Friday, October 9, 2009
Cute daycare report from yesterday
"Xander had a good day. He enjoyed playing outside in the playhouse, swinging, climbing, digging in the sandbox, and taking two wagon rides around campus. He wasn't too interested in sliding down the slide. It may have scared him."
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Happy birthday, Xander! And other cool stuff.
I can't believe our little boy is a year old already. How did that happen?! I brought in cupcakes to daycare today, so everyone could celebrate. We had a mini-party in the park on Saturday, too. One of our friends took most of the pictures, so as soon as she gives me the CD I'll post them with a narrative. Suffice it to say that Xander is very, very happy with some new toys, he stuffed lots of cake in his mouth, and he sat on everyone's lap at least once.
And this isn't birthday stuff, but I have to share two amazing things that took place at school. One: when I was in CA with Xander I missed out on a Talmud class. They went to the library with my friend the rare book librarian to look at Talmuds from the 1500s and up, and analyze their evolution. Well, I just got a private make-up session, with just myself, the prof, and the librarian! It was wonderful.
And two: after class on Monday one of my favorite profs and I were chatting about education, and I mentioned that one topic I love has never been offered in a class. I want to learn not the Talmud itself, but about its context: what was the Hellenistic world that formed the perspective of the rabbis? What did the Greeks and Romans think about the rabbis, what did they think about the Greeks and Romans, how did the surrounding culture influence the way they viewed philosophy, gender, class disparities, the calendar, Christianity, etc? He told me that I was right, a "world of the rabbis" course had never been offered before, but if I could drum up support for it, he would teach it. I immediately sent out an email to the student body asking who would be interested, and seven people wrote back. Early yesterday morning I emailed him this, he brought it up at a meeting with the deans yesterday afternoon, and today in class he told me that it was a go! The deans are supportive of the idea, and now he wants to meet with me privately to talk about my ideal curriculum and to decide if it's feasible for Fall 2010 or Spring 2011. I'm so excited, and it happened so fast, my head is still spinning.
And the third good thing of the day: Jonathan got home early from work! Hooray.
All in all: happy baby. Happy mommy. Happy daddy. Even the cats are purring.
And this isn't birthday stuff, but I have to share two amazing things that took place at school. One: when I was in CA with Xander I missed out on a Talmud class. They went to the library with my friend the rare book librarian to look at Talmuds from the 1500s and up, and analyze their evolution. Well, I just got a private make-up session, with just myself, the prof, and the librarian! It was wonderful.
And two: after class on Monday one of my favorite profs and I were chatting about education, and I mentioned that one topic I love has never been offered in a class. I want to learn not the Talmud itself, but about its context: what was the Hellenistic world that formed the perspective of the rabbis? What did the Greeks and Romans think about the rabbis, what did they think about the Greeks and Romans, how did the surrounding culture influence the way they viewed philosophy, gender, class disparities, the calendar, Christianity, etc? He told me that I was right, a "world of the rabbis" course had never been offered before, but if I could drum up support for it, he would teach it. I immediately sent out an email to the student body asking who would be interested, and seven people wrote back. Early yesterday morning I emailed him this, he brought it up at a meeting with the deans yesterday afternoon, and today in class he told me that it was a go! The deans are supportive of the idea, and now he wants to meet with me privately to talk about my ideal curriculum and to decide if it's feasible for Fall 2010 or Spring 2011. I'm so excited, and it happened so fast, my head is still spinning.
And the third good thing of the day: Jonathan got home early from work! Hooray.
All in all: happy baby. Happy mommy. Happy daddy. Even the cats are purring.
Monday, October 5, 2009
More kidlet items
Today we were looking at squirrels in the backyard.
Yay for bedtime! 
But after I kiss Daddy goodnight, I have to try just one last time to use his mouse...Have I mentioned that the past week he's been in bed every night by 8, and is only waking up once in the middle of the night? This would be glorious, except for the tiny niggling fact that on good nap days, he's wide awake by 6am. Today was one of those days. Arg.
Hosanna in the highest
This is a Christian/Catholic phrase praising God, and I remember hearing it said a lot during high school. I always wondered where it came from. And today I found out!
