Meta

Two thing happened this past Shabbos that prompt me to take iPod in hand and blog a bit. The first was that I spied Rabbi Wilshanski (my old Rosh Yeshiva in Morristown) doing something or other on the bima following kriah in 770. At that point memories of all our interactions flowed through my mind and I tried to remember the stories he had told at a melave malka he hosted in his house. Unfortunately I couldn't recall the details of the stories he had told, which disturbed me, because I distinctly remember telling the stories that very night to Yosef Abramov, and many times over later on. I figured that at some point or other I had written the stories down on this here blog, and in fact I did. But more on that later.

The second thing that happened to me this past shabbos was that I ran into Yossi Beenstock as he was escaping my class shul. He was actually running, or at least walking very briskly, and it is actually my class's shul, though I've never been there. Anyway, Yossi commented, as he has done many times in the past, that I hadn't posted a post on this here blog in quite some time. I replied that if he liked he could write up a post himself, and I'd publish it. He asked if he could make its subject the perfidy of eBay, and I told him that he could do whatever he liked.

Needless to say, this post is not his post. Rather, this post is a link to the stories I heard at that melave malka so many years (5767!) ago. Here is that link. It's cute to go back and read old posts, and even cuter to go back and read old comments. Admittedly, the comments on that post were not particularly brilliant, though my Aramaic was pretty good, if I say so myself. Those were the days, eh? When bloggers were real bloggers, commenters were real commenters, and Blogger didn't look like Microsoft Word circa 1993. We boldly split infinitives that had never before been split, were not yet the youths of Churchill, and set our minds a boggling.

And that was that.

Sefirah Beards UPDATED! (scroll down)

I received the following email on the 19th of this here month of April:

Hi,

I came across http://therealshliach.blogspot.com/ while searching for resources around psychology and facial hair and was wondering if this is the correct contact in regards to the content on the site. My team just created a graphic on the topic, would you be interested in taking a look? I would love to get feedback from your readers and see what they have to say about the topic, as well as yours.

Thanks in advance for your time.

I wasn't sure if this was spam or not, but eventually decided that it most probably wasn't, so I emailed back:

Hey, 

I'm not sure what the blog has to do with psychology and facial hair, but yes, I would probably be interested in seeing a graphic on the topic.

Just like clockwork, I got the following email:

Hi,

Thanks for getting back to me. The graphic illustrates a brief history of the beard and how they are perceived today. The piece lives here and you're welcome to use it as you'd like: http://onlinephd.org/facial-hair/

Let me know what you think, I appreciate all feedback.

Thanks!

And for those of you too lazy to click on through to the source link, here(I don't think an apostrophe belongs here, so I'm not inserting one)s you go:

Created by: Online PhD

Two things: I'm impressed that Safari managed to maintain the hyperlinks while I was copying and pasting from my email to Blogger; obviously things have changed progressed from the TRS heyday. Two, I'm not sure what to make of this graph, but I'm sure my astute readers will have much to say on the matter.

UPDATE:

http://spencerjardine.blogspot.com/2012_09_01_archive.html

Talking

I recently heard a story from the protagonist, which is as good an indicator of truthfulness as any I know of.

A young South African gay Jewish man got HIV, in the days when getting HIV was essentially a death sentence. The young man's doctor didn't know whether he should tell him or not, so he asked everyone he knew, including, as it turns out, the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Now, I'm not sure exactly what they told the Rebbe, but I do know what the answer was: "Tell him he's got it." Or something along those lines.

What does this mean? I'm not sure. I guess it's not a surprise that the Rebbe dealt with questions like this, and I don't know that I'd expect a different answer, but still. It has to mean something, right?

Shabbos?

There was also a personal aspect of that question: How was I going to pay attention to a game that lasts five days? I'm a typically over-connected modern worker bee. Lately, as the trips run into each other and I go 50, 70 days on without one off, I often feel frantic, wondering what I might be missing. I have two phones. An iPad and a Kindle. Three MacBooks. I take my iPhone into the bathroom, to text and play Zombie Gunship. Sometimes I take a call, hitting mute to flush. I use airport urinals with a phone in the other hand. I compulsively check my email. At dinner. In bed. At funerals. No, really, I checked messages at my great-aunt Thelma's funeral. I was a pallbearer. Lately, though I haven't told anyone, I've been having trouble reading. Half-finished books pile up. I open stories in browsers and get a few paragraphs in before I'm distracted by another link, another pop-up video. I'm an addict.

