Thursday, May 29, 2008

What I'm up to and some bloggers.

So I haven't been around much lately. I'm not sure what it is, but my posts have been brief and filled with videos or other people's ideas. I'm in a lull, perhaps. Unmoved? Not exactly. I just finished reading Philip Roth's "So I Married a Communist," and have now picked up Rabbi Marc D. Angel's "Choosing to Be Jewish: The Orthodox Road to Conversion." The former was a really good read, and I hand it to Roth. He has so many books, and I find a lot of them difficult to get through, but this was absolutely hard to put down.

I look forward to the rabbi's take on Orthodox conversion, especially with all the hullabaloo over conversions recently. It *is* hard reading all the pieces about how I'm not "technically" or "halakicly" Jewish. But the rabbi is very quick to say that we're all there, it's just those damned bells and whistles. The more I think back to my conversion, the more I have to consider the validity of the beth din. I dipped in the mikvah (twice), but the validity of that even relies on those there in the beth din. The more I consider it, the more I feel more confident about pursuing an Orthodox conversion. I won't get into it here, but that's just how it goes.

So while I'm not delving into deep Jewishly inclined thoughts, I thought I'd give some face time to the blogs of others. So browse my blog roll, and I'll be sure to have something solid to say when I return from a quick trip to San Francisco this weekend to chillax with the epitome of awesomeness.

Lenny ben David talks about Lyndon B. Johnson and all he did for Jews throughout the early/mid 20th century.

Ilana-Davita explains the French School System as she prepares to organize a Holocaust project.

Esther walks away from her four years as a Jewish singles columnist, and tells us all about it.

And finally, over on the Jewsbychoice.org blog, Yair writes about Na Nachs, the offshoot of Breslov Hassidut and how they bring their absolute joy to just about everyone.