Hosanna derives from a Greek translation of the Hebrew "ho'she'ana," meaning, "save us, please" (hoshea=save, na=please). Ho'she'ana is a phrase that Jews say in the liturgy for Sukkot, the harvest festival, when we ask God to please send us rain in the winter months. But when it got over to the Greek, it became a phrase of praise rather than the original supplication. Interestingly enough, the shaking of palms on Easter also comes from Sukkot, where you shake the lulav branch during services. The Easter customs were based on a Greek conflation of the major holidays!
Of course, now I feel somewhat silly, because all of this is explained in the Jewish Encyclopedia here. Why do I only look these things up after I learn about them in class??
Hosanna derives from a Greek translation of the Hebrew "ho'she'ana," meaning, "save us, please" (hoshea=save, na=please). Ho'she'ana is a phrase that Jews say in the liturgy for Sukkot, the harvest festival, when we ask God to please send us rain in the winter months. But when it got over to the Greek, it became a phrase of praise rather than the original supplication. Interestingly enough, the shaking of palms on Easter also comes from Sukkot, where you shake the lulav branch during services. The Easter customs were based on a Greek conflation of the major holidays!
Of course, now I feel somewhat silly, because all of this is explained in the Jewish Encyclopedia here. Why do I only look these things up after I learn about them in class??
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Some cute pics
Going vrooom in the Target cart
Yay for the outdoors!
This is at the hotel at my pulpit in Indiana on Yom Kippur. He opened the drawer by himself and climbed right in, then started bouncing away and chattering to himself. Video will follow.Thursday, October 1, 2009
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Cool things that I'm learning
From Liturgy class, where we deconstructed everyone's High Holy Days' services:
- The Kol Nidre prayer, which is a prayer releasing people from obligations, isn't really a prayer at all, but a legal contract. This is why it's sung three times in some congregations, so it will have more weight. (In class I compared this to saying "Beetlejuice" and "There's no place like home" three times, and the professor said that yes, there was truth to that, that superstition and "magic" were very closely related.)
From Talmud class, where we're discussing the contents of Tractate (chapter) Moed:
- The Hebrew term for Jewish holidays is moed. It comes from the mem/ayin/dalet root, which means "time." But it also comes from ayin/dalet, which means "witness." When we celebrate a Jewish holiday, we bear witness to divine intervention in the world. That's why all holidays are reenactments (e.g. Passover reenacting the exodus, Sukkot the harvest, etc) because we are marking moments of transcendence in time, moments when there was more than just human activity.
- Someone asked why the Talmud lacked clarity. Why does it have so many layers if it is, in essence, a legal contract? The answer : Yes, the Talmud is a social contract that is 1500 years old. The U.S. Constitution is also a social contract, from barely 250 years ago. It was written in English by people who were not totally dissimilar from us. Now, are we aware of any litigation surrounding the U.S. Constitution? (The prof is sharp!)
- During a tangential comment, I found out why so many Jews are allergic to nuts - apparently the nut allergy has been traced back to Eastern Europe, which is why it's only American Jews who are so susceptible (cuz that's where we all came from). Sephardic (Spain/North Africa) Jewry, including most Israelis, don't have the allergy.
From Homiletics class:
- "Never underestimate the intelligence of the congregation. Never overestimate their knowledge." Basically, there are no taboo academic topics. Whether or not it connects depends on how you say it.
- You can preach with or against a text. I.e., "Abraham's great, do what he did" versus "Abraham sucks, don't do what he did." We talked about the pros and cons of preaching against; on one hand, it makes the Biblical heroes human. On the other hand, it invites people to go outside of Judaism to find their wisdom.
From Hellenism class, where we study what the Greeks and Romans thought about Jews:
- The Jewish exodus from Egypt is actually quite well known to the Greeks, especially the historians Hecataeus and Strabo who traveled the world (and whom I'd never heard of before this class, so don't feel badly if you haven't either!). According to them and other "pagan" sources we've been reading, the Jews were thought to be Egyptian in origin and expelled because a plague was going around, and people were afraid they were the source. Because others shunned them they kept to themselves, and later on, that became habit. Only one source says that they weren't expelled, but that the "legislator Moses" brought them out of Egypt because he disliked the Egyptian religion and its customs. Who knew?!
- An HUC doctoral candidate sat in on our class today. He's an assistant pastor at a Baptist church, and he brought the senior pastor with him. Next to them there was another rabbinical student, then myself. Then an evangelical Christian PhD student. And next to him was another PhD student, an ordained pastor who happens to be taking a few years off from his ministry to go back to school. At one point we all got into a great discussion on how Hellenized Jews (assimilated Greek Jews) were different from Greek pagans. It led into explanations of how they might have visualized God, which then segued into how Christianity and Judaism visualize God today in light of the Greek influence. Intellectual bliss.
