באותה שעה גזרו על היחוד ועל הפנויה. יחוד דאורייתא היא! אלא אימא: על יחוד דפנויה

11:15PM - Aaaargh

This past Saturday night, I ordered my haggadoth from Lulu.com

As of today, they still had not shipped, and I was beginning to get worried.

I went to the Lulu.com support chat. The good news is that the support staff were quite good: They spoke English, understood the problem, and were able to explain to me what was going on.

The bad news is that my order had been cancelled, because the credit card had failed. (I'm pretty sure the reason for this is that I clicked "use shipping address as billing address", and the shipping address was my dad's address, rather than one with my name.)

So, this meant that I would need to start from scratch.

I re-uploaded the PDF, and made a new order. The problem is that printing can take 3-5 business days (though it never has taken more than two days in my experience, and has even taken one day), and my father is leaving for Israel on Wednesday night.

So, I chose "express shipping" (24 hours after printing), which cost me a bloody fortune -- $60. I sure hope it arrives in time. If it prints tomorrow, then it will arrive at my dad's place on Saturday; if it ships on Monday, it will arrive at his place on Tuesday; if it ships on Tuesday, it will arrive at his place on Wednesday.

If it ships later, I simply won't receive it.

But that will be OK, right? I can calm down? If that happens, I can print 3 or 4 copies at a print shop here, even though they won't be nicely bound? And if I have more than four people at either seider, people can share.

It won't be super-beautiful, or impressive for me, but does it really need to be? Isn't that just feeding narcissism, not freedom? (That is, it's OK to want it to be beautiful, but if I'm going to freak out and feel like a failure if it's not, that's not going to be good for me at all.)

8:25AM - Wet Sefer Tora

It strikes me that it had been written on gevil (unsplit leather), rather than qelaf (parchment), this wouldn't have been a cause for worry. At least, that's what Yaakov has always told me.

That's why you can write a mezuza on gevil, in "Dio Lanetzach", and keep it in a large glass mezuza-case, filled with water and a few goldfish, and it will remain OK. Does anyone do that, though?

8:15PM - Waaa

I have a wet Sefer Tora in my apartment. This does not make me happy.

There's a safruth store a block or two away. I hope I can convince someone tomorrow to come from the store and take a look at it, to tell me what to do.

5:51PM - Brilliant minds conversing about an important topic

me: Anyway, did you open the email? [NB: The email said just: "In faire Verona where we lay our Scene...".]

11 minutes

5:49PM - Pesach

I've got almost three weeks to make Pesach -- that is, to make magic in my apartment, turning it from a plain, filthy one-room hovel into a glorious, beautiful Roman triclinium.

My brain is less able to focus on work during these weeks -- and that's OK. It really is. It's OK not only when I'm tootling around Washington Heights and attending a "class" every few days or so, and occasionally doing some reading for said "class", but even when I'm occupied with hardcore work at the IMHM on a daily basis. It's OK to get less work done, as long as I'm still regularly doing work.

• Two days ago (Saturday night), I removed my mattress from the slat base, and put it on the floor.
• On Sunday morning, I bought a plunger (and successfully cleared out the drain of the kitchen sink, which had been clogged and festering with a cesspool of bacteria for weeks).
• On that same shopping trip, I bought a mat and a blanket, to put over the slat base, to turn it into a bed. Even with these, it was still not usable.
• Later on Sunday, I did a fair amount of work on my Haggada. I would like to finish all corrections and updates by Friday, and send it to Lulu.com then.
• This morning (Monday), I brought my suits to the drycleaner, and the Torah scroll's torn mantel to the tailor. On the same shopping trip, I bought three large pillows (sale: 15 NIS each, only three left) to put between the ratty-blanket-lying-on-the-slats and the new-(albeit-smallish)-blanket-that-I-had-bought-yesterday. I also bought four decorative cushions.
• I set up the large pillows between the blankets, and lo, that thing is starting to become a rather comfortable bed.
• What else did I buy this morning? Don't remember. I need to find little tables somewhere.

