First, according to the Online Etymological Dictionary the origins of word "Free" are rooted in a context of "love":

O.E. freo "free, exempt from, not in bondage," also "noble, joyful," from P.Gmc. *frijaz (cf. M.H.G. vri, Ger. frei, Du. vrij, Goth. freis "free"), from PIE *prijos "dear, beloved" (cf. Skt. priyah "own, dear, beloved," priyate "loves;" O.C.S. prijati "to help," prijatelji "friend;" Welsh rhydd "free"). The adv. is from O.E. freon, freogan "to free, love." The primary sense seems to have been "beloved, friend, to love;" which in some languages (notably Gmc. and Celtic) developed also a sense of "free," perhaps from the terms "beloved" or "friend" being applied to the free members of one's clan (as opposed to slaves, cf. L. liberi, meaning both "free" and "children"). Cf. Goth. frijon "to love;" O.E. freod "affection, friendship," friga "love," friðu "peace;" O.N. friðr, Ger. Friede "peace;" O.E. freo "wife;" O.N. Frigg "wife of Odin," lit. "beloved" or "loving;" M.L.G. vrien "to take to wife, Du. vrijen, Ger. freien "to woo."

The term "Patriot" finds its origins in the word patriote or "fellow countrymen", though in political terms it evolved into somewhat of an insult:

Meaning "loyal and disinterested supporter of one's country" is attested from 1605, but became an ironic term of ridicule or abuse from mid-18c. in England, so that Johnson, who at first defined it as "one whose ruling passion is the love of his country," in his fourth edition added, "It is sometimes used for a factious disturber of the government."

"The name of patriot had become [c.1744] a by-word of derision. Horace Walpole scarcely exaggerated when he said that ... the most popular declaration which a candidate could make on the hustings was that he had never been and never would be a patriot." [Macaulay, "Horace Walpole," 1833]

But the term Patriotism was not always an insult, nor was always used as a political sledgehammer to sell flag pins. According to Harvey Chisick's Historical Dictionary of the Enlightenment, "patriotism" could be defined as something akin social egalitarianism and justice:

Unlike the situation in the 19th century, when nationalism tended to be exclusive and confrontational, during the 18th century patriotism belonged with such inclusive and cohesive values as humanity and beneficence. In the course of the second half of the 18th century, a person who provided relief for the poor, or objected to excessively harsh penal laws, or who criticized institutions such as serfdom or slavery, was likely to be described as a good patriot." (p. 314) [emphasis original]

My hope for this 4th of July our nation can look back to the history of these important words not be lost amongst the ever-spiteful partisan rhetoric which continues to divide our country. I hope that we can spread freedom - in all senses - to our fellow citizens of the world and that we remember the message of what it once meant to be a true patriot.

While I'm not optimistic, I am proud to live in a country where I have the freedom to dream.

Apparently this is not an uncommon problem with Thinkpads. One theory is that the problem is with the inverter but someone else had to replace the whole screen.

After doing some fiddling, I found that my problem was be solved - at least temporarily by dimming the screen down from full brightness. I have no idea exactly what the problem is or why this worked, but if you're having similar trouble you may want to try dimming your screen before shelling out hundreds for a new screen - or thousands on a new computer. So far it seems to work ok for me, but I have no idea how long it will last. Minimally it should make backing up easier while you go computer shopping.²

Please let me know if this was a helpful solution.

Update: Turns out this solution lasted one day - a valueable day for backups, mind you, but one day. If this works, do not close the screen.

. 1. Yep, that's right - an IBM Thinkpad - was one of the last runs before the change to Lenovo.
2. Thankfully, I actually ordered a new Thinkpad on sale earlier in the week before the screen went dark. I did notice some screen problems, but I was having more performance and HD issues typical of a computer several years old.

The period of counting the Omer is also a time of semi-mourning, during which the Halakha forbids haircuts, shaving, listening to live instrumental music, or conducting weddings, parties, and dinners with dancing.

But even in matters of custom there can be multple opinions. For example, every year I get several e-mails asking about what types of music are permitted during the 'Omer. Some distinguish between live and recorded music, others avoid music with instruments. While I personally find these distinctions inconsequential since the entire practice is a matter of custom, let it not be said that here at YUTOPIA we are completely intolerant of minhagim. And so in honor of Sefirat Ha'Omer, I've decided this year to compile my favorite a capella videos from YouTube.¹

According to Jewish educator and comics fan and writer Alan Oirich, artist Gil Kane based his design of the large-headed, balding Guardians of the Universe in DC's Green Lantern on David Ben-Gurion.

You be the judge:

Image from Cracked

The intent of these shiurim is not to get people to the level of pesak and as such we did not explore the vast teshuva literature on the subject. Rather the goal was to provide working definitions and explain the laws and principles underlying the various halakhic disputes. Most sources are from the Talmud, Rambam, and Shulhan Aruch.

