week category...

2008-02-17T14:29:00.002-06:00

I do believe very firmly that the skills of ethnography are useful in science and design.. and essential or tremendous innovations.

Heroes of the week: Donald A. Norman at the Segal Design Institute and Walter Herbst, KSM.
You can read more about Don Norman at his website
http://www.jnd.org/

Hero of last week: Emily A. Carter
http://prince-web1.princeton.edu/archives/2005/01/31/opinion/11842.shtml
http://prince-web1.princeton.edu/archives/2006/10/04/news/16045.shtml

Hero of the previous week Gerhard Ertl
see nobel prize site. Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2007 for an award in surface science.

Heroes of the week prior: Sam Danishefsky. Daniel Kahne. Suzanne Walker.

for a little bit about Dan Kahne, whom I remember from my days in Tigerland (but who has now moved to Crimsonland) see
http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/11.11/03-kahne.html
______________________
There is an interface between design, art, chemistry, and creativity.. and what is vital is to seize this moment for the betterment of society. So... where do we begin?

the candidates for the hero of the week category

2008-02-17T14:17:00.002-06:00

1) Here's an interesting article from the epigenetics world about using a novel bioinformatic approach to look at CpG islands. Nice work from the Greally lab at AECom.

http://nar.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/gkm489?ijkey=CzeZ15jFKYUAQTn&keytype=ref

nice work, but no cigar.

....the next two items are thumbs down on the conventional wisdom scale.....

2) http://www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/11.11/photos/3-kahne-450.jpg
Bash Harvard, becuase why they were stupid enough to focus only on Dan Kahne's move there and not Suzanne Walker's move there is sexist.
Kahne brings chemistry to life

Professor bridges biology and chemistry

By William J. Cromie
Harvard News Office

Daniel Kahne is not so much a self-made man as a mentor-made man.
Mentors brought him back to college when he dropped out, taught him the joy of research, and gave him the idea of solving some of life's biological problems with the help of chemistry.

Harvard brought him here in July as a tenured professor of chemistry and chemical biology to do for others what others have done for him. He is here to develop and apply the tools of chemistry to questions like how do bacteria always manage to keep one evolutionary step ahead of all the scientists who are trying to kill them?

Kahne also will participate in a new Ph.D. program in chemical biology that bridges the scholarly and collegial gap between Harvard Medical School and the University's departments of chemistry and molecular biology.

"I have no formal training in biology," admits the 45-year-old professor. "But I have always been interested in questions related to biology and human health, and I can provide a different perspective from which to study these questions. I'm excited about the opportunities I'll have to do this here."

Christopher T. Walsh, Hamilton Kuhn Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at the Medical School, is glad to have Kahne here. "Dan is deeply thoughtful as a scholar," he says. "His creativity is in thinking deeply about molecular puzzles and inconsistencies and coming up with experimental approaches to resolve them. We have had a very productive collaboration on antibiotics, how bacteria become resistant to them, and what can be done to combat resistance with new drugs. Besides, he is also a serious Red Sox fan."

Walsh also is a fan of Kahne's wife, Suzanne Walker, who moved with him from the chemistry department at Princeton University. "Both are terrific people as well as front-rank scientists," Walsh says. "She has an appointment as a professor of microbiology and molecular genetics at the Medical School. I have moved my labs to be her immediate neighbor, and we will be collaborating on a number of projects."

Art history vs. chemistry

Raised in Lexington, Mass., Kahne comes from an academic family with ties to Harvard. After a long career as a professor at MIT, his father lectured in social psychiatry at Harvard Medical School from 1969 to 1973. His mother received a Ph.D. in labor economics from Harvard in 1953, then chaired the department of economics at Wheaton College in Massachusetts until she retired at age 70.

In high school, Kahne was curious enough about health issues to work summers in a research lab at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. He also studied art and majored in art history at Cornell University, where he wrote a thesis on the Swiss impressionist Paul Klee.

Kahne dropped out of Cornell, but his adviser, Roald Hoffmann, didn't drop out on him. "He could have said, 'What the heck is your problem?' Kahne recalls, "but he remained supportive. He made me visit him at his office every week, and suggested that I work in the chemistry lab of a young faculty member, Dave Collum." Hoffmann himself had been an art history major and wound up winning a Nobel Prize in chemistry.

"I can't recall any specific moment that I became interested in chemistry," Kahne comments. "I think people find their way in life based in part on relationships with others. Hoffmann and Collum made it enjoyable to do research."

This turned out to be true in graduate school, too. Kahne earned his Ph.D. and did postdoctoral work in chemistry at Columbia University between 1981 and 1988. "That was the happiest time of my life," he recalls. "I met my wife, who was also graduate student, there, and I worked with world-class scientists who were also great teachers."

With Gilbert Stork, his Ph.D. adviser, Kahne studied the structure of tetracycline. "Stork didn't care that tetracycline was an antibiotic," he says. "We didn't discuss its biological activity. He wanted to learn how to build molecules of that complexity in a lab."

Structure vs. function

As a postdoc at Columbia, Kahne worked with Clark Still, a man he describes as a "genius." "Biologists tend to work with large molecules like DNA and proteins," he notes. "Clark wanted to mimic some of the functions of natural large molecules with synthetic small ones. With him I began to think more about the functions of molecules, whereas before I had focused mainly on their structures."

This focus on function came in handy when Kahne moved to an assistant professorship at Princeton. "I met a lot of molecular biologists there, and they encouraged me to think about problems on the interface of chemistry and biology," he says.

Over the next 17 years, there was a national movement toward using chemistry to understand biology, and Kahne became part of it. "My wife and I decided to come to Harvard because of a strong interdisciplinary program that involves the commitment of outstanding scientists in chemistry, biology, and medicine."

Kahne is also looking forward to preparing graduate and undergraduate students to travel this new road in chemistry. "There are so many exciting new things to learn here," he says, "that I can be both a student and a mentor."

3) As often is the case the science journalists have way-over-hyped the work.. and made a lot of people excited over something that isn't a viable technique and prob won't be usable within the next twenty years if ever. Thumbs down on the media people.

"A step towards three-parent babies? Progress report shows clinical application of technique still far away.

Erika Check Hayden
A predictable media circus followed a UK newspaper's report yesterday that scientists have created so-called 'three-parent embryos'. But some of the reports have misconstrued what the scientists have actually done thus far, and the scientists caution that their unpublished work, while promising, is still far from clinical use."

alea iacta est

2008-02-17T12:39:00.003-06:00

It turns out that after quite a long time debating what I will do with my life, I'm almost on the verge of announcing that I've chosen to throw my lot in with the research science academics.

I thought about doing non-profit management like at a hillel or something and having done that on a volunteer basis -read procrastinating on PhD work- I've come to the realization that while I'm good at it, and can edfinteily get better at it.. it isn't thrilling, exciting, or challenging enough for me to be happy doing it full time. I might change my mind if I ever marry and have a family, but it just doesn't seem like the sort of thing that would make me deeply fulfilled at this point.

I also thought about consulting and really wish that a company like HerbstLeZarBell would be interested in hiring me, but it seems that this opportunity is not to be, not just yet at least.

On one side, I think I'd like to go back to school and get an MD degree... but a part of me says not just yet. Maybe when I'm 40 or something. ;-) I've a passionate interest in neuroscience and the work of STeven Quartz. It's a fascinating idea to me that potentially we could understand the source of religion in the mind... check out the work in the Jan 3 edition of the NEJM. (Yeah, I read NEJM for fun and to procrastinate working on my own work. Don't say there is no such thing as a geeky cat.) What I really want to be looking at though is how do I apply what I know about design, organization, people, art, beauty, and elegant engineering to chemistry, biology, neuroscience, and medicine?
This is my life's calling.

I'm applying to a job in policy work just in case nothing else pans out, but it's not the first of my choices at this stage of my life. I think it will be when I'm 50-ish for so.

Plans for writing the great story, screenplay, or novel are on hold, though I keep jotting down ideas here and there.

other people's thoughts on giving a good talk...

2008-02-17T12:36:00.000-06:00

http://blogs.usyd.edu.au/labrats/2007/06/everybodys_talkin_1.html

http://www.scs.uiuc.edu/suslick/seminaronseminars.html

Also, I can't find anymore the posting about how to adapt your presentation slides to people who are color blind, but search for it and maybe you'll find it.. well worth reading over and implementing the advice in your talk... especially if you do imaging of any sort and science.

The creativity of the Jewish people. a rant, a worry, and a challenge...

2008-02-16T14:36:00.003-06:00

I am worried about the state of Israel. We are losing more and more ground to the Palestinians who have truly mastered manipulating the media. Jews have mastered the law, but they have neglected how important presentation is. They have neglected how to sell how wonderful Israel is to Israelis themselves. What is on Israeli TV? I would like to see a TV sitcom or series where the underlying lesson actually is how to feel good about Israel and being an Israeli. Israelis have forgotten also though, how to laugh at themselves. This is what worries me the most. The pressures of the politics have made them neurotic -even as Elie Wiesel suggested it was a miracle that such a thing had not happened yet. I read about how the Israeli education strike has halted things in the country and I am worried, because Israel's strength and economy require the brains. If Israeli children are ranking lower and lower in math skills, if they are ranking lower and lower in science, history, reading, economics, and finance ... how will we build our precious Eretz HaKodesh? I do not say we need to silence the Leftist voices, who remind us that we have to fix the imbalances and the injuries. They have good things to say. We need to pay attention to these things as well. What worries me though is that it is clearer and clearer to me that the decline in Israeli education spells disaster for Israelis -whether they are Jewish, Arab, Druze, Christian or something else. Education is a Jewish value. Education is a tremendous resource. We need to be creative and search for solutions that matter.

Someone needs to go lobby the countries that pledged -France, England, the US, etc,. that when they give money to the Palestinian Authority, they need to promise that the money be used only for certain things.. like economic development, health care, municipal facilities, feeding people, the kind of infrastructure that matters. They will be forbidden to use it for the further brainwashing of their people to become terrorists. That part is unacceptable, because we will have contributed blood money. If someone in Hollywood would make a move exposing the PA and terrorists... exposing Nasrallah for who he really is... that would be wonderful. If someone would write a best-selling thriller to put out there what is really going on in the world with people like these mastermind terrorists... that would also be good.

Where is the creativity of the Jewish people going?

2007-10-31T22:20:00.000-05:00

So I was listening to a friend of mine talk about how his wife turned to him this past week and remarked, "dear, you're beginnign to look like your father." He was a litle surprised and asked her how. It turns out that he had gone shopping and found a bunch of new shirts that heliked. One shirt in particular were the colors his father prefers wearing and it was on sale, so he bought it. When his wife saw him with itone, she immediately thought of his father.

Over the years I've heard lots of people discuss how one can't help but become their parents... I'm sure that for some people this is perfectly fine, but for others this is a positively horrifying experience.

Life, relationships, marriage, and the like

kosher food in Connecticut, USA

2007-10-31T22:18:00.000-05:00

I recently learned about the following establishments, which considering I'm trekking tehre to make kosher food ...this is all useful information. I figured that it would be useful to impart this upon the greater public in case anyone else needs such information.

The Crown Market
http://www.thecrownmarket.com/

The Shop Rite on Frontage Road in New London carries kosher meats and cheeses, some frozen foods.

Kosher New Haven
New Haven is a Kosher town; we have the most kosher
opportunities in Connecticut. Below you will find a complete
list of the local kosher establishments in our area. Please
continue to support them.
- Joshua Cypess
Rabbi, Young Israel of New Haven

Local Kosher Establishments updated November 11, 2005
All numbers are (203)

synagogue located at 292 Norton Street.

Yale Kosher Kitchen at Slifka Center
80 Wall St, New Haven
432-1134
http://www.yale.edu/slifka/kosher_kitchen/index.html
Vaad HaKashrus of Fairfield County
Mashgiach Temidi on premises
Mon-Fri
Breakfast 8:30 am-9:30 am
Lunch 11:30 am-1:30 pm
Dinner 5 pm-7 pm
Fri dinner 6:45
Sat lunch 12:30
Closed Sunday

Meat Restaurants
Kosher Express (Chinese cuisine)
132 Amity Road (Amity Plaza Shopping Center)
387-7889
Organized Kashrus Laboratories (O-K)
Sun-Thurs 11 am-9 pm
Fri 11 am-1 hour before candle lighting
Sat night one hour after sunset
Mashgiach Temidi on premises

Westville Kosher Meat Market
95 Amity Road , New Haven
389-1723
http://www.westvillekosher.com/index.php
Vaad HaKashrus of Fairfield County
Mon-Wed 8:30 am-6 pm
Thurs 8:30 am-7 pm
Fri 8:30 am-3 pm
Sun 8:30 am-2 pm

Dairy Restaurants
Claire's Corner Copia
1000 Chapel St New Haven
562-3888
http://www.clairescornercopia.com/
Rabbi David Avigdor
Mon-Fri 8 am-9 pm
Weekends 8 am-10 pm

Edge of the Woods
379 Whalley Ave, New Haven
787-1077
Vaad HaKashrus of Fairfield County
Bakery & Pizza only
Mon-Fri 8:30 am-7:30 pm
Weekends 9 am-6 pm

Stella's European Bakery & Café
372 Whalley Avenue, New Haven
772-4779
Vaad HaRabonim of Massachusetts (KVH) - Cholov Yisroel
Sunday 10 am - 5 pm. Monday - closed, Tuesday &
Wednesday 10 am - 6 pm, Thursday 10 am - 8 pm, Friday 8
am - 2 hours before sunset, & Shabbat 6 pm - 10 pm.

Bakeries
Shaw’s Supermarket Bakery
2100 Dixwell Ave., Hamden
230-5000
Vaad HaRabonim of Massachusetts (KVH)
Mon, Wed, Sat 6 am-9 pm
Tues, Thurs, Fri 6 am-8 pm
Sun 6 am-6 pm

Stop & Shop Supermarket Bakery
2335 Dixwell Ave , Hamden
248-9615
Vaad HaRabonim of Massachusetts (KVH)
Daily, 24 hours

Stop & Shop Supermarket Bakery
112 Amity Road , New Haven
389-8600
Vaad HaRabonim of Massachusetts (KVH)
Daily, 7 am-9 pm

Krispy Kreme Donuts
1440 Boston Post Road, Milford
878-1283
Hartford Kashrus Commission (HKC)
Daily 5:30 am-11:30 pm
Drive-through daily, 24 hours

John Warner retires...

2007-10-21T09:55:00.000-05:00

It's the end of an era for me. The US Senator from Viriginia is retiring and with his retirement an era is closed. I remember sitting in his office as a young adult. I remember meeting with his aides. I remember passionately loving and respecting this man who was part of a mental love-affair with all Virginians. Though a flawed character, he seemed to have the grace that Virginians care about so much.... the honor, uprightness, gentility, etc. that has been part of the greatness of how Viriginia produced her sons for the nation's service. That Virginia gave our country so many presidents, so many strong leaders, so much beauty, so much love... The home of many military installations -not at all in the least the US Navy -home of the Atlantic Fleet.... Virginia. You rooted your sons and daughters in history. You planted them firm and gave them ideals.

So it is that from such an illustrious background, faded glory perhaps, but noble nonetheless....
John Warner is quitting the senate finally. Perhaps best known for having married and divorced Elizabeth Taylor, perhaps best known for defending his fellow Virginians in the Senate Armed Forces Committtee. An end to a childhood adoration of the Spector- Gramm- Warner- Robb- Bentsen- Rudman congress.... a congress that is no more.

{taps please}

how do I describe love to you?

2007-10-21T09:35:00.000-05:00

There's a certain feeling about reaching out to another person. A certain kindness in bridging the gap of loneliness. Somewhere a certain sense of wanting to be alive and passionate.

postdoc

2007-10-21T09:13:00.000-05:00

folks, if I decide to postdoc with the Wimmer group ... please someone beat me over the head and remind me that I desperately need to work with a group where the group is fantastic and the PI is phenomenally good as an advisor and mentor.

Japanese-american who influenced American pop culture more deeply than most people know: Iwao Takamoto died

2007-01-18T17:50:00.000-06:00

from wikipedia...

Iwao Takamoto (April 19, 1925 - January 8, 2007) was a Japanese American animator, television producer, and film director. He was most famous as being a production designer for Hanna-Barbera Productions and the artist/character designer for Scooby-Doo.

[edit] Biography

Takamoto's father emigrated from Hiroshima to the United States for his health. He returned to Japan only once, to marry his wife. Takamoto was born later in 1925 in Los Angeles, California. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Takamoto's family, like many Japanese-Americans, were sent to an internment camp. They spent the rest of World War II in the Manzanar internment camp. It was there that Takamoto received basic illustration training from a couple of friendly co-internees.

Takamoto first entered the cartoon world after the end of the war. He was hired as an assistant animator by Walt Disney Studios in 1947. Takamoto eventually became an assistant for the legendary Milt Kahl. He worked as an animator on such titles as Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, One Hundred and One Dalmatians, and Lady and the Tramp.

Takamoto left Disney in 1961 and joined Hanna-Barbera Productions shortly thereafter. He worked in several positions there, but is arguably best known as a character designer. He was responsible for the original character design of such characters as Scooby-Doo, The Jetsons' dog Astro, and Penelope Pitstop. He worked as a producer at Hanna-Barbera, supervising shows such as The Addams Family, Hong Kong Phooey, and Jabberjaw. He directed several feature length animated films, including Charlotte's Web (1973) and Jetsons: The Movie (1990).

Takamoto was Vice-President of Creative Design at Hanna-Barbera, and was responsible for overseeing H-B's many product related merchandising. In 2005 he received the Golden Award from the Animation Guild, to honor his more than 50 years of service in the animation field.

He died on January 8, 2007 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles from a massive coronary.[1][2]

**********************
There are some really funny stories about how when he left the internment camp he went to see if disney would hire him, they said come by with your portfolio and he said.. what's a portfolio. they said all of your drawing samples so he sat up all night and drew images of everything he could think of --enough to fill two notebooks.. on the basis of those drawings Disney hired him.

Also, he was the guy they used to call in when a boss would look at a cartoon and say, no, no that doesn't look right.. no matter who started the image, they would call in Takamoto the bosses would tell him what they wanted and he would fix the cartoon image. He was known as "the fixer." Takamoto's hand created and finalized many of the great Disney images we know and love. He will surely be missed.

goodnight piano man... death of Bill Dederer'99

2006-08-23T21:23:00.000-05:00

Dear Class of 1999,

I am saddened to pass the news that our classmate and friend, Bill Dederer, died on Thursday night. He was doing what he loved...playing piano and singing in a a concert for Handicapped Children in Peekskills NY. The last song he sang was "Come Together" by The Beatles. We will honor Bill's prophecy this Thursday, August 24th, in New Paltz, NY, where Bill has lived for the past year and a half.

The formal celebration will be held at Dutchess Manor at 2pm. http://www.dutchessmanor.com/dirs.shtml
Dutchess Manor is approximately 40 minutes from New Paltz. After the ceremony, we are invited to Bill's principal (Jose)'s house in New Paltz from roughly 5-8 for food, talk etc.

The final stage will be a party until the wee hours at Bill's apartment and surrounding bars... remember we are talking about Bill here!

So if you can, please do join us to celebrate Bill.

Please feel free to call me with any questions. I am staying in Bill apartment now with Jacob Dumez and Burks Spencer to assist his parents in the arrangements.

If you plan on attending and need help finding transportation or lodging, feel free to call or email me.

Please pass the news. Thank you.

All of my love,

Jeff Powers

said to Jacob

2006-08-23T18:57:00.000-05:00

"It worries me when we start thinking alike... it makes me worry about my health."

Jacob said this was quotable and that it had to be published and so it is.. meowmeow.

a better blog...

2006-06-21T12:45:00.000-05:00

so it has come to my attention that this is a defunct blog that doesn't capture the essence of blogging. in order to read actually blog-worthy posts out there please see meowmixspeaks.blogspot.com

SCientists who work on failing projects are the most optimistic people in the world

2006-06-16T17:01:00.000-05:00

I have come to believe that even though they are the most depressed people in the world that really, scientists who work on projects that have been failures for several years are the most optimisitc people in the world.

You see, most people have never been confronted with things not working. Most people in fact have never been confronted with failures as deep and terrible as having something so innately tied into one'se self esteem as one's mind -which is what scence research work is like really- be proven publicly to be unworkable or a failure.. or really I suppose a distinct lack of success... all the time.Often those scientists are not terribly social. They haven't much of a sociallife, their work is everything, and ...somehow they rouse themselves every day to go in and work..

working is easy when things go well or at least there is some tangible product like you helped a customer, solved some little problem even if it was just figuring out how to organize a filing cabinet or cleaning off a desk... but when you haven't got that sort of thing to boost your sense of productivity...? It's darned depressing and how could anyone motivate him or herself to go in after it time and time again?

I figure it must be that those people are just the most phenomenal optimists in the world. Yup.

So the next time you see a struggling scientist... pat him or her on the back and say, wow, I really admire your optimism!
;)

disclaimer: If you get socked for having said that, I hereby release myself from any and all ersponsibility for your medical bills. ;)

do friendships disappear just because you're mad at each other

2006-06-16T16:08:00.000-05:00

I've been pondering this question for a little bit now and I'm curious whether anyone else has an answer..

If person A is mad at friend B and becuase A is mad at B, they don't speak... is the friendship over?

Is it over if A is so mad at B that B no longer feels comfortable talking to A?
Is it over if A and B never resolve their difficulties?

What then comprises the nature of friendship...?

One might argue that it is the ability to rely upon each other. It is the ability to call up when in need. That it is the ability to chat when one wants to chat. One might argue that friendship is just some bond of goodwill between two people. (If A is mad at B, then is there still goodwill?) What if friendship is merely a misnomer for social association? "You are geographically close so I ssociate with you, thus you are my friend....?" That seems wrong. What if friendship is "you are culturally similar/mentally similar/ etc. ? In general, I supose I think of friendship as people caring for one another and being able and willing to express that... so it befuddles me when people are still friends and yet they are mad at each other and don't talk... Apparently I have even engaged in it... but I still don't quite understand.

Anyone have an explanation ?

The King's Daughter II by Raysh Weiss

2006-06-08T20:24:00.000-05:00

I am so shepping nachas...
Today was the premiere of Rachel's film The King's Daughter and I was really so proud of her accomplishment. Every person has a chance to tell a story and to tell it in different ways, but while the film before hers used a lot of shots.. it wasn't a judicious use of film, just gratuitious filmography.. while Raysh's actually really used the medium and the capabilities of film well...
wow, dude, I have to say.. I am so impressed with Raysh's ability and talent... I know that there are people who take offense at her message and people who might criticize some of the transitions, but really, she did a phenomenal job... really really... I am so impressed.
so very very very impressed.

Watch out world, here comes Raysh Weiss!
;)

Lee and Harriet Reese's letter

2006-05-30T19:02:00.000-05:00

Nothing else to say, the letter says it all...
*************************************************

February 14, 1895

Are you alive? Real? Or are you the most beautiful dream that I have had in years? Are you an angel -- or a figment of my imagination? Someone I fabricated to fill the void? To soothe the pain? Where did you find the time to listen? How could you understand?

You made me laugh when my heart was crying. You took me dancing when I couldn’t take a step. You helped me set new goals when I was dying. You showed me dew drops and I had diamonds. You brought me wildflowers and I had orchids. You sang to me and angelic choirs burst forth in song. You held my hand and my whole being loved you. You gave me a ring and I belonged to you. I belonged to you and I have experienced all.

thoughts to grow on

2006-05-29T20:37:00.000-05:00

I went to see akeelah and the bee today and it was an incredibly awesome movie.. there were a few dangling threads which I guess may get resolved on the DVD, but it was well worth the money spent to see it.

*****
"All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience."
--Johann von Goethe

"Love is much more fundamental than any kind of thinking or believing. It is the root and basis of who you are, at the most fundamental level. This means that anything other than love as an expression of your being is artificial and unnatural and is a result of not knowing who you are."
--Bill Harris

"Carefully watch your THOUGHTS, for they become your WORDS. Manage and watch your WORDS, for they will become your ACTIONS. Consider and judge your ACTIONS, for they have become your HABITS. Acknowledge and watch your HABITS, for they shall become your VALUES. Understand and embrace your VALUES, for they become YOUR DESTINY."
--Mahatma Gandhi

"Wisdom is knowing what path to take next... Integrity is taking it."
--Robyn Elpruhzlein

"We fear that we are inadequate, but our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves: "Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?"
Actually, who are you not to be these things?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn't serve the world.
There is nothing enlightening about shrinking so that other people around you won't feel insecure.
We are all meant to shine as children do.
We are born to manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone.
And as we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically releases others."
--Marriane Williamson, from 'A Return to Love' - this quotation was used by Nelson Mandela in his inaugural speech.

"Once you do something you love, you never have to work again."
--Willie Hill

"It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them."
--Adler

"Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do."
--Johann von Goethe

"We see things not as they are, but as we are."
--H.M. Tomlinson

"I hear and forget. I see and remember. I do and I understand."
--Confucius

"The aspects of a thing that are most important to us are hidden to us because of their simplicity and familiarity."
--Ludwig Wittgenstein

"Speaking with kindness creates confidence, thinking with kindness creates profoundness, giving with kindness creates love."
--Lao Tseu

"The man who strikes first admits that his ideas have run out."
--Chinese proverb

"History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely only after they have exhausted all other alternatives."
--Abba Eban

"Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish."
--Euripedes

"Those who make peaceful reform impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
--J. F. Kennedy

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
--Martin Luther King

"It's never too late to be what you might have been."
--George Elliot

"If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite."
--William Blake

"Man has no body distinct from his soul; for that called body is a portion of soul discerned by the five senses, the chief inlets of soul in this age."
--William Blake

"Those who enter the gates of heaven are not beings who have no passions or who have curbed the passions, but those who have cultivated an understanding of them.""
--William Blake

"Life is a daring adventure or it is nothing at all."
--Helen Keller

"If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we would find in each man's life a sorrow and a suffering enough to disarm all hostility."
--Henry Longfellow

"It is not the function of government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the government from falling into error."
--Justice Robert jackson

"When you look at the long history of man, you see that more hideous crimes have been comitted in the name of obedience than have been comitted in the name of rebellion."
--C. P. Snow

"It is what we think we know already that often prevents us from learning."
--Claude Bernard

"For it is not death or hardship that is a fearful thing, but the fear of death or hardship."
--Epictetus

"The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible, and achieve it, generation after generation."
--Pearl S. Buck

"Treat people as if they are what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being."
--Goethe

"Our identity is very closely associated with our thoughts and feelings. Usually, when we feel anger, we become angry. We are anger itself. When we feel depressed, we are depression. When we feel greedy we are greed. It's easy to see ourselves in the emotional 'guise du jour' and mistake this costume for who we really are beneath it."
--Marc Gilson

"A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can sing it back to you when you have forgotten the words."

"An eye for an eye will only serve to make the whole world blind."
--Mahatma Ghandi

"Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it."
--Goethe

"Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday. Was it worth it?"

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."
--Mahatma Ghandi

"Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius."
--Mozart

"That which does not kill you makes you stronger."
--Neitzsche

"God will become visible as God's image is reborn in you."
--St. Bernard of Clairveux

"Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs - even though checkered by failure - than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat."
--Theodore Roosevelt

"No act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted."
--Aesop

"If he is indeed wise, the teacher does not bid you enter the house of wisdom, but rather he leads you to the threshold of your own mind."
--Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

"In the midst of great joy, do not promise anyone anything. In the midst of great anger, do not answer anyone's letter."
--Chinese proverb

"Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time. Then your time on earth will be filled with glory."
--Betty Smith

"Feeling grateful or appreciative of someone or something in your life actually attracts more of the things that you appreciate and value into your life."
--Northrup Christiane

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."
--Eleanor Roosevelt

"The best way to know God is to love many things."
--Vincent Van Gogh

"Comfort is found among those who agree with you; growth among those who don't."

"If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn't lead anywhere."
--Frank A. Clark

"It's easy to be brave from a safe distance."
--Aesop

"He who spends time regretting the past loses the present and risks the future."
--Quevedo

"The highest form of spiritual work is the realization of the essence of man.... You never learn the answer; you can only become the answer."
--Richard Rose

"Yesterday is the past. Tomorrow is the future. Today is a gift and that's why we call it the present."

"I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him."
--Galileo Galilei

"Do not dwell in the past, do not dwell in the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment."
--Buddha

"Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
and though they are with you, and yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love, but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
for their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward, nor tarries with yesterday."
--Kahlil Gibran

"The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."
--Albert Einstein

"A Friend is one who Knows you as you are, Understands where you've been, Accepts who you've become, and still gently invites you to Grow."

"What most people need to learn in life is how to love people and use things instead of using people and loving things."

"We avoid the things that we're afraid of because we think there will be dire consequences if we confront them. But the truly dire consequences in our lives come from avoiding things that we need to learn about or discover."
--Shakti Gawain (The Path of Transformation)

"Whenever you find you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."
--Mark Twain

"The real art of conversation is not only to say the right thing at the right time, but also to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment."

"Don't be so humble; you're not that great."
--Golda Meir, to a visiting diplomat

"Always remember you're unique. Just like everyone else."

"Namaste" is an East Indian greeting (by putting the palms of the hands together in prayer position) which means, "I respect the place in you that is of love, of truth and of Light. When you are in that place in you, and I am in that place in me, then we are one."
Or in other words, "The divine within me recognizes and honors the divine within you."

Namaste!

Lloyd Bentsen dies...

2006-05-23T20:21:00.000-05:00

A good man died this morning.

His name was Lloyd Bentsen. He was a senator from Texas. I for one am saddened that the heroes of my younger days are slowly dying one by one. I met Lloyd Bentsen when I was a lot younger than I am now and a very different person than I am now.

Senator Bentsen (as he was when I met him) was an incredibly stately man. I was young at the time, but even at the age I recognized him as a man who carried himself with dignity. The level of respect he accorded himself and those around him made him a pleasure to be around, but mro than that it made him someone I admired and hoped to be myself.

I fall pretty short of that these days. In my younger years I wanted a political career. I worked for the local legislature, was a political civic reporter, aspiring to the governorship of the lovely Commonwealth of Virginia and to the Virginia State Supreme Court. He was convinced that in the future years the United States would need good people who were self-confident and self-assured and as a result met with students sometimes to ncourage them in their interests in politics.

So many things have changed in my life since then that I doubt I could be anymore what I had hoped to be there and then. Still.. being reminded of it, by his death, reminds me of what a great charge we have in life to be bigger and greater because we who have been given much, owe to our fellow man so very very much. It is our responsibility not to just pursue our bliss, but to pursue what the responsibilities we have to the world in which we live.

Every once in a while I'm reminded of the nobility of humankind that I knew when I was a child. I'm hopeful that someday I might fulfill my own hopes for achieving a place that I can do such great good for others with the same level of dignity and gracefulness.

God Bless Texas with equally wonderful people to guide her. God Bless the USA. God Bless the government of the USA. May Lloyd Bentsen's soul rest in peace.

Barry Sharpless's talk

2006-05-18T01:54:00.000-05:00

"The training received in the group is neither predictable nor
quantifiable; likewise, it is not intended to produce a product that, for
example, industry wants. Since nothing original is intentionally
discovered by scientists who cannot tolerate (indeed, they should welcome
it) a high degree of uncertainty, group membership does not guarantee
results. Because of the nature of our research, however, group members
preselect themselves and possess a remarkably high degree of independence
of thought as well as scientific motives tilted toward discovery, not
reward. As a group, they hold superior standards for judging the
significance of research, and I share with all them all of the glory that
is a Nobel Prize."

