Rolling on Shabbos.

*Tap, Tap* Anyone out there? I've been mute for many days now, for a variety of reasons but mostly that I have been quite busy and engrossed in readings for class and worksheets for Hebrew. I've also had some time to reflect on this past Shabbos, which, to be honest, was the most disappointing in recent memory.

Now, I know what you're thinking: Really? Disappointing? Get over it! It's just Shabbos! But the thing of it is, without a proper or near-proper Shabbos, my week doesn't begin or end, it just is, and this causes great stress for me. I had hoped to stay on campus for a Mexican-themed Shabbat dinner, but because of Tuvia's schedule and a desire to spend Shabbos with him, it didn't work out. He rushed out after work, picked me up, and we rushed home to beat the Sabbath clock. Already upset that we weren't able to make it to shul, we entered his house, which, I immediately  noticed, was freezing. The thermostat was set to hit 68, but it was at a mere 52 degrees. Thus, I davened Kabbalat Shabbat. Tuvia set off to check the heater, and, as it turned out, the motor was broken. He had to call a repairman, and had to run off to help his theater group set up a screen because he's the youngest and most agile of the group. I stayed home, lamenting the loss of the day already. I sat and read, which turned out to be fruitful after I came upon an article by Isaac Gottlieb in the AJS Journal on "The Politics of Pronunciation," a text workup about the halakhic arguments regarding Ashkenazim and Sephardim and how they approach prayers and pronunciation. But still, the day was lost already. The man came and fixed the heater, but it took nearly three hours. We played a game, and went to sleep, knowing that in the morning there were other reasons that would create cause to leave home, breaking Shabbos further. The morning arrived, the day went along, and havdalah approached. I'll admit to feeling relieved with havdalah, feeling a brisk touch of the end of Shabbos, but the reality of the week approaching. How disappointing, how lacking, how disappointed I was in myself.

Perhaps sensing my frustration, by some stroke of luck, Tuvia and I have been invited to a bulk of Shabbos and Jewishly oriented activities over the next few weeks. Tu B'Shevat will be spent at the Orthodox shul, as we were invited to a dinner there, and the next Friday we'll be at the home of a friend in West Hartford for services at the other Orthodox shul, followed by a dinner with friends, and a lunch the next day in honor of the birth of one of the Chabad rabbi's new baby girls. It is without possibility that the next few weeks will be lacking.

But it's such a basic commandment -- Zakhor et yom ha-Shabbat l'kad'sho (Exodus 20:8). That is, remember the Sabbath day to sanctify it. I was telling Tuvia that I wish, absolutely wish that it were attainable for him or me or us to live in West Hartford, in a religious community, so that it is easier, more feasible, more doable to keep the Sabbath. You don't have to drive to shul, you walk, you make it there. You have Sabbath dinner with each other, or with friends. You go to services in the morning, you take your Sabbath walk in the eruv, you take a nap, you have havdalah, you go about your way. I understand entirely why communities cling to one another, why Jewish communities thrive within themselves. It just makes sense. It's logical! This is why, when planning our trip to Chicago for early March, I insisted on finding a hotel within walking distance to the shul I used to go to there. I want to have a Shabbos, darn't. I want to make a traveling Shabbos happen!

I can't help it, but I seek perfection. I know there is no such thing, but I crave it. I want it the Lebowski way -- I don't roll on Shabbos!

On a lighter (more unfortunate) note, in an effort to live entirely out of my dorm room, I managed to set off the fire alarm for the complex this morning while toasting some bread in my toaster oven. I burned my knuckle quite horribly while pulling the burned pieces out of the oven, throwing them into the trash and thrusting open the windows to air the room out. My fear? I'll be reprimanded and told that I can't have the toaster oven. Of course, there is another Jew in the complex who supposedly has an entire kitchen in his room, so why not me?

Is it Friday yet?

School, Food, Books, and More!

So much to say! So little space. I'm torn between writing several blog posts all in one effort, or to just pile it all in here. There are some bloggers who will post 10 posts in a day, clogging up the old Google Reader. There are others who will write a novel, making my brain bleed. So where is the happy medium? To be honest, I don't know. So for now, we'll just throw it all out there in a couple itty, bitty morsels of goodness.

Topic No.1: Food, Kashrut, and Weight Watchers
I'm back on the wagon with Weight Watchers online. It was about a year ago that I hopped on the bandwagon, I lost about 20-25 pounds, and I was feeling good about  myself. Now? Well, there's something about this weather that makes me want to lose weight. So I'm on again. The great thing about this, and how it ties into this blog, is that I'm making all efforts to go kosher. Tuvia has managed to pick up a variety of sets of silverware, baking dishes, plates, bowls, you name it. When we eat at his place, we do it kosher. Here in my dorm room, I'm pretty much pareve. I will do fish or veggies, but no meat, so I don't have to worry about much. I'm still actively reading Going Kosher in 30 Days , kindly granted to me by the folks over at the Jewish Learning Group, but I'll just say that it hasn't been 30 days. It's a longer process -- a much longer process. I have oodles of questions for people about dishes and the kitchen, for one. It's so easy here, but it's difficult at Tuvia's (at least, I think it is). So what would you say about the following:

• How do you keep track of what baking pans/pots/etc. are Meat and what are Dairy/Pareve?
  