As I settle into my seat on my way to London, the plane over the Atlantic, I start a book called "Hamlet's BlackBerry," which hypothesizes that all our devices are removing the moments before and after important events, amputating both anticipation and reflection, robbing our lives of depth. I feel like the writer is inside my head. There's a passage about each generation fearing the new, describing how Socrates believed the invention of writing would be the end of creativity and critical thinking, the permanence of words calcifying ideas. Writing was to Socrates what video games are to current parents. This is fascinating stuff, just the sort of modern philosophy I'm usually drawn to, but my strobing mind distracts me. I mark my place and never pick it back up again. Oh, and I'm reading a book about the poisonous effect of our devices … on my iPad. Such is the depth of my sickness as I leave passport control at Heathrow. And yet, as my cab heads straight to Lord's Cricket Ground, I still feel in control. I mean, for instance, I don't imagine this trip will lead me to reevaluate my life in a Buddhist temple on the seventh floor of a north London public housing building.

------

It occurs to me, sitting in this grandstand, that maybe I'm looking for answers in the wrong direction.

For a few days now, I've been focusing on the game itself, reporting on the state of Test cricket. It obviously doesn't fit in a modern world. People don't have five hours, much less five days, to be disconnected. One look around the stands and you realize many don't have five minutes, or at least they think they don't: a parade of kids eating ice cream cones, holding hands with dads on BlackBerrys. The game is out of sync with today. But maybe it's deeper than that. What if it isn't the world that's changing?

What if it's us? Gary Small, a professor at UCLA, is at the cutting edge of research on what our devices are doing to our brains. His findings are terrifying. The way we ingest information is changing us. When we read online, our mind, instead of focusing on the text, is subconsciously making thousands of instant decisions, each hyperlink or embedded video causing a series of chemical reactions: Yes or no? Yes or no? Connect. Disconnect. Connect. Disconnect. "Our brains get trained to work like a search engine," Small says. "We jump from idea to idea. We're not thoughtful. We're not pondering. In some ways, we're less creative."

Like a muscle, the brain strengthens the part of itself that it uses the most. This isn't new. Scientists can point to the invention of the hand-held tool hundreds of thousands of years ago, and a corresponding growth in the size of the frontal lobe. The Internet is really just a sophisticated hammer. What will future anthropologists find out about our brains?

The good news is that, for digital immigrants -- people who grew up without these stimuli -- a few weeks away will allow the brain to return to normal. But digital natives -- those who've always known the Internet and smartphones -- might be forever different. Before the age of 20, there's a significant amount of pruning of the synapses. The generation coming of age now might have permanently changed its brains. Studies show humans are losing some ability to interpret facial cues. What's next? Will people one day be unable to read a novel? Or, say, watch a five-day sporting event?

"Digital natives are very impatient with mental tasks that involve delayed gratification," Small says. "That's what you're going to see with cricket. It will be very challenging for this long form of cricket to survive, except among a few aficionados. What's happening to the brains of young people is going to affect the fan base as well as the player base."

That's a new thought, a frightening one. Separate from the economics of television and advertising, from the money pulling at the players and the time required of fans, the biggest threat to Test cricket might be the reconstituted brains of those who watch it.

The face in the mirror is our own. We created a world without space for a pastoral game. We created a world without enough hours in the day. Forget great generals and politicians; unintended consequences are the true drivers of history. When the clock was invented, there was no minute hand. Nobody really needed minutes until around 1700. The modern wristwatch was invented in about 1820. What happened in between? The Industrial Revolution. For the first time in history, people needed to be at work on time. Minutes mattered. Now seconds matter. So we check our email every few moments, even feeling phantom vibrations in our pocket -- like pain in an amputated limb -- wondering what we're missing, even as we're doing something we profess to love.

---

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/story?page=111225/testcricket

Tough Life

Exactly fourteen days after my previous post, I again take writing implement in hand (metaphorically, of course) and pen this missive to the masses. Actually, that's an interesting point. Would my fingers in this case be considered my writing implement? I suppose the keyboard would have that function. But if I were, say, scratching this out in the sand with my various digits, presumably my finger itself would be the writing implement. In which case how would I possibly take my writing implement in hand? My finger (thank the one above for his kind beneficence) is always in hand!

Moving right along, today is the ninth of Elul, which means that we say the 25th through the 27th chapters of psalms. Now, being that I'm currently enjoying the 25th year of my life, I say the 25th chapter of psalms every day. My daily psalm schedule is to say the Rebbe's chapter, followed by my own, and then the daily recitations for Elul and the month (The second ת in ח״תת [or is that חת״ת?]). And yes, I know the general rule that we do more common things before we do uncommon things, but in this case I'm afraid that I'll forget the extra three chapters if I say the others first, so I just say them first. We all need something to do Teshuvah for, right?