If there was ever a reason to "sell" or appreciate what a graduate degree
in science is or should be about.. it would be this paragraph.. you see..
he captures something essential to the scientific lover. Someone who
finds a passion in science will chase after this elusive thing --something
significant that we can give to mankind from our minds and really then
from our hearts.

my response to "How to Stop Medicaid Fraud" by Steve Malanga

2006-05-14T16:21:00.000-05:00

http://www.city-journal.org/html/16_2_medicaid_fraud.html

Steve Malanga misses an important, though perhaps complex, point in his consideration of Medicaid fraud. (See the City Journal article linked above.) The first part of this missing piece of your assessment is that the cost of the medical services and providers that overbill Medicaid are themselves expensive to educate and maintain. The second part is that Medicaid itself pays very little for services rendered, causing all sorts of ethical dilemmas within our system. The third point is that Medicaid doesn't create an atmosphere for healthy Americans by encouraging preventative medicine, but a band-aid for sick Americans. Health care reform, if our country is ever wise-enough to implement it, would entail changing the way we practice medicine, so it covers an integrative approach rather than our current attempts at healing a patient's current complaint or assuaging symptoms. If we could ever do this -and it would require the compliance of medical schools, hospitals, insurance companies, pharaceuticals, etc., which bodes badly for this ever happening- we would do more for the American public and probably lower the incidence of these kinds of infractions.

Maintenance of Healthcare Infrastructure

Any ambulette service or hospital has operating costs and a desire to make a profit. Maintaining the equipment, facilities, and staffing in order to keep the hospitals working well is not easy, no doubt, but hospital administrations are working to pay their administrative staff the huge salaries required to keep people employed in the field. When we talk about staffing, we're not just looking at the dentists, MD's, nurses, and double billing from hospitals, we're also considerinng the security staff, the lab technicians, the check-in staff,the administrators who oversee all areas of the hospital. Your wording "even hospitals" implies that you are astounded the hospitals double bill and overbill. Such an implication if it is indeed correctly interpreted on my end would indicate you have not used hospital services in quite some time. Hospitals are notorious for overbilling and doublebilling all patients --not just Medicaid.

If you would go out of your office and interview people, ask anyone who has had to go to an ER or had to have treatment of some sort in a hospital what horror stories they might personally know of. You'd be astonished. A young woman I know had a biking accident. ER physicians sent her home with a leg brace that was unnecessary in addition to crutches and a vial of prescription pain medications. An assessment by another physician revealed that she should never have been put in a leg brace and that a costly MRI should have been done instead. Another young woman I know was taken to the ER complaining of fatigue. She was admitted by the hospital erroneously as a potentially suicidal psychiatric patient. The doctor for the case afraid that she might be sued in case the girl really might be suicidal insisted that the girl be held in the hospital for observation though the patient insisted she was fine and wanted to be discharged. The doctor insisted also on putting the girl on anti-depressant drugs. After a week of normal behavior, the girl was discharged. The girl immediately stopped taking the antidepressants. She filed a complaint at the hospital, which waived her portion of the charges, but kept their payment from the insurance company for her drugs, treatment, and weeklong hospital stay. How you can think hospitals are an afterthought in the medicaid fraud is amazing to me.

Nonetheless, I would argue in their favor that hospitals are terrible to maintain. In order to pay all the necessary personnel, administrators who manage healthcare protocol, public relations staff who win over the "marketshare" of patients to choose their hospital over another one, lawyers to manage malpractice issues, security and valets to win over public trust and keep order, etc. and still make money, each hospital has to not just pay for their facility costs -electricity, water, sewage, taxes to the town/city/village/borough for the property, couches in the lobby, possibly a water fountain, etc.- , their actual medical practioner staff, technical lab staff, but also cover the tremendous cost of auxiliary staff -janitors, medical records, secretaries, computer maintenance personnel, plumbers, etc. ad nauseum. Add on the fact that diagnostic technology is expensive to purchase, upgrade, maintain, and dispose of. Medicaid doesn't pay even a fraction of a patient's fair portion of this grand production. Forget how much goes into assessing similar costs for ambulette service -mechanics, garage, etc. These services aren't in use all of the time either, but a hospital still has to pay the personnel to be on hand for a certain amount of time in case the service is needed at least between certain business hours. Some staff like lab technicians or some kinds of nursing assistants aren't even needed for the full time they are on duty. So, of course, they overbill. Is there any wonder then that hospitals work hard at defrauding Medicaid?

Cost of medical education -time, tuition vs. payoff -vacation time, salary

There are also staffers who take advantage of the system. You have a tremendous disparity among medical practioner staff. There are those nurse practioners, interns, residents, and young doctors, who work inhumanely long hours and can hardly be expected to really provide excellent care given the stress and terrible shifts they are forced to work. We hardly take note of how those people are the slave labor of hospitals nor do we give any thought to how anyone can possibly learn how to be a good doctor under such conditions. We're teaching the young medical practioners of tomorrow that they will be pushed to their breaking point every day for several years at a low salary. Any human under those conditions can develop a sense of entitlement and a lower sense of ethics. What restitution do they demand? They want to be paid well later on. They want to pay off their medical school debt of $200,000-$275,000? Of course. It doesn't take rocket science to understand this. Pursuing what is wrong with our healthcare system today requires a serious look at medical education and a serious intent to reform that system. Contrast that for example, with the life of a PA, a physician's assistant. A PA can routinely take off vacations and choose how many hours he works. His quality of life is better than the physicians and nurses with whom he works. Often if he wants he can work at two places in a hospital to make the bigger bucks for 10-20 hours a week and then at a clinic where he can really help people (without the bureaucracy) for say another 10-20 hours a week. He takes home a paycheck that is anywhere between $40,000-90,000, depending on where he works, what hours he chooses, and what his specialty is. PA's spend a great deal less money and time in their education, but can often make a similar amount of money as a doctor if not more in the first 15 years of their career after training is completed. It is the hospitals that pay the bulk of a PA's annual salary. If you were a doctor wouldn't you be jealous? You go to school for two more years than this guy, endure a training of 4-12 years more than this guy, indenture yourself and go into debt for anywhere between 200K to 300K -- and he gets easier hours and a comparable salary?! Forgetting the unpleasant issue of a doctor who overbills to make up for his education costs, the bottomline is that medicine is a business and every doctor's practice has an operating cost with similar problems to those mentioned above in the case of hospitals.

Reduction in Payments by Medicaid for Healthcare

I read recently that Medicaid may again slash how much the government will pay per service. Practically speaking, this does not solve the issue of how much we pay per Medicaid patient, nor does it help the purpose of Medicaid -which was to give healthcare to those who could not afford it. As it is, most providers are not willing to take Medicaid patients unless they *can* get more money out of the system to cover their bottom-line. I have heard from off the record sources that many doctors, nurses, hospital staff are told by administrators that they have to limit the number of medicaid patients they see (say the doctor cannot take any more new patients or make it impossible to schedule the appointment) or else try to bill more so they can recoup the losses of having a Medicaid patient. It just doesn't balance out on the books. Healing people is a profession that is difficult to do when the bottomline is always going to be making a profit. In order to keep from going into more debt (when one begins to practice medicine add malpractice insurance onto your medical school bills!), taking fewer Medicaid patients or else taking the patient and overbilling Medicaid in order to cover your costs is the only way to go.

One Ethical Dilemma: who are we making into doctors? and why?

I have even heard one young doctor agonizing over how he's going to justify to his group/partners his having accepted another Medicaid patient, because he "just couldn't turn the guy away." I think we all would prefer this kind of a compassionate person to be a doctor over the sort of person who is business-oriented. Our medical schools are geared towards the sturdier, more business-like, less sensitive, and less compassionate students. Those are the ones who come out successful, because they can stomach the long grueling shifts. They're the ones who focus on the salary and benefits prize at the end and who perfect the system for the "5 minutes with the doctor" appointments, complete with sparsely written charts full of incorrect information. One young man I know who is now a young doctor told me that if he had known he was going to speak with and see patients only 15% of the time and spend 75% of his time doing paperwork for charts, billing, and insurance, he's not sure he'd have gone into medicine. Though many of the more sensitive and compassionate people who go into medicine are horrified and unhappy about such practices, it's the more businesslike and aggressive people who make it and who force the hand in the long run. These people find a way to work the gauntlet of hospital pressures, group pressures, and insurance pressures for number of patients seen, amount billed, number of drugs prescribed, and number of procedures done. Older doctors train younger ones. The young ones who are more efficient and see more patients, bring in more money are rewarded. Most training goes on in hospitals -who have too m any business professionals screaming about profit and sales. We are creating more and more of those kinds of doctors, because of how much the education costs, the way our medical education is set up, and because of the way that the medical profession is practiced today. A profession that ought to be about compassion at its core, has the least compassion for their own practitioners, and as a result has the least compassion for all people, including Medicaid patients and the taxpayer that pays for them.

At the end of the day, if you want to stop Medicaid fraud, you have to ask why these people are doing it. We've chosen some very clever people to be our nation's medical school students, I'm sure they'll find a way to fool the system even with a team of analysts in every state. Solving the problems that push them to defraud the Medicaid system may lead you a lot farther in the long run than hiring a bunch of analysts to go checking every medicaid claim... though that's a start for helping us to pay for the reform that surely must follow.

Conservation of people

2006-05-05T16:16:00.000-05:00

There IS a conservation principle in the world...

Q and R were in love in 1950. Because of various laws, they were unable to be anything more than friends. Sad as it was, they developed a very nice and rewarding friendship and revelled in the knowledge that they were kindred spirits. They agreed to remain in touch and all, but that they needed to move on and date other people.

In 1953, R met W and they were thrillingly happy. Eventually it came up that W was not of the proper legal status to marry R either. So dissolved that relationship.

In 1957, Q met Y. Y was madly in love with Q and convinced Q to get involved in a long 5 year relationship. After a while, they loved each other greatly and thought they would get married. A few incidents happened in those intervening years that caused Q to remember eventually that Y was not the right person to match Q's life. One who is more superstitiously inclined might say that Q's neshama woke Q up. At any rate, whatever the case, Q broke it off.

In 1962, Y met W. They fell fabulously in love. They got engaged and lived happily ever after. (Or so the story goes.)

Q & R found out about Y and W and rejoiced for Y and W, all the while thinking how marvellous Hashem's world is. Mah rabbu ma'asecha...

Y and W had children L, K & M.
Q married D. They had children J and F.
R married Z. They had one child T.

Many years down the road it turned out that K's son S married F's daughter E. S & E had a son B.

B married V. Guess what? V is the great-granddaughter of R and Z, the grand daughter of T.

**************
It is said that in three generations, I shall bring you into my fold. So it is.
**************
I'm ever amazed at the hashgacha that seems to appear in the world. It is a phenomenally intriguing thing to me.

juxtaposition of Yom HaZikaron against Yom Ha'Atzmaut

2006-05-05T01:16:00.000-05:00

Recently, someone I'm fond of wrote the following line in an email I received...
... I never quite understood how to appropriately make the transition between Yom Ha’Zikaron and Yom Ha’Atzmaut…

I'm curious about that statement... and curious, too, to know what you all think of it for yourselves and what your comments might be regarding my thoughts below inspired by the statement.

Isn't the transition similar to that of Ta'anit Ester to Purim and Ta'anit Bechorot (though for most people ta'anit bechorot is a joke, because people just make a siyum to get out of it) to Pesach? Part of the fast is that lives hang in the balance --ours or theirs. Specifically, we mourn both the lives we have already lost as subjects to Pharaoh in the case of Pesach, the lives we might lose to Haman's people in Purim, and the lives we did lose defending and regaining Israel in Ha'Atzmaut, right? So in each celebration there is a twinge of the sadness and pain that came -hence the drinking on Purim -we also drink to dull the pain of the deaths, not just to make merry- and the affliction of Pesach, many died in Mitzrayim, and in the nesim that were made for our sakes -the actual passing over our homes and our firstborn as well as the death of those in the Yam Suf, so when we eat matza and we spill wine -which in those days was precious- we are "saddened" (lesser and lessened so to speak, bad pun, sorry) and likewise the juxtaposition of Yom HaZikaron and Yom Ha'Atzmaut, no? Or am I just imagining the similarity of those connections?

Perhaps I am waxing philosophical, but I think it is natural to ask -- is there any simcha in all of Am Yisrael that does not come with pain?

For myself, I would answer no. I think that might be borne out by Jewish history. This idea appears in Milton's _Paradise Lost_ and in "the paradox of the fortunate fall." I would then propose that the reason we juxtapose the pieces that you and I see of Yom HaZikaron before Yom Ha'Atzmaut here, because we want to never forget that one prize of being alive, being among those who can do and are alive to do, is that we can gain sensitivity and as such we implement strategies to cause the living of Am Yisrael to always remember first the pain and then to rejoice so that we don't take for granted what we rejoice about and that we don't lose sight of the fact that as we are brought up, so too we can be brought low --the inscription that is fabled to have been on Shlomo HaMelekh's ring "this too shall pass" or what goes up comes down, the ages old idea -though particularly prominent in the Middle Ages- of Fortune's wheel. If that might be a worthy answer then the transition is that in mourning we value what gift the ones who are dead now gave us and in celebrating we remember we are lucky -and perhaps only just so, perhaps it is not that we are any more deserving than the next people- to have what we have. On a broader scale, maybe it is a lesson about not swinging to extremes,I suppose too. When one is happy, remembering not to be too happy, when one is sad, not to be too sad. I like that lesson a great deal less, because it seems to be very much against being fully present in the moment, but perhaps. for my own preference, I would say that the transition between the two is that it is really one whole thing, just that the first thing is to remember that we have paid for our celebration and so in our celebration to be sensitive to others.

I have always been a tiny bit torn, because, as much as I'm probably closer to a settler type and feel sad about giving up land Jews fought and died for, I have always wondered what Arabs living in Israel felt about Yom HaZikaron and Yom Ha'Atzmaut and whether there wasn't a better way to handle the whole thing.

If you've time to respond, I would greatly love to know your thoughts, though I more than understand if you haven't the time to do so right now.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? By Edward Albee

2006-05-02T14:38:00.000-05:00

Uncontestably touted as one of the most stunning dramas in our time, _who's Afraid of viriginia Woolf_ by Edward Albee throws low punches and scores hits in the most tender parts without fail. The work highlights humankind's most powerful drive to continue the species and how childlessness can in so many ways be a total renunciation of all that we think we are meant to mbe.

Anthropologist Emily Martin, formerly Emily Ahern, wrote about how Western medical texts portrayed a woman as nothing without children. Albee's text shows that this tremendous power of reproduction actually extends even further to male-female relationships. In the sort of contemptuous banter that many a husband and wife fall into in the later stages of their marriages.. Albee shows us all too clearly perhaps how one's incrediblly low self-esteem can destroy relationships... where the words are just cover for the vital subtext that is pervasive in our society. Pepole who are brash, braying, aggressive on the surface, but inwardly really are just incredibly unsure of themselves and terrifyingly unhappy about who they are, their failings, and who they have become.

The power of this play and the fact thatit still strikes people so deeply shows us just how accurate Albee's portrayal of our world is. The simple fact that people have applauded the play reveals to us that its message clearely still applies today as much as it did in 1962 when it was first written. (much like Hansberry's _A Raisin in the Sun_)

Martha is a classic discontented housewife on the surface.

***break***
I should have been working, but I stopped to do something I really wanted to do instead, which is read another play. I love reading plays. If I could figure out how to be a good playwright I might do that someday in my life... anyway I read Edward Albee's _Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?_ It was a stunning.. truly truly stuning play.

I was really touched by its portrayal of how much having children and childrearing itself are a huge part of our sense of self-worth. and more than that at how low sense of self-worth hurts marriages/relationships and causes people to respond and react in really angry and hurtful manners.. the substance of the anger Albee wrote and created isn't that the people don't love each other, but rather that there is such a combination of hurts and pains that they can't help it, because no one else knows or sees their pain as deeply as the spouse/friend, etc... and so the firing of shots in a huge way is miscommuniation on the small level, but on the wider level it is totally understood by both George and Martha -and even I suspect Nick at the end- as the cry of pain from one woman and her total psyche from how much she hates herself ro not having children, for not thinking she is worthy of love, and onwards to how those things are expressed in awful mean-sounding barbs to other people... but really are just an expression of the misery that she is in. The interaction Albee sketches out for us is a means of saying "I'm miserable" --not just without actually having to say "I'm miserable," but in a manner that can reveal more about our misery than simply the words "I'm miserable." It is fascinating that humans need to communicate that deeply in fact.. and is obvious to some level that when the misery is at a certain level and the person is in dire need of someone to hear and know and connect with them in their level of pain that this method of caustic barbs are how some people can choose whether unconsciously or consciously to express the pain. (I don't think I had ever recognized that people are actively expressing pain in this fashion having always thought that crabbiness was a byproduct of being miserable. It seems thought aht on some level, even if it is unconscious as I belive most such expressions are, the suspicion remains in my mind that such an expression is actually the subconscious reaching out and trying to tell another person how unhappy he/she is deep inside. In which case also, any time someone is mean, hurtful, or crabby, really then I should be looking to see were and how that person is hurting inside rather than being hurt, taking offense, or responding the way we all tend to with our own hurt and upset. A fascinating concept for how to rule one's own emotions and passions.)

It is so easy to see that in the people around us all the time. The pain a human being can feel is an amazing thing. It isn't as simple as I hurt, but rather extends through time, through memories, through emotions, and interpersonal connections, and even connections to inanimate things.. all those cells and chemicals in the brain uniquely connected (unique in that it is different from one human to the next) to formulate a signature of pain that reeals itself in one of the most common ways that human beings can reveal pain.

I'm really impressed by Albee's writing. I hope someday I can write like that. I really do. It's fascinating that he can capture people so clearly in their moment of unconsciousness and bring the pain up so sharply that we can see it as readers or an audience.
Nothing moves me like literature. I suppose I like nothing morethan reading literature, psychology, and histories. It's a it sad considering what I do. I'm considering changging fields becuase I think it would be more in line with my character and make my life less of a struggle.

the funniest thing I've read so far... now that I'm learning to use LaTEX

2006-03-01T11:39:00.000-06:00

LATEX also has some disadvantages, and I guess it’s a bit difficult for me to
find any sensible ones, though I am sure other people can tell you hundreds
;-)
• LATEX does not work well for people who have sold their souls . . .
• Although some parameters can be adjusted within a predefined docu-
ment layout, the design of a whole new layout is difficult and takes a
lot of time.3
• It is very hard to write unstructured and disorganized documents.
• Your hamster might, despite some encouraging first steps, never be
able to fully grasp the concept of Logical Markup.

***********
I gotta say, ... that's a mighty fine hamster.

cool

2006-02-26T18:52:00.000-06:00

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/02/history-deserves-best.html

http://www.archives.gov/index.html

http://video.google.com/nara.html

neat article, meowmeow, about quantum computing...

2006-02-24T09:56:00.000-06:00

Contact: James E. Kloeppel, Physical Sciences Editor
kloeppel@uiuc.edu
217-244-1073
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Quantum computer solves problem, without running

By combining quantum computation and quantum interrogation, scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have found an exotic way of determining an answer to an algorithm – without ever running the algorithm.
Using an optical-based quantum computer, a research team led by physicist Paul Kwiat has presented the first demonstration of "counterfactual computation," inferring information about an answer, even though the computer did not run. The researchers report their work in the Feb. 23 issue of Nature.

Quantum computers have the potential for solving certain types of problems much faster than classical computers. Speed and efficiency are gained because quantum bits can be placed in superpositions of one and zero, as opposed to classical bits, which are either one or zero. Moreover, the logic behind the coherent nature of quantum information processing often deviates from intuitive reasoning, leading to some surprising effects.

"It seems absolutely bizarre that counterfactual computation – using information that is counter to what must have actually happened – could find an answer without running the entire quantum computer," said Kwiat, a John Bardeen Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physics at Illinois. "But the nature of quantum interrogation makes this amazing feat possible."

Sometimes called interaction-free measurement, quantum interrogation is a technique that makes use of wave-particle duality (in this case, of photons) to search a region of space without actually entering that region of space.

Utilizing two coupled optical interferometers, nested within a third, Kwiat's team succeeded in counterfactually searching a four-element database using Grover's quantum search algorithm. "By placing our photon in a quantum superposition of running and not running the search algorithm, we obtained information about the answer even when the photon did not run the search algorithm," said graduate student Onur Hosten, lead author of the Nature paper. "We also showed theoretically how to obtain the answer without ever running the algorithm, by using a 'chained Zeno' effect."

Through clever use of beam splitters and both constructive and destructive interference, the researchers can put each photon in a superposition of taking two paths. Although a photon can occupy multiple places simultaneously, it can only make an actual appearance at one location. Its presence defines its path, and that can, in a very strange way, negate the need for the search algorithm to run.

"In a sense, it is the possibility that the algorithm could run which prevents the algorithm from running," Kwiat said. "That is at the heart of quantum interrogation schemes, and to my mind, quantum mechanics doesn't get any more mysterious than this."

While the researchers' optical quantum computer cannot be scaled up, using these kinds of interrogation techniques may make it possible to reduce errors in quantum computing, Kwiat said. "Anything you can do to reduce the errors will make it more likely that eventually you'll get a large-scale quantum computer."

###
In addition to Kwiat and Hosten, co-authors of the Nature paper are graduate students Julio Barreiro, Nicholas Peters and Matthew Rakher (now at the University of California at Santa Barbara). The work was funded by the Disruptive Technologies Office and the National Science Foundation.

student request...

2006-02-22T12:34:00.000-06:00

Please refer to this site for a response to the Butz matter and consider signing the petition and spreading the word.

http://www.neveragaincampaign.org

counter to their hopes

2006-02-21T10:07:00.000-06:00

Regarding some photos I asked people their opinions of which depicted demonstrating Muslims threatening Europe and all non-Muslims with another Holocaust, beheadings, and other such violent cries of vile and insulting nature for the "insult to Islam" of the cartoons publish in the Danish newspaper. One particularly "classy" sign read "Europe is the cancer; Islam is the answer." Jewish comedians are funnier, but considering that levity isn't a Muslim thing, a rhyme like that isn't too bad from the humour angle. Other signs had phrases whose words should not be repeated and so I shan't do so here, but if you want to see the photos and haven't already drop me an email or leave me a comment. I received the following comment which poked at me and I felt compelled to share. "The apparent inability [of the Muslims] to detect the logical implications [of their actions and comments] is pretty amazing. The worst part of this sort of thing [the demonstrations and riots] is that it just leads to escalation of rhetoric, and polarization and hardening of attitudes. As a colleague pointed out, if people really want to get rid of the Jews, it would be much more effective to stop threatening them and let them assimilate."

YetiThinker sent me comments too, but he promises a post of his own on the subject so I shan't spoil it.

Recently at Northwestern University there was a whole hubbub surrounding the anti-Semitic comments of Arthur Butz, a member of the electrical enginnering faculty. The electrical engineering, computer engineering, and religion faculty all wrote letters calling for his resignation and decrying his lack of scholarship. The students of the Kellogg School of Management wanted to get him fired, which though many others feel that way the university feels they cannot do such a thing, officially because it would set an otherwise poor precedent for other schools. (One might wonder if it is because there is a self-hating Jew as the university's president and he is surrounded with staff in the administration who are Jew-hating non-Jews... but oh, well. We shouldn't dwell on that idea.) Anyway, that being said, one thing that has always made me laugh a bit is that, when things like this happen, the more virulent the attack, the more likely the Jewish community is to bond and strengthen. Perhaps these rascists, Holocaust-deniers, and anti-Semites are doing their part to help and strengthen the Jewish people... counter to their hopes.

2006-02-12T21:15:00.000-06:00

shabbat was interesting. I spent it at the local chasidic shul. I got wooed by a 38 year old divorced and overweight frummie who showed up in my chabad house and decided on the spot that she was interested in me, then there was a 27 year old relative of a frummie (there for the aufruf) working for a consulting firm offered to take my resume to help me get a job working for BlahBlah the company she works for all while amazed that I could read Hebrew said so, and obviously intrigued by the fact that I was this out of place foreign looking person in a chabad house... she started off with comments about how it's strange that the rabbi makes these comments with Hebrew words thrown in, but not to be scared or to feel bad since he's just spouting gibberish and no one else understands anyway. Then she realized that I read Hebrew reasonably well and asked me how I learned Hebrew, and I explained that I learned Hebrew in Hebrew School, omitting the silly fact that when I learned Hebrew in Hebrew school I really only learned to read words out loud, but not really to know what the heck they mean. Heh. so while I bentched she exclaimed to everyone around her "wow, look at her, I went to Hebrew school and never learned how to do that..." and then she would lean over listen to me and go back to being like, wow. At one point she turned to me and asked me if I knew what ethnicity I am and when I told the person I am Chinese she launched into a discussion about how her girlfriend is learning Oriental medicine and how she was a skeptic until she saw a demonstration by some fellow where he burned a piece of paper with his qi. I know a bit about that stuff too, but it is interesting of course how people decide what they should talk to me about and what they think I am based on how I look. Friday night a middle-aged woman came up to me and said "I'm Swedish and converted, though I'm not as religious as you." She paused and then said, "so do you like anthropology?" I cracked a smile and stifled a brief bit of internal surprise. It amused me. I have to confess though that there are reasons why sometimes I prefer quiet shabbatot where I can hide away and not deal with anything or anyone. In some sense this is what appeals to me about college campus Jewish communities. People are a little bit less likely to be poking at me if I'm another student in the crowd.

then again, when I went to the talk at Jeremy's shul on the history of CHinese Jews.. I swear every freak came out.. peopple decided to wear the most outlandish things in what was I suppose and expression fo their brotherhood with those of Asiatic descent? Who knows.. but mention soemthing foreign and Asian and you might get all the nutjobs in the Jewish community to come out. Oh, dear Lord.

As it is said... save us O Lord from those who would harm us, save us from those who are do not know how they could or would harm us, and save us Lord from those who so deranged they would harm us thinking we are someone else. heh, that's a bit dark, eh?

meowmeow.

keeping the Faith 2000

2006-02-12T19:59:00.000-06:00

it's an interesting movie.. an interesting premise certainly rabbi, priest, businesswoman friends from childhood since she rescued them from a playground bully... she has a joie de vivre that is infectious... but somehow has lost some of those priorities that make life worth living. Connected to her cell phone, connected always to her business.. most of which requires her to be a "ballbuster"and pushy, angry yelling at people to deliver, a persona that is all too commonly expected of successful business women. I watched this movie and saw stereotypes and cliches abounding. Don't get me wrong I thought it was funny, but I noticed underneath it all that the movie was about friendships... and perhaps it is that which I find my mind wandering off on today.

I look at people who say they want to marry a best friend. It's tough, because there are too many things people are trying to fill with a relationship. Too much space in the mind and heart that we are filling up with another person or too many things to do that when push comes to shove people are just afraid to find out what is inside.

Well, frankly, I suppose that is called navel gazing and there are many who don't approve of it. I myself don't really know what to say except that sometimes I think the world could care less what any given individual does.

happy chinese new year. here's a compatibility grid.

2006-01-31T09:03:00.000-06:00

Compatibility among the Chinese Signs (you have to know which you are.. but it may be quite likely that you are friends with someone you have a high rating for, which is just amusing, but not a serious thought or comparison.
on a scale of 1 (less compatible)
to 10 (more compatible)

Rat Ox Tiger Rabbit Dragon Snake Horse Ram/Goat Monkey Rooster Dog Boar/Pig
Rat 9 6 4 7 10 7 3 4 10 6 8 8
Ox 6 8 4 8 7 9 5 2 4 9 7 7
Tiger 4 4 5 5 6 3 9 4 2 4 9 7
Rabbit 7 8 5 8 7 7 5 9 4 2 8 9
Dragon 10 7 6 7 9 8 8 7 10 9 2 8
Snake 7 9 3 7 8 8 4 7 4 9 8 4
Horse 3 5 9 5 8 4 8 8 5 6 9 6
Goat 4 2 4 9 7 7 8 9 5 5 4 9
Monkey 10 4 2 4 10 4 5 5 9 4 8 7
Rooster 6 9 4 2 9 9 6 5 4 4 5 5
Dog 8 7 9 8 2 8 9 4 8 5 7 7
Pig 8 7 7 9 8 4 6 9 7 5 7 8

a harsher than normal rant

2006-01-23T19:00:00.000-06:00

Today I heard a comment (from someone whom I think meant no insult to me) that Asian Americans who become religious are doing so because they're "coconuts" or "twinkies" (wannabe whites) and they're selling out to the dominant white culture. I'm just sitting here mulling that over because I don't know what to make of it. Is it true? I'm sure that on some level being white has got to be easier and nicer in so many ways than being brown or yellow. I've certainly grown up with that thinking and I don't really know if it is true.

Even at the college level where I ran into a great deal many more people of varying non-white skin colors who were very intelligent and who demanded respect -- sometime in the past 11 years I met one white professor of psychology -(This professor is probably one of the reasons I consider psychology classes a waste of time and money. Everything you need to know you can read in books on your own.)- made an offhand comment to me that it is best if I stay out of the sun, because if my skin wouldn't be so brown, I would look a bit more normal and respectable. Perhaps she meant it in a different way and I certainly hope so. There were evaluations of Asian Americans by other Asian Americans based on who their friends were. If all of your friends were Asian you fit in and were good meet the parents material. If all of your friends were white you were self-hating. If you had a good mix of both, then you were well-adjusted. I failed that test miserably. All of my close friends were white.

One experience I could never quite find a way to reshape into a fashion that excuses the words and actions was something that I heard all throughout my K-12 schooling in Chesapeake, VA where I grew up. I can remember quite well the students at my elementary, junior high, and high schools who would call me a "chink" or walk by where I was sitting and say "ching chang chong" in whild and crazy voices. One student in particular would make comments to me about my body or the way I dressed, etc. and tell me if I changed those things he'd be willing to date me. As much as the comment hurt, I kept a retort that he was too stupid for me anyway to myself and would stay silent. I wondered to myself at one point several years ago whether the move in my own life towards being an observant Jew hadn't had more to do with wanting to hide who I am so that people wouldn't be able to hurt me than with a genuine desire to pursue a particular devotion to God. A heretical thought I thought then was maybe a devotion to God is a means of whitewashing one's identity regardless of what color one's skin is. One hopes that God doesn't judge one based on one's skin color. I never heard mention of prayers reaching god and being sorted by skin color. That idea almost sounds like a Bill Cosby skit: "Here, Lord, are all the white people prayers." "Put them in this box please." "Here, Lord, are all the yellow people prayers." "Place those in this bin please." With the apparent racism, why wouldn't one want to be white after all?

People who see me often can't tell whether I'm Filipino, Chinese, or some other form of Asian. I was travelling at the end of December and someone in line with me asked if I was Filipino. Another woman in line was speaking in Chinese and I was chuckling to myself listening to her conversation warning whomever she was talking to not to drive too fast. I suppose I've figured then that if people can't tell what ethnicity I am --my inherited identity shouldn't be that important to me either.

I'm not sure though that it could ever be even close to that simple, because I think it's inherent to any group to want to be something exotic and other. I see plenty of whites who wear "Chinese" outfits. These girls walk around in Chinese style dresses -the sort one expects to see on a waitress at a Chinese restaurant or the sort one figures is an American fantasy about what authentic and antique costume a Chinese woman would wear- or if faux Chinese blouses or jackets or slippers. I have admit to finding the Chinese slipper fad in the United States a bit interesting. Chinese people have these slippers because culturally we don't allow people to wear shoes into our homes. Sometime about a year or tow ago, women of all sorts around the US began sporting these slippers as the latest fashion accessory to their outfits and wardrobes. Something about that fad seems silly to someone who has been taught the those slippers are for indoor wear only. These women aren't necessarily imitating becuase they think it's good, but because they are immersed in a culture that sells material goods, pushes exoticism and individuality, and trains people to hide their self with a level of mediocrity in one's personal growth. A young woman mentioned to me that she dislikes or feels odd or feels somewhat intimidated by another woman's lack of fakery. She said that since this woman isn't fake at all, she's really intimidating. Why is that? Why is it that being true and honest is so fearsome? I suppose it is because society has bred a bunch of idiots who are afraid to know who they really are. so long as everyone else will play along with the fake game, no one need be exposed.