I decided to split this shiur into three parts:

1. Part 1 introduces the reshuyot and the basic definitions of eiruvin, and demonstrates that halakha views eiruvin positively and that putting one up is considered to be a Good Thing.
2. Part 2 covers the physical construction of the eiruv - the lehi, korah, and mostly the tzurat hapetach, explaining their halakhic function.
3. Part 3 discusses the conceptual requirement of getting all residents in an area to join an eiruv, as well as several solutions to the problem of getting Jews to agree on anything.

All three shiurim have been added to YUTOPIA's Source Sheet Archive.

As always, comments and corrections/suggestions are welcome!

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?

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!

As longtime blog readers know, that last condition was a tough one to overcome.

At any rate, I'm posting my article "A Fair And Balanced Approach To Jewish Social Justice" and I plan on revisiting the motivations for the article at some later point.

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.

What's parsonage you may ask? The term originally referred to a rectory or dwelling of the priest on the premises of a church. These days it's more associated with a tax benefit given to clergy members where housing expenses are paid with pre-tax dollars (simplified definition). Quoth the IRS:

A minister who is furnished a parsonage may exclude from income the fair rental value of the parsonage, including utilities. However, the amount excluded cannot be more than the reasonable pay for the minister's services.

The catch is that clergy are also considered "self-employed" which means we get nailed double when it comes to social security, paying both the employee and employer side of things. However, there is one interesting loophole:

The fair rental value of a parsonage or the housing allowance is excludable from income only for income tax purposes. No exclusion applies for self-employment tax purposes. For Social Security purposes, a duly ordained, licensed or commissioned minister is self-employed...However, you can request an exemption from self-employment tax, if you are conscientiously opposed to public insurance for religious reasons.

Even if a Rabbi were to go Milton Friedman in lomdus on the IRS, I'd have to guess that most Rabbis do in fact participate in social security.

Still I'd love to hear from any Rabbi who has in fact used this exemption - and the arguments they've used.

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.

For the most part, the trojan is more of a nuisance than a critical problem - the computer will still function despite the annoying prompts. However my infection was severely worse in that the trojan disabled control panel, task manager, and even locked me out of editing the registry. This meant that I couldn't remove the trojan either with an anti-virus program or manually.

When I was first infected with the trojan, I needed to pay someone to recover data and reinstall the machine. The second time - yes it happened twice - I was able to handle it myself, though the process was still time consuming. If you're having trouble with your thinkpad, here are my suggestions for the homemade nuclear option:

1. Backup Data Files: Fortunately I recently purchased an external hard drive (I can officially recommend the Lacie Rugged line). As far as I can tell the trojan will not be transmitted through an external backup of data files.

1a. Backup Installation Files: If you have "must have" programs on your machine, it's sometimes useful to save the installation files so that you don't need to spend time redownloading everything. Furthermore, if you're using a free anti-virus or spyware program, you'll probably want the latest versions installed immediately as well. Even with the trojan, you should still be able to download the exe files and backup to your hard drive.

2. Reboot Computer, Press F11 While Rebooting: This will effectively wipe your machine to the system defaults from when you first got the computer. Yes, you will need to reinstall all programs but you'll also find your computer will work faster.

Like I said, this solution time consuming and it's technically not really a "fix" in that you're wiping your machine and starting over. However, I can say that it works and you can do this without paying anyone.

As a final aside, I should hope that none of my Loyal Readers are gullible enough to shell out the $50 to purchase the advertised anti-virus program. The techie who fixed my computer said that there were people who did get the program, and surprise surprise, it didn't help.

I'd consider it a work in progress so any feedback or comments would be appreciated.

Within the new guidelines, that is.

Today I am very pleased to announce that the transition appears to be complete. Thanks to a great deal of hacking and the good support people at tweakedhosting.com, both the chords and guitar database are up and running at their new homes:

The new site for YUTOPIA is:

www.JoshYuter.com

The Jewish guitar chords can be found appropriately enough at:

www.JewishGuitarChords.com

For the time being YUCS is redirecting all traffic to the new site,² but since I don't know how much longer YUCS will be in operation, I'd like to ask if you could please update your links and feed subscriptions accordingly.

I don't have metrics just yet, but it does seem the site runs slightly slower and loads a little weirder than before. On the plus side, I've sorted out most of the new glitches and thanks to the new system I've even added some cool features such as this nifty little new contact form for direct spam-free feedback.

It also seems to be a good time to update the Blogroll on the side. If you'd like to exchange links or if you're already linking and would appreciate the reciprocity, please let me know.

Thank you all very much for your help and support. It's been an exciting time lately, and it doesn't look to be slowing down any time soon.³ I hope I'll be able to continue sharing in the next adventures of my little YUTOPIAN world.

1. And if and when it ever does go down, I'll write up a history. Tentative title: "From 501 to 404." (Yes, that's an obscure but relevant reference).
2. Some pages might not be working due to previous movabletype upgrades. I'll fix those as they come up.
3. Another big announcement forthcoming, and no I'm not getting engaged.