Recently in Personal Category

Wow.

I can hardly believe how long it's been since I've last written anything. I've barely had time to get basic derashot out, let alone formulate for intelligible posting (maybe next year :-). Consider that for the months of September and October I was commuting from Springfield to the LES for every Shabbat and Chag, packing, unpacking, and writing derashot. Then for some reason things just keep popping up that I haven't had the time to think let alone research and write.

So I'm sticking my head out to say that yes I am alive and well, just too distracted with many life and shul details to write more - though I must say I've been feeling the absence of not writing.

Right now I'm prepping a shiur for Dec 25 on Talmudic Responses to Greek and Christian Culture. Of course it's not going to be close to comprehensive but it serves a double inyanei deyoma.

God willing I'll try to make more time to write. I've really missed this place.

Dear Loyal Readers,
Over the past few weeks I've hinted at some more changes going on in my life and for the usual reasons of busyness I haven't gotten around to posting. The big news: I accepted the position of Rabbi at The Stanton St. Shul¹ in New York's Lower East Side and even had my first Shabbat last week.

As you might expect, it's a big change for me being my first rabbinic position - especially on top of all the craziness in my life over the past few months.² Still, I'm very excited to be taking on this new challenge and hopefully work on myself in the process.

In terms of blogging, I'm going to have to be even more careful with what I say up here. Obviously some things will have to be "off limits," but I on the other hand since I'll be doing more teaching I should be able to post more Torah as derashot or some shiurim.

I'm still looking for apartments on the LES, but thankfully I'm getting help from the community and the great people at LoHo Realty, so for the time being I've been commuting into the city.

So that's the scoop. If anyone out there is interested in the community or wants to come by for a visit, please let me know!

1. The website could use some work, but I hope to add my expertise in that area as well.
2. Plus since it's technically a part-time position I'm currently taking classes in Revel, possibly en route to a PhD in Talmud but that part is still tentative.

It's that time of year again for the annual birthday introspection. Last year I turned 30, which led to my completely fabricated "Big Round Number" theory. This year I turn 31, which as a friend pointed out to me, means that I'm "in my prime" in the mathematical sense.

As I hope everyone knows by now, a prime number is "a natural number which has exactly two distinct natural number divisors: 1 and itself." There's something pure about a prime number, a number distinct such that it stands alone. It's identity is not determined by other numbers, but rather a prime number exists only in relationship to itself and the core identity of 1.

I started ruminating about ideas of identity: what makes us who we are, and how we define ourselves etc. Ironically, today's summer addition to Hulu.com was the 1993 classic Groundhog Day which deals with identity defined by knowledge and actions, such as the identities we form through sheer mindless repetition and predictability.

This past year for me was anything but predictable. It was only March when I was still working at a cushy stable job at JPMorgan Chase with a nice apartment and simple routine. Since then I got laid off, wrote three master's theses before passing, found out I needed to move, and we're not even close to being done with more big changes coming (details to follow shortly). In general, there does seem to be a sense for me this year of forcing myself to break some patterns, accepting new challenges, and being in a position where I'm forced to be more independent and proactive in determining how the next year will progress.

For now I will simply thank everyone for the multitude of warm birthday wishes¹ and I look forward to sharing what promises to be an exciting year with everyone.

1. Thank you Facebook

Well, one bit of good news since the last post is that my recent thesis draft passed as is! I still have some minor changes to make like some silly grammar, spelling, or syntax things,¹ but even so, the professors found it passable "and quite interesting."

Once I get those bugs out of the way I'll consider either posting it or a thoroughly abridged summary.

If you're new to YUTOPIA, I first blogged about this thesis way back on February 25th, 2004, and a few more times since. After a while I just stopped talking about it other to say it was "in progress" and generally let it get in the way of pursuing so many things in life mostly out of guilt and insecurity.

For so long I was afraid to write anything, mostly due to self-imposed pressure of writing a paper solely as an admissions ticket to a PhD program. For most of the time I was working on a topic I didn't choose, didn't really understand, and constantly felt too unqualified and too insecure to write anything. Even if I'd write three sentences, I'd delete two for not being good enough;I knew I could write better and couldn't deal with not producing at the level I thought I ought to have been able. I even used to get panic attacks just by loading up the draft in Word.

There were several factors why things worked this time including:

1. Having a topic I understood
2. Having clear parameters for a research model
3. Growing up a whole lot over the past few years
4. Having an absolute drop-dead deadline
5. Getting laid off at an opportune time
6. Getting over the existential need to get a PhD immediately and living without degrees
7. Dealing with bigger problems, which helps put things in perspective
8. In fact I think it's because at this point nothing was else riding on finishing the paper freed me up to view it as just another independent task

I may think of more later - right now I'm writing on instinct. I definitely feel that I've changed a bit since I've started, daresay even matured. There's also an odd sense of closure. Back in 2003 or so the biggest advocate for me going to Chicago was my then-girlfriend, who got married within a day of me submitting my draft.² I don't know exactly what that means, but I think it's interesting enough to mention.