This past Saturday night I went to a lecture at a synagogue about the history of Jews in China. As I said to my friend Jeremy, events like that must bring out the Jewish freaks. It was worse than walking into the local Chabad house, which is potentially a means of experiencing the white middle-aged or older Jewish freak population depending on where the Chabad house is located. Everyone who had anything that looked Chinese -be it silky cloth with embroidered "Chinese style" patterns on it in the form of a yarmulke/kippa or shirts, vests, jackets, etc, was wearing their Chinese costume. Perhaps this is in support of the Jewish-Chinese relationship, but quite frankly, I don't see people wandering around in eighteenth or nineteenth century English outfits when they go to hear a Brit speak about the history of American and British relations.

A couple at the talk afterwards asked me if I was Jewish and cooed over how well I speak English. I wanted to hit them over the head and say --dumbass I was born and raised in an English-speaking country! My cousins talk about how marrying a white person is selling out and yet a great number of them have done so. There are people from both sides who will throw stones at a mixed-identity person. One may as well just learn that there are a lot of crazy nutcases out there.

I don't know what I think, I just know that somehow internally it makes me angry on some level. I wonder if I'm too sensitive.

No whitey is ever going to know what it is like to be looked at for the color of your skin and treated a certain way -as if you couldn't speak English properly- or to have your culture mimicked or mocked a certain way. How is anyone ever to understand? I wonder, too, how does anyone ever expect not to experience isolation if that is the case? Perhaps you can argue that Asian Americans who take on religion are those people who are spiritual who looked for an additonal means of connecting with the people around them based on shared values. Christian and Jewish values are very similar to Chinese values, so it isn't much of a stretch.

Perhaps then the answer is that in some realms one finds one's connections with people in beliefs or in a common cause. Beliefs and the common cause then offered by religion may be a means of bridging that gap and not a means of becoming "white." I certainly don't want or like to ditch my heritage, my foods, my roots, my traditions and rituals as a person of Chinese descent for what other peoplethink is normal and right. That bland Ashkenazi fare of things which are mostly sweet isn't ever going to be a staple of my existence. People often say, it's just food, but if you moved to a country where you could not longer eat anything you were used to eating -no bread, no cheese, no steaks, no potatoes, no salad, etc.- you might figure out why it's important and nice to have those things.

Perhaps though, people choose it genuinely because they care about God. I'm tired of people thinking that converts of non-white skin colors convert because they want to be white. The white converts convert to be closer to God. The non-white converts convert to be white. Where's the logic in that? Hah. Some Jews are just so stupid.

okay, end of rant. I may not believe all of this so wholeheartedly tomorrow, but I'm an angry cat right now and so I'm ripping on any piece of furniture that comes my way.

a thermodynamicist said to me today

2006-01-20T03:04:00.000-06:00

"Intelligent design? whoever thinks that intelligent design created people is crazy! If there ws a really intelligent designer, do you think he or she would have created a body that is this fragile and messed up?"

I particularly liked that line.

Me, I'm sitting here at an ungodly hour a whole hour past when I said I could go home and I'm still here, even though I really want to be in bed, I just don't feel like I can go and come back to do this, so I'm going to plug through it and try to get to the end. I did promise myself 5 horus of sleep though... I just hope those 5 hours of sleep don't start at 5 or 6am. I am at ther mercy of a potentiometer though.. and well, frankly potentiometers are crappy pieces of engineering when one wants precise adjustments. Of ocurse, this is why PID (no, not pelvic imflammatory disease, but proportional, integral, derivative tuning loops/control loops were designed... of couse those only work but so well too.. figures..

Recently, I read two articles by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk about complex trauma. There's been some interesting work done by him, Robert Levine, and an Israeli psychiatrist/MD studying trauma. What amazies me is that the level of trauma efect in Israel is lower than the overall level in the US. The Us is a wealthy country and has relatively lower levels of crime, wouldn't you think? van der Kolk and Levine see patients suffering from traumas in their childhood, little things... some of the worst of it being neglect or abuse at home, but the little things add up and sensitize the child the way a PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) event might. van er Kolk asserts that this little but compounded and complex kind of trauma no matter how little it might seem, is the underlying cause for a great deal of the poor health of Americans. He believes that DESNOS/developmental trauma leads us to the point where there are so many obese and sick people in the US. I don't know if he's right, but it sounds like a viable argument actually.

just thinking about carrie

2006-01-12T11:08:00.000-06:00

Often, between classes, I would go in help her stuff envelopes with the latest PIA newsletter and chat with her. I heard about when she worked in a refugee camp in Laos and we would talk about the Jewish community at Princeton and the cultural ramifications of different religious rituals. Of the latter, she, not having had any personal experiences with it, was quite curious. When she was in Seattle, WA area with another public interest job, she noticed how poor the living conditions were in the community she was working and decided to convince people to help her help the poor people with whom she was working. She managed to rally together a huge army of people to help fix up homes, feed people, and doctor the sickly. She had this knack that Mike Kelly once told me I had... of rallying people together to do what I wanted ... a knack for convincing people that they were vital to whatever I was doing and that what I was doing was important.

query

2006-01-09T14:06:00.000-06:00

this is s hiur by rav yitchak blau... i'm curious to know what if anything other people think of these ideas...

********
The Material, the Spiritual and the National Revival

Rav Avraham Yitzchak Kook offers a different reading of this aggada in his eulogy for Theodor Herzl (Ma'amarei Ha-ra'aya, pp. 94-99). He sees Yeravam as representing Malkhut Yisra'el, and therefore, the gemara refers to the relationship between Malkhut Yehuda (David) and Malkhut Yisra'el (Yeravam). To understand the relationship between these two monarchies, Rav Kook outlines his perspective on the goals of Am Yisra'el.

In Rabbi Kook's view, the Jewish nation must strive to achieve both material and spiritual success. While the former works primarily on the universal plane which we share with non–Jews, the latter touches more on our particularistic vision. Of course, it remains clear that the material success is the means and the spiritual success the ultimate goal; just as each individual tries to stay healthy in order to accomplish spiritual aspirations, so too the nation requires robustness in order to realize its own spiritual vision.

Why do we need the material component? On both individual and communal levels, material poverty often gets in the way of spiritual achievement. The individual who cannot find a steady job may find it difficult to concentrate on study and prayer. A national collective suffering the torments of persecution and exile may have analogous problems.

Perhaps there is a second factor as well. In Orot (p. 104), Rav Kook argues that the full flourishing of Torah depends upon a national political entity because Torah is not restricted to hermits and ascetics; rather, it relates to every political, economic and social issue in a polity. Note how the modern state of Israel has spawned a host of halakhic discussions regarding questions about military issues, national economics, the rights of minorities and so on. Thus, the material success not only allows us the breathing space for the spiritual; it also expands the playing field for the spiritual.

Yehuda and Yosef, the two leaders among Ya'akov's children, already embody these twin themes in the end of Sefer Bereishit. Yosef provides material comfort in Egypt, and he excels on the universal plane in his interaction with the broader environment. Yehuda provides the unique spiritual message of Torah.

The Davidic dynasty initially united the material and spiritual. However, a rupture occurred and the kingdom divided into two. For Rabbi Kook, this split is not just a political argument but also a divide between our two themes: Yeravam, a descendant of Yosef from the tribe of Efrayim, stood for the material success of the Jewish people; the descendents of David, on the other hand, passed on an ideal vision of our spiritual heritage.

While Rabbi Kook views the split as problematic, he argues that the two kingdoms could still have engaged in mutually beneficial interaction if not for the fact that Yeravam's pride interfered. In our aggada from Sanhedrin, God’s offer means that each kingdom can provide what it is able to, and the joint effort will enable these partners to walk with God.

When Yeravam asks who will be first, God answers that the material flourishing represented by Yeravam must take a backseat to the essential goal of spiritual striving represented by David. Yeravam refuses to accept such a hierarchy, and the partnership crumbles. The rest of Jewish history thus reflects the problems of a split between the two realms.

Finally, Rav Kook sees these two themes emerging from the idea of a Mashiach ben Yosef and a Mashiach ben David: the former reflects the material efforts of Yosef while the latter represents the spiritual ideals of Yehuda. According to Chazal, Mashiach ben Yosef dies because ultimately, it becomes clear that the spiritual goal is paramount.

Clearly, Rav Kook talks here not only about Herzl the man; he speaks in broader terms about secular Zionism in general. In keeping with his fundamental orientation, Rabbi Kook grants it significant value, but he sees it as lacking something crucial: one must respect its desire to grant the Jewish people a state and a homeland as crucial elements of our vision; at the same time, when not animated by a spiritual perspective, such nationalism misses out on the most significant element of our worldview.

Shirley M. Tilghman's lecture...

2005-12-12T12:00:00.000-06:00

Strange Bedfellows: Science, Politics and Religion

President Shirley M. Tilghman
Dec. 1, 2005

George Romanes Lecture, presented at Oxford University

It is a great honor to be invited to give the George Romanes Lecture in this historic theater at Oxford. It is also a personal pleasure, as I have several reasons to feel a special kinship with George Romanes. We are not only both Canadians, but he was born in Kingston, Ontario, where I lived for four years while I was studying at Queen's University in the late 1960s. Romanes was the son of a Presbyterian minister, and Presbyterianism greatly influenced the founders of my own institution, Princeton University. Lastly, Romanes was a fellow biologist — a naturalist as such scientists were called in the 19th century — and was deeply engaged in the study of evolution and natural selection as a close colleague of both Charles Darwin and Thomas Huxley.

Indeed, Thomas Huxley delivered the second Romanes lecture in 1893 on the subject of "Evolution and Ethics." He pointed out in the preface to his published lecture that the Romanes Foundation had laid down one requirement of its lecturers — that they "shall abstain from treating either Religion or Politics." Luckily for the lecturers who came after him, Huxley went on to note that, "Yet Ethical Science is, on all sides, so entangled with Religion and Politics, that the lecturer who essays to touch the former without coming into contact with either of the latter, needs all the dexterity of an egg-dancer."

Today, of necessity, I will be walking on Huxley's metaphorical egg shells, for I wish to explore with you the dangers that arise when science, politics and religion find themselves at cross-purposes on issues of importance to the future. I speak as a scientist, a teacher and a university administrator who believes that for the most part, the contributions that science has made in expanding our understanding of the natural world over the past century have contributed to dramatic improvements in the well-being and the quality of life of most individuals living today. The evidence for this sweeping statement is all around us: in the dramatic increase in life expectancy and particularly the reduction in infant mortality; in the virtual eradication of a disease like smallpox through systematic world-wide vaccination; in the generation of household conveniences that have freed us from punishing manual labor; in the provision of safe drinking water and sanitation; in the availability of world travel and its potential to foster greater understanding among people of different cultures; and in the development of the Internet, a powerful tool that provides global and instantaneous access to everything from the world's great literature and art to mindless chatter on blog sites.

All of this progress, and the economic prosperity it has created, arose from public and private investments in science and technology in many countries. The economic return on investments in science and technology has been documented many times over. In the last 20 years, we have seen the creation of entirely new industries — industries that depended on discoveries such as recombinant DNA, semiconductors, the Internet and lasers. These discoveries form the bases for some of the most powerful drivers of today's economy. What is remarkable is that all of these advances grew out of research in university laboratories and, as often as not, research conducted by students and faculty pursuing knowledge for its own sake, with no commercial application in mind.

I do not mean to suggest that advances in science have always led to unalloyed good. For one thing, progress in science and technology has not benefited all individuals equally. Whether you use metrics within a developed country or between countries, the gap between the rich and the poor has been growing steadily during this scientific revolution, and there remain far too many places in the world where the basic necessities of life — food, housing, security, and health care — are not being met. The development of life-saving anti-retroviral drugs has radically changed the long-term prognosis for individuals infected with HIV in the developed world, turning AIDS from a death sentence into a manageable disease for some. Yet we seem unable to overcome the enormous economic and public health barriers to delivering these same drugs to patients in the developing world.

Furthermore, scientific advances can have unintended negative consequences of their own. Thalidomide was thought to be a savior for pregnant women suffering from morning sickness until it became evident that it was causing birth defects in their newborns. The development of chlorofluorocarbons in the 1920s as a nontoxic replacement for ammonia in refrigerants was considered a breakthrough in technology until it was discovered in the 1970s that the by-products of the chemical reaction between CFCs and sunlight were chlorine atoms, which were destroying the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere, thereby contributing to global warming. On the other hand, scientists have also played a critical role in exposing the dangers of products first created in the lab. For example, the phased elimination in the United States of lead additives used as stabilizers in gasoline owes an enormous debt to the compelling research — and perseverance — of geochemist Clair Patterson. Blood lead levels in the United States have fallen dramatically since the introduction of unleaded gasoline — arguably one of the greatest strides for public health in recent decades.

The scientific progress we have witnessed in both the United States and the United Kingdom in the 20th century did not happen by chance. It arose out of a social contract between governments on the one hand and research universities and institutes on the other. Although it is hard to imagine it today, prior to the Second World War, the government of the United States did very little investing in fundamental scientific research. In those days, foundations like the Rockefeller Foundation were the most important supporters of research in universities, with state and federal governments providing relatively modest funds. The Second World War changed everything as the federal government turned to academic scientists, particularly in physics, to develop the weapons that would ultimately end the war. National research laboratories were created at Oak Ridge and Los Alamos, and others that already existed were greatly expanded. The impact of academic scientists on the outcome of the war was probably startling at the time, but it helps to explain what happened next. When President Harry Truman turned to Vannevar Bush, his science advisor during the war, to advise him on postwar science policy, Bush changed history by writing a highly influential report entitled "Science — the Endless Frontier." In it he laid out the principles by which the federal government would link its future investments in fundamental research with education, particularly the education of graduate students. By investing in the young, the system acquired a vitality, an energy and a capacity to change continually that would make it the envy of the world.

The confidence that society placed in scientific progress as the path to prosperity was reflected for decades in everything from surveys that identified science as among the most respected professions to the yearly generous allocation of tax dollars to basic and applied research. In return for this broad support, society rightfully expected the discovery of new knowledge that would lead to better lives for everyone.

Yet from the very beginning, science and politics, especially religiously-inspired politics, had the potential to become "strange bedfellows," by which I mean working at cross-purposes with one another, rather than in harmony. That potential for conflict seems greater now than at any time in my career, and I would like to explore with you today some underlying causes by focusing on two distinctively American debates that have received considerable attention in the press over the last several years: priority-setting in the national space program and a resurgence in opposition to Darwin's theory of natural selection. While each has features that are unique to it, I believe that there is a common thread to these stories, which I will try to highlight.

On January 14, 2004, President George W. Bush announced major new goals for the publicly funded exploration of space, most prominently, the goals of sending humans back to the moon by 2015 and eventually to Mars. This announcement came at a difficult time in the history of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the United States space agency. The two programs in human-based space exploration, the International Space Station and the Space Shuttle Program, are both in trouble. The Space Station, originally announced by President Ronald Reagan in 1984 for completion in 10 years, is dramatically behind schedule and over budget, and the Space Shuttle Program, just beginning to recover from the 2003 Columbia shuttle disaster, is slated for mothballing in 2010.

The announcement also came at one of the most extraordinarily productive times in the history of astronomy and cosmology, when explorations with satellite space telescopes such as the Hubble Telescope, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotrophy Probe, and the ground-based Sloan Digital Sky Survey, as well as unmanned space missions like Voyager, are providing us with breathtaking insight into the structure of the universe and our solar system. We are learning that our cosmos is much stranger than we thought. It is flat, not round or spherical, and it is flinging itself apart at an accelerating rate. To explain these observations, cosmologists have invoked a new force, to which they have given the Darth Vader-like moniker of "dark energy," to counteract the forces of gravity that we understand much better. Only 4 percent of the universe can be accounted for by the atoms and molecules we know and understand; the rest is composed of "dark matter" and this strange dark energy. We even have a much more accurate age for the universe — 13.7 billion years plus or minus a few hundred thousand years. At the same time, we are beginning to fill in remarkable details about our solar system, with new galaxies, planets and moons being discovered almost monthly, to the point where we are beginning to reconsider what constitutes a planet in our lexicon. These discoveries comprise a golden age of space exploration — but of a very different kind than President Bush is proposing.

This highlights a tension that has always existed between the scientific community and the political process whereby priorities are set. Ideally, priorities should reflect the relative importance and potential impact of competing questions, coupled with a dispassionate assessment of the likelihood that they can be answered by the proposed experimental or theoretical approach. In many fields, including my own, priority-setting has been a "bottom-up" process, in which scientists compete individually or in groups for resources through a peer review system. While government agencies like the National Institutes of Health can, and sometimes do, create set-asides for Congressional priorities like HIV vaccines or bioterrorism prevention (two recent examples of top-down priority setting), the system is always open to new ideas that arise in the minds of individual creative scientists. The underlying philosophy of such a system is that scientists themselves are in the best position to recognize the most interesting problems that are also solvable.

When the views of scientists are ignored in the priority-setting process, scarce resources tend to be wasted. A good example occurred in the 1970s when a handful of powerful members of the United States Congress pressed the National Institutes of Health to form the National Institute of Aging in order to spur research in gerontology, using existing resources to fund it. Given the ages of these legislators at the time, such action qualified as a clear conflict of interest, but the real problem was that there simply were not enough good ideas to justify the dollars set aside. As a result, potentially important research in other areas was sacrificed in favor of mediocre work.

To return to astrophysics, this scientific community has evolved a unique procedure in which the leaders come together once every 10 years, under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences, and, through an inclusive and collegial process, establish priorities for the next decade. The small size and relative cohesiveness of the field, together with the large price tags attached to individual experiments, drove the evolution of the decadal process. The resulting recommendations are conveyed to NASA for consideration, but they have no binding authority.

In 2002, less than two years before President Bush's announcement, the National Academy of Sciences produced one of these decadal reports entitled "New Frontiers in the Solar System: An Integrated Exploration Strategy." In it, the Academy proposed priorities and recommended substantial investments in space flights like the Voyager missions to the outer planets, as well as Earth-based experiments. It was a comprehensive list of projects and missions that included everything but human exploration. With regard to the exploration of Mars, the report endorsed the current science-driven strategy of remote sensing, in situ measurements from landers and the transfer of samples to Earth as the best strategies for understanding Mars and its astrobiological significance, and for affording unique perspectives about the origin of life on Earth.

There are a number of plausible reasons why the President and NASA chose to ignore the advice of the country's most distinguished scientists. They may have made a practical judgment that the American public will not continue to support large outlays of dollars for "pure science" in which new knowledge is an end in itself, but instead will require the tangible — even romantic — symbols of space science that the Apollo missions have provided. They may have made a military decision that establishing American dominance in space is strategically important, or an economic decision that mining the natural resources in space will be essential to the future prosperity of the United States. President John F. Kennedy rationalized the first space program by saying that "this nation needs to make a positive decision to pursue space projects aimed at enhancing national prestige." George H.W. Bush, or Bush 41 as his son calls him, fully endorsed the Space Station with yet another rationale in his State of the Union address in 1989: "Why the Moon? Why Mars? Because it is humanity's destiny to strive, to seek, to find. And because it is America's destiny to lead."

Without judging the persuasiveness of these possible rationales, it is worth noting that if President Bush's proposal to launch manned flights to the moon and, ultimately, Mars goes forward, the United States will repeat the decision-making process that led it to establish the Space Station. Then, as now, the scientific community was highly skeptical of the utility of the Space Station, most especially its scientific value, and was concerned that support for the station would preclude support for what in their view were significantly higher scientific priorities. Scientists then, as now, were anxious that the project not be seen as a scientific priority, or worse, be judged by its scientific accomplishments. Twenty years later, history has proven the skeptics of the 1980s to have been highly prescient.

The Space Station has foundered for many reasons, including the failure of all four administrations that oversaw it to support it fully. As John Logden of George Washington University recently pointed out, "NASA continues to work toward completing a space station program first approved in 1984, using a transportation system begun in 1972 and in operation since 1981. This is far from a fast-moving forward-looking effort." But a lesson I would draw from this case study is that top-down, politically driven science projects, especially those that will be enormously expensive, need to be clear about their goals at the outset and are unlikely to be successful in scientific terms unless they have the support of scientists who understand the challenges and likely benefits of the undertaking.

If cosmologists are deciphering the origins of the universe and our solar system in unprecedented ways, biologists are making enormous strides, thanks to the technology that was developed during the Human Genome Project, toward unlocking the origins of life on Earth. Yet here, too, science and politics have found themselves at loggerheads. It is impossible to ignore the increasing assertiveness of elements within American society who have challenged the validity of Darwin's theory of natural selection and have lobbied for an alternative explanation, which they term "intelligent design," to be taught in public schools alongside the principles of evolution. This is deeply disturbing, for the theory of natural selection is one of the two pillars, along with Mendel's laws of inheritance, on which all of modern biology is built. It is virtually impossible to conduct biological research and not be struck by the power of Darwin's theory of natural selection to shed light on the problem at hand. Time and again in the course of my career, I have encountered a mysterious finding that was explained by viewing it through the lens of evolutionary biology. The power of the theory of natural selection to illuminate natural phenomena, as well as its remarkable resilience to experimental challenge over almost 150 years, has led to its overwhelming acceptance by the scientific community.

Today, however, under the banner of "intelligent design," Christian fundamentalists in the United States have launched a well-publicized assault on the theory of evolution, suggesting that the complexity and diversity of nature is not the product of random mutation and natural selection but rather of supernatural intent. Although exponents of intelligent design have been at pains to distance themselves from overtly religious interpretations of the universe, the intellectual roots of intelligent design can be traced to creationism, which holds that the natural world, including human beings in their present form, is the handiwork of a divine designer — namely, God. Biblical creationists contend that the world was created in accordance with the Book of Genesis — in six short days — while the followers of intelligent design eschew this literalism. They say that their goal is to detect empirically whether the "apparent design" in nature is genuine design, in other words, the product of an intelligent cause. They reject out of hand one of the central tenets of natural selection, namely, that biological change arises solely from selection upon random mutations over long periods of time. For those of you who are not conversant with the literature of intelligent design, the argument usually begins with Darwin himself, who said "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." From there, advocates such as Michael Behe, a professor of physical chemistry at Lehigh University, declare that "natural selection can only choose among systems that are already working, so the existence in nature of irreducibly complex biological systems poses a powerful challenge to Darwinian theory. We frequently observe such systems in cell organelles, in which the removal of one element would cause the whole system to cease functioning."

What is wrong with this view? To begin with, it reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of how evolution works. Nature is the ultimate tinkerer, constantly co-opting one molecule or process for another purpose. This is spurred on by frequent duplications in the genome, which occur at random. Mutations can accumulate in the extra copy without disrupting the pre-existing function, and those that are beneficial have the potential to become fixed in the population. In other instances, entirely new functions evolve for existing proteins. My favorite example is lactate dehydrogenase, which functions as a metabolic enzyme in the liver and kidney in one context, and as one of the proteins that makes up the transparent lens of the eye in another. In the first cellular setting, the protein has a catalytic function; in the second, a structural one.

A common weapon that is used to advance the "theory" of intelligent design is to posit that evolutionary biology cannot explain everything — that there remains uncertainty in the fossil record and that there is as yet no consensus on the origin or nature of the first self-replicating organisms. This, too, reflects a basic misunderstanding about how science works, for, in fact, all scientific theories, even those that are approaching 150 years of age, are works in progress. Scientists live with uncertainty all the time and are not just reconciled to it but understand that it is an integral part of scientific progress. We know that for every question we answer, there is a new one to be posed. Indeed, the very word, "theory," is misunderstood by many who take it to mean an "idea" that has no greater or lesser merit than any other idea. The fact that Darwin's "ideas" on natural selection have stood the test of time through keen experimental challenge does not give his theory special status in their eyes. There are also those who exploit the fact that scientists often disagree over the interpretation of specific findings or the design of experiments to argue that nothing is settled and thus anything is possible. The fact of the matter is that fierce disagreement is the stuff of scientific inquiry, and the constant give-and-take is needed to test the mettle of our ideas and sharpen our thinking. It is not, as many would claim, prima facie evidence for deep fissures in the central tenets of natural selection.

Of course, the real test of whether intelligent design is a scientific theory, comparable to Darwin's theory of natural selection and worthy of equal consideration in the biology classroom, is whether it poses testable hypotheses. Here the answer is self-evident — it does not — and therefore it has no place in the science curriculum of America's public schools, which rest on the premise that the state has no constitutional authority to impart supernatural truths. Rather than searching for explanations for the complexity that is surely present in each living organism, intelligent design accepts that this complexity is beyond human understanding because it is the work of a higher intelligence, leading logically to the conclusion that experimentation — the tried and true basis for scientific progress — is pointless. The result is an intellectual dead end. In fact, because there is no prediction that can be tested, the future of intelligent design is dependent on the failure of experiments designed to test other hypotheses. It is ironic that intelligent design's reliance on negative proof exacerbates what religious historians have called the "shrinking God" problem. Each time a natural phenomenon that has been attributed to divine inspiration is explained by scientific exploration, the role for an intelligent designer is diminished. In other words, they are setting up God to fail.

Today the scientific merits of intelligent design are being heatedly debated in school districts, courts, legislatures and churches across America. No lesser figures than the President of the United States, the majority leader of the United States Senate, and a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church have suggested that in the interests of intellectual diversity, intelligent design should be taught together with natural selection. One United States Senator, Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, went even further by saying that "intelligent design is a legitimate scientific theory that should be taught in science classes." And he is not alone in this view. Eighty years after John T. Scopes was convicted of teaching the theory of evolution in a Tennessee high school, the majority of Americans are still unsure of the validity of Darwin's theory. Not quite two-thirds of respondents in a recent national CBS poll favored the teaching of both evolution and creationism, while more than a third expressed the view that only creationism should be taught.

There is considerable disagreement within the scientific community regarding the best way to respond to this assault on evolution. One view is to dismiss or trivialize it by pointing out, for example, that everything we know about the human knee would suggest that no intelligent being could possibly have designed it. Another faction argues that the scientific community should ignore the opponents of evolution, for by engaging in the public debate over creationism, one inevitably lends credence to its premises. The third strategy is to enter the public debate on the side of science and evolution, and to do so firmly but respectfully.

My own inclination is to engage, to explicate, and to strive to understand why so many people find Darwin's ideas so difficult to embrace. Of course, scientists have found themselves at odds with the guardians of religious orthodoxy for centuries. The Copernican revolution, which dethroned the Earth from its central place in the universe, was regarded by many as heretical, as Galileo discovered at great personal cost. From the splitting of the atom to the creation of so-called test tube babies, scientists have been accused of usurping the role of the Almighty. As Albert Einstein himself would say of Ernest Rutherford, scientists have "tunneled into the very material of God," and for many men and women, these advances have been both alarming and disorienting. As the pace of scientific discovery quickens and no corner of the cosmos or the human body is exempted from scientific inquiry, the perception that we are distorting — rather than explaining — the natural order of things will only intensify. Inevitably, this perception will find political expression, and thanks to the American system of government, in which power is widely diffused, the views of even a small minority can carry disproportionate weight on Capitol Hill or in the White House.

I would argue, however, that evolutionary biology and its sister science cosmology, which seeks natural explanations for cosmic phenomena, may be special cases. This is because they can appear to conflict with humankind's universal need for a narrative to explain our origin and place in the universe. As my colleague and former President of Princeton, Harold Shapiro, wrote recently, "These narratives, grand and modest, rational or irrational, develop as a response to our own mortality, to our lack of control over aspects of our situation, and to the apparent insignificance of any individual." To the degree that evolutionary biology and cosmology appear to undermine the truth of such old and revered narratives, their findings will be deeply troubling and threatening to some. Creationist literature is full of objections to the idea that natural selection works on a random accumulation of mutations and not according to a guiding hand or discernable goal. It rejects as heresy the notion that if the last 5 million years of history were repeated, if we rolled the dice again, human beings in their current form might not have emerged victorious. The great evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley, who rejected dualism of any kind, captured what creationists find most objectionable when he famously if somewhat irreverently opined that "evolution is what you get when you give an idiot all the time in the world."

A more temperate response is offered by Frank Rhodes, the distinguished scholar of Darwin and evolutionary theory, who has no difficulty reconciling evolutionary theory with belief in a creator. He argues that the "truth is that evolution is neither anti-theistic nor theistic. So far as religion is concerned, evolution is neutral. It does suggest that species arise by natural selection which proceeds by natural laws, but, like all scientific theories, it provides no ultimate interpretation of the origin of the natural laws themselves." Another perspective on this theme has been offered by Kenneth Miller, a professor of biology at Brown University, who wrote that if an exponent of intelligent design "wishes to suggest that the intricacies of nature, life and the universe reveal a world of meaning and purpose consistent with a divine intelligence, his point is philosophical, not scientific. It is a philosophical point of view, incidentally, that I share ... [but] in the final analysis, the biochemical hypothesis of intelligent design fails not because the scientific community is closed to it but rather for the most basic of reasons — because it is overwhelmingly contradicted by the scientific evidence."

This brings me to the joint lesson to be derived from the two case studies I have discussed today. Arguments over the relative value of manned and unmanned space flight or over the content of the biology curriculum in America's public schools may seem remote from one another, but at the center of both tales are dangers that arise when science and politics fall out of alignment and become "strange bedfellows." As Thomas Huxley rightfully said, it is naive to think that science can be completely divorced from other aspects of human activity, but the credibility of science can be compromised — sometimes fatally — when it is allowed to be inappropriately co-opted for political and religious purposes. Sending Americans to Mars may be politically astute, and promoting intelligent design in American classrooms may be a source of comfort to those who are threatened by the implications of natural selection, but neither, in my judgment, represents sound science, and to suggest that they do threatens the integrity of the entire scientific enterprise. The ultimate risk is that we lose the trust and respect of the public, on whom we depend for the support of science. It is not that scientists have a monopoly on truth or wisdom — after all, we are human beings, which means we are fallible — but in the scientific method we have a tried and true process to explore natural phenomena based on proposing and testing hypotheses through observation and experimentation. This method has served us well in advancing human knowledge and, ultimately, in helping to improve the lot of our fellow men and women.

The role of the scientist must be safeguarded, not only by society but by scientists themselves. And here I need to take my own profession to task for a moment. All too often, we take refuge in the ivory towers represented by our labs or limit our scientific conversations to our peers and a privileged group of graduate students and post-doctoral fellows — the scientists of tomorrow. There is a lot to be said for the "dreaming spires" of Oxford and the ivied walls of Princeton, but if our work begins and ends there, we will have only ourselves to blame when the public calls for flights to Mars and the teaching of creationism or, conversely, disregards the dangers of global warming or a potential influenza pandemic. And we will have only ourselves to blame when no one offers us a seat at the table where crucial public policies are formulated.

In his farewell address to the National Academy of Sciences this spring, outgoing president Bruce Alberts cautioned that "most people have never encountered a working scientist, nor do they understand how science works or why it has been so successful. Far too many think that we are weird geniuses, when in fact the vast majority of us are neither. . . . I am absolutely convinced that the scientific community will need to devote much more energy and attention to the critical issue of educating everyone in science, starting in kindergarten, if we are to have any hope of preparing our societies for the unexpected, as will be required to spread the benefits of science throughout our nation and the world."