10:21AM - Menachem bar Machir

In Selichoth this morning, there was a piyyut by Menachem bar Machir (late 11th to early 12th century, Regensburg), אדם בקום עלינו, telling the Purim story. It reminded me quite a lot of the piyyut of his which I'm working on these days, אודך כי עניתני, for Hanukkah. Long, narrative poem, too many words in each line, each stanza ends in a biblical verse, usually from somewhere unconnected to the story. (In the Hanukkah one, only the first stanza ends in a verse from a prophecy about the Hasmoneans, ועוררתי בניך ציון על בניך יון, and in the Purim one, only the last stanza ends in a verse from the Megilla, רוח והצלה יעמוד ליהודים.)

Makes me think that someone should put out an edition of the collected poems of MbM. (Probably not me; I'm more into holidays and rites than individual poets. It's a different way of organizing a book. Both are important.) Davidson lists twenty poems of his, in many different genres (in contrast to many Ashkenazic contemporaries of his, who wrote almost exclusively Selichoth), and I would be surprised if people haven't discovered several more in the past 90 years..

2:01PM - Dissertation stuff

I've been taking some of my huge clunky files of textual variants in the largest (=most lines and highest numbers of manuscripts) piyyutim, and turning them into usable texts, by typesetting the poetry stichometrically, adding vocalization and line-numbers, and typesetting the textual variants in the form of a readable apparatus criticus, rather than as ugly, clunky footnotes. In the piyyutim which quote pieces of Biblical verses at fixed points in each stanza (say, the last line of each stanza), I have been adding the citation references at the side of the page, next to the line, rather than in the commentary.

This last activity has gotten me thinking about the use of Biblical verses in (both versions of) Menaḥem bar Makhir's piyyut Odkha Ki ‘Anithani. He's really incorporating these verses into his narrative quite skillfully, and I'm intrigued by how he's repeatedly going back many of the same Biblical chapters, thus intertextually linking his narrative to those stories. (Thus, for example, the sexual elements of the Hanukkah narrative* get linked to the story of the Rape of Dinah in Genesis 34.) Also, it's interesting how he seems to make an effort to find Biblical verses containing the names of characters in his story, such as Judah or Hannah, even though the Biblical verses are obviously referring to the Biblical characters of those names.

*[Ha, I bet you didn't know there were any sexual elements of the Hanukkah narative.]

But wait, there's more: Menaḥem actually begins the piyyut with an introduction which speaks more directly of the Biblical connection. Implicitly, he is telling us how he is going to be composing the rest of the poem. He spends the first few stanzas, through line 18, singing of how the events of the Hellenistic and Maccabean periods, though they occurred in post-Biblical times, had already been foreeen by the Biblical prophets:

I give thanks to Thee, for though hast answered [my prayer], kept me alive, and not finished me off,
Thou hast not let mine enemies rejoice over me, and thou hast brought me up out of the netherworld,
I praise Thee, O Lord, for Thou hast drawn me up.

From way back in time, thou wast aware, and had the intended [events] inscribed,
Before the news happened, Thou madest them known, and announced them:
I shall raise up thy sons, O Zion, against thy sons, O Greece (Zechariah 9:13)

Thou didst redeem me way back in time, from the mortar and bricks of Pibeseth and Aven [Egypt],
And thus also from Hellas, the mucky pit of evil-doers,
Out of the horrible pit, the miry clay.

[...]

The dearly beloved man [Daniel] dreamed explicitly of the matter of the Third Empire [=the Greeks],
The image of a tiger, with four impressive wings,
And then it split into four heads [the tetrarchy].

He [Daniel] was shown, a second time, a goat [symbolizing Alexander's empire] which grew and became formidably mighty,
And the great horn, and the image of four [horns] which became established beneath it --
Northward, southward, eastward, and westward.

Only then does Menaḥem begin telling his story in a more conventional narrative manner.

In the (ugh) introduction, I totally should have a chapter where I discuss the use of Biblical references in the piyyutim of my corpus, and specifically a piece about Menaḥem's use in this particular piyyut.

10:46AM - "Oui" stories

ME: In late 2009, Jen and I ran into a French (Jewish) girl at the opéra. I pointed out the Chagalls to them, and the French girl said: "Ah, oui", and then, embarrassed, said "I mean, yes."

LIPMAN: Haven't I, about in 2005, told you about the woman who approached me when I was sitting in the university library at a computer? She asked "Könnten Sie mir mit dem Computer helfen?" I answered "Wie?" in the sense of "Certainly; what can I do for you?", and she understood "Oui."