From non-school things:
- It was 56 degrees today. Jonathan loved it. I hated it. This weekend is all about buying Xander winter clothes.
- At the hotel on erev Yom Kippur, Xander would not go to sleep. It was midnight, and we had been rocking him on and off since 8, it was miserable. Finally Jonathan called my mom... and Bubby sang him to sleep on speaker phone from 2000 miles away! The funny part is that I fell asleep before Xander did. :)
- My computer died a tragic death last week, and was resurrected. Jonathan is the computer god: he managed to get all my documents off the hard drive before it crashed, then he bought a new hard drive and put it all back together.
- Simcha looped the handles of a paper bag around his neck then ran through the house, terrified. Best we can figure out, he thought the paper bag was chasing him.
Time for bed. Goodnight!
- The Kol Nidre prayer, which is a prayer releasing people from obligations, isn't really a prayer at all, but a legal contract. This is why it's sung three times in some congregations, so it will have more weight. (In class I compared this to saying "Beetlejuice" and "There's no place like home" three times, and the professor said that yes, there was truth to that, that superstition and "magic" were very closely related.)
From Talmud class, where we're discussing the contents of Tractate (chapter) Moed:
- The Hebrew term for Jewish holidays is moed. It comes from the mem/ayin/dalet root, which means "time." But it also comes from ayin/dalet, which means "witness." When we celebrate a Jewish holiday, we bear witness to divine intervention in the world. That's why all holidays are reenactments (e.g. Passover reenacting the exodus, Sukkot the harvest, etc) because we are marking moments of transcendence in time, moments when there was more than just human activity.
- Someone asked why the Talmud lacked clarity. Why does it have so many layers if it is, in essence, a legal contract? The answer : Yes, the Talmud is a social contract that is 1500 years old. The U.S. Constitution is also a social contract, from barely 250 years ago. It was written in English by people who were not totally dissimilar from us. Now, are we aware of any litigation surrounding the U.S. Constitution? (The prof is sharp!)
- During a tangential comment, I found out why so many Jews are allergic to nuts - apparently the nut allergy has been traced back to Eastern Europe, which is why it's only American Jews who are so susceptible (cuz that's where we all came from). Sephardic (Spain/North Africa) Jewry, including most Israelis, don't have the allergy.
From Homiletics class:
- "Never underestimate the intelligence of the congregation. Never overestimate their knowledge." Basically, there are no taboo academic topics. Whether or not it connects depends on how you say it.
- You can preach with or against a text. I.e., "Abraham's great, do what he did" versus "Abraham sucks, don't do what he did." We talked about the pros and cons of preaching against; on one hand, it makes the Biblical heroes human. On the other hand, it invites people to go outside of Judaism to find their wisdom.
From Hellenism class, where we study what the Greeks and Romans thought about Jews:
- The Jewish exodus from Egypt is actually quite well known to the Greeks, especially the historians Hecataeus and Strabo who traveled the world (and whom I'd never heard of before this class, so don't feel badly if you haven't either!). According to them and other "pagan" sources we've been reading, the Jews were thought to be Egyptian in origin and expelled because a plague was going around, and people were afraid they were the source. Because others shunned them they kept to themselves, and later on, that became habit. Only one source says that they weren't expelled, but that the "legislator Moses" brought them out of Egypt because he disliked the Egyptian religion and its customs. Who knew?!
- An HUC doctoral candidate sat in on our class today. He's an assistant pastor at a Baptist church, and he brought the senior pastor with him. Next to them there was another rabbinical student, then myself. Then an evangelical Christian PhD student. And next to him was another PhD student, an ordained pastor who happens to be taking a few years off from his ministry to go back to school. At one point we all got into a great discussion on how Hellenized Jews (assimilated Greek Jews) were different from Greek pagans. It led into explanations of how they might have visualized God, which then segued into how Christianity and Judaism visualize God today in light of the Greek influence. Intellectual bliss.
From non-school things:
- It was 56 degrees today. Jonathan loved it. I hated it. This weekend is all about buying Xander winter clothes.