This is not an easy task, but I believe it can be accomplished if we are prepared to venture into the public square and express ourselves clearly, respectfully and passionately. We cannot take refuge in esoteric arguments and bewildering jargon and hope our audience will embrace the positions we espouse. Science need not be difficult or opaque if we choose our words and practical illustrations wisely, and the concepts of evolution or the Big Bang are no exceptions. Neither can we succumb to the arrogance of knowledge. We must listen as well as speak to those who look at the world through a fundamentally different prism and be prepared to acknowledge the legitimacy of their beliefs while drawing a clear distinction between the tenets of science on the one hand and political aspirations and religious beliefs on the other. Finally, we need to invest our message with passion. By passion I mean a willingness to convey the extraordinary beauty of the natural phenomena we study. We can demystify the heavens without destroying the wonder of a meteor shower. We can explain the genesis of the giraffe's extraordinary neck or the millipede's bounty of appendages without reducing these animals to a collection of data sets. We can call evolution and cosmology what they are: the most compelling explanations we currently have for the cosmos and the extraordinary diversity of life that we enjoy on Earth.

Thank you for allowing me to share my thoughts with you today.

© 2005 The Trustees of Princeton University

Lightweight

2005-12-03T22:37:00.000-06:00

my brain isn't up to snuff.

thoughts on the parsha and the shiur from Rav Bick shlita that follows the post

2005-12-02T02:27:00.000-06:00

So here's the thoughts I've got. HaRav Ha Gaon Avraham Kook Hacohen zt"l wrote about the revealed and hiddden worlds in his Orot. He descirbes for us how Leah was of the revealed world and how Rachel was of the hidden world. (His explanation and discourse on this topic is summarized nicely by Gideon Weizman.) Why would I mention this though when we're only on parshat toldot? On the life of Yitzhak? The only parsha to deal with the life of yitzchak as Rav Bick points out below.

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Hey ...is this an interesting idea...
okay, or maybe it is just me frittering away time while my sample heats
so I can do the next run on it...I'm tired and I've been up all night,
slowly heating the sample, taking spectra, and heating it more, and taking
spectra.. sigh.. this is tediously long.
anyway,

i don't know how coherent this idea is... but here goes.

A discussion in Rav Tzadok Ha-kohen of Lublin's Divrei Sofrim presents his
theory that the Biblical figure of Esav represents external piety
contrasted by internal immorality. Rav Kook separately has this idea of
how Leah erpresents external things... something he calls "the revealed
world," and how Rachel represents the inner world, or what Rav A.I.
Kook, zt"zl calls "the hidden world." He is referring I believe to
spiritual level worlds, but I'm not entirely sure, you'll see that I make
some distinction in more tangible terms about these things though. I see
the hidden world idea as being more about a person's introspection and
the revealed world as being more about one's actions, one's external
doings, and the extrovert characteristics. Maybe these have naught to do
with spiritual matters.. i've yet to really figure that out. anyway,
forging on with the thinking... According to midrashim and rabinic
commentary that I'm too obtunded to recall sources for right now, when
they were born Leah's name was called out as Esav's match. Leah was
originally intended for Esav and Rachel was intended for Yaakov, but when
Yaakov stole the birthright, he got Leah and Rachel- he got both the
revealed and hidden worlds.. but what does this really mean?

First off, it begs the question that if HKB"H intends soemthing to happen
and it doesn't happen.. well we have to ask whether or not we really
understand this story.. I'm going to put aside that wuestion though and
worry about it later.. maybe I shouldn't but that is what I feel like
doing at 4 or 5am, so there.

Now take a look at what Rav Ezra Bick writes about all this:

http://www.vbm-torah.org/parsha.61/06toldot.htm)http://www.vbm-torah.org/parsha.61/06toldot.htm

I read this shiur earlier tonight around 2am.

To piggy-back off of ideas he presents but doesn't go to the end with...

(This idea might be able to give deeper meaning to the Avot as an
institution, as foundations of Judaism and the Jewish people, reasons we
can ask H" forgiveness mercy, etc. for our faults,... Why doesn't anyone
ever question the institution of the imahot and avot in Judaism...?)

I was thinking that Avraham Avinu was the revealed world component fo the
traits we see in Judaism, --hospitality, hosting guests, generosity,
tzedaka, social action -saving lot, arguiing with hashem about sdom and
amorra,- and that Yitzchak was an embodiment of the hidden world, more
spiritually focused and aware of the essence of a human in relation to
Hashem --this characterisitc is his "blindness" to physical things, but
that his blindness is an ability to see the spiritual and only the
spiritual in a myopic kind of way, but what it appears he means by this
is that a certain kind of introspectiveness is available to Yitzchak
that enables him to see people's potential perhaps more than their
actual outward or exhibited (realized) traits. Say Avraham is the
kinetic energy and Yitzhack was the potential energy meter --oy, I've
been in my lab, too long, one can tell. ...

Rav Bick's drash is about the blindness and is interesting. I heartily
encourage you to print it out and read it over shabbat.

Yaakov when he acquired both Rachel and Leah -which perhaps implies
that he had a match for both pieces -which may be why he needed two
wies.. oh, who knows.. I've been up for too long, but yes, perhaps it
is indicative of why he needed someone who was a match for both his
introspective and extroverted sides? or perhaps that they were
spiritual matches for his action oriented and inwardly focused self. I
have a difficult time right now pinning down these ideas in my mind.

Anyway, when Yaakov acquired both Esav's share and his own in his bracha
from his father... he gained a right to this double world, which makes
some sense.. You cannot create the people out of two sons, but you must
doso from one. So Esav who had the physical world the revealed in his
nature, but who wasn't able to marshal it properly or to use it for the
good of others as Avraham Avinu -his predecessor on that path- was the one
who had to forfeit his shaer in the creation of this people. Oddly the
midrashim discuss how the day that Yaakov took Esav's birthright was the
day of Avraham Avinu's death... and how much more symbolic is this
connection that Esav who didn't manifest his inheritance of that external
caring for the world, that external action based-service of H" self, lost
his birthright the same day the man who created that birthright Avraham
died? All in this, Yaakov gains what truly was the essence of Yisrael..
the ability to integrate the two into one life. It is culminated in the
struggle with the angel, who names him as his bracha Ysirael. Yisrael is
the integration of both the revealed and hidden worlds... I think this
idea of revealed and hidden worlds is much deeper and stronger than I am
portraying it in this moment. I'll have to see if I can read Orot or
other Rav A.I.Kook writings to explore it more.. I'm forgetting things I
read years ago now. sigh. Terrible. My brain gets less and less good as I
get older and more senile.

Anyway, it is necessary for Yisrael's very existence then that Yitzhak
experience the akeida. It is the akeida itself that provides Am
Yisrael with this trait of being focused on kedusha and HKB"H. (You
must read R'Bick's shiur to understand this. Really really.. and this
is a key point of what I'm saying, so I supopse that Rav bick's shiur
is of utmost importance to "getting" this interesting idea that I
wanted to present.. sigh. He writes it much more nicely than I could
or would, so please read it.)

In Parshat Toldot one characteristic of Yitzchak's blindness is that he is
unwilling to see his sons for what they are, he has so much of the angelic
rachaman -they cried when he was bound for the akeida and according to
midrash those tears fell in his eyes and caused his blindness... Rav Ezra
Bick claims that this blindness isn't a physical blindness until later in
Yitzchak's old age and so the blindness it causes is instead a spiritual
type of blindness where yitzchak sees things only in an attribute of mercy
and the potential of the person. (again, shamelss plug, read his shiur it
explains everything about this particular idea so clearly.)

Bad analogy in cse thoguh you need more explanation: Just as Plonit A
could say, "oh this person had so much potential and didn't live up to
it," Ploni B could say, "this person is a good-for-nothing, he has flaws
here and ehre and here," Ploni B doesn't take into account the person's
life path and so he only looks at the outward self. and not the inner
self. So, too, Israel, Jews, who are bnei Yisrael.. are not just
considered bnei Avraham or bnei Yitzchak... (Think about the pasuk
Hamalach hagoel oti... -Yaakov separates his bracha... the angel who
watched over me and places my name on them, and then he separately notes
the blessing of the names of the avot the essences of outer (grandfather
avraham) and inner (father yitzhak) worlds --I suspect there can be a
reason derived from that.. though maybe I'm stretching it a bit too far.)

Nonetheless, it is noteworthy that the Jewish peole are called called Bnei
Yisrael and Am Yisrael, because they are to achieve --or they already
have-- (not sure if I could make the argument more solidly one way or the
other that they have or that their job is to struggle to have) this
integration of the revealed and hidden worlds...

What is fascinating is that gerim are called by name bnei avraham... upon
conversion... they become plonit bat avraham or ploni ben avraham -- so is
the conversion then a sign that they have exhibited or put into action and
deed enough of some character to have their revealed world componenet of
themselves acknowledged? I have no idea, but it's an interesting thought.

shabbat shalom, cheers.
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The Israel Koschitzky Virtual Beit Midrash

Parshat HaShavua
Yeshivat Har Etzion

PARASHAT TOLDOT

The Blindness of Yitzchak

By Rav Ezra Bick

Introductory Note:

This shiur will make liberal use of midrashim in order to understand the personality and spiritual qualities of Yitzchak. There is a widespread tendency to view peshat and midrash as mutually exclusive, seeing drash as appropriate for rabbis making a point in a sermon but not as genuinely addressing the text. I believe this is a fundamental misunderstanding of midrash. The midrash presents a sensitive second-level interpretation of the narrative, searching for the meaning and wider understanding of events. The language of the midrash does indeed require decoding. Precisely because it deals so often with themes and understandings beyond the literal exposition of a story, it uses associations, metaphors, myths and other literary devices to convey its meaning. There are undoubtedly many midrashim that are homiletic in origin; nonetheless, the majority are interpretative. One of the goals of this shiur is to illustrate this point.

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Parashat Toldot recounts the entire career of Yitzchak. Avraham's life and deeds are described in Lekh Lekha and Vayera in a series of incidents involving heroism, devotion, sacrifice and moral excellence, and this is continued into Chayei Sara. Yaacov's life is detailed from Vayeitze until the end of Bereishit (viewing the struggle of Yosef and his brothers as belonging to the life of Yaacov, i.e. how the mission is passed on - parallel to Chayei Sara for Avraham and the second half of Toldot for Yitzchak). Yitzchak's life, his position in the trilogy of Avot, is completely encapsulated in one parasha - Toldot. And what did Yitzchak actually do in this parasha, other than having children and eventually sending them on their way? He dug wells! The only incident from Yitzchak's career described in the Torah is that he dug wells in Gerar. No drama, no great deeds of heroism, no struggle, no journeys. The last point is especially indicative. Travel and wandering are hallmarks of Avraham and Yaacov. Avraham not only makes the long journey to Eretz Yisrael, he continually moves about within Eretz Yisrael, as well as a trip to Egypt. Yaacov makes the round trip to Aram and is associated with several different places in Eretz Yisrael, completing his life in Egypt. Yitzchak's life is circumscribed by Gerar on the one side and the desert beyond Chevron on the other. The picture we receive is a sedentary one, uneventful, quiescent, passive. The Torah had nothing much to tell, it seems. Why then is Yitzchak an 'av,' a father, an archetype? An archetype of what?

Let us begin by focusing on Yitzchak's blindness. "When Yitzchak grew old, his eyes weakened from seeing" (27,1). That Yitzchak had difficulty seeing is undoubted - the deception of Yaacov in order to obtain the berakhot (blessings) depends on it. Nonetheless, it is tempting to interpret his blindness as not only physical but a perceptual, spiritual inability to distinguish: for instance, to distinguish between Yaacov and Eisav, and not only in the form of their faces. How is it that Yitzchak loved and favored Eisav, when we assume he was unworthy of this preference? The answer is - he was blind, for some reason unperceptive, undiscriminating, and hence easily fooled.

There is one relatively strong indicator of this interpretation, despite its seeming "drush" character. Normally, the Torah introduces a necessary background piece of information not at the beginning of the story but precisely at the point where an explanation is demanded. For instance, although the fact that Sara is barren is clearly part of the background of the visit of the angels to Avraham, only when Sara is about to laugh at their announcement of the impending birth of Yitzchak does the Torah write, "And Avraham and Sara were old...." This is injected in the middle of the story and to modern ears sounds like an interruption. This is, however, standard practice in the Torah. (See also, "And Rivka had a brother..." [Ber. 24,29].) In our case, the story begins with a statement that Yitzchak was blind and continues by stating that he called for Eisav to come. If the significance of Yitzchak's blindness is to explain how Yaacov could fool him, this statement need not appear before verse 5. On the contrary, its actual location indicates that his blindness is part of the explanation of why he sent for Eisav. From that, it is one more step to conclude that we are dealing with lack of discernment rather than just physical blindness.

This principle, that explanatory material explains the nearest verse, is behind the midrashic principle of "dorshin semuchin" - proximity is a source of meaning. Naturally, the explanations need not be mutually exclusive. Not only is it possible that Yitzchak was blind in both ways, but a connection may be seen between the two. Yitzchak's physical blindness symbolizes and is reflected in his mental lack of discernment - the physical state of a Biblical tzaddik mirrors his spiritual state.

Why then was Yitzchak blind, unperceptive, not attuned to the world about him? The midrash (Bereishit Rabba 65,9) cites several explanations, some of which are quoted by Rashi. Let us examine two of them.

The midrash traces Yitzchak's blindness to something he saw during the akeida. This approach is based on the statement, "His eyes were weakened from seeing." The latter phrase, "from seeing," is unnecessary and the midrash chooses to understand it as causative ("seeing" caused his blindness) rather than modifying (his blindness was of the type which affects seeing). The first explanation is that Yitzchak, while bound on the altar, looked up and SAW into the heavens, where the angels were weeping. The tears entered his eyes, seared them and, years later, caused his eventual blindness. An alternate version is that he saw the glory of the celestial throne and this sight alone resulted in blindness.

Both these midrashim are clearly referring to spiritual blindness rather than physical blindness. After all, the verse explicitly states that Yitzchak became blind in his old age. Would the searing experience of angel tears have a delayed effect, if we are to understand that they in some way burn? Would the sight of the glory of heaven gradually attack the optic nerve, like a dormant virus, or would it, taking the story literally, burn away the tissues of the eye like a red-hot poker? The midrashim are describing an experience which reorients Yitzchak's perception, a tendency which increases with age and eventually, when it becomes totally dominant inwardly, is reflected in his physical blindness as well. But what exactly is the connection between the experience of the akeida and blindness?

I think the explanation of the first midrash is as follows: Angels are routinely used by the midrash to express an objective rational truth, even where God disagrees. For instance, the angels argue against the creation of man because "he is completely deceitful" - and Truth is the seal of God (Bereishit Rabba 8,5). God's answer is to "cast Truth down" - not an answer which addresses their argument rationally. Similarly, the angels protest the akeida as being "foreign" to God (ibid. 56,5) - meaning, not in accordance with Divine justice. In our midrash, the angel's tears express the objective tragedy of the akeida - the world, its spiritual foundations, weep at the sight of a father sacrificing his son. Yitzchak was witness and victim - willing victim but victim nonetheless - of this act. He felt the tears of the angels, the tragedy and sadness of existence in a world where such an act is possible, while looking at his father's face, stern and determined, preparing to sacrifice him. Is it any wonder Yitzchak was unable to reject a son, even Eisav?

The akeida, an episode in Avraham's section of Bereishit, was the formative experience Yitzchak's life. While Avraham also was unwilling to reject his son, Yishmael, nonetheless he could be persuaded, by Sara, by God. Avraham appeals to God to accept Yishmael (17,18) and the appeal itself indicates he recognized Yishmael's true nature. Yaacov, of course, is famous for his willingness to discern and distinguish between his sons, beginning with Yosef and ending with the individualized berakhot - and not always berakhot - to his sons on his deathbed. Yitzchak, however, is unable to do so, and this is due not to a simple lack of intelligence or insight but to a heightened spiritual awareness of the value of fatherhood and sonship, an overwhelming sense of the tragic fragility of human continuity, of its cosmic significance (the angels are crying) and infinite value. This sensitivity will undoubtedly interfere with the practical side of fatherhood - you can't raise children if you refuse to distinguish between them. But is it not possible that it is nonetheless a crucial part of fatherhood and Yitzchak is an 'av,' a forefather of the Jews, precisely because he exemplified that ideal?

The second explanation of the midrash relates that Yitzchak peered into the heavens, and therefore was blind. Chazal are saying that Yitzchak's eye, following the akeida, was turned inward, or heavenward. Having seen so high, so holy a sight, having been in "that world," he was unable to also see and weigh and consider the problems of "this world." Yitzchak, in other words, was so overwhelmed by spirituality as to be relatively detached from mundane concerns. He was a dreamer, a visionary, contemplative, inward, detached - a "luftmensch" - and that is the sort of disability that blinded him to a clear distinction between Yaacov and Eisav.

The first midrash, while more tightly focused, is not actually presenting a different picture of Yitzchak. Whatever the nature of the cause, the result of the akeida is that Yitzchak's heightened spiritual sensitivity makes him unable to make hard-nosed distinctions in the mundane world. His mind is directed upward and inward; his field is depth of experience rather than practical living. From where in peshat did Chazal derive this picture? Consider the way Rivka maneuvers Yitzchak. It isn't only that she succeeds, both in the case of the berakhot and in arranging for Yaacov to be sent away, but in her apparent inability to approach Yitzchak directly. In his presence, Rivka is unable to confront or persuade. The Netziv traces this back to the story in last week's parasha of Rivka falling off the camel when first meeting Yitzchak. A touching story - but what is its significance? The Netziv explains that Rivka's first impression of Yitzchak, returning from a "walk in the field," which the Netziv believes refers to a spiritual exercise of meditation, was so overwhelming in its spiritual force and intensity that Rivka could never overcome the feeling of trepidation and awe in his presence, even when she knew intellectually that she was right concerning a particular matter.

This is indicated even more clearly by the lack of episodes in Yitzchak's biography. Yitzchak did not engage in remolding his external world; his experiences were inward, contemplative. He is an "av" - this sort of experience is a necessary and essential ingredient in the development of a full spiritual personality - but there cannot be much to tell. One episode in Yitzchak's life, repeated twice - digging wells - is the metaphor of this activity. Yitzchak doesn't conquer new heights, he deepens the achievements of the past. He not only digs wells in Eretz Yisrael, he RE-DIGS the wells of Avraham. After Avraham, who climbed to the pinnacle of Mt. Moriah, spiritual development requires introspection - "la-suach ba-sadeh" (24,63), wandering through the field, digging within; and Yitzchak, in his all-encompassing fixation on the throne of glory, was the one to do that. The great achievements of Avraham will dissipate - the wells will become filled in - if Yitzchak will not return and deepen them, forgoing the advance into new areas in order to solidify what has been gained. His blindness, then, is part and parcel of his fatherhood.

Consider - God could have intervened and told Yitzchak to give the blessing to Yaacov. When Avraham hesitated to banish Yishmael, God told him to do so, for Yitzchak was to be his successor. In Yitzchak's case, God neither cures nor instructs, and his blindness results in the berakha reaching Yaacov by mistake - not despite the blindness but through the blindness. Yaacov receives a berakha in a manner where Yitzchak's blindness is part of the berakha itself. The blindness is not merely a disability; it is the obverse side of Yitzchak's depth, concentration, and single-minded dedication to the holy. Yaacov, whose personality is so different, is a product of his grandfather and father - Yitzchak gives him the "berakha of Avraham" (28,4) - and he serves the God of Avraham and the "pachad" of Yitzchak. Pachad, fear and trembling, awe and retreat, are a necessary part of the integrated spiritual personality.

This understanding of Yitzchak's personality, in its one-sided extremeness, is based on Chazal's view of the avot as archetypes, all three of whom are necessary components of Jewish spiritual personality. Chazal understood that to be the deeper 'peshat' of Bereishit - a description of the roots of the People of God rather than a collection of biographies. This approach requires that we search for the significance of each incident in the lives of the avot and relate it to the theme of his life and of Sefer Bereishit, rather than merely, on the first-level of peshat, determine its historical coherence. For that purpose, the midrash is unsurpassed.

Questions and points to ponder:

------------------------------

1. Eli also suffered from "weak eyes" in his old age (I Samuel 3,2). Is this physical or spiritual? See the Radak. What is the textual indicator in this case to choose metaphoric blindness?

2. Yaacov also, when blessing his grandsons, had trouble seeing (Bereishit 48,10). In context, though, the relationship between his blindness and the berakha, and hence its implications for Yaacov's personality, is the exact opposite of what is claimed for Yitzchak. What is the difference between "weak eyes" (Yitzchak) and "heavy eyes" (Yaacov)?

This shiur is provided courtesy of the Virtual Beit Midrash, the premier source of online courses on Torah and Judaism - 14 different courses on all levels, for all backgrounds.

(c) Yeshivat Har Etzion1997 All rights reserved to Yeshivat Har Etzion

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deb musher used to sing with the roaring 20.. this song.

2005-11-30T18:30:00.000-06:00

TORI AMOS LYRICS

"Winter"

Snow can wait
I forgot my mittens
Wipe my nose
Get my new boots on
I get a little warm in my heart
When I think of winter
I put my hand in my father's glove
I run off
Where the drifts get deeper
Sleeping beauty trips me with a frown
I hear a voice
"Your must learn to stand up for yourself
Cause I can't always be around"
He says
When you gonna make up your mind
When you gonna love you as much as I do
When you gonna make up your mind
Cause things are gonna change so fast
All the white horses are still in bed
I tell you that I'll always want you near
You say that things change my dear

Boys get discovered as winter melts
Flowers competing for the sun
Years go by and I'm here still waiting Withering where some snowman was
Mirror mirror where's the crystal palace
But I only can see the myself
Skating around the truth who I am
But I know dad the ice is getting thin

When you gonna make up your mind
When you gonna love you as much as I do
When you gonna make up your mind
Cause things are gonna change so fast
All the white horses are still in bed
I tell you that I'll always want you near
You say that things change my dear

Hair is grey
And the fires are burning
So many dreams
On the shelf
You say I wanted you to be proud of me
I always wanted that myself

He says
When you gonna make up your mind
When you gonna love you as much as I do
When you gonna make up your mind
Cause things are gonna change so fast
All the white horses have gone ahead
I tell you that I'll always want you near
You say that things change
My dear

_Rent_ original play written by Jonathan Larson, musical movie directed by Chris Colombus

2005-11-29T14:17:00.000-06:00

"Forget regret or life is yours to miss"
"No day but today"
"Another day"
"520,600 minutes"
the songs that add up to give us another "carpe diem" theme... why do we only think about seizing the day, when we're faced with death? (aside from the fact that the movie's themes were good and worth thinking about, but that the movie as a whole was not a very good movie)

The movie made me cry... I think I started crying within twenty or thirty minutes of the film's beginning and kept crying until about an hour afterwards...

I remember standing up in front of a crowd and giving an impassioned plea for not pulling AZT, the psychological hope that it gave him and our friends was so important. At the time, back in 1992, we didn't know that AZT may have killed him faster. Maybe I would have responded differently had I known, but Bob's life was still really so precious. He cared so much about people. His love for other people was so great. I didn't know until later that all the bruises were something else -I just thought he was clumsy. At first he just thought he was clumsy, too. I remember the way we made our gifts each year... how I would search out the perfect and largest apples and he would find the perfect candycane. We made a point not to get things that were expensive or flashy and made a pont to take the time to talk about our lives. What I hoped to be someday.. and his asking me never to forget him. As if I could? I miss you, Robert. I wish you could see who I am now. How I've failed and how I've succeeded... you were so good at just loving without any expectations. My successes made you smile. Your gentleness and your stories made me happy. I found safety for a tiny moment there. When he shared the news I remember being devastated, but thinking he won't he can't die and then slowly struggling along with it a I realized he got weaker and weaker and I had to accept that he would die. That I couldn't ignore it and make it all go away. I lost one of my favorite people to AIDS on February 14, 1995.

I thought about my Angel, so like Mimi. I remembered how Angel strugggled with living and dying. She let people use her body like an object, because she never believed in her self-worth. Years of self-hate beaten into her head. How she struggled not to give into the druggies pushing and taunting. How she wanted to belog, to be loved, to fit in, and how she never could or would, because that was the lot life dealt her. Angel went from abusive boyfriend to abusive boyfriend occasionally being rescued by well-intentioned guy friends some of whom simply ended up using her, too. A few notable fellows who stayed above all that... at what sacrifice I can only imagine. I remember how she'd cry so easily and how she thought she was so broken she could never be fixed. The day she told me that she wished she could live her life over again and make different choices. The day she thought M. would somehow be her rescuer and how when he left her, she collapsed. So I cried for Angel, too -- the Angel in the movie and the Angel in my life. I remmeber how I dreamed because of Angel about opening a school where I could teach girls how to really know their self-worth how to struggle and work to love themselves in a disciplined and compassionate way and how to meet unconditional love in their lives. I wanted to teach the boys that the world requires respect and dignity. I dreamed of helping to make the world a place where Angel could have lived happily. Angel disappeared on NOvember 18, 1994. Sometimes in random places and at random times, I look up and I think I see her.

I thought of that band of friends and missed my cadre. I missed my previous life's band. The joys of how we lived and were are still so precious to me. Each day I remember that life is so precious we have to live for today. When I speak to people who speak like they live for tomorrow, I am sad, because I want to know what happens if tomorrow their loved ones are gone? In my mind, I say, "You. Did they know how much you loved them? Did you know what they meant to you?" When I say live as if this is your last, I don't mean shirk your responsibilities. I mean remember that people are so precious and our time with them is limited. When you speak with them, give deeply of yourself and be really there with them in your heart. TReasure them as if they might be gone tomorrow.

The clock ticks...
...
but "the bell tolls for thee..."

Life is too short to spend angry and remorseful. When our friends die we don't eulogize their Nobel Prizes or their Tony awards, we eulogize the human being, the love, the life, the warmth, the uniqueness, the laughter, the sense of humor, the character that they were. I would rather buy you a copy of _A Grief Observed_ then take you to see this movie, except I'd like to show you Mimi and Angel in the movie. How they were like people I have loved in my life and how they tap into soemthing I miss very very keenly even still today.

Lama Lama is Great

2005-11-28T20:40:00.000-06:00

Meowmix Chatul wrote:

If there was a program written to describe today it would go something like this..

When xy00 hours, some part of experimental set up fails,
when fails, if Chatul gets frustrated,
then bang head into wall or some other sign of frustration
When y = even, laboratory equipment fails,
when y = odd, experimental equipment fails.
When 1715 hours arrives, allow tiny amount of success and bait the cat into
staying longer...

Meowmix's friend Lama Lama wrote in response:
How about this?

--

my $time = 0;
my $magicTime = 1715;
my $result = 0;
my $failure = -1;
my $n;

my %Chatul = ();

#initialization stuff here
.
.
.

while($result == $failure) {

$time++;

try {
$result = experiment($Chatul{thesisResearch}{data});
}
catch IOException with {
push(@{$Chatul{thesisResearch}}, "frustration");
bang(head(%Chatul));
}

$n = int(rand(2));

if (n % 2) {
throw IOException("Experimental equipment failure\n");
}
else {
throw IOException("Lab equipment failure\n");
}

if ($time == $magicTime) {
delude(grandeur($result));
$time = 0;
redo;
}
}

.
.
.

_Saving Face_ by Alice Wu

2005-11-25T02:17:00.000-06:00

Wow! There is nothing in the world as rewarding for me as seeing an Asian woman succeed in a non-traditional field. Kudos to Alice Wu!
Director and screenplay writer...

This film was amazing!
Really stunningly amazing... beyond words for how amazing it is. I sooo want to own a copy of the DVD. Wow... All I can say... is WOW!
A phenomenal work.. touching, humorous, so rich, ...

in some ways this movie is my hero... it is like my big fat greek wedding in some ways, and an average joe american movie, and still asain american... and it breaks the barriers that I see so many asian americans struggling with.. I am so phenomenally excited and happy to see a film like this.. I really think that Alice Wu will go down in history as having made a film that broke a barrier never touched before in the film industry. I'm shepping nachas.... oh, baby. oh, yeah.
:)

Yehuda Natan ben Moshe Mordechai

2005-11-22T19:08:00.000-06:00

I look at all that I am, the human a compilation of experiences unique because with my mind, my soul, my experiences these all sum to who I am. If I had an identical twin who did the same things and went the same places, it still would be different, right? So when people look at the person within, is hat person's soul and mind a product of the genes? It is as if you begin with a certain thing, but that everything you do from here on out will change and affect that initial being. A parent could do the exact same thing to two children, but the two children will absorb it differently. In some ways, it amazes me that if people are so complex -- how could we ever contemplate that it would ever be possible to make generalizations? yet somehow in the human experience generalizations are possible and quite commonly so.

When I think of Yehuda I think of how special he was. Unique, indeed. I think of how particular his quirks were. I might think of his preference for hotdogs, chicken breast, and anything without sauces or particular flavors. This is hardly unique, though. So going on... I think of his "tornado dance" or of his Stetson. I think of the kriat yam suf Purim costume and of the wacko hallel. I think, too, of how he gave so much of himself to people he met and saw. When I think of how powerful his presence both positive and negative could be... People talk about how selfless he was. ...and I realize how much it took to hold the negative within to keep it from ever touching or affecting anyone else's life. I contemplate how much loathing he had to hold inside to go there... and believe that that meant he had no one with whom to share that negativity, being always required to be positive and giving. No one allowed him the right to be both the negative and the positive. So he turned it inwards entirely. Looking at that, what must he have thought or seen of himself? How skewed a picture could that have been? I can only flip through the pages of the worn file in my dusty lair as I review to myself this picture. I -almost heretically- think to myself: a selfless person has other things behind the selflessness... perhaps it is a sense that he hasn't got the worth to demand from others what he gives to them? perhaps he has learned so much not to ask, because his heart is so big he sees other people's needs as being so important, so much more necessary before his own... not out of ill-will to himself, but out of love for others? who knows... the list could be endless...

In the end I think also of how specifically he was unique because his family, his friends, his lifestyle, his schooling, his sensitivity, and his hopes and dreams... He wanted people to see him and love him, maybe just the same as anyone and maybe only the way he could.

Sometimes when I think of how unique each person is I look at social science fields and I want to throw them all in the trash and tell people to just stop.. stop it all.. stop the psychology, stop the sociology, stop that stuff, but other times I know too how those fields are valuable to us as a whole... even if it pains me how thpse fieldscan encourage society to make every person a generality and to see people moving en masse instead... but then I think of it in the same manner that I assess light, photons individually trave;, but I assess them as a statistically relevant sampling ... particles moving as an emsemble, but not those assessed as individuals can be described... (biologists know nothing of this type of thing, so they can scoff much more readily at the softer sciences), but if I were to be completely honest.. well, I am not sure I could scoff so.. and not be hypocritical at least... because I would have to say that I see there is some point to the generalizations. Indeed I do.

Yehuda was a ray of light. He was able to carry beauty with him. Whatever was in his mind... and I surely do not know... I know that he touched my life with beauty and grace. His ability to love another human being was precious... rare no matter who your associates are. I know I see precious little of that in the people I have encountered thusfar in life.

I Decide by Lindsey Lohan

2005-11-20T14:08:00.000-06:00

Last night was remarkably interesting. I actually wrote a whole post about this and then my PC froze which meant I lost it. Sad, but not the end of the world. Last night, I made the green mung bean dessert soup for Miriam and her family. Batya kept me company and we watched _Princess Diaries 2_, which I realize will make Shimon groan and roll his eyes, because -yes, it is remarkably predictable, but I was okay with the fluffiness of thhe movie. There are three songs on the soundtrack whose lyrics I like very much. I Decide, This is My Time, and Your Crowning Glory... it was so cute though that Batya held my hand when she got really excited in the movie.. it was so funny and reached one of those deep inner spots of humanity.

I had really interesting discussions with a friend of mine who came in town for job interviews. We haven't had time like that in a really really long time and it was so nice.