8:42AM - Linguistic question

Dear Rabbi Dr. Minden,

Which language is older, German or Yiddish?

Thank you for your time and expertise,

Koiheles Schwartz

=================================

Dear Koiheles,

nu.

First of all, Yidn are documented in Cologne in the year 321 in the goyishe calendar, while (Lesser) Germany was founded only in 1871. Secondly, political correctness aside, German isn't a language but a jargon of Yiddish. The proof of this is that even after decades of being exposed to Yiddish in Kiryas Joel, I still don't always understand all that a German mumbles.

Yours venerably and modestly &c.

M.

10:20PM - French lessons

XXXX (Name omitted, to protect the utterer from getting in trouble with la grande nation): If you want mishne lessons [in Yiddish], it's more, if you just want somebody to talk to your child, it's less.

me: Right. For the French, I care less about the michná lessons.

XXXX: But cooking, or philosophy, or swearing, or whatever the French have a reputation for?

me: Right, possibly those. But I would be willing to forego those, in order to save money.

XXXX: Or you don't pay the tutor much, that way you'll save money twice, by paying less in the first place, and by having him demonstrate the richness of French curses.

1:53PM - Hmmm

Any ideas about this brief text?:

Oh, hi Pete, old chap - got yerself a gmail address fine'ly, eh? How's Ellie these days?

10:21AM - Oven

So, remember that piece-of-shit fucking oven which isn't strong enough even to bake a potato? At least the broiler was not bad, and I used it to broil frozen veggie-burgers and french-fry-potatoes.

It cost me (the sheqel equivalent of) over $100.

Now it won't even turn on. The power is dead.

I'm going to see if I can try to fry up these frozen veggie-burgers and french-fry-potatoes in a pan on the stove. They'll be disgustingly oily that way, but at least they'll be calories.

UPDATE: I don't have the emotional energy to ask a store, in Hebrew, to honor a warranty for a product which I hated anyway. At the time when I bought it, I was penniless. Now, at least I have the financial energy (hah) to buy a new, better, more expensive oven. (But what if that one breaks down in 2.5 months, just as the first one did? Well, 2.5 months from now is about May 1, and I'm leaving on May 17. Ah, but I'm returning on June 1? Hmmm.)

UPDATE II: This could be a "blessing in disguise", as they call it. Having a real oven (i.e., one that can get hot enough to actually cook) means that I could bake matzoh on Pesach.

UPDATE III: Nonetheless, I'll wait a day or two to see if it will turn on by itself again. Who knows what's going on inside the electricity?

10:20AM - Dream

And now that Shabbes Shkolim is this week, it's time for the first pre-Pesach anxiety dream of the year. Woo-hoo!

I am a guest at the Goldsteins, in Basel. I think my father is somewhere present, too. There's no couch or bench or bed at the table, so I take two chairs and a few pillows, and fall back into the two chairs, reclining. Frau Goldstein gets indignant, tells me that nobody else is getting two chairs, including her, and asks me to move over to the other side of the table, where taking two chairs will, for some reason, be less burdensome. I feel guilty.

I fill up my glass (stemware -- ooh, phallic?) with what seems to be white wine, though it's pretty clear-colored. I redden it by adding some drops of -- red wine? Red grape juice? The drops are coming out only drop by drop, and I eventually realize that it's merely red food-coloring, which hardly count to turn "white wine" into "red wine". (Good thing there's no obligation to have red wine at the seder, merely a homiletical preference.)

It seems that various people are reciting kiddush for themselves, to speed things up or something. At least one of them is a woman; this is rather surprising in an Orthodox setting out of the Upper West Side, though of course it doesn't bother me. I'm trying to get to the point of being able to recite kiddush, but each time I stretch my body out horizontally over the badly-put-together-two-chairs-and-pillows, I spill liquid from the glass, and have to refill.

At least once, I think multiple times, I actually break the glass in the process, and my hand gets cut and bleeds. I think I may break a few, actually. The lights in the room are rather dark. I think a few other people might make kiddush in the meantime. Other people are still shmoozing. It's getting later; it might even be as late as 11 PM. And, of course, the seder still hasn't even officially started. My hosts must be getting annoyed with me. I'm feeling guilty.

