January 2009 Archives

January 5, 2009

Dear Loyal Readers,
I recently decided to cash out my credit card points from my American Express card to move. In my program each point is worth 1/2 a cent. As you could imagine most of the items in their store are "overpriced" at that ratio, but through their "Giving Express" program, AmEx allows for donating points at a rate of 1 cent per point to any charity in the GuideStar database.

I currently have 8,000 points left which translates into one $50 donation and three $10 donations.1 The question is, where should it go?



January 1, 2009

Taking advantage of the recent national holidays I gave a two-part shiur series at The Stanton St. Shul. Part 1 was given on December 25th (fourth day of Hanukah) on Rabbinic Responses to Greek Culture and Part 2 was delivered this morning on Rabbinic Responses to Christian Thought. (The initial plan was to combine both into one shiur, but that was unrealistic).

I'm not writing them up because to be perfectly honest most of what I did was done before, and much better than I could ever hope to do. In particular I borrowed heavily from Saul Lieberman's Greek in Jewish Palestine / Hellenism in Jewish Palestine, Ephraim Urbach's The Sages: Their Concepts and Beliefs, and Haham Jose' Faur's new book The Horizontal Society which I hope to review shortly.

Still there are those who may be interested in the source sheets, which may be downloaded in PDF:
Rabbinic Reactions to Greek Culture
Rabbinic Responses to Christian Thought.

Also, I'm going to be posting future source sheets - and slowly migrating old ones - to a new section of YUTOPIA: http://joshyuter.com/shiurim/

Enjoy!