There seems to be a general concensus from people that there isn't a one person this bashert who is the only person one will ever match up with ever... which is fascinating to me. I remember having a discussion with Josh about the Talmud's "take" on marriages and how one and another one get together and how it "works." I remember speaking to a number of people about how one "knows" when one has found one's match and it is interesting to me, not the variance and not the similarities in their opinions about how one meets or who one meets that other person, but more the emotional and internal position of the person when he/she discovers the person he/she chooses to marry. It seems more from talking to a lot of people that that mental frame is of great importance for a match to occur. It's like Plonit Aleph says this year she will meet her husband and get married this year and Ploni Bet says that he just decided that he was going to meet a girl, and then he found and decided to marry Plonit Gimel. It is really intriguing to me. Because in a bunch of cases of people that I've spoken to now, both married and non-married people seem to agree that the idea of there being one and only one doesn't seem to work. It's humourous to me, because several people have mentioned this niggling suspicion independently of each other.

Besides that I saw a remarkable case this week of another one of these intentionality/mindfulness, Buddhist training things at work, which makes me marvel and feel awe for the human mind. I agree with those who would postulate that emotions come from that unique set of experiences that an individual goes through.. those experiences add up to create the person, complete with his/her complexity... that complexity that CSLewis wrote about in _A Grief Observed_ and that complexity that makes it so we can't truly ever predict another person's thoughts, beliefs, and actions.

overheard recently from tigerlily

2005-11-18T12:18:00.000-06:00

Overheard recently... "oh, and the cutie can't spell for shit."

LOL
How amusingly funny a line. I love it!

Manon Lescaut by Giacomo Puccini

2005-11-16T18:30:00.000-06:00

I heard/saw last night and EXCELLENT performance of the opera Manon Lescaut. It was so phenomenally good actually I was so pleasantly surprised.. When I was a child we would go to the opera and sometimes I would be bored and sometimes I would be entranced.. it really depended on the opera and the opera company.. I wish I could take my father to hear an opera performance when he comes to visit, but I don't know when he will next come to visit. sEriously though.. he would love to hear opera performed live here. It's much better than what we had back at home. When we were little my parents took our whole family to the opera and we would listen and just breathe in the gorgeous music. It was amazingly wonderful.. the performance brought me to tears actualyl.. it felt so good to hear the music performed well.. there's soemthing about how music really touches the soul.. My "aunt" Rachel says I am a sensitive person, tehre's some book about sensitive people, she was reading it to see if my "cousin" Miriam was a sensitive child, since she is sensitive to sounds, but when she was done reading it Rachel emailed me and said, I don't think Miriam is sensitive like this book says anymore, but I do think *you* are. It made me laugh at how cute and funny that was. I have yet to read the book though I hope to at some point, because I am very curious to know what this type of person is. Anyway, I believe it probably connects to the way I experience opera. I efel it deep in my soul. The storylines are never greatly developed, but it is the music and the staging which make opera so incredible.. the pathos of the music.. there is soemthing about those sounds done just so which strike my ehartstrings and brings me to soar in glee and crash in sorrow with the opera as it unfolds before my eyes. It is so beautiful.

The only thing that bothered me was the bad step that they gave the male singers.. to prance forward and back.. it was badly done. The sets were gorgeous. Manon's acting and signing were stupendous. Des Grieux's singin was fantastic. Lescaut was obviously a lesser qulatiy voice which was troubling. Geronte also had a beautiful voice, but sadly it was unremarkable when placed next to Manon and Des Grieux.

this whole production was about gorgeous mouth-watering presentation and stunningly vivid juxtapositions. It was very decadent and brimmed full of passion in the entire act 2.. which I think was really Puccini's masterpiece. I've never seen a more compelling act or heard a more heart-wrenching and beautiful series of duets.

I really loved this ending scene in Act 2 where Manon brings to Geronte the mirror and says look at yourself and then look at us... she is juxtaposing the lovers vs. the lecherous old man (there seems to always be a tragic woman who dies and a lecherous old man in these great stories), what was astoundingly played was the fact that when Geronte has her arrested, he brings her tattered belongings before her and then shows her the same mirror and that final positioning .. physically is so striking.. it compels one to see the juxtaposition and to recall the actions that were mirrored.. likewise there is this lovely bit of music in the first act when desGrieux falls in love with Manon and wants her to run away with him. It is mirrored in words, language and even a hint of the musical theme when she is in prison and he is hoping to have her break out of the jail.. the juxtaposition of her life before versus her life in the jail... he tries to free her from both previous scenarios.. in one case doomed to the convent, loveless, and poor, young and lovely... and in the other case, imprisoned, separated from her love, trodden by time more now, and about to be exiled... He is proof that "Omnia Amor vincet" is not true as the nun in _The Canterbury tales_ would have us believe... Love does not conquer all. Apparently, Puccini felt it was a worthwhile tale to tell of how love cannot conquer a woman's folly, a man's jealousy, human greed, nor a man's lust... or is that really his theme.. perhaps not. Perhaps really Puccini was trying to tell us how miserable life, even with the noblest of emotions, cannot be unsullied and ideal in this world. this amazingly deep love that des Grieux feels for Manon drives him and her on this terrible downwards path.. had Manon never met des Grieux and instead been abducted into a life of luxury with Geronte she could still have borne it well and fared decently.. but once one has tasted that beautiful thing of a real love.. precious, delicious, and amazingly powerful --kind of like one of the richest creamiest of custard.. ah, the perfect creme brulee for example... so soft, so transient, so delectable, one wants to keep it forever but even the moment it is on the tongue it is vanishing before one can capture it and commit it to memory. (Can you tell I like a gourmet creme brulee? heh.) Anyway.. I am not yet sure I have a handle on what was fantastic about this opera theme wise, but I have to tell you my artistic palate's epicurean desires were so well soothed last night I am eager to hear Der Rosenkavalier in February... and tempted sorely to take off to hear Cosi fan tutte or die fledermaus in january ... though I haven't a clue who i would go with if i went in january.

Apparently, Jacob doesn't think that a gorgeous opera is worth the travel... sigh. The unappreciative!

_Kitchen_ by Banana Yoshimoto

2005-11-13T18:37:00.000-06:00

"...a kitchen, some plants, someone sleeping in the next room... perfect quiet. At peace, I slept. ... p.16"
So BY writes about Mikage's own experience recovering from the death of her last family member. Me, reading it, I thought about the weeks after Yehuda's death, when I took comfort in having people sleep over in my living room.. somehow they provided me with peacefulness that I think someone who is sensitive to some degree might understand. I take comfort now, despite Sheena's berating me for leaning on people too much and Dalia's disapproval, that other people, too, who have felt such pain have also taken refuge in the same kind of things I did. That for a handful of people perhaps, such slight alterations to a situation keep the aura of death at bay until the pain can be handled more easily.

I found this book to be so cathartic and so good at pointing at how I felt that I was relieved and happier for having read it. Recovering the will to live after so many traumas in a row, beginning with Dave's death, Carrie's death, and leading up to this point where the tolling bell came to be so painful for me, is a journey in itself. I found that reading of MIkage and Yuichi's struggles and then Satsuki's struggle, too... it reminds me of the bits I went through on my own, too. Grieving is so personal in a way. When Ilana asked, meaning to be kind, how I was doing... I just thought to myself, how can I tell this person who doesn't know me and doesn't know what I felt or took into my heart, ... but who also doesn't know what my life's past has been and why it mattered to me so much. It hurt like you couldn't believe that people who aren't grieving stare at you like you're a freak and they judge you for things they don't know and don't feel. No one seems to "get" it. And the grief is renewed again and again for each person --I don't think that grieving gets easier when more people die. It's just different. I remember the numbness I felt when Ronald Marshall died. That numbness was nothing like the chill that grabbed my heart when Carrie died. It was worse when Yehuda died. It comfotrts me that other people feel the same heart stop when they see a reminder them.. maybe it's a laugh, or a joke, a hand mannerism, a moue, an object, or an article of clothing, somehow the little pieces that we hold in our hands... how we don't let go, how we let go, but then are called back to remember, ... pausing for pain happens continuously, because we don't ever really forget ... and how people further down the line in our lives will never understand why a red pickup truck might make me sad, or why a black leather vest or a black hat might cause me to stop breathing for a moment longer than normal,... but that people down the line in my life wont' know, won't udnerstand, won't see past the curtain of superficialtiy.

Yoshimoto writes on p. 20" No matter how dreamlike a love I have found myself in, no matter how delightfully drunk i have been in my heart I was always aware that my family consisted of only one other person. The space that cannot be filled, no matter how cheerfully a child and an old person are living together --the deathly silence that, panting in a corner of the room, pushed its way in like a shudder. I felt it very early, althgouh no one told me about it. ... When was it I realized that, on this truly dark and solitary path we all walk, the only way we can light is our own? Althrough I was raised with love, I was always very lonely. Someday without fail, everyone will disappear, scattered into the blackness of time. I've always lived with that knowledge rooted in my being..."

That passage speaks to me so strongly I am not sure I have the words to convey it well to anyone else what it conjures within me.

Living with the Tanabes, Mikage finds that "little by little, light and air came into [her] heart." With the peace in their unobtrusive company, she slowly reacclimated herself to life. This emergence into light comes with something that Mikage only slowly recognises within herself, though.

"Even I, slow as I am, finally understood his excessive unnaturalness. When I took a good look in his eyes, I understood. He was terribly, terribly sad. Sotaro had said that even though she'd been seeing him for a year Yuichi's girlfriend didn't understand that slightest thing about him, and it made her angry. she said Yuichi was incapable of caring more for for a girl than he did for a fountain pen. Because I wasn't inlove with Yuichi, I understood that very well. The quality and importance of a fountain pen meant to him something completely different from what it meant to her. p.29" She sees it first in Yuichi who is mourning the loss of a parent and his own family. Yuichi's tender protective care for his fountain pen seems to the outsider -even to the girlfriend- so weird. The fountain pen though is a symbol of something steady, reliable, trustworthy, and meaningful that isn't true of the girlfriend. She doesn't understand him and becuase she doesn't understand who he is, she doesn't "get" how to meet his needs and get her needs met by him.

"If a person wants to stand on her own two feet, I recommend undertaking the care and feeding of soemthing. It oculd be children, or it could be the houseplants, you know? By doing that you come to udnerstand your own limitations. That's where it starts." so said Eriko to Mikage p.41.

"...if a person hasn't ever experiences true despair, she grows old never knowing how to evaluate where she is in life; never understanding what joy really is. I'm grateful for it. p.41" (Eriko, also to Mikage) (personally I agree with that line.) p.42" There are many days when all the awful things that happen make you sick at heart, when the path before you is so steep you can't bear to look. Not even love can reascue a person from that. ... As I grow older, much older, I will experience many things, and I will hit rock bottom again and again. Again and again I will suffer; again and again I wil get back on my feet. I will not be defeated. I won't let my spirit be destroyed." Mikage promises to herself that she will learn to be happy in the moment and to take the pleasure today and the pain tomorrow, the pain today and the pleasure tomorrow. that this piece of life will be again and again.

"I felt that I was the only person alive and moving in a world brought to a stop. Houses always feel like that after someone has died." p.55 oddly this is so true... I know exactlyt he feeling she is writing about.. it is like a shiva house feeling. Amazing to put words to it... because it doesn't seem logical but that is precisely the feeling I felt.

also on p. 55"Truly great people emit a light that warms the hearts of those around them. When that light has been put out, a heavy shadow of despair descends."

One theme for which there is no perfect series of quotations, but for which there is a connection between what BY writes and what I saw and experienced myself is that somehow after a death, people work together to clean things up.. and somehow in the cleaning up.. there is some kind of a sense of calming down.. I'm not sure I know why, but I know that somehow the cleaning motion, cleaning up a kitchen for example is a means of making the world feel okay.

Mikage gets a job for a famous cook... "When I saw the women who attend the classes, it made sense. Their attitude was completely different from mine. Those women lived their lives happily. They had been taught, probably by caring parents, not to exceed the boundaries of their happiness regardless of what they were doing. But therefore they could never know real joy. Which is better? Who can say? Everyone lives the way she knows best. What I mean by 'their happiness' is living a life untouched as much as possible by the knowledge that we are really, all of us, alone. That's not a bad thing. Dressed in their aprons, their smiling faces like flowers, learning to cook, absorbed in their littel troubles and perplexities, they fall in lvoe and marry. I think that's great. I wouldn't mind that kind of life. Me, when I'm utterly exhausted by it all, when my skin breaks out, on those lonely evenings when I call my friends again and again and nobody's home, then I despise my own life --my birth, my upbringing, everything. I feel only regret for the wole thing."p. 59 {personally, i found this paragraph startling in its sharpness, but wholly something I knew the taste of.}

pp.59-60 "No matter what, I want to continue living with the awareness tha I will die. Without that, I am not alive. That is what makes the life i have no possible. Inchin one's way along a steep cliff in the dark on reaching the highway, one breathes a sigh of relief. Just when one can't take it anymore, one sees the moonlight. Beauty that seems to infuse itself into the heart: I know about that."

p.61" Of course there is a relationship. ... don't you think that seeing such a beautiful moon influences what one cooks?"

Eriko explains to Mikage what happened to Yuichi's real mother. and finishes with this soliloquy about how it was just her and the pineapple plant and how event he pineapply plant died and there was no one who could possilby understand her left... p.81-82 "I realized that the world did not exist for my benefit. It followed that the ratio of pleasant and unpleasant things around me would not change. It wasn't up to me. It was clear that the best thing to do was to adoprt a sort of muddled cheerfulness. ..." eriko ends up investing in her beauty and her self, she and Yuichi buy some fun, bbeautiful and tasteful appliances.. things which will make them happy and add a level of quality to their lives. Mikage reflects and says " ...is this what it means to be happy? ... Why is it we have so little choice? We live like the lowliest worms. Always defeated --defeated we make dinner, we eat, we sleep. Everyone we love is dying. Still to cease living is unacceptable." p.82.

p.86 "... it was true that she jumped to conclusions and that her life was a mess --even her earlier stint as a salesman had been a failure. I was aware of all that, but the beauty of her tears was something I would not soon forget. She made me realize that the human heart is something very precious."

pp.96 "Look at you, I thought. thanks to a sudden whim, here youa re hanging from a roof, panting white puffs of breath. You've really outdone yourself htis time. ... pp. 97 Lying there on my back, I looked up at the roof of the in nd , staring at the glowing moon and clouds, I thought, really we're all in the same position. (It occurred to me that I had often thought that in similar situations, in moments of utter desperation. I would like to be known as an action philosopher. We all believe we can choose our own path from among the many alternatives. But perhaps it's more accurate to say that we make the choice unconsciously. I think I did --but now I knew it, because now I was able to put it into words. But I dont' mean this is the fatalistic sense; we're constantly making choices. With the breaths we take every day, with the expressions in our eyes, with the daily actions we do over and over, we decide as thugh by instinct. and so some of us will inevitably find ourselves rolling around in a puddle on some roof in a strange place with a takeout katsudon in the middle of winter, looking up at the night sky as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Ah, but the moon was lovely." p.98

p.101"You see, Yuichi, how much I don't want to lose you. We;ve been very lonely, but we had it easy. Because death is so heavy --we, too young to know about it, couldn't handle it. After this you and I may end up seeing nothing but suffering, difficulty, and ugliness, but if only you'll agree to it, I want for us to go on to moredifficult places, happier places, whatever comes, together. ..."

p.104 "While watching them, I felt a strange, sweet sadness. In the biting air I told myself, there will be so much pleasure, so much suffering. with or without Yuichi."

dude, this post took 6 hours to finish typing up.

Japan- the willow tree, her branches blowing in the wind and reaching heavenward and then back down to her toes

2005-11-13T12:49:00.000-06:00

I forgot until this past shabbat about the time I lived in Yokohama, Japan and the time I spent in Kamakura. There are beautiful buddhist shrines at Kamakura, which no good self-respecting religious Jew would probably admit to having been inside of, but ... well, I have been there and I remember speaking with the monks, becuase I wanted to learn more. I learned about how Buddhism is really no avoda zara, which gave me a great deal of inner rejoicing. It made me happy too when a great Rav acknowledged that he too did believed that the buddhists were not avodat kokhvim. I remember also being dressed in a kimono, with a tight, but gorgeous obi, around my waist and with the tiny wooden slippers/shoes on my feet dancing a special dance with fans and table utensils, learning how to maniuplate cups, saucers, and platters in my hands as I twisted and turned them in and out around my body to music. Recalling the offset of the collar around my neck, and the rice flour on my neck and face, I remember the beauty of the cloth and the tremendous feeling of the traditions and the power of that time and existence. I remembered performing the tea ceremony, pouring the green powder, the beaten fiber whisk, the dark wooden bowls, and the burning hot earthy-dark water pot/kettle. The rituals which bind us and both take and give power. Deep down inside I am still oddly connected to those things. It strikes a vibrant chord within me to see the traditions... to remember how I was a part of those traditions...and as I look around to the Jews around me, I wonder to myself if any of them can ever know me really. I wonder when I'm around the non-Jews, too, if they can ever know me really also. Internally, I shudder and simply accept how alone an individual's experience is.

It is difficult to explain to people how strongly my existence is tied up into that which is Chinese, Taiwanese specifically, Japanese from the occupation of Taiwan, that which is Jewish, that which is American, and that which is French. I became split yet again when I acquired a tie to Israel. I feel almost as if I could sympathize with Voldemort, with one's soul being split up by the horcruxes, except mine is not maliciously meant, nor evil in essence. That it holds one in some kind of limbo of existence is too true though. I understand alone very well as Banana Yoshimoto wrote in her book _Kitchen_ (which I highly recommend as an excellent work of fiction). It pains me to think that I know no single person who could possibly understand me in this deep complexity of all the different facets of my identity... but that people say they know me and they don't even know the half of it.

Our traditions, my traditions, your traditions, mingling traditions... my father was right to quote to me a Confucian teaching that the leaves fall back to the roots.

returning from a seminar on BenS's work on tehillim 24

2005-11-10T14:20:00.000-06:00

First, off, I like Ben. I should hardly have anything bad to say about him or his work.
Second off, I am reminded why the sciences called so strongly to me. I hate sitting through mindless conversations with a ton of name dropping and nitpicky little comments which seem to ignore vital and pertinent and logical points. (For example LZ, Ph.D. was mad that Joseph Campbell's work should have any mention, becuase he's a remarkable anti-Semite. I say look in academia, why should the man's biases and political leanings influence whether or not you remark upon his work and use it, especialy since it isn't his comments about Jews we are using. Those notably may have been influenced by his anti-Semitic leanings. I can't find good justification for hating scholar simply because he holds views that are repugnant to me. If that were the case I might have to ignore a great deal of the scholarship in the world... including scholarship that is better than that done by those people whose views may be more in line with my own! Indeed.)

(unable to finsh right now, so i'll post but return to complete the thought...
note:
I find the works that lead people to call G-d impotent and powerless when he give people greater and greater power to be a bit short-sighted because they don't record and acknowledge the IMHO concept that one achieves greater power --in fact, one achieves a "rank" closer to "deification" by leaving an impact greater than the mere circle of acquaintances, friends, and family and greater than becoming "father of a nation" or "father of capitalism" or "mother to the poor" --better than simply having a tremendous impact on other's lives by ideas is the ability to have an impact on their minds, daily habits and practices, and society. This is what the "powerless" G-d does in his role as "creator" -HaBorei.

what i think of the events dans les quartiers" ne peux pas entrer"

2005-11-06T13:33:00.000-06:00

So in the first comments section one may read the two articles that were sent to me which I find highly interesting. One would like to wish and hope that this is not true, but oddly, for some horrendous reason it appears that the wave of Islam is indeed taking over. I recall one journalist making doomsday predictions that Europe for all of her posturing against Israel and for Israel to leave Gaza and the West Bank saying that Europe was only doing so to protect herself at home. A friend of mine remarked they had no choice but to stand against Israel politically, because she feared the Arabs who would riot would become more out of hand. The French have stood by silently while Jewish offices, businesses, buildings were damaged or looted. They have hoped much as Neville Chamberlain did that appeasing the demanding monster would put an end to the difficulties. While I still love France and even have sympathies for the French, I feel very sorry for the situation they are in, I have to admit that there is a reason we speak more respectfully of Winston Churchill than of Neville Chamberlain. France, gloriously beautiful and sweetly cultural country that it is, has indeed been weak --and to Arabs, such weakness is a weakness to be exploited.

A fellow I know in the USA has been talking quite a bit about how the Muslims are taking over the US with their investments of money and their hope to turn the world into an Islamic world without the privileges we call "democratic." People have laughed at him, but I would wonder greatly now, whether we are watching the world slowly become entirely Muslim. As I think about this, I know despite my desire to enter the hallowed Ivy tower walls and sit contemplating literature, culture, and trends, that I feel compelled instead to continue my work in applying science to the problems we have today. Inherently, I think that there is a great need for people to build this world today in such a way that medical, scientific, and social progress be met in as many countries as possible. The craft of words and colors is sadly a leisure time pursuit. I fear that time for such pusuits which impart joy to the mind and heart simply for the tickled pleasantness of it will be greatly missing from us in the years to come. It is a very very needy world that meets our gaze when we look out of our windows. We must educate our peoples, ourselves, and never stop growing and expanding our minds. It is vital that to meet the needs of the world today, that we be prepared to do what is needed.

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2005-11-04T14:33:00.000-06:00

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_Golden Child_ by David Henry Hwang

2005-11-03T09:44:00.000-06:00

I just finished reading _Golden Child_ by David Henry Hwang... the last words of the play are Andrew's and it goes as follows:
"I watch your mother sleeping, knowing you are growing inside of her. And suddenly the room is filled with spirits -- so many faces, looking down on me. And on each face, a story, some I have been told, some I can only imagine, and some I will never know at all. But many of them, people not so different from myself, who struggled with what to keep, and want to change --for the next generation. And I realize my face too will one day be born again. I feel the eyes of our ancestors upon us, all awaiting together the birth of you, my Golden Child."

It was so interesting to read DHH's exploration of how in Chinese families the people are woven together in a network. His exploration of how generations affect one another... even in the beyond invisible pieces of the fabric of the world. So many of the ideas are actually very similar to Judaism.

What amazes me is that the real truth lies in the percentages of all of these things.
Siu-Yong says (pp47-48 Theatre Communications Group ed) "What is family anyway, but a loose collection of people with nothing in common but blood? Does blood cause all people to think alike? To love, or even like, one another? Of course not! If we wandered wherever our emotions might take us, we would all have murdered each other ages ago. That is why blood is not sufficient for order. Blood must be reinforced --by discipline. And your precious honesty is the mortal enemy of discipline. ..."

Where there are holes in the legal exegesis for halacha... what matters is discipline. Just as Adam named the creations, giving their innate nature and purpose a raised consciousness -a realization-, so too when we act in a disciplined manner we give an awareness and realization to the commonality, to Hashem, to being alive/creation, to kedusha... the discipline raises the level of kedusha, but is the actual action of building so that a greater thing can be achieved.

One thing that DHH touches on, but doesn't necessarily comment on is that faith might be the a priori to that discipline. He poses it in the form of Christian faith. Siu-yong says that faith can be in anything. Ancient worship, becuase it is their tradition. Tieng-Bin says it should be in Jesus, because it allows them to explore their individuality.

Thumbelina...

2005-11-02T05:10:00.000-06:00

Elisha used to sing this sometimes when we were at Princeton together. I'm not sure if it was a comment as to my personality, my name, my size, or simply his affection for children's songs, but still I'm fond of the song because we had such good fun those days.

"Thumbelina, Thumbelina, tiny little thing
Thumbelina dance, Thumbelina sing,
Thumbelina, what's the difference if you're very small?
When your heart is full of love, you're nine feet tall!

So you're no bigger than my thumb, than my thumb, than my thumb;
Sweet Thumbelina don't be glum.
Now, now, now, ah, ah, ah, come, come, come!

Thumbelina, Thumbelina, tiny little thing
Thumbelina dance, Thumbelina sing,
Thumbelina, what's the difference if you're very small?
When your heart is full of love, you're nine feet tall!

So you're no bigger than my toe, than my toe, than my toe,
Sweet Thumbelina keep that glow;
And you'll grow, and you'll grow, and you'll grow.

Thumbelina, Thumbelina, tiny little thing
Thumbelina dance, Thumbelina sing,
Thumbelina, what's the difference if you're very small?
When your heart is full of love, you're nine feet tall!"

A Raisin in the Sun by Lorranie Hansberry

2005-10-31T01:07:00.000-06:00

"What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And the run?
Does it stink like rotten meat
Or crust and sugar over
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it jyst sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode? "
-Langston Hughes

It seems like it dries up, but then when it gets the tiniest piee of hope, it can well up in a person and just explode from the happiness of it.. the burst of emotion, becuase one just can't contain the deferral anymore...

I just finished the play I began reading for my sukkot trip. By far, _A Raisin in the Sun_ (ARITS) is one of these rich and deep, painfully poignant and oh, so, true portaryals of what life in America is. What is horrendous is that the message of the play, written in the mid to late 1950's, is still so true today. It is true today not just for the Blacks, but for the Hispanics, and in some ways for the various kinds of Asian Americans, who despite their model minority status, really do suffer from a macabre and grotesque racism.

I find myself profoundly struck by this play. It is set in Southside Chicago, which right now makes it drive home all too clearly the point -- how we force people into ghettoes. There is a neighborhood in Skokie where no houses could be sold to Jews. It was a "Gentleman's Agreement" that the houses could only be sold to white protestants... Asagai in ARITS talks about how the minorities are just assimilating to fit in and shedding their heritage and identity to be white. The snubbing of George Murchison who really is parroting what whites do, so as to appear like them, but missing the point that and education is for thinking and knowledge.. a poitn that Beneatha actually gets, but hasn't the moeny to capitalize off of... The pride in Walter of Mama and of ruth when he stands up to the injustices, stands up to the putrid racism, and stands up for a dream on having their own home...

I'm reminded of the time when my father decided we were building our own house. He wanted a beautiful house. He wanted a house of his own desires so that he could prove to the world that he had finally made his dream come true. For years my uncle wanted to pull him down and criticized one thing after another. My uncle was one of these compete and pull down people. He nnever let up on telling my father how the white people were out to get them and that my father would never get his certification. I never remembered how much the Willy Harrises of our world hurt until I read this passage in ARITS when Willy steals Walter's money and his dream, totally bankrupting the family and destroying their dreams. I remember when my father finally passed the exams that allowed him to be properly certified in English, his pride in having achieved his dream was amazing, and it came between the hard knocks that life dealt to him... but still a dream is a dream! I had forgotten how much being beaten down and trodden on was actually a part of our consciousness. I had forgotten too though how much our family's dreams matter to us... even when we forget becuase we are trying to be individuals and express who we are... there are still the dreams. Mama's dreams of a garden and her claim that the little plant is her expression of herself. Bennie's expression of herself in photography, music, and horseback riding as she searches for soemthing that speaks out and says who she is... what amazes me so deeply is that self-expression is so vital for those who dream. If you have a dream, it seems that creating and creativity are vital for staying alive... what we keep alive is our internal hope for the realization of our dreams.

When Cindy said, we marry white people to sanitize ourselves... we marry whites so that they can make our dream that we have become white true, I was struck by the implications. When Walter and Beaneatha tell Mama why the whites don't want them to move into Clybourne Park, they reply to her wounded cry "what do they think we're gonna do?" with the annswer "marry them." Maybe that wasn't so awful and wrong after all. Eugene says Chinese should marry Chinese. My father wishes that his children would marry others who are just like them. My mother recognizes that this isn't possible. Deep down inside, I see finally how powerful and how painful this statement is... I always wanted to marry someone who would learn to speak some chinese for my parents. I watched my parents curb their tongues to speak in a language foreign to them, so as not to exclude the white people, but never saw the Israelis curb their tongues to speak in a language that would include those who didn't speak Hebrew. My parents fought to preserve something of their culture and identity for their children, but fought and dreamed... their dreams lost out time after time, because they were polite and had manners that were in accordance with their culture. I feel an acute pain because this play raises so many questions and so many problems. Asagai's comment to Bennie that there are always going to be bad people in every culture and every people is so true. I remember now what he said and how it applied to Jenny's comment that the thieves in china had no pity. I think of the terrible Jews who betrayed their own to get ahead and recall Lil's mentioning to me her theory that the best of the Jews died, because that was the only way to survive. Only the ones who could survive would do so...

As Walter Lee Younger cries out and I would paraphrase... the money that paid for my education, that paid for my life, my food my sustenance is made of the flesh of my father and mother, the flesh of my grandfather and grandmother, the flesh too of those who pay taxes and those who struggle to live and those who luxuriously live... that money is for our dreams. Ultimately, Mama quote Walter Younger the Elder and something brightened for me in my understanding of the world... " Seem like God didn't see fit to give the black man nothing but dreams --but He did give us children to make them dreams seem worth while. (pp.45-46 Vintage Books 1994 edition)"

I think of all this and my heart cries for my parents, for my family, for my world... I, too, am a part of this world. One by one all we can do is "be the change we wish to see in the world."

I can only hope that someday, I, too, like Walter Lee Younger will come into my adulthood and find that ground upon which through my own heritage I can stand tall and be the person I was amde to be. A Confucian saying is that the tree grows leaves and the leaves reach to the sun, but in the end the leaves fall back to the roots. No matter what I will never forget that I am Chinese. I will never forget all the flesh and blood that was paid so my life could be here. My freedom comes at a dear price... and it would be wrong of me not to remember and not to honor that which has come before me...

wow, so much has happened over the past few weeks...

2005-10-27T19:26:00.000-05:00

How do I begin to relate my thoughts of the past week. I suppose there are primarily three topics that I want to touch upon.
1) women and torah reading, my personal quandry
2) reflections on yehuda as the yahrtzeit draws near
3) trekking 'round, lessons and thoughts from my wanderings during sukkot

In true cat-fashion, we will go in reverse order now... beginnning with topic three...

Sukkot is a time of change according to most religious leaders. they all prattle on about how it is timme to dedicate oneself to doing something about change. I think that probably evolved out of some frustrated rabbi's need to get his community moving back onto the derekh. Sometimes people can be so incredibly stubborn and cling to things which are old --refusing to renew themselves and refusing to grow. Sometimes they don't even know about their own stubborn refusal, it is so deeply imbedded within other things -desire to get innto grad school, desire to get out of grad school, desire to move from one city to another, desire for a different job, desire for a wife, desire for a spouse, etc.- that the person cannot even tell where he or she has lost the core things that direct him or herself along the path that matters to him or her.

Sometimes, I suspect the chagim interfere with out lives so much so that we are forced to take an accounting of who we are and where we are.

Over the past two weeks, I have watched friends raising their children and reflected on their efforts as well as the children themselves. The children, for example, there are the ones who push and push their parents to the brink of distraction -and i recall those wise words of one parent to his son... saying a your children will give back to you the worry and anguish you gave to me... (this makes me worry about my children, oy! and boy do I regret how much I made my mother and father worry! Do I have it coming to me someday?! Yipes.) ... There are the ones who get out of bed, when they are supposed to be asleep. The ones over whom parents fret to themselves, thinking, is she eating enough? The ones who pull pranks in a mischevious manner and tease their parents. Children who need boundaries, who need to be pushed lest they think they can act willy-nilly without thinking of anyone else. It's amazing to me to see how each child grows and develops. Shoshanah was telling me how amazing it must be to have a new life growing within one's own body. I cannot help but marvel at what amazing creation humans are. How HaBorei (the Creator) chose to make us all as we are... that a woman can bear a child and feel the sensation of a new life growing within her body... that a man finds himself creating with a woman this new life and if one is so blessed one life after another life... I know a lot of people who obsess over how lonely they are. I know a lot of people who talk about how they want children. I wonder often if those people have short-sightedness beyond description in that they do not really see how having a partner means a tremendous amount of responsibility --to the other person's feelings, thoughts, needs, desires, and a tremendous amount of responsibility to the growth annd development of another human being -to whom they will sacrifice so much of their own needs, wants, hopes, and lives... Are people who are just lonely and wanting to move already into the next phase of life really aware that they are not going to find succor for their loneliness? Another human is no salve for lonliness.