- At the hotel on erev Yom Kippur, Xander would not go to sleep. It was midnight, and we had been rocking him on and off since 8, it was miserable. Finally Jonathan called my mom... and Bubby sang him to sleep on speaker phone from 2000 miles away! The funny part is that I fell asleep before Xander did. :)
- My computer died a tragic death last week, and was resurrected. Jonathan is the computer god: he managed to get all my documents off the hard drive before it crashed, then he bought a new hard drive and put it all back together.
- Simcha looped the handles of a paper bag around his neck then ran through the house, terrified. Best we can figure out, he thought the paper bag was chasing him.
Time for bed. Goodnight!
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
The High Holidays are OVER
And I am so, so relieved.
Don't get me wrong - I really enjoyed leading the actual services, as well as the process of creating the services and writing the sermons. But it just took so much time, and coming on the heels of Xander being sick, it wiped me out. I spent all of today in the HUC library doing regular schoolwork that I was behind on. I'm mostly caught up now.
In other news... Xander was a big hit at break the fast. The woman who hosted us for erev (evening) Yom Kippur dinner made the best noodle kugel that I have ever had in my life, bar none. I want her recipe. So that Jonathan can make it. :)
The only bad thing is that we forgot our diaper bag at the pulpit. Oh well. We'll be there again in less than two weeks!
Don't get me wrong - I really enjoyed leading the actual services, as well as the process of creating the services and writing the sermons. But it just took so much time, and coming on the heels of Xander being sick, it wiped me out. I spent all of today in the HUC library doing regular schoolwork that I was behind on. I'm mostly caught up now.
In other news... Xander was a big hit at break the fast. The woman who hosted us for erev (evening) Yom Kippur dinner made the best noodle kugel that I have ever had in my life, bar none. I want her recipe. So that Jonathan can make it. :)
The only bad thing is that we forgot our diaper bag at the pulpit. Oh well. We'll be there again in less than two weeks!
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Another Friday, another pulpit visit
This one actually didn't go as well as Rosh Hashanah. My sermon went over great, but I think my timing was a little off on other things. Oh well. It's all a learning experience. We started the evening off with 3 people, and by the time the service ended there were 12. Quite a difference from Rosh Hashanah, when we had over 70! One cool thing was that because there were so few people, Xander was able to have full run of the sanctuary. At one point I and a congregant were lifting the Torah, and Xander was right with us, underneath the scroll, looking up in awe. A woman told me afterwards that that made the service for her, "it was literally generation to generation!" Personally, I think his presence was why I was so off - I was so distracted the whole time, it was hard to focus. Now I know to work on it for the future.
Jonathan has bought Xander a costume for Halloween. Three guesses what it is, and the first two don't count. A lion outfit! He'll be adorable.
When I was a girl my favorite cat, Boychick, loved to steal socks. He would even eat them. Well, Yentl is his rightful inheritor. She started by stealing Xander's socks and carrying them everywhere in her mouth. And today we noticed that she had taken one of mine! They were in the cardboard box that she likes to play in (the one in the video, actually). I greatly disappointed her when I fetched it back and deemed it healthy enough to be put in the laundry and worn again.
And last but not least, Xander eats like a little person now, real food at each meal plus snacks! While all our cloth bibs have been working perfectly from newborn-drool until now, they've been getting so soggy and messy with each meal, I was doing tons of laundry. So I caved and bought him two plastic ones that are easy to wipe off. They also have a pocket to catch food bits. It's this style, but I got the generic at our grocery store for $2 each. :)
Speaking of baby, I think I hear someone puttering around, waking up from his nap....
Jonathan has bought Xander a costume for Halloween. Three guesses what it is, and the first two don't count. A lion outfit! He'll be adorable.
When I was a girl my favorite cat, Boychick, loved to steal socks. He would even eat them. Well, Yentl is his rightful inheritor. She started by stealing Xander's socks and carrying them everywhere in her mouth. And today we noticed that she had taken one of mine! They were in the cardboard box that she likes to play in (the one in the video, actually). I greatly disappointed her when I fetched it back and deemed it healthy enough to be put in the laundry and worn again.
And last but not least, Xander eats like a little person now, real food at each meal plus snacks! While all our cloth bibs have been working perfectly from newborn-drool until now, they've been getting so soggy and messy with each meal, I was doing tons of laundry. So I caved and bought him two plastic ones that are easy to wipe off. They also have a pocket to catch food bits. It's this style, but I got the generic at our grocery store for $2 each. :)
Speaking of baby, I think I hear someone puttering around, waking up from his nap....
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