Eventually, there's no more stemware, because I'm broken all the available stemware glasses. I take a plain glass cup, of the sort which I have in my apartment here in Jerusalem. I fill it with -- wine? Is there any wine left? Or even grape juice? I discover that the clear liquid in the bottle, which I had been using earlier to fill up my cup, was not wine, but some sort of distilled thing resembling Araq -- not halakhically acceptable for use in the ritual cups at the seder, and anyway not something I enjoy. Or maybe this one is made from pears, or something. Anyway, I try desperately to fill the remainder of the cup with more wine-like liquids, but what is there left? Have I already spilled all the wine, just as I have broken all the stemwear? I think I start trying to squeeze the red food-coloring into the glass, drop by drop.

I finally make kiddush, though I'm not sure over what. I'm embarrassed to recite the "expanded text" (beautiful poetic version, going back to the time of the Geonim, and used in many communities today), because I've already made myself look so ostentatious in front of the hosts and other guests, so I use the ordinary version. This makes me sad.

During kiddush, I realize that it happens to be Friday night, so I include the lines about Shabbos in kiddush. (This is the first time in 14 years that the seder has falllen on Friday night, so I recite these lines with great gusto.) But why did I only just remember this? Why didn't I remember it was Shabbos during maariv, at shul? Why didn't I include the relevant mentions of Shabbos in maariv? And what about ברכת מעין שבע -- I know that almost all shuls omit this on a Friday night which falls on seder night, but KAJ-NewYork includes it, and that's where I davvened. (If I davvened this evening in New York, how am I now in Basel, anyway?) How could I have missed that? Here is an occasion which hasn't occurred in 14 years, and I was at one of the only shuls in the world, if not the only one, which includes מעין שבע on that occasion, and I missed it? I walked out early? What the hell was I thinking?! And if I left early, that means I must have missed Yigdal, too, rather than getting the opportunity to sing it with the choir....

Oh hell...

UPDATE: When I clicked "publish this post", there was an internet blip, and I was terrified that I had lost the post forever. I clicked the "back" button, and returned to the previous page. In the background, I could see the words of my post, græyed out, and there was a dialog-box in the foreground, asking me: "Restore from saved draft?" I clicked "Yes", and it filled the compose-screen with the words of my previous post, about some recording of “Poor Wand’ring One”. I screamed: "FUCK!" However, somehow, by clicking "back" or "forward" or whatever, I managed to get to the right post, which seems to have been posted, after all, for here it is.

4:32PM - Music criticry

Consider this video:

Start at about 1:20.

The singer pauses, faux dramatically, before the word "mind", then prominently emphasizes that word by singing the note loudly and on a fermata: "Can help thee find / true peace of (pause) MIIIIIIIIIIND."

On the one hand, not very good. On the other hand, she's 14, and I think it's important to give kids room to figure out such stuff as "interpretation", even if it means that they're going to come up with some rather ungood ones on their own. Better than growing up to be automatons who sing music with no interpretation at all.

10:06AM - Procedure for eating a meal (for frum dorks)

1. Cook the food.
2. Take off your tefillin, and put them on the side table.
3. Wash your hands, with the accompanying berakha: בא"ה אמ"ה אקב"ו על נטילת ידים. (Note: Real hardcore dorks say the berakha first, and then wash. I'm not currently that hardcore.)
4. Say the berakha for the bread: בא"ה אמ"ה אקב"ו המוציא לחם מן הארץ.
5. Eat a piece of the bread, and then the rest of the meal. Preferably do it in a reclining position, on your bed or couch. This has nothing to do with halakha (except on Pesaḥ night), but dorks are into historical re-enactment, right?
6. Being social is good. If you're dining alone, chat with people on the internet.
7. When you're done eating, wash your hands again, with the berakha בא"ה אמ"ה אקב"ו על נטילת ידים. If you don't have fragrant oils handy, at least use soap. When you're done, dry your hands. (I forget to mention that above, after the first washing.
8. Say the berakha בא"ה אמ"ה אקב"ו להניח תפלין. Put on your arm-tefillin.
9. Say the berakha בא"ה אמ"ה אקב"ו על מצות תפלין. Put on your head-tefillin.
10. Fill up a glass of grape juice or (preferably) wine. Doesn't have to be glass; a silver or gold goblet is OK, too.
11. Lift the cup, and recite the four long berakhoth of Birkath Hamazon: הזן, על הארץ, בונה ירושלים, הטוב והמטיב. (Optional: the הרחמן passages at the end.) Feel free to abbreviate or expand these berakhoth as you see fit, with poetic embellishments. Singing is a plus.
12. Recite the berakha over the wine or grape juice: בא"ה אמ"ה בורא פרי הגפן.
13. Drink it.
14. Recite the after-berakha after the grape juice: על הגפן ועל פרי הגפן וכו.