Truly happy is the person who has peace within him or herself.

That said, I find each person hashes out his or her own burdens throughout his or her life.. let me explain in slightly better detail. For example, consider a fictitious character Plonit bat Foofoo v'Bumbum. Foofoo is (besdes another fictitious character) a controlling woman with boundary problems and issues regarding her own self-esteem. Bumbum is (also another fictitious character and) a recalcitrant and selfish, perhaps even abusive, womanizer. Bumbum nnever had much of a habit of talking and his tendencies were to boost his own ego, make himself seem more important and grand --too take offensive more often for his own honor than for Hashem's honor... He was hardly an ideal father, but as with any person, he was hardly all bad. He had good traits, taught and valued hardworking effort and core traits of honesty, intelligence, creativity, --and as a result nurtured in his children those things which can be encouraged through education and teaching from books. His faults were that he was so inwardly displeased with himself that he had to push others down and to keep chinging things around so he was always the top dog. Hitting his children was a means of putting them in his place.. not just a power boost to establish his sense of how people depended on him and his own strength, it was also a means to assert his authority - a illogical means to proove that he deserved more, but wasn't getting what he deserved. He could assure himself that he was doing what was right by showing how others were not as good. Foofoo had been attracted to both Bumbum's show of strength and his show of weakness, like many women who love and admire both the vulnerabilities and the strengths of their mates. She had no idea of course that it would become the horrid life it became when she agreed to marry him. Her own difficulties were with self-esteem, too. She struggled to keep herself afloat as her life revolved around raising her children. Her own sense of self was eroded by her husband's disrespectful stance. Though she had a job, she found it gave her little strength and independence since her husband always belittled what she did. No matter how hardworking she was, nor how much she gave to her work, she earned no recognition from those who mattered most. Her focus then became her children and their successes. Foofoo's major needs then were for her children to be extensions of herself, so their successes were her successes and her needs were their needs. Classic boundary issues. She could never see how when she needed something it could be anything but the desire of her children to fix or help or handle her issues. She could likewise not see how when her children needed soemthing she could standby and allow them to struggle if she could do anything about that. Not only did her efforts perpetuate a sense of disrespect and disregard for an individual's dignity, but it propagated a sense, too, of low self-esteem and a very subtle sense of self-hate in her children. Plonit herself suffered for her father's womanizing. He was on his third wife now. She could think of him only as a selfish man. Little did she notice in herself the traits that he had impressed upon her own mind. Her own disrespect towards others was manifested in other ways, but clearly there. Her own selfishness was reflected in her behavior with those she loved or wished to love. Her lack of boundaries, an inheritance from her mother, showed up in her relationships, her workplace, and her sense of loneliness. All in all, one might say --what a mess ! Poor Plonit! How unfair is it that Plonit be born into such a family and given such a bad upbringing! One might say Plonit has every right in the world to be envious of others in the world! (Chas v'shalom!) Plonit might say she has a right to be depressed, so much is wrong in her life. (But then, depression is such an expression of selfishness we might say that she has only learned the lesson from her father all too well, and in fact, so well, she has blinded herself from the truth of the matter.)

I would say something slightly different. It is the combination of our parents that determines our trials, burdens, and life's work. The combination of their expreiences and personalities can teach us what our life's work is... we are to learn how to see them and overcome our own tests and trials. They pattern us with a set of traits which are good and bad... the bad ones are to be learned from and overcome if possible. The good ones used for the great things for which such talents are needed in the world. Rather than pity Plonit! We might marvel at what a tremendous gift she has received. This set of trials are hers to master and to gain from in order to help to build and fix the world (tikkun olam). There is no perfect rearing of children.
If one pays a lot of attention to a chld, she becomes assured that her needs are important, but omits learning where her needs fall with respect to another human. That lesson must come later in her life. If one pays little attention to a child, she mmust learn later in life that her needs are important and how to prioritize them with respect to the needs of others. One could say. ah, but strike a balance! That balance must be struck though in conjunction with the needs of the parent who is her or himself on his or her own journey towards her or his own growth. Such a balance is impossible. Indeed, such a balance is undesirable. In fact, if one could strike such a balance as to grow oneself, perfectly well, and raise one's child perfectly so, then that life itself would have no part of tikkun olam and no reason to be alive or kept alive. Perhaps it is for our potential for tikkun olam that HaKadosh Baruch Hu keeps us alive...? I doubt that is the only reason, nor do I warrant that this is the primary reason, but I rather suspect that it is part of why we are permitted the miracle of being alive every day --having porous bodies which work so fantastically wonderfully as they do...

Anyway, the point is that every human inherits a series of problems in a combination uniquely his or hers. The manner in which he or she deals with those problems are part of that person's piece of tikkun olam. Every person he or she interacts with then at each stage along the way is touched by the person's growth and struggles and that touching of worlds is integral to the existence of the world as it is the further weaving of the fabric which creates and sustains the world. In truth, each person is incredibly important then for the world to evolve as it does, is, and should. Each person is s incredibly important to tikkun olam. Our actions are in response to the inheritance we gain from our parents, siblings, extended families, spouses, children, and friends. In this way, though we may choose how we behave at each moment, we are also programmed and it is no wonder to me that Hashem may know who we are and how we will be and act throughout time. It is as if one could focus in finely on the interwoven threads at a certain point in a rich tapestry.. like the unicorn at the Cloisters in New York.. and know that one particular part is a life innteracting with countelss others... and step back to see the whole thing and know that perhaps this is a fraction of a miniscule taste of what it means to be all-knowing...

ultimately, too, perhaps this is why a child comes born into our arms with his or her own personality --several children of the same parents will take different lessons from the same event... each one has his or her own path to travel and piece of the tapestry to weave and createas he or she must... so when a child takes your hand, or a fellow asks for a hug, or a lover needs you to listen... in each position you are primely situated to create, both to destroy and to heal, the world.

And so I transition to my thoughts regarding Yehuda.
I still miss Yehuda. I still think of him often, probably still almost every other day or every day... I think of how powerful life is and how vitally important the very breath I breathe is to the world.. to my thoughts, to my actions, and then in ripple effect outwards to others whose lives i might touch without knowing it. I know that Yehuda's life touched so many others' without his ever knowing it. Nothing we do is wasted or useless, no matter how it seems to us. Losing hope is a failure on our part to recognize all that we have and all that we are able to be and to do even still. Those who do lose hope though cannot be blamed or held accountable, for the road they have to travel is arduous and fraught with pain and difficulty. The courage required to have hope and to believe when one has been pushed deeper and deeper into the mud is hard to muster... and many people never do muster up the strength nor the courage.

So then what of my thoughts regarding the death of someone I loved so very very much? I don't judge it at all. I don't even dwell upon it except to learn that all life is precious --precious to someone... maybe not to that person, but to someone. I learn from it that maybe Yeti was right deep down inside that the greatest thing to do is to live so that we honor our friend.. and live so we live passionately and deeply aware of our life. It doesn't matter how or why he died, but that his death created a huge hole and a huge wound for which we all want succor.

The honor we give to him by living fully our own lives.. by being the best people we can be.. growing at our best, by living our lives with integrity, courage, discipline, and love.. is actually the greatest of honors. If we learn more on his account, if we work more, love more, live more,... we have helped him to fulfill his piece of tikkun olam, because his life mattered to us. His life affected ours and changed us. His life is woven into the tapestry. We (perhaps we are the threads around him?) will always have been touched by his existence. This is the honor that life accords to another life.

So it is that I believe that connections from one to another are the greatest thing we people can create and do here.

Finally, I would come to my discussion of womena torah readings but alas it is late and i need very much to take myself offlline to do other tasks. I beg the indulgence of my readers... if I have any. ;) To wait for another day to hear what my tremendous internal debate over women and torah reading is.

May we all have a good year full of blessing, good life, tremendous growth, deep insight, and peace within, without, far and near.

last year shemini atzeret/simchat torah

2005-10-24T13:43:00.000-05:00

Last year was the first year in about a string of 8 or more years that I wasn't at Ol'Nass' for the Jewish holiday of Shemini Azteret/Simchat Torah... in retrospect I think it was for a good reason... that was the last chag I got to spend with my friend Yehuda z"l. He had suggested that one of our meals be a hot dog meal. ;) I miss Yehuda. I think perhaps this shabbat I will have a hot dog dinner at home just to remember him in my own way.

I am glad that I was here instead last year. We had a lot of fun and it was really an amusing chag (chag being the Hebrew word for the pilgrimage holy days). It was a fluke that I was here, but in retrospect it was so much fun to have that time with him. I remember him dancing to make up for Matan not being here. I remember him offering to be my wedding planner... and my laughing as I asked if everything was going to end up being in black leather if I took him up on his offer.

Now that I'm back at Ol'Nass' for shemini atzeret and simchat torah. It is as if my life has resumed. Perhaps, it is that I feel as if the cycle has come around full circle.

I remember Yehuda making fun of a very spooky way of saying the words in Rosh Hashana/YK davening/prayers that talk about who will die by fire, who will die by water, who will die by hunger, who will die in various manners... my chavruta reminded me of this and I can't help but think of the disasters this past year has contained for all of mankind.

I am so aware now of the power a year of mourning has... no wonder a year was instituted by our rabbis for mourning. Over the course of the first year, we are called by all sorts of things to think of all the things that have gone on. I think somehow a lot of the events this past year went by in a blur. Though I thought of him, the blue hair and the yetziat mitzrayim shtick... I hardly remember Purim at all. I think I barely did more than simply hear the megilla, but I know I sent shalach manot, and had a seudah... I just don't recall the details like I would have in normal years. At Pesach, I wrapped up the book and took it to his family. Telling myself when it would hurt less that I would return to finish writing in it, but that at least his family would have it for comfort during Pesach, which was a chag they missed Yehuda a lot when he was in Israel, and now will have to miss him forevermore. The long summer days came and went, I'd have imagined him working in a lab downtown, but thoughts of him came less frequently and less painfully. With Elul and the return of Rosh Hashana, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot, my thoughts again turned towards him and my memories. In the end, though, my awareness has returned to me. I am returning somehow to the world in a way that isn't steeped with the flavors, colors, and songs that make up my memories of a life wherein Yehuda made things brighter. I still think of him, but somehow the edge of it is lesser and my acceptance of the world that keeps turning and moving withut Yehuda is more solid.

Somehow coming full circle in the year has made a huge difference, but the year mattered greatly to me. The passing of a full year of all the memories that are attendant upon that year, its holidays, and its memories was important for healing and growth. I'm not terribly sure why. Somehow though I am saddened still, I am not without joy and hope for the future. I want to remember and to live.

A part of me wonders if I am doing him an injustice and part of me is reassured that I am doing what I should be doing.

nothing calls my heart like a good story

2005-10-10T23:16:00.000-05:00

really, nothing calls my heart like Israel... I wish, oh, I wish for some reason tonight that I were in Israel.

I was originally going to write this post about the book _What Zeesie Saw on Delancey Street_ because I thought it was such a wonderful and gorgeous book, but somehow instead I can't write about that, but feel instead that somehow a wolf-like howl in my heart. Somethine else is afoot in my soul and I don't know why or how this is the case, but...

Somehow I breathe the air and it's not like I don't appreciate how nice I have it here chutz la'aretz, here I have internet access easily, here I have a decent job, not too many worries or responsibilities... I'm fairly happy here, I think. Truly, if I lived in Israel I'd probably be scraping by and really scraping by... but, somehow my heart wants to see the land again, to touch the soil, to inhale the fragrance of trees and flowers... I am homesick for Israel. tonight.. why? maybe it's that I took out my havdalah candle from Tzfat and smelled the wax, I took the vial tonight of half dirt from Yerushalayim and half sand from the Negev and remembered that in my heart is the Golan and the Galil, and that I belong somehow rooted in the land... i can't bear the idea of leaving here on one hand because i have it easy here --I know how to live here, know how to survive here, know how to get up and go to work here... and I am afraid of not being able to survive in Israel, not being able to make it ther, but some how.. some how... I feel my heart being called by the land. I feel some pull that I can't resist.. I just can't let go of this thought that has been in my mind since Rosh Hashana when I davened with the Israelis ... I miss Israel. I am so homesick ofr Israel. Israel is in my prayers very week motzaei shabbat when I pray for all of the kehillot in Eretz Yisrael and I can't help but feel tears sprinng to my eyes as I worry that I can't figure out how to survive there, but want so despereately to go there... I know my sentimental soul, simply wants to touch and kiss the ground again... All I want is to be back in the land of Israel again... touching its dirt & stones, breathing its air, and singing songs to its trees and just knowing that there is no where else my heart feels so called as Israel. there's this raw hunger in me to be there... and an urgency I do not understand. I just know somehow that for the past few days since rosh hashana, I have felt a very very very deep need to go to Israel and to be there ... I am so silly. I can't explain why or how it is that I feel this way.

l'shana haba birushalayim
all I can say is that I desperately want to be in Israel... right now... I have no idea why.

the word shut up

2005-10-10T12:29:00.000-05:00

Please don't use the word shut up... it's so rude

Hashem sees every detail and holds you close to His heart...

2005-10-10T10:08:00.000-05:00

So my sister sent me a card today that had this pasuk from Yeshayahu on it "Search the book of the Lord and see all that He will do, not one detail will He miss... for the Lord has said it and He will make it come true..."

I'm curious... if Hashem speaks at our conception the name of our bashert ... is it ordained that we are matched up with another person?

I have often heard a lot of other people discuss their opinions and takes on bashert, zivugim, shidduchim... and never actually come up with anything serious on my own end regarding this as I find this sort of affairs to be significantly less the type of topic I can contribute anything to as opposed to my philosophy and halacha type of studies and mental inquiries... I remember once a shiur in which I heard that every person has a number of possible people that he or she can be set up with as a match. I believed at the time that I had met three of the possible number, but knew, too, that when I met each of them it wasn't appropriate, because of the timing and where each of us was with our lives. That take on shidduchim, zivugim, and bashert makes sense to me in many ways. I recall, too, that a very good friend of mine Rabbi Josh Yuter (if anyone knows Josh, you'll have to let him know that I actually called him rabbi!) had a lovely machshava shiur on bashert that I encourage anyone who knows Rabbi Yuter to ask him about it. It was very well-thought out and beautifully put. Perhaps my own thinking falls in line that whatever happens to fall in place is what is ordained to fall in place, but it can only do so by your choices and actions. Your choices and actions are like the quantum choices of an electron to be spin up or spin down, like the choice of a particle to be here or there, like the ability of an electron cloud to statistically exist in any of these spces but never at the nodes of an orbital, and like light to be both particle and wave. When one begins to see how these phenomena are possible and okay, one begins to see that he quandary of balancing free will against the belief that Hashem knows all and that somethings are ordained by Hashem is very much like the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle and the principle of statistical distribution of a particle's existence. We cannot know all the particulars until we sample.. at the moment that the quantity is sampled and tested, we know where it "is" but know nothing else about it, because it is always in flux and actually morphing as we continue to move. Our very organic world... is so extraordinarily beautiful.

Luckily, I find today that I am counting my blessings for having crossed paths with friends who have also been teachers, companions along the journey of life, and fellow avadim Hashem. To all of you who are fellow travelers... thank you so much for walking with me when we have been able to walk together and for walking on your own when we have not. I think I finally realize what Shimon menat when he said that it helps to know those people are out there doing their thing and holding down their piece of the world even if I'm out of touch with those people... I, too, am grateful even if I'm not in touch with thse people who were key to my life in so many ways that you are out there holding down your piece of the world and continuing to touch other lives.

Today is a day to recall that everything we do and everywhere we go, we are touching another person's life and that we are entrusted by Hashem with a great and powerful ability to influence another's life simply by a smile a hug or some expression of love and caring. Too little do we realize and take advantage of this. You whose paths have crossed mine in this past year are too many to be named and I am sorry for this. Please know how much I treasure your existence in my world. You have all taught me so very very much.

I don't know anymore where Asher ben David, Ephraim ben Israel, or Michael ben Adam are anymore as sadly, I've lost touch with you three, but for what it is worth, I am grateful and nostalgic today over the times we have spent together and over all I learned "in the dust at your feet."

All people are my teachers. All the world is my bechina b'torah u'v'ma'aseh. My examiner is Hashem. As Mori Ephraim ben Israel taught me: I will only know the score when I stand b'shamayim bayom hadin, so until then there is no point in counting the score, but only in continuing to do my best at the bechina. I wish that we should all succeed at our own bechinot and that we should continue in taf-shin-samekh-vav to grow to strength and greater wisdom.

Thanks to Michael who wrote that this year be filled with brachot that are revealed and not hidden. I second that wish. May this year of taf-shin-samekh-vav be filled with brachot for all of Am Yisrael that are revealed in their goodness and not hidden.

As I watch the world suffering one by one regionn after region seeing calamity and more calamity, I pray in these aseret yemei tshuva that Hashem grant that we might be allowed to see our geulah bimheirah byameinu.

G'mar Chatima tov
v'hatzlacha b'yadeikhem

Chatul

the gribenes debate

2005-10-07T13:47:00.000-05:00

so some of you have heard about my great debate since rosh hashana regarding what i'm going to do about dinner two shabbatot from now... i got invited over rosh hashana to have dinner with one of the coolest Ravs/Gedolim ever on the planet and to have gribenes and i can't decide what to do... because i've always wanted to try gribenes and one really can't say uh, no , i don't want to have dinner with the coolest rav ever on the planet, but my friends Yetispotter is coming back to town and I haven't seen him in a while and I have been looking forward to hanging out with the Yeti. It was a huge quandary as I went back and forth and thought, oh, geez, I've always wanted to try gribenes.. I mean it's in so many of my stories, I always feel a tad guilty giving a dvar torah with gribines in it, becuase I don't know what gribenes tstes like or how it smells... sigh... and so I've always wanted to try it... and of course I got offered the opportunity because it so happens that Mr. Coolest Gadol shlita is also a big fan of gribenes.. one wonders how he has lived to his ripe old age...considering how many people have been telling me I'll die fromthe gribenes ever since I began debating this quandary... anyway, Yetispotter pointed out this entry at Wikipedia to me (I had to go look for myself to see if he was pulling my leg)...at
http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:COyQfXzjv34J:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_cuisine+gribenes+wikipedia&hl=en&client=safari
one finds this entry under jewish cuisine, under the soups heading, finally one gets to this entry...

"Gribenes, or "scraps," form one of the best liked foods among the Jews of eastern Europe. It is eaten especially on the Feast of Ḥannukah. So much do the Jews share in the belief "that there is no flavor comparable with the tawny and well-watched scraps," that it is often suggested as an inducement to friends to make a visit."

how cool is that?
inducement, indeed!
one Rav, gribenes, an offer that is hard to refuse...
but I still might.
meowmeow,
I think cats must like gribenes.

Meet Merman, he's a cream-colored Persian cat, who loves gribenes. So much so that he is willing to employ mice to bring him gribenes in exchange for their lives... ooh that sounds like a dark story, no more of that one!

a really powerful book with a really powerful idea women and feminism and raunch culture

2005-10-07T13:16:00.000-05:00

I'm stunned, impressed, shocked, wowed... having read the review pasted below, I'm floored perhaps. I have been wondering for quite some time now as I noticed and tried not to notice the rise of pants with words printed on the tuchus, the increase in shirts which had minimal sleeves and minimal cloth to cover the bellies of the women wearing them, the increase in skirts that didn't even cover the bottom curve of the tuchus of many women, ... who wears these clothes, why do they wear them, and what are we supposed to do about it?
obviously, not look?
er... as a once-upon-a-time friend of mine, Marcel once said, "if women dress that way, aren't we supposed to look and think what they are trying to say with those clothes?" I wanted to bash him in the head, becuase I thought it was the stupidest question ever. I didn't think that many women think wen they put on a v-neck shirt, "ooh, I hope all the guys will look down my shirt." Heck, my darling 11th grade bais yakov girls wear "tznius" clothing, that well, honestly, it's so tight I don't want to close that itty bitty gap and figure out what any random "she" might look like without her clothes on, but in some cases ... it's nearly impossible... and those girls are TRYING to dress modestly.
I think this world is getting sick and sicker.
Anyway, I think I'm finding myself in agreement with Ariel Levy, but I'm not sure what to do about it. Read on...
*********************************************
Friday, October 7th, 2005

A review of Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture by Ariel Levy

Girls Gone Wild
A Review by Christine Smallwood

A quick glance at the T-shirts ought to be enough of a clue that all is not well in American mass culture. Girls no more than 14 saunter down the street with their low-riders jammed down below their thongs and, snugly fitted over their brand-new breasts, piquant words of wisdom: "Everyone loves a Jewish girl." "What boyfriend?" "Save a Horse: Ride a Cowboy." A picture of a rooster above the word "Tease."

In another life, wearing a garment advertising the favor you wish to do the cowboys of the world might be degrading or, at the very least, embarrassing. In another life -- say, in a radical feminist compound of the future where no men exist and we rely on frozen sperm for breeding -- it might be ironic. In this one, it is simply the thing to do.

Enter New York magazine writer and editor Ariel Levy. Her new book, Female Chauvinist Pigs, examines the rise of this American "raunch culture," that amalgamation of pornography and porn signifiers -- the single entendre T-shirt, implants, excessive waxing, cardio pole-dancing classes, Playboy bunny keychains, Howard Stern and Robin Quivers, Girls Gone Wild, The Man Show and its ever-present "Juggies" -- that has popped up all over television, music videos, fashion, advertising and publishing.

Levy traces the ascendancy of this peculiarly porn-tastic culture to the ashes of the feminist movement, which famously split 30 years ago into "sex-positive" and anti-porn camps. People like Candida Royalle fled, frustrated that an emphasis on the politics of sex had done away with its pleasures (Royalle went on to direct adult films for women), while the likes of Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon became anti-porn crusaders. Both sides believed they were radically sex-positive/pro-sex, but saw the conditions for sexual liberation in radically different ways. Levy defines "raunch feminism" as the legacy of the unresolved contradictions between the two sides, as well as the continuation of rebellion against uptight movement mothers. Only instead of supplementing political lobbying or social work with sexual liberation, these days we believe that the work ends with sex. As Erica Jong, whose Fear of Flying advocated the enjoyment of consequence-free sex for women, says to Levy, "Sexual freedom can be a smoke screen for how far we haven't come."

The picture that Levy paints is more than a little grim: raunch culture, which is essentially misogynist, callow, simplistic and ubiquitous, breeds women-hating-women who angle for power with men and propagate more raunch under the deceitful guise of feminist empowerment. Thus women are burdened with the usual demands to be sexy, come hither, and look like you want it -- only now, "because we have determined that all empowered women must be overtly and publicly sexual, and because the only sign of sexuality we seem to be able to recognize is a direct allusion to red-light entertainment, we have laced the sleazy energy and aesthetic of a topless club or a Penthouse shoot throughout our entire culture." In this way, the dominance of raunch has superseded all other sexualized behaviors, creating lesbian bois who fuck and chuck one-night stands and straight girls who test their dates' mettle by bringing them to strip clubs.

Levy goes further. "In this new formulation of raunch feminism, stripping is as valuable to elevating womankind as gaining an education or supporting rape victims," she writes. "Throwing a party where women grind against each other in their underwear while fully clothed men watch them is suddenly part of the same project as marching on Washington for reproductive rights." This unlikely feat is possible because in 2005, there's no consensus on what feminism, or a feminist, is -- there are S/M feminists, radical lesbian feminists, NOW and Planned Parenthood feminists, even some pro-lifers who call themselves feminists. While the big-tent approach to feminism has created space for everyone, it has also allowed for conservatism, exploitation and commercialism to pollute women's hard-won gains.

The biggest lie of pornography's ascendant place in American culture is the notion that it has somehow made us all more free. Levy looks for the "new feminism" in raunch culture -- for the proof of freedom and power -- but all she finds is the "old objectification." What's unusual in her telling, though, is that women today have only themselves to blame. They produce HBO's G-String Divas and work for Girls Gone Wild; they gobble up porn diva Jenna Jameson's book; and if they don't audition for Playboy's 50th anniversary casting call, they read the magazine, which is run by a woman, too.

Playboy empress Christie Hefner, Hugh's daughter, sees no contradiction between her stable of bunnies and the two women's organizations -- Emily's List, a fundraising tool for pro-choice candidates, and the Committee of 200, a mentoring and scholarship group -- she founded. She identifies the increased female readership of Playboy as a sign that "the post-sexual revolution, post-women's movement generation that is now out there in their late twenties and early thirties ... has just a more grown-up, comfortable, natural attitude about sex and sexiness that is more in line with where guys were a couple generations before." (Because of course admiring someone wearing a tail who's serving you cocktails is natural, not to mention grown-up.)

For some women -- those who are turned on by other women, for example -- the license to consume Playboy is unquestionably an advance; for others, though, you might wonder what they get out of page after page of identical bodies with identically parted lips. For instead of celebrating the diversity not only of shapes, but of desires, Playboy and its kin have commodified female sexuality into a series of recognizable poses that have been reproduced and repeated until they are now the very definition, the only definition, of sexiness. Hefner argues that female Olympians posed in Playboy as a way to tell the world that they "don't think that athleticism in women is at odds with being sexy." Interesting then, that to prove their sexiness, these athletes posed as soft, sedate pin-ups, not in action on the court.

Critiquing -- let alone complaining about -- pornography has become very old-fashioned and, worse, a real killjoy. Better to become a "female chauvinist pig," to mimic men -- have casual sex, check out girls, show a little skin of your own. (Of course, unlike their male heroes, female pigs still "parade around in their skivvies as a means to attaining power.") An FCP, in Levy's definition, "is funny. She gets it. She doesn't mind cartoonish stereotypes of female sexuality, and she doesn't mind a cartoonishly macho response to them. The FCP asks: Why throw your boyfriend's Playboy in a freedom trash can when you can be partying at the Mansion? ... Why try to beat them when you can join them?"

Levy talks to Erin and Shaina, two sisters who have a pile of magazines like Playboy and FHM on their bedroom floor (they share a room at their parents' place). Erin's been known to make out with another girl in public cause it "turns guys on." (She thought it would be like being on TV, but the real experience wasn't as sexy as in her fantasies.) Shaina thinks that getting your ass slapped at a bar by a stranger isn't harassment -- just flattery. Although Erin feels "conflicted being a woman" and tries to "join the ranks of men," she owns a copy of The Feminine Mystique -- but she would never try to push her ideas on someone else. The meaning of feminism for today's FCPs is a private affair. Another FCP, Anyssa, a struggling actress, likes to fantasize about what it feels like to be a stripper, with dozens of eyes on you. When Levy suggests that stripping was more a parody of female sexuality than an enactment of it, Anyssa's friend Sherry snaps. "I can't feel sorry for those women," she said. "I think they're asking for it."

Ultimately, FCPs want power. They equate power with being like men, and being liked by men. They're the kind of girl who's always felt more comfortable with boys, who doesn't really like other girls. Raunch is one way for them to gain access to that circle of men and to separate themselves from other women. Annie, for instance, used to enjoy Howard Stern because "it's humor masking a pretty woman-hating thing -- which I've got a good amount of in me, I guess, because I take pleasure in it."

"Yeah, we're all women, but are we supposed to band together?" asks Anyssa. "Hell, no. I don't trust women."

Yet as Levy points out, being the exception that proves the rule -- the girl who gets raunch, who laughs at Howard Stern -- just means the rules are still intact. As long as "acting like a man" is valued, acting like a woman will be devalued. And regardless of how you understand gender, being a woman -- having breasts, bleeding once a month -- will be a handicap.

Levy extrapolates from her research subjects to all women, relying on a "we" without clearly defining who she's speaking about, or for. We revel in the porn aesthetic. We fetishize strippers. We do cardio striptease workouts. We have no real erotic role models. We are female chauvinist pigs.

But are we? It's clear that "we" live in a culture permeated by raunch and pornography -- at least white women do. Levy doesn't take account of black, Asian or Latino culture. She doesn't look at booty shakers pouring champagne on themselves, dripping with gold on the music videos on BET, or thumb through Confessions of a Video Vixen, the bestselling book about a hip-hop video dancer. She doesn't think about Japanese anime and manga, with their double-D heroines. After second-wave feminism was accused of being a white movement, women of color assumed an important position in academic and activist debate. "We" could have a lot to teach each other about the ways that we are uniquely, and commonly, misused across media. Female Chauvinist Pigs ignores that possibility.

It also neglects any mention of class. Male-identified FCPs are financially successful. Even if they're not at the top of the ladder, if they're bartenders or registered nurses, they're not struggling to get by. They would never be forced to strip for money, for instance, which is one reason it's easy for them to dissociate themselves from women who do. So you have to wonder why Levy doesn't take the time to interview strippers or sex workers. She quotes Jenna Jameson, but she doesn't get an analysis of raunch from the perspective of an actual sex worker. Presumably such a thing falls outside the scope of her subject matter, but you'd think that a G-string diva would have an idea or two of her own on her new role as cultural heroine.

Raunch, whether or not we like it, is tangled and complicated, fraught with pleasure, voyeurism, mimicry, excitement, revulsion, exploitation -- a whole host of contradictory impulses. (There's a reason this stuff tore the women's movement apart.) But all is not a matter of false consciousness. Many women are savvy enough to recognize those contradictions and see through the charade that is broadcast into their lives 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The ways that they consume and digest endless streams of newspaper stories, television shows, magazine covers, books, advertising campaigns, billboards and Internet pop-up ads would have been worth investigating. After all, being a woman faced with infinite images of other women taking their clothes off, gyrating, tittering, moaning and pushing product can be exhausting and demoralizing. (Shockingly, there are those rare mornings that the New York Times online goes down better without the Victoria's Secret pop-up ads.) Raunch, like so much of mass culture, is both out of our control and impossible to ignore. We must develop a smarter strategy for living with it than simply wishing it would go away.

Levy's book diagnoses, but it doesn't prescribe. After carefully documenting the sale of female sexuality, Levy closes with the call for readers to believe they are "sexy and funny and competent and smart." Apparently the solution to a system of objectification in which women themselves are complicit, in which feminism has been co-opted by and for profit, is for us to be ourselves. It's a little hard to swallow. Unless there is a political dimension to our personhood that extends to other women, we will never be more than marketing niches. Levy has done the good work of documenting raunch culture. What next?

Christine Smallwood is on the editorial staff of The Nation.

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rosh hashana from Elisheva

2005-10-06T11:27:00.000-05:00

For those who are interested, (I'll certainly not be offended if you choose not to continue to read!) I have endeavored below to provide you with words of Torah, but as I'm inadequate for the job, let me say in advance that I offer you a few words belonging to other people cobbled together with my own poor reasoning. It's a bit long, for which I apologize. Had I more time, I would edit it properly and make it more concise.

As always, if I make any errors, misinterpret the stories, or falsely retell the stories --any errors are my own fault and not to be blamed on anyone else. I believe I learned once that HaRav Auerbach zt"l once said to a student, "it is better that you should tell my ideas as your own then to tell your ideas as mine." So if anything sounds terrible or incorrect and is attributed wrongly, blame my poor intellect instead. I'm hardly the scholar. Also, if anything strikes you pleasantly and you feel good from what I've written below, I'm glad for it, but if however, what I write strikes you as non-sensical or simply bad thinking, I beg of you to forget these words immediately.
*******

If I may be so bold as to begin with an idea I heard from Jeremy Meisel, who repeated the words of a rebbe at Lakewood Yeshiva, and use it to my own devices, I would say as follows: The Lakewood rabbi told a story that on one day in the court of a great king, all the carpenters were lined up to present their requests for materials they needed. One man was ushered to the front of the line, listened to attentively by the king, given what he requested, and allowed to leave to begin his work immediately. The other carpenters wanted to know what this carpenter was doing that gave him such preferential treatment. The answer given is that this carpenter was doing work for the king and so all his requests were granted so he might do a good job. I believe that the Lakewood rabbi's vort is that the Rosh Hashana tefillot is our chance to put Hashem as our King/Melekh and if we choose to serve Hashem in our deeds and actions then our requests during the year are listened to more attentively and granted more readily.