Point being, it feels really weird to say the same psalm twice in a row. Is there some sort of protocol I should be following to prevent this sort of thing from happening? I could say, for example, the Rebbe's chapter after my own, but that just feels wrong. Or perhaps I could say the Chitas ones first, but there's just as much trouble to be found there as anywhere. Heck, if I was a really precocious ten month old and it was Rosh Chodesh Elul, I'd have the problem however you looked at it! Unless I said my own last. Hmm, that's an idea.

Today I just ended up saying them back to back, which made me feel a bit like Prince and the (semi) Hebrew Hammer, but is there a better way to do things?

These are the questions that torment me on the subway ride to work.

Smiles

Exactly twenty four months after my marriage, and eighteen after Yossi Shomer's, I attended the nuptials of my dear chavrusa and partner in argument, Michoel (Moo) Rose. Not only did I teach him the proper role of aircraft carriers in WWII, but I also helped him develop a lot of character. You're welcome Mrs. Rose. 

 

C.D.S.G.

I recently attended a non-Lubavitch Shul for Shabbos Davening, which was pretty much the same thing as a Lubavitch Shul for Davening, except that they started at the obscene time of 8:30. Ridiculous.

Anyway, the Kiddush was in honor of a family that is leaving the community after a decade to move to Israel. One of the locals made a speech, which went something like this:

There are many communities which have the minhag to make a "seudas preidah," a separation meal, when people leave. It's interesting to note that the word, "preidah," separation, is also the same word for mule. Why is this? Well, a mule is a strange animal. On the one hand, it's sterile, it can never have progeny. On the other hand, it's a very hard worker. So a mule is bittersweet. So too is a separation: we're taking leave of one another, and it's very sad. At the same time though, it's a new start, a new beginning, and we're happy that they'll be moving on to greater things. So a separation, just like a mule, is bittersweet. Sure, we hope we'll keep in touch, but at the end of the day, this is it.

During this speech I started thinking, "Hmm, I've never heard of this whole seudas preidah thing." And then it occurred to me- this is exactly why, in the immortal words of the brothers Marcus, "Chassidim don't say goodbye." We don't have a separation, we don't leave one another. Sure, there may be a temporary parting, but we know we'll see each other again.

As a Lubavitcher, we hear things like C. D.S.G all the time, and it sounds trite and common and obvious. Then you hear things from another perspective, and all of a sudden, you realize that we really are better than everyone else. Ok, maybe not. But we do have the right idea.

UnKosher Questions

In today's Chumash (specifically, verse 13) we read about a question asked of the R' Yosi by the Bishop Arius. There's a very interesting comment in the Sapirstein edition of the Chumash (page 12, note 9) which says, "Nothing other than what is mentioned here is known about this person. His name appears nowhere else in Torah literature." Funny that there's an entire Sicha (volume 34, page 9) about this guy's question, but that's neither here nor there. Of course, this is the Artscroll volume which famously quotes from Likkutei Sichos in the notes (quoted as "Beiurim LePeirush Rashi Al HaTorah" [notice the lack of a bibliography in the volume]), but again, take that as you will. My real question for you tonight is whether this Bishop Arius we are dealing with here is the same one who became famous for Arianism? It does seem possible, because Arianism is more monotheistic than Christianity, so it seems altogether possible that Arius was talking with famous Rabbis. What say you?

Jews

I got this email a few minutes ago, from jddaniel9247@verizon.net:

I am considering a portion of a posting on your blog "The Real Shliach" as an insert for a work to be published.

Please reply with all your requirements (citation, format of same, etc.) for both circumstances (profit/non-profit) as I have yet to decide which route this project will go.

Thank you and regards,
JD Daniel

Some quick Googling revealed this.

So I wrote him:

Sorry, I do not allow republication of any of my work under any circumstances, especially not for Christian publications.

What say you, loyal readers?

Are you ready?

Two years ago I posted, and today I was once again inspired to post similarly.

The version I recall is:

Before the Rosh was officially Lubavitch he informed his yeshiva hanhala that he'd be in 770 for shavuos, not in Lakewood. They cried, "But matan Torah is in Lakewood!" The Rosh responded, "Yes, but Moshe Rabbeinu is in 770."

The version ex-Mossad recalls is:

The Rosh reponded, "True, but Koballas Hatorah is in 770."
--
I prefer my version if only for being more radical and in your face. I suppose one could ask the Rosh what he said, but that would ruin the fun. Besides, as studies have shown, memory is bogus.