Minimally there's a lesson here in either tenacity or stupidity. I've had several people - including a therapist - tell me to quit and move on, and perhaps if I were a better economist I'd have just dealt with the sunk costs. I think part of it was the counter-insecurity of admitting failure³ or that deep down I also knew that I do in fact know how to write.

At any rate, having a masters the University of Chicago it may or may not open doors in the future, but right now I don't feel that it has to. That lesson alone is probably worth more than the paper itself.⁴

I would also be remiss if I didn't thank my family and friends who have provided encouragement or even just put up with me struggling with this over the past few years. Also I must also thank the new professors for their constructive guidance and feedback. In fact I received more productive comments from them in the past few months than I've gotten in the previous four years combined.

1. Huge shocker I know.
2. Mazal Tov!!!!
3. Think something like that Simpsons episode where all of Mr. Burns' illnesses cancel each other out.
4. Who knew you could learn something while getting an education?

By now my extended absences from blogging should come as no surprise. I've always held that real life must take precedence over any virtual identity. However, since I did promise an explanation, so here's the scoop.

• Once I got laid off¹ I decided to use the time to remove my longstanding albatross of my U of C thesis. This, I should point out, is no small feat considering that previous attempts at finishing have elicited more panic attacks than paragraphs. At any rate, I managed to hunker down and actually managed to turn in a paper on secularization theories. The only problem was that my then adviser had since left and the new professors in charge thought the thesis was pretty much uninteresting or otherwise insufficient.² After a near rewrite of the entire paper, it still wasn't up to snuff and it was rejected.
• So after basically writing two theses, I had to start from scratch again, but this time in conjunction with the new advisers. Following their suggestions and my own familiarity with the subject. I wrote a new paper dealing with the Conservative teshuvot on homosexuality and e-mailed it in last week.³ Thus, in a span of three months I researched and wrote well over 100 pages worth of thesis, with the last fifty or so in the past month alone.
• In the middle of these theses, I also organized Mt. Sinai's shavuot program and updated my own shiur on taxes and tzeddakah.
• Oh, and I also wrote a piece for the upcoming issue of R. Marc Angel's journal "Conversations" on the topic of "social justice"⁴
• Anticipating burnout, I had planned on attending R. Aryeh Klapper's summer kollel, but we got the dates mixed up and it actually started about two weeks before I had down on my calendar. This actually turned out to be fortuitous because...
• I just found out today that my landlord is not renewing the lease on the apartment in which I am currently subletting. This means on top of being unemployed I also need to move out in about two months.

So yeah, it's been an intense couple of months with neither respite nor resolution imminent. ⁵ Much has been neglected personally - I simply haven't had the time to take care of myself as as I should.⁶ Despite the immediate concerns of job and dwelling, I'm still optimistic in the macro sense that this is yet another instance of being forced out of a comfort zone to grow in some way or another.

There have also been a few changes in the blog itself. I recently ported over all templates to MT4 which as you can see went must better than last time. Aside from some minor cosmetic changes, the significant perk is that commenting with the captcha actually works! This means no more bugs and no more Typekey registration.

Finally, I registered the domain names http://joshyuter.com and http://jewishguitarchords.com for this site and the chords directory respectively. Currently these URL's are only a masked redirect, but this may change in the future.⁷

And that just about covers it. I may try forcing myself to write again more regularly to maintain the outlet, but no promises.

Stay tuned for future developments...

1. Which I later found out to be another casualty of the Bear Stearns buyout.
2. Much of the problem stemmed from the fact that I didn't chose the topic, but it was assigned to me from a faculty adviser. The problem was he left the university and the replacements didn't like the new topic.
3. Advisers are on vacation and won't look at it for another week. If it passes I'll blog a summary.
4. More precisely, my perspective on which I hope to elaborate at some point.
5. Thankfully before I descended fully entered into "woe is me" mode, I found Kathryn Bertine's recent and possibly final installment of her series "So You Wanna Be an Olympian" and found the last section to be particularly helpful.
6. I've even ignored my own 5 year blogoversary!
7. At the rate things are going it's a good thing I don't have a good pun for "Brave New World."

Many months ago, I was passing though the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle and saw that not only was there something called "Jazz at Lincoln Center" but that Dave Brubeck and Ramsey Lewis were playing in one concert. Despite my eclectic taste in music I've never been much of a Jazz person, but even I've heard of and appreciate Dave Brubeck and Ramsey Lewis as two of the living legends of Jazz. You've probably heard of Dave Brubeck's most well-known work Take Five. I barely missed hearing Dave Brubeck a few years ago in Seattle and I jumped at the opportunity to hear him in NY.