I would begin to add to this idea with the remark that often I hear people talk about making resolutions at Rosh Hashana like one might discuss New Year's resolutions around Jan 1st. I've pondered this connection briefly every once in a while and would like to take a brief moment to stab at a possible answer as to what those days of repentance/self-reflection, those days of standing before the King of Kings, and those days of asking for a good life might -in some tiny aspect- be about.

One might think that this is our time to look our best, since we are coming before the King. I would counter that by saying that every day, we are before the King. No one can hide from Hashem. What makes this time so much more special? At another moment, we might think perhaps the more slichot one can say the better so as to be in a proper mood for seeming repentant enough to merit a good year. Some kind of self-flagellating sense may lead some of us to think that if we might be properly penitent, we might do better next year. If so, we and our co-religionists seem to be proponents of an idea that the more you beat the horse the more likely it is to get up and walk properly --which experience can prove doesn't work. If it doesn't work, then why do we do it? What about those who sit in shul and simply endure -or even sleep through- the long litany of rote words and chantings? What do they get out of it?

We spend a great portion of the davening talking about Hashem as melekh and a great portion of time in appearing repentant so as to sweet-talk(?) HaKadosh Baruch Hu/HKB"H (Hashem) into granting us a good decree, yet when one admits that Hashem is the master of all, the One who controls everything, does all that self-flagellation do any good? Hashem knows better than we do even which bad things we will do this year, what of the list in the vidui we are not truly penitent over, ... How can we really stand there and say the vidui if we know we may within the next month do at least one of the sins on this list? --and that timeframe if we're all highly optimistic people! Hashem certainly knows we probably will. We say these things each year no less, so it's fairly guaranteed that our penitent repetition of this year after year might get a bit old for Hashem. Hashem and we both harbor no doubt that we are going to do these things again! Why not stop here, wait until the moment before death and just say the vidui then and have it over with at a moment we might truthfully be able to say, "we're sorry, we won't do this again"... !? The answer to me is nicely put in the _Shadowlands_, wherein the character of C.S.Lewis says, "I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God, it changes me. " What a great thought, prayer changes me. It's actually reflected in the Hebrew itself the verb to pray is a reflexive verb, meaning we do it to ourselves.. Usually this grammar is reserved for things like I dressed myself, etc. ... how does one pray oneself? Hah! Is it that prayer changes us? Let's say this is so. Even if you don't have the concentration and intention for the prayer, don't understand the prayer, don't like the prayer, halachically, we say --pray anyway. Perhaps the act of praying will change each one of us.

Why then a special holiday? Why not just presume that shabbat or daily tefillot can do this all the same? If one is praying for praying's sake to change oneself, are not all prayers equal?

Perhaps Rosh Hashana --if one feels like getting out on a limb with connotations-- is a connection between the real "Rosh" the Ribono Shel Olam, HaBorei, the Creator, and time -"Hashana"- for us finite (er, mortal) beings who count our lives in years, weeks, days, hours, minutes, ... even for some of us nano and picoseconds in a slightly different manner. Time is of the essence to our very existence and is the manner in which we measure our very presence in this world. At Rosh Hashana, we mention life and death, which are conditions very much connected to our sense of time.

Certainly we see time counted every week with shabbat. A.J. Heschel called shabbat "a palace in time." Ehad Ha'Am is credited with penning the line "more than the Jews have kept shabbat, shabbat has kept the Jews." Marking time through shabbat and remembering what holiness can do for our lives at least once a week has helped us to retain our identity -our purpose in life, our connection to HKB"H, among lots of other things. Shabbat, that palace where we meet to affirm that HKB"H created the world --is it not enough to bring us to set our eyes upon the King and remind us that we serve Hashem? I would venture a guess not.

Perhaps Rosh Hashana itself lends us a marker on a grander scale, of once a year, to remember that we who count our days, whose lives are bound by time, are connected to that "Rosh," who doesn't count time. Rosh Hashana, rather than counting time like shabbat, might be a means of stopping our counting of time. At Rosh Hashana, standing before HKB"H and discussing our character flaws in shul together, we stop -we halt the business of time- to reflect on what is really important.

Simply put, it may be that we are reminded that there is more to our lives than the petty surface things we hold in front of ourselves when we worry about time. The Ba'al Shem Tov wrote something lovely that I can only paraphrase awkwardly as "the world is new to us every morning, that is Hashem's gift, and we should believe we are reborn each day." This is difficult to do. Rarely when we go about our days, --teaching, attending classes, working, going to meetings, picking up the kids, or whatever else we are doing, -- do we think about what we would do if this one or that one of our loved ones -bli ayin hara- were to die. We tend, also, not to live with that awe and delight as if each day were are first or with that love and savoring taste as if each day were our last. As several people have pointed out to me over the past year, we just can't live our lives like that. If we did, we might never get anything done. So we resume counting time outside the bounds of Rosh Hashana.

At Rosh Hashana, when we recommend ourselves to Hashem more with our character, our hopes, or our intentions and less with our resumes, our station in life, or our job titles, we remind ourselves, however subtly, of the important things in life, which cannot be seen by the eyes. We remind ourselves of whom, perhaps, we aspire to be through the prayers we pray at Rosh Hashana and thus are we changed by that raised level of awareness. We stop for a moment in time -sanctifying that time- to renew our awareness that beneath the surface, in the depth of ourselves, who we are as humans matters to the Ribono Shel Olam. Knowing this may subtly alter how we act for however brief a period of time before we are so immersed again in our daily lives that we forget. Maybe that's why we need to do it every year? That this time is connected to our requests for a good year, for a good life, is no silliness. What matters to us about a good life and a good year is connected to what matters to HKB"H about whether we are looking internally and trying to be good people and good av'dim (servants of) Hashem. So really in the end, our Rosh Hashana tefillot whether or not we consciously think so, are focused on this moment when we place Hashem in front of us to remember that HKB"H is king, and that what really matters is who we are inside and not what is on the outside.

... and that maybe, just maybe, is what links New Year's resolutions, serving the King, and prayers for a good life all together. I don't know, but this is my guess for now.

N.B. The idea of "the important things are invisible to the eyes" is from my recent reading of _The Little Prince_ by Antoine de St. Exupery.

continuation of _The Little Prince_ post

2005-10-02T17:51:00.000-05:00

we are so lucky to be able to love...

even when we have brief moments with another person ... we are "tamed" for ever so brief a moment,... we "tame" another for ever so brief a moment,... we are so lucky still to have loved and to have been loved. We really hurt when we are bbetrayed and we really hurt when we lose a loved one... but we are so lucky to have loved and held this precious thing in our hands.. I was really so happy to see this underlying statement in Le Petit Prince regarding what life is.. it is as if le prince is an angel or a prophet come to share his wisdom... and all too interestingly, one doesn't read this tiny children's book as if it were a revelation of some madman, but rather we coo over how adorable a story it is.. such subtlety is precious. We find in our minds hat we absorb pieces of what Antoine wished to teach us regarding his own outlook on life and on what is important.. and how he wishes for peope not to forget the idealist within... the person a little naive, a little innocent, so very precious who loves... with all his or her heart. This person who knows that what really matters is the person within and not the stupidity of the surface...

I thought that what he showed us about how death is a travel to another place was an interesting idea, introduced so cleverly into the mind, without much ado. The idea that love endures past death was also so interesting, becuase I recal reading how CSLewis also dealt with this thought... interestingly, the Problem of Pain was written at about the same time as The Little Prince. One has to wonder if CSLewis ever read/saw the book. More notably, though is that the themes overlap a bit better with those in _A Grief Observed_ and that AGO was written after TLP. Obviously, WWII and the tremendous expereinces people had with love and loss around that period of time brought out many of these ideas.. the climate was just so.

I'm reminded of Jack's comment at the end of _Shadowlands_ ... which goes something like..."why are we given the ability to love...? ... I was given the chance twice in my life... I chose one way early on, to close myself off in books and thought, never to be hurt again, and the second time I chose the other way..."

more accurately from three quotes we might see better:
Harry: Christopher can scoff, Jack, but I know how hard you've been praying; and now God is answering your prayers.
C. S. Lewis: That's not why I pray, Harry. I pray because I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn't change God, it changes me. "

"Joy Gresham: We can't have the happiness of yesterday without the pain of today. That's the deal. "

"C. S. Lewis: Pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world. " "the pain now is part of the happiness then."

and one which makes no difference to this particular debate, but which amuses e nonetheless: C.S. Lewis: "He comes; he sleeps; he goes. So the plot thickens."

Indeed, as one particular yahrtzeit comes up soon, I find that I am at peace with the fact that we endure our pain now as part of the package deal for havinng loved then. I find, too, that I pray, because the prayer changes me. I find that I trust now that all love extends past this physical shell of humman frailty and that it is connected to eternity. I find, lastly, that what is most important about life, is that which is invisible to the eye. It is not one's career or accmplishments in the grown up serious world which matter most, but the connections we made and the taming that was done, by far... it is the love we learn to show here and now.

be happy where you are and don't fret about saving time...?

2005-09-29T14:14:00.000-05:00

First, shameless plug, I just met Natalie who works for sippurim www.sippurim.org by all means it is a really awesome site, please go check it out and utilize it if you have children.

I absolutely adored this book _Bagels from Benny_ --it is by far a super super duper book. I heard from mindy that I should read _What Zeesie Saw on Delancey Street_ as well as the book about Dancing with Zaide, but I haven't had a chance to track those books down. (It's thundering outdoors. my oh my. I was going to go grocery shopping but I guess maybe not right now.)
***
the depth and not the surface...

I recently read _The Little Prince_ by Antoine de St. Exupery. I love this book. It is really wonderful. People forget it its lessons so often and that makes me sad. so many people have told me they like the book but they don't see the way the prince's relationship with the flower is like a relationship they had or are in. I can see how easy it is to be a grown-up... one just forgets all the things one learned about the world and it is easy to just close your eyes and pretend that nothing is there anymore, but what one sees on the surface... this world is so good at having us be blind to what really matters in life. I wish that this would not be the case. I really wish there was some way to tap into life and remind people of what is really and truly beautiful in the world... and what really really matters.

(It made me think of the dreamtime walkabouts. I thought of the dreamlines and the songs and stories that are told about life in the aboriginal world. Learning how an open love protects one from pain and from hate... lacking fear, because one walks with Hashem. I miss the dreamtime. I remmebered a lesson from a teacher once: it is not good to live in such a heavily civilized and populated area all the time, becuase you may come to forget the truth inn the world that what is really important is what is within and what really matters are the connections we make with other people. Those connections... that is wealth.)

I have heard so many people tell me that they are too busy to think of the world in such precious terms as .. this person may be my last time seeing him, or that one it may be my last time speaking to her, these guys tell me that they just can't live life that way, otherwise they would do nothing with their lives, but I do not believe this is true. I believe with my heart's core that people can live their lives, work and meet their responsibilities and still remember to love and to treat each other as if this may be their last time together. The crux is in how you treat another person and how you speak, not in where you are or whether you are spending all of your time with that person. Sure we might regret telling a friend I can't talk now, I have to go to work. Those things can't be allayed, but we can certainly remember if someone we love called and we were curt with a family member or loved one in annoyance or frustration.

(Incidentally, it seems to me that men learn what to cherish a bit more when they get married. It may be that they learn to follow what their wives tell them to do either because their wives make it so unpleasant for them if they don't or because they recognize her wisdom...there are many more options than these two, but... anyway we should also recognize that not all women are wise.)

To see beauty where it is anytime, to be cheered up by a rainbow or a sunset, is to know that life could change terribly the next day. Today, I could be a free man walking with my own plans and tomorrow I could be caged, enslaved, forced to do another man's bidding. So today, I will stop to smell this rose, to adore the sound of the rian, to love the majesty of the natural beauty all around me. Each day one can stop and admire the world around him and say "Today, I will recognize and honor Ribono Shel Olam, Haborei, the One who rules and creates all."

Beyond that, too, though, is an interesting commentary that de St. Exupery makes about people and moving in caravans... that if people would simplify their lives and live in one place, they would have made their lives easier. One creates the roots and the connections... one tends to those people and those connections with dedication and one's life is not so lonely, not so terrifying, and not so hard. If only we could all figure out how to live that way.
I like what he writes about the idea of being tamed... to create ties... the secret of the fox was that same secret that CSLewis identified, which is that painn is part of the package of love. Love is so incredibly great and beautiful it is a shame to miss out on it. Even if one must endure pain, one is so blessed to have touched another life, to have been touched by another life, and most of all... to have had a connection to another being. Love is that connection. Language brings us misunderstandings no doubt and can often bring more pain, but no matter it is also a vehicle for that love... which is ultimately according to Erich Maria Rilke the entire purpose of living.

One is made special through onne's connections to other people, one is made precious when one allows oneself to trust and to share... all the pieces of a person when shared with another person both people grow and gain... sure, all people develop rituals they do.. stupid things, like if I preface a comment with someone's name in a certain tone of voice.. the other person expects a lecture,... if I preface a comment with a certain sigh, the person listening expects to hear a certain type of comment. All the more so in other affairs... people have rites even for physical things, actual habits, ... but those things make that relationship unique. The rites are specific in peculiar ways to the people involved. Saying that you love your mother is different from saying that you love your father, but they're both parents, ... simply they are different people.

What I thought was interesting though is the discourse about thorns.. what do flowers have thorns for... to me that question can be reworded as: what do people push others away for when they yearn for connection and closeness?... I find the exchange between the little prince and the flower as he gets to know her so typical of human relationships as men and women et to know each other. I also find it odd that other people do not identify real life events with those patterns I see in the text, but alas alack, I suppose it is to be expected.
...
I wonder that people have forgotten if they look up at the sky on a starry night, that somewhere up there is a little prince wiht a flower he adores, and a sheep in a crate, with a muzzle that has no strap... and baobab trees he must fend off...

de St. Exupery shows us grown ups who are concerned with clothes, counting things, business -the desire to own things and to feel more iportant because one can own things... like stars, land, novel concepts, power/ruling, vanity/ego/self-aggrandizement, shame/drinking to forget the shame --those stuck in patterns of self-destruction, rote and ritual actions which are so unfulfilling and yet are adhered to so closely it is mind-boggling, and he shows us people who will do so much to save time, but for nothingness, and people who are nnever satisfied with where they are... he shows us how empty all of that is ... the lesson of the geographer that he is only concerned with those things which will endure forever... is so ironic inn that even those things which he records are ephemeral.. but most precious of all is that he teaches the boy the word ephemeral... you see no matter how much you think here and now is important... his fights & his hurts with the flower mean nothing at all whhen he realizes that she is not going to endure forever, that she is ephemeral, because this is the source of so many regrets... people in our lives come and go, this is the way of the world, but we must know to treasure them at the momnt we have them... to let go and to lose for nothing, but simple "serious" grown-up things like business, vanity, shame, power, ritual, etc. this hardly seems quite right in his world. Perhaps he misses soemthing and perhaps he doesn't, for you see.. I would ask, so many people are touched by this book.. why are they touched?

Meckleschnott, the Third, once told me that we cry and we love those stories that tell us who we want to be. I suspect he is right.

We *want* to be able to live as the little prince wishes he could teach us to live, but so many people don't know how to do so. They feel like these fellows I know do, that one simply cannot live like that and make it in the world today. I am not so sure that is true. If you are sad that we are destroying the world and that species are going extinct, are you not sad, too, that you are not living your life true to yourself and really in touch with what matters in your own life? If you are sad that you are still struggling with a paper you must write that you will not write for various excuses, do you not also see that you reuse to write it because internally you are unhappy or afraid? If you will not leave the man who continues to hurt you, even though friends of yours say that they love you and will help you, do you not see how you are betraying yourself? Few people seem to see how much what really matters in life begins within oneself. To be a good friend, to be a truly solid person, to be able to really love, to be a fine parent, one must first really learn to love oneself. Learn to love the person within, the heart, the mind, the soul, the thoughts within... and one learns to love, by really knowing and really being aware and present with ones feelings and thoughts. We are all so willing to do that to get to know another person, but so rarely will be grant ourselves that courtesy and that accord of love, honor, and respect.

Do we know what we love? so we know what we will fight to die for? In Judaism, we say there are a handful of things for which one must give up one's life rather than do... how many of us are ready and prepared to do that? I find it astounding that even my favorite black-hatters don't know the answer to this question.

de St. Exupery shows us too in the tale of the baobab of how one does as Voltaire says "il faut cultiver votre jardin" it is necessary to cultivate your own garden... aka it is important to grow and learn and teach oneself. Reach inwards and remake yourself... learn and always learn, grow and find the flaws and root them out, make sure that the baobabs-- those traits within- which could destroy/fracture your planet are rooted out.. Inspect oneself and one's own planet to guard against these things.. this is one's role as a parent to oneself. Baobabs start out very little and when they grow too big, they are a force to contend with...

It amazes me when we are touched by acts of heroism and when we are touched by other people's sacfrices... we see in humanity those things we admire and wish ourselves to be so giving, so heroic, so amazing, so altruistic, so pure and so innocently good... It also touches me that the little prince is Antoine's manner of relating his outlook on life and what life, heaven, death are about... that when one dies we can look into the stars still, and that as one lives, one must still look into the stars to remember what is important... these bonds we make they last beyond death. That love we forge & the relationships still mark us as special even when the other person is gone, ...

Sometimes it is eas to forget when a person does something for us.. the object itself is all the more precious because of the story that comes with the object... the water that the prince drinks at the end of the story is the discussions while walking, the walk, the time he spent carried in the pilot's arms, the finding of the well, the drawing of the water, with one's own effort, and finally this water is the product...

...and so it is that I think I may understand finally what Thich Nhat Hanh meant when he wrote "be present. A flower blooms beneath each of your steps."

"We walk, when we walk. we eat, when we eat, we breathe when we breathe."

Finally, in closing, a last bit from _The Little Prince_ to keep one remembering: " Good-bye," said the fox. Here is my secret. It's quite simple: One sees clearly only with the heart. Anything essential is invisible to the eyes." ... "It's the time you spent on your rose that makes your rose so important. ... People have forgotten this truth, ... but you musn't forget it. You become responsible for what you've tamed.
******************************************
The Master doesn't try to be powerful;
thus he is truly powerful.
The ordinary man keeps reaching for power;
thus he never has enough.

The Master does nothing,
yet he leaves nothing undone.
The ordinary man is always doing things,
yet many more are left to be done.

The kind man does something,
yet something remains undone.
The just man does something,
and leaves many things to be done.
The moral man does something,
and when no one responds
he rolls up his sleeves and uses force.

When the Tao is lost, there is goodness.
When goodness is lost, there is morality.
When morality is lost, there is ritual.
Ritual is the husk of true faith,
the beginning of chaos.

Therefore the Master concerns himself
with the depths and not the surface,
with the fruit and not the flower.
He has no will of his own.
He dwells in reality,
and lets all illusions go.

The Dance and the Railroad by David Henry Hwang

2005-09-27T10:51:00.000-05:00

Today, waking up late --a little bit just becuase I needed the sleep to compensate for tiredness and fatigue of the days prior and a little bit becuase yesterday was so phenomenally upsetting--I opened a book of plays that I had been wanting to read. Years ago I worked on the production of a play called F.O.B. which stands for "Fresh Of the Boat" a derogatory and insulting term referring to new immigrants. I had read the play _M.Butterfly_ for a class and immediately begun to be aware of how powerful and touching DHH's words were to me. I love to imagine and picture the plays in production as I read them. It's fine for a dramatic read-through to just be acquiainted with the text and to make mistakes. I'm saving a playbook to read each night of chag that I'm out during sukkot. I hope I can find someone to read the scripts with me out loud... though it might be difficult as few other Jews are aware of the Asian-American experience in the US.

Anyway, this morning I read _The Dance and the Railroad_ and I found myself marvelling again at Devid Henry Hwang's ability to capture human naivete and jadedness... I marvelled too at his ability to translate that strength that comes from disillusionment and inspiration.. the two chracters "switch places" so o speak.. one man who has long ago given up hope gains hope and the other one who is naively hopeful becomes despairing --it seems life is like this often, but that's not what captured my mind, it was actually how he portrays this marvelous piece of the human condition wherein one can recapture one's strength and face one's fear...

oops, the time, i hafta go, sorry not to end this properly

mitzvot as a discipline

2005-09-26T23:01:00.000-05:00

One way to learn to love is to learn what discipline means. To love someone means learning to discipline them, too. Hence, why parenting is a school in itself about love. We must learn, too, to parent ourselves properly. All the things we didn't learn with our parents.. and believe me, no one learns everything at their parents's hands --if you were lacking a parent, because one died, or if you were lacking one, becuase one left or divorced, etc. really SERIOUSLY .. take it from someone who has seen, heard, and lived a lot... you are no worse off than anyone else-- we all bear the scars of errors our parents made.. that is how it should be. That is how we are made... we are made b'tzelem elokim, sure, but we are also made by two humans and by HKB"H. We are made with certain flaws and certain struggles ingrained into our paths... we can choose to embrace that and grow or to run and hide. We choose our way no doubt. We are also each of us given our own unique task, based on our parents and their flows and what we will encounter as we live and grow. So it is that I have come to begin my learning of the lesson that discipline is oft confused with punishment and that the two are different and that discipline is itself a form of love --a form of love with boundaries. Having boundaries doesn't mean love that is conditional. It means love that respects both the person loving and the person loved. Discipline means learning to love oneself as well as the other person.

The first idea is the idea from the gemara about what to do when two friends (reiyot) are in the desert with one sack of water. Hillel says "love thy neighbor as thyself" and so we reach the proposal that the men must share the bottle of water. It comes out though instead that the sack of water is enough for one man to make it out of the desert alive. this solution of splitting the water means both men die, which is not okay by the torah. the sugya goes on and on and in the end the conclusion as I understoond it years ago when i learned this chunk of text is that one must learn to love oneself. Loving oneself is inherent to loving another... and that Hillel's teaching of do not to another what you would not do to yourself, is really two commandments one to love oneself, and the other to love others. Learning to do that is indeed all the torah. Mitzvot are themselves a practice in discipline. They are training annd bring merit particularly if you struggle with them.

this is rather like the training of yoga or meditation... people are taught to bring their minds into focus. Yoga and meditation are more palatable to our sensibilities these days, inn a way that mitzvot are not. truthfully though, the torah way of life, the following of mitzvot is really also the same kind of meditation practice that all those New-Agey people are pursuing. when one is obedient to H" one feels good someplace deep down inside, because one fulfills an inner sense of following through, doing what is right, and living up to discipline and rules set down. the level of guilt people feel for not follwoing what H" sets out for us is amazing.. maybe even one reason there are so many jews in psych-related stuff. I think that a human's mind requires rules and living up to those rules, becuase inn a way doing so frees us and makes us aware of who we are in a very different and powerful way. We are aware when we follow the rules of who we are, what are place is, and how we choose to live. Living the mitzvot without thinking is in itself a difficult thing, too. Living the mitzvot and knowing what you choose is difficult too, for totally different reasons. In any event, the practice of holding oneself to a set of rules is important becuase it trains one to love and to learn oneself. By obeying H" you learn to love yourself. you learn to say, if i don't do X I will feel guilty and bad, I don't want to do that when I could feel happy about who I am and what I am doing. One learns after a fashion, how to hold oneself on course... and of course, one's lifetime?... it is merely the practice of such mindfulness and such focus and awareness... and the struggle to do what is right. Living a life dedicated to the mitzvot is hard. One struggles with it all the time. It is in and of itself, however, an incredble practice in love -- love of H" , love of oneself, love of life, love, too, of the world, and love of one's fellow man.

The other train of thought regarding discipline is this... discipline differs from punishment as follows... 1) one who is disciplined really learns to love himself... his intention is to pardon, to show mercy, love, and kindness, and to work so that the wrong doesn't happen again. 2) one who is punishing himself is exacting vengeance for something done wrong.

To investigate that thought let's put it this way: someone I love Plonit bat Fuzzy Wuzzy forgot my birthday. Plonit could be very upset, make up for it by buying me a gift, then fed-ex-ing it to me to make up for it. however,the birthday is missed, does it amtter if the gift comes in the regular mail or by next day delivery? not really, no. Plonit confesses that she did it because she wanted to make herself "pay" for the error, so she wouldn't do it again... a more compassionate response probably would be instead to be sorry she missed my birthday, send me a gift by regular post, and to enter my birthday into an automatic calendar program which will email her a reminder a few days in advance... this way she won't forget it again and is addressing the issue in a manner more likley to provide a real solution to the issue. Exacting payment from herself is punitive, vengeful, and not actually self-disciplining in any manner. Rather it is designed to hurt the self, either in a self-abuse/self-hate kind of manner... Plonit is hardly unusual.

consider another case: Ploni ben Fluffy Tuchus was supposed to be the spokesperson for a group event. The evening gala drew near and Ploni, in part nervous, in part just unaware and not taking good care of himself, didn't sleep much, didn't eat much, and as a result worked very poorly on the gala speech. The speech went quite badly. So much so that Ploni's team mates in the group were angry with him. Ploni came home bemoaning how much he felt he was a failure and a regular shmendrick and shlimazel. Ploni beat himself up over the event for days. This kind of beating oneself up for days thing is another kind of self-hate or self-abuse. We learn it easily as children from peers, parents, whomever... because it is so rampant in our society today... as one of my colleagues Roger says either we are fighting against guilt or we are flowing with the guilt... at any rate, the punitive option is to beat oneself up, and not to do things, to learn to be afraid and to hamper oneself... the discipline response is instead to apologize, accept what comes his way for the error, and to apply himself to learning how to take good care of himself properly.

truthfully, most people live like Plonit and less like Ploni, whose story (below) is more severe. in either case though we see a strong sense of punishment... abuse, hate, and frustration and dislike... this is the root of human loneliness. when we no longer hate ourselves, we can find contentment in our own company and peace within the borders of our own minds... and we can also find awareness and love within our own hearts...

It is so hard though for us to behave with discipline in our actions, meaning moderation, but also to behave with discipline for ourselves, meaning to discipline ourselves. We tend to want to punish and to exact vengeance... also tending to want to impose some standard upon ourselves which is disastrous for our self-esteem and personal growth. We must unlearn the painful lessons which taught us fear and taught us to hate ourselves in even the slightest and most subtle of manners. We must learn what discipline and self-love the mitzvot have to teach us. Obedience and focus in itself are virtues and part of love.

***** shana tovah to all, may you in these days preceding tishrei gain for yourselves a smidgen of self-love and discipline... and if you don't, I love you all nonetheless.*****

Last lines of the day: eat artichokes. they're good for you.

question of the day: if CHAZAL say that one would be best never to have lived and they also agree that pikuach nefesh is of tantamount importance, revealing that life is the primal Jewish value... how does one reconncile these two thoughts?
(I do realize that the other side to the comment is that they say "given that one is born and one lives, one must do his best to live well..." --but I find a contradiction therein which bothers me nonetheless...

all time worst chemist conversational lines

2005-09-26T02:04:00.000-05:00

"talking to a particle is like talking to a 13-year old, but I like talking to you..."

"the key to maxwell's genius was his horse. where's that horse?"

"The oxygens are bouncing around with their coffee saying, 'hey, how ya doing?'"

"He was British, because you know, that happens."

"Say, that reaction was nice. was it good for you too?"

these were contributed by ari and his list of starzakisms

***** oh dear heavens, can you tell I'm up too late?
oh the other hand the upside is that I've now had a crembo from Israel and ooh, they really are as good as people say... and I totally get it now why they are "seasonal food" --heh, heh.
nice.

dude, I need sleep, and not to have to go to work tomorrow.

I wrote this to someone else, but it is a good crystal of my thinking about a certain aspect of life...

2005-09-25T19:40:00.000-05:00

In my own search for what makes me happy, I've found that the love of another person is tremendously powerful, though in the end it isn't everything. The everything is really the love a person learns to love himself or herself with. For me that is hard to do. I have learned that one's ability to be a good parent to him or herself... knowing when to be kind, nurturing, caring, disciplinary, etc. is actually a lot trickier than it seems, becuase we all overcompensate. We know our faults and aren't even sure we like who we are, so why should anyone else like us? When we see our faults even in the tiniest detail, we punish ourselves harder than we need to, because we know how bad we are. Sadly, the overcompensation obscures the truth from our view. That real parenting is compassion... and for a lot of us, we don't have compassion for ourselves. Sometimes we can have too little, too much, or just enough compasion for other people, but almost always we don't know how to be compassionate parents to ourselves.

****
There's a rule of thumb that people behave by unwittingly. In general, whatever love we lacked as children -discipline, nurturing, food, material things, etc.- we choose one, several, or all of those forms to exact back from those we are in relationships with... often demanding more than a hundred-fold what we lacked... as if we were accruing interest. Knowing that about ourselves and other people can sometimes be empowering. I can't vouch for anyone else, but for me, let me share with you a little bit from my own learning about life and the world.

For many people in relationships people, there is an emotional bank account where interactions are like deposits or withdrawals... even if it wasn't something you did specifically for that person it can be recorded in the emotional bank account one way or the other.

People rarely realize that everyone has their own "currency" of love. Learning to love someone as a friend, lover, parent, or child requires learning what the loved one's "currency" is -be it gifts, actions, words, follow-through, etc.- and it is a gift if someone can help you find out what his or her "currency" is, and is also a gift if the the one loving can learn to give love in the way that that person needs and wants. This is one of the most difficult aspects of relationships. It's even harder for people to learn to record it as a "deposit" when another person's means of loving, which doesn't fit his or her "currency" is provided nonetheless. for some generic "you", that is a hard task --to take in love in a manner which doesn't fit "your" "currency." That latter ability means giving people the ability to love "you" as they are able and as they can and know how to do so rather than trying to require them to go into uncharted areas where they aren't so comfortable giving and expressing love.

Anyway, that's how stuff works in my worldview... any comments?

and I thought we lived in the 21st century...

2005-09-23T06:02:00.000-05:00

Dear colleagues:
I am forwarding a copy of a letter that we sent as faculty in the Asian Pacific Islander American (APIA) Studies program to the UM administration and Michigan Daily as an immediate response to the recent report of ethnic intimidation towards UM Asian American students.
I have included a link to the Michigan Daily where this story was reported on the front page so you may read about the heinous nature of this incident and will join us in expressing your outrage and disgust about this incident and challenge the UM administration to publicly decry this offense.
http://www.michigandaily.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/09/21/4330f61d9f9f0
At this time, the faculty in APIA Studies and other Asian American faculty in other programs and departments are meeting with various student and faculty groups to discuss the next course of action to be taken. To date, President Mary Sue Colemen and other UM officials have not publicly expressed their outrage about this incident and we are troubled that such public silence may communicate that these types of ethnic intimidation or harassment are tolerated or condoned on this campus.
Please join us and make sure that others know about this incident and to challenge UM officials to take a public stance against such acts and to mobilize the necessary resources to address this issue on a campus-wide basis.
Sincerely,
Phillip Akutsu
------------ Forwarded Message -----------

To: marysuec@umich.edu, emgram@umich.edu, lmonts@umich.edu, harperer@umich.edu, matlock@umich.edu, pmaqui@umich.edu, pgurin@umich.edu, daily.letters@umich.edu

Subject: Faculty concern over racial incident
To:
Mary Sue Coleman, President
Edward Gramlich, Interim Provost
Lester P. Monts, Senior Vice Provost
Royster Harper, Vice President for Student Affairs
John Matlock, Director, Office of Academic and Multicultural Initiatives;
Patricia Aqui, Director, Multi-Ethnic Student Affairs;
Patricia Gurin, Acting Director, Center for Institutional Diversity

An Open Letter
We, the core cluster of faculty in Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies,
work earnestly in our teaching and research to increase interracial
understanding and tolerance throughout the UM community. One of our responsibilities is to educate students and colleagues alike to the deep historical record of anti-Asian racism and violence throughout American history.