• Do people have different dishes/silverware/etc. for Pareve? Or just use Dairy?
  
• Do you wash them separately in the dishwasher? All together?
  
• What's your policy on the oven and cooking dairy and meat at separate times?
  
• How do you make the kitchen work like clockwork while trying to make everything not mesh?!
  

So, it seems like a lot, I know. But I now understand why Jews are keeping the toss-away aluminum baking-pan business and paper plate/plastic silverware businesses in business. I mean, it just makes life easier. This is why I like my vegetarian/pareve way of life. It's just easy. And for me, it's all about ease. Or maybe it's not supposed to be easy? I suppose that could be the Jewish way.

Topic No. 2: Chavi's Academic Life, or A Class Breakdown!
I know my readers just LOVE to hear what's going down in my academic life. So I thought I'd fill you in on the classes I'm taking this semester. 


Class No. 1: I'm once again doing Modern Hebrew, which after one day already has me overwhelmed. I'm going to try my hardest to get to an Ulpan this summer so I can brush up and really be ready for a second year as a master's student. I want to be able to read the texts in their original and to really be able to participate in class. But so far, everything is NOT coming back to me at a quick pace, which has me quite nervous. 
Class No. 2: Probably my most challenging class, Talmudic Historiography and Midrashic Thought is a graduate seminar that will definitely make me think. The amount of reading alone might kill me, but it's very much up the alley of what I want to be doing. Keeping up with the professor and some of the more advanced students, though, might stress me out unnecessarily. Add to this that the course reserves aren't yet on reserve and the books are expensive and the library is slow ... oy. My mind is already ready to explode. This will be another last-minute semester with me trying to figure out which of 20 topics I want to write a term paper on. I can't wait. 
Class No. 3: My third and final course shouldn't be too difficult, but it could prove to be more challenging than I think. It's with an adjunct professor (a new, original face, huzzah!), and it is the Ancient Near East taught using the Tanakh as a frame to analyze the rest of the Near East. I think it'll be interesting, considering it's an undergrad course with about 50 people in it, many who scoffed at the idea of using the Hebrew Bible as a source book. I'll let you know how it goes, but the class relies on a 20-page paper that I will surely rock. I just have to figure out what to write about ... something obscure, perhaps. Maybe looking or focusing more on archeology. I could, of course, just write more about Ba'al and calf figurines ... cross-cultural review? Who knows.

Conclusion
You like how I have things divided up like a nice little paper or outline? Welcome to my world. I have to think of everything as a finely organized outline, and I'm very much NOT an outline kind of person.

As an aside, there's a delicious little book by Joel M. Stein on its way to me (which I hope to review amid all the serious academic books that I'm reading) called "Webstein's Dictionary: The Essential Guide to Yiddishizing Your Life." OyChicago did a nice little write-up on it, and you can actually buy the book over on Pop Judaica. If you want to wait and see what I think, feel free. Either way, it'd probably be a stellar gift or a hilarious coffee-table companion.

At any rate, this is all for now. In the morning, thanks to the suggestion of Tuvia, I should have a d'var Torah on this week's parshah. It's wishful thinking, maybe, but I'm hoping to get back into the swing of looking at the Torah portion each week on Fridays between Hebrew and Ancient Near East. Until then, be well!

Bookworms (and Bibliophiles) Unite!

Books. We all have them (or at least we should) and most of us have way too many of them. Academics in particular tend to collect them -- even ones they have and may never read. I've moved around a lot in the past 2.5 years and this has resulted in a lot of book purging. Luckily, I've kept a massive list that's off to the right there of all books I've owned or once owned and for the most part what I've read. Of course, this list compilation started just last year, so anything I owned before that and sold or donated or passed along is unfortunately not there. My policy is that, the books I chuck or donate I can just buy again. Books, you see, are going nowhere.And, might I add, as an Academic, I intend to hoard them.

So no matter what way you paint it, books are our lifeblood. The great books -- the Torah (or Bible), War and Peace, Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (note: there's no THE in the actual title), The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter? -- are known, if only by title, to just about everyone. And we know books by the way they feel and smell and the cover(s) that adorn them. We don't know books by their .pdf incarnation via the Sony Readers or Kindles (though, you know, I really want one). We crave the hard copy, the beautiful, physical page-turning experience that is the book.