Dave Brubeck first stepped to the microphone to make a small correction in the program. Instead of being 83 as listed, he was actually 87 and joked, "how time doesn't fly." Later he displayed some more of his humor describing how he wrote the song "London Sharps, London Flats" and dedicated it to his manager after a particularly difficult European tour:

You'll notice how my right hand goes up the keyboard on the sharps and my left one goes down on the flats.

It sounds terrible.

On purpose.

Of course it didn't sound that bad. Actually I hope I can play the piano that well when I'm 87.

Ramsey Lewis may not be as familiar, but is well known for jazz arrangements of other songs. Perhaps the most recognizable piece being a cover of Dobie Gray's "The In Crowd," but he also included a jazz cover of the Beatles' In My Life.
While Dave Brubeck's pieces played with chord structures and time signatures Ramsey Lewis' music more more rhythmic incorporating jazz, blues, gospel, and even a calypso riff.

Anyway, with everything else that's been going on this week, the timing (so to speak) couldn't have been better.

Identifying divine providence or hashgacha, if we're being honest, is a tricky endeavor. Virtually any event can be attributed to free will just as easily as it can be to divine intervention, and I covered some of these views in one of my shiurim. Not only is our attitude towards events subjective, but even if we assume a "divine plan" it could take many years for this plan to unfold. I once gave a derasha pointing out that even Yosef Hatzaddik was relatively shortsighted in his view of hashgacha. As Yosef assuages his brother's fears he tells them, "you intended for bad, but God intended for good; to have such a day to sustain a large nation" (Bereishit 50:20). As we know the descent into Egypt plays a much larger role in the Jewish story beyond Yosef's limited perception. Furthermore, we recently read about the hidden divine role in Megillat Esther, the narrative of which which took place over the course of several years.

On the other hand, observing apparent instances of hashgacha immediately can have a profound effect on our outlook. Case in point, earlier today I had an appointment at 5:00 PM on the Upper West Side. On a normal Wednesday I would need to rush out of the downtown office, and depending on how well the 1 and 2/3 trains synch up, barely make it in time. But today, having more time on my hands than usual, I decided to head down earlier than usual and read outside on one of the benches in the middle of the pedestrian islands on Broadway. As I sat down to open the book¹ I noticed an elderly woman physically struggling with a younger person who seemed to be trying to help the older one. The exasperated younger woman explained that elder one had a history of dementia and tried to cross the street against the light to get away from her and asked for help in trying to get her to sit down on the bench.

Initially I just tried to diffuse the situation by talking to the elder woman, and eventually did get her to sit down though she was still very distraught. But as I was sorting out things with her aide, she said three very familiar words: "ata medaber ivrit?" As it turns out she was Israeli, initially from Tel Aviv, and a whole lot more lucid when conversing in Hebrew. Without getting into the details I spoke to her in Hebrew, calmed her down, and despite her claims of being completely fine, convinced her to go with the medics to Mt. Sinai hospital.²

While I have no idea what would have happened if I hadn't been there, I do realize that had I not been laid off I wouldn't have been there to help both her and her aide.

And the great thing is that this story of hashgacha is just beginning.

1. In an amusing irony, the book I was reading was The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.
2. She wanted me to come with her, and I might have if I didn't have the appointment (which I made with one minute to spare...again).

Dear Loyal Readers,
It's been a while since I've done a personal post, mostly because there hasn't been much going on worth reporting. Then again I suppose you could say I haven't blogged regularly (even by my standards) since I changed jobs in accordance with their internet policies. At any rate this last part is now moot since my position at JPMC no longer exists, i.e. eliminated, downsized, or whatever term is in fashion these days.

While the result is similar to being fired, my current circumstances are really not as severe all things considered other than looking for another job. It was a good run at JPMC - I may be applying to other positions there - and I'm looking forward to resetting priorities and approaching the next challenges and opportunities.

In the meantime, I'm brushing up computer and Rabbinic resumes and hope to use the time productively. Of course any leads would be greatly appreciated...

YU's Commentator reports that Revel dean Dr. Arthur Hyman will be stepping down from his administrative post, but will continue teaching courses in Jewish Philosophy. To some students, Dean Hyman gave the impression of a grandfatherly adviser, one of Yeshiva University's many eccentric characters. This perception and the Commentator's relatively light coverage¹ neglect Dean Hyman's contributions and tireless efforts to improve Revel's academic reputation.

Since turning 30 last August I've been a little more aware of my age, making the occasional self-deprecating grizzled remarks about the old days. Age is especially noticeable in the increasingly youthful Washington Heights community where the shul is even running a single's event specifically for people ages 22-29.

All this I can deal with, but then I get the following in the mail:

On the plus side I guess this means I can cash out on social security earlier and join one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the country.

Now get off my lawn.

*waves stick*