An incident like the one reported on the front page of Wednesday's Michigan Daily (Sept. 21), involving two male university students assaulting a couple of Asian heritage by shouting racial slurs, throwing eggs, and urinating on the couple, is unequivocally outrageous. The incivility of this assault is incomprehensible. We are also deeply troubled by the remarks of two leaders of Asian student organizations interviewed in the story. Both spoke openly about experiencing racially-motivated bias themselves, and admitted that this kind of incident was not surprising to them. It is profoundly disturbing that students of color continue to endure racial bias and harassment on this campus, and we underscore the likelihood that such racial bias and intimidation is significantly underreported. Incidents like the racially-motivated intimidation reported in today's Michigan Daily--also reported in the Ann Arbor News and the Detroit Free Press several days ago--cannot be tolerated or condoned by university officials or public authorities. Moreover, it is unfortunate that a public incident such as this has once again unmasked more pervasive ethnic and racial discrimination that remains underdocumented. We call on the university leadership to honor its commitment to valuing diversity, by taking a public stand against racially-motivated bias and attacks, and to marshall the necessary resources to ensure that the wider university community can collaborate collectively to end such race-based bias and intimidation. We further call on university officials and public authorities to apply the full extent of civil and university codes in sanctioning the students who perpetrated the acts.
Phillip D. Akutsu
Vicente M. Diazp
Scott Kurashige
Emily P. Lawsin
Susan Y. Najita
Damon Salesa
Sarita See
Amy K. Stillman, Director Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies within the Program in American Culture College of Literature, Science, and the Arts University of Michigan
**********
News

Students may face charges for racially motivated felony

Police say there is a good chance victims will file a lawsuit
By Rachel Kruer, Daily Staff Reporter
September 21, 2005

The Ann Arbor Police Department has issued warrants for two University students for allegedly yelling obscenities and urinating on two students in a racially motivated act.

The incident began when one of the suspects, a 21-year-old, allegedly urinated from a second-floor balcony on two Asian students walking down the 600 block of South Forest Avenue Thursday night.

After the couple asked why they were being urinated on, the suspect and another student reportedly began to use racial slurs disparaging the couple’s Asian heritage.

The situation escalated, according to a police report, when at least one student began throwing items, which the couple suspected were eggs, at the couple.

One of the students was immediately taken into custody. The other student who urinated on the couple, barricaded himself in the apartment, which the police could not enter without a warrant.

However, the AAPD knows the identity of the student, who could face jail time if prosecuted.

AAPD Lt. Michael Logghe classified the crime as ethnic intimidation, or verbal or physical attack against a person of another race or gender. Logghe said ethnic intimidation is a felony and carries a maximum penalty of four years in jail. The suspects could also be charged with assault, and one of the suspects could face a charge of indecent exposure, which would require him to register as a sex offender.

Keith Elkin, director of the Office of Student Conflict Resolution, said he could not comment on whether OSCR was handling the case.

However, he said crimes involving ethnic intimidation do not only break city law, but also violate the University’s code of conduct.

“We protect student rights and have the responsibility to talk to students,” Elkin said. “Also, we have the ability to consider if the violation was motivated by bias, in which (case) we could consider sanctioning a student.”

If OSCR were asked to intervene, Elkin said there were a range of consequences a perpetrator of ethnic intimidation could face, from a formal reprimand to expulsion from the University.

Sgt. Angela Abrams of the AAPD said the victims will likely prosecute.

The police report also included a statement from an independent witness — an employee at a parking structure on South Forest — who said she saw the men assault the couple.

The incident has galvanized members of the Asian community — some of whom have also faced the humiliation of ethnic intimidation first-hand.

Cindy Chuang, LSA senior and president of the Taiwanese American Student Association, said she was appalled and shocked that a fellow University student could be demeaned in public.

But she herself said she has experienced racial bias from fellow students, who she said were drunk when the incident occurred.

While walking down South University Avenue, Chuang said a group of students yelled, “Wow, you speak really good English” and “You talk with a white accent.”

LSA senior and former Korean Student Association President Paul Yun said he was disgusted by the incident but not surprised that it happened.

Yun said that he has also faced discrimination in Ann Arbor.

While using a public restroom at Good Time Charley’s, Yun said he was referred to as “Bruce Lee” and “Ching Chong.”

He also said that many of his friends have experienced similar incidents.

Yun said that the issue needs to be addressed immediately. He said he expected the United Asian American Organizations — an umbrella group for the Asian student groups on campus — would be the first to respond to the matter.

At the very least, Yun said this incident will call attention to a problem on campus and could potentially empower the Asian community to improve the climate for minority students at the University.

hideaway

2005-09-22T06:24:00.000-05:00

Some of us hide our insecurites better than others... some of us are so intimidated by what looks like other people who have it all together... but never suspect that the person we are so intimidated by is really as full of insecurities as we are... sigh.

Perhaps in a spark of afflatus or perhaps with some wacko degree of hubris, I'd like to continue...
I recently had it called to my attention that sometimes people argue out of a need to prove themselves. In a way, this shows itself particularly clearly in people who have low self-esteem, because they are reaching for something to add to that internal bin of self-worth and trying to establish something for themselves that feels good about themselves.

Case and point: a really lovely woman (Most of the cases I know of are women, though there are a decent number that are men.) who was in college at the time she met and fell in love with her husband dropped out of college (Most of these cases are not necessarily dropouts, but they are the best examples, because the dropping out sets the tenor for a terrible pattern that will repeat itself in their lives later on.), got pregnant and had children some time later. Her husband often had arguments with her that ended in "you don't have to go to work tomorrow, but I do, so that's the end of that." She became extremely argumentative in her family's bounds and always regretted not being able to do the things that she wanted to do before she was married. Being a mother of two children and doing parent-teacher stuff on the side, she really did have a longer work-day than her husband and she did have to go to work. (In fact, unlike her husband, who if he got fired wouldn't have to work, she could never be fired as a mother.) In so many ways, she was living a life of resentment. Albeit she loved her children and she loved her husband, but the pieces of herself that made up her self-respect were gone ... and really she spent the next 35 years on the road to recovery... and is still trying to recover from that blow. In many ways she is better but it's a tremendous hit, not to mention the deletrious impact that has on her children.

Another woman who quit a graduate program after she became pregnant also had a similar situation. She became a stay-at-home mother, who worked for her husband and his brother like free, unpaid, possibly one could say slave labor, and had it held over her head repeatedly that the men were the ones who "brought home the paycheck" ... understandably she was resentful and had built up a great deal of self-hate. This woman's mental trauma made her teach and believe that women are the suffering sex. They can have full and real lives up until they marry and have children. Her lessons took their toll on her children, of course, too. Her husband was hard-working and almost never at home.

The tales are many and most are along similar lines and themes. In all honesty, we will certainly visit this topic again and again as I try to analyse and sort out what patterns I see and what is going on for these women and for the children who grow up influenced by them. It is particularly important as children need to break away from their mothers and grow independently at some point... and many children ion these circumstances could not do so, because the mothers had nothing else to base their self-esteem on, but the successes of their children. (Contrary to a commonly held nothion, a mother's success is not dependent upon her child's performance in life.)

A few thoughts though... 1) these resentments have affected a generation of women. 2) these women found that their self-respect was linked to their intellectual capabilities and ability of self-sufficiency. 3) These women taught and felt they learned that being a woman was about being subservient, but felt or thought that they were better than that.

thoughts? It's an interesting thread to follow.

a friend posted this one...

2005-09-21T06:23:00.000-05:00

"Thermodynamics of Relationships:
Covalent bonds, which involve atoms sharing electrons, are more stable than ionic bonds, which involve the attraction of charged opposites.

But which, I ask, is more fulfilling?"

********************************************
I say both are really great... useful and helpful. Maybe.. just maybe though, the stable relationships are worth more... just my thoughts. I've had one too many of those ionic types of relationships maybe.

what does a girl want?

2005-09-20T02:13:00.000-05:00

so I asked a friend outright what kind of guys she wants...
at first she said, the usual, what everyone wants, someone smart, someone nice, someone who's going to make a decent living, etc...

then I pushed and asked for more details and it turns out that is is more the picture she wants:
someone who went to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or Penn -okay, if not Ivy League educated then really well-educated from a good school- and also did a year at Gush, Sha'alvim, or HaKotel
someone who comes fromm a nice happy loving family
someone frum from birth, secure in himself and his Jewish observance
someone who has a stable, steady good job that pays well or really well, or has a family with money
someone who has a financial sense about saving money and making money
someone who is capable of connecting serious torah to serious secular studies
someone who learns and makes the time to learn often
someone who is also friendly, nice, smart, gets along with people easily, wants to be active in the community he lives in, generous, sensitive, has an understanding of derekh eretz...
and has a wide breadth of interests in science, literature, cultural things, and outdoors activities...

heh, I said, isn't that a tall order?
and she said, isn't that what every girl wants, but doesn't want to say out loud?

I said, I dunno... I mean I guess you could have added on more things to make that fairly unrealistic as far as finding such a person in real life.

the journey

2005-09-18T18:08:00.000-05:00

I find it weird when people say that they want children... This is not to say that someday, IY"H, I do not anticipate having a child or two. Rather, I think that I will be a parent, but I'm in no hurry to make the family thing go super fast or too soon. I have a career to build, parnassah to bulid up before I can afford all the things a child would need... i need to be really able to manage my own life and grow up the way I want to grow and be before I think I can have a child. ...not to mention the fact that I'm not even married yet. I figure thhere is a lot I have to learn about being a spouse before I can tackle the being ready to be a parent thing. I want to have marriage down before I try to juggle the marriage and ... so it puzzles me when people who aren't even married yet go on and on about how much they want a child or children already.

I figure one or two kids is more than a handful. I'll be happy with whatever Hashem gives me of course, but really, I just don't get the race to be done already.

I think of life along the lines of this great quote my Papa sent to me for my birthday:
"Sooner or later, we must realize there is no station, no one place to arrive at once and for all. The true joy of life is in the trip." -Robert J. Hastings

second denver installment

2005-09-15T14:01:00.000-05:00

I'm generally pretty good at packing things in bags, ziplocks, etc. so the mesh pocket in the Gregory pack was hardly a downside. On this trip weather protection was indeed desireable! incidentally, on my continuing pro-Gregory Iris pack rant... it is amde of an extremely lightweight silicone impregated fabrc . Iw as amazed at how strong the material was and how waterproof it was without compromising weight. G70 material is much to be admired.

The trip created a nifty neat discovery or two about wool. Discovery one, wash wool in a soap containing lanolin so it won't be scratchy. To restore already scratchy wool requires several treatments with lanolin. Dove liquid soap works nicely for that. Discovery number two, wool t-shirts don't smell when you wear them on long hiking trips. Something about the natural fiber causes this interesting effect. While one can wash one's clothes, one finds that one doesn't stink the way a capilene shirt would. I wonder why. One downside is that they don't dry as fast as capilene might.. or as fast as I recall capilene drying. The other downside is the shirts come in really odd colors and patterns.

I learned that one can tie hiking boots with a pulley system (pulley trick which moves the lock in between hooks: laces in two eyehooks on the same side, then loop the one in your left hand under the string that is between the two eyehooks of the right side and vice versa, so you have an x created in between where there would have been two originally) and with a sectioning habit (segment: simply tying a knot after lacing left and right, to keep that tightness localized over a certain part fo the foot), which causes each part of the boot to set in a separate manner so you can tighten certain parts , lock the foot into the boot a certain way, etc. Of course this isn't ideal for those who are going climbing on rocks as a fall or twisted ankle will want you to have easy pull laces to remove the boot from the foot quickly for treatment, but for those of us who own boots that are maladjusted to our weirdly-shaped feet... this is a great set of techniques to learn for less painful day hikes and camping. Between such techniques and the superfeet insoles which are now becoming every podiatrist's most recommended insole, one may nnever need to figure out how to use that moleskin pad... ;) would that I had never had to learn that lesson 6 years ago in Acadia National Park with my sister and those dratted Saloman boots! In retrospect it makes perfect sense that one can use pulley and segmenting tricks to fit a boot to one's foot's contours properly but heavens to Betsy! I never thought of it myself!

Romanian Kosher Meat Co. salamis were a must for this trip. Not only are they representative of Chicago and Chicago's best Jewish contribution to the kosher market, but they're perfect for travel. Of ocurse,.. not if you mind the smell of salami in your suitcase, though once again the ziplock bag habit came in handy and kept my things meat smell free.

Gratuitous plug for Zelda's Sweet Shoppe www.zeldas.net --which provided the scrumptious biscotti --pistachio and dried cherry-- for our trip. YUM! They were excellent hosting gifts and really tasty snacks for hiking, too. I highly recommend biscotti for hiking trips.

Okay, so our first adventure of this whole thing was the ah.. well,... so there's this weird thing orthodox Jews do... with their cookware and pots. It's a ritual immersion in water called toveling... but you see it has to be a certain kind of water. Naturally accumulated water. Check Leviticus if you don't believe me. Anyway, they call these containers thhat hold such water mikvahs...

I realized in the week before thhe trip that I needed to tovel the camping cookset. The earliest date I could do so was a Wednesday a week before we were to leave. We had quite a harried schedule up until then, so this was a must do it then or no other time kind of opportunity. Mir and I went to the WRP kelim mikvah (which is where Jews do this ritual immersion thing generally) only to find that it was closed for cleaning the water. In hindsight, this was probably a good sign as to how the rest of the trip would go, but silly me, I didn't think of that of course. I'm just a cat.

So we went to the ERP beach to immerse pot, pan, handle, and two metal plates in the Lake. I'm sure it was a sight to see.(Part of this immerrsion thing is that one lets go of the item one is submerging so it is surrounded entirely by the free flowing water. This can be a bit tricky in a lake with a lot of wind and sloshing rough waves. I wasn't there to LOSE the cookset. ;)

tears to my eyes twice today

2005-09-15T10:34:00.000-05:00

I think it might be the lack of sleep, or maybe it is the fatigue setting in again and holding me up, but I've already cried twice today...

if you're interested in gush katif and ir emunah...
http://www.livejournal.com/users/mishkaegli2/344.html
sent in by my old chavruta Gershon. Israel Dec 2006!

I cried over the picture of the imma in the yellow kerchief with her two sons helping them with their homework.

I'm nutty and sentimental that way. *****************************

and then there was this thing with the kids today... even though I'm not a parent myself, I end up in these roles... it spurred me to write the following passage.

Do you know what it is like to have a child you love so dearly and watch the child make mistakes and do things you think are wrong or bad...? Oh, it's painful. Even though I think of myself as growing up or grown up, I'm reminded how having the precious role of mentor, mom, parent, guide, advisor, etc. means that I am growing more. I'm learning to hold my tongue to let the people do what they will and if it turns out to be a mistake letting them live their lives as they want and should. Oh, it is so hard.

Perhaps in a way that is what the mitzvah about p'ru u'rvu is about. Maybe we are commanded thusly, so that we can be in touch with these lessons... of patience, of letting go, of inner peace, ... of real love. Perhaps the whole point of life is learning to love...

a very sweet note

2005-09-13T19:22:00.000-05:00

On 2005-09-13, a person I do not know wrote to me:

i just want to say yiu are amazing
you deserve the lottery
kol tov
****************************************************
I'm really touched, but I have no idea what prompted that comment. I'd be grateful to win the lottery actually. It would be really awesome. I think I'd use the money to take a trip to Europe and visit Andorra. Anyway, What I was really coming online to write is that my mother encouraged me to get a book called _common Prayers_ by Harvey cox and I really am liking it quite a bit. I have some things that I'm sure I will write about it later on.. but just a heads up.. it's an interesting book about intermarriage between a Jewish woman and a Christian theologian. Word to those who are in the know... it doesn't end up the way CSLewis and Joy (nee Davidman) Gresham's marriage did on the Christian side of things. Rather, they choose to raise their child Jewish... and it's an interesting affair.

I know, it's a hiatus from finishing other books, but seriously, _The Storyteller_ is just not that fascinating. I really like British, French, and American authors so much more than Spanish authors.

Dinner is going to be brussel sprouts with freshly squeezed lemon juice, served with les crudites, followed by a dessert of a Chinese green mung bean and rice reduced congee.

reading about Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach zt"l

2005-09-13T11:08:00.000-05:00

I find Auerbach’s determination to learn and his adherence to a strict schedule very admirable. Anyone who can hold to a strict schedule for learning is to be admired greatly in my opinion.

There is one very touching story so far in the book so far that I feel compelled to put down so I might review it later and perhaps remember it well. R’Shlomo Zalman Auerbach was consulted by parents regarding their retarded child. The parents presented to him their tow options for sending the child away. E asked them if they had consulted the child. They said no and the child would not understand. He was greatly upset by this. He demanded the child be brought to him. He told the child that he was a gadol hador and that he would like the little boy to represent him in the new special school and look after all of the religious matters in the new home. The rav continued to speak and told him that he will give him smicha which makes him a rabbi and that he wanted the child to use this honor wisely.. the rav stroked the child’s cheek and told him he now had a responsibility to his fellows. The story brought tears to my eyes. I care very much when people honor another person’s dignity and help to lift them up above themselves. It's one of the most beautiful things I know about the human condition.

Another story which really touches me very much is when a woman who had once been married before was becoming frum came to ask a sheilah about covering her hair at work. She felt that she had made so many changes to her life and for herself that she couldn’t bear to also cover her hair at work, because of the huge source of difficulty and embarrassment this would cause her. The rav shlomo zalman auerbach ruled that for this woman.. since her embarrassment would be so extreme he said to another rabbi who argued in favor of requiring her to wear a sheitel “You do not know, nor do you have any way of knowing, how this woman would feel with a wig –which she considers a source of embarrassment—on her head.” This sensitivity to the woman’s feelings is also impressive. I am so touched when a person shows sensitivity to another person’s feelings.

just another thing the cat pulled in off the newsline

2005-09-13T10:20:00.000-05:00

Actually, it's a send-in from Su in Cambridge, but cats like conspiracy theory stuff as it reminds them of tangled balls of yarn to play games with******

U.S. Meteorologist Says Russian Inventors Caused Hurricane Katrina
Created: 08.09.2005 16:42 MSK (GMT +3), Updated: 17:08 MSK
MosNews

http://www.mosnews.com/news/2005/09/08/kgbkatrina.shtml

A meteorologist in Pocatello, Idaho, claims Japanese gangsters known as the Yakuza used KGB inventions to cause Hurricane Katrina, Wireless Flash reported Thursday.

Scott Stevens says after looking at NASA satellite photos of the hurricane, he’s is convinced it was caused by electromagnetic generators from ground-based microwave transmitters.

“There is absolutely zero chance that this is natural, zero,” Villagevoice quoted Stevens as saying after Katrina’s landfall, pointing out suspiciously rectilinear shapes in the satellite-photoed hurricane clouds

The generators emit a soundwave between three and 30 megahertz and Stevens claims the Russians invented the storm-creating technology back in 1976 and sold it to others in the late 1980s.

Stevens says the clouds formed by the generators are different from normal clouds and are able to appear out of nowhere and says Katrina had many rotation points that are unusual for hurricanes.

At least 10 nations and organizations possess the technology, but Stevens suspects the Japanese Yakuza created Katrina in order to make a fortune in the futures market and to get even with the U.S. for the 1945 bombing of Hiroshima.

this just in!

2005-09-13T00:49:00.000-05:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster

Those of you who like Ramen noodles and those of you who like spiritual mattters migh t get a kick out of a new ... uh, religion?

It was brought to my attention by Elisha. Thanks for this one.

heehee... who'da thunk?

Rashi on the Generation of Esav --Why does the Torah teach us the lineage? ah! They're all mamzerim!

2005-09-12T22:18:00.000-05:00

Bereishit lamed vav: pasuk bet --Rashi's take on this apparent contradiction of a "bat anah bat tziv'on" is as follows " im bat ana lo bat tziv'on... melameid sheba tziv'on al kaltho, eishet ana, ...vhodiakha hkathuv shekulan bnei mamzeiruth hayu."

My cousin Avi is really my brother; his sister-in-law is really my aunt... so while there is nothing like mamzerut in our family we laughed about this a bit. The relationship is a bit more convoluted, but doesn't fit anything abnormal people might think up. Avi decided to share amidst the laughter the following poem, which I think reads a bit like a funny passage in a gemara -though I have forgotten which maseket. It's a passage which asks one of the possibilities for how amny averot one can committ at a time, if my memory serves me correctly. If anyone knows the aggada that I'm referring to and remembers, please send me the citation!

oy! ****************makes us laugh and think of this poem Avi found called "I'm my own grandpa" credit for author unknown and unclear****************************************

Many, many years ago
When I was twenty-three
I married a widow
As pretty as could be.

This widow had a grow-up daughter
with hair of flowing red.
My father fell in love with her,
And soon the two were wed.

This made my dad my son-in-law
And changed my very life.
Now my daughter was my mother, for
she was my father's wife.

To complicate the matters worse,
Although it brought me joy,
I soon became the father of a
bouncing baby boy.

My little baby then became
A brother-in-law to dad, and
so became my uncle, though
it made me very sad: For

if he was my uncle,
Then that also made him brother to the
widow's grown-up daughter
Who, of course, was my step-mother.

Father's wife then had a son
Who kept them on the run.
And he became my grandson, for
he was my daughter's son.

My wife is now my mother's mother
And it makes me blue, because,
although she is my wife,
She's my grandma, too... If

my wife is my grandmother,
Then I am her grandchild.
And every time I think of it,
It simply drives me wild.

For now I have become the strangest
case you ever saw: As
As the husband of my grandmother, I'm
my own grandpa!

the balance matters to me

2005-09-12T11:08:00.000-05:00

Ever marveled at how a baby learning to say the alphabet becomes a young teenagers in college and thought about how incredibly wacko life is? You weigh on one side the rat race world struggling to have a career, survive, etc. and on the other side you realize that every day is so precious and beautiful that everyone you meet has got a story... Life's full of these contradctions. Run fast, yet savor each step?!

I know too many people who say to me that one can't live one's life thinking that today might be one's last and one can't live one's life remembering that those one loves could be taken away at any moment. Is it really true that one can't live thinking that? If I remember that someone I love could be taken from me at any moment in time.. aren't I more likley to forgive them and treat them with love? why isn't is a good rule of thumb?

Then there's the woman who said she can't imagine thinking about what it is like when her children now very young will grow up. Truthfully? I've heard that so often from people I know. another mother I know was saying --oh, I wish I could freeze my children at this stage. I don't want them to grow up. Why not? Why can't we bear to think that the world will change... and that life will be different? People live and people die. The worst thing is to think that people will regret how they lived in my mind. When we are sad that people die... are we sad for them or for us? I disagree with people who tell me that the worst thing in the world is death. I think that the worst thing is to regret how we have lived our lives and to think that we are alone.

It seems to me that some balance between living cognizant of the perspective on life as a broad infinite tapestry always being woven and added onto and living focused on our jobs, tasks, errands, theories, etc. is really important for not regretting and not succumbing to the idea of loneliness.

lyrics to "saw you standing there"

2005-09-11T23:20:00.000-05:00

There were tears in my eyes,
as I looked out the window
watching you leave...
Hanna held me in her arms,
her tears in my fur as we cried...

why did you leave?
Was it the tuna that went bad?
Was it the soups that she burned?
Why did you go? when she loved you so...

Some mornings I wake with a meow,
she doesn't know that she misses you so much.
I hear the sighs and the cries in her sleep...
and I wonder as I settle myself back in the pillows

Why did you leave?
Was it the tuna that went bad?
Was it the soups that she burned?
Why did you go? when she loved you so...

So now the months have gone by.
She still has a couple of pictures in bottom of the drawer.
I chewed the rest of them up. A new guy takes your place,
but I think she still hopes for you.

Why did you leave?
Was it the tuna that went bad?
Was it the soups that she burned?
Why did you go? when she loved you so...

*************lyrics to a bad country music song***
we vote it almost as good as our all time favorite lyrics for country songs "if people were biscuits honey, you'd be homemade" .. three cheers to the HOBY leader who wrote that one.

first denver installment

2005-09-07T23:08:00.000-05:00

So the weeks before our trip to Denver, CO, USA and Estes Park.Rocky Mountain National Park, USA were hectic with both work and the necessary preparation for the trip. Hours each day were spent in researching the area, Jewish life necessities -synagogues (nothing Sephardi and nothing modern orthodox), kosher food, and even some of the history of the area (Denver's first Jews came with the mining boom), past inhabitants of the area, camping/hiking information, and fun things ilke new favorites for hiking gear... whew! It was a lot of stuff to find out! I found a lot of interesting tidbits out. Of great interest to me were the essentials needed for a mountain hiking first aid kit and directions on how to properly pack a backpack.. (something I hadn't done since my days in the Appalachians of Virginia back in 1995).. so as not to cause oneself back pain, shoulder pain, or other pack-carrying discomforts. (my '95 experiences were with external frame packs for camping and this trip was a light internal frame pack --a Gregory Iris, for those of you who are afficianados-- and day hiking rather than camping. The last serious day hiking I did was either Acadia National Park, Maine, USA or Indiana State Dunes, IN, USA. I even contacted Su (of Su and Yakov fame) and Mike (of Kipling fame to whom we now owe a significant mazal tov as he just got engaged) to get more information on the area. Both people were tremendously helpful. Su's assessment of Denver is not to be repeated, but let's say she recommended RMNP highly over the city of Denver.

We heard via Palo Alto and via Skokie that Denver's frum community might not be "comfortable." Who knows what that was supposed to mean?

I packed food as is my normal wont, bringing along an aluminium camping cookset -which proved to be quite valuable. I followed a Schiller tradition and packed away a salami too. I actually brought along and extra one for our shababt hosts. Since food is always a concern, I'd actually planned out a complete menu for the entire trip. That made shopping when we got there petty easy and straightforward, which I like. Having accumulated an all too long list of things to take along, I sorted out what was a nnecessity and what was not, erring on the side of more things to take in the case of emergency gear and erring on the side of less things to take by way of sefarim and the like. Considering my physical condition, I decided that there would be a limit to how much I could carry and I set the bar at 25 lbs.

I knew that I would carry medical supplies, which probably weighed in at 2lbs and added on approx. 3L or more of water with requisite toilet supplies, food, and the reguarl emergency mountain supplies of flashlight, compass, whistle, matches, raingear, mylar sleeping bag and mylar blanket, etc. The gregory Iris pack is excellently designed for such a trip and really I adored the pack... I'd recommend it to any small folk who is looking for a comforatble and lightweight daypack. All the engineering design work I've done led me to a real appreciation for this pack. The cloth is strong and really lightweight, the pack compression straps are great.. the only part that is annoying is the canted pouch on the right hand side,which really would have been best if it had been parallel like the pouch on the other side.. all in all though, i wouldn't complain too much about that.. as the pack withstood bad weather, too. Oh, though of course, I packed everything in ziplock bags, so there is another downside to the pack.. the little mesh pocket is well.. mesh.. so if you're not accustomed to packing in zip lock bags (I think I may single-handedly keep ziplock bag producers in business) then you won't be as satisfied as I was about how well the pack performs in snow and hail and rain.

Iberian flavor is just not quite me?

2005-09-05T11:08:00.000-05:00

newsflash

motz" sh
i made my first creme brulee with Batya .. we used Chana's blowtorch... all I can say is i want a blowtorch of my own! shew!

******
I have learned now from reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Mario Vargas Llosa that I do not like reading Spanish tomes in translation. Somehow the vibrance and the soul is lost on me. Maybe I just don't really get the Iberian flavor exactly... like it's a portion of my personality that just doesn't match or something. I'm not sure. I'm off to read more of the history of cod by Mark Kurlansky and to start the new bestseller that my mother sent me _The World i Flat_ by Thomas Friedman. I'm curious to know what those two will teach me..

I love the line in _Cod_ that discusses how the Basques were here long before any other peoples. I like the Basques. Maybe someday I will travel to their lands to see them and to explore their culture.. I'd like that a lot.

That and..well, I have a fascination with the country of Andorra...

The Gambler, by Kenny Rogers (lyrics)

2005-08-30T14:11:00.000-05:00

These are the lyrics to a classic country song by Kenny ROgers. Josh sent them to me today. I think as I write today and think about the world, that I realize how much I haven't taken these words to heart yet. I know I shuld. Someday I might live them really, but for now I keep telling myself over and over, hoping that repetition will teach me and I'll learn my lesson well.

On a warm summer’s evenin’ on a train bound for nowhere,
I met up with the gambler; we were both too tired to sleep.
So we took turns a starin’ out the window at the darkness
’til boredom overtook us, and he began to speak.

He said, son, I’ve made a life out of readin’ people’s faces,
And knowin’ what their cards were by the way they held their eyes.
So if you don’t mind my sayin’, I can see you’re out of aces.
For a taste of your whiskey I’ll give you some advice.

So I handed him my bottle and he drank down my last swallow.
Then he bummed a cigarette and asked me for a light.
And the night got deathly quiet, and his face lost all expression.
Said, if you’re gonna play the game, boy, ya gotta learn to play it right.

You got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run.
You never count your money when you’re sittin’ at the table.
There’ll be time enough for countin’ when the dealin’s done.

Now ev’ry gambler knows that the secret to survivin’
Is knowin’ what to throw away and knowing what to keep.
’cause ev’ry hand’s a winner and ev’ry hand’s a loser,
And the best that you can hope for is to die in your sleep.

So when he’d finished speakin’, he turned back towards the window,
Crushed out his cigarette and faded off to sleep.
And somewhere in the darkness the gambler, he broke even.
But in his final words I found an ace that I could keep.

You got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run.
You never count your money when you’re sittin’ at the table.
There’ll be time enough for countin’ when the dealin’s done.

You got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run.
You never count you r money when you’re sittin’ at the table.
There’ll be time enough for countin’ when the dealin’s done.

fun tidbits off the newsline

2005-08-29T19:29:00.000-05:00

This article of the AP newline is kind of fun, I excerpted the super cold and the PVC part.. the PVC bit had me laughing...

Almanac Warns of 'Polar Coaster' Winter By JERRY HARKAVY, AP
LEWISTON, Maine (Aug. 28) - Get your sweaters, mittens and hats ready. The Farmers' Almanac warns that the coming winter will bring unusually sharp fluctuations in temperature, and says readers "may be reminded of riding a roller, or in this case, 'polar' coaster." "Mother Nature seems to be in the mood for some amusement this winter season," the almanac said in its 2006 edition, just off the presses.The coldest weather will be in the Northeast, which also will get plenty of snow, the almanac said. It predicts cold weather for the South and Mid-Atlantic regions and snowy but mild weather in the Great Lakes and Midwest.Parts of the Rockies and the Great Plains may have drier-than-normal weather, adding to the area's continuing drought, but wetter-than-normal weather is predicted for the Pacific Northwest and lower Texas.
...
Pu
mpkins get plenty of ink this year, first in recipes that include pumpkin pie, pumpkin gratin, pumpkin dip and pumpkin pancakes. But an article also describes how a hollowed-out pumpkin can be used as a boat, as is done each year at the Windsor-West Hants Pumpkin Festival and Regatta in Nova Scotia. Potential participants beware: "Your pumpkin, or personal vegetable craft (PVC) as they are known, can rarely be used twice due to structural ravages," the almanac says.

08/28/05 14:49 EDT

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

I liked the usage of ther personal vegetable craft. :) Today was a good full day's work; my paws hurt.