I currently have three Tanakhs and two chumashes. It was pointed out that all of the books I brought to school with me are Judaica (and they are, except for one Vonnegut), and most of the books I have back home are Judaica, with the exception of Salinger, Diamant, Vonnegut, Joyce, and others. In the past two weeks at school, I have recalled one book from a different campus, in addition to checking out three other books -- one required and the other two simply books I picked up while perusing the stacks (one on Shabbos stories and the other by an author who broke down the Documentary Hypothesis and essentially recomposed Torah). You see, I can't leave the library without picking up a new book. Even if I never get to it, books -- I must be surrounded by books.

I recently finished Chaim Potok's "Davita's Harp," while also spending plenty of time reading "Cool Jew," while also starting and finishing (and needing to review) "The Search Committee" by Rabbi Marc D. Angel, in addition to (yes, this is the last one), starting and almost finishing Nahum Sarna's book on "Genesis" (the Torah book, not the band).

You see, I am a bookworm in anticipation of becoming a bibliophile.

So I take with great comfort the calming words I recently wrote to a friend who is applying to graduate school for a library sciences degree about the future of books (no, they're not going anywhere). I also was excited to hear that my good friend Jon finally decided to start a blog on what he calls "Fringe-Lit," the books that you wouldn't hear about outside of a college classroom or a university or small press. His blog, Up the Broken Trail, is now live and in his first post he explains how it is that he discoveres new, interesting authors that might not otherwise break the big Borders wall of awesome (read: Stephen King, ugh) books. By the way, I have to add that Jon, a brilliant writer and an amazing person and friend, has already written his own book (it's on Nebraska football, if you're interested), which I think is pretty impressive.

And then there's another blog that I have to pass along as a lover of books, and that's the Jew Wishes blog. Jew Wishes is "an avid first edition book collector," who reads anywhere between three and five books a week, along with newspapers and periodicals. Essentially, Jew Wishes is well read and provides readers with a rundown of the books getting the read-through. The most recent post by Jew Wishes is about the book "The Talmud and the Internet" by Jonathan Rosen -- a book I've been meaning to pick up for some time now.

I'm sure there are loads of other book-friendly blogs out there, but these are the two on my radar that I think YOU should most definitely check out. As for me, I still have a book review of "The Search Committee," which just came out officially on September 1, and that will likely come Saturday, so stay tuned. Until then?

Well, you see, I'm finishing up the book on "Genesis," starting Sarna's other book "Exploring Exodus," and I've already started reading the book that sort of resorts out the Torah, and the Shabbos stories book will probably be a reference more than a read. What else? Well, there's also all that other class reading ... I have about four books on Qohelet that I need to pore over, not to mention regular Torah study and ...

Books. They're what's for dinner. And breakfast, lunch, long walks to the dining hall, bus rides, plane rides, short bathroom visits ...

Note: There is a difference between a bookworm and a bibliophile! As your editor in residence, I want to clarify the difference. A bookworm is a lover of books for their content and loves reading in general. A bibliophile, on the other hand, is more of a lover of books who strives to collect books and appreciates them  for their format and purpose. I'm a little bit of both, but since my collection isn't so fast (what with all the movie and such), I'm more of just a bookworm for now. 

Books, books galore!

The little brother and I went to Myopic Books yesterday, as I attempted to show him one of the more "well known" neighborhoods in Chicago -- Wicker Park. He tracked down a copy of "Wicked," the story that's now the play, which he saw when he was in Chicago last May. I, on the other hand, hit the Judaica section (this is the place where I tried to sell some of my Judaica and they said "Sorry, they're just not selling well").

I left with a copy of Maimonides' "Mishneh Torah," the abridged edition, annotated with an introduction by Philip Birnbaum, published 1974 (from what I can tell). The true selling point (other than its usefulness) was a tidbit in the introduction that read,

"Anyone reading this book carefully will greatly help reduce our generation's painful ignorance of the contents of Judaism's traditional literature."

That, folks, is plenty a reason to pick up this book.

I also picked up a copy of "Living Judaism" by Rabbi Wayne Dosick, which means I can pull it off my Amazon Wish List. I kept seeing this book everywhere I went, but I couldn't bring myself to pick it up fresh. So here was a used copy, in perfect condition for $6.50. Hot dog! What a steal.

Of course, neither of these purchases helps with my overflowing book problem. Luckily, I returned many books to the library (mostly those that I'd checked out for reading-up for the class I attended while checking out schools last year). Right now I'm reading "Heat" by Bill Buford -- a non-Judaic book, but an amazing book that I can't seem to put down (it's for a bookclub, actually). I'm still into "Constantine's Sword," but I'm about ready to just give up on that and pick it up in another lifetime when I have the time to sit down with a 700-page giant. There are about five other books that are sort of sitting in the wings that, well, aren't super high on my list of priorities to indulge in. I am, however, going to start putting some books on hold at the library (the pocketbook thanks me), since I finally paid off my $1.50 fine (a late fee for CS, of course). Did I mention that the library is literally around the corner? Yah, I'm just slow.

Here's to books, read, unread, and piling up all over my studio apartment.