EXTRA TIP: Try not to get hot chicken fat in your sweater when you pull out the rack of the oven.

8:02AM - Irony

me: Do you enjoy this form of humor: ?

Gabriel: Are you familiar at all with the work Pirates of Penzance, by Messr. W. S. Gilbert and A. Sullivan,
specifically with the aria "Poor Wand'ring One"?
Lipman: No, let me google that.

And is there a name for that?
Lipman: Irony.
me: A rather shallow, lame form of irony? Or deep irony?
Lipman: Plain.
me: Care to explain why this particular case is funny? That would amuse me.
Lipman: Sorry, I can't. Goofishness.
me: I mean, it's the fact that we have spent the last few weeks watching dozens, if not hundreds, of recordings of this particular aria, and pulling apart its title in punny ways, and, discussing the operetta as whole, a fair amount, over the past year, have we not?
Lipman: Yes, the comic effect is in the disparity.
me: Right. Have we discussed the operetta a lot over the past year, or really only over the past two weeks? I think there's been a recent re-surge -- mainly just in this aria, to a certain extent in the film. No, the film was the previous two weeks.
Lipman: Mainly the past few days, with lots of samples, but we did talk about it in passing quite a bit over the last two years, I suppose.
me:  Wow, it's really been just a few days? We sure have watched a lot of rẽdi[s]iõs.

7:52AM - OK....

Someone I know who is a giyoreth, but had one Jewish grandparent] once told me that her mother once said to her: "Jesus is a prophet in Judaism, right? I mean, he's not the Son of God, but he's still one of the prophets."

And she said: "NO!"

So, the woman [mother of the giyoreth] went to her own father, and said: "You went to Hebrew school when you were a kid. Jesus is a prophet in Judaism, right? I mean, he's not the Son of God, but he's still one of the prophets."

And her father said: "NO!"

And the woman said: "I don't think you're right."

And then she looked online, after a few days, and said: "OK, sorry. I guess I was wrong -- that's Islam, not Judaism."

Isn't that weird?

8:58AM - Yup!

  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/01/opinion/i-had-asperger-syndrome-briefly.html?src=tp&smid=fb-share

9:45PM - Ramban on Pharaoh

Here is a summary of Hananel Mack's article, "From the Eyes of Nahmanides: His Attitude to Pharaoh of Egypt and Jewish Status in the Kingdom of Aragon-Catalonia" (Hebrew), Sefunot N.S. 7 (22), 1999.


( Click here to read my summary. )

I'm posting it today, in honor of Parashath Bo, which we leyned this morning.

1:03PM - Internet Exchange

Dear Phillip Minden,

I am a Nigerian Princess suffering from alatoglitorisis piscadensis, a rare, untreatable disease. I need the money to pay for treatment. Can you please find it in the bottom of your heart to give me even as little as 500 USD? For ever 1000 USD you give, you can get points, which you can trade in for stolen credit cards.

And for every ,,,,,,,,,, 1500 USD you give, you get the opportuinty to enter into the George Washington Penis Enlargment sweepstakes, for only 50 more USD.

Thank you,

Katakawaraya Nolastname

===================================================

Dear Princess,


of course I shall send you the amount you need. I feel honoured that you picked me out of the hundreds if not thousands who have an email address today. Unfortunately, I'm living quite far from the next cash machine. But if you transfer $300 to my account, I'll be able to pay for public transport, which is very expensive in Switzerland, and then I can send you both the money you were so kind to ask for and the 300 I borrowed for the ticket.

Thank you,

